PL joins Pakistan martial law protesters

11/5/07 -- About 50 protesters showed up in front of the Pakistan embassy in New York City today, including two members of Progressive Labor Party who have been working closely with Pakistani students at Columbia University. The police moved the protesters into a pen on nearby 5th Ave, after falsely claiming they were "blocking sidewalk traffic." Nevertheless, the protest continued and garnered a significant amount of media attention. One PL member was even interviewed for New Delhi TV, holding a sign that read "From Jena to Pakistan, Smash Fascist Terror!" and was photographed by a BBC reporter. The crowd maintained a high degree of enthusiasm for around an hour, chanting in Urdu and English. The content of the event was contradictory. Much of the protest was of a highly nationalist character. However, instead of writing off the event in a sectarian manner, the two PL members present advanced an internationalist line to the greatest extent possible, and will continue to provide logistical support to our Pakistani comrades at Columbia. We recognize that this means helping draw the connection that workers from the U.S. to Pakistan will only really be free when they abandon the poison of nationalism for the weapon of revolutionary working-class internationalism. Then we can get rid of the world's Bushes and Musharrafs for good! Until then, what is happening in Pakistan is just a taste of what is bound to happen in the U.S. too, as rising inter-imperialist conflicts and an increasingly volatile global economy build inevitably towards a new world war and growing fascism.