1. Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' Dogfight
   Imperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children
2. Anti-Racists Victorious In Showdown With Fascist Court System
3. LATINO WORKERS REJECT LIBERALS, PLEDGE TO PACK COURTROOM
4. French-U.S. Bosses' Current Love Affair
5. Whither Cuba?
   State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?
6. Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona
   Airport, Fight Job Cuts
7. Hotel Union Uses Immigration `Reform' to Sidetrack Potential Walkout
8. THOUSANDS OF DISSIDENT WORKERS MARCH IN VENEZUELA
9. CHALLENGE A Weapon to Unite Workers, Reject Divisive Nationalism
10. Power of Working Class Shines Amid Fascist Repression
11. PLP Anti-Racist Base Can Unite Katrina Victims Against Bosses' System
12. Teachers Challenge Pro-War AFT Hacks
13. Anti-Racist, Anti-War Resolutions At AFSCME Convention
14. DeMOCKracy in Iraq:
    Three Strikers Murdered in Kurdistan
15. NY City Workers:
    Red Politics Can Expose `Coalition of Sellouts' and War Contract
16. LETTERS
    1. Con Ed Profits From Workers Misery
    2. Campus Workers Unite Against Boss's Squeeze
    3. Reds True Fighters Against Anti-Semitism
    4. French Reader Gets Kick Out of Anti-Racist Football Article
    5. Israeli Move Part of U.S. Plan?
17. Communist School Stresses Crucial Role of Industrial Workers
18. Mexican Elections Won't Change Workers' Lives
19. REDEYE
    1. Officers's order in Iraqi: kill all able men
    2. Imperialist boundaries poison Mid-East
    3. Nixon adviser says fascism is real threat
    4. `For a good person to do evil, takes religion?'
    5. Dixie Chicks say religion keeps us down
    6. Judge bars Wal-Mart workers' health $
    7. US-Israel axis devastates Lebanon
    8. The poor pay extra for what they buy
20. 70 Years Ago Spain's Workers Led Fight Against Fascism
21. Years After `Peace Accords' Death Squads Back in El Salvador
22. U.S. Rulers Killed 1,000 World War 1 Vets in 1935 `Katrina'

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Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' Dogfight
Imperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children

In attacking Hezbollah, Israel's fascist leaders further intensified both regional conflicts and the global rivalry among imperialists. The Israelis bit off more than they could chew. Having underestimated the resiliency of Hezbollah's underground network and the size of its arsenal, Israel's top brass now know that they need a ground war, not just air strikes, and have called up thousands of reservists.

Bombing Lebanese civilians has only inflamed hatred of Israel and its U.S. backers and built pro-Hezbollah sentiment from Gaza to Indonesia. [Supporting Hezbollah, however, is a grave political mistake. Hezbollah is a racist and fundamentally capitalist organization that takes orders from Iranian oil billionaires cloaked as ayatollahs.] In addition, with arms flowing from the U.S. to Israel and from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, the local clash is rapidly evolving into an escalating proxy war that deepens the divide between U.S. imperialists mired in Iraq and a host of challengers. At stake in the broader struggle are control of the entire Middle East and its oil and the lives of millions -- as cannon fodder or "collateral damage."

"The United States is already at war with Iran; but for the time being the battle is being fought through surrogates," wrote former ABC-TV news anchor Ted Koppel in the New York Times (7/21) citing, a "senior Jordanian intelligence official." Koppel and the Jordanian spy chief note Iran's gift of 12,000 rockets to Hezbollah and "more than $300 million in cash" to Hamas, "funneled through Syria" (although they fail to mention the U.S. rulers' annual $3 billion "contribution" to the Israeli war machine).

But the real cause of the current crisis, Koppel says, is the botched U.S. invasion of Iraq. Failing to replace Saddam Hussein with an effective occupying regime meant "tearing down the wall that had kept Iran in check." That failure has had other destabilizing effects.

While Israel and Hezbollah were busy murdering children, Iraq's oil minister Husain Al Shahristani met in Washington with executives of Exxon Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, Shell and BP (France's oil giant Total was conspicuously absent). Assuring the U.S. and British oil barons of first crack "in expanding Iraq's oil sector and developing new fields" (Associated Press, 7/28), he lamented that it would take at least four years to bring production even to pre-war peaks of four million barrels a day (mbd). U.S. rulers, represented by the Establishment's Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), as well as Bush's neocons, had projected a 6-mbd post-invasion output that would help spread prosperity, tranquility and pro-U.S. politics throughout the Mideast.

Leslie Gelb, ex-president of the CFR, calls Bush's Iraq fiasco the U.S.'s chief obstacle in dealing with Lebanon. "Mr. Bush has to restore America's military credibility....[H]e is so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan that he cannot and will not take strong military action anywhere else." (Wall Street Journal, 7/28) Gelb says, "If Syria or Iran...stepped up unacceptable military operations in either Iraq or Lebanon, the U.S. could threaten...air attacks against Iranian and Syrian air-defense missiles and radars, air strikes against Iranian naval forces and oil depots, and cross-boarder raids into Syria to disrupt support of Iraqi insurgents."

Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, also sees Iraq policy as key to the problem but draws a different conclusion. "It is precisely our actions in Iraq that have opened the door for Iran and Syria to support Hezbollah and Hamas actions without much to fear from the U.S." ("Nieman Watch," Harvard University, 7/17) But Odom (like Rep. Murtha) calls for a U.S. "tactical retreat" from Iraq followed by a wider "counter-offensive" in the Mid-East, uniting the U.S. and "a coalition of the major states of Europe and East Asia."

In fact, U.S. rulers may not be sure of what to do. It's not strategic vision they lack; they have oil on the brain. What's missing for them are masses of people willing to shed blood for U.S. imperialism. Israel's bosses have the same problem and hesitate to send reservists into Lebanon.

An overlooked aspect of the fighting in Lebanon is the emergence of the eastern Mediterranean as a major oil transit hub. July 13 marked the opening of a U.S.-sponsored one-million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline, originating in the Caspian region and deliberately by-passing Russia, which ends at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, directly north of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. But more important is the 1.6-mbd pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq that also discharges in Ceyhan. Although insurgents have severely damaged the pipeline, Exxon Mobil lifted 2.1 million barrels of Iraqi crude from Ceyhan in one recent week. (Reuters, 7/29)

Washington, no doubt, expects Israel -- which now gets a fifth of its oil through Ceyhan -- to increase its naval influence over adjacent shores. The Russians, however, much of whose oil exports enter the Mediterranean through Turkey's nearby Bosporus strait, have conflicting ideas. They're dredging Syria's Mediterranean port at Tartus, preparing to move the bulk of their Black Sea fleet there from Sevastopol (Kommerzant, Moscow, translated by Global Research, 7/28).

One trap for workers to avoid is rooting for the phony "anti-imperialists" like Hezbollah and Hamas, who actually abet the imperialist designs of Iran, Russia, China and the European Union (EU). Another is falling for the "peace" plans proposed at the UN. The U.S. wants Hezbollah disarmed, and NATO to occupy southern Lebanon. The EU, seconded by Russia and China, wants a UN force, and Hezbollah retained as a foil to Israel and the U.S. All the players here are acting in the deadly self-interests of various sets of capitalists.

As we've constantly pointed out, the international working class has absolutely no interest in siding with any of these murderous bosses. War is widening. We must raise this issue in all our shops, unions, campuses and mass organizations. Building a mass PLP and winning workers in all these areas to red politics is the order of the day. The only road to ending these killer wars is the one leading to communist revolution. Join us.

Anti-Racists Victorious In Showdown With Fascist Court System

FARMINGVILLE, NY, July 31 -- Attacks against Latino workers continue apace in Suffolk County, Long Island. Day laborers evicted from their homes continue to camp in the woods near Farmingville and allies of the fascist Minutemen continue to harass them and their prospective employers with photo and video cameras.

One year ago three anti-racist fighters were arrested for the "crime" of demonstrating in solidarity with these workers, under attack from a leader of the fascist anti-immigrant Sachem Quality of Life organization. Our militant picket line put him and his group -- openly affiliated with other anti-immigrant racists such as the Minutemen -- on the defensive. Workers that day appreciated our anti-racist presence and responded to our call for international working-class unity by joining our demonstration.

Our counter-attack against these arrests has seen that call spread more widely, growing out of this struggle. Hundreds of students and workers have packed the courtroom and seen the criminal INjustice system for what it is -- fascism at work. The cops themselves openly declared that they can arrest anyone they want at any time during any demonstration they don't like. The deep truth of our slogan, "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses' Plan, has become apparent to more of our friends.

We took the offensive by reaching out to our base in the mass organizations and they responded by filling the courtroom every day. Some days we had 60 people for a courtroom made for 36 and some had to sit outside the courtroom. Other days we squeezed up to 50 people into the small room. We provided the political leadership for our attorneys who were ultimately won to the outlook of fighting for all three defendants as a whole, of jamming the courtroom with supporters and of making our politics primary throughout the entire trial. After one year, momentum continues to build (see box page 3).

At the close of the trial, after forty court appearances, all the defendants were found not guilty on all charges.

But the real victory here is the deepened political understanding we developed, a victory beyond the influence of any judge's decision. It belongs to ALL workers.

Interaction with workers on Long Island confirms that despite the constant bombardment of patriotic garbage generated by rulers both here and in Latin America, a deep reserve of internationalist sentiment persists in the broader working class. A creeping suspicion of liberals and Congress also persists. We must substantiate this through painstaking base-building in the heat of struggle.

We don't welcome arrests but neither shall fear of them paralyze us. To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing. We're learning that workers won to communist ideas are the ultimate and only power which can smash the capitalists and their courts, cops and jails. Each fight is an opportunity to reveal the enemy's weaknesses, a chance to learn and grow on a more solid basis than before. u

LATINO WORKERS REJECT LIBERALS, PLEDGE TO PACK COURTROOM

On July 14, two defendants and several friends were well-received at an action meeting/forum organized by the Workplace Project, an organization providing legal and other services to workers on Long Island. Panelists reviewed legislation pending in Congress as well as urged voting and unity between blacks and Latinos.

One defendant questioned the panelists as to why they recommended voting as the next phase of the "migrants' rights movement" if the same imperialists who want to send Latino youth to the Mid-East and who exploit Latin America are the ones who will pass the more liberal immigration bill some hope for. While the workers gathered that evening applauded the question delivered in Spanish), the same wasn't true for any of the panelists' answers.

Several attendees agreed to help pack the courtroom for the defense case and closing arguments and they did.

French-U.S. Bosses' Current Love Affair

Flashback: February 17, 2003. In San Francisco, 150,000 people rally against the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. David Harris, a founder of the Vietnam War draft resistance, tells the crowd: "We're here to say `Thank you, France.'"

Maybe it seemed like the right thing to say. After all, just three days earlier French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin won an ovation when he told the UN Security Council that the use of force against Iraq was unjustified. Within a month, French president Jacques Chirac would threaten to veto UN support for the U.S. invasion.

But today the opposite seems true. France backs the U.S. on every important foreign policy issue: Israel, Iran, North Korea.... On Feb. 9, 2005, the French elite applauded Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice when she affirmed U.S. police power over "states where corruption and chaos and cruelty reign." That day, a Radio France Internationale reporter summed up France's new position: no timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, support for the Iraqi elections and for NATO intervention in Iraq.

Clearly, the French ruling class was never really committed to fighting against war and imperialism. But French bosses did see the invasion of Iraq as part of a plan to establish uncontested U.S. hegemony worldwide, and leave French bosses with a smaller slice of the world pie, according to Jean-Paul Hébert, a researcher at the school of higher studies in social sciences.

The French bosses thought their European counterparts would follow their lead in opposing the U.S. They were wrong. Former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine ruefully told a Le Monde-hosted internet chat, "The great majority of Europeans [i.e. European bosses] do not want to enter into a logic of being a counterweight [to the U.S.]. They think it's preferable to have good relations with the U.S. in the hope of influencing the U.S., even though that hope is illusory."

When French bosses saw which way the wind was blowing, they then ditched the anti-war movement and buddied up to the U.S. bosses. This proves, once again, that the anti-war movement can only rely on the working class and its soldier and student allies, because they're the sole groups in whose class interest it is to oppose imperialist war.

Any lingering doubts about the bosses' cynicism should consider how the France-U.S. rapprochement evolved, as laid out in a two-page spread in the April 6 Le Monde (the bosses' main newspaper for communicating their ideas to the French elites).

In the Fall of 2003 -- just months after the invasion of Iraq -- French president Chirac became worried about Syrian efforts to muscle the French bosses out of Lebanon. When Syrian president Bashar al-Assad turned a deaf ear to his protests, Chirac hinted to George Bush at the June 2004 D-Day commemoration that Lebanon needed "democracy." Within two months, Maurice Gourdault-Montague, Chirac's diplomatic advisor, and Condoleeza Rice, then Bush's national security advisor, were huddled together over Rice's laptop, pounding out the UN resolution that forced Syrian troops out of Lebanon.

Ever since, France has been playing "good cop" in the Arab world to the U.S. "bad cop," according to an unnamed French diplomat quoted in Le Monde. French diplomats advise Arab rulers that they [the French] are "restraining" the U.S., but the Arab rulers must toe the line because otherwise the U.S. will clobber them. The French bosses flatter themselves, that they're playing a role in world affairs by acting as U.S. messenger boy (although the destruction of "democratic" Lebanon by the U.S.-backed Israeli fascists might put a glitch in this love affair).

Nevertheless, Le Monde warns that the rapprochement is just a marriage of convenience. And Hubert Védrine warns that "China is...a future major world pole...an increasingly formidable trade rival, maybe an eventual military threat..." Védrine admonishes European bosses to "abandon their naivety" about U.S. intentions because "the world is changing before our eyes: new powers are emerging, a multi-polar world that excludes Europe could develop, China is growing in strength, with all that that implies, etc." Some French bosses want to be free to choose sides in a U.S.-China confrontation.

The front-runner for the "Socialist" Party nomination, and odds-on winner in next year's French presidential elections, is Ségolène Royale. She advanced her foreign policy aims in a June 22 interview in Le Monde. "Europe must not be on the defensive, but on the offensive," she said, "I deplore the defeatist talk of certain elites."

Once burnt, twice shy: If the French bosses think it's in their interest, they will again break with U.S. imperialism, and again pose as "friends" of the anti-war movement. No imperialist is truly against spilling workers' blood in endless wars for control of the oil that fuels their profit machines. Wars can't be fought by allying with one imperialist gang against another. It can only be done by ending its causes -- capitalism and imperialism -- and by building a mass revolutionary communist movement.

Whither Cuba?
State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?

Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul Castro after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding. Many, particularly in the Bush administration and among Miami's right-wing Cuban exiles, have already announced his death. The question is, whither Cuba after Fidel?

Cuba is not a communist country but rather is state-capitalist retaining some concessions won by workers from the revolution's early stages. But workers don't run Cuba; it is run by the state-capitalist rulers led by Fidel (and now Raúl).

The Miami exiles and the Bush gang want to turn Cuba into a U.S. colony as it was from the 1898 U.S.-Spain war until 1959, when U.S.-backed dictator Batista was ousted. But this scenario is not exactly a given because the world today is not what it used to be 50 years ago when U.S. imperialism basically ruled Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard. Now many other rivals have landed there: China, European bosses and even Russia -- which Fidel turned to when Washington began trying to oust and/or kill him. Russia is making a comeback; witness the recent billion-dollar weapon and trade deal with Venezuela. And local bosses are grabbing their cut, as evidenced by a meeting last month in Argentina of Mercosur, a Latin American free trade group. In Cuba itself, recent discoveries of huge offshore oil reserves have attracted oil company investments from Norway to China (with U.S. oil moguls shut out).

The most probable scenario of a post-Fidel Cuba more likely resembles China or Vietnam, with the current state-capitalist ruling class maintaining power and opening the economy to even more imperialist investments. Some in Miami hope the U.S. will invade Cuba if Fidel dies and provoke chaos there. This could happen, but with the U.S. quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan (and possibly Lebanon since their Israeli ally's "blitzkrieg" seems to be backfiring), this scenario is not a given either.

Whatever happens, Cuba's workers will not emerge winning. The key element needed right now is a real revolutionary communist leadership to fight for true workers' power.

Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona
Airport, Fight Job Cuts

BARCELONA, Spain, July 31 -- Facing the contracting out of 4,000 jobs nationwide, and a do-nothing union leadership, on July 28 hundreds of baggage handlers took matter into their own hands and wildcatted, taking over the El Prat airport here -- one of Spain's largest -- blocking runways and preventing all flights from landing or departing.

This was the workers' answer to the growing attacks against their jobs -- similar to those suffered by airport and airline workers and other workers worldwide. AENA, the airport authority, ended its contract with Iberia Airlines. Union leaders told the workers about the looming job losses but didn't lift a finger to stop it. Coming smack in the middle of the high summer season, the militant action had a maximum effect, forcing cancellation of hundreds of flights until the bosses agreed to workers' demands.

Immediately, the bosses took the offensive. An editorial in El País, Spain's leading liberal newspaper, basically labeled the workers "terrorists," stating such "savage actions" should be banned. A judge is now threatening the workers with "crimes against airport security."

The workers did the right thing, not waiting passively for their union hacks to make a sweetheart deal with the bosses. While the union leaders were holding mass meetings, the workers ran them out and took over the hall, deciding on the wildcat strike.

Workers are fed up with capitalism, making them pay for the bosses' crises and endless wars. This kind of militant action can become a school for communism if a revolutionary leadership is built among such militant workers.

Hotel Union Uses Immigration `Reform' to Sidetrack Potential Walkout

LOS ANGELES -- Hotel workers in the LAX airport corridor are preparing for a strike this fall, probably together with those in other cities. But the UNITE-HERE union leaders are building a political movement that only benefits the bosses and their war plans.

Hotels like the LAX Hilton pay immigrant workers less than a living wage to boost profits. Housekeepers, servers and others -- many from Mexico and Central America -- make as little as $7.60/hour even after 20 years. Health insurance costs up to $300 monthly. "We want to change the community," said a server with 19 years on the job. "We want to work one job instead of two, we want to have more time with our families. It's not just for us, it's for our kids."

Hilton and Westin workers are becoming leaders, defying bosses who charge them with "insubordination" for "crimes" like requesting a rule book. When a union activist was suspended recently, 75 co-workers sat down in the cafeteria to support him. When they, too, were suspended for six days, they picketed the hotel daily until the suspensions were lifted.

"People are scared -- not of a strike, but of other employees staying inside," said a union organizer. The union exploits that fear by building reliance on clergy and politicians instead of on the workers themselves. A recent march began with hundreds of enthusiastic workers chanting loudly but ended with staged arrests of a dozen clergy and other supporters in front of the Hilton, amid a massive, intimidating police presence. As the hotel workers drifted away, most of the energy disappeared.

UNITE-HERE doesn't expect a strike to win anything so they work closely with the City Council to legally extend the "living wage" ordinance now covering the airport to cover the nearby hotels. At best, that could raise wages to $10/hour -- still not enough to support a family here, even with two wage-earners working full time!

This small step -- which the bosses can wipe out easily by raising health premiums -- would come at tremendous political cost. When workers rely on politicians, they tie themselves to the same capitalist system that causes their exploitation. This is UNITE-HERE's plan for LAX hotel workers.

So far, it has mobilized workers around immediate issues: insufficient staff or equipment, speed-up, no breaks, no respect, high cost of health insurance. But with a multi-state hotel strike likely, union leaders are redirecting workers' militancy into supporting liberal rulers' "immigration reform."

