Strikers, Subcontractor Workers: Unite Against Warmaker Boeing
Imperialist War Needs Dictate Fascist Financial System Take-Over
- Facing Worst Crisis Since Great Depression
- Rulers Want Congress Under Military Discipline
- Who Pays? ....We Do, Mostly
- Top U.S. Policy-Makers Serve Class Dictatorship Of Financiers
a href="#Stella D’Oro Strikers Prove Tough Cookies in Battling Huge Cuts">"tella D’Oro Strikers Prove Tough Cookies in Battling Huge Cuts
Ten Thousand March For Homecare Worker Demands
Anti-Racist Fight vs. Police Murders Continues
Profit Drive Killed 25 in LA Train Wreck
a href="#Nebraska: Workers — Don’t be Suckers For Anti-Muslim Racism">Ne"raska: Workers — Don’t be Suckers For Anti-Muslim Racism
a href="#Chicago Bosses’ Aim: Run Transit On Slave Labor Chicago, Il,">"hicago Bosses’ Aim: Run Transit On Slave Labor Chicago, Il,
Italy: Black Workers Rebel vs. Racist Mafia Massacres
a href="#Colombia: Uribe Gov’t Murdering Student Protestors">"olombia: Uribe Gov’t Murdering Student Protestors
AFL-CIO Labor Fakers Always Bail Out Bosses
LETTERS
Anti-Racism Leads the Way in Boeing Strike
Summer Project Unites Workers Across Borders
At L.A. Factory Gate: Everyone Reads CHALLENGE
Boeing Bosses Part of Rulers Who Oppress All Workers
U.S.-Russia Sharpening Rivarly Revs Up World War Threat
Strikers, Subcontractor Workers: Unite Against Warmaker Boeing
SEATTLE, WA, September 28 — "I was impressed," said a veteran Boeing CHALLENGE reader at our multi-racial strike-support BBQ. Referring to the traditional "Rolling Thunder" in which workers bang on metal every hour on the hour as the strike deadline approaches, she said, "At first, I was the only woman hammering, but pretty soon the new hires started hammering too. At first the banging was a few minutes; by the time the strike neared it was fifteen minutes. Those young people moved me right off my tub [metal container]! They got there with their hammers before I could even get started!"
Over 27,000 machinists are on strike. No work, no planes, no profit. But the bosses want a blank check to screw the workers. Carson, the company’s jetliner division boss, said, "It is important that it [the strike] be resolved in a way that allows the company to remain successful and…preserve…the right to manage the business."
The strikers, however, have their own ideas. As one worker told a CHALLENGE seller, "I’m not striking for the money. They could give me $50,000 and I wouldn’t take it. I’m striking for the kids and the grandkids."
We met plenty of other young workers as strikers grabbed 1,800 CHALLENGES and 2,500 four-page CHALLENGE extras (in five hours) and picked up their first $150 strike checks. Some had struck before they received their first check! All vowed to hold the line.
Strikers were impressed with our Party comrades from around the country and locally who came to support the strike with our revolutionary communist politics. "Thank you for coming out here to support us," said more than one. "This is the class struggle we all need!" responded one comrade.
Our organizing and literature stood in sharp contrast to the union misleaders’ narrow trade union view of job security. It’s clear to masses of strikers that our Party’s goal is anti-racist multiracial unity between subcontractor workers and those still in unions (see letter, page 6 ). We stand for revolutionary communist class-consciousness.
The union, on the other hand, is focused on insuring that what few jobs are left in the "heritage" (basic unionized) plants remain union (with new workers paid less than half the wages of veteran workers). The mass presence of our revolutionary ideas has put the union leaders on the spot. We brought our communist politics to life in this strike. It’s infuriated the right-wing. That’s why the hacks called the local security to order us to leave. But we didn’t leave until we sold and distributed every last piece of literature and gathered a dozen contacts!
Strikers See Big Picture
Everyone on the picket lines, at the strike-check distribution and at our BBQ was discussing the Wall Street financial meltdown. (The BBQ, incidentally, raised more than enough to pay for the cost of our CHALLENGE "Extra.") The "Extra" showed the link between the bosses we’re striking against (the Boeing Board) and this crisis and how they benefit from the bailout (see page 8).
One of the more interesting bailout discussions occurred in a Boeing CHALLENGE distributor’s kitchen. He, his wife and another striker nearing retirement joined a veteran Boeing comrade, a worker and a new teacher.
This group of black, Latin and white workers pooled decades of experience and knowledge to cut through the fog being thrown in our faces. Rather than accepting the excuse that Bush caused the meltdown, we traced the long history of U.S. imperialism’s need to rely on financial speculation. All roads now lead to more imperialist war and attacks on the working class.
We knew about one of the key economic attacks from personal experience: re-industrialization through racist super-exploitation. We described how a friend who makes Boeing parts in a subcontractor plant is about to lose his house despite massive overtime. Five out of the six concluded that revolution — as hard as it may be to accomplish — was the only answer. "Pacifist marches won’t do it," said a Vietnam Vet CHALLENGE reader, "This will come down to an armed fight!"
"Yeah, we’re going to have to bring the power of industrial workers like ourselves and soldiers together with
their natural allies if we want to succeed," suggested a comrade. Three older workers who participated in anti-racist, anti-imperialist rebellions during the Vietnam era began reminiscing about how it was done.
Much more was revealed in this hour and a half discussion. Here and in several other such gatherings are the beginnings of Party-led industrial groups who read and sell CHALLENGE and organize to win their co-workers, families and friends to PLP’s revolutionary communist ideas in the middle of class struggle. Our friends must become members and they, in turn, have to expand our paper’s sales and influence.
The union wanted strikers to come into this battle blaming black, Latin and Chinese subcontractor workers. But when one seller held up our CHALLENGE strike Extra and shouted, "Read how L.A. subcontractor workers support Boeing strikers," she was cheered.
Based on this experience, a Boeing CHALLENGE reader wrote a "thank you" note from us strikers to L.A. subcontractor workers who have sent support letters and spoken at some of our BBQs. It was the first political document he’s written. He presented it to our group that meets at a nearby restaurant. He knew the union would stonewall any effort to build multi-racial, international unity between non-union subcontractors and us so he proposed a way to gather many rank-and-file signatures right now. Another shop steward agreed to sell more CHALLENGES after this discussion.
Small, but useful, victories as the strike goes on. Holding the line while struggling to advance PLP’s revolutionary communist line.J
Subcontractor Workers Support Boeing Strikers
Workers in LA subcontractor factories are discussing how the Boeing strike affects them and how to support it. In one shop, workers posted PLP leaflets calling for support for the strike, building unity of all aerospace workers and fighting against racist super exploitation in the subcontractors’ factories. Some workers are being forced to work many hours of overtime. At another factory, workers eagerly took the leaflets and CHALLENGES, encouraging PLP’ers to "keep up the good work" and agreed that unity between union and non-union workers is "what we need." The bosses called the cops to hurry there in the middle of shift change. They told PLP’ers to leave or face arrest. But afterwards, more than a few workers drove their cars over to the sidewalk to get the literature and thank us anyway.
Imperialist War Needs Dictate Fascist Financial System Take-Over
Lenin explained many years ago the stage of capitalism where the big bankers eat up the smaller ones:
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. (Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916)
Facing Worst Crisis Since Great Depression
U.S. capitalists caused the financial crisis they now seek to solve with drastic measures like the stalled $700-billion bank bailout. Over the past 30 years, they drove house prices sky-high and workers’ wages down, creating the conditions for subprime loans. Financiers got rich, for a while, by trading these worthless instruments as if they were pure gold. But that joy ride has ended and left U.S. banks in a deep hole. The staggering consequences include a $1.2 trillion New York Stock Exchange plunge on Sept. 29th amid a spate of bank failures. And U.S. bankers’ woes extend far beyond Wall Street.
The profit system ties a nation’s capacity to exploit foreign labor, markets, and raw materials by armed force to the strength of its financial institutions. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism’s leading think-tank, is worried. "The issue today is whether Wall Street turmoil will produce similar pressure for the United States to look inward—and indeed whether its capacity to sustain an international role may have been compromised" (CFR website 9/29/08).
To maintain their global dominance, U.S. bosses are undertaking an unprecedented restructuring of their troubled financial system. Wealth and power are concentrating more and more into a handful of megabanks like J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and BankAmerica. The bank bailout, a massive infusion of capital to such firms from a Treasury run by Wall Street stalwart [See box.] Henry Paulson, is part of the plan. The big money boys continue to fight for it despite its Sept. 29th rejection on Capitol Hill. They also call for stricter government regulation of markets.
Through these proposed new regulations and massive consolidation that will give the ruling class more direct control over the financial sytem than ever before, the major U.S. capitalists are advancing economic fascism.
Rulers Want Congress Under Military Discipline
The bailout’s failure in Congress (which may prove temporary) highlights a major obstacle on the finance capitalists’ road to fascism and war. An inefficient political system, especially the House of Representatives, hinders actions they sorely need. With every house seat up for grabs in five weeks, most reps opportunistically pandered to their voting bases rather than support the bankers’ vastly unpopular bill.
U.S. rulers formed the Hart-Rudman (H-R) commission in 1999 to guarantee their world supremacy well into the 21st century. In 2001, it had proposed downgrading Congress’s cumbersome one-member-one vote rule in favor of a five person "leadership team" to "review the totality of Executive-Legislative relations." It was to consist of "the Speaker of the House, the Majority and Minority leaders of the House, and the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate" and consult directly with the "the President, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, and senior cabinet officers." Complaining of self-serving reps, Hart-Rudman said "Only by having the five most powerful members of the Congress directly involved is there any hope of real reform." One "reform" was that "every member of Congress...participate in one or more war games per two-year cycle" at the National Defense University.
Bush dropped the ball after 9/11, implementing only one of H-R’s 50 provisions (Homeland Security). Expect more ruling-class calls to clean up Congress following the bailout debacle.
As for the White House, the rulers hope the presidential race will produce a protector of the U.S. empire far more capable than Bush. The CFR is "looking for signals from both campaigns on how Obama and McCain would restore the economy, and thus maintain the ability to project power abroad" (website, 9/26/08). But the Establishment’s New York Times (9/30/08) laments, "Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama were far from Washington, bit actors at best in helping to resolve a crisis that one of them will inherit."
As this economic tsunami is hitting U.S. bosses harder than any other imperialist, the constant allusions in the media to the 1930s are telling. U.S. rulers long for a Roosevelt-style president who can implement the economic discipline they need before they can mobilize to confront rivals like China and Russia militarily. Over the course of a decade of far-reaching economic programs, FDR was able to raise taxes on the ruling class to pay for the consolidation and militarization of U.S. capitalism in preparation for WW II. So we can expect more drastic finance-capital sourced initiatives, like the bailout, under the next administration.
The ruling class, in the midst of a crisis, looks for opportunities to prepare for future conflict. For workers, the financial mess shows voting is a dead end. Obama and McCain are in fact competing to see who can best serve the most powerful camp of war-hungry bankers. We have to take advantage of every opportunity to expose the failure of capitalism and build confidence in our class and our Party as the future of humanity. Investing time and effort in building the revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party represents a far better "growth strategy" for our class. Financial disasters and wars are built into the profit system. It will take a long time to get rid of it. But efforts today will reward generations to come.J
Who Pays? ....We Do, Mostly
A few capitalists and all workers will bear the cost of the bailout and the crisis that necessitated it.
Bosses with shares of subsequently bankrupt firms see their holdings’ value drop to zero, but so do workers’ pension funds and individual retirement plans, which mainly hold stocks.
The $700-billion bailout price tag comes close to the Iraq war’s, which, combined with reduced public revenue due to the economic slowdown, spells sharp federal cuts in services for the working class.
The racist, anti-working class nature of the bailout will lead to African-American and Latin home borrowers losing between $146 billion and $190 billion from bad sub-prime loans, according to a United for a Fair Economy report (Interpress Service 9/25).
At the local level, New York’s mayor Bloomberg slashed $1.5 billion from health, education, sanitation and other necessities on Sept. 24 as a direct result of Wall Streets woes. Bloomie foresees a $5.2-billion deficit (roughly equal to his own personal wealth, which he is not about to part with) for 2011. New York governor David Paterson wants to increase his state’s already projected $1 billion service cuts and predicts a $24-billion budget gap over the next three years.
Taxes are going up. For example, seven percent, says Mayor Mike, on NYC property, which landlords jack up further as rent increases to workers.
The financial sector is already hemorrhaging jobs, some high-rollers but mainly working-class, in New York and other money center cities by the tens of thousands. The new consolidation onslaught hastens the pace.
Finance capitalists also want to bail out Social Security, which will be underfunded by 2017, and help themselves, by forcing workers to pay into "mandatory retirement accounts" managed by their banks. Leading this effort to rob workers in order to fund the war makers is the Concord Coalition headed by Pete Peterson, a major Rockefeller-allied investor who once chaired the Council on Foreign Relations.
Top U.S. Policy-Makers Serve Class Dictatorship Of Financiers
The Washington bigwigs doggedly pushing bailout count the biggest U.S. bankers as their main constituents. Treasury secretary Paulson is not just any Goldman Sachs alum. He headed the Wall Street powerhouse and was its biggest shareholder. Representative Barney Frank’s top donors come from Brown Bothers Harriman, a private bank that holds $2 trillion in custody for the ultra-rich. (Bush’s grandfather, Prescott, was a BBH partner.) Citigroup, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan Chase led the bankrollers of Senator Chuck Schumer’s last campaign. Senator Christopher Dodd cashed fat checks from Citigroup and AIG (as well as from war profiteer United Technologies).
a name="Stella D’Oro Strikers Prove Tough Cookies in Battling Huge Cuts">">"tella D’Oro Strikers Prove Tough Cookies in Battling Huge Cuts
BRONX, NY, SEPTEMBER 27 — "All these factory bosses, big or small, have been trying to eliminate the unions all together," explained one of the 136 striking Stella D’Oro Biscuit workers here, out since August 13. Not one worker has crossed the united picket line. Support has come from other locals, transit workers, truckers and the community said one machinist. Strikers said that although lost wages are starting to hurt, they’re all determined to win this struggle.
The Stella D’oro strikers are in Local 50, within the much larger Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). When asked why the other locals haven’t walked out in solidarity, one worker said, "That would be great but many are afraid to lose what they have." This integrated local has shown the rest of the international that withdrawing their labor power from the bosses is a key way of both turning fear into its opposite and making a real stand for workers’ power.
This strike represents many of the same dynamics attacking workers nation-wide. One worker declared, "We know that this strike is an outcome of the economy. They say there’s no money but they want to squeeze profits out of our wages while they spend $2.3 trillion on the war in Iraq!" This worker is absolutely right!
This particular attack began when Stella D’Oro was sold to Brynwood Partners in January 2006 for about $17 million. The crashing economy has reduced sales and profits. A union official said Stella D’oro bosses want to steal an additional $1.5 million annually from these workers.
Preceding the strike the bosses pushed the workers to the hilt. "They sped up production to sub-human standards," said one worker, adding, "It’s not just the contract that drove us over the edge… it’s the working conditions as well!"
The bosses want to eliminate four holidays, 12 sick days, one week of vacation and viciously attack workers‘ wages. Now they want every worker to pay approximately $400 a month for their health benefits and to contribute a dollar of their hourly wage towards their pensions. However, over a five-year period these combined cuts (plus union dues and other expenses) would slash take-home pay nearly 50%, dropping from $18 to as little as $10 an hour, not counting inflation, by 2013!
This bosses’ attack is also racist. Given the composition of the workforce — Latin, Asian, black and white (European immigrant) — the bosses figure they can get away with super-exploiting these workers, and net super-profits.
Although production has slowed down, it hasn’t been stopped. Scabs have been hired. "Nobody wants to get into trouble" physically stopping scabs, explained one worker. We told another worker that, "Stopping scabs from crossing a picket line has always been an important part of maintaining an effective strike." But this worker said this would need the backing of the entire BCTGM union.
We brought coffee and donuts and gave all 25 afternoon-shift pickets a copy of CHALLENGE. They were impressed with the front-page Boeing strike article. "We’re small and it’s good to see so many workers fighting like this," commented one worker.
The Boeing strikers’ militancy and the role that communist leadership plays should help embolden this small but spirited strike here. We will bring our co-workers and students to discuss such lessons with the workers on future visits. They were also excited to hear we would try to raise strike support at the next teachers union Delegate Assembly. We will also invite some strikers to speak at our October 18 PLP forum on the elections.
"While so many people are talking about the illusion of "change they can believe in" declared one PL’er, "you guys are showing workers and students the real direction of change!"
We have much to learn from the striking Stella D’oro workers because they’ve done what so many of us need to do. Ultimately, it’s the entire capitalist system that needs to be shut down. Only then will workers see the true potential of their power.
Ten Thousand March For Homecare Worker Demands
NEW YORK CITY, September 16 — Some 10,000 homecare and healthcare workers of Local 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) marched in Midtown Manhattan to demand a decent contract. Homecare workers are among the most exploited section of the working class despite many being unionized. The average union wage is $8/hour with limited health benefits and no pension. Still worse, sleep-in homecare workers get no overtime pay and are paid for twelve hours a day when they usually work sixteen. These workers are overwhelmingly immigrant women from the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America and some from Russia and China. Less than half of all homecare workers are unionized.
Agencies like BestCare are threatening to eliminate healthcare benefits when the contract expires on Dec. 31. The agencies are funded by NY State and keep half of all funding as "administrative expenses," i.e. profits. A "decent" contract for homecare workers would have to double their subsistence wage and guarantee full healthcare and pension benefits.
But there’s no such thing as a decent contract for workers, because of capitalism’s drive for maximum profits. The union is only asking for a $2/hour wage hike and healthcare, and no pension. They want the state to take over administration of homecare from these agencies, cut the administrative cost and use some of that money to pay for increased pay. This collaboration with the state will not win a decent wage or benefits for these workers — especially in these days of financial crisis and endless wars — and weakens the will of workers to strike and prepare for the larger struggles ahead.
The relatively higher-paid hospital workers in 1199 will also face increasing pressure for future wage and benefit cuts. The racism used to divide hospital workers and the mostly immigrant homecare workers must be smashed. Anti-racist unity, fighting for all health workers, must be organized to win these struggles.
At the rally, Progressive Labor Party members, some in 1199 SEIU, talked with workers as we marched. That same day AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, was being bailed out by the Fed to the tune of $85 billion (see page 2 on the financial crisis). The workers expressed indignation that we’ll be paying to save Wall Street and yet can’t receive a decent standard of living or job security. But that is the nature of capitalism: workers pay and pay for the bosses in boom or crisis times.
We distributed hundreds of PLP fliers and CHALLENGES which pointed out that, to satisfy workers’ needs, the only real solution to the failure of capitalism is building a PLP-led movement to fight for a society where production is based on the well-being of all workers, who produce everything of value. We must continue building our CHALLENGE networks in our workplaces, turn them into PLP study groups and and Party-led on-the-job groups to lead the struggles against the racist bosses’ attacks and recruit more communists.
Anti-Racist Fight vs. Police Murders Continues
LANGLEY PARK, MD, September 24 — "Fight Back!" chanted PLPers at a rally against police brutality today. Over 150 people gathered here, led by CASA de Maryland (an immigrant workers’ rights group) and supported by the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability. Protesters spoke out against the police murder of Manuel Jesus de Espina, the lynching of Ronnie White by prison guards (officially a homicide according to the coroner’s report), and the SWAT attack on the mayor of Berwyn Heights. Dorothy Elliott reminded protestors of the long struggle for justice, which she has been seeking for the murder of her son by police in the 1990s.
PLP members brought a message of militancy and revolution to this gathering, distributing over 40 CHALLENGES to fellow protestors. Many in the crowd appreciated the more militant spirit. A Guatemalan man eagerly took DESAFIO and said, "we need a society where everyone is equal — these police will continue the brutality until we have a new system." He liked PLP’s international organizing and outlook, and planned to show the paper to his friends and family. A worker from El Salvador was visibly angry, declaring "the police are without shame; they come in the community and want our help, then they turn around and kill our friend. On top of that, when we stay on the corner looking to work, they kick us off the corner with threat of arrest, when I am only just trying to feed my family."
With the exception of the poignant personal stories and the revolutionary line of the PLP, this event was only a symbolic rally that had the effect of quelling any sense of fight-back. It is almost as if the organizers were saying: "Come out, light a candle, think about the victims, then go home and continue your lives as wage slaves and you will be lucky if you are not targeted by the police." Many workers were optimistic that the rally might lead to justice. But we need to build a fighting spirit of anti-racist militancy in the spirit of John Brown and Harriet Tubman and swell the ranks of the PLP to advance this struggle beyond symbolism.
The reality of the situation is that under capitalism, police protect the bosses and their property and use racist terror against workers. The long history of police brutality will not be ended by rallies alone. At a time when the bosses’ financial meltdown will lead to more oppression of workers, the bosses will need to control fight-back with brutality and intimidation. Only the development of a mass militant anti-racist movement, ultimately leading to a revolution against capitalism, can stem the tide of police brutality.
