By refusing to get on their knees and surrender to the bosses' patriotic blackmail and demands for "sacrifice," the workers' actions are an obstacle to Washington's war drive against Afghanistan, which is an extension of their war on working people at home.

Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura's mobilization of National Guard troops against the strike is an example of the U.S. rulers' steps to militarize the country. In the guise of "fighting terrorism," the Bush administration, with bipartisan support, is prioritizing "homeland defense"--the use of the military on U.S. soil--that was put together by the Clinton administration. The steps to increase the military's presence at airports and on city streets, to expand FBI spying and disruption operations, and other "antiterrorist" moves will all be used to target working people and our defensive organizations, the unions.

This is not the first time the military has been used against working people at home. In the mid-1980s the Minnesota government deployed the National Guard on behalf of the Hormel bosses to try to break the strike by meat packers in Austin, Minnesota. During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the U.S. rulers mobilized the National Guard to crack down on Black workers and youth in Detroit, Newark, New Jersey, and other major cities where revolts had erupted against police brutality and racist discrimination.

During World War II the Roosevelt government sent in the National Guard to try to break the strike by 500,000 coal miners facing deteriorating safety conditions. But the United Mine Workers, defying the bosses' demands for wartime "national unity," successfully shut down coal production nationwide four times in 1943, declaring, "You can't mine coal with bayonets."

In their resistance today, the Minnesota workers are not alone. They are joined by coal miners and their union in Alabama, who are protesting the deadly assault on their lives and safety by the coal bosses, whose profit drive was responsible for the September 23 mine disaster that killed 13 workers at the Jim Walter mine. The United Mine Workers today also needs active solidarity from the labor movement.

By their actions, the Minnesota workers, the miners, and other working people engaged in strikes or other struggles are a source of strength for all workers and farmers under attack today, such as the thousands of airline workers facing massive layoffs and the attempts to intimidate them through intensified police "security checks."

Those who oppose the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan should support the resistance by these workers to the bosses' assault at home and reach out to them with the truth about the imperialist war drive.
 
 
Related article:
State workers walk out in Minnesota  
 
 
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