NEW YORK CITY, March 26 — A five-day occupation in West Harlem on 125 Street is protesting Columbia’s University’s displacement of primarily black and Latino residents and businesses to build a new campus.  About 50 Columbia U. students, community activists and residents marched from the college 20 blocks north to the West Harlem site. 

The main community contingent came from a church where for years PLP has been actively building anti-racist struggle. Students and activists began the occupation, within the expansion area, with a shelter and bathroom provided by a business that has been seized by eminent domain. At least 10 people have slept there nightly, while others came during the day plastering the building with signs and the neighborhood with leaflets. 

On the 24th, the march on Broadway stopped at the site where a worker was killed and two others seriously injured two days before, during demolition work for Columbia.  To save money, the University had contracted with a mob-run outfit, the same one responsible for another death in the expansion zone. We then marched to a nearby apartment complex, where the University and owners have been harassing working-class tenants, and trying to create a Columbia dormitory and market-rate housing. 

Today, a forum at the University attracted about 100 students and community residents. Panel members described why students should fight the expansion; a public housing resident condemned privatization and failing services; a public health psychiatrist exposed the planned destruction of poor NYC communities and many in the audience gave moving testimonials. Students plan to continue the occupation on Friday nights, after an evening of discussion, followed by a neighborhood march on Saturday. Everyone was invited to the monthly social justice meeting we’ve organized at the Harlem church.

During the occupation, PL’ers had many discussions with students on the need for fundamental change. They recognize that bankers run their Ivy League school and inculcate them with ruling-class ideas to educate more capitalist leaders. PL’ers raised the idea that worldwide revolutionary change is both necessary and possible, although it takes patience and a long-range outlook. Most took CHALLENGE and some are interested in joining a study group.

For years, the anti-expansion group relied on politicians and the courts. When this failed, they started building from the bottom up. Most college activists don’t see the need to ally with workers or the community. Building these ties is crucial. Actually, many will face unemployment and unaffordable housing and health care.

Overall, this week was a tremendous step forward in the movement’s militancy, in the bonds between workers, residents and students, and in the level of political discussion.  We’ll deepen the understanding of the need for revolution with our new and old friends.

The bosses’ assault against students and teachers in the United States has reached epic proportions. The capitalists are using standardized curricula and tests to assert more direct control over what is taught. They are attacking wages and conditions for school workers even as they blame teachers for the system’s decay. In large and overcrowded urban districts, where student populations are predominantly black and Latino, dress codes, rigid discipline, and metal detectors are the norm. Students are treated like criminals, with no time off for good behavior.

These racist attacks serve two related purposes for the ruling class. First, they enable the bosses to lay an ideological foundation for intensified fascism. Second, they make it easier to intimidate and militarize youth for the inevitable broader wars against the bosses’ surging imperialist rivals, such as China. The U.S. rulers need to use the schools to protect their profits and shore up their dominant — but declining — position in an increasingly competitive world economy. 

Trillions for War, Zero for Schools

In the current period, the bosses’ economic crisis and the trillions sunk into Afghanistan and Iraq have led to a wave of racist budget cuts and layoffs in public schools throughout the U.S. The results have been devastating. In New York City — the graduation rate hovers around 60 percent — and most graduates require remedial work before they can take college-level courses. In Philadelphia, where the schools had floundered under state stewardship for nearly a decade, district officials estimated it would take until the year 2123 to get all students up to grade level in reading and math. In February, after decades of local mismanagement, the state board of education revoked its accreditation for the entire Kansas City, Missouri school system. Even by the bosses’ own low standards, the public schools are broken.

To distract workers from the real causes of why and how schools are designed to fail, the capitalists push one reform after another. Supported by billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, these range from the small-school movement to the charter school phenomenon to the bosses’ current vogue, an all-out emphasis on “teacher quality.” By using data-driven teacher evaluations, the bosses claim to have found an objective way to improve substandard schools and weed out unqualified instructors.

Useless Tests A Bosses’ Tool

In fact, these evaluations are based significantly on student performance in standardized testing, where the margin of error is so high that they are statistically useless. But as a political tool for the bosses, the evaluations are invaluable. They give the rulers easy scapegoats for the failure of their schools: “bad teachers” and the unions that “protect” them.

Many of the headlines in the teacher-bashing campaign have been seized by Republicans like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker or by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or by capitalists like David and Charles Koch. But the main leadership for this attack comes from the dominant liberal wing of U.S. finance capitalism and its loyal servants: mainstream media like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and the Democratic administration of Barack (“Race to the Top”) Obama.

These rulers do have disagreements. Some of their factions on the right, like the Koch brothers, advocate the gutting of collective bargaining rights and even the abolishing of unions altogether. More dangerous, however, are the liberals who want to use the unions to mislead teachers into thinking their interests are best served by the latest reform. Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the major teacher unions — containing 30 percent of U.S. union members — have willingly collaborated with the bosses in the new evaluation systems. The leaders of these organizations are loyal to the bosses, not to the workers. More insidious are new reformist groups like Educators for Excellence, which has enlisted broad support among young teachers in its reactionary fight against tenure. 

