I remember the event in the below article very well. The very next
year, 1980, was my most politically active year and the Communist
Workers Party was a part of the alphabet soup that I either worked with
or was around. They seemed to place more blame for the massacre on the
federal government than on the kluxers and Nazis and as the article
indicates they may not have been entirely wrong. By that I mean that the
federal government may have facilitated it, but from my personal
observation of them the CWP did not seem to be all that concerned about
the fascists who actually pulled the triggers. Anyway, in that year of
1980 the CWP held their own demonstration in front of the federal
building here in Charleston, West Virginia. After parading around for a
while and chanting slogans and apparently not getting much attention
they decided to be a bit more aggressive. They entered the federal
building and started running up and down the hallways pounding on doors
yelling, "You killed our comrades!" Yeah, I'm sure that those low level
secretaries who didn't know what was going on were baffled by the
accusation being hurled at them. There were only two CWP members who I
got to know. They were a couple, a man and a woman, who had been
assigned to work in the Committee Against Registration and the Draft
which I was a part of. I hope these two were not a good representation
of the rest of the party. They came off just like brainwashed cult
members with the wide glassy eyes and all. I once encountered some
members of the Way, a religious cult, and their whole bearing and
behavior was very similar to these two CWP members. I remember that the
man once started ranting about the SWP being too wedded to bourgeois
legality based only on a comment from me that the SWP did not do
something or other because it was illegal. I hope he didn't mean that
the CWP went around breaking any bourgeois law that they wanted to just
because it was bourgeois. That would be inviting government disruption
and they would find a lot of their comrades in jail. It reminds me of
the bikers I was around during another part of my life. They claimed
that they recognized no law but their own. The woman part of that couple
did not come off as quite so brainwashed. I still wondered about her
though. She looked anorexic. She was so thin and bony that I didn't see
how she survived.
https://socialistaction.org/2017/09/16/16233/
Recalling the Greensboro Massacre
/ 19 hours ago
Sept. 2017 Greensboro marker
Survivors, family, and community members gathered on May 24, 2015, for
the dedication of a marker near the site of the 1979 Greensboro
massacre. Photo by Lynn Hey/ News & Record
By JOHN LESLIE
On Nov. 3, 1979, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party
(ANP) attacked an anti-Klan march in Greensboro, N.C., that was
organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP). Five members of the CWP
were murdered and 10 others were wounded with the collusion of federal
and local law enforcement.
Workers’ Viewpoint Organization (WVO), which changed its named to the
Communist Workers Party just days before the massacre, had been
organizing in the North Carolina textile industry. Members had taken
jobs in textile mills and worked to build multiracial union struggles.
Their work in the mills had earned them the hostility of the textile
bosses, local cops, and union bureaucrats.
In this period, the KKK was reasserting itself after being dormant for
years. The CWP took part in a confrontation with the Klan in June of
1979 at China Grove, N.C., where the KKK was holding a meeting.
Protesters at China Grove took up the chant of “Death to the Klan!”Sept.
2017 Klan in Gettysburg
The CWP prioritized anti-Klan organizing, seeing opposition to the KKK
as an obligation for communists. Party activists and their allies
planned an anti-Klan conference that was to be preceded by a march
through Greensboro’s low-income housing projects. The CWP leaflets,
emblazoned with the slogan “Death to the Klan,” exhorted the Klan and
Nazis to come to Greensboro, stating, “you are nothing but a bunch of
racist cowards. … We challenge you to attend our November 3rd rally.” (1)
March permits issued by the police stipulated that demonstrators not
carry any guns, despite the fact that open carry was legal in North
Carolina. Violation would result in revocation of the march permit.
Police and federal informant Edward Dawson, a convicted felon and
long-time Klansman, was urged by his Greensboro police handler to attend
meetings where the Klan response to the march was taking place. Dawson
spoke at a KKK meeting, where he urged armed action against communists.
Additionally, the American Nazi Party in North Carolina had been
infiltrated by an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agent, Bernard
Butkovich, who posed as an over-the-road trucker. Butkovich also
encouraged the Nazis to go to Greensboro armed. However, he reported no
discussion of an armed attack to his superiors.
In the weeks before the march, a United Racist Front was declared in a
press conference by neo-Nazi leader Harold Covington and KKK Grand
Dragon Virgil Griffin. At one gathering, Covington declared, “Piece by
piece, bit by bit, we white people are going to take back this country.” (2)
On Nov. 3, as marchers started to gather outside of Greensboro’s
Morningside Projects, a column of Klan and Nazi supporters in nine cars
started to approach the parade route. Just before the fascists arrived,
police officers were ordered by the dispatcher to clear the area,
leaving the area unprotected. At approximately 11 a.m., the tactical
unit responsible for protecting the rally was ordered to go to lunch. A
Greensboro police detective had provided Dawson with a copy of the
permit that detailed the parade route. Dawson rode in the lead car of
the caravan, which was followed by detectives in an unmarked car.
CWP member Paul Bermanzohn recalled later, “‘Where are the cops?’ Sandi
asked me. … We had a tense but consistent relationship with the police.
