Audience attending the west regional conference for Workers World Party held in Los Angeles on September 4, 2010. The event was held at the Southern California Library for Social Research. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe)
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By Bob McCubbin
Los Angeles
Published Sep 8, 2010 5:12 PM
Known in the region as “the people’s library,” the Southern California
Library of Los Angeles was the site of the first Western Regional
“Abolish Capitalism, Fight Injustice — Conference on Socialism” of
Workers World Party.
With daylong attendance on Sept. 4 well surpassing 100, and
standing-room-only available for latecomers, the assemblage was
notable for its diversity, especially the presence of large numbers of
people of color, youth, activists and workers of many nationalities.
Along with many people from southern California, especially the Los
Angeles area, party representatives attended from the WWP chapters in San Francisco, San Diego and Tucson, Ariz. Party members and
supporters also came from San Jose, Oakland and Orange County in
California as well as from Seattle.
An open mike for questions and comments followed every plenary session.
Also notable was the participation in the conference of speakers
representing other organizations of struggle that agree with WWP’s
recent call to the movement for a regroupment for socialist unity.
Kuusela Hilo of BAYAN USA described the current plight and
centuries-long struggle of Filipino workers for national liberation;
Ron Gochez of Unión del Barrio provided a militant defense of the
demand for the return of stolen Mexican lands; and Zahi Damuni,
co-founder of Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition,
focused on liberation for occupied Palestine.
Rosie Martinez, former vice president of Service Employees Local 660
(now Local 721), who is currently a leader of the union’s Latino
Caucus, spoke of the struggle to defend some of the most oppressed
workers, especially women workers in the health industries. She linked
that struggle to the effort of workers worldwide to defend themselves
against attacks by some of the same transnational corporations.
Celina Benitez from the Southern California Immigration Coalition
called for a day-in, day-out, full-time commitment to the struggle for
full legalization of all immigrant workers, in addition to focusing on
important mobilization days such as May 1.
Dave Welsh, a San Francisco Labor Council delegate representing the
Letter Carriers union, spoke on the need for a Works Progress
Administration-type federal jobs program for the 30 million presently
unemployed and underemployed people in this country. He urged that
this demand be raised from the rank-and-file at the projected Oct. 2
Washington, D.C., mobilization.
Carlos Mejiafrom the Honduran resistance gave a solidarity greeting.
Capitalist economic crisis, war at home
John Parker, a WWP National Committee member and Los Angeles branch organizer, opened the conference with a tribute to the important work of all the organizations present and a call for increased solidarity despite any political differences. Such an effort is necessary, he suggested, as groundwork to the building of unity in the struggle for
socialism.
Parker went on to offer a brief analysis of how the historical pattern
in which workers in the imperialist countries have been more
privileged than workers in the superexploited countries is changing.
There is a global “leveling” underway. Going under the name of
“globalization,” the result is the growing impoverishment of workers
everywhere.
Parker raised the current condition of overproduction, the burgeoning
warehouses full of commodities for which there are no buyers. Under
these chronic conditions, the imperialists don’t want educated
workers. There is a serious effort underway to destroy the public
education system. But a positive condition is the changing character
of the working class. It has become more multinational with a larger
percentage of women. These demographic developments bring with them the certainty of more dynamic and class-conscious working-class
leadership.
Parker quoted from the book “High Tech, Low Pay” by Sam Marcy,
founding member of Workers World Party, on the changes in production that underlie these developments: “The technological revolution is therefore a quantum jump whose devastating effects require a revolutionary strategy to overcome.”
WWP national leader Larry Holmes stated that even capitalism
functioning normally is a crisis for the working class. He described
the present global and national situation, however, as a capitalist
crisis, but one of a new type, where the various component parts of
the capitalist system have ceased working in harmony and are now, in
fact, in conflict with each other. The ruling class is now and will
increasingly use racism as a solution to the deepening problem of an
economy stuck in neutral.
Holmes stressed the need to actively fight the ruling-class program of
racism and defend immigrant workers and Muslims and all who are under attack. He cited as an example the Party’s role in initiating a Sept. 11 mobilization to defend the proposed Islamic center in lower
Manhattan.
While on the one hand describing the Tea Party movement as a
phenomenon that must be taken seriously, he emphasized that it is not
“the real storm.” It is, he suggested, the storm before the real
storm. The real storm, he predicted, is coming: “The real storm is the
working class rising up.”
