Governmental Organizations. While the heads of state and their entourages are rendezvousing in the centre of Rio, the alternative Global Forum is meeting in the Parque de Flamengo.
The organizers of the latter, which include Brazil's CUT union confederation, are hoping that the meeting will result not only in a general exchange of experiences but also in agreement on concrete proposals. The results will be announced in a general proclamation which will present an alternative to the official Agenda 21.
The formation of a worldwide network will be embodied in for example
"binding NGO agreements" and a "Climate Alliance" between the states of the North and the inhabitants of the
Amazon, and above all the indigenous
Above all, however, it must give rise to well-worked out campaigns to put pressure on the rulers. For, without struggle and grassroots mobilization, the decisions of the alternative conference will also be nothing more than
4e pieces of paper. *
International Viewpoint # 230 ° kind of experience special. DOLORES TREVIZO
T HE DESPERATE conditions pro-
duced by economic restructuring in the last 20 years, especially in the Black working class, were a necessary but insufficient condition for producing the urban rebellion of 1992. The sufficient, or primary, cause was political. Specifically, a sense of racial injustice overwhelmed a community which has felt like a collective Rodney King at the hands of an ever more belligerent state.
The economic conditions of the past 20 years have been devastating to the Black and Latino working classes. When big manufacturing industries closed the gates to their factories in many cities the Black community suffered the most because it was untrained and ill educated (itself a political effect of the racist segregation of education) to be transfered into some of the high tech jobs that opened up.
The politics of hiring
And those that had been retrained in the skills necessary to post-industrial jobs were turned away at the arches of human relations" offices because hiring is especially political in the context of an over-
The upshot has meant severe unemployment and underemployment for African
American men. To get a feel for the effects of capitalist restructuring on the African
American community, consider these numbers: in 1974, close to one half of all Black males between the ages of 20 and 24 worked either as semi-skilled machine operators or in craft positions at family level wages. By 1986, only 25% of that group of
Black males worked in such jobs, while the others were forced either into non- union, low-waged service jobs or into unemployment.
The situation for Black youth is even more devastating. Faced with overcrowded schools, a declining quality of education and no prospect for future employment, over 50% of Black and Latino youth drop out before the completion of high school. The social effect is a wholesale disorganization of the African American, and to a lesser extent, Latino communities. Faced with the option of getting through the day by watching rerun after rerun on television, young Black and Latino males with nothing to do organize their lives around the community of a gang. And the community of gang-life is very violent as it is increasingly involved in the use and sale of drugs.
### Massive force
In order to contain the effects produced by economic restructuring the state has responded to the growth of gang membership and gang identification with massive force. The Los Angeles Police Department, under the guidance of Police Chief Daryl Gates, has in fact pioneered pseudolegal techniques in repression that are seen as a model for police departments across the country. For example, the battering ram was a military vehicle used to break down the doors of crack houses. Obviously, its use trampled over the rights not only of innocent citizens (whose homes were accidentally destroyed because of mix-ups in addresses) but even those of criminals whose property was wantonly destroyed.
Operation Hammer was another military technique pioneered by Gates that had to be abandoned because of its inherent violation of civil rights. Under this policy, police officers combed the poverty stricken
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resistance
eets of South Los Angeles rounding up ing "suspects" en masse. As one might ell imagine, hundreds of non-gang memis were arrested and released simply cause they were Black or Latino boys 10 wore fashionable urban gear (baggy nts, white t-shirts and thick jackets). id even though their innocence was yally established, their names remained police files for years after their illegal
The net effect of these and similar polies has been the wholesale criminalization f the Black and Latino youth of Los ngeles. Gates' war on drugs became in eality a war against minority youth, a acist war which was to produce increasing ncidents of collateral damage. Law suit after law suit has been filed against LAPD officers for use of excessive force, wanton destruction of personal property and wrongful arrests. In each case Daryl Gates has defended his officers and has pressured the city council to release the monies necessary for litigation as well as for the out of court settlement of suits.
