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MIM Notes 306 · Sept. 1-14, 2004 · Page 1

MIM Notes

Sept. 1-14, 2004, Nº 306

Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

Free

INSIDE: Fort Bragg interviews * Pope on feminism * Una Página en Español...

MIM
PO Box 29670
Los Angeles, CA 90029
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On the web: www.etext.info/Politics/MIM

KERRY TAKES "MORE

MILITARISTIC THAN

THOU" POSITION

In August President Bush announced

a plan to withdraw tens of thousands of

U$ troops currently stationed in other

countries including Germany and Korea.

Bush said this will enable the U$ military

to respond more quickly to threats around

the world. He also said this will allow the

troops to remain close to family and

friends longer.

While MIM doubts that either of these

points will prove true, Bush's

announcement shows that a section of

the ruling class is worried about imperial

overstretch. This is a matter of both

having too few troops to do the messy

work the imperialists need done and

working those troops too hard and too

long. As we've reported in earlier issues

of MIM Notes, the U$ military has

extended the tours of thousands of troops

in Iraq--who, along with troops stationed

in Afghanistan, are not affected by Bush's

proposed withdrawal--hurting morale

and lowering re-enlistment rates.

We can imagine the Kerry campaign

secretly thanked Bush for the opportunity

to steal some militaristic thunder. Kerry

foreign policy advisor and former

assistant secretary of state Richard

Holbrooke immediately hit the radio and

television talk show circuit, arguing

Bush's plan would decrease the

Amerikan military's readiness. Bases in

Europe were needed to shuttle troops and

supplies to the Middle East, he said; the

wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have already

strained Amerikan logistics to the

breaking point. He also stoked up the anti-

north Korea fires in order to justify the

presence of U$ troops in south Korea.

(Ironically, the very day Holbrooke started

his media blitz thousands of students

marched in the south Korean capital

demanding U$ troops leave Korean soil.)

Holbrooke also said that cutting troop

strength abroad would weaken Amerika's

alliances--even though a recent poll (1)

found more Germans supported U.$. troop

reductions there than opposed reductions

(to say nothing of the Koreans). Some

MIM NOTES

DISTRIBUTOR

ARRESTED

AT THE DNC

Police confiscate

reporter camera

and recorder

BOSTON

July 30, 2004

Boston Police arrested a MIM Notes

distributor at Roxbury Community

College during an event called the

"Progressive Democrats Convention" on

July 29th. Howard Dean and Dennis

Kucinich were among the main attractions

as speakers. The police backed Roxbury

Community College's claim that they are

"private property" where MIM Notes

cannot distribute on their outdoor

property.

Activists with Kucinich had bombarded

the public including the MIM table with

flyers for their event all week. In fact,

the Kucinich activists were the best

organized of any activists seen on the

streets this DNC week, not that we think

that is all good since there should have

been more radical activists around.

We showed up at 1:30 pm, and an event

organizer in the parking lot told us we had

not missed the action, because it was

going to last till 5pm. We handed out copies

of MIM Notes and interviewed the Utah

Progressive Democrats Caucus, Kucinich

Imperial overstretch spurs

Bush withdrawal plan

BOSTON

July 27, 2004

The Greens' Nader/David Cobb

debacle is the fate awaiting all parties that

allow themselves to become subverted

in the name of "ideological diversity" and

"freedom of expression" within a party.

Corporations know how to use that

breathing room to spread the oh-so

underrepresented corporate point of

view.

In the days leading up to the

Democratic National Convention and

during the DNC, MIM has struggled

mightily to do the research to bring the

truth to our readers about the foggy

Greens and their "decentralized"

allegedly "democratic" procedures. To do

this we attended a speech by Ralph Nader

and have spoken with several Green

activists. It is now clear that there is a

ton of lying going on in Green circles about

Nader, Cobb and Kerry.

In the fog of that sort of politics, the

corporations easily carry the day. They

are the status quo after all, and it is

incumbent on challengers to offer a clear

alternative to overcome the status quo.

