- JOIN THE FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM: BOSSES’ PROFITS VS. WORKERS’ LIVES
- Looming Global War Spawns Rotting Economy
- PLP’s Ideas Spread at International Youth Conference
- Seattle Summer Project GI’s, Boeing Workers Debate Communist Politics
- Rally vs. Lynching in Prince George’s County Jail
- Abolitionist’s 1852 Independence Day Remarks By Frederick Douglass What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
- Strikers Fight U. of Cal’s Poverty Wages
- Study and Practice Forge A School for Communism
- Soldiers Welcome PLP’s Politics
- Test Boycott Teaches Real Lesson
- Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca Workers’ Mass March
- Pentagon Behind Colombian ‘Rescue’ Circus
- General Strikers Battle Peru’s Cops in Anti-Gov’t Protests
- LETTERS
- Communist Paper Acts to Unify A Party
- Nationalism, Racism Splits Caribbean Workers
- Media Used Floods to Fill Agribusiness Pockets
- Rulers Want to Turn Our Minds to Mush
- U.S. Civil War Shows Profits Drive Starvation
- Film Builds Wave of Anti-Communism
- Applying Historical Materialism to the US Civil War (1861-1865)
- REDEYE
- Bosses Use Black Pols to Promote Capitalism, Racism
- U.S. A-Bombed Japan As Political, Act of Mass Murder
JOIN THE FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM:
BOSSES’ PROFITS VS. WORKERS’ LIVES
From rising gas prices to foreclosures, lower wages and benefits, workers know things are getting worse. Will voting for Obama help? Is communist revolution really the viable alternative? These questions pose a tremendous challenge and opportunity for the PLP. Industrial workers and soldiers are at the center of the contradiction that all workers face: between the bosses’ need to squeeze maximum profits out of workers, while at the same time winning them to patriotic sacrifice for the bosses’ nation, versus the workers’ need to survive. It comes down to their profits or our lives.
An urgent battle is taking place for the allegiance of the working class. Through the election campaign the bosses are trying to mobilize workers’ loyalty to U.S. imperialism. The PLP Summer Projects are struggling to win workers to act in their own class interests against the racist, sexist exploiters, and to join the fight for the liberation of our whole class. The stakes are high.
The more war there is, the more crucial manufacturing workers become, because they’re the ones running the machines, building the parts and assembling the weapons. An army officer recently went to an aerospace shop to tell the managers that the parts being made were being shipped directly to Iraq and were essential to the success of the U.S. war effort. He said that if the managers couldn’t get the workers to produce the parts faster, the army would send someone to guarantee it!
This shows industrial workers’ central role in the war effort. These workers barely earn the minimum wage. Some have gladly taken communist leaflets and CHALLENGE. In the past, when faced with growing war and exploitation, Russian and Chinese workers, with communist leadership, took up the fight against their oppressors and led the fight for revolution and workers’ rule. Workers here today have great potential to join the fight for workers’ power.
Southern California has nearly one million manufacturing workers — many working for subcontractors in the defense industry. The Southeast forms the backbone of the new auto workforce and the soon-to-be-built “southern aerospace” corridor. Most of these jobs are in non-union, low-wage factories run by subcontractors. Like previous industrial areas, the basis of these subcontractors is the super-exploitation of immigrant and black workers. Conditions in these factories are unsafe — speed-up and machines that don’t have the needed safety guards make cut fingers and back injuries common. Workers get little or no health care. The bosses are relying on the most exploited workers to produce their weapons and fight their wars.
Due to the decline of the U.S. relative to its competitors in the world (see Editorial p. 2) there’s mounting evidence of growing fascism — from unemployment, police terror and immigration raids to unsafe racist and sexist conditions and speed-up in factories. The U.S. rulers are re-organizing their vital industrial sector on the backs of immigrant, black and other low-paid workers to be prepared for current and larger-scale military conflicts. These workers can become the backbone of a movement to take on the bosses’ attacks and lead the fight to turn the bosses’ imperialist wars into revolutionary class war.
The bosses’ crisis is increasing, and with it the inability of this system to provide workers with even the most basic necessities. Just this week the federal government rescued another bank, Indymac, and pledged billions to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest holders of mortgages in the nation. No boss — not Obama, McCain or local politicians like L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa represents our interests. The only way to secure our interests is to forge unity and confidence among the workers with the clear goal of building a mass revolutionary communist party that can survive and grow under all conditions. Workers forced to work 9- to 12-hour days for low wages in unsafe conditions, while their families are harassed by the immigration police and the cops, are not in the hip pocket of the rulers. In fact, these workers will be won, over time, to the revolutionary alternative of fighting to build a movement that can take on the entire profit system.
Fight for Communism
Communists are committed to building strong ties with our fellow workers and organizing class and ideological struggle. We participate in day-to-day discussions and struggles to build unity and confidence among the workers for the long-term fight for communist revolution. The basis of the capitalist system is production for maximum profit. Through the bosses’ control of the means of production, they exploit workers and super-exploit black, Latino and women workers. They also exploit markets and resources.
Political discussions about these principles, combined with solid friendships and class struggle, can lead to more workers joining the Progressive Labor Party as it becomes clearer that capitalism only has more misery to offer workers. In its place we need a communist society where workers will control and organize production, not to make profits for a boss but to meet the needs of the international working class.
Through a fighting communist leadership committed to the working class, workers can come to see that we can rely on our class. We must expand CHALLENGE’s readership among industrial workers, soldiers and students. We must win the allegiance of our class to fight for its own futurenot for U.S. imperialism.
Looming Global War Spawns Rotting Economy
As the U.S. economy brings workers new miseries daily, Obama and McCain are proposing divergent, but equally unworkable pie-in-the sky “solutions.” Skyrocketing prices, job destruction and credit crises result inescapably from capitalism itself and its profit drive (which neither candidate attacks). They are worsened by the U.S.’s sharpening rivalry with imperialist and capitalist rivals.
For example, the free-for-all over control of Mid-East oil among the U.S., China, Russian-backed Iran, India, al Qaeda and the Taliban drives gas costs sky high. [See CHALLENGE, 7/16] Furthermore, to stay top dog, U.S. rulers must spend a large chunk of their capital on making war, which wastes funds that could otherwise go to rebuilding factories and infrastructure.
CURRENT DOWNTURN DATES TO U.S. VIETNAM GENOCIDE
The current wave of manufacturing layoffs reflects a permanent war-caused trend going back to the Vietnam era. At that time, European and Japanese manufacturers — having had their factories destroyed in World War II — invested heavily in the most modern technology, while U.S. bosses stood pat, having to pour huge sums into their imperialist war in Vietnam. Thus, these U.S. rivals leaped ahead in market share.
Meanwhile, U.S. workers’ real income then began an uninterrupted downslide, with rampant inflation sapping their purchasing power. Since Vietnam, with the U.S. unable to gain a military foothold on the Asian mainland, Chinese manufacturers have increasingly dominated the labor market there and undercut U.S. firms with rock-bottom wages.
Obama and McCain tout various schemes to boost industry, finance and employment, but a beleaguered imperialist power like today’s U.S. must ultimately “solve” its economic woes through world war. It will someday have to unleash its full military might and move in the direction of destroying much of its rivals’ productive capacity and labor force and then try to seize what’s left. This would require occupying vast conquered territories to regain markets and sources of raw materials, which it is attempting to do now, with very limited success, on a local scale in Iraq.
Communist leader V. I. Lenin detailed this unrelenting process in his 1917 “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”: “Imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists.”
In the 20th century’s two world wars, competing imperialists, seeking to win or maintain world dominance, managed to mobilize entire populations to kill hundreds of millions all over the world.
GOOSE-STEPPING McCAIN STILL DOESN’T ‘GET’ MOBILIZATION
McCain, though an ardent militarist, appears unable to grasp the economic aspects of the rulers’ approaching war needs. He would continue Bush’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich, enabling them to pocket the billions that the main section of the ruling class knows are necessary to preserve the long-range interests of their system.
Establishment mouthpiece, The New York Times (7/12), chastised McCain’s shortsightedness, “Following in those footsteps does not, however, make a good case for his candidacy. Americans face hardship in the years to come. The tanking of the economy, coming on top of years of unmet needs — for health care, infrastructure repair and alternative energy [not to mention rebuilding the military — Ed.] will require the next president to spend more and to raise taxes to support that spending.” So the Times wants all of us to “pull our weight.”
McCain would reverse the job slide with tax breaks for “entrepreneurs...at the heart of American innovation, growth and prosperity. They create the ultimate job security –– a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away.” (McCain website) In other words, “open up a small business.” Such fairy-tale promises will never provide a decent income for millions of jobless auto, aerospace, airline and steel workers, nor reduce the racist double unemployment rate for black and Latino workers. (GM has gone from the world’s top automaker to the verge of bankruptcy, shedding tens of thousands of jobs from Detroit to Oshawa, Ontario to Toluca, Mexico.)
LIBERAL OBAMA’S ‘HIGH-WAGE’ MILITARISTIC REBUILDING LACKS CASH
Obama better understands the rulers’ agenda and hopes his own version of the New Deal will mimic Roosevelt’s success in rallying a Depression-ridden nation for World War II. Obama’s campaign calls for jacking up taxes on corporations and the rich to fund “five million new jobs” at good wages in a centralized technology and infrastructure rebuilding effort. But U.S. bosses, beset by foreign competition, simply don’t have the cash to willingly forgo short-term profits for such a program. Unlike Roosevelt, who entered office when federal outlays, including military, made up only 7% of U.S. gross domestic product, the next president will inherit a state apparatus that eats up more than 20%.
A more likely scenario for “economic recovery” than Obama’s phony high-wage, voluntary-mobilization proposal involves restoring the draft and forcing workers into poorly-paid industries. Obama buried his call for mandatory national service, reaching into high schools, in a July 4 press release: “Obama will make it a presidential imperative to restore...public service to the agenda of today’s youth, whether it be serving their local communities...as teachers or first responders, or serving in the military and reserve forces or diplomatic corps that keep our nation free and safe.” (Obama website)
Soon after winning nomination, Obama picked Jason Furman, a champion of anti-union Wal-Mart as his top economic advisor. Furman is a protégé of Robert Rubin, CEO of Rockefeller’s Citibank and was Clinton’s Treasury-Secretary who led the racist dismantling of welfare.
The rulers have their work cut out for them in this period of economic decline and intensifying war. So do we. More than 400,000 U.S. workers have lost their jobs since December. Many of those still employed are spending one-fifth of their pay just on gas. But organized working-class fight-back is at a low level. PLP must expose the connection between these economic assaults and the rulers’ broader war agenda, initiate class struggle and build a party that can ultimately overthrow their deadly profit system.
PLP’s Ideas Spread at International Youth Conference
ATHENS, GREECE, July11-13 –– Seven young PLP comrades from New York City are attending Resistance 2008, a youth conference here. We are bringing our line of communist revolution to establish the dictatorship of the working class— where workers, through their revolutionary mass party, lead society—to a thousand young workers from all over Europe who are attending the Conference.
PLP’ers are the most vocal group here and so far PL’s literature has been well-received. These young comrades met some young workers who are already translating our literature into Greek. They’ve invited us to visit them on the job and talk to their fellow workers. On Sunday afternoon the group spoke at the Conference and their speeches were applauded, especially PL’s ideas on the need to fight nationalism and destroy racism and sexism. A complete report next issue.
Seattle Summer Project GI’s, Boeing Workers Debate Communist Politics
SEATTLE, WA, July 13 — “Man, this leaflet is an eye-opener,” exclaimed a Boeing machinist after reading the PLP’s flyer. “It’s a reality check.”
Two thousand of those leaflets entitled, “Boeing’s Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage For Boeing Contract Fight” based on the CHALLENGE editorial were distributed by young volunteers at three Boeing plants during the first week of the Seattle Summer Project. Workers grabbed 900 CHALLENGES. Troops at nearby Ft. Lewis took an additional 100 plus 200 “GI Notes,” the Party’s soldier’s newsletter, with a supplement by an Iraq veteran (see page 4). Communist politics were debated in the factories and the barracks throughout the week.
The implications of this “reality check” took shape when a multi-racial group of young volunteers was invited to dinner with two older white Boeing workers in mid-week. One veteran machinist, a friend of the Party, willingly acknowledged the increased oppression, racism and sexism brought on by the sharpening imperialist dogfight. He feared, however, that we didn’t have the “fortitude” to answer these attacks that workers had in the 1930s and ’40s. We then examined what led to that fortitude, how did we lose it and how can we get it back. We had been trying to answer this question all week.
Boeing Union Workers Chime In
A toolmaker made a point of how much better was our leaflet’s slogan — “This Time, This Contract: We Must Fight For Our Class, The Working Class” — than the union’s “It’s Our Time, This Time.” Class-consciousness is a must he said. Narrow trade unionism won’t work when the capitalists outsource work to low-wage, non-union subcontractors. Long discussions followed about how — and if it was possible — to build international unity between, black, Latin and white workers.
The toolmaker didn’t just talk. He helped circulate throughout the plant an open letter written by Boeing machinists for workers to sign that answered the bosses’ claim that our wages were “above the market rate.” It explained how the bosses used racist super-exploitation to lower the “market rate” for all workers and called for international solidarity.
Another machine operator commented how pleased he was that the young volunteers visited him. He hoped they felt welcome. He did, however, note they talked a lot about the plight of workers, but not too much about the evils of capitalism and the virtues of communism.
The vision of communism was one of the reasons workers in the 1930s had fortitude. They saw the Soviet Union as a beacon. Unfortunately, the old communist movement had the strategy of building socialism, which maintained the capitalist wage system. They thought socialism would be a halfway house to communism. Just the opposite happened. Socialism, with all its concessions to capitalism, eventually undermined the revolution, leading back to capitalism. This demoralized the left and, in good part, led us to lose that fortitude.
Non-Union Subcontractor Workers Say Build A Life Around Your Co-Workers
We continued this discussion in study groups (see page 4) and meetings with young industrial workers, mostly non-union, who came here from around the country. These newer, young comrades set themselves the long, hard task of rebuilding this communist vision among their co-workers. The first job was to increase their CHALLENGE sales and networks. But how do we answer our friend’s fears and doubts?
An auto subcontractor worker related his difficulty in getting a religious CHALLENGE reader to Party events. He realized that to win his friend to act on CHALLENGE’S ideas he would have to reciprocate. So he read a little of the Bible and with his wife went to their friend’s baby shower. His friend hasn’t joined the Party yet, but she did say that our comrade was a model she wanted her children to emulate.
A new recruit from a California aerospace subcontractor told an amusing story at a BBQ about how she came around. Her friend, who had read a CHALLENGE, invited her to a social event. “These people are communists,” our new recruit told her friend. “Oh, no,” her friend assured her. Then they attended another meeting where revolution was openly discussed. “You see, I told you so!” she said to her friend. Her friend got scared, but stuck around, joined and now sells CHALLENGE in a key plant. So it pays to know not only your co-worker, but their friends and family too!
Other stories described how these new comrades were trying to center their lives around those of their co-workers. We vowed to double and triple our efforts. It is these kinds of personal/political relationships that will expand the limits of class struggle and revolutionary potential. The first Boeing worker we ever met, now 82, said he thought this strategy was “an excellent idea.”
Rally vs. Lynching in Prince George’s County Jail
PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD., July 4 — Today 30 residents of this Washington, D.C. suburb rallied under the leadership of the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability at the jail where Ronnie White, a 19-year-old African American youth, was strangled to death in his cell by either a cop or a prison guard. White was accused of killing a police officer by running him over with a car during an arrest. Apparently some cops and/or guards decided to be cop, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner!
Dorothy Elliott, whose son was murdered by County cops over a decade ago, decried the murder and called for justice. A second speaker linked this murder to others by County police as well as to the killing and torture by the U.S. government at Abu Ghraib. A third speaker charged that this murder was a lynching, which showed the need to unite working people and students in a mass movement to fight racism. The speaker linked the present struggle to the fight against slavery by reading part of the famous July 4, 1852 speech of Frederick Douglass (see box).
The rally had three demands: suspend all guards who had access to White’s cell until the murderers are caught; install video cameras on all isolation cells; and establish full and timely communication with the public about the investigation. These demands, even if met, cannot solve the problem of police terror against the working class.
The state (the government) has demonstrated its determination to use racist police brutality and now lynchings to terrorize workers, deepen racism and maintain its power at all costs, both at home and abroad. No reform of capitalism will change that basic need of the bosses’ state.
That’s why PLP’ers, deeply involved in this struggle, are building a revolutionary Party to destroy the bosses’ state and replace it with a workers’ state that will have no interest in promoting racism and terrorism against the working class. The latter will eliminate the bosses and their profit system, the source of racism which divides our class and drags down the lives of all workers.
Abolitionist’s 1852 Independence Day Remarks By Frederick Douglass
What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
[To defeat slavery] . . . it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Strikers Fight U. of Cal’s Poverty Wages
LOS ANGELES, July 14 — Over 8,500 service workers at the state-wide University of California (UC) Medical System struck today, supported by many of the 11,500 university healthcare workers also represented by AFSCME Local 3299. Their wages are so low that 96% are financially eligible for some kind of public assistance!
One worker on the picket line told us, “We’re striking for dignity. Without us [the workers], the empire wouldn’t exist. We’re the cement that the empire is based on.”
He and many other workers eagerly took a PLP leaflet and CHALLENGES and gave them to their friends. He said he liked communism and that real communism was different from the socialism of the past. We agreed and said workers could run society without wages — to produce and share what we need. He and his friends asked that CHALLENGE write about their struggle.
These workers struck after 11 months of negotiations in which the UC bosses refused to grant any real wage increase. While food and gas prices are skyrocketing, their latest “offer” would raise the starting minimum hourly wage from $9.67 to $11.50, in a three-year contract but would not increase wages for workers making more than the new minimum.
The strikers and those honoring the picket lines are Latino, black, Asian and white. The marjority are Latino immigrants facing poverty wages and fighting back against this attack on our class.
The UC bosses are trying to break the strike with an injunction. We advised the workers not to rely on the bosses’ legal system but rather to build unity to defy any injunction.
We are calling on workers and students to come to the picket lines and build support for the walkout. However, we’re also raising the need with these angry strikers for the long-term struggle for communism and workers’ rule. We intend to continue joining the picket lines and to spread the defiant attitude of these strikers to other workers being attacked by the same bosses’ crisis.
Study and Practice Forge A School for Communism
SEATTLE, WA, July 10 –– Throughout the 2008 Summer Project here, we had intense struggles in study groups about the Party’s ideas on “race,” the military and industrial work, and dialectics. This was my first summer project. I was very excited about immersing myself in such schools for communism and in selling CHALLENGE. Some comrades were veterans and lifelong fighters against racism and imperialism, while some were very new to the Party and for the first time met with Party members outside their local collective. We came from across the U.S., united in our fight for a PLP-led working-class struggle against imperialism and capitalism.
Military Work Study Group
Led by a comrade who is an Iraq war veteran and current reservist, we engaged in role-playing exercises of possible scenarios we would encounter while leafleting on the Ft. Lewis base. Everyone had some anxiety about this. We discussed topics to be highlighted in discussions with soldiers: their role in ending the war; the history of soldier resistance in Seattle during the Vietnam Era; and their own anger at U.S. imperialism’s drive for profits at the cost of international working-class lives. The veteran said we should be careful in raising perceived accusations of soldiers being murderers and active supporters of imperialism by their participation in the war. We distinguished between being “anti-war” and being for class war against the bosses. (See article below on selling CHALLENGE to GI’s.)
The study group successfully emphasized the importance of continuing and expanding involvement with our working-class brothers and sisters in the military. Rebelling against the brass and uniting with the international working class is a big step towards communist revolution.
Industrial Work Study Group
Industrial work was the other focus of the Summer Project. We leafleted the Boeing plant several times and visited some current workers and retirees who had a good relationship with Party members working in the plant. (See page 3) We stressed how invaluable it was to win industrial workers — who make the bosses’ weapons of war — to building PLP and fighting for a communist revolution. Many workers are painfully aware of the exploitation they face on a daily basis under capitalism. Many know that the union hacks are in bed with the bosses, have sold them out and will again to save their own skin. They’re aware of the bosses’ insatiable pursuit of profit and that they’re only cogs in the machine, disposable and replaceable at the whim of the capitalists.
We must increase PLP’s presence in factories. As a veteran Boeing worker lamented, much of the solidarity the working class had in the 1930s and ’40s — like swift, militant reaction to scabbing, and allegiance to each other — is sorely missing from the ranks of younger workers who have a more individualistic attitude. We need to lead these workers in class struggle, consistently distribute CHALLENGE and form study groups in winning these workers to join the Party. –– A Project Participant
(Next issue: Study groups on Racism, Immigration and Class, and Dialectics.)
Soldiers Welcome PLP’s Politics
As a PLP Seattle Summer Project volunteer approached a soldier in uniform, the soldier quickly asked, “Are you anti-war?” “No I’m not anti war,” responded the volunteer, “I’m pro-war, I’m for class war, and I’m not a pacifist. I’m for a war to overthrow capitalism”. These remarks threw the soldier off guard and he asked, “What do you mean by “class”? This started an extended conversation and at the end the soldier took all the literature the volunteer handed to him. Finally the soldier asked, “What do you want me to do?” “We want you to read and discuss these ideas with your buddies”.
This and many other positive conversations occurred when 15 or so PLP volunteers descended on the military town near Fort Lewis where hundreds of soldiers from the base go for lunch. As they approached soldiers, the volunteers were armed with G.I Notes, the military newsletter of the PLP, “Soldiers Unite Against Imperialist War,” a leaflet written by an Iraqi veteran participating in the Summer Project, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, and “Red-Led GIs Blast Racist Brass,” a pamphlet documenting soldiers rebelling during the Vietnam era. Over 100 G.I.s received one of these pieces of literature and at times all four items.
Although most soldiers welcomed us, some were clearly threatened by our ideas and wondered how receptive soldiers could be to PLP literature. At the local Taco Bell, the GIs streaming in for lunch were accepting our literature. All of a sudden the restaurant’s manager came out to the parking lot after a sergeant complained about the literature distribution. Volunteers continued with the distribution and again the manager came out to ask them to leave. At this point, the same sergeant came out and yelled, “Hey, stop doing that” to the volunteers. One of the volunteers yelled back “Hey, is this freedom of speech”? The sergeant had no response, quickly got in his truck, slammed his door and left. “Listen I know that guy over there does not want you to read this but here is G.I. Notes, written by soldiers for soldiers.” “Don’t worry about it, give it here,” said a young G.I. walking across the parking lot who heard the yelling.
Volunteers also went door to door in the housing around the base. “I’m not in the military but my husband is,” said a young woman as she came to the door. She called for her husband to join her. A long time was spent with this couple who listened to us describe the nature of imperialist war. Even though the soldier did not say much he was listening intently and in the end he took all of the literature. A different conversation led another volunteer into saying to a different soldier “in some cases it will become necessary to frag some officers, every single soldier knows of a sergeant they want to frag.” The soldier nodded in agreement. Another soldier told us, “I am going to photocopy this stuff.”
It was an inspiring day for the volunteers who engaged in important conversations with so many soldiers about revolutionary ideas. Continuing these visits is a significant part of the plan for this Summer Project since we recognize that soldiers are indispensible for the revolution.
Test Boycott Teaches Real Lesson
(In part 1, a PL teacher learned that a new standardized test was being tried out in his school which would allow administration to further oppress students and track them and their teachers. After discussions with CHALLENGE-reading staff and students, young members and friends of the Party planned to boycott the test.)
NEW YORK, NY –– On the day of the test the students said that they were not going to take it, even though their PL teacher was forced to administer it to keep his job. The students understood this contradiction and although they respected their teacher they also recognized the test was against their interests.
The speech they were expected to take notes on and write about in the test was an apology for the rise in oil prices and blamed the working class and winter for the rise in heating oil prices. Many students disrupted the speech, wrote notes about oil and imperialism on their answer sheets and exclaimed that this test was trying to justify the price of oil and shift blame away from the oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A student then said, “I’ve had enough. Let’s go!” After a moment of silence half the class rose up and followed her. When told to return to their desks, the students raised their fists, shouting “Hell no! We won’t go!” The security guard shrugged his shoulders and walked off. The PL teacher returned to his room.
During the PL teacher’s prep period, several student comrades discussed politics and the test. They decided to disrupt the test. One had a class with five other CHALLENGE readers. She was charged with the more militant act of defiance. The other was in a less supportive situation. She chose to use a silent resistance against the test by refusing to take it. This showed PL’s ability to adapt tactics based upon available forces, and maintain struggle and advance under fire.
One of the members described how her 5th-grade cousin had led a walk-out against the test in her elementary school. Her cousin was sent home from school and her mother had told her that she was proud of her for standing up for what she believed in. The brave act of a 5th-grader inspired her cousin to provide militant communist leadership against the test.
Two other teachers resisted the test. One has met with PLP, reads and distributes CHALLENGE and is a close friend of the PL teacher. The other acted out of conscience after a conversation with the PL teacher about the necessity for resistance. He told all of his students that they could take the test as homework, invalidating the test.
The student PL’er loudly declared that the test would be used for a future draft because students who fail out of school have less options and many join the military (more to come in part 3), and that resistance was necessary. When the teacher tried to silence her in front of the supervisor, another five students stood up and declared that they would not take the test. That teacher became quite angry and took the political attack personally.
It turned out that a fourth English teacher, acting independently, told his students the test was garbage. His classes also refused to take the test. All in all, over half a dozen classes in two grades refused to take the test, over half of which occurred through direct PL leadership.
The testing coordinator told the PL teacher not to worry because the test was a joke and supported the struggle as well!
Acts such as this illustrate that every little thing we do counts as patient, slow work can pave the way to direct resistance. These acts alone will not stop capitalism, let alone the “test craze,” but they do help teach students how to fight, deepen the commitment of PL members and help spread CHALLENGE. This struggle won 10 new CHALLENGE readers. The future for revolution looks bright –– bright red!
Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca Workers’ Mass March
OAXACA, MEXICO — Thousands marched in Oaxaca City on June 14 during the second anniversary of the failed attempt by fascist governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, local authorities and the cops to bust the 2006 teachers’ strike. The strike led to the mass occupation of Oaxaca for several weeks by teachers and other workers and students. The march today included teachers from Section 22 of the SNTE (National Teachers’ Union), farmworkers, members of neighborhood associations, students and activists in APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca).
This march came at the end of over 27 days of intense activities to pressure Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, the government agent who runs the national leadership of the SNTE, to meet many section 22 demands. Because of these actions to pressure the government, the movement advocated recalling the leadership of Section 22 and to get compensation through a trust of 5 million pesos (US$ 500,000) for the immediate family members of the 14 activists of APPO who were assassinated in the social-political conflict, among them U.S. Indy media cameraman Bradley Roland Will. The government rejected demands to free four APPO members and return control of the schools to the original strikers.
During the march, members of PLP passed out 4,000 leaflets denouncing the reforms to the Social Security Law (ISSSTE) which reduce social security and weaken the right to a pension upon retirement, sickness and other services. We attacked the great robbery where the banks and other financial institutions will consume the workers’ savings, the food crisis which will affect the farm workers and the whole population of the poor and also the privatization of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company, the electricity company) etc. which will generate greater poverty for the working class and enormous wealth for the capitalist class.
We also put up posters on the walls which applauded the victory of the teachers against the bosses’ fascist police on June 14, 2006 and called for the fight for communism (see poster attached). Our leaflets were well-received, encouraging us to continue our work to expand the fight for communism and invite activists of these movements to join the Progressive Labor Party to achieve this vital goal.
From the Streets to the Houses — The Ideological Struggle
That night we saw and discussed the PLP movie “Road to Revolution.” The discussions afterward on how maintaining the wage system, along with other concessions to capitalist ideas, caused the historical failure of socialism encouraged many to decide to work closer with our organization which fights directly for communism. We will continue our work inside APPO to build the Party and the international revolutionary communist movement.
But we also understand that APPO is a reformist movement with opportunist, fake leftist leaders from groups and organizations like the Communist Party of Mexico, Marxist Leninist and its branch, the Popular Revolutionary Front. Their main leader, Zenén Bravo, joined the leadership of APPO in the movement of 2006, and negotiated to become a delegate with the bourgeois party Convergence and with the assassin Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Now cynically, and without caring that the people have rejected him, he has dubbed himself “representative deputy of APPO in the Congress, defender of the people and firm fighter for socialism.”
We concluded that our newspaper CHALLENGE plays an important role helping workers understand that while the struggles over the reform demands of Section 22 help unite workers and advance our struggle, only the fight for communism holds the promise of freeing our class from capitalist economic and political dictatorship. CHALLENGE must be our indispensable and permanent tool.
Pentagon Behind Colombian ‘Rescue’ Circus
BOGOTA, July 13 — The Colombian army’s “rescue” of Ingrid Betancourt, the former Presidential candidate, along with three U.S. mercenaries working as contractors for the Pentagon, and several Colombian soldiers held prisoner by the FARC was praised by the bosses’ media as “perfect.” (The FARC is the largest and oldest guerrilla group here and in Latin America.)
But more and more reports have revealed what really happened, including a $20 million payoff to free the hostages. A FARC communiqué accused the two guerrilla leaders guarding the hostages of selling out to the government to free their prisoners (El Tiempo, Bogotá, 7/11). The whole episode looks increasingly like a Jessica Lynch-type media-Hollywood invention. (Lynch’s “heroic rescue” from her Iraqi captors turned out to be a complete Pentagon fabrication.)
While initial reports said it was a strictly Colombian operation, the NY Times (7/13) revealed that, “The U.S. played [an] elaborate role...including the deployment of more than 900 American military personnel...earlier this year...to locate the hostages.” This also included “Hundreds of American support personnel...on the ground in Colombia,...a frenzied intelligence-gathering operation located in the U.S. Embassy here....intercepts of the rebel group’s radio systems, human intelligence, satellite imaging” and piloted surveillance aircraft. U.S. “military and intelligence personnel [were] alongside Colombian officials planning the operation” — all part of the $600 million per year “aid” U.S. rulers give to Colombia.
Mrs. Betancourt, the three Pentagon mercenaries and the Colombian soldiers looked pretty healthy and in good shape after these many years of captivity in the jungle. Some time ago, the media said Mrs. Betancourt was on the verge of death because of mistreatment. Mrs. Betancourt herself, supposedly a “humanitarian” liberal, went on to embrace the two death-squad heads here: President Uribe and General Montayano (army chief), and racist anti-working class Presidents Sarkozy and Bush in France.
Compare this treatment Betancourt and the others got to the thousands of workers and youth brutally killed by the Colombian army and its paramilitary death-squad thugs. Or to the thousands held captive and tortured by the CIA and the Pentagon in Gitmo and other “secret jails” worldwide.
While the evil Empire (the U.S. bosses and their allies) is striking back in South America, the so-called “Bolivarian socialist” movement led by Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales is compromising more and more with the forces led by U.S. imperialism. Chávez has even attacked the movement in Venezuela for protesting today’s visit here of Colombia President Uribe.
Chávez has called on the FARC to give up its weapons because its guerrilla war gives U.S. imperialism “an excuse” to act in a pro-war manner. Even Fidel Castro has criticized the FARC, telling it to free all the war prisoners it holds. FARC is being pressured to join the “political” struggle, meaning become an electoral party. But when it tried that a decade or so ago, forming the Patriotic Union and participating in the electoral process, the Army and the death squads murdered thousands of its supporters.
Chávez has toned down his rhetoric, even asking Venezuelan capitalists opposed to his “Bolivarian socialism” to join with his government to increase production. Chávez wants to look “moderate” to gain a better deal from an Obama-led White House. After all, Chávez, despite all his anti-imperialist rhetoric, has not stopped selling oil to the U.S. while seeking deals with other imperialists like China, India and Russia.
Republican candidate McCain was actually in Colombia during the “rescue” operation, probably tipped off beforehand, and tried to use it to score political points.
While Chávez and Fidel opportunistically criticize the FARC, FARC’s politics are not that great either. Long ago FARC gave up any claim to Marxism. Its aim is to make a deal with a section of the Colombian bourgeoisie.
General Strikers Battle Peru’s Cops in Anti-Gov’t Protests
LIMA, PERU July 12 — Militant marches and violent protests erupted during and after a July 9th general strike opposing the economic and political policies of President Alán García, a loyal ally of U.S. imperialism in the region.
Today in Pataz province, 300 miles north of Lima, hundreds of cops protecting the mines shot at miners, on strike since June 30, killing one and injuring five.
In the Amazon city of Puerto Maldonado, angry indigenous people burnt government buildings and hurled stones and arrows at 200 cops sent from Lima to attack them after government officials refused to meet with them.
The miners have been striking the Marsa gold mine company, owned by Peruvian capitalists. They’re demanding bonus payments for 2007 from Marsa’s contractors, given that the high world market price of gold has netted the bosses huge profits.
While the economy is growing 9% annually, benefiting mainly local and imperialist bosses, over 50% of the population still lives below the poverty line. Life is much harder for most city workers, as higher prices decrease their buying power on meager wages. Strikers are also opposing the government’s heavy repression against a growing number of nation-wide protests.
While the strike in Lima was not as successful as elsewhere, still 20,000 marched, including construction workers, teachers and students. The strike made Wednesday, July 9, resemble a Sunday in this huge city.
In Puerto Maldonado, the local population opposes the plans to privatize extensive chunks of land in the area which would benefit local and international companies. This is part of Garcia’s scheme to sign a Free Trade deal with Washington.
