Crisis in Buffalo, N.Y., calls for worker unity
By Bev Hiestand
Conditions of life are very difficult for workers and
oppressed communities in Western New York. Like other former
centers of industry and transportation, we have been very
affected by the dismantling of heavy industry, downsizing and
layoffs.
What solution does the capitalist class offer? High tech!
Reindustrialization was supposed to create an economic
turnaround in this increasingly impoverished region.
But the greatly hailed scientific high-tech revolution of
the 1970s and 1980s has been so different than the
scientific-technological revolution of a century or more ago.
Those big leaps in the means of production led to the expansion
of capitalism, but with it came an overall improvement in the
living standard of the working class. Today reindustrialization
has brought more layoffs and been an excuse for a greater
offensive against the working class.
And while the imperialist war drive will bring death and
destruction, poverty and misery to the people of Iraq, it will
also deepen economic and social suffering here. The capitalist
state, instead of providing resources on an emergency basis, is
in deficit because of the economic crisis and because the
social surplus created by our collective labor is being
funneled to Wall Street and the Pentagon while the
infrastructure is left to rot.
War will not bring about jobs and prosperity. The Gulf War
in 1991 ended in an economic downturn severe enough that Bush
Senior didn't get re-elected.
When people are losing their jobs, the budget deficit is
expanding and benefits are being cut while corporations are
raking in billions, it's natural to awaken to the need to fight
back.
Now that impulse is being drowned in a frenzy of hoopla
about "terrorist cells" in Buffalo. The highly publicized
arrests of six Yemeni American young men has taken place at the
very moment that the Pentagon has quietly deployed hundreds of
Special Operations troops to a military base in East Africa and
has positioned an assault ship facing Yemen.
It's part of the campaign to push this country in a
direction of war. It's orchestrated to create the impression
among the population that they are at war with the Arab world.
It prepares the population to get ready for war abroad, not war
at home.
In recent months we've seen tens of thousands demonstrate to
stop budget cuts from gutting Buffalo public school education.
In March, more than 20,000 protested the plan of the Kaleida
health conglomerate to shut down Children's Hospital of
Buffalo. And a protest quickly drew together in May when
Kaleida tried to shut down a health clinic in a poor
community.
The working class is made up of workers from so many
countries and nationalities, so many women, so many lesbian and
gay, bi and trans people and disabled workers that the
potential is there for a more left-wing leadership among the
laboring class.
The anti-war forces in Buffalo have an important role to
play in helping workers get past this difficult period by
demanding no U.S. war and stop the round-ups of Arab, South
Asian and Muslim people. It's up to the radicals to give
encouragement to beat back this racist assault. Through our
coalition work we have helped keep the anti-war movement from
being derailed, and keep the anti-imperialist focus. And we are
already ordering a second bus for the Oct. 26 demonstration in
Washington.
The struggle ahead is not going to be easy. That's why they
call it the struggle! But we are ready, willing and able as a
party to take on the challenges we're up against.
Reprinted from the Oct. 3, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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