Confusion, fuzz, vacillation and cross-

cancellation only benefit the status quo.

The story goes back to 2000 and the

Ralph Nader campaign on the Green

ticket for president. Reading between the

lines in Nader's book, we'd say it was

More coverage of the DNC

and anti-DNC protests inside!

Reactionary Amerikan veterans criticize Kerry,

whine for more war; MIM talks to the Falun

Gong; thousands march in pre-DNC

anti-war rally; and more!

Some Greens start `Greens for Kerry'

Cobb supporters make themselves liars

Continued on page 5...

Continued on page 4...

Continued on page 8...

MIM Notes 306 · Sept. 1-14, 2004 · Page 2

What is MIM?

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is the collection of existing or emerging

Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-

speaking internal semi-colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Maoist Internationalist
parties in Belgium, France and Quebec and the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking
Maoist Internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.$. Empire.

MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish-speaking
parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM upholds the revolutionary communist ideology
of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and is an internationalist organization that works from the

vantage point of the Third World proletariat. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all
groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possibly by
building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for

North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to
maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main
questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the

potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within
the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the
death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang

of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance
of communism in humyn history. (3) As Marx, Engels and Lenin formulated and MIM has
reiterated through materialist analysis, imperialism extracts super-profits from the Third

World and in part uses this wealth to buy off whole populations of oppressor nation so-
called workers. These so-called workers bought off by imperialism form a new petty-
bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes are not the principal vehicles to

advance Maoism within those countries because their standards of living depend on
imperialism. At this time, imperialist super-profits create this situation in the Canada, Quebec,
the United $tates, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland,

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and Denmark. MIM accepts people as
members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system
of majority rule, on other questions of party line.

"The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should

regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of
learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution."

- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208.

Editor, MC206; Production, MC12

Letters

MIM Notes

The Official Newsletter of The Maoist Internationalist Movement

ISSN 1540-8817

MIM Notes is the bi-weekly newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. MIM

Notes is the official Party voice; more complete statements are published in our journal,
MIM Theory. Material in MIM Notes is the Party's position unless noted. MIM Notes
accepts submissions and critiques from anyone. The editors reserve the right to edit
submissions unless permission is specifically denied by the author; submissions are
published anonymously unless authors insist on identification (prisoners are never
identified by name). MIM is an underground party that does not publish the names of its
comrades in order to avoid the state surveillance and repression that have historically
been directed at communist parties and anti-imperialist movements. MCs, MIM comrades,
are members of the Party. The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) is an anti-
imperialist mass organization led by MIM (RCs are RAIL Comrades). MIM's ten-point
program is available to anyone who sends in a SASE.

The paper is free to all prisoners, as long as they write to us every 90 days to confirm

their subsciptions. There are no individual subscriptions for people outside prison.

People who want to receive newspapers should become sponsors and distributors.

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Most back issues of MIM Notes are available free on our web site. The web site con-

tains thousands of documents, with ordering information for many more.

MIM grants explicit permission to copy all or part of this newspaper for any reason, as

long as we are credited.

For general correspondence, contact:

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I am overwhelmed at hearing about the

abuse of Iraqi prisoners, as if the abuse

is isolated

to only Iraqi prisoners.

The U.S. government is basically only

concerned about diplomatic relations with

Arab countries over U.S. military

personnel's abuse of prisoners. Please

don't get me wrong. I am sickened from

what I heard happened.

President Bush has stated that the Iraqi

prisoners abuse does not reflect the ways

of a democracy. American prisoners are

treated with just as much inhumanity and

abuse. The only reason that the abuse of

prisoners in Iraq is creating such

controversy is because of the graphic

photos.

President Bush really doesn't care

about the human rights violations! If he

did, he would put an end to the human

rights violations in the prisons in the

United States. The human rights arm of

the United Nations repeatedly cites

American prisons for abuses, and

tortures.