New union literature highlights the "American Dream," denied to hotel workers, and calls for a "pathway to citizenship" to supposedly make this dream a reality. What lies! Across the U.S., tens of millions of citizen-workers realize that life under capitalism is a nightmare, not a dream.

This "pathway to citizenship" (actually an obstacle course) is the main distinction between the Hagel-Martinez Senate immigration bill and the Sensenbrenner House bill. It's a cruel trick designed to build patriotism among immigrant workers so they'll fill the huge holes in the bosses' military. As CHALLENGE has noted, the U.S. military desperately needs "more boots on the ground" and immigration is likely to be the only source of population growth in the 18-24 age group for some time. UNITE-HERE's "American Dream" campaign is playing right into their hands. Witness the "democracy" U.S. rulers and their Israeli lieutenants are bringing to workers from Baghdad to Beirut!

"I never thought of the connection between immigration and war before," said one hotel worker, "but it really does make sense." Imperialist wars and all other curses of capitalism can only be ended with communist revolution. That's why CHALLENGE readers must spread this paper to more hotel workers. We must mobilize our friends and co-workers to bring these important ideas to the picket lines, to workers' homes, and to the September 28 march on the Hilton headquarters in Beverly Hills. The bosses are fighting for the loyalty of these workers. We must fight back.

THOUSANDS OF DISSIDENT WORKERS MARCH IN VENEZUELA

CARACAS, July 19 -- Thousands of trade unionists marched to the National Assembly today, demanding respect for workers' rights. This was not a right-wing action but one organized by a militant caucus opposing the hacks leading the UNT (the Union Federation formed by pro-Chavez union leaders to counter the CTV, the virtually defunct pro-U.S. and pro-AFL-CIO federation). Other mass organizations joined the march.

The workers were protesting the constant violations of union contracts by private and government bosses, firings, low wages and the lack of job security. They also opposed joint ventures by the government with private international oil companies which attack energy workers. The marchers also defended workers who have seized plants abandoned by their bosses.

However, these workers, including the dissident militant C-CURA caucus inside the UNT), still have many illusions in Chavez's so-called "Bolivarian Socialism of the 21st Century." This is a deadly mistake. Workers need to build their own revolutionary leadership and fight for real workers power without any bosses -- communism.

CHALLENGE A Weapon to Unite Workers, Reject Divisive Nationalism

Seven young Washington, D.C. students and workers went to New Orleans with a group that prioritizes resident empowerment and brings displaced residents back to the city.

We had many sharp political discussions. The highlights of the trip were the levee tour (see next issue) and CHALLENGE sales.

We sold CHALLENGE to day laborers at Lowe's Hardware store, speaking to several workers about uniting black residents with super-exploited workers from Latin America. Anxieties over our Spanish skills dissolved once we began talking with the workers. Although not everyone in our group spoke Spanish, the workers still appreciated the effort and support from everyone. They were very receptive to the ideas and took about 10 papers for fellow workers. One man from Mexico said, "So how do we get together to work on this?" He gave us his name and number, as did two other workers.

The Iberville Project residents were also very receptive. Some had already seen the paper, giving us hope for sustainable Party work here. We spoke with some young men interested in the Middle East situation and in growing fascism here. They said the U.S. was trying to "take over" resources there. One talked about the cops' harassment of black people, specifically of those in the projects. We distributed 15 CHALLENGES. Three people asked us to contact them about talking politics and taking action.

We also discussed black nationalism and fighting racism. Some volunteers we met have a black nationalist outlook. One stressed that black people should do most of the talking with residents door to door, while white workers in the group should stay in the background taking notes. Our multi-racial group was turned off by this idea. Some people thought black residents wouldn't talk to white workers. This directly contradicted our positive experience with Latino workers at Lowe's and black workers at the Iberville Projects.

While the group we worked in focuses on building black leadership, an important goal, and while black workers will surely be leaders of the revolutionary communist struggle, no revolution can succeed without a unified multi-racial fight against racism and capitalism. Hopefully, as the organization develops able black leadership, a sharp political struggle for communist politics within the organization will point in a winning direction.

This experience strengthened our collective and built communist ideas in the future PLP'ers who came with us. We encourage everyone considering going to New Orleans to go, not only with the idea of easing suffering, but of ending it altogether with communist revolution.

Power of Working Class Shines Amid Fascist Repression

July 28 -- "I think the whole system is designed to keep us down -- from the schools to the jails -- not just FEMA and the storm. It's the whole rotten system." So declared an angry black working-class resident in the devastated area called New Orleans East.A group of teachers, parents and student volunteers traveled to this city to work, learn and participate in its sharp class struggle. Our multi-racial contingent spent a week gutting homes, visiting displaced residents, viewing Katrina's destruction and getting to know other volunteers.

We learned many valuable political lessons, the key one being the power of the working class. We saw what we could do by sharing tasks, helping each other and making decisions collectively. We also saw how strong many of the residents were who continue to fight, organize and speak their minds as they try to rebuild their lives and communities.

We met residents from the Iberville Projects who took back their apartments, and residents from New Orleans East whose homes were demolished and who were open to organizing groups such as the Survivors Councils. We met others who were courageous during Katrina and who saved neighbors' and friends' lives, contrary to the racist images the media portrayed.

We saw the growth of fascism with our own eyes -- while much of the city is abandoned and strewn with debris (including asbestos), the National Guard is patrolling in army vehicles, pulling over residents, mostly young black men. There's a curfew and few if any services for those who have returned. While there is a growing grassroots movement to encourage residents to come home ("the right of return"), it's clear that the ruling class continues to force those who do return to live in deplorable conditions.

The majority of homes in the Lower Ninth Ward are still abandoned and have signs spray-painted on them by FEMA marking the number of dead and living people and animals found upon inspection last September.

We also had great discussions with volunteers, residents and Summer Project staff at work sites and at daily evening meetings on grassroots organizing, a vanguard movement, nationalism and class, and about what it means to devote your life to changing society. High schools students led an evening workshop on the role of sexism.

The Project here is very much focused on high school students, revealing how they are an important ally of the working class and how willing some young people are to do hard work, to grapple with political ideas and to fight back! We pledged to return to New Orleans this winter with even larger contingents and to continue to show our solidarity with the struggling workers there.

PLP Anti-Racist Base Can Unite Katrina Victims Against Bosses' System

New Orleans is symbolic of both the utter callousness of the capitalists and the matchless collective spirit of the working class. It's a situation which exemplifies both the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead to winning working people to PLP's communist politics.

Terry, a woman living here in the middle-income neighborhood of Gentilly, told us her story. Because Gentilly is not on a flood plain, Terry and some of her neighbors stayed to wait for Katrina to pass. They'd been through hurricanes before. However, they hadn't known that the canals surrounding the neighborhood would overflow when the levee broke several miles away.

As Terry walked through her house to get her family out, the water rose from her knees to her neck in minutes. Her family, along with about 50 neighbors, took shelter in a two-story house. Her son and his friend, both over 6 feet, rescued 17 people, including three children, one a baby. Terry and her neighbors were rescued from the second floor and taken to the Superdome.

She described the conditions we've all heard about: no bathrooms, no food, no water. National Guardsmen first told them they couldn't leave but later, when they managed to get outside, they were told they couldn't go back in. They slept on the sidewalk. Eventually, they were bussed to San Antonio. She said she would have stayed there, but her mother wanted to come "home."

Many New Orleanians want to return to the only home they've ever known. However, the city, state, and federal governments -- racist to the core -- are making that next to impossible for poor black people.

Several Chicago students and teachers traveled here recently to help organize people who want to fight for the right of return. It was an amazing experience.

In addition to Terry, we heard many other stories highlighting the complete disregard by the ruling class towards people in the path of Katrina, especially the most disadvantaged. Those left behind to die were the same people who this system has always treated as disposable -- not just here, but everywhere. Many Chicagoans noted the similarities between the plan to use Katrina to turn New Orleans into a whiter, wealthier city and Mayor Daley's gentrification schemes for Chicago.

Although we saw many horrors and heard many stories of governmental abuse and neglect, we also had reason for hope. Thousands of volunteers are here from across the U.S. Despite living under a capitalist system, where profits are valued above people, these volunteers have come during the hot Gulf Coast summer to help gut houses, feed people, and provide other services. Many New Orleanians are fighting the government's refusal to let them rebuild their homes. There are beginnings of unity between black and immigrant workers. Building an anti-racist base for PLP can solidify this unity and point out to Katrina's victims both the source of their plight -- capitalism -- and the solution: workers power.

Teachers Challenge Pro-War AFT Hacks

BOSTON, July 25 -- The leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) used the union's international convention here to justify the bombing and invasion of Lebanon by Israel, helping to pave the way for major war in the Middle East. More than 1,000 delegates voted against the leadership's pro-war proposal.

Many had read the 500 CHALLENGES and 5,000 daily CHALLENGE flyers distributed by PLP'ers, with an editorial each day on that day's topic. The literature included PLP's advocacy of revolutionary communism and our position on many other issues like inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China; liberal politicians as the main fascist danger; and the racist nature of the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) as well as of the debate on immigration. CHALLENGE was well-received by the delegates; when one resolution (on China) was being debated on the floor, many delegates were poring over our newspaper.

More than 3,000 delegates were in the hall when the President introduced a special order of business on "State-Sponsored Terrorism and the Crisis in the Middle East." Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran were criticized and the right and responsibility of Israel to defend its borders were affirmed. It ignored the acts of the world's biggest terrorists, Bush, Rumsfeld & Co. and their junior partners in the Israeli government.

Delegates lined up at the microphones but debate was shut down in fifteen minutes. The leadership's move follows its consistent support for U.S. imperialist foreign policy by promoting patriotism and anti-communism while trying to steer the membership into the arms of the Democratic Party. Sen. Edward Kennedy was a featured speaker and was introduced as "a great friend of labor," a "friend" who is one of the main sponsors of legislation viciously attacking immigrant workers and whose colleagues like Hillary Clinton want to send even more troops into the Iraq quagmire. (More on Kennedy's role in our next issue.)

During the past two years anti-war sentiment has grown within the union and resolutions condemning the war in Iraq have been presented at state and national conventions. This year four locals submitted resolutions which not only criticized the Bush administration but also the various ways the U.S. is trying to control the Middle East for economic and political reasons. They called for immediate withdrawal.

Right-wing forces centered in the New York State delegation tried to counter these efforts by introducing Resolution #31 which criticizes Bush but not the system. Progressive forces could not defeat #31 within committee but, after sharp debate, amended it to include the phrase "oppose the war" and to call for the removal of all U.S. bases and troops in Iraq.

The passage of amended #31 produced mixed reactions, some feeling that in and of itself this was a victory but actually the real victory was PLP'ers influencing the debate with our anti-imperialist communist position. A major step forward was the formation at this convention of an AFT Peace and Justice Caucus with 130 delegates signing up. This new group has the potential to become a significant mass organization if it reaches out to union members, engaging in anti-war struggles in the schools in between conventions, as well as fighting the racist educational system which, in NYC for instance, had produced the most segregated schools in the country.

PLP members must introduce communist politics into this Caucus, championing reliance on the masses, not on the AFT leadership and their friends in the Democratic Party. (More next issue.)u

Anti-Racist, Anti-War Resolutions At AFSCME Convention

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' (AFSCME) international leadership plans to spend the second week of August at its Chicago convention fighting to get a dues increase. Although U.S. workers face the growth of fascism and the specter of more and wider imperialist wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, the pro-capitalist union "leaders" agenda is about fattening their business's bottom line.

Many workers understand the need to speak about, and act against, the horrors confronting our class here and worldwide. In AFSCME's New York City District Council 37, affiliated locals have passed several resolutions on such issues as the ongoing racist disaster in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast; immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; and supporting immigrant rights while attacking both the Sensenbrenner and McCain-Kennedy Bills.

Such resolutions, even if passed, won't change the world, but the struggle over what ideas should lead the working class is part of that change. Many delegates, like those in the locals which passed these three resolutions, honestly want to act on the problems we face.

Therefore, it is crucial for our co-workers to understand that these problems cannot be solved by electing "good politicians," or by trying to reform that which can't be reformed. They are inherent in the profit system. Our goal must be to destroy it. Progressive Labor Party will be offering our revolutionary communist solutions for their consideration.

DeMOCKracy in Iraq:
Three Strikers Murdered in Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan, run by pro-U.S. hacks, has a reputation for being free of the daily butchery flooding the rest of the U.S.-occupied country. But it seems this doesn't apply to workers fighting back. On July 27, police and "security" forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) opened fire on 700 workers on strike against the Tasloja Cement Factory near Suleiumanyian. Three workers were murdered and 16 were injured.

The strikers were demanding higher wages and the re-hiring of 300 fired workers. The cops and security forces dealt with these workers as if they were "insurgents."

But what else can be expected from the (PUK) rulers? They've committed the same atrocities for years against anyone opposing their capitalist masters (several of the PUK leaders are millionaires).

This is the kind of "democratic freedom" the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys are imposing on the workers of the Middle East.

NY City Workers:
Red Politics Can Expose `Coalition of Sellouts' and War Contract

NEW YORK CITY, July 18 -- When District Council 37 of AFSCME announced a new contract covering nearly half the city's workforce, it signaled an attempt by the Bloomberg administration to impose its terms on all other city unions. Its 10% wage increase over 32 months barely keeps pace with inflation, and only seems like an "advance" when compared to the last contract -- ZERO percent for one year. Although touted as a "no-give-back" contract, it retains the two-tier give-back initiated in the last contract which pays new workers lower wages for their first two years. All this clears the decks for billionaire mayor Bloomberg to launch a campaign to wring give-backs from pensions and health benefits down the road.

Bloomberg's ruling class is driven to force such cuts in workers' conditions because of U.S. capitalism's problems worldwide: competition from imperialist rivals in Europe, China and Japan; a huge trade deficit; a losing quagmire in Iraq costing hundreds of billions; and an exploding war in the Middle East by imperialist clients sending the cost of oil skyrocketing. All this is impelling the ruling class to break unions and make workers pay for the bosses' crisis. This is fascism at the workplace.

The rulers' primary defense against working-class revolt is their state power -- laws, courts, police, military -- and their ideological control through their media and schools. But to avoid exposing the state (their government) as a dictatorship of capital, they have the union leaders to contain class struggle within the limits of the contract, head off or limit strikes and win workers to think they must accept their lot.

As "leaders" who defend the profit system, they are pro-capitalist agents of the bosses in the workers' ranks. Therefore, they must get workers to knuckle under to the bosses' need to save their system on the workers' backs. Knowing that there is "widespread grumbling among municipal workers" (NY Times, 7/13), these union lieutenants of the bosses look for ways to keep the wraps on this anger. So 20 other unions in the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) -- about half the city's workforce -- declared they will bargain "together" to counter any "pattern" set by DC 37. Already the city bosses are hinting they might not even negotiate with such a "coalition."

But this dancing back and forth between these two "sides" is designed to try to pull the wool over the rank-and-file's eyes. As the Times says, this MLC move "is partly a response to" that "widespread grumbling." When bargaining individually, union leaders like Randi Weingarten, MLC head and president of the teachers union, have been selling out their membership for years. A big coalition of 20 such hacks will only produce a bigger sellout.

Riding off the rank-and-file unity that developed in the transit strike, these union fakers hope that putting forward the tactic of 20 unions bargaining together will lead workers to think such unity will produce a better contract. But this is not rank-and-file unity; it is unity of the bosses' agents to head off workers' anger and save the "leaders" skins.

Real working-class unity can only flow from leadership that defies the bosses' system, red leadership. Some of that has been provided among city workers throughout PLP's existence. This is leadership that not only stands ready to break the bosses' laws, but also points out that reforms cannot solve problems inherent in capitalism, a system that puts profits first and workers on the garbage heap.

This unity also includes multi-racial unity, and a fight against racism, given that a huge number, if not a majority, of the city workers are black and Latino. These union misleaders have never led a concerted struggle against the racist bosses who have oppressed city workers and students, especially the black and Latino majority.

Victory in this contract struggle means spreading the revolutionary ideas of CHALLENGE which will help workers unite to fight the bosses, not bow to them, and will win workers to understand that only destroying the system and replacing it with workers power -- communism -- can solve our problems. This means expanding the circulation of the paper, developing more networks of CHALLENGE distributors, recruiting more workers to study-action groups and to joining PLP. Unity growing out of that kind of struggle is the opposite of the union leaders' "unity," which unites with the bosses' system.

LETTERS

Con Ed Profits From Workers Misery

The suffering, hardship and death in Queens, NY, along with new outages on NYC's Staten Island and the over 100 heat-related deaths in California all due to power blackouts continue the bosses' war on the working class. The growing fascist control and manipulation of the news we get turns the world upside down and distorts the truth, from Iraq to New Orleans to Queens. What about the thousands of 100-year-old feeder cables rotting because of no repair or replacement? What about the billions Con Ed bills us for while they warn us of power shortages and tell us to cut back on our use of electricity, a basic need to sustain life in the cities?

In a city boasting one of the greatest concentrations of wealth in the world, with the country's biggest utility -- possessing $25 billion in assets and $12 billion in annual revenues -- working-class families are forced to throw out food and go without lights or air conditioning in 95-degree weather, especially the aged and sick.

Electric power, like all capitalist products, is a commodity sold for profit. When the cost of building new generation plants and maintaining the infrastructure cuts into profits, the utilities slash supply and have reduced the workforce by 35% over 20 years, down to skeleton crews barely capable of making repairs when neglected equipment fails. When the City-owned, bondholder-controlled transit system was denied fare increases, it followed the same scenario until major derailments and service disruptions forced workers to approve a staggering bond issue providing billions in new taxes to rebuild the system.

Now it seems Con Ed may be going the same route. Money the government used to give them and other utilities now finances dozens of wars launched or sponsored by the U.S. ruling class to protect their profits and dominance.

Fascism is increasing because the bosses fear workers' growing unrest and anger at their rotten system that extracts profits from workers' misery and death. Con Ed fed us misinformation for almost two weeks, saying the power loss was a "minor problem" involving a few hundred people; then it became 1,800; then 25,000 and finally 100,000. If one adds homes and apartments with reduced voltage affecting lights, air conditioning and elevators, the figures reach 200,000 victims of Con Ed profiteering. But just as Con Ed turns truth from day to night, workers organizing for revolution will change capitalist night into a communist day.

A Comrade

Campus Workers Unite Against Boss's Squeeze

The class struggle is picking up at my NYC campus. The bosses are squeezing the workers -- what few remain after a round of firings -- for more and more work. The bosses are also using all their tricks to reduce costs.

However, recently all the members of one crew began fighting back, signing a letter to the "big boss" complaining about the workload. Standing together will make us stronger and enable us to resist attacks. The "big boss" sent quite a nasty letter in return, but our point got across.

At this jobsite a modest number of workers are reading CHALLENGE and being confronted with revolutionary communist ideas. Although this reform struggle seems small, the ideas in CHALLENGE are shaping this into a revolutionary one. While the class struggle continues with or without communist ideas, the responsibility lies with communists to bring red ideas to the fore and fight for political leadership of the working class.

For example, in this struggle it is crucial to point out that given the new social contract (fascism) under which we live, conditions will worsen. No matter how hard we fight or what few reforms we may win, our gains will be taken away. Workers here and everywhere must realize that only through communist revolution can we end the misery we face on and off the job.

