File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/marxism-general.9706, message 89


From: "Trotskyist Screamer" <trotskyist-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: M-G: Forwarded [SEP Violence at the March on Detroit (fwd)]
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 01:46:28 PDT


------- Forwarded Message

During the march on Detroit t'other day, David North's Socialist
Equality Party (formerly the Workers' League) was involved in some
fairly scurrilous activity. For those who know the history of this
groupuscule, this is hardly a surprise. Regardless, comrades and 
friends should be made aware of their most recent attack on the most
basic precepts of socialist democracy. The following is from someone
there at the time, a member of the Marxist Workers' Group.

Fraternally,

Chris Faatz
***********************************************************************
***********************************************************************
The Socialist Equality Party(SEP), better known as the Workers League, 
has
been trying to start up an organization in the Lansing area, 
specifically
at the MSU campus, for years, with only recent (limited) success,
establishing at MSU recently a branch of their youth movement the 
Students
for Social Equality.

Earlier this year, the Marxist Workers Group was founded in the Lansing
area by a tiny cell of comrades who representing the surviving core of 
the
Lansing Area Marxist Study and Action Group. The MWG has been the only 
one
of the four or so "revolutionary" and socialist organizations operating 
in
the Lansing area to have made a strong committment to strike support 
work
around the UAW strike at Melling Drop Forge. Our collective in its 
earlier
MSAG form sent two members out to walk the picket lines on the *very 
first
night* of the strike. The core of the MSAG that stuck with it in this
fight and became the MWG was involved in a nasty political fight within
the Lansing chapter of the Anti-Racist Action Network(ARA-Net) around 
the
refusal of some members of that group to do picket line work because
"white workers are counter-revolutionary" and the refusal of ARA to
condemn this and take a strong stand as a collective in support of the
workers--we were kicked out of ARA for that stand. We have made regular
trips out onto the picket lines throughout the strike, walking the line
and participating alongside the workers in militant actions which have
brought them in conflict with the cops(the pigs dispersed the workers
from the plant gate with tear gas recently, the gas spilling into some
homes in the working-class neighborhood around the drop forge.) We have
also been the only group to have taken a stand on the picket lines 
against
the powerful UAW bureaucracy that has been knifing the workers struggle
by dangerously under-staffing the picket lines(in a city of tens of
thousands of auto workers!), also calling in our leaflets for the
formation of elected rank-and-file strike committees to take over the
strike from the bureaucratic mis-leadership. These leaflets have been
accepted warmly and there are indications that our proposal might have
sparked some interest amongst at least some of the workers.

What has the SEP been doing? Well, apparently they prefer to loudly
denounce the bureaucrats from the safe confines of college campuses.
Because we have fought side by side with the workers as they have
attempted to do whatever they could with the tiny numbers that their
"leaders" call out onto the lines at a time to stop scabs from coming in
and out and shut down scab producton, picking up whatever weapons are
available to them (shattered glass for the parking lots, eggs and the
sticks from their picket signs for the windows, simply sitting in front 
of
scab trucks as they attempt to enter the parking lot, etc., etc., etc.)
we are derided for "throwing eggs" and "just helping Sweeney and
Trumpka..." We briefly noted in our article on the Melling strike in our
little newsletter PRAXIS that we have not seen them out on the picket
lines and even though we gave them exact directions, etc. they have 
shown
no interest.

Apparently this was the breaking point--a new, healthy and 
worker-oriented
revolutionary collective had been formed in an area that they had 
decided
to mark off as their turf, it was formed by comrades they had tried very
hard to recruit, and it had come out politically against it. 

Our collective marched in the union-organized March on Detroit in 
support
of the locked-out workers there, marching with Workers Voice (WoVo) and 
a
couple of independants under a WoVo banner reading "NO MORE DEFEATS! NO
MORE SURRENDERS! RANK AND FILE CONTROL OF THE UNIONS!" Around Hart 
Plaza,
where the march ended, two of our comrades went over to an SEP lit table
with the thought of buying a couple of cheap Trotsky pamphlets from 
them.
Without me so much as opening my mouth, frequent SEP candidate for 
public
office and prominent member Jerry White turned to me and started on a 
long
tirade against the Melling article from PRAXIS..."Hey, Burgis, that was 
some fucking shit you wrote in that goddamn PRAXIS newspaper...," etc. 
An
MWG comrade of mine briefly responded with a simple "Fuck you, when's 
the
last time you were even on the picket lines?" White responded with 
"I'm not even going to talk to you!" The MWG comrade put up his hand in 
a
quick "fuck you, I'm not talking to you either" gesture,
and walked away in digust. 

An SEP robot trailed after us, saying "you taunted Jerry White! You 
don't
know what could happen to you!...." Rolling his eyes, the MWG member
turned around to go over and argue with them more. As they were arguing,
the SEPer physically attacked the MWG comrade, smashing him down on to 
the
pavement--fortunately, the comrade was mildly cut and shaken instead of
being in the hospital with a concussion. 

The motivation was clear--comrades who they had tried to recruit started
up their own group and took a stand against them politically in any area
in which they have desperately trying to establish a presence. We are an
extremely young group, and they were trying to intimidate us to get us 
out
of the way.

Fortunately, a Spartacist who was selling WORKERS VANGUARD nearby 
snapped
a photograph of the incident from behind and another of the MWG comrade
with a trickle of blood running down his leg. They will send those
pictures to our PO Box in East Lansing and they will definitely appear
along with an article on the incident in PRAXIS, as well as most likely
WORKERS VANGUARD and WORKERS VOICE. We will send relevant materials to 
any
other left group that asks for them.

Our response is clear--we are going to publicly expose them to the
extent that they are going to have to answer a lot of embarassing
questions from their members, sympathizers and contacts about violence
within the workers movement.

With Bolshevik-Leninist Greetings,

Ben Burgis
MWG

e-mail: burgisbe-AT-student.lansing.cc.mi.us

PRAXIS
PO Box 1544
East Lansing, MI 48823

------- End of Forwarded Message


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