Many of the U.S. military personnel

guarding Iraqi prisoners were employed

as prison guards in the United States,

before being deployed to Iraq. What they

are doing to Iraqi prisoners, is basically

what is taught to them right here in

America in our state prisons. If they

would have been caught doing the same

things to u.s. prisoners, they would have

been patted on the back for doing their

job.

--A Washington prisoner,

August, 2004

The Imperial States

are a global threat

There was a lot of talk about what this

week's handover of "sovereignty" to Iraq

meant. For the imperialists, it means

another poorer state to die and slave for

them.

Half a world away, there's another

"handover" from the U$ imperialists to

the UN capitalists forces. Again, the

future is unclear. This time we ask can

the Haitians build a proletarian

government that meets their basic needs

and above all, offers security to them

instead of the U$?

The U$ poses a threat [to the people

of Iraq and Haiti]. Not [only] from

adversarial power and weaponry, but

from its inability to control what happens

in its own prisons, and states. Prime

example: the Abu Ghraib incident. The

imperialists couldn't even control their

own employees. They remain a threat, in

themselves and in Iraq and elsewhere--

places like Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia.

There is a broad band of imperialist

states that can harbor "terrorists" and

"drug traffickers," spark humanitarian

disasters, and undermine global economic

growth. They can be an immense and

powerful state like Texas, where

uncontrolled, corruption, conflict, chaos

and communal violence by the bourgeoisie

and agencies help turn states, instead of

a powerhouse for the proletariat, just look

at president $nake Bushit - he came from

that devilish pit of breeding.

But Amerikans "don't do the foresight

thing." They pay a terribly high price for

their actions of oppression against the

masses: in an overextended military, drugs

in our inner cities, preventable

humanitarian tragedies, and ultimately the

loss of lives as "collateral damage."

--A California prisoner

MIM comments: This writer raises

a good point. Not only do the Amerikans

consciously apply a double standard to

international events--according to

themselves alone the right to preemptive

war while denying other countries even

the right to arm themselves in response

to perceived threats from the United

$tates--but the political realities of

capitalism make it impossible for them to

crack down on those Amerikans who

would profit from war. The

representatives of the capitalist class in

Washington DC may decide its best to

ban certain narcotics or the manufacture

or export of certain weapons. But within

capitalism they cannot prevent some

opportunist from taking the risk, breaking

the law and selling drugs, guns or bio-

warfare agents on the black market.

It's analogous to the case of "Jack"

Idema, the Amerikan mercenary accused

of torturing Afghan men and leading out

his own private war in Afghanistan. Even

if the United $tates was not giving Idema

direct orders, it created an atmosphere in

Afghanistan that made an Idema

inevitable. The wild west atmosphere--

complete with bounties for Osama Bin

Laden, dead or alive--suited their

interests. They cannot disown Idema;

unintended or not, he is there creation.

Bush's reaction to Iraqi prisoner abuse is hypocritical

MIM Notes 306 · Sept. 1-14, 2004 · Page 3

June 2004

The Leonard Peltier Defense

Committee and the Boston Area -

Leonard Peltier Support Group were cut

off by PayPal, the web based payment

processing service, for violation of its

"Acceptable Use Policy." In their press

release the groups reported that PayPal

justified the action "Designating Leonard

Peltier as being `notorious for committing

murderous acts' .... PayPal also claims

to have done an exhaustive evaluation of

the LPDC & Boston sites for `offensive'

material." PayPal closed their accounts

and froze all funds collected for up to 180

days.

The committees explain Leonard

Peltier's case well. "An Indigenous

Rights activist & prisoner of conscience,

Leonard Peltier has been imprisoned for

the past 28 years for a crime he did not

commit. U.S. prosecutors have admitted

that they did not & cannot prove that

Peltier committed the crime of which he

was accused. In fact, it was proved long

ago that Leonard Peltier was convicted

through the use of fabricated evidence

& false testimony. Under nonpolitical

circumstances, the courts would have

Demographic

data for police-

state repression

The U$ Department of Homeland Security

recently asked the Census Bureau for a list of

how many people of Arab descent live in each

ZIP code of the country and a list of cities

with 1000 or more people of Arab ancestry.

