AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND THE WORLD US A Curtis defense under attack A SYSTEMATIC campaign of provocation and disinformation is being waged against the campaign in defense of Mark Curtis, a member of the Socialist Workers' Party framed up on sexual assault and burglary charges.
One of the organizers is the Workers' League, a degenerate sect devoted to proving that leaders of the SWP have been agents of the KGB and FBI, and that since the party's leadership is made up of agents, its adherents have the right to enter and cannot be expelled. It has been suing for some years to get the courts to set aside the SWP's rights to determine its own membership.
The moral level of the Workers' League operation is indicated by the statement in the September 16 issue of its paper, The Bulletin: "The role of the SWP leadership is as flagrant and open as can be. Like Curtis, they have been caught with their pants down, and like Curtis, they are trying to brazen it out, relying above all on the political stupidity and cynicism of the pettyMipi- versAc bloo International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, bourgeois radical milieu in which they have sought support."
Curtis was sentenced to 25 years in prison on November on charges of burglary and sexual assault. He had also been charged with assaulting a police officer at the time of his arrest, but the prosecution was forced to drop that accusation. In fact Curtis was badly beaten. He testified that a woman had asked him for help and led to the porch on which he was arrested. She then disappeared, and a policeman burst in, grabbed him and pulled his trousers down. He was charged with attacking a fifteenyear-old woman who lived in the house.
The only evidence against Curtis was the testimony of the arresting officer, who had been suspended in 1978 for beating up a suspect and lying about, and the alleged victim and her younger brother, who proved notably unimpressive witnesses. In fact, the conviction was on the cop's word. There was no material evidence that Curtis had any physical contact with the alleged victim. In fact, the porch where the attack took place was covered with dog hairs, but none were found on Curtis, although there were on the purported victim.
A letter by the father of the alleged victim attacking the Curtis defense campaign
SEASONS GREETING "Mikhail 1988 is being circulated by the Workers' League and sent to endorsers. It is couched in insidious demagogic terms, "vicious rape against a working class youth," and makes incredible accusations: "I made several attempts to speak with leaders of the Socialist Workers Party...hoping to convince them that were making a big mistake in defending Curtis....Their response was to laugh in my face and flash a wad of hundred dollar bills at me to show how much money they were making from the case."
The SWP has introduced evidence proving that the police failed to stop this man from smashing up the Curtis defense headquarters, after he told them he was going there to "kick ass." He later claimed that SWP supporters burned a cross in his lawn.
Despite these demagogic attacks, support for Curtis and suspicions of the police are growing. For example, in November, Central Arizona Labor Council President R. T. Griffin sent a protest letter to the Des Moines prosecutor, stressing the bad conditions in the packing-house industry in which the framed-up socialist worked: "Rather than cease these hazardous conditions, they instead try to persecute individuals such as Mark Curtis."
However, the frame-up against Mark Curtis and the provocations against his defense indicate that he and the SWP are the target of a sinister concerted campaign. The maximum international support is need. *
PROTESTS can be sent to Polk
County Attorney James Smith,
Room 408 Courthouse; 500 Mulberry St., Des Moines, lowa 50309,
USA. Copies should be sent to the
Curtis Defense Committee, PO Box
1048, Des Moines, lowa 50311.
### HUMBUG
PENTAGE BUDGET THAT WASN'T ON YOUR LIST. WAS IT? /
POLAND A splendid couple! THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT Current of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) distributed leaflets with the following text on the occasion of Margaret Thatcher's visit to Poland:
Undoubtedly, the British prime minister, Mrs. Thatcher, and General Jaruzelski will be able to understand each other. First of all, it can be assumed that they will exchange their experiences in chopping trade-union rights, in which they are both worldfamous experts. A tradition of collaboration has already been established. When the British miners were on strike, Jaruzelski rushed to support Mrs Thatcher by increasing Polish coal exports to Britain. So, they will have no problem seeing eye to eye now.
They will be able to talk to each other about how best to defend the privileged strata at the expense of the poor, how most effectively to drive down the consumption of the working people, how best to cut back social services.
If there were not some difficulties about the "social system," they would really make a splendid couple! Unfortunately, geopolitical interests stand in the way of a marriage.
Could Mrs. Thatcher at least be appointed an honorary member of the Political Bureau? No? Then at least she ought to be brought into the Consultative Council. In fact. her advice was already followed in fact, her advice was already followed in May, when our media cited the way that the British seafarers' strike was broken as an example, and concluded that solidarity strikes could not be tolerated here either.
