Confront Bosses’ Attacks and Imperialist War
SEATTLE (USA), March 18— “I never realized the importance of soldiers and industrial workers,” admitted a young demonstrator from the University of Washington (UW). He was holding a banner protesting Boeing weapons manufacturing.
About a hundred activists came to the Seattle Convention Center to condemn the subcontractors who built arms, bombs, and weapons. This Boeing summit was attended by hundreds of weapons producers.
This UW student and his friends made a mistake. The focus of their demonstration was on weapons, not on recruiting soldiers and industrial workers who can change geopolitics and have done so in the past.
A comrade talked to the young protester, explaining how communists organized revolts during the US war on Vietnam. In the end, the US armed rank-and-file (and the Vietnamese fighters!) forced the US brass to give up the war.
US General Westmoreland, commander of the US forces during that war, was forced to admit to President Johnson that he had been lying about the possibility of winning. In fact, he was afraid he would “lose the whole army.” At the time, at least one and a half million north Vietnamese fighters were women and tremendous communist combatants.
Today, the expanding Middle East war worries many industrial workers.
The student promised to talk with others in his group about recruiting soldiers and industrial workers. He took ten copies of Red Flag to supplement the discussion.
Industrial Workers Organize
A few days later, a comrade and friends in the Industrial Action Committee met. They took copies of Red Flag to read and distribute. One industrial worker said he often reads articles from the paper to his friends while discussing communist politics.
A young committee member said that he likes to learn from practice. For example, he is helping organize a May Day demonstration in Tacoma (south of Seattle).
The meeting continued for two and a half hours. Another member told her story. She had given up on socialism. “It doesn’t work,” she told us all.
All of these people are willing to work with ICWP in one way or another.
The attendees agreed that both the fight against ICE and against war in the Middle East are key. We must connect these two capitalist horrors, building our communist revolution based on communist practice and theory.
There is a contradiction within the larger Action Committee between militant unionism versus focusing more on war. This is an ongoing struggle.
Recently, some points of unity were written into the Action Committee statements. The Committee is not talking only about fighting for Boeing workers. It now spotlights fighting for working class internationalism, against the holocaust in Gaza, and for a worker-led society.
Imperialist war and ICE are threatening our comrades and friends. We are learning the necessity of mobilizing masses and exposing the lies that go along with war. The political battles in the factories and in these meetings are very useful in developing communist relationships with industrial workers. Sometimes it seems difficult, but now is the time to fight for communist recruits to the ICWP.