The Census Bureau gave it to them. When

the Census analyst's supervisor realized this

could be a political problem later, she asked

Homeland Security--after the information was

already turned over--what they had wanted

it for.

The response was laughable: "My reason

for asking for U.S. demographic data is to aid

the Outbound Passenger Program Officer in

identifying which language of signage, based

on U.S. ethnic nationality population, would be

best to post at the major international airports.

Some cases this would identify multiple copies

needed of a specific language sign versus other

cities only one copy."

We want to clarify a couple points. First, if

Homeland Security wanted to know what

language to make signs in, they could have

asked for data on what language people speak

at home, which Census also collected in 2000.

And if they wanted information for airport

signage, there was no reason to request data

at the ZIP code level, because city or county

data would be more appropriate.

Second, if Homeland Security was more

adept at data analysis, they could have compiled

their own lists from the data available to the

public on the Census website. So it's not as if

Census provided them with some dark and

dirty classified analysis. That was not the case

in WWII, when the Census Bureau used its

brand-new mapping capability to provide the

War Department with information about where

people of Japanese descent lived on the West

coast, for use in rounding them up for

internment. At that time, only Census could

have provided the analysis.

What do we learn from this? First,

Homeland Security is using ethnic profiling to

target communities based on their ancestry

composition. This is not surprising, though of

course they would have preferred to be able

to deny it. Second, demographic data collected

by the state will be used by the state for its

own purposes. We at MIM sometimes use

Census data--such as incomes by "race" or

unemployment rates--but we never kid

ourselves that such data is untainted by politics.

We just know that the imperialists have

reasons to try to make it both accurate and

available, and we take advantage of that.

Those civil rights and privacy groups that

are pressuring the Census Bureau to limit such

activity are doing a good job of exposing these

practices, but trying to keep the government's

demographic data out of the hands of the

repressive state apparatus is a losing battle.

On the other hand, a campaign to boycott

Census data collection efforts--just like

boycotting national elections--could be

justified.

Source: Electronic Privacy Information Center,

www.epic.org, has the original emails back and forth
from Census and Homeland Security, and some of
the data files, on their website.

by PIRAO chief

July 17, 2004

We have a five digit figure of radical

books and magazines that in some cases

we must give or in most cases should give

to prisoners. Although we have the largest

prison operation of its kind, we need more

large prisoner lists--from any English-

speaking country. If you can assemble a

list of prisoners who would read radical

literature, please send it to us. We plan to

unload this material this year.

Likewise, if you can assemble money

for the postage to mail books &

magazines, contact us. We're looking for

people who are new to MIM to step

forward, not people who have worked

with us before. We aren't trying to tire

out or bankrupt all our supporters, which

is why this message goes into the public.

Contrary to what many people believe

and expect, the major bourgeois

foundations have never been any use in

assisting us with prison literacy projects.

We've even had proposals that we can

say contain a design of self-defeat for

funding this activity. By encouraging

people to dream of manna from heaven

instead of getting the economics of

activism from the ground up, the

imperialists accomplish much more than

their piddling donations to a few

controlled "progressive" foundations

could ever accomplish.

To those who would say they can

donate to non-profit organizations for a

tax deduction, I would say you have a

point, but not really. If you give $1000 to

a tax deductible charity and manage to

get $400 back from the government in

taxes for argument's sake, then you have

given $600. The question is whether your

money actually went further than if you

gave MIM $600. Since MIM has no paid

staff, the answer is no, your money does

not go further with one of those non-profit

organizations paying for staff, office-

space, phones etc.

I have to warn people that we are not

good at "have it your way" like Burger

King. We get people writing to us with

specific requests as if we are going to

go to a bookstore and buy every

individual item they ask for. That's not

possible. We are looking for people who

want to read radical literature in prison.