In any case, the political fallout is the same. Under increased pressure, teachers tend to become more controllable. Some workers get caught up in the blame game, with teachers blaming students and parents blaming teachers when the evaluation numbers fall short. 

In a desperate effort by principals and teachers to keep their jobs, some schools focus their attention on students who are relatively close to grade level, triaging the ones who are further behind. As one New York City high school guidance counselor recently told the school’s staff, “Don’t waste your time on them.” The children he was throwing overboard amounted to nearly one-fourth of the student population!  

As always, the school reform’s primary targets — and victims — are the students.

There never was a “golden age” of U.S. public education. While government funding has fluctuated over the past century, the schools’ purpose was always to reinforce capitalist values and the profit system. The overwhelming majority of children are trained for low-paying, subordinate tasks in the rulers’ factories, infrastructure, support services, and military. More than ever, U.S. capitalism requires a politically reliable, highly regimented education system to feed a military that will secure its threatened interests worldwide. It’s no coincidence that Obama’s education reform agenda includes the re-opening of Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs at a number of colleges. 

To meet the rulers’ needs, the schools infect children with capitalist ideology: racism, sexism, individualism, and incessant competition for the best grades and test scores and then jobs, all against a backdrop of extreme racist and sexist inequalities. Rigid discipline and arbitrary rules nurture passive followers. Gross distortions of history — the “bravery” and “heroism” of genocidal monster Christopher Columbus, the “compassion” of white supremacist Abraham Lincoln — rob students of the ability to understand the world. Regimented teaching-to-the-test saps their creativity and analytical thinking. Daily doses of anti-communism steer them away from the one force that can change the world to meet the needs of the working class.

Graduating to Communism

If the situation sounds bleak, it’s crucial to point out that it’s only one side of the story. As the bosses make their plans, so too must the workers. In New York, for example, masses of furious parents, teachers, and students have routinely disrupted the Panel for Educational Policy (the rubber-stamp body that does Mayor Bloomberg’s bidding) with standing-room-only crowds and deafening chants. Rising anger among teachers has led to fresh attempts to form a serious opposition caucus to the sellout union leadership in New York. 

But while this anger itself is positive, and the Party must be immersed in these struggles, no reform will help students get the learning they need. It’s our job to point to the systemic failures of education under capitalism and to win teachers, students and parents to fight for communism and join PLP. To truly educate our children, we must abolish the profit system. We need to create a new society to serve the needs of workers, not the tiny, parasitic minority of bosses. Forward to May Day!

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Obama Rescues Bosses’ Profits

The bosses’ attack against teachers has a precedent in their systematic dismantling of the standard of living of industrial workers in steel and auto, which was won through generations of class struggle. As in the schools, this attack was carried out with the express support of the leadership of the unions.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Obama claimed victory for “rescuing” the auto industry: “We got workers and automakers to settle their differences.” What he really meant was that the bosses forced the workers to accept a two-tier wage system, with new hires making $14 an hour, or half the wages of their previous hires. This give-back was achieved with the active support of the United Auto Workers union leadership. For the bosses, “settling differences” always means protecting bosses’ profits and attacking workers.

CHICAGO, March 24 —  Events and circumstances change if we are prepared, bold and militant! To support the call for justice for Trayvon Martin, twenty Progressive Labor Party members and supporters joined a rally of 300 people at Daley Plaza. The outraged participants demanded that the racist George Zimmerman be arrested for the murder of Trayvon in Sanford, Florida. Speakers called for everything except a communist revolution. Some wanted a U.S. Justice Department investigation, while others took the opportunity to vent about all sorts of past grievances. Only the PL’ers came there to build a movement to end this racist system with communist revolution. To that end, we circulated among the crowd and sold CHALLENGEs and distributed a Party leaflet. 

After the initial rally, the organizers called on everyone to march to a second rally in Millennium Park. During this march, the PL’ers adopted a bold stance and chanted for communist revolution as the only solution to racism and racist killings. We came prepared with our bullhorn, and soon most of the marchers and many bystanders were joining our chants. 

Upon our arrival at Millennium Park, we seized the momentum and drowned out the empty speeches of the organized speakers and called for communist revolution. The crowd gathered around our bullhorn and listened intently and cheered our speeches. We explicitly exposed Barack Obama and the imperialist wing of the U.S. ruling class, along with all of their racist attacks on the working class, from Chicago and Detroit to Baghdad. All the while, we were distributing leaflets and selling CHALLENGEs as fast as we could. The scene was electric and we were unprepared for what followed. The organizers of the event asked our comrades to lead the march back to Daley Plaza. They literally handed over the demonstration to PLP!

We took up the charge and led about 100 protesters back through downtown Chicago with communist chants and speeches. It was reminiscent of our actions in the 1980s, when there was still a shadow of a class movement. The young Party leadership changed the character of the march, arming the workers with a communist analysis and militancy.  People along the march joined our chants with great passion. When we reached the Plaza, we held what was essentially a PLP rally! We gathered information from 20 contacts and are currently pursuing them.  

The events of the day demonstrated that we must be bold and militant when putting forth the Party’s politics.  We should be confident that the working class is ready to embrace our revolutionary communist analysis and plan of action. Death to the racist profit system, power to the working class!

