LOS ANGELES—Base building and long-term struggle have laid the groundwork for big things to come at one high school in California. From the first day I started teaching at the school, I have put my politics in the forefront and built relationships with teachers and students that are centered on openly discussing the world situation.
During lunch, teachers chat about everything from conditions for students at the school to imperialism all over the globe. Teachers and students have waged struggles against scanning and large class sizes, as well as attended large rallies around issues of immigration, police murder, and women’s rights. There is an understanding amongst both teachers and students that we must be active in the world around us in order to change it.
The administration at this school does not understand this foundation that has been laid. So when they tried to start off our school year explaining how teachers would be docked an hour’s pay for being even a minute late to work and that we would be docked pay if we left campus at any time throughout the day, even during our lunch, they assumed we would just roll over and say ok.
At the initial meeting where this attack was laid out, one teacher spoke passionately about how she worked at a school before where this policy was enforced and how it impacted both staff and students. That was enough to get the ball rolling. Staff held planning meetings to discuss how to fight back against this attack.
Part of the plan involved contacting the union for support. We found out quickly that the union president had already given the administration the thumbs up on the plan without even discussing it with our staff. In the course of just one week of work, our staff has now learned the important lesson of the role played by union misleaders.
Even though the top leadership of the union sold us out, our union reps demanded a meeting with the administration to discuss this attack. The administration framed this to the staff as a collaborative meeting and had the goal of getting the staff to set the terms of the attack in order to fool us into more willingly accepting it. We met beforehand as a staff and decided that we would make no concessions to the administration, that we would demand these policies not be enforced and we would be involved in setting the parameters for how they can abuse us.
The meeting went as you would expect. The administration occupied 15 minutes of a 45 minute “collaborative meeting” to talk about how hurt they are that the staff is making such a big deal out of this and destroying our “family” environment at the school. Two of the three administrators even cried.
Their tears did not fool us or deter us. As I said, the groundwork for bold fight back had already been laid. The staff stood united and strong. We said NO! The final outcome of this has yet to be seen, but at this point it appears that we have won the battle.
In the future, we will need to do a better job of connecting attacks like these to students and their families. We know that any attack on the working conditions of teachers is really an attack on the learning conditions of students. This has to be made clearer to the whole staff though so that our organizing strategy embodies that understanding. Overall though, a little fight back has gone a long way in bringing us closer together as a staff and shifting everyone slightly to the left. I look forward to a long history of fight back and struggle with everyone!
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Joseph Stalin – communist most feared and hated by capitalists
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- 17 September 2018 194 hits
The U.S. ruling class reviles Joseph Stalin, one of the first communist leaders of the Soviet Union (USSR), and so they lie about him. But they lie about so many things, why would they tell the truth about Stalin? Yet the capitalist slander campaign against Stalin led many authors, university researchers and even ordinary people to dislike Stalin. Why so much capitalist hatred against Joseph Stalin?
First, some facts. After the Russian Revolution, 12 European countries (including the United States and Japan) invaded the Soviet Union to kill this new socialist society in its cradle. Nevertheless they were defeated. Instead Stalin led the socialist Soviet Union from being “the poor man of Europe” to a world power that challenged the worldwide empire of the capitalist U.S.The capitalist,with their tails between their legs, have vowed to keep this part of history buried from workers.
Under Stalin’s leadership, the Soviet Union became powerful enough to defeat Hitler’s Nazis in World War II. Of the 250 Nazi divisions that fought in World War II, 200 of them fought to conquer the Soviet Union...and were defeated. Eighty five percent of German casualties were at the hands of the USSR. It was only after the Soviets began pushing the Nazis back, that the Allies invaded Normandy, and entered World War II.
The Soviet workers and their Red Army suffered huge casualties (20 million dead) and destruction. Nevertheless it was their valour and incredible sacrifice that defeated the Nazis . Despite the toll they were still able to provide education to all of its citizens, this included college and trade schools. They provided universal health care and employment. Workers had four weeks of paid vacation and received a pension at age 60, women at age 55. They had paid maternity leave and free childcare and they eliminated the centuries-old famines that had racked the Ukraine.
Some charge that Stalin was a dictator, yet he struggled mightily for a new constitution with secret elections so that the entrenched bureaucracy would be challenged. Local Party Secretaries defeated him in this effort.It is helpful to see the sources of the criticisms of Stalin. The sources of the forced starvation stories in the Ukraine are anti-communist, pro-Nazi sympathizers who left the Ukraine and headed to the Western countries.
In 1956 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his achievements in a secret speech. Khrushchev wanted to take the USSR in a more capitalist direction. Professor Grover Furr documents that of the 61 charges Khrushchev levels against Stalin, 60 can be proven to be false. Needless to say that speech is the source of many of the attacks on Stalin.