Profit Drive Killed 25 in LA Train Wreck
LOS ANGELES, CA –– The train accident on September 12 in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles, in which 25 people died and over 125 were seriously injured, was totally preventable. The press has blamed the engineer, Robert Sanchez, for text messaging someone just before the accident, but this tragedy was caused by the greed of the bosses, their politicians, and their anti-worker capitalist system!
In this case a MetroLink commuter train collided head on with a Union Pacific freight train sharing the same track.
Yes, sharing the same track. Imagine driving on a one lane highway in which cars, trucks, and buses traveled at freeway speeds in both directions, but had to share that one lane. Furthermore, the only way a driver would ever know that an 18-wheeler was heading towards him or her was a stoplight. If it is red, drivers must get their car off the road. If it is green, just drive ahead on that one-lane highway.
This lunacy is the deliberate policy of the MetroLink Authority –– mostly appointees of local Southern California Democratic politicians –– which runs the Los Angeles area commuter train system. Their patchwork commuter system is woefully under-funded and run with callous disregard for the safety of passengers and MetroLink workers. And, to save a few bucks, MetroLink contracted with a French company to operate the system, including hiring workers.
Since these totally avoidable deaths, many people have pointed out the obvious fixes to avoid future accidents. First, the train system needs to be double-tracked; trains traveling in opposite directions would no longer share the same track. Second, all trains should be equipped with Positive Train Control. This is an electronic system widely used throughout the world which detects trains headed for a collision and automatically stops them.
New radios should be installed on local freight and commuter trains. Because MetroLink shares train tracks with freight trains and because passenger trains and freight trains use different radio frequencies, engineers are unable to communicate between the two systems.
Split shifts could be eliminated. The MetroLink engineer, who died in the accident, worked a 13- hour day. He worked the morning rush hour, then had the mid-day off, but had to report to work again for the afternoon rush hour. In addition to having such an unsafe work schedule all week, engineers have no back-up. MetroLink operates their trains with only one engineer, not two. If an engineer is sick, distracted, or misses one of those red lights, that’s it. No one else, and no safety feature, is there to back him up or catch his mistakes.
So far, after an enormous public outcry, the local and national politicians –– who are responsible –– have moved into inaction. Locally, California Public Utilities Commission directed rail companies to ban train employees from using cell phones while on duty.
Nationally, proposed legislation would reduce the number of hours railroad employees can work from 400 per month to 276. Workers can now work 90-hour weeks, but the new legislation would reduce their work-week to about 60 hours — still unsafe. In contrast, the FAA limits airline pilots to 100 hours of flight time per month, a 22-hour work- week.
As for Positive Train Control, current proposed legislation would not require these electronic safety systems until the year 2015. The bosses’ foot-dragging will lead to more people dying unnecessarily in the next decade because of this total disregard for the workers.
At a time when the Federal Government is spending about $1 trillion to bail out the banks and finance companies, spends more than $1.1 trillion per year on its military and spy agencies, and the lion’s share of local government budgets is devoted to cops and jails, the "no-money" argument of the politicians reveals that capitalism serves only the interests of the capitalists — at the expense of workers’ lives.
Workers and passengers are cogs in a giant capitalist machine devoted to squeezing every last ounce of profit out of the commuter train system. The bosses are sacrificing the safety and lives of the workers riding the trains (and transit workers) to bail out the banks, pay for imperialist war and line their pockets.
Only when workers take power will our safety and lives be more important than the dollar-bill flag of the bosses. A system that cannot provide safe transit is one more reason to join the fight for communist revolution!
a name="Nebraska: Workers — Don’t be Suckers For Anti-Muslim Racism"></">Ne"raska: Workers — Don’t be Suckers For Anti-Muslim Racism
GRAND ISLAND, NEBRASKA, September 19 — About 150 Muslim workers were fired today at the JBS Swift meatpacking plant in a struggle over prayer time during the 30-day period of Ramadan. Of 2,500 workers, about 500 are Muslim, mostly from Somalia and Sudan.
While we don’t believe in prayer and religion, we must unite with Muslim workers and oppose racist anti-Muslim attacks. As the economic crisis deepens and the imperialist oil war expands, the rulers are building a mass fascist movement by getting workers to blame each other for boss-crated problems. The recent immigration raid in Mississippi — where more than 650 workers were rounded up — was called in by the AFL-CIO, and federal agents were cheered on by union workers as immigrants were handcuffed and led away. We cannot allow repetition of this chilling scene.
Last Monday, hundreds of Muslim workers walked off the job, protesting lack of prayer time, especially concerned for evening prayer, which ends the daily fast. Swift supervisors accused Muslim workers of taking too long on their prayer breaks. Some workers complained of being kicked by a supervisor while they prayed. A woman worker protested being followed into the bathroom by a male supervisor as she attempted to pray. They held a similar protest on Tuesday and marched to City Hall.
Break times were changed on the second shift to accommodate the sunset prayer, which forced all workers to work Saturday to get their 40 hours. That sparked a protest by about 400 black, Latin, Asian and white non-Muslim workers, who walked off the job Wednesday and Thursday in what was basically a racist protest against the Muslim workers. The bosses and union leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers no doubt encouraged it.
About 80 Muslim workers were thrown out of the plant after a confrontation with protesters. When they tried to return for their shift Friday, they were fired, along with 70 others. No non-Muslim workers were fired. Also, the bosses reversed themselves on the new break schedules.
One worker said that the Somali workers "have changed everything," and that "Swift management has given in to the minority." Another said, "Nobody should have special privileges." How often have we heard white workers make these same racist comments about black and Latino workers? This is exactly the type of "unity" that Bush-Obama-McCain and the racist rulers are counting on to expand their war on terror to Pakistan, Iran and beyond.
One precondition for communist revolution is the highest unity of the international working class. "Globalization" and mass immigration worldwide, with more internationalized work-forces on the job, make this possible. But it doesn’t just happen. We must set the example of building anti-racist, international friendships, and a revolutionary communist movement that reflects the same. Like the Mississippi raid, we should see this Swift struggle as a sign of things to come, alert our co-workers and build the revolutionary communist PLP, the only antidote to the bosses’ fascist poison.
a name="Chicago Bosses’ Aim: Run Transit On Slave Labor Chicago, Il,">">"hicago Bosses’ Aim: Run Transit On Slave Labor Chicago, Il,
September 29 — Union bus drivers are discovering the hard way what was buried away in the contract arbitration "award" forced on us last year. After a fear campaign of "doomsday scenarios" and sending the contract to arbitration to avoid a rank-and-file vote, our paychecks are shrinking and our jobs are less secure. All this is happening as more workers ride buses and before the current economic crisis.
The contract and the state legislators are funding a new Health Care Trust fund that most drivers will never use, by collecting 3% of every paycheck. In addition, they increased pension funding to 6%, more than wiping out the measly 3% wage "increase" we were "awarded." So far this has cost every worker about $2,000.
Even more dangerous, full-time senior drivers lost our 8-hour guarantee, and about 50 part-timers are being hired every month. Right now about 950 part-timers comprise almost 25% of the 4,000 drivers. They pay the same union dues as full-timers and get little more than the right to file a useless grievance. Part-timers cannot afford to feed their families on what used to be a job many young black workers sought. It’s so bad that union Local 241’s sellouts tried to get part-timers to support a 6-day schedule rather than split shifts, so they would have more time each day to work a second job to support their families!
Then there is the "Second Chance" program: workers on probation or sentenced to community service are cleaning buses and garages. Mayor Daley and the bankers want to run mass transit on poverty wages and prison labor. All this in a city and state run by the Democratic Party machine that created Barak Obama.
But workers are fighting back. Transit Workers United, a rank-and-file group of full- and part-timers, is circulating a petition demanding the union fight to make everyone full-time, and force the city to fill almost 200 vacant full-time slots. More than 200 part-timers attended the September union meeting.
This is good as far as it goes, but transit workers need to understand that this is not just our problem. We’re being assaulted by the same racist profit system that closed half the Cook County health clinics for uninsured workers in 2007, eliminating 2,000 jobs, and is eliminating the second shift at the Chicago Ford Assembly Plant this November.
These racist attacks hit black and Latino workers first and hardest. There are more than 20 million unemployed in the U.S., nearly a million in Illinois. The unemployment rate for black workers is twice the national average, and for black youth, ages 18-25, four times higher. With the unfolding Wall Street calamity, foreclosures on the South Side of Chicago have tripled; Detroit is the nation’s highest.
No matter who wins the White House, the racist rulers will continue their assault on the workers because they need trillions more to expand their oil wars and rescue Wall Street. As the rulers face increasing challenges to their empire from other imperialists, the threat of world war grows. A struggle against racist unemployment that unites transit, Cook County and Ford workers with immigrant workers and unemployed youth can be fertile grounds for expanding the revolutionary communist PLP and creating a more mass distribution of CHALLENGE. Fighting racist unemployment and for jobs, guided by communist politics, can open the door to revolution!
Italy: Black Workers Rebel vs. Racist Mafia Massacres
ITALY, Sept. 25 — Racism has grown all over Europe as the bosses need to superexploit immigrant and non-white workers to obtain massive profits and blame them for the crisis of capitalism. The racism built into the capitalist society breeds racist killers. The area of Castelvolturno was the scene of the first racist killing in post-war Italy when in 1989 Jerry Eslan, a black man, was killed by racists in the nearby Villa Literno. Today, racist violence is even more common.
More recently in Castelvolturno, a racist massacre was carried out by the Camorra, the local mafia. It was the biggest mafia killing in recent years. Some local gangsters randomly fired against a group of black workers and youth, killing six of them. The bosses’ media reacted to this atrocity by blaming the victims, who were condemned as criminals and drug dealers. In spite of these stereotypes, 99% of black workers work under semi-slave conditions in the tomato fields. But the mobsters shot at random to "teach blacks a lesson." Six were killed just for being black, just as neo-Nazis burn immigrant workers’ refugee centers to "teach them a lesson," and just as Roma people (often called by the racist term Gypsies) have been victims of a recent pogrom at the hand of racist mobs and the right-wing Berlusconi government. According to these racist killers, all immigrant and black workers should be killed.
This time black Italians protested the killings with a mini-rebellion, burning garbage cans and damaging some cars in the Caserta zone of Castelvolturno. A similar small rebellion took place in the bigger city of Milan.
These workers and youth are tired not only of being exploited on their jobs, but of being charged higher rents and of discrimination in general. They are tired of being treated as second-rate citizens.
In Milan, an Afro-Italian teenager was beaten to death with iron bars by two store owners. The killers said he stole some cookies, as if that was a crime punishable by death. This slander was repeated by the media without any real investigation of what happened, even though no cookies were found. Racism was the real cause of this horrendous crime.
The bosses, their media and some people influenced by racist ideas are labeling all blacks and immigrants as criminals, while treating the big criminals of the Mafia and their politician and cop protectors with kids’ gloves.
Racist brutality is a universal aspect of capitalism, from Milan to Paris to Brooklyn (like the recent killing of a mentally-impaired Latin worker with a taser) to Maryland (see article p. 3). Any worker who falls for this bosses’ racism is cutting his/her own throat, particularly today when the rulers need more racism to divide workers so they can exploit ALL workers even more to pay for their economic crisis and wars (Italy has a military contingent fighting with NATO in Afghanistan). Our slogan must be: same enemy, same fight! Black, Latin, Asian, immigrant and white, unite to smash capitalism and to fight for communism!
a name="Colombia: Uribe Gov’t Murdering Student Protestors">">"olombia: Uribe Gov’t Murdering Student Protestors
Colombia’s bloodthirsty ruling class has murdered thousands of people who oppose its policies of hunger, war and oppression. It’s even killed many who foolishly tried to change the system through elections. It has also forced over four million rural workers and their families, many indigenous and union activists, to flee their homes, losing everything.
According to a report of 400 human rights organizations presented to the UN High Commissioner in Colombia, over 13,600 people have been "murdered, executed or disappeared in the six years of the President Uribe administration" ("Página12", 9/24). Meanwhile, bodies of 45 youth have been found in Bogotá’s southern suburbs and in the poor coffee region of Central Colombia. The cops and army executed the youth, including a minor with mental problems, under the guise that they were all "common criminals."
Also, "Página12" (9/26) reported that death-squad chief Salvatore Mancuso, extradited to the U.S. in May, testified via video in a trial of two Senators of Uribe’s Party that the AUC (the death-squad organization) influenced the local 2002 Presidential elections.
Uribe, a Bush lapdog in South America, was one of the "world leaders" Sarah Palin spoke to briefly at the U.N. in mid-September. (The others included the U.S. puppet President of Afghanistan and war criminal Henry Kissinger.)
But now, to avoid more national and international outcries, instead of the past mass massacres, people are killed daily in ones and twos. Militant students are some of the victims of this "new" style of repression, ones like Johnny Silva, Nicolas Neira, Oscar Salas and many more who’ve been murdered. They’ve been part of the militant fight against plans to privatize public universities. For this the government and the bosses’ media have branded them "subversive guerrillas."
So in addition to the usual brutal repression of young protestors during the annual mass May Day marches in Bogota, the rulers have now put a price on the heads of the more militant H.S. and college youth to try to quell the growing protest movement against the Uribe government.
As part of the struggle to give political leadership to angry workers and youth, two PLP comrades in Ciudad Bolívar are trying to bring communist ideas to some of the million people in this poorest section of Bogotá. Many of these residents are refugees from the murderous war waged by the rich landowners’ death squads and the army in rural Colombia.
The refugees face a lot of contradictions coming to Ciudad Bolívar. Instead of a countryside of trees and rivers, they now live in a boss-created urban jungle filled with unemployment, racist and sexist discrimination, alcoholism, police persecution and rejection by the bourgeois society. Their hard lives are made even more oppressive.
Many different groups are out to influence these refugees, some with pro-government ideas, others opposed to the government. We’re involved in some of them that are trying to bring the few available but limited resources available in this area. But we’re also struggling to fight for unity in action as the best way to fight for improvements for the residents of the area. We want to win some of the movement’s most active leaders into a political school, no easy task amid mass terror carried out by the bosses’ paramilitary goons, aimed at preventing us from organizing ourselves.
Our goal is not building a better reform movement begging for more crumbs from the government, but winning masses of workers and youth to PLP to fight for the only real solution to this capitalist hell: communism. DESAFIO is a key ideological weapon in accomplishing this long but vital process for our class.
AFL-CIO Labor Fakers Always Bail Out Bosses
NEW YORK CITY, September 28 — More than 1,000 workers and others demonstrated three days ago near the NY Stock Exchange against giving Wall Street a blank check in the financial bailout. This swindle is so unpopular — seen by many as "corporate welfare" — that the NYC Central Labor Council was forced to react and organize one of many similar protests held nationwide to demand a "fairer bailout" which helps working-class people. Big shot union sellouts like AFL-CIO President George Sweeney and teachers union chief Randi Weingarten attended the rally.
One of the AFL-CIO’s top demands is for the bailout to be governed by an "independent board." (Of course, the bosses pick these "independent" boards.) The labor honchos are banking on an Obama and Democratic Party victory so that some of the allotted $700 billion will finance Obama’s plan for infrastructure repair, which they hope could create many unionized jobs.
But as far as workers are concerned, the union mis-leaders are part of the problem. In every bosses’ bailout — from the NYC fiscal crisis to the one for Chrysler in the 1970s to all others for any company — the union sellouts have been on the bosses’ side, giving them huge concessions on jobs and benefits.
Lack of regulations, greedy bankers and speculators are all part of the problem but not the root cause. The first major post-World War II crisis occurred in 1973; then came the "Black Monday" Wall Street crash of 1987 followed by others in 1990-93, 1998 and 2001-2. As each crisis ended, we were told the problem was "fixed" — but then a new one occurred, slashing workers’ standard of living even more — and because of racism affecting black and Latin workers still more. On top of that, racist politicians and media pundits are blaming the victims of the subprime lenders for the crisis.
Company profit rates have actually not returned to their pre-1973 level. More than a century ago Karl Marx described this as the falling rate of profit. To compete with each other, the bosses invest in new technology, replacing workers. But machines by themselves don’t produce profits. Real profits come from workers’ labor, with the bosses pocketing most of the value that labor creates. While the volume of profit might increase, the higher investment in machinery and technology forces the rate of profit down.
As their crises worsen, bosses try to compensate by exploiting workers even more, by taking out or swallowing the competition and fighting with rival imperialists for new markets through wars. PLP has a different answer: workers of the world unite to smash a system based on war and economic crisis!
LETTERS
Anti-Racism Leads the Way in Boeing Strike
The Party’s work in aerospace subcontracting facilities (as well as other industries) has left us able to expose the racist super-exploitation present in these plants and tie it to the increased attacks on primarily white union workers in the basic heritage plants.
Subcontractors employ mostly Latin, immigrant and black workers. The fact that our Party has built a small concentration in the subcontractor plants over the last few years has given us a "leg up" on raising the absolute necessity for anti-racist, multi-racial class unity.
After more than a dozen visits to strike picket sites at Boeing plants all over King County it is clear that workers appreciate the Party’s revolutionary message. Almost every worker takes a CHALLENGE .
These visits to the picket lines have allowed the Party to expose how capitalism uses racism to attack all workers. Boeing strikers have shown great appreciation for the statements of solidarity coming out of subcontracting plants. The significant minority of black, women and now Latino workers in the Boeing union plants has been particularly receptive to this show of class unity.
Strikers delved into "how capitalism uses racism to attack all workers" at two recent lunches at a restaurant near the plant. A dozen strikers and a guest from England examined the condition of the working class from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, to the slave-like conditions of India immigrant workers in Mississippi shipyards, to the ruin anti-black, anti-immigrant racism has wrought in the new "southern aerospace corridor" and the L.A. subcontractors. "It’s the same damn thing in England," said our British friend. "First they imported the Poles and when they started to organize the bosses switched to eastern Europeans — never allowing the Poles to become "legal."
No wonder many strikers believe the union can’t win on job security. The pro-capitalist union leaders’ narrow trade union outlook can’t deal with the racist and nationalist divisions that immobilize us. It’s impossible to save a few decent-paying jobs in the heritage plants while the bosses are hell-bent on attacking all industrial workers through racist super-exploitation in subcontractors.
A friend took a small step towards building anti-racist class conciousness. He volunteered to write a thank you note to L.A. subcontractor workers that have supported our strike. We are going to circulate it on the picket lines, and at our lunches and visits with strikers.
Even on my job, a construction site rather than an aerospace plant, the situation at the subcontracting plants has helped to illuminate the constant presence of racism on our site. After discussing the low wages and dangerous conditions present at these subcontractor plants one worker spoke up, "the immigrant workers on site are the subcontracted workers of construction." This is the first step to leading anti-racist fight-back on the job.
The key to defeating the boss’ divide and conquer tactics is to bring anti-racist struggle onto the shop floor. The sell-out contracts "won" by the UAW leadership and the current contract pushed by the pro-boss IAM leadership increasingly show how the fates of those in the heritage plants are tied to those in subcontracting plants. Ultimately this strike will be sold out as well. The only way to end this racist exploitation is to show workers that racism is inherent to capitalism and will intensify as the bosses scramble to shore up their shaky empire, and that only communist revolution can unite all workers by ending capitalism.
Red Worker
Summer Project Unites Workers Across Borders
The L.A. Summer Project showed that the working class must be internationalist. The comrades in the project shared experiences and learned from each other and lived in a comradely way, spreading PLP politics without being limited by borders and language barriers imposed by the bosses. We had a BBQ during the project where most of the participants spoke only English and a few of us spoke Spanish. But our communications, though limited by gestures and expressions, showed a lot of joy and curiosity in meeting people with the same goals: fighting for communist revolution. I was able to speak at the BBQ with a young worker living in L.A. who migrated from Mexico and told me about the difficulties of being a low-paid undocumented worker, living check-by-check and sometimes not being able to satisfy the basic needs of life. On top of that, he lives with the fear of being deported or fired from the job and so has a very limited social life because of these conditions. It is very difficult for him being away from his immediate family in Mexico to fight for the "American Dream" that is more and more a nightmare. But now that he knows the PLP, he is very happy with his friendship with the comrade who invited him to the BBQ and with other comrades he is meeting. He never imagined himself being part of a communist Summer Project.
I heard similar comments from a young Mexican immigrant couple who met our Party and politics for the first time, and now want to join a PLP study group.
Our Party offers answers to the hard daily lives so many immigrant workers, and workers in general, are suffering in this racist, crisis-ridden, war-making capitalist society. These ties make our Party more internationalist. Since bosses don’t respect their own borders when it comes to exploiting us, workers should put into practice the slogan: workers of the world, unite, workers’ struggles have no border!
A Young Comrade, Mexico
At L.A. Factory Gate: Everyone Reads CHALLENGE
This summer a comrade and I traveled to Los Angeles for our first Summer Project. As a new member and a friend of the Party we learned so much on this trip and gained a better understanding of the Party’s line.
