GI resisters face gov't reprisals Dozens already in prison

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taxes on workers' homes and sales taxes. These are part of the essentially regressive tax system that increasingly loads the tax burden onto the backs of working people.

We can be sure that the intention of those in power is to give us a little of both—less education and more taxes.

How to fight back This attack is symptomatic of the general assault on working people. In addition to the uninterrupted, decades-long attack on wages, we have also been victimized by systematic cuts in social benefits and an equally systematic shifting of the tax burden from the rich to the poor.

Moreover, the strategy of the ruling rich is to sucker their victims into accepting higher taxes or reduced social services for working people. The trick is to get us to call for cutting benefits or raising taxes for some other doomed to defeat.

No, the principle of class solidarity, upon which the best traditions of the working class in every country are based, remains the best strategy to this day. The labor movement-especially the teachers' unionsmust mobilize workers and their natural allies for mass action in the streets around these central slogans: We will not be divided! An injury to one is an injury to all! Tax the rich, not the poor!—the editors (See related stories on pages 4 and 5 concerning the cutbacks of school programs in California and New York.)

Exploiting its lightning-quick victory over Iraq, the U.S. military is now on a campaign to punish American soldiers who resisted fighting in the Gulf War. Hundreds of GIs are being victimized, to eliminate an important legacy of the Vietnam Syndromepolitical dissent among rank-and-file soldiers.

During the Vietnam War, there were many GI defense cases: Fort Hood Three, Presidio 27 and Fort Jackson Eight, to name but a few. Unlike then, however, today's GI resisters don't have the benefit of an ongoing antiwar movement. The war against Iraq is over. But for these men and women, the war has only just begun.

When the Gulf crisis began in August 1990, thousands of GIs protested by applying for conscientious objector (CO) discharges from the military. The Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (CCCO) estimates that between 3000 and 5000 GIs applied for CO status during the six-month build-up in the Gulf.

Thousands of other GIs applied for hardship or medical discharges, refused orders, or voiced their political opposition to the war in one form or another.

Hundreds of GIs put themselves in legal jeopardy when they acted according to their conscience and refused to be deployed with their units to Saudi Arabia. They now face charges of being Absent Without Leave (AWOL), missing a troop movement, attempting to avoid hazardous duty, and desertion. Approximately half of those facing charges are Black or Latino.

Dozens have already been quietly courtmartialed and imprisoned, receiving sentences ranging from three to eight months in the brig at hard labor, forfeiture of pay, and bad-conduct or dishonorable discharges. Over 100 are "fugitives" hiding out from U.S. military authorities, and many more are in military stockades awaiting trial.

Reportedly, 100 resisters are in the brig at the U.S Marine Corps (USMC) base at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Twenty-four are incarcerated pending court-martial at the USMC's Camp LeJeune, N.C., base. Others are languishing in different military prisons (continued on page 14, in “Dividing the spoils of World War I- How oil companies gobbled up lrad a - BRITONS”)

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section of the working class ("Not us, do it to them!"). If we fall for that one, we are