Another source of attacks was the writing and organizing of LeonTrotsky. He was a charismatic individual with the emphasis on individual. Trotsky belonged to a different party than Stalin and Lenin. He joined the Bolsheviks when the Russian Revolution was imminent. When Lenin died, Trotsky thought that he should be the next leader.
He organized for his ideas. They were publicized widely in the party, but when it came to a vote, his position lost 724,000 to 4,000. The Bolsheviks and Lenin chose Stalin. However, he continued to organize against Stalin and the Bolshevik leadership and was finally kicked out of the party. He secretly continued his anti-Stalin organizing and propaganda. He appealed, not to the workers, but to the capitalists all over the world for support. Capitalists loved his stories because it gave them more ammunition against Stalin. But Furr speaks and reads Russian and English and has had access to Trotsky’s archives as well as the archives of the former Soviet Union. He has written and self-published several books on the period. For those who want to learn what really took place under Stalin’s leadership, please go to his website: https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/
The fact is that college professors who try to write a balanced or a favorable view of Stalin are ostracized by the system. They can’t get published. Those that promote anti-Stalinism get published, paid and praised. The reason the capitalists hate Stalin is because he helped lead a revolution that threw them out of power.
The capitalists who exploit workers, who bring death and destruction, who promote racism and sexism, hate Stalin. They benefit from our ignorance that it is possible to have a system where the capitalists do not exist. But a better world is possible. It’s communism where the workers of the world rule and the capitalists end up in the trash heap of history.
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Spike Lee’s Black KKKlansmen is a fascist NYPD advertisement
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- 16 September 2018 193 hits
This summer audiences had the opportunity to contrast two films by Black directors addressing the role of the police. One, Sorry to Bother You, by first-time director Boots Riley, who proudly calls himself a communist, accurately depicts the cops attacking striking workers trying to keep out scabs. The police are friends of the company, not the workers. This social satire addresses alienation and wage slavery, collective versus individual advancement, the need for militant strikes and multi-racial unity, and the role of the state (especially the police) in protecting the owners’ profits. This is communist art, one that helps us understand and fight capitalist exploitation.
The other film, BlacKkKlansman, is by veteran director Spike Lee, who was recently paid $219,000 by the New York Police Department(NYPD) to help develop a program to build closer ties between the NYPD and Black and Latino residents, who will never forget “New York’s finest” many racist killings: Eric Garner, Amadou Diallo, Ramarley Graham, Patrick Dorismond, Sean Bell, Eleanor Bumpurs, Shantel Davis, Kimani Gray, Saheed Vassell and many others. Lee’s art distorts reality and offers a mythical view of the police as people who risk their lives infiltrating and disrupting white supremacist groups.
KKKop investigated PLP
Lee’s film is supposedly based on a memoir by Ron Stallworth, a former Colorado Springs detective who spent years infiltrating Black radical and communist groups, including Progressive Labor Party (PLP). Stallworth said in a recent interview:
“And I was actually running two investigations at once: the Klan investigation and an undercover investigation of the Progressive Labor Party. I’d bounce back and forth from one investigation to another” (Time, 8/9).Stallworth was part of the FBI Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro). Boots Riley has written a three-page critique of BlacKkKlansman, in which he accurately reports:
“Cointelpro’s objectives were to destroy radical organizations, especially Black radical organizations. Cointelpro papers also show us that when white supremacist organizations were infiltrated by the FBI and cops, it was not to disrupt them. It was to use them to threaten and/or physically attack radical organizations. … In some cases, it was the undercover cops who came up with plans and literally pulled the trigger on assassinations. . . That is what Ron Stallworth was helping to do.”
A few more lies:
Riley details how BlacKkKlansman is filled with distortions, including made-up scenes:
Stallworth and the Colorado Springs police never prevented a KKK bombing.
This was added to create suspense and make the police seem heroic.The scene in which a drunk white cop with a history of racist abuse is secretly recorded, and was then later arrested was entirely fabricated. Lee wants us to believe that most police care about racism. But in the real world, police embrace a “blue wall of silence” that protects cops who regularly brutalize Black, Latin and white workers.
Stallworth could speak on the phone with KKK leaders, but as a Black man, he obviously couldn’t show up at Klan meetings. A white cop (played by Adam Driver) went in his place. In the film, the partner is Jewish and is almost discovered by a suspicious Klan member, who would have reacted violently. In real life, the cop was not Jewish.Once again, Lee made this up to exaggerate the risks to the police.
The film also creates the character of Patrice, the leader of the Black Student Union at Colorado College. She is initially appalled when she learns that Stallworth is an undercover cop. Yet in one of the final scenes, Patrice and Ron walk down the hall together, guns drawn, to confront a burning cross.
