OAKLAND, CA, October 28 — At Occupy Oakland, workers and students reclaimed Oscar Grant Plaza after the occupation was brutally attacked on October 26 by a full-scale military action of 500-600 kkkops from 17 different Bay Area agencies.  The cops invaded the camp, which included children, at 5:30 AM with flash grenades, percussion bombs and tear gas. Eighty-five people were arrested that morning, and more than 100 during the day.

Like the fascist response to the Oscar Grant demonstration protesting his murder by racist
cops several months ago, this was a well-planned domestic version of the “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Oakland politicians and police are well-rehearsed from years of attacking black and Latino youth. Now they have redesigned their security to handle mass uprisings.

Far from being intimidated by this police brutality, over 1,000 Oakland workers and students fought back. They gathered at the main library for a rally, then marched to the police department and jail to demand the release of arrested comrades before returning to City Hall. CHALLENGE was distributed along the way.

At 6:30 PM, the cops gave protesters five minutes to disperse or face mass arrests. But it wasn’t until 7:45 PM that the cops again attacked with tear gas and flash grenades. One Iraq vet, Scott Olsen, had his skull broken by a tear gas canister. These fascists wouldn’t even let people carry him away without tossing a flash grenade near him. The rebellion lasted until midnight.

By Wednesday night, workers and students had taken back Oscar Grant Plaza at 14th and Broadway and torn down the fences around the park. The daily General Assembly (GA) began at 7 PM.  By 10 PM, 1,486 people had voted to have a one-day general strike on November 2nd. The tents had returned the next day.

Over 1,000 people have attended the GA each night since the camp was raided. Liberal mayor Jean Quan tried to speak but was told to “go home!” She did. For now, the cops are laying low. Such a fascist attack proves that the cops are enemies of the working class and a direct arm of the state.

For some, Occupy Oakland is a base camp for the local struggle against capitalism. While the Occupiers and their supporters span the political spectrum, there certainly are many who want a new economic and political system. PL’ers had conversations where Occupiers actively shared their ideas about how to organize a new society as an alternative to profits and capitalism.

On visits, PLP members talked with individuals about producing things for need and voluntary commitment to work for all instead of a wage system. Many wanted to “tax the rich,” but others wanted something more fundamental.  We had a good reception to the CHALLENGE headline, “Only Revolution, Not Voting, Can End Capitalism’s Racism, War and Unemployment.”

A few transit workers and other friends have joined us at the camp visits, rallies and meetings. Occupy Oakland called for a general strike “against an economic system built on inequality and corporate power that perpetuates racism, sexism and the destruction of the environment” (see later report on page 1).

This movement gives us opportunities to connect Occupy Oakland to the jobs where we are actively fighting back. Some are promoting the general strike at work. This encourages political strikes against the system as a whole rather than just for wages and benefits. One bus driver recently commented, “I get it!. All that stuff you’ve been saying about how banks  and corporations control transit — it’s all coming true.”

Others, however, express hesitation due to their experiences with racist cops and bosses, who use racism to divide workers and attack in particular dark-skinned workers. Yet the constant attacks enrage these same workers. The Occupy movement makes it easier for PLP to expose the class rule of finance capitalists.J

Bankers Are Vultures on Carcass of Public Services

The big banks have an organized apparatus of “public” transit agencies, commissions, managers, legislators and court decisions that feeds money collected from the working class to private capitalists. Communists call this state power.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) controls funding for Bay Area transit. The MTC is subsidizing hedge funds while attacking transit workers and passengers.

Hedge funds Amerimar Enterprises in Philadelphia, and Angelo, Gordon and Co. in New York made $33 million in profits from the sale of a U.S. Postal Service property in San Francisco to the MTC. These transactions allowed public tax dollars (the post office property) and fees paid by the public (MTC-collected bridge tolls) to go directly to profit finance capitalists.

Bay-Area wide, the MTC plans to cut service and jobs by $80 million per year. With control of funding, the MTC will demand scrapping work rules, and will use part-time bus drivers to cut service. SF MUNI Management is well on its way. By 2014, they plan to cut the budget almost $24 million by using part-time jobs to reduce service.