A capitalist crisis is ravaging Pakistan. The working class is fighting back against its devastating effects and against the bosses’ attacks as the latter tries to shift the crisis onto workers’ backs. 

Almost daily workers are organizing demonstrations against the bosses across the country, including railroad and airline workers, and among teachers and women in the healthcare industry who’ve organized huge strikes. In Lahore, the Paramedical Association is waging a militant walkout to win a contract. They have no job security and work long hours at low wages.

Workers Beat Cops

In Faisalabad, during violent street protests against unemployment, the high cost of living and power cuts, workers smashed a government official’s car and badly beat police and private security guards. 

Workers at the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) have been battling the bosses’ thugs, police and army in street battles for two years. They’re continuing their protests against privatization and layoffs. KESC bosses appoint highly paid “executives,” relatives of current political leaders, to gain state support for their repressive tactics against workers, which includes torture.   

Skyrocketing inflation and high prices of basic commodities are forcing many into poverty. Energy shortages, caused by wide-scale mismanagement in the state-owned energy companies, and soaring corruption, nepotism, bribery and favoritism hit hardest in the poor areas where electricity is cut by 70% daily. Only the national capital, Islamabad, and rich areas have power.

Capitalists without the right political connections can’t get energy for industrial production so they close factories, adding to the massive unemployment and bankruptcies. Financial institutions are moving money out of Pakistan, depleting foreign reserves, limiting imports of necessities.  

The national debt has increased 52 percent since 2008, ($1,000/person). The economy is dependant on loans from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. It was weakened by the suspension of a yearly $150 billion fund last November after Pakistan closed U.S/ NATO supply lines to Afghanistan in retaliation for the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by U.S. Predator drones.

Obama Plots with Pakistan Rulers

Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Galani have met as both governments seek to restore their mutually dependant relationship: the Pakistan ruling class gets U.S. military aid and development funds and the U.S has an essential ally for its imperialist designs in the region.

Meanwhile, U.S. drones continue to kill hundreds of Pakistani workers and their families and anger against the U.S. erupts in demonstrations nation-wide. 

Rising Joblessness  

The crisis is hitting workers hard: factory closings increasing unemployment, wage-cuts, unsafe working conditions, harassment of workers on the job, double oppression of women workers and exploitation of children. Five million workers lost their jobs in the last year. Nearly half of the labor force is unemployed or underemployed. 

In Faisalabad, Pakistan’s industrial capital and third largest city, half a million workers have lost their jobs in the past two years as weekly power cuts halt production and bosses close factories, some moving to Bangladesh.

Because of the energy crisis, self-employed workers — tailors, masons, carpenters, mechanics and electricians and workers at CNG stations (Compressed Natural Gas) — cannot earn enough to support their families.
Women healthcare workers are denied contracts. In Sindh province they haven’t been paid for three months. Sindh teachers are denied status as permanent employees and therefore have no benefits or pensions. 

People are dying from lack of basic health care.  Suicide amongst the unemployed is becoming common. Recently a jobless man in a village close to Faisalabad, worried about feeding his family, committed suicide after killing his two daughters. A young man with a masters degree in business administration also committed suicide because of his failure to find a job over a year after graduating. His father had spent his life savings on his son’s education.

Poverty prevents four out of ten children from attending school. Eighty percent can’t get a proper education. Parents are forced to send them to work to help sustain the family. Ten million school-age children work collecting garbage. 

Bosses’ Tools: Nationalism, Puppet Unions

The ruling class is using two weapons to combat workers’ militancy: nationalism to divide them and pro-boss puppet union misleaders to control them. 

These unions are affiliated with the ruling party. They lead strikes but calm down workers’ anger with lies like “your demands have been accepted and you will be rid of these problems soon.” They help the ruling class to disperse crowds with tear gas and baton charges. They target activists for “disappearances,” imprisonment and assassinations.  

Urdu is Pakistan’s national language, although the various regions have distinct languages. Until recently, for the most part, the population identified itself as Pakistani regardless of linguistic or territorial differences. Now the rulers are openly spreading nationalism, hoping to splinter the solidarity that workers in all sectors are developing. The President, one of the country’s wealthy landowners, with estates in Sindh province, joined in, calling for “the integrity of Sindh.” The Prime Minister announced that he would protect his language, Saraiki, by dissolving Punjab province if necessary.

Murderous riots broke out in Karachi (Pakistan’s largest city) during last year’s elections when both Sindhi and Urdu rival political parties employed thugs to attack workers, blaming other parties in order to influence workers to vote for their particular linguistic group.

To combat all this and give leadership to our class, PLP is always exposing the bosses’ divisive nationalism and the capitalist system as the cause of all the workers’ problems. We’re unmasking the dirty role of the phony trade union leadership by building the Party in the factories and workplaces and by spreading our communist literature.

Friends and members of the revolutionary international communist PLP are convinced that only worldwide communist revolution can uproot the profit system’s wars, exploitation, poverty and injustice. We’re confident as we try to convert the terror of this economic and political disaster into an opportunity to build a communist movement under the red banner of PLP.