The message is clear: cops and anti-racist activists should be allies in the fight against racism.
Do the right thing? Art serves the ruling Class agenda
Riley correctly points out that Lee devoted his storytelling talent to altering the facts into a piece of art that defends the racist capitalist state, making the cops look like heroes and anti-racist allies of the working class. Riley describes Lee’s lionization of the cops as “really disappointing, to put it mildly.” Spike Lee depicted police violence negatively in 1989’s Do The Right Thing, honoring the names of police-murder victims such as Eleanor Bumpers. Some workers may have seen him as a rebel. But the film industry serves to build up capitalism, not make meaningful criticism of it.
Lee has been part of that industry for a long time now and his payday from the NYPD makes it even more inevitable that he will produce narratives that prop up the status quo and seek to win more youth and Black workers to support the state apparatus, specifically the police. We must see this film as part of the conditioning the state imposes on us to see the police as our saviors, starting when Officer Friendly visited our kindergarten. As communists it is our duty to rip the hood off films that attempt to use identity and fake progressive politics, to feed us the bosses crappy anti-comunist, and anti-workers culture.
Turkey’s currency, the lira, has plunged more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar in the last two weeks and over 40 percent since the beginning of the year. The crisis is driven by sharpening contradictions between Turkish and U.S. bosses as the post-World War II order disintegrates. In the face of the U.S. rulers’ weakening grip, Turkey is moving closer to Russia. In response, U.S. President Donald Trump has used the arrest of an American evangelical pastor, Andrew Brunson, as an excuse to raise tariffs on Turkish goods and further pressure the lira by sowing doubts about the stability of the Turkish economy.
While U.S. imperialism stands in relative decline versus a rising China and resurgent Russia, it will never give up its empire without an all-out global fight. History shows that trade wars inevitably lead to shooting wars. The international working class, led by the Progressive Labor Party, must reject the bosses’ wars pitting workers against workers. Our class must fight for a communist society that serves the needs of the international working class.
Turkey’s Pivot to Russia
Turkey sits between Europe and the Middle East and is a crucial counterweight to Russian client Iran. It fields the second largest armed forces in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the military arm of U.S. geopolitical dominance for the last seven decades. Once a reliable ally of the U.S., Turkey has of late strained the partnership by focusing on its own national interest and pivoting toward Russia. Within the last two years, according to Stratfor (8/12), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has:
Arrested U.S. citizens as bargaining chips with Washington since the attempted coup against Erdogan’s government in July, 2016;
Purchased a Russian S-400 missile defense system;
Ignored U.S. sanctions against Iran, which Turkey depends on for fossil fuels;
Attacked U.S.-backed Kurdish militias in neighboring Syria.
The decay of U.S.-Turkey relations represents another sign of the U.S. bosses’ declining position in the Middle East and the growing instability and volatility of the period. Donald Trump’s economic sanctions—doubling tariffs on Turkish steel to 50 percent and on aluminum to 20 percent—have intensified the crisis, leading the defiant Erdogan to a counter-threat: “...Turkey has alternatives. Failures to reverse this trend of unilateralism and disrespect will require U.S to start looking for new friends and allies” (New York Times, 8/10).
No capitalist solutions for the working class
Due to a reliance on foreign currency and an inability to pay back its debt in U.S. dollars, the Turkish economy is vulnerable to attacks from the U.S. bosses. The falling value of the lira has severely hurt the savings, pensions, and paychecks of workers in Turkey. Annual inflation now stands at 15 percent and could soon rise even higher (NYT, 8/14).
Much like Trump, Erdogan has thrown out or marginalized professional Turkish economists and is running the economy for his own political future and survival. If Erdogan props up the lira by raising interest rates, fewer businesses could afford bank loans and Turkey’s growth rate would plummet, leading to even more unemployment.
If interest rates stay low and inflation gets even worse, workers’ wages—already inadequate for the necessities of life—will be worth even less. There are no capitalist solutions that serve the needs of the working class.
Adding to the volatility of the Turkish-U.S. conflict is the fact that both sets of bosses are under intense pressure, both internally and externally. To fend off opposing bosses who were jailed or ousted from the government after the failed coup, the Erdogan wing held snap elections that hurt the government’s legitimacy with many workers (Washington Post, 6/25). Now rising prices are being used by Erdogan’s competitors to unite an opposition movement.
U.S. decay paves the Way for war
While the relationship between the U.S. bosses and the Turkish ruling class continues to deteriorate, capitalists around the globe are sizing up the situation to improve their own positions. Iran continues to strengthen its oil-based ties with Turkey. Qatar came to Erdogan’s aid with a promise of $15 billion to back the lira. The announcement temporarily stabilized the currency and may open the door to investments from other powers: “That Turkish support for Qatar during the stand-off with Saudi Arabia finally paid off.…Let’s see if the Chinese and Russians put some money on the table” (Bloomberg, 8/15).
