Anti-imperialist leader from India talks to Boston workers

Workers in Boston had a unique opportunity here May 18 to share views with Manik Mukherjee, a veteran leader of working-class struggles from India. Mr. Mukherjee is the general secretary of the International Anti-Imperialist and People’s Solidarity Coordinating Committee and vice president of the All India Anti-Imperialist Forum.

Manik Mukherjee, fourth from left, with Boston workers and activists. WW photo

Mukherjee has been at the forefront of organizing support and solidarity for the people of Nandigram in West Bengal, India. Peasant women there have been on the front lines of resisting the forced acquisition of their lands, which their families have farmed for centuries, for the creation of a “special economic zone” (SEZ) for Dow Chemical and other multinational corporations. The people stopped the SEZ by digging up the roads and making the bridges impassable, but they faced multiple massacres and mass rapes by West Bengali state agents.

On his arrival in Boston, Mukherjee was greeted by a delegation including United Steelworkers Local 8751 President Franz Mendez, Ed Childs of UNITE-HERE Local 26, Bishop Filipe Teixeira OFSJC, members of the executive board of the Archdale Roslindale Coalition and members of the International Action Center.

His first meeting was with a group of about 20 leaders, organizers’ stewards and rank-and-file members of USW Local 8751, the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, and the organizing staff of District Council 35, Painters and Allied Trades. Workers from Haiti, Cuba, Angola, Brazil and three different U.S. states attended—a workers’ United Nations, as Tony Hernandez of DC 35 remarked in his opening comments.

Mukherjee described the impact of the 1,300 SEZs that have already been established throughout India and the organizing in West Bengal of agricultural laborers’ peoples committees to oppose them. Mass meetings were held, explaining that the land to be acquired for the Dow Chemical hub was all arable land—the breadbasket of Calcutta—that had provided the livelihood of the people for centuries. Its takeover would lead to famine and massive unemployment. Existing factories and industrialization would be destroyed to make way for superexploitation, free from all labor laws and regulation as well as taxes.

The people of Nandigram, according to Mukherjee, said, “No! We will give our lives, but not our land.” He recounted the battle of Nandigram, where police used torture, mass rape, burning down of houses and massacres, but were unable to defeat the people. The solidarity slogan of progressives throughout India became “My name, your name, our name is Nandigram!”

Mukherjee pointed to the need for worldwide solidarity and working-class unity to fight back against the SEZs and the multinational corporations.

Several school bus union leaders inquired whether Mukherjee was planning to visit Haiti. More than 80 percent of the members of Local 8751 are Haitian immigrants. They expressed that Haiti, faced with U.N. occupying troops, mass starvation and the rising cost of food, was in need of the kind of militant struggle shown by the peasants of Nandigram. Mukherjee expressed keen interest in making such a trip, and the union leaders agreed to work to arrange it.

Mr. Mukherjee next went to the Charlestown Bus Yard to speak to unionized school bus drivers on their break. He gave a general description of the conditions of workers in India, where more than 90 percent are unorganized, where there is 40 percent unemployment, and where 36 percent live below the poverty line, surviving on one meal a day. He talked of massive layoffs, no jobs, loitering, begging and prostitution, and expressed the need for workers of the whole world to unite against the capitalists and bring an end to wage slavery.

Later, a reception was held for Mukherjee at Boston City Hall with African-American city councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey, and representative of Korean-American City Councilor Sam Yoon. The councilors were deeply moved by his account of the role of multinational corporations and SEZs throughout India. Councilor Turner proposed drafting a City Council Resolution denouncing special economic zones in general and Dow Chemical specifically for their criminal role in Nandigram. This resolution could become a model for other progressive city councils to demonstrate their solidarity and aid in building a movement to stop this global injustice.

Finally, Mukherjee addressed an International Action Center forum. Bishop Teixeira described the significant, 3,000-strong immigrant rights demonstration on May Day in Everett, East Boston and Chelsea. Miya Campbell discussed peoples’ resistance to the racist acquittal of the cops who killed Sean Bell.

Steve Kirschbaum, who was part of an IAC delegation to Nandigram last November led by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, spoke of the 30,000-strong anti-imperialist demonstration that greeted their delegation in Calcutta, and how the SEZs are a worldwide strategy at the forefront of imperialism’s global war against the workers.

Mr. Mukherjee said Nandigram represented the type of class struggle needed to push back capitalism and move toward revolution. Organizing mass struggle and class struggle, as in Nandigram, provides the opportunity to explain the need for revolution. He gave a class analysis of the current stage of Indian development as a developing imperialist power, discussing the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the global working-class struggle and the need for all anti-imperialist forces to unite and renew the worldwide struggle against imperialist war.

Jonathan Regis demonstrated the new Nandigram Solidarity Web site, www.nandigramsolidarity.us, which includes videos and photos about Nandigram, an online interactive petition demanding justice for Nandigram, and other ways to get involved in supporting the struggle.