The Italian press and rightwing agreed in estimating 700,000 at the demonstration. Whatever the figure, it was a veritable human flood that converged on Rome from all corners of Italy.
The demonstration of 12 contingents converged on the Piazza San Giovanni, the biggest open space in the city. Seven hundred buses remained on the city ring road, and several trains were unable to disgorge their passengers, so dense was the crowd.
When the rally began at 4 pm, tens of thousands of demonstrators had still not left the starting point. Combative, with banners and placards, the demonstrators had a cheerful but determined air. This is a big contrast with the last big union demonstrations, in June 1982 on the sliding scale and of the metal workers in spring 1983, when rage and bitterness against the wideranging austerity meas ures dominated. On March 24 the Italian working class could measure its strength.
Despite the division that has occurred between the three union federations at the top level (between the CGIL the CSIL - - Christian majority and the Socialist UIL), the demonstration showed the unity that exists at the base through the 'self-organised' assemblies of the factory councils. Lorenzo Paletti, a worker from the OM lorry factory in Brescia, representing the factory councils, underlined the presence of many CISL militants. The numerous factory council banners were another proof of the unity that exists at the base. The big battalions of the CGIL and Communist Party had of course mobilised but the starting point for the mobilisations was the factory councils - they provided the dynamism. 26
The council representatives were warmly received and applauded when they spoke. They had harsh words for the unions: "The union leaderships have repressed the energies of the movement.' We are against the decree, even if it is amended. 'Our action here is not just a passing fancy, it's not a fit of rage it's a considered response and will continue.' The general secretary of the CGIL, Lama, on the other hand, judged it 'inopportune to have recourse to the general strike, and came out for 'a reform of the wage system.
The CGIL leadership proposes to renegotiate that element of wage adjustment which woud be 'automatic' and thus linked to the sliding scale. This would be 'contractual' and thus negotiated by collective agreement. But this proposal does not satisfy the other union leaderships who are lined up behind the government decree because 'we have to fight inflation', and particularly because the bosses have clearly explained that the decree has to be applied.
In this situation the initiative is once again with the rank and file. (This report was published in La Gauche newspaper of the Belgian section of the Fourth International, on April 6, 1984)
Palestinian leader threatened with exile Abdel-AZiz Ali Shahin (Abu Ali) is one of the best known leaders of the Palestinian
Considered as one of the founders of El Fatah in the Occupied Territories, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison in September 1967. For fifteen years he was one of the most important leaders of the Palestinian political prisoners, and at the head of all their struggles, strikes in Ashkelon and Naf'ha prisons.
was released from prison, the authorities decided to send Abu Ali into exile in the midst of the desert, and forbid him contact with any other human
It has now been announced that he waged a campaign against his exile, has taken the initiative to mount a broad support campaign for Abdul-Aziz Ali Shahin. All the Palestinian nationalist forces in the Occupied Territories are mobilising in his support, and many well-known Jewish progressives have also supported the campaign.
The international workers movement in every country should launch solidarity actions with Abu Ali, demanding his right to live with his family in his homeland. Support committee: Abu Ali Shahin Defence Committee, PO Box 20479, East Jerusalem, Israel.
The local elections in Turkey In the November 6 general elections, the military dictatorship restricted participation, these elections serving merely to institutionalize the coup of September 11, 1980. However, the participation of all the political parties in the March 25 elections showed that no major change has occurred in the political situation in
T'The Anavatan Party, which controls
the cabinet, once again got the largest number of votes, despite the traditional right continuing in the form of the Dogru Yol Partisi [the Correct Road Party]. The old Islamic party, which continues in the form of the Refah Partisi [Party of Welfare], recovered almost all its previous vote. The fascists did not run on their own in the elections, but pursued their objectives within the framework of the Milli Demokrasi Partisi [MDP - Nacional Democracy Party, the party closest to the military junta], and the Anavatan
The SODEP [Sosyal Demokrasi Partisi, Social Democracy Party], which seeks to represent the opposition as a whole, got a considerable part of the vote that went to the Halkci Parti [People's Party] in the November 6 elections, from which it was excluded. The vote for the two parties fell below the one third mark, which represents the traditional limit of support for this current in the period since 1950.
Those who are trying to build up more of a mass basis for founding the Demokratik Sol Parti [Democratic Left Party]
International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
keep postponing its public launching Ecevit announced that it was not possible to vote in this election because of the limitations on political rights.
Since the new parties got more than 50 percent of the vote, the hopes for early parliamentary elections were dashed. Now the only way to make changes in the parliament is through realignments of the parties.
The masses were more visible in the public squares in this election than in the November 6 one. But there was no opposition that could attract them, and they were not ready to oust the politicians elected three months before. On the occasion of the November 6 elections, I wrote: "...a breakdown in the present stability cannot be expected...these elections indicate that the stagnation is going to continue." (International Viewpoint, No 43, December 26, 1983.)