At CHALLENGE sales we talked with many industrial workers and soldiers about their bosses’ exploitative practices and the horrible working conditions they endure on a daily basis. One worker told us she needed time off to care for a sick family member and was told not to come back if she took it. One of the greatest things we saw was the morning we had been at an industrial site and turned to look at the entrance gate and saw so many of the workers sitting outside reading the paper! Distributing papers to day laborers, one man told us how he had left El Salvador because of harsh conditions only to find himself worse off. He said that although the economic hardships were bad here too, the level of racist attacks against him and his family member was something he did not have to endure back home. We spoke with a homeless vet who told us of the deplorable tactics used by the military to deliberately train them to dehumanize civilian "enemies." This demonstrates how the bosses’ pit us one against the other in an attempt to break workers apart.
The Summer Project is a great opportunity to learn from other comrades about work done over their years with the Party as well as from each other. As someone very new to the Party, every discussion and reading helped me learn and inspired me. I was able to speak out more, and speak with others about some of my own questions. I helped lead a discussion of student/worker alliances which brought out the importance of keeping contact with friends we bring around the Party. Without the constant connections and close discussions we could lose those potential future leaders of the Party.
In my mind the LA Summer Project is a great way to be one step closer to the building of a communist revolution and the idea of living in a communist society. I know it has given me confidence to work harder, to ask more questions of my comrades, and want to step up to more roles of leadership. Everyone, no matter what their experience level, should attend every Summer Project they possibly can.
New Red
Talking Revolutionary Politics in Obama Campaign
I helped out at a voter registration drive in my neighborhood that I found out about through BarackObama.com. I never voted before and agreed with PLP’s position that voting can’t and won’t alleviate the suffering of workers under capitalism. I also agreed that the Obama campaign provides an important opportunity to meet workers that want to change society and introduce them to the ideas of the PLP.
I worked with two young women who felt strongly about voting and the "change" Obama promises. It ended up being a very good experience since we actually spent more time chatting then registering people. We talked about our lives and racism in the neighborhood and the media (my two fellow registrars were arguing about whether or not Tyler Perry [an entertainer] degrades black workers). Before I left we exchanged contact infomation. I am planning on attending some more campaign events with them and hope to expose them to some of Obama’s comments that accepted the Sean Bell verdict and discouraged violent protest.
Red Registrar
REDEYE on the News
Crisis shows voting doesn’t help
- GW, 9/26
The fact the credit crisis relegated the elections to the inside pages tells us two things.
First, that real power does not lie with politicians. The crucial decisions were made by traders, bankers and speculators….
Second, that…[the] contest to see who will run the country sheds little light and has little bearing on how it is run.
Pipe-dream of US diplomats
- NYT, 8/14
A bumper sticker that American diplomats distributed around Central Asia in the 1990s as the United States was working hard to make friends there summed up Washington’s strategic thinking: "Happiness is multiple pipelines."
People speak: Gov’t does opposite
- NYT, 9/25
Americans’ anger is in full bloom, jumping off the screen in capital letters and exclamation points, in the e-mail in-boxes of elected representatives in the nation’s capital…. in outright opposition to the White House plan…. members of Congress say reaction to the bailout does not appear orchestrated or coordinated, but rather individual expressions that come from the grass roots and run across the philosophical spectrum.
War opponents, for instance, are telling lawmakers that they are tired of an administration…[that] played "the fear card" too many times by leading the nation into war in Iraq to find nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and curbing civil rights in the name of pursuing terrorists.
US said ‘Don’t bail banks out!’
-NYT, 9/24
Wall Street and the administration’s record of financial oversight came under attack at the United Nations on Tuesday….
For some leaders, the Bush bailout plan seemed hypocritical given the tough course Washington has often advised struggling nations to take….
"They are all remembering the very hard, unforgiving advice that they got from American financial institutions" to "deflate your economy, let your banks go to the wall"…. The outpouring on Tuesday came from some of America’s closest allies and trading partners…
Big Washington meet: Look out!
- NYT, 9/25
In deference to the current emergency, we will refrain from pointing out that when our national leaders came together following Sept. 11, the results were, all and all, worse than if they had stayed home.
Boeing Bosses Part of Rulers Who Oppress All Workers
The Boeing bosses are part of a ruling class oppressing workers worldwide. Their Board of Directors is linked to some of the country’s largest corporations and biggest Wall Street investment houses who are looking to make a killing out of any bailout scheme that the bankers and their politician servants can work out. But they also have their hands full these days, with the strike and the financial crisis.
The top Boeing bosses run not only Boeing but they and their class run the whole country, and both political parties.
For example, Boeing director Edward Liddy is also a director of manufacturing giant 3M and (till recently) financial giant Goldman-Sachs. His 3M, like Boeing, makes profit the old-fashioned way, by exploiting workers who create value from making products. However, his Goldman Sachs has been profiting the deregulated way, by gambling and cheating — speculating in the markets and selling bad debts — because it was temporarily more profitable than investing in production.
But the new way has problems. Said the NY Times, "A significant portion of the financial boom…seems to have been unrelated to economic performance and thus unsustainable." So now Liddy and his cronies are getting the government to bail them out.
Their Goldman Sachs is taking advantage of the bankrupting of competitors like Lehman Bros. Had insurance giant AIG failed, it might have taken down Goldman Sachs, but the government bought, and saved, AIG — and Goldman Sachs. Now Liddy is the new CEO of AIG! Boeing director John Biggs is also a director of JP Morgan Chase and former CEO of TIAA-CREF, the national teacher’s pension fund. His successor there, Herbert Allison, is now head of Fannie Mae (currently on government life support).
While a bailout may be advantageous to these bosses, they still have to sell it — to Congress, U.S. workers and to international capitalists. If the world’s bosses don’t go along, it could endanger the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Another Boeing boss, William Daley, is a key Democratic Party power broker and an Obama "senior advisor." His brother Richard is currently Chicago’s mayor, and a big Obama backer. These Democrats are trying to convince workers and youth that "Republican greed" caused the meltdown and that Barack will lead them to the promised land of regulated capitalism. Obama’s main job is to win U.S. youth and workers to sacrifice blood and sweat for these thieves’ continued rule.
Although these Boeing bosses know they can count on Obama to serve Wall Street, some are backing his rival McCain (elections are unpredictable). Another Boeing boss, Kenneth Duberstein, is a director of Big Oil’s ConocoPhillips and was once Republican Reagan’s chief of staff. He’s a long-time McCain advisor and member of Timmons & Co., a leading lobbyist firm. McCain named its CEO, William Timmons, to lead his transition team.
Duberstein, a champion of unregulated capitalism, was also a Fannie Mae director. From 2002-2006 his firm advised that mortgage broker on regulatory matters — how to keep the scam going!
So, the Boeing Board members know that whoever becomes president, he will be tied to the same jackals that caused the meltdown in the first place.
They may have the election sewn up, but they still must convince the world that the U.S., while possibly going bankrupt, is still the only superpower. They plan strategy in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Rockefeller/Morgan-sponsored think-tank that ("unofficially") plots U.S. foreign policy. Its members include Boeing bosses Biggs, Daley, and Duberstein!
These bandits know they’re in deep trouble. Basically they didn’t make enough profit the "old-fashioned way" so they deregulated, starting with Reagan and growing under Clinton. Instead of investing in industrial production, they had to resort to scams like subprime mortgages — that the old rules made difficult — to make a fast buck.
Now they want to re-industrialize, but not making washing machines and hair dryers. What money remains will be spent on armaments to control the world’s oil supplies and destroy their rivals’ productive capacity.
They want to bail themselves out. But ultimately it’s workers’ loss of homes, jobs and health care, earning slave wages that would bail them out, in their drive to reindustrialize for war production to fight imperialist wars.
The union wanted strikers to come into this battle blaming black, Latino and Chinese subcontractor workers. But when one seller held up our CHALLENGE strike Extra and shouted, "Read how L.A. subcontractor workers support Boeing strikers," she was cheered.
Based on this experience, a Boeing CHALLENGE reader wrote a "thank you" note from us strikers to L.A. subcontractor workers who have sent support letters and spoken at some of our BBQs. It was the first political document he’s written. He presented it to our group that meets at a nearby restaurant. He knew the union would stonewall any effort to build multi-racial, international unity between non-union subcontractors and us so he proposed a way to gather many rank-and-file signatures right now. Another shop steward agreed to sell more CHALLENGES after this discussion.
Small, but useful, victories as the strike goes on. Holding the line while struggling to advance PLP’s revolutionary communist line..
Hospital Workers Back Boeing Strikers
STATEMENT FROM CHALLENGE READERS AT A BROOKLYN HOSPITAL
We the CHALLENGE readers express our solidarity with the Boeing workers.
We support our brothers and sisters in their struggle against the Boeing company.
Boeing recently made $20 billion in profit from super-exploiting Boeing workers yet Boeing refuses to meet the economic demands from the workers.
However, the bosses’ government is spending billions in taxpayers’ money to bail out the banks, mortgage and insurances companies, while millions of U.S. workers’ wages have stagnated and health and pension benefits have grown stingier.
We, the CHALLENGE readers, are contributing $70 towards your struggle.
Keep up the fight against the bosses at Boeing.
U.S.-Russia Sharpening Rivarly Revs Up World War Threat
As the Georgian-Russian war revealed, inter-imperialist rivalry has reached a new level. It demonstrated the Russian bosses’ willingness to commit military power to defend their centuries-old sphere of influence and their control of the energy-rich Caspian Sea-Caucasus region. It also again exposed the U.S. bosses’ growing inability to rely on proxy forces to defend their interests abroad, prompting an eventual clash of U.S. and Russian troops. This, plus the on-going worldwide economic crisis, has accelerated the threat of world war as the only "solution" to this rivalry.
At stake in this Georgian dogfight is not only who will exploit, transport and decide where to market those energy resources, but which imperialist gangs will dominate the world, which, since World War I has been based on controlling the world’s energy resources. Since WWII, U.S. bosses’ world supremacy stems from controlling the oil-rich Middle East and energy resources in Latin America and Africa. This control, however, has been eroding, hammered by unrelenting challenges posed by rival imperialists and local bosses.
All this has intensified the U.S. bosses’ decline. To reverse it, says Foreign Affairs (September/December 2008; "A Daunting Agenda" by Richard Holbrooke), the weakness in "the domestic economy" must be repaired because "in the long run, the rise and fall of great nations is driven primarily by their economic strength…." But in reversing this economic downturn "… a new factor has emerged, unlike any the United States has previously faced"; with the high price of oil "...Americans ….are contributing to the greatest transfer of wealth from one set of nations to another in history" — an astounding $3 trillion yearly to oil-producing countries.
Historically, economic power helped determine military power of past empires. U.S. rivals, like Russia, are using their energy wealth to rebuild their military with state-of-the-art weaponry. The Russian navy has commissioned six new carrier groups to be built starting in 2012. The U.S. has eleven.
To regain its economic clout, U.S. imperialism must reassert control over the world’s energy resources and seize or destroy its main rivals’ industrial base. Energy-wise, so far, it has been waging a losing battle in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela. It recently suffered a major defeat in the Caspian Sea area as Russia’s Gazprom outfit bought most of the region’s exportable oil and gas resources. This effectively killed the West’s projected NABUCO pipeline to transport oil and gas from this area to Europe, bypassing Russian territory.
Now, because of its Georgian military victory, Russia can shut the only pipeline that bypasses the Russian Federation, the BTC (from Azerbaijan to Georgia to Turkey), or achieve this through clients like the Turkish Kurds. Recently, during repairs fo9llowing a Kurdish attack, the million barrels of oil BTC transports daily to Europe was rerouted through the Russian network. Given this, the deputy vice-president of Azerbaijan’s State Oil Co. said, "his company is considering an offer by Russia to buy all of the firm's natural gas production for both domestic use and export to Europe." (LA Times, 8/18/08)
Thus, U.S. rulers’ dreams of using Central Asia’s energy resources to break Russia’s stranglehold on Europe’s energy supplies — to maintain the NATO alliance for geopolitical reasons and eventual global war against Russia and/or China — have temporarily being dashed. Thus, gaining control of Iran — the world’s third largest oil and second largest natural gas reserve — has therefore become more crucial than ever to an ever more desperate U.S. imperialism fighting to maintain its world hegemony, with very few options left but war. Iran is also the perfect land bridge to transport Caspian Sea’s energy to Europe.
All this will require a war of unpredictable consequences. That’s why Holbrooke states, "The next U.S. president will inherit a more difficult set of international challenges than any predecessor since World War II." A challenge either Obama or McCain will dutifully undertake.
Capitalism/Imperialism breeds war under either nationalized or privatized means of production. Eighty percent of the world’s oil/natural gas resources have been nationalized but it’s only sharpened the inter-imperialist rivalry and moved the world closer to global war. Whether Saudi Arabia’s Princes, Iran’s Ayatollahs, Venezuela’s Chavez or Mexico’s Obrador, nationalization serves the interest of one sector of the local ruling classes and whichever imperialist they are allied with.
Our class should never support any of these butchers or participate in any capitalist electoral circus. Our interests lie in building a mass revolutionary communist PLP to fight for a communist world, where our class will decide how to best use and allocate the world’s natural resources to meet the needs of the world’s workers.
- Two Day Rebellion Leads To Boeing Strike WORKERS MUST FIGHT RACISM
- Job Security, Outsourcing Big Strike Issues
- U.S. RULERS DEMAND NEXT PRESIDENT IMPOSE FASCIST SACRIFICE
- DRAFT: RULERS NEED IT, BUT CANDIDATES CAN’T SAY IT— YET
- Relying on Politicians Won’t Stop Racist KKKops
- Airport Workers Catch Thieving Bosses
- PLP Exposes Deadly Election Politics to Iraq Veterans
- Will U.S. Invade Pakistan?
- France: Thousands Strike Against Job Cuts
- Bolivia: Gas-Oil Profits Behind Racism of Fascist Goons
- Imperialist Rivalry Spurs Mexican Rulers’ Oil Battle
- Pacifism Hindered Calif. Mass Farmworkers’ Strikes
- LETTERS
- REDEYE REDEYE
- Voting Won’t End Nightmare for 20 Million Unemployed Workers
- The Decision of a Lifetime
- Baltimore Youth Learn: There’s No Such Thing As a Good Politician
Two Day Rebellion Leads To Boeing Strike WORKERS MUST FIGHT RACISM
Under Any Flag”
Job Security, Outsourcing Big Strike Issues
U.S. RULERS DEMAND NEXT PRESIDENT IMPOSE FASCIST SACRIFICE
DRAFT: RULERS NEED IT, BUT CANDIDATES CAN’T SAY IT— YET
Relying on Politicians Won’t
Stop Racist KKKops
Airport Workers Catch Thieving Bosses
PLP Exposes Deadly Election Politics to
Iraq Veterans
Send letters and articles to
Will U.S. Invade Pakistan?
France: Thousands Strike Against Job Cuts
Bolivia: Gas-Oil Profits Behind Racism of Fascist Goons
As far as workers and their allies are concerned, the solution doesn’t lie in the 21st Century socialism (state capitalism) of Chávez or its Morales’ version of Andean capitalism. Morales continues attempts to negotiate a deal with the open fascists, demoralizing workers and peasants who have illusions about his government. The only solution is to build an anti-imperialist and anti-racist movement to fight for a society without any form of capitalism: communism.
Imperialist Rivalry Spurs Mexican Rulers’ Oil Battle
Pacifism Hindered Calif. Mass Farmworkers’ Strikes
LETTERS
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL SPREADS
COMMUNIST IDEAS
CHILD VICTIMS OF IMF/WTO RACISM
CAPITALISM CHOOSES PROFITS OVER HEALTH
OLYMPIC GAMES—WHERE IS
SPARTACUS?
REDEYE REDEYE
India’s Muslims Brutally
Repressed - NYT 8/27
FBI Poised To Be US Gestapo
- NYT - 8/21
Russian Invasion Echoes U.S. Acts
- LAT 8/14
LA: Immigrants Fear Red Cross
- NYT - 9/7
Voting Won’t End Nightmare for 20 Million Unemployed Workers
The Decision of a Lifetime
Baltimore Youth Learn:
There’s No Such Thing As a Good Politician
Believing that politicians will negotiate and compromise with students to gain economic justice and provide employment and quality education is a false hope under capitalism. All politicians are puppets to the capitalist class and workers are not yet organized enough to hold them accountable to their lies. To end this madness of unemployment and mis-education we need communist revolution and less conversations with politicians at City Hall.
Workers Vote To Strike; Fight Warmaker Boeing’s Attack On All Workers
- Reject the "Kick Your Kids to the Kurb (KKK)" Contract! Strike!
- Workers Debate Dismal Future Under Capitalism
- Kick Capitalism To The Curb
a href="#Democrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers">"emocrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers
- The Context: War for Control over Energy Resources
- The Acceptance Speech and the Issues
- Dissent and Protest
- Where Do We Go From Here?
a href="#At LA Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders">At L" Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders
Protesters Charge Cops With Racist Killing of Latino Worker
a href="#Mississippi Terror Raid: Workers Shouldn’t Be Suckers for Anti-Immigrant Racism">"ississippi Terror Raid: Workers Shouldn’t Be Suckers for Anti-Immigrant Racism
Bosses Turn Education into Schools for Imperialism
Racist Gentrification Sweeping Workers Out of Harlem
a href="#Pakistan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks">Pa"istan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks
Afghanistan: Tables Turning on U.S. Aggressors
LETTERS
- Latest Victim of Racist Cops: The Mayor!
- Worker Agrees: He Gets 5%, Boss Gets 95%
- International PLP School in Spain
- a href="#Summer Of Communism: Teachers’ Role in Uniting Workers, Students">"ummer of Communism: Teachers’ Role in Uniting Workers, Students
- Are Radical Solutions Essential?
- The Relationship of Workers to the Party
- a href="#‘Lincoln’ Review Lacked Historical Context">‘L"ncoln’ Review Lacked Historical Context
Russia-U.S. Rivalry Sharpens War Threat, Intensifies Fascism
- Putin Institutes Wartime Fascism
- U.S. Bosses Hope Obama-Biden Can Spur War Effort
a href="#Obama’s Veep Pick Biden Has Imperialist Pedigree">"bama’s Veep Pick Biden Has Imperialist Pedigree
U.S., Russian, Chinese Rulers Battle In Beijing
- Parading Elitism, Olympics Despise Working Class
- Sportsmanship Gets A Capitalist Kick In The Face
Workers Vote To Strike
Fight Warmaker Boeing’s Attack On All Workers
Puget Sound, WA, August 30 —"Strike, Strike" reverberated down the Auburn plant aisles. Thousands or Boeing Workers marched outside negotiations near the airport chanting, "Out the Gate, in ’08." Seven thousand emptied the Everett complex for three days running taunting the company to "Paint the Lines," a reference to the green lines security traditionally paints around the factories to mark where picketers shouldn’t cross. These marches followed a month of Rolling Thunder: workers banging their tools making a deafening sound like thunder rolling through the plants, every hour on the hour. Boeing workers have taken matters into their own hands, forcing the union mis-leadership to recommend a strike Sept. 4.
This militancy did not arise spontaneously. For years, PLP helped lead mass rebellions in Boeing plants building Rolling Thunder, organizing mass marches and protest rallies as part of class struggle against the bosses and their imperialist plans for the aerospace industry. The union misleaders have tried to appropriate the tactics, but it got away from them. As IAM District President Tom Wroblewski lamented, "Once you get these guys up the mountain, it hard to get them back down again."
Workers should harbor no illusions that this militant activity alone can reverse the sharpening attacks on our class. Millions must be guided by communist, class-conscious ideas, organized by the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), in order to truly change society.
Global capitalist competition causes the general trend to attack industrial workers, particularly younger, newer workers. The rising industrial and military prowess of Russia and China, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist competitors, gives new urgency to the U.S. bosses’ need to retool and cut costs. In addition, the racist super-exploitation of subcontract workers, those working in a rapidly growing number of non-union, low-wage sweatshops, is changing the face of the aerospace industry.
Reject the "Kick Your Kids to the Kurb (KKK)" Contract! Strike!
Boeing is flush with cash at the moment, having made more that $13 billion in profit in recent years. The bosses, however, feel pressed to hold every penny as they look to the sharpening fight against their imperialist rivals. The union misleaders, meanwhile, are bickering over how much of this cash they can get to bribe older union workers to sell out the next generation.
Between 2006 and 2008, average Boeing wages have dropped $6/hour because of lower rates for new hires agreed to in prior contracts. This contract will lock in the trend of increasing exploitation, as nearly 50% of the Boeing workforce, those currently earning the highest wages, will retire in the next few years.
The tactics may differ, but in the end, aerospace workers will suffer the same fate as their class brothers and sisters in auto and other industries. More work will be subcontracted to the non-union shops; union workers will face lay-offs or lower pay in the current plants. We must not accept this contract. Workers must strike!
