Bush & Clinton: They should run on the same ticket

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Columbus Day 1992: Nothing to celebrate for Native Americans Once upon a time, Democratic Party politicians were forced to make grand promises to win labor's vote. These promises had been ballyhooed under labels like the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Society, and the War on Poverty. But after more than half a century of unkept promises, working people became increasingly skeptical of Democrats posing as friends of labor, the oppressed nationalities, and the poor and destitute.

Meanwhile, way back in the late 1960s, the Republican Party-which had rarely found it necessary to give lip-service to the rights of workers and their unions-saw the opportunity to cut in on Democratic Party territory. The Republicans took advantage of the disillusionment of working people with the Democratic Party's unfulfilled promises to them. The Republicans began to tap into the the growing (continued on page 8, in “"Ice-T often used his rap to”)

Vol. 10, No. 10 OCTOBER L contined The month of October 1992 marks the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's landing upon these shores. Citizens of this nation will respond with celebrations, often elaborately staged and government sponsored, lauding the Spanish discovery of America.

Conveniently ignored will be the fact that this bewildered sailor, misjudging his destination by several thousand miles, landed on an island he did not know existed and proclaimed it "India."

Also conveniently overlooked by most Americans is the fact that this continent was at the time inhabited by roughly 25 to 50 million (estimates vary) Americans Geronimo: He tought back. who bad, indeed, discovered and lived on 1992 50 CENTS ETERNAL GILANCE FEDOME this land for about 30,000 years.

So this year, 1992, is also being commemorated by the original inhabitants, the present-day survivors of the struggle against the European invaders, not as a joyous celebration but rather as one of mourning.

Instead of the descriptive term, "discovery of America," the Indian organizations have described the year 1491 as "the last good year," so that 1992 becomes the 500th anniversary of the year that the good years ended. Some American Indians or spokespersons have also described this year as marking "500 years of resistance.' Free Leonard Peltier!

And truly, the resistance continues. The struggle continues to free 47-year-old Leonard Peltier, the former leader of the American Indian Movement who was railroaded to federal penitentiaries after conviction for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents in the South Dakota Pine (continued on page 6, in “TWA agreement increases economic hardship on workers”)

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CATIONS EVEXTVHE Defend abortion rights!

Clip and mail to: Socialist Action, 3425 Army St., Join us in our campaign to sign-up 500 new subscribers to Socialist Action newspaper by Dec. 31, 1992. If you like our newspaper, help us get the socialist message out to others. Order a bundle Action of Socialist Action for sale in your area. Ask your friends to subscribe-they'll get a point of view in our newspaper they Help us pay for on-the-spot coverage in pay for on-the-spot coverage Editors: MICHAEL SCHREIBER, JOSEPH RYAN Staff: Paul Colvin, Gerry Foley, Joni Jacobs, Hayden Perry, Barbara Putnam, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Sylvia Weinstein.

Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $8 per year ocialist Action correspondent Gerry Foley has just embarked on a six-wer act-finding trip to the ex-Soviet Union. While there, Foley will Interview trad CA 94110. Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif.

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2 SOCIALIST ACTION OCTOBER 1992 I am going to tell you about my grandmother, "Pink Mary," who was a Cherokee Indian from Kentucky. Her father, my great grandfather, was Chief Blue Moon Mann.

When I was young and being raised by my grandmother, I was never told she was an Indian. She had married my grandfather, James Ellsworth Wright, who was English, Scots, and Irish. And that's what my family wanted the world to believe.

I was 12 years old before I knew for a fact that my grandmother was an Indian. In fact, the first inkling I got about her Indian heritage was when my uncles or my aunts would call her an "old squaw" in anger. She had long black hair; so long, she could sit on it. And she wore it around her head in braids.

I remember my aunts pleading By with her to bob her hair because she looked like an "old squaw."

They wanted her to wear makeup—but she wouldn't. They wanted her to shorten her dresses she wouldn't. She was that way as long as I can remember her. Something in her wouldn't let her change to keep up with the changing world.

Now, I respect that feeling.

Then, I just thought she was old-fashioned and ignorant.

She gave birth to 18 children.

She had professional help, a midwife, only with the first. All the others were delivered with the help of my grandfather. She had three sets of twins, and my mother, Alice, and her brother, was one of those sets of twins.

My uncle Crit, my mother's twin, was also called "the Indian." His hair was black and his eyes were even blacker. My mother had blue eyes and brown won't find anywhere else.

the ex-Soviet Union.

La contribution today. contribute O $500 • $250 0 $25 $10 O other. hair. They called my uncle "the Indian" because he lived off the land in Kentucky.

When uncle Crit was 12 years old, he went into the coal mines and worked until he was 40. By that time, he got black lung disease and could not mine coal any more. But all his life he spent as much time as possible living and hunting in the deep forest of the Kentucky mountains.

He hunted and trapped squirrels, foxes, possums, and rabbits. He sent my grandmother packages of herbs, roots, and a variety of leaves to make medicine. He also sent her wild honey from a bee hive deep in the heart of the forest. Crit hated the city, unlike his brothers and sisters, who had moved to Lexington with my grandmother. His ability to live all alone (except for a hunting dog) in the great woods of Kentucky was not only not appreciated but scorned.

My mother and father had divorced and my brothers and sisters and I were left with my grandmother. My father had KID See p93-1 gone to live in Ohio and my mother had joined her two sisters in New York City. My brother, sister, and I went to New York for one summer when I was 12.

We stayed in a furnished apartment in Bensonhurst, in Brooklyn. We southern children became the talk of the neighborhood kids, who were all Jewish. They kept asking if we were "Polacks."

(I was to learn later that this was a derogatory name some called people of Polish ancestry. But I think many kids who used the term didn't know it was derogatory. I didn't until I was told this much later.)

The neighborhood kids asked our nationality. (I couldn't understand why.) I told them Name Addre City Stati Zip Business Manager: JOSEPH RYAN St., San Francisco, CA 94110.

These are expressed in editorials.

American. This didn't seem to satisfy them, so they would ask what country was I born in. I told them Kentucky. They asked if I wasn't really a Polack? I told them I would check it out with my mother, because I was never told I was any other thing but an American.

When I asked my mother what our nationality was, she told me I was Irish, "Scotch," and English. Then my aunt Kitty said that actually, I was mostly Indian. I went back and informed my new friends about this, and they said I was lying, that I was ashamed of being a "Polack." I finally gave up trying to understand them or trying to explain. I was just as happy that they considered me a Polack from Pennsylvania as an Indian from Kentucky.

Nowadays, there is no shame in being part Indian. In fact, my relatives now brag about it. I wish my grandmother, "the old squaw" had lived to see the day. Perhaps that's why she would never bob her hair, wear makeup or change her way of life. She knew where she came from and was proud of it.

That was my grandmother, "Pink Mary." She was named after a wild flower in Kentucky. This "Columbus Day" is for her.

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of Long Beach and appropriated the money

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Malcolm X See page 10.

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