Young Red Worker

Reds True Fighters Against Anti-Semitism

The Sunday NY Times Book Review (7/23) carried a review of  Jan Gross's book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz," by David Margolick, which slandered communists, the real fighters against anti-Semitism. The review says the following about the July 4, 1946 murderous anti-Semitic attack, or "pogrom," when Poles murdered 42 Jews in the Polish city of Kielce, a year after World War II ended:

"Days before the pogrom, the Polish primate, Cardinal August Hlold, had spurned Jewish entreaties to condemn Roman Catholic anti-Semitism. Afterward, he charged that by leading the effort to impose Communism on Poland -- Jews were in fact prominent in the party, though hardly in control -- the Jews had only themselves to blame. The point was seconded by the bishop of Kielce, who suggested that Jews had actually orchestrated the unrest to persuade Britain to hand over Palestine. It was a neat trick: being Communists and Zionists simultaneously. Only the bishop of Czestochowa condemned the killings, and was promptly reprimanded by his colleagues. One wonders how Karol Wojtyla, then a young seminarian, later Pope John Paul II, viewed this cesspool of ignorance and intolerance."

So the Roman Catholic Church, evidently including the later "saintly" Pope Karol Wojtyla, either did nothing or actively blamed the Jews themselves!

Then Margolick says, "If the Church gave the Jews short shrift, the same was true of the Communists, even the Jewish ones. For them, ignoring the Jewish plight, as well as Polish complicity in wartime atrocities, offered a way to ingratiate themselves with a wary nation."

This is a lie. The communists did NOT "ignore the Jewish plight."

Margolick has to know -- but fails to mention -- that Polish and Soviet communist leaders moved swiftly to severely punish those responsible for the murderous anti-Semitic pogrom. They compelled everyone in Kielce, 10,000 people, to watch the funeral procession for those murdered Jews.

Five days later, the communists put 38 pogrom participants on trial. Nine were sentenced to death and executed on July 12, 1946. (*See bottom for website source.)

Evidently the Times' reviewer felt compelled to hide the fact that the communists fought anti-Semitism with a determination unmatched by the Western Allies.

Like Poland, pre-war Hungary was a fascist dictatorship in which anti-Semitism, along with other forms of racism against minorities (Rumanians in Hungary, Ukrainians in Poland) was institutionalized. During the 1930's and '40's the communist movement) opposed anti-Semitism more strongly than any other political force (including the Zionist movement). As former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wrote in 1951: "The Soviet Government fought anti-Semitism with characteristic pertinacity....The truth is that the Soviet Government is anti-anti-Semitic."

Naturally many Jews were attracted to the communist movement. Many welcomed the Red Army after the war and joined various communist parties. Many communist leaders in Hungary as elsewhere were Jewish. Historically, communists have always led the fight against all forms of racism.

A Red History Buff

French Reader Gets Kick Out of Anti-Racist Football Article

When the latest issue of CHALLENGE arrived, I told my usually apolitical 18-year-old son about the article on the soccer star Zidane, and he said, "You're putting me on." I said, "No," and we immediately read the article together.

We discussed it -- he knows all about the racism of the Italian soccer clubs -- and I didn't even know he took an interest in the matter! So, one small testimony that printing this story was an excellent idea.

Zidane's backing off from charging racism breaks the rhythm of the article, but facts are stubborn things; we live in a complex world. It's important to know that there are limits to how far millionaire soccer players will go.

A Friend in France

Israeli Move Part of U.S. Plan?

I believe the Aug. 2 CHALLENGE editorial contains a misunderstanding 

of Israeli motives for invading Lebanon. Israel has not acted on its own volition. Since mounting an action of this magnitude requires extensive organization, it is likely that this conflict is the U.S.-planned prelude to the bombing and subsequent invasion of Iran. When Israel "decides" to pursue Hezbollah into Syria, the U.S. hopes to draw Syria into the war; Iran has a defense agreement with Syria. Once Iran enters the war, the U.S. would mount its own invasion from Iraq. This plan is predicated on the "cooperation" of the ruling classes in Syria and Iran.

Long-time reader

CHALLENGE Comment: The U.S. does not seem to be prepared to invade Iran at this point, considering its problems controlling Iraq (having to send still more troops into Baghdad). While your predictions about the consequences of these attacks are true, it's difficult to be certain whether the U.S. is behind the attacks or whether Israel is acting for its own interests and hoping the U.S. will allow them to continue, assuming it benefits the U.S. ruling class.

Communist School Stresses Crucial Role of Industrial Workers

LOS ANGELES, July 31 -- The last three weeks of our 2006 Summer Project demonstrated the potential for organizing a revolution and a communist society through a series of communist schools, study groups, leafleting, CHALLENGE sales and developing closer ties. The schools were memorable and vital, attended by up to 30-plus people at each. Two people joined PLP; many others are seriously considering it.

In one school, an industrial worker stressed the importance of young comrades becoming factory workers, citing the revolutionary potential of industrial workers. This coincided with our leafleting at many plants. He also suggested a "work-in," where those interested would find temporary factory jobs for a better understanding of industrial work, even if not doing it long-term. His description of developing ties with co-workers provided a better feel for doing industrial work.

We also heard presentations on the history of PLP, on immigration, and on racism and its roots in capitalism and imperialism. We discussed New Orleans and the need for multi-racial unity against racism, an attack on the whole working class as well as the need for communism and dialectics. We also analyzed the current Middle East crisis -- a sharpening quagmire rooted in inter-imperialist rivalry and many local bosses' greed for more oil profits. The war in Lebanon is a murderous example of this rivalry and possible omen of a coming world war. All this highlighted the necessity for even more dedication in building our party.

We had struggles over collectivity and contradiction between reform and revolution, understanding that while participating in reform struggles, it's an illusion to think they'll lead to revolution.

With consistent, day-to-day, hard work of building personal-political relationships and with genuine political and ideological struggle for communism (including a wider distribution of CHALLENGE), we will be able to bring our friends closer to the party. We're learning that it's not enough to just push for militant anti-imperialist politics. Grasping the primacy of a communist outlook will increase participation in events such as the Summer Project and building networks of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, necessary to sustain our Party and movement. Many of us are realizing that fighting for communism is not a sacrifice -- it's in our class interest. We will lead more fulfilling lives from our experiences as communist organizers. A proper struggle can only strengthen us on an individual level and as a Party on a collective level.

Our communist school has inspired future study groups with more widespread leadership from among our comrades and our close friends as a result of these struggles here. We plan more anti-racist activity and will emerge from this even stronger.

Mexican Elections Won't Change Workers' Lives

[The following was accidentally omitted from our last issue -- Ed.]

Oaxaca's militant teachers have returned to work. They were pressured by the media's claim that if the teachers "care" about the students, they'll go back to work while negotiating their contract. The section below was written while the strike was still on.)

OAXACA, MEXICO, July 14 --"The Teachers' Struggle is Also the Workers' Struggle!"; "Long live Communism; Death to Capitalism!"olk,0

These were some of the slogans chanted by many people in the mega-march of 500,000 people in Oaxaca supporting the teachers.

The PRD and its candidate, Obrador Lopez, have promised to spend more money on education, scholarships for the poor, and pensions for the elderly and other reforms. Even if he had won the election and slightly limited the huge profits of Mexico's bosses and the imperialists, the lives of Mexican workers would not be changed significantly. As the competition increases between local capitalists on the one hand and the imperialists on the other, workers are sinking into greater poverty.

REDEYE

Officers's order in Iraqi: kill all able men

Military prosecutors last month accused four soldiers in the unit of releasing three Iraqi men they captured that day, only to kill them....

But the lawyers are...making a more startling claim: that the soldiers were given explicit orders before the raid to "kill all military-age males" they encountered.

The lawyers say that two senior officers -- a colonel and a captain -- have acknowledged that they gave that order, as have other men in the same company. (NYT, 7/23)

Imperialist boundaries poison Mid-East

...For the optimists hoping that war in the Middle East will soon end so the rebuilding can commence, there is a serious problem....

Boundaries between many countries of the Middle East, like those in Africa, were...put together...by European colonizers who...lumped enemies together on purpose, hoping that ethic hatreds might reduce anticolonial feelings...A new study....compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly that artificial nations suffer terribly -- lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it.

...And having oil wealth is unlikely to save the day. Fragmented countries with natural resources often do worse because civil war rages over who gets to keep the money. Some of the poorest countries in Africa, for example, are actually quite well endowed with diamonds and other resources. (NYT, 7/20)

Nixon adviser says fascism is real threat

John Dean, the White House counsel who warned Richard Nixon 32 years ago that Watergate was "a cancer growing on the presidency," was back in town the other night....

"What is at the end of the road in America," he said, "is a proto-fascist type attitude.".... "We have a very real possibility in this country of getting on that road. We're not very far from it. It wouldn't take a very sharp turn."

His observations, Dean said, are based on many discussions with social scientists... (Tribune Media SVC., 7/16)

`For a good person to do evil, takes religion?'

In "Breaking the spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and theorist of cognition at Tufts, refers again and again to the "brave" researchers (including himself) who challenge religion. In " The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins, a professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford, once again likens religious faith to a disease and sets as his goal convincing his readers that atheism is "a brave" aspiration....

...As the (atheist) physicist Steven Weinberg has famously put it,...good people tend to do good, evil people tend to do evil, but for a good person to do evil -- "that takes religion." (NYT, 7/25)

Dixie Chicks say religion keeps us down

The Dixie Chicks...Lead singer Natalie Maines belts it out: "Dust bowl. Bible Belt. Got more churches than trees. Raise me, praise me, couldn't save me. Couldn't keep me on my knees." (Liberal opinion, 7/26)

Judge bars Wal-Mart workers' health $

Wal-mart won a major legal victory when a federal judge in the US struck down a Maryland state law requiring large retailers to provide minimal levels of health insurance. (GW, 8/3)

IRS firing auditors who find rich cheaters

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes....

Estate tax Lawyers are the most productive tax law enforcement personnel at the I.R.S.,...For each hour they work, they find an average of $2,200 of taxes that people owe the government. (NYT, 7/23)

US-Israel axis devastates Lebanon

The United Nations estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 Lebanese have been displaced, a giant number for a country of 3.5 million....people are stranded without food, power and in some towns ,clean water.

"we have between 20 and 25 percent of our population that is turned into refugees. What government can cope with that?" (NYT, 7/29)

The poor pay extra for what they buy

Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year's insurance.

The poor are also the main customers for appliances and furniture at "rent to own" stores, where payments are stretched out at very high interest rates; in Wisconsin, a $200 television can end up costing $700.

Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities... a "ghetto tax." (NYT, 7/19)

70 Years Ago Spain's Workers Led Fight Against Fascism

July 18 marked the 70th anniversary of the fascist uprising begun by Franco and other generals against Spain's Republican government. The Spanish Civil War was the first harbinger in Europe of World War II (along with Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and the Japanese fascist's attack on Manchuria in the early 1930's).

Even though Spain was a weak capitalist country, its banking system was very strong (as it is now). And the banks extended its capital to all branches of production. Spain's colonies in Africa and it's neutrality during World War I helped create huge financial institutions like Hispano Americano Bank, Bank Vizcaya and Bank Bilbao. The merging of finance capital with the landed aristocracy created a financial oligarchy, turning Spain into a small imperialist country (so labeled by Spain's Communist Party in the 1920's and '30's).

But this capitalist development also sparked a very militant and class-conscious working class. In Oct. 1934, the fascist CEDA party entered the government. CEDA didn't hide its sympathy for the Nazis. It was widely expected that CEDA would follow Hitler's example in using parliament to introduce an authoritarian regime. But many Spanish workers were determined not to fall prey to the disaster that had divided the German labor movement.

Following the heroic February 1934 uprising of Austrian workers in Vienna, in a vain attempt to stop the semi-fascist Dollfuss from entering that government, the watchword of Spanish anti-fascists had become "Better Vienna than Berlin", referring to Hitler's rise to power by parlimentary maneuvers. Nowhere was the radicalization of the Spanish workers movement clearer than in the ranks of the Socialist Party (PSOE). Under rank-and-file pressure, its strategy of reformist gradualism was being replaced by calls for revolution.

.A general strike was called. In Asturias, in northern Spain, miners rose in armed insurrection and formed militias which laid siege to most of the province's Civil Guard (police) posts. In the mining town of Mieres, the Provincial Revolutionary Committee announced to a wildly enthusiastic crowd the founding of the Socialist Republic.

The local Workers' Alliance Committees organized every aspect of life, from food distribution and hospitals to transport and communications. A makeshift war industry was rapidly established. Factories began to turn out armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition. The workers even produced a benzol substitute for petrol, made from coal. "Red Guards" were organized to ensure revolutionary order, looters were strictly dealt with and well-known right-wingers were arrested.

Women were heavily involved at all levels, many joining the militias. The miners had few arms and relied on those captured from government forces or arms factories; they suffered from a chronic shortage of ammunition. The insurrection's principal weapon was dynamite; its adept use enabled the miners to inflict humiliating defeats on the opposing army.

In the mountain passes, giant catapults hurled the dynamite at the enemy. In the cities, the dynamiters crept forward while smoking cigars, using them to light hand-held explosive sticks. Once the mining areas had been secured, a column of 1,000 militias was sent to seize the provincial capital of Oviedo. Here, where the local party and union bureaucracy was more dominant, the workers had been slow to rise, but the miners' arrival established revolutionary power in the city's streets. The government forces were quickly driven into a few isolated strongholds.

Meanwhile, troops sent from the capital in Madrid to deal with the rebels met stiff resistance in the region's southern mountain passes. Several hundred miners, armed mainly with dynamite, pinned down one such government force for 12 days. However, the Asturian Commune remained isolated. Much of the Socialist leaders' new-found militancy was only hot air.

Elsewhere in Spain the general strike soon collapsed due to the passivity of the PSOE leadership and the lack of anarchist union federation support. Only in Catalonia, under revolutionary socialist influence, did the strike begin to take on insurrectionary proportions before being undermined by the half-heartedness of the left nationalists and anarchists.

Such was the optimism of the Asturian workers that news of the failure of the movement elsewhere in Spain was dismissed as government lies. After ten days of desperate resistance, gradually the enemy forces pushed back the 20,000 militias. The government soon decided to smash the movement at all costs. Franco's advancing troops, who had experience crushing colonial revolts in Northern Africa, used prisoners to form human shields and bombed food lines. On October 18, after protracted negotiations, the revolutionaries surrendered. Many workers refused to hand over their arms, either hiding them or fleeing to the mountains to begin a guerrilla struggle.

(Next: the 1936-39 Civil War and how the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Mexico, were the only forces helping the Republican government, while the U.S., France, Britain, fascist Germany and Italy helped Franco.)u

Years After `Peace Accords' Death Squads Back in El Salvador

EL SALVADOR -- On July 5, hundreds of high school students took to the streets protesting a bus fare increase and the high cost of living. They demanded fares be cut in half for students and for people over 60. When the students neared the National University, security police -- the UMO (Unit for Maintenance of Order -- assaulted them.

The students defended themselves and a big fight ensued. Police sharpshooters were stationed on adjacent buildings, helicopters flew over the students' heads, shooting indiscriminately, while other cops beat and arrested them. Hundreds from the National Civil Police, including the Group of Police Resistance, surrounded the University, arresting and beating more students.

In the end, two cops were fatally shot and many students and teachers were wounded. Dozens of students were arrested, beaten and tortured in the jails; many have disappeared. The government of Antonio Saca immediately accused the FMLN of being responsible for the demonstrations and the police deaths. But they ignored the poverty, unemployment and repression caused by the government and by capitalism itself.

Ironically, these police units that attacked the demonstrators were created after the "peace" accords between the FMLN leadership and the fascist Salvadoran government. The #2 police official is an ex-guerilla commander and many of the cops are former guerrillas, who today openly defend the murderous capitalist system. They are just like the old death squads.

"Now we live in a country where democracy is the main achievement of the peace accords," scream the FMLN leaders. Clearly, since these leaders are paid $4,000 a month, compared to a farm worker's $76, it's obvious which class and system they defend.

The Salvadoran working class is fed up with their inhuman conditions. There are daily demonstrations, protests, strikes and confrontations. The working class must understand that the capitalist rulers will do everything possible to keep workers on their knees, including building supposed "leftist" tendencies to confuse them.

Experience has exposed the FMLN's objective of "national liberation" as just another way to exploit and repress the working class. The attack on this and other demonstrations shows how capitalism meets workers' demands: with bullets. This system cannot meet our needs. The fight between workers and bosses is a fight to the death. Our only alternative is the direct fight for communism.

We support the struggles in the streets, strikes and demonstrations against the bosses. There we can expose capitalism and the phony left. Many of these angry workers and students know true communist ideas through our paper, CHALLENGE/DESAFIO , and that future struggles should be not only for fare reductions but for working-class power. Then all wealth we produce will be distributed according to the needs of these same workers, not for the profits of capitalist bosses.

U.S. Rulers Killed 1,000 World War 1 Vets in 1935 `Katrina'

The genocidal response of the Bush administration to Katrina is not new for the U.S. ruling class. And talk about putting soldiers and unemployed veterans in harm's way....

On September 2, 1935, what became known as the Great Labor Day Hurricane ravaged the Florida Keys with winds of 160 miles per hour and gusts up to 200 mph. Between 400 and 600 people, perhaps over a thousand, perished. Among the dead were hundreds of World War I veterans. At the height of the Great Depression these vets had been sent to build a road on the low-lying islands of the Florida Keys as part of the Public Works for Veterans program. While working, they were housed in inadequate tent-like structures provided by the Roosevelt administration. When the National Weather Bureau issued warnings for a hurricane, they were not evacuated.

Shortly afterwards, the editors of the communist literary magazine New Masses asked Ernest Hemingway to write an account of the storm from an insider's perspective. He was living in the area at the time and knew it intimately. Hemingway's response was the article, "Who Murdered the Vets? A First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane," published September 17, 1935. Excerpts follow:

Whom did they annoy and to whom was their possible presence a political danger?

Who sent them down to the Florida Keys and left them there in hurricane months?

Who is responsible for their deaths?

The writer of this article lives a long way from Washington.... But he does know that wealthy people, yachtsmen, fisherman such as President Hoover and President Roosevelt do not come to the Florida Keys in hurricane months....because [they] know there would be great danger, inescapable danger, to their property if a storm should come.... But veterans, especially the bonus-marching variety...are not property. They are human beings...and all they have to lose is their lives. They are doing coolie labor for a top wage of $45 a month and they have been put down on the Florida Keys where they can't make trouble....

As this is written five days after the storm, nobody knows how many are dead...but the total of veterans dead and missing alone numbers 442.... The total of dead may well pass a thousand, as many bodies were swept out to sea and never will be found.... But the veterans had been sent there; they had no opportunity to leave, nor any protection against hurricanes; and they never had a chance for their lives....

Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans, many of them husky, hard-working and simply out of luck...to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months?

Why were the men not evacuated on Sunday, or at least Monday morning, when it was known there was a possibility of a hurricane striking the Keys and evacuation was their only possible protection?

Who advised against sending the train from Miami to evacuate the veterans until four-thirty o'clock on Monday so that it was blown off the tracks before it ever reached the lower camps?....

Now it's calm and clear and blue and almost the way it is when the millionaires come down in the winter...except for the smell of the dead that always smell the same in all countries that you go to.... Or is it just that dead soldiers smell the same no matter what their nationality or who sends them to die?....

You're dead now, brother, but who left you there in the hurricane months on the Keys where a thousand men died before you when they were building the same road that's now washed out?

Who left you there? And what's the punishment for manslaughter now?

