Street actions are an important component of the campaign against the imperialist assault. However, many of the demands and slogans put forward by political groups in the United States who participate in the actions pose a danger for workers and youth.

So far, pacifists have largely set the political tone for the protest actions with groups who consider themselves socialist or communist following behind. Pacifist demands such as "War is Not the Answer;" "Stop the Cycle of Violence;" "Justice Not Vengeance;" and "Our Grief is Not a Cry for War," assume that there is something the imperialist government in Washington can do that will serve the interests of workers and farmers in the United States and abroad. The candlelight "peace" vigils and nationalist demands to "apprehend the perpetrators" fall into the same trap.

Pacifist demands such as "no war" have no class content and can equally be applied to both the U.S. war moves and the steps by the Afghani people to defend their country. The calls by the Communist Party USA and other groups to "apprehend the perpetrators" assume that the most brutal imperial power in history, the U.S. ruling class, has a right to "get justice" and violate another country's sovereignty to get who they claim is the "perpetrator."  
 
'Us' and 'them'
There are no "we Americans." The United States is a class-divided country, in which a small handful of capitalists--billionaire families who own the factories, mines, mills, and banks--exploit wage workers and keep working farmers, small fishermen, and other commodity producers on the knife's edge financially. The government defends the interests of the employers and the imperialist exploiters and oppressors of working people around the world. There is nothing that their government and their army will do in the interests of our class, the working class, either in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the United States.

For working people the starting point in responding to any U.S. aggression begins with how to advance our own class interests and line of march toward taking political power and establishing a workers and farmers government. We need to begin with the working class and other exploited producers internationally, not with the "United States of America," which always leaves fighters prey to nationalist and patriotic pressures. We need to begin with imperialism and its wars, not war in the abstract.

Socialist workers and Young Socialists take an uncompromising stand demanding: End the imperialists' Afghan war! Stop the assaults on workers' rights! End the U.S. and British bombing of Afghanistan! These are concrete demands on the government to end its assault. We discuss our demands with co-workers in the industrial trade unions, at tables with communist literature in working-class districts, and at college campuses, forums, and other public events. During the anti-Vietnam war movement, socialists blocked with others to demand "U.S. troops out now," in order to rally the largest forces against the war around an objectively anti-imperialist slogan.  
 
'Peace' vigils: a nationalist trap
In the first two weeks following September 11, the International Action Center, which is affiliated with the Workers World Party, organized candlelight "peace vigils" under the banner of both opposing the U.S. war drive and mourning the dead. The Young Communist League, the youth group of the Communist Party USA, called for support for the peace vigils and issued a button that reads: "I love N.Y. honor their mem-ory...unite in peace." Another button that is prominent at New York demonstrations has a picture of a peace sign with the Twin Towers in the center.

These are all adaptations to imperialist war pressures and disorient many young people who genuinely want to fight against imperialist aggression. A centerpiece of the capitalist war drive for a couple of weeks after the attacks was nightly candlelight vigils held at large gathering points across New York City and in many other cities around the country and internationally. The vigils, like the benefit concerts and blood drives, served to try to whip up American patriotism and convince the maximum number of people from the middle and working classes that they need to ally with the bourgeoisie to find a common "solution" to an attack on "our" soil.

Anti-imperialist fighters have had to face similar campaigns by the rulers to try to draw us into patriotic sentiment. In the buildup to the 100-hour slaughter against Iraq 10 years ago, the big-business media and capitalist politicians urged every person in the United States to wear a yellow ribbon to "support our troops." In the Opening Guns of World War III, an article in New International no. 7, Jack Barnes pointed to communists' answer to the campaign.

We insisted that yellow ribbons--no matter who was wearing them, or for what individual reasons--play the same role as an American flag in bolstering patriotic support for the war. It doesn't matter whether the person wearing the yellow ribbon (or a flag) is a worker, lawyer, or a capitalist; white, Black, Puerto Rican, or Chinese. It doesn't matter if he or she was persuaded to wear it by a neighbor, or is understandably concerned about a son or daughter stationed in the Gulf.

We opposed liberals and radicals in the trade union officialdom or various coalitions who suggested attaching yellow ribbons to antiwar buttons, or wearing a different-colored ribbon. This is an objective political question. The ribbon's practical meaning and impact in politics is nothing more than a capitulation to patriotic, prowar pressure in a sentimental guise. The worker can change his or her mind, but the ribbon can't change its function.

The vigils and the "honor their memory" and "Twin Towers" buttons cannot change their function either.  
 
Proletarian internationalism
One of the demands put forward by the International Action Center and echoed in a statement by a new group, "Labor Against War," is: "Billions to rebuild NYC and compensate the victims and their families." This is similar to the reactionary call by the Communist Party to "Rebuild Brooklyn, not Kuwait" after the Gulf War. These nationalist slogans feed into the rulers' campaign to rally around the stars and stripes and imply that workers in the United States are worth more than fellow toilers in other countries, including the one currently under imperialist assault, Afghanistan.

It's the capitalists problem to figure out how and where they rebuild their offices that used to be in the World Trade Center and nearby buildings.

There is also a liberal fallacy to the demand. The capitalists already have billions of dollars that could be used to raise the standard of living for working people in this country, Afghanistan, and around the world through profits they squeeze from our labor. We can assume that billions of dollars are going to "NYC," toward lucrative contracts for the large construction outfits and toward other windfalls for big business. Congress has already bailed out the airline industry to the tune of $15 billion. (Which will help the airlines who have hubs in New York City. How progressive!).

The only effective and lasting campaign against imperialism and its wars starts with proletarian internationalism and demands that can unite working people across borders. Workers and youth need to champion the demands to: Cancel the third world debt; Shorten the workweek with no cut in pay; Lift all trade barriers put up by imperialist countries; and Stop demands on semicolonial countries to reduce protective tariffs.

Washington's imperialist aggression against the toilers around the world has earned it the position of being the most hated power on the globe. The Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York, Martín Koppel, said in a September 11 campaign statement, "By its systematic superexploitation of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; by its never-ending insults to their national and cultural dignity; by its ceaseless murderous violence in countless forms--U.S. imperialism is turning North America into a death trap for working people and all who live here."

Posing the question in terms of how do "we" stop "terrorist attacks" turns workers and farmers away from deepening their class consciousness and the need to deepen our struggles against the bosses assaults at home and their wars abroad. By fighting to topple the capitalist government and replace it with one of our own, working people can construct a leadership that can help set an example of the road out of imperialist war, economic exploitation, and national oppression. Rather than a living in a death trap constructed by imperialism, workers and farmers will then be able to harness the enormous potential productive forces in the United States to join with working people in other countries in the struggle for socialism.  
 
 
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