In Cuzco, over 20,000 workers and students marched, not only opposing the government’s pro-business economic policies but also demanding departure of a U.S. military contingent in the area. The Pentagon is eyeing Peru as a possible replacement for the air base it now operates in Mantas, Ecuador, given that the government there won’t renew the base’s lease when it expires next year.
But while workers and youth are very angry, their mis-leadership — the CGTP (Labor Federation of Peruvian Workers) and SUTEP (national teachers’ union) which helped lead the strike — is controlled by fake leftists. Some of them are promoting Ollanta Humala, a nationalist-populist politician and former military officer, as the alternative to García. These same fake leftists and union leaders initially backed Fujimori and then Alejadro Toledo as “lesser-evil” politicians, both of whom turned out to be anti-working class agents of U.S. imperialism.
The key ingredient lacking in Peru’s working class, as in the rest of the world, is a revolutionary communist leadership. The aim of revolutionary-minded workers is to convert these mass struggles into schools for communism and build that kind of leadership. It won’t be an easy task, but it’s the only way forward for workers and their allies.
LETTERS
Communist Paper Acts to Unify A Party
Last week seven LA students and a teacher spent an evening meeting with workers and their families to help prepare for the Summer Project.
Our team of three spent a very enjoyable hour visiting the family of a worker who is a long-time CHALLENGE reader. Many of the family members have joined us for May Day for over ten years. We were there mainly to talk to the young-adult son about joining the Summer Project. At first he was reluctant because he works days. But then we started talking about CHALLENGE and he got more interested. He said that he often reads the paper and feels that he’s already working toward the same goals. When we suggested that it was good to be part of a collective, he said that he talks politics with a circle of friends who share similar views. So we told him a little about Lenin and how he saw the communist newspaper as a way of pulling isolated revolutionary circles into a unified party that would eventually be able to lead a revolution. This idea was new to him and he thought it made sense. He took extra papers to show his friends, and agreed to talk with them about meeting with Summer Project volunteers. He also agreed to try to help find more places for volunteers to stay.
This conversation never really got around to whatever disagreements family members have with the Party. The next time we meet with them, or with the son’s friends, we’ll try to draw these out. But our visit showed, in a small but exciting way, the potential of the Summer Project to develop more young-adult leaders for the working-class and it’s Progressive Labor Party.
Project Volunteer
Nationalism, Racism Splits Caribbean Workers
Racism and capitalism’s worldwide crisis affect every corner of the world. The plan by the 15 rulers of CARICOM — the English-speaking Caribbean nations community — to build a single regional economy involving the free movement of skills, labor, goods and services, is now in danger of not meeting its 2015 deadline. For example, leaders agreed last year to grant an automatic six-month stay to nationals entering a member country, provided there are no security concerns. But only a handful of countries have bothered to comply with their own rule.
The Miami Herald (7/12) reported that earlier this year, Guyana requested an investigation after immigration officers in oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago refused to allow 15 Guyanese to enter the twin-island nation. In the Bahamas, where tensions against Haitian migrants have constantly run high, government officials decided against joining the free-movement arrangement, citing a concern that Haitians will “flood the archipelago” seeking to improve their lives.
The situation has reached such ridiculous levels that in Barbados, female immigration officials have been accused of turning back Guyanese women out of concern that they will “lure away” the men on the island.
We hear the usual racist anti-immigrant slanders rampant in the U.S. and Europe, like blaming Guyanese and Jamaicans for a spike in crime “caused by” Guyanese and Jamaicans in some of the better-off islands. “They blast ‘foreigners’ flooding their schools and hospitals.” (Miami Herald).
Again, racism — born with capitalism — is an international attack against all workers, exacerbated nowadays by the climate of endless wars and capitalism’s crises. “Pan-Caribbean” unity cannot be achieved under capitalism.
A Caribbean comrade
Media Used Floods to Fill
Agribusiness Pockets
The devastation and human suffering caused by the flooding of the Mississippi River was accurately described in the article, “Mid-West Floods: Another Disaster Created by Capitalism” (CD, July 16). In addition to the neglect of the levees by the government described in the article, the story is an example of how cynically the bosses manipulate the suffering of workers to advance their own interests.
While the country was watching 24-hour news coverage of crops destroyed and fields flooded along the Mississippi, Congress was finally pushing through a $307 billion Farm Bill that it has been trying to pass since May. Congress is made up of politicians who represent different groups of capitalists. They sometimes argue over how to spend taxpayers’ money. This Farm Bill stirred up one such conflict. So it was stalled. Then the floods began.
It looked like Congress was responding to the plight of the small farmer. That’s exactly how it was meant to look!In fact, there are very few small farms left in this country. The main “farmers” in the U.S. are giant agribusiness corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, which made $44 billion in 2007. The Farm “aid” is nothing but corporate welfare. Meanwhile, not one town in Iowa along the path of the flooding has a population over 1,000 people. These are very small communities. Yes, there were suffering workers but the Farm Bill will do nothing for them while the media exploitation of their images assured it’s passage.
This maneuver particularly helped Senator Obama who represents the state of Illinois and is closely tied to big agribusiness. He was able to make his vote appear to be part of his concern for suffering Americans while doing his buddies at Archer Daniels Midland a big favor. Part of the bill provides $10 billion to subsidize “biofuels” which means using corn to make ethanol rather than to feed people. Switching from gasoline to biofuel is a major part of Obama’s energy program.
So once again, the media shows us the suffering that directs voter sentiment in their favor while ignoring coverage of suffering like the thousands of Iraqi civilians murdered by the ongoing U.S. imperialist war for oil.
Brooklyn Red
Rulers Want to Turn Our Minds to Mush
In the recent issue of CHALLENGE, there was a letter from a person who claimed that anti-intellectualism existed in California and stated that he\she wanted to join the PLP. I think that anti-intellectualism exists all across this country, and it exists for a reason. The ruling class wants our minds to turn to mush, and the pop culture works overtime to make sure this happens.
Recently, I read a newspaper article that pointed out that many school students did not know when the U.S. Civil War took place, and also pointed out that many people were ignorant about the history of this country. Certainly it is the duty of communists to work to enlighten the workers about the real history of U.S. capitalism. I think that the newspaper does a good job, and I especially like the recent debate in CHALLENGE about the U.S. Civil War and the class forces involved in this war. Keep up the good work.
Red Coal
U.S. Civil War Shows Profits
Drive Starvation
The article on the front page of the July 2 issue shows that there are diametrically opposed interests between gigantic agricultural businesses versus consumers, i.e., mainly the working class. The profits to be made in converting corn from food to fuel, in the face of climbing oil prices, lead many agricultural businesses to convert their food production into fuel production. This is causing food prices to skyrocket along with oil prices, and the working class world-wide is finding it more difficult not only to fuel our cars but to buy food. Starvation is resulting for many of the world’s workers and our families. The free market system, with the drive of profits for the few, leads directly to starvation for the many.
Two related historical events come to mind. First, the capitalists hypocritically blame the Soviet government for a famine that took place in the early 1930s and that killed, according to them, ten million Soviet citizens — a figure they exaggerate to fool the working class. [The July 2 article showed that ten million children die each year in the world from capitalism.] In the same breath they condemn the Soviets for their attempt to stem the results of the famine by expropriating the kulaks, the rich farmers, who were holding the working class for ransom by withholding food if their exorbitant prices weren’t met. The only way to feed the working class was to take away the land from the kulaks and guarantee adequate food production by and for the workers.
Second, the Southern slave-owning planters did the same thing during the U.S. Civil War from 1861-1865. A book reviewed in the June 4 issue of CHALLENGE, “A People’s History of the Civil War” by David Williams, shows how planters abandoned production of food for the families of Confederate soldiers, starving them out by replanting their land with higher profit-making crops, such as tobacco and cotton. This drove food prices out of sight for most working-class families. Ironically while slaves were fed the bare minimum necessary to keep them able to work these crops, working-class white Southerners and free black men and women suffered from starvation.
The slave-owners’ government forced working-class Southerners into the Confederate army and wouldn’t let them resign, but planter-class officers were free to leave any time they wished, and they left the army in droves. Huge numbers of enlisted Confederate soldiers also deserted. This desertion rate as against deeper commitment on the Union side was part of what eventually forced the Confederate government to surrender — a situation echoed 100 years later when troop rebellion was part of the U.S.’s forced exodus from Vietnam.
Indeed, this book is full of stories about how the class interests of the slave-owners (the 25% of the population of the South who began the war with their decision to secede from the Union in order to protect and spread slavery) clashed with the interests of all non-slave-owning Southerners (75%). There was tremendous opposition to the slavocracy from both slave and non-slave-owning Southerners, but the slave-owners controlled the state through their occupation of political offices and their control over generally fraudulent and violent elections.
We face a similar problem today with the rich agricultural business owners protected by the capitalist state against the interests of starving workers. Communism is the only system where the world’s workers can be defended against the twin capitalist atrocities of war and starvation.
Saguaro Rojo
Film Builds Wave of Anti-Communism
The much-publicized movie “Indiana Jones” premiered in San Salvador. We communist youth decided to see it.
We found the film painted a miserable caricature of the Soviets, lying that they did not know what they were doing and were insecure and idolized Americans. The main thing this movie does is make fun of the glorious Red Army.
In 1957 (the year when this film supposedly takes place), the Soviets did not send terrorists to the U.S., which they try to show in the movie. In fact, they launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, which inspired admiration worldwide.
We feel the goal of this film is to muddy the image of communists, and to continue creating a wave of anti-communism. Youth have another conception of what the USSR really was. We, the youth and adults of Progressive Labor Party denounce such decadent films that constitute the daily attacks capitalism launches anytime it can. Youth must work with their friends in the universities and schools to counter these attacks against our proletarian ideology, and let it be known that communism is the only salvation for the international working class.
Salvadoran comrade
Applying Historical Materialism to the
US Civil War (1861-1865)
Recent articles in CHALLENGE have given new information on the dynamics of the Civil War, which once and for all ended feudalism as a form of political economy. We must be careful, though, not to mechanically evaluate the political movements of the 1860s outside of their historical context.
Marx and Engels and the communist movement they represented at the time correctly saw the Civil War battle of the industrial bourgeoisie against the slave labor bourgeoisie as a progressive one. The Draft Riots were neither left wing nor progressive. These racist riots were in opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation and the movement of African Freedmen and women in New York for more freedom (see the movie “The Gangs of New York”). At the same time New York capitalists forced black and Irish workers to compete for the same low-paying jobs. The Draft Riots were an attempt at an anti-abolitionist counter-revolution, in which many racist Irish workers were involved in mass assaults on black people.
By 1864 the Union Army was being filled up with more and more “draftees,” now motivated in most instances, thanks to abolitionist organizing, in a fight for Union and black freedom. Motivated by an egalitarian ideal (even if it was in service to a very anti-egalitarian capitalist system) many workers carried out heroic, mass battles at Petersburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, etc.
In a well written and well-reasoned essay on Lincoln, which appeared in an issue of “The Communist” magazine, his ruthless dedication to smashing the slavocracy is likened to Stalin’s resolve in crushing the White Counterrevolution. Relative to the slave labor capitalist system, the industrial wage labor capitalist system (with the finance capitalist in a subordinate role) was a progressive one. The struggle against the slavocracy had committed, mass support by thousands of black, white, brown, Asian and Native American workers, students, soldiers, men and women, who participated in the fight for what Engels called the democratic republic, symbolized in Lincoln’s call for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Armed with another 150 years of knowledge gained through class struggle, the working class can now advance beyond the “democratic republic” and set our goal to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat; a government of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers. Many of the ancient contradictions between bosses and workers will be eliminated by the destruction of capitalism in all its forms; reactionary, reformist, anti-feudal. The abolition of wage-slavery will lead to the egalitarian society that brave workers fought for in the Civil War. The information uncovered by our comrades about the Civil War is definitely helpful when put in the larger context of the historical progression of our march toward communism.
A Red Historian
REDEYE
Obama: ‘withdraw’ to
Afghanistan
Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan....
He said in a news conference here, “It’s very hard for us to bolster our forces in Afghanistan when we have such a heavy presence in Iraq....
“We need a timetable for withdrawal, not only to relieve pressure on our military, but also to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.” (NYT, 7/14)
Obama and key Dems
back wiretaps
...in the end Mr. Bush won...almost all the major elements the White House wanted. The measure gives the executive branch broader latitude in eavesdropping....
Support from key Democrats ensured passage of the measure....
Senator Barack Obama...had long opposed giving legal immunity to the phone companies’...wiretapping.... But on Wednesday, he ended up voting for what he called “an improved but imperfect bill.” (NYT, 7/10)
Drug co. $ to docs hurts kids
An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs are not approved for most uses in children, who appear to be especially susceptible to the side effects, including rapid weight gain. (NYT, 7/12)
US let 9/11 go on as jolt for war
Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.’s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was “all preventable.” By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.’s inspector general, “50 or 60 individuals” in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, “I don’t want to hear about that anymore!”....
Nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation. (NYT, 7/13)
General reports US war crimes
When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report... (NYT, 7/6)
In ex-colonies, childbirth grim
Pregnancy is now usually a cause for celebration, not an occasion to write a will....
But not so in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in every 16 women dies in childbirth.... Maternal mortality is the most dramatic health inequality on the planet — more stark even than child mortality.
It is the incontrovertible evidence of how little women’s lives are valued or their voices heard in many parts of the world. (GW, 7/4)
Bosses Use Black Pols to Promote Capitalism, Racism
The history of racism and racist ideology in the U.S. is replete with ruling-class efforts to invent new forms when the old ones are no longer useful. Slavery gave way to Jim Crow; theories of “cultural inferiority” became favored over eugenics. But the rulers’ ability to fool workers into accepting, and in some cases embracing, these new plans for division have historically been deadly to our class. Their latest plans to use black superstars to resurrect “culture-of-poverty” arguments in order to justify more racism against black workers are no exception. As will be seen below, only a communist revolution that destroys capitalism can abolish the super-exploitation of black, Latino and immigrant workers, and the bosses’ need to divide the working class.
In 1965, former NY senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “The Negro American Family: The Case for National Action.” Moynihan was then assistant Secretary of Labor in the Johnson administration. While admitting that rising black unemployment was even then at “disaster” levels, Moynihan linked poverty not to joblessness, but to higher rates of children born “out of wedlock.” He blamed single-parent, female-headed families, not racism, for educational differences, higher welfare rolls, urban “isolation,” and crime. And he attacked the black family as a “tangle of pathology” caused by centuries–long history of slavery and Jim Crow.
Moynihan’s report was released during the growing anti-racist upsurge against capitalist-inspired exploitation and oppression of the 1960s. Thus, the rulers were forced to temporarily shelve its more brazen conclusions. Moynihan’s arguments introduced the term “benign neglect” which became the ideological basis for attitudes toward low-income workers that shaped Nixon administration welfare policies of the late 1960s. They also helped spawn an academic industry, which invented the concept of “culture of poverty” to explain racist unemployment and poverty, while covering up continuing discrimination and segregation.
In the 1980s, as urban industrial jobs increasingly vanished and unemployment increased sharply, this push to the right accelerated. Racist ideologue Charles Murray, who later co-wrote “The Bell Curve,” produced “Losing Ground,” which blamed social welfare programs for unwed mothers, unemployment, and crime. Murray and others promoted the racist and sexist imagery of female-headed black and Latino families as symbolic of the urban “underclass”. These Nazi–like myths helped provide the rationale for the increasing welfare cuts of the Reagan years, which in turn laid the groundwork for the Clinton-led bipartisan “welfare reform” of the 1990s.
Today, “culture-of-poverty” ideas, correctly seen by anti-racists in the 1960s as the other side of “genetic inferiority” garbage, have become “mainstream.” Obama, Clinton, and McCain all embrace some aspect of “getting tough with the ‘underclass.’” Politicians of all stripes trumpet the success of “welfare reform,” even as unemployment shoots up and more workers fall deeper into economic misery. The bosses and their political mouthpieces remain nervous, however, about the possibility of working-class rebellion against layoffs, soaring food and gas prices, more hospital closings, and bigger wars. At the same time that the media is promoting the idea that racism in the U.S. has been overcome, the rulers feel the need to sharpen their racist knives for more vicious attacks on our class.
(Part two will discuss how Bill Cosby and Barack Obama are using the bosses “culture of poverty” against the working class to build U.S. imperialism.)
U.S. A-Bombed Japan As Political, Act of Mass Murder
When the U.S. pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima died last year a spate of letters and articles appeared reporting that he felt no remorse or guilt about killing 140,000 innocent civilians because “it was necessary to end the war without a land invasion of Japan and therefore actually saved the lives of far more Japanese and Americans.”
This is a monstrous lie that outdoes even the whoppers told by Hitler. The fact is U.S. president Harry Truman ordered the dropping of the bomb on August 6, 1945 — and a second one three days later on Nagasaki killing another 110,000 civilians — not as “the last act of World War II” but rather as the opening shot of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Truman’s Secretary of State, James Byrnes, told A-bomb scientist Leo Szilard that “demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.” (Leo Szilard, “A Personal History of the Atomic Bomb”)
This not only killed 140,000 residents of Hiroshima instantly but, “The number of people killed directly and after exposure to radiation...now reached 231,920,” as of Aug. 6, 2003. (British journalist John Pilger)
Actually in August, 1945, Japan was on its knees, suing for peace, and facing a million Soviet troops sweeping through the Chinese mainland, preparing to invade Japan itself (after having defeated the Nazis in Europe). Truman himself wrote in his diary on July 17, 1945 that when the Soviets entered the Far East war — as they had promised to do by August — “Fini Japs when that comes about.” (Truman, “Off the Record”) Truman already had been given decoded Japanese cables which his diary referred to as the “Jap Emperor asking for peace.”
Dropping the bomb was militarily unnecessary. On March 9, 1945, “100,000 to 200,000 men, women and children died when the U.S. Air Force doused Tokyo with jellied gasoline; all told, in the month before Hiroshima, [conventional] bombs killed up to 500,000 in Japanese cities and left 13 million homeless.” (U.S. News & World Report, 7/13/95) That’s why Air Force General Curtis LeMay complained that there was nothing left to bomb in Japanese cities except “garbage can targets.”
Then General (later President) Dwight Eisenhower told Secretary of State Stimson that, “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary....[It was] no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” (Eisenhower, “Mandate for Change”)
So why the rush to use the Bomb? Clearly the liberal Democratic Truman administration didn’t want Japan to surrender before it was used. On June 6, 1945, Stimson told Truman that he was “fearful” that before the Bomb was delivered, the U.S. Air Force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the A-Bomb “would not have a fair background to show its strength.” To whom? Certainly not to Japan which was frantically trying to surrender, itself fearful of facing the Soviets.
If U.S. rulers were so intent on demonstrating the Bomb’s power to the Japanese, why didn’t they pause long enough for Japanese officials to travel to Hiroshima to assess the extent of the damage before dropping a second Bomb on Nagasaki just three days later, killing another 110,000 civilians?
This decision to commit mass murder in the name of anti-communism was clearly political. As Churchill said about the A-Bomb, “We now had something in our hands that would redress the balance with the Russians.”
The U.S. ruling class’s indiscriminate destruction of Iraq is part of a long history of such butchery; Japanese men, women and children are still dying from the inherited genetic effects of the A-Bomb slaughter. It’s ironic that U.S. rulers now “worry” about nuclear weapons getting into the hands of al Qaeda in countries like Pakistan — whose bomb the U.S. helped build (see “Deception” by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark); and they “warn” Iran not to build a nuclear bomb (or face U.S. nukes). Yet the U.S. ruling class is the only one to have ever used the A-Bomb, killing more than one-third of a million innocent people. Surely U.S. rulers are the most horrific terrorists in world history.
a href="#Rulers’ Rivalry Hikes Gas Prices">"ulers’ Rivalry Hikes Gas Prices
a href="#Bosses’ Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage for Boeing Contract Fight">"osses’ Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage for Boeing Contract Fight
Support the Seattle and Los Angeles Summer Projects
Angry LA Workers Mobilize Against Racist Police Murders
a href="#Red Leadership Could Turn Lights Out on Con Ed’s Scabs">"ed Leadership Could Turn Lights Out on Con Ed’s Scabs
a href="#PL’s Politics Make Mark at LA Social Forum">"L’s Politics Make Mark at LA Social Forum
a href="#Liberals’ School Reforms Serve Profit System, Leave Kids Behind">"iberals’ School Reforms Serve Profit System, Leave Kids Behind
a href="#Student’s Answer to Testing: ‘Shut the School Down!’">Stud"nt’s Answer to Testing: ‘Shut the School Down!’
Mid-West Floods: Another Disaster Created by Capitalism
D.C. Rally Hits Profit-Driven Housing Shortage in AIDS Fight
Autoworkers Need International Solidarity to Fight Bosses, Union Hacks
a href="#Constantine’s Racist Sword Aided Imperialism">"onstantine’s Racist Sword Aided Imperialism
U.S.-U.K., China Rivalry Behind Zimbabwe Turmoil
LETTERS
a href="#Building Allegiance to the Working Class Among GI’s, Families">"uilding Allegiance to the Working Class Among GI’s, Families
a href="#CHALLENGE Readers’ Password: "Power to the Workers!"">"HALLENGE Readers’ Password: "Power to the Workers!"
a href="#Workers to Racist Punk: ‘Get Off Our Bus!’">Wo"kers to Racist Punk: ‘Get Off Our Bus!’
BBQ Brings Food For (Marxist) Thought
Finds Axle Articles Come Up Short
- Ousted by Hussein, big oil is back
- Iran oil is real US target
- Few jobs for poor black and Latin kids
- In poverty, more non-wedlock kids
- 5m ‘liberated’ Iraqis flee homes
- Do US politics favor no-brainers?
- Israelis were the real barbarians
a name="Rulers’ Rivalry Hikes Gas Prices">">"ulers’ Rivalry Hikes Gas Prices
The capitalist economic crisis is sharpening global competition for Persian Gulf oil and driving fuel prices sky-high. The working class is being dealt a triple body blow. In some parts of the U.S. workers are shelling out up to one-fifth of their pay for gasoline. Soaring energy costs contribute to a job-destroying economic slowdown and are driving up food prices worldwide.
While many politicians and pundits rail at greedy speculators, who are indeed cashing in on, and boosting, the price spike, its root causes are geopolitical (and rose immediately from Federal Reserve efforts to protect U.S. banks — see box below). China’s and India’s burgeoning economies now thirst for Mid-East crude supplies that U.S. rulers once claimed as private property. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were supposed to counter U.S. economic weakness by strengthening its control over the oil all rivals needed. But despite murdering millions, the U.S. war machine has failed to secure oil-rich Iraq or tame al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan bent on seizing Mid-East oil sources. Oil’s grand prize, U.S. puppet Saudi Arabia, faces internal attacks. Meanwhile, Washington and its proxy Israel are trading escalating war threats with Iran’s holy-roller oil barons, who kicked out Exxon Mobil three decades ago. And beyond the Gulf, an upsurge in political violence has slashed Nigeria’s oil output.
Botched By Bush, U.S. Iraq Genocide Yields Rulers Little Oil
Unlike growth in China and India, the U.S. fiasco in Iraq — which is also central to the oil price-crunch — receives little blame from the rulers’ media. U.S. bosses invaded Iraq in 2003 hoping to create a new "swing producer," in addition to its old one, Saudi Arabia, increasingly bedeviled by al Qaeda. A "swing producer" is one with sufficient spare capacity to steer world markets by raising or lowering output, according to its U.S. patron’s wishes. (One reason U.S. rulers toppled Saddam Hussein was his constant jerking around of oil production, making for an unstable price market which Big Oil couldn’t control.)
In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia helped the U.S. bring down the oil-exporting Soviet Union by pumping so much crude that its price fell to $5 a barrel, depriving the Kremlin of needed foreign income. Months after the Iraq war began, the liberal Brookings Institution gushed, "Many analysts believe that Iraq might be able to pump up its production to as much as 6 mbd [million barrels per day] by 2010 and 7-8 mbd by 2020." (Brookings, May 2003)
But Bush didn’t put enough boots on the ground to secure Iraq’s oilfields, which now produce 2.5 mbd, even less than before the war. And with their own infrastructure in peril, Saudi princes can’t take up the slack. "Saudi Arabia has arrested 701 Islamists in the past six months on suspicion of plotting attacks on oil industry installations." (AFP, 6/26/08) The Saudis just promised to hike output a meaningless 200,000 barrels a day.
The U.S.-Israeli standoff with Iran is another major factor in oil prices. "Speculators and others may be acting on the assumption that Washington and its Israeli ally will proceed to ‘take out’ Iranian nuclear facilities, because that is exactly what Bush and his allies are implying will happen if the Ahmadinejad regime does not comply with U.N. resolutions." (Newsweek, 7/7/08) In turn, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, promised, "Iran will definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz" (Los Angeles Times, 6/29/08), the world’s most important chokepoint. Through it 17 million barrels of oil pass every day. In such a case, $10-a-gallon gas would be cheap.
With Crucial Fuel Sources At Risk, Rulers Feel A Draft
To ease their oil woes, U.S. rulers are planning a solution involving far more than reducing fuel consumption or regulating speculators. Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a group called Securing America’s Future Energy, headed by former Marine commandant P.X. Kelly, are staging a war-game program,"Oil ShockWave," on campuses across the U.S. The New York Times (11/2/07) reported on one imminent scenario presented last year:
"Iran had drastically cut its oil production in response to Western economic sanctions imposed because of its nuclear weapons program. The Venezuelan leadership of Hugo Chavez followed suit, driving prices beyond $150 a barrel. The Iranian nuclear program touched off talk of war. The military advisers urged redeployment of the bulk of America’s naval and air power to the Persian Gulf in anticipation of war, and urged reinstatement of the draft for young men and women."
Hang onto your hats. At press time oil hit the $143-per-barrel mark and talk of war with Iran has begun. "Oil ShockWave" deliberately targets college students, who, ever since Vietnam, have been reluctant to support the Pentagon’s murder machine. The program springs from the highest levels of the liberal Establishment. In addition to its Harvard pedigree, "Oil ShockWave" boasts Robert Rubin, Citigroup chief and Clinton Treasury-Secretary, as a leading participant.
Like openly militaristic McCain, "Barracks" Obama favors the mobilization a broader Gulf war requires. He vows to add 92,000 troops immediately upon inauguration. But his threat to invade Pakistan "searching for Osama bin Laden" and the Taliban would require hundreds of thousands of troops and could kick off a war in a country possessing the A-Bomb. Some "anti-war" candidate!
Voting for either candidate would prove a serious political error. War is a result of capitalist crisis and inter-imperialist rivalry. A new president can change the appearance of the crisis, but not its essence. The solution is to work towards the ultimate elimination of the profit system that causes these endless oil wars. Our revolutionary communist Party has this goal.
U.S. Bank Bailout Spiked Oil Prices
While many politicians and pundits blame greedy speculators for skyrocketing oil prices, the immediate problem arose from the Federal Reserve’s efforts to protect U.S. banks. Under capitalism, money serves two functions: (1) it has a "use value," enabling the buying and selling of commodities, from raw materials and labor power to finished goods; (2) its accumulation is a means of storing value for future investments and future payment. Capitalist hoards are claims on the future labor of workers and the surplus value they can create. (Workers are paid only part of the value they create. The rest is "surplus value" from which bosses’ profits are reaped.)
Since last August the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates and supplied billions of dollars to the banking system in an effort to limit the bank failures that began with the subprime mortgage crisis. This increase of money in circulation cheapened the value of the dollar. It now buys less in international markets.
As the value of the dollar fell 20% during the last year, so did the value of foreign investments in U.S. treasury bills and corporate debt. The decision to let the value of the dollar fall so quickly sharply reduced the value of hundreds of billions of treasury bills belonging to China and other rivals.
Looking for protection from such losses, investors (U.S. banks, pension funds, foreign governments) began buying gold and oil, commodities whose value could not be manipulated by the Federal Reserve. This increased buying forced up the price of both oil and gold, fueling new internal conflicts in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations, immigrant workers, whose earnings are tied to the dollar, have staged strikes because the reduction in the value of their pay meant they can no longer feed their families back in India and Pakistan.
Faced with internal conflict, many Persian Gulf nations are again pressing to price oil in euros or yen, both worth far more than the dollar. (Iran already requires Japan to pay for oil in yen not dollars). This move has been limited only by the efforts of the Saudi royal family, the world’s largest oil producer and a major holder of U.S. investments (including in Citibank). If oil was not priced in dollars, the value of the dollar and these investments would fall even further as countries dumped the dollar for other currencies.
This falling dollar stoked the already heated inter-imperialist rivalries for oil, further exposing the U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
a name="Bosses’ Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage for Boeing Contract Fight">">"osses’ Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage for Boeing Contract Fight
The July 16 strike sanction vote means the Boeing contract battle is in full swing. For nearly a year, the International Association of Machinists (IAM) leadership has been pushing the slogan, "It’s Our Time, This Time." They say that if workers in union plants stick together, they can negotiate a contract to increase our wages, benefits and job security. Workers on the shop floor are not so sure. As one machinist puts it: "What part of capitalism don’t they understand?!"
In this struggle, illusions won’t serve us. Currently, Chinese, Russian and European capitalists are economically challenging the U.S. bosses, undermining U.S. rulers’ political clout. War to maintain the empire is pushed to the forefront, with both presidential candidates offering plans for a "better" war. In this climate, the U.S. bosses are rebuilding their industrial military base on the backs of the working class, particularly those of us in basic industry. Racism and sexism lead the attack. Black and Latin workers — women and men — in the subcontractor plants were the first and most brutally attacked. (The subcontractors are non-union, low-wage plants to which outfits like Boeing farm out work formerly produced by higher-wage union plants — domestic outsourcing.)
The bosses use racist super-exploitation as a wedge to attack all industrial workers: 140,000 unionized senior autoworkers will be replaced by 77,000 new workers at half the wage. The UAW carefully isolated American Axle strikers for 83 days this spring, and then railroaded a contract through that cut 2,000 jobs and wages by a third to a half. The Nucor company is building the first integrated steel plant in the U.S. in four decades right outside Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to take advantage of some of the country’s lowest, non-union labor. No matter what eventually happens with the tanker contract, the bosses, with the Pentagon’s blessing, are determined to erect a "southern aerospace corridor" in non-union, low-wage Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. The system depends on this kind of racist exploitation to build profits.
The Boeing bosses have no illusions about the times — or their ruling-class needs. In late June, they eliminated defined pensions (ones with guaranteed specific benefits) for all non-union new hires, demanding the same of union workers when the old contract expires on September 3. They’re pushing healthcare cuts disguised as a "wellness-based healthcare system." They’ve said our wages are "above the market rate" after they slashed the "market rate" through racist outsourcing — which they’re accelerating. In order to afford to attack the world’s workers, the bosses must attack us here at home — and Boeing bosses are doing their (very profitable) part!
Fight The Bosses’ Ideas Within Our Ranks
Relying on deals with the company bosses — never wise — and believing their lie that "what’s good for the company is good for the workers" is increasingly delusional in these times. The bosses’ imperialist plans call for more war, nationalism, racism, sexism and attacks on our standard of living. The only viable answer is to smash the capitalist system with communist revolution — no easy, short-term task. We’ll never succeed without waging a long-term fight against the bosses’ ideas.
When union members struggled for our locals to participate in the immigrant rights May Day marches to fight anti-immigrant racism, they were building the class-consciousness we’ll need this fall. When workers raised money for the Jena 6 on the shop floor and fought the union misleadership to protest this racist outrage, we were laying the anti-racist groundwork for the class struggle ahead. When we exposed the Pentagon’s role in promoting aerospace wage-cuts, we took aim at the dead-end flag-waving of the union sellouts.
In this vein, PLP is sponsoring Summer Projects in the Seattle area and among L.A. aerospace subcontractors. Building anti-racist, international solidarity between union workers and non-union super-exploited subcontractor workers takes aim at the bosses’ divide-and-conquer strategy.
We face a tough battle, and may not win this round, but we can build our offense with strike preparations. We can struggle for the kind of class-consciousness and solidarity that teach us about workers’ power. We can build forces among those already in basic industry and young revolutionary workers just entering the factories in order to eventually destroy this bosses’ nightmare.
Angry LA Workers Mobilize Against Racist Police Murders
HOLLYWOOD, CA, June 21 — Hundreds of workers –– Asian, black, Latino, and white –– expressed their anger at the memorial for Usman Chaudhry, next to the bushes where racist LAPD officers woke him up, handcuffed him, then assassinated him. Chaudhry was 21 years and had autism. Even though the kkkops had his identification the police didn’t notify Chaudhry’s family about his death for 21 days.
The event was also a protest against over thirty such executions since the beginning of 2008 that include Michael Cho who was killed by La Habra police and Brian Moore, 23, in Compton. Just five days later, all charges were dropped against the cops who killed Cho. The memorial challenged the climate of fear that hangs over this block and many others like it. "It was a good event," said a regular CHALLENGE reader who lives in the neighborhood, "because people really came together, at all levels."
On the one hand, we mourned with Usman’s parents, sister, and brother, all of whom spoke, and with friends and family of Cho, Michael Bayoune, and others murdered. But the barely-suppressed anger of the crowd broke out during the closing candlelight vigil, with raised fists and chants –– led by PLP’ers –– of "No Justice, No Peace –– No Racist Police!" CHALLENGE and leaflets were warmly received by nearly everyone.
