By Mya Shone (including an article by Dominique Ferré)

“So far, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets,” boasted the IAF October 12 on X (formerly Twitter), in a post replete with four images of the wasteland that once was Gaza City. According to military experts, it was an unprecedented hailstorm of bombs in a concentrated area. Israel pummeled Gaza with more bombs in less than a week than the U.S. had used in all of Afghanistan in a year. 

By the end of the second week, one-third of Gaza homes had been destroyed or damaged, along with hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, and essential infrastructure — roads, water, electricity, and communication facilities.

“Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist,” wrote Giora Eiland, October 10, in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Eiland, a retired Major General in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as well as former head of the Israeli National Security Council, knows of what he speaks.

In this, U.S. rulers are complicit. In the May 2021 assault on Gaza, two-and-a-half years ago, the IAF flew F-15 and F-35 fighter jets, purchased with grants from the U.S. Congress. The planes dropped 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs that can level high-rise buildings and gravity bombs fitted with JDAM guidance kits to hit designated GPS coordinates, all manufactured in the U.S. and also purchased with U.S. grants.

In the midst of the 2021 attack, the Biden administration authorized the sale of $735 million in bunker buster bombs to replenish the IDF stock of weapons — the bombs in use today.

As 300,000 Israeli troops stand poised to invade what remains of Gaza, Biden has guaranteed that the ground troops will be amply supplied. Israel received already tens of thousands of 155 mm rounds used to pierce armored vehicles, while a million rounds of 7.62 mm ammo for machine guns and sniper rifles, along with tens of thousands of 30 mm rounds used in attack helicopters, are on their way — all to be used against a mostly unarmed people, half of whom are children. 

If that were not enough, on October 20, Biden sent a supplemental military request to Congress, including a further $14 billion to re-arm Israel. The request followed on the heels of an address in which Biden invoked President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s plea to a wary public at the outbreak of World War II that the United States must be the “arsenal of democracy” and so arm England even before the U.S. entered the war.

“End All Aid to Apartheid Israel” is an essential demand to stop the genocide against the Palestinian people and better allocate the billions of dollars towards education, housing, and social welfare.

The Global Context

Let us now put the ever-expanding war budget in a global context.

“From One War to Another” is the title of an article by Dominique Ferré, October 17, in La Tribune des Travailleurs (Workers Tribune). Ferré describes the unfolding three-front imperialist war (Europe, the Middle East, and Asia), funding for which was included in Biden’s $106 billion supplemental military request.

Ferré’s article reads as follows

 “’The State Israel is our best investment at $3 billion a year. If the State of Israel didn’t exist, the United States of America would have to invent one, to protect its interests in the region.’

“These were Joe Biden’s exact words, spoken before Congress on June 5, 1986 when he was a senator. They couldn’t be more in tune with reality: U.S. imperialism has been financing the State of Israel since 1948, on the condition that Israel ‘protects U.S. interests.’

“Israel’s leaders, led by Netanyahu, have their own logic – that of Zionism, which extends colonization ever further, expelling and massacring the Palestinian people in their wake. Hence, the Zionist leaders seized upon the Hamas attack on October 7 to unleash a war to the death on Gaza, provoking the start of a new Nakba.[1]

“But the U.S. administration, for its part, is engaged in its war against Russia on Ukrainian territory. It is actively preparing a war against China. It doesn’t need a new front in the Middle East, while the conflict in Ukraine is getting bogged down.

“Putin and Zelensky have understood this. The former (though a friend of Israel) compared Gaza to ‘the Nazi siege of Leningrad.’ Zelensky, on the other hand, was anxious that NATO might ‘turn the world’s attention away from Ukraine.’

“Then, on October 16, the U.S. press sent Netanyahu a torpedo, making it public that the CIA and Egyptian services had warned him in advance of the Hamas attack.

“On the same day, the U.S. administration urged Israel to loosen the total blockade of Gaza. In an effort to defuse the situation and prevent a regional conflagration, Biden sent his Secretary of State to negotiate with the Emirate of Qatar, the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Hamas is affiliated. 

“Biden leaned on Egypt’s Marshal Sissi, who, complicit in 16 years of Israeli blockade of Gaza, does not want the arrival of 2 million Palestinian refugees in Egypt, fearing the outbreak of a social explosion. 

