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   Vol. 68/No. 17           May 4, 2004  
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
May 4, 1979
In the early morning hours of April 18 Nazi thugs fired three gunshots into the offices of the Indianapolis Socialist Workers Campaign Committee. The committee had announced its candidate for mayor, David Ellis, at a March 28 news conference.

Since the news conference, Ellis’s campaign had attracted much attention, both from the local press and from working people in this city. He had marched at a picket line protesting sales of the Krugerrand, the gold South African coin. And he had issued a statement to the press on the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, which was distributed at an April 7 antinuclear march in Bloomington.

The bullet holes in the front windows of the offices were found Wednesday morning by campaign workers, along with a sticker bearing a swastika from an American Nazi Party splitoff, the National Socialist White Peoples Party.

Ellis immediately called the police, who upon arriving at the campaign office said that the shots were probably fired from a pellet gun. But broken glass was found scattered thirty feet from the window. The cops took no action, saying that if campaign workers found the bullets or other evidence they should contact police detectives.

Confronting Indianapolis Mayor William Hudnut at an appearance the next night, Ellis demanded that Hudnut condemn this violent attack on his rights as a candidate and order the police department to investigate the incident.

An appeal has been drafted protesting right-wing attacks and is being circulated for the signatures of prominent individuals and organizations. A public speak-out is being held at the Militant Bookstore, 4163 North College.  
 
May 3, 1954
The current right swing in the policy of the American Communist Party constitutes a mortal danger to the American working class. The danger is this: the Stalinist policy of support to the Democratic Party and the labor bureaucracy can spell the defeat of the American working class in the struggle with fascist McCarthyism.

Here is the proclaimed policy of the party that dares to call itself “Communist”:

(1) The menace of fascism can be defeated by “a popular coalition movement which unites labor, the working farmers, the Negro people, small and middle-size business and those groups of capital opposed to the McCarthy program of fascism and war.”

(2) This coalition must take place within the framework of the capitalist party system because “the two-party system remains the form through which the overwhelming majority of the American people now express themselves in politics.”

(3) The organization of an independent Labor Party must be shelved for the next two national elections: “Its (labor’s) objective must be to bring about a regroupment and realignment within the Democratic Party nationally and within the Republican Party in local areas.”

(4) The issue is not socialism or fascism but capitalist democracy or fascism: “The Communist Party emphasizes that the issue at the present time is not Communism. The choice before our people today is peace, security, democracy versus the grip which the monopolists have on the country and their plans for fascism and war.”

The Socialist Workers Party declares that this program of the American Stalinists is a program of betrayal of the American working class to the fascist hangmen.  
 
 
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