NEW YORK CITY, March 13 — Students and teachers took to the streets last Thursday once again to protest the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposal to collocate a charter elementary school into the Tilden campus building. It already houses three high schools. This time the struggle was taken to the steps of Tweed, the DOE’s headquarters in Manhattan. Students from Brownsville Academy, who recently won their collocation, fight joined dozens of students and staff from the Tilden campus. Despite the cold and rain, spirits were high as students picketed and chanted. Many received CHALLENGE.
Collocations and school closings are the order of the day for thousands of predominantly black, Latino and immigrant schools citywide. Under capitalism these attacks will continue because the bosses cannot afford, and has no interest, to educate all children. Capitalism needs millions of working-class youth to settle for being the next foot soldier, prisoner, low-paid worker or part of the unemployed.
If students blame themselves for failing the tests required to graduate, the bosses don’t have to worry about them questioning this racist system. Budget cuts, large class sizes, and the instability caused by these collocations and school closings are just some of the racist attacks students face every day they make focusing in the classroom, and passing standardized exams more difficult.
After some chanting, students gave passionate speeches about the need to fight the collocation. The Tilden students gave a perseverance award to the Brownsville Academy students for their successful struggle against a DOE proposal to collocate their school and for their solidarity with the struggle at the Tilden campus. Students marched into Tweed to deliver a “math award” to the DOE’s office of space planning for figuring out how to fit over 300 students and staff into 12 classrooms! The cheering crowd then marched to City Hall to deliver a “disrespect award” to Mayor Bloomberg.  More chants and fists in the air ended the day’s rally.
The fight against this collocation will continue. Angry workers, parents, and students organized against the proposal to shut down 22 schools. The Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), Bloomberg’s cronies, voted to pass it. In fact the PEP has always voted in favor of the DOE’s proposals. It is clear that workers do not live under a democracy, but rather a ruling-class dictatorship. The capitalists and their government appointees will continue to attack us until we realize that the international working class has the power to shut their system down!

ALGIERS, March 4 – Wildcatting dairy workers have taken on four enemies in one fell swoop: union misleaders, company bosses, the courts and the government.
Workers at the largest dairy supplying the capital are continuing their February 28 wildcat against the official trade union and its corrupt general secretary, Khelifi Ali. The strike has shut the public-sector Colaital dairy company in Birkhadem, six miles south of here.
The workers have defied a court ruling the wildcat as illegal. The general director of the government’s National Milk Office (ONIL), Fethi Messar, is ordering in police as strike-breakers. The ONIL is also increasing production at 11 other dairies in order to help break the strike. Meanwhile, Messar said he’s willing to “mediate” the conflict.
The strikers are demanding a wage hike and the resignation of Khelifi Ali and his cronies. A minority of the dairy workers are striking, but they’ve blocked the strategic pre-pack unit, closing operations. Public-sector dairy managers and the union misleadership made joint threats to try to prevent the strike.
The struggle began on February 7 when the dairy workers first struck against the company union and for higher wages, permanent jobs for the temporary workers and reinstatement of unjustly-fired workers. The three-day walkout ended with the workers winning a 40 percent pay hike and the permanent hiring of 100 temporary workers, while obtaining the “freezing” of company-union activities, Khelifi Ali’s removal and a general assembly to elect a new union leadership.
Oust Union Traitors,Strike to Enforce It
When the authorities failed to call an assembly, on February 21 the workers held one on their own and voted out the corrupt leaders. But the company union has refused to recognize the vote, leading to the present strike. The courts ruled the strike “illegal” since the bosses’ law does not permit a strike to change the union leadership.
The action hits a key sector here where per capita milk consumption is 137 liters/year (U.S. consumption is 72 liters/year). The strike has already caused a shortage of pasteurized powdered milk in the shops.
Class relations are clear in Algeria. In their struggle, the Birkhadem dairy workers are fighting four enemies: the misleader of the only government-recognized union, Khelifi Ali; the courts; the general director of the public-sector company, Derouiche Mohamed Abdelhamid; and the government’s general director of the ONIL, Fethi Messar. Sellout union, judge, company and government — all in one bag!
It’s clear that real victory cannot come from chopping off only one of the monster’s heads, Khelifi Ali. Workers will also need to defeat company management and the government. Ultimately, only communist revolution can beat that gang-up.

