BOSTON, November 20 —When capitalists talk about “restructuring,” from the imperialist International Monetary Fund to Roxbury Community College (RCC), they mean robbing workers of their livelihoods and youth of a future. At RCC, where the student body is almost all working-class Black, Latin, and immigrant, racist attacks come in the form of attacking the workers. In less than two years, the administration has fired or forced out more than one-quarter of the faculty and staff, creating instability and degrading the college’s programs.   
The latest attack came with a scheme to privatize the Information Technology (IT) Department, with the support of the Massachusetts state government and its Board of Higher Education. But a group of RCC staff and faculty and students are fighting back! We plan to deliver a petition at the next Board of Trustees meeting.  We hope this action will spur more workers and students to fight back and to combat fear and passivity, which feed into the hands of the college administration. 
“Privatization” Means Attacks on Workers
“Privatization” is a tactic capitalist governments are using the world over to boost profits and drive down workers’ standard of living.  Governments sell off public-sector departments to private companies and replace relatively secure government jobs and decent benefits with low-wage, dead-end jobs with zero job security. Privatization is part of developing fascism. The bosses rake in handsome profits through this increased exploitation. It’s one way the capitalists are responding to their growing economic crisis.
The administration’s justification for privatizing IT is based on their false claim that the RCC IT staff is incompetent.  Their plan to outsource the department began last spring with a malicious smear campaign designed to ruin the reputations of the IT workers. College President Valerie Roberson called in the state police and the state attorney general’s office to lock down the IT office and investigate a supposed breach in the computer system.  Earlier that morning, Roberson called the Boston Globe, which printed an article about the alleged breach without investigating. Other news media then picked it up.  To date, not a shred of evidence has been produced to prove that a “breach” ever occurred.  This vicious attack on workers shows how the capitalists use their state power to control the government, the police and the media.
The leadership of AFSCME, the IT workers’ union, is relying on the state’s anti-outsourcing Pacheco Law to stop the RCC administration from privatizing IT and firing the workers.  But capitalists can always circumvent their own laws.  The Massachusetts state auditor pledged help for the college make its case to skirt Pacheco.  (The state legislature voted in January to grant the public transportation system a three-year reprieve from following Pacheco, a green light to privatize some bus routes.) Under capitalism, workers are not protected by the bosses’ laws, the governor, or the supposedly neutral state auditor’s office.
Build A Movement, Fight to Win!
While many workers at RCC may feel powerless, feelings are not facts.  We can challenge the administration’s power by uniting our natural allies: workers, students and the community. We can expose Roberson’s lies and upset RCC’s status quo.  But even if we stop their plans to privatize IT, the administration would keep trying to use their power to hire and fire, set harsh work rules, and restructure the college.  Our victory,though important, would most likely be short-lived. 
Everybody at RCC knows that the bosses are united against us, and nobody wants to fight and lose. This contradiction in the class struggle under capitalism requires us to think politically and strategically about the meaning of “victory.” Real victory will be ours when the working class makes the rules for society.  To achieve this, we need a long-term revolutionary outlook and a vision for a communist future free from the rule of profit.  This victory may seem far off, but what we do today counts.  We will be moving toward real victory if we build unity and confidence in our class and a spirit of resistance for the long fight ahead.  Today we will be winning if some RCC students and workers decide to embrace this outlook. For the working class, this will be the most important victory of all. We will be building our army for the monumental and decisive battles to come!

Here in Israel, I attended a rally for McDonald’s workers’ rights. Most of the protesters were Jewish students. For the past couple years, they have been fighting for increased wages and rights. However, when workers attend protests, they have gotten fired, suspended, or otherwise harassed.  This protest was in solidarity with those workers to show the bosses that our class will not be intimidated and the movement will not be crushed.
Red Leadership Needed
Before the trade union leaders of Histadrut let me speak on the microphone, they wanted to know what I had to say. I told them, “I wanted to say that in the U.S. there is a similar movement for fast food workers (FF15) and that exploitation in Israel is the same as exploitation worldwide. All working class people have the same struggles and interests and we must unite against our oppressors, the capitalists.”