Workers Debate Dismal Future Under Capitalism
Progressive Labor Party called for a "United Aerospace Strike" in our well-received flyer at the airport demonstration. We included solidarity statements from Mississippi shipyard workers, Long Beach Boeing workers and L.A. subcontractor workers. Every statement warned of "losing higher-paid jobs to lower paid, non-union employees at an alarming rate."
The battle for the hearts and minds of the Boeing workers is as sharp as the sound of Rolling Thunder. The pro-capitalist union leaders offer ideas that will not challenge the bosses’ system. They blame the bad contract offer and the loss of union jobs on "this blatant example of corporate greed." That’s why they tried, and failed, to start the chant "Boeing’s offer is unfair, all we want is our fair share."
Workers debated the unions’ ideas for hours on the shop floor, with many rejecting the misleaders’ analysis. We built this factory with our labor, and our class, the working class, should control it!
As the bosses fled Rolling Thunder, we organized meetings of CHALLENGE readers in the plants. Riffing on the debates initiated during the Party’s July Summer Project, we discussed how bad ideas undermined the Chinese Revolution. We learned how Chinese revisionists –– misleaders who revised revolutionary ideas to take power back from the working class –– defeated the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, and consolidated capitalism’s hold on China. They busted up the communal farms, sending the equivalent of the U.S. population into the new Chinese factories at dirt-cheap wages. The imperialist rivalry has never been the same.
Kick Capitalism To The Curb
We also discussed how capitalism reinforces racism, sexism and imperialism. We discussed how the dog-eat-dog capitalist economic base makes it impossible to mitigate, let alone eliminate, these divisions in the working class. "How can communism succeed when we are so divided against each other?" asked our friend.
We examined the different economic base in a communist system, based on the collective strength of the international working class and the slogan "from each according to their commitment, to each according to their need." We debated whether a movement guided by communist politics that smashed the ruling class and revolutionized the economic base could indeed change how workers interact with each other. The road to workers’ power is built on fighting these evils of capitalism right now in this contract battle. But many agreed that the final defeat of racism, sexism and imperialism requires a communist revolution.
Everybody agreed this was a long, hard fight, made doubly difficult by the defeat of the old communist movement. One friend said, "A light bulb turned on" when PLP members explained how concessions to the wage system made by the old movement doomed it from the start.
In the end, the choice was made clear: we could kick our kids to the curb or kick capitalism to the curb. We left these discussions resolving to sell more CHALLENGES, distribute PLP basic documents Road to Revolution III and IV, organize two PLP study groups and build our revolutionary forces. As we go to print it looks like we’ll strike on Sept. 4. Either way, the future is ours if we build these revolutionary communist forces in our industry and throughout the working class.
a name="Democrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers">">"emocrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers
In a spectacle worthy of rock stars, with 84,000 screaming fans and July 4th-style fireworks, the Democratic Party named Barack Obama and Joe Biden to its party’s ticket for the November elections. As we go to press, the Republican Convention has begun and will name John McCain and Sarah Palin (another "fresh face") as their candidates. Despite being bombarded by frenzied and non-stop media coverage of the campaigns, workers should understand that neither ticket offers anything to us except capitalist exploitation marked by endless wars, attacks on our living standards, and divide-and-rule racism against African Americans and Latinos. The Obama campaign, with its mass outreach to youth, black and Latin, and labor, dangerously misleads millions into supporting the ruling class.
Obama has captured the imagination of millions who want to believe that he will bring change that would help them in these tough times. But Obama has the same backers as President Bush and Dick Cheney! (See PLP Elections Pamphlet). He will serve the same interests! The rulers believe that Obama’s appeal will make the working class more enthusiastic about following U.S. rulers into continuing and expanding wars and inevitable cutbacks in wages, services, and social programs. Like Kennedy, Carter and Clinton before him, Obama represents false hope for change and is simply a front man for the ruling class, "fresh face" notwithstanding.
The Context: War for Control over Energy Resources
U.S. imperialists lead a declining empire that defines the limits of any president’s initiatives. U.S. power, while strong and doing great damage worldwide, is weakening relative to other rising powers including the European Union, Russia, China, and even some secondary capitalist powers like Iran and Venezuela that gain leverage by allying with the rising powers competing with the U.S. At the core of these disputes is control over the world’s energy resources, centered in the Middle East.
The Acceptance Speech and the Issues
Obama’s speech was standard liberal fare. His rhetoric was indistinguishable from his Democratic Party predecessors including John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry, or Bill Clinton. Like them, he promised improvements in all aspects of life (see box). Yet his predecessors have never achieved these goals and cannot because they interfere with the needs of the capitalists for profits. In fact, Bill Clinton dismantled the welfare program so that now the poverty rate has increased dramatically while welfare rolls have fallen drastically!
Obama is tied to the ruling class by a hundred strings, as demonstrated by his selection of long-term Washington insider Joe Biden for Vice-President and his coterie of advisors who all belong to ruling-class think-tanks and policy institutes like the Council on Foreign Relations that ensure the continuity of U.S. imperialism regardless of who is president.
Dissent and Protest
At the convention, thousands rallied to attack the Democratic Party for its failure to champion working-class interests to end the wars and achieve social justice. However, it’s an illusion to think the Democrats, a ruling-class party, would ever truly represent workers’ interest.
The Iraq Veterans Against the War demanded to address the convention around the need to incorporate their goals — an immediate end to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, better care for returning veterans and reparations for the Iraqi people. Obama turned a deaf ear to these demands and others, relying on thousands of police armed with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and truncheons to threaten the demonstrators and move them far away from the convention, arresting over 130 and beating many. The cops did the same to protestors at the Republican Convention.
Where Do We Go From Here?
The Democratic and Republican conventions are clown shows to entertain and distract us while the country’s actual rulers, the rich capitalists, make sure that their every need is met by their faithful political servants in both parties. They use the political process, including the conventions, to deceive us into thinking that voting can significantly affect our interests. The ruling class wants to recruit millions of us into supporting U.S. imperialism by blunting our class-consciousness about our exploitation by the rich capitalists, bankers, developers and government officials. The working class should instead attack these elections for the shell game they represent, and build a militant, internationalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist opposition to capitalism. This approach is not "on the ballot" in this election — revolution for workers’ power and communism can never be won through a ballot, but only through revolution and armed struggle.
What does Obama stand for?
• JOBS — Obama promises "more jobs," ending outsourcing of jobs overseas. But Obama cannot defy the laws of capitalism. They dictate that capitalists must drive for higher profits to survive and therefore seek out the lowest wage markets, whether they be in China, Mexico or Latin America, as the Japanese and European automakers do in seeking lower wages in the U.S.
• WAGES — Obama promises help for "hard-working Americans." But again, capitalism dictates that U.S. bosses must drive down wages to be able to compete with rival bosses worldwide. So they "outsource" jobs to subcontractor shops from across the southern U.S. to California, jobs which pay $10 an hour, less than half of what workers in unionized factories like Boeing earn, leading to mass layoffs and mass unemployment.
• UNEMPLOYMENT — Because of the above two factors, capitalism must create a "reserve army of unemployed." No president in history has ever ended unemployment because it’s built into capitalism’s drive for maximum profits which leads to "bubble-bursting" recessions and depressions.
• RACISM — Obama promises to "bring people together" while blaming victims, not racism, for their misery. But Obama won’t withdraw the 100,000 cops that Clinton put on the streets, cops who daily attack and murder black and Latino workers and youth. Again, Obama’s capitalism cannot function, and has never functioned, without the hundreds of billions in super-profits that the racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers rakes in for the bosses.
• THE ENVIRONMENT — Obama promises to "be free of foreign oil in ten years." (!) But U.S. capitalism needs to control that foreign oil as a lever in its battle with imperialist rivals in Europe, Russia, China and Japan. Obama promises to put money into non-polluting energy sources, but he doesn’t tell us that no modern army or industry can exist without oil. You can’t drive a tank or fly a jet fighter on wind power.
• A DRAFT — Obama promises to "rebuild our military to meet future conflicts." How? With the current depleted and exhausted U.S. Army? It can only be done by drafting millions, which Obama aims to accomplish through the back door of "National Service." This would supposedly give youth a "choice" of "public service" or military service, and promise undocumented immigrant youth citizenship in exchange for becoming cannon fodder in his endless "future conflicts." Where else will he get the troops he wants to put into Afghanistan?
• FASCISM — Obama complains about the Bush assault on civil liberties, but meanwhile votes for the latest Bush bill to tap an untold number of phone calls in the name of "national security." And he hasn’t uttered a word about repealing the fascist Patriot Act. The rulers need such laws to put down potential rebellions by workers and youth fed up with all the attacks on their lives.
• WAR — Obama promises to gradually withdraw most (not all) troops from Iraq, but wants to enlarge the army by at least 92,000, sending more soldiers into Afghanistan to continue the killing of thousands of civilians in order to protect proposed oil pipelines in that area of Asia. And Obama’s pledge to handle "future conflicts" by definition must maintain and expand the hundreds of U.S. military bases throughout the world upon which U.S. capitalism depends to control the flow of oil. In defending his ability to be "commander-in-chief," Obama proudly cites all the past U.S. wars that have seen Democrats in charge.
And Obama’s opponent, John McCain, is just as much a loyal servant of capitalism on every one of the above issues.
a name="At LA Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders"></a>"t LA Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders
LOS ANGELES, CA. –– The working class is no stranger to racist killer cops, especially in the recent multiple murders involving the LAPD and LA County Sheriffs. PLP members attended a candlelight vigil for Christian Portillo, who was gunned down by the murderous cops in Lennox. Recalling PLP’s response to Sean Bell’s murder in New York, we decided to bring revolutionary politics to these events and received positive responses from the working class there.
As the vigil progressed, there was a call by community leaders for a march toward the Sherriff’s office that was to remain calm and collected. White flags were passed out along with signs calling for an end to police murder. Similar to the misleaders in New York, leaders of this march called for exposing the "bad" cops and respecting the "good" cops. These misleaders called for peace and increased participation in the system. Once Party members saw reformist politics leading the march, we mobilized to circulate more CHALLENGES and literature. One comrade began chanting "Policia cochina, racista y asesina!" (Police, pigs, racist and murderous!) that was warmly received and picked up by our working-class brothers and sisters.
The workers’ anger, especially that of Christian Portillo’s brother, grew. The march became a picket line and eventually PLP pushed to move down the block in front of the Sheriffs’ station. PL members’ chants got louder and more militant. Then, Portillo’s brother tacked a flier attacking these racist murderers on the station wall. One comrade took a bullhorn and gave a speech linking the murder of Christian Portillo to the capitalist system that would continue to flourish with reformist politics. This comrade called for workers to fight back and join our fight for communism. At the end of the march, the misleaders continued their call to work within the system. Another comrade jumped on the bullhorn and gave another speech in Spanish reminding the crowd of the 1992 rebellions in response to the Rodney King beating. He called for joining PLP and building for communist revolution on the job, in the schools, and in the streets.
The most important lesson we learned is that we should never underestimate our class. Our initial hesitation to be militant at a vigil based on the fear of being seen as "opportunist" (taking advantage of the situation) was wrong. The actions of the working class in Lennox and especially some of the Portillo family members reminded PL’ers of the responsibility they have to build the fight for communism. PLP made contacts here and will continue to build the relationships needed for the long-term fight for revolution! Only revolution will end these brutal police murders and the terror that is capitalalism! J
Protesters Charge Cops With Racist Killing of Latino Worker
Workers PLP met at the Lennox vigil (above) called and invited us to another rally which we attended in Compton the next week against the police killings. Family members of the several victims of racist police terror actively led chants, as they continue being under police surveillance and intimidation. The rally got support from cars passing by and honking.
PLP members led the chant "Black, Brown, Asian, White — to smash racism we must unite!" Later, when Christian Portillo’s sister spoke, she echoed these sentiments, saying that we all need to unite against racist cop terror. Portillo’s friends and family all took CHALLENGE and were interested in reading it along with our leaflet linking the racist police murders of Portillo and Kevin Wicks in Inglewood with the rulers’ drive to make the working class pay for their wars and economic crisis. One person we had met at the first rally asked us for the new CHALLENGE. She had read the previous one and liked it. She noted that this was the sort of thing that started the civil war in El Salvador. We agreed and could see why the Summer Project which just ended was so important.
By expanding CHALLENGE networks and organizing workers in the factories, in the military and in schools, PLP is laying the basis to lead the fight against racist police killings around revolutionary communist politics and to build the fight to end racist terror once and for all, not with dead-end reforms but through the long term fight for communist revolution.
a name="Mississippi Terror Raid: Workers Shouldn’t Be Suckers for Anti-Immigrant Racism">">"ississippi Terror Raid: Workers Shouldn’t Be Suckers for Anti-Immigrant Racism
LAUREL, MISSISSIPPI, August 28 — The Gestapo-like raids carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cops struck again, arresting 595 workers employed by Howard Industries, world’s largest manufacturer of electrical transformers employing 3,000 workers in southeastern Mississippi. And the traitorous AFL-CIO applauded the raid! (See below)
In May, ICE carried out a similar raid, arresting hundreds of workers at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. These raids are terrorizing many small towns nation-wide. At the same time the Laurel raid was taking place, a rumor of an ICE raid in Perry, a small Iowa town 100 miles from Postville, was panicking the Latino community, 25% of Perry’s population.
Hundreds of heavily-armed ICE agents raided Howard Industries’ Laurel and nearby Ellisvile facilities. They arrived in unmarked cars and white vans, sealed the plants and rounded up "suspect" workers, questioning them in mobile trailers.
Just as the Nazis used yellow stars to identify Jews, Latino workers were segregated from other workers. U.S. citizens were given blue armbands to divide them from immigrants. Agents wearing flak vests stopped motorists driving near the plant and told them to leave the area.
The raid’s blatant fascist-like racism shocked many. An immigrant rights group in Jackson, the state capital, criticized the raid, saying families with children were involved. "It’s horrific what ICE is doing to these families and these communities," said Shuya Ohno, a spokesman for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. "It’s just hard to imagine that this is the United States of America." (NY Times, 8/27)
A woman entering a local church with four small children said several of the youngsters’ parents had been detained. The woman, a translator for many of the families, said: "I don’t like this at all. I don’t understand it. They have come here to work. It’s very sad."
But this is exactly the U.S.A. today, a country led by a ruling class which needs more racism, more fascist terror. The raids’ aim is not really to deport all undocumented workers, or even to find those guilty of "identity theft" as ICE claims. The goal is to terrorize immigrant workers, and all workers, so they accept super-exploitation, rotten working conditions, more social service cutbacks and get used to the kind of mass terror that the bosses and their police agencies will use against ALL workers who refuse to swallow these conditions. These attacks will continue no matter who’s elected the next President.
Plants like this one here will become more important for the bosses’ war machine as it gears for wider wars, from Afghanistan to the Caucasus. The ruling class realizes that the U.S. population is changing. According to Census figures, in several decades most U.S. workers will be immigrants, Latinos or blacks. So racist super-exploitation will be needed more than ever to keep the bosses’ super-profits rolling in.
But this also becomes a contradiction for the bosses: they need those workers they’re terrorizing for their war plants and their military. So, while we might hear a lot of empty talk about "the end of racism" — "after all," they tell us, "look at Obama" — the opposite is happening.
This makes it primary for PLP to organize among these factory workers, and all workers and soldiers, to win them to fight racism, understanding that capitalism cannot live without racist exploitation. All workers must see these ICE raids as an attack against the entire working class. The AFL-CIO did the opposite here. Rather than unite the workers and organize them all, it pitted unionized workers against immigrant workers.
Robert Shaffer, regional AFL-CIO official, applauded the raid, saying he’s complained for a long time about how companies in southern Mississippi hire undocumented immigrants, disgustingly adding the racist comment that the region "looks like a little Mexico." The same union traitors who, because of their pro-boss sellout politics, have failed to organize millions of workers — citizens or immigrants — nationwide, are now blaming the victims for their own failures.
Workers who fall for this racist trap are cutting their own throat. We must defend our fellow immigrant workers when the bosses attack. Our motto should be, "All for one and one for all; same enemy same fight, workers of the world, unite!"
Bosses Turn Education into Schools for Imperialism
From metal detectors, cameras and police presence to eroding union protections for teachers, trends in education point to a tightening control that is part of a growing fascism in society. Workers and youth organizing in movements to oppose an accelerating cascade of budget-cut assaults will come up against these physical and coercive elements of the police state. Through sharp, vigorous and patient organizing inside such movements, communists can win masses of workers and youth to see growing fascism not only as cause for despair but as cause for revolution.
Capitalist education always serves to teach the big ideas needed so that the ruling class can pursue its aims with minimal resistance from the workers. The Cold War education of the 1950s produced a society that mostly accepted a vicious anti-communist war in Vietnam at considerable cost in lives and absorbed its costs for ten years. As the Cold War heated up again under Reagan in the 1980s, brutal wars in Central America and huge cuts in social spending ensued. A U.S. population won to anti-communism tolerated these attacks. The (unexpected) reward for U.S, imperialism was the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main competitor. During the Cold War U.S. schools taught young-people anti-communism so they would not protest the rulers’ war plans.
Today U.S. imperialism faces a situation that is both similar and different. New competitors are rising, and as CHALLENGE has emphasized, control of Mid-East oil is key to dominance in the coming period. What teachers are asked to teach about the Mid-East matters. The ruling class needs U.S. schools to win over future workers to U.S. imperialism.
In New York State all high school students must take Regents exams in several subjects to graduate. In Global History students have been asked to write about the "positives and negatives" or the "differing viewpoints" on imperialism. These topics do more than force thousands of students to argue for imperialism on test day. Because topics tend to be recycled, these questions also exercise enormous influence over teachers who care deeply about preparing their students for examination and graduation. Teachers frame their treatment of imperialism in similar terms. Teachers are pressured to avoid teaching imperialism as the racist and genocidal system that it is. Like slavery and the Holocaust, imperialism has no positive characteristics. This moral stance is impossible when teaching to the test.
This past June, question #41 reads:
"In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The United Nations response led to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. This response is an example of:
Détente
Empire building
Totalitarianism
Collective Security
In classrooms, where the struggle for literacy is desperate, teachers tempted to speak about U.S. imperialism are discouraged by such a question. The "correct" answer was choice #4. The test’s writers want Americans to understand Desert Storm not as an exercise in U.S. imperialism but "collective security." But even more alarming than the right answer is the wrong one, specifically choice #2. Teachers who focus on actual history are in trouble. The history is clear:
The U.S. developed relations with the Saudis after World War II, calling the oil reserves of the Mid-East "a stupendous source of strategic power and the greatest material prize in the history of the world" Carter proclaimed his doctrine of U.S. dominance in the Mid-East in 1980 and created a "rapid-reaction force" designed to invade the area. Reagan transformed this force into Centcom, which has grown under every president and directed three major wars in fifteen years.
This history points to choice #2, imperialism. Teachers who speak in terms of U.S. imperialism run the risk of "confusing" their students and maybe even costing them the one point they need in order to graduate. The prospect is terrifying enough, especially to new teachers, to dampen a real critique of U.S. imperialism. Additionally, the teacher-training taboo of never "sharing your view" finishes off many a good lesson about the true role of the U.S. in the world before it ever begins. No doubt the rulers have the good old-fashioned witch-hunt in their arsenal for teachers who refuse to toe the line of U.S. patriotism in class, and they will use it again as they have in the past. Next to these exams, however, the Cold War persecution of teachers was crude and perhaps even less effective in terms of the levels of conformity achieved.
Luckily, working class students can and do respond to real history teaching. Facts, a veteran PLP member used to say, are stubborn things. Several students informally surveyed on this question after the exam knew to stay away from choice number two even though they knew it was correct. In class, the teacher led discussions to ensure they understood the purpose of the test and what the testers were looking for. In fact deconstructing an exam this way actually makes test prep easier: "always pick the choice that makes America look good."
When the "positives-of-imperialism" question reas its ugly head, we have an opportunity to raise important ideas among teachers and students about growing fascism, the role of education and the needs of U.S. imperialism. This article was discussed with several teachers and students in the base of PLP at a school where we’re active for suggestions prior to publication. We must take every chance the rulers give us to build our movement for communist revolution.
Racist Gentrification Sweeping Workers Out of Harlem
HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY, August 19 — Several weeks ago, the Record Shack, a legendary 35-year-old music store on 125th St in Harlem, was suddenly evicted. The owner was not even allowed inside to get his personal possessions; his goods were brought to a Yonkers storage facility that’s asking $12,000 for their return. The landlord is a local church, The United House of Prayer, that has been selling off its ample property to the highest bidders, including banks and chain stores, that are invading the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood. Last weekend, as on many past Sundays, local activists rallied outside the shuttered music store, demanding its re-opening and condemning the landlord church.
Harlem, home to many poor and working-class African-Americans and a major cultural center, has already been cut in half. That is, housing affordable at the average Harlem worker’s $20,000 wage and to small black-owned businesses are being displaced by luxury condos and upscale stores. What are being labeled "subsidized units" in the new buildings are pegged at incomes of $40,000-$60,000. Going, going, gone are affordable apartments and small businesses.