“Biden has also made a tacit agreement with Iran: the U.S. will not intervene directly in Gaza, in exchange for which the Lebanese Hezbollah will not attack Israel in the north.

“Once again, for the past 75 years, it is the great powers that make the decisions concerning the lives, and above all the deaths, of the inhabitants of Palestine, whether Arabs or Jews. 

“It is urgent that they be able to decide for themselves and impose a democratic solution based on equal rights for all, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and on the right of return for all refugees.”

All out for the demonstrations across the U.S. and worldwide:

• End All Aid to Apartheid Israel

• For a Democratic and Secular Palestine: from the river to the sea (with the right of return)

ENDNOTE

[1] The Nakba, the “catastrophe” refers to the 1948 expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians by Zionist paramilitary forces and the newly created IDF. Israel Shahak, who had been the Chairperson of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, documented the destruction of 385 Palestinian villages along with the seizure of Palestinian homes, businesses and other property across the breadth of historic Palestine.

In 1967, another 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza. Ten more Palestinian villages were destroyed and two United Nations refugee camps, Aqabat Jabr and Ein el-Sultan, both near Jericho in the Jordan Valley, were emptied of their inhabitants.

* * * * * * * * * *

Saying NO to a Second Nakba!

By Daniel Gluckstein

As these lines are being written, the media are announcing the imminence of Israeli military intervention in Gaza.

Pure hypocrisy: The intervention has already begun, causing more than 5,000 deaths, mainly civilians (especially children), the exodus of almost a million people in appalling conditions, and the destruction of thousands of homes.

The siege of Gaza has already had incalculable consequences on the health, physical and psychological state of a population deprived of everything. The only uncertainty is this: When the second phase of the intervention begins, how many more thousands of lives will be destroyed? What will be left of Gaza?

Remarkably, the prospect of this predicted genocide does little to move the world’s leaders.

Admittedly, a humanitarian corridor is being planned to try to get some food to the population. According to the press, Biden is visiting Israel to try to calm Netanyahu’s murderous ardor.

Both are motivated by “strategic” concerns,” namely, pursuing a military offensive while avoiding a generalized regional conflagration which they could not control.

As for the fate of the Palestinian people, who cares?

It will be objected that on October 7, Hamas killed 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians. True enough. We’ve written it before, and we’ll say it again: We have as much reason to mourn the young Israeli civilian killed by Hamas on October 7 as we do for the Palestinian child crushed under the bombs in Gaza.

But how can adding thousands, or tens of thousands, more victims to this morbid tally bring peace any closer? It won’t. Quite the contrary.

What has begun in recent days in Gaza has a name: the second Nakba. The first Nakba, in 1948, threw 800,000 Palestinians into exile, never to return to their homes. Today, in 2023, one million Palestinians, most of them descendants of families driven out by the first Nakba have taken refuge in Gaza because all other doors were closed to them – a mass exodus.

For 75 years, the refusal to recognize the existence of a Palestinian people and its rights has fed all the bloody stages of what the press calls “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” In historical terms, the massacre of October 7, 2023 is a deferred consequence of the 1948 Nakba. This is an objective fact. Recognizing it does not mean justifying these events or endorsing the policies of Hamas.

This begs the question: What new bloody tragedies would a second Nakba in 2023 produce?

Netanyahu doesn’t care. The logic of the Zionist far right is to go further and further: If they could get rid of the Palestinian people once and for all, they wouldn’t hesitate. But the Palestinian people exist. They have the right to live on an equal footing with all the peoples of the region.

Everyone, Jew or Arab, should be able to live in a society free from massacres, arbitrary expulsions and discrimination in a State that recognizes the equal rights of all without distinction.

To achieve this, we must stop Netanyahu’s murderous arm, impose a halt to the bombing and lift the blockade. The common interest of all the region’s inhabitants, Jews and Arabs alike, is to stop a new Nakba.

• – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Who We Are and What We Stand For

The Organizer is the publication of Socialist Organizer, the U.S. section of the Organizing Committee for the Reconstitution of the Fourth International (OCRFI), which has sections and supporters in 41 countries. Socialist Organizer is a multi-racial, multi-gender, working-class organization that aims to organize the working-class and all of the oppressed to abolish capitalism, a system based on the private ownership of the means of production – a system that is leading humanity and the planet to destruction. 