Thatcher could supervise the firings of the Jastrzebie miners. She has already laid off tens of thousands of miners in her country. And if it were to turn out that a state of war needed to be proclaimed again, Mrs. Thatcher's considerable experience would certainly be useful. After all, a state of war has already existed in Northern Ireland for 19 years!
Doubtless, Mrs. Thatcher would like to take advantage of her stay in Poland to assume the pose of a defender of workers' rights. Thus, she will express her support for Solidarnosc. Thanks a lot! We would a thousand times rather have the support of the British seafarers and the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, who have been subjected to poverty and to the repression and terror of the forces of order. They can understand us. Mrs. Thatcher only wants to use us.
What we have to say to Mrs Thatcher is this: Give the sacked miners their jobs back! Repeal the anti-union laws! Withdraw your army from Northern Ireland! * CANADA Youth organization needed A YOUTH ORGANIZATION is what is needed. That was the conclusion reached
AROUND THE WORLD OBITUARY Sylvia Bleeker (1902-1988) SYLVIA BLEEKER, a veteran of the American Trotskyist movement, died in New York on November 23 at the age of 86. She was the companion of Morris Lewit (Stein), a central leader of the Socialist Workers Party in the 1940s and 1950s.
Bleeker adhered to Bolshevism in her native Byelorussia in the revolutionary period and came to the United States in 1920. She and her companion were Yiddish speakers and were first active in the United States in a Jewish workers' club. Bleeker was an outstanding unionist in the needle trades and collaborated in associated in union work with James T. Cannon, then a CP leader and later founder of the American Trotskyist movement.
She and her companion were expelled from the Communist Party on the charge of "Trotskyism" about a year after Cannon, when she was CP candidate for congress in New York. They then joined the Communist League of America, the US branch of the Left Opposition.
In the 1930s they edited a Yiddish-language Trotskyist journal, Unser Kampf, in the 1930s, which circulated in 15 cities in the US and in a number of countries where there were concentrations of radical Jewish workers (France, Belgium, South Africa, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil).
During the war, she worked in the Civil Rights Defense Committee fighting the legal victimization of Socialist Party leaders. In the same period, her companion served as national organizational secretary of the SWP.
In 1946, Bleeker and Stein went to Mexico to help reorganize the Trotsky household in Coyoacan. In 1947-48, they collaborated in Paris with the Fourth International center.
In the 1950s, Stein returned to the SWP leadership and Bleeker worked in the party publishing house. In the late 1950s, they became inactive owing to health problems, but remained sympathizers of the party.
In 1984, Sylvia Bleeker opposed a wave of expulsions from the SWP which were condemned by the Fourth International. She continued to support the Fourth Internationalist some of those expelled. * by about sixty young people who participated in the open conference held by Gauche Socialiste on November 5 and by the conference of Gauche Socialiste itself on the following day. [GS is a Québec organization sympathizing with the Fourth International.]
.After a day of rich in discussion and education, among other things on the questions of the student movement in Québec, youth, women, as well as the struggle against racism and in defense of the environment, the conference participants took up the need for a political organization for youth.
First of all, the links between the various governmental schemes, such as the freezing of school costs and the reform of student loans and scholarships, against which young people have been mobilizing, were seen clearly as the plans of the bourgeois state to keep youth in under-employment and poverty. That pointed up the need for a political organization for young people. The questions of the independence of such an organization and its sympathy with the program of the Fourth International were taken up.
In the evening, Rébeca Houzel of the Jeunesse Communiste Révolutionnaire
Tendency, a group established by [the youth organization in sympathy with the French section of the Fourth International], Pierre Laliberté from the Solidarity group in the United States and Manon Ann Blanchard of Gauche Socialiste presented an internationalist view of the student struggles. The Toronto comrades added a special touch, informing us of their experience in English Canada.
A parallel was easily made between the student demands in Europe and America. On both sides of the Atlantic, students are demanding access to higher education, which requires adequate financial aid for young people coming from the working class.
A youth organization is necessary because the reality experienced by young people often differs from that perceived by the adult world and also because they have own modes of expression and learning process that need to be respected. The struggles of youth have a revolutionary character, and the young people leading them want to achieve revolutionary changes in our society, to fight the bourgeoisie and its grip and to overthrow the capitalist system. *
[From Gauche Socialiste.J
22
1988 INDEX
1988 INDEX
(Issues 133-154)
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