Workers and youth are up against a racist profit system that purposely uses police terror to force workers to submit to intensified exploitation in preparation for wider wars, and eventually World War III. Workers and soldiers have nothing to gain and lots to lose from these wars, beyond those killed and wounded. One in three homeless men are vets, and three-quarters of all vets have substance abuse or mental health problems. They come home to inadequate care and systematic police abuse.
PLP members criticized demands made by leaders of sponsoring organizations for federal investigations or police reform. Voting for Democrats is no solution. In the midst of budget cuts to health and education, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants more money for cops. Barack Obama has called for building up the U.S. military for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and maybe Iran.
The coalition that sponsored the rally is planning for more such events in neighborhoods across the city this summer. PLP plans on bringing Summer Project volunteers to fight back against these racist attacks by organizing on the job and in the schools to build class unity. Imagine if each police murder were met with on-the-job protests as well as thousands marching in the streets. And then imagine the power of such a movement, based in the industrial working class and led by communist ideas, to take on the capitalist system that’s killing us.
a name="Red Leadership Could Turn Lights Out on Con Ed’s Scabs">">"ed Leadership Could Turn Lights Out on Con Ed’s Scabs
NEW YORK CITY, July 2 — Over 9,000 workers were set to strike the billion-dollar Con Ed electric company at midnight last night when a "tentative" agreement was reached in the early hours of this morning. Few details were released. The rank and file will be voting on it over the next month.
Con Ed was preparing a massive scab operation, ready to work non-union managers 24 hours a day on two 12-hour shifts, in automated control rooms, dispatch centers and on service trucks, but without routine maintenance.
The bosses had "offered" what amounted to a wage-cut: a one-half of 1% annual wage "increase" in a four-year contract, healthcare cuts, a switch to 401(k)-style pensions for new hires (which first reports said was scrapped) and a clause to make workers pay back workmen’s compensation benefits from their pensions. With inflation mounting at 4.2% a year (excluding food and gas costs!), a less-than-one-percent wage "increase" is a gigantic slash in real wages.
Meanwhile, the "neutral" government has taken the company’s side, with the State Public Service Commission saying, "Con Edison has a plan….We are confident…they are doing everything they should be doing" (NY Daily News, 7/1).
Yes, a "plan" all right — a massive strike-breaking scab operation to protect their tens of millions in profits reaped off the backs of the 9,000 workers and from charging exorbitant rates to millions of customers.
How to beat such a plan, in a company thriving on automation? If the union was worth anything it could have been doing the following:
• Calling on workers throughout the city’s labor movement to come out in support of Con Ed’s workers, and together with them surrounding the company’s buildings and barring anyone from entering or leaving;
• Better yet, preparing in advance to have thousands of Con Ed workers remain in the buildings in a mass sit-down strike to prevent any scab supervisors from performing union jobs;
• Mobilize New York’s working class to the strikers’ side, calling attention to Con Ed’s constant rate hikes that impoverish electricity consumers, especially in black and Latino neighborhoods where non-payment of exorbitant bills lead to service cut-offs.
Such a plan would inspire the entire working class with a militant, no-holds-barred strike that could deal with the company’s scab-operated automated equipment. No matter how automated, workers are still needed to operate it.
A sit-down strike could hold Con Ed’s billion-dollar automated plants hostage, just as the communist-led autoworkers did in their 1936 seizure of GM’s key plants to win their demands on threat of immobilizing the company’s machinery. In fact, the utility workers industrial union itself grew out of the militant CIO in the 1930s, largely led by communists, and is responsible for the wage and benefit levels these workers have today.
No doubt Con Ed would cry that the workers "don’t care about the public." But it is the bosses who don’t care, raking in millions in profits while offering what amounts to a huge wage-cut to workers who are suffering skyrocketing costs in food and gasoline and being forced to pay for the bosses’ trillion-dollar oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While Irish and Italian workers have long-dominated the workforce, lately half the workers hired are black and Latino, with one in five women. The company would like to use this situation to drive a wedge between the older and newer workers. The fact that for decades the older workers had not fought to integrate the workforce could be coming home to roost now, giving Con Ed the racist tool with which to divide the workers, and feel it can get away with offering such a lousy contract.
The kind of action needed to carry out the above plan won’t happen with the current crop of union leaders whose main aim is to elect "pro-labor" politicians and who always side with the bosses. Workers need a long-range plan to build communist leadership. Organizing solidarity and unity in this current battle could help prepare the workers for the kind of action that, with red leadership, would result in a revolution that would shut off Con Ed and their partners’ in the bosses’ state.
a name="PL’s Politics Make Mark at LA Social Forum">">"L’s Politics Make Mark at LA Social Forum
LOS ANGELES, June 30 — Last weekend, the Los Angeles Social Forum drew a few hundred attendees. CHALLENGES and PL leaflets were distributed throughout the event.
One workshop presented the struggles in building worker-student solidarity on their respective campuses. Discussion in both break-out groups and the workshop in general offered different ways to achieve this. PLP members showed that historically the only effective path is building a base in the working class, bringing out communist ideas in class struggle. We also emphasized that while campus work is important we must spread these ideas throughout the working class, especially among industrial workers. An important avenue this summer is participation in the Los Angeles or Seattle Summer Projects, where we will be doing precisely this — building a worker-student and soldier alliance.
The presidential election came up, and while there was mostly agreement on rejecting Obama, there was certainly disagreement over how to react to his campaign. Some wrote it off and condemned participating in it. We advocated the importance of seeing the contradictions within those who are attracted to his campaign. Many working-class youth and adults are drawn to the prospect of change, especially amid the failing economy, budget cuts and the war. We noted that such people can be won to pro-working-class, communist politics if we dare to join the struggle.
It’s important to talk with Obama supporters and show them an alternative — communist revolution — where, instead of giving away our power to politicians and their system of empty promises, we take power ourselves and attend to our needs through a communist society.
Another workshop portrayed the anti-war movement through the soldier’s perspective. A clip from the Winter Soldier forum depicted what soldiers have been required to do in this war, leading to some soldiers becoming more politically conscious. A veteran described the war as imperialist, saying the working class must and could change the world so that imperialism could not exist. A comrade explained that her experience in the anti-Vietnam War movement had taught her that activists needed to understand the reasons for the war and base their activities on anti-capitalist, communist politics.
The discussion illustrated what soldiers have done to end wars, be it the Vietnam War or the current ones in the Middle-East. Some said mass marches and rallies are important, but organizing soldiers both within and outside the military is much more vital to halting this war and building for a communist revolution. Soldiers are ultimately the ones sent to fight these wars for profit. A comrade concluded that the class consciousness of the soldiers on the panel and their stance against racism demonstrate the great potential the working class has for revolution.
Some high school students participated for the first time in the struggle to defend our ideas. Our emphasis on understanding that capitalism is the political basis of imperialism and that the solution is communism resonated with some newly anti-imperialist forum-goers. As we continue to prepare for our summer actions, the LA Social Forum reinvigorated our confidence in the working class and PLP’s politics. Overall our activity at this Forum revealed the importance of putting forward communist revolution and building a base for it.
a name="Liberals’ School Reforms Serve Profit System, Leave Kids Behind">">"iberals’ School Reforms Serve Profit System, Leave Kids Behind
At the coming American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Chicago convention, nearly everyone wants to reform or repeal NCLB ("No Child Left Behind" or, as some call it, "No Corporation Left Behind" or "No Child Left Untested"). McCain and Obama both support NCLB’s goals and its testing to measure schools’ success, but both want "changes."
McCain emphasizes "market forces" (privatization) and freezing federal education spending. Obama backs more active federal government intervention. "More accountability is right," he says. Neither candidate can or will change the basis for the U.S. educational system: it has always served the needs of the capitalist class, not of workers and our children.
The current educational reform movement’s two wings are more alike than they appear.
Straight from U.S. rulers comes the $60 million "Ed in ’08" campaign, sponsored by The Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Comparing U.S. students to those in other industrialized countries, they conclude, "The world is changing, jobs are evolving, and far too many students are simply not being prepared to be successful adults…. Many of those who do graduate are not ready for college, for the workplace and for life." For the sake of "our economy" (meaning U.S. capitalism that exploits millions worldwide), they want "strong American schools." "Improving our educational performance will pay huge economic dividends" — for these capitalists.
U.S. imperialists are facing unprecedented competition from European and Asian bosses, a sharpening rivalry leading to ever wider wars. So, led by Roy Romer (former Colorado governor and ex-superintendent of LA schools), they’re pressuring presidential candidates Obama and McCain to support their agenda: privatization (charter schools), accountability (teacher pay based on students’ test scores) and union-busting (ending tenure).
A new coalition, led by NYC school head Joel Klein and ex-FBI informer and Democratic Party hack Al Sharpton, is joining Romer and his billionaire pals to brand these capitalist policies as an "Education Equality Project." They stress that black and Latino students still lag far behind their white counterparts in test scores and graduation rates, fifty years after court-ordered school desegregation. But capitalism is racist to the core. It reaps $250 billion super-profits annually from the difference in income between white families and black and Latino families.
Broad or Broader?
The other reform wing (the Forum on Educational Accountability and the Forum on Education and Democracy) advocates "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education," appearing to challenge the "Ed in 08" program.
But the two sides are essentially similar. The "Broader, Bolder" group also wants to make NCLB "work better" by backing expanded early childhood education and better health care. While not rejecting aspects of privatization (charters) they also want the federal government to spend more money on "accountability systems" (testing).
They want schools to promote "upward social mobility," but don’t challenge class society where a few wealthy at the top profit from exploiting the many workers on the bottom. They want to retool schools to produce the loyal and well-trained workers and soldiers urgently needed in the pre-World War economy: "The increasingly inter-connected world of the 21st century places a premium on the preparation of all of our young people to take their places as effective workers, citizens, and family members."
The "Broader, Bolder" group includes many Clinton administration officials; Chicago schools boss Arne Duncan Rudy Crew, Bella Rosenberg (long-time associate of former AFT President Albert Shanker), members of the Brookings Institution and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Harvard’s Christopher Jencks and William Julius Wilson, and a raft of well-known liberal reformers. Several (including reported Obama advisor Linda Darling-Hammond), are also part of the Forum on Education and Democracy (FED), with its roadmap for education reform entitled "Democracy at Risk."
The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) is a broader coalition of over 140 liberal organizations with similar goals and policies. It’s "committed to the No Child Left Behind Act’s objectives of strong academic achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap….The federal government has a critical role to play in attaining these goals. We endorse…an accountability system that helps ensure all children, including children of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and of limited English proficiency, are prepared to be successful, participating members of our democracy."
These groups appeal to teachers and school activists who are rightly appalled by the present situation. Their programs might seem to be "a step in the right direction" despite their continued embrace of federal "accountability" and intensive testing. But reforming the system means making it work better — for the bosses who run it! To fight for our children and our future, amid sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry and war, we need to destroy that racist system before it destroys even more of us.
For schools to serve the working class, we need a society that serves the working class, not the capitalists. We must unite students, parents and teachers in a class struggle against the rulers’ attacks. Out of this struggle, with red leadership, we can acquire the understanding needed to end the racist profit system with a communist revolution that abolishes wages and inequality, building this movement in the factories, barracks, communities and schools. That means teaching and learning everything, from the history of our class to the philosophy of dialectical materialism, from politics and economics to science and mathematics. Join the Progressive Labor Party in this historic task!
a name="Student’s Answer to Testing: ‘Shut the School Down!’"></a>"tudent’s Answer to Testing: ‘Shut the School Down!’
NEW YORK CITY, June 30 — The ruling class has been forcing NYC teachers to give testing so the bosses can intensify fascist practices at home, enabling them to continue their imperialist wars. Some PL teachers met to discuss the new preparatory tests that would presumably "predict" what students would do on the final tests. These would be given three times a year, administered by teachers, then graded by the State. One PL teacher was in a high school that was administering the test, a joint partnership between the State and Houghton-Mifflin Corporation. The PL teachers decided that a written report on the test was needed.
As part of his training, the PL teacher saw the computer program of the standardized test. One screen correlated the teachers, the number of students taking the test and the students’ scores on that test. The rulers will use this test to determine what teachers teach in the classroom. They want to tie a teacher’s tenure to the test scores, which would provide a basis for their merit pay schemes. Communists must lead the working class to struggle against the bosses’ attempt to implement this new weapon against us.
A week later the school discussed the testing. The bosses’ puppet facilitator tried to explain that "data-driven education" would be positive. The PL teacher exposed the test as a "tool of oppression," to loud applause from the majority of teachers. Every teacher who spoke afterwards condemned the test. Only the school administrators showed even tacit support for it. This did not happen in a vacuum. Over 100 CHALLENGES are distributed in the school, more than 20 among the staff. Years of friendship and political discussion with these teachers encouraged them to express their anger toward the ruling class’s plans.
With PL’ers confident in our ability to extend the struggle among teachers, it was time to involve the students directly. PL’ers have patiently built ties among the students for over four years. More than 80 students read CHALLENGE regularly; 10 have joined the Party.
After carefully estimating the balance of forces, the PL teacher encouraged his freshman classes to boycott the test. He told them his job was to give them the test, but they could decide whether or not to take it. He informed them that over $100 million had already been spent on the test.
The students were already frustrated with standardized testing and asked if the tests would affect their grades. The answer was no, but the State could come down on them hard. One student declared, "Well, let them throw the first punch and we’ll shut the school down." Another replied, "Just give us the excuse." (Continued next issue.)
Mid-West Floods: Another Disaster Created by Capitalism
The wholesale failure of any flood protection system in the ravaged Mid-West has once again exposed another disaster created by capitalism. The ruling class’s neglect of the country’s infrastructure has made tens of thousands of working people homeless; killed at least two dozen residents along the Mississippi and its tributaries; submerged 100 blocks of Cedar Rapids, Iowa — a city of 200,000 — under water; destroyed tens of thousands of houses; flooded 160,000 acres of cropland in Illinois; and has seen the failure of 20 levees. And virtually all of this death and destruction was preventable if not for the anarchy of the profit system.
This failure of the flood protection system was long predicted. Army Corps of Engineers brigadier general Gerald Galloway told the NY Times, "We told them there were going to be more floods like this….This shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
The Times (6/22) cited a chaotic system of levees, "owned and maintained by all sorts of towns, agencies, even individual farmers." It reported the levees "have poor construction, signs of stress, trees growing on them, [and] animal burrows. A 1994 report urging a more uniform approach to flood control along the Mississippi river system was largely ignored. That report stated, "Many levees are poorly sited and will fail again." In fact, the situation is so chaotic that Galloway said, "We don’t even know where some of these levees are."
The Wall Street Journal reported (6/19) that scientists believe the unplanned and chaotic development has made floods worse. "By building along the riverbanks and forcing the Mississippi into a bed that is half the width of where it ran a century ago, residents are displacing water and forcing the river to run faster and higher."
The racism of the system was revealed in the levees supposedly protecting impoverished East St. Louis, Illinois, with its large black population, where leaks were discovered on the Illinois side. The Associated Press reported that at one place "water was bubbling out of the ground like a volcano."
John Barry, author of "Rising Tide" about the 1927 floods, told the Christian Science Monitor that the low standards governing U.S. levees are a joke around the world. The Dutch inland standards are 12 times as rigid as the U.S. and their ocean levee standards are 100 times as rigid.
The politicians, from Bush to McCain to Obama, paid lip service to the flood victims, posing for photo ops in brief visits with survivors. These ruling-class servants are ready to spend trillions on imperialist oil wars while never caring about workers’ lives, from the Mid-West to the Mid-East. Capitalism’s priority lies in its drive for maximum profits, not in protecting people’s lives.
D.C. Rally Hits Profit-Driven Housing Shortage in AIDS Fight
Washington DC, June 21 — Over 50 people rallied for more effective HIV prevention and more affordable housing in the Congress Heights neighborhood — one of D.C.’s worst hit areas in terms of HIV. Every 3rd Saturday of the month, the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association’s Health Disparities Committee (MWPHA) and several other groups visit neighborhoods to raise the awareness about HIV/AIDS prevention and care.
PLP has been organizing within MWPHA for some time now. We have struggled with our friends to not just hand out condoms but also to directly confront the bosses for their racist neglect of HIV patients. Out of that struggle we have won the group to have these rallies and to link the fight against HIV/AIDS with the fight for housing, jobs, drug treatment, and more youth programs, including sex education in all schools as a way to see that we must fight the whole capitalist system. One of MWPHA’s major demands is for more affordable housing for everyone living with HIV/AIDS to help people prevent and manage HIV. PLP members distributed about 35 CHALLENGES and plan on having study groups to discuss how communism can ensure health equity for all workers.
During this last rally we chanted, "Affordable Housing is the Name of the Game, Soccer Stadium - Shame, Shame, Shame!", "Racism Means Fight Back, HIV Means Fight Back, Housing Mean, Fight Back," and much more. People marched around the neighborhood with signs and distributed a flier that compared the amount of public money offered to a soccer stadium developer — up to $225 MILLION — with the amount of housing that could be provided to people who need homes. Over 25,000 people are on the waiting list for housing vouchers (Section 8) and about 200 people with AIDS are waiting for housing funded by a federal program called HOPWA.
Housing and HIV
People with no stable housing are 3-9 times more likely to get HIV. Unstable housing puts people in very vulnerable positions that often lead to drug addiction and exchanging sex for a place to stay. Homeless individuals with HIV or AIDS have much more trouble taking their medications correctly or at all (National AIDS Housing Coalition, www.nahc.org). Meanwhile, affordable housing has been disappearing because capitalism puts making profits — high rental costs and sparse housing assistance — over the needs of workers. In the 1970s MWPHA requested over 400,000 vouchers for rental assistance; in 2003 the budget included less than 40,000 vouchers.
Revolution…Communism…HIV?
A revolution for a communist society gives workers the power to eliminate profit in all aspects of society so we can meet the needs of our class. It also eliminates racism that developers and their politicians use to favor stadiums and condos over workers’ basic necessities for life. In China when the working class had control, everyone had access to basic health care, lived free of epidemics like schistosomiasis, and had an average life expectancy that increased from 35 to 68 years. Unfortunately, they abandoned this system and gave control of health to private organizations that charged for services and required health insurance. Infectious diseases and infant mortality rates have soared (Blumentha D, Hsiao W. Privatization and its discontents – the evolving Chinese health care system. New England Journal of Medicine; 2005. 353(11): 1165-70). Progressive Labor Party invites all of our activist friends to join us in raising the class struggle for a workers’ dictatorship, so we can really save the health of our class.
Autoworkers Need International Solidarity to Fight Bosses, Union Hacks
SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL — Almost 200 delegates from 27 countries met June 16-18 for the 12th International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) World Auto Council "to address fundamental challenges of [the] industrial and enterprise restructuring process sweeping the auto sector." But little could be expected to deal with the problems faced by autoworkers worldwide at a meeting where the keynote speaker was Ron Gettelfinger, president of the UAW and the IMF Automotive Department.
While parroting, "We must develop a pathway to build union strength at the major global auto producers and suppliers," in practice under Gettelfinger’s leadership the UAW has done the opposite. The last example was the sellout of the Axle strikers in Detroit and other U.S. cities (see CHALLENGE, June 4).
Gettelfinger and most union hacks worldwide have done everything possible to help companies cut autoworkers’ wages, jobs and benefits. Nationalism and pro-company unionism have been the norm for these hacks, and not just the UAW. The Canadian Autoworkers Union has just seen its strategy of "trading concessions for job security" blown to bits when GM announced the closing of its big Oshawa, Ontario plant. In Mexico, union hacks have announced their willingness to accept even lower wages, making them competitive with "China’s low wages."
On June 17, IMF delegates attended a strike solidarity rally with workers at the Cummins Engine plant in Guarulhos. It followed the meeting’s closing speech by IMF General Secretary Marcello Malentacchi pledging to end precarious (non-permanent, low-paid) work. But this symbolic rally was just for show, to pretend these hacks are actually fighting union-busting.
The IMF is calling for a Global Day of Action on October 7. Class-conscious and militant autoworkers must turn this day into one of real international solidarity, blasting the hacks’ nationalism, exposing how the attacks workers suffer worldwide are caused by an international capitalist system faced with sharpening competition for markets, resources and cheap labor, which is leading to endless wars.
This is the only kind of political leadership that can confront the auto bosses growing attacks, and it won’t come from the UAW, CAW or IMF hacks. It requires a red leadership whose goal is, "Workers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!"
a name="Brazil’s GM Workers Need International Solidarity">">"razil’s GM Workers Need International Solidarity
Not far away from the IMF meeting place, GM has been trying to hire 600 new non-union workers with lower wages at its assembly plant in São José dos Campos. Meanwhile, the local city government has given GM tax exemptions and other concessions. The company, the local government and the media have attacked the workers opposing this wage-cut scheme, claiming they "oppose the creation of new jobs." Now GM is threatening to transfer jobs to a plant in São Caetano do Sul, which has a pro-boss union leadership and already has 1,500 workers earning less and with less benefits.
Contrary to the U.S., Canada and Europe, Brazil’s auto industry is enjoying a boom because of the rise of the local market. GM controls 20% of it, making huge profits.
A coordinated struggle of rank-and-file GM workers in Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the U.S. behind the slogan, "Same enemy, same fight, autoworkers of the world, unite!" would go a long way to fight these bosses’ attacks, something they won’t get from the IMF’s pro-capitalist leaders.
a name="Constantine’s Racist Sword Aided Imperialism">">"onstantine’s Racist Sword Aided Imperialism
"Constantine’s Sword," based on a book by former Catholic priest James Carroll, is a documentary film that depicts the vile history of Catholic anti-semitism. During the 1960’s, influenced by the anti-war movement, Carroll became painfully aware that if the U.S. had been dropping contraceptive pills on the people of Vietnam, the Church would have been the first to condemn the war, but because it was dropping napalm, it supported it. He soon left the priesthood and became a writer.
Carroll decided to investigate the origins of Catholic anti-semitism. He went back to Emperor Constantine, who adopted Christianity as a way of uniting the Roman Empire around a strong ideology that placed him as God’s representative on earth. Other belief systems, including paganism and Judaism, were competitors that were violently suppressed. Jews were blamed for the death of Christ, a false charge that was repeated over the centuries in the Passion Plays that depicted the crucifixion and death of Jesus. In Europe the Passion Plays were often followed by pogroms, violent attacks on Jewish communities.
Later, the Crusades, which began in the late 11th century, lasted almost two centuries, and were aimed at seizing Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims. Blessed by the Pope, fueled by Christian fanaticism, and led by the cross, the crusading armies marched toward the Holy Land, stopping along the way to murder thousands of Jews in German towns. Later, during the state-sponsored Spanish Inquisition, tens of thousands of Spain’s Jews were forced to convert, to become "conversos." However, that wasn’t sufficient, because converted Jews were suspected of secretly practicing Judaism and were called "marranos," or swine. 2,000 of them were burned at the stake. In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. Later, the Arabs (called Moors) were also expelled.
Carroll correctly points out that the 20th century persecution and mass murder of Eastern European Jews could not have occurred were it not for the centuries of Christian anti-semitism that prepared Germans, Poles and others to see Jews as Christ-killers and a threat to Christians. The film shows how the Vatican refused to speak out against fascist attacks and killings of Jews, either in Italy itself or in the rest of Europe. It signed a Concordat (treaty) with the Nazis in order to preserve the property and functioning of the Catholic Church, and shared much of the conservative vision of fascism, especially its anti-communism.
Though Carroll remains a Catholic, he warns about the growing theocratic danger of religion and government merging to become one. He shows how the Air Force Academy in Colorado has allowed cadets to proselytize evangelical Christianity on campus, and where non-Christians have been harassed. Yet Carroll fails to examine the dilemma for the ruling class when it comes to religion. On the one hand, evangelical fervor can motivate believers to join the military and risk their lives in the supposedly holy cause of fighting radical Islam. On the other hand, this resurrection of the "Crusades" creates considerable anger and resentment among Arabs and Muslims throughout the world.
Carroll’s critique of Catholic anti-semitism is limited, never seriously examining the overlap between the conservatism of Catholic and fascist ideology. The film neglects to mention the role of Vatican officials in helping high-ranking Nazis to escape to Latin America after the war. It says nothing about the role Catholicism has played in indoctrinating the oppressed to accept their unfortunate lot in life and wait for the kingdom of heaven, or the alliances that the Catholic hierarchy has made with wealthy elites and fascist regimes throughout the world.
Christianity became the official religion of Rome because it guaranteed the rule of the Emperor. It became one of the central institutions of feudalism, based on the exploitation of peasants. Today, the Vatican — worth billions of dollars –– hypocritically criticizes capitalism for its fixation on material wealth (profits), but even more avidly condemns Marxism for wanting to bring an end to capitalist exploitation and religious superstition. Based on medieval prejudices, Catholicism, like ALL religions, fights to keep working people subordinate to the rulers.
U.S.-U.K., China Rivalry Behind Zimbabwe Turmoil
On June 29, Robert Mugabe was inaugurated for a sixth term as President of Zimbabwe. Plans for a Kenya-style solution (sharing of power among different political factions after the violent turmoil in that country in the beginning of this year) were scrapped after the opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) dropped out of the elections. This followed the terror campaign waged by Mugabe’s goons which left 104 dead and 3,500 injured. Tsvangirai left the country and basically abandoned his followers to their own fate.
Zimbawe’s economy is a mess. Hyperinflation has led to a bottle of Coke costing 15 billion Zimbabwean dollars in the black market (Wall St. Journal, July 2). The embargo imposed by Britain and the U.S. only hurts the working-class masses even more. Washington and London are taking a stand against Mugabe not because he steals elections — hell, Bush and many other U.S. allies worldwide have done that — but because of China’s growing influence in Africa. When U.S. Secy. Of State Condi Rice went to Beijing and asked the Chinese rulers to join the arms embargo against Zimbabwe, Chinese Foreign Secretary Yang Jiechi refused, saying that the only solution was for Mugabe to enter talks with the opposition.
The opposition MDC, led by Tsvangirai, an ex-union leader, is considered totally in the pockets of Western imperialists. In 2002, the MDC opposed the take-over of the white capitalist farmers despite the popularity of the move (these agricultural bosses were a leftover from Ian Smith’s white-supremacist regime before a guerrilla war ended it). Mugabe seized some of the richest farms to reward his cronies. The MDC also favors neo-liberal policies such as privatization and free trade which would worsen the lives of the working masses.
But Mugabe himself is a good example of how a militant nationalist who helped lead the fight against the racist rulers of Rhodesia (Ian Smith’s racist regime) turns into just another exploiter. In the 1990s, the Mugabe regime imposed International Monetary Fund-type austerity measures against the working class, attacking pay and welfare services and selling off state industries. The opposition MDC actually came from the working-class resistance to these measures when the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZACTU) broke with the ruling ZANU-PF and in 1995 organized a general strike. Tsvangirai headed the union federation and gained a reputation as a militant leader.
But it didn’t last too long. He joined with NGOs and even with multinational corporations and white agricultural bosses and became a pawn of London and Washington. So Zimbabwe’s workers had no choice between two anti-working-class politicians (Mugabe and Tsvangirai).
It’s unclear what will happen next. Will Mugabe be able to hold onto power with China’s support, under pressure from the U.S. and the UK and their local allies in Africa? Whatever happens, the future is bleak for Zimbabwe’s working urban and rural masses. A South African-style solution is no answer. Witness the recent anti-immigrant pogroms in South Africa which attacked Zimbabwe immigrant workers there, whose earnings helped their families back home. There’s no shortcut out of this capitalist hell except the hard and long task that revolutionary-minded workers must carry out here and in Africa to build a revolutionary communist leadership.
LETTERS
a name="Building Allegiance to the Working Class Among GI’s, Families">">"uilding Allegiance to the Working Class Among GI’s, Families
Some of us who are working with people in the military and their families (MFSO, IVAW, Veterans for Peace, GI Rights Hotline) just recently started to go to a major army base in our area to distribute "care packages" to soldiers. These "care packages" contained a copy of the DVD of "Sir! No Sir!" as well as information, newsletters from the various groups, and cookies. There were 10 of us that went the last week of June, and it was a big step forward for some of the folks who participated. We distributed close to 100 bags.
Those of us who have done this many times before were bolder, and actually tried to engage the soldiers in some conversation. One carload that I met said that they would take the info if it was anti-war. One soldier told me that he was voting for Obama. I asked him if he really thought that Obama would get us out of Iraq. He said that he didn’t really know, but that he was better than McCain. Later the whole group got together in a restaurant to discuss our experiences and make plans to do this again in August. I suggested going to off-base housing to talk to military families and a few people thought this was a good idea.
Five years ago when I first joined MFSO, I tried to get the group to go to the base and talk to soldiers on their lunch hour, as well as talking to the families in the neighborhood. This was shot down immediately by the leadership. After five years of pressure from soldiers, their families and veterans, the national leadership has reversed their position in their email bulletins! Yes, it seemed like forever, but we continued to struggle with people. Another important factor has been the growing leadership of members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Having these local soldiers in the antiwar movement has changed it from passive to active. They have many events planned this summer.
Of course, we do too! A summer project in Seattle and one in Los Angeles will involve many young people who are heading for the military or the industries that supply the war. This will be a tremendous chance for us to win students, soldiers, military families, and industrial workers to unite and bring this struggle to the next level. Politicians, the union misleaders, or peace groups often talk of building a new patriotism, a patriotism that somehow will benefit the working class. This is a deadly trap. We need class struggle… so that we can eventually bring down this capitalist system and establish workers power internationally. This is going to be an exciting and challenging summer! Let’s get started!
Military Mom
a name="CHALLENGE Readers’ Password: "Power to the Workers!"">">"HALLENGE Readers’ Password: "Power to the Workers!"
Recently, the company transferred me from one plant to another in the same company. The first day I ran into a worker who had gotten CHALLENGE before. When we greeted each other, he was talking to another worker to whom he said, "look, this is a communist," and the other worker extended his hand and said, "good, now there are two of us." A pleasant welcome.
A week later I gave CHALLENGE to the "other communist," who really liked the paper a lot. He and my old friend invited me to sit down with a group of them at lunch time. Every day at lunch we have discussions about sports, UFO’s, racism, sexism, imperialist wars, and the need to build a communist workers’ movement.
While I was in such a lunch meeting, a new friend came up who had been invited to join our table. One of those present, when seeing him approach, said to him, "if you want to sit here, you have to say the communist password." Another worker said to the new one, "Tell them, ‘Power to the Workers,’" which he did, and we all laughed.
This atmosphere has given me the confidence to be bolder in discussing communist politics and looking for new CHALLENGE readers. For example, once I gave the paper to the "other communist" in front of another worker who I had already planned to give it to also. I gave it to the other worker, and when he had it in his hands, he asked, "This paper is communist, right?" "Yes," we answered. "Is it illegal?" he asked us. "Not right now, but have no doubt that it will be. Because this paper opens your eyes and you’ll find out what others don’t want you to know," answered the "other communist." After this, we gave him a more full explanation about the paper and what we fight for.
All these opportunities have been created with many political and personal discussions inside and outside the plant. With some of these new friends we went to visit some farm worker comrades. In the plant where I worked before, there are also other workers who read the paper and they’re willing to come to activities with workers from my new plant. These are opportunities which open the way to expanding the network of CHALLENGE readers. Our next steps are to start a study group and to recruit.
Red Organizer
a name="Workers to Racist Punk: ‘Get Off Our Bus!’"></">Wo"kers to Racist Punk: ‘Get Off Our Bus!’
During a visit to Chicago, I was on a CTA bus when a young racist thug started verbally harassing a young Hispanic woman. After answering her cell phone in Spanish, he started saying ignorant stuff like "Don’t speak that s--t! This is America! In my country you speak English!" He cursed her out and told her "You ought to be thrown out of the country!" Another passenger (a Korean-American woman) and myself yelled at the racist, telling him "You need to get off the bus!" The bus driver (an African-American woman) along with some white workers yelled at the punk to leave. I said to him, "Dude, no one wants you on the bus, you need to leave now!" The racist finally got the message and left, and the driver notified the police.
The lessons to be learned from this: If a party member is by himself/herself, and there is a racist attack on a black or Latino worker, try to give leadership to other workers to fight back against the attack. The racist on the bus was frightened by the multiracial unity of the bus passengers. And also, the police (who are no friends of the working class) should not be called if at all possible. In a communist society there would be still be struggle around bad ideas left over from capitalism. Racist ideology would be dealt with by the workers.
A Comrade
BBQ Brings Food For (Marxist) Thought
Our Party-led study group had a barbecue recently. Besides the delicious food and some wonderful songs written and sung by another comrade, we had a great discussion of art and politics. We talked about what Marx meant when he said that the superstructure of society (laws, politics, education, religion) reflects the economic base of that society (how production is organized, with owners and workers in capitalist society). For example, the U.S. constitution reflects the property interests of the wealthy plantation owners and merchants who created it, and most of our laws are simply measures to protect the interests of corporations. Anyone who doesn’t think so should try not paying their mortgage, or their rent or their credit card bill, and see what happens!
We also looked at some examples of artists who consciously tried to expose the nature of capitalism and to encourage anti-capitalist struggles. We read one short story, "Afternoon In the Jungle," by Albert Maltz, one of the blacklisted "Hollywood Ten." The story is about a boy living during the Great Depression, whose parents are struggling with poverty wages, and who discovers a 50-cent piece lying at the bottom of a sewer. He’s unsuccessfully trying to retrieve the coin when a down-and-out man comes along, a man who makes a living finding lost coins. The ensuing heart-wrenching fight between the boy and the man illuminates the dog-eat-dog nature of capitalism, in which workers are reduced to fighting each other for scraps.