The Black and Latino communities of South Central have recognized the racist war against them for what it is. It is a war in which only one side has had the legitimate means to manoeuvre and lethal force. And this is no abstraction. As most in the community will tell you, you cannot be a black man in South Central Los Angeles without being stopped, usually for no reason at all, forced to get on your knees if you're co-operative, or to kiss pavement if you're proud, and then released after an illegal search of your car and then your person. And if you protest too much you might find yourself not only physically abused but probably without legal recour-
The verdict of innocence for the police who savagely beat up Black motorist Rodney King was seen, rightfully, as the complete social and political legitimation of the racist attack against Blacks in this society. In order to confront that, the African American community tested its power on the streets.
### Holding the streets
One of the things that was so awesome about the uprising was that for a few short days African Americans and Latinos took the streets, holding their enemy at bay. The alteration of the relationship of forces, however temporary, had a liberating effect for the African American community. It sensed its own power by being able to hold the streets against the cops and it got a sense that the state was not omnipotent. Indeed, the repressive state apparatus came off as an awkward and even bumbling machine when the national guard couldn't be deployed within the first 24 hours because the ammunition had been forgot-
As we know, the state has since recovered and has in fact overcompensated for those few awkward hours when its agents were reduced to spectators of the public violation of law and order. Police officers have taken back the streets through an unprecedented display of military force which has resulted in the arrest of approximately 19,000 individuals and the deportation of 700 Latinos with several thousand more facing likely deportation. This reassertion of power, coming in the form of a military occupation, has bought with it a complete suspension of civil liberties.
Currently the people of Los Angeles do not have the right to public assembly or free speech. It is even worse for the Black and brown communities who currently don't even have the right to privacy. The police are currently conducting a door to door search for loot in the Black and Latino communities and many of these searches are being conducted without search warrants. Further, both communities are being subjected to raids. Latino communities are being swept of so called illegal aliens" and the police are sweeping the streets with the biggest operation hammer manoeuvre yet (apparently Gates is making good use of the national guard while it is still here).
### Defending basic rights
Hence at the moment, the struggle remains on this very high political level. The immediate questions before Los Angeles citizens are: do we have the right to assemble peacefully? Do we have the right to privacy? Do we have the right to a speedy arraignment? Do we have the right to due process? Do we have the right to a community free of military occupation? Do the 19,000 deserve amnesty? Do people of color have a right to equal justi-
In terms of our longer term coalition building, the strategy that ought to be adopted should be both political and economic. The issues of police abuse and the racial double standard in the courts need to be highlighted if a coalition wants to be seen as responsibly addressing the issues of minorities. This is not to say that econo-
USA mic demands should play a secondary role. On the contrary, while anti-racist solutions should be defining of a coalition, economic demands should be central.
A model attempt at this kind of dual strategy was seen at a Black and Latino community wide meeting called by the Coalition against Police Abuse. There were about 80 people at this meeting with about 15 to 20 community groups represented The demands that came out at the meeting were many but the basic ideas focussed on one theme: community control of everything. There was a big discussion of community control of the rebuilding process which generated a consensus around the notion of a Cooperative Zone as counterposed to the government's solution of an Enterprise Zone. The idea was first and foremost to reject the government priority of rebuilding businesses.
This positive notion, which has not yet been fleshed out in details, calls for a major public works project. Specifically, the coalition wants to set up a public board composed of over 50% South Central residents. This board would be responsible for receiving and allocating government monies being earmarked for relief and would employ residents of the community in both the construction process and at the cooperative association level at union
The purpose of this strategy is that:
a) the community democratically decides where monies go since only its real residents know what is needed and b) the community benefits collectively from the redevelopment of the area.
### Community control
In other words, not only should the construction contracts not be given to private development firms but what is actually developed should be owned and worked collectively.
It remains to be seen whether or not the coalition can mobilize sufficient forces to carry out this ambitious but no less necessary project. In any case, major problems face the local ruling class, problems that can no longer be hidden or explained away. As many of the community activists put it an unstable Black community is an 5 unstable Los Angeles". * June 8, 1992• # 230 International Viewpoint
The old guard
CHINA fades away
Square and the repression of the student and popular authorities who are masters of their own regions. These regional powers, even when they are not especially enthusiastic about the content of the reforms, fear the recentralizing tendencies of the prime minister Li Peng movement in China, nothing is yet resolved. The conquerors are less triumphant than ever: it is rather their factional adversaries who have the wind in their sails, enjoying the solid support of that formidable tactician Deng
Xiaoping.
