Haiti, March 3—It’s been close to a month since the first uprising of 2019 with masses of working class people rising up against the capitalist system. Recalling a history of the first Black people to successfully fight back against capitalist slavery and colonialism (1804 Haitian Revolution), today, in the streets and through social media, workers and students call for an end to a system of inequality. For several days, starting on February 7, the anniversary of the fall of the hated Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, to February 18, a series of mobilizations shut everything down: roads were barricaded, no transport moved, businesses closed. An estimated two million people in every corner from big cities to small “sections rurales” (hamlets) were in the streets.
The demands, at heart, were anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, calling out in particular France and the U.S. who are responsible for the impoverishment of the masses through their economic and political stranglehold of the country. The demonstrators called for the departure of politicians in power, for jobs and better living conditions, and jail for those who stole from the masses in the PetroCaribe gasoline scandal. It is more and more clear that the whole damn capitalist system has to go. The working class needs communism.
Let us not imply that we are on the cusp of revolution here. There are many in the mass movement who just don’t really get it. In one demonstration, video cameras caught numbers of young people shouting, “Putin yes, U.S.A. no!” The enemy of our enemy is not our friend! Capitalists are always in competition with one another to gain more power for themselves; their rivalry is always at the expense of the workers. In some social media posts, there was a calling out and mocking of those who think they are part of the middle class, noting they supported the class in power even though they themselves didn’t have a working toilet or drove a tenth-hand car. There is a lot of opportunism inside the movement, “what’s in it for me?” This way of thinking is promoted by the bourgeoisie because it divides our movement. It will be stamped out as revolutionary class consciousness grows among the masses and the Progressive Labor Party(PLP) grows in influence. Our goal is to lead class struggle and lead the working class to seize state power and establish a communist egalitarian system.
In general, working people here are fed up with misery. During an agitational rally organized by the Party in a provincial city we got a very positive response. In a public market, both vendors and shoppers shouted, “We can’t continue like this, life is too expensive, we can’t feed our children, this has to change!”
Thanks to these mobilizations, PLP has yet another opportunity to struggle around the necessity for communist revolution as the only way to end exploitation and misery. People are becoming more class conscious, more interested in knowing who the ruling class is and how they work. In fact, many people are using social media to circulate the names, the companies, the fields of activities, the political implications and the history of the small group of bourgeois who “keep us in the misery, who starve us as they get fat,” as the demonstrators say.
In the working class areas, people are regaining confidence in their ability to defeat the system. Witness the cancellation of most carnival celebrations. The people are saying, “no, we will not dance as garbage fills the streets, because we are hungry, we will not dance on the blood of those murdered in the struggle, we will not dance when there are no hospitals to receive our sick and wounded, let alone with a corrupt president in power.”
Our Party invites you to take part in advancing class struggle everywhere to end capitalism and to establish communism. March with us on May Day 2019 and put another nail in the bosses’ coffin!
COLOMBIA—The capitalists’ strategy, based on sexism, individualism, nationalism, racism —basically everything that can keep us divided and oppressed—is manifested in our daily life. Without realizing it, we fall into this trap by taking positions that delay the revolutionary struggle for a better world. In the case of racism, it manifests itself in many workers from Colombia, who, forgetting their miserable situation, look and speak contemptuously of workers from Venezuela who have immigrated to Colombia these days.
Sexism and racism are manifested in frequent comments to these proletarians, blaming them for the current wave of crime, insecurity, and prostitution, as well as lowering wages and stealing work. In the place where I work, I have discussed issues with my coworkers, making them see that in the past many workers from Colombia immigrated to Venezuela, trying to escape from the bosses’ war and seeking to improve their economic situation and but returning empty-handed, just like that many who have sought the “American dream,” only to suffer from wage slavery and racist oppression. Therefore, capitalism keeps us fleeing and trying to escape from its prison by looking for “better bosses.”There are also conscious comrades who state that nationalism only serves the capitalist politicians, who use it to divide and exploit us, and that only uniting with the working class and promoting proletarian internationalism can help us improve our situation. It is our duty to support ourselves without looking at nationality. But it is essential that this international working-class unity is politically oriented to fight against our class enemies, the capitalists all over the world.
For that, it’s necessary to spread the revolutionary politics of Progressive Labor Party and its newspaper CHALLENGE, as an ideological weapon that allows us to initiate the struggle in an organized way, for the destruction of warmongering, oppression, and unnatural imperialism, and the building of communism. Communism is our most natural way of living in a dignified manner, away from all the capitalist scourges, economic crises, and onslaught against workers. Fights against the bosses by the workers give us great opportunities to unite to defeat nationalism, racism, sexism, and individualism as we build an international working-class base for communist revolution.