Resistance to gentrification has been constant, from students and residents uniting to oppose Columbia University’s takeover of West Harlem, to a militant Movimiento por Justicia in East Harlem, to several groups in Central Harlem. There have been demonstrations large and small and several actions, uniting all the groups. Unfortunately, severe weaknesses pervade the struggle.
All the groups suffer from a major focus on politicians. They rightly denounce the sellouts like ex-mayor Dinkins and Rep. Charles Rangel, and Harlem’s traitorous City Council representatives, but then hope to elect new politicians who say they will fight in the people’s interest. No few individuals can turn around the basic fact that the government’s role is — first and foremost — to protect the flow of profits, and also to control uprisings by the governed. But this obsession with elections means that debating the merits of individuals, or listening to politicians’ speeches occupy many meetings.
Much activity is focused on a few people attending meetings of political bodies and hoping to influence their outcome. Although protesting at politicians’ offices or events can be good focal points for mass actions, the major effort must be to build mass activity and expose the role of politics in a capitalist society. We need more mass actions such as gathering to stop evictions, or we could occupy renovation projects.
Nationalism is the other major stumbling block to building a mass campaign. At the August 3rd Record Shack demonstration, some people wanted to boycott other businesses owned by the Church, not a bad tactic, but on the basis that they were run by Jews or Koreans; they chanted "Buy Black." This slogan ignores the fact that the evil landlord is himself black, as are many other Harlem oppressors.
It was possible to have a discussion with a few demonstrators about how racism is used to super-oppress and divide people, but nationalism serves to maintain those divisions and hide the underlying class divisions. When we all mass in large numbers with militant actions, then we’ll really see which side people are on and allow us all — workers and students of all backgrounds — to fight together.
Some anti-gentrification movement fighters do see that capitalism, based on endless greed for profits, and built on racism, is the problem. By distributing CHALLENGE and having continuing discussions, we must try to win them to join the Party for the long struggle ahead and not become defeated by our current inability to turn around gentrification.
a name="Pakistan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks"></">Pa"istan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks
After only five months, Pakistan’s new coalition government has sunk into a seemingly unstoppable political and economic crisis: rapidly-rising inflation, increasing challenges from Islamic extremists and U.S.-India condemnation of Pakistan as a very serious threat to capitalist world security.
On August 18, the latest in a long line of U.S.-backed military strong men, President Pervez Musharraf, stepped down rather than face impeachment. While commentators predict his resignation heralds a new era, the chaos continues: a suicide bombing kills 30; another leaves 70 dead; one coalition partner resigns from government; thousands flee their homes during the biggest battle of the "war on terror" between the Pakistani army and the Taliban; president-to-be Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), declares, "The world is losing the war on terror."
Meanwhile, working-class anger at the rising cost of living — wheat flour, a staple, increased 26% in one month and transportation 14%, following last year’s jump in consumer prices of almost 20% — government corruption and general insecurity led to nation-wide protests. In Karachi, Pakistan’s Telecommunication Company workers struck in May, taking over the company’s headquarters until July 28 when they won higher wages.
On-the-job actions erupt in textile factories, the cement industry, among teachers, hospital and other government departments as more workers demand wage increases to offset increased living costs. Critically affecting the government’s military plans, 3,000 Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (Defense Ministry) workers, paid on a daily basis, are demanding pay increases and permanent jobs, now given to relatives and friends of army officials.
The PPP-led government blames Musharraf’s nine-year dictatorship for worsening conditions, claiming he left a "mutilated" economy with a large trade deficit and a government budget deficit up 75%. But their "poor people’s budget" follows Musharraf’s policies that blatantly benefit Pakistan’s ruling class and the U.S., which is insisting on the deregulation of Pakistan’s economy. More privatization of public resources is planned, tax breaks on stock-market profits are extended two years and large tracts of land are reserved for foreign investors to develop agribusiness. Subsides for food, fuel oil, electricity and fertilizer are slashed over 25%.
With a nod to the painful poverty of its 168 million people — 70% exist on less than $2/day, 60 million are "food insecure" (according to a UN report) — the government trumpets its $507 million program to provide $15 per month, medical insurance and job training for 3.3 million desperately-poor families. This contrasts starkly with a military budget of $4.7 billion.
Since 2002 the army has also received $10 billion from the U.S. to fund Pakistan’s military participation in the "war on terror" against the Taliban in the tribal belt along the Afghan/Pakistani border. But despite these billions, the insurgency has grown and the U.S. believes that the funding — paid in cash — is going elsewhere. In Pakistan it’s no secret that it lines the pockets of top military officials, who use the war as a cash cow and want to keep it alive.
The root of Pakistan’s current problems is U.S. bosses’ need to use it as part of their goal of world domination. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, (now an Obama foreign policy advisor) devised the "Bear Trap," a plot to defeat the U.S.’s main imperialist rival, the then Soviet Union, by drawing it into a war between the Afghan pro-Moscow government in Kabul and the wealthy landowners and religious zealots opposing it. The plan (in Brzezinski’s words, "to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam"), involved the creation, funding and training of an Afghan mujahaddin army in Pakistan.
This led to a 12-year jihad that became the U.S.’s largest covert action, (estimated cost, $40 billion (The Nation, 2/15/99) the bulk coming from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia). It inflicted religious intolerance on the secular societies of Pakistan and Afghanistan, perpetrated some of the most brutal acts of terrorism and became the breeding ground for the Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist networks now operating in 80 countries.
Today the U.S. claims factions in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence are aiding the Taliban’s resurgence. But the latter’s strength is also growing because the Pakistani army is weakening. Soldiers see the officers’ corruption and plunder and are demoralized. Desertions are rising. Many rank-and-file soldiers are reluctant to fight in a war overwhelmingly targeting civilians. Bloody confrontations, like the recent one killing many civilians and making 300,000 homeless, strengthen the Taliban’s position.
"Why is our government bombing us from the air," shouted one refugee. U.S. air strikes from over the border in Afghanistan or from secret CIA bases in Pakistan that kill more villagers than terrorists intensify the anger.
Caught between the army and the insurgents, people in the tribal areas are either coerced or voluntarily join with the Taliban. They do have an alternative: join with other workers in building PLP which is fighting the cause of all this misery, capitalism.
(Next, Part II: India, the U.S. and inter-imperialist rivalry over Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan and the projected "balkanization" of Pakistan.)
Afghanistan: Tables Turning on U.S. Aggressors
The "victory" claims of U.S. rulers when they invaded Afghanistan in 2001 have turned around. Not only is Osama bin Laden still at large, but the Taliban and its allies are now launching coordinated assaults on U.S. Army bases and an attack that killed ten elite French paratroopers. No wonder Obama and McCain are advocating troop increases in Afghanistan. At stake is a proposed oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
The seven-year occupation has devastated Afghans. Thousands of civilians have died from U.S./NATO air attacks, bombs, missiles and police fire, intensifying hatred of the imperialists. Poppy cultivation and corruption have soared. Poverty, homelessness, skyrocketing food prices, 75% illiteracy — this and worse is the lot of the average Afghan, the result of U.S. "liberation." With over 80% of women affected by domestic violence, Afghanistan has become the most dangerous place in the world for women.
All this has become fertile ground for Taliban and al Qaeda recruitment.
In the face of this devastation, Afghans have protested. Hundreds demonstrated against rising food prices; at a teachers’ rally for wage hikes, students set 45 vehicles ablaze and attacked the cops. Angry street demonstrations protested the U.S.-puppet agreement to maintain permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan.
All this is linked to the instability in bordering Pakistan, a Taliban base.
LETTERS
Latest Victim of Racist Cops: The Mayor!
I attended a rally in Berwyn Heights, Maryland, near the University of Maryland in Prince George’s County. Over 100 people from the University and neighborhood gathered to protest this latest victim of the County’s police – the MAYOR!
On July 29th, the SWAT team of the Sheriff’s Office broke down his door, shot his dogs, cuffed him and his mother-in-law, and interrogated them for 90 minutes as they lay next to the bloody dead dogs on the floor of their living room. The cops claimed they were tracking a delivery of drugs (30 pounds of marijuana) to their home.
I arrived at the rally carrying CHALLENGES and a sign that read "Indict the Killers of Ronnie White - Stop Police Terror" to link this latest episode of police terror with the lynching of Ronnie White, a young man killed in his jail cell after his arrest on suspicion of killing a police officer (see Challenge July 30, p. 3).
I encountered ten students from the University who had organized an earlier rally against the Berwyn Heights attack. They were eager to read our communist newspaper and wanted to organize a bigger demonstration against police brutality at the County Executive’s office. Two of their leaders joined us and the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability a few days later to discuss the use of state terror to control workers, how to fight for a more equitable system, and next steps in the campaign against racist police brutality.
Many people at the rally commented on the sign and the connections between the two attacks. One elderly white man commented that he used to be a "law-and-order man," but after seeing a resident cuffed, tasered, and insulted with racist comments, he changed his attitude. Some residents appeared to have had more sympathy for the dogs than for the dozens of workers –– mostly black and Latino — who have been brutalized by this police force for decades.
The responses from black and white workers about these two attacks are paving the way for reviving significant multi-racial organizing against police brutality in the County. As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens, more police brutality is likely as the ruling class tries to intimidate and control workers who are increasingly angry over their deteriorating quality of life. Now is the time to fight back!
Red organizer
Worker Agrees: He Gets 5%, Boss Gets 95%
Early one morning, ten comrades went to distribute leaflets and CHALLENGES in an industrial area in Los Angeles. Afterwards we approached two workers eating breakfast and gave them a leaflet and a CHALLENGE. We described the key role workers play in industry, how the boss exploits us and how the workers are the basis of all production. One comrade explained why the bosses need unemployment, and always pay lower wages, comparing the minimum wage to those of Boeing workers.
One worker agreed, saying he gets paid the minimum while every day the bosses demand more production. The other worker said he had no complaints; he received a good wage producing parts for cars because he’s paid for his skills. I asked him, "How many pieces do you produce in a day?" He replied, "About 80 to 100." I asked, "How much does each piece cost?" He answered "$400."
I said take 80 pieces as a minimum, multiply that by five days a week, and then by four for a month of production and then by the $400 each piece costs. He was quiet for a while and then said it was a lot of money. I noted that his wages covered about 5% of his total production and that the other 95% went to the boss. Finally he said, "It’s true; they’re exploiting us when they just give us crumbs and the boss keeps most of the value of the production. And I thought I wasn’t exploited!"
I’m a student from Mexico who participated in the Summer Project to further PLP’s activities in the factories and to use these experiences to spread communist ideas to other workers.
A young comrade from Mexico
International PLP School in Spain
A three-day international PLP communist school was organized here in Spain, including friends from France, workers of Spain and immigrants from Brazil, Peru, Colombia and El Salvador living here and others.
A Brazilian said that back home people are told there are only two classes: the "high" and the middle class. This led to a good discussion about class struggle and how capitalism worldwide is trying to deny the contradictions of the only two classes in society: the working class which fights the exploitation by the capitalist class.
The school was a positive development for the international growth of the communist PLP. We will write more soon.
PLP’er in Spain
a name="Summer Of Communism: Teachers’ Role in Uniting Workers, Students">">"ummer Of Communism: Teachers’ Role in Uniting Workers, Students
I’m a NYC high school teacher who just spent two weeks in the Los Angeles Summer Project. I had a great time working with older and younger comrades and friends. We all learned from one another, figuring out how to get CHALLENGE/DESAFIO to thousands of workers and students, to get contacts and start the process of winning those workers to the Party.
We talked a lot about the worker-student-soldier alliance (WSSA), bringing different groups in the working class together to fight capitalism. The power of the WSSA is far greater than its parts — none of them alone can really stop capitalism in its tracks, but together we can.
Early in the Project a comrade presented the history of the Party’s work in the 1960s and ‘70s to build a WSSA, including in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). I met the party through this work, which seemed the most logical and strongest work we could do to stop the war in Vietnam. Students alone couldn’t shut the system down. But, I learned, united with workers we had a lot more power!
I began to think about the work teachers do. It seemed to me that there are two aspects of WSSA needed in that work. We should try to build an alliance between our students and local factory and military workers — that’s what we discussed in the Summer Project. We also should forge unity between our own students and their teacher, who are also workers.
Most Party teachers work to win our students. We all have friends on staff who know about this. The staff we are friendliest with and closest to are the most committed to our students. But because teachers are trained to think of themselves as professionals, they are mostly not struggling to organize these students and their parents as fellow workers. Changing this would build real working-class unity in the schools and make clear that the enemy of good education is not parents or teachers, but capitalism. This won’t happen by itself — we need to struggle as hard with our friends and colleagues as we try to do with students.
That’s a big fight, which would expose the main contradiction in the school system — between the capitalist school system and the working-class students and their families.
In struggle,
One of many red teachers.
Are Radical Solutions Essential?
Recently I spoke to a group of religious humanists on the topic, "Our Future: Are Radical Solutions Essential?" I outlined the dire threats and conditions most of the world’s working people and their friends face. I declared that the U.S. presidential campaign would never confront these issues.
I cited three authors whose work can be useful in these discussions. First, I summarized Jared Diamond’s "Collapse," which concludes with an analysis of how twelve inter-related ecological/economic factors could well make the earth largely uninhabitable if not corrected in a reasonable time. Two — global warming and deadly competition for energy and water — are already at the root at expanding imperialist conflict. Michael Klare’s "Resource Wars and Oil Wars" makes very clear the dominant role multi-national profit wars play in this growing carnage. The morning I spoke, the Georgia-Russia war had just begun and my sources easily proved that the U.S.-UK financed BTC pipeline was at the heart of this deadly conflict.
I also read much of an op-ed piece by Israeli historian Benny Morris (NY Times, 7/18) calling on Israel to bomb Iran extensively by the end of the year, saying if this attack didn’t end the Iranian nuclear program, Israel "would have no choice" but to launch nuclear strikes that would slaughter millions in the Middle East. I then quoted both Obama and McCain assuring Israel that they support "all options being left on the table" and that both want to widely expand the U.S. imperial war machine.
Finally I recommended reading Joel Kovel’s "Enemy of Nature" which brilliantly attacks capitalism as the root of exploitation, ecological collapse and wars.
The audience so appreciated this candor and clarity that they rose for a standing ovation. Most of those attending will probably vote for Obama as the "lesser evil," but the main lesson is that many liberals are open to intense criticism of capitalism and the electoral system that helps preserve it.
Aging but Active Red
The Relationship of Workers to the Party
In a Sept. 3 letter, Red Coal (RC) insists that workers should have the right to strike and protest "government" policies in a communist society. Rather than banning strikes, RC asks, "Shouldn’t we have more faith in the workers? Shouldn’t we have more confidence in the power of communist ideas?" RC further states that strikes are necessary especially to protect job safety.
Under capitalism a strike (for example against unsafe working conditions) is one of the workers’ weapons against racist, sexist capitalist exploiters. In a communist society safety would be the first consideration on any job while any risks in emergencies would be shared equally, unlike a capitalist system where profits and class privilege are primary.
If workers struck in a communist society, it would indicate that they thought the working-class leadership of the communist party had become class enemies like capitalists. Arguing that strikes may be necessary under communism indicates a lack of confidence in communist ideas by implying that the working class shouldn’t trust or need the Party.
Because of uneven economic and political development (the richest one-fifth of the world’s population accounts for 86% of private consumption while the poorest one-fifth accounts for only 1.3%), some minority sections of the working class may feel that they have needs that are contradictory to those of the majority. In such cases, PL’s commitment to egalitarianism and internationalism must prevail over more selfish, national, racist and sexist ideas.
Many small and large struggles, even wars, may take place because of this. If communism is to prevail, the Party must give strong, principled leadership to the working class. This doesn’t have to mean that the working class will be alienated from political power because working-class ideas and leadership will constantly be sought after and developed by the Party until eventually everyone will become communist organizers.
I hope that comrade RC will ask his Party comrade about the possibility of getting into a study group and discussing the relationship of workers to the Party.
A Comrade
a name="‘Lincoln’ Review Lacked Historical Context"></">‘L"ncoln’ Review Lacked Historical Context
The article on Lincoln (CHALLENGE, 9/3), while not untrue, lacks historical rigor. Lincoln was clearly a racist, anti-Indian (in fact, when mobilizing the Union troops he had to call many of them back from fighting Indians in the West) and would have permitted slavery to remain intact (though he was against expansion), if the Union would be preserved.
The article reveals things about Lincoln that appear personal. But more important, he was against the expansion of slavery because he supported the expansion of industrialization and wage labor. However, within the Republican Party he was in the center at best, maybe even tilted to the right. During the Civil War, the radical Republicans, who opposed all slavery, were beginning to flex their muscles and by the end of the war they were becoming a dominant force within the Republican Party.
Lincoln remained a moderate until he was assassinated. His plans for "reconstruction" would have left the Southern ruling class intact but without slavery. Lincoln’s plans for black people would have left them at the mercy of their former owners. Clearly, that was a racist position. While ultimately "radical reconstruction" failed to truly change black and white relations, its programs went much further in dealing with the questions of the Southern ruling elite and racism.
The article doesn’t give any historical background. Even the title is incorrect; Lincoln was not pro-slave. He was racist and his opposition to slavery was primarily against its expansion, and holding the Union together. Expanding industrial capitalism, especially out West, was his major goal.
CHALLENGE should be more careful in dealing with historical issues. The real story of U.S. rulers needs no exaggeration to be condemned and thrown into the racist trash-bin of history.
P.M., History Teacher
Russia-U.S. Rivalry Sharpens War Threat, Intensifies Fascism
Russia’s onslaught into Georgia, a major strategic setback for U.S. rulers, shifts the imperialist rivalry into a new, more dangerous phase. The U.S. war machine no longer holds a monopoly on invasion and must now contend with the restored might of Moscow’s 1,200,000-strong nuclear-armed forces. For example, Pentagon planners targeting Iran will have to raise their estimates of needed troops and figure out how to get them.
Eight years ago, the top-level, Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman commission formulated far-reaching plans for maintaining U.S. global supremacy into the 21st Century, including militarization under a domestic police state. Its foreign policy chapter stated, "It is a critical national interest of the United States that no hostile… [predominant power] arise in any of the globe’s major regions, nor a hostile global peer rival or a hostile coalition comparable to a peer rival." On Russia, Hart-Rudman warned against political developments that Putin in fact later led, "A form of Russian national socialism [fascism — Ed.], emboldened by a revived form of pan-Slavism, could do enormous harm over all of Eurasia and beyond" ["harm" to U.S. ruling-class interests ––Ed].
Putin Institutes Wartime Fascism
Former KGB agent Putin’s success in reorganizing Russia into an imperialist power contrasts sharply with Bush’s failure to carry out Hart-Rudman’s recommendations. Putin has mercilessly disciplined pro-U.S. political dissenters and businessmen. Alexander Litvinenko, a KGB turncoat who criticized the Kremlin from London, died horribly in 2006 from a Russian-sourced radioactive poison. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-chief of the former oil giant Yukos — which he tried to sell to Exxon Mobil — rots in a Siberian jail, his latest parole bid summarily denied. Putin ended regional elections and effectively nationalized major industry, especially energy, which Russia wields as a weapon.
The soaring price of oil, partly due to the U.S.’s Iraq fiasco — which has been far from meeting predicted oil production goals — has helped immensely to strengthen oil-exporting Russia. But mostly, Putin & Co. have stirred up a nationalist fervor for resurrecting the old Russian empire. The Russians have a big head start in moving to an imperialist wartime footing, stemming from both good and bad periods of their past.
From World War II, they retain the collective memory of the red-led mass mobilization against their Nazi enemies — the greatest single undertaking in history. In the late 1980s, the now state-capitalist Soviet rulers opted for open capitalism, crushing all workers’ past gains, and the old Soviet Union imploded. U.S. capitalism chose this as an opportunity to install a "new world order" with only one superpower — the U.S. This worked for a while, but the U.S./NATO war against Russian ally Serbia became the turning point for Russia’s bosses. The latter needed justification to get back at the U.S. and the recent U.S./NATO-inspired independence for Kosovo — taking it away from Serbia — fit the bill. Following Georgia’s invasion of its two northern pro-Russian autonomous provinces, Moscow turned around and recognized their independence.
Russia’s bosses have used nationalistic patriotism to influence workers to accept worsening living conditions and tight government social control. Pensions are down, the former communist-led healthcare system is in shambles, wages go unpaid for months, and prostitution and Mafia-type crime are rife.
Bosses’ nationalist and profit drives, whether from Moscow or Washington, run counter to the interests of the international working class, including Russia’s workers.
U.S. Bosses Hope Obama-Biden Can Spur War Effort
U.S. rulers, on the other hand, thought they could counter Russian influence in the old Soviet bloc without committing U.S. ground troops. They banked on bribes instead, through election-fixing "revolutions" in Georgia and the Ukraine among others, financed by Rockefeller ally and billionaire George Soros, and massive arms shipments to two-bit pro-U.S. leaders like Georgia’s Saakashvili.