Turkey’s strategic location makes it a prime target for China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative. A China state publication backed the development of more projects on Turkish soil to exploit Erdogan’s rift with the U.S. (Global Times, 8/20).
We Don’t Warn of Peace
Turkey’s shift toward Iran and Russia is another sign of the decline of U.S. imperialism, which has been accelerated by Trump’s turn toward isolationism. Inter-imperialist rivalry is growing more volatile by the day. Sooner or later, one of these situations will spiral out of control and into massive global warfare. None of the capitalist bosses’ politicians—including the latest wave of “socialists” in the U.S. Democratic Party—can stop this historic inevitability toward chaos and destruction. The only way forward is to rely on the power of the international working class—and to develop a communist society based on the needs of the many, not the profits of the few. We can build a new world without racism, sexism, exploitation, or imperialist war. Join us!
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No free speech for racists—Army of antiracists overpowers klan
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- 01 September 2018 173 hits
Washington, DC, August 12—A pathetic count of 24 white supremacists showed up at the “Unite the Right” rally. Thousands of antiracists came to oppose them. This morning was the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville rally where Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist. Progressive Labor Party and friends interjected the mass liberal politics with the communist idea of “no free speech for racists.” Many followed the Party’s multiracial lead.
Transit workers blast the Klan
A multiracial PLP continent of 50 met up with several Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) union workers and other members of labor unions in front of the AFL-CIO headquarters. One transit worker from Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) gave a speech attacking the racist ideology of the Ku Klux Klan. Another protester read a statement of solidarity with the anti-racist Metro workers (see page 3).
The transit union knew the mainly Black workforce would be, to say the least, unwilling to transport the white supremacists. So, the ATU put out an official statement saying they would refuse to give the racists any type of special treatment and would not be driving any trains to get them to the rally.
However, a union member was forced into driving a train. The police commander took over a single car for white supremacists and the press. Union misleaders were present yet did nothing to stop the transport of racists. The driver of the train was an ATU 689 member and the union officers present did not intervene. The Metro police protected and allowed for the racists to have a secure, heavily guarded ride in an empty train car. So much for the “leadership” of the Metro union.
There was a follow-up protest by ATU 689 in the aftermath of the August 12 rally demanding, “General Manager, Paul Wiedefeld’s termination for breaking the public trust and giving special accommodations to white supremacists on Sunday.”
Communist-led antiracists would have been able to effectively shut down the trains and busses to ensure that no racist rides on public transit. The city spent $2.6 million protecting these fascists and their freedom of racist speech. (Yet, They want to raise fares, cut service, cut workers’ benefits and freeze wages. It shows Metro’s priorities.) This is the equivalent of promoting hate speech and racist violence. PLP knows that racist speech leads to racist violence.
No free speech for racists
The PLP communist contingent marched over to the rally at Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. Fencing lined the park, with a 75-yard gap in the middle to keep the racist scum safe and to keep the counter protesters far enough away so that no brick or bottle thrown could hit its intended target. This sizable distance also kept the Nazis from being heard by anyone except the cops and members of their own group.
In the blazing sun, we distributed over 600 CHALLENGEs and had a welcoming and encouraging response. When the racist Nazi scum finally showed up, we led chants and were joined by those around us. Later, a liberal woman attempted to silence our bullhorn when PLP led the chant, “The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all are a part of the bosses plan!” She was unsuccessful.
One protester took the lead in confronting some stray Trump supporters who were against “left-wing violence” (see bottom photo, page 1). The crowd and PLP followed his antiracist lead. The racists eventually left the park, despite being protected by a team of “de-escalators”, who believed that all views (racist or otherwise) should be allowed. The argument for free speech is one that allows, promotes, and protects racists and fascists. No free speech for racists!
After much chanting and a timely rainfall, PLP, friends, and many protesters departed, knowing that we had successfully suppressed the racist message of the Trump supporters.
More fights to come
For the past 40 years, DC has never been a hub for racist and fascist groups. This is largely due the city’s history of beating, chasing, and drowning out racists every time they come, many times led by PLP. Today, many restaurants had signs refusing service to white nationalists. Uber and Lyft drivers also refused service. There is clearly a history of antiracist consciousness among workers here. It’s up to communists to turn those antiracist actions into an international class-consciousness.
There are still many battles to come, and we must be prepared for them. We have our work cut out for us. We must take a stand wherever and whenever a racist or fascist rears its ugly head. We will shut them down and chase them out. Fighting back against racism and fascism isn’t a choice to be taken lightly; this is about the survival and well being of the entire working class. Fight for communism, power to the workers!