They usually gathered in a swarm around us at least an hour before a
march.” (3)
As the KKK arrived on the scene, people started yelling. Dawson leaned
out of his truck window and shouted at Bermanzohn, “You asked for the
Klan, you got it, you commie son of a bitch!” (4)
After a brief scuffle between marchers and fascists, the Klan and Nazis
opened fire with rifles and shotguns, killing CWP members Cesar Cauce,
Bill Sampson, Jim Waller, and Sandi Smith. Ten people were wounded. CWP
member Mike Nathan died of his wounds in the hospital. Only a couple of
CWP supporters were armed with handguns and a shotgun. The shootings
were caught on film by the four different news crews that were on the
scene to cover the demonstration.Sept. 2017 Greensboro
Two subsequent trials revealed the extent of police and federal
collusion with the fascists. In particular the role of Dawson, who was
both a federal and local police informant, shows the role of police. At
the urging of the police, Dawson had disrupted meetings of the
Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist grouping that had an
intense rivalry with the CWP. There had been clashes between CWP and RCP
supporters. The FBI, ATF, and local cops were intent on disrupting
leftist political activity in North Carolina.
In the first criminal trial, six fascists were prosecuted by the state,
five of them charged with murder. An all-white jury acquitted all of the
fascists. In a federal civil rights trial, all nine defendants were
acquitted by an all-white jury despite eyewitness testimony and film of
the massacre captured by news crews. Neither Dawson or Butkovich were
called to testify in the first criminal trial.
In court, the fascists claimed self-defense and played on the
anti-communist prejudices of jurors. The ACLU refused to defend the CWP,
citing the violence and arrests. Six CWP members and supporters were
held on felony riot charges. For this reason, CWP members were
uncooperative with the prosecution in the trials of the KKK and Nazis.
They strongly believed that cooperation would help convict their
comrades. The attitude of the prosecutor didn’t help when he stated that
most people thought that the communists got what they deserved. (5)
The Carter administration’s Justice Department found no wrongdoing by
police in the incident, but questions remain about why police were
withdrawn from the neighborhood right before the shootings and why the
tactical squad was sent to lunch at 11 a.m. Politicians closed ranks in
defense of the behavior of the police.
Marty Arthur (Nathan) said later: “Believe it or not, the Klan and Nazi
killers walked away free from all three trials [two criminal, one
civil]. They were never punished, never spent one day in prison. How can
the justice system acquit murderers who four TV videotapes show firing
into a crowd and killing five people?” (6) The civil trial, which
concluded in 1985, found the Greensboro police department, as well as
the Klan and Nazis, liable for wrongful deaths; the CWP protesters were
awarded $400,000.
Progressive activists in the region and nationally wanted to build a
mass political response to the killings. A mass march was called for
Feb. 2, 1980, by an ad hoc coalition calling itself the February 2nd
Mobilization Committee. The CWP was reluctant to work with other
leftists or broader forces in the aftermath of the murders. CWP leader
Jerry Tung had predicted a five-year period of struggle leading to
revolution. This perspective of revolution on the immediate horizon
required sacrifice and confrontation with the agents of the state and
the far right.
Strategy and tactics in the fight against fascism and the far right must
be considered carefully. Activists should never underestimate the
possibility of cooperation between rightists and the cops. The courts
and capitalist politicians cannot be relied on to protect us.
Revolutionaries doing anti-fascist work should avoid isolation from
broader social forces by building united front counter-mobilizations.
The use of defensive slogans, rather than offensive slogans, is called
for. James P. Cannon, a founder and early leader of the Socialist
Workers Party, argued, “… defensive formulations are an indispensable
medium for teaching the masses, who will not be convinced by theory but
only by their own experience and propaganda related thereto. This
experience of the masses proceeds in the main along the line of
defensive actions. That is why defensive formulations are most easily
comprehensible and represent the best approach of the revolutionary
Marxists to the masses. Finally, it is a tactical and legal
consideration of no small importance in a bourgeois-democratic country
that defensive formulas partially disarm the class enemy; or in any
case, make their attacks more difficult and costly. Why should such
advantages be thrown away?” (7)
After Greensboro, the state and media tried to paint the CWP as the
aggressor, using their rhetoric against them. The “violence on both
sides” argument we have seen after the Charlottesville fascist
mobilization was used decades ago against the CWP.
Immediately after the murder of Heather Heyer last month, the whole
establishment, from Mitt Romney to Nancy Pelosi, became “anti-fascists.”
Now, despite the evidence that rightists came to Charlottesville with
violent intentions, the media and liberals seem intent to blame violence
on anti-fascists or “antifa.”
It’s noteworthy that the cops in Charlottesville seemed oblivious to
acts of violence that were committed by fascists. One example took place
when a person, now identified as a KKK member, pulled a handgun and
discharged it in the direction of counter-protesters right in front of a
group of cops. The current witch hunt against “antifa” is designed to
divert attention from the racist far right and to place an equal sign
between the left and right.
1. Love and Revolution: a political memoir, Signe Waller, p 293
2. Through Survivors’ Eyes- From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre,
by Sally Avery Bermanzohn, p. 194
3. Through Survivors’ Eyes- From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre,
by Sally Avery Bermanzohn, p. 213
4. Through Survivors’ Eyes- From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre,
by Sally Avery Bermanzohn, p. 214
5. Codename GREENKIL, Elizabeth Wheaton, p 194
6. Through Survivors’ Eyes- From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre,
by Sally Avery Bermanzohn, p. 265
7. Socialism on Trial, by James P. Cannon
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September 16, 2017 in Black Liberation, Fascism / Far Right, Marxist
Theory & History, Police & FBI.
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