Memories of racism in the 1930s

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REVERSE REVERSE ACTiON Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, Gerry Foley, Suzanne Forsyth, Malik Miah, MayMay Gong, Hayden Perry, Barbara Putnam, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

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2 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1991 Watching David Duke brought back some of the earliest memories of my childhood in Lexington, Kentucky. These were marked, indelibly, by racism and the Great Depression. It was not a pleasant memory.

What jogged my mind was the pictures of David Duke's bluecollar followers, both men and women, carrying his campaign placards—laying bare their hatred of Blacks. What was revealed was that just below the surface lay all of the rotten racist crap, and all that was needed was the likes of David Duke to bring out the worst in them and make them feel it's okay.

But David Duke is just a symptom of the decay of an economic system that is founded on racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism. Capitalism couldn't exist if it did not divide white against Black, Christian against Jew, male against female, etc.

What always amazes me is how often it works. Some big mouth KKKer will run for office on the issue of white against Black an SAN JOSE, Calif.—Over 550 women gathered here over the weekend of Nov. 15-17 for the Young Feminist Conference, sponsored by the California National Organization for Women (NOW). Although the conference was open to all feminists regardless of age or sex, the majority of participants were young women from campuses up and down California.

The young women in attendance appeared overwhelmingly to be new feminist activists looking for direction and ideas on how to organize. Many were the founders of independent pro-choice groups on their own campuses.

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By there are all of those poor-white suckers, being pounded into the ground by their bosses and the capitalist class, carrying around David Duke signs. What's the secret? How does it work? It's not such a mystery.

It was 1936 in Lexington, Ky. There were no jobs or money. My father had read in the paper that the tobacco warehouses were hiring tobacco strippers. The tobacco had been hanging up in the warehouses and was now dry and ready for stripping. My mother was working, and so my father took me and my older brother, Glen, to the job-site. Glen stayed in the car, but I insisted on going to the line-up with my father.

It was a hot morning and when we got to the loading dock of the warehouse, there were already two lines of men. One line for Black men and one for whites. The men stuck to their line and talked in low tones to each other. There were no exchanges of either words or glances between the two lines.

Finally, after what seemed hours, a white man wearing a For example, Kami-a University of California, Berkeley, freshman and founder of Berkeley Students for Choice-came to the conference to "get educated." She explained, "It's a good experience to get around women whose main goal is the fight for women's rights. " She said that she hoped people would leave the conference "ready to do something."

One of the conference organizers, Cookie Pemberton of Los Angeles, argued strongly that young women need to get involved in the women's movement to broaden the feminist agenda and bring back an activist orientation.

Conference planners must have envisioned the event as simply an Closing date:

Nou. 25, 1991 large straw hat came out onto the loading dock. "All right," he said, "this is how it is. We're willing to pay 37 cents an hour to you white men. And if you don't want to work for that, we have plenty colored boys here that will work for 27 cents an hour." And with that the lines begin to shuffle forward and hopeful workers gave their names.

My father didn't get the job. He was too far back in the line. As my father walked back to the car, he said that the problem with "niggers" is that they would take the bread out of his children's mouth for 10 cents an hour.

His anger was not directed toward the boss who was offering 10 cents an hour difference. After all, in his mind, that's what bosses were supposed to do, pay the lowest possible wage. He was just doing a boss's "job." No, my father blamed the Black men who had to accept 27 cents an hour to get the job.

Actually, stripping tobacco was usually a job done by Blacks. It was low-paying, back-breaking work. But this was a depression, and whites had showed up for these lousy jobs. In fact, it would be closer to the truth to say that it was the white men who were taking the bread out of Black children's mouths. This thought never occurred to my father.

After I grew up and became a socialist, I rearranged that scene in my head a dozen times. First, I pictured the white men yelling back to the boss that all of them, educational conference, however, because no single issue was emphasized and no sessions were set up for the adoption of resolutions.

The conference featured general sessions with a variety of speakers and dozens of workshops running the gamut of feminist issues.

NOW Executive Vice President Patricia Ireland's featured speech was a general talk on the state of the women's movement today. She quoted a poll stating that 88 percent of women between the ages of 19 and 29 believe the women's movement has helped their lives, and two out of three of these women believe a strong women's movement is necessary.

Ireland emphasized the need for young women to join and lead the women's movement. She spoke of the need to organize women and the majority of Americans to fight for a common program of social justice. She did not mention NOW's position in favor of a third party, however-only the need to elect women to office.

Independent politics were mentioned by at least one other speaker, Josie Miranda, a past coordinator of the University of California, Davis, NOW chapter.

Miranda described the Democratic and Republican parties as "two hands attached to the same body," and listed the alternatives to two-party politics-including voting for socialist and other parties or the formation of a feminist party.

Her call for the April 5, 1992, demonstration for women's lives TRUCKS!

NO TAKING APPRMAINE YOUR ACTO JOBSI ATION!

SOV NO NO DISCRIMINATION Black and white, would get equal wages or no one would work. Then I pictured the Blacks walking off and saying to the white workers that if you want to work for a dog's wages go ahead—but we won't.

And then I pictured the white men joining the Black men and both groups laughing and shaking hands. And, of course, I pictured the boss caving in and saying he was only kidding-everyone would really get 47 cents an hour.

During the organizing drive of the CIO in the 1930s, Black and white workers did join together to create industrial unions-but mostly in the North. It was selfwas met by enthusiastic applause. She also mentioned that NOW planned to organize a pledge-ofresistance campaign to be ready in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Bay Area activists who worked together on the Oct. 5 pro-choice demonstration in San Francisco circulated a petition calling upon NOW to sponsor a West Coast action sometime before April 5. It is hoped that a West Coast action will build publicity and support for the April 5 march in Washington, D.C. And it will also mobilize tens of thousands on the West Coast who want to demonstrate their support for women's reproductive rights.

Two hundred signatures for the petition were gathered at the conference alone. Because the conference was not set-up for decision-making, the petitions and the call for a NOW-sponsored West Coast action were presented during the open-mike period at the closing session by Mary Doran of the San Francisco State University DARE (Defend Abortion Rights Emergency Coalition).

WHOA!NE REPUBLKANG WANT NO PARTEF BACKS ARE DKING YOUR DISCRIMINATION BY MORIN FOR THE MIAMI HERAIC:

interest that spurred white workers to hold out their hands to Blacks.

Divide and conquer, the tactic bosses used to keep wages down in the South, was smashed up North by an industrial union movement based on real solidarity.

Those unionized workers refused to be suckers for the capitalist class. They kept their eyes on the real enemy and organized a united struggles by all workers to raise their living standards—Black and white, women and men, and irrespective of creed. That's the only answer to all forms of bigotry.

The sentiment for a march was so strong that Doran was interrupted at least twice by applause. Proposals for action were made by other speakers and were well received, although no voting could take place.

The California Young Feminist Conference served to bring together many women new to feminism and mass-action politics to share experiences, ideas, and their commitment to fight the current backlash against women in this country.

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urday-pro-choice forces turned out to

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