We fight to end white supremacy, patriarchy, and all forms of bigotry, to establish a workers’ government, and create a worldwide socialist economy run democratically by and for the vast majority of humanity: working people.

To attain this objective, we promote the fight for a Labor Party based on the trade unions and communities of the oppressed and for an Independent Black Working Class Party linked to the struggle for a Labor Party.

Subscribe to The Organizer! – Join us!

The Organizer (ISN 1059-2369) is published 10 times per year by The Organizer, P.O. Box 1782, New York, NY 10025.

Our Website is: www.socialistorganizer.org. You can reach us at Tel. 415-216-5346 or by email at <theorganizer@earthlink.net.

Rates: To subscribe for one year, send $30 to The Organizer, P.O. Box 1782, New York, NY 10025.

• * * * * * * * * * *

Rabin, Clinton and Arafat on the White House Lawn on September 13, 1993

The Meaning of the 1993 Oslo Accords on Palestine

Thirty years ago, on September 13, 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed between Yasser Arafat, on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of the State of Israel, under the aegis of Bill Clinton, president of the United States. [1]

The Oslo agreement was welcomed by all sections of the Palestinian leadership and by the apparatuses of the international labor movement, all of them supporters of the so-called “two-state solution.”

In September 1993, the International Secretariat of the Fourth International published a declaration, the conclusion of which we publish below.

“Let us recall the founding Charter of the Palestinian national movement, which stated in 1969: ‘The Palestine National Liberation Movement solemnly proclaims that the final objective of its struggle is the restoration of the independent, democratic State of Palestine, all of whose citizens will enjoy equal rights irrespective of their religion.’”

In 1970, the Second World Congress on Palestine, organized by the Palestinian national movement, declared: “All Jews, Muslims and Christians will have

the right to Palestinian citizenship.”

The subsequent abandonment under the Oslo Accords of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, led Arafat to declare in a letter to the Israeli prime minister that “the clauses of the founding Palestinian Charter which are contradictory to these [Oslo] agreements are henceforth null and void.”

This bears repeating: For the major powers, led by U.S. imperialism, the Oslo Accord was not about peace and the rights of oppressed peoples, but about the imperialist order.

The Oslo agreement is based on partition, on division, on the denial of the rights of oppressed peoples, on the denial of democracy. Because of this, the Agreement creates all the conditions for new confrontations, new wars, and new massacres.

Today, the Oslo Agreement, signed under the flag of the UN, is being presented as a means to put an end to a long period of murderous conflicts and wars. It’s as if imperialism and the UN were not fully responsible for the wars and massacres that have ravaged this region for 75 years.

The State of Israel was not born out of a national development leading to the constitution of a State, but out of a UN decision ratifying the partition of Palestine and approving the establishment of the State of Israel.

For its part, the Fourth International wrote, as early as November 1947:

“The position of the Fourth International toward the Palestinian problem remains clear and plain as in the past. It will be the vanguard of the struggle against partition, for a united, independent Palestine, in which the masses will determine their own destiny on a sovereign basis through the election of a Constituent Assembly.”

“On its banner, the party of the proletariat, the Fourth International, inscribes: For the victory of the Palestinian Revolution, for a sovereign Constituent Assembly establishing a single secular and democratic State, the Palestinian Republic, on all the lands of ancient Palestine.”

ENDNOTE

[1] The first Oslo Accord, known as Oslo I, was signed on September 13, 1993. The agreement between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, signed under the watchful eye of U.S. President Bill Clinton, saw each side recognize the other for the first time. Both sides also pledged to end their decades-long conflict.

A second accord, known as Oslo II, was signed in September 1995 and went into more detail on the structure of the bodies that the “peace process” was supposed to form.

The Oslo Accords were supposed to bring about Palestinian self-determination, in the form of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The claims, however, would only be limited to a tiny fraction of historic Palestine, with the rest left to Israel.

To meet their goals, several steps had to be taken, including the phased withdrawal of the Israeli military from the Palestinian territories it had occupied since 1967 and the transfer of authority to a Palestinian administration. That never happened. The so-called “two-state” solution was dead on arrival (summary reprinted from Justice Initiative).