Unfortunately, it is literature with a

disproportionate share of material about

the United $tates, but we do have some

variety.

So the first question is whether we can

find prisoners who want to read radical

literature--with a range from

progressive to revolutionary and

Maoist. The second question is what

the prisoner, organization organizing

the prisoner or group inside a prison

wants. We do not have enough of

Marx, Lenin, Mao, Black Panthers

or Malcolm X or anything else to be

able to promise people that they

would get exactly the books they

want, but we will try as best we can

to take into consideration general

requests--political economy, Black

or whatever topic/fill in the blank.

We can pretty much guarantee that

prisoners will NOT get EXACTLY

what they want.

On other subjects--we see a lot

of backlog cleared for the web

page. That's good news. We've

added help from some new people,

but we need still a few more. There

are also plans in the works to make

it easier for more people to

participate in discussion and MIM

work. So again, we know people are

frustrated, but there is a backlog of

stuff we've had to get done and we

do think about how to make it easier

to work with us.

WANTED: English-speaking prisoners to receive radical literature

been compelled to release Peltier due to

prosecutorial misconduct & a flagrant

abuse of power. Instead, 28 years later,

Peltier languishes in the maximum

security prison in Leavenworth, Kansas."

Just as the imprisonment of Leonard

Peltier is a political act of social control,

these actions by PayPal are also political.

While the capitalists roam around the

world stealing resources and exploiting

the labor of Third World peoples for

profit, activists fighting imperialism are

stopped from raising money for their

work.

"We consider this policy & PayPal's

actions to be an attack on our political

beliefs, interference with our right to

participate in the `democratic' political

process, & an intentional effort on the

part of PayPal & its parent company

eBAY to interfere with our (and your)

constitutional rights. Such corporate

actions--as taken at the behest of the

U.S. government, or not--are an affront

to activists everywhere & threaten our

basic freedoms."

MIM is reminded of our interactions

with the web search agent Google in

December of 2002 when they pulled

MIM ads with a bullshit justification

about a policy of refusing

advertisement of websites that

advocate against an individual, group

or organization. (Among the MIM

ads pulled was one for a review of

the movie Star Trek: Nemesis.)

Google freely runs ads from the

Democrats and Republicans which

attack each other, along with ads

from the U.S. military and other

government organizations. Google

also singled out a few keywords in

our ads as improper including

"oppression of children"--taken

from documents opposing the

oppression of children.

MIM agrees with the Peltier

committees that we should use

capitalist institutions like Google,

eBay and PayPal to aid our work

and fundraising. But clearly we can't

count on them, in fact we need to

build independent institutions of the

oppressed that we can rely on

wherever possible.

Notes:

http://www.peltiersupport.org/

Welcome/Boycott.html

PayPal censors Leonard Peltier support groups

Prisoner, lawyer

discuss settlement with

California prisons

Some gains made;

many abuses continue

The United Front to Shut Down

Security Housing Units (SHU) held the

second in a series of California-wide

educational events on 22 July. This event

was in San Jose, hosted by the Barrio

Defense Committee, and focused on the

recent settlement agreement around a

lawsuit brought by a SHU prisoner

against the Department of Corrections,

Castillo v. Alamida.

The event opened with a former SHU

prisoner describing conditions he called

comparable to the torture of prisoners in

Abu Ghraib. This included 3 minute

showers every other day, half the

food given to prisoners outside the

SHU, guards placing bets on fights

between prisoners, little to no

exercise time (even though the law

mandates 10 hours per week), and

virtually no resources to help

prepare prisoners for the streets.

This man reported the difficulty he

experienced socializing when he got

Continued on page 6...

MIM Notes 306 · Sept. 1-14, 2004 · Page 4

clear that Nader believed Greens had

gone soft after the Bush election and

were throwing up procedural roadblocks

to a future Nader campaign--essentially

because as MIM has said, too many

Greens are just moonlighting Democrats.