 

From Mumbai to Lebanon . . . US Iraq War Fiasco Causes Endless Bloody Crisis

2,000 Arab-Jewish Protestors Slam War

‘Butt’ Heard ‘Round the World Exposes Racism at World Cup

PL’ers Spark Fight on War, Immigration ‘Reform’ at NEA Convention

UAW Leaders ‘Choice’ to Auto Workers: Unemployment Now, or Later

Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike and Miltant Class Struggle

Unite Against Guest Worker Slavery

Collective Clean-up — A Microcosm of Communism

Miami Arrests Signal Mass Racist Terror

Brooklynites Protest Ratner Housing Rip-off

Education ‘Reform’ Masks Aim for Schools to Serve Ruling Class Even More

LETTERS

India’s ‘Miracle’ Enslaves 6-year-olds

Workers Seeing Through Capitalism’s Illusions

Steel Bosses Fight Dog Eat Dog

Immigrant Airport Workers Study Red Ideas

Mexico Electoral Fraud: Millionaires Vs. Millionaires

UMW Reform Fight Fertile Ground for PLP

Non-Profits Build Fascism

REDEYE

• US torture is an old story to Latinos
• Imperialism gives marines grim mission
• That day seems a long way off….
• Liberals also want US to rule the world
• Neo-Nazis joining Army in race-war plan
• Need cheap labor? Just fill your prisons!
• Top brains’ miracle solution to poverty!
• Hey, how did Buffet get all that money?

Forward to Communism: In the 1930’s Soviet Union, Many Workers Organized for Communism Rather than Socialism

Liberal Bosses Showing Their True ( WAR ) Colors

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From Mumbai to Lebanon . . . US Iraq War Fiasco Causes Endless Bloody Crisis

Israel’s raids into Lebanon and Gaza have killed hundreds of non-combatants, as of July 14. Terrorists’ bombs killed 200 commuters in Mumbai, India, on July 11. North Korea had test-fired seven missiles in Japan’s direction the week before. While rooted in separate regional rivalries, these acts and threats of mass murder all reflect increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism’s supremacy.

Among the U.S.’s foes here, however, there are no good guys, just capitalists seeking a bigger piece of the profit pie for themselves. Hamas’s leaders, for example, despite being underdogs, are perfectly willing to lob rockets onto children to maintain control of the Palestinian Authority’s cheap labor racket, once run by Arafat.

Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s ties to Iran, not their seizure of Israeli soldiers, motivate Israel’s massive assault on Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. In the past, Israel settled such kidnappings through prisoner swaps, including the exchange of 436 Hezbollah supporters for a single Israeli intelligence agent in 2004. But now, with Iran’s ayatollahs threatening to wipe Israel off the map and developing the nuclear means that could threaten Israeli’s nuclear monopoly in the region (Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons), Israeli rulers have decided to strike pre-emptively. They deliberately provoked the hostage-taking to furnish phony grounds for crushing the Teheran-backed forces in their midst. Although Washington bankrolls Israel’s war machine with $3 billion a year, the Israeli brass moved apparently without U.S. approval. The gunslinger hired to patrol the heart of the U.S. oil empire is once again proving highly unreliable.

Iran’s newfound boldness towards Israel stems from Bush’s bungling in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal (7/14) reports, "The Iraq war has made Israel significantly less safe....Iran has used the conflict to project its influence across Iraq and the Persian Gulf region." The Iraq fiasco also underlies the "world’s sole superpower’s" relative powerlessness in the crisis. "With U.S. troops tied down in Iraq...the White House has little desire for a broader regional conflict that could bring a head-on clash with Iran right now." (WSJ, 7/14) Along with Iran, the big winners here are Russia, which is helping Iran build its nuke program, and China, Iran’s top oil and gas customer. For now, the U.S., though a pariah in world opinion, must counter Iran’s rise through diplomacy. Exploiting U.S. weakness, Russia and China recently killed "a U.S.-backed [UN] measure demanding that Iran stop enrichment activities and threatening sanctions and the use of armed force." (Bloomberg News, 7/12) Iran’s buddies succeeded in substituting "a package of incentives."

No matter who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre, it sets back U.S. plans to enlist India as a bulwark against Russia and China. As various sources blame Kashmir-based Islamists and Pakistani intelligence, tensions heighten between India and Pakistan, shifting India’s focus toward nuclear-armed Pakistan and away from its blossoming love-fest with the U.S. Bills that would bless "atomic trade" between the U.S. and India await passage on Capitol Hill. India-British-U.S. Mittal is concluding its takeover of Europe’s Arcelor, making Mittal the world’s largest producer of steel, crucial to both industry and war-making.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) focuses its July/August issue of Foreign Affairs on India with articles like "India and the Balance of Power" and "America’s New Strategic Partner?" But the Boston Globe editorialized (7/14) that the train bombers’ goal may have been "to punish India for entering into a strategic alliance with the United States." Along with its rosy forecasts for the subcontinent, Foreign Affairs warns, "the dispute over Kashmir could still spark a war between India and Pakistan." The CFR website highlights an article predicting nearly 3 million deaths at the outset of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

In return for $2 billion in aid since 2003, North Korea allies with China, just as U.S. rulers had hoped Israel would serve them, but both these "junior partners" also have their own interests as well. "With the U.S. preoccupied in Iraq, China embarked on a quiet policy of self-interest: to strengthen North Korea as a ‘buffer state’ between China and South Korea. China does not want the North to collapse, and for U.S. troops to fill the vacuum and appear on its northeast border." (Christian Science Monitor, 7/10)

China contributed generously to the creation of the long- and longer-range Korean missiles that help tie up over 100,000 U.S. ground troops in South Korea and Japan and make the entire U.S. Seventh Fleet unavailable for Mid-East action. China’s Korea strategy buttresses its ongoing plan to challenge the U.S. for control of Persian Gulf oil.

We should not conclude that the U.S., handcuffed militarily at present, will shy from war. Quite the opposite. Even before the recent escalation in killing in Iraq, the CFR boasted that the U.S. campaign was slaughtering "between fifty and a hundred a day." (CFR, 6/15/06) U.S. rulers know they have much more to do — seizing the entire Middle East and its oil and preparing to take on China and Russia. Their problem is mobilizing the nation to do it.

One tack they’re trying is anti-Arab racist militarism. (See page 5) But that appeals only to a segment of the population, like the gang of U.S. soldiers — the leader a born-again Christian — who raped an Iraqi girl and then killed her and her family. The rulers are also trying to promote Al Gore’s environmentalism to promote the government as savior and protector. [See article next issue.] But the Green Movement doesn’t produce the killers the bosses need. The Vietnam Syndrome, essentially mass opposition to profit-driven wars, continues to haunt them.

Organizing soldiers to join workers and students in the fight against U.S. imperialism is the main way to fight U.S. war-makers, not relying on U.S. capitalist rivals like Hezbollah or Iran or China. This latest Middle-East explosion has the potential to escalate at some point into a much wider war. This will accelerate the bosses’ need to militarize society and put more "boots on the ground." It is incumbent to raise, and oppose, this looming attack on the working class in unions, campus groups, churches, parent associations, and all other mass organizations.

As the world’s bosses create one crisis after another, the opportunity for us to mobilize millions in a revolutionary communist movement against the profit system’s endless wars lies open.

2,000 Arab-Jewish Protestors Slam War*

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Israel supports the war-making rulers. On July 16, some 2,000 Arab and Jewish anti-war demonstrators rallied in Tel Aviv to protest the Israeli bosses’ military strikes in Southern Lebanon. Police arrested three protesters, claiming they were holding a demonstration without a permit. (NY Times, 7/17)

According to YNet, an Israeli web service, the protesters, who marched from Hen Boulevards toward King George Street, chanted slogans such as "Olmert agreed with Bush: War and occupation"; "Stop the war monstrosity"; and, "Say no to the brutal bombardments on Gaza." They also accused Defense Minister Amir Peretz (a Labor Party leader who joined the government) of murdering children in Gaza, and recited: "Peretz, don’t worry, we’ll be seeing you at The Hague." (Site of the war crimes tribunals)

Hours after the attack on Lebanon began, 200 demonstrators picketed Peretz’s Jerusalem office. Also on July 16, a smaller protest occurred in the Haifa Central Train Depot where a Hezbollah rocket had landed shortly before.

‘Butt’ Heard ‘Round the World Exposes Racism at World Cup

Just like in the U.S., racism is growing across Europe, especially against immigrants, and a major expression of it was seen by more than a billion people watching the recent World Cup of Football. The racist attack on France’s star football player Zinedine Zidane proves once again that whenever racists spew their filth they’re protected while when anti-racists fight back, they’re condemned by the rulers’ media.

In the Cup finals, Zidane, playing his last professional match, was ejected when he flattened the Italian player Marco Materazzi. Italy went on to win the Cup in penalty kicks and immediately the pundits denounced Zidane for a "classless act." But of course, as in many such incidents, there’s appearance and there’s essence.

Zidane was reacting to the most revolting racist attack by Materazzi. According to a transcript recorded by an employee of FIFA (Federation of International Football Association), Materazzi called Zidane a "big Algerian shit." The French anti-racist organization SOS-Racism said Materazzi also labeled Zidane a "dirty terrorist." And a Brazilian TV station that hired lip-readers to watch the video of the confrontation reported that Materazzi called Zidane’s sister "a prostitute."

Less noted was the grabbing, kicking and fouling of Zidane all game long by Italy’s defenders. Said French defender William Gallas, "The Italians did everything they could to provoke Zidane." (NY Post, 7/11) Obviously their racism was designed to get Zidane to explode, with the hope that it would get him ejected and give Italy a better chance to win the Cup — which is exactly what happened.

Lately it was reported that Zidane is saying the attack didn’t involve racism; rather it was "personal," against his "manhood." Whether this is because Zidane feels that labeling it a racist attack will reduce his corporate sponsorship earning power or because the French government is pressuring him to play down the racism for fear of sparking the kind of anti-racist rebellions that erupted last fall, the fact remains that there’s too much evidence to indicate racism is at the heart of it.

Racist insults by right-wing fans against non-white players are very common throughout Europe. Soccer in Italy itself "has a long history of racist behavior…. Materazzi’s father…managed Lazio, an infamously right-wing racist club…[whose] players openly have used the fascist stiff-arm salute at games." (NY Post) Materazzi will be playing for Lazio this year. Its "fan club, The Ultras, are notorious for their Fascist-friendly politics" and "have members in Italy’s extra-parliamentary far right…. The group has frequently used racist and anti-Semitic banners, one…50-foot banner [saying]…their opponents were a "team of n------." (Dave Zirin’s weekly column; available by e-mailing: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Now, "during post-game festivities, Roberto Calderoli, the former minister of reform and a member of the right-wing National Alliance Party,…[said] Italy had vanquished a French team made up of ‘Negroes, Communists and Muslims.’" (NY Times, 7/12)

In a recent match in Sicily, Messina’s star African player Marc Zoro picked up the ball and walked off the field, protesting the racist chants raining down on him. Many of his opponent players showed support for him, except one who yelled, "Stop that, Zoro, you’re just trying to make a name for yourself." It was none other than this same racist, Marco Materazzi.

Zidane himself, whose parents immigrated to France from Algeria, grew up poor in Marseille’s housing projects and was often taunted for his Algerian roots. It was this kind of racism that sparked last year’s youth rebellions in France. Zidane "has sparred verbally with Europe’s far-right political machine for more than a decade. He is an outspoken anti-racist on a team…[that] stands up against bigotry both inside and outside the sport." (Zirin) Zidane was ejected twice "for striking foes who had taunted his religion or ‘race.’"

Given all this, the "butt heard ’round the world" was only a token of what pro-fascist racists like Materazzi really deserve.

PL’ers Spark Fight on War, Immigration ‘Reform’ at NEA Convention

ORLANDO, FL., July 12 — Last week, almost 10,000 teachers and educational professionals met here at the Convention of the National Education Association (NEA). PLP members have raised — and won friends to — communist ideas at these meetings for many years.

This year the PL contingent’s key issues to discuss with teachers were imperialist war, immigration reform policy, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and support for the teachers’ strike in Oaxaca, Mexico. While we raised the need for that support, we lost control of the motion, and were unable to include language saying that the PRD candidate for President of Mexico, Lopez Obrador, would not solve the problems faced by teachers and students. But the convention did act in international solidarity by voting to send $10,000 to Section 22 of the teachers’ union in Oaxaca to help with the medical bills of teachers and their supporters attacked by the police.

Through distribution of more than 2,000 leaflets and 200 CHALLENGES, discussions and floor activity we argued that inter-imperialist rivalry — the main contradiction in the world today — must be seen as the primary reason for the fights over immigration and education reform. We explained that the U.S. ruling class is worried that its industrial base and troop levels here are dismally low for their future imperialist needs. (A colleague from the Peace and Justice Caucus told one comrade she would like to send her daughter to work with us to learn what communists do.)

We noted that war and fascism are the order of the day now; that both the McCain-Kennedy and Hagel-Martinez immigration reform acts are attempts to win immigrants to patriotism and, through the DREAM Act and similar language, compel immigrant students to enter the armed forces to obtain "legal" status. We addressed this on the floor and also in our state delegations and caucus meetings. Many teachers were totally unaware of how the DREAM Act pushes immigrant youth into the military, and were interested in PL’s ideas on the Act’s link to widening war and inter-imperialist rivalry.

We fought to include international solidarity with Iraqi teachers, students and parents in the motion calling for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, leaving no bases behind. The Convention didn’t consider this motion, although a voice vote clearly supported doing so. In both this vote and in the discussion of the DREAM Act, the NEA leadership used parliamentary maneuvers to ensure that the Convention would not discuss main issues putting the union in opposition to the Democrats and the liberal bosses.

We attacked the role of the Broad and Gates Foundations in preparing schools for war, as well as the broader implications of NCLB, saying that under capitalism all educational reform legislation, serves the ruling class’s need to train loyal soldiers and workers for imperialist war. Again, delegates thanked us for connecting the dots, and explaining the links between these issues.

Hundreds of delegates read leaflets with these positions, but we also discussed them with our close friends over dinner, at which delegates — both PL’ers and friends — reviewed our political ideas and convention strategy to implement them at the convention. This work here reflects years of activity in our union locals.

Our co-workers attend these conventions to fight attacks on their livelihood and on public education. Teachers nationwide, including from rural states in which we have very little contact, go to these conventions looking for leadership. Many are open to our point of view. The convention allows us to spend more time at social events and during boring floor speeches better acquainting ourselves with teachers from home and from around the country, and engaging in more political discussion with them. As the crisis of capitalism sharpens, more of these teachers can be won to join PLP in fighting for communist revolution as the only solution to this system of war, racism and exploitation.

UAW Leaders ‘Choice’ to Auto Workers: Unemployment Now, or Later

DETROIT, MI, June 27 — At the United Auto Workers convention in Las Vegas, June 11-16, the union leadership rewarded itself with pay hikes while giving auto bosses over $15 billion in wage and healthcare concessions from active and retired workers and agreeing to the possible elimination of more than 40 plants and 80,000 jobs. GM and Ford market share has dropped and UAW membership has sunk to one-third of its former peak. While GM and Ford close plants, Honda, Toyota and Mercedes are opening new non-union shops in the U.S.

While about 2,000 delegates and staff let the good times roll, 12,600 at Delphi and 35,000 at GM were abandoning ship, taking buyouts and early retirements negotiated by the union. Meanwhile, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved Delphi's plan that could eliminate nearly all 33,000 U.S. hourly workers within six months. At the convention, former UAW President Doug Fraser said that the "beauty" of the buyout agreement is that "it leaves it up to ‘personal choice.’ That way, it doesn’t look like the union is 100% on the side of the company."

"Personal choice" under capitalism means unemployment now or unemployment a little later.

More than one-third of all U.S. GM and Delphi hourly workers will be gone by the end of the year, allowing GM to beat its target of cutting 30,000 jobs in North America more than two years ahead of schedule and reducing its production capacity to reflect its shrinking U.S. market share. The job and health care cuts for retirees and other sweeping measures will save GM $8 billion annually after losing $10.6 billion last year.

In April, UAW Vice-President Bob King told a conference sponsored by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank that the union "made a conscious choice to put aside the adversarial approach. We believe adversarial relationships drive manufacturing jobs out of the country." (Detroit News, 4/20) Next summer, he will "put aside the adversarial approach" and lead the contract bargaining at Ford. He also tried to stop a picket line at Ford World Headquarters over the firing of some black engineers. He said, "We don’t need that kind of publicity. We’re trying to sell cars." Union "leaders" turned car salesmen!

Replacing King as VP in charge of National Organizing, Terry Thurman is the former director of Region 3 in Indiana and Kentucky. It was in Indiana that Chrysler sold a parts plant to Metaldyne, and King and Thurman teamed up to force workers into accepting more than $10/hour pay cuts so that Metaldyne would "recognize" the union.

Black workers and youth in Detroit, Flint, Toledo and other cities have been devastated by the retreat of the U.S. auto bosses — driven by capitalism’s inherent competition for maximum profits — leaving behind crumbling schools, few if any public services, poverty and police terror. Racist unemployment for black workers is still double what it is for whites, and the income gap is growing.

Capitalism’s contradictions and inter-imperialist rivalry cannot be resolved at the bargaining table — ultimately only by imperialist war. The union leaders want us to follow the Democrats to bigger and deadlier wars. For the international working class, the only solution is communist revolution. We will prepare for the 2007 contract talks by expanding the base of CHALLENGE readers and distributors and adding layers of class struggle and personal ties.

Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike and Miltant Class Struggle

OAXACA, MEXICO, July 10 — The teachers and the workers here are writing one of the most militant pages in the history of class struggle in this Mexican state. The fight for better living conditions and against Governor Ulises Ruiz — signified y the mega march of 500,000 workers supporting the striking teachers — showed a desire for a minimum of dignity for the workers of Oaxaca. But our struggle must be for everything because we the workers create everything.

Oaxaca’s teachers face great obstacles. The federal government won’t grant teacher demands for higher wages despite reaping millions from rising oil prices. Oaxaca’s teachers’ movement has the potential to affect workers’ wages nationwide. A wage hike for Oaxaca teachers could spark similar demands from more than a million other teachers and from tens of millions of other workers. This would wreck the bosses’ and politicians’ plans to maintain current starvation wages. Capitalism and its government exist to exploit the working class.

That’s why mass support is needed from their fellow teachers and other workers across the country. Workers in the fields and the cities must stand in solidarity with this struggle. We’re all part of the same working class and affected by this struggle. There are no isolated problems or solutions. The attacks on the Oaxaca teachers are an assault on the entire international working class.

The workers in the area must understand that using the vote to "punish" the PRI and PAN parties for their dirty role in repressing the Oaxaca striking teachers only benefits another part of the entire capitalist election scam, the PRD. The root of our problems is this whole profit system in which the governments and its electoral parties faithfully represent and defend the bosses’ interests. They hardly care about the welfare of the working class.

As workers our main objective in these struggles must be exposure of these forces since their main function is to divide the working class and legitimize its exploitation. Our main job — be it teachers, miners, factory workers or farm workers — must be to organize the entire exploited class to destroy this capitalist system with communist revolution, led by the Progressive Labor Party.

Our participation in these class struggles is crucial to achieving this. We, the working class, don’t need anyone to rule over us, since we are the only ones who create wealth. We can change the world and establish workers’ power.

PLP members stand in solidarity with the Oaxaca teachers and with the rest of the struggles of the international working class.

Unite Against Guest Worker Slavery

July 12 — We live in a diabolical country in a diabolical time, and New Orleans has become a laboratory for crushing the working class in the U.S. The rulers are importing "guest workers" to do the jobs low-paid black workers had before Hurricane Katrina.

