[June 14 protest march by Twin Cities Black…]

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June 14 protest march by Twin Cities Black community.

on the supposed "crack house," police without warning threw "concussion" grenades in the windows, and ignited a fire that killed Lloyd Smalley, 71, and Lillian Weisse, 68, who were asleep in the house.

Burning cross on lawn Increasingly, African-Americans in the Twin Cities area are targets for racist attacks.

At 2:00 a.m. on the morning of June 21, Russell and Laura Jones, a young AfricanAmerican couple with five young children, awoke to find a burning cross on the lawn of their East St. Paul residence. The police who were called extinguished the burning cross, but at 4:30 a.m. another burning cross was placed on the boulevard opposite the Jones' house. The Jones family had moved into the neighborhood, in which white racist skinheads have been active, last March.

Three 17-year-old white skinheads have been charged with three misdemeanors in connection with the cross-burning incident.

However, on Monday, July 16, Ramsey County District Judge Charles Flinn dismissed a disorderly conduct charge, ruling the St. Paul ordinance banning cross burning to be an unconstitutional restriction of free speech. The Judge cited recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that flag burning is protected By Kwame M.A. Somburu, et al.

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Laura Jones, whose family was the target of the cross burnings, expressed outrage at the decision. "The judge equated cross burning and flag burning," said Laura Jones. "To us, it's just outlandish. Cross burning is a direct threat, flag burning is just a protest. When you go on somebody's property and By CAROLINE PITTSBURGH—In early July, Eastern Airlines strikers here sponsored a rally and "walk-through" at the Pittsburgh International Airport. Among the many unionists present was a delegation from the Black Workers For Justice (BWFJ).

B WFJ is an organization based in North Carolina. A delegation of 18 members drove north in a couple of vans to make a tour of several Midwest cities-including Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicagospreading their message of union solidarity.

Following the rally at the Pittsburgh airport, I was able to interview a member of the steering committee of BWFJ, Nathanette Mayo. She explained that B WFJ developed out of a struggle in defense of three Black workers who had been fired for challenging harassment and discrimination at a K-mart store in Rocky Mount, N.C., in 1981.

The primary goal of BWFJ, said Mayo, is to promote union organization in the South as well as solidarity between workers, North and South. Here in Pittsburgh, the delegation plans a "strike-solidarity tour," visiting the picket lines of unions on strike in the area.

The organization publishes a monthly newsletter, Justice Speaks, and operates a library and workers' center in Rocky Mount, SOCIALIST AC another Cost Cutters' employee. Ms. Nash received bruises and cuts on her face and arm which required hospital treatment.

The news conference and picket raised the following demands:

1. That the two Cost Cutter stylists who assaulted Terryann Nash be fired.

2. That Cost Cutters' management meet with officials of the State Human Rights Department to review Cost Cutters hiring practices and employee training program.

3. That Cost Cutters must set standards of non-discriminatory behavior and inform all employees that their jobs depend on their meeting this standard.

4. That Cost Cutters' management must issue a public apology to Teryann Nash and a public statement that the company will not tolerate racial discrimination.

In the North Memorial Hospital incident the Committee Against Racism, Police Brutality, and Community Violence has raised the following demands:

1. That the Governor and the Attorney General launch a criminal investigation of the police involved and prosecute them!

2. That the Federal authorities launch an investigation into criminal civil-rights violations by the police involved and prosecute them!

3. That the State Human Rights Department investigate North Memorial Hospital for violations of the victims civil rights and award the victims money damages!

4. That the administration of North Memorial Hospital issue a formal apology to the victims and to the community!

5. That the visual media release all film of the incident!

While many witnesses testify to the presence of TV cameras, the stations now claim that either film was not shot or it cannot be located.

Sections of this article have been taken from material published by the Committee Against Racism, Police Brutality, and Community Violence.

BWFU

BLACK WORKERS FOR JUSTICE N.C. It also sponsors educational forums, a workers' legal clinic, a workers' hotline, and a workers' health and safety committee.

The delegation on tour includes members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union and of the American Postal Workers Union, as well as a textile worker and a poultry worker, among others.

Mayo explained that the organization helps form workplace committees to teach about unions and prepare workers for organizing drives by established unions. Contacts and requests for help come from the members' own unions or from co-workers and church acquaintances, spread generally by word of mouth and through the newsletter.

For more information or to subscribe to Justice Speaks, write to Black Workers For Justice, P.O. Box 5574, Raleigh, N.C. 27650.

TION AUGUST 1990 7

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The recently concluded general strike registers a stage in the process of revolution and counterrevolution in Nicaragua that is properly understood only in the light of over ten years of sharp class struggle.

A promising revolutionary period opened up when the July 1979 working class insurrection, with the decisive assistance of the Sandinista guerrilla army, took possession of Managua and routed the last of Somoza's National Guard. The revolution in Nicaragua, moreover, constituted a new stage in the social upheaval begun in the Western hemisphere by the Cuban Revolution of 1959-60.

Unfortunately, the revolutionists of action in Nicaragua did not follow the example of their Cuban counterparts.