We then had an exuberant but comradely debate about the merits of the short story. Some said they thought the story was cynical because it provided no solution, while others felt it should be seen as part of a larger literary project to have workers see the vicious nature of capitalism and resolve to bury it.
Comradely,
CUNY activist
Finds Axle Articles Come Up Short
Challenge has carried many articles on the Axle strike. As a communist newspaper, our purpose is to support the strikers and at the same time give guidance as to what, in the longer term, workers can do to break away from capitalist ideas and oppression — to be a source of truth for our class. In some ways, the articles were not on target.
(1) The headlines and leading themes of the articles could lead to the belief that the main problem for the workers is that the UAW "is in the hip pocket" of the bosses. But the fact is that Axle has already shown that it can move away from Detroit and profit from cheap labor elsewhere. They were not bluffing about closing the plant. It is not serving our cause to imply that a more honest leadership could have killed the deep wage-cuts. Globalization has changed the worker’s battlefront.
The June 18 article does point out how the bosses say the wage-cut agreement "addresses market reality.," and in its closing section the article does get to the heart of the matter: "No matter what gains workers make through bitter struggle, when capitalism’s market asserts itself…the workers wind up at the bottom of the heap." Marx didn’t claim that low wages are a product of bosses’ personal greed. The profit system requires them to seek maximum profit or go under. These ideas should be front and center.
(2) Having finally conceded "market reality," the end of the June 18 article says that the only real course for the workers is to build the revolutionary party to smash the system. This is true, but it implies that union struggles are near-useless, which is not, of course, what we mean. But only one very short passage (June 4) in the long series of Challenge articles gives some suggestions for worker activity here and now (quoted in its entirety): "Without a company-wide organized opposition in the union, ready to break the laws, stop scabs, spread the strike here and in Mexico, and REACH OUT TO THE REST OF THE WORKING CLASS (emphasis added), workers would be hard-pressed to take on Axle, GM and the UAW."
It seems to me that more space in these articles should have been devoted to elaborating on such ideas, instead of confining them to one, negatively phrased paragraph. PLP aims to help workers to act as a broad, powerful class, and our articles should try to influence strikes in that direction.
Ancient Red
CHALLENGE COMMENTS: The letter reviewing our coverage of the Axle strike makes two main criticisms;
1."The headlines and leading themes of the articles could lead to the belief that the main problem for the workers is that the UAW ‘is in the hip pocket’ of the bosses…It is not serving our cause to imply that a more honest leadership could have killed the deep wage-cuts;" and,
2."Having finally conceded ‘market reality,’ the end of the June 18 article says that the only real course for the workers is to build a revolutionary party to smash the system. This is true, but it implies that union struggles are near-useless, which is not, of course, what we mean…PLP aims to help workers to act as a broad, powerful class, and our articles should try to influence strikes in that direction."
On the face of it, these two criticisms appear to be contradictory. On the one hand, we shouldn’t imply that "better" union leaders would make a difference. On the other, we need to offer better leadership and direction to the struggle. I think this reflects the struggle around reform and revolution that has always challenged the communist movement, including our Party.
Criticizing the UAW leadership on the picket lines and in home visits was no small thing. Some fake-leftists made reformist criticisms and offered their solution of "electing strike committees" and so on, while the rest of the left was "in the hip pocket" of the UAW.
As the strike wore on, workers became more and more angry with the UAW, but never really challenged them. How could they without an alternative leadership? We tried to organize meetings to begin to provide that alternative, but there was a lot of fear and passivity to go with the anger. The pregnant wife of a worker (who came to May Day and wants to become active) wanted to picket Solidarity House (union headquarters), but we couldn’t mount a serious effort to do that, given our limited political base among the workers.
We had limited ties to the strike and no Party club. We tried to use the strike to re-establish the Party in Detroit. Having May Day there and bringing a group from there to Chicago, with strikers at both, was achieving our main goal.
Without going over every article in the three-month strike, CHALLENGE consistently exposed the imperialist competition among the auto bosses, talked about China, India and global production, racism, war and made it clear that this was not the result of a greedy boss or corrupt union leader. We could have done better at painting a picture of how we would lead this struggle, trying to sharpen the contradictions at every level, breaking the laws, mass violence, etc.
Sometime over the summer we will have a mass leafleting at several gates, saying that the main lesson of the strike is that capitalism is a bosses’ dictatorship, and the only answer is communist revolution and a workers dictatorship to keep the bosses from coming back. Self-critically, we should have made this point more clearly throughout the strike and in the paper.
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Ousted by Hussein, big oil is back
From the first days that American-led forces took control of Iraq, the conquering army took pains to broadcast that it was there to liberate the country, not occupy it, and certainly not to cart off its riches…. there was suspicion that the war was a naked grab for oil that would open Iraq to multinational energy giants…. oil, and its critical importance to the American economy, has for decades been a paramount interest of the United States in the region….
That basic question was yanked back to the fore recently when word emerged from Baghdad…that the Iraqi oil ministry was close to awarding contracts to service its oil fields to some of the largest Western oil companies….
Some 40 companies from around the world had jockeyed for the contracts, but they were being awarded with competitive bids, the report said. Those about to land the deals — Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total — had held oil rights in Iraq before Mr. Hussein nationalized the fields and kicked them out more than three decades ago….
The companies that failed to capture a foothold: the Russian oil giant Lukoil…and Chinese firms… (NYT, 6/29)
Iran oil is real US target
To the editor:
The reality is that Iran is not a problem, Iran is a prize, or more specifically Iranian oil and gas is a prize, which is sought by China, India, Europe and the US…. the reality is that the US is on course to exercise its military might to achieve its objective. (GW, 6/13)
Obama policy team: imperialists
Obama had promised something different in foreign policy…. But last week…. Obama’s new foreign policy team were a roll-call from the past. There was Madeleine Albright, Clinton administration secretary of state and ambassador to the UN. She was joined by another Clinton heavy-hitter, Warren Christopher, her predecessor…. There was the former national security advisor, secretary of defence, and others, most of whom had supported the decision to go to war in Iraq. "People who anticipate real change should feel betrayed…. What they’re getting is a warmed-over Clinton cabinet "....[with] contempt for international legal norms and backing military solutions to complex military problems." (GW, 6/21)
Few jobs for poor black and Latin kids
The labor market is now caving for teens from all backgrounds. But for low-income, black and Hispanic kids, it’s the "Great Depression," according to a new report by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies….
In the inner city, minority kids work at extraordinarily low rates. Only 15 percent of poor black teens had jobs last summer — versus 60 percent of white teens in affluent suburbs. (Cheaters Syndicate)
In poverty, more non-wedlock kids
In 2006, for the first time in U.S. history, a majority of all births to women under 30 — 50.4 percent — were out of wedlock. Nearly 80 percent of births among black women were out of wedlock…. For Hispanics, it was 51 percent.
One of the main reasons out-of-wedlock births have skyrocketed in recent decades is because it has become so difficult for poor and poorly educated young men to earn enough to support a family….
The U.S. economy does not come close to providing decent employment… for everyone who wants to work. At the lowest end of the economic ladder the crisis in employment is reminiscent of the Great Depression in its intensity.
It is in this group of poor and educationally deprived young people that out-of-wedlock births are highest. (NYT, 6/27)
5m ‘liberated’ Iraqis flee homes
An inconvenient truth of the Iraq war is that 4.7 million Iraqis have fled their homes amidst the violence and chaos that has enveloped their country. Some 2 million of them are in Jordan, Syria and neighboring states, barely getting by, while another 2.7 million have sought shelter elsewhere in Iraq…. How could the war be liberating the Iraqi people when so many of them couldn’t risk living at home? (MinutemanMedia.org, 5/1)
Do US politics favor no-brainers?
Although John McCain’s doctors have verified that he is physically healthy, one must consider the probability of dementia setting in over the next four years. Then again, dementia has never been seen as a handicap for a US president. (GW 6/6)
Israelis were the real barbarians
Israelis hail the "purity of arms" of their soldiers and contrast this with Arab "barbarism". "In truth, however," writes Morris, " the Jews committed far more atrocities than the Arabs and killed far more civilians and PoWs in deliberate acts of brutality in the course of 1948". A contemporary Israeli official implicitly conceded the charge, but pointed out that "there are no sentiments in war". (GW, 6/13)
PLENTY OF FOOD . . . BOSSES PROFIT WHILE WORKERS STARVE
‘Barracks’ Obama Lays Out Grand War Plans
Eyeing Future Global Conflict, U.S. Warmakers Torpedo Irish EU Vote
LA Students, Parents, Teachers Unite vs. School Cuts
NEA Convention: Voting for Democrats Won't Bring the Real Changes Teachers and Students Need
Sean Bell Forum: H.S. Students Debate Racism, Capitalism, Communism
Bosses Cut Jobs, Wreck Pensions; Stock Market Won’t Save Them
Workers, Students Build Alliance Against Racist Wage Cuts and Tuition Hikes
France: Immigrant Workers Strike vs. Racist Attacks
Italy: Anti-Immigrant Pogroms Echo Nazi-Mussolini Era
Masses Fight Bolivian Bosses’ Slavery, Gov’t Sellout
Letters
Likes ‘Hard-Hitting Truth Coverage’
Anti-Racism, Not Morality Is Workers’ Weapon
Civil War: Northern Capitalist vs. Southern Slaveowners
Is An ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Believable?
- Body Size Surveys — Practice to Accompany the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Theory
- Why Obesity Data Is Believable
Two Years Later, Oaxaca Workers Need to Break with All Bosses
- NAFTA pushed globe to food crisis
- Boss pressure distorts TV news
- Need bigger weapon than lawsuit
- Bubble no trouble — for the rich
- Marx, Malthus explain hunger
- SUMMER OF COMMUNISM!
- Lessons From the Past
- Our Fight....
International Unity A Must in Upcoming Boeing Contract Fight
PLENTY OF FOOD . . .
BOSSES PROFIT WHILE WORKERS STARVE
The litany of horrors faced by workers of the world is staggering: Ten million children under the age of 5 die each year from hunger (The Lancet, a British medical journal). Half of the world’s population faces premature death due to lack of nutrition or potable water (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); 2.4 billion people have to cook with wood or other biological products (instead of natural gas) and 1.6 billion have no access to electricity.
None of these things need to be true. In a world full of technological wonders, no one should be hungry or have to live in the dark. According to the FAO, there is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone—at least 1.5 times current demand. In fact, over the last 20 years, food production has risen steadily at over 2.0% a year, while the rate of population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year. Furthermore, it is now common and easy to transport food over great distances. This is the essence of capitalism: millions die from starvation every year because it is not profitable to keep them fed.
In fact, the top agriculture firms’ profits are increasing BECAUSE of the starvation. Cargill and Monsanto, two of the world’s largest agriculture corporations saw their third quarter 2007 profits increase by 86 and 45 percent, respectively. Billionaire Jim Rogers is on TV constantly advising people to “buy agriculture!” The investment blog “Energy and Capital” describes in detail the starvation and misery and ends with the statement: “...enough of the doom and gloom. How can I profit from this? Well, I’m gonna tell you...” Starvation is good for business!
Higher food prices mean greater profits.The contradiction between the ability to feed all of the world’s workers and the greed of the bosses has become even starker as the price of food has increased astronomically. From March 2007 to March 2008 average world prices for wheat increased 130%, soy prices were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74%, and maize was up 31%. (BBC News, 4/8/2008).
There are a number of factors that have led to the increase in food prices including droughts in 2005 and 2006 affecting major wheat-producing countries and high oil prices (According to the World Bank, transportation costs for food are up 80% since 2006 and fertilizer prices have risen 150%).
The call by some capitalists for higher biofuel usage has also caused prices to increase dramatically. Not surprisingly, these bosses are heavily invested in technology and factories needed to turn food into fuel. Currently, about 5% of the world’s grains are being used to make biofuels, and the percentage is increasing. If the trend continues, half of the U.S. corn harvest will be diverted to ethanol production by the end of 2008.
This has two primary effects:
First, as more corn is planted it displaces wheat and soybeans, causing their price to rise. (This process is similar to what has happened in the developing world under pressure from the IMF and World Bank. In order to increase the profitability of the land in these countries, the IMF and World Bank demanded that local farmers grow only export crops like coffee and cotton instead of food. This caused countries to have to import food and ended up increasing poverty and hunger.)
Secondly, the U.S. corn industry produces around 40% of the world total, meaning the increased diversion to agrofuels in the U.S. impacts global markets for all food grains. (Earth Policy Institute) In places like Haiti, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mexico, Italy, Indonesia and Egypt food prices have skyrocketed, revealing the racist face of the food crisis. Any attack is felt even more so by black, Latin and Asian workers of the world, including in the U.S. where food prices have also risen. There have been many rebellions against this racist genocidal capitalist attack.
On April 3 in Les Cayes, the third largest city in Haiti, five thousand people set up barricades made of burning tires and cars and seized trucks carrying rice. Hungry workers and students tried to storm the presidential palace in Port-Au-Prince. The army was sent to smash a mass strike and rebellion led by workers in Egypt against the food price hikes. In the Ivory Coast, 1,500 demonstrated, chanting “We are hungry,” and “Life is too expensive.” Jean Ziegler, a Swiss professor who studied food issues for the U.N. has made comparisons to the French Revolution, saying “one day starving people could rise up against their persecutors.”But, even though it is good that angry workers respond with armed opposition to the brutality of capitalism, a revolution to end this living hell will require that communists internationally get immersed in these struggles.
Communist leadership must turn these struggles into schools for communism: showing that the food crisis, endless imperialist wars, racist and fascist terror can only be ended by building a red-led movement uniting workers internationally to fight for a society without the profit-hungry bosses.The fight for a communist world will be long and hard, and there will be periods of scarcity for the workers of the world, but the main cause of starvation will be wiped out. Drought and floods, crop-killing diseases, or other unforeseen calamities are always possible.
Based on scientific planning, decisions on where people should live, how infrastructure should be built, how food should be supplied, etc., will be made collectively. Under communism, times of scarcity and plenty will be dealt with collectively, with every member of society involved. No matter the situation, no one will eat caviar while others starve to death.
‘Barracks’ Obama Lays Out Grand War Plans
Barack Obama’s June 4 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) shatters his already shaky credibility as a peace candidate. In it, he vowed to do “everything—and I mean everything—to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon....I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”
In Obama’s view, the talks with Teheran he proposes would actually strengthen a subsequent U.S. military strike:“Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. But that only makes diplomacy more important. If we must use military force, we are more likely to succeed, and will have far greater support at home and abroad, if we have exhausted our diplomatic efforts.”Obama made it clear to AIPAC that “change” (his favorite slogan) includes rebuilding the U.S. war machine, to which he would immediately add 92,000 troops. “That is the change we need in our foreign policy. Change that restores American power and influence.”
OBAMA AIDE: GIs IN IRAQ TO STAY
Amid cheers from their U.S. boosters, he also promised Israel’s fascist rulers $30 billion in military aid over the next decade. Obama is pursuing the age-old U.S. strategy of arming racist anti-Arab Israel to the teeth to police the U.S.’s Mid-East oil empire. An Obama administration may even persuade well paid ally Israel to do the U.S.’s dirty work in taking out Iran’s nuclear installations and setting the stage for regime change there.
Obama has grand war plans for Iraq, too. U.S. rulers invaded Iraq hoping to raise its oil production — under the control of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Britain’s BP and Shell — to six million barrels a day (mbd), which would trail only Saudi Arabia’s in the region. But with output stagnating near 2,000,000 mbd due to Bush’s bungling, Obama’s “phased withdrawal” platform has become permanent colonial occupation. His top Iraq adviser Colin Kahl just wrote a report for the Center for a New American Security stating that “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010.” (New York Sun, 6/4/08)
OBAMA FAKES ANTI-WALL STREET STANCE
Having clinched the Democratic nomination, Obama now openly embraces liberal Establishment forces on Wall Street as much as he does U.S. imperialism. The recent resignation of Wall Street/Beltway broker James Johnson as head of Obama’s vice-presidential search team represents a feigned attempt to distance the candidate from the big money he has always served.Right-wing pundits had assailed Johnson’s ties to Establishment banker Goldman Sachs and the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission. But Johnson’s chief liabilities for Obama were loans he received from upstart banker Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial.
The liberals seek to scapegoat Mozilo as the prime mover of the subprime mortgage crisis and its broader economic fallout.As soon as Johnson left Obama’s side, Establishment protégé Jason Furman joined it as chief economic adviser. Furman, who holds three Harvard degrees, toiled in the Clinton White House with Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers to dismantle Welfare and secure “free trade” treaties, with disastrous results for U.S. workers. Until Obama tapped him, Furman ran the Hamilton Project that Rubin had started at the liberal Brookings Institution. In addition to selling “free trade” pacts, it studies ways of centralizing control of finance into the Establishment’s hands. Furman praised JP Morgan’s predatory takeover of subprime-tainted Bear Stearns as a “necessary stop-gap.”
Furman also touts anti-union Wal-Mart, which depresses workers’ wages.Obama masquerades, and appeals to many people, as an anti-racist agent of change. But the main principle motivating his campaign (like McCain’s) is capitalism’s relentless search for maximum profit rates. If that means shipping further U.S. workers’ jobs to low-wage hellholes globally, Obama & Co. approve. If it means using armed force to secure cheap Iraqi oil at the cost of a million or more Iraqi and GI lives, they say, “so be it.” If maximizing profit entails sacrificing masses of working-class lives in wars with Iran or China over energy and influence, Team Obama welcomes the task.
For the working class and its friends, backing “Barracks” Obama is a grave political error. The solution to the endless misery and war the profit system generates lies beyond its phony electoral process. Helping build the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the capitalists’ deadly dictatorship is the only viable answer.
Eyeing Future Global Conflict, U.S. Warmakers Torpedo Irish EU Vote
U.S. liberals are hailing the recent vote in Ireland against the European Union’s Lisbon treaty as ordinary Irish people’s thumb-in-the-eye of the elite bureaucrats in Brussels it would have further empowered. The Boston Globe called it “Getting Their Irish Up.” But Libertas, the Irish anti-EU movement that steered the vote with massive publicity, counts two major U.S. war contractors, Declan Ganley and Ulick McEvaddy, as leaders. The former’s firm sells communication services to the Pentagon; the latter runs an outfit that refuels CIA planes on “rendition” torture missions.
Ireland holds tremendous geostrategic significance for U.S. rulers. In World War II, the U.S. significantly protected its Atlantic supply routes to Britain and then-ally Russia by prevailing upon Ireland’s pro-Nazi nationalist rulers to stay neutral. A pro-European stance by Ireland in a future conflict on the continent would present Washington with a major obstacle. That’s why, in addition to fanning anti-Europe feeling in the Republic of Ireland, the U.S. foments sectarian strife in British-ruled Northern Ireland, even as it boasts of “peace accords.”
In 2001, for instance, FBI agent David Rupert offered to supply weapons to the violent Real IRA. Such threats justify perpetual British military presence in Ireland, preventing the island’s full unification with Europe. A less than half-hearted member of the EU, Britain sides with the U.S., by and large, militarily, politically and economically.
LA Students, Parents, Teachers Unite vs. School Cuts
Los Angeles, CA, June 6, –– “The teachers, parents and students united will never be divided,” “money for schools, not for war” and “no cuts, no more, the cuts are for the war” chanted hundreds of teachers, parents and students protesting in front of local high schools. At one, over one hundred teachers, close to 60 students and a dozen parents marched around the school with placards that read “Budget cuts hurt the kids.” Students carried banners reading “Money for school not for war” and “Black and Brown Unity.”
The students were the loudest and most energetic. At many LA schools there was a struggle about whether students should be on the picket line. Some teachers said this was an issue that affected teachers only, but others argued successfully that the budget cuts affect the students the most and they were key in the fight against these attacks. Students did picket at these schools and gave important political and tactical leadership, raising connections between the cuts, the war and racism.
The day before the picket, CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets were distributed at several schools.The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) organized this job action in which teachers were to protest for one hour at the start of the school day against the budget crisis. About 75% of the union’s 48,000 members took part in the citywide protest. The budget crisis threatens to cut 6,500 probationary teachers, educational programs, transportation, counseling services and teachers’ pay.
The press is trying to pacify anger at the cuts by saying that administrators are being cut, but the administrators will replace other teachers in the class room. The union’s purpose was to “send a message to Sacramento” to stop the cuts, not to build working-class unity among masses of teachers, students and parents to fight the cuts and the system that makes war for oil profits and prisons its top priorities.
For now, the LA School Board has decided to cut 507 jobs, make all teachers take 4 furlough days (a wage cut) but also promised that school cops would be protected from the cuts!! These school budget cuts are part of capitalism’s crisis nation-wide. As the U.S. bosses are facing growing threats from rising imperialist nations such as Russia and China, the U.S. bosses will be forced to make further cutbacks to pay for needed wars. They will depend more on their reformed schools to meet their needs for workers and soldiers who believe in patriotic ideas and have the technological skills needed for serving the army or factories. (see box for more on education, the war machine and fascism)
The bosses will continue to use police terror and mass incarceration to try to hold back the revolutionary potential of the working class. One thousand new cops will be patrolling the streets of Los Angeles by next year. A brand new youth detention center is being built just a few blocks away from a high school. The UTLA leaders blame the governor, but the blame lies with the system he serves.
To confront this attack, students, teachers and parents must see ourselves as part of the international working class. We are the ones that labor in the factories, and teach the future workers and soldiers. We make everything possible! The bosses have a dictatorship over the working class, but teachers, workers, soldiers and students united can build a mass communist movement and become an unstoppable force against capitalism. Meeting the cultural, political and economic needs of the working class and a committed struggle to end racism and exploitation will be the goal.
NEA Convention: Voting for Democrats Won't Bring the Real Changes Teachers and Students Need
Thousands of teachers and school workers are expected to gather in Washington D.C. at the annual convention of the National Education Association (NEA). The leadership of the union will call on its members to celebrate and lend their votes to the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, placing their faith in the electoral system to make “a change we can believe in.”But teachers, parents and students who are counting on this “change” to make the schools work for them will be disappointed. Obama, like any other politician, serves the needs of the ruling class, which is why he says “we should take no options, including the military option, off the table,” in spite of being perceived as the anti-war candidate. Keeping the military option on the table means that the U.S. ruling class is facing threats to its world domination which it cannot stave off without massive oppression and cutbacks at home. The rulers also need the hearts, minds and skills of the working class to have any hope of competing in the current world situation. They are desperately attempting to reform the educational system so that they can teach working-class youth to love and defend the U.S. against its rivals. Capitalists like Bill Gates pour money into the schools in an attempt to make them more useful to the system, even as budgets are cut in major cities. All politicians have the same agenda: use the schools to keep young people serving the needs of the system for soldiers and workers.Teachers need to ignore the union leadership’s call to vote and instead unite with students and parents, as some Los Angeles teachers did during recent protests (see above.) When we have enough workers, students and above soldiers won to communist ideas and prepared for revolution, only then can we hope to build schools that truly serve our needs rather than imperialism’s.
Sean Bell Forum: H.S. Students Debate Racism, Capitalism, Communism
BROOKLYN, NY –– It was standing room only as over a hundred students from high schools met to debate whether the racist murder of Sean Bell last November was systemic or an exception to the rule. PLP members and friends who are involved in various debate leagues organized this forum to make the point that while it’s great to debate, we must also organize and fight back! These students, who often compete against each other in tournaments, came together to exchange ideas and experiences.
After the panel, members presented their ideas about the Sean Bell case, the history of police brutality in NYC, the impact of the NYPD takeover of school security, the criminalization of students and the impact of racism and profiling in various communities. Questions were raised to the panelists: Were we all Sean Bell? What is the link between the Sean Bell case and the racist treatment of our students in the NYC public schools? Why are many students facing this criminalization? Is there fascism growing in the U.S.? Why is more money spent on security instead of academics? Why is there racial profiling? When an audience member raised the idea that to speak of fighting inequality usually leads to being “labeled” a communist or socialist, the forum shifted to a real debate over which system is better.
Some students argued that communism would be better since workers would have a better life and we would be equal. Other students argued that there will always be competition and that people who work hard should be rewarded. This was answered by a student who stood up and said, “What about workers in Africa, Latin America or Asia? They work hard and will never be paid what they’re worth!”
When the point was made that under capitalism, doctors study hard and sacrifice, a panel member answered-in a communist society, we would all help that person to become a doctor.Complex issues about capitalism and communism were debated, at times heated, but respectful between the students. It was inspiring to see how thoughtful the students were and how, despite it being close to exams, proms and closing school activities, many students want to organize and fight back.
The closing speaker called on the students to continue organizing and to make sure that we not allow police murders to continue! This forum showed us many things, but mainly that there is great hope for the youth to move forward, take political leadership and fight for communist politics in a mass way!
Bosses Cut Jobs, Wreck Pensions; Stock Market Won’t Save Them
PHILADELPHIA, PA –– In whirlwind negotiation sessions, 1199 hospital union leaders rammed through contracts at two major hospitals in Philadelphia. Usually, negotiations run for months and in the past union militants organized job actions and marches against the bosses. This year however, the union itself called in a federal negotiator and a tentative contract was reached in only one session. Ratification meetings were then quickly arranged with little time for discussion. At one hospital, less than half of the union membership attended. Nonetheless, the workers present overwhelmingly approved the contracts.
The union leaders hailed the new contract as a victory for resolving the main issue to most union members: securing money for the pension fund. However the real issue is whether union negotiations can truly resolve the problems capitalism causes for workers. PLP calls for class struggle and organizes for communist revolution to destroy capitalism. Hospital bosses may have agreed to extend their pension obligations another four years because they priced their penalty for leaving the pension fund at $6 million and they didn’t want their many construction projects interrupted by a strike. But whatever their reasons, we can expect them to come at us hard when this contract ends.
At one meeting a speaker from the audience argued against the union members’ passivity and their faith that contract negotiations could help us in today’s world. He urged workers to grasp the intensifying contradictions among the rival capitalist bosses. “What are we looking at next?” he asked. “A shooting war with Iran? Increasing trade wars with China and Russia? Do any of you really think the bosses will ever stop attacking our jobs and benefits?”The night before, at a city-wide meeting of the union delegates, the union president had just finished his monthly litany of how bad things are when a union delegate known to many as a PLP member rose to speak. Addressing the union president he said, “At one of the last ratification meetings you tried to mock me for ‘believing in the revolution no one else does.’ After all the bad news in your report, now tell me we don’t need that revolution more than ever!”
Some saw the rushed negotiations and ratification as a travesty against “union democracy”. Others believe that union leaders and the bosses feared the militants organizing the union members to the highest level yet. With the presidential election coming, the union leaders certainly didn’t want some “nasty” strike spoiling their plan to channel worker’s anger at capitalism into voting for the boss’s politicians. To the majority of union members, however, this contract appeared to answer their prayers: the pension crisis was resolved for the time being and they didn’t have to think about a strike for another four years.
But the world’s bosses are marching toward wider wars, deepening racism and fascism, and further attacks on workers’ living and working conditions. Communism remains the only path for workers to build a society that serves our needs because the root of the pension funding crisis is capitalism, a system based on wage slavery, profits and money. For example, the Federal “Pension Reform Act” of 2006 demands that every pension meet certain funding levels supposedly to protect worker’s pensions. Sounds good, right?But the bosses won’t continue to fork over more of their profits. Ultimately this law establishes legal avenues for driving workers to pay more into pension plans by encouraging bosses to reduce or leave the plans. Because the capitalists control the state, the government, they can pass ‘legal’ attacks that will protect profits and literally take food out of the mouths of older workers.
Over the years Democratic and Republican administrations dramatically reduced government spending for health care—closing hospitals and nursing homes, cutting hundreds of jobs, and draining the amount workers and bosses fed into the plans. Billions of government dollars funded the bosses’ imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Pension fund money is also invested in the stock market and the current decline of stocks means that workers are worrying a lot! But whether the market goes up or down, investing pension fund money in the market only helps corporations exploit workers labor and pension fund managers further their own financial schemes.
Sooner rather than later however, the bosses will make such philosophical concerns irrelevant. With increased global competition and wider wars to pay for, the bosses must eliminate the few remaining pension plans. Every day it becomes clearer that the only security workers have is communist revolution.
Workers, Students Build Alliance Against Racist Wage Cuts and Tuition Hikes
CALIFORNIA, June 6 — “Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers and Students Must Unite!” chanted over fifty campus workers and students at a rally against budget cuts, tuition hikes and especially in support of the University of California (UC) workers’ contract fight for higher wages and safeguarded benefits and pensions. Everyone received CHALLENGE/DESAFIO and a leaflet explaining the importance of turning labor actions and strikes into schools for communism. Many were excited by these ideas. One worker asked, “Where have you guys been!” and took extra leaflets to give to other workers. Another, who helped lead the chant “Workers United Will Never Be Defeated!” also took extra leaflets. Students were inspired by the militancy and energy of the workers and were open to PLP’s communist ideas.
The rally occurred a week after 20,000 workers from the ten UC campuses and five hospitals voted overwhelmingly to strike if administrators refused their contract demands. The workers demand a modest wage increase of 9% for the first year of the contract and 6.5% for each of the next two years. Taking inflation into account the raise comes to 10% or even less. And, if the university once again increases workers’ fees for parking and health insurance, the “raise” turns into a wage cut. One demand is to prohibit these fee increases. A strike seems likely in the coming weeks, which will give PLP and friends even more opportunity to build support for the workers and to fight for communist politics among these workers and students.
The successful action grew from over three years of struggle on campus to build worker-student solidarity against racist labor-outsourcing practices, cutbacks and fee hikes, and anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism being used to create support for U.S. imperialism. The continuing effort to build a CHALLENGE readership and networks, modest in size, has helped spread PLP’s revolutionary ideas among campus workers and students and show students that workers are open to communism. We have struggled to win students to see a worker-student alliance as vital to any revolutionary movement, for only the working class, organized around communist politics and multiracial internationalism, can destroy the racist profit system and its imperialist wars.Some of the workers and students involved have been won to anti-racist, anti-capitalist solidarity. At the rally, they enthusiastically chanted “Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras” (Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders) and “Working People Have No Nations, Smash Racist Exploitation!” 20 students and 3 workers from this campus had attended this year’s May Day march in Los Angeles and were impressed and inspired by PLP’s red flags and shirts.
These students and campus workers see the connection between the U.S.’s imperialist oil-profit wars and the racist attacks on workers’ wages and benefits. They see that student registration fees continue to go up while workers’ poverty-level wages keep getting further slashed. They see the links between the racist budget cuts and the growing permanent war budget supported by both Democratic and Republican politicians.
Only a communist society, where all contribute according to commitment and receive according to need, will put an end to the racism, exploitation, poverty and genocidal wars created by capitalism. This is the indispensable lesson that our friends can learn from the growing fight against the bosses’ cutbacks and from the fight to build a worker-student alliance. Only communism will eliminate profits, wage-slavery, borders, nationalism, sexism, racism and imperialist wars. By fighting for worker-soldier-student alliances and for more workers and students to join PLP and to help distribute CHALLENGE, we’ll politically prepare our class for the long-term struggle for communist revolution. We are urging students and workers to participate in the Summer Projects to strengthen this crucial alliance.
France: Immigrant Workers Strike vs. Racist Attacks
PARIS, June 13 — Some 700 undocumented workers have been on strike at about 40 locations in the Paris area for the past two months. Their political strike to obtain legalization has inspired workers across France.
The action has now entered its third phase, in which anti-racist working-class support for the mostly black African strikers will be critical. Such support needs to be based on revolutionary class consciousness, highlighting the limits of a purely trade union perspective.
The unprecedented strike is rooted in three previous successful walkouts at a laundry and two restaurants which won undocumented workers 45 legalizations. Those strikes encouraged undocumented workers, but the workers were also spurred by increased firings — due to a July 1, 2007 decree saying bosses must have the prefectures (an administration of the Ministry of Interior) check foreign workers’ documents before hiring them — and increased immigration police raids and deportations. Meanwhile, French unions and immigrant rights associations were organizing among the undocumented workers, notably with a flyer detailing workers’ rights.
This led to the strike’s first phase when hundreds of undocumented workers walked out on April 15. They won 85 legalizations but Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux was clearly playing for time, hoping that weariness and vague promises would end the action. On May 20, additional hundreds of strikers joined the first wave. Some 350 workers have now been legalized, but still only one-third of those who’ve filed applications.
Moreover, although racism is always the bosses’ number one tool to divide and rule, the Sarkozy government clearly needs to whip up anti-immigrant racism now to regain popularity with right-wing voters. The French government is one trillion euros in debt ($1.6 trillion). Interest payments on the debt are the second-biggest budget item. The European Union, fearing inflation, is pressuring the French government to balance the budget and reduce debt. But the government is applying Reaganite trickle-down economics and has given the wealthy fat tax cuts. Consequently, only an austerity program — cutting services and laying off public workers — can balance the budget.
Some of those cuts, like closing many county courthouses, are alienating sections of Sarkozy’s electorate. Therefore, the government is trying to make the cuts on the sly so as not to arouse public protest. The result is a wavering policy of government advances and retreats. Some sections of the ruling class worry that the image of a disunited government is weakening French imperialism.
