Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 24, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- Brutality by design CLINTON'S REAL LEGACY ON DISPLAY By Fred Goldstein At the same moment President Bill Clinton delivered his speech to the Democratic National Convention extolling the so-called accomplishments of his administration, the Los Angeles Police Department opened fire with rubber bullets, pepper spray and bean bags on a crowd of 10,000 concert- goers 200 yards from the convention center. The cops were testing their new crowd-control assault tactics on an unarmed crowd milling about after the police shut down a protest concert featuring Rage Against the Machine. The band had finished its set and the cops pulled the plug on the Latino group Ozomatli. Their goal was to clear the streets before the delegates emerged from the hall after Clinton's speech. So the LAPD used the excuse of a few bottles and rocks being thrown over a fence as the pretext for a full-scale military attack, complete with cops on horses, motorcycles, bicycles and foot, all dressed in riot gear. To underscore the satisfaction of Democratic Party officials with the police action, a Los Angeles Independent Media Center dispatch of Aug. 15 quoted Julie Green, a convention spokesperson, complimenting the police on a "smooth operation." The simultaneous events summarize the entire Clinton administration. Clinton is at the podium posing as a friend of the people while his henchmen send the police to attack the people with full force. It is this type of maneuver that has earned him the accolades of the bourgeoisie--despite their distaste for him. A MONUMENTAL RENEGADE After his speech all the commentators praised Clinton as the greatest politician of his generation, if not of the past century. What was his greatness? He got the Democrats back into the White House after a long period of Republican rule. Wherein lies his political brilliance? He stole the Republicans' thunder by moving the Democratic Party all the way to the right, adopting most of the Republican program while still holding onto the party's base. To be sure, it does take a certain amount of political initiative and skill to be a renegade on such a monumental scale. Clinton took over the leadership of a party that has the backing of the unions, the Black bourgeois leaders, the women's movement and the gay movement. He then proceeded to destroy the welfare system, strengthen capital punishment, pass NAFTA, refuse to fight for anti- scab legislation, put forward the "don't ask, don't tell" anti-gay military policy, hand over the country's medical care to the insurance companies, make balancing the budget the be-all and end-all of economic policy, and commit blatant military aggression against Yugoslavia and Iraq. Of course it is not hard to chart a reactionary course when all of Wall Street is demanding it. It is easier than it appears to carry out that program when you know you can count on the continued support of the party base's leadership, which hopelessly follows the time-worn and ultimately bankrupt "lesser evil" theory and will not break with the pro-imperialist Democratic Party leaders. But when history is written, Clinton and his Democratic Leadership Council, the architects of this turn to the right- -of which both Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman are leading members--may get mixed reviews from the bourgeoisie. The reason for this is precisely what is happening on the streets of Los Angeles as well as what happened in Philadelphia, Washington and Seattle. CLINTON-GORE EXPOSED BIG BUSINESS CONTROL The Clinton-Gore leadership became so brazen that they exposed big business's control over the Democratic Party--a control that was supposed to remain behind the scenes. They made an enormous effort at forcing imperialist neoliberalism down the throats of the oppressed countries on behalf of the multinational corporations. They openly carried on fund-raising from big business in shameless Republican style. Their repressive legislation was brutally racist, anti-poor and anti-working class, as they implemented the budget demands of the bondholders. In the scheme of U.S. politics, the Republicans were supposed to be the party of big business and the Democrats the party of the common people. Of course, this was never true. But Clinton and Gore have accomplished what volumes of political argument could not accomplish--they discredited the two-party capitalist political system before a new generation. To be sure, breaking with the two-party system of corporate rule is not an end in itself. The question of how to take the struggle forward must still be answered. But it is nevertheless a vital and indispensable beginning on the road to building an independent revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system. Should this struggle widen and spread to the masses, the ruling class and the Democratic Party leadership is fully capable of reviving its demagogic liberalism. But for now, since the protests in Seattle and Washington, the bourgeoisie has realized that the youths who are carrying out resistance to corporate domination, racism and repression, whatever their ideology, are irreconcilably opposed to the manifestations of capitalism and the two bourgeois parties. Beginning in Philadelphia and now in Los Angeles, the bourgeois establishment is officially treating them as enemies to be intimidated and crushed. The illegal jailings and beatings in Philadelphia and the heavy use of military- style police force in Los Angeles can only be understood in that light. The government's nervousness was evident when the LAPD raided Patriotic Hall, where the Shadow Convention and the Independent Media Center were housed, on Aug. 14. On a trumped-up claim that a van was filled with explosives, the police shut down the hall while the IMC was preparing to upload a broadcast about the demonstrations to 150 stations through a satellite connection. In place of the IMC broadcast the police sent a message saying the program had been closed down by the LAPD. Activists were forced to stand outside for six hours. REPRESSION BREEDS RESISTANCE Among the many accounts of the attack on the Rage concert, one by Los Angeles Times staff reporter Joe Mozingo shows that the government has much to fear. Mozingo was covering the demonstrations and rushed to the site of the attack to join the crowd. A phalanx of 20 mounted police and a line of foot cops encircled the crowd and drove it towards a corner into another phalanx of police with shotguns armed with beanbags and rubber bullets. "They began to shout 'Don't shoot,'" wrote Mozingo, and then, "they were push ed onto Olympic Boulevard. The group stopped just past Francisco Street. The police ordered them to move. They didn't. "The horses were lined up--23, side-by-side. Hundreds of other officers were in tight formations. ...Then boom!" Rubber bullets were flying. Mozingo himself was shot several times. The crowd retreated and then "stopped under the overpass of Harbor Freeway. The police lined up 50 yards away behind spires of smoke. ... Again, after repeated orders to move on, shooting erupted in trails of sparks. ... We ran away again and had several other stand-offs on Olympic." Protesters were picking up rubber bullets as souvenirs. Finally the crowd was pushed out of the area. But it is clear from this report that the concert-goers, almost all youths, did not flee in panic or fear. They were angered into resistance and held their ground in the face of overwhelming force. They only dispersed when they had no means to overcome police firepower. The crowds in Seattle had similar fight-back reactions against police attacks with rubber bullets and tear gas. This is the first development of a sustained resistance movement in a generation. It comes after the defeat of the USSR and the great setback for the socialist camp. This defeat paved the way for the triumphal march of U.S. corporations all over the Third World and for the arrogance of the Clinton administration and its repressive policies at home. It arises in a much more reactionary political atmosphere, both nationally and internationally, than existed during the 1960s and early 1970s. It has tested the ruling class and drawn a vicious reaction. The ruling class feels free to dispense with all elementary norms of capitalist democracy. It is setting the police free to do virtually anything they want to suppress any manifestation of militant resistance. But in the long run this strategy is bound to fail. In fact, the struggle can become an invaluable education that will ultimately make the movement stronger. All organizations that consider themselves Marxist or socialist, despite ideological and tactical differences, are duty bound to give support to this movement and to help turn the capitalist strategy of destruction into a means to fan the flames of resistance. - END - (Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. 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