NEW YORK CITY, November 4 — “No Contract, No Peace!” Today, 800 workers and students rallied outside of City University of New York headquarters demanding a raise. This struggle is intensifying the contradiction between union leadership and the need for communist leadership.
The cops made a mass arrest of 54 workers who staged a planned act of civil disobedience by blocking the entrance of the building (see letter). They are part of the Professional Staff Congress union (PSC). We salute our sisters and brothers and respect their willingness to put themselves on the line.
This rally had many strengths: the spirited leadership by workers, the multiracial and intergenerational unity. The chants included calling for a strike and calling to shut down the city. College students played a leadership role in the march and called for a massive student march next week. One worker in PSC said, “We will need some uncivil disobedience.” While civil disobedience can bring public attention to the CUNY crisis, they can also build the illusion that workers can negotiate within this capitalist system.
Don’t Negotiate, Fight Back!
What kind of leadership do professors and students need at CUNY? The limits of leadership under union president Barbara Bowen are high and lead us down a path of negotiation with oppressors. What we need is communist leadership leading us on the path to revolution. Let’s go on a strike against racist attacks on our class with other city workers and students to shut this city down.
It is no surprise that 25,000 have been working without a contract for six years at a university system that teaches 500,000 students. Clearly, putting the emphasis on contract negotiations has not borne fruit. The union itself described the latest contract offer as a “severe disappointment.”
We can push the limits of this struggle. PSC failed to unite with its natural allies: campus workers. The largest labor union in the city, DC 37, also has been working without a contract. These are some of same workers who keep the college campuses running. Professors and staff at PSC should unite with workers from DC 37, who are mainly Black and Latin manual laborers. 
We also need to politicize our campuses about the nature of capitalist education and racism. The fight for high wages cannot stay an economic one. It must be the one and the same fight against tuition hikes and police on campuses. A lesson we are learning here is not to underestimate what the working class can do when they are mobilized.
It’s our job to continue to build inside the PSC and transform the fight for our daily needs into the fight for communist revolution. PLP members hope to win many union members to become communist organizers. Moving forward, we must discuss the historical role of unions in global capitalism.
*******
Whose CUNY? Not Our CUNY
CUNY, like all schools, is a place where capitalist ideas are driven into the minds of the working class. From kindergarten, we are taught that competition is better than cooperation; some people are smart and others dumb; the rich and poor deserve to their place in life; racism and sexism have always and will always exist; and the individual is the most important thing. We have all been told that capitalism, even if it’s not the best society we can think of, is the best society we can hope for. And just in case we don’t quite believe it, they add a large serving of anti-communism and lies about the Soviet Union.
So, it’s no surprise that all of the racism, sexism, exploitation and union-busting are on full display at CUNY. The faculty and staff are engaged in the fight for a better contract against the Board of Trustees and Governor Cuomo (see sidebar). More and more classes are taught by adjuncts, which have zero job security, little benefits, and earn literally starvation wages. One out of every four adjuncts lives at or below the poverty level, and are in a government assistance program like Medicaid or food stamps (The Atlantic, 8/15/15).
CUNY is a racist institution where Black, Latin, and South Asian students are shuffled into community colleges and Reserve Officer Training Core (ROTC). The senior colleges are increasingly white. This segregation divides students and leads us to blame each other for the failures of capitalism. The CUNY bosses just approved continuation of annual tuition hike! Yet, the rulers want to rally support for war from the same students they alienate. After decades of sharp struggle to kick them out, ROTC programs have returned to two campuses. David Petraeus, former head of the CIA and military commander in Afghanistan and Iraq has been teaching at CUNY, despite protests against his appointment. There is a lot to be angry about.
But, schools are also a place where thousands of working class students come to study in the hopes of improving their lives and learning about the world. It has a tradition of fightback, including the huge student movement for equal access to education for Black and Latin students. CUNY has attracted many progressive workers who want to serve and fight with the working class.
Ultimately, CUNY is not “ours” to take back. The University does not belong to the working class. Like all institutions under capitalism, it belongs to the capitalist rulers. But it is a battleground for communist ideas. Let’s fight the good fight!
*****
Who does Andrew Cuomo Serve?
Like all politicians, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo serves the ruling class, never working people and students. The following facts show how Cuomo attacks the working class and takes his marching orders from the bankers and bosses:
Cuomo earned $2.5 million in a three-year period after he left the Clinton Administration working for Andrew Farkas, a wealthy real estate developer.
Farkas and his associates contributed over $800,000 to Cuomo’s election campaign, with billionaire David Koch also contributing a large sum.