While the Bush gang tortures and murders "detainees" in its worldwide prison camps and terrorizes immigrants at home, it has failed to enact the society-transforming fascistic measures outlined in Hart-Rudman and other strategic proposals. These include a thorough revamping of education "in the national interest," a top-to-bottom centralization of law enforcement agencies, and a systematic indoctrination of elected officials to support the rulers’ military priorities.
To their dismay, only the Homeland Security Department proposal has been established, and that is pretty disorganized although able to carry out terroristic anti-immigrant raids. (See page 3) In addition, instead of ruling-class-imposed discipline, economic chaos reigns domestically. Bankers, bent on doing whatever they please, got rid of their nemesis Eliot Spitzer, the rulers’ supposed Sheriff of Wall Street. Financial crises mount. U.S. rulers are counting on "Change" candidate Barack Obama to initiate the mobilization they need. Their new situation regarding Russia explains why Obama chose arch-imperialist draft supporter Joe Biden as his running mate. [See adjoining box and article on Conventions, page 2]
Russia’s newfound militarism is already damages U.S. influence far beyond Georgia, Agence France Presse reported (8/17/08). "President Hugo Chavez said...that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela." And Russia is increasing its arms sales to U.S. foe Syria. We don’t say that World War III will start tomorrow. We do, however, recognize that chances for a global flare-up have risen qualitatively, without counting either China’s inevitably destabilizing role or Europe’s ambiguous loyalties. The rulers’ power grabs constantly increase the risk of deadlier wars.
All this U.S. capitalist economic anarchy and faltering trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come down hard on the U.S. working class while killing millions of workers abroad. Wages are down, prices and unemployment are up, racist policy brutality and Nazi-like immigration raids are intensifying. The only road to reverse such assaults — in both the U.S. and Russia, as well as worldwide — it to build a mass international Progressive Labor Party that aims to establish a profit-free communist society without exploitation, unemployment, racism, sexism and capitalist borders.J
a name="Obama’s Veep Pick Biden Has Imperialist Pedigree">">"bama’s Veep Pick Biden Has Imperialist Pedigree
Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war and the fascist Patriot Act. He wants to send U.S. soldiers as "peacekeepers" to fight pro-China forces in Darfur. He now sponsors a bill that would send $15 billion in aid to Pakistan’s yet-to-be-named next dictator. Biden’s ruling-class mentor is Leslie Gelb, former NY Times editor and head of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations. Together they wrote a major policy paper on Iraq which proposed partitioning it into three autonomous regions, a plan that foundered on the inability to apportion its huge oil reserves.
In 2005, Biden told NBC News, "The United States will ‘have to face’ a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties result in persistent shortfalls in US army recruitment (Agence France Presse, 6/12/05). "It’s just a reality," Biden said.
Olympic Flame Foretells Imperialist Inferno: U.S., Russian, Chinese Rulers Battle In Beijing
Every four years the bosses get their chance to parade nationalism with the Olympics games. Gold medals for hypocrisy should go to the rulers of every country that sent athletes to Beijing, with the U.S., China, and Russia taking the lion’s share. This "peaceful gathering of nations" served as yet another battleground in an imperialist rivalry that has just escalated to a new level of armed conflict. Russia’s premier Putin actually took advantage of the opening ceremonies to tell Bush to his face "War has begun," in Georgia. By the time the games closed, Russia’s emboldened military was threatening pro-U.S. Ukraine and Moldova with the Georgia treatment.
U.S. pundits used the event to accuse the Chinese of hosting "totalitarian games...a showcase for a dictatorship" (Boston Globe, 8/24/08) and made comparisons with Hitler’s Nazi extravaganza in 1936. But U.S. bosses’ gripe with China has nothing to do with "human rights" (as they claim) and everything to do with its support for anti-U.S. forces in Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. In Beijing, Bush muttered about China’s "repression," while the U.S. war machine continued to commit crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can expect more carnage before the rivals reconvene for the London games in 2012. Not only are Russian bosses feeling their imperialist oats, but the Pentagon has elevated Africa to a theater of war, like the Middle East, by setting up its new Africa Command. And the U.S. Navy has re-established its Fourth Fleet, charged with patrolling Latin America, just as Russian warships plan to visit Venezuela. World rulers may well have to take a wartime Olympic break, as they did in 1916 (during World War 1), in 1940 and 1944 (during World War II).
Parading Elitism, Olympics Despise Working Class
Another side of Olympic phoniness is elitism. The remarkable athletic feats witnessed at Beijing hardly reflect general physical fitness back home, especially in the U.S., with its sickening youth culture of junk food and video games. For every Michael Phelps, there are millions of U.S. children who never even learn how to swim. Competitive sports in the U.S. are open almost exclusively to affluent families that can afford to enroll in year-round leagues and hire private coaches. Parents dreaming of scholarships, endorsements or are selfishly living their lives through their children, push them to the brink and over. Olympians mainly represent a select few of these few, lucky survivors of this over-training, which causes participants, particularly girls, grave injuries like ligament tears and concussions at epidemic rates.
The Olympics were born of inter-imperialist rivalry. A French nobleman, Baron de Coubertin, started the modern Olympic movement to rouse French youth to fitness following his country’s humiliation in a war with Prussia in 1878. The Olympics were built as a playground for ruling classes to compete with each other, even implementing until the 1970s a no-professional rule that barred athletes who accepted pay for athletics. They used this rule to limit participation by working-class athletes. Anti-working class racism permeated the Olympics, especially during the reign of its pro-Nazi president, Avery Brundage (see box this page).
The amateur rule would be thrown out during the 1970s because many imperialist countries could not compete anymore with nations with state-sponsorship of athletes. The Soviet Union briefly ran a sports program that both served the majority of its youth and produced world-class athletes. But Soviet leaders went the all-elite route when they fully embraced capitalism in the post-Stalin era.
Sportsmanship Gets A Capitalist Kick In The Face
Finally, there is the seldom practiced ideal of "fairness" and "sportsmanship." Olympic organizers set the tone for cheating at the opening by hiding a talented seven-year-old singer backstage while a "prettier" girl lip-synched for the cameras. The U.S. media jumped all over this "outrage." But how much different was it from Hollywood’s exploitive starlet system or the viciousness of "American Idol"? Underage Chinese gymnasts and doped Ukrainian weightlifters were sure to follow. Kicking a biased referee square in the face, a Cuban takewondo competitor showed exactly how fair and sportsmanlike the games actually are. The prevailing ethic at Beijing wasn’t the fair play of friendly sport but the win-at-all-costs mentality of capitalist warmakers.
Sure there were some thrilling Olympic moments. But if they result only in patriotic chants for one country over another they are deadly for the international working class and lead straight into the plans of the rulers for wider wars and more capitalist exploitation. A better competition for workers to take sides in is Progressive Labor Party’s long-term struggle to eliminate the profit system, and the imperialist wars it generates, through communist revolution.
- U.S.-RUSSIA FIGHT SHARPENS . . .OIL FUELS GEORGIA WAR
- LA Summer Project Builds Communist Leadership for Future
- Veteran PL Farmworker’s Inspiring Stories of Battles in the Fields
- Aerospace Workers Need United Strike vs. Warmakers
- Angry Homecare Workers Must Sack Union Hacks, Bosses’ Politicians
- From California to Seattle: Volunteers Help Connect Boeing Workers
- Attack Hacks’ ‘Anti-War’ Hypocrisy at AFT Convention
- In Opposing Imperialist War: GI’s Must Fight Racism, Sexism
- All Workers Must Oppose Anti-Immigrant Racism
- PL Youths’ Red Ideas Greeted At International Festival
- South Africa General Strike Shows Power of Workers
- LETTERS
- Red Eye on the News
- ‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln Was Viciously Pro-Slavery
- SUMMER OF COMMUNISM LETTERS FROM LOS ANGELES
U.S.-RUSSIA FIGHT SHARPENS . . .OIL FUELS GEORGIA WAR
U.S. PIPELINE
RESTORE DRAFT
LA Summer Project Builds Communist Leadership for Future
Revolution with U.S. Marines
Communist Future
Veteran PL Farmworker’s Inspiring Stories of Battles in the Fields
Aerospace Workers Need
United Strike vs. Warmakers
Angry Homecare Workers Must Sack Union Hacks, Bosses’ Politicians
From California to Seattle:
Volunteers Help Connect Boeing Workers
Attack Hacks’ ‘Anti-War’ Hypocrisy at AFT Convention
In Opposing Imperialist War:
GI’s Must Fight Racism, Sexism
All Workers Must Oppose Anti-Immigrant Racism
PL Youths’ Red Ideas Greeted
At International Festival
South Africa General Strike
Shows Power of Workers
LETTERS
More Letters from LA Summer Project
Rising Struggle Among Young Workers
Strikes Under Communism?
Red Eye on the News
Plenty of big-biz $ backs Obama
Russia war is payback to US
Nuke-free area (except Israel)
Obama wants you to serve US
Desperate Haitians eating dirt
Anti-Latino hate crimes up
‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln Was Viciously Pro-Slavery
SUMMER OF COMMUNISM
LETTERS FROM LOS ANGELES
Coin Toss Between Obama, McCain Yields: WAR, WAR, WAR
Obama Denounces Communists, Gives Nazis A Free Pass
a href="#CHALLENGE’S Ideas Make Summer Project A Winner at LA Factories">"HALLENGE’S Ideas Make Summer Project A Winner at LA Factories
a href="#‘The workers are all talking about striking…’">‘The"workers are all talking about striking…’
Paving The Way To Revolution One Visit At A Time
LA Summer Project Volunteers Oppose Racist Terror!
Learning, Teaching Red Ideas at NEA Convention
BBQ Serves Up Communist Food for Thought
Students, Teachers Pass the Real Test: Fighting for Our Class Interests
Shipyard and Tire Strikers Battle Cops in Greece and Iran
a href="#Can’t Stop PL Youth from ‘Reddening’ Mexico’s May Day">Can’t "top PL Youth from ‘Reddening’ Mexico’s May Day
Brazil: Lula, Bosses, Ethanol: Killing Workers for Profits
LETTERS
a href="#GI’s, Families Bare Capitalism’s Horrors">GI"s, Families Bare Capitalism’s Horrors
a href="#Myth of Elections Can’t Hide U.S. Fascism">"yth of Elections Can’t Hide U.S. Fascism
a href="#‘Stalin was a great leader…’">‘Sta"in was a great leader…’
Summer Project Visits Pay Dividends on the Job
U.S. on TV Masks U.S. in Real Life
Garment Workers Need More Than Patches, Will Fight for the Whole Coat
a href="#The Cosby-Obama Show: Racism Is the Victims’ Fault">"he Cosby-Obama Show: Racism Is the Victims’ Fault – Part II
Coin Toss Between Obama, McCain Yields: WAR, WAR, WAR
Barack Obama’s recent Mideast-Europe saber-rattling road show exposes his earlier opportunistic masquerade as a "peace" candidate. Obama won the nomination by selling masses of mainly working-class voters the lie that he would withdraw from Iraq. Now, jetsetting from Baghdad to Berlin on his own version of Air Force One, Obama is trying to show his capitalist masters his fitness to command their ever-deadlier war machine. Wherever he goes, he lays the groundwork for the broader wars U.S. rulers need to maintain their precarious worldwide dominance.
In Iraq, Obama showed that "withdrawal" actually means permanent occupation by "residual" forces to be determined by generals like the butcher Petraeus, who he consulted. Obama advocated more troops in Afghanistan, which, along with parts of Pakistan, he would make the near-term focus of the anti-Islamic U.S. "war against terror." Now McCain is adopting this phony "withdrawal" scheme. Obama reassured Israel’s fascist rulers that he "will take no options off the table in dealing with this potential Iranian threat." In Berlin, he demanded that Europe supply more combat soldiers for U.S.-led military efforts in Afghanistan and beyond.
Obama Denounces Communists, Gives Nazis A Free Pass
Obama’s July 24 speech at Berlin’s Victory Column (a favorite of Hitler’s) showed his stark allegiance to the capitalist class. "Friend-of-the-Workers" Obama said not a single word in Germany’s capital about Nazis, who killed tens of millions. Instead he attacked the very force that defeated the Nazis in World War II, the working-class Soviet Red Army, by condemning communism by name three times.
Obama couldn’t and wouldn’t criticize Nazi Germany because its brutal program of territorial reconquest, expansion, and confrontation of major rivals closely resembles today’s U.S. rulers’ own agenda. They are hell-bent on retaking the Mid-East and its oil, making U.S. protectorates of former Soviet vassals in Eastern Europe, and militarily besting potential super-powers like China, Russia, India, and the European Union.
On July 24, the Obama campaign’s top think-tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), led by Clintonites like Madeleine Albright, published a report — "Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy" — that mimics Hitler’s racist "Mein Kampf." It says "America must have the will and the capabilities not only to ensure U.S. security but also to enhance the security of allies and friends. The American military must have the appropriate structure and technological capacity, weaponry, troop strength and morale, information and intelligence capacity, and other support to meet 21st-century threats. It must remain the strongest fighting force on earth." Pretty "peaceful…"
Obama’s liberal CNAS backers criticize Bush’s Iraq fiasco but bless imperialist war in general: "Although Iraq was the wrong war, some wars will nevertheless have to be fought. Force should never be used as a first choice, but in some cases it may need to be used sooner rather than later . . . . [S]trategic leadership requires being prepared to act swiftly and surely whenever required."
The CNAS paper pinpoints a coming clash with China: "Mutual misunderstandings and flashpoints like Taiwan could, in the worst-case scenario, actually lead to military conflict, with potentially devastating consequences." In such a case, Obama’s call for 92,000 new soldiers and Marines would prove a drop in the bucket. "Peace candidate"-turned-president Obama would restore the draft just as fast as Nazi goose-stepping militarist McCain would.
On the home front, Obama favors a police state. He just cast a Senate vote to protect the Feds’ wiretapping operations. Obama also seeks to revive Clinton’s community policing initiative, which put over 100,000 racist cops on the street. And in his home base of Chicago, vote-hungry Obama has sold himself lock, stock, and barrel to the Rockefeller-influenced Democratic Party machine of Mayor Richard Daley, which endorsed his election to the Illinois State and U.S. Senates. One of his biggest backers is William Daley, the Mayor’s brother and Clinton cabinet member, who is Midwest chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase. As Chicago mayors over decades, Daley’s father and brother have run a police department that has systematically tortured and murdered thousands of black and Latino workers.
CHALLENGE has often said that voting for either Obama or McCain would be equally bad. They both represent the same capitalist system, as do all presidents. Obama, however, with his phony anti-racist appeal, holds the danger of luring greater numbers to the rulers’ war agenda. But he inadvertently highlights the solution as he rails at communism. The wars Obama supports will end only when the working class holds state power in the wake of communist revolution. This is our Party’s long-term goal.
a name="CHALLENGE’S Ideas Make Summer Project A Winner at LA Factories">">"HALLENGE’S Ideas Make Summer Project A Winner at LA Factories
The start of the LA Summer Project has been very productive. We’ve had CHALLENGE sales at factories, a demonstration against racist police murders, and schools to study the capitalist system in today’s world, which destroys the lives of workers throughout the world. We’ve talked about the key role of industrial workers and soldiers in building a communist movement to destroy capitalism and imperialism, as well as planning CHALLENGE networks, building a worker-student alliance, and about the coming election in the shadow of imperialist war. Volunteers are tirelessly bringing CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets to industrial workers, as well as to the residents of Inglewood and Lennox where the racist cops killed two workers (see articles p. 3).
The response to our CHALLENGE sales at the factories has been great. In one subcontractor factory in Southern California, after we sold CHALLENGE outside the factory, the papers were on work tables for 2 days. Both the morning and the evening shift were reading and talking about them. One worker said communists and fascists were the same. But another worker, a CHALLENGE reader, told him, "Don’t you know that it was the communists who beat Hitler? If it weren’t for the communists, you might not be alive because the Nazi’s wanted to kill people like us and control the world."
Other workers in one department were especially interested in the Boeing article, since they also make parts for Boeing. One worker asked, "Why doesn’t this paper have names on the articles like other papers?" Another regular CHALLENGE reader answered that this was the workers’ paper, and that the articles aren’t signed because they are written by workers collectively and not to build up or promote individuals. Another worker thought that under communism he would lose what he has, but his friend, a regular CHALLENGE reader, told him, "You don’t have anything. The bank owns your house and we’re facing rising prices for everything, but our wages aren’t rising. We really have nothing to lose and we have a world to win." Another worker asked, "But do you think workers are open to communism?" "Yes, it’s the only solution we workers have," said the second CHALLENGE reader.
A worker from a different area who reads CHALLENGE said, "I was very happy to see the CHALLENGE sellers in front of the factory. It shows me this is a serious project. Keep it up!" Some of these workers had recently written a letter of support to the Boeing workers in their coming battle. (See box below)
Workers in other factories are discussing the terror tactics used in the subcontractor factories to make workers use every minute to produce parts. In most of these factories, workers have to document and account for every minute of work, and every part that they make. If they don’t meet exact goals hour by hour, they are written up and threatened with firing. Going to the bathroom "too many" times (like 3 or 4) during a shift can be cause for a write-up. Many machines in the factories don’t have safety guards, causing many serious injuries. At the same time, the companies tell the workers they are producing parts for the company and the "nation;" that they should be proud and motivated by their great duty to work diligently, and that if there are any problems with the parts, the workers will be held responsible and punished. Many workers aren’t buying it. The Migra immigration raids and the rain of racist police killings outside the factories are part of the same bosses’ terror campaign.
Capitalism, based on exploitation and competition for maximum profit, is cheapening the lives of workers everywhere — from India to China to the U.S., as U.S. imperialists prepare for wider war to defend their declining position, on the backs of the working class. The U.S. bosses may have given up producing washing machines (leaving that to their Chinese competitors) but they are producing more and more weapons to seize a key imperialist resource: oil. Communists have to be in the factories so we can bring this world view to our class and turn these attacks into the growth of CHALLENGE and PLP — to fight for communist revolution and workers’ power.
Our experiences organizing workers here makes it clear that we can expand our CHALLENGE networks. So far, its been a great project thanks to the commitment of all those involved!J
a name="‘The workers are all talking about striking…’"></a>"The workers are all talking about striking…’
"When my team and I distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets about exploitation in garment shops in a busy area in front of a factory, less than half an hour later a boss stormed out demanding, ‘Why are you guys here? What are you doing? They’re [the workers] inside, talking about your paper, talking about striking.’ Hopefully we were influencing the workers to take action." Two weeks before, the workers in this shop had organized a strike; no wonder the bosses were scared.
(Outside a subcontractor factory) "The workers’ reactions were very positive. It was surprising how many took the leaflet and the paper, even though they were in their cars. They tended to take the paper into the factory with them."
"Among hundreds of young workers entering a garment factory, almost every one took CHALLENGE. One worker came out, handed us a dollar and told us how important it was that we were there with CHALLENGE. He described the abuses in the factory."
"Garment workers were joyful as they passed and read CHALLENGE. When two read some of the articles, they asked for a handful of CHALLENGES so they could spread the word and the paper to their co-workers."
Another volunteer wrote that we want, "the workers to use the strike to build communist ideas…The warm reception to these ideas is not only helping the LA workers extend their CHALLENGE networks, but is strengthening new comrades of all ages to see how eager oppressed workers are to fight back and read the paper."
Support Boeing Workers
To our fellow workers at Boeing,
We send you warm and militant greetings. We’re a group of workers in a subcontractor factory in Los Angeles. We make some parts for Boeing. At the same time, when the bosses can’t finish an order on time here, they send the work to other subcontractors who pay less than here and who have no benefits. You all will decide whether or not to strike to get a new "less bad" contract. The strike is an important political weapon for a united group of workers acting as a bloc to confront the bosses and their state.
Forward friends! Prepare for a militant strike and we and other workers will be with you. The attacks you face and the attacks we face come from the same source: the racist bosses’ thirst for profits.
Some workers from Los Angeles
Serving The Working Class
Seattle, WA, July 16th —Summer Project volunteers, joined by local Party members, distributed 2,500 four-page communist flyers and 350 CHALLENGEs to Boeing workers attending the strike sanction vote for the upcoming Sept. 3rd contract. They caught the union, who had no literature of their own, off guard and provided the Boeing workers with a communist analysis to counter the anger most felt after listening to union hacks drone on about how "It’s Our Time." In opposition to this narrow trade unionism, our leaflets proclaimed, "We Must Fight For Our Class, The Working Class."
Prior to the strike sanction vote, participants in the Summer Project sold CHALLENGE to Boeing workers in the early morning and afternoon, catching the first and second shifts. They negotiated finicky traffic lights and dodged cars to get the paper out to as many as possible. Veteran sellers joined new Party members who had never sold the paper publicly before. Both young and old derived strength from one another, each saying at different times, "Well if they can do it so can I!"