• * * * * * * * * * *

Biden Expedites Construction of the Border Wall …

By E.J. Esperanza

On October 5, 2023, the Biden administration announced it was expediting the construction of 20 additional miles of border wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. To accomplish this, the Biden administration waived 26 federal laws and regulations that protect the nation’s air, water, endangered species, habitats, and indigenous burial sites.

The administration’s excuse for going back on yet another campaign promise: Congress had already appropriated the funding under the Trump administration.

This, of course, is only half true. Nothing forced the Biden administration to waive 20 federal laws and regulations to expedite the wall’s construction. If the Biden administration was truly opposed to building the wall, his administration could have pushed for rescinding the funding when the Democrats controlled Congress in 2021-2022.

Of course, the Biden administration and the Democratic Party are not against militarizing the border or building a wall. Secretary of DHS Mayorkas said as much in the federal registry’s public notice about the rationale for expediting the wall’s construction.

While the Biden administration would have the public believe that his hands are tied, the truth is that building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border has been a bipartisan project that the Democrats have not only supported, but initiated. Indeed, the first border wall construction came in 1993 under the Democratic administration of President Clinton, who constructed the first 14 miles of barriers between Tijuana and San Diego (a measure supported by Biden and other Democrats in Congress).

Between the Bush and Obama administrations, an additional 630 miles of wall barriers have been built by both political parties.  In fact, of the 706 miles of border wall currently on the nearly 2,000-mile stretch of land between the United States and Mexico, only 87 miles were built by Trump.

Even the 2019 legislation that approved the 20 miles of border wall that the Biden administration is now needlessly expediting was approved by a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, with 129 Democrats approving the measure. 

As this paper goes to print, the Biden administration is now also asking Congress for an additional $14 billion to further militarize the southern border, a request that was included in a broader war-aid package for apartheid Israel and Ukraine with a joint price tag of $106 billion.

This continued bipartisan policy to build a wall and militarize the southern border will have one known outcome, regardless of the excuses: record deaths as migrants will be forced to risk more dangerous routes to seek refuge in the country. In 2022 alone, more than 890 deaths were reported on the southern border by the Department of Homeland Security, making it the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide—a number many humanitarian organizations claim is an undercount.

• * * * * * * * * *

Working-Class Anger, Strikes Not Cooling Off

By Coral Wheeler

Working class anger is staying hot despite the cooling weather, as the ongoing strike wave continues to pound the US ruling class. Workers from different sectors across the country are coming together to demand better working conditions, fair compensation, and the right for their unions to exist in this shifting technological landscape. At least 453,000 workers have taken part in 312 strikes since the beginning of the year. The awakened behemoth of U.S. labor is gathering steam.

At the beginning of October, 75,000 healthcare workers of the Kaiser Permanente group went out on a 3-day strike in five states and Washington, D.C. On the picket lines, strikers gave harrowing accounts of their working conditions: chronic overstaffing at hospitals, neglected patients, wages being frozen despite skyrocketing inflation, depression amongst workers and sometimes even suicide.

Just as Kaiser’s coalition of unions threatened a second strike, the two parties reached a tentative agreement, ending the largest healthcare labor dispute in U.S. history. The workers won a 21% raise over the 3-year contract, $25/hr minimum wage in California, investment in training programs, and new restrictions on hiring subcontractors and using outside firms for temporary staffing.

In Las Vegas, several thousand members of the Culinary Workers Union (CWU) held picket lines outside hotels and casinos for the first time since 1984. Tired of suffering from skyrocketing inflation, one striker noted, “Everything’s going up, except our pay. It used to be okay, because things weren’t expensive. But now it’s impossible to live on a minimum wage in this city.”

Negotiations between the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the Big 3 automakers stalled again as the parties remain far apart on many issues. When Ford failed to change their wage offer after two weeks of negotiations, the UAW suddenly changed its tactics. Instead of announcing which new locals would join the “stand-up” strikes each Friday, on October 11, 8,700 workers at Ford’s most profitable plant in Louisville suddenly joined the strike. As we go to print, the total number of striking auto workers has risen to 45,000.