BROOKLYN, NY March 1— As the 274,000 students and 29,000 faculty and staff across the City University of New York (CUNY) were on winter break, thousands of custodians, custodial assistants, laborers and mechanics who make the students’ learning conditions possible continued working in intolerable working conditions.
New York State and the CUNY bosses claim there’s no money to improve either learning or working conditions. That’s capitalism for you: no money for education but plenty for corporate welfare. And it’s not just Amazon, many corporations get tax breaks and there’s lots of money for prisons.
At Kingsborough Community College (KCC) the fightback is growing. Strong relationships, CHALLENGE networks, and increasingly politicized friendships among multiracial, immigrant and native-born students, workers and faculty offer a glimpse of a united working class with a communist understanding that capitalism is not working for workers and students. We need a revolution!
Contingent vs. full-time: divide and conquer
Among faculty, the bosses have reduced full timers to 40 percent; the rest are adjunct faculty. Adjuncts are hired on a temporary, on-demand basis without the pay, benefits, or job security of tenured faculty (see CHALLENGE, 12/19/18).
At the same time, the bosses made a similar attack on campus workers, with even more devastating and racist results. Years ago, KCC began hiring custodial staff under the job title of “custodial assistants,” not full custodians, so they could pay them less. Then they limited their hours to just under the minimum threshold of 37.5 per week to prevent them from reaching full-time status with full benefits.
Custodial assistants make $16 per hour; full custodians make around $20 per hour. According to a recent study, on a single income, wages in New York City must be at least $29.96 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment, and $34.40/ hour to rent the more common two-bedroom, with similar numbers for New Jersey (NBC New York, 6/18/18). At $16 per hour, custodial assistants must work about 93 hours a week, all 52-weeks to cover rent and basic expenses. At $20/hour, they still must work 74 hours a week, nearly two full-time jobs. But again, KCC workers are prevented from ever reaching full-time status. And so workers suffer, facilities like bathrooms flood daily and buildings literally crumble around the students.
Union misleaders keep the bosses’ peace
Every day, KCC bosses order the custodial assistants to work outside of their title to perform the necessary duties of higher paid, full custodians. Workers who complain to their union District Council 37 (DC37) representatives are told to not be insubordinate, to follow bosses’ orders, and grieve it later. Grievances take time to file and don’t go anywhere. Workers don’t even bother–they know the union is on the side of the bosses. The union only notices them during elections to “get out the vote” for Democrats.
As budget shortfalls hit KCC last year, more than one-third of the custodial staff either retired or quit. Workers had to speed up and work extra details, and DC 37 did nothing. This year, the new custodial assistants being hired are exploited even more, working even fewer hours, and facing summary termination.
When communists led unions they were militant, fighting organizations, much more than today. But whether then or now, the bosses constantly grind us down, taking away our hard fought victories. As we fight for better pay for adjuncts ($7K per class) or better conditions for custodians, join the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in fighting for a communist world.
Organize, strike, revolt
At KCC the new third wave of even more highly exploited custodians follows increasing numbers of “Continuing Ed Teachers” (CETs) among faculty who teach vital (and profitable) programs such as ESL. While they are members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, they are barred from using facilities like the KCC library and gym, and are paid even worse than the adjuncts. Under capitalism the drive to lower wages everywhere is relentless. At KCC, our growing relationships among groups of students, faculty and workers and the antiracist struggles are gradually changing the atmosphere, and some workers feel freer to express solidarity and voice their own grievances. KCC custodial and cafeteria workers, students and adjuncts,CET faculty, and PLer’s are all part of the working class, and are struggling against the same enemy to strengthen working class unity.
PLP supports the adjunct organizing around the demand for $7,000 per class or strike. The strike is a powerful weapon, as workers from Chicago to India keep proving. Whether students succeed in organizing to terminate racist administrators, or adjuncts succeed in organizing a CUNY-wide strike around 7K for adjuncts, we win by fighting now to make our lives better and fighting over the long haul for a better worl–communism.
Armed with communist ideas and CHALLENGE, let’s recruit many more workers and students worldwide into an army to smash racism, sexism, and imperialism once and for all with communist revolution. This spring semester, class struggle is back in session.
Since Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members have returned from volunteering in the New Sanctuary Caravan Project at the U.S.-Mexico border in January, we are upping our efforts to build an international immigration campaign. Our goal is to recruit more people to go to the border to provide direct aid and to win many volunteers and refugees to see that a world without borders is possible. Many ties were made between refugees and volunteers. We developed these bonds with the understanding that workers around the world are all in this together, that we all have the same enemy and must unite to fight racism whenever it raises its ugly head.