The rebels of 1989 are silenced or repressed - with some of them who have connections in high places turning to business. Both social peace and the regained strength of the "reformers" — who wish to combine economic and social changes with preservation of political continuity involving a capitalist "reconversion" of a part of the
Communist bureaucracy - are underpinned by current economic successes.
ROLAND LEW — May 7, 1992.
T THE TOP levels of the
A state the pendulum continues to swing. Currently,
Deng Xiaoping, through a rapid and resolute offensive, has imposed a return to a line clearly favourable to the "reformists"
Their project is increasingly explicitly that of a transition to a type of state capitalism, favourable to private initiatives, open to the outside world and with a firm hand on the political tiller, exercised by the "Communists" at the centre (who, in the case of success, will adopt another name).
Starting with a visit by Deng in
January to the southern provinces most heavily involved in the reform, the offensive was pursued from March onward by a big media campaign designed to pressure the central apparatus to give way. It is revealing of the fragility of the situation that, according to
Le Monde of April 22, 1992, "the new offensive's success remains tied to the health of Deng Xiaoping" - and one may add, that of his opponents. In
China the future of a billion people depends on the remarkable longevity of a few very old men.
Indeed, it is being said that Deng has gone on the offensive because he has little time left - and because many of his opponents are no longer in a fit physical state to fight back. Deng (88 years of age) will carry the day at the forthcoming Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) congress in October if he
6 gets the support of Peng Zhen (90) and
International Viewpoint # 230• June 8, 1992
Bo Yibo (85), or if he can really count on Yang Shankun (85), China's president, one of the main organizers of the 1989 repression, and somebody who is known to have influence on the army, which is expected to play a crucial role in the succession.
And then the big question of Chinese politics; can Deng outlast his conservative rival, Chen Yun (87)?
The whole population is watching its leaders die; a spectacle that recalls the last years of Mao, with a vast gulf between the regime and the rest of society, including many CCP cadres. Irresistible social pressure
However Deng's current successes are not due only to his undoubted tactical skill. He owes it above all to the mounting pressure of society and the growing power of those sectors of the apparatus who support reform, and who want to narrow the gulf between a profoundly changed Chinese society and the atrophied apparatus, which talks and thinks in a way totally out of touch with the reality of the country. Furthermore, significant sections of the apparatus are already far along the road to their social reconversion.
The battle at the top is becoming more and more ferocious as the conservative current fights with its back to the wall. While it continues to control many command structures at the centre, at the summit of government and in the propaganda apparatus,
-and this is not to mention provinces such as Guangdong and its capital Guangzhou, or Zhejiang, which have become great free trade zones for capitalism.
The conservatives are still able to win battles and exercise the power to make a formidable nuisance of themselves, but the whole trend of the times is against them; they have no clear project of their own nor do they have real support in the country.
It seems that they have even lost the support of the army. In order to bring this about, Deng has had to agree to a sharp increase in the military budget which has no justification in the current international situation.
Given that its economic record is far from negative, the pitiable state of the Li Peng team may seem strange. The economy is far from stable and the ills of the past remain, but, nonetheless, the Chinese economy has performed better than expected over the past three years, to the surprise of foreign observers.
A fragile dragon
While the achievement may be fragile, for the moment China is among the "dragons" of Asia, with 6 to 7% growth a year. Even more unexpectedly, the regime has succeeded in bringing inflation down sharply, demonstrating that it has some control over the economy and thus some capacity to exact obedience, something that was by no means clear three years ago.
However, if these positive results are looked at a little more closely, it is clear that they reflect the victory of Li Peng's opponents. The necessity of the struggle against inflation and austerity was recognized by all currents and applied since 1988.
But the attempts at recentralization and even partial recollectivization in the countryside promoted by Chen Yun or Li Peng have run up against tough and ultimately victorious resistance by an irresistible alliance of new economic forces in the towns and countryside, regional officials attached politically and materially to their newly won autonomy and peasants opposed to any measures of recollectivization, however limited. This allian-
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