Boston-area antiwar speakout draws broad range of activists

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SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1990 BOSTON-As one participant put it, the Boston Area Speak-Out on El Salvador "was a different kind of meeting" for the region's Central America solidarity movement. Held on Feb. 11, and organized to demand an end to all U.S. aid to El Salvador, the meeting was attended by over 150 antiwar activists and featured a broad representation from labor, the churches, the women's movement, and the solidarity movement.

Noted historian Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University and author of "A People's History of the United States," addressed the crowd on an upbeat note. He asserted that "now, for the first time in American history, there is a very large number of people in the United States who are aware of what is going on in Central America."

That awareness was evident in Linda Harrison, a telephone worker and leader of Local 2222 of the IBEW who recently won a militant strike against Nynex.

Harrison prefaced her written remarks with an explanation of what brought her to the meeting. "I have to tell you one thing-that from this strike, I've become angry. And because I've become angry, I've become more aware. That's why I'm here. When you access people like me," she declared, "you know that you've begun to win your battle."

Her call for international worker solidarity was low key but eloquent. "If I allow a worker in another country to be paid less for his [or her] labor, I will be paid less for mine. If I allow a worker in another country to lose his [or her] rights, I will lose mine. It's as simple as that."

"Drug-mania" propaganda

Paul Atwood of the Smedley Butler Brigade of Veterans for Peace denounced the Panama invasion, pointing out the danger the invasion represents to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the rest of Central America.

Atwood noted that "the U.S. has been dishing out retail terror up until now. The invasion signals their intention to escalate to wholesale terror." He characterized it as "a propaganda tactic to convince the American public that the Bush Administration is serious about the so-called 'war on drugs."' "In fact," said Atwood, "the CIA and other agencies invented this drug-mania.... It is no accident that crack is now afflicting the very people in society who benefit least [from society], and who have the best reason to oppose our racist and inequitable system.

"Just as the bogey-man of a world communist conspiracy' was invented, so too have the international drug traffickers, who are utterly dependent upon the services and capital of banks and other financial institutions in this country." Atwood warned that the invasion of Panama may be a prelude "for a deadly assault planned for the entire We reprint here major excerpts from a speech by Boston NOW Vice President Ellen Zucker to the "Speak-Out to End All U.S. Aid to El Salvador."

Tonight, right before I came over here, I heard George Bush waxing eloquently about human rights and democracy. I wish desperately that I could believe him.

I knew that I had to come over here and make this speech, and had been thinking long and hard about what goes on in El Salvador, and why we-as the National Organization for Women—must take a stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in El Salvador, against U.S. intervention in that country, and against U.S. financial and military support of the repressive regime in that country.

It is somewhat ironic to listen to what has gone on in the past few months and to look at our government's reaction. We hear them talk about democratic movements. They talk of civil rights. But we have to wonder: How can they do this?

How dare they talk about civil rights when we know that they are funding death squads region."

The Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler, a leading spokesperson for Boston's Black community, stated that "this country has been the plantation owner of the world, and it's time for it to stop—in South Africa, in Central America, in the Caribbean."

Ellis-Hagler condemned U.S. economic and military support to El Salvador. "Millions of dollars a day go to El Salvador. For what? For death squads. For keeping people down and 'in their place,' for exploiting workers and poor people ... to murder priests, to murder housekeepers, to murder all types of people, and workers. That's where our money goes.

"As we look around this country, what do we see on our streets? We see sick and suffering addicts who have no place to go and recover. We see men and women without a place to lay their heads. And yet we spend millions of dollars a day in El Salvador-for death."

International solidarity Ellen Zucker, a vice president of the Boston chapter of the National Organization for Women, proclaimed NOW's solidarity with the people of El Salvador [see sidebar]. She drew parallels between their struggle and two struggles taking place in the streets of Boston—to keep abortion clinics open, and against the racist "stop and search" policy used by Boston cops to terrorize the Black and Latino communities. [See Socialist Action, February 1990.] Jean-Claude Martineau, noted Haitian author and activist, recounted the "tremendous brutality" against the people of Haiti "that matches apartheid." He spoke of the famine there that is every bit as bad as that in Ethiopia.

Martineau implored the Central American solidarity movement to address the issue of Haiti, and described how the story of his country is buried in the U.S. press. The American people, he said, are the "least-informed people on Earth," and the function of the American press is to misinform and serve the interests of the American rulers.

Looking to Eastern Europe, Martineau portrayed the uprisings there as "a struggle for self-determination," and compared the actions of the workers and students there with those of the people of Central America and the Caribbean.