Because of this softness and Democratic

Party attempts to bribe the Greens, Nader

knew he would have to get on the ballot

himself and could not count on the Greens

to put themselves on the ballot--pathetic

indeed for a party interested in the

electoral process and which received as

many votes as Nader did in 2000.

During the Democratic National

Convention in Boston, MIM interviewed

a Nader campaigner who contradicted

what the Massachusetts Rainbow-Green

Party said, namely that they endorse the

Cobb campaign and not Kerry in states

where the Bush/Kerry result is close. The

Nader campaigner also believed that

Cobb supporters are supporting Kerry.

(.wav format, 700kb)

An example is on the votecobb.org

website. On June 25th, the Cobb admin

for the website said, "Peter Camejo has

said that David's website tells people to

`vote for Kerry.' That phrase does not

exist on this site." Then as of July 27th,

the second article on the home page says

plainly "Vote Kerry and Cobb," in

reference to the strategy of voting for

Cobb in most states while voting for

Kerry in swing states. It goes to show

how dishonest the Cobb campaign is.

Anyone involved in politics much can see

that this whole result was inevitable from

the way the Greens went about their

politics.

Purging parties leads to clarity and

honesty. Not purging parties results in

immediate duplicity as when corporate

politicians take them over and claim they

have not. These corporate politicians can

easily form their own parties; yet the

foolish Liberals believe they should allow

all points of view in their party instead of

purging those who disagree with their

main points. The Greens should realize

that there is no issue of "repression" yet

when they do not hold state power. The

corporate point of view is not

underrepresented.

The Greens' picking someone like

Cobb--who the public has never heard

of--is a dream-come-true for the

corporate parties. It shows that even a

pile of disaffected Democrats can do no

better than to put someone forward that

is unknown in a bourgeois electoral sense

and also ambiguous in response to Kerry.

MIM is not the only one to notice this.

The mainstream press has also reported

it.

Thanks to the lack of purging in the

Green Party, there are now conflicting

cross-currents.

1) We have the Democrats pushing for

Kerry in the Green Party.

2) There are Greens who deny pushing

for Kerry out of fear of legal

repercussions via campaign laws.

3) There are Greens pissed off as hell

that this all happened but who have to

put up a solid front for the benefit of their

party. They may even find themselves in

the position of having to lie on behalf of

their party's maneuvers for Kerry.

A party should stand for something.

That is how to encourage political

participation in the imperialist countries.

The clouded politics, lying and corporate

maneuvers mean that the Green political

spectrum has been disenfranchised by the

Greens' own organizational political line.

People can dedicate their time and money

to a Green party and have it end up

supporting Kerry anyway. That is real

disenfranchisement of the real Greens.

MIM opposes Kerry, Cobb and Nader.

Yet we have self-interests in these

contests. The lack of political clarity of

Greens makes it harder for everyone else

working outside the two main parties. It

becomes impossible to draw political

lessons from political activity when a

party does not stand for anything to begin

with. We cannot draw a contrast with

Greens when the Greens themselves are

all over the political map. Meanwhile,

people such as our friends the imperialist-

country pacifists have no party to go to.

On the other hand, MIM and its circles

do benefit from these ugly and negative

Some Greens start `Greens for Kerry'

Green organizational experiences

vicariously. From watching the Greens

and seeing what happens without purges

and also from seeing what the Democrats

are willing to do to subvert their

competitors we learn lessons of a

universal nature. Anyone reading

Nader's book and hearing about his

difficulties getting on the ballot who did

not realize that the Greens became weak-

kneed after Bush's election in 2000--

count yourself naive and politically

inexperienced.

Note:

Sources saying Cobb won't run in

states with close Kerry/Bush races: http:/

/news10now.com/content/all_news/

?ArID=24466&SecID=83 ; http://

www.commondreams.org/views04/0721-

02.htm ; http://www.registerguard.com/

news/2004/07/27/ed.edit.nader.0727.html

; "When pressed, Cobb admitted that

different rules apply in the swing states.

