From the Managing Editors

Apologies to our readers. Computer problems (not Y2K related) and other complications delayed our first issue for the year 2000.

We hope to come out again in print this year with issues for summer, fall, and winter, and possibly a special issue. We also propose to post articles more frequently on our website, http://www. laborstandard.org, and may include more material in our electronic editions than in our print editions, as many other publications now do.

A few words about the present issue.

In addition to coverage of the actions in Seattle and D.C., and the fight over trade with China, this issue features some original and invaluable contributions on Black history — Adolph Reed on the origins of the current concept of “race”; Dave Riehle on pro-Cuba sentiment among African Americans from a century ago; Joe Auciello on developments in the Nation of Islam and the truth about the last year of Malcolm X; Martin Luther King III (and also Mike Alewitz) on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is expected to face a crucial hearing before a federal judge in mid-May 2000.

A special feature of the present issue is the section on the “Celebration for Economic Justice” held in Pittsburgh last October, whose centerpiece is the speech by AFL-CIO adviser Bill Fletcher titled “Tasks for a Revitalized Union Movement.”

In regard to Cuba, and the increasing pressure to end the U.S. blockade of that island, W.T. Whitney has some telling comments — especially in regard to the Elián Gonzalez case and the inordinate power of the anti-revolutionary Cuban Americans in Miami.

The victory of the white-collar workers’ strike against Boeing highlights our wide-ranging reports on current labor struggles. And Dave Riehle, Rita Shaw, and Charles Walker pay their respects to a heroic figure — Shaun (“Jack”) Maloney, who died in Seattle shortly after participating in the historic labor march there on November 30.

Our usual columns, by Paul Le Blanc (“Basics of Socialism”), Joseph Auciello (“Reading from Left to Right”), and Charles Walker (“Teamster Notebook” and “Labor News Briefs”), are supplemented by information on recent developments involving the Workers Party of Brazil, on which we expect to have more in coming issues.

Also, we are grateful to our readers who have sent in letters in recent months. We look forward to printing more such letters, continuing important discussions among trade unionists and socialist activists.

A New International Movement?

May Day this year underlined the potential for development of a diverse but coalescing worldwide movement against the “globalized” form of capitalism that is now dominated more blatantly than ever by the multinational corporations (perhaps better spoken of as “cartels”) and the super-rich who own and profit from them.

In New York City, according to Haïti Progrès, the newspaper of the Haitian community there, 10,000 were expected to march on May Day, their demands centering on the call for amnesty for undocumented workers in the U.S. The campaign for amnesty for undocumented workers got a big boost from the AFL-CIO’s recent adoption of that demand. (We carry several articles on that important development in this issue.)

In Minneapolis/St. Paul, our sources tell us, Local 16 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union (HERE) brought out a thousand workers on May Day  as a show of strength to coincide with the beginning of contract talks with employers. Militant youth, of the kind who recently filled the streets of Seattle and D.C., also demonstrated, and the two protest actions more or less merged.

Local 16 is the union that has led the fight for six undocumented women workers from Mexico who voted last year to join HERE at the Holiday Inn Express in Minneapolis. Those workers were arrested by immigration officers last fall when they sat down to negotiate a contract with their employer. Thanks largely to Local 16’s efforts, and the wide support received — support that continues to be needed! — the Holiday Inn workers were granted a two-year extension to live and work in the U.S. as of the last week of April.

But we must continue to demand permanent amnesty for these workers. They symbolize the potential for unionization and international solidarity embodied by the estimated six million undocumented workers, from all over the world, who are currently employed in this country.

In Tucson, Arizona, in another sign of the changing times, leaders of the Steel Workers and Teamsters who have been involved in coalition efforts in sympathy with the Seattle and D.C. demonstrations marched on May Day alongside environmentalist youth activists, Students Against Sweatshops, members of Jobs with Justice and the Labor Party, and a youth “arts brigade” that plans a labor history mural — to depict a variety of battles, from the deportation of workers from Bisbee in 1917 to the copper miners strike at Clifton-Morenci in 1983–84 and the 1998–99 strike in nearby Cananea, Mexico.

Similar actions took place in many parts of the world. The Guardian of London quoted a leader of the May Day demonstration in that city this year: “Lucy Parsons, of Reclaim the Streets, told the Financial Times that the May Day protests were aimed at ‘taking power away from the politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats’ and forcing ‘radical social and ecological changes.’”

The Guardian‘s commentator Isabel Hilton herself raised some provocative questions: “If I want to say yes to trade, but only if the workers in south China’s free trade zone factories can get labour protection, whom do I lobby? If I want to say yes to internationalism but no to a world in which international institutions are a thin disguise for dominating US corporations, to whom do I address my postcard?”

Hilton added that the May Day protesters “have their answer, as the protesters in Washington and Seattle had theirs. Their presence in Seattle and since has focused the unease [about global capitalism] felt by many who would not join them.”