Two Pictures Are Worth 2,000 Words

(Letter)

21 April 2009

To the editor, Workers Vanguard:

The dishonesty of your recent polemic on protests at the City University of New York (WV No. 934, 10 April) is captured in your cynical use of a photo taken at the September 23 demonstration outside the CUNY Graduate Center. As I entered the demonstration, I was handed a poster reading “Bail Out CUNY,” at which point your photographer snapped her picture. She then watched me look down, read what it said, and place it on the ground. All of this took place in less than one minute. Moreover, in my speech that day I explicitly addressed why I did not carry that sign. True, having had their “gotcha” moment, your reporters did not stick around for the speeches. However, for the past five months they have been in possession of the Class Struggle Education Workers Newsletter (November-December 2008), which quotes from my speech as follows:

“Someone handed me a sign saying ‘Bail Out CUNY.’ It’s certainly grotesque that CUNY gets cuts while Wall Street speculators get more than $700 billion. But it’s not that the ruling class is just somehow confused about ‘priorities.’ We have to reject the whole framework. What we need is not this or that different bailout but to kick out the capitalists whose wars abroad go hand in hand with a war on us and our right to education here ‘at home.’”

So you know full well the real political story, but from your cynical standpoint, anything goes. Why? Because I am a supporter of the Internationalist Group. The rest of the “polemic” is in the same vein: an exercise in amalgams, distortions and puerility.

Sándor John

WV replies:

In reading Sándor John’s letter, we cannot help but recall Richard Pryor’s rendition of Chico Marx’s line: “Who’re you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” Regarding the opportunist shenanigans of the Internationalist Group at CUNY, including those of the ubiquitous John, we don’t have much to add to what we wrote in “For Free, Quality, Integrated Education for All!” That article noted that at a November 2008 rally, IG supporter John was holding another sign referring to CUNY Chancellor Goldstein that called to “Cut his salary—or lay him off!” Also picked up by mistake?