If they don’t substantially lower our wages, they won’t be able to compete worldwide. If they don’t win us to fight their wars, they won’t be able to stay top imperialist dog. We must help people understand that the working class needs to unite and fight racism against black and immigrants workers, and against imperialist wars. Eventually workers will have to take matters — and power — into our own hands by fighting for communism: a world with no exploitation, racism and endless wars.

The Democratic Party and some immigrant rights groups are promoting the H2B or Guest Worker program. What guest workers face in New Orleans is a window to the future they want for everyone.

XXXXX Hotels  recruits unemployed workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, workers who see an opportunity to work for maybe ten months at U.S. wages and send money home to their struggling families. They’re told that for an up-front investment of $5,000-$10,000, they will get the necessary papers and transportation. They sign long contracts written in English, agreeing to work for $6.39 per hour for 60-80 hour a week with time-and-one-half for overtime, totaling $25,000. They’re promised rooms in the hotels where they work, with swimming pools. They borrow the up-front money and plan to work very hard.

But upon arrival they’re charged $50 a week for a bunk bed in a room with four workers designed for two and no pool access. The rent plus $8 per meal (about four hour’s labor per day) and employee taxes are deducted directly from their paychecks. They pay into Medicare but have no healthcare coverage. They are moved frequently from hotel to hotel and have no phones to contact their families. They get 24-40 hours of work per week ($6,000-$10,000 for the contract). They work, eat and sleep under the eye of the boss. If they leave, they’re automatically "illegal" and can be deported. When they eventually return home, they’re still in debt for at least the original $5,000 -$10,000. This forced labor is slavery!

Other immigrants are working all sorts of jobs under similar conditions. Day laborers hang around building-supply stores and street corners, hoping for a day’s work. XXXXX Hotels rents these workers cots in their parking lot for $50 a week. Before Katrina this city was 70% black. Now, immigrants work on construction sites and on sanitation crews and do landscaping for less wages than black workers used to earn.

The bosses want black workers to blame immigrants for "stealing" their jobs. But many black workers understand that the same bosses who left them to die are now preventing them from coming home while bringing guest workers into the city.

There are many lessons to be learned from the fascist laboratory that is New Orleans. The main one is that this city can also be a place to build a mass integrated, international PLP. Our Summer Project here in this epicenter of racism is energizing our members and friends, winning new recruits and developing more leaders, especially among black and Latin youth.

Collective Clean-up — A Microcosm of Communism

The New Orleans government has warned that it will completely demolish all homes not gutted by August 29, the anniversary of Katrina. The city’s poorest areas, including the hardest-hit 9th Ward, ironically have the highest number per capita of completely paid-off homes of any area in the U.S. So, in order not to lose them completely to government bulldozers, the owners are highly motivated to gut their ruined houses of moldy walls and water-logged furniture, the only way they can be repaired and made habitable.

But a gutting crew costs $6,000, plus repairs. Residents will need to use their pensions (if any), savings (if any) and Social Security for rebuilding materials, which have doubled in cost since Katrina. Meanwhile, there’s nowhere to live, since homes are unsafe until gutted. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) temporary trailer parks provided after Katrina are literally concentration camps — surrounded by police forces — and too far from people’s homes or jobs, whatever few jobs are available. Residents say the lack of FEMA funding and scarcity of trailers has made FEMA a "four letter word not to be used."

Not only are government bureaucracies like FEMA incompetent, but rebuilding projects have been deliberately designed to fail. Grossly inadequate one-foot-thick new levees built in working-class neighborhoods are in blatant contrast with levees half-a-football-field-thick built to protect commercial areas, the French Quarter and the Garden District’s rich mansions.

Volunteers, mostly young people, from all around the country, donate their vacation time from high school and college.Five to twelve in a crew perform this serious task. The work is truly "from each according to commitment" since both men and women wield sledgehammers; the heavy lifting requires teamwork. First, the appliances and flood-soaked beds and sofas are carried to the curb. The stench of maggot-infested food and refrigerant flow from refrigerators. Volunteers suffer nausea, often vomiting, and must bear the continuous smell of mold until the walls are demolished.

We wear heavy work boots, donated Teflon suits, masks, goggles, rubber gloves under work gloves, in 100-degree heat and virtually 100% humidity, producing instant sweat, immediate mold smell inside the mask and fogged goggles. Yet, we are in this as a unit. We work as one: carrying and pushing, the whole crew lifting sodden, plaster-filled carpets together. Then some break the sheet rock with sledgehammers, others with crowbars and others climb to the second floor to kick down the ceiling, the molding and the ventilating system and fans. Almost everything goes into wheelbarrows, pushed through sludge to the street. Insulation is lifted from between the frame. We remove the last of the clothing — still on hangers — the cookware from kitchen drawers and the soaked books and teddy bears.

Then hundreds of nails are tediously removed from the frame, sometimes taking two days. The floors are then swept clean.

One volunteer said this process of working together was a little like building communism: always listening when someone asks for help, taking breaks when needed for water and meals and working for as long as needed.

The way we share the sandwiches, the food at the volunteer shelter, cooking there and cleaning collectively, gives us a glimpse of a future society. The willingness and motivation to work hard for the common good, and completely without pay, shows us that many people are made of the "right stuff" for communism.

Mass Sale of CHALLENGE At Housing Complex

On a recent trip to New Orleans to participate in the fight against racism — to help Katrina victims move back home — a group of PLP’ers sold CHALLENGE at a local public housing complex. Residents received us warmly. They had made a militant struggle to re-enter their homes and now live under the threat of being forced out by capitalist shock troops — cops and the National Guard. We developed contacts among the residents, who wanted to know more about PLP. A local bodega agreed to take a bundle of CHALLENGES regularly.

We raised many aspects of our revolutionary communist ideas with volunteers as well as residents, but we need to achieve a more mass distribution of CHALLENGE. Some of us were working under conditions we were unaccustomed to, but this main task sometimes got lost in all our other activities.

This project is good training in trying to emphasize revolutionary ideas as opposed to liberal reform, especially as fascism grows throughout the U.S., helping us learn how to function in fascist-like conditions.

A Project Participant

Miami Arrests Signal Mass Racist Terror

The arrest of seven young black men in Miami for allegedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago is the latest stop on the U.S. rulers’ road to fascism. The U.S. Attorney for South Florida, R. Alexander Acosta, told the media that these confused young men had "developed a hatred of America." Yes, they probably did hate the racist and oppressive conditions experienced by millions of black workers and youth in ghettos nationwide. That’s now become a terrorist crime, punishable under the fascist Patriot Act.

Photographs of these black men, some Haitian immigrants, some in dreadlocks, were plastered on every major newspaper’s front page. Ten years ago, the headlines would have read, "Predators" or Wolf Pack." Today they’re branded as "terrorists" and charged with having planned an event as big as 9/11, all to inspire racist terror in the population.

The racist rulers need fascism to mobilize the population for bigger and deadlier wars, and to crush any potential resistance to their increasing attacks on workers. These arrests reflect the merger of the racist "war on crime/war on drugs," which imprisoned over one million black workers and youth, with the "war on terror."

Those arrested are from Miami’s Liberty City section, a ghetto of mostly black workers with high unemployment, plenty of racist police terror and the scene of numerous rebellions. Dozens of federal cops in fatigues with automatic weapons swarmed over the neighborhood. Bush’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims these young men swore an oath to Al Qaeda, and planned to wage "a full ground war against the United States." (Miami Herald, 6/23)

However, the Herald also says, "[A]fter sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons." And according to one defense attorney, an undercover FBI agent was the only person who ever claimed any connection to Al Qaeda. Those arrested didn’t have the money to buy cars, radios, uniforms, guns or boots. According to the indictment, they allegedly asked the FBI agent for $50,000 and gave him their shoe sizes.

The FBI has a long history of infiltration and cold-blooded murder. In the 1960’s, FBI informers inside the KKK, acting on orders from their FBI handlers, participated in the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls, and in the murders of Civil Rights workers, from Viola Liuzzo to Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner. In 1980, an FBI informant was in the lead car of a KKK caravan that killed and wounded about a dozen members of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, N.C.

In the 1970’s, FBI agents played a major role in the trial of the "Panther 21" in NYC. Like the Miami 7, the "Panther 21" were on trial for "planning" to blow up the NYC subway, the Bronx Zoo and other sites. At the trial, FBI infiltrators, some actually leaders of the Panther Party, testified that they in fact, had "planned" everything and couldn’t get the "21" to cooperate. The "21" were acquitted, but the exposure of the degree of infiltration quickened the Panthers’ downfall.

The FBI, Homeland Security, local "Red Squads" and other cops are all busy making plans to attack and undermine any threats to the ruling class, real or imagined. The main antidote to police infiltration and provocation is to have solid personal/political ties among many workers and youth. Having a mass base for PLP makes it harder for "strangers" to appear and suggest something crazy. And when they do, they will stand out like a sore thumb. Our response to this fascist attack should be to work harder to build a mass PLP.

Brooklynites Protest Ratner Housing Rip-off

BROOKLYN, NY, July 10 — My church’s Social Club hosted a panel discussion on a massive, controversial $3.4 billion development project called Atlantic Yards, to be built in the center of Brooklyn. All but one speaker opposed the project even though 40 proponents were invited. The opposing speakers presented a horror story of the destruction of the neighborhood at taxpayers’ expense, to benefit corporate developer Bruce Ratner. They exposed secrecy, lies and false promises of jobs and affordable housing. The way this project is being jammed through against popular will is one sign of growing fascism.

Atlantic Yards encompasses 22 acres for a New Jersey NETS basketball arena, seventeen 40-story luxury buildings and a showcase "Miss Brooklyn" building shaped like a 62-story wedding dress! The project will destroy a working-class neighborhood. Vehicular traffic would increase 50% while the main arteries are now at 100% of capacity. There are no plans to increase already overcrowded subway lines in the area.

For Ratner to seize thousands of existing households, the Supreme Court had to redefine "eminent domain" — "commercial gain" rather than public good "now rules over personal property." The proposal is in the State Legislature’s hands, by-passing city regulations.

There has been no popular input, only closed-door meetings. Other contractors were barred from offering bids. Ratner has bought off opposition groups like ACORN with large donations. They and others say they believe Ratner’s claim of "making progress" and "improving the lives of the needy," by his commitment to 3,800 permanent "minority" jobs and 1,800 affordable housing units. But Ratner won’t commit to numbers in writing, and his track record is the opposite. Because there is an affordable-housing component, the project gets heavy State subsidies and Ratner gets the billions.

One panelist charged that the affordable housing would be built off-site, belying the dream of some workers receiving the same housing benefits as the rich by living next door. Another speaker declared there is no future here, just minimal jobs.

The room was filled with anger at the process allowing this project, and also great appreciation for those who are tirelessly trying to stop it. DDDB (Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn) has 400 active volunteers. Local community papers, musicians and movie celebrities have voiced opposition.

But a friend asked, "What’s PLP’s view on this project?" We say this struggle rips the mask off the so-called democratic process, where billions of public monies are funneled to greedy capitalists, a clear example of fascist assault on working-class needs. As long as capitalism exists we can expect more such assaults.

Currently we probably don’t have the strength to halt this luxury housing scheme built at working-class expense, just as we can’t stop Halliburton profiteering from "cleaning up" New Orleans or Iraq. It may be that more powerful capitalists will stop Ratner because they can’t afford to give this petty contractor billions, needing to fortify their position while being chased from Iraq to China. The ruling class makes the decisions because they have State power. A victory in this struggle is winning our friends to understand that logic and debate will not stop capitalism. We need workers’ power and communist revolution to wrest state power from the bosses; therefore, we need to win our friends to see that they must join PLP to strive towards this goal.

Education ‘Reform’ Masks Aim for Schools to Serve Ruling Class Even More

Modern war, when unleashed on a world scale, is total war. It requires detailed preparation by the state or government. The current quest by the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class — the Rockefeller-led grouping - for domination of the world’s oil —reserves is not yet war on a world scale. They themselves say it could require 30 years of war. Since no major imperialist power besides Britain has signed on to it, it could unleash world war at any time — one launched by an imperialist power which, while dominating in military hardware, is rapidly losing its industrial or manufacturing prowess. In short, there’s a certain desperation in this quest.

"Meet Donald Fisher," says the San Francisco Weekly, "the private billionaire with unprecedented sway over ordinary San Franciscans’ lives." Fisher is the retired founder of GAP stores. According to Forbes magazine his family fortune places him among the world’s top 120 billionaires.

So far, he’s donated some $46 million to the 52 Charter schools organized by KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). In addition, KIPP received some $7.9 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Joined by venture capitalist John Doerr, Netflix launcher, Reed Hastings and the California Teachers Association (CTA), Fisher also backed a California State ballot initiative that requires school districts to provide free facilities to charter schools.

According to Business Week (6/26), Education Secretary Margaret Spellings claims, "Business is becoming the voice of reform." The magazine lists the main contributors: the Gates Foundation is the largest (even before Warren Buffet’s "donation"), followed by the Eli Broad Foundation, the Milken Family Foundation, the G.E. Foundation and companies like IBM.

This effort contains a division of labor. The Walton Family Foundation concentrates on providing low-income families a choice among schools; the Milkens on training and retaining teachers; the Gates push small schools and technology; and the Broad Foundation trains District Superintendents, senior management, newly-elected school board members and even parent groups.

Co-ordination on this scale is not spontaneous. Yet where and when these decisions were made remains an unreported mystery. Therefore, it’s easy to underestimate these foundations’ grip on education. Take the Broad Foundation for example: it has trained Superintendents or senior executives in 38 school districts; placed senior management trainees in 15 major districts; and trained 109 new school-board members in 29 districts representing some 2.7 million students. In addition, they fund grass-root parent groups.

Much of this "reform" is aimed at winning and mobilizing working-class parents and students, especially black and Latino families in the big cities, to support "better education" with the sinister underlying plan being to win them to support the racist, imperialist U.S. bosses, the source of the very racism that continues to viciously attack these same families.

Advisors to the Broad Education Foundation include United Federation of Teachers union President Randi Weingarten and CTA President Barbara Kerr. They urgently tell us, "We are convinced that as a country we face a crisis of epic proportions, one that threatens our economy, our democracy and our very standard of living."

What emerges in this orchestrated rule of foundations is a strengthening of the direct dictatorship of capital. Communists have always pointed out that "democratic government" is primarily a mask hiding the actual class dictatorship of capital. It is a mask, though, that in normal times serves the real function of allowing the various factions of capital to argue out their differences, gaining or losing advantages through legislation. For them that’s "the rule of law."

But at other times — notably in war economies or severe economic crises — they choose varying degrees of a more direct and unified class dictatorship of capital. Today, foundations and grant-giving are the mechanisms for this direct control. Like its twin, immigration "reform," school reform represents a sharpening of class dictatorship in preparation for extended war, and sooner or later, world war.

(Next: How the bosses fight to change the world views of students and their parents and win their allegiance to U.S. imperialism.)

LETTERS

India’s ‘Miracle’ Enslaves 6-year-olds

Mumbai, India, made the news when terrorists attacked commuter trains recently, murdering over 200. Mumbai is touted as India’s financial center, representing the country’s supposed "capitalist miracle." But the fact is India remains one of the world’s most exploitative and poorest countries. Mumbai is no exception.

India’s weekly Frontline Magazine (3/25-4/07, 2006) reported on child bonded [slave] labor in Mumbai, stating:

"Maharashtra state is officially child labour-free but the exploitation of children continues in Mumbai, the state capital.

"Bits of fabric, gold threads, glitter beads and tiny fake pearls are some signs that invariably guide you to the dens of misery called ‘zari factories.’ Steep staircases lead to a trapdoor, which open into hovel-like rooms that house the zari units. Until recently, boys between the ages of six and 14 were found kneeling at low work-tables sewing beads and coloured threads on to vast lengths of fabric. There are thousands of these factories in Mumbai spread across not just Govandi but other slums such as Dharavi and Madanpura.

"The boys work 20-hour days, seven days a week, in dingy minute-sized rooms…. [with] hardly any ventilation and the floors are grimy. Each room has a small smelly bathroom located in one corner. Another corner serves as a basic cooking area. They sleep, bathe and eat in this same room. They are given two meals a day and, if lucky, two cups of tea. ‘It’s a life of wretchedness,’ says Satish Kasbe, a social worker with Pratham, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works in rescue and rehabilitation of child labour.

"The boys are rarely allowed to leave the room. If they must, they do so with an older boy who is a karigar (craftsman). And if they are lucky, the owner takes them on an occasional Sunday outing. Sometimes the owner locks the trapdoor, to open it only the next morning. Some rooms have two trapdoors. So if there is a raid, the children are shunted down the other one, which is then covered with a workbench.

"‘When we return the kids, we ask the parents why they sent them,’ says Kasbe. Many say they cannot afford to look after them. Some believe that by sending the children they save them from a miserable life in the village."

Again, when the rulers talk about "capitalist revival," they mean more misery and super-exploitation of all workers.

An Internationalist

Workers Seeing Through Capitalism’s Illusions

Recently, when paying for a doctor visit, the clerk behind the counter expressed outrage at my being charged $60 for a two-minute follow-up consultation, where the doctor merely said, "Everything looks good." She said she thought the fee was ridiculous since I was a "cash-paying" customer and had already paid a large sum for the original visit.

Frustrated by the lack of medical insurance for herself and her young daughter — despite having a full-time job — she said she was struggling to pay for just food and shelter, let alone for the high cost of healthcare. She had been covered by Medi-cal but the government canceled it. Now to get any medical assistance she must qualify for welfare.

Feeling helpless with this lack of options, she told me that "the system certainly doesn’t work for us." A simple statement, but very revealing of the frustration and helplessness most workers feel struggling daily to survive under capitalism.

As imperialist rivalry sharpens abroad, the bosses’ fascism at home grows, too. Capitalism forces all workers and their families to pay — financially as well as with their lives — for the ruling class’s oil wars and profits. Examples of these abuses are visible in every aspect of capitalist daily life. That’s why it’s important to find the communist ideas behind every-day problems and constantly raise communist politics, wherever we might find ourselves.

I couldn’t help but relate this incident to a recent anti-Minuteman counter-demonstration I attended in the downtown garment district. A small group of anti-racist activists confronted a handful of Minuteklan racists yelling racist slurs and trying to intimidate a crowd of shoppers and workers. The workers’ anger was clear; some joined the activists.

After the protest, one worker approached us, asking for more leaflets for his co-workers. He was irate about the racists holding a march in downtown, where mostly immigrants work and shop. He couldn’t understand why some would scapegoat immigrant workers by saying things like, "they’re taking our jobs," when he sees the opposite in his daily life. Immigrants, he thought, are forced to "take" jobs paying poverty wages, in conditions sometimes three times as hard as citizen workers. Although not defining it, this worker saw the faulty logic in blaming fellow workers for the bosses’ racism and exploitation. Immigrant labor doesn’t "steal" jobs, but instead bosses use racism and nationalism to justify the super-exploitation of immigrant workers — as well as workers abroad — and to get citizens to blame their fellow working-class brothers and sisters.

He then told us about an Immigration Service (INS) raid at a nearby sweatshop. The INS (now under Homeland Security) tried to arrest several workers. Word spread quickly. By the time the agents tried to leave, workers from other factories had surrounded the building, ready to challenge the agents. Frightened by the large crowd and seeing the potential power of these workers, the agents released those they had detained and left.