As soon as Cuomo took office, he promised to cut taxes on the wealthy and reduce benefits to public employees, promises he made good on.
Cuomo coerced two state unions (CSEA and PEF) to accept contracts that included a three-year salary freeze, nine unpaid furlough days, and higher payments for health care premiums.
In March 2012, Cuomo pushed through a state pension plan that provides lower pension benefits and raises the minimum retirement age.
In his first budget, Cuomo reduced state spending on education by $1.3 billion, forcing statewide layoffs of teachers and larger class sizes. What a racist attack on these already under-financed schools!
Cuomo allowed the “Millionaire’s Tax,” a tax on households earning over $500,000 a year, to expire. This tax had provided hundreds of millions of in-state revenue.
Cuomo has been the most powerful New York cheerleader for hyper-segregated charter schools. It’s no coincidence that he collected $800,000 in campaign contributions from bankers and businesses that back these schools.
Members and friends of our Party have been hurt to learn of the death of comrade Gene Zbikowski on October 31 from a sudden heart attack at age 62. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his wife Noémie and their three children. Gene had been our correspondent in France for well over a decade, writing articles about workers’ struggles there and throughout Europe. He also translated editorials and articles into French for Le Defi (the French edition of CHALLENGE) which were very useful for the Party in Haiti. He also sent us a stream of translations of exposés appearing in the French press.
Gene joined the Party in Minnesota in the early 1970s. He later settled in Nantes, married and raised a family while teaching at a community college from which he recently retired. At one point he discovered CHALLENGE on the Internet and contacted our then-editor, comrade Luis Castro, who suggested he write for the paper. Gene said he had always wanted to be a journalist and told us, “Now I have my chance!”
Over the years Gene covered the many strikes and rebellions raging in France, sent us pictures of the workers’ fightbacks and their May Day marches, exposed the phony French “communist” party, the pro-capitalist Socialists, and the ruling class’s spread of anti-Muslim and anti-Black racism. He especially stripped bare the sellout nature of the pro-boss trade union misleaders. He would often intersperse the writings of Marx and Lenin where applicable in his reports on the class struggles in France.
During one nation-wide strike, he invited a Party comrade to Nantes where he was warmly greeted as he brought solidarity greetings to sanitation workers on the picket lines there.
Comrade Gene’s contribution to the international communist movement being built by PLP will be deeply missed. His legacy will be everlasting in all his reports of workers’ class struggles that will become stepping stones in the march towards communist revolution.
- Information
Judy Catchpole: Fierce Fighter, Fierce Lover of the Working Class
- Information
- 15 November 2015 157 hits
On October 9, Comrade Judy Catchpole died at age 78. A proud daughter of the working class, she fought through every stage of her life. Judy joined PL forty-five years ago while working for the NYC welfare department. For years she sold Challenge, took part in street rallies, and built our Party. Though she could be rough around the edges, no one could doubt her commitment to the fight for communist revolution!
Although short in stature, Judy’s heart and fearlessness made her a force to behold. Several comrades tell of demonstrations where she shielded them with her body from police and/or union goons. During a demonstration against the opening of a slave labor workfare office, Judy managed to get past the welfare patrolmen and into the building. No other demonstrator got that far. She certainly didn’t just talk the talk; she walked the walk.
Judy was fearless not only in the streets, but also on the job. She fought back against speed up and low pay, fought to build a worker-client alliance to unite welfare workers and welfare recipients, and fought for an egalitarian future through communist revolution. She was fired for a time while working at a Brooklyn child welfare office, but fought alongside other PL welfare workers to reverse her firing. We were able to collect money to support Judy for the three months she was off the job by visiting welfare offices around the city. We demonstrated at the hearings held about her case and she won her job back.
Judy came from a large white working-class family from upstate New York and spoke about them often. She built a multiracial family. She loved her daughter, grandchildren and great granddaughter. She worried about the ways that racism would affect their lives and always wanted them to take part in the fight that in many ways defined her life. In the last years of her life, she was disabled by serious illness but always kept up with world events and wanted to discuss what the Party was doing about problems faced by workers around the world. She would have been happy that her family was represented three days after her funeral at the rally for Justice for Kyam Livingston.
SILICONE VALLEY, October 26—In a large Bay Area city, more than 30 women, men, and children protested high rents, racist evictions, and homelessness—all products of the profit-mad capitalist system. Evictions are increasing in this high-tech region and disproportionately affect Black and Latin workers; the city’s Black population has dropped by half in the past twenty-five years, with 35,000 people displaced. Although Black workers now represent only 6 percent of the city’s population, they make up 25 percent of the homeless.