So Sarkozy and Hortefeux are counting on anti-immigrant racism to strengthen right-wing support for the government. The result is a case like that of “Mr. G.” In January he went to the prefecture in Melun to file for legalization. The clerk handed him a form to fill out and within five minutes the cops put him in a detention center on a just-issued deportation order! Another case is that of Baba Traore from Mali, who leaped into the Marne River on April 4 to escape the immigration police. He died of immersion in the 43°F water causing cardiac arrest. Clearly, smashing the undocumented workers’ strike is a top priority for this government.
Now comes the third phase of the strike, broadening the struggle to the whole working class in the Paris region and beyond. Solidarity committees are being established at each striking location. They organize picket lines, protest marches, the leaflet distributions and the collection of funds. But mobilizing the necessary solidarity implies winning workers to an understanding of how the capitalists and their government use racism against “foreigners” to maintain their system of exploitation. That understanding involves the need for communist revolution.
Italy: Anti-Immigrant Pogroms Echo Nazi-Mussolini Era
ROME, ITALY, June 11 — “Fascist aggression against immigrant and young leftists is taking place with increasing frequency,” says a leaflet issued by PLP friends in Italy. “This racist system (whether the government is center-left or center-right) will produce more and more racist aggressions. The new Berlusconi government has enacted two laws, one shifting the status of ‘illegal’ to the ‘criminal’ code, and another transforming the CPT (Temporary Detention Centers or ‘lagers’ as they’ve been called) into centers to identify and expel undocumented immigrants. Immigrant and citizen workers need to unite and form anti-racist self-defense committees.”
As in other European countries and in the U.S., anti-immigrant racism has turned more violent, given the increase in the bosses’ economic turmoil and endless wars. On June 8, thousands of Roma people (commonly known by the despective name Gypsies) marched in the heart of Rome protesting this racist violence instigated by the new government. The pogrom against Roma people resembles a medieval horror story. A false rumor spread in Naples — ravaged by a garbage crisis with rats the size of cats — that "a Gypsy woman had stolen a local baby." On May 10, a mob surrounded a Roma people camp and burnt everything. Fortunately most residents had gone, but the mob beat those few who remained. Carlo Mosca, Rome’s new police chief, did not need to appeal to that medieval anti-Gypsy racist lie going right to the point: “We need a hard line because one can only answer the beast [his label for undocumented immigrants, particularly Roma people] with maximum severity.”
Rome’s mayor Alemmano, a “former” fascist, showed he still follows Il Duce Mussolini’s racism. He ordered a police raid on Roma people camps, arresting hundreds. In another sign of the old Nazi-Mussolini era, a “special police commissar” has been named in several cities to be responsible for immigrants (particularly Roma people).
Humberto Bossi, chief of the Lega Nord (the Northern League party), and a member of Berlusconi’s new coalition government, went further: “We are not afraid of taking on the streets [referring to leftists and anti-racists]....We are ready if they want a fight and I have 300,000 men ready...The guns are always hot.
”In the Veneto region, a Lega Nord representative told the Treviso city council even more precisely: “We must use against immigrants the same system used by the [Nazi] SS: punish ten for each one of our citizens they hurt.” This is the same Lega Nord Berlusconi has put in charge of the Ministry of Interior (Italy’s Homeland Security).
But how did the Cavaliere (Berlusconi) come to power after his previous government was hated so intensely and kicked out by the masses of workers? The fault lies with the so-called center-left government of Romano Prodi and his unconditional supporters among the fake left (particularly the PRC or Refounded CP).
The Prodi government expanded the same kind of free market, anti-working-class politics as previous right-wing governments. While workers fought back with militant strikes, including general strikes, their sellout union and the PRC supported all government measures. Despite massive protests against Italy’s troops in Afghanistan, the Prodi-PRC government refused to recall them. The economic crisis is so bad that many workers can’t even afford their daily pasta (the national staple).
The open fascists took advantage of this sellout by blaming the “criminal” immigrants for everything. (The Prodi government has also attacked immigrants.) For the first time since World War II, no party calling itself communist will have representatives in Parliament. So the Lega Nord won the support of a good number of workers in the April elections, moving its leader Humberto Bossi to boast, “We are the new party of the working class.”
But the Berlusconi-Lega Nord party coalition won’t just attack immigrants. Berlusconi has already said that’s only the beginning of his new “Conservative Revolution.” Italian capitalism is the sick man of the European Union. Its economic crisis is even more profound than on the rest of the continent. It needs to super-exploit citizen and immigrant workers even more to make them pay for the crisis.
Berlusconi will also accelerate the Italian bosses’ role in the endless imperialist wars. On June 12, he told Bush on his visit to Italy that Italian troops in Afghanistan will be sent to the area where heavy fighting is taking place.
The only solution, as the leaflet issued by PLP’s friends says, is for immigrant and citizen workers to unite and rebuild a new revolutionary communist movement based on fighting racism and all the bosses. Join the PLP!
Masses Fight Bolivian Bosses’ Slavery, Gov’t Sellout
LA PAZ, BOLIVIA, June 15 — Racism has become the main tool of the Eastern Plains capitalists in their dogfight against the government of Evo Morales, the first indigenous President here, who’s aiming to build “Andean capitalism.” The OAS’s (Organization of American States) Inter-American Human Rights Commission just reported that in the country’s Chaco region a cow has more rights than a “Guarani farmworker.
”The Buenos Aires daily “Pagina12” reported (6/15): “Thousands of indigenous families are locked up in farms where — night after night and for more than a century — they are subjected to ‘servitude similar to slavery.’ In dozens of farms in Santa Cruz, Tarija and Chuquisaca the norm is to get up at 3 AM and work till 10 PM basically for free.”
The farm bosses refuse to let the workers leave the farms, keeping them in permanent debt by charging them outrageous prices at company stores. When a father of a family in servitude dies, the children inherit the debt.Almost simultaneously, the People’s Ombudsman reported that 800,000 children between 7 and 18 work 8 to 12 hours a day under severe exploitation in sugar fields, mines and elsewhere.
Bolivia’s urban and rural workers and their allies have been fighting this racist super-exploitation since the Spanish colonialists’ days. On June 9, tens of thousands demonstrated at the U.S. embassy here chanting “U.S. gives asylum to murderers.” They were protesting that Sanchez Berzain, the former President Lozada’s main advisor, was responsible for ordering the army and police to repress a mass rebellion in 2003 against the privatization of the country’s rich gas deposits, killing 80 people.
The protestors demanded that the U.S. ambassador explain why this killer got asylum. Instead, they were attacked by the cops. One of Sanchez Berzain’s lawyers was an adviser to Barack Obama.
This protest occurred several days after a racist mob forced some 30 Quechua farmworkers to march naked on their knees in the city of Sucre.
This is the racist, murderous nature of the old capitalist gang and their henchmen who basically have divided the country with a dual power situation. This open right-wing neo-fascist opposition — led by descendants of Croatian Nazi collaborators — now controls the gas- and oil-rich Eastern region. Meanwhile, “socialist” President Morales constantly compromises with these fascists. Many think an August referendum will simply consolidate this dual power situation.
Some rank-and-file workers in the unions and mass organizations are beginning to fight back against the fascists and the sellout by the Morales government and the agents of his party (“Movement Towards Socialism”). Teachers and miners have been striking for higher wages and against the right-wing’s racist offensive. The COB’s (Labor Federation) call for mass strikes and protests is mainly for angry workers to let off steam. But workers and their allies cannot rely on any politicians to fight our battles, whether they are indigenous or call themselves “socialist.” Evo Morales came to power on the back of the 2003-05 mass uprisings. But essentially he hasn’t changed the racist nature of capitalism here. He’s enabled the openly fascist pro-imperialist forces to reorganize after having retreated because of the masses’ fight-back before Morales assumed power.
The open fascists know they can get a better deal for themselves by negotiating directly with Brazil’s Petrobras, BP, Spain’s and Argentina’s Repsol and other energy giants. Workers and their allies must also reorganize and build on their struggles to turn them into schools for communism: to eliminate all forms of capitalism and its fascist-racist goons.
Letters
Likes ‘Hard-Hitting Truth Coverage’
Thanks for my first issue of Challenge. I appreciate your hard-hitting, truth-telling coverage. Out here in bliss-ninny California in the State of Anti-Intellectualism, it’s hard to raise consciousness in any kind of revolutionary way. A certain segment of the bourgeoisie is in total control and their program is to obliterate consciousness, not to raise it. When everyone’s mind is mush, THEY control society. Currently a member of the Green Party, how can I join the Progressive Labor Party without moving to Brooklyn? Otherwise, I WILL move to Brooklyn! I can’t stand it out here!!
Sincerely,
P----- G------, PhD
Anti-Racism, Not Morality Is Workers’ Weapon
The poem on the front page of the June 18th CD article is on my wall in a church-based immigration clinic, and I use it in political discussions with co-workers. But neither the poem nor the article about the raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant explain how RACISM actually works. Racism — in this case the super-exploitation of undocumented workers in Iowa — is the rulers’ main tool to REDUCE the wages and living conditions of citizen and documented workers, as well as the undocumented workers who got arrested and deported. We must understand that racism ALWAYS injures ALL workers. This communist message goes beyond the poem’s liberal call for the “majority” to defend the “minority” out of morality and so they might have allies in the future. The Iowa meatpacking industry is a product of the bosses’ racist divide-and-conquer tactics.
Until the 1980s, the center of US meatpacking was in Chicago and Omaha, where unionized workers, many of them black, earned decent wages. Then when an agricultural crisis created massive unemployment among white rural workers, meatpackers opened new plants in Iowa and other rural areas. (Agriprocessors, site of the recent raid, moved from Brooklyn to Iowa in 1987.) Wages and benefits were lower than in older unionized plants, but in the face of unemployment any job looked good in Iowa. As production in the low-wage rural plants soared, urban plants with the largest numbers of black and militant workers were shut down completely.
The bosses manipulated the isolation, anti-unionism, and racism of rural white workers to speed up and lower the wages of both black and white workers, in both cities and rural areas. When white workers in Iowa threatened strikes, the bosses recruited Asian refugees, then Latinos from LA, and now Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants. Racism and nationalism (“Jobs for Americans”) injured ALL workers, even before these recent fascist raids began. White, black, Latin, Asian, citizen and non-citizen now work at lower wages, with fewer benefits, and under more intensely dangerous conditions than ever before, and the new fascist wave of mass arrests and deportations will drive wages down even further.
A construction worker friend admits that if immigrant workers had not been kept out of the unions for the last 30 years, there might still be unions around here and average construction wages wouldn’t have fallen to a third of what they were in the 1960s. But sometimes he still argues that if immigrants had been kept out of the country altogether, wages wouldn’t have fallen.
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! If there hadn’t been immigrants from Mexico the bosses would have found a different group to super-exploit. In fact, a friend who works with refugees predicts a new wave of “legal” refugees from places like Burma will replace the deported “illegal” Mexican workers in the near future. If “legal” workers and citizens are convinced that undocumented workers should not be allowed to work, the meatpacker bosses and the immigration police (ICE) guarantee a brighter future for capitalists and more misery for the entire working class.
When the working class understands that the fight against racism is central to the needs and interests of all workers, we will be on the road to overthrowing capitalism, the source of racism and exploitation itself.
Red Advocate
Civil War: Northern Capitalist vs. Southern Slaveowners
Although it is always inspiring to learn more about the history of working class struggle, the article in the June 4th issue, “Civil War’s Hidden History: Women Workers Battled Gov’t, Bosses” makes a fundamental mistake in its description of the main contradiction during the U.S. Civil War. The article states “that class struggle – the consolidation of finance capital vs. the response of working folks – comprises the source of the conflict.”
The source of the conflict was the irreconcilable differences between the two U.S. ruling classes of that time. The Northern ruling class was increasingly dominated by industrialists and bankers and the Southern ruling class was completely controlled by the slave-owning plantation class.
The Marxist analysis of the Civil War is that Northern capitalists opposed the extension of slavery to the Western states because, as capitalists, they wanted more wage labor, to produce surplus value, which was not produced by slaves. The main contradiction was between the capitalists’ need for wage labor to expand industrialism and the slave-owners’ fight to maintain and expand slave labor.
The contradictions between these two classes had been sharpening for a long time. The federal government had been dominated by the Southern class, and its Northern allies, since the writing of the Constitution. By the time of the Civil War, however, that grip by Southern rulers was weakening. Armed conflict was inevitable. Workers were convinced to fight an intra-capitalist war, then, just as they are convinced to fight in the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq today. The rulers spread lies, myths, patriotic emotions and other weapons to confuse workers about what is in their own class interest.The struggles described in the article reflect examples of workers who were not accepting the ruling class lies. This, however, does not mean that class struggle against the bosses was the main contradiction of the period. Red teacher
Is An ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Believable?
(Part 1 of this series reviewed the statistics about obesity in the U.S. and worldwide.)
According to the statistics in Part 1, there’s certainly lots of body fatness out there and it’s increasing. It’s hitting kids. And it’s worldwide, even where people still suffer from starvation! Can we believe these statistics? Or did the drug companies dream up the obesity “epidemic” to push diet pills and did the book publishers do so to sell their latest diet book?
We need solid information, meaning going out and engaging the world. A correct “theory” about how much obesity depends on “practice.”
Body Size Surveys — Practice to Accompany the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Theory
Practice here means coming in contact with — even measuring — real people. And a true picture means more than observing and measuring a few people, like your friends, family and co-workers who might be in better (or maybe worse) shape than the population as a whole. One must consider whole populations in different areas and from many walks of life to determine this “big picture.” In the U.S., as well as other countries, the World Health Organization and government and university researchers use certain statistical techniques to select a large group of people (known as a “random sample”) who somewhat represent this “big picture” — the population as a whole.
In the U.S. Natural Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, thousands of people from all 50 states are interviewed and measured every year, producing the data indicating what proportion of the population is overweight or obese. Overweight and obesity is a big and increasing problem (see plp.org). Furthermore, a connection between social class and fatness emerges: on average, workers tend to be more overweight than professionals and business people. But although these figures are based on practice, on engaging with and measuring real human beings, can we be sure the data is really true? After all, it’s possible to lie with statistics. (Remember the “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify the war in Iraq? And the misinformation and distortions about “intelligence testing” to justify claims about the “innate” inferiority of ethnic groups and workers?) Are the bosses’ governments making things up?
Why Obesity Data Is Believable
Chances are pretty good that the statistics cited above about the body-size characteristics of people here and worldwide are true. Why? First, there are many public health scientists personally and professionally committed to doing a decent job and telling the truth. It would not be easy (though not impossible!) for governments to ignore their scientific findings and bamboozle the public. Second, and perhaps more important, governments worldwide have a stake in measuring the health of workers and other social groups. Health (including fatness) relates to productivity of the working class, healthcare costs, and even the military readiness of potential soldiers. Bosses do want to know if there are particular health problems affecting workers (both blue- and white-collar) that might eat into profits and undermine future war efforts.
Bottom line: there’s no good reason to doubt the truth of the worldwide obesity epidemic. There’s a lot of obesity out there and it’s rising.
(Part 3 will discuss the health consequences of overweight and obesity; Part 4, the causes of the obesity problem; and Part 5, what can be done about it, and it’s relation to politics.)
Two Years Later, Oaxaca Workers Need to Break with All Bosses
OAXACA, MEXICO, June 14 — Hundreds of thousands of teachers, workers and students from section 22 of the Mexican Teachers’ Union (SNTE) and APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca) marched militantly in the city of Oaxaca to commemorate the great battles of 2006. The marchers also attacked Governor Ulises Ruiz and the bosses’ plans to privatize the social security system ISSTE (Institute of Social Security and Social Services for Public Workers). PLP members and friends passed out thousands of leaflets showing that the only real way to destroy the racist oppressive system of capitalism is to fight for workers’ power and communist revolution.
Since May 9th, Section 22 of Oaxaca and the local teachers’ unions in several other states, together with other unions and organizations, have been carrying out work stoppages, marches, blockades, and occupations to force the hated bosses’ government of President Felipe Calderon to rescind the fascist new social security “reform” law that affects more than 2 million workers.
The capitalist Calderón government, obeying its imperialist backers, continues with its plan to privatize everything. They claim they want to “modernize” the social security system, but it is just another way of robbing what workers have saved over the last 50 years. These billions saved will be given to the imperialists in the U.S. and other countries and to local capitalists and their banks and financial institutions. This is just another way the local and imperialist bosses squeeze maximum profits from the working class to pay for their economic crisis and fascist plans for more imperialist wars. This deadly mass robbery is made possible thanks to the collaboration of all the capitalist parties and politicians, the bosses’ legal system and the sellout union leaders. It is not just Elba Esther Gordillo, the fascist top honcho in the SNTE (national teachers’ union), who has direct responsibility for murdering many rank-and-file militant teachers in Oaxaca and other areas. Reformists in the unions and mass organizations are also to be blamed for building the illusions that capitalism can be made to work for workers and their allies if we replace bad politicians with “lesser evil” capitalist ones who only represent another group of bosses.
The privatization of social security is just the beginning for the bosses and their government. The electrical utility (CFE) and PEMEX (the state-owned oil monopoly) are also on the privatization block. The debates among the senators and deputies of different parties are basically over strategies of how to best fool and rob the workers.Workers here are also being attacked by rising prices of gas and basic necessities. The major supermarket chains (Soriana, Sam’s, Chedraui, etc.,) speculate storing large quantities of food in their warehouses to raise prices and their capital even more, meanwhile the Calderón government tell workers “there’s no food.” At the same time they push this lie, they open the borders to big transnational agribusiness to sell beans, rice and corn from Mexico, increasing these companies’ profits at the expense of the consumers and thousands of farm workers who are sunk into deeper misery.PLP must increase its efforts to organize the international working class to build a new society that will respond to our needs and interests. Workers produce everything. We don’t need parasitic bosses who rob the product of our labor.
In a communist society we won’t have sellout unions and hacks who today serve the murderous bosses. Join the PLP to fight for a communist world!
REDEYE
NAFTA pushed globe to food crisis
During this food crisis, poor countries have had an already difficult situation made worse because they previously followed bad prescriptions given to them by policy experts from Washington. Tortilla-eating Mexico used to be a homeland of corn, but thanks to policies promoted by the IMF, the World Bank and the US government (especially through the Nafta free-trade agreement) it has become a corn importer. The old orthodoxy was.... “The idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on US agricultural products... available in most cases at a lower cost.” How wrong both that assumption and conclusion look today. GW, 6/6
Boss pressure distorts TV news
In his new memoir, “What Happened,” Scott McClellan... called reporters “complicit enablers” of the Bush administration’s push for war.Surprisingly, some prominent journalists have agreed.... that they had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a positive light.[Katie] Couric said she sensed pressure from “the corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it.” At the time, Ms. Couric was a host of “Today” on NBC.Another broadcast journalist.... said that journalists had been “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with patriotic fever in the nation.” NYT, 5/30
Need bigger weapon than lawsuit
Recent high-profile events demonstrate the biased result of malevolent government actions. The response to New Orleans plainly shows racial preference, as does the sub-prime mortgage collapse. Minorities were, and still are, steered to the most vicious loans. And we already know that drug law enactment, enforcement and incarceration are aimed at minorities, as are second-rate medical care and voter identification laws. Further, the average wealth for whites in Connecticut today is $179,000; for minorities, only $7,000.There’s got to be another lawsuit in there somewhere. But.... lawsuits have shown that they simply can’t do the job.... It’s time to try something stronger. MinutemanMedia.org
Bubble no trouble — for the rich
Poring through
Bernanke’s pitch;
It all seems geared,
To aid the rich.Take the ongoing housing bubble collapse. Non-profit economists have been warning about it for years. And do you think it was kept secret from Mr. Bernanke that Bear Stearns and other avaricious investment bankers were gathering up fishy mortgages and sugar-coating them as high-yield investments? Who’s kidding whom? The whole administration knew what was going on. It’s just that no one wanted to spoil the fun.Unfortunately... individual citizens.... are simply the bottom of the food chain and should be prepared to sacrifice our financial lives for the welfare of banks, credit card issuers, investment houses and hedge funds. They’re the ones who make our country great, providing us with jobs and loans that allow us to buy and lose our homes. MinutemanMedia.org 5/1
Marx, Malthus explain hunger
American [scholars] like Malthus because he takes the blame off us. Malthus says the problem is too many poor people.Or, to put it in the terms in which the current crisis is usually explained: too many hard-working Chinese and Indians think they should be able to eat pizza, meat and coffee....Dr. Friedman argues that...the way big agriculture is practiced...degrades...the environment so much that it will eventually reach a tipping point and hunger will spread.Others vigorously disagree. In their view, the world is almost endlessly bountiful.... But they see the underlying problems in terms more Marxian than Malthusian: the rich grab too much of everything... NYT 6/15
SUMMER OF COMMUNISM!
Wars in the Middle East and growing conflicts worldwide that threaten the U.S. Empire are planting the seeds for World War III. The question isn’t whether a world war is coming, but when.
The U.S. ruling class understands that in order to remain the top imperialist amongst its competitors it must rebuild and expand its industrial sector and win workers and youth to racism and patriotism so it can to wage wars around the globe.Currently, the ruling class is attempting to rebuild its industry with low-wage, subcontracted labor — mainly immigrant and black workers — using racism to attack all workers by abolishing higher-paying unionized jobs. Besides racism, the bosses are bleeding workers in the factories through sexism, nationalism, speed-up, overtime, massive temporary jobs, eliminating benefits and pensions and cutting and freezing wages. Only by robbing more of the value workers produce can the bosses attract the investment necessary to rebuild and expand their industry. Without more war production capacity, the U.S. bosses won’t attain the military might necessary to maintain their empire and defeat their rivals.
But to build such capability, the bosses need us — the working class — to build the factories, run the machines, drive the trucks and shoot the guns in battle. They can’t make war without winning us ideologically. They are fighting hard to do this with Obama’s “vote-for-change” campaign, with Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the lie that U.S. imperialism can be “inclusive” and “humanitarian.”
Lessons From the Past
In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt “arsenal-for-democracy” speech laid the groundwork to transform the U.S. economy to war production. The Roosevelt-led capitalist class mounted an all-out mobilization by: (1) drafting 14 million workers and youth into the armed forces (in a population barely one-third of the present 300 million); (2) instituted gas and food rationing (each family had to present coupons at the store to buy meat — limited to 4 oz. per person daily — sugar, butter, etc.; (3) decreed a government-imposed wage-freeze and price controls; and (4) banned all strikes. Not one new car, washing machine or radio was manufactured in the U.S. for four years — all the factories were producing tanks, bombers and weapons of war. Tax rates topped out at 94%! (It’s 35% now.)
The ruling class knew their German and Japanese imperialist rivals had to be defeated in order to maintain their own dominance and they used the workers’ anti-fascist sentiment to further their class interests. When men were drafted, women were recruited into the factories and quickly became machinists, welders and assemblers of tanks, guns, bombs and planes. The number of women employed in industry jumped by over 460% between pre-war years and 1944. Black workers, who had been shut out of war industry, increased their numbers in skilled trades by 750,000 during this period. This huge transition was accomplished almost overnight. But the war took an enormous toll on workers in the factories. In fact, injuries and deaths on the “home front” were 11 times the casualties for soldiers at the battlefront!
This was truly a capitalist war on the working class. The U.S. Communist Party mobilized masses of workers to support the Soviet Union — the first workers’ state — against the fascist Nazis, but it made a significant error in not supporting workers’ struggles against U.S. bosses (for instance, the strike of 600,000 miners). This disarmed an essential aspect of the struggle for revolution. In supporting the “good bosses,” like FDR, against Hitler, the CPUSA obscured the struggle against capitalism, diverting it from a workers’ dictatorship and communism.
Our Fight....
We are slowly rooting ourselves in the industrial working class and among soldiers to build a base for revolution. This means becoming involved in, and leading, class struggle and learning those lessons to be gained through fighting the bosses. However, it also means struggling with the workers to free our class from the bosses’ ideology of racism, nationalism, sexism and anti-communism,Workers in the shops are slowly taking our communist analysis as their own. We invite students, teachers and workers to join PLP’s Summer Projects to help in this crucial fight to build PLP among industrial workers and soldiers.
International Unity A Must in Upcoming Boeing Contract Fight
SEATTLE, WA—“We can’t afford not to care about the international working class,” argued a Boeing machinist with a shop steward as they rehashed over the union meeting the night before at work. A third worker had just walked up to ask what had happened at the meeting. The shop steward thought the most important thing was information about the slave–like conditions of Indian immigrants in the Gulf Coast shipyards. He complained, however, that too many of his fellow workers (who he had informed about the outrage) just didn’t care.International class-consciousness stands in stark contrast to the union misleaders slogan “It’s our time, this time” about the upcoming contract battle. But even this honest shop steward inadvertently defended the narrow trade union perspective these hacks were pushing. “Sure you can say all this super-exploitation is eroding the wage ‘market,’ but if we raise our wages we will pull everybody up,” he countered. This excuse flies in the face of reality.
Twenty years ago, millions were unionized in basic industry. All the key plants had unions. Today, despite a similar number of industrial workers far fewer are unionized and key plants are now non-union, relying on racist super-exploitation. Narrow trade unionism, never a good substitute for anti-racist, communist class-consciousness, is ridiculous in the present climate.Members met at lunch later that day to plan our campaign around this issue and follow our progress in the pages of this paper. Our victory will be measured in the number of Boeing workers we win to raise the slogan “Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite!” during this contract battle as we build the Progressive Labor Party.
The Progressive Labor Party is organizing summer projects in Seattle and Los Angeles this summer to both learn from workers’ experiences and revolutionary ideas and to bring revolutionary ideas to industrial workers. We urge you to join us in going to the factories, visiting with workers, and studying the science of revolution as well as hearing from the experience of revolutionary workers themselves. Volunteers will learn first hand from the workers and share experiences, leading to a lifetime of serving the working class and building for a communist revolution.
We will also talk to soldiers about the war and the system that puts them in harm’s way for oil profits. Please join us for a great revolutionary experience! Make a donation and support a Summer Project volunteer.
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CHALLENGE
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Fascist Anti-Immigrant Raids Attack All Workers
Liberal Bosses Use McClellan to Bushwhack McCain
Prison Slave Labor: Fascism U.S.-Style
Baltimore Youth Fighting for Job Funds
a href="#Teachers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services">Teac"ers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services
a href="#Chile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools">"hile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools
a href="#‘Market Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half">‘M"rket Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half
Urges El Salvador Guerrilla Vets to Join PLP
a href="#‘War on AIDS’ Needs War on Capitalism">‘W"r on AIDS’ Needs War on Capitalism
a href="#French Rulers Put Squeeze on Workers’ Fight-Back">"rench Rulers Put Squeeze on Workers’ Fight-Back
French Government Boxes in Undocumented Immigrants
Mexican Bosses Battle Over Oil While Workers Starve
a href="#PLP Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan">PL" Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan
LETTERS
a href="#PLP’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day">PL"’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day
a href="#‘Democratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants">‘Dem"cratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants
Construction Deaths Are Murders
NYC Youth Maintain May Day Momentum
The U.S.-Death-Squad Empire Strikes Back
RED EYE
- Insider praises China’s Red era
- Socialism’s fall = quake deaths
- Black capitalism no improvement
- Boss poisons you? Not a crime!
- a href="#How Do You Define ‘Fat’?">Ho" Do You Define ‘Fat’?
- How Fat Are People in the United States?
- How Fat Are People Around the World?
NY Civil War Draft Riots Were Racist Attacks on Black People
Fascist Anti-Immigrant Raids Attack All Workers
In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
POSTVILLE, IOWA, May 29 — The above statement by anti-Nazi Pastor Martin Niemöller is clearly related to the U.S.-Homeland Security Agency’s immigration police (ICE) attack on undocumented immigrants. The Des Moines Register reported (5/12): "Months in planning, Monday’s raid involved 16 local, state and federal agencies, led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)." The largest single workplace raid in U.S. history saw 389 workers — mostly from Guatemala and Mexico — arrested in minutes at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant. They were herded onto buses and interned at the National Cattle Congress Fairgrounds, some 80 miles away in Waterloo. There they were kept in a makeshift camp, behind a chain-link fence, watched by armed immigration officers for three days until processed and sent to jails state-wide.
Nearly 300 have pleaded guilty to reduced charges of document fraud and will serve short prison sentences before being deported, while others await immediate deportation or have been placed on temporary release for compassionate reasons.
The appearance of dozens of buses, helicopters and heavily-armed ICE, state and local cops resembled a scene from a Nazi-era film. And the aim is the same: to terrorize workers.
Rosa, a 40-year-old mother of two, was working on the kill floor that morning when she heard the cries of "la migra" — a warning about ICE cops — ringing through the plant and saw her friends drop their tools and run. She slipped into a freezer and hid among the dead chickens, sitting alone in the cold for several minutes, thinking that everything was over. She would be caught, sent back to Mexico with nothing. The better life she had planned for her children was not to be.
The plant, which produces kosher and non-kosher products, was already a hell for workers, paid less than Iowa’s $7.25-an-hour minimum. The ICE investigation revealed abuses like a supervisor covering a worker’s eyes with duct tape and beating him with a meat hook.
But that wasn’t the main aim of the raid. The company has not been charged with anything, even though accused for years with many health violations. Not much has changed since Upton Sinclair wrote his novel "The Jungle," exposing horrendous conditions in the meatpacking industry in Chicago and across the Midwest.
The aim of the raid, and many others occurring nation-wide, is not really to arrest those "guilty" of "identity theft." Its real aim is to terrorize undocumented workers, and all workers, into working for less and less, thereby reaping increasing super-profits for a capitalist system desperate to pay for its wars and economic crisis.
The lie spread by the bosses’ media — and by many of their lapdogs among the union "leaders" — that immigrants are "stealing jobs" from citizen workers is exposed by the fact that, according to a report in the NY Times (5/31), Iowa bosses can’t get enough workers. The state has the second lowest unemployment rate in the country, 50% less than the national rate. Iowa employers are desperately seeking employees. Why? "Companies want to be in Iowa because wages are lower than elsewhere in the nation or region," says the Times. While the bosses in general approve the idea of terrorizing workers into accepting lower wages, there’s a section that doesn’t want the fascist attackers to go "too far," to scare off workers from filling these low-wage jobs and limiting their profits.
This fascist attack occurs alongside the growing imprisonment of undocumented workers (see page 2 on the growing U.S. prison population). El Nuevo Herald (Miami Herald Spanish edition), reports (5/28) that the jail in Del Verde, Texas, is filled with arrested undocumented immigrants, even though this hasn’t stopped the flow of these immigrants. This and other jails throughout the Southwest are big money-makers for private prison companies that run many of them. The border is also militarized as U.S. and Mexican rulers put their Plan Mexico into operation, under the guise of "fighting the drug cartels," thereby militarizing the entire region.
The essence of Pastor Niemöller’s 60-year-old declaration is that all workers and their allies must oppose these growing fascist attacks. We in PLP are organizing exactly that, and across all borders. Join us!
Liberal Bosses Use McClellan to Bushwhack McCain
The liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists had two main motives in publishing former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan’s book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception." Firstly, in "revealing" that the administration based its Iraq invasion on lies — no weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s), no links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden/9-11 and no Iraqi greeting the U.S. as "liberators" — the former Bush press secretary damages Bush clone McCain’s election prospects. The NY Times (6/1/08) calls it "McCain’s McClellan nightmare." The British liberal Independent (5/30) gleefully wonders, "Has McClellan handed victory to Obama?"
Secondly, by further discrediting the Bushites for hyping Hussein’s non-existent WMD’s, it helps prevent them from launching a unilateral attack on Iran before they leave office (although that still might be possible). The U.S. rulers’ liberal faction knows that tackling Iran will require far greater military force than the missiles and bombs the Bush gang once seemed tempted to use. Recalling the 750,000-strong multi-national force they were able to muster for their 1991 Iraq invasion, the liberals are forcing Bush & Co. to work through the United Nations.
The NY Times editorialized (6/1), "Having long taken a back seat to the Bush administration in publicly challenging Iran’s nuclear program, [UN] inspectors last week moved into the driver’s seat, demanding that Tehran come clean on any progress it has made toward building a bomb....The Americans have handed over the wheel on the confrontation with Iran. After challenging Iran’s atomic efforts with everything from diplomatic crusades to shows of military force, the Americans backed off late last year, based on a new intelligence finding that Tehran had suspended work in late 2003 on the design of nuclear arms. Now, in the waning days of President Bush’s second term, it would be difficult — politically, diplomatically and militarily — for them to try to press for a new confrontation."
Aiding Liberal Imperialists Seeking Larger Forces for Wider Wars
Turncoat McClellan helped sell Bush’s on-the-cheap warmaking, Rumsfeld’s hi-tech "shock and awe" invasion which failed to win a war but managed to kill one million Iraqis. But McClellan now serves the more powerful multilateral camp of U.S. bosses. His bestseller resulted from a year of close collaboration with Peter Osnos, publisher of PublicAffairs press and a senior fellow at the Century Fund, a liberal, ruling-class think-tank. A recent Century Fund study, "America’s Slide From Leadership to Isolation," blames the current Iraq fiasco on "too few U.S. boots on the ground" and "U.S. abandonment of collective security for a unilaterally driven agenda." It concludes, "In coming years, U.S. political leaders will almost certainly have to adapt their styles and aspirations to global leadership to the international rules of the game that the United Nations embodies" — although, again, that depends on what U.S. rulers think they can get away with on their own.