The two events, although seemingly unrelated, indicate workers are frustrated with a system that claims to meet their needs but actually exploits, terrorizes and vilifies them! We must make these connections. The belief that by "doing your part," contributing to and complying with the bosses’ system, you will get rewarded is simply an illusion. Increasingly workers worldwide are running into the dead-ends of capitalism and imperialism. What isn’t an illusion is the potential power workers possess as a class to change society. We must fight to reveal the communist truths in every one of capitalism’s evils in order to build a movement and a Party that will make the power of workers an actuality.

A Comrade

Steel Bosses Fight Dog Eat Dog

The CHALLENGE editorial about "Sharpening Imperialist Dogfight" (6/21), clearly exposed the increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism, the growing threat of war and the urgent need to build a mass PLP. In part, it focused on the struggle between Mittal Steel and Russia’s Severstal steel giant to acquire Arcelor, the giant European steel company. At the time of the writing, Severstal and Arcelor had a deal and CHALLENGE correctly pointed out the growing isolation of U.S. imperialism and the growing ties between France, Germany and Russia.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. It now appears that Mittal will get Arcelor for $33 billion, making it by far the biggest steel company in the world. The New York Times (6/26) reported, "The fight for Arcelor was closely watched around the world, as it evolved into a clash between two major forces shaping the world economy: the ascendancy of India and China as sources of new business models and ambitious new companies, and a rising tide of protectionism in the West, fueled by anxiety that new competition will erode a way of life.

"‘These are all tremors of the fact that the world system, which has been maintained by the United States and Europe, has suddenly got to adjust to the rise of China and India, and it ain’t going to be easy,’ said Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations."

CHALLENGE implied that because Mittal is "backed by U.S. and British based investors," it is more an asset of U.S. imperialism while the Times views it more as part of the rise of Indian and Chinese imperialism. This further underlines the point that CHALLENGE made about the growing threats to U.S. imperialism, which will inevitably lead to World War and if we build a mass PLP, open the door to communist revolution.

A Reader

Immigrant Airport Workers Study Red Ideas

Airport workers are responding to revolutionary politics. We have been fighting racism and sexism on the job, and now we’ve begun a PLP study group among mostly immigrant workers from Africa. They’re really on the ball, with many questions for the Party.

Since these workers emigrated from Africa, amid so much poverty, war and AIDS, it’s only fitting we study imperialism first. We’ve been discussing why the U.S., with only 6% of the world’s population, uses about 50% of the world’s resources. This outright thievery by U.S. bosses is enforced either militarily, as in Iraq, or by pro-U.S. flunkies, as in Africa. The study group agreed that workers starve in places like Africa because local capitalists work hand in hand with the imperialists.

We’re studying from CHALLENGE, from the book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney, and even from the bosses’ newspapers. We also noted how the imperialists use racism against the world’s workers. The current sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is leading to World War III; only communist revolution by the international working class, led by a mass PLP, can destroy imperialism.

Over the coming period we’ll study dialectical materialism, the struggle against racism and sexism, and the fight for communism.

Red Airport Study Group

Mexico Electoral Fraud: Millionaires Vs. Millionaires

On July 16, 1.5 million people rallied in Mexico City to protest the fraud their candidate López Obrador suffered in the July 2 presidential elections. Millions of workers believe that López Obrador and his PRD party would reduce their poverty.

During and after the election, the big millionaires of the Business Coordinating Council said they would continue meeting in order to see the matter to its conclusion. The week before the election they paid for radio and TV spots telling people not to be fooled and to "keep what has been accomplished."

These bosses are at war with their counterparts who support López Obrador. He believes the reforms capitalism needs cannot be implemented without a tiny loosening of the noose they've tied around our necks.

The bosses supporting PAN candidate Calderón have fought to prevent López Obrador's millionaire supporters from winning the election. The dogfight continues as the PRD demands a recount before leaving the decision to the Electoral Tribune.

As PLP has said, the workers have nothing to gain from supporting one politician over another. However, the bosses continue to swindle millions of workers, who participate in politics only by choosing one oppressor over another.

Unfortunately, past revolutionaries opted for the "lesser evil" until finally abandoning the path of revolution altogether.

Now we must take the communist banners to all the exploited and oppressed who feel frustrated by the probable electoral defeat of the PRD.

The bosses who support López Obrador are not lesser evils. They merely have different tactics in their war against the working class. They want to use small reforms in order to win workers' loyalty to that sector of Mexican bosses who seek more independence from the U.S. imperialists. But no matter who the bosses are, their loyalty is to their profits - always at the expense of the working class.

In coming protests, we invite workers to march with PLP. The working class can only be truly conscious when it organizes itself as a party. PLP has that goal. Join us!

Comrades from Mexico

UMW Reform Fight Fertile Ground for PLP

The July 19 letter from "Red Industrial Fighter" (RIF) questions my view that miners would struggle for a United Mine Workers (UMW) local. RIF wants to know why I reached that conclusion, asking, concerning my claim, "Is it just because of the increased exploitation and oppression or have plans been made?"

But U.S. labor history demonstrates that miners, and workers in general, are more than willing to fight their oppressors. I don't think miners and other workers will continue taking this bosses' class war on their living and working conditions. If U.S. workers are unwilling to fight oppression and battle for a union, etc., then communists are up shit's creek without a paddle. In other words, we would be forced to re-evaluate our whole perspective which relies on the position that oppression and exploitation breeds working-class resistance. Without this resistance, we will have one helluva job winning this apparently defeated working class to communist revolution. If the miners and other workers fail to mount fight-backs, independent from the bourgeois state and parties, how and where will we intervene with red ideas?

Therefore, I support any miners' battle for a union since this would provide an opening for such intervention. Also, I still believe it's better for miners to have a union then not. Think about it: suppose the only job one could find was in an unsafe, non-union mine in backwoods Appalachia where you witnessed fellow miners lose their lives? Suppose you knew next to nothing about communism (and can't arrive at communist consciousness spontaneously; if that were possible, there would be no need for a revolutionary party)?

But suppose you did possess trade union consciousness and wanted to organize a UMW local, and were prepared to fight for it? If this was the only way you knew to fight your oppression and the exploitation, wouldn't this be a positive development and one that communists would support? If these miners are unwilling to become involved in a fight-back, then what hope is there to win them to revolution?

Consider: prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, Russian Orthodox priest Father Gapon organized his Assembly of Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg, a reformist working-class organization. Several thousand workers joined. Initially, the Bolsheviks denounced Gapon, but then Lenin fought to win the Bolsheviks to intervene aggressively in this movement. It only makes sense. If you want to win workers to a revolutionary position, you must meet them where they're at. In many ways, it was positive that the Gapon movement existed, since it opened the door to Bolshevik agitation.

Eventually, especially after Bloody Sunday when the Tsar's police slaughtered 1,000 workers, others began to listen closely to the Bolsheviks. Russian workers attempted to fight their oppression by joining a reform organization, and this involvement in Gapon's group led to the openness of workers to revolutionary Bolshevik ideas. As Lenin knew, there is a relationship between reform movements and revolution. That's why he wrote, "Left-wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder."

Take the immigrant rights movement. Its leadership is rotten to the core and is attempting to steer it in the wrong direction. Still, the emergence of this movement is a positive development since it made it possible for PLP communists to aggressively intervene.

RIF wants to destroy all reformist illusions. I would contend that if miners fail to rise against their oppressors and exploitation, even in a reformist fashion, then communist revolution might just be an illusion. From a study of miners' history and my own personal experience in the coalfields, I think they will fight back and I would welcome and support them.

Red Coal

Non-Profits Build Fascism

Today, non-profit organizations in the U.S. help build fascism by inhibiting working-class consciousness of the need to destroy the profit system with a communist revolution to build a society where everyone shares the hardships and the wealth. Instead, they push the Big Lie that you can improve capitalism if one makes a patriotic sacrifice through donations. They also hide continuing cuts in welfare, retirement plans, legal aid, migrant worker assistance and other programs. Even more important, now they’re administering the government’s new openly fascist projects.

For example, the Catholic Church is a major sub-contractor to the U.S. government, helping supervise many new concentration camps — "juvenile facilities" — in which undocumented youth are held before deportation. Many good people work in this youth program, believing that at least conditions are slightly better for the imprisoned youth because they’re no longer held in the adult lock-ups. But the number of such youth crossing the border and being arrested is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, the church and many decent social-worker types are enabling it to happen by helping run the jails. These people think they’re improving capitalism but instead they’re building 21st century fascism.

Another example: the government is hard at work imprisoning and deporting many undocumented workers while planning to import many more in slave-worker capacities — "guest worker" or "temporary worker" or "blue-card worker." Meanwhile, it has allocated millions of dollars to various non-profits to stop "trafficking in humans," women, young girls and youth brought into the U.S. for prostitution and slave labor. Yet, in six years these programs have helped less than 200 people escape. In reality, the program is a sham to deceive people into believing that at least the U.S. is protecting women and children even as it imports huge numbers of undocumented workers to face wage slavery.

Actually, non-profits are private versions of "national service," which U.S. capitalists talk about using to restore the military draft. They ask people to sacrifice to help do "good things" while really strengthening the U.S. war machine. Simultaneously, they conceal the worsening living standards which allows the rulers to divert profits and taxes to pay for the war effort. Even though people employed in the non-profits oppose exploitation and might be anti-war, big shots from the corporate and legal communities run these outfits. Liberals sitting on local non-profit boards of directors are very committed to the Democratic Party and electoral reform, another reason why the non-profits will always serve the interests of their capitalist masters.

However, volunteering and working in these organizations can be very important, since these are the remaining organizations — besides schools, unions and churches — which the rulers still permit to exist while creating a fascist war machine.

The clients of these non-profit organizations and the decent-hearted, pro-working-class people employed in them can be organized to fight back. Many are ready to do just that. But it is crucial to develop that desire into the need to join PLP and organize a revolution to destroy capitalism. It’s becoming easier to explain that fighting for reforms in a non-profit will soon see funds cut off and workers fired. But, if one fights back and builds PLP simultaneously, it will enhance the ability of workers to rise up and destroy capitalism. The goal of communism, a sharing society, where exploitation and bosses are banned, is what many people in non-profits already want.

REDEYE

US torture is an old story to Latinos

The recent United Nations report that the United States military is torturing detainees at the Guantánamo military base is profoundly troubling….

…U.S. government-sanctioned brutality [is]…not surprising to the people of Latin America. Since 1946, the United States has put its official seal of approval on torture by Latin American militaries at the Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). There, the United States has trained more than 60,000 members of Latin American militaries in torture, psychological warfare, interrogation, and counterinsurgency…..

SOA graduates are integral to the …suffering of thousands at the hands of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, the systemic torture under General Ríos Montt in Guatemala, or the atrocities that continue to be committed by the Colombia military. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Imperialism gives marines grim mission

"We go out and kill these people," said Captain Del Gaudio, the commander here.

"I define success as continuing to kill the enemy to allow the government to work and for the Iraqi Army to take over."

That day seems a long way off….

One of the "habits of mind" drilled into the marines from posters hung up inside: "Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet." (NYT, 7/5)

Liberals also want US to rule the world

…America’s difficulties are tied to deeper forces than the acts of a single president. There is not much daylight, after all, between Bill Clinton’s "indispensable" nation and Bush’s insistence that "the only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world."

…The country’s military, economic and cultural sway is overwhelming. Neither Clinton nor Bush favored retreat, strategic or moral….

Any American president must now confront a central question: How should power unprecedented in its international scope be exercised so as to minimize the alienation it stirs…. (NYT, 7/16)

Neo-Nazis joining Army in race-war plan

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racial hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military….The numbers could run into the thousands….

"We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad…."

Neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance …sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war….

"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces….

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units….

"…As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood." (NYT, 7/7)

Need cheap labor? Just fill your prisons!

…In the…northeastern corner of Louisiana….the prison system converts a substantial segment of the population into a commodity that is in desperately short supply — cheap labor….

There is little in the state rules to limit potential for a sheriff to use his inmate flock to curry favor or to reap personal benefit.

"If you talk to people around here, it is jokingly referred to as rent-a-convict…."

Many here view the inmates essentially as commodities, who can be returned behind bars after the agricultural season is over, and the need for labor is reduced.

"Good thing about it, wintertime you can lock them up — put them in cold storage,"… (NYT, 7/5)

Top brains’ miracle solution to poverty!

It is a group drawn from the upper echelons of New York City’s business, nonprofit, academic and social services sectors….

For the last four months, the group has been focused on solving a perplexing riddle: the problem of rising poverty in a city as wealthy as New York. They analyzed data about who is poor in the city and why….

The thinking behind them has narrowed to a central notion: the solution to poverty is employment. (NYT, 7/17)

Hey, how did Buffet get all that money?

When the world’s second-richest man gives most of his money to the world’s richest man we do well to count our spoons. Warren Buffett has given $31bn to Bill Gates to add to his $29bn foundation. Gates replied with a quote from Adam Smith on the virtue of philanthropy. He omitted another quote from the great man, that merchants "seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public". (GW, 7/13)

Forward to Communism

In the 1930’s Soviet Union, Many Workers Organized for Communism Rather than Socialism

In the late 1920’s, following World War I and the failed attempt to destroy the first workers’ state, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) knew that Germany and the other imperialist powers were preparing a renewed attempt to destroy the revolutionary USSR, an attempt that became World War II. To defend workers’ power, the CPSU had to increase industrial development.

Until then, the so-called "New Economic Policy" had allowed private trade and given rural capitalists (kulaks) control over the food supply. To prevent the kulaks from starving the workers, collectivization put agriculture in the hands of the peasants.

As part of the first Five Year Plan, the CPSU mobilized millions of workers and peasants to build new factories from scratch. Many worker "shock brigades" committed themselves to high production targets.

Initially, the rapid expansion caused a sharp drop in workers’ standard of living1 — with food rationing and scarce housing — and production was often disrupted. In response, many workers pooled their wages in "communes" and "collectives." Communes distributed wages equally or by family size, while collectives paid skilled workers somewhat more, though even collectives limited the wage spread. Organized by the rank and file, rather than the CPSU leadership 2, they contained many CPSU members and recruited many from shock brigades.

Communes were often explicitly intended to develop a new communist form of labor 3. From 1929 to 1931, they expanded rapidly, reaching over 7% of the industrial workforce. Meanwhile Party publications criticized them for undermining the policy of "material incentives" — especially higher wages for skilled workers – saying they were inappropriate for the current level of industrial development.

At a Party Conference in June 1930, Kaganovich, a CPSU leader, attacked the "excesses" of those who wanted "complete collectivization of the shops," though some delegates defended the idea 4. Party publications said communes should only be formed if they advanced labor productivity 5, but available facts showed that workers in communes and collectives were very productive 6.

This conflict arose because, rather than constructing communism, the line of the communist movement then was to build socialism first — but now we see that socialism turned back into capitalism since it is a system that tries to combine workers’ political power with a capitalist wage system. They thought communist labor organization required a much higher level of industrialization and was something for the very far future.

Thus, the CPSU rejected rank-and-file initiatives for communes. Rather, they tried to solve production problems such as workers’ frequent job changes by increasing skilled workers’ pay, instead of winning people politically to communist policies, and fixing the shortages of housing and consumer goods.

In June 1931, Party leader Stalin, representing the majority of CPSU leaders, spoke against "the ‘Leftist’ practice of wage equalization," blaming it, rather than the low level of political understanding, for frequent job changes by workers 7. Still missing the point (which history has taught PLP was the main one), he admitted that, "In order to retain the workers in the factories we must still further improve the supply of goods and the housing conditions of the workers."

Believing that the only way to convince workers to acquire greater skills was to pay skilled workers more, Stalin said, "We cannot tolerate a situation where a locomotive driver earns only as much as a copying clerk." With this speech, the CPSU put an end to the communes and collectives in Soviet industry. Moreover, they were never re-introduced, even after industrialization. Worse yet, increasing wage inequality failed to prevent frequent job changes 8.

We have much to learn from the fierce commitment of Stalin and the other CPSU leaders to strengthen the worker’s state and defend it from the onslaught of World War II fascism looming within a decade. However, with hindsight, PLP can see that material incentives (like wage inequality), even when combined with political struggle and commitment, laid the basis for the later return of full-blown capitalism in the USSR.

Although the commune movement did not develop further after 1931, we in PLP have learned from those many Soviet workers who wanted communes — and from the Cultural Revolution in China when many workers and students advanced the idea of political rather than material incentives — that communist organization of society should not be put off for the future. Hindsight shows that, on this score, those CPSU rank-and-filers were right and the leadership was wrong.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Lewis Siegelbaum, "Production Collectives and Communes and the ‘Imperatives’ of Soviet Industrialization, 1929-1931," Slavic Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 1986, p. 66; Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 228-235.

(2) I. Zaromskii, "Production collectives — new forms of the organization of labor," Labor Questions (in Russian), 1930, no. 4, pp. 18-29; Siegelbaum article cited above; Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the politics of productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 46-48.

(3) Zaromskii, p. 18; Siegelbaum article, p. 68.

(4) Siegelbaum article, p. 69.

(5) Zaromskii, p. 27.

(6) Siegelbaum article, Table 4, p. 78.

(7) J. V. Stalin, "New Conditions — New Tasks in Economic Construction. Speech Delivered at a Conference of Economic Executives, June 23, 1931," Problems of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976, pp. 537-539.

(8) Vladimir Andrle, Workers in Stalin’s Russia: Industrialization and Social Change in a Planned Economy, New York: Harvester Press, pp. 126-176.

Liberal Bosses Showing Their True ( WAR ) Colors

U.S. rulers have a serious ideological problem. Intensifying international conflicts require them to rally the nation for ever widening wars. But recruiting shortfalls and growing opposition to the Iraq fiasco reveal a public insufficiently motivated by the Bush gang’s crude "Dead or Alive" rhetoric. The liberal wing of U.S. capitalists thinks it has the answer. As recent books show, it involves racism, Democrats and militarism.

Peter Beinart, a Brookings Institution protégé, has just written "The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again." First, says Beinart, the "war on terror" should become more specifically a war against "jihadist terrorism" or "salafist totalitarianism." While careful to mention that Islam has some good aspects, Beinart demonizes anti-U.S. Arabs and Muslims as backward and morally inferior.

Promoting the view that Muslims’ lives are essentially worthless, he excuses the U.S. for "killing [Afghan] civilians...in the process of installing a vastly more humane government." (p. 172) Beinart updates the racist contempt of the U.S. commander in Vietnam who declared, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." His take is, "America could not have built schools for Afghan girls had it not bombed the Taliban first" (p. 197). Beinart "forgets" to mention that the bombing killed hundreds of non-combatants, including schoolgirls.

Liberal Democrats, says Beinart, should embrace racism and reclaim their identity as the "Party of War." They should make jihadism what Soviet "communism" was during the Cold War—Public Enemy No. 1—the party’s prime focus. (U.S. rulers used the term "communism’ long after the Soviet Union had reverted to capitalism.) Beinart’s greatest heroes are Presidents Truman and Kennedy who convinced much of the public that invading Korea and Vietnam would safeguard "freedom."

