Egyptian workers reject crackdown on protests
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In mid-March the Egyptian cabi net issued a decree (which still has to be approved by the military junta ruling the country) criminal izing “protests, sit-ins and gather ings” that supposedly interfere with normal business operations.
The bill was immediately rejected by worker and youth organiza tions, who said they will continue protests.
The cabinet claimed protests must end because it has answered most workers’ demands and would address the rest through future legislation or regulations.
The bill was motivated by the con tinuing actions of workers against ... Antiwar (continued from page 1: “April 9 & 10 protests herald a new antiwar and social justice movement”) including the rights of unions to bargain, the rights of undocumented workers to due process, and the fight against the criminalization of the Black community.
The issue of Libya was prominent in Harlem on March 29, when New York City Councilman Charles Barron stood with around 150 others outside of a Demo cratic National Committee fundraiser for Barak Obama and shouted, “We did not elect Barak Obama for him to bomb Af rica!” The $30,800-a-plate re-election af fair was held at a new upscale restaurant symbolic of the gentrification that is dis placing Harlem’s Black population, and dissipating the potential of Black politi cal power being wielded independently in the community’s defense.
Harlem housing activist Nellie Bailey said, “We want money—not for war—but for our children and our seniors here at home.” The demonstration followed by a week the very public withdrawal of sup port for Obama by the African American poet Amiri Baraka via a new work, in which he said:
So it wd be this way That they wd get a negro To bomb his own home To join with the actual colonial Powers, Britain, France, add Poison Hillary With Israeli and Saudi to make certain That revolution in Africa must have a stopper corrupt and incompetent officials and executives at their workplaces, and the determination to use new found political organizing space to achieve economic and social goals.
On March 20, a military-spon sored referendum for constitution al changes was passed overwhelm ingly in the face of opposition from most of the forces that led the up rising. Those forces feared that the changes left in place an undemo cratic constitution crafted by the dictatorship, and would call snap elections without giving time for new parties to be formed.
A number of new parties and al liances are in various stages of for The bombing of Libya was the first U.S. military action actually directed by the relatively new U.S. African military command center known as Africom. The activation of Africom, which at this mo ment links the attacks on Africa with the attacks on the Black community in a manner instantly understandable to the street, has created new opportunities to build an antiwar movement capable of outreach to one of the communities most victimized by the shuffle of funds from social services, education, and housing to war.
The relationship between the war against working people at home and the wars abroad was a theme in the reso lution passed in the same week by the Hartford, Conn., city council. Over $453 million in tax revenues from residents of the city of Hartford, one of the poorest cities in the nation, has gone to fund the wars and occupations in the Middle East.
The council resolved, in addition to de manding of the federal government that it bring the war dollars home, to urge Hartford residents to participate in the April 9 march in New York City.
More surprisingly, they noted that “bud get deficits, largely due to war spending, have been used as a pretext to force con cessions from public sector unions” and resolved to support the right of unions to collectively bargain.
While the Hartford city council plainly laid out the relationship of the state bud get deficits to war spending, most labor leaders nationally have refused to inte grate the demand to end the wars into the fight to defend public workers’ right mation, including social-democrat ic and revolutionary groups.
Opponents of the amendments also pointed out that rather than amend a constitution drafted by dictators, a constituent assembly should be formed to write an en tirely new one. In the end it seems the measures passed precisely be cause the old ruling party and the Muslim Brotherhood still have a massive organizational headstart over the new parties in formation.
Meanwhile, youth leaders de clined an invitation to meet with the visiting Hillary Clinton, point ing to U.S. support for Mubarak.
— ANDREW POLLACK to collective bargaining. Their refusal to take up this demand reflects their defer ence to the Democratic Party.
There are increasing exceptions to the rule, however. At a recent union rally at the New York state house, Transporta tion Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen felt compelled to call for ending the war. He and George Gresham, the president of 1199 Healthcare Work ers East, are keynote speakers at the April 9 antiwar rally in New York City. Also speaking is Mike Keenan, president of the Troy, N.Y., Area Labor Council.
The attacks on the Muslim American community, the Black and Latino com munities, and the unions are not the only issues that are more and more organi cally being integrated into antiwar or ganizing. The relationship between the government’s deadly and destructive wars for oil and its support for nuclear power has been brought home by the ecological and human disaster in Japan. Historically, nuclear power was used to normalize nuclear production for weap onry. The “peaceful uses of the atom” were promoted as part of an ideological campaign to quell the horror aroused by the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The plutonium-laden MOX fuel made from recycled reactor rods has similarly been justified as a barrier against nucle ar weapons proliferation and, in turn, as part of a discourse to ramp up fear of nuclear terrorism.
The confluence of five factors—the Japanese nuclear disaster, the U.S.-Euro pean-Japanese failure to invest in green
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Barry Thumma /AP Kyodo News / AP