The Castro leadership had steadily deepened the Cuban Revolution from the time it overthrew the brutal capitalist dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. At first, the Castroists shared power with Cuban capitalists. But when the Fidelista leadership saw that the revolution was being blocked by their capitalist "allies," they came into increasing conflict with them. The Castroists backed up their anti-capitalist struggle by vigorously encouraging the masses of workers and farmers to mobilize in defense of their class interests.

By July 1960, with the elimination of pro-capitalist representatives, the government was no longer a coalition that defended capitalist property relations and held back land reform. This ever-deepening social revolution in Cuba continued until, by December of 1960, the political power of capitalism and American imperialism was stripped of its economic and social base on the Caribbean island. The Castroist leadership had carried through a socialist revolution in In sharp contrast, the Sandinista leadership took back its pledge-on the first day after Somoza's overthrow—to carry through the main task of the democratic revolution. They revoked their previous commitment to nationalize all the land and to distribute it to the landless peasantry of Nicaragua.

While the Sandinistas responded at times favorably to peasant mobilizations and demands for land, limits were rigidly established by their strategic commitment to restricting the revolution within a framework acceptable to an important section of the Nicaraguan capitalists and landlords. And even though section after section of the Sandinistas' capitalist allies went over to openly counterrevolutionary opposition, the government remained committed to what they euphemistically termed their "mixed economy" policy—their strategic alliance with the ruling Nicaraguan capitalist class, albeit an ever-smaller section of it.

The Nicaraguan workers and peasants, however, have maintained a virtually uninterrupted series of offensive and defensive mobilizations for the entire period beginning with the overthrow of Somoza to the present day. But the essential role of Sandinista leadership throughout has been to strive to balance itself between these mobilizations and the unrelenting efforts by Nicaraguan capitalism and U.S. imperialism to resist and roll back the efforts of the exploited masses to defend and advance the limited conquests of their struggle. 1 Hobbled by capitalist alliance The Sandinista leadership, attempting to hold a course between the forces of revolution and counterrevolution, was threatened on one side by Nicaraguan and world capitalism, which would like nothing better than to crush them along with the continuing revolutionary threat; and on the other, by the worker and peasant masses who just as relentlessly pressed the Sandinistas to deepen the revolution and resolve the question of which class shall rule.

One of the most important lessons of history is that such mass mobilizations cannot go on indefinitely. Time is an element in the revolutionary equation. Whole classes, like individual combatants, can ultimately get worn out in the course of prolonged periods of heightened class struggle. In the last analysis, time is not on the side of the masses; the masses must find their way through the window of revolutionary opportunity before the ruling class regains its balance and it inevitably closes.

A revolutionary crisis is reached when the masses can no longer endure intensified hardship and when workers in their great majority enter the field of combat. In such mass upsurges the intrinsic social power of the workers is manifested by generalized strikes and occupations of society's workplaces.

In contrast, the "almighty" capitalist class is suddenly deprived of the very source of its social and economic power. The workers' capacity to wrest control over the economy away from the capitalists has electrifying impact on all classes. It stuns, demoralizes, splinters and immobilizes the capitalists. It inspires the suffering layers of the middle classes to follow the workers' example. They are also drawn onto the field of battle Sandinista strikers put up barricades in Managua.

on the side of the workers to bring an end to their misery as swiftly as possible.

But the ruling class will gradually recover if the initial blow dealt them is not followed up in time with the institutionalization and consolidation of the newly revealed power of the workers and their natural allies. The least conscious layers of the workers and the middie classes will gradually tire and lose confidence in ultimately gaining a decisive victory over the oppressors. In the end, revolutionary leadership or misleadership is decisive.

The Sandinista leadership failed to follow the example of their Castroist predecessors, who made a successful transition to fuller revolutionary consciousness in the very heat of the revolution, enabling them to bring it to a victorious conclusion.

Why they failed, despite the very best of intentions, is no mystery. Castro, himself, advised the Sandinistas not to follow Cuba's example! He, in turn, was no doubt motivated by concern over the greater geographic vulnerability to imperialist invasion of Nicaragua, which, unlike Cuba, is not surrounded by an ocean.

Castro, and of course the Sandinistas; must also have correctly calculated (and were occurred at least as early as Aug. 7, 1987, with the signing of the Arias Peace Plan in Esquipulas, Guatemala, by Daniel Ortega. But Chamorro's election to the Nicaraguan presidency crystallized a decisive shift from a gradual to a more rapid strengthening of the forces of counterrevolution.

One incident stands out revealing the inexorable erosion of revolutionary potential, which occurs when a decisive resolution of the class struggle in favor of the workers is unduly postponed.

Immediately after the Sandinista defeat Socialist Action noted in its March 1990 edition: "A Sandinista victory had been expected by most observers of the Nicaraguan elections. They pointed to opinion polls and to a Sandinista election rally of 800,000 in Managua on Feb. 21, the largest in Nicaraguan history, to back their prediction that the Sandinistas would win....

"But to the shock of the Sandinistas and their supporters, the Nicaraguan people moved by their desire to see an end to economic deprivation and deepening hardships voted for a candidate who they believed would best deliver U.S. economic aid and hasten an end to the U.S.-contra war. 'They voted with their stomachs,' is the way most

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A key pamphlet on the Black struggle