Before our first trip to the plants, many expressed anxiety about the reception they would receive. They were afraid of the anti-communism they might encounter while distributing CHALLENGE. There were a few anti-communist remarks, but they were by far the exception, not the rule. More than once, co-workers of those expressing "hostility" apologized to our comrades — encouraging our members to continue. Most workers were interested; many asked for extra copies to give to friends and family, and to co-workers inside the plants Boeing workers were talking with each other about CHALLENGE and communism. The consensus throughout the Summer Project was that most workers were receptive to our communist politics.
Volunteers also visited Ft. Lewis twice, distributing 100 CHALLENGEs and 200 GI Notes to soldiers going out for lunch and later at their homes (see letter Page 6). The sales at the army base provided Party members with a chance to talk with the soldiers, something they had missed out on while running through traffic earlier in the week. They found that soldiers were ready and eager to discuss not only the need to end imperialist war, but also the need to build worker-soldier-student alliances and fight for communism. A number took extra literature to take back to their friends still on base after giving us information so we could stay in contact with them.
Paving The Way To Revolution One Visit At A Time
Seattle PLP’ers and volunteers also visited over 20 Boeing workers at their homes (some more than once) for a few moments to several hours. The most successful were prearranged dinners and lunches at homes, pubs and restaurants. These visits provided an opportunity for the participants to learn about the work at Boeing and most workers’ negative sentiments toward the union.
The project was also a positive experience for the workers who were excited to see so many young people who understood the value and importance of industrial work. Word of these visits spread as those Boeing workers who had been visited told dozens of their coworkers and spread the excitement in the plant.
For many Party members these visits and sales at the Boeing plants and army base were concrete examples of workers’ ability and willingness to discuss and embrace communism. One of the most important aspects of the Summer Project was the elimination of some of the anti-working class notions that hinder our political work.
The public presence created by the Summer Project was a big boost for our work, inspiring and reinvigorating workers friendly to us and Party members alike. We learned that public sales did not have to be in contradiction with base building, but could be used to create a public presence that would help in creating and consolidating friends of the Party.
The Project also inspired teachers and students to build their lives around serving the working class. Building a base in the industrial working class and military can only aid our communist work in the schools. It will give our base everywhere the confidence that our Party is pursuing a realistic long-range path to revolution.
Through sales, visits, and study groups participants learned that this meant involving themselves in the lives of their co-workers and struggling to make building Party-led groups on the job primary. Participants and local Party members alike came to understand that building our lives around the working class is not a tactic, but a political strategy necessary to the success of PLP and communism.
In a week and a half, Seattle hosted over 20 Party members from around the country. We distributed 5,000 leaflets, 2,000 CHALLENGEs, and 200 GI Notes. We visited 22 workers and hosted three barbeques for locals and volunteers. More than fifty Boeing workers signed our open letter in solidarity with industrial workers victimized by racist super-exploitation, calling for international working-class unity. Those of us remaining in Seattle will be seeing the positive repercussions of this Project for months to follow, and it is now our duty to see that the work done in the past weeks is continued and the struggle intensified.
LA Summer Project Volunteers Oppose Racist Terror!
LOS ANGELES, July 26 — "I’m really glad you guys are here! We have to do something about these cops — they are gangbangers in uniform!" So declared a resident of the Inglewood area to members of the PLP Worker/Student Alliance Project when they hit the streets yesterday with signs, banners and a bullhorn protesting the cops’ murder of a 38-year-old black postal worker, Kevin Wicks. We took over the four corners in the neighborhood where the murder occurred. Our banner read: "End Police Terror with Communist Revolution!"
The rally was called as an immediate response to a series of cop murders here. Two months ago, Michael Byoune, a 19-year-old black youth was shot at a neighborhood burger restaurant by the same cop who killed Kevin Wicks. Last week, the LAPD once again gunned down another unarmed Latino man, Christian Portillo, in his own driveway. The Summer Project volunteers responded to these racist murders in a big way, rallying in the Inglewood community, and heading for the shops and factories to denounce these murders.
The militant Inglewood rally attracted hundreds of people in the area, including many getting off buses or driving in cars. Area residents were really angry.
After a series of speeches, many by youth, calling for revolution as the only solution to the murders of unarmed workers — most of whom are black and Latin — we asked workers driving by to honk their horns in solidarity with us. The response was deafening!
We also took to the street, leafleting on buses and to passing cars. We concluded with a picket line that was well-received by the community. Over 400 CHALLENGES were sold and hundreds of leaflets were distributed. Many people told us, "I’m so glad to see you guys here!"
The Summer Project is linking the racist super-exploitation of workers to racist police terror. Black, Latino, Asian and white workers are the backbone of Southern California’s industrial workforce. Thousands of factories employ millions of these workers in subcontracting, non-unionized and labor intensive, low-wage workplaces engaged in war production. Workers there are subjected to brutal conditions and intimidation. We can clearly see these same terror tactics by the racist police and immigration cops (ICE) who get away scot-free.
Our PLP leaflet exposed the politicians’ and LA Times’ call for a civilian review board in Inglewood (a small city near LA). Cities like New York which have civilian review boards run by the bosses’ politicians see rising racist murder rates by the cops similar to Inglewood and LA.
The Inglewood community’s welcome with open arms to the PLP Summer Project volunteers shows the potential our Party has to grow and the willingness of workers to accept communist ideas!
| Los Angeles, July 25 — Two days ago, Christian Portillo was murdered by the fascist LA Sheriffs. PLP Summer Project volunteers responded to this racist killing by leafleting and selling CHALLENGE door-to-door in the neighborhood where this fascist attack took place. It is no coincidence that this same area houses workers who produce the machines and weapons for the bosses’ war. Many work in industrial factories as low-wage, subcontracted, super-exploited labor.
This murder was just one incident, but there have been two other racist police killings in the area within the last week, including the murder of Kevin Wicks in Inglewood. Add that to the amount of murders in the country, around the world, and we could see the quantitative development of the fascist regimes that capitalism breeds. The leaflet we wrote called for the working class to unite and fight back against ever-increasing police terror, connecting it to the imperialist oil wars and exposing it as a systemic problem. Liberals and phoney "leftists" in Los Angeles are organizing around police reforms and civilian control boards. This is not the solution. These boards will only rubber stamp, not stop, police terror. Only by organizing students, workers, and soldiers around communist politics will the real enemy be exposed: capitalism. Some of the volunteers met young people who had organized walkouts two years ago. They acknowledged that these attacks affect all workers. We collected the youths’ contact information and agreed to meet up to discuss and organize future events. We also talked to families in the local park who expressed their anger over the system that keeps them unemployed through the use of sexism and racism. In contrast, two comrades approached a family that had anti-communist ideas and forced the comrades off their property. It is important to recognize that the working class is fed on a daily basis with anti-communist ideas and it is up to us to struggle against these anti-communist ideas within our base and within ourselves. We are taking this struggle against racist police into the industrial factories to show workers the power they have to end this racist oppression and crush the capitalist system by shutting it down at the point of production and organizing a revolution. The solution comes by arming the working class with communist politics with an emphasis on industrial workers. Workers who are at the point of production are key in smashing the capitalist system and building for communist revolution. |
Learning, Teaching Red Ideas at NEA Convention
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 3 — At a hotel near the convention center where the National Education Association (NEA) annual meeting was taking place, a young working-class student struggled with questions of reform and revolution. She was sharing her dream of one day operating a hotel where unemployed workers would have a place to stay while seeking work. Before going to her own job later that morning, she had come with her teacher and a classmate to bring the message of revolution to the NEA delegates. These students, their teacher and two other PL comrades were passing out a PLP flyer and selling CHALLENGE outside a caucus meeting of about 1,000 delegates.
Respecting this young worker’s understandable desire to assist her class brothers and sisters, PL members explained how capitalism must exploit workers in order to maximize the bosses’ profits, not to help them to find jobs, shelter or food. Yet while struggling with the common illusion that the capitalist system can be reformed to improve workers’ lives, this future comrade was doing exactly what is necessary to bring the message of revolution for communism to the NEA teachers. With PLP leadership, a communist society would be organized to meet the needs of workers, such as work, shelter, food and education, not to exploit workers.
Like this young worker, most teachers want to help the young workers in their classrooms to survive this system. They attend these conventions to consider how to reform this system. Their leaders tell them to vote for the right politician. The leaflet distributed at this year’s convention explains how neither John McCain nor Barack Obama provide any hope for teachers, students or their parents but that what is needed is a revolutionary alliance of teachers and workers to fight for communism.
Obama addressed the convention, bringing his message of false hope. He makes his home in one of the most segregated cities on the planet, but does not make that an issue. He’s a product of a racist, Democratic Party machine which has ruled Chicago for generations (see editorial, front page). With his approval of increasing U.S. troop strength and keeping all military options on the table, Obama is as much of a warmonger as McCain.
With help from comrades and friends in the D.C. area, more than 300 CHALLENGES and 1,300 flyers were distributed to convention delegates. The flyer pointed out that NEA leaders have no real solution to the problems in education. Unions are reform organizations which never question the capitalist system itself. They condone the racist cuts in education and the increasing control that corporations exert over public schools through No Child Left Behind.( See parts 1 nd 2 in previous CHALLENGE Issues.)
In addition to passing out flyers and selling CHALLENGE, comrades participated in an NEA reform caucus, discussing the Iraq war and other issues. Everyone in the caucus received a flyer. When giving CHALLENGE to one reform activist, they discovered that he was already buying it regularly at a mass sale in his city. While reserving certain criticisms, he praised the writing in the paper and said he drew a lot of good ideas from reading it. He agreed to receive a subscription.
These examples of revolutionary work in a mass organization like the NEA can help build the Party and its base and advance the cause of communism.
BBQ Serves Up Communist Food for Thought
LOS ANGELES, CA—"Look friend, we’ve known each other for a long time, you’ve been reading CHALLENGE for a long time, you’re a respected militant worker, you’ve participated in our May Day dinners, and you know that the working class needs communist leadership. We in the party want to invite you to become a member of the Party so you can help us bring communist ideas to the workers."
"This question takes me by surprise, and even though you all know that I’m with you, to say that I’m a member, ‘I want you to let me think about it, because I understand that it means commitment and danger, but independent of my answer, I want to keep participating and to help a little more." This discussion took place during a Bar-B-Q organized by PLP with 20 friends from work and also to sharpen the political struggle.
These workers are CHALLENGE readers in the same company and same union, among them black, white, Latino, Iranian and Russian workers. Next year the contract for these workers expires and PLP is already preparing to take advantage of this reform struggle to inject communist ideas and expose the system of exploitation, imperialist wars, and the role that the union leaders play at this time of increasing attacks on workers. In the past the PLP has played a key role in these struggles and hundreds respect and know our Party and CHALLENGE.
The mood was upbeat politically. We discussed the billions of dollars that the government is spending on the war, the high cost of living, the upcoming contract battle and how workers are always the ones who have to pay.
The Bar-B-Q ended with three small speeches: the first about the need to organize the working class and maintain an attitude of class struggle against the bosses; the second about multiracial unity and workers’ internationalism, emphasizing that the attack on immigrant workers is an attack on the whole working class; the third was about the unity of workers from different industries. It concluded that the fight for communism is the only one that will guarantee the real liberation of the international working class.
Everyone was happy with the Bar-B-Q since the food was very tasty and the speeches were enthusiastic and clear. This is one more step in the consolidation of a base to recruit to the Party, and this gave us the impetus PLP needs so that in the coming period we’ll be visiting these and other workers and asking them to help distribute CHALLENGE, help participate and lead class struggle and join the Party.
Students, Teachers Pass the Real Test: Fighting for Our Class Interests
(In parts 1 and 2, teachers and students rebelled against a new pilot test being used in their high school. After a teacher found out that the test could be used to track students and rank teachers for merit pay, he began speaking to CHALLENGE readers in the school about what to do. PL students in several classes refused to take the test or disrupted its administration. Although some teachers were upset about this, others allowed resistance in their classrooms.)
After leading this struggle, the backlash against PLP students and teachers was minor. The teacher in the room where the students protested the test was angry at the PLP. She accused us of encouraging "disciples" to disrupt the test with "conspiracy theories." There were some other members of the English department that were upset with what had happened and placed the blame on communist politics. It was difficult dealing with workers who had always been friendly now showing animosity toward PLP.
However, the overall climate of the school and the fact that so many staff and students opposed the test limited the principal’s ability to attack those who had directly opposed the test. Neither the principal, nor the department assistant principal confronted the PL teacher. The strong friendships and political alliances we have been building in this school over several years helped protect us from the administration this time.
A week and a half after the struggle, the teacher, two student members and a friend were having lunch in a diner near the school. The young PL’er who had disrupted the test reported that she had been talking to her classmates, and that many of them had refused to take the test as well. They had taken her communist leadership and had silently refused taking a test that they recognized as being against their own interest.
These tests are produced, graded, and determined by the education bosses. Many teachers in the school continually voiced the idea that the test disregarded them, making their assessment of the students’ needs and progress irrelevant since all meaningful decisions about students are made by administrators based on test scores. This intensification of alienation (which is when workers have no power over their work and cannot find it meaningful) is a major component of rising fascism. As the tests take away the planning and assessment of learning from the teachers, the State is in more direct control of the students through the curriculum that is forced on the teachers.
One victory from this struggle is the increased multi-racial unity that developed among students as they challenged the test. The school has a student body that comes from the Americas, Africa, Eurasia, and Pacifica. The communist leadership provided during this struggle helped the students to work more collectively. They learned that they are many and that they are stronger when they unite.
To consolidate the Party’s gains in this struggle, more CHALLENGES were distributed, and those who hadn’t read the paper in a while began receiving it again. Several students want to write for CHALLENGE, joined study groups and deepened their commitment to the Party. With many battles looming for next year, the students have already cut their teeth on a mass struggle led by the communist PLP.
Shipyard and Tire Strikers Battle Cops in Greece and Iran
ATHENS, Greece, July 28 — Cops violently attacked workers protesting the death of eight co-workers after an explosion at a ship being repaired at the nearby state-owned Perama shipyard. The explosion was caused by a lack of safety measures in the use of blowtorches.
The workers were demonstrating in front of the Ministry of the Merchant Navy, demanding safer working conditions. The workers also declared a 3-day strike. In July 2007, two other workers died in a similar explosion.
There’s no secret behind these murders of workers. It’s called maximum profits. Because of low wages paid to shipyard workers and merchant marine sailors, Greece has the world’s largest merchant fleet. Local companies control one-fifth of the world’s merchant transport.
Tire Workers Strike in Iran
IRAN — While the Iranian ruling class is involved in a dogfight with the U.S. and its local lackeys over control of Middle-East oil profits, it’s also doing the same thing all bosses do: attacking militant workers.
A strike by 1,200 workers at Kian Tire in Chahardangeh, near Tehran, is in its third week. The workers are demanding three months’ back pay. When a special police unit used bulldozers to break through plant walls and arrested 1,000 workers, strikers set tires on fire. The cops ordered firefighters to put out the fire and shoot boiling water at the strikers. Six firefighters refused to attack their fellow workers and were arrested. The 1,000 strikers have almost all been released after being forced to sign a "no-protest" agreement.
Capitalists, whether holy rollers like Iran’s Islamic rulers or "good Christians" like Dubya, Obama or McCain, have one thing in common: exploit and repress workers.
Students Back Striking Teachers in Honduras
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 28 — The 60,000 teachers members of the Federation of Teachers Organization have been on strike for over two weeks demanding six months back pay owed to 3,000 teachers, public transport financial aid for poor students, and other demands. The teachers are also demanding the creation of thousands of new teaching jobs.
The strike, supported by thousands of students, have extended to the 18 provinces of the country. Last week, thousands of students held a militant protest through the streets of this city demanding a raise in the government bus fare aid for 150,000 of the poorer students here.
Marlon Brevé, the minister of Education, has said the strike is unjustified because only 1.2 to 2% of the teachers are owed back day. Teachers earn an average of $350 a month, in a country where the cost of food and everything else keeps on going up and up just as in the rest of the world.
Teachers here have a history of fighting back, with many strikes in recent years for their just demands. The working class of Honduras, like the rest of the region, is sick and tired of having to pay more and more for the economic turmoil of capitalism while a few bosses, imperialist companies, politicians and military officers in cahoots with drug gangs, make out like bandits. We in PLP support these militant teachers and students. We have to bring them our revolutionary politics so they can join with us in building an international red-led movement and turn their struggles into schools for communism.
a name="Can’t Stop PL Youth from ‘Reddening’ Mexico’s May Day"></a>Ca"’t Stop PL Youth from ‘Reddening’ Mexico’s May Day
"Come on! There’s no one in the building"….It was night when we brought the copier downstairs covered with a cloth to keep the neighbors from discovering it. We were three young comrades who were moving the machine from one house to another, with four days to make 15,000 fliers (two-sided, really 30,000 copies) and 250 international CHALLENGES for a mass May Day march in Mexico City.
Earlier, a comrade had made 3,500 copies but the machine heated up quickly; after making 100 leaflets the machine began messing up. He was unable to finish the 15,000 leaflets and couldn’t convince his parents to keep the copier in his house any longer.
To continue making copies in each other’s homes, we raised the volume of the music so the neighbors couldn’t hear the loud machine, risking their anger since we were working late at night, but they were very tolerant.
After 2,000 copies, the ink ran out. With only a few days left, we had to do something else. Two comrades sought copy centers in a nearby city. The budget tripled and again we had to rely on all the comrades in our area to cover the cost of 5,000 more copies.
There was only one day left before May Day. One comrade’s friend works in a photocopy store near us and allowed us to make 3,000 leaflets and 200 CHALLENGES on overtime at his job. Comrades continued making leaflets and newspapers at home. Though tired and sick, one comrade prepared food for us and helped us collate and staple the CHALLENGES.
The next morning, May Day, 25 pairs of arms took charge of spreading communist ideas among hundreds of thousands of people who marched in the center of the world’s biggest metropolis. The leaflet exposed and denounced the inter-imperialist rivalry for oil worldwide, and specifically in Mexico, and advocated the need to build an international communist movement, the PLP, to fight for communism. We also commemorated International Workers’ Day and the struggles of workers worldwide. Job completed, comrades of the world.
Young Comrades
Brazil: Lula, Bosses, Ethanol: Killing Workers for Profits
Brazil is becoming one of the four strongest emerging capitalist countries (known as BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China). Under the government of former "socialist" union leader President Lula, the Brazilian ruling class has become a growing imperialist power. Petrobras, the state oil giant which has surpassed Microsoft as the third largest corporation in the Americas, is now as hated by the working masses of South America as Exxon-Mobil, Shell or any other big oil giant. Equally hated in Haiti is the Brazilian army which leads the UN occupation force there. And domestically, the Brazilian bosses are as racist and as brutal as they are overseas.
Brazil has become the world’s leading producer of ethanol, using sugar cane instead of the corn used in the U.S. "It is work unfit for humans," said 38-year-old Caio Ribeiro. At his age he is considered a "survivor" among the sugar-cane cutters in Sertaozinho, one of the many cities in the Ribeirao Preto region, Sao Paulo’s biggest sugar producer. Three years ago, Caio fainted while cutting sugar cane because of back and circulatory problems, and had to quit. "Machines should be used to cut the cane," declared Caio, "otherwise many more people will die."
According to local union activists, 20 sugar cane cutters have died since 2004 because of the sped-up drive to supply more and more ethanol. They charge that working conditions are subhuman, bordering on slavery. Hundreds of workers were rescued from slave labor in the last year from plantations in Sao Paulo and in northern Brazil.
According to a study by the Methodist University of Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, each sugar-cane cutter works as hard in a day as it takes to run a 26-mile marathon, overburdening his/her cardio-respiratory system. Young workers, particularly from the poorer northern area of Brazil — whose population is mostly black — labor as migrant workers during the sugar harvest season. They live under generally unhealthy conditions in some of the 37 towns that surround the sugar region of Ribeirao Preto.
The bosses say that in several years they expect to mechanize the whole operation of cutting sugar cane, but will still need workers to process the sugar cane into ethanol, so the exploitation won’t end.
Whatever capitalism produces turns into death and super-exploitation for workers, whether it be ethanol or plain old crude oil. Many workers thought Lula — who had a reputation as a militant metalworker union leader in the auto-steel belt of Sao Paulo — would be good for the workers. But he turned out to be a blessing for the Brazilian bosses, creating illusions in many workers about "having their man in the presidency," thus derailing their struggles. Instead of voting for some hacks or any other politician who claims to be a "friend of the workers," we must organize to build a revolutionary communist movement to fight all the bosses. That’s the goal of PLP. Join us!
LETTERS
a name="GI’s, Families Bare Capitalism’s Horrors"></">GI"s, Families Bare Capitalism’s Horrors
On July 14, we went door-to-door at a local military base and realized that the housing situation here is worse, by far, than in any other part of the city. Soldiers and veterans are not being taken care of and their families are suffering from the consequences of imperialist wars both emotionally and financially.
