http://themilitant.com/2015/7947/794704.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 47 December 28, 2015
(front page)
SWP: Working-class campaign against
rulers’ war policies at home and abroad
BY MAGGIE TROWE
“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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