US Navy Reservists Wouldn’t Build Cages for Haitian Refugees here ♦ History is on our side! here ♦
US Navy Reservists Wouldn’t Build Cages for Haitian Refugees
One summer, decades ago, the US Navy Reserve command ordered my unit to convert a Brooklyn Navy Yard building into a large detention facility way before 9/11, Abu Ghraib, and Gitmo.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard was a graveyard of old steel and forgotten abandoned naval workshops. We were detailed to renovate a derelict build, making it into a detention facility for Haitian refugees. The Chief Petty Officer’s blueprints called for cells and barred doors. “They can’t stay in America,” he said of the families fleeing Baby Doc Duvalier’s fascist US puppet regime.
We marched to the site, dragging our feet. We “lost” tools. When confronted, we refused to weld or do metal work to fabricate the cages: “We’re not jailers,” we said. “They are working class people, who have done nothing wrong.”
Of course, they built the cages without us anyway while we were quickly transported upstate to Camp Smith.
That rotting shipyard already held enough ghosts. At least we didn’t add more. And we talked amongst ourselves about why we must support our brothers and sisters, not help lock them up. We had more in common than differences. Now decades later, it’s the same old shit. The bosses are still using nationalism, racism, and every other anti-worker unity idea that they can muster to separate us. We organized then, and now we must continue to organize, for a worker-led society. —AKA Heavy Metal, Brooklyn, NY
History is on our side!
This is about Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City Mayor. The article in the last Red Flag should have made it clearer that trying to elect “progressive” candidates is a dangerous diversion. It will not only divert the masses from the fight for communist revolution but will deliver them into fascism and genocidal World War III.
Red Flag promotes articles based on what friends say about a subject. But I think the party needs to give more leadership to the discussion, to show clearly what the stakes and solution are. And how to get there.
Mamdani was elected in 2020 as a Democratic member of the New York State Assembly. He is a Social Democrat, like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio Cortez, who endorsed him. He has actively supported Democratic Party candidates for years. These politicians are not radicals or revolutionaries. They are part of the “loyal opposition” within the US Congress and Democratic Party.
They support capitalism (a brand they call Democratic Socialism, which includes wage slavery with the State as the boss) and imperialism. State capitalism was used in Nazi Germany also. They oppose revolution and communism.
During the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919-1933), as the Nazis were building up strength in the midst of a worldwide capitalist crisis and preparations for World War II, the Social Democrats opposed and even “outed” communist workers who advocated crushing fascism with revolution. They were the “loyal” opposition.
Some Communists, like R. Palme Dutt, leader of the UK Communist Party, called them “Social fascists.” They paved the way for fascist dictatorships, like Hitler.
We should see Mamdani’s candidacy in the context of the current crisis and expanding World War III, as the Red Flag article mentioned. He says he opposes the genocide in Gaza, but his candidacy is about fixing subways.
The US rulers don’t have the patriotic workers, youth, and soldiers they need — yet. They need politicians like Mamdani and Gavin Newsom to motivate masses to support their system. They are desperate to turn youth and workers — angry at genocide, imperialism, and anti-immigrant racism – into supporters and reformers of capitalism.
When Obama ran for President, we warned friends about him. Some sharply disagreed, then later thanked us for the warning.
Promises like fixing the subways and rent control will go out the window in the rulers’ war budget. The rulers are desperate to build weapons to compete with and wage war against China. They will attack the working class harder, no matter who is in office.
Red Flag has a vital role to play to win youth and workers worldwide to see that voting and reform won’t end the bosses’ fascism and war. That these are dangerous illusions. With comradely struggle, they’ll see that capitalism—in all its forms—is our mortal enemy.
We need to build a mass International Communist Workers’ Party among youth, students, workers, and soldiers everywhere. Our fight is for communism, nothing less. Only communism will end wage slavery, racism, borders, imperialist war, and genocide.
—A Comrade