First Published: Revolutionary Worker, “Special National Edition”, February 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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January 29, Washington, D.C. (WPS) “We must go into the streets in the spirit of the Cultural Revolution!... Let’s show Teng a sight he’ll never forget!” In minutes the street outside a Washington church was transformed into a sea of flaming red banners and portraits of Mao Tsetung, the symbol of revolution to millions. Draped with a hangman’s noose, a huge placard was hoisted up demanding “A Fitting Welcome For Teng!” Hundreds of Red Books shot into the air. The chants quickly swelled to a mighty roar. “MAO TSETUNG DID NOT FAIL, REVOLUTION WILL PREVAIL!” Five hundred people, led by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, were pouring into the streets to give Teng Hsiao-ping the promised greeting he so richly deserved.
As the march assembled, Teng was sitting down to dinner at the White House to celebrate his treachery to the people of China and the international working class with the U.S. imperialists. He was there to sip champagne with the likes of Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger while lining China up to be cannon fodder for the U.S. war machine. He was serving China up on a silver platter to the top U.S. bankers and industrialists–the very jackals who are bleeding the life out of us here and itching to sink their teeth into China. And he was raising a toast to the end of “30 years of unpleasantness”–the very period of history when the Chinese people, led by Mao, were throwing off the yoke of these foreign exploiters.
But this rat–royally introduced as “His Excellency, Mr. Teng Hsiao-ping”–must have nearly choked on the splendid banquet that was set before him. Outside, hundreds of revolutionary fighters swore to ruin his pompous spectacle and raise high the red flag of his hated enemy, Mao Tsetung. The spectre of revolution was rising up like a vision of the future right in the heartland of U.S. imperialism, right at the front gate of Teng’s superpower sugar-daddies.
Cops were swarming in the streets, sent by the bourgeoisie to smash the revolutionary message represented by the demonstration. Hundreds of riot police backed up by squad cars fanned out around the demonstrators. Menacing people with their clubs, they tried to intimidate the march with a blatant show of the armed might of the capitalist state. But already people passing in cars were grabbing leaflets, clenched fists were going up, horns honking. Agitators addressed the people on every street corner in open defiance of the pigs.
In the face of the threatening cops, people were pouring into the street, fresh with the memory of people’s testimony at a powerful rally that had given vivid expression to the bright future that revolutionary China had represented for all mankind. Faces were filled with hatred for the towering setback brought by Teng, who is trampling on Mao’s legacy and dragging China back to capitalism.
The portraits of Mao were held still higher by the marchers. So were pictures of the Four–revolutionaries who heroically fought to defend Mao’s line and working class rule in China. Banners were held more firmly with their slogans: Down with the Reactionary Treachery of Teng Hsiao-ping and Co.–Firmly Uphold the Revolutionary Banner of Mao Tsetung! Down with NATO and its Newest Member, China! Down with U.S. and Soviet War Preparations!
The marchers began to move out, fired with a sense of history in the making. The eyes of the world were focused on Washington–history demanded that a stand be taken.
Immediately the cops moved in, shoving people up onto the sidewalk, yelling that the permit to march in the street had expired. Red Books were raised in defiance, hearts steeled with determination. The revolutionaries who went down in China had not fought in vain! The march pushed forward, growing in intensity. The spirit of the Cultural Revolution was coming alive in the streets of Washington!
The march swept down Columbia Avenue, led by a militant contingent of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade whose blazing red jackets symbolized the revolutionary batallions of the Red Guards who had knocked Teng and his fellow rats from their high positions during the Cultural Revolution. People came out of their houses in the largely Black community where in 1968 a powerful rebellion exploded against national oppression. Many came up to say they remembered the support that Mao had given them when he said: “The Afro-American struggle is not only a struggle waged by the exploited and oppressed Black people for freedom and emancipation, it is also a new clarion call to all the exploited and oppressed people of the United States to fight against the barbarous rule of the monopoly capitalist class.”
This was the most militant demonstration they had seen since the ’60s. But it was different, too–people, many of them workers, were being led by a revolutionary Party and consciously raising the banner of revolution, waving it right up in the face of the bourgeoisie. As one worker who was on the march said, ”You know I worked all my life, I never knew I could fight back. I knew there was police killing people in the streets, that I was working my ass off and didn’t have nothing. But now I know what we’re fighting for, that we can fight, that we’re going to make revolution. Through the Revolutionary Communist Party I learned it’s this whole damn system that’s gotta go–like little roaches we’re gonna wipe ’em out!”
The street was alive with people inspired by the fact that the banner of revolution was still around and being held high in the streets. Two women ran out shouting ”Good luck, good luck!” Another stood holding a bag of groceries, her lips moving to the chant of “Down with Hua, Down with Teng, We uphold Mao Tsetung!” A man ran over and grabbed a large portrait of Mao and proudly held it as he waited for his bus. Hearing the chants of “Mao, Mao, Mao Tsetung, Revolution’s gonna come!”, a dozen youths came out of a pool hall yelling, changing the chant to “Revolution’s coming now!” against a vicious assault spearheaded by motorcycles and mounted police and unleashed the righteous fury of the international proletariat at Teng’s betrayal of the cause of communism.
As the police regrouped, they began taking vengence on the demonstration, furious that it had accomplished its political objective of exposing their masters’ reactionary little dinner party. They clubbed many people and arrested 78, including Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Central Committee of the RCP.
Suddenly the marchers could see the White House. The police were growing desperate. In a last ditch attempt to stop the week-long political offensive launched against Teng by the RCP, they announced that another parade permit to march in front of the White House had been revoked. Refusing to back down, the marchers pulled out hundreds of American flags and set them on fire. A man who had joined the march with his three year old son demanded a flag of his own to burn, waving it in flames in a blazing display of his hatred of U.S. imperialism.
As the cops began their attack, the marchers suddenly broke into a run toward the White House. A thundering cry reverberated down Pennsylvania Avenue, “DEATH, DEATH, TO TENG HSIAO-PING!” As the police moved on the crowd clubbing and beating, hundreds stood their ground.
Many prisoners who were badly hurt were denied medical treatment and others were singled out and beaten in jail. But the revolutionary spirit of the demonstration continued to rock the walls of the jail cells and revolutionary songs and chants rang out in the courtrooms of the enemy.
While the march was a source of inspiration to revolutionary minded people around the world, it was a nightmare for the bourgeoisie. The intensity of the police attack and the severity of the charges–felony assault thrown at the 78 arrested–only underscored the desperation of the bourgeoisie that they were not able to stop this powerful statement from being made. It was definitely a “fitting welcome” for the ratfaced traitor Teng Hsiao-ping. And during the rest of his visit, the same message would be delivered again and again.