Upon hearing that, the leader said he represents the union and I cannot talk about exploitation because they are involved in a legal battle. If they claim workers are being exploited, it could be used against them in court. How outrageous! The union leadership is just as fake in Israel as in the U.S.! In fact, they make wimpy U.S. unions look strong. Workers in Israel make about $6.50 an hour. To not call that what it is — exploitation — is ridiculous. True victories have never been won in court but through workers organizing and fighting back.
Histadrut is a Zionist union that supports attacks on Gaza. It collaborated with the ruling class of South Africa under apartheid, and received funding from the CIA as well as the AFL-CIO, the trade union federation in the United States. Workers in Histadrut led a general strike in 2012 for low-wage and subcontracted workers that led to a settlement, including a three-year ban on any further strikes. The role of unions under capitalism is to negotiate the terms of workers’ exploitation, and play workers into the hands of ruling-class parties. This is true worldwide.
Confidence in the Working Class
What gave me hope, however, is talking to everyday people at the rally. I found a lot of people who agreed that workers in Israel and Palestine face the same struggles because of capitalism. Contrary to what I’ve heard, not everyone has been won to Israeli fascism. There are still workers who want to unite with their class in Palestine to create a better world. There are antiracist Jewish workers here, like everywhere else, who are open to communism. We should always have confidence in the working class to understand and fight for communist revolution. Join the fight!

NEW YORK, November 12 — This Veteran’s Day, twenty members and friends of Progressive Labor Party rallied against racist tuition hikes at Medgar Evers College (MEC), a Brooklyn branch of the City University of New York (CUNY). As we confronted campus cops and attacked racist police terror, we explained how imperialism is leading to world war. Most important, we raised the banner of communist revolution.
The next day, at Hunter College in Manhattan, PL’ers attended the much bigger Million Student March. Although if failed to point the way to revolution, three women PL’ers stepped up and provided a communist spark.
Defy the Bosses
At the MEC rally, CHALLENGE practically flew out of our hands; we distributed more than 350 papers before running out. Many student friends came to join us, with two providing strategic leadership. PLP declared that the best way to honor veterans is to fight U.S. imperialism and rally in solidarity with our working-class sisters and brothers in the Middle East.
After an hour-long outdoor demonstration, students made the bold decision to rally inside the MEC cafeteria, though we knew the campus kkkops would give us a hard time. Some students recognized us from our CHALLENGE sales and asked how they might get involved and come to our study groups. Others clapped and chanted with us. When the administration yelled at us to leave, we chanted, “When they say exit, we say fight back!”
With every rally at MEC, we meet more antiracist students. The struggle for a better world will continue as we fight to smash this racist system and replace it with communism!
Three Women Leaders, One Fierce Line
The Million Student March was called to demand tuition-free public college, cancellation of all student debt and a $15 minimum wage for campus workers. With nothing more than a bullhorn, a few signs, and determination, three women comrades again raised the banner of communism.
As we approached the rally, we heard an unamplified chanting with no class content: “CUNY for the people!” But the schools we have today will never be for working people. “Higher education” is an instrument of the ruling class to poison the next generation with racist, sexist ideas, and to justify capitalist inequalities. Colleges and universities foster research that attacks the working class, from military studies to racist pseudo-science on human intelligence. Under communism, after a mass working class seizes state power with a communist revolution, all workers will participate in lifelong education that serves the needs of our class.
At Hunter College, more than 150 protesters marched to Chancellor James B. Milliken’s house to demand an end to tuition hikes. Despite our strength in numbers,  the march organizers called for everyone to follow the cops’ orders. These misleaders led chants like “There is only one solution, intifada revolution” while herding people onto the sidewalk! To be serious about revolution, you have to start training now. You take the streets, you use a bullhorn, and within the limits of the period and situation you defy the cops. You must have confidence in the working class, and you need a revolutionary communist party to lead.
On the march back to Hunter, we chanted, “Tuition hikes mean we got to fight back!” and “If we don’t get it, shut it down!” We linked tuition hikes to racist murders by cops; both are attacks on working-class youth. Soon all 150 people were chanting with us.
As we shared the bullhorn with others, the speeches became more militant, more anti-racist and anti-sexist, more class-based, and more international. It was inspiring to see what three women could do with a bullhorn and a sharp line. With just a little boldness, we were able to shift the politics sharply to the left.