Fightbacks are growing. At one busy intersection, there are spirited weekly demonstrations by Residents for Renters Protection. People chant, sing, and bring posters in English and Spanish to publicize the fight, with members and friends of Progressive Labor Party protesting in solidarity. There were upraised fists, honking horns, and high fives from pedestrians and people in passing cars and buses. Most of the protesters work in low-wage food, retail and service industries. They are systematically being evicted out of this city.
Residents for Renters Protection plans to present the City Council with demands for rent stabilization on older units and against arbitrary evictions. One member lamented, “We only have one supporter on the City Council—all the others don’t want to confront the real estate cabal.” This led to discussions about bringing more workers from local unions and other organizations to the rallies in an effort to pressure the capitalist politicians to institute rent controls.
Housing for Shelter,
Not for Profit
PL’ers brought the CHALLENGE article, “Homelessness Part and Parcel of Capitalism.” It explained that the root cause of homelessness is the capitalist crisis of overproduction. As real estate developers build new condominiums and evict tenants to attract higher-paid tech workers, there is an epidemic of homelessness. Workers have no friends on the City Council or any branch of government. We can rely on only our class.
PLP captured this contradiction with a poster: “Housing for Shelter, Not for Profit.” Spanish-speaking protesters helped us translate: “Vivienda Para Vivir, Sin Fines de Lucro.” This idea spurred deeper conversations at the protest and at dinner afterward about the possibility of a communist society that would serve workers’ basic needs: decent housing, nutritious food, and meaningful work.
When we abolish money, wages and profit, the motivation of shared responsibility to provide for the health and nutrition of neighborhood families could grow. Perhaps yesterday’s small restaurants could be tomorrow’s neighborhood cafeteria for families returning from school and work, a place where neighbors could enjoy a delicious, healthy meal. Nobody will be homeless or have to live in small, decrepit apartments. Under communism, we can truly build a world where everyone’s needs are met.
On November 4, an estimated 250 workers were producing plastic bags inside Rajput Polyester Factory when the building collapsed near Lahore, Pakistan. The official death toll is 45 workers. The rest are wounded or still trapped under the debris.
Majority of these workers are teenage or young adult men from farther districts who work for about $120 a month. Many live or sleep in the factory. The factory continued to function after it took a hit from last month’s earthquake.
The politicians and bureaucrats are running slow rescue missions and phony investigations. The working class doesn’t need a verdict to know who’s guilty: these factory bosses and the imperialists they serve.
Whenever a disaster hits, be it blatantly capitalist like a factory collapse or caused by capitalism like Hurricane Katrina, the working-class never recovers from those conditions. Years after the garment factory collapse at Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza that murdered over 1,133 people, the conditions are still death traps. Months after the chemical explosion in Tianjin, China, many are still searching for jobs and homes.
Imperialist Rivalry in Pakistan Intensifies
The workers in Lahore, like workers everywhere, suffer one capitalist attack after another. Last year, a mosque collapsed, killing over 200. The year before that, massive floods forced masses to flee their homes. The second attack on workers in Pakistan comes in the form of imperialist rivalry. There is no excuse but capitalism for a country that can accept a $46 billion investment deal with China to build the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor but can’t invest in infrastructure?
For the bosses, be it in China, Pakistan, or the United States, their top priority is oil profits, not workers’ blood. On November 11, Pakistan handing over 2,300 acres of land in its poorest province, Baluchistan, in a 43-year tax-exempt lease to China. This move will build a network of transportation for oil and gas, connecting China directly to the Arabian Sea. As Challenge goes to press, China has taken official control of Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which, lying next to the Strait of Hormuz, is a key gateway to oil-exporting Gulf countries. This means a challenge to imperialist rival, United States. For the working class in Pakistan, it means ratcheting up exploitation, displacement if their homes are “in the way” of the economic corridor, and war.
Bury the Bosses
What should our response be to this factory collapse and economic corridor? Bury the bosses and their killer profit wars. Progressive Labor Party must respond to this attack on the working class with mass fightback. From Pakistan to Colombia to Haiti, PLP fights with and serves the working class. Comrades everywhere must raise this attack on workers in Pakistan at their local unions, jobs, hospitals, schools, and unemployment offices. Be it in the Professional Staff Congress, the Unitarian Church, or in the streets during a Challenge sale, raise international solidarity with workers in Pakistan!
