First Published: Unity, Vol. 2, No. 20, October 5-18, 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Over the last six months, members of WVO have physically assaulted a number of individuals and organizations in the progressive and revolutionary movements. These incidents include:
• On May 27 in New York, WVO members wearing steel helmets and carrying lead pipes, knives and clubs, broke into the office of the Chinese American Democratic Rights Association (CADRA) and assaulted its members, sending several persons to the hospital. WVO people also ransacked the office. Before the attack, WVO had cut the telephone wires of the office so the CADRA members could not phone out for help.
• WVO members on June 2, tried to break down the barricaded doors of the New York China Daily News.
• In Brooklyn, on August 27, WVO attempted to split a march sponsored by the Black United Front. WVO’s activities assisted the police who attacked the march and beat a number of demonstrators.
• In Chicago, on September 12, members of WVO assaulted UNITY supporters and a literature table they were manning and several required hospitalization. The WVO people were armed with baseball bats, lead pipes and claw hammers.
• A number of people who have left WVO recently have been threatened with physical injury by WVO.
WVO openly encourages such activity. Recent issues of its newspaper repeatedly threaten that opponents of WVO “must be ruthlessly driven out physically” from the mass movement, and “by any means necessary.” WVO claims that the masses cannot determine right from wrong, which is why WVO must engage in provocations.
WVO’s campaign is the type of activity that is inspired by government police agents. There are known agents in and around WVO. The government historically has encouraged such activity as a way to disrupt and attack the left movement in the U.S. Agents have been attracted to WVO because of its frustration and fanatical desperation at being isolated as a sham “revolutionary organization.”
The League of Revolutionary Struggle (M-L) has no interest in any physical confrontation with WVO. We will not be drawn into retaliatory “gang warfare.” At the same time, we will defend ourselves when assaulted. We will continue to politically disagree, and will continue to rely on the masses to thoroughly expose and discredit WVO.
As past experience has shown, attacks like those conducted by WVO must be opposed by the unity and common efforts of the people’s forces. This has already happened in several instances related to WVO. In New York, the Black United Front decided that it will not work at all with WVO. Steps like this are positive and have lessened WVO’s ability to disrupt the mass movement.
It must be made clear that WVO’s actions will result in neither intimidation nor counter-provocation.