Taxes, racism and hunger

By Vic Perlo

This article was reprinted from the April 4, 1998 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

In last week's column I compared real estate taxes in New York City with those in suburban Long Island and Westchester County, pointing out that these higher taxes made possible better schools for the children of the more affluent suburban residents. I also said they accepted high property taxes for their children's schools while rejecting a progressive state income tax that would make possible better schools throughout the state, especially in New York City.

But the high taxes in Westchester County impose an onerous burden on more than half the county's families, and a crippling burden on families with low incomes. In an article, "Economy booming, but so is hunger. Blacks suffer most in Westchester," in the Mar. 23 Westchester Gannett, Christian Rohatynsky of Food Patch, an organization that distributes food to food pantries in 40 Westchester locations, said: "In our community, where housing takes such a phenomenal part of our income, people survive with a lack of basic services, including food."

Stanley Schear, a homeless advocate, told the Gannett, "If you live in Westchester it is hard to eat and keep a roof over your head. When you look at the working poor, or increasingly seniors on fixed incomes, they sometimes have to choose between paying rent and eating." In 1997 some 239,000 Westchester residents were forced to resort to Food Patch - an increase from the previous year. Of these, 55 percent were African American, 27 percent white and 13 percent Latino. And 15 percent were homeless or living in marginal housing.

The Cold War continues

During his speech in Uganda, President Clinton blamed the Cold War for the failure of the United States to provide needed economic aid to African countries and for Washington's sorry record of overthrowing progressive governments and supporting fascistic dictators.

"Very often we dealt with countries in Africa and other parts of the world more on how they stood in the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union than on how they stood in the struggle for their own people's aspirations to live up to the fullest ... of their abilities," he said in an article quoted in the New York Times.

This, of course, is standard rational of official apologists for CIA and U.S. military intervention. But it grossly misstates the nature of the Cold War, which is, in fact, still very much alive.

It is - and was - a struggle between U.S. imperialism and the democratic, socialist and national liberation forces of the world. The most blatant example was the Congo where, after liberation from Belgian Colonialism, the CIA engineered the overthrow and assassination of President Patrice Lumumba and imposed the infamous dictator Mobutu who impoverished the country for a third of a century until he was disposed last year by the armed forces of the National Alliance led by Laurent Kabila.

In South Africa, where Clinton spent most of his time, the U.S. government supported the Apartheid rule and its armed forces, which were used to invade neighboring countries led by democratic forces.

But there the USSR provided vital support for the African National Congress (ANC), which led the struggle against the racist regime. The USSR supplied 90 percent of the financing, equipment and training of the ANC's armed forces, which were decisive in the overthrow of apartheid, the liberation of its prisoners and establishment of the government of Nelson Mandela.

And it was Cuban volunteers, together with Angolan troops, who broke the back of South Africa's Defense Forces and their UNITA allies at the 1988 Battle of Cuito Caunavale, thus bringing about a decisive shift in the balance of forces in South Africa in favor of the national liberation movement.

In fact, in Africa, as elsewhere, there was conflict between the progressive movements supported by the USSR and reactionary dictatorships supported by the U.S. Washington was not concerned with the fundamental nuclear standoff between socialism and capitalism but, rather, with its determination to continue to plunder if African resources and the super-exploitation of its peoples for the profit of transnational corporations.

(Note: The U.S. military has taken command of the South African mercenaries who are still fighting progressive regimes in Angola and Mozambique.)