Beinart assigns today’s Democrats the task of winning the nation to a crusade of genocidal ethno-religious cleansing, followed by military occupation, throughout the world’s main oil regions and shipping routes. "From the Middle East to Southeast Asia, from the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the United States may need to enter stateless zones, capture or kill the jihadists...and stay long enough to begin rebuilding." (p. 196)

The key to renewing greatness, says Beinart, is for liberals to adopt a warrior culture that welcomes and even glorifies killing and dying in service to the U.S. empire. He decries "anti-imperialist liberals" who "have been tempted by the hope that humanitarian methods could fully substitute for violent ones." (p. 197) He lambastes as cowards some liberal Democratic donors who said they could not support the capture or killing of Bin Laden if it "would cost the lives of 500 to 5,000 U.S. troops." (p. 197)

Through its Progressive Policy Institute, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC — the party’s Clinton-Lieberman wing) has published "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty." It puts more stock in humanitarian fig leaves for war than Beinart does but, like him, insists on militarizing society, and especially the Democratic Party itself. One chapter, "Reconciling Democrats and the Military" calls on liberal politicians to "appreciate...the warrior ethos." Democratic leaders, it said, should be veterans, or at least have veterans as top staff members. Until they implement a "national service" smokescreen for a draft, politicians should encourage youth, including their own children, to enlist.

"AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country" comes from Kathy Roth-Douquet, a DLC member and Clinton aide, and Frank Shaeffer, an ex-Marine novelist/artist discovered by Peggy Rockefeller. Its chief focus, which the other two books also emphasize, is fully restoring ROTC in Ivy League colleges. Larry Summers got fired for not getting this job done at Harvard. Presiding over a Harvard Yard ceremony in which nine graduates of a non-credit, off-campus ROTC program received commissions, Summers said "we still have some ways to go." Now that’s an understatement. Fifty years ago Harvard graduated hundreds of officers every June.

Summers’ and the rulers’ unfinished business is our opportunity. Among the millions not supporting U.S. imperialism’s wars, we can spread the idea — inside and outside the military — that there is a far better fight to be waged: the lifelong struggle to build a working-class party with a revolutionary, communist outlook, the PLP.

1. ISRAELI RULERS APE NAZIS' COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
   1. Israeli Offensive Helps U.S. Rivals
2. ISRAELI FASCISTS TOP THEM ALL
3. FIGHT RACISM
   Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers
4. Mexico's Election Only Serves Bosses, Not Workers
5. Buffet-Gates `Charity': Another Rulers' Tool to Suck Workers' Blood
   1. And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
      Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery
6. Angry Workers Don't Buy Los Angeles Mayor's War Contract
7. Cops Tell Bosses' Court Anti-Racism Is Illegal!
8. International Solidarity:
   CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers
9. AFT Convention: Leadership's Liberalism Masks Pro-Boss Stance
10. Anti-Racist Legal Workers Expose Anti-Immigrant Lawyers
11. Spreading Red Ideas Inside and Outside the Factories
12. GI's Must Reject Politics of Passivism, Patriotism and Nationalism
13. Debunk Democrats As War Party At Church Conference
    1. MINISTER O.K.'S Lenin
14. LETTERS
    1. Bosses Use Racism to Divide Katrina Victims
    2. `Welcome to the United States of Slavery!'
    3. Reform Won't Build GI Movement
    4. Colombia Vote A Sham
    5. War Criminal Murtha Spurs Anti-Arab Racism
    6. CHALLENGE Comment:
    7. Pro-War Union Hacks Won't Make Mines Safe
15. Bosses' Profit Drive Murders Young Worker
16. REDEYE
    1. Suicides triple amid New Orleans debris
    2. Workers may have to consider revolution
    3. Supreme Court says money = free speech
    4. Non-red revolution leaves S.Africans jobless
17. Rulers Use Non-Profit Groups vs. Workers' Class Consiousness
    1. How It Works on the Ground
18. Peru: Bosses' Dogfight Sharpens; Crook Back in Power
19. Note to Readers:

---

ISRAELI RULERS APE NAZIS' COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

On May 29, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia -- seized by Germany in 1939 -- was gunned down by two resistance fighters. Heydrich-- who only four months before had organized the Wannsee Conference that planned the Holocaust-- was the third highest ranking Nazi after Hitler and Himmler. Hitler then ordered a massive retaliation.

The Nazis surrounded the village of Lidice (in what is now the Czech Republic) and eventually killed 340 men, women and children, who were sent to death camps. Lidice was wiped off the map. Another small village, Lezhaky, was also destroyed two weeks later. Both men and women were shot, and children were sent to concentration camps. The Nazis murdered 1,300 civilians to avenge Heydrich's death.

Now Israeli rulers are following the Nazi model of collective punishment. Recently the Israeli "Defense" Force (IDF) began a massive attack on Palestinian Gaza, with tanks, helicopters, fighter planes and artillery. They bombarded a university and destroyed bridges and a power station supplying electricity to 700,000 Palestinians. This was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's response to a Palestinian guerrilla attack on a border post and the kidnapping of a 19-year-old Israel soldier while killing two others.

However, as some elements of the Israeli media have admitted, this massive assault and the arrest of Palestinian leaders were organized well in advance. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (6/25) said that Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence service, had warned that gunmen were planning to attack a border post. The IDF did nothing to combat it. And the Israeli government has several times in the past negotiated prisoner exchanges, notably in 1985, when the Israelis freed 1,150 Palestinian prisoners to recover three soldiers, and again in 2004, when they swapped 400 Palestinians for one Israeli colonel and the corpses of three Israeli soldiers (Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2006).

London's Financial Times notes that Fatah's "Mahmoud Abbas, the nationalist [Palestinian] president.... [and] Hamas...reached a national unity pact that, by accepting a two-state solution, meant the Islamists implicitly recognized Israel...." So the Israeli attack is really an attempt "to sabotage the Hamas-Fatah agreement."

The Israeli government is forcing over one million Gaza Palestinians to suffer for the border attack. The destruction of the power station halts running water, electricity, and cooling ventilation during the summer heat for hundreds of thousands. The IDF has closed access roads bringing basic supplies to Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is trying to execute a plan concocted in 1998 by his predecessor, mass butcher Ariel Sharon. Their idea is to build a "Greater Israel," by herding the Palestinian population into four walled-off concentration camp enclaves in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, giving Israel all the rest -- 80% of the area's territory. The provocation by a Hamas Military Wing group was just the excuse needed. (One should note that early on Israeli rulers built Hamas as a bulwark against the first Intifada.)

Although Bush press spokesman Tony Snow and Secy. of State Condi Rice have said Israel has the right of "self-defense," this IDF fascist military offensive won't help the already shaky U.S. position in the Middle East. Increasingly Arabs and Moslems will see the U.S. hand behind this. (All the tanks, aircraft and other weapons are U.S.-supplied.)

Israeli Offensive Helps U.S. Rivals

The Russian government, while having normal relations with Israel, invited a Hamas delegation to Moscow soon after their election. Russia, just like China, is strengthening relations with Iran. And in early June, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Moscow's decision to establish naval bases in the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia. According to http://www.pinr.com:

"As part of the plan, the port of Tartus would be transformed into a naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet when it is away from the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. The Russian plan involves the installation of an air defense system with S-300PMU-2 Favorit ballistic missiles. The missiles have a range of 200 kilometers (124 miles), allow a larger warhead and are equipped with a better guidance system than the previous version. The air defense system would be operated by Russia for the defense of the Tartus base and would provide potential protection for a large part of Syria. Through these initiatives, it is clear that Russia wants to strengthen its position in the Middle East."

Workers in the Middle East are being sacrificed on the altar of imperialist and local dogfights for the control of the region's oil wealth. The multi-ethnic workers of the Middle East -- from Syria to Iran to Iraq to what is now Palestine-Israel -- have a long history of supporting communists. Unfortunately, the opportunist and nationalist errors of the old international communist movement led to its own destruction. It's time to build a new international movement based on fighting all the bosses, local and imperialist, including fundamentalists from all religions, and uniting all workers to fight for communism.

ISRAELI FASCISTS TOP THEM ALL

"Consider, for a moment, what would have happened if, in reaction to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) [long considered a terrorist group by the British ruling class] seizing a British soldier, the British government had: invaded Northern Ireland; punished its people by destroying its electricity supply, transport links and government offices; shelled Belfast and Derry from land, sea and air; cratered the Falls Road; used the Royal Air Force to buzz the offices of the Taoiseach in Dublin; and arrested every IRA Republican it could lay its hands on.

"There would rightly have been an international outcry -- and so there should be in this case." (London Financial Times, July 1)

FIGHT RACISM
Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers

New debates about racism are raging in today's news. The front pages are full of reports on Arab detainees unfairly held in the Guantanamo Bay torture camp, the genocidal devastation to black workers in New Orleans and multiple plans to redefine the status of "illegal" immigrants. The ruling class -- the class of land and factory owners who exploit workers for profits --works mightily to control workers' thoughts on these issues. They hammer us, the working class, with capitalist ideology through the schools, advertising and the media we watch, listen to and read. The most dangerous messages come from the ruling class's liberal wing. They seek to turn our best instincts of anti-racism and unity into nationalist loyalty towards them.

The ruling class has spent centuries pushing individualism and passivity in the working class. They needed these ideas to defuse the anger that led to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. But they face growing competition from imperialist rivals like China and have difficulty maintaining control of Mid-East oil. They cannot hope to win their wars without winning workers to nationalist unity and a willingness to fight for U.S. imperialism.

One attempt to build this ideological commitment is revealed in a recent N.Y. Times' column (6/7) by liberal Thomas Friedman. He adds an insidious twist to the body of ideology about immigration. Friedman acknowledges that "[t]here is a lot to be worried about in America today," referring to the war in Iraq and to the many problems workers have at home, like failing schools. However, his answer is not the openly fascist Minuteman type -- if we just kept "America for Americans" we'd be stronger. Instead, Friedman celebrates the "stunning diversity" and "freedom" in the U.S.

So far this sounds like the same old melting-pot story taught in school. But Friedman goes a step further, directly addressing the rulers' needs in their struggle for imperialist supremacy: "Our Chinese will still beat their Chinese." [!]

Friedman stresses that the U.S. needs immigrant minds and bodies to fight its wars and to serve as a cheap labor pool at home. He calls for a "free flow of legal immigration" to ensure the "influx of brainy and brawny immigrants." He compares this to an "oil well -- one that never runs dry." These points are buried in the deceptive liberal platitudes about "diversity" and "democracy."

Friedman acknowledges the workers' right to be angry at the system. But then he proposes ideas to divert us from recognizing the injustice of capitalism. He calls on workers to be loyal to the U.S. in its competition with rivals like the afore-mentioned Chinese and the "enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan" he calls "totalitarians." He tries to use the anti-racist sentiments and anger that once moved workers to create mass reform movements in an attempt to build nationalism and support for imperialism.

We must not be duped by such slick packaging of rotten ideas. We must analyze what the liberal politicians and media say about the world to ferret out the real core of fascism under the nice words about "diversity" and "aspiration." In New Orleans black and immigrant workers are being held in separate guarded camps, and on Long Island anti-racists are put on trial for defending immigrant day-laborers. When liberals talk about immigrants joining forces with "native" citizens to fight our enemies, we must be clear that the "enemies" they're talking about are other workers just like us, with our same class interests.

We must fight for the true unity of internationalism, the only kind of "diversity" that will allow us to defeat the real enemy, the capitalist system with its borders and wars which serve only to oppress workers.

Mexico's Election Only Serves Bosses, Not Workers

As we go to press, the Mexican election results are in dispute. Calderón, candidate of PAN, the right-wing party of current President Fox, is leading López Obrador, the nationalist-populist candidate, by 1%. His supporters insist there was wide-spread fraud. The biggest fraud, however, is the one all the bosses promote against the working class -- the dangerous illusion that capitalist elections can end mass unemployment and poverty. The only real alternative for workers is organizing a mass revolutionary communist party to smash all the capitalists and their wage-slavery system.

López Obrador might offer workers some more crumbs than Calderón, but what's really at stake are the interests of various factions of the Mexican and imperialist bosses. Calderón and PAN represent those Mexican bosses who support the U.S. neo-liberal economic model, NAFTA and the privatization of the energy sector. López Obrador, with a social-democratic program á la Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, represents Mexican bosses NAFTA screwed, and who want tighter government control over the oil industry. They want to retain import restrictions on crops like rice and beans which NAFTA will lift in 2008.

Many militant workers and their allies have illusions that electing López Obrador will help them. López Obrador and his PRD party won the most votes in areas of recent sharp class struggle -- in Oaxaca, where striking teachers are occupying the city's center; and in Michoacán where striking miners and steel workers beat back a massive police attack in April.

Workers must break with the deadly illusion that there are "lesser-evil" bosses. The PRD wants to tie the working class to the supposedly "progressive" sector of the ruling class, those Mexican bosses who want a bigger share of the profits for themselves. The PRD controls Zacatecas where the cops attacked striking miners. It was also under a PRD mayor that the cops viciously attacked striking National University students in 2000.

Serving U.S. imperialism, Calderón said the government-owned "Pemex should be given the freedom to buy the technology or put together the contracts necessary to be able to increase reserves and production." However, Lopez Obrador defends the ban on foreign investments in Pemex, and pledges to build three gasoline refineries and boost Mexico's petrochemical production.

Lopez Obrador claimed he would limit the rate of oil exploitation; stop the country's annual imports of $14.5 billion worth of gasoline and petrochemicals, create desperately needed jobs and get additional revenues to finance his "poor first" programs. But his real aim is social "peace" and to save Mexican bosses' profits. They know their oil supply is declining and that working-class militancy is rising.

Workers should take no side in the current bosses' dogfight. We should understand that capitalist "democracy" is a huge fraud, under which bosses fight over the "right" to exploit workers for their particular interests. The main lesson for workers and their allies is that capitalism in any form will never serve our interests. This opens more opportunities for PLP to spread our politics of fighting for workers' power -- communism. (More next issue.)

Buffet-Gates `Charity': Another Rulers' Tool to Suck Workers' Blood

Warren Buffet's $31-billion pledge to Bill Gates' $30-billion foundation has nothing to do with charity. Philanthropy's most insidious purpose is to legitimize atrocities inherent in the profit system. The rulers want us to think that Buffet's, Gates' and Rockefeller's missionary crumb-tossing will somehow alleviate extreme poverty and the plagues it causes. They would have us believe that supporting billionaire George Soros's Human Rights Watch can curb the U.S. military's torture and massacres. Above all, the "philanthropic" rulers seek to turn us away from the one road to the working class's betterment, communist revolution.

These foundations have become a major part of the state apparatus, functioning in many ways to perpetuate the capitalists' class dictatorship, with all its miseries for workers. (See article page 8) Ultra-rich families establish foundations to pass their stolen billions from one generation to the next tax-free.

Through foundations, leading capitalists wield tremendous influence in setting policy. Foundations funnel smaller bosses' money into serving the big boys' purposes. At times, the rulers employ foundations to seize the fortunes of renegade capitalists. Finally, foundations put a humanitarian fig leaf over outrages ranging from racist exploitation to imperialist war.

Buffet and Gates trail the Rockefellers in using philanthropy to shelter their wealth and steer society. A century ago, the latter established the General Education Board, which effectively bought control of Harvard University and other important ideology foundries. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission aimed at eradicating debilitating diseases like hookworm in the South. Prefiguring Gates' campaign against AIDS and malaria in Africa, its ulterior motive was to create a low-wage workforce healthy enough to toil in the region's new industries. The Rockefeller Foundation continues to bankroll the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, which, respectively, lead in planning domestic police-state measures and overseas military adventures.

Although the media like to describe Buffet, of Omaha, and Gates, of Seattle, as "self-made" billionaires, their foundation deal actually represents a consolidation of Eastern Establishment power. The big shots forced Gates into his charitable pursuits, many of which operate jointly with the Rockefeller Foundation. Gates started his foundation in 2000 under the gun of liberal Clinton's anti-trust prosecution of Microsoft. Gates' Microsoft was running afoul of U.S. imperialism by indiscriminately peddling strategic technology to -- and boosting the economic and military capacity of -- potential foes like China. Battered by the courts (another instrument of the state), Gates finally heeded his masters, investing millions, for example, into the shipyard that builds Navy aircraft carriers.

In 2001, Gates' father joined George Soros, Buffet, and two Rockefellers in a full-page New York Times ad protesting a Republican proposal to repeal the estate tax. The tax, the ad read, "exerts a powerful and positive effect on charitable giving." Inheritance levies running to 55% compel the moderately rich to donate to tax-free ruling-class philanthropies. The conservative editors of the Wall Street Journal whined that Buffet favors "death taxes only for those whose estates are too small to hide in foundation tax shelters." (6/28/06)

Gates' forcible conversion to "charity" recalls earlier confiscations by foundations. Henry Ford, a vicious anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, opposed U.S. entry into World War II. Upon his son Edsel's death in 1943, the family began shifting Ford Motor stock to the Ford Foundation rather than cough up the 77% wartime estate tax. When Henry himself died in 1947, Wall Street-based trustees took over the foundation, the nation's richest at the time, devoting it to a host of liberal causes, pointedly including "international affairs."

When Time-Warner bought out Turner Broadcasting in 1995, the rulers attached a slight hitch to loose cannon Ted Turner's $1-billion personal payout: he couldn't keep it. Turner immediately pledged the same sum to an offshoot of the Establishment United Nations Association, which advances U.S. goals at the UN.

And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery

The wealth amassed by the world's three richest capitalists -- two of whom are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates -- exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 48 poorest countries. In 1983, Buffet's net worth was a "mere" $620 million. With the ruling class's downsizing, wage-cutting and mass layoff assault on the working class in the 1980's, Buffett upped his riches to $3.8 billion in six years. Since then it has multiplied 1,000%, to $38 billion! How?

First he bought Dempster, a windmill manufacturing company, cut costs and laid off workers, generating enough cash to buy the textile firm Berkshire Hathaway, which became his springboard to empire. In 1985, he shut down its New Bedford, Mass. Plant, dumping 425 workers on the street. Buffett continued along these lines, buying one outfit, reaping profits, selling it to generate more profits. That same year he engineered a deal to buy ABC-TV. Rounds of budget-cutting and layoffs followed.

Five years later he purchased U.S. Gypsum which, facing asbestos suits from workers, sought bankruptcy protection against the misery and disease it had brought to thousands of workers.

In August 2004, the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Fruit of the Loom moved its Cameron County, Texas production to Honduras, eliminating 800 workers' jobs, in a county that had double-digit unemployment and a 33% poverty rate. This was followed by shutting its Rabun Gap, Georgia yarn facility, dumping another 930 workers.

Then last year Buffet, being Gillette's largest stockholder, merged it with Proctor & Gamble, netting Buffett another $645 million, all of which sparked a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions that led to P&G cutting 6,000 jobs.

Buffett's drive to increase Berkshire Hathaway's per-share value at any cost left a trail of closed plants and ruined communities behind him. These mechanisms which created his billion-dollar wealth contributed greatly to the poverty which he now says his stolen billions will "solve."

Such is the fraud that media like the N.Y. Times peddles as "magnanimous philanthropy" by the "captains of industry."

Angry Workers Don't Buy Los Angeles Mayor's War Contract

LOS ANGELES, CA. June 29 -- "There are a lot of workers here whose disappointment has turned to anger," a transit worker calmly told a meeting of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) local discussing the latest sellout contract offer brought back by Business Agent Neil Silver.

"That's why there's so much yelling," he continued. "This company has shorted us money contract after contract and we`re tired of it. Now this war that will never end is bleeding us and everyone else and we're tired of that too. The mayor and the rest of the Democrats have no answers except a larger, bloodier, more expensive war. And you come with a contract that won't even pay our bill at the gas pump. We say no to this contract, no to MTA and no to the war you want us to take a hit for."

This impassioned speech produced a burst of applause.

As workers entered the hall to vote, one mechanic took a PLP leaflet and jabbed at the headline reading, "REJECT THE CONTRACT," exclaiming, "This is how I'm voting!"