U.S. global leadership — that is, imperialist domination, with junior partner allies — is also the goal of another of McClellan’s newfound backers, billionaire currency swindler, election fixer, Rockefeller ally and liberal "philanthropist" George Soros. Osnos got his big start as an officer in Soros’s Human Rights Watch and has published six Soros books through PublicAffairs. After buying votes in various pro-U.S., anti-Russian electoral "revolutions" in Eastern Europe, Soros now calls for U.S.-led multi-national military action against Chinese influence in Darfur.
Another liberal McClellan enabler is life-long war criminal Richard Holbrooke, vice-chairman of Perseus investors, the firm that owns PublicAffairs. Holbrooke was an aide to ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in the U.S. genocide in Vietnam in the 1960s and advised Bill Clinton’s bombing of Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. A nominal supporter of Hillary Clinton, Holbrooke recently jumped on the Obama bandwagon by conceding his nomination at a May 26 debate in Toronto.
McClellan didn’t jump ship alone. His older brother Mark, also a former GOP stalwart, joined the liberals last year. As Bush’s head of Medicare/Medicaid until 2006, he made those agencies blank-check factories for giant drug companies. Today, Mark McClellan heads a program at the liberal Brookings Institution that studies ways of federalizing health care and subordinating Big Pharma’s profits to the rulers’ larger war agenda. McClellans’ opportunistic fence-jumping reflects a major, ongoing effort by the imperialists to win as broad a base as possible to their cause. The coming elections are, of course, their main focus.
Book Benefitting Obama
Scott McClellan’s Iraq "exposé" chiefly aids Barack Obama. Hypocritically feeding on widespread anti-war sentiment, Obama proposes an Iraq exit strategy. But his platform demands 92,000 new soldiers towards "making the finest military in the world...best-prepared to meet 21st-century threats." (Obama 2008 website) Voting for Obama as an anti-war candidate would thus be a grave political error. Voting for anyone, in fact, can’t help at all.
The solution to the capitalists’ endless wars and their ceaseless attempts to trick us into supporting them lies outside their fruitless electoral process. It lies in building a communist party dedicated to the long-term struggle of overthrowing the deadly profit system.
Prison Slave Labor: Fascism U.S.-Style
Slavery is being practiced by the system under the color of law. Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today, it’s the same thing, but with a new name. They’re making millions and millions of dollars enslaving blacks, poor whites, and others — people who don’t even know they’re being railroaded.
-- Political Prisoner Ruchel Magee.
This "land of opportunity" now boasts a prison population of nearly 2.4 million, higher than any other nation, ¾ of a million more than China, which has four times the population of the U.S. California alone has over 160,000 inmates — more than France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the Netherlands COMBINED. These five countries have a total population eleven times that of California. They are no less racist than the U.S. but have a different policy in treating non-violent offenders.
According to a U.S. Justice Department Report, as of this year, 7 million people are in prison, on probation or on parole. That means 1 in every 32 Americans is in the system. (http://www.usdoj.gov/) Seventy percent of all prisoners in the U.S. are black or Latino.
This massive imprisonment of millions is part of U.S. rulers’ efforts to control the working class and especially the potential rebellion of the most oppressed, the black and Latino workers. It occurs in the context of the virtual elimination of welfare under Clinton — when the big leap in the prison population took place — and the slashing of wages and jobs of all workers. Facing sharp economic crises and heightening inter-imperialist rivalry over energy supplies, U.S. rulers must exercise tight control over U.S. workers and try to win them to support — or at least not fight against — the rulers’ increased exploitation, even more intense racism and preparations for wider wars. As brother Ruchel Magee says (above), slavery today — of which this mass imprisonment in U.S.-style concentration camps (and the threat of it to millions more) is a part — has a new name. That name is fascism.
History of U.S. Prison Labor
Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue slave labor. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else’s land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery — which were almost never proven — and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, mining and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910, 88% of "hired-out" convicts in Georgia were black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.
Capitalist Rehab….Exploitation
Prison labor is a pot of gold for the bosses: no strikes, unions, health benefits, unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation. This is one of the main reasons for such high incarceration rates in the U.S. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting out of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons.
These companies contain the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores and many more. All of these businesses reap extraordinary profits from the economic boom generated by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, such profits rose from $392 million to $1.31 billion.
Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but in Colorado, they’re paid about $2 per hour, well below the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17¢/hr for a maximum of six hours a day, or about $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) in Tennessee — prisoners receive 50¢/hr for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it’s no surprise that inmates find federal prison pay "very generous" — possibly $1.25/hr, eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime.
Private Prisons
The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under Reagan and Bush, Sr., but reached its height in the 1990s under Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton’s cuts in the federal workforce led to the Justice Department contracting with private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.
Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison-industrial complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are CCA and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed payment for each prisoner, independent of the cost to maintain each one.
In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, 30 days are added, increasing profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.
The rulers find themselves in another risky situation: these same workers they oppress so viciously are among the ones the rulers need to arm to serve U.S. imperialism. They can be won to become part of the future red working-class army. One reason the rulers need someone like Obama is exactly to win black workers and youth (now reluctant to join the military) to fight in the many imperialist wars needed to stop U.S. rivals in the Middle East and elsewhere. A key role of our Party is to build internationalist and revolutionary consciousness among black, Latino and all workers so that imperialist war can be turned into class war for communism and an end to racism.
U.S. Prisons and Black Workers
In the U.S, black people comprise 13% of the population, but constitute half of the country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; black workers are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.
The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era.
The number of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic bubble of the late 1990s. In 2000, 65% of black male high school dropouts in their 20’s were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72%, compared with 34% of white dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20’s were jobless in 2004, up from 46% in 2000. Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990s and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16% of black men in their 20’s who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21% were incarcerated. By their mid-30’s, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.
Most of the states with a majority of black prisoners are in the South where cheap prison labor helps keep wages down for the growing auto, steel and other basic industries in that are becoming key for the U.S. war machine. However, Maryland, not generally viewed as a "southern state," has the largest percentage of black prisoners — 77%. Wisconsin, with a tiny black population of 6%, has a black prison population of 48%. And Mississippi, the state with the largest black population, 36%, has a black prison population of 75%.
Baltimore Youth Fighting for Job Funds
BALTIMORE, MD, June 2 — On May 30th, students, teachers and education advocates gathered at the Inner Harbor amphitheater to protest Mayor Sheila Dixon’s refusal to appropriate $3 million toward knowledge-based jobs for 750-1,000 young people through the Peer 2 Peer (P2P) network. P2P Youth Enterprises, a coalition of approximately 20 local youth groups, organized the demonstration. They then marched to the Legg Mason plaza and announced a hunger strike, commencing that evening. The protestors chanted and gave speeches on education, followed by an open mic session featuring socially conscious hip hop and spoken word poetry.
P2P has been engaging in activities from workshops to overnight camp-outs in front of City Hall to demand these funds. "It’s outrageous that the City is not giving $3 million to young people to do positive work," said a public school teacher. "When the City schools were predominantly white, about 20% to 40% of the city budget went to education. Now that the City’s student population is 90% African-American, the portion of the City budget devoted to education is just 11%, a severe, racist cutback that hurts all students, no matter what their racial background."
The Baltimore City Council voted 11 to 3 against the P2P funding. Many speculate that pressure from Mayor Dixon forced that negative vote.
Two weeks ago, when the coalition began a four-day, overnight campout in front of City Hall, Dixon appeared and told the young people they ought to just get jobs at Target. But P2P seeks funding for programs like tutoring and mentorships, so young people can be paid to teach other youth important skills, like algebra, debate and video production.
"Target is not a comparison to Peer 2 Peer," said one P2P organizer, nor is P2P an after-school or summer program, as misrepresented by the bosses’ media. It’s a year-long program designed to create jobs and prepare youth for careers in a knowledge-based economy.
The $3 million figure would come from the annual interest earned on the City’s $88 million rainy-day surplus emergency fund, not from the fund itself, as inaccurately portrayed by the capitalist media. "The state of youth in Baltimore City is definitely an emergency," declared a P2P youth leader.
One excuse offered to refuse funding is "a sluggish economy," yet City funds are going into the build-up of tourist areas like the Harbor.
As the event concluded, committed hunger strikers were transported to a church where nightly shelter is being provided.
The young people view the hunger strike as necessary to attain their goal, with no plans to end it until the mayor and the City Council grant their demands.
Progressive Labor Party applauds the selfless commitment of the hunger strikers and all their many supporters. But we recognize its limitations. In general, hunger strikes seek to embarrass the rulers, but the rulers really have no shame. After all, capitalism starves millions of workers worldwide.
P2P activists stepped up the level of struggle by bringing many supporters to the Mayor’s Night-In, which she had promoted as an opportunity for youth and adults to talk about solving problems in various neighborhoods. The vast majority of participants were P2P supporters, who spoke out very forcefully, essentially taking leadership of the event away from the politicians. At one point the mayor physically grabbed the microphone to defend herself and to accuse adult P2P supporters of misleading P2P youth. However, she received meager applause, compared to the overwhelming repeated applause for P2P speakers, a vigorous standing ovation for the hunger strikers, and powerful applause supporting the $3 million for P2P youth jobs.
In a broader sense, political awareness is growing, learning how politicians and the government, though claiming to represent all people, are really puppets for the ruling class of big business owners. Some of the young activists recently attended PLP’s May Day march in New York City.
It’s becoming clearer that the government is not neutral but really a dictatorship of the capitalist class. The government is theirs, not ours.
Even if a reform victory is achieved — winning $3 million — the rulers, having state power, can always take it away later, as they’re doing in cutting wages for millions of workers. This is especially true, given the bosses’ need to direct resources toward carrying out imperialist oil wars in Iraq and elsewhere.
Capitalism cannot be reformed, nor can it solve the problems it creates for the working class. We need a future in which the working class shares the fruit of all the value our labor produces. Only communist revolution can achieve this.
a name="Teachers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services"></a>"eachers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services
MEXICO CITY, May 29 — Thousands of teachers from many parts of Mexico, including Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tlaxcala and Mexico City, participated in a massive march here to protest the reform of the law of the Institute of the Social Security in Service of the State Workers (ISSSTE), which plans to reduce pension benefits and increase retirement age. Members and friends of PLP distributed thousands of leaflets exposing capitalism and calling on teachers to fight for communism.
In their fascist offensive, the bosses and their imperialist backers have dealt a new blow to workers by reforming this law, thereby giving workers’ savings to the banks and financial institutions. These "reforms" mean the end of pensions for the retired, removal of the right to housing credits, slashing child-care services and a severe cut in medical services.
In the short term, this will affect the workers of the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE), of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company) and of public companies. Even though the more pro-U.S. imperialist bosses support the "reform" all the other Mexican bosses represented by different capitalist political parties, including the opposition López Obrador and the PRD are behind it. (This situation is facing workers worldwide — see page 5 on France’s workers facing a similar attack.)
Currently more than 20 million Mexicans eke out their existence on wages equal to barely twice the minimum and many even less than that. These hungry masses lack a revolutionary organization. PL’ers must continue exposing the bosses and their neoliberal and state capitalist policies and keep organizing the workers to build a communist system where exploitation, poverty and unemployment will not exist. We must have confidence in the great potential of the working class to make a revolution and run society.
During the march there were many insults and anger directed against President Felipe Calderon and Elba Esther Gordillo, "leader" of the teachers’ union, but the problem isn’t only these puppets and the Social Security Reform. The whole capitalist system is rotten and must be destroyed.
Some teachers said that the positive reforms to Social Security were won with over a century of struggle and now the bosses are taking them away with one stroke. This is the essence of capitalist "reforms": they give workers only crumbs and can take them back at any moment. We need to fight, not for reforms but for a communist world, where workers in Mexico and globally will control society for the benefit of the international working class. Long Live Communism!
a name="Chile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools">">"hile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools
SANTIAGO, CHILE, May 28 — For the third successive week, high school and college students have militantly protested a new law which could privatize public education. Students demonstrated on May Day and then again on May 16 (Day of the Fighting Youth) when students took over several colleges and high schools immediately after "socialist" President Michelle Bachelet gave a national speech on education. In one school students hung a banner reading, "If education is a merchandise, students must be rebels."
Today, the "carabineros" (riot cops) brutally repressed a planned student march, attacking several thousand gathered in Santiago preparing to march to the Ministry of Education. The cops said they "had no march permit." Some 337 students were arrested battling the vicious police attack. Over 600 were arrested nationwide during this day of protest. The cops beat students viciously as they were being loaded into police vans.
The government’s proposed General Education Law offers some crumbs like computers and a few scholarships, but each municipality would control education, opening the door to privatization. Students say they want free public education like their parents received, not a few computers or scholarships.
Chilean youth, like youth worldwide today, had a reputation of being non-political, but the reality of a local and international capitalist system bent on making workers and youth pay for its crises and wars, is impelling young people to realize they must fight for their interests.
Education under capitalism, whether free or privatized, is based on promoting bourgeois ideology and building the next generation of exploited workers the bosses need. The best education these youth can acquire is in the class struggle against capitalism and its stooges.
a name="‘Market Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half"></">‘M"rket Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half
DETROIT, June 1 — The recent sellout contract signed between American Axle and the UAW is a perfect example of how capitalism works and where its priorities lie: destroying the lives of thousands of workers and turning U.S. industry into a low-wage haven. The immigration raids spreading throughout the Midwest and Southwest are no accident. They’re aimed at terrorizing ALL industrial workers, immigrants, undocumented or citizens, into accepting even lower wages. A worker who falls for any kind of racism is betraying his/her own class interests.
Axle workers are the latest victims of this fascist attack. The Axle bosses say the new contract "addresses market reality." (NY Times, 5/29/08, and all following quotes) After their 87-day strike, this is how that "reality" hits the workers:
• Within a year, 2,000 of 3,650 union jobs will be eliminated.
• "Wages and benefits would be cut at least in half."
• "Most new work will be going outside the United States."
And this is how "reality" meets the company’s bottom line:
• "It expected to save about $300 million a year under its new contract."
• "American Axle…lined up $1.4 billion in new…business for the next five years and…85 percent of it would be sourced abroad." ("Operations in Mexico and overseas helped the company earn $37 million in 2007.")
• Wages in Axle’s new plant in Guanajato, Mexico will be barely $1.50 AN HOUR.
What about the union? The bosses say the UAW "jointly addressed" this market reality "in this new set of agreements." Yes, it "addressed" more than half the workers onto the street and cut the wages and benefits of the remainder more than half. To say the company has the union leadership in its hip pocket is putting it mildly.
This swindle follows the pattern set by the Big Three automakers and the union. GM just announced that one-fourth of its workers, 19,000 (adding to the 34,410 who left in 2006), are taking the company-offered buyout. Of these 19,000, JPMorgan auto analyst Himanushu Patel "predicted GM won’t replace 15,000…and will hire 4,000 [at half the pay] for total annual savings of $2.1 billion." (Associated Press, 5/31)
Forty years ago, UAW President Walter Reuther was acclaimed for signing a contract with a "guaranteed annual wage." Hundreds of thousands of laid-off U.S. autoworkers can now testify that the only "guarantee" under capitalism is job- and wage-cuts for workers and maximum profits for the bosses. And the racism of the bosses and UAW hacks has hit black autoworkers even harder, devastating cities like Detroit and Flint. Since 1999, Michigan has lost 143,000 auto jobs — 45 percent of the total lost nationwide.
No matter what gains workers make through bitter struggle, when capitalism’s market asserts itself — through global competition, the drive for maximum profits, economic crisis and the needs of imperialist wars — the workers wind up at the bottom of the heap. After all, the bosses control the government and this state power is used to enforce the laws of the capitalist market. That’s why PLP says this system can’t be reformed. "Market reality" won’t permit it.
The only lasting victory that can be won from the Axle workers’ three-month battle is for the workers who bought and read CHALLENGE and came to PLP’s May Day events to join the Party in building a movement that aims to eliminate this system and its profit-driven markets so workers can hold state power and use it on behalf of the working class. Our goal is to establish a communist society in which workers come first and there is no "second" — profits, bosses and their labor lieutenants will be buried six feet under.
Urges El Salvador Guerrilla Vets to Join PLP
El Salvador — At the end of the 1970’s there were nine people in my family including seven brothers and sisters. The government army came into my settlement, killing children, youth, old people, and women; in my family four brothers were killed because they were suspected of helping the guerrilas.
In 1979, when I was 24 years old, I was pursued by the National Guard because of my revolutionary ideas. I joined a military detachment of the ERP (Revolutionary Peoples’ Army). We had massive confrontations with the government’s army at the same time that they bombed us. When we were invaded by the enemy in a combat zone, we sometimes spent up to eight days without food. After battle, we went to an area that was under the control of the guerrilas where we got our political and military training.
In 1989 we carried out a military campaign where I fought in the city of San Miguel, in the eastern part of the country. I spent nine days in a trench, seeing many of my comrades fall from the enemy’s weapons, and seeing the suffering of the civilian population from the bombings. But we also attacked and showed our political resolve and military strength, as we forced the army to flee and struck mortal blows. Hundreds of soldiers and police fell, brought down by the revolutionary shrapnel of the armed people. Here we were true to our slogan of struggle: victory or death.
At one moment when we were ambushed by the enemy army, a soldier in the bosses’ army (who today is my friend) warned us about this ambush, from which I escaped unharmed. This helped me understand that solders in the government’s army were winnable since most aren’t won ideologically to the bosses’ side.
Since the end of the armed struggle, as a disabled veteran of the war, I’m a member of ALGES — Association of the Disabled from the War in El Salvador. The ideas of a revolution to change society had me frustrated for a time, as I feel that I had been fooled by the high leaders of the guerrilas. After the war, many of them became brazen servants of the capitalists, while my conviction and that of my fellow disabled and dead fighters was to fight and win for the working class.
I then met a club of PLP and when I heard the strength of their political ideology, it didn’t seem foreign to me. Here I see true revolutionary ideology, which is the fight for communism. I hope that this story helps many fellow veterans of the war to join the Progressive Labor Party since the commitment to fight for the working class must continue.
a name="‘War on AIDS’ Needs War on Capitalism"></">‘W"r on AIDS’ Needs War on Capitalism
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 15 — Over 120 public health workers and students met at the annual meeting of the MWPHA (Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association) with the goal of launching a more intense HIV/AIDS advocacy. Speakers and workshop participants attacked the "social determinants of disease" — lack of housing, jobs, and youth development programs, and widespread substance abuse. Most attendees wanted to break out of their small boxes and form a strong unified movement to demand more resources from the federal and local government.
Scrambling for small grants for NGOs and trying to help resolve complicated individual problems of AIDS sufferers is not enough! Most participants felt that the war on AIDS should be joined with a war on capitalist institutions. Reflecting higher levels of awareness, a speaker attacked the "war on drugs" as a war on people. Others noted that the phony "war on terror" drained resources from public health programs. Attendees agreed to testify at city council budget hearings and did so the next week.
This MWPHA conference moved from the traditional public health education to pushing for aggressive political pressure on the system to beat the factors that sharpen the devastation of AIDS. A virus may cause HIV/AIDS, but capitalism and its racist impoverishment of millions transform it into an epidemic by increasing peoples’ vulnerability.
Stable affordable housing is at the forefront of this battle; without it, consistent treatment is almost impossible. But pressure on the system, however bold and militant, is not enough. Capitalism must be overthrown to get at the root of the problem. Too many activists in the HIV/AIDS movement are still far from embracing this goal. But, step by step, some progress is being made.
PLP members’ active in this struggle have led regular public outreach in Ward 8, the lowest income area in D.C. These actions began only with condom distribution and education, and have progressed to community speak-outs and rallies. The stage is set for more intense struggle — confronting politicians and city agencies in their offices around demands for housing and drug treatment. PLP must win more people to its politics to turn struggles like this into schools for communism.
The building of a revolutionary party amid public health struggles is hard work but is the only way forward. We have launched study-action groups that explain how communism can destroy capitalism and its epidemics, but political theory among our friends remains weak. This opens the door to the Obama/Democratic Party deception, taking grants from the archenemies of public health like Pfizer and other drug companies, and a belief that building NGOs will show the way forward.
At this vital time, during growing racism and fascism in the U.S., a financial crisis and endless imperialist wars abroad, we must intensify our struggle to win our friends to step forward and join the communist PLP for the long-term struggle to destroy the racist root cause of AIDS/HIV.
a name="French Rulers Put Squeeze on Workers’ Fight-Back">">"rench Rulers Put Squeeze on Workers’ Fight-Back
PARIS, June 1 — Due to sharpening imperialist competition, French President Sarkozy is now ignoring most of France’s union "leaders" leaving them virtually paralyzed. While these misleaders plead with the government to negotiate, and organize symbolic 24-hour protest strikes, Sarkozy steamrolls right past them with plans to dismantle both the welfare state and the unions.
To pursue its imperialist agenda, the French government needs a docile workforce and ready cash. For example, while visiting Iraqi officials today, foreign minister Kouchner offered them French military instructors to train the Iraqi army. In return, the Iraqi prime minister offered to buy state-of-the-art military technology from France, one of the world’s leading exporters of arms and aircraft.
Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said "there is an urgent need for French companies to be more present here in Iraq." Sarkozy wants European Union imperialism to penetrate Iraq in the next six months. Therefore, the government is playing hardball with the unions here.
On May 22, thousands struck and over 450,000 demonstrated in 153 cities protesting government "reforms" to force workers to work longer for smaller retirement pensions. But Sarkozy intends to push his reform through, consulting the unions only on precise points and without trying to get approval from even the most sellout unions (Le Figaro, 5/23).
The main teachers’ unions called for another 24-hour strike on May 24 against government plans to axe 11,200 jobs next school year, but while 15,000 demonstrated in Nantes, the action was only partly successful elsewhere. The following day Education Minister Darcos announced the cuts would be maintained and "protest marches won’t change a thing."
That hard-line position was enough to bust up the union coalition. On May 27, three teachers unions said they were "suspending" the protest movement.
The government then busted up union unity around another 24-hour strike against retirement "reform" planned for June 17. When the smaller unions split with the bigger ones (CGT and CFDL) over the latter’s back-door agreement with the bosses’ organization MEDEF, the government then double-crossed the whole business with a measure undermining the 35-hour work-week.
With the union misleaders at loggerheads, Sarkozy is attacking on yet another front — introducing a bill to make it easier to shift public workers from one ministry to another, and even to shift them out of the public sector altogether.
The government has been able to play off these union misleaders against each other because they’re all competing to become the government’s "preferred negotiating partner." The big losers are the workers.
Only communist leadership, dedicated not to negotiating with the government to "improve" capitalism, but to overthrowing the government and the capitalist system, offers a way forward for the working class here.J
French Government Boxes in Undocumented Immigrants
PARIS, June 1 — A January 7 government circular which legalizes undocumented workers in dribs and drabs is keeping them at the mercy of the bosses and their government. The circular provides for the legalization of workers who can produce a job contract, proof they’ve been working for three months and a promise from their boss to pay the costs of legalization. But each prefecture is allowed to apply the law as it sees fit.
The result is a feudal system in which legalization depends on a worker’s relationship with his boss, and the boss’s relationship with the prefect. Another aim is to smash the strike movement for legalization launched by undocumented workers in April.
Mexican Bosses Battle Over Oil While Workers Starve
MEXICO CITY, June 2 — The fight amongst the capitalists of the world for control of oil has motivated the latest wars in which hundreds of thousands of workers have died for the different greedy bosses’ profits. In this period, this dispute among the imperialists is leading to World War III.
For the Mexican ruling class, the big fight amongst different sections is over PEMEX, the state-owned oil monopoly. President Calderón, with the support of the U.S. imperialists, wants to privatize it all, while other local bosses (like former presidential candidate López Obrador) oppose this, preferring it to remain as a state-owned company, favoring more investments from local capitalists instead of U.S. oil companies.
Oil is the bloodline of modern capitalist industry and war machines. Control of the oil flow and profits is the reason the U.S. bosses and their military are geared to make wars from Baghdad to Kabul. It is now more profitable than ever with the continuous rise of the price of a barrel of crude. For example, PEMEX had profits of about $100 billion in the last four years.
This oil wealth does not belong to the "Mexican people" as the politicians tell us. If it did, its megaprofits would be used to end the poverty of 70 million people in Mexico, 50% of whom live in extreme poverty. These profits benefit the politicians who administer PEMEX and the companies’ bosses who have direct business with PEMEX.
The center of the dispute between the group led by Calderón, the ruling PAN party and the majority of the PRI (which ruled for 60 years before PAN) against López Obrador, the FAP (Broad Progressive Front) and some of the PRI is over which group of national or foreign bosses will control the billions of dollars of profits of PEMEX.
The competing bosses are trying to convince us to support the "privatizers" or the "nationalists." This is a fatal trap. We workers are the ones who produce all the wealth including the oil and we must take it into our own hands. Capitalism in any form (free market or with nationalized industries) is based on the exploitation of the working class. Choosing sides in this dogfight as far as workers are concerned is like siding with either the drug cartels or the bosses’ government in their mini-civil war over drug profits. Workers have only one choice: to build a massive international communist movement to fight for the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class over all bosses and establish a society in which oil, and everything else, will serve the needs of the world’s working class. That is what PLP fights for. Join us!
a name="PLP Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan"></">PL" Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan
This May Day gives us an audacity to fight against exploitation with full devotion, honesty, enthusiasm and bravery. The working class all over the world is very eager to get rid of capitalism but, for example in Pakistan, we’ve got to deal with the brutal living conditions that this system breeds, with union leaders who are in cahoots with the bosses and with fake-left leadership who lead us down the dead-end of state capitalism. None of these leaders want to change the world of capitalist oppression because they are puppets dancing in the hands of bosses by getting money and other personal advantages. They are created by the capitalists to keep poor workers away from their revolutionary struggle against exploitation, poverty, illiteracy and profit. We, as PL’ers, fight against all of these anti-working-class forces and struggle to bring true communist ideas to the masses of Pakistani workers.
Capitalist bosses have recruited gangsters and called them union leaders. Almost every so-called union leader is enjoying a luxurious life style: homes in posh areas, dinners at best restaurants, costly car, etc. Many ruling class parties have their own union bosses to protect their political interests and to keep the workers quiet against their policies. Trade unions in Pakistan Railways, Steel mill, PIA, Wapda, PTCL, Pakistan Hydro Electrical Board and many others are led by the bosses’ lieutenants.
While the union bosses get fat, the Pakistani working class faces miserable circumstances: high prices, low wages, poor working conditions, no job security, and many other social problems. This situation creates the conditions where workers are ready to get rid of this rotten system but they can’t find a way out because of puppet leadership!
The super-exploitation of Christians, women and children illustrates the genocidal situation that has been created for workers in Pakistan. Christians are common as sanitary workers who face some of the worst working and living conditions. Women workers are subject to rape by local bosses or landlords. Resistance means that the women can be accused of having an illicit relationship and subject to the barbaric sentence of stoning. The children of the working class face particularly terrible conditions. Most families cannot afford to send them to school so many send them to madrassas (free religious education providers) to get religious education, food and shelter. In many schools, the clerics feed the children the anti-working-class ideology of political Islam and convince them to protect local bosses’ interests by becoming "terrorists." Child labor is also very common. Many children work in restaurants, hotels and factories where they face low wages, sexual abuse and torture.
In response to these horrible conditions, fake-leftist parties, chanting the slogan of state capitalism (socialism), are working to maintain capitalist oppression. No party is functioning for the working class — they prefer to get sympathies of "intellectuals" from upper class and hold conferences in five-star hotels with capitalist guests. They are encouraged to keep good relations with bosses in the better interest of their families; "after all it is due to these bosses they are getting something to keep their families alive."
You cannot find people from the working class in their meetings — they don’t like to meet workers with torn clothes or dirty hands. They argue for national and people’s democratic revolution, socialism, international socialism, Trotskyism, nationalism, but not for communism! Nobody can hear a single world about communism from these fake leaders because they are afraid of it.
It exposes their purpose to work for capitalism by these fake -isms. But we understand their intention: to keep the working class away from any real revolutionary movement. They are here to spread the illusion that communism is dead and to protect the interests of bosses. Workers are fed up with these fake -isms that all lead back to capitalism. They need communist ideas to change their lives.
PLP’s voice is very loud and clear, its line is based on truth, honesty and experiences of great revolutionaries. It has strong power to attract sincere people and it gives courage to workers for changing the world of exploitation into equality, justice and prosperity. Communism is a truth that penetrates the hearts of the working class.
It is alive and still bringing workers under one red flag of PLP to make international communist revolution. When we greet workers with the line of our Party they are happy to join us and get rid of the fake-leftist trade unionists. We believe we will win millions of workers, students, soldiers and other oppressed and exploited people to get rid of imperialist wars, terrorism and exploitation.
LETTERS
a name="PLP’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day"></">PL"’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day
As previously reported in CHALLENGE, May Day was a modest success for PLP’s revolutionary communist forces in Colombia. Many new friends joined our contingent during the mass May Day march in Bogotá. Marching with our red flags and red PLP T-shirts, our contingent was led by a huge banner proclaiming, "DESAFIO, revolutionary communist newspaper."
Our "fight-for-communism" chant echoed throughout the day on the lips of many other marchers. We also chanted, "Fascism and terrorism sustain capitalism; Don’t vote — organize for revolution; No more sexism; Long live communism! End imperialist war with communist revolution!"
DESAFIO and a PLP communist leaflet were distributed during the march. Comments of people in our 100-strong contingent (our largest ever here) included:
"As a party, you are showing strength, interaction and an outstanding unity," said one friend. Another said, "During the march, when I heard a strong blast nearby, I thought people would run away, but your organizational strength and serenity calmed me almost completely." A close friend of PL told us, "We needed more belligerence in our chants, but I felt very good most of the time. If you had invited me earlier I would have brought my daughters. I will do that next year."
A young militant comrade, while proudly waving the red flag, told her friend, "The red flags gave us a lot of inspiration and attracted the eyes of hundreds of May Day marchers. Our fist and star mean the rebelliousness of revolutionary students, workers, peasants and soldiers on five continents united by our Party’s communist program."
May Day itself was held under fascist conditions here. The paramilitary death squads have killed 24 trade unionists so far this year, and several others are missing. This, plus the sellout and opportunist policies of the trade union leadership, led to a smaller participation by organized workers, but there were plenty of other marchers. Many, including the social-democratic electoral opposition "Democratic Alternative Pole," concentrated on demanding President Uribe’s resignation, as if fascist violence would end by eliminating one bosses’ goon.
When the march ended at Plaza Bolivar, fake leftists sang the national anthem so we responded singing The Internationale. Many workers sang with us and chanted, "Long Live Communism!"
As the day’s events were concluding, the cops viciously assaulted anyone hanging around (including senior citizens and children) with tear gas, beating up and arresting 115 people. Youth responded by attacking some banks and local businesses.
More and more youth are realizing that the system has nothing to offer them, and are becoming increasingly militant.
May Day was a day of struggle here, a day in which our communist politics shone brightly.
Comrades in Colombia
a name="‘Democratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants"></a>"Democratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants
The ruling APRA party here in Peru is a loyal imperialist lapdog serving the local bosses as well. Its ideology and practice are fascist, using social demagoguery resembling Hitler and Mussolini. Now it’s trying to impose a new law (DL 1015) to enable capitalists to take over peasant community-owned land very cheaply. This follows the Spanish colonialists’ robbery of communal land two centuries ago.
But today, the robbery is "democratic." The bosses use their laws and even allow some opposition from useless organizations like the People’s Advocate which is suing to oppose the law. But this is just a waste of time. It will be a lengthy trip through the Constitutional Court, which eventually will approve it.
Last year, President Alán García wrote articles in El Comercio (the bosses’ main paper here) saying he no longer thinks like his old leader, Raúl Haya de la Torre, the social-demagogue who founded APRA in the 1920s. Alán García now proclaims himself a "center-leftist" believer in the free market.
Haya de la Torre was also a loyal servant of the imperialists and local bosses while demagogically saying he represented blue collar workers and intellectuals. He did all this to present his party as a counterweight to the old international communist movement.
Haya de la Torre wrote his famous "Anti-imperialism and APRA," claiming to oppose imperialism while being anti-communist. He said APRA was an anti-imperialist front like Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in China (meaning a nationalist front which included workers, poor and rich peasants and the national bourgeoisie).
Julio Antonio Mella, the great young Cuban communist who helped found the Communist Parties of Cuba and Mexico, and became a leading ideologue in the international communist movement in Latin America, wrote an essay entitled, "What is APRA?" exposing de la Torre’s lies. While in the past, APRA hid its pro-capitalist ideology, today it’s an open loyal servant of U.S. imperialism and all those who daily exploit millions of workers in Peru and worldwide.
Protests are being organized against the legal robbery of the communal land. But this is just a reaction against this capitalist offensive, unfortunately lacking communist leadership. Several of us here are trying to change that situation.
Friends in Peru
P.S. We’ve been receiving DESAFIO regularly.
Construction Deaths Are Murders
The city "building boom" has netted tens of billions in profits for contractors, real estate moguls and bankers providing interest-bearing loans. Yet construction workers are dying like flies: 30 workers in the last year due to building collapses, faulty cranes, lack of inspection and generally hazardous conditions erecting scores of high-rises city-wide. Still the profiteers refuse to insure safe working conditions.
These are not "accidents." They’re murders.
In March, a crane collapse killed seven. In late May two more died in the crash of a crane that should have been removed from service after an earlier discovery of a faulty turntable repair. The contractor had been cited for 35 violations and paid a lousy $104,675 in fines. On June 2 still another worker died in a fall when no licensed rigger was on site.