Oscar Chacon of the Interfaith Office of Accompaniment gave an update on the curin El Salvador. How can they care about democracy when they work so shamelessly with those who would deny the voice of public opinion in El Salvador and throughout Latin America?

U.S. seeks to control We know that our government's actions have everything to do with its desire to control, and very little to do with that precious word "democracy." We know that because of what they do in Latin America, and we know that because of what they do here. They offer no response to the fact that their guns and their money help kill innocent people in El Salvador.

We know this also because there are other forms of [U.S. government] violence that take place not in El Salvador but in our city's streets, and in our country. We know that they encourage acts of violence against all those who threaten their control-working people, people of color, and women.

So while they fund death squads in El Salvador, here they urge the smashing of unions, here they endorse terrorizing activities—"stop and search" policies that terrorize rent situation in El Salvador. Also speaking were Felix Arroyo of the Democratic Latino Committee, and Mary Jean Maguire from the Cambridge Sister City project. Jim Henle chaired on behalf of the Coalition for Peace and Justice in El Salvador, the organizers of the speak-out.

Greetings were read from Pedro Cruz of FENASTRAS (National Federation of RY the communities of color. And here they seek to empower the terrorists of Operation Rescue, who would deny [us] our right to control our own bodies and deny us access to health care and abortion services.

And so, while we should be absolutely shocked by their actions in El Salvador, and we wish that we could believe the words of our president tonight, we know that we can't. The list is too long; the history is too bloody.

We need to condemn the violence in El Salvador, but we can't just concentrate on that which is far away. We need to be in solidarity with these sisters and brothers, but we also have to look at what is happening in our city's streets.

We need to stand up and say that we do not approve of the "stop and search" policy in this city. We need to fight with our sisters and brothers in trade unions to make sure that their benefits are not cut back and their unions are not slowly eroded.

And we need to make sure that we are out there protecting every woman's right to choose. That means ensuring access to clinSalvadoran Workers). A collection was taken for two Salvadoran union funds, and a meeting was announced to build the March 24 demonstration in Washington, D.C., to demand an end to the U.S. war in Central America.

At the conclusion, the 150 participants joined a nearby meeting called to celebrate the release from prison of Nelson Mandela.

Insenh Ryan/Socialist Action ics. That means getting out there at obscene hours on Saturday mornings to make sure that you can get to that door, that you can get an abortion, and that they [Operation Rescue] leave.

They're to blame Now, there's an interesting thing happening in this city. There are people-politicians, the police, Mayor Flynn-telling us that we're expanding the violence. But our presence, we know, has made a substantial difference in the lives of the people who come to these clinics.

They say that our presence at the clinics is, in fact, escalating the violence. It sounds all too familiar, doesn't it. It's now our fault, they try to tell us, that the thugs of Operation Rescue get there and try to take the doors.

Well, we can't relax. We have to stand up and say that's not right. We have to stand up and say that we know we're responsible for keeping those doors open.

I also take a page out of what Nelson Mandela wrote, and what Nelson Mandela said this afternoon about mass action. It is with the position of mass action that our victory is assured.

We all should remember those words. NOW will stand with the people of El Salvador as they reach for freedom, and we must make sure that their voices are not denied. We must equally stand with our sisters and brothers in the streets of this city to make sure that civil rights are not denied here.

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... Nicaraguan elections racy were fully aware of the illegal acts of the Reagan administration in pursuing funding for the contras, but went along with the administration's policy, voting time after time for so-called humanitarian aid to the contras.

The Reagan-Bush villain explanation also leaves out the complicity of the Soviet bureaucracy and the capitalist regimes in Latin America, all of whom pushed a deadly "peace plan" onto to the Sandinista leadership in order to steer the revolution into a dead end from which it could not emerge.

Indeed, in mid-1987 the U.S. ruling class adopted a more flexible anti-Sandinista policy. Seeing that the contras were unable to hold any portion of Nicaraguan territory, U.S. policymakers turned to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for help.

They wanted Arias and Gorbachev (and their cronies) to put the kind of economic and diplomatic pressure on the Sandinistas that could force them to make major concessions to the U.S. government and the contras.

An editorial in the New York Times (Aug. 15, 1987) explained this shift. It called for the implementation of a "peace treaty [to] achieve the contras' purposes—like ending emergency-rule dictatorship [sic], giving real freedom to opposition parties, and holding internationally supervised elections."