The March 25 elections showed that this situation has in fact continued. The socialist organizations are in disarray. They did no propaganda work in connection with the elections, either separately or in concert. The parties that dominate the "Social Democratic" movement were incapable of even hearing the voices of those who have been fighting a life or death struggle for basic human rights in the prisons in the much more difficult conditions that have existed since the September 11 coup.
To the contrary of what the bourgeois press would have people think, the most important event in Turkey in March was not the local elections but the deaths that occurred in the prisons. In Diyarbakir, the most developed and most political city in Turkish Kurdistan, 12 leading fighters of the Kurdish national liberation movement died in the local prison. Some are very ill in the prison hospital.
More recently in the Mamak prison in the Turkish capital of Ankara, a group of revolutionaries announced that they preferred dying on hunger strike than facing a slow death in prison.
The March 25 local elections were another element necessary to establish the parliamentary facade of the regime. That was their significance. to say nothing of political freedoms, the most basic human rights have been trampled underfoot in the most brutal way since the September 11 coup
These elections once again demonstrated the absence of trade-union and political organizations prepared to wage a determined fight for an improvement of the conditions in Turkey's prisons, the release of the political prisoners, and to restore full trade-union rights working masses, as well as general political freedoms.
doors, and the dollar-a-day pay for those who decide that kitchen, yard or janitorial work is at least a way to pass time.
There is no radio, and TV is only in
The INS confiscates pens and pencils and the refugees must go to the office to write their letters there.
In "good weather" the young men must stay outside all day - it's too much trouble to let them in and out - and there are no bathrooms for their use in the Border Association for Refugees from Central (BARCA) provide paper and envelopes, cash checks and help handle mail and telephone calls for detainees, who sometimes stay at Los Fresnos as long as eight months while the INS reviews their cases or before they can raise the 2,500 to
Lawyers with Proyecto Libertad have filed suit against the INS for routinely refusing to advise Central American refugees of their rights to a hearing and to apply for political asylum.
The camp averages 60 to 75 deportations a week. Salvadoran security forces right-wing death squads view the returning young men with suspicion, many, perhaps most, face torture and death upon their return to El Salvador.
INS Deputy agreed to allow Socialist Workers Party vice-presidential candidate Andrea Gonzalez and four supporters to tour the
Permission was rescinded when the INS placed the center under quarantine
US government attacks
Salvadoran sanctuary movement
SAN ANTONIO - A nun and a religious social worker could be sentenced to 15-
Naturalization Service (INS) to provide
Today there are approximatedue to a measles outbreak.
BARCA members confirmed that several cases of measles had been discovered. To the local solidarity activists it came as no
Los Fresnos camp doctors reluctantly year jail sentences and hit with fines to- ly 110 such churches in 60 cities. taling 14,000 US dollars. They were indicted by a federal grand jury in Brownsville, Texas, on March 15 for conspiracy and illegal transportation of two Salva-
The February 19 predawn arrest of Sister Dianne Muhlenkamp and layworker Stacey Merkt by border patrol agents on a rural road in Texas' Rio Grande Valley made front-page headlines here.
Also arrested, but not indicted pending further investigation, was Jack Fischer, a Dallas Times-Herald reporter. He was on assignment covering the informal network of religious people, churches and orthe Sanctuary Movement, which aids Salvadorans fleeing from their war-torn homeland.
In 1982 there were 14 churches of various denominations around the publicly defying the Immigration and International Viewpoint 23 April 1984
This case may be "the political trial of 1984," said Jack Elder, director of Casa Oscar Romero, a refugee center in San Benito, where the arrested Salvadorans named for the Salvadoran archbishop slain by a government death squad, is a small, single-story white building that provides a refuge for 25 to 30 Salvadorans.
This sanctuary provides an alternative to what lies in store for refugees apprehended by ta migra - the INS - and sent known as "El Corralon."
When this concentration camp opened two years ago it could hold 175 people. It now holds 700 in overcrowded condivisitors described the orange jumpsuits detainees must wear, the triple provide medical care, in some cases allowing weeks to go by before examining de-
Elder welcomes the growing interest in and support for Casa Oscar Romero, but explains that compared to the magnitude of the problem "what we're doing is insignificant in terms of actually assisting
"Whether or not the house is here, the refugees will come so long as violence in El Salvador, which the Reagan administration supports, continues."
The legal fight developing between the INS and the Sanctuary Movement promises to focus more public attention on the inhumane treatment Salvadoran refugees face at the hands of la migra, and also on US complicity in the fate awaiting those who are deported.
This article is from the April 13 issue of The Militant a weekly socialist newspaper published in New York, reflecting the views of the Socialist Workers Party. An overall view of the sanctuary move ment is given in Sanctuary - Central American refugees and US churches, International Viewpoint, No 47, March 12, 1984.
27
POLISH SOLIDARITY
serious they may be Certainly, it seems that the
French
Socialist
Party has found it possible to forget their support of 'democratic freedoms' and to ignore