Look at the massive New York transit system. It has always been an ATM machine for Wall St. The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is currently proposing its biggest-ever borrowing program of $14.8 billion over a five-year period to fund its capital projects. In addition to paying interest to bondholders, the MTA must pay fees to the bankers who package and sell the bonds, amounting to between $2.50 and $5 on every $1,000 worth of debt.

Financial institutions underwriting the bonds include Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merriill Lynch, J.P Morgan, Jeffreys and Co, Jackson, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. Over the last two years, these capitalists earned $39.7 million in fees by issuing bonds.J

LOS ANGELES —In the Occupy movement here, PL’ers led a roaring march of about 50 people — which grew as we marched — around City Hall, chanting, “Stop racist police brutality, stand with Boston in solidarity.” OccupyLA is approaching its 30th day here. To date, the occupiers have gotten very little resistance from the police — in contrast to Oakland, Denver, Atlanta, Boston and New York, where hundreds bravely fought against the cops. The participants here include a hodgepodge of individuals ranging from union hacks and pro-democracy types to fake leftists, undercover cops and disrupters. But most important are the honest youth, students and workers, employed and unemployed, who are enraged at the horrors of capitalism. We found this out first-hand when we helped spark the march against police brutality.

One of the growing frustrations in the camp has been the ineffectiveness of the General Assembly, which is essentially the “leaderless” leadership body with rules that allow one or two individuals to prevent a proposal from passing despite the large majority in agreement. A group trying to form an anti-police brutality committee was shut down and called provocateurs by “leaders” taking advantage of these rules.

But at one meeting we met a few individuals who were upset about the General Assembly.  A small discussion started, and it was announced that up to 100 people had been arrested in Boston. The discussion turned to racist police brutality, and what, if anything, to do about it. Some of the misleaders who later joined the gathering tried to “facilitate” (that is, take over) the meeting. They called for a moment of silence in solidarity with our Boston brothers and sisters. They did not want to “provoke the police” or fight racism and argued that the cops were “part of the 99%.”

The gathering grew to about 50 people, which showed younger comrades how sharp ideas can influence a larger body. More important, it was good for them to see that many people supported our idea of calling the police racist defenders of the state and Wall Street, in opposition to the more visible “leaders.”  It was a great moment of unity in the fight against racism. That’s when we led this march around City Hall, especially significant after the demoralizing General Assembly.

Friendships that started with this action have become a small base for our Party as we organize anti-racist actions, ignoring the reformist “leadership” group. Our work is a small step in the right direction, but we need do a better job at mobilizing all our clubs and friends to get involved on a more consistent basis. We need to improve our open presence with CHALLENGE.

However, with the modest efforts of some comrades, we’ve gotten to know a few individuals fairly well and more recently have discussed CHALLENGE with one. We’ve also helped mobilize members of one church to participate on a few occasions. One of them has participated in PL events and wants to learn how the Party organizes in such situation.

We know the bosses’ only interest in allowing such Occupy movements to exist is to push patriotism in their “pro-democracy” rhetoric and to lead them toward the voting booth. But they can also be schools for communism if we and our friends are there, in the muck and mire and sleeping bags and tents. Join the struggle! Join Progressive Labor Party!J

My comrade in PLP and myself try to encourage each other to overcome our resistance to engaging with our friends in the community. We decided to go to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Dilworth Plaza here in Philadelphia. He had brought CHALLENGEs to sell.

 As we rounded City Hall, we made our way through the lanes of “occupying tents” toward the crowd having an open meeting at the Tech Tent. It was presented by a coalition — All Mothers are Working Mothers; Payday for Men; Women’s Global Strike; and DHS-Give Us Back Our Children — to  about 35 people, from their late teens to retirees, listening closely to explanations of the sexist and economic injustice faced by parents and children.

These painful experiences were often generated by both governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which supposedly give aid to families. The crowd was equally divided among black and white, as well as Southeast Asians and Latinos; about two-thirds were female. We were being urged to fight to support justice and demand better services for moms, dads and children.

Amid this rally, I had a strong memory of myself as a teen-aged woman
listening to protest leaders and experiencing the awakening of my own political mind. A “speak-out” line was forming at the mike. I’ve had a “communist education” from the PLP — through my spouse, our PLP club, area leader, reading CHALLENGE, attending Party conventions, then bringing these ideas to co-workers, friends, and family members and participating in PL-led anti-fascist demonstrations.
I discussed the idea with my comrade about saying a few words at the mike. We agreed and I got in line to be handed the mike a few moments later and began speaking.