`John Kerry is a corporatist and a

militarist,' Cobb said. `But if you live in a

swing state, hold your nose and vote for

Kerry.'" http://msnbc.msn.com/id/

5518334/site/newsweek/

A pro-Cobb writer believes that Greens

are better served by him: http://

w w w . c o u n t e r p u n c h . o r g /

reiter07202004.html

Nader supporter on how Greens

wanted to start too late in 2004. (.wav

format, 460k)

Continued from page 1...

BOSTON, July 28, 2004--In the early

evening Wednesday on the sidestreets

leading to the Democratic Convention, a

group of early high school age students

approached silently, followed by an equal

or greater number of cops on bicycles.

About 10 minutes later, a different group

showed up and they could be heard from

blocks away. However, cops did not

follow these boisterous demonstrators.

Only those cops already standing on the

corner as the demonstrators passed would

intersect with the demonstration. As the

demonstrators passed, at the last

intersection before the left turn to the

thoroughfare leading to the Fleet Center

the police just shut their truck door to get

out of the way.

About 150 demonstrators this summer

day in 2004 were chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho

Chi Kerry." It was mostly Vietnam

Veterans (late middle-aged white men)

and a sprinkling of twinkies. The chant

echoes that of anti-war militants from the

1960s who chanted "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi

Minh is going to win!" The chant referred

to the fact that the leader of the

Vietnamese resistance war was going to

physically defeat U$ troops. Just as the

demonstrators in the 1960s predicted, that

is what happened. Unfortunately, there

is still a portion of Vietnam Vets who don't

get it. They can be found at the backbone

of reactionary organizations advocating

things like genocide and nuclear war,

which is what they would have gotten had

the United $tates "tried" any harder to

win that war, since Mao had nuclear

weapons and a people willing to fight U$

aggressors if given the chance. This never

stops reactionary Vietnam vets from

saying the United $tates didn't "try hard

enough" to win in Vietnam.

What these particular vets are trying

to do by chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Kerry"

is to name presidential candidate John

Kerry a traitor or communist, just because

Kerry changed his mind after serving and

took an active political role against the

Vietnam War. It's classic scumbag red-

baiting tactics on behalf of genocide and

nuclear war.

We interviewed a handicapped womyn

from Oklahoma who is an official Kerry

delegate on the veterans against Kerry

demonstration. She restricted herself to

saying that they have a right to

demonstrate. There is an interesting point

here, because many of these same

Kerry and Vietnam Vets

A tale of two rallies

Police closely followed

this protest by silent youth

at the DNC (right), while

ignoring the protest by

Amerikan veterans

against Kerry (above).

Continued on page 9...

MIM Notes 306 · Sept. 1-14, 2004 · Page 5

delegates and even a pair of pre-voting

age kids carrying signs to repeal the

"Patriot Act" and some others. We asked

many of our interview subjects if they

were aware Kerry had co-authored the

"Patriot Act" and we asked them to tell

us what they believe they can accomplish

as individuals inside the Democratic Party

that they can't accomplish outside it.

The trouble started when the director

of the center came outside to tell us we

were on private property. We told him

more than once that he had invited the

public to his building, and not only that,

with big-name speakers and that he was

not entitled to apply usual rules concerning

"private property" in that context. We

explained further and repeatedly to the

Boston Police that such a claim does not

MIM NOTES DISTRIBUTOR ARRESTED AT THE DNC

even fly in shopping malls, never mind

publicly-funded colleges hosting multiple

public figures. This was a classic case of

wanting to "have it both ways." If

Roxbury Community College had wanted

a private event, it should have organized

it "invitation only." Once the RCC invited

the public, that public does not surrender

any free speech rights on RCC grounds.

A red-tag delegate to the DNC had

gone in the building and come out as she

had promised to interview with MIM

Notes. Just as MIM Notes finished that

interview, Boston cops assembled on the

city sidewalk some meters away to

prepare to arrest the MIM Notes

distributor.