Holmes noted the historic tradition of working-class struggle and
emphasized that revolutionaries must take seriously and be involved in
every struggle of workers and oppressed people, no matter how minor,
while always keeping in mind the big picture, the need to build a mass
movement for socialism. Socialism, he emphasized, is the only
reasonable path for the planet. He concluded his remarks with the
observation that the fight for socialism is not the property of one
party. It must be a movement, and we have to launch such a socialist
movement.
Judy Greenspan, a longtime party activist from San Francisco and a
teacher, offered an overview of the growing attacks on public
education, stressing the scapegoating of teachers, the use of
divide-and-conquer tactics that pit parents against teachers and
teachers against teachers, and the racist character of the present
system. She urged everyone to support the Oct. 7 Defend Public
Education mobilization.
Capitalist state terrorizing our communities
Jefferson Azevedo, a Brazilian revolutionary and Los Angeles WWP
branch member, reminded the audience that wars are also a cause of
migration. The military, he charged, is an important purveyor of
racism.
Larry Hales, a leader of the revolutionary youth group Fight
Imperialism, Stand Together and WW contributing editor, spoke on the
role of the state, a Marxist concept defined as organized violence,
such as the police and the military, that stands between the haves and
the have-nots and functions as protection for the haves and a constant
threat of terror against the workers and oppressed.
Gloria Verdieu, a San Diego WWP branch organizer, spoke on the cases of political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE 9 and Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin. Cheryl LaBash, a WWP national organizer and a co-coordinator of the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, paid tribute to the Cuban socialist revolution and called for the freedom of the Cuban
Five political prisoners.
Fighting U.S. imperialism, defending self-determination
Monica Moorehead, a WW managing editor and Women’s Fightback Network organizer, spoke on the Party’s theoretical contributions in
explaining the class roots of women’s oppression and lesbian, gay, bi
and trans oppression. She also spoke on a recent conference she
attended in Montreal that brought together more than 350 women
activists from around the world under the banner of fighting
imperialism.
Teresa Gutierrez, co-coordinator of the New York May 1 Coalition for
Worker and Immigrant Rights and a WWP national leader, stated that
there will be no compromising on full rights for all immigrant
workers. “No to the Schumer plan,” she emphasized, and no to
“comprehensive immigration reform,” a code phrase for continuing the
persecution of immigrant workers. She cited V.I. Lenin’s writings on
the right of oppressed nations to self-determination as an essential
guide in formulating demands such as the return of the lands stolen
from Mexico and the right of African Americans to reparations for
centuries of unpaid slave labor. Within the movement of immigrant
workers, she observed, there exists an army while, in fact, a world
without borders is being created by the international working class.
Paul Teitelbaum, a WWP organizer in Tucson and a May 1 Coalition
activist, recounted the sordid history of the U.S. takeover of Mexican
lands and the disastrous effects the “free-trade” agreement NAFTA has had on Mexico’s poor and working-class people.
Sharon Black, a national WWP organizer, spoke on how individualism is promoted by bourgeois culture, and how it serves the interests of the
ruling class. But our class needs organization, she insisted,
especially since the ruling class keeps us exploited and oppressed in
part because it is very organized and centralized. Black urged
conference attendees not affiliated to seriously consider joining WWP
or one of the other organizations in attendance.
Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire and an organizer of the Detroit branch of WWP, traced the history of North
American/African relations from the beginning of the trade in enslaved
African people to the current efforts by the Pentagon to achieve
decisive military control over the African continent.
Los Angeles WWP organizer Maggie Vascassenno, California student
activist Daniella Rodriguez and San Diego WWP member Zola Muhammad were conference co-chairs. The event concluded with a spirited singing of “The International,” a revolutionary workers’ anthem.
When asked how she liked the conference, Fresno State college student Chisanga Changa from Zambia told WW, “I am liberated, educated and inspired. The conference was amazing. I was very touched.”
The success of this conference showed that as the economic crisis
deepens, here and worldwide, socialism is becoming more popular and
capitalism more and more unpopular.
The Los Angeles WWP branch will be holding Marxist classes on
socialism starting on Sept. 18. For more information, call (323)
515-5870 or visit workersworld.net.
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