Rev. King's dream unfulfilled as Black poverty increases

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in poverty tied to setbacks for unions in 80s The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream that was shared by millions in America. He dreamed that one day, people would not be denied freedom solely because of the color of their skin.

Many Black people felt they had a reason to be hopeful. Blacks made their greatest gains in this century-both socially and economically-during the 1960s. The civil rights movement coincided with a period in which the U.S. economy (propped up by war spending) was still expanding. Unemployment was relatively low. At that time, the U.S. capitalists could still accommodate millions of Black people in the workforce.

As we enter the 1990s, many of the gains of the 1960s remain. Jim Crow (as an official doctrine) is gone. At the same time, a sizeable Black middle class—including close to 800,000 managers and corporate executives-has come into existence. White "Yuppies" have been joined by Black "Buppies."

But the dream is still a long way from being fulfilled. Racism persists. And the stagnant economy and government cutbacks of the last two decades have hit Black people particularly hard.

Black poverty has grown Wages and living standards of Black workers have fallen (absolutely, as well as relative to whites). About 35 percent of the Black population lives under the official poverty line (compared to 28 percent in 1968). Last year, Blacks had 25 percent less to spend than in 1970. And median Black income is still only 57 percent that of whites.

Over 13 percent of Blacks are unemployed (compared to 9.4 percent in 1973). Between 1973 and 1986, the percentage of Black men between the ages of 18 and 29 who had fulltime, year-round jobs fell from 44 percent to 35 percent.

The incidence of cancer in Blacks has risen 34 percent over the last 25 years (that of whites went up only 9 percent). One out of every four Black women's pregnancies ends in miscarriage. The infant mortality rate is 23 per 1000—twice that of whites and on a par with many underdeveloped countries in Africa and Latin America.

Since the days of Martin Luther King, segregation continues in our central cities. Almost one-third of Black people live in neighborhoods that are at least 90 percent Black. In a Washington Post poll taken last October, 52 percent of Blacks said that Black people in their area are discriminated against when they seek housing.

It's true that segregationists have less power now to muster entire police and sheriff's departments to keep Blacks out of "white" areas. However, the police generally increase It would be the height of understatement to say that the 1980s were rough years for working people in this country.

Today, more people live below the poverty line (over 32 million), more people are homeless (over 3 million), and more people are unemployed (an underreported 7 percent average for the decade). With these deplorable social conditions as a backdrop, the weekly earnings of working people have dropped by an average of 9.2 percent—a $32per-week decrease.

The decline in living standards for Ameri20 SOCIALIST ACTION prefer to sit by while racist mobs (and murderers with parcel bombs) go to work.

Is Democratic Party an answer?

Meanwhile, police and city halls utilize the "war on drugs" to terrorize the Black community into submission. And atrocities such as Mayor Wilson Goode's 1987 firebombing of the MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia serve as a reminder to Black activists to "stay in their place."

Wilson Goode is one of the close to 7000 can workers, especially for Black and Latino workers, began in the 1970s.

It got much worse in the 1980s. Over the last 10 years the rich definitely got richer, and the poor definitely got poorer as the captains of capital expanded their attacks on workers around phrases like maintaining "competitiveness" and "profitability."

Regrettably, the success of the bosses' offensive can be attributed to one decisive factor: the capitulation of the misleaders of the trade unions, who refused to organize any effective resistance to the employers' onslaught.

The class-collaborationist policies of the JANUARY 1990 oseph Ryan/Socialist Black elected officials in this country who belong to the Democratic Party. Most Black leaders promote the idea that support to the Democratic Party can somehow work to improve conditions for African Americans.

But since the time of Martin Luther King, the Democratic Party has done everything possible to shake off its liberal "New Deal," "New Frontier," and "Great Society" image (which was never anything but phony campaign rhetoric).

An example the AFL-CIO bureaucracy—policies predicated on the belief that a "partnership" exists between bosses and workerscame home with a vengeance in the 1980s.

Based on this "partnership," the bureaucracy lent a sympathetic ear to the bosses' demands for "concessions" and "takebacks." By conscious design, their refusal to organize a fightback helped facilitate the employers' austerity drive, on the one hand, and disarmed the union rank and file, on the other.

In one trade-union struggle after another, the bureaucracy undermined or sabotaged any fightback. In some situations they openly thinking" can be glimpsed in the person of Doug Wilder, recently elected governor of Virginia. Wilder was formerly known as a "shoot-from-the-hip" liberal in Virginia politics. Now he styles himself as part of the "new mainstream" of the party. His more "moderate" stance, the Black millionaire says, is proof that he has "matured politically.

In the process of becoming "mature," Wilder changed much more than his trademark Afro haircut. He decided to back fewer anti-discrimination bills in the Virginia Senate and he increasingly called for stiffer jail sentences. He said that he could now support the death penalty because it no longer appeared to him to be imposed disproportionately on Blacks. [For more on this issue, see page 3.] Wilder reportedly plunked down $50,000 of his own campaign funds into a coordinated campaign to elect fellow Democrats in Virginia. His gesture of party loyalty is not unimportant in the South, where 147 "Dixiecrat" officeholders deserted the party last year to join the Republicans.

But no one should be surprised that politicians feel free to "crossover" into the Republican camp. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are merely two factions of the same party—which is run for the benefit of the capitalist class that rules this country.

"It's as simple as he who pays the piper picks the tune," Rep. Dan Glickman (DKan.) admitted in the Washington Post weekly edition (Nov. 6-12, 1989). "Money has made it more difficult for Democrats to define an economic agenda that is different from the Republican agenda; we are taking from the same contributors."

Thus the Democrats in Congress have unabashedly teamed up with the Republicans to hand over money that should have gone for housing, healthcare, and schools to the bankers and the military. From 1982 to 1985, for example, the Democratic Party majority in Congress authorized cuts of about $110 billion from social-welfare programs. During the same period, the government's interest payments to the banks rose by $124 billion.

If Black leaders (those who profess to be "mature" like Doug Wilder) are willing to serve the interests of big business, they will be duly rewarded. If not, they can expect the ruling class to try to silence them.

Martin Luther King, despite his illusions in the Democratic Party, put his main emphasis on the need for mass protest actions-strikes, marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. Today, likewise, solid victories can only be won through mass protest. A Black party that is completely independent of the Democrats could play an important role in uniting and organizing Black people to win their dream of freedom.

played the role of strikebreakers. The results of these class-collaborationist policies are ominous: the union movement is weaker and all working people are poorer.

Unfortunately, the 1990s are starting out on the same sour note on which the last decade ended, as 8000 Eastern Airlines machinists and 20,000 New York telephone workers watch their strikes wither on the vine thanks to the bureaucracy's refusal to implement a fighting strategy.

Decade in review

Let's review the last decade. The bosses entered the 1980s with their class-conscious agenda for further driving down the wages and living conditions of American workers. They began by issuing a challenge-in reality a litmus test—to the trade-union bureauNewly elected President Ronald Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO)

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