The RCC and Boston cops had asked

us to leave RCC property and go onto

city streets, but there was no way that

MIM could have covered the city

sidewalks efficiently to hand out

newspapers, because people funnel in

from the sidewalks covering hundreds of

yards to the doors leading into the

convention. This is MIM's second run-in

with RCC, and Northeastern is also under

the impression that it can invite the public

and then disinvite them when they hand

out newspapers. That's why we need to

take the legal offensive to get this squared

away in Massachusetts. MIM Notes

absolutely relies on being able to get out

its newspaper at big-name political events.

We are looking for legal help obtaining

restraining orders on college

administrations in the Massachusetts

area.

If you saw MIM handing out papers at

RCC, we would like to hear from you as

a witness at bosmim@mim.org.

Had the issue stayed at the level of what

college administrations can and cannot do

in inviting the public, it would have been

a ho-hum case that we nonetheless needed

to win and follow-up on in agreements

with colleges in Massachusetts. The

Boston Police were wrong in interpreting

the law in RCC's favor, but the whole

arrest became another matter when

Boston Police forcibly took the recorder/

camera with the day's interviews and the

evidence from the arrest.

MIM is currently pursuing return of the

digital recorder via legal means. The fact

that police took the recorder is an outrage

to all journalists and photographers.

Continued from page 1...

BOSTON, July 25

Protesters marched past the Fleet

Center, site of the Democratic National

Convention (DNC) despite FBI and police

harassment before the event and a police-

state atmosphere that included the threat

of random bag searches on public

transportation. Organizers insisted on their

right to march past the DNC and

succeeded in securing a permit just hours

before the scheduled start time.

Police presence was heavy, but (from

what we saw) police did not obstruct the

permitted rally or march. We did not see

any bags searched during the march, and

many groups set up literature tables

unhindered. MIM suspects some of the

more draconian "security measures" that

did not materialize were leaked to

dissuade people from attending. Another

reason to "dare to struggle:" the cops

might be bluffing.

On the other hand, bags in the subway

had been searched and the actual DNC

had not started yet. We saw plenty of

police harassment and obstruction during

the DNC (see the article this issue on the

arrest of a MIM notes distributor).

The march passed by the

Massachusetts State Hall, a beacon of

Amerikan liberty that served as an

observation post for cops with binoculars.

The march went by, but did not enter,

the infamous "protest pen" set up by the

City of Boston as a "free speech" area.

This pen was surrounded on three sides

by metal barricades topped by razor wire

and covered by an abandoned rail line

(seen here with police). Organizers sued

to have the pen dismantled and a better

site chosen, calling it an "internment

camp." A judge denied their request, at

the same time noting, "One cannot

conceive of what other elements you

would put in a place to make a space more

of an affront to the idea of free expression

than the designated demonstration zone."

The overwhelming majority of

protesters agreed that Democratic

presidential candidate John Kerry was

complicit with Bush in the war on Iraq. A

speaker at the kick-off rally pointed out

that Kerry has called for more U.$. troops

in Iraq, increased funding for Special

Forces, and believes the occupation of

Iraq should continue for the rest of the

decade. However, even though the

"anybody but Bush" crowd stayed away

from this march, there was still a range

of political trends present. Electoral

politics was by no means absent. Some

marchers were DNC delegates, hoping

to influence the Democrats' program

"from the outside." Others supported

third-party candidate Ralph Nader (see

other articles in this issue about the Nader

campaign).

MIM supporters passed out about 600

copies of MIM Notes. The response was

generally encouraging, although a not-

insignificant proportion of protesters still

dismissed the paper out of hand. Several

said, "I'm not a Maoist, so I don't want

it." Hey: If you're not a Maoist, you

should want it! (And you're who we're

writing for. Only a miniscule portion of

MIM Notes readers considers itself

Maoist--or Communist, for that matter.)

As we've written before, a progressive

outlook requires non-stop efforts at self-

improvement. Those in the anti-war

movement need to look around and see