Friendships and commitments were made that went beyond our short stay at the border. Volunteers became sponsors for people with no ties to family or friends in the U.S. (having a U.S. citizen sponsor is a plus in seeking asylum). The migrants received pro bono immigration lawyers. The working class of Tijuana also rose to the occasion, sharing whatever they had–food, clothes, and sometimes a place to sleep or to shower.
Meanwhile, the fascist U.S. President Donald Trump and the “Socialist” Mexican President Obrador are working together to stem the flow of refugees. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials have prevented journalists, organizers, and volunteers from crossing the border, questioning them and holding them in detention for hours. Two U.S. attorneys working with the Tijuana-based group Al Otro Lado were denied entry into Mexico (San Diego Tribune, 2/11). And nine members of the borderland faith-based organization, No More Deaths, were arrested for the “crime” of leaving jugs of water and cans of beans for migrants passing through the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona, where more than 3,000 people have died making their way north on foot since 2000 (The Intercept, 1/17).
Volunteers in the Caravan Project learned many important lessons. With no paid staff, no office space, and minimal resources–we were part of a 40-day campaign that attracted hundreds of volunteers, including local immigrant rights organizations and churches, who provided extensive assistance to thousands of refugees, including preparing asylum applications, food preparation and serving, transportation, childcare, health clinics, and other services needed by a community.
Caravan volunteers, who reported on their experiences at a National Writers’ Union forum, will report back at a local church in March and plan to speak on campuses and to community organizations. Our PLP club is organizing a study group on immigration and planning a fundraiser to help refugees, both at the border and when they settle in new homes. Understanding how imperialist states have historically created “borders” to justify ownership of resources, control the wages and movement of labor, and divide workers across borders by promoting “nationalism” and “racism” are all goals of the study group. We are also planning a dinner to build for the PLP May Day march on May 4. These activities are important elements toward building the ties and deepening understanding of how to bring about a communist society to smash all borders!
In short, the work at the border is a small school for communism. For cynics who claim that a society cannot function without money, the international village in Tijuana disproves that idea. The thousands of people fleeing Central America and the hundreds of volunteers coming to greet them are experiencing directly what it means to make decisions and allocate resources and human energy based on what the working class needs. The international solidarity and international friendships being forged show the potential of creating an egalitarian communist society to serve the needs of the all workers. While U.S. and Mexican bosses are united in attacking the refugees and immigrant workers, we propose an international Summer Project, for PLP members and friends to unite our class, the workers, on both sides of the US/Mexico border. One World, One Working Class, One Party! Join us.
New York City, March 3—Today 150-200 healthcare workers, medical students, Aids organizers, municipal and CUNY (City University) retirees and others picketed the big Pharma profiteer, Pfizer, and then marched through the streets of midtown Manhattan. Angry chants like “Pfizer’s greed kills” and speeches denounced the capitalist medical system which forces millions to choose between food, rent and prescription drugs. In addition, many protesters called for support for a single payer health plan (e.g., Medicare for all, paid by the government) to take “excess” profits out of the hands of healthcare profiteers. While it is important to call out the greedy healthcare industry, we in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) explain that a system that doesn’t meet the medical needs of the working class doesn’t deserve to exist. In the U.S., Black and Latin workers are the most likely to lack access to quality medical care and needed medications. It was disappointing to see that few Black workers took part in this demonstration, since because of racist conditions, Black and Latin workers face the worst health and health care coverage. Perhaps it was because the union movement was noticeably absent. Union misleaders have opted to divide the working class by merely protecting their members, who have medical and drug coverage, while largely ignoring the needs of workers who do not. Retiree organizers at today’s march are fighting against that kind misleadership, which weakens the working class and in effect helps, put more money back into the bosses’ pockets.
Some organizers of today’s march put forward a divisive chant, “Health care is a right, not just for the rich and white.” Instead of equating white workers with their bosses, we should be promoting struggle and unity. At demonstrations to stop hospital closings we’ve had better chants, such as “Health care is a right, fight fight fight” and “Men and women, Black and white to win better health care we must unite.”Moreover even a single tax payer system, or medicare for all will not guarantee good health for all, because under capitalism there is no incentive to maximize the health of anyone who is not working– be it the unemployed, disabled, old, or imprisoned.
Participating in the movement against medical industry profiteers is necessary as we fight to survive in this racist capitalist system and helps us show our friends why communist revolution is needed to insure equal access to medical care.