I agreed that sexism is oppressing us in many cruel ways. Most men and their children suffer from the effects of this sexism on the women they love and experience it directly on themselves as well. We face the same basic problems and we can face them together when we unite and create a society without sexist oppression. Many in the crowd applauded.

I said the division and injustices of sexism, added to the worst kind of racism and patriotism, keep us blaming other groups of workers, both employed and unemployed. While acknowledging that some people react negatively to the word “communism,” I declared that the only way to defeat sexism and racism is for all workers, men and women, young and old, to organize to defeat capitalism.

This profit-maximizing system cannot allow us workers any gains without snatching them right back. I said we need to get rid of this whole system and called for a communist-led society where meeting the needs of the workers drives the decisions.

At this point I was being tapped on the elbow to give up the mike, but was able to conclude that the Progressive Labor Party was leading this fight to create a world of equality and sharing and that the paper we were distributing would give more information. The audience expressed warm applause.

My comrade and I distributed the remaining CHALLENGEs. We discussed the strengths and weaknesses of our actions and words and agreed that it was important practice.

The ongoing class war is being waged against us whether we choose to see it or not. We dedicate this letter to inspiring our comrades in PL (such as myself) to put into action the Party’s ideas to build working-class warriors determined to bring about our goal of a communist world.J

Comrade in Philly

CHICAGO, November 1 — While the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement continues to grow worldwide, Occupy Chicago has moved in that same direction. Progressive Labor Party has been there since the beginning, selling CHALLENGE and trying to channel the movement towards communism. For the past month students, workers (employed and unemployed), doctors, nurses, teachers and others have built Occupy Chicago from a few angry people into a lot of angry workers. PL applauds this effort, but without communist revolution we’ll continue to be at the bosses’ mercy.

There’s a lot we communists can learn from this movement and there’s also a lot we can teach those in it. One is that non-violence doesn’t work when the bosses’ main tool is violence. On Occupy Chicago’s main website, they list their “Declaration of Nonviolence” which reads: “Occupy Chicago reassures its members and the public that we are a social movement dedicated to nonviolent action.”

We’ve struggled with OWS to see that non-violence is useless when the ruling class is committing genocide against the working class on a daily basis, whether it’s on the streets of Chicago, Oakland, New York, Rome, London or Rwanda; whether at Cook County Board meetings where they close hospitals, or in the schools or the jails. As long as capitalism exists, there can be no peace anywhere.

That lesson was taught the hard way to this movement. Over the past three weekends, the Chicago kkkops have arrested hundreds of the occupiers. On October 24, they arrested 130 people just for being in Grant Park after hours. The cops say they’re “protecting the peace.” But when a concert or a football game at nearby Soldier Field ends late and people are just hanging out in the park, there’s not a cop to be found.

One student protester who was there that night told us: “We were just sitting in the park peacefully. We made our tents and were prepared to stay for the night. The cops told us to leave at 11 PM. Some did but the majority said no, we’re not moving. At 12:30 AM, two big spotlights went on and about 200 cops in riot gear came out of nowhere and started arresting and beating people. They cut up tents and destroyed people’s stuff and just took people to jail. It was surreal.”

Also arrested were two nurses, there to make sure that protesters received proper medical treatment. Funny, the bosses say they have no money to keep open Oak Forest Hospital, from where 243 long-term patients have since been moved and have died. But they somehow have money to pay killer cops to arrest non-violent protesters. That’s capitalism!

We relayed that fact to the student protester who described that night. We gave her a copy of CHALLENGE and she gave us her contact info to stay in touch.

Another point that we raised to the Occupy movement is its lack of black and Latino workers, on whom capitalism’s hammer comes down first and hardest. They’re the ones who know the hard fact that racism and capitalism go hand in glove.

Without racism, the bosses could not keep the working class divided. The Occupy movement knows this because PL’ers keep raising it. Now they’re reaching out to the Occupy Gary and Occupy the Hood movements. As long as the working class continues to be pushed into the bosses’ elections and reforms, we’ll continue to be prey to the dead end of capitalism. We need communist revolution.J