Our struggle will be long and hard, but it makes for a life worth living. As we chanted as the rally, “The only solution is communist revolution!”

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CUNY, like all schools, serves the needs of the bosses. Capitalist education funnels us into the bosses’ system of competition and individualism. It tries to brainwash us into believing in the bosses’ sham of democracy and the myth of equal opportunity.
Since 2011, CUNY tuition has increased $300 per year, and more hikes for the city’four-year colleges are planned. Where is this money going? Not to improve  education for these mainly Black, Latin, Asian, and immigrant students! In fact, our professors, staff, and campus workers haven’t seen a raise in six years. Many live in poverty. Rather, these tuition hikes are funding the bosses’ oil war plans.
In 2013, the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was restored at CUNY. The capitalist rulers are intensifying recruitment of Black, Latin, and immigrant youth as U.S. imperialism moves toward broader global wars. The students now under-served at CUNY (and at public colleges throughout the U.S.) are the ones who will be drafted and sent to fight these wars.
When soldiers rebelled against the Vietnam War, Black soldiers led the way. Recently, in Ferguson and Baltimore, Black workers again led the fightback against racist murders by police. Students and workers have no stake in the bosses’ bloody conflicts. Only communism, a system run by and for workers, can create a world without tuition, poverty, and war.

CHICAGO, November 22 — On any given Saturday night in the trauma unit at Mount Sinai Hospital on Chicago’s West Side, many Black and Latin men are admitted with multiple gunshot wounds. For this comrade and his co-workers, it happens so regularly that it seems almost routine. But there’s nothing acceptable about the street violence—an outgrowth of the daily economic violence of capitalism—that brutalizes members of our class. Equally unacceptable are the proposed “solutions” by the city’s ruling class, from more killer cops on the street to stricter gun legislation to longer prison sentences.
Murderous Care Black Workers
About 30 years ago, when a trauma care network was first established in Chicago, a number of Level 1 trauma centers were created on the city’s North and West sides and nearby suburbs. But only two served the South Side, where the majority of the population is Black: the Michael Reese Hospital and the University of Chicago Medical Center. In 1988, two years after opening it, the obscenely wealthy, Rockefeller-created University of Chicago closed its adult trauma center, citing large financial losses. Today it accepts only patients 15 and younger. Michael Reese Hospital’s trauma center closed in 1991.
The city’s failure to maintain a Level 1 trauma center on the South Side is racist to the core. Most Black victims of major trauma must be transported up to ten miles to a hospital with adequate facilities. According to the American Journal of Public Health, people shot more than five miles from the nearest trauma center are 23 percent more likely to die in transit. Of the two thousand-plus gunshot wound victims in Chicago in 2015 to date, more than 800 fall outside that five-mile radius (Chicago Tribune, 9/11/15).
Racist Liberals Attack; Workers Fight Back
For those who view Democrats as the “lesser evil,” the liberal leaders’ approach to health care in Chicago is instructive. Former Mayor Richard M. Daley did little or nothing during his 22 years in office to re-open a trauma center on the South Side. Current Mayor Rahm Emanuel led the charge to close half the city’s mental health clinics in 2012. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle appears ready to approve the closing of pediatric inpatient services at Stroger Hospital, which serves mostly Black and immigrant workers and their families (see CHALLENGE, 11/11/15).
Meanwhile, Barack Obama is building a $500 million presidential library near the University of Chicago.
Finally after years of pressure from working-class activists, the University of Chicago is partnering with Sinai Health Systems to create a trauma center within Holy Cross Hospital in the city’s Southwest side. But workers must put this “victory” into context. It will do nothing to fight the poverty, desperation and violence created by the capitalist profit system.
Instead of worker-on-worker violence, the international working class needs worker-on-capitalist violence with a mass working-class Red army. We need an army to fight back against the racist Chicago Police Department for the murder of Laquan McDonald. We need to turn the guns around in the escalating imperialist bloodbath in Syria—and aim them at the capitalist bosses on all sides.
Only a communist society will make workers’ health a priority. Only communism can eradicate all the traumas of capitalism—for good.