We spoke with a daughter of a vet and a struggling mother who is recovering from a stroke. The mother emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1978 and only reads at a fourth-grade level. She is on Section Eight housing and trying to get food stamps and social security. As a worker living in poverty and barely able to make ends meet, she clearly sees how the system is corrupt and said that it "took away people’s dignity" — capitalism degrades as it exploits.
We also talked to a Gulf War vet who became motivated to learn more about communism after talking with us. He retired after 21 years in the Army and, though he believes that a soldier cannot question his orders, he also believes that resistance can exist within the military if there is mass unity among the ranks. He is living in and struggling with the atmosphere of sexism, racism, and aggressive behavior promoted by the military that resulted in the woman he is living with being raped and trying to commit suicide with his weapon last month. We asked him to join us in a struggle for a world where oppressive situations such as these would not develop and where workers would be treated as important members of society. He said we "got him thinking" and that he would read Challenge "front to back."
The youngest person we talked to is the sister of a soldier who died in Iraq while serving his third tour of duty. Her brother’s widow, who had four children when she lost her husband, was told she would receive free housing, but didn’t realize it would only be for three months. She was kicked out of her home and ended up living with her mother-in-law because she couldn’t afford to live on her own with the four kids while the government wouldn’t help her. Because of these experiences, the sister we talked to was strongly against the war and was very interested in the paper and learning more about PLP.
By visiting these places, we saw the conditions that we must fight against and the people who see clearly the problems of this system. As more and more working-class soldiers, students, and workers experience day in and day out just how degrading and heartbreaking capitalist policies have made their lives, they will join with PLP in mobilizing fight-backs against our oppression. If we are there to bring communist politics to them, they can realize that it is through the unity of our class and the fight for communism that the horrors of capitalism will be destroyed –– and they can play a leading role in that struggle.
A Few Summer Project Volunteers
a name="Myth of Elections Can’t Hide U.S. Fascism">">"yth of Elections Can’t Hide U.S. Fascism
The ACLU recently revealed that a Homeland Security directive signed by President Bush in December 2003 established the Terrorist Screening Center which contains a so-called Terrorist Screening Database of over one million names — citizens of the U.S. and other countries. The list has been used to detain thousands of people during airport security checks or to bar them from flying. Local law enforcement agencies have also accessed the database during routine traffic stops. The Nazi Gestapo had nothing on these fascists.
Actually, the Nazis learned a lot from U.S. rulers. The rally protesting the lynching of a young black man in a Prince Georges County jail cell (CHALLENGE. 7/30) is a case in point. Portuguese writer Miguel Urbano Rodrigues reported that the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, as a young merchant marine, witnessed a lynching in the southern U.S. He was so shocked by this brutal racist act tolerated by the local authorities that he wrote a 1924 article in the French version of the "Comintern" (Communist International) that the KKK had assumed all "the brutality and rites of fascism." (http://www.lahaine.org/skins/basic/lhart_imp.php?p=31752)
The Nazis’ racist Nuremberg laws justifying the Aryan "master race" were based on the U.S. Eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nazi ideologue Rosenberg called the U.S. "a splendid country of the future" which had the merit of formulating "the new idea of a racial state."
The Third Reich portrayed the genocide against the Native population of North America as "a civilizing epic." The Nazis saw their plans to "Aryanize" Eastern Europe (slaying most of the population but leaving 50 million Slavs alive as slaves of the "master race") as a follow-up to what the U.S. army and rulers did in the Far West. In 1939, just prior to World War II, Hitler hailed the "incredible inner strength of the U.S. model of civilization."
Henry Ford was hailed by the Führer himself for spreading worldwide anti-Semitism with his mass publication of the forgery Protocols of Zion. The racist book "The Menace of the Under Man" by Lothrop Stoddard, a U.S. writer, was so well-received in Nazi Germany that Stoddard was invited to Berlin to be seen by Hitler himself. Two U.S. Presidents, Harding and Hoover, also hailed this racist trash.
The Italian Marxist philosopher, Domenico Losurdo, wrote in 2003 how President Theodore Roosevelt favored the "master races."
Ford, GM, IBM and other U.S. companies continued to operate in Nazi Germany during the war. IBM machines were used to keep count of the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, and Ford and GM built trucks for the Werhmacht. Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush made millions doing banking business with the Nazis.
The Patriot Act, the racist immigration pogroms, the mass jailing of black and Latin workers, the mass cutbacks on social programs to sustain the war budget, are all aspects of growing U.S. fascism. Some people are fooled because this fascism is covered with the myth of elections (Obama and McCain are for more and more wars but simply differ on the tactics of how to carry them out); and "freedom of speech" (a few U.S. monopolies own the mass media).
The fact remains that fascism is a product of capitalism. The U.S. has a long history of pro-fascist activities. As the decline of the U.S. bosses continues and major wars loom ahead (leading to another world war), fascism will be covered with the Red-White-and-Blue instead of the Swastika.
An Anti-Fascist Red
a name="‘Stalin was a great leader…’"></a>"Stalin was a great leader…’
Recently my wife and I were in New York City on vacation. We visited Brighton Beach, a large area of Brooklyn which has thousands of immigrants from Russia.
We went into a small store which was selling souvenirs from Russia. I began looking through some World War II posters inspiring workers and soldiers to fight. I found one with Stalin looking at a map of Europe.
I asked the storeowner, a man from the Ukraine, way up in his eighties, about the poster.
He said, "World War II was a terrible war! When you fight the Nazis, you win or become slaves. We had to win! Stalin was a great leader."
California comrade
Summer Project Visits Pay Dividends on the Job
During the recent Seattle summer project, participants broke up into groups of three to four to visit workers. On the last visitation day I took a group of young Party members to meet some of my co-workers. One co-worker, an ex-Marine, discussed life in the military and the prospects of reaching soldiers. This worker has received several issues of CHALLENGE, but seemed hesitant to have Party members over. By the end of the conversation, however, he said that he was glad to have us over and that if the project participants were staying longer they should come back. Party members left feeling confident in our ability to bring communist politics to those in the military, but most importantly we put a human face on the Party for this worker that has already drawn him closer to our communist ideas.
We visited another co-worker who had experienced union sell-outs first hand while working in a factory for several years and has been trying to get by in the increasingly volatile non-union construction field. He told Party members how his union negotiator fell asleep during their open contract negotiations and then later drew up a contract with company reps behind closed doors. The contract was loaded with concessions for the company, but managed to get shoved through thanks to a $2,000 signing bribe. Party members were shocked to see the amount of union dues and fees that were taken out of every paycheck, and even more shocked to hear how every time the dues went up the services workers received went down.
Regarding his work in the non-union construction field we had a long discussion about how racism, particularly toward Latin workers, is used to isolate workers in order to attack them in the form of wage cuts and increased disregard for safety on the job. The conversation involved a lot of back and forth between my co-worker and Party members. Afterwards we gave him his first CHALLENGE. The next day on the job he told me how much he enjoyed having the Party members over and we got into a discussion regarding the editorial on the front page of the paper. He talked about how he liked what the Party had to say and now we have another CHALLENGE reader/base member.
These visits helped to remind us of what Lenin said: workers will accept the Party if we are honest about our line and our intentions to serve the working class. If we bring our communist ideas to workers we will not just be "blaming Bush" or breeding cynicism, but offering a solution to the hell that is capitalism. As Party members we left this project with renewed faith in our ability to win workers to communism. Our base members came away with a renewed faith in the Party’s ability to provide leadership in the struggle against capitalism. Now it is on to LA in the fight to build communism!
Summer Project Participants
U.S. on TV Masks U.S. in Real Life
At the airport where I work, many immigrant airport workers read CHALLENGE regularly because our Party’s newspaper makes the most sense out of an otherwise confusing capitalist world. PLP is working to help these workers understand that communist revolution is the only way out of the bosses’ racist imperialist hell.
A young co-worker from Ethiopia asked: "Why are there so many problems in America? Many Ethiopian immigrants come here and see the U.S. is nothing like it’s portrayed on television!"
I explained to my friend that, "Yes, the U.S. has many economic and political problems — high food and gas prices and home foreclosures. There’s a chance the national economy could collapse if the bosses’ two biggest mortgage outfits, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, go under. This is all part of the bosses international capitalist crisis, with the U.S. getting the worst of it because it has the most to lose.
"Yes, U.S. society is nothing like on TV because the media bosses like CNN or Fox paint such a distorted picture of places like Africa. That’s why it’s so important for CHALLENGE and its message of communism to spread globally!"
My friend exclaimed, "We need a revolution now! So when would this happen?"
I said it could happen during a bosses’ world war if PLP grows worldwide. Understanding the ideas in CHALLENGE is a step in the right direction for working-class liberation!
Airport Red
Garment Workers Need More Than Patches, Will Fight for the Whole Coat
"We need a bit more than patches
We need the whole coat itself.
We need a bit more than slices
We need the whole loaf itself.
We don’t just need a mere job to do
We now need the whole factory.
And the coalmines and the ore
And power in the state."
–– Bertolt Brecht, The Mother
At a recent party where we raised over $600 to send volunteers to the Los Angeles Summer Project, we watched the documentary Made in L.A., which is about the struggle of L.A. garment workers. Through the film we come to know three remarkable women: Maria, who grew up on a ranch in Mexico, works 10 to 12 hours a day making clothes for a contractor, and then goes home to take care of her three children; Lupe, a young garment worker who is articulate and decides to become a full-time organizer; and Maura, who was forced by poverty to leave her three children in El Salvador and come to L.A. to work in the garment district.
The three women describe conditions in the factories for over 100,000 garment workers (mostly Latino and Asian women): low wages –– the average annual income is $14,000; forced overtime with no overtime pay –– two out of three garment factories violate minimum wage and overtime laws, according to the Department of Labor; and dangerous and unhealthy work conditions –– three out of four factories violate federal health and safety regulations.
In L.A. thousands of small factory owners compete to see who can produce clothes most cheaply for the big retailers, and to do that each owner fights to get as much production out of each employee as he can, paying as little as he can. There exists a pyramid of profit, in which the many workers at the bottom produce all the profit, some of which goes to the contractor, but much of which is taken by the big retailers like Gap, Wal-Mart, J. Crew, Abercrombie and Fitch, and so on.
Unfortunately, the film never explains how profit (surplus value) is collectively produced by workers, starting with those who pick the cotton and including those who work the sewing machines, and how that surplus value is stolen by a collective class of owners. This failure to explain exploitation is the result of the film being made on behalf of the reformist Garment Worker Center (GWC), a non-profit organization founded in 2001 that waged a three-year boycott and lawsuit against the big clothing chain Forever 21, for which many of the workers produce clothes. Maria, Lupe and Maura take part in this campaign: we see them picketing stores, demonstrating in other cities, and speaking on college campuses to win support for the boycott. As time progresses, we see these three workers develop as public speakers and become more self-assured.
As the lawsuit is lost in district court and as the boycott drags on without success, frustration develops and some of the workers become disillusioned and drop out of the campaign. This isn’t surprising. Communists believe that boycotts and lawsuits are, at best, secondary tactics, and that on-the-job struggles (work actions, strikes) should be primary. Yet the film completely avoids struggles on the job. At the end of the film, we learn that the wealthy CEO of Forever 21 signs an agreement with the 19 workers who sued, pledging that its contractors will abide by "lawful conditions." Though presented as a big victory, this pledge is virtually meaningless. The exploitation of workers is legal under capitalism, and even when the owners violate the few wage and safety regulations that exist, there is little enforcement.
One of the positive features of the film is how it shows sexism damaging the lives of women workers and weakening their struggle. Maria’s husband spends his wages on alcohol, has her do all the housework and complains about her going to meetings with other workers. Eventually, Maria finds the confidence to stand up for herself and separates from her abusive husband. The struggle against the sexist practices of the owners, as well as sexist attitudes and behavior within the working class, is an important battle that needs to be fought and won.
There is a powerful scene in the film where the workers travel to NYC and visit Ellis Island. They look at pictures of Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. more than a hundred years ago and worked in the garment factories in NYC. One of the pictures shows workers standing behind a banner that reads "Unity Is Strength, Organize." Lupe stares at the photo and realizes that her struggle against the garment bosses is part of a century-old struggle against exploitation. But the reformists are keeping Lupe, Maria, Maura and hundreds of thousands of others from realizing that the owners will never be nice, will never pay us what we deserve, will never give us job security, health care and adequate pensions, and will never end the hated national borders that keeps Maura from seeing her children in El Salvador. Workers need not just a few reforms (the patches, in Brecht’s song) but the whole coat (control of the factories and the government and the end of bosses).?
REDEYE On the News
US in Iraq: Winning = staying
The elected leader of Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is demanding a timetable for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country….
So why is the White House balking at a chance to leave Iraq and claim victory?
Well, one of the administration’s primary goals in invading Iraq — in fact, probably its single most important objective — was to establish Iraq as a friendly, long-term host of American military bases. From those bases in the heart of the Arab world, they hoped to dominate the oil-rich Middle East for decades to come. And if that was your goal from the beginning, the calculus of victory gets pretty simple:
Winning means staying; leaving means losing. (NYT, 7/17)
Tobacco biz aims to hook young
A new Harvard study claims that the tobacco industry in recent years has manipulated menthol levels in cigarettes to hook youngsters….
Young people, the study said, tolerate menthol cigarettes better than harsher nonmenthol cigarettes. In low-level menthols cigarettes, the menthol primarily masks harshness, making it easier to begin smoking. (NYT, 7/17)
‘It was always about the oil’
That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished — for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that’s why "we" invaded Iraq — only "we" aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are….
We the people and they the oil companies are not one and the same. (Creators Syndicate, 7/3)
Religious bosses are just as bad
….An undercover informant…saw "a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees." Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards….
Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant. They have told investigators that they were routinely put to work without safety training and were forced to work long shifts without overtime or rest time. Under-age workers said their bosses knew how young they were. (NYT, 7/27)
Guantanamo cases full of holes
"After reviewing 517 of the Guantanamo detainees’ cases in depth," [Ms. Meyer] said, "they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority — all but 5 percent — had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters." (NYT, 7/22)
Capitalism not always rational
The Fed….kept cutting interest rates, but nobody wanted to borrow….The Onion, as usual, hit the nail on the head with its recent headline: "Recession-plagued nation demands new bubble to invest in." (NYT, 7/18)
a name="The Cosby-Obama Show: Racism Is the Victims’ Fault">">"he Cosby-Obama Show: Racism Is the Victims’ Fault
Part II:
Under slavery and Jim Crow, there were always African-Americans willing to advance themselves at the expense of the masses of black workers. This elite group put themselves at the service of their masters, allowing themselves to be used as object lessons for other members of the oppressed group. They helped to justify racism and the class nature of capitalism, claiming that progress only came through "hard work" and "following the rules." Their willingness to sell themselves was only matched by their contempt for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t emulate them.
Today, capitalism still needs these sellouts. In Ivy League colleges, one of the key purposes of minority student programs is to turn out black and Latino businessmen and administrators for capitalism. The bosses can then say, "See, there is no more racism. If you can’t make it, it’s your own fault." They also need politicians and stars who can promote ideas that white orators would not be allowed to get away with. Enter comedian and multi-millionaire TV star Bill Cosby. Cosby gave a now-infamous speech at the 2004 NAACP awards ceremony in which he attacked activists who charged the criminal justice system with racism. He disparaged "lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people" for "not holding their end in this deal" and attacked young black people for their dress, the names they carry, and because "all of them are in jail" (‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’, Ta-Nehisi Coates TheAtlantic.Com).
Cosby’s line was initially ignored by the liberal media and rejected by the hacks who pose as "leaders" of the black community. Since then, he has co-written, with Harvard Medical School professor Alvin Poussaint, "Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors." This book promotes the idea that black workers who continue to question the existence of worse conditions in their communities have only to look at their own failings for answers. It also promotes a new separatism:
"(F)or all the woes of segregation there were some good things to come out of it" (Coates). No, not mass multi-racial struggle against racism and for working-class unity; like the Nation of Islam, Cosby and Poussaint laud separate black businesses serving black people. Cosby regularly preaches a doctrine of "personal responsibility" and "self-reliance" to black, mostly male audiences at churches and colleges in major urban areas.
Cosby’s rhetoric dovetails with Barack Obama’s attempt to downplay the endemic nature of racism by pushing hard work, patriotism and national service. But Obama’s politics are just a cover for sharper attacks on the working class, in particular black, Latino, and immigrant workers. The rulers have to repackage "blame-the-victim" ideology in order to justify these rotten conditions. So when Obama recently spoke at one of Chicago’s largest black churches, he resurrected Moynihan’s culture- of-poverty theories when he assailed black fathers for sitting "in the house watching Sports Center" and claimed that they "have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men" (NY Times 6/16/08).
One may wonder why a candidate who claims to want to "bring people together" did not mention in his speech that marriage rates among all young males, as well as young black males "are strongly correlated with the annual earnings of these young men" (Bob Herbert, NY Times 6/21/08 quoting from Andrew Sum, Center for Labor Market Studies). Or the fact that "mean annual earnings of young men without four-year college degrees have plummeted substantially over the past 30 years" (Herbert, quoting Sum).
Or finally that in 2006, 50.4% of all births to women under 30 were "out of wedlock," reflecting both cultural and economic changes (were all of these women part of the "underclass," too?)(Herbert)
Both Obama and Cosby ignore extensive research done in the 1970s and 1980s highlighting the development of "resilient kinship ties" in black families as a historical response to "persistent racial oppression" ("The Black Family" and US Social Policy: Moynihan’s Unintended Legacy?" Dean E. Robinson, 2003). Anti-racist sociologists also attacked Moynihan’s idea that black family structure was "in crisis" by studying the history of that structure over a century, and proving that differences between black and white families developed over long periods, and didn’t affect the family unit’s fundamental strength (Hill 1972; Stack 1974; Gutman 1976; Jones 1985).
Despite its proclaimed demise, the racist beast always reappears in new forms. That is because the rulers cannot rule without it. With communist leadership, workers will see through these tricks. Racism cannot be reformed away under capitalism. The only way to stomp it to death is to violently overthrow the tiny group of exploiters who profit from it. Communism’s principle "from each according to commitment, to each according to need" will abolish the material basis for the bosses’ wage slavery and racism, which will lead to the elimination of this plague on humanity.
Dark Knight Becomes a Nazi Crusader?
The movie, ‘The Dark Knight,’ set a record of $155 million in its first weekend. In times of recession, the box office booms: providing workers a temporary escape from the problems created by capitalism. As one commentator wrote, "If you’re worried about mortgage payments and gas prices, when you’re sitting in The Dark Knight for two and a half hours, you’re not thinking about any of that stuff."
However, The Dark Knight, instead of pushing a clear message of "hope" in believing individuals with special powers can save society like many superhero films, attempts to win workers to passively accept a bleak future of fascism.
In this latest Batman flick, Batman fights the Joker who threatens to terrorize Gotham unless Batman reveals his true identity. To prove he is serious, the Joker sets out on a rampage of bombings and assassinations. He is clearly a symbol of the "terrorist threat" the bosses use to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the racist attacks on immigrants and Arabs.
In the face of the Joker’s violent rampage, Batman must resort to fascist surveillance by tapping all cell phones in Gotham. Further, he pushes himself to the limit interrogating the Joker in a torture scene right out of Abu Graib. The message is clear: the bosses’ government must be allowed to do whatever is necessary in order to fight "terrorism."
Batman, however, realizes that Gotham’s real future of fighting terrorism is not in him but in Mayoral hopeful Harvey Dent. In one of his speeches addressing the chaos that has descended upon Gotham, Dent states: "The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming!" His slogan echoes the campaign slogan of the Barack Obama campaign, "Change we can believe in."
In the Batman stories, Bruce Wayne is the hero who disguises himself to rid the world of bad guys but he’s also the boss of a large corporation Men like Bruce Wayne become rich by exploiting men and women to protect their profits (sometimes killing them). These stories try to win workers to the idea that there are some good bosses.
The film also embraces the anti-Chinese racism pushed by the U.S. ruling class in their efforts to win workers to fight this rival imperialist. Following suit with Obama’s recent endorsement of anti-China trade legislation, Dent proclaims, "I suggest you buy American" when it comes to an item "made in China."
Despite the fact that Dent becomes a killer, Batman says that Dent must be cleared of his crimes and his image preserved as that of an honorable politician. Batman takes the rap for the murders, arguing that people need a Harvey Dent (aka Obama) to believe in. In the end, the film pushes the idea that while the fascist tactics of Batman are necessary to bring order to a chaotic system, men like Dent are necessary to provide a "democratic" façade to the fascism.
"The Dark Knight" leaves the audience with no real hope and no belief in their own power to change things. Workers are told to accept the fact of a bleak future with the necessity of fascism to make sure that the terrorists do not win.
While going to the movies may provide workers with a temporary escape from their worries about soaring energy prices and foreclosures, we should be organizing to fight back against the bleak future of fascism that the film promotes as inevitable. It is true that we are living in a "Dark Night," but by organizing against the bosses’ fascist attacks with PLP’s communist politics, we can have a bright future to look forward to.