Many construction workers are undocumented immigrants, hired because the bosses can pay them poverty-level wages, rushing them onto jobs with little or no training. Racism causes this murder for profit.
Brooklyn Reader
NYC Youth Maintain May Day Momentum
BROOKLYN, NY, May 24 — A multi-racial crowd of nearly one hundred teachers, students and their families gathered in a local park to share food, fun and politics as we try to build on the excitement of May Day in preparation for summer activities. This weekend barbeque is a tradition in our area, and was the largest in several years.
After the food ran out due to the bigger-than-expected attendance, speeches highlighted the key role of industrial workers in the revolutionary process. We called on guests to join this year’s Summer Projects in Seattle and Los Angeles. One college graduate explained his decision to work in the transportation industry. Two high school seniors, both valedictorians at their respective schools, described how the Party helped guide them along a path of struggle in school, rather than passivity.
Our multi-racial and inter-generational crowd once again made an impression, this time on several parents at the cookout. They’re now considering sending their teenagers to the West Coast this summer.
Young people who had led walkouts in their schools and marched on May Day together used their recently-honed organizing skills to bring friends and family to kick back and enjoy this day of food and sports.
PL’ers in the NY Urban Debate League are planning a city-wide forum on the Sean Bell case and on criminalization of youth in schools. This will help us stick to our plans of keeping our red ball rolling from May Day right into the summer and the next school year.
The winning of youth into our Party and its anti-racist activities demonstrates the important role young students and workers play in our movement. It also shows youth that instead of fighting and shooting each other (a rash of which has erupted in the city), we should be fighting for a society that eliminates the racist warmaking bosses who cause the social problems workers and youth suffer.
The U.S.-Death-Squad Empire Strikes Back
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, June 1 — The heart-attack death of Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo or Sureshot), founder and leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest and oldest Latin-American guerrilla group, follows several recent events favoring the U.S.-Colombian government’s war policies in the region. Early in March, Raúl Reyes, FARC’s second-in-command, was killed by an air-command raid while asleep in a camp inside Ecuador. Then Iván Ríos, another top FARC commander, was killed by his own security chief to collect a huge government reward. This was followed by the surrendering of Commander Karina, the top FARC woman leader. (Apparently, the Colombian secret police threatened her daughters’ lives, a common government tactic against guerrilla leaders).
The FARC has suffered major setbacks, losing many areas it once controlled, reducing its ranks to some 9,000 fighters.
All of this has induced the Uribe government, the Colombian generals and the White House to seek a military solution to eliminate the FARC altogether.
However, the FARC might be down but it’s not out. Recent reports show its urban base increasing. Yet the government now has the upper hand. Uribe and U.S. rulers are using this to intensify attacks against its two main enemies in the region: Venezuela’s Chavez and Ecuador’s Correa (both oil-producing OPEC members).
These two are partly to blame for this. After the Colombian military’s air-command raid that killed Raúl Reyes and others inside Ecuador (with open U.S. intelligence help), Uribe and the U.S. were on the defensive since this raid was to sabotage Chávez’s plan, supported by France, to exchange Ingrid Betancourt (a French citizen and former Presidential candidate in FARC custody) and others for FARC members held in government prisons. This exchange was making Chávez and FARC look good. But amid worldwide condemnation of the Colombian government for the raid, Chávez and Correa shook hands with Uribe at a Latin-American presidential meeting in the Dominican Republic. Uribe later responded to this favor by increasing attacks on FARC and linking it to Chávez and Correa.
The Uribe government was also discredited internally because of its connection to "parapolitics" (death squad-drug dealer groups). Sixty-four politicians (51 of them congressmen or 20% of Parliament) have been linked to parapolitics; 32 are already in jail. Most are linked to Uribe.
Semana, a newsweekly magazine, commented (5/4), "In the ’80s, Pablo Escobar and his gang reached Congress, but only 5% of all parliament members were linked to him. In the ’90s, when the Cali cartel decided to subtly bribe politicians under what was known as Process 8000, only 26 congressmen ended up in jail (10%). Today, the alliance between the mafia and paramilitaries has…seen 51 congressmen under investigation (19%)."
In mid-May, 14 jailed leaders of the AUC (death squads) were suddenly sent to the U.S. for drug trials. This had a dual purpose: firstly, to clean the image of President Uribe and force the Democrats in the U.S. Congress to pass a free-trade deal with Colombia. Secondly, the death-squad leaders will only be tried for drug-dealing, not for the thousands they’ve killed (mostly innocents) in the last few years. Thus, the links of Uribe and U.S. companies (Chiquita Brands, Del Monte, Coca-Cola, Drummond Mining) to these killings won’t be exposed.
Most of the thousands murdered in Colombia in past decades are victims of the Army and its allies in the paramilitaries (trained and financed by Plan Colombia, signed by Clinton with Colombia in the 1990s). Although the FARC is labeled "Marxist," it’s far from that. Its main goal has been to negotiate a deal with some section of Colombia’s ruling class (and possibly with some imperialist rivals of the U.S.) to preserve capitalist exploitation. Colombia’s working class and its allies don’t need more capitalism. They need to fight for a communist society without any bosses. That was the idea advanced by the small but growing PLP group here on May Day.
RED EYE
Insider praises China’s Red era
To the Editor:
I am writing to counter the one-sided and distorted picture of the Chinese revolution, particularly the Cultural Revolution... in your May 4 issue. I grew up and worked on a collective farm during the Cultural Revolution. I have been doing research in China for the last 20 years.
Today more and more Chinese working-class people look back at the Cultural Revolution years with fond memories. Despite some shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution, China was a socialist society that was overcoming inequality with full employment, free medical care and free education for its citizens. It was a country that had largely eradicated deeply rooted problems of homelessness, prostitution, bandits and drug abuse.
Since China abandoned socialism, it has been faced with the spread of drug abuse and prostitution, worsening environmental degradation, official corruption and other crimes. It is time that we recognize the positive lessons of Chinese revolution, particularly the Cultural Revolution.
Donping Han, Swannanoa, N.C.
The writer teaches history and political science at Warren Wilson College (NYT, 5/25)
Socialism’s fall = quake deaths
Earthquakes don’t destroy strong, well-built buildings; they destroy weak ones. In China, public anger is mounting. A third of the confirmed dead were children trapped in the 6,900 classrooms...
This is not just corner-cutting in the quest for fast growth. It is the consequence of systematic non-enforcement of regulations in return for bribes, and everyone in China knows it.
...Officials have unchecked power and no compunction, given the loss of the belief they are building a communist utopia, in helping themselves to cash on an even grander scale. (GW, 5/23)
Black capitalism no improvement
The scale and suddenness of attacks on thousands of African foreigners has surprised authorities. It should not have. Xenophobic attacks on Zimbabweans, Malawians, Mozambicans and Somalis have raised awkward questions about the depth of reconciliation in the "rainbow" nation. When six white police officers were caught on film setting dogs on three black men, little attention was paid to the defenceless victims, three Mozambicans. That was nearly eight years ago, and research by the South African Migration Project has shown high levels of intolerance to South Africa’s 5 million immigrants since then. The influx of 3 million refugees from Zimbabwe appears to have brought xenophobia that was latent to the surface.
The speed with which the fire has spread through the squatter camps shows how dry the tinder was.
...The real problem: Africa’s richest and fastest-growing nation is also its most unequal. The violence has shown, once again, how little the fading presidency of Thabo Mbeki has delivered to the unemployed, unskilled and dispossessed. (GW, 5/30)
Boss poisons you? Not a crime!
Mr. Elias wanted his workers to clean out a 25,000-gallon tank that contained cyanide waste... When the workers complained of sore throats and difficulty breathing, Mr. Elias told them to finish the job or find work somewhere else.
Mr. Dominguez, a 20-year-old high school graduate, wanted to keep his job... Two hours later, covered in sludge and barely breathing, he was removed from the tank, a victim of cyanide poisoning at the hands of a ruthless employer...
He now has the rigid body movement and stammering speech found in patients with Parkinson’s disease.
My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer who breaks the nation’s worker-safety laws can be charged with a crime only if a worker dies. Even then, the crime is a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in prison. (About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.) Less than two per year have been prosecuted. (NYT, 5/27)
Is There An Obesity Pandemic?
This is Part 1 of a five-part series. Part 2 will discuss whether these statistics about the "obesity epidemic" are believable — a specific example of how we decide what’s true and what’s not. Part 3 talks about the health consequences of overweight and obesity. Part 4: the causes of the obesity problem. Part 5: what can be done about the obesity problem — and how this relates to politics.
You can hardly pick up a magazine or newspaper these days and not read something about being fat and losing weight. Headlines trumpet that we’re in the midst of an obesity "epidemic" — not only in the rich countries but even in poorer countries around the world. But is this epidemic real?
Then there’s the debate about the health effects of being "overweight" — not really fat (that is, "obese"), but just a few pounds above what’s considered normal. Some scientists argue that being even a little overweight increases the risk of dying early or getting heart disease, diabetes, or cancer. Other researchers claim that being a little heavy isn’t bad for you and, in fact, may even be good for you if you’re middle-aged or older.
Finally, there’s tremendous controversy about the causes of obesity as well as the best way to lose weight and keep the pounds off. Do you have to eat less or just change what you eat? What about low fat and low carbs. Soda and fruit juice? Where does exercise fit in?
All of which brings up a basic question for all of us: when it comes to important — and maybe even controversial — questions, how do we know what’s really true? That’s a question that matters not only for health, but for everything we do in our personal lives, our work, and our political activities.
Let’s look at some facts — in this case, statistics collected by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (You can get information on this issue from the website www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity).
a name="How Do You Define ‘Fat’?"></">Ho" Do You Define ‘Fat’?
"Overweight" and "obese" are both terms for ranges of weight that are greater than what is generally considered healthy for a given height. For adults, overweight and obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the "body mass index" (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it goes along with their amount of body fat. BMI is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by height in meters squared:
BMI = weight (kg)/height (m2)
To figure out BMI using pounds and inches, multiply weight in pounds by 700, divide the result by height in inches, and then divide that result by height in inches a second time. You can find a BMI calculator at www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi).
BMI is used to classify people as "overweight" or "obese" as follows:
* An adult with a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.
* An adult with a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.
How Fat Are People in the United States?
What do the statistics based on BMI show? In the U.S., the amount of overweight and obesity in the population has increased sharply since the 1970’s for both adults and children. Two national surveys (NHANES — the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys) show that among adults aged 20-74 years, the amount of obesity increased from 15.0% (in the 1976-1980 survey) to 33% (in the 2003-2004 survey). These two surveys also show increases in overweight among children and teens. For children aged 2-5 years, the amount of overweight increased 5% to 14%; for those aged 6-11 years, from 6.5% to 19%; and for those aged 12-19 years, from 5% to 17%. See included graphs for another view of the trends in overweight and obesity in the U.S.
How Fat Are People Around the World?
This is indeed a world-wide problem, reflecting capitalist development trends in many countries (more high-calorie food available and more sedentary lifestyles as people move from agricultural work to office and factory jobs). (Data here from World Cancer Research Fund: Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Cancer, 2007.) Most recent estimates suggest that in 2002 there were 1 billion overweight or obese people worldwide. In China, where capitalism has returned with a vengeance, the amount of underweight adults has decreased and the numbers of people who are either overweight or obese has risen substantially. In 2002 there were 184 million overweight and 31 million obese people in China, out of a population of 1.3 billion.
The World Health Organization has found that over a 10-year period in the 1980s and ‘90s, the average BMI increased in most populations. Historically, starvation, underweight, and infection were the main nutrition-related public health problems in middle- and low-income countries. This is no longer the case. Surveys have shown that overweight exceeds underweight in most model- and low-income countries, including those in North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and Latin America. The rise of overweight and obesity since the mid-1970s has been two to four times faster in lower-income than higher-income countries. In some poorer countries, scientists now speak of a "dual burden": obesity alongside starvation.J
NY Civil War Draft Riots Were Racist Attacks on Black People
Although the review of "A People’s History of the Civil War," it erred in suggesting that the draft riots in New York City (and women’s role in them) constituted an "inspiring story." In fact, the New York draft riots were vicious racist attacks on black people, comparable to the 1919 race riots in which white mobs murderously attacked black communities in many cities after World War I.
In June 1863, the pro-slavery Democratic Party in New York whipped up racist sentiment among Irish and German immigrant workers, declaring that the Civil War was a "n_____ war" and that the Emancipation Proclamation issued in January of that year would lead to a flood of freed blacks moving to New York, driving down wages of white workers and depriving them of jobs altogether.
During the five days of the draft riot in New York City, white mobs lynched eleven (11) black men and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets to the ground, terrifying the newly-homeless 233 black children who had been living there. Thousands of black people fled the city, never to return. For more on this, see Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. A relevant excerpt can be read at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.htm.
We must never forget the severity of U.S. racism, both historically and today. It’s central to every aspect of U.S. capitalist history, and remains today the most significant tool that helps the capitalists stay in power.
Anti-racist Red
- Angry Axle Strikers Slam Pro-Boss Union Sellouts
- MURDER BY UNEMPLOYMENT
- Latinos Among Hardest Hit
- From Burma to China to Katrina: Capitalism, Imperialism Are Unnatural Disasters
- Campus Sit-in Growing into Mass Fight Against Cuts, War
- Rally Raps Budget Cuts, Immigration Raids, Iraq War
- Red Chants Resound in Downtown Bogotá on May Day
- Hospital Workers Blast Racist KKKop Killers of Sean Bell
- Brooklyn Walkout Correction
- Racist Anti-Immigrant Gangs Betray Anti-Apartheid Fight
- Texas May Day Shows Workers Need Unity, Not Borders
- Protest Fascist Minutemen at DePaul U
- More May Day Reports from Around the World
- PAKISTAN
- Coal Barons, Gov't Guilty of Murdering Miners
- FRANCE: Teachers' Strike in 130 Cities Against Gov't Cuts
- Anti-War Solidarity Actions Sweep CUNY Campuses
- LETTERS
- FASCIST PARTY OUT IN PARAGUAY, BUT CAPITALISM REMAINS WITH A LIBERAL FACE
- REDEYE
- Civil War's Hidden History: Women Workers Battled Gov't, Bosses
- U.S. OIl War Sends Vets Back Jobless, Homeless, Suicidal and Dead
- U.S. WAR CASUALTIES: 655,000 AND RISING
Angry Axle Strikers Slam Pro-Boss Union Sellouts
DETROIT, May 18 -- "Good morning brothers and sisters. First, let me say..." "No! First let ME say, this is BULLSHIT!" is the way a woman worker interrupted a UAW International rep at a standing-room-only meeting of American Axle (AAM) strikers. Over 1,000 black, Latin and white strikers packed the King H.S. auditorium to hear the UAW explain the tentative settlement to the 12-week-old strike, and to give them a piece of their mind.
"Bullshit," "Liar," "Sellout," and "Who do you work for, them or us?" peppered the two-hour meeting as UAW leaders read a 19-page summary of a four-year contract that will slash wages and benefits for current workers, eliminate 1,000 jobs and close two forges. Many of these workers are the higher earners in extended families that have been devastated by racist cutbacks and plant closings. They have fought not just for their own immediate families, but for the many others who depend on their wages.
A few workers tore up the summary and tossed it over the balcony. Workers cheered as the contract fell like confetti. One worker repeatedly warned those around him, "You better vote this down. I'm going to make more [when I'm] retired than you will working every day." A woman shouted, "Bullshit, bullshit," at UAW President Gettlefinger. When he demanded respect, another worker told her, "Go ahead. He ain't nobody!" When the UAW International VP handling American Axle rose to speak, a striker yelled, "Sit your fat ass down before I bust out the windows on your Cadillac!" He and those around him weren't playing.
Production workers' wages will be cut from about $24/hr to $18/hr. Some reclassified jobs will drop to $10/hr! Fork-lift and tug drivers drop to $12/hr. Health insurance payments will rocket to over $100-a-month with deductibles as high as $2,500 for family coverage, with less coverage overall. Pensions will be frozen, replaced by a 401(k). New hires will start at $11.50/hr, with a minimum of three years to reach "top pay" of $14.04.
For those retiring after January 1, 2009, healthcare benefits will be capped at $10,000 annually if one is pre-Medicare and $7,500 annually if receiving Medicare. For family coverage, retirees will have more than $100-a-month deducted from their pension checks and face annual deductibles as high as $1,500.
GM, the big winner in this struggle, is underwriting more than $220 million for AAM in buyouts and other expenses. The major auto bosses have been outsourcing production for decades to drive down labor and production costs. This process was greatly accelerated when Japanese and German automakers began expanding production here and grabbing big chunks of the U.S. auto market. It has accelerated even more with the shifting of auto production to China and India, driving down wages still further. This international imperialist rivalry among the bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor is bringing fascism and war to the world's workers.
The bosses are offering workers the "choice" of a $140,000 "buyout," to leave the company for good, or a $90,000 "buy-down" over four years, to accept the wage-cut. They will also get a $5,000 "signing bonus" ratification bribe.
Despite the overwhelming anger and disgust with the union leadership (or maybe because of it), the contract has a good chance of passing. Firstly, workers know that the UAW leadership won't bring back anything better. Even if they reject it, the workers are not organized to challenge the leadership for control of the strike. Without a company-wide organized opposition in the union, ready to break the laws, stop scabs, spread the strike here and in Mexico, and reach out to the rest of the working class, workers would be hard-pressed to take on AAM, GM and the UAW.
For that new leadership to emerge, workers must develop a revolutionary consciousness that rejects the choices of buyouts or buy-downs; an anti-racist international outlook that unites workers across all borders and rejects sacrificing for the bosses' profits.
During the strike, PLP renewed old friendships and made new ones. We visited workers in their homes, walked the picket lines and distributed CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets. A small number of Axle strikers attended May Day in Detroit and Chicago. Out of this bitter defeat for the workers, revolutionary communist leadership can take root. Communist ideas are the science of revolution, and class is in session
MURDER BY UNEMPLOYMENT
Capitalism kills in many ways -- imperialist wars, racist cops, inadequate healthcare. But there is a killer it generates which is somewhat hidden but nevertheless sends hundreds of thousands of workers to an early grave (millions over centuries) -- joblessness.
Unemployment is a fact of life under the profit system. In its 400-year existence, there NEVER has been a time when the working class has been fully employed. There is always a "business cycle," boom and bust, recession after recession, and periodic depressions. Capitalists by their very nature must seek maximum profits to stay ahead of their competitors. One primary tool is cutting costs. And one of the main "cost-cutters" is laying off workers, both during "downturns" and "prosperity."
Neither Obama nor Clinton nor McCain can reverse this fact of capitalism. Rather, these multi-millionaires' role is to defend and enforce that system, ensuring that the bosses firmly control the government in order to pursue maximum profits, whether at home or abroad. Unemployment cannot be "reformed" away. The bosses depend on it, for use as a club over the head of those still employed, threatening to "close the plant" and move to lower-wage areas, or simply lay them off and hire "replacements" (scabs) if they don't accede to the bosses' demands.
A 1976 Congressional study attempted to "estimate the cost in human suffering of people being out of work." (NY Times, 10/31/76) From 40 years of statistics (1933 to 1973), that study concluded that every 1.4% rise in unemployment in 1970 led directly to the death of 30,000 workers over the following five years: strokes, heart and kidney ailments, 26,440; suicides, 1,540; homicides, 1,740; cirrhosis of the liver, 870. And that's from every 1.4% rise. The true rate of unemployment now is at least 13% or more, which could mean that the 1.4%/30,000-death figure would climb nearly ten-fold, to nearly 300,000, over a five-year period!
Moreover, the study found that infant mortality rates show dramatic increases within one to two years of a recession. Johns Hopkins University professor Harvey Brenner testified that, "The national rate of suicide...can be viewed as...an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths.
So while economists and pundits debate whether the U.S. is or isn't in a recession, tens of thousands of workers are dying from the disease of joblessness. This is doubly
true for black and Latino workers who, because of racism, suffer twice the unemployment rate of white workers.
So when GM, Ford and Chrysler lay off hundreds of thousands of auto workers, leading to thousands of deaths from the above causes, no murder indictments are brought against those bosses. "That's just capitalism."
Mass unemployment, and especially its racist component, is thus one of the biggest killers capitalism has created. One more reason to destroy it with communist revolution and erect a system without bosses and profits, in which everyone works to the best of their ability and commitment, a society that eliminates the word and concept of "unemployment."
Latinos Among Hardest Hit
Nazi-type raids by ICE (Immigration police) blame immigrant workers for capitalism's current crisis and terrorizes them to accept second-class wages and working conditions to pay for the bosses' crisis and endless profit wars. This two-pronged attack is aimed at ALL workers, since the entire working class is suffering rising unemployment (see adjoining article), the housing crisis and gasoline and food price-hikes.
Latino workers are among the hardest hit by capitalism's economic crisis, both in jobs and earnings, "imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics....and...has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes." (NY Times, 5/13, and all following quotes) Racism forced Latinos into the hardest and lowest-paying jobs, being among the first to be dumped by the profit system.
"The boom in American housing generated...jobs for those....doing much of the unpleasant work shunned by those with better prospects. But now significant portions of this work are disappearing." Latinos "are concentrated in an industry [construction] that is leading the downturn," slashing already meager earnings and leading to home foreclosures.
From April 2007 to this past April, "The unemployment rate among Hispanics spiked...to 6.9 percent," while "the overall jobless rate rose...to 5 percent." Of course, as the accompanying editorial reveals, these fraudulent rates are at least half the true rate. Latino joblessness probably exceeds 14%.
"For...nearly 19 million Latino immigrants...the downturn has cut significantly into earnings, dropping the share of those sending money home to families in Latin America from nearly three-fourths...to about half." So "one in 12 of the mortgages made to Latino households in 2005 and 2006 is likely to fail. Why? Because, "By 2006, 47 percent of the loans issued... [to] Hispanics were subprime, nearly the double the rate for non-Hispanic whites....Only African-Americans leaned harder on subprimes."
Such is life in these racist, profit-driven United States.
From Burma to China to Katrina: Capitalism, Imperialism Are Unnatural Disasters
The hypocrisy of U.S. rulers knows no bounds. To capitalize on the sympathies of workers everywhere concerned about the millions affected by Cyclone Nargis in Burma (also called Myanmar), the bosses are playing their "humanitarian" card in order to fend off Chinese imperialists' influence in that country in their fight over energy resources. The Clinton administration played that same card under cover of stopping "ethnic cleansing" in Yugoslavia to secure oil and gas pipelines from central Asia. That "humanitarian" effort ended with the establishment of a massive U.S. base in Kosovo encompassing 7,000 military personnel. Now it is attempting the same ploy in Burma.
Yet somehow U.S. bosses' "humanitarianism" never extended to the victims of Hurricane Katrina right here in their backyard. In covering the Burma disaster (as well as China's quake), the media downplay obvious parallels to Katrina. The same capitalist forces, unwilling to sacrifice almighty profit for public safety and with utter disregard for workers' lives, were at work in New Orleans. And there, racism, U.S rulers' favorite weapon, multiplied the death and destruction still further.
Burmese Workers' Lives
Worthless to Bosses with
Energy Profits at Stake
In Burma, of western energy companies, only Chevron and France's Total have big operations. They help run the Yadanas gas project, the Burmese ruling-class junta's largest source of income, with yearly sales topping $2 billion. When the storm struck, Chevron and Total each donated $2 million to the Red Cross, one of the very few outside groups working with the Burmese government. Such "aid" helps to ensure their continuing participation in the Yadanas deal. Chevron has a 28% share in it; Total has 31%.
Besides the 128,000 killed by the cyclone, over two million survivors risk starvation and deadly diseases like cholera and malaria. Citing "sovereignty," Burma's military dictatorship, allied with China, is blocking relief workers and supplies from other countries. By barring foreigners, even during a disaster, the ruling generals seek to limit outsiders (other than Chinese) from cashing in on the country's vast natural gas fields.
U.S. Imperialists Hope High Burma Death Toll will Justify Military Strike
While Chevron's bosses may be content with their Burma racket, the broader class of major U.S capitalists wants dominance, not junior partnership with two-bit Burmese dictators or French oil barons. U.S. rulers (along with their British allies) and their strategists seek to exploit Burma's gas and oil fields directly and drive out the growing presence of rival Chinese firms Sinopec and PetroChina. They cynically hope that the carnage in Burma will justify military intervention and lead to eventual regime change.
Britain's influential Economist magazine (5/15/08) coldly calculated that "if, say, a third of the 2m[illion] now struggling to survive in Myanmar were to die in the coming week from hunger and disease because their government refused outside" help a "crime against humanity" would result, grounds for U.S. Navy helicopters to breach Burma's borders and drop relief supplies. Warning that "the aircraft doing the dropping might be fired on unless they had military escorts, and that might lead to more fighting than anyone should want to see in a disaster zone," the Economist concludes, "the attempt is worth making."
The Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the leading U.S. imperialist think-tank agrees: "Sovereignty provides no license for inexcusable behavior. The time has come to act." (CFR website, 3/15/08) Of course, the savage 2_-year non-response to the plight of hundreds of thousands of mostly black residents of New Orleans is somehow "excusable."
U.S rulers' response to the Burma crisis reveals a trend towards cloaking armed intervention in liberal, humanitarian garb. Faced with drastic ground-force shortfalls and future conflicts bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan, they need to enlist more troops and broader public support for their war machine. Harvard professor Samantha Powers, Barack Obama's chief foreign policy advisor ("officially" fired for leaking his plan for permanently occupying Iraq, but still working behind the scenes) plots U.S. military "humanitarian" deployments in places like Darfur and Burma.
Ruling-class-led groups such as billionaire George Soro's Human Rights Watch, which backed Bill Clinton's bombing of Serbia and decries Burma's dictatorship, help win well-meaning people to the U.S. war agenda. The liberal interventionist invokes a noble-sounding U.N. principle, "the responsibility to protect." But invasions, in fact, kill workers to protect capitalists' bottom lines.
A Sad Reversal of Red
`Serve-the-People' Politics
Unlike Burma's isolationists, Chinese leaders have been very open about the recent earthquakes in Sichuan province. For now, until they build up capital and armed forces sufficient to challenge the U.S. head-on, China's bosses welcome foreign investment and thus media attention. To attract dollars and euros, they have created history's largest low-wage paradise. While reporters gush over how helpful Chinese authorities have been, profit reigns supreme and workers' needs go neglected.
Cheap construction that saved the bosses a few bucks murdered thousands of children. The NY Times reported (5/15/08), "Six schoolhouses collapsed in the city [of Juyan], even as other government buildings remain standing." A half-century ago China's leaders, striving to put communist theory into practice, made the well-being of the people the highest priority. In the 1950's Red China mobilized virtually its entire population in digging up the snails that spread the debilitating schistosomiasis epidemic. And they won millions of workers and peasants to participate in a massive construction project, mostly working by hand, which diverted the Yangtze River from centuries-old flooding.
Storms, floods and earthquakes are part of nature. But, capitalism, which, time and again fails to do what readily can be done to protect workers from these disasters while using them to justify imperialist war, must be destroyed. Building the international PLP is the one sure road to eliminating the unnatural disaster of the profit system.
Campus Sit-in Growing into Mass Fight Against Cuts, War
LOS ANGELES, CA May 8th -- May While the ruling class is trying to slam the working class with huge racist cuts in education, healthcare, and social services, the students at our university have been part of a mass fight-back against these attacks. A few weeks ago, a group of over 120 students walked out of their classes and occupied the University President's office for five hours. Students discussed the nature of the budget cuts and linked these attacks to a system that has nothing good to offer the working class. This may seem like a spontaneous action, but the anger among students has certainly been building up for a while. The Party has leafleted against the cuts, the war and the capitalist system, calling for action and the long-term struggle for revolution, and sold CHALLENGE on the campus.
Clearly, the attacks on the working class are intensifying class anger; students here have not only been angry about budget cuts but also about its links to the war in Iraq, the building of prisons as well as the massive healthcare cutbacks affecting their families, "We aren't having a real conversation about the budget cuts if we're not linking it to the war," said one student. "Politicians don't understand our suffering like we do," said another making it clear that this isn't going to be a movement for students looking to build careers as politicians, much less pander to elected officials' lies.
Over the course of a few weeks, what started out as a sit-in organized by students from a few social science classes has slowly been turning into a mass movement involving students, professors, and staff from different organizations and different departments across campus. In the course of the struggle, the administration of the university has exposed its true nature and its undeniable allegiance to the capitalist class. They have been trying to pacify us by telling us that we are "preaching to the choir" and that it's a matter of pressuring elected representatives. Meanwhile, the administration has been targeting students involved in the struggle, threatening to suspend them from school. The students' response has been to denounce this move, saying that an attack against one student is an attack on everyone involved, whether student, professor or staff.
The energetic and committed involvement of many people on our campus shows the potential for building a movement that targets the core of these attacks: the capitalist system. The Party has been active in this struggle; although we have been a bit timid about openly raising the need for communism we have been raising this with our friends and making strides to correct our timidity. Many involved in this struggle came to the May Day march and were impressed with all the red flags.
Our next goals are to increase hand-to-hand as well as mass distribution of CHALLENGE, coupled with study groups to guide our practice on campus. One of the next steps is to get the students on our campus to form alliances with the rest of the working class, who must turn these difficult times into opportunities to build for a revolution that will get rid of a system reliant on war, budget cuts, and the exploitation of all workers.
Rally Raps Budget Cuts, Immigration Raids, Iraq War
LOS ANGELES, MAY 19 - Around 250 students came to a rally against budget cuts despite the intense heat. Some speakers wanted to pressure the administration with demands, others discussed fascist attacks and ICE terror raids. Yet another speaker connected the budget cuts to the war budget, saying that the war in Iraq is against the interests of students and workers everywhere and that we should all unite against the racist cuts.
Many students are disillusioned with electoral politics and understand that wider connections must be made, not only to the prison budget, but also to the war budget. Many students chanted "No Cuts, No More, The Cuts are for the war," reflecting this sentiment. We distributed about 150 CHALLENGES and 400 PL leaflets to students. This struggle will continue.
Red Chants Resound in Downtown Bogotá on May Day
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- As reported in CHALLENGE (5/21), PLP was modestly successful in mobilizing for the union-led May Day march here of 75,000 workers and youth. Our 100-strong PLP-led group, mainly comprising young workers and students, distributed thousands of communist leaflets and hundreds of DESAFIOS. Our chants were heard throughout downtown Bogotá, promoting pro-communist internationalism and attacking capitalism, imperialism and the paramilitary death-squad fascist Uribe government here (U.S. imperialism's most loyal ally in the region). Over 20 people joined our contingent during the march.
Contrary to the unions and fake-leftists, rather than merely "celebrating" the holiday, PLP advances May Day as a day of fighting back for the international interests of the working class, not to beg crumbs from the ruling class. We don't ask the "international community" (read, the UN, human rights groups, etc.) to end the murder of workers and youth, the oppression of our class or the vicious war waged by the paramilitary death squads led by the government and its army. They have killed over 2,400 union activists in the last 20 years, some of them paid by imperialist corporations like Coca-Cola, Chiquita Brands, Dole, Del Monte and Drummond Mining.
Workers and youth are mad as hell. During the march, they attacked the internal war and the war in Iraq, the Free Trade Agreement Uribe and Bush aim to sign to exploit the working class even more. But what's lacking is a revolutionary alternative to this capitalist-imperialist hell. The trade union hacks, fake leftists and guerrillas don't offer that alternative.
We in PLP have a long way to go to provide that alternative, but we're on the right road. As Lenin said in 1905 in Russia, the cataclysm of war doesn't create revolution out of nothing. Revolutionary communists here and internationally, as well as the working class, have a lot of obstacles to overcome, but we won't get anywhere following the old recycled line of workers' management of capitalism, "people's democracy" or "national liberation." The only road for real liberation for workers and their allies is communist revolution. Join PLP and make that long road shorter!
Hospital Workers Blast Racist KKKop Killers of Sean Bell
BROOKLYN, NY, April 25 -- Hospital workers protested this morning's not guilty verdict for three plainclothes cops who fired 50 bullets into an unarmed black man, Sean Bell, leaving his bachelor party. One comrade circulated an e-mail to friends to protest outside the hospital at noon. Word of mouth spread the message.
Within an hour a dozen stood to protest. They held hand-made signs with strong messages: "Killer Cops' Innocence Means the System is Racist"; and, "Sean Bell's Murder Here, Imperialist War There, the Same Racism."
The group comprised white, black and Latino, young and old. A bystander on the street stood with us. When the hospital's Chief of Police came out to intimidate us, we stood firm. Workers unable to leave at noon sent us solidarity messages.
This action was built from a larger one called earlier in the year to support the Jena, Louisiana students, victimized by racism.
Today was the first day of demonstrating for some. Such protests must spread to every job site. Mass mobilizations of workers at the point of production and then taken to the streets have the power to spark anti-racist rebellions which, with red leadership, can build communist class consciousness and help lead to a revolution that will banish racist murders and the cops along with them.
Brooklyn Walkout Correction
(Due to our error, the following paragraphs from the page-3 article in the May 21st CHALLENGE on Brooklyn H.S. walkouts protesting the racist education budget cuts and the acquittal of the kkkops who assassinated Sean Bell were either omitted or appeared incorrectly).
One student overheard a dean calling students "idiots and stupid" for planning a walkout, and ordered "safety agents"/cops to lock them in. But student pressure forced the agents to unlock the doors.
