NDP leader attacks First Nations, activists

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SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2013 9 In a shameful move, the labour-based New Democratic Party in New Brunswick republished an aggressively titled op-ed ar­ ticle on its website, “Don’t Negotiate Till Threats End!” The article was taken down and replaced by a similarly problematic edi­ torial, “Reality Check: The Law is the Law,” written by the party leader in the province, Dominic Cardy.

The articles chastised activists who joined a highway blockade with members of the Elsipogtog First Nation, trying to stop ex­ ploratory drilling on their lands. To Cardy’s credit, he recognized the problem of relying on the government to safeguard the envi­ ronment, asking, “Why should we expect them to have the courage to use the law [against the shale gas industry]?”

But in the next paragraph, he put on his ... Revolution in Grenada (continued from page 7: “A 30-year personal”)

dozen or more, others leaped to safety from the fort’s great walls, suffering serious injuries or death. The wounded and injured were treated by medical teams that included members of the Swedish section of the Fourth International.

The Grenadian Revolution ended that day. The U.S.

invasion that followed a few days later was met with virtually no resistance except for the several hundred Cuban airport workers. Breaking a formal agreement that had been hurriedly negotiated between the Cu­ ban government and the Reagan administration, af­ firming that the Cubans would not resist the invasion and would act only in self defense, the Rangers nev­ ertheless opened fire on the Cubans, who alone cou­ rageously resisted as well as they could the massive power of the imperialist forces.

Several hundred Cubans were arrested and jailed but soon afterward released to return home. There was virtually zero resistance from Grenada’s armed forces or militias. Fearing mass hatred for his action in imprisoning Bishop, Coard invoked martial law and enforced strict curfews. Weapons were locked tight in Grenada’s armories. The island was “conquered” by the invaders in a matter of hours as Grenada’s humili­ ated and demoralized masses were rendered helpless and disarmed.

All the pretexts employed by the Reagan administra­ policeman’s hat and gave the reader a stern tautological legal lesson: “Any blockade … must end … because the law is the law. [Ac­ tivists] have an equal responsibility to stand up against law breaking and vandalism.” Cardy attempted to resolve the cognitive dissonance of respecting the “rule of law that can’t be trusted” by revealing his actual plan to stop shale gas: an NDP government led by him. The environment is to be saved by electing him as premier, or not at all. Aside from opposing shale gas mining, it is difficult to see how a government under his leadership would differ substantially from the current regime. Cardy is a propo­ nent of the right-wing “Third Way” move­ ment within the Socialist International. He took the lead in pushing for a reduced role for labour in the federal NDP, and he admires the imperialist war criminal Tony Blair.

Cardy’s diatribe is especially disappoint­ ing because it betrays the party’s own his­ tory. Participants in the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, which brought the city to a grinding halt, didn’t follow Cardy’s “the law is the law” attitude when they suffered savage attack by the police and were thrown in prison.

One of those arrested participants, J.S.

Woodsworth, later went on to become the first leader of the Co-operative Common­ wealth Federation, predecessor of the mod­ ern-day NDP.

This identity crisis is not new for the party.

But it is accelerating at an alarming rate. As capitalism descends deeper into crisis, its contradictions, which are its inherent fea­ tures, are underscored by statements like this. At a time when workers and a growing underclass are losing more and more at the expense of big business, the platform and tion and the capitalist media were soon repudiated. There were many—all lies. Grenada was said to be threatening the lives of some 700 U.S. medical stu­ dents on the island; Grenada was said to be construct­ ing a military base for Soviet use on its new airport; Grenada was said to be detaining political prisoners; Reagan officials even implied that Cuba had orches­ trated the coup and was behind the murder of Bishop and his comrades. And finally, the U.S. claimed to have been invited to invade by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States.

These lies were broadcast around the world without regard to veracity. The invasion was repudiated al­ most everywhere, including by an overwhelming vote of the UN General Assembly. Cuban President Fidel Castro condemned the coup. Coard and his associates were labeled Stalinists and traitors to the revolution. An official day of mourning was organized in Cuba to commemorate Bishop’s achievements. Cables from Cuba threatened to cut off all aid to the Coard regime.

Before this Cuban condemnation and immediately after Bishop’s murder, the SWP leadership stood pub­ licly mute. But it soon became clear that central party leaders were more than prepared to side with “the Central Committee majority.” Following Bishop’s ar­ rest I had been in daily contact with Consul General Joseph Kanute Burke, who in turn was in daily contact with Bishop’s mother, who had been allowed to visit her son to bring him food.

Burke reported that “the boys” were talking, and that a resolution was possible in his view. History

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begin our analysis of the problem of sexual violence by looking at it as a problem pri­ marily caused by individual criminal, sick, or socially challenged men. Certainly, all of our efforts at mass education about rape culture, zero tolerance for sexual violence on campus, and the promotion of bystander intervention are important and necessary and should not be minimized in any way. This is just to say that sexual violence is much, much more than that. It is one of many tools of repres­ sion used in capitalist society to keep women subordinate and vulnerable economically in a way that benefits the elites.

We should begin to think about sexual vio­ lence and all the structures and regimes of this society that facilitate it as something other than residual backwardness and start to think of it in a way more akin to the way that we think of other tools used to divide and weaken the working class, such as mass deportation or mass incarceration.

The topic of mass incarceration leads me to my third telling incident, the publication of Beth Richie’s extraordinary new book: “Arrested Justice: Black women, Sexual vio­ lence, and the Prison Nation.” In “Arrested Justice,” Ritchie sets out to describe the way that the movement against violence against