https://themilitant.com/2020/01/18/organize-solidarity-with-protests-by-workers-and-youth-across-iran/
‘Organize solidarity with protests by workers and youth across Iran’
article
BY TERRY EVANS
Vol. 84/No. 3
January 27, 2020
Protest in Tehran Jan. 13, in rebirth of nationwide popular
mobilizations against Iranian regime’s interventions in the region and
economic crisis bearing
down on working people. figure
Protest in Tehran Jan. 13, in rebirth of nationwide popular
mobilizations against Iranian regime’s interventions in the region and
economic crisis bearing
down on working people.
Protest in Tehran Jan. 13, in rebirth of nationwide popular
mobilizations against Iranian regime’s interventions in the region and
economic crisis bearing
down on working people. figure end
Socialist Workers Party candidates are urging working people in the U.S.
to organize actions in solidarity with the struggles of fellow working
people
in Iran. Thousands have protested there this week, angered at the
Iranian government’s cover-up of its Revolutionary Guard shooting down a
Ukrainian passenger
plane killing all 176 people on board.
The party’s candidates tell the truth about the struggles of working
people there, who are demanding an end to the wars the Iranian rulers
wage across
the Mideast and protesting the rule of the bourgeois clerical regime.
These struggles deserve the support of working people worldwide.
“Our party calls for the immediate, unconditional and total withdrawal
of all U.S. forces from the Mideast,” Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for
U.S. Senate
from Georgia, told Alejandro Mendez when she visited his small
restaurant and grocery store La Tienda Tarimoro in Eatonton, Georgia,
Jan. 11. Mendez, a
former dairy farmworker, had first met SWP campaign supporters last fall.
MILITANT/SUSAN LAMONT Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from
Georgia, speaks with Alejandro Mendez in Eatonton, Georgia, Jan. 11.
“It’s working
people who fight and die in U.S. wars,” he said. figure
Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia, speaks with
Alejandro Mendez in Eatonton, Georgia, Jan. 11. “It’s working people who
fight and
die in U.S. wars,” he said.
MILITANT/SUSAN LAMONT Rachele Fruit, SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from
Georgia, speaks with Alejandro Mendez in Eatonton, Georgia, Jan. 11.
“It’s working
people who fight and die in U.S. wars,” he said. figure end
“U.S. forces are only there to defend the interests of the ruling class,
to control the resources of these countries,” Fruit said.
“Soleimani was a central leader of the Iranian rulers’ efforts to extend
their counterrevolutionary economic and military influence,” she said,
handing
Mendez a copy of the SWP national campaign’s Jan. 10 statement on the
Middle East (
available on the Militant’s website).
“He had been a target of protests by workers in Iran and Iraq.”
“It’s working people who have to fight and die in their wars,” Mendez
agreed.
“Only by looking to working people in the entire region can we see a way
out of the military conflicts there,” Fruit added. Mendez took copies of
the Militant
supplement “
Revolution, Counterrevolution and War in Iran
” to show around. It describes how working people joined demonstrations
in over 90 cities and towns across Iran at the end of 2017 to protest
Tehran’s
military intervention in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, and to press their
own class interests.
Mendez renewed his Militant subscription and said he would talk with
dairy workers to see if they would like to meet the socialist candidate
and learn
more about the SWP campaign.
‘U.S. forces out of Mideast’
When SWP campaigner Jeff Powers knocked on the door of Dre Johnson in
Vallejo, California, Jan. 11, Johnson told him that the U.S. government
should get
its forces out of the Middle East.
“We face a deteriorating situation in this country,” Johnson said,
pointing out he has to work two jobs while his wife also works full time
so they can
afford to pay their bills.
Workers are often told that Washington carries out “our” foreign policy
and “our” wars, but different social classes, not “countries,” have
foreign policies.
What are usually called “U.S. interests” are in fact those of the
capitalist rulers. Workers are forced to serve as the cannon fodder.
Washington’s military operations are an extension of what they do to
working people at home with their dog-eat-dog profit system, backed up
by their cops,
courts and prisons, explained Powers.
That’s why “we need to build a movement of workers independent of the
Democrats and Republicans,” Powers explained. The SWP urges workers to
build a labor
party that fights to defend the class interests of all workers, at home
and abroad. Johnson subscribed to the Militant and got a copy of the book
The Clintons’ Anti-Working-Class Record: Why Washington Fears Working People
by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes.
“It’s not our job to dictate to any country, in the name of liberating
them,” bus driver Tharien Graham told James Harris, SWP candidate for
Washington,
D.C., delegate to U.S. Congress, Jan. 8. Harris met Graham when he
brought his campaign’s support to Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689
strikers picketing
at the Cinder Bed Road garage in Lorton, Virginia. The bus workers are
fighting for safer working conditions and more pay.
“There is a class struggle in Iran and Iraq,” Harris said. “Workers
there are trying to unite across religious and national differences and
find a working-class
road forward.”
“Imperialist intervention does not help the ordinary people of the
Middle East,” 15-year-old student Rsaal Firoz told Communist League
member Andrés Mendoza
at a protest called by the Stop the War Coalition in London Jan. 11.
Firoz was at the action with his mother, Sadaf Nayab. She told Mendoza
she opposed
the killing of Soleimani, “But I’m no supporter of the Iranian
government,” she added. “It is not the government that people fought for
in the revolution
of 1979.”
“The current government is a reactionary bourgeois clerical regime,”
said Mendoza. “It’s the product of a counterrevolution that pushed back
what workers,
women, Kurds and others conquered through the overthrow of the
U.S.-backed shah in 1979.” Nayab and Firoz bought copies of the Militant
and the supplement
“Revolution, Counterrevolution and War in Iran,” along with
New International no. 7,
where Barnes discusses what Washington’s 1991 assault on Iraq opened up.
‘Militant’ — tool to fight Jew-hatred
SWP campaigner Susan LaMont, who works at a Walmart store in Atlanta,
reports that she has made good use of the column in last week’s Militant, “
Why Fight Against Jew-Hatred Is a Key Question for Working Class,
” in discussions with her co-workers about the Dec. 10 anti-Semitic
attack at the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket.
“Some had heard about the murderous assault on TV, but others found out
about it for the first time through our discussions,” she wrote. “The
coverage
in the Militant was a big help in these discussions, especially in
explaining that Jew-hatred is not simply another form of ‘hate’ or
discrimination, but
a tool used by the capitalist rulers and their supporters to scapegoat
Jews for the growing crisis of their system.
“One co-worker, Maxine Castle, who has worked a maintenance job at the
store for four years, said we should send a card of condolence to
families of those
in Jersey City who had lost loved ones.”
“We’re all human,” Castle, originally from Jamaica, told me, “no matter
what your nationality or beliefs. If my Jewish brother is hurt, it hurts
me too.”
“We decided to go ahead. Seven other co-workers added their names, which
led to more discussions on the importance of working people speaking out
against
these and any other examples of Jew-hatred.”
If you would like more information on the SWP campaign, or to help
circulate campaign literature, the Militant and books by SWP leaders,
contact the
campaign office nearest you
or at themilitant.com.
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“ I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people
became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs. ”
― Sam Harris,