FASCISM 101
At another school, an announcement heard repeatedly on May 1 morning warned that, "Any student who walks out of the school will be suspended for a Level III infraction." Some students were told they would get three-month suspensions while others were threatened with ouster from special programs. Teachers were ordered to report any students who walked out. Hundreds still tried to walk out, but security guards were assigned to block all exits and cops were called.
Despite all this, some students did walk. Rather than being discouraged, some students want to continue organizing. Some teachers refused to "name names." One teacher submitted a list that included famous revolutionaries and leaders of slave revolts. Another just wrote, "I refuse" on his sheet. Teachers and students plant to intensify activities with regular agitation and meetings around the Sean Bell murder and the cutbacks.
Racist Anti-Immigrant Gangs Betray Anti-Apartheid Fight
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, May 19 -- "Shock" is the expression being used after the eruption of violence on a scale not seen since the end of apartheid. "Anger at substantial immigrant populations -- fellow blacks mainly from Zimbabwe and Mozambique -- has seen at least 22 people killed in the past week since the first incidents in the northern Johannesburg township of Alexandra. The killing has now spread through the country like wild-fire..." (London Times online, 5/19)
The violent anti-immigrant pogrom has been fueled by the same lies directed against immigrants in Europe and the U.S. -- they "steal jobs, cause crime," etc. Racist gangs have employed the weapons used against traitors during the anti-Apartheid era, like "neck-lacing" (burning tires around victims' necks).
This racist violence is not "shocking" if we understand the real cause. Racism and inequality are universal aspects of capitalism, from Paris to London to New York to Johannesburg.
Since the African National Congress (ANC) took power following the dismantlement of the old apartheid regime, the lives of some black politicians and petit-bourgeois elements have improved, but life is harder for the majority of black workers. Last year, mass workers' strikes reflected this situation. "People are having to find scapegoats, this is about competition for diminishing resources.... President Mbeki has tried to de-racialise the economy but only a very small number at the top have really benefited," said Sipho Seephe, President of the South Africa Institute of Race Relations. (London Times) "Some 40 percent of the population -- 80 percent of which is black -- is little better off than at the end of apartheid in 1994."
Another important lesson is that there is no half-way solution to the evils of a worldwide capitalist system involved in endless wars, continuing economic crises and the need to divide and super-exploit more and more workers to reap super-profits. Once the imperialists and capitalists realized the old apartheid regime couldn't control South Africa's angry workers and youth, the ANC came to power. Nelson Mandela, Mbeki and Jacob Zuma (the next President) -- supported by the "Communist" Party of South Africa (with a substantial base among its most militant workers and youth because of the "C"P's role in fighting apartheid) -- became capitalism's managers. They provided some cosmetic changes but without changing the essence of racist exploitation.
Zwelinzima Vavi , leader of the COSATU union federation, spoke at a protest organized by the ANC-CP-led federation outside parliament. He said it's not the Zimbawean exiles causing the problems for poor South Africans, even blaming capitalism. But only 100 people protested, showing the lack of credibility of COSATU, which since 1994 has supported the ANC governments and its free-market capitalist policies, and now backs the new ANC President Zuma.
The racist gangs are murdering immigrant workers in the same townships where heroic battles against apartheid were waged in the past, a direct product of these sellouts' pro-capitalist policies. Now the struggle to build a society without racism and capitalism is now more difficult than ever. But it's the only struggle which will eventually extricate workers here and worldwide, out of this capitalist-created hell.
Texas May Day Shows Workers Need Unity, Not Borders
TEXAS -- May Day was a modest success for our group in this state. Our May Day dinner was organized by young teachers, workers and students with a program of speeches and music, good food and lively discussion that focused heavily on the role of education under capitalism. Later, many of us attended our city's Immigrants Rights march, where we had an opportunity to show how communist ideas and action make possible a true education in working-class politics.
At the rally we distributed over 300 flyers exposing the liberal rulers' tactics of using promises of citizenship to recruit immigrants as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism. Our leaflet became the leading source of information for all participants and onlookers at this reformist march for immigrant rights. More importantly, as we marched with our friends, we discussed the need to smash capitalism's borders worldwide and struggle for communist revolution.
I was joined at the march by one of my students and her sister. We talked about the capitalist purpose of borders and the need for workers to unite across them. The heavy police presence also sparked discussion of police brutality and why cops were enemies of the working class; they ultimately act in the interests of the bosses, killing thousands of workers worldwide in order to instill fear and hopelessness in working people.
Afterwards we went to dinner where we sharpened our understanding of the history of the U.S./Mexico border. During dinner someone mentioned the ruling-class propaganda that, without borders, millions of Mexicans would flood "our" streets and steal "our" jobs. I explained how the existing border had been created out of the southern U.S. slaveholders' effort to push slavery further west during an historical period when Mexico had outlawed slavery. We finally concluded that what was labeled independence by the ruling class was also the enslavement of the Mexican and black workers in the South.
During the march we had received a flyer announcing a protest at a prison in another city that jails immigrant families and many U.S.-born children. My student wanted to join the protest and is currently organizing others within the school to join us. These students are writing a leaflet calling for the need to unite workers and smash the bosses' borders. It will be really exciting to travel alongside my students in support of immigrant rights and ultimately communist revolution!
Protest Fascist Minutemen at DePaul U
CHICAGO, May 19 -- PLP brought several dozen workers and students to the rally against the racist Minutemen founder Chris Simcox at DePaul University here. Simcox was invited by the right-wing DePaul Conservative Alliance. Liberal pro-immigrant students organized students to protest his appearance. But only PLP tied the Minutemen's racist ant-immigrant attacks to the bigger picture of U.S. capitalism in crisis.
The rally's high point came when a new younger friend of the Party led the crowd to denounce a sign-carrying racist who stood near us, leading the cops to whisk him away to save his skin.
Our contingent distributed almost 200 CHALLENGES and 500 leaflets, as well as making six contacts.
CORRECTION
The May 7 issue on the California Teachers Convention (page 5) said, "Delegates were urged to get 1% of their local membership to walk precincts for the November 2008 elections." Due to a typographical error, the next sentence said, "We should aim to win 100% to become CHALLENGE readers!" The original article said, "1% to become CHALLENGE readers!"
More May Day Reports from Around the World
OAXACA, MéXICO
A PLP group participated in the annual May Day march held in downtown Oaxaca. Thousands marched, particularly teachers and farmworkers, showing their disgust with the government and the capitalist system it represents.
Our group distributed 600 flyers with our communist analysis of capitalist exploitation, and we put up 100 posters walls around the march reading "A system that creates inequality, wars, racism and exploitation must be destroyed." We also distributed 50 copies of DESAFIO.
Our participation was modest, but we are already making plans to increase our efforts in future activities, including May Day 2009. The working class and its allies here, and worldwide, need a revolutionary alternative to a system which only breeds hunger, wars among drug cartels and a dim future for humanity.
PAKISTAN
Greetings from revolutionary communists in Pakistan. Our PLP group had a great May Day here, with comrades involved in many activities. Our communist ideas were well-received. We made new friends as more and more workers and their allies are becoming disillusioned with the fakers on the "left" who offer no solutions to a capitalist-imperialist system breeding endless wars for profits under the cover of religion, "democracy," etc.
Coal Barons, Gov't Guilty of Murdering Miners
When six miners died in the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah last August 6, it was no "accident" -- it was deliberate murder for profit. Ten days later three more workers died from a tunnel collapse while trying to rescue those six. All nine deaths were completely avoidable.
The mine owner, Robert Murray, claimed it was due to an "earthquake." This lie was exposed in a recent Congressional report, but don't hold your breath expecting anything will be done by the bosses' politicians to prevent future murders.
Murray's operation practices "retreat mining." This method involves removing the massive coal pillars that support the mine's roof. As miners move backwards towards the entrance, this allows sections of the mine to collapse, "the technique of doubling back to carve final profits from the coal pillars that brace the mine." (NY Times, 5/9) With coal prices soaring, the mine owners find it extremely profitable to extract every last bit of coal, over the dead bodies of the miners who dig out the coal.
In March 2007, a similar collapse occurred in the same mine, but the pillars and mine roof didn't fall on any miners. However, the Crandall bosses played down that incident, which should have led to the banning of retreat mining.
In fact, before the August disaster, miners -- including one of the six who died -- reported that sections of the mine floor had been buckling up from the intense pressure placed upon it. They said the mine bosses knew about the problem but continued operations anyway.
Then, on August 6, a series of pillars burst apart, causing a mine cave-in so powerful it registered 3.9 on the Richter scale. It killed the six miners, entombing them in the mine. Their bodies were never recovered. Three were immigrants from Mexico, forced by the bosses' racism to work on the more dangerous, unsafe jobs, a condition which then spreads to all workers. Ten days later, three more miners, working to reach the six who were trapped, were killed as well when a 1,500-foot section of the tunnel collapsed on them.
If the company had stopped this "retreat mining" after the March 2007 collapse, all these miners would be alive today. But the owners concealed the extent of that incident, leading to the August murders.
Now a big hue and cry is rising, from the Congressional report to NY Times' editorials, calling for a "criminal inquiry" and new safety laws. But the report itself upholds the legitimacy of "retreat mining." And the Mine Safety and Health Administration is notorious for being run by pro-industry appointees, who have done next to nothing about enforcing current laws. The "worst" that happens is a slap on the wrist for mine owners' violations.
Some coal bosses say domestic coal could become an "alternative" fuel to the U.S. rulers' dependence on imported oil from war-torn regions and anti-U.S. governments. Daydreaming! Modern industry and armies can't run without oil. Besides, the biggest U.S. bosses, like Exxon-Mobil, make multi-billion-dollar profits from oil; the Pentagon itself is geared to preventing U.S. imperialist rivals from grabbing control of the flow of oil. But -- oil or coal -- capitalist industries' main goal is reaping maximum profits. Killing workers, including ignoring their safety, is part of that process. Only a communist society, where workers' lives are the first priority and the fruit of their labors will be shared by the whole working class, not a few profiteers, will end this carnage.
FRANCE: Teachers' Strike in 130 Cities Against Gov't Cuts
PARIS, May 16 -- Yesterday, according to the government's understated figures, 860,000 public workers struck against job cuts and government policies dismantling public services, demonstrating in over 130 cities. It was particularly strong in education, with over half of junior and senior high school teachers and nearly two-thirds of primary school teachers on strike. Large contingents of high school students livened up the protests.
In Marseilles and five other cities, teachers' general assemblies voted to renew their strike on May 19, in some cases over the opposition of the union leaders. They hope to spark a break with the ritual 24-hour protest strike.
Longer and more intense strikes are needed to force the government to back down from the 22,900 education job losses programmed in the 2008 budget. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy's reaction to yesterday's walkout was to propose new strike-breaking laws to "protect" the "right to work."
The government's onslaught on public workers -- which includes last year's elimination of special retirement plans for mainly rail workers performing particularly hard jobs -- is not driven solely by budget-balancing needs, after giving the rich tax breaks of 222 million euros ($350 million) in 2007 (to increase this year). Privatizing public services is also part of the bosses' strategy to cut wages and benefits for ALL workers.
France's 5,000,000 public workers cannot be laid off or fired for union activity as easily as private-sector workers. They form the core of the French trade union movement. About 15% of public workers belong to unions, as against 5% of private-sector workers.
Given that French bosses are competing with rivals worldwide, they need to smash the French labor movement in order to maximize profits. For instance, while from 1996 to 2007, labor costs in Germany fell 5%, they rose 20% in France. (Charlie Hebdo, 5/7/2008) Nevertheless, with inflation, real wages in France have fallen 4.2% in the private sector and 7.0% in the public sector since 1994. (Council on Employment, Income and Social Cohesion)
Furthermore, French bosses are participating in on-going wars to re-divide the world. The French expeditionary force in Afghanistan now numbers 3,200 soldiers, and France is suspected of having tried to overthrow Sudan's government (Le Canard Enchaîné, 5/14/08). The bosses need a docile workforce on the home front.
Successful extension of the teachers' strike movement would build the May 22nd national strike called by all the major unions to protest government plans to increase the number of work-years needed for a full retirement pension. Previous pension "reform" laws have already led to a 30% relative fall in pensions as against wages. Air France and rail-worker unions have joined the strike call.
While it's necessary to fight against job cuts and for decent pensions, as long as capitalism exists so will the bosses' drive to increase exploitation and launch imperialist wars. That's why workers here and worldwide must go beyond struggles to "reform" capitalism and organize for communist revolution to destroy capitalism. J
BULLETIN May 19 -- About 40,000 teachers and their supporters demonstrated in Paris yesterday. An inter-trade union federation meeting today proposed no action except to renew the call, initially launched by the French PTA, for a demonstration on May 24. It also ignores the high school students' protest movement. In short, most of the union "leaders" are doing everything they can to alienate the teachers' potential allies and keep the movement "manageable."
In such a situation, communists put forward organizing the widest possible support for striking teachers, forging the links necessary to help develop the revolutionary potential of the working class.
Anti-War Solidarity Actions Sweep CUNY Campuses
NEW YORK CITY, May 19 -- On May Day, PLP members participated in events upholding workers' solidarity at multiple CUNY campuses. One of the campus unions, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), held rallies to celebrate the West Coast longshoreman's (ILWU) plan to organize an eight-hour work stoppage against the war. We were excited by this opportunity to show how class-conscious industrial workers can fight for more political demands (for a critical analysis of the ILWU May Day work-stoppage see report on the May Day activities in the Bay Area, CHALLENGE, May 21, 2008).
At the events, we participated in various anti-war activities -- bullhorn rallies, teach-ins, film showings and literature tables -- and distributed CHALLENGE, which linked the war with the CUNY budget cuts. On one campus a dozen union members unfurled a 15-foot-long banner, "US Out of Iraq...No Attack on Iran!" in front of the cafeteria. As speakers explained the real reasons for the war on Iraq along with conditions here at home, a student called out, "What about the war in Palestine?" We invited him to join our discussion.
During another rally, a letter received early that May Day morning from the General Union of Port Workers of Iraq was read aloud (see box). Inspired by ILWU's actions in the U.S., the Iraqi unionists were planning to stop work in Umm Qasr and Al Zubair.
On a third campus, the administration refused to grant a sound permit. When speakers began to use a handheld bullhorn, campus security backed up by city cops swarmed in, threatening to arrest the chapter chair and the speaker. So much for free speech on campus.
After these city-wide campus events, many students and union members went together to the Immigrants' Rights Rally in Union Square.
From these successful May Day actions the potential exists for building a strong worker-student alliance and to recruit new members to PLP. We will continue to be involved in struggles on our campuses to make this happen.
(Excerpts from the May Day message from the Port Workers in Iraq to West Coast U.S. dock workers.)
In solidarity with the ILWU, the General Union of Port Workers in Iraq will stop work for one hour on May Day in the ports of Umm Qasr and Khor Al Zubair.
Dear Brothers and Sisters of ILWU in California:
The courageous decision you made to carry out a strike on May Day to protest against the war and occupation of Iraq advances our struggle against occupation to bring a better future for us and the rest of the world as well....[which] will only be created by the workers.... We in Iraq are looking up to, and support you until the victory over the U.S. administration's barbarism is achieved.
Over the past five years the sectarian gangs who are the product of the occupation have been trying to transfer their conflicts into our ranks. Targeting workers, including their residential and shopping areas, indiscriminately using all sorts of explosive devices, mortar shells, and random shooting, were part of a bigger scheme that was aiming to tear up the society.... We are struggling to defeat BOTH the occupation and the sectarian militias' agenda....
Long live the port workers in California! Long live May Day! Long live International solidarity!"
LETTERS
Lauds May Day Youth
I have to first start by saying it was a very good experience for my family and me. I presently work at Rikers Island. I was very moved by the kids of all ages who were in attendance. I was blessed to be in their company. Kids who don't stand for anything will fall for everything. These multi-talented kids have a view of what is going on today which they showed in their performances. It is very important they realize how this world is going to be. I have never been moved by such a young and powerful group of kids. Kids need these events to express themselves.
My family and I would like to give special thanks to the PLP teacher and his wife that invited us to the powerful May Day event. Here's to the young and powerful kids of the future!
A Bronx Worker
`Thumbs up for Workers' State'
At the PLP May Day rally in NY, people were eager to take copies of CHALLENGE as we rallied. I distributed over 25 papers to observers. Many had never heard of May Day, but they responded positively to the idea of a workers' state. One man from Haiti talked about the starvation his family faced living there, and was looking for big changes!
At the dinner, a D.C. community organizer who attended her first PLP May Day praised the commitment and sincerity of the youth leading the program. She said, "You can tell they really own these ideas -- they are not just repeating ideas heard from others!" Another first-time May Day marcher promised to come back next year and tell his friends about it.
D.C. Red
Working Class Has Only
One Color -- RED
We in NYC had many May Day activities. On May 1, we assembled at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, and later went to Union Square to march against the raids suffered by undocumented immigrants. On May 3, we participated in the PLP political dinner honoring May Day.
In Brooklyn and Union Square we chanted and agitated intensely, countering the conservative political tone given by many organizations in those events for immigrant rights. Before 200 demonstrators in Cadman Plaza, one Latino immigrant spoke militantly, saying: "We must stop those SS-like raids carried out by the immigration cops in the streets and workplaces."
He also opposed the racist verdict freeing three cops who killed Sean Bell and injured his two friends with 50 shots. He also attacked the racist education cuts affecting our youth, the future of our class. He declared that the soldiers in Iraq are killing and dying for the sake of imperialism.
He concluded with a bang: "The working class only has one color: the red of the blood spilled by the Martyrs of Chicago executed for demanding their just rights. We speak one language, the one of struggle against exploitation and discrimination. Workers of the world, unite!"
This was the opposite of what others push: that voting for the Democrats gives immigrant workers "better possibilities." Some also said praying was the solution. But the bosses only listen to the "prayers" of the big corporations like Exxon-Mobil and Halliburton.
The PLP May Day political dinner was in sharp contrast, with speeches, poems and music full of communist solutions to capitalism's racism, war and exploitation. And the best part of this great evening of good food and better politics was the leadership provided by Red youth. The future of our movement is in great hands.
An immigrant worker
Peru: Aim Workers' Anger At Class Enemy
Some of us participated in the "People's Summit Linking Alternatives" carried out to coincide with the ruling-class summit meeting held here in Lima, Peru, between Latin America's rulers and the European Union's imperialists. Some 6,000 people attended the alternative summit on the campus of the Univ. of Peru at Rimac. On May 16, a mass rally was held at Lima's May 2 Plaza.
Some of us exposed the conditions of the working class. This contrasted with the main positions at the meeting, plagued by nationalist and patriotic organizations. Some even wanted to return to the ancient "collective living of Tawantinsuyo (Inca empire)." There were also relatively small pseudo-leftist organizations who still believe Peru must go through the experiences which Hugo Chávez is bringing to Venezuela or Evo Morales to Bolivia. They think Cuba is following the road of "socialist construction."
What's evident is the lack of channeling workers' discontent against their class enemy. This is the challenge facing those of us trying to build a vanguard organization of the working class. We must go beyond our enormous limitations.
Friends in Lima
Bosses' Pawns Can't Stop
Students From Marching
On May 1st 2008, a group of South Central LA high school students boarded a rented bus at a nearby college campus. But there, waiting to intercept us, were a dozen cop cars led by some administrators and the fascist District President. "You need our approval before boarding the bus." "You all don't know what you're getting into and don't know any better." "My children should be in school. That's more important." Words of obvious fascism from the administrator were shared by the District President. So, after being harassed by the bosses' pawns, we all packed into the cars of our comrades and met up with the bus at a rendevous point. There, comrades from other locations joined us as we left for the immigrant rights march as a group. We overcame the circumstances and did not let the cops or the District President stop us.
A student May Day marcher
CHALLENGE Carries the Day
On May 1st, about 22 people from our school and people from another school boarded a bus. When everyone boarded the bus we were given a red shirt and a chant sheet. On the way, we started chanting to get some practice. A block away from the march we departed from the bus and people brought carts, empty backpacks and purses just to put CHALLENGE in. When we started chanting, people looked at us. Then many of us scattered and started to distribute CHALLENGE to everyone who was interested in it. The highlight of this story is the CHALLENGE committee to get out the paper to different people. We talked about the paper. We did a good job getting out the paper, and I'm proud of us for doing this successfully without any fight or threats from any of the people we offered the paper to.
A high school CHALLENGE seller
Reflections on May Day
"This is a result of our work," my brother said, referring to workers and students with red flags meeting in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate May Day.
My brother was happy, even tearful. "This cost our Party beatings, jail, deportations, and separating families, but here's the result -- communist May Day lives -- no matter how much the bosses want to destroy it." My brother was right. If not for PLP celebrating May Day in the U.S. since the 1970s as a revolutionary holiday in the long-term struggle for communism, it would have been forgotten here.
It's gratifying to know that when there's such a celebration, the first thing workers who were members of PLP -- but are no longer active -- do is look for PLP.
My 16-year-old daughter came to the dinner and wanted to participate in the Immigrant Rights march, but she also wanted to go to school. I'm sorry I didn't struggle hard enough with her because our part of the march was the best, most militant and the reddest, qualitatively better because of PLP's presence -- those with the clearest, most profound and most political ideas, combating all nationalist, racist and anti-communist ideas.
Many in the march followed our leadership. While there were flags carried from every capitalist nation, the only flag that waved high during the whole march was the Red Flag of the Progressive Labor Party.
The street resonated with our chants -- "See this fist! Workers to Power!" and "Workers' struggles have no borders." These slogans belong not only to PLP but to the working class. They were heard during the whole march, along with "Long live communism, death to capitalism."
We were together with millions and millions of workers who celebrate our day. With thousands, and potentially millions, who follow our Party, although our numbers are modest, we represent the interests of the majority. I'm not alone. Here's my party, my class and this is my family, my people.
A Proud Communist
Solidarity on May Day
My family and I, along with a close friend, attended a May Day dinner in our community on April 26. A political skit based on communist analysis of the U.S. presidential race introduced an evening of personal stories about organizing for revolution and the history of the communist movement since Haymarket. We listened to a dramatic poetry reading and a call to expand the distribution of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. Our voices rang through the neighborhood as we joined in singing the "Internationale" and "Bella Ciao."
We had the chance to renew old contacts and meet new comrades and friends. A Latina woman attending a PLP event for the first time said, "I never knew a white person could be so revolutionary".
The next day, my African-American friend called to tell me how impressed she was with the celebration. Commenting on the stories told by a Latina immigrant of the horrors faced in coming to the U.S. without papers, she said, "We are starting from a small group, but with the multi-racial unity we saw last night we can organize much bigger displays of solidarity with all workers, black, Latin, and white. We can defeat the [capitalist] media campaign to keep us divided!"
ON TO MAY DAY 2009
ALL POWER TO THE WORKING CLASS
West Coast comrade
FASCIST PARTY OUT IN PARAGUAY, BUT CAPITALISM REMAINS WITH A LIBERAL FACE
Ex-Bishop Fernando Lugo won the presidential elections in Paraguay, ending the 61-year reign of the fascist Colorado Party. Lugo won with the help of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, including the center-right Liberal Party, center-left parties, as well as several socialist parties including PMAS (Party of the Movement Towards Socialism, Hugo Chavez' allies) and several social movements of farmers and indigenous groups (including Tekojoja).
Many workers and activists believe that the working class will benefit from this ouster of Colorado. Not true! Lugo's win signals a change in the style of the oppressor, nothing more. His politics resemble those of Chavez in Venezuela and Lula in Brazil, who have the image of being pro-working class, but are really just another face of the ruling class. Lugo owes a debt to many capitalist elements among his allies in the Patriotic Alliance for Change and is not likely to be able to even accomplish modest reforms. Face it -- capitalism is bigger than any one candidate, no matter how sincere he or she may be about social change. It's the same in the U.S. with Obama, Clinton and McCain. Rather than build illusions in the system, workers and activists should follow the policy of "Don't Vote! Revolt!"
The big issue that Lugo will take on is renegotiating contracts involving two hydroelectric plants -- Itaipu (with Brazil) and Yacyreta (with Argentina). The Paraguayan government receives less than the typical world price for the electricity they sell and Lugo has promised that the revenue received from better deals with Brazil and Argentina will help fund social programs, including health care. (Dengue and yellow fever are now common in Paraguay). We have seen, however, time after time, that such reform promises rapidly go out the window after a "reformer" is elected, as the ruling capitalist class asserts its needs over those of the masses.
Immediately after winning the election, Lugo spoke with Hugo Chavez and said that he intends to join UNASUR, an economic bloc formed by Chavez. Then he declared his desire to meet with China, signaling an opening to Chinese imperialism to play off against U.S. imperialism and curry favor with his socialist backers in the Patriotic Union for Change. But trading one imperialist for another is not progress!
Paraguay is a geopolitically strategic country finding itself between Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia, while at the same time sitting on top of one of the world's largest supplies of fresh water -- the Guarani Aquifer. Many large and small imperialists, including Brazil, the U.S., Venezuela, China and the European Union, want a piece of Paraguay's resources and labor! Instead of playing ball with imperialists, revolutionary workers should break with all politicians and build the PLP, an independent revolutionary communist party that calls for the complete destruction of capitalism. No deals -- Lugo is just another puppet of the capitalists and their elites -- Workers must build the PLP and make revolution if the future is going to be bright!
REDEYE
Israel hero sees why Arabs fight
Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. "Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?" he asked. "There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country." (NYT, 5/4)
Liberals front for warmakers
...Left-liberals such as Michael Ignatieff and Paul Berman are not much more than camp followers of the Bush administration. "America's liberal armchair warriors... are the `useful idiots' of the war on terror." "...In today's America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig-leaf. There really is no other difference between them." (GW, 5/9)
Drug arrests: blatantly racist
Between 1980 and 2003, drug arrests for African-Americans in the nation's largest cities rose at three times the rate for whites, a disparity "not explained by corresponding changes in rates of drug use..."
Black men are nearly 12 times as likely to be imprisioned for drug convictions as adult white men.
Underscoring law enforcement's misguided priorities, fully 4 in 10 of all drug arrests were for marijuana possesion. Those who favor continuing these policies have not met their burden of proving their efficacy in fighting crime. (NYT, 5/10)
U.S. runs killers in Afghanistan
A special investigator for the United Nations on Thursday accused foreign intelligence agencies of conducting nighttime raids and killing civilians in Afghanistan with impunity.
...He was accusing the Central Intelligence Agency or American unconventional-warfare units of operating without accountability to the Afghan government or the foreign military command in the country.
"It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily armed internationals accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them," he said in his report. (NYT, 5/16)
India: U.S. polluter won't clean up
Hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects as a result of the world's worst industrial disaster 23 years ago in the central Indian town fo Bhopal.
...Children's growth had been stunted, said campaigners, because there has been no clean-up of the Bhopal plant...
The disused Union Carbide factory contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals that continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 people.
Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, says that because the plant is on government land it is up to the state to clean it up. (GW, 5/9)
Generation has no American dream
This is a generation that is in danger of being left out of the American dream -- the first American generation to do less well economically than their parents. And that economic uncertainty appears to have played a big role in shaping their views of government and politics.
...Americans in this age group are faced with a variety of challenges that are tougher than those faced by young adults over the past few decades. Among the challenges are worsening job prospects... The top five occupations in terms of anticipated job growth: registered nurses, retail sales, customer service reps, food preparers and office clerks.
It's not hard to understand why surveys show that overwhelming percentages of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The American dream is on life support. (NYT, 5/13)
Civil War's Hidden History: Women Workers Battled Gov't, Bosses
A People's History of The Civil War, by David Williams (published by The New Press, 2005), reveals that the U.S. Civil War was shaped, at least in part, by the resistance of the soldiers, the anti-war sentiments of the general population and the militancy of women workers, blacks, whites and native Americans. Williams' thesis is that class struggle -- the consolidation of finance capital vs. the response of working folks -- comprises the source of the conflict.
At the height of the war, women organized for higher wages with strikes and rose up against stores and government warehouses with armed struggle. Women of both the north and south began by raising their demands with petitions and delegations to Presidents Davis and Lincoln. Seamstresses from Montgomery, Alabama, wrote that as government workers, they needed more for their labors or they would perish on the $12-a-week allotment. Representatives of 10,000 seamstresses in Philadelphia called on Lincoln at the White House. All Lincoln did was ask the Quartermaster Dept. to make sure they got "the wages ordinarily paid," but the wages women got hardly provided a living.
Lacking help from either government, Confederate or Union, women began taking action for better pay and working conditions. In October 1863 a union of 1,000 female umbrella sewers in NYC and Brooklyn went on strike. They were working 18 hours a day for 6-8 cents per umbrella. In munitions factories women worked under murderous conditions: 19 killed at the Washington Arsenal; 15 in Jackson, Mississippi; 32 in a Virginia cartridge factory; and in a Richmond ordnance factory explosion 50 women died. In Augusta's gunpowder works, women walked out in Oct. `64; at Richmond's govt. arsenal, 300 women went on strike.
With Southern plantations growing profitable tobacco and cotton instead of food, small farm families were taxed to supply the army. Upon losing their husbands, brothers and sons in the army, poor southern women in particular became desperate to feed their children. In Greenville, Alabama, twenty women shouting "salt or blood" raided the depot and took what they needed. High prices were driven even higher by speculation. In Richmond, over a thousand women smashed shop doors and looted until President Davis himself came to the scene and threatened to have them shot. In Mobile, dozens of women bearing axes, hatchets and hammers ransacked grocery stores, carrying banners, "Bread or Blood." In Lafayette, women armed with guns, pistols and knives marched on a grist mill and took what they wanted.
In the North, women took to the streets as well, but to fight the draft. Poor men could not afford the wealthy men's way out of the war: $10,000 to hire a substitute. In Port Washington, LI, women led 1,000 protesters with a banner NO DRAFT, attacked the draft commissioner and broke up the draft box. In NYC, women took part in draft rebellions, grabbed stones and used their stockings as sling-shots.
These inspiring stories of our history comprise a small part of Williams' research on how the onset of the war and starvation of soldiers and their families was deliberate by Lincoln and his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. Part two of this review will reveal that Williams himself did not give up on peaceful change through the ballot box. Yet he documents well how votes for Lincoln's second term were manipulated and that legislation passed during Lincoln's watch fed only the hunger of the growing wealthy class for land and centralized banking
U.S. OIl War Sends Vets Back Jobless, Homeless, Suicidal and Dead
Politicians in both parties are constantly waving the flag over the dead and wounded bodies of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, boasting about the "outstanding job" they're doing, after having been put "in harm's way" by the ruling class's vicious imperialist war for control of Mid-East oil.
These vets are workers, so the "harm's way" doesn't stop when they return -- IF they return -- to be attacked by a capitalist class which forces workers to pay even more for their economic meltdown and wars.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ, 3/25) and the Boston Globe report surging joblessness, low wages, inadequate and denial of medical treatment and huge homelessness.
The military paper "Stars and Stripes" cited a U.S. Veterans Affairs Dept. study reporting 18% of veterans being jobless.
One quarter of all vets are earning less than $21,840 per year.
The WSJ wrote, "The [above] report found that most of the returning veterans were unable to find civilian jobs that matched their previous military occupations." So much for the recruiters' promises of joining the army and "learning a skill."
The Military.com website released a survey showing 81% of discharged vets did not "feel fully prepared... [to] enter the job market." According to Black Veterans for Social Justice, "Typically...young adults who go into the military at 17 or 18, when they return home, the same kind of economic conditions that forced them [to enlist] ...still exist or have gotten worse." (OneWorld News service, Nov. 2007) And that's what the still-to-be-passed DREAM Act (supported by the liberals and the Pentagon) has in store for immigrant youth who join the military if they come home alive -- an economy of rising unemployment, sinking wages and racism on all fronts especially affecting black, Latino and immigrant youth. Talk about "harm's way"!
To make job matters worse, the percentage of amputees is the highest since the U.S. Civil War. Up to 36% of the 1.5 million veterans of the current wars are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder -- an astounding half a million patients! Outstanding claims by vets rose from 254,000 to 378,000 between 2003 and 2006. Average waiting time for treatment is 183 days.
Is it any wonder that 1,784 returning vets committed suicide in 2005 alone?
Finally, "194,254... [are] homeless...on any given night." (Boston Globe, quoting The Alliance to End Homelessness)
These are the fruits of imperialist war. The bosses send youth off to oil-rich lands to kill other youth, and workers -- over a million in Iraq -- only to send 4,000 back (plus 500 from the Afghan war) in body bags and tens of thousands suffering amputated arms and legs, brains shattered by explosions and post-traumatic stress, racist police terror, jobless or earning poverty wages and living on the streets.
However, working-class youth will continue to join the military, and eventually millions will be forced into the armed forces when the rulers bring back some form of the draft to wage their wider wars against their imperialist rivals
So organizing for revolution among soldiers and vets, not voting for these bosses' hypocritical, disgusting politicians, is the road to follow.
U.S. WAR CASUALTIES: 655,000 AND RISING
An April 17 RAND Corporation study as detailed in "CounterPunch Diary" (5/2) by Alexander Cockburn, reports that, "The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have thus far produced 300,000 psychological casualties, 320,000 brain injury casualties, plus 35,000 (probably understated) officially reported `normal' casualties. This adds up to 655,000 US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and average of just under 101,000 Americans killed or wounded every year since the wars began." This excludes the million Iraqi; dead from U.S. imperialism's invasion. Talk about blood for oil!