The leaflet labeled it a war contract and called on workers to build the long-term fight for workers' power, explaining that the union leaders have no answer to wage- and benefit-cuts and the widening Mid-East oil war.

Four months ago Business Agent Neil Silver told the workers he would fight for a "significant wage increase." Then he came up against the growing needs of wartime U.S. capitalism for cheap labor. While his friend, liberal Democrat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, heads the Transit Authority's Board of Directors, this offer was only half of what Silver had promised.

Many workers had the illusion that Villaraigosa was a "mayor of all the people." This ATU local had launched his political career over a decade ago with a very large political donation and the press built him up, so some workers were taken in.

But as one rank-and-filer said, Villaraigosa brokered a lousy contract the last time and repeated it now. "He's not our friend, he's our enemy, said one worker. "His friends are the big businessmen who run L.A." Villaraigosa's biggest backer, billionaire liberal Eli Broad, is helping to concentrate L.A.'s political power in the office of the mayor.

Their tight grip on the city uses pro-Democratic party labor leaders to saddle workers with war contracts. All three transit unions simultaneously announced "good responsible" tentative agreements, but none cover inflation.

These capitalists don't need an efficient transit system and a more co-operative world. They DO urgently need: (1) a public transit with loyal, experienced workers paid cheaply without strikes; and, (2) tens of thousands of even lower- paid workers to swell the ranks of industry and seek to maintain U.S. imperialism's supremacy.

Their most cost-effective aim is a large, flexible, part-time workforce (United Transportation Union drivers), putting in longer, more intense hours and paying more of our own medical plans and pensions (all three unions).

The ratification meeting was rowdy and angry throughout. It was after Silver announced the offer would use money slated for our medical plan and to pay us a _ of 1% wage "increase." The worker who gave the afore-mentioned impassioned speech challenged Silver to square an expected 20% wage package with this meager result and with no explanation why.

Silver sidestepped the war issue: "This package is equal to what everyone [else] in transit is getting." Instead of the vote passing by the 10 to 1 margin of the last lousy contract, this one got by at 243 to 146 -- almost two votes against for every three in favor. It is becoming clearer to groups of workers that this system has nothing to offer except exploitation and war. PLP's answer -- to fight for power for the working class -- is ringing true to more workers.

The 2009 contract will undoubtedly be worse as the U.S. is forced to up the ante of wider imperialist wars against their Chinese, Russian and European rivals. In this period of widening war, building now for that contract fight means a greater commitment for our Party's forces among these transit unions. We aim to build the PLP and win workers to understand that the answer to all these attacks is to organize for communist revolution to destroy the system of exploitation and imperialism for good.

Cops Tell Bosses' Court Anti-Racism Is Illegal!

FARMINGVILLE, NY, July 3 -- Three anti-racists are on trial in Suffolk County criminal court for defending workers from racists one year ago.

In a militant demonstration, a local racist, David Drutarovsky, was surrounded and chanted down by demonstrators and 30 day laborers who joined this action. This demonstration, in solidarity with day-laborers, was organized by anti-racist teachers and students from New York City. These workers face daily harassment and even assault. The bosses use them to drive down wages and divide the working class, using racism to attack them.

Drutarovsky picketed on a regular basis at the corner where day laborers have gathered to wait for work six days a week for at least six years. He tapes and photographs the workers and their prospective employers to intimidate them. Once he even showed up in a gas mask "to protect himself from the germs" he says Mexican immigrants carry.

Drutarovsky got far less than he deserved that day. The cops, seeing the unity of workers opposing this racist, started arresting demonstrators who they saw as the "leaders": those who spoke Spanish, gave speeches and chanted the loudest.

On that same day, July 16, 2005, two racist thugs posing as employers called a day laborer over to their truck and smashed a bottle into the worker's face, sending him to the hospital. In October, the district attorney offered those two scumbags non-criminal deals. The courts clearly serve the capitalist class; the racists got off with a slap on the wrist.

We have fought to maintain the offensive in all our legal proceedings. Our motions to dismiss all charges generated 15 court appearances before trial even began. We have organized to pack the courtroom to capacity. Police testimony given at earlier hearings is coming back to bite the prosecutor in the ass. It is clear that the cops are racists and liars. They have proven this on the witness stand when the sergeant, their key witness, testified that yelling the word "racists" is a crime! He contradicted himself several times.

In the bosses' eyes, the real "crime" we committed that day was traveling to support Suffolk County's most super-exploited workers with militant anti-racist and communist leadership. These workers responded by joining our demonstration. Even if only for a few minutes, they rocked the local racists and their cops back on their heels.

The bosses are using their courts to deter us from future actions. Their schemes will fail. Every friend and member who shows up at our trial turns the bosses' attack into its opposite.

International Solidarity:
CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, June 28 -- Today 70 teachers and students picketed the Mexican consulate to support striking teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Militant chants rang out in Spanish and English: "When the police attack, Teachers fight back!"; "Teachers' struggles have no borders."

Local 2334, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) comprising the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) at the City University of NY (CUNY) organized the rally, joined by a dozen rank-and-filers from AFT Local 2 and some CUNY students. The Labor Council for Latin-American Advancement, a Latino labor group, co-sponsored it.

The PSC Delegate Assembly unanimously passed an Oaxaca support resolution -- calling for a halt to police attacks on the strikers -- which was delivered to the Mexican consul. He said he would convey the resolution to Mexican government officials but claimed the federal police in Oaxaca were there to "keep the peace" during the elections.

He understood that unionized teachers here wouldn't let this issue drop, and would react to any more police assaults. Of course, the consul simply represents the Mexican capitalist state and can't influence policy. Bosses everywhere use state violence against strikers, but the Oaxaca teachers had asked for this form of pressure to put the government on the defensive.

Outside, the rally roared on. The delegation reported this meeting. PSC members in Oaxaca have also been meeting with the teachers there, establishing direct ties and sending reports back to the New York local.

One speaker noted that the strikers' demands were essentially the same as those here, and that with the same enemy, "Mexican and U.S. teachers must unite." Another said that just as capitalists in Mexico and the U.S. are increasingly linked to each other, so too must Mexican and U.S. workers stand together.

PSC leaders are committed to international labor solidarity, but the union movement is dominated by the bosses' patriotic imperialism. The leadership New Caucus won a recent election with 55% of the vote, embracing worker solidarity in the teeth of right-wing attacks. The PSC local brought about 100 members to the transit workers' picket lines last winter. But many more PSC members must be won to this position.

The AFT national leadership and the National Education Association have done little to back the strikers. Only one other AFT local has taken action, Local 2121 at the City College of San Francisco. International teacher solidarity will have to grow from the ground up, combating pro-boss union leaders, here and in Mexico, where the national union (SNTE) leader Gordillo distanced herself from the strike and red-baited its leadership.

Ultimately teachers and all workers must not merely defend strikes and fight the capitalist educational system, but fight to turn strikes into schools for communism. As the PLP leaflet in Oaxaca declared: "PLP, faced with the failure of Socialism, today fights directly for Communism, in order to bury once and for all this unjust and murderous system."

PLP invites militant teachers and "all conscious and determined workers" in New York, and Oaxaca to join our ranks. All reforms are eventually reversed by capitalism. Teachers need to fight for a communist society that meets workers' needs.

AFT Convention: Leadership's Liberalism Masks Pro-Boss Stance

NEW YORK CITY, July 3 -- At thecomng July 19-23 AFT Convention in Boston, the war in Iraq, the genocide in New Orleans and immigration reform are some key issues that delegates will be discussing, only because of long struggle by rank-and-file delegates to get them on the table. The AFT leadership is more interested in big words about education reform, endorsing electoral candidates and lining up education workers behind the bosses' foreign policy. Many teachers think of the AFT leadership as "good guys" on many issues, but in reality the leaders are members of the ruling class's Council on Foreign Relations and other think-tanks committed to running and saving this system. The AFT has always been a pro-boss, anti-communist union, helping the CIA build just such "unions" in many other countries. And it's not changing now.

What it will do is attempt to mislead teachers by passing a mild resolution that seems to oppose the U.S. rulers' plans. In reality, though, it lines the AFT up with the forces in the ruling class who don't like how Bush is conducting this war. The leadership wants to stop a majority of the delegates who actually oppose the war from supporting an anti-imperialist resolution. None of the AFT leadership opposes U.S. imperialism.

PLP members, along with many other rank-and-filers, have been involved in struggles against the war, at conventions and in our locals. We know too well that the ruling class liberals use education "reform" to mask the fascist nature of the schools: the metal detectors, the military recruiting in the schools, the prison-like atmosphere, the complete racist neglect of working-class students, especially black and Latino students, and the use of No Child Left Behind garbage to do just that -- leave our class's children way behind, set for unemployment, poverty-level jobs and cannon fodder in the bosses' wars. The AFT leadership does nothing to oppose this rising fascism in the schools.

PL'ers have called for support for workers in New Orleans and helped expose most "education reform" as part of the bosses' agenda. The AFT leaders rely on speakers like Teddy Kennedy to try to deceive us on this. But PL'ers have advanced an outlook which attacks these liberal pro-capitalists because there is no way under a profit system to end the misery of the working class. We call for the fight for communism.

At the convention and afterwards, we will fight for that idea -- among the emerging anti-war forces within the AFT, in our locals and with the parents, students and co-workers in our schools. The working class with communist leadership, not the liberals of AFT, has the answer to the crises we face today.

Anti-Racist Legal Workers Expose Anti-Immigrant Lawyers

PLP has often said that fascism is growing here and elsewhere. How? As members of organizations like unions, we see capitalist political control and fascist ideology being promoted by leaders of those groups. One of the bosses' current goals is to use these leaders to convince workers, professionals and others to support the legalization of a Homeland Security police state.

These ruling class plans -- especially among its liberal proponents -- as related to immigration "reform" became clearer for several people who recently attended the annual national conference of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association (AILA), an organization of 10,000 lawyers and paralegals. Interestingly, 7,000 represent the immigration interests of business. Many of the remainder deal with undocumented workers, asylum seekers, detainees and people facing deportation.

AILA employs lobbyists who are working overtime these days to ensure that the liberal Senate version of immigration "reform" is enacted. But it's clear that AILA, like the majority of its members, sees this issue only in terms of its benefit to business people. AILA is urging its members to tell their business clients to push their elected officials to support immigration "reform" because it's "good for business."

AILA lobbyists are not concerned that the "guest worker" proposal would relegate those "guests" to virtual slave labor, because any worker who becomes unemployed and can't find another job within 60 days will be deported. With that threat hanging over their head, many workers will be reluctant to organize on the job against exploitation and terror. One workshop speaker praised capitalism's ability to create a "dynamic and flexible" labor pool. No concern was paid to the working conditions, benefits or job security of that "labor pool."

At the same workshop, billed as a "pro-immigrant" response to right-wing propaganda, an immigration lawyer, an Army Lt. Colonel teaching at West Point, proudly stated that she doesn't use the term "undocumented worker," but calls "them" illegal immigrants. She joked: "They're not `undocumented.' They have plenty of documents, all of them fake." One person in that workshop exposed this speaker's racist use of language and sick sense of humor.

The Army officer also said the military fully supports immigration "reform," and is actively recruiting amongst the immigrant population. The Army, she said, believes that immigrants "adapt better" to the military environment and are more compliant with military rules. The anti-racist person in the workshop then warned that the so-called "Dream Act," which many immigrants and legal workers naively support, is really just another ruling-class tool to force immigrants into joining the military to fight for the bosses' profits.

It's clear to those of us who attended this conference that there is no "reform" of immigration law which will serve workers' interests. As another workshop speaker pointed out, U.S. rulers have historically used fascist immigration laws and policies in order to attack all workers. Only a communist system, which abolishes borders, nations and wages, will truly liberate ourselves and our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Spreading Red Ideas Inside and Outside the Factories

Almost ten years ago, a worker at my high school gave me a leaflet from the racist Voices of Citizens Together (VCT) presenting their thoughts on immigrants and what they planned for July 4, 1996. He said we should fight these guys, but I couldn't; I was headed for a MEChA ( a Chicano student organization) conference. When I returned, I discovered that the VCT rally was practically destroyed, with some of their membership bloodied from the confrontation.

The worker brought me to a PL forum about the action and gave me a CHALLENGE and soon took me to PL study groups.

Later I participated in a Summer Project in a city with a U.S. Army base and a huge network of Boeing plants employing over 40,000 workers, members of the local machinists' union.

We were students and teachers conducting mass CHALLENGE-DESAFIO sales at the plants and the Army Base; holding discussions about political economy, dialectical materialism, and the importance of organizing industrial workers and soldiers; and having barbeques along with visits at the workers' and soldiers' homes.

I remember then CHALLENGE pointing to the inevitability of imperialist war in the Middle East, saying that in order to launch that war for oil, the U.S. ruling class needed to squeeze vast resources out of its own workers. The main segment that produces everything -- the industrial workers -- were some of the first targets. At that time the U.S. military was using Boeing-made aircraft to bomb the Balkans because U.S. rulers wanted control over the areas where pipelines brought the oil out of the Mid-East. Simultaneously, they were demanding greater concessions from the Boeing workers.

CHALLENGE and the 1999 Summer Project taught me how important the allegiance of industrial workers and rank-and-file soldiers is for the U.S. imperialists. Secondly, the direct experience in agitation among these two groups showed me they were both definitely open to communism and to joining PLP.

The oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the industrial working class increasingly important to U.S. imperialism. This has become even clearer with the latest growth in hiring of manufacturing workers. But to fund the war, U.S. bosses must maximize profit and slash conditions for workers, using racism and state terror and cutting benefits like healthcare, pensions and education.

As a student I thought agitating from the outside was important. Now dialectical materialism has taught me that the internal is primary, that without struggle inside to develop the ideas, agitation is limited. I realized that to really change things I had to be inside the factory, because the politics of the industrial working class is crucial. I decided to become a machinist in order to be an active organizer for the Party inside the factory.

Once inside, I understood that I underestimated the significance of the mass CHALLENGE sales. Class struggle within the working class is a daily and constant ideological struggle. It's like war. To recruit, to gather the most strength, consolidate and spread beyond my immediate circle, I must make broader contacts within my factory.

Our goal is to change the common fight over grievances into one for the seizure of state power led by our working-class party. This has been the main aspect of class struggle in which CHALLENGE engages. I'm slowly building a base around the ideas of anti-capitalism, anti-racism and communism. Challenge is key in this struggle, but must coincide with my first building trust and friendship among a close circle of workers. This takes patience and a long-term perspective.

Recently a worker told me that when he was younger he believed the president, that communism was the enemy -- it was bad. When the communists fell, everyone clapped. "But now, when I talk with you guys, I think communism is good."

Without CHALLENGE, a permanent revolutionary organization of the working class will never advance.

Agitation through distributing the paper and leaflets means that a network of workers can develop within the factory which can maintain contact with one another. They can follow political events carefully, tracing their effect on the working class, and help us develop ways for our Party to influence those events. This will sharpen the general class struggle, leading towards the seizure of state power in a communist revolution.

It's very important that youth and others participate in the 2006 Summer Project to bring communist ideas to the industrial working class. This will help intensify the struggle inside the factories and also should lead to more youth working in these plants.

GI's Must Reject Politics of Passivism, Patriotism and Nationalism

SEATTLE, WA.,June 25 -- Over 200 people attended the speech of U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty, when his Stryker brigade received orders to redeploy. Lt. Watada is stationed at Ft. Lewis, Washington. He spoke publicly around the Seattle-Tacoma area before he was required to report to duty.

In his statement, Watada said that he wasn't opposed to all wars, just the Iraq war because it was illegal and based on lies. Since killing Iraqis went against international treaties and conventions, his moral and legal obligation to defend the U.S. constitution prevented him from fighting. The case of Lt. Watada has caused sharp struggle within Military Families Speak Out and other Veteran groups.

Watada's opinions echo ruling class strategists that say the fiasco in Iraq is hurting U.S. imperialism's ability to wage bigger wars in the future. He is highly supported by peace and psuedo-left groups, such as the Seattle Draft and Military Counseling Center (SDMCC), who openly back the bosses' message of passivism, patriotism, and nationalism. They build the illusion that if we fight for the "right reform" or vote in "progressive candidates" the war will end.

The liberal Watada movement is a dead end for all workers and will not spontaneously develop into a rank-and-file rebellion against the system. It will take an understanding of the nature of the bosses' legal system to convince workers, students and soldiers that laws are there to keep us down. The ruling class makes the law and they break the law. They control the cops and the legal system. And even if they are forced to withdraw from Iraq, they will continue to send troops to other hot spots in the Middle East and Asia or South America, because they need to control the oil flow to keep their system going.

Masses of workers, students and soldiers need to reject the politics surrounding Watada's case. The young people that are attracted to these groups need a communist perspective in order to intensify revolutionary class consciousness, defeat the empty promises of reform and put an end to all imperialist wars. We need to become more active in these organizations so that we can win people to join the PLP and lay the ground-work for future generations to get rid of capitalism for good.

Debunk Democrats As War Party At Church Conference

The CHALLENGE editorial "All Warmakers" (7/5) -- which exposed the Democrats as just as much a war party as the Republicans -- was right on time. I read it just before attending a national church conference. I was in a group planning a resolution for the church to endorse an interfaith "Out of Iraq timetable" campaign, with escalating non-violent protests if the pullout hasn't begun by September.

After reading the CHALLENGE editorial, and a Time Magazine article describing the Democrats' infighting and horse-trading, I began to feel this "timetable" campaign -- and me with it -- were being used to strengthen the Kerry-Feingold faction.

To deal with this contradiction, I had to find a way to attack the ruling-class liberals while participating in this reform "timetable" program.

So, while circulating the petition I warned signers to beware of Democrats who want withdrawal from Iraq to move forces into Iran, and who want a tactical retreat in order to strengthen the military for an eventual war with China. I had similar conversations with about 100 in our group.

While distributing copies of our resolution, I also gave out hundreds of leaflets explaining that the Democratic Party has no anti-war faction. The leaflet called for discussion of imperialism and for building an anti-war movement independent of the Democrats, among civilians and people in the military.

Some folks agreed when I said, "The Democrats are a war party, not a peace party." Others didn't. "Not my Senator Feingold," someone said. So I quoted Feingold: "I am only referring to a time frame for the military mission in Iraq, not for our broader political and other missions" and bemoaning "our failure to prioritize military spending." The leaflet also quoted Kerry, Hart and Murtha (who said on "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation," "Let's reduce our presence in Iraq; let's start to rebuild the Army.")

Several dozen of us worked on petitions and speeches supporting the resolution. We joined forces with some veterans, adding to our resolution their proposal that the church work for better benefits for vets, active-duty and military families. A delegate -- a GI -- helped distribute leaflets but didn't want to speak publicly. So, on his behalf, I read a short speech that he wrote. "We are pre-positioning troops in Iran right now and plans are being made to send more military personnel into the region despite what you may hear in the media about troop reductions," he warned. Then I met a Vietnam vet who'd been active in the GI anti-war movement. Both took extra literature and want to stay in touch.

Several dozen people in my church have read CHALLENGE, though none attended this out-of-town conference. As follow-up, I plan to show this issue to all of them and to several others who were delegates, plus some old friends I saw there. I will also work in my church to build anti-war activity around this "peace" campaign.

The resolution passed almost unanimously. In the airport, on my way home, CNN was interviewing a U.S. general in Iraq who said he already has a "timetable" for troop withdrawal, and I thought about what the rank-and-file soldier had written.

The Kerry-Feingold crowd masquerades as a "peace" movement but this "near enemy" (see box) is truