Freedom Road Socialist Organization:

Freedom Road Socialist Organization: New Year's Message 

LET'S GET TO WORK--A NEW YEAR'S MESSAGE
from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization

Freedom Road has not made a habit of issuing New Year's statements. 
Fact is, we'd rather not be doing this one, but 2003 is shaping up 
to be a real bear of a year for activists, revolutionaries and 
socialists. So, for our own use, and for your consideration, here 
are a few thoughts about the immediate and dangerous situation we 
face and the tasks we have to take up.

Most seriously, the Bush administration is driving hard toward an 
invasion of Iraq. Although a broad global array of forces, including 
sections of the US ruling class, oppose this drive, war this year is 
more likely than not--and it could begin in a matter of weeks.

The rapid approach of war has made a real dent in the consciousness of 
people in the US. So far, it has produced more doubt than support among 
large sections of the population, notably in the Black, Puerto Rican 
and Chicano communities and among many immigrants.

"FACTS ON THE GROUND"

A second major feature of 2003 in the US is going to be a rain of 
economic blows clobbering ordinary folks. This will be true even if 
the corporate world's balmiest predictions come true--the economy 
manages some growth, and the stock market finally edges upward again. 
Most significantly, massive budget deficits loom at the state and local 
level across the country. The certain result: service cuts, lay offs, 
and a perceptible decline in the standard of living.

There will be no help from the federal government. The national budget 
is locked into deficit for years to come, and that's without factoring 
in the hundreds of billions an invasion and the subsequent occupation 
of Iraq will burn up.

What's more, the Bush administration, with a loyal House and Senate, 
plans to push as hard to restructure the US as it is doing to the world 
balance of forces. Look what's happening already: the "War on Terror" 
now has immigrants ordered to report to police stations from which 
hundreds of them simply disappear--into cells or deportation, at least 
so far.

The Homeland Security Act has already eliminated more union jobs than 
any decertification election in the memory of the labor movement. Now 
Medicare and Social Security are in their gun sights. So are taxes on 
corporate dividends.

In short, Reagan-style, they are driving to create "facts on the ground" 
in the interests of the rich that will prove extremely difficult to 
reverse later.

THE MOVEMENT GROWS

Which is not to say that the news is all grim.

In the months since it became clear that the Bush administration's next 
major target is Iraq, the anti-war movement has gotten more focused and 
has grown in size and even coordination. Unions representing over 3 
million workers have passed anti-war resolutions. Students are 
organizing on their campuses and mobilizing for larger demos. Activists 
in most cities and even many small towns have formed local coalitions, 
established vigils and made day-of plans to protest invasion. Many more 
religious leaders and celebrities have expressed outright opposition or 
at least doubts about Bush's course.

This surge in opposition builds on the anti-war and anti-repression
 work of the year following 9/11, including the struggle to defend Arab, 
Muslim and Asian detainees and deportees. Young Arab American and Asian 
American activists have spearheaded the battle against these racist 
attacks.

United for Peace, a national network formed in October, is making real 
strides. UfP began by gathering information about anti-war activities 
across the country and making the info available on one encouraging web 
site, http://unitedforpeace.org. They've now also begun to tackle the 
more difficult task of convincing various forces that have often been at 
odds to instead cross-support other groups' major events, avoid date 
conflicts, and pace the various events so that they build on each other 
and create some momentum in the national media.

TWO BIG CHALLENGES

For socialists and anti-capitalists specifically, there are two main 
challenges. The first challenge is to make the link between what people 
are suffering here in the US--especially economic austerity and racism-
-and the war drive. There will continue to be, for example, a narrow 
tendency in the labor movement to focus exclusively on the economy in 
the least-common-denominator, "let's look for a deal from the bosses in 
return for loyalty" tradition.

To the contrary, people's anxiety about the economy and the war, the de-
legitimization of corporate CEOs, and the resentment of increased racial 
profiling can be mutually reinforcing and spark more resistance if 
activists make the connections clearly. Some polls show that only 19% of 
African Americans support a war against Iraq. As cities and states face 
unprecedented budget crises, the federal government will be totally 
unhelpful because of the resources it's wasting on military interventions. 
In this way, these connections will become more evident.

The other challenge for socialists is to put the impending attack on 
Iraq in context. It is the immediate phase of the openly-declared endless 
war to tighten US capitalist domination of the globe--a ruling class quest 
that is wrong by every standard of justice, human rights and equality, and 
one that will leave us, the ordinary people of the US, less safe and more 
hated. That means that we should try to educate around an anti-imperialist 
understanding, but we should not try to make it a precondition for working 
with people.

A case in point is how we relate to efforts like Win Without War, an 
anti-war initiative which accepts the peculiar notions that Saddam 
Hussein is really a threat to the US people, and that the US government 
is justified in removing leaders of sovereign states whom it doesn't like, 
so long as there is formal United Nations approval. (This approach would 
leave the anti-war movement without a paddle if, as has happened before, 
the US does manage to bully and bribe the UN Security Council into 
supporting an invasion.)

While we can criticize this line, we shouldn't treat its advocates as 
agents or enemies or try and read them out of the movement. Our immediate 
goal is to build the broadest possible united front to stop an invasion 
of Iraq, or if we can't do that, to force Bush and company to use up the 
maximum energy, resources and political capital in going ahead with their 
aggression; in other words, make them pay a heavy price and limit their 
future interventions.

TALKING ABOUT THE WAR

The more work we do in putting forward an anti-imperialist perspective 
in discussions with folks in our workplaces and communities, the better 
situated we'll be to deal with the inevitable jingoism that will arise 
with the start of an attack on Iraq. We should avoid the two major 
mistakes of the 1991 Gulf War--US chauvinism and catastrophism. We 
cannot again center opposition to a war on the prediction of massive 
casualties among US troops. It might not go that way, and US lives are 
not the only lives that count. Nor should we predict immediate uprisings 
of the Iraqi masses against the invaders. This may happen but the invading 
force may be too overwhelming, or it might happen later once an occupation 
is in place; we just don't know.

In discussions with people in our workplaces and communities, we've begun 
by emphasizing that war with Iraq will make more people hate us, make our 
children less safe, drag the economy down even further, and shred civil 
rights with a witch hunt for terrorists here at home. All of this to control 
oil supplies, beat out rival powers and, while doing so, increase the 
profits of Bush and Cheney's petro-cronies.

Now, to put the movement on firmer grounding, and to prepare for the Bush 
administration's next moves against the Philippines, North Korea, the 
Palestinians or whoever is the target, we need to begin raising some deeper 
issues. What we need to remind people is that, with all Bush's talk about 
the need to remove weapons of mass destruction from dangerous governments, 
there is only one government in the world that has ever actually used a 
nuclear weapon against human beings, and that is the United States of America. 
Who really constitutes a danger to the world's peoples? What gives the country 
that jails the industrialized world's largest percentage of its population 
(the imprisoned being themselves disproportionately people of color), the 
right to profile as protector of democracy and minority rights around the 
globe? Is it a coincidence that both our president and vice president, who 
come from oil company backgrounds, are set on dominating the country that has 
the world's second
largest oil reserves?

Well, we've got a lotta work ahead of us and 2003 surely won't be an easy year. 
But things are shaking and where there is oppression, there is resistance.

And 2003 may well hold some surprises. The US ruling class is over-reaching so 
wildly that a year from now we might just be looking back on a string of 
reverses for imperialism, on growing people's movements, on strengthened 
international solidarity among the oppressed, and on some real, concrete 
victories in the US and world-wide.

Let's get to work.

National Executive Committee
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
January 1, 2003