Pity the poor bureaucrats

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The entire world has been glued to their television screens watching the events in the Soviet Union. Two sets of bureaucrats were vying for power. The Yeltsinites and their "hard-line" opponents were each trying to prove to the capitalist world that they were the most able to turn the people of the Soviet Union into a passive labor force for capitalist exploitation.

The Soviet bureaucrats have been doing their best to lay the entire country on a banquet table for world imperialism to feast on. The capitalist class has no MILWAUKEE-When an articulate white man explains that the 14-year-old Laotian boy they found naked, dazed, and bleeding in the street is his lover, the police believe him.

When a Black witness phones later to find out what happened to the boy, she is told he is safe. "That's a boyfriend-boyfriend thing," the officer says. ...I can't do anything about somebody's sexual preferences in life." While the two talk, the boy is dying at the hands of the white man.

While the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings have shaken Milwaukee, this image laid bare the rampant racism and homophobia of the Milwaukee police.

Dahmer has apparently confessed to killing 17 men, mostly gay Blacks, over the last two years. Konerak Sinthasomphone became number 13 on May 27.

The case has outraged Milwaukee's gay community since July 22, when police found preserved body parts in Dahmer's refrigerator. Reports that he usually found his victims in gay bars resulted in officials terming the slaughter "homosexual overkill."

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted in a statement, "When has the term "heterosexual overkill' ever been used to describe the serial killing of women by a male perpetrator?"

When neighbors realized that police were in the killer's apartEditors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER JOSEPH RYAN Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, Gerry Foley, MayMay Gong, Hayden Perry, Barbara Putnam, Weinstein.

Business Manager: BARRY SHEPPARD 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

These are expressed in editorials.

By fear that any of the bureaucrats are socialists. It knows they have been busily ripping off the Soviet economy so that they'll be well-fixed when and if they're able to bring capitalism back to the Soviet Union.

What the world's capitalists do fear, however, is that no faction of Stalinist bureaucrats can deliver the goods. Even worse, they fear that while the wolves and foxes are bickering among themselves, the chickens will begin to organize and take over the whole hen house. The capitalists are deadly afraid that the working class of the Soviet Union will tell both the bureaucrats and capitalists to get lost.

The working class does that every once in a while. They just take matters into their own hands and do it themselves. That's what the Russian workers did in 1917, and that's what the American working class did in the 1930s. They told all of their bosses and all of their labor bureaucrats to get back and out of their way. They took them all on and came out on top.

Never forget that. The American workers showed that they can defeat the whole kit and kaboodle of bosses and bureaucrats.

Bosses demand more

And let's not kid ourselves. American workers know what the Soviet worker is faced with. Fat-cat bureaucrats are not much different no matter which country they live in. They all live off of the labor of the workers and they all want the workers to stand back and keep quiet and let them do their talking for them.

The well-dressed and well-fed bureaucrats, whether in the Soviet Union or in the AFL-CIO, want to dicker with the bosses over how much workers should give back to these greedy pigs. They are willing to give up jobs, health, working conditions, wages, and anything else the boss demands—rather than organize the membership to fight. Their primary concern is that union dues keep coming in to pay their fat salaries. But sometimes they run into problems.

This is because the capitalist class is never satisfied. They always want more. They are especially eager to destroy unions whenever the opportunity presents itself.

The union "leaders" are so used to doing all the talking and keeping workers in the dark, that if workers don't push them into action they wake up one morning and find that the goose that lays the golden egg-the unions—has been killed by the bosses.

Workers need democracy The rank and file of the unions must have democracy in order to defend their interests, not only from the bosses but from their own bureaucrats-who are always ready to play "lets make a deal." The workers need to discuss among themselves the best way to defend their interests.

This is true of all movements for justice-the women's movement as well as the labor During the civil rights movement, it would have been impossible for Martin Luther King to tell the millions of Black people to go home-that he would handle the whole thing.

First of all, it would never work. Second—without those millions of Black men, women, and children-Martin Luther King would have been just another voice crying in the wilderness. And that was his strength, he knew it and did everything he could to inspire them to get into the streets and fight for their human rights.

That's what workers every: where need—a new fighting leadership that dares to mobilize the many millions of us everywhere in the world, so that we can defend and advance our class interests.

Aug. 1, Police Chief Philip Arreola charged them with negligence.

The police association responded to the suspensions by calling for Arreola's resignation. A poll of "rank-and-file" cops showed that 98.1 percent of them opposed suspending the three veteran officers.

The Milwaukee Journal reported in the wake of the Dahmer controversy that 69 percent of the city's Black population feels the police discriminates against them. Only 41 percent of Milwaukee Blacks rated the police in their community positively, while 70 percent of the whites gave them a positive rating.

Ten years ago, the cop murder of Ernest Lacy sparked similar protests in Milwaukee, which ultimately led to the retirement of then-Chief Harold Breler. In the aftermath of the Dahmer slayings, some are questioning whether changing chiefs was enough.

and landlords to roll back the civil rights of our lesbian and gay sisters and brothers.

It is unfortunate, yet not unexpected, that Mayor Jim Scheibel and the Democratic Farmer Labor Party are not throwing their arsenal of resources into fighting Citizens Alert's repeal campaign. Scheibel could use the powers of his office and make prime-time radio and television appearances educating St.Paul voters on the need to protect the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

But all he has given us was a meek four-line quote in the newspaper pointing out the need for a campaign that he's not going to initiate or lead.

Human rights are always going to be put up for referendums and repealed as long as Republicans and Democrats remain in our public offices. Both parties remain completely tied to capitalism, which profits from exploitation and divisions between people If St Paul voters keep the gay and lesbian rights ordinance in place this November, we can carry ourselves with pride— knowing that we are a people who protect the civil rights of the oppressed.