The strikes have reportedly cost GM and Ford over $500 million, with Ford losing $44 million a day and GM losing $21 million a day. While it remains to be seen if the current strategy is better than a full strike of all 150,000 UAW members, the drama around which locals will or will not go on strike has kept workers enthusiastic, and the bosses guessing. All three automakers have agreed to some reduction or limitation of the two-tiered wage system and, in one of the most striking developments to date, GM has agreed to put its electric-battery manufacturing under the union’s main labor contract, a win that UAW President Sean Fein rightly hailed as transformative as the shift to EV takes off.

Also in the UAW, around a hundred employees at ZF Chassis Systems in Tuscaloosa have been on strike since September 20. The local is demanding the elimination of the two-tier pay scale. At Mack Trucks, union members went on strike on October 9 after 73% of the 4,000 workers in three states rejected a 19% wage increase negotiated by their UAW union. Denouncing “a bogus agreement,” the members sent their leaders back to the table for a better deal. UAW members from Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan have been striking since September 12th against outsourcing their jobs, for a wage increases, a Cost of Living Adjustment, and an end to the tiered wage and benefit system.

Workers at several Waffle House locations in the southern U.S. held walkouts, demanding a $25 hourly minimum wage, an end to automatic meal deduction charges from worker paychecks, and an increase for security and natural disaster plans.

Education workers in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) are also preparing to strike. On October 3, 1,021 out of 1,060 union members voted in favor of strike action. Nine days later, 97% of the 3,000 members of the United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) teachers’ union did the same. 

This strike wave has been set ablaze by the obscene profits accrued by the ruling class while the average worker suffered and lost during the Covid-19 pandemic. Aggravated by soaring inflation, this radical upsurge in the labor movement has been marked by a growing awareness that unions must not only fight for better pay, but against two-tiered pay structures, and for the existence of their very unions by fighting to keep production of new technologies under union contract. Support this wave of strikes!  Join a local picket line near you!

• * * * * * * * * * *

Newsom Signals “Let ‘Er Rip” to Robotrucks – Tech Profits Over Drivers

By Bradley Wiedmaier

Despite protests from the Teamsters and Firefighters unions, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 316, legislation which would have required backup safety drivers on Robotrucks 10,000 lbs. or larger. Newsom made his position loud and clear. He refused to hear from labor or meet with Teamster President Sean O’Brien or rank-and-file drivers. He acted despite a huge rally on the steps of the state Capitol.

“California cannot risk stifling innovation,” Newsom declared, creating a false dichotomy between jobs, safety, and technological change.

Concerned foremost about safety, members of the Firefighters Union spoke at the rally about the dangers inherent in transporting hazardous materials and the need for first responders to be able to communicate with vehicles in an emergency. There is no ability to communicate with Robotrucks as has been demonstrated by the Robotaxis in San Francisco. First responders have had no way to get the vehicles to move to clear the right of way in urgent situations.

Truck drivers at the rally sharpened the point: “Driverless is Dangerous.” Traffic fatalities occur with human drivers roughly every 100 million miles. Autonomous vehicles have totaled 18 million miles so far and already are racking up fatalities. Given the mileage record, it would seem that driverless vehicles are at least more than five times deadlier than human-driven vehicles.

The message fell on deaf ears. Governor Newsom, who is eyeing a run for president in 2028, is siding with his executive tech supporters over jobs and workers’ well-being. There are 300,000 to 500,000 long haul truckers hauling most food and goods across the country. There also are many more thousands of short-haul drivers handling large semis which could be subject to automation. The Teamsters got it right when they said, “Newsom has betrayed all workers.”

From the bottom to the top, workers need to be in control of their destiny. Now is the time for the Teamsters to engage with their members and with other unions to take the essential steps towards creating an independent labor- and community-based working-class party.

•   *   *   *   *   *

UAW picketline of BCBS in Grand Rapids, Michigan

UAW Strike Wave Grows to Blue Cross Blue Shield

By Tyler Henderson

For the last few weeks, UAW members from Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan have been making use of their right to strike, given the status quo of mistreatment and cost-cutting by greedy corporations. Add to this a new, more aggressive working-class leadership within the UAW. So the renewed militancy should come as no surprise.

After speaking with striking members at the Grand Rapids Facility, these workers, specifically clerical workers, went over the key points that led them to strike, and what they are looking to win.