Arias and Gorbachev came to the aid of U.S. imperialism. Arias drafted a "peace" plan which gradually gave the contras at the bargaining table everything they had been unable to obtain on the battlefield: political legitimacy, the release of all Somozista and contra prisoners, elections in which they could obtain unlimited financing from the U.S. government, and more. In other words, they were given unfettered freedom to mobilize against the Nicaraguan Revolution.

Role of Soviet bureaucracy For his part, Gorbachev wielded the threat of withholding vitally needed economic aid-primarily Soviet oil—to pressure Nicaragua into accepting all the counterrevolutionary provisions of the Arias Plan that year the Sandinista revolution triumphed, and 1988 reached $1.7 billion, roughly 40 percent of the total value of the damage resulting from the U.S.-contra war.

To this day, the Nicaraguan capitalists control more than 60 percent of the Nicaraguan economy. The percentage of their control of the agro-export sector is even higher.

With such preponderant control over the commanding heights of the economy, the Nicaraguan capitalists have been able to bring the economy to its knees-mainly through the process of decapitalizationwhile falsely claiming that Sandinista "mismanagement" is responsible for the economic chaos.

Throughout the 10 years of the Nicaraguan Revolution, the Nicaraguan capitalists acted as the internal agents of the contras and U.S. imperialism. But the Sandinistas obstinately refused to break off their one-sided "partnership" with the Nicaraguan capitalists. And by failing to do this, they were compelled more and more to make the Nicaraguan workers and peasants shoulder the burden of the increasing hardships and austerity.

In an interview which appeared in New Left Review in July-August 1987, FSLN Commander Tomás Borge actually stated that the Sandinistas had "sacrificed the working class" in pursuit of their alliance with the capitalists. He said:

"The Nicaraguan bourgeoisie has not resigned itself to losing political power and is fighting with all its weapons-including economic weapons which threaten the very existence of the economy. It is no accident that the bourgeoisie has been given so many economic incentives, more than the workers; we ourselves have been more attentive in giving the bourgeoisie economic opportunities than in responding to the demands of the working class.

"We have sacrificed the working class in favor of the economy as part of a strategic plan; but the bourgeoisie continues to resist. sometimes boycotting the economy for the sake of its political interests."

The Nicaraguan working class, which waged bitter strikes against the Sandinista government's austerity policies in 1988-89, had a chance to vent their anger at the Sandinistas on election day 1990. Most of the working-class districts of Managua, Leon, and the other main cities voted overwhelmingly for Chamorro.

The Nicaraguan peasants were also sacrificed by the Sandinistas' "mixed-economy" strategy.

While the Sandinistas did distribute land to approximately 70,000 farm familieslargely under pressure from peasant land occupations and from the contra inroads among the peasants—the remaining 60,000 farm families never received any land from the government. Their hopes in receiving individual titles to the land were dashed-and they too turned to Chamorro and her U.S. backers in the hope of securing a better life.

"Everything will get better"

Daniel Ortega's 1990 electoral campaign promised the Nicaraguans that "Everything will get better." The Sandinistas hoped that their new package of political and economic concessions to the capitalists—a policy known as concertación—and their seemingly assured victory in the February elections would convince the U.S. government to end the contra war and the trade embargo against Nicaragua.

On the eve of the elections, Daniel Ortega reaffirmed in the strongest terms yet the Sandinistas' willingness to abandon and repudiate the Salvadoran freedom struggle and the FMLN guerrilla fighters. Ortega also pledged that no more land would be redistributed to the peasants and that, in fact, some land illegally seized would be returned to the former owners.

And to prove their good intentions of coexisting peacefully with U.S. imperialism, Sandinista leaders even leaked the idea that numerous representatives of the "patriotic" capitalist sectors would be taken back into the government following a Sandinista electoral victory.

These Sandinista statements were applauded by contra representatives and U.S. government officials, who, expecting a Sandinista victory, were willing to accept the deal. Contra leader Arturo Cruz, for example, is quoted by the New York Times (Feb. 22) as saying that the best hope for the Bush administration would be a narrow Sandinista victory, which would force a "cabinet of national reconstruction, including Violeta Chamorro and the united opposition parties."

But Ortega's election campaign, replete with T-shirts and baby-kissing, provided no solutions to the desperate plight facing the Nicaraguan people-just promises that things would get better thanks to eventual U.S. aid. The Sandinistas offered no revolutionary alternative to defend and advance the Nicaraguan Revolution. In fact, their campaign represented a pledge to further reverse the gains of the revolution.

The Nicarguan people saw the annual inflation rate surge to close to 30,000 percent in 1989. They saw their average real income decline by more than 70 percent over the past 10 years. They saw various versions of