Vol. 79/No. 47      December 28, 2015

 
(front page)

SWP: Working-class campaign against
rulers’ war policies at home and abroad

 
“What the working-class movement needs is space to organize a broad public discussion of the connection between the rulers’ war policies at home and abroad; space to organize active opposition to those policies in the factories and through our unions; space to join with all those willing to debate the issues in a civil manner, and to take our protest to the streets; space to engage in politics in the class interests of workers, farmers, and our allies here and around the world.”

That’s what Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes said as Washington prepared to invade Iraq at the end of 1990, in the article “The Working-Class Campaign Against Imperialism and War” published in New International no. 7.

The course Barnes described, a stepped-up campaign against imperialism, is what members and supporters of the Socialist Workers Party and Communist Leagues around the world did then and are doing today as Washington and its imperialist allies increase bombings in Syria and Iraq and attack workers’ rights at home under the pretext of fighting Islamic State terrorism.

“In the face of this current war drive, the Socialist Workers Party views the defense of Muslim mosques, community centers and individuals as our highest responsibility. These attacks are part of the rulers’ attempts to restrict the rights of all as working-class resistance rises,” Steve Warshell told a Dec. 13 meeting at the Baitul Naseer Mosque in Hallandale Beach, Florida, to condemn the Dec. 2 terrorist attack by Islamic State supporters in San Bernardino, California, and protest a spate of attacks on Muslims. He called for Washington, Paris, London and Moscow to get their military forces out of the Mideast.

Warshell’s remarks “opposing the calls to register Muslims and ban their entry are much needed,” Munir Khan, a member of the mosque, told the Militant.

As capitalist political figures from President Barack Obama to Democratic and Republican candidates call for increased surveillance aimed broadly at Muslims, attacks on Muslims and mosques have increased. In Florida a Tampa woman had her headscarf pulled off; a Palm Beach Islamic Center was vandalized; “F--- Muslims” was painted on an Islamic school; and the Islamic Center of Greater Miami received an email saying, “I want to kill every Muslim around the world.”

In London, Communist League members set up a table outside the Finsbury Park mosque in north London Dec. 11 with signs opposing U.K. and all foreign bombing of Syria and denouncing anti-Muslim attacks. The mosque was recently the target of a failed arson attack. The communists publicized a demonstration the next day against U.K. bombings in Syria and a Militant Labor Forum that night on “The Working-Class Campaign Against Imperialism and War.”

A worker from Albania stopped to discuss the difference between communism and Stalinism, and then brought them coffee. A Somalian-born woman who knew of Malcolm X’s discussions with Algerian revolutionaries in the 1960s bought Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Barnes and a Militant subscription.

In New York, SWP members joined a Dec. 10 action of several hundred in solidarity with Syrian and Iraqi refugees and against attacks on Muslims, and were invited to a Hanukkah dinner organized by the NYC Muslim Jewish Solidarity Committee at the nearby headquarters of the Islamic Society of Mid-Manhattan. More than 100 Jews, Muslims and others were at the meal and party. The solidarity committee was formed this year as a way for Muslims and Jews to oppose “hate crimes, incitement or discrimination directed at either community.”

The previous week New York socialists knocked on doors in Bayonne, New Jersey, discussing and debating the connection between the war at home and the war abroad with workers born in the U.S., Egypt, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Three people bought subscriptions to the Militant.

When SWP member Candace Wagner was discussing the attacks on Muslims with co-workers at Walmart, one of them told her that some customers in the Valley Stream, New York, store had yelled at a Muslim couple ahead of them in line to “get out of the country. You don’t belong here.” A couple at a nearby cash register shouted back, “They have as much right to be here as you.”

Cindy Jaquith in Miami contributed to this article.

 
 
Related articles:
Washington's war moves spark attacks on Muslims
Protests reject assaults on mosques, refugees
 
 
 
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