The Progressive Labor Party has repeatedly warned workers of coming wars leading to a major war to decide which imperialist(s) will control the world. We’ve said that the U.S. ruling class will use its state power to prepare and try to mobilize the population for war.
On March 20, 2012, the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) Independent Task Force (ITF) on U.S. Education Reform and National Security issued its 96-page report. The CFR is the key U.S. ruling-class think tank directing U.S. imperialism’s foreign policy and influencing government officials who are instrumental in their plans. It’s significant that it appointed a Task Force headed by Condoleezza Rice, former George W. Bush’s Secretary of State (a key figure in both Iraq wars), and Joel Klein, ex-chancellor of New York City’s schools.
U.S. rulers are trying to seize an opportunity created for them by the right-wing “education reform” (ER) movement. It has successfully mobilized some parents and others to attack unionized public school teachers; demanded the use of standardized test scores to produce “data-driven” evaluations of teachers; popularized the call for charter schools and the closing of public schools; and called on state governments to institute a “common core curriculum.” The ER movement is responsible for right-wing superintendents like Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C. and Cami Anderson in Newark.
Based on this ER platform, the ITF proposes using the common core curriculum standards to “ensure that students are mastering the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard the country’s national security,” i.e., military, foreign service and defense industry skills; to push patriotism more sharply in civics classes and other school curricula; to sharpen competition between public, charter and private schools; and to institute a “national security readiness audit” in order to censure those educators not falling in line with the bosses’ plans.
This audit will also inculcate nationalistic and competitive ideas in students’ and teachers’ minds. All this enables the ruling class to institute a higher level of social control in the schools and prepare U.S. youth for major conflicts — imperialist war — with one or more of its main competitors in the world.
Wrapping its rhetoric in the specter of threats to the U.S. “leadership role” in the world, the ITF report gives away its real agenda early on. It says explicitly that the U.S. “Education Crisis Is a National Security Crisis” (page 7). Its “five distinct threats” include U.S. economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, global awareness and unity and cohesion (pp. 7-13). Each of these “threats” signifies an area this ruling class-led group has identified as critical to address in the lead-up to imperialist-led genocide.
The ITF’s citing of these threats reflects the current rise of China and other competing imperialists, whose goal is to replace the U.S. in its current number one position. The ITF says U.S. workers lack the skills necessary to enable U.S. businesses to turn back these challenges by maximizing productivity per worker, bringing the bosses higher profits. They bemoan the reality that 75 percent of U.S. youth (particularly black and Latino youth) are not qualified to join the military. This is mostly because many don’t graduate from high school or are not otherwise prepared to be soldiers in today’s high-tech armed forces.
The report further criticizes U.S. schools for not producing enough graduates proficient in foreign languages who can work as diplomats and/or spies, Special Forces and overseas agents for U.S. corporations. The ITF also cites the growing “education/mobility gap” (really just a product of the bosses’ economic crisis on top of their racist and anti-working-class policies). They believe this growing inequality will impair workers’ loyalty to, and willingness to die for, U.S. imperialism.
The ITF fears that “this trend could cause the United States to turn inward and become less capable of being a stabilizing force in the world.” This view represents the thinking of the most powerful capitalists, for whom “stability” is a codeword for continued U.S. political and economic domination.
PLP forces, both inside and outside the schools, must expose these atrocious profit-driven goals. Just as the “education reform” movement has given the rulers an opportunity they might use for their purposes, communist leadership in the schools can turn the tables on them. A militant left-led mass movement of students, parents and workers against racism, sexism, fascism and imperialist war would be an important component of PLP’s drive towards communist revolution.

Tel-Aviv, Israel-Palestine, March 8 — Over 100 working women and men marched in central Tel-Aviv to mark International Women’s Day. Two PL’ers joined the march and distributed CHALLENGEs in Hebrew and English.
This march was dotted with red flags and represented multi-ethnic unity of working women. While small, the march was very sharp, politically speaking, with the red flags and energetic chants of “The Answer to Racism is Revolution” and “The Answer to Sexism is Revolution”.
We in Progressive Labor Party welcome the demand for revolution. Indeed, while we do disagree with the organizers of the march on many subjects, to have International Women’s Day marked with red flags and chants calling for revolution was a very welcome change from the liberal feminist slogans and commercialization seen on this day.
As our Party continues to grow we will have our own contingent marching on International Women’s Day under our own flags and with our own chants, not merely calling for a revolution, but for a communist revolution.