First and foremost, they are looking to end the outsourcing of their jobs overseas. Not only does this contribute to the economic insecurity of workers here at home. but it further adds to the existing systems of abuse and exploitation in the global south, where the corporations pay pennies on the dollar for the same work, in addition to not having to deal with the labor and safety regulations they would find here.

Along with the end of outsourcing, they are fighting for an end to the tiered wage and benefit system, wage increases, as well as Cost of Living Adjustments.

UAW leadership has now begun contract negotiations with Blue Cross Blue Shield, and members will be asked to vote on any tentative agreement reached by the two parties. Until then, members will continue to picket Blue Cross Blue Shield facilities across the state.

• * * * * * * * * * *

François de Massot, Pillar of the Fourth International (1932-2023)

Our comrade François de Massot passed away on October 2. He was an historic leader, a pillar of the Fourth International and its French section, having joined the FI in 1950 at the age of 18.

During his 73 years of political activity, he held high the banner of proletarian internationalism, with special attention to party-building in the Far East, Palestine, and the United States.

We published on our website (socialistorganizer.org) a must-read article on Palestine by comrade François as well as two of many tributes to him that were sent to his memorial meeting on October 12 in Paris – one from the United States (excerpts), the other from India. We reprint these here below.

Future issues of The Organizer will include some of comrade François’s many writings and more tributes celebrating his life and political legacy. — The Editors

•   •   •   •   •   •

“Red Salute to Comrade François!”

The message from Indian activists reads as follows:

 “Through our exchanges, which spanned a period of almost three decades, we gauged just how sharp Comrade François’s intelligence was. He was a political person of great stature. The interests of the working class were always at the forefront of his words and deeds.

His contribution to the organization of Asian conferences in India and world conferences was considerable. His ability to build consensus between comrades of different political orientations united many of us in India. His knowledge of India’s history and political situation was astonishing.

His kind personality and friendly, caring nature attracted people of all ages. His work discipline was admirable. Like his refined appearance, his exemplary qualities will remain fresh in our memories.

The working class has lost another comrade at a crucial time of global turmoil.

We stand with his wife Diana and his party colleagues in this hour of grief. “

Signed/

Nambiath Vasudevan, M. A. Patil, and Milind Ranade

* * * * * * * * * *

“When and How I Met comrade François”

By Alan Benjamin

Dear comrades,

I first met François when we were running away from the infamous “rocha-buses” — or water-cannon trucks — in the streets of Lima, Peru — an experience that was life-changing for me.

It was a night in early 1978 when the FOCEP — a coalition of Trotskyist organizations (POMR, PST and PRT) and prominent left-wing intellectuals and human rights leaders — presented the famous “Moción Roja,” or Red Motion, to the inaugural session of the Constituent Assembly.  

The motion declared that the Constituent Assembly was henceforth sovereign and not subordinate to the military regime of Gen. Morales Bermudez. The Constituent Assembly, the motion continued, was entrusted to designate a government mandated to implement the demands of the working class and peasantry. 

When the majority of the elected delegates to the Constituent Assembly, led by right-wing and populist forces, voted against the Moción Roja, the FOCEP called upon the Peruvian workers and peasants to deepen their mobilizations in support of their demands. In response, the military regime unleashed its repressive apparatus  — rubber bullets, water cannons, tear gas — against the thousands of protesters who had gathered in Lima’s central plaza. That is when I met cde. François.

Cde. François helped me, a young activist working at the National Agrarian University, understand the historic significance of the events we were experiencing in Peru. Without his explanations, it is likely that I would not have grasped and assimilated what was taking place.

This experience in Peru, and the numerous discussions with cde. François over the years, confirmed in my mind the relevance and validity of the Transitional Program. And it fostered in me great respect for cde. François, who, for decades, would be my comrade, friend and mentor — a genuine pillar of the Fourth International, to which he devoted the bulk of his adult life.

I am deeply sorry that François will not be among us for the November 3-5 OCRFI conference in Paris. But the mere fact that this conference is taking place is a testament to the ongoing struggle for the Fourth International that he waged. At every juncture, he upheld the banner of our world party.

Comrade François will be missed sorely. As best as we can, we will attempt to follow in his footsteps.

¡François de Massot, Presente!

(Alan Benjamin is a member of the Editorial Board of The Organizer newspaper)