White supremacy, whether in the form of apartheid or some of the names it goes by here (i.e. "majority rule"), is the foundation of South African capitalism, just as slavery was to the pre-Civil War American South. It will only be abolished by civil war, by a victorious workers revolution in South Africa. For Workers Revolution in South Africa! Here at home. Finish the Civil War. A concrete example of this slogan put into action was the Sparta League's mobilization of a demonstration of 5,000 trade unionists and Blacks to stop the Ku Klus Klan from marchit in Washington, D.C. on November 27, 1982.
IT IS RIDICULOUS to look at Harvard as a place for moral leadership in the fight against racism. Why did the administration, the campus cops and the Conservative Club all line up to defend Hoppenstein?
Harvard's own racist history speaks for itself. It was only five years ago that President Bok's special assistant. Robert Klitgaard (formerly at the Kennedy School), suggested in a private report that Black and other minorities attend "lesser" institutions to perhaps experience a "greater overall feeling of perceived equality." Blacks and other minorities still face repression from campus cops, who arrest anyone, who doesn't "look like a Harvard student." Presumably, that means white male upper class preppies.
Here, too, Cap "the Knife" Weinberger '38 not his first taste of handing out marching orders (at The Crimson, no doubt) Hears Kissinger boned up on how to commit war crimes here. Let us not forget the Defense Department contracts Harvard racks up. It was here that napaline, which was used to murder millions of Vietnamese was developed by Louis Berser. And down the street, the National Security and International Security programs train member of the CIA. Marine Corps and other war-mongers giving them "crisis control" lessons to prepare for Central America invasions.
Harvard is not now, nor has it ever been, a neutral pillar, of beaming morality. Harvard, with other institutions of hugher learning, serves as a training ground for this country's ruling class and its technocrats.
Yet illusions persist. So at the School of Education, divestment activists wanted to bring apartheid here, with a Jim Crow Commencement scheme. Thinking that the best way to fight racism is to act it out, some produced a leaflet which zealougly suggests: How about separate water fountains, a white seating section and a Black one at Commencement>
It couldn't happen here, or could it? As President Germany, where he honored Nazi SS troops, it's surprising that some liberal Ed Schooler didn't suggest all the Jewish students, putting them behind barbed wire and branding them with inventory numerals to demonstrate the realities of the Holocaust to Reagan's ruling class.
The Lowell House blockade makes liberal demonstrations like the Jim Crow Commencement look all the more like the insanity it is. Students learned firsthand that the University administration and its cops are not our friends. As thousands of students at Cornell, Columbia, UC Berkeley, University of Colorado, UMass Amherst, Lufts and the University of Iowa have learned, taking a stand against racism in South Africa and racist terror at home means attacks from the ruling class and their cops. At UC Berkeley over a month ago, Guillermo Bermudez, a Hispanic student and a member of the SYL, helped initiate a united front demonstration to keep Marine recruiters off campus. For his actions, Guillermo (5'5", 129 lbs.) was grabbed in a potentially lethal choke hold by one 6'3" UC cop. Another cop broke his arm. So now Bermudez faces nearly three years in jail on trumped-up charges, including "battery" of the cop who choked him!
The SYL is proud that it mobilized students in solidarity with Blacks in South Africa to chase Hoppenstein off campus. Keep the Butchers on the Run! The University is now trying to revive its own thought police--the Committee on Rights and Responsibility. Students and faculty must boycott this campus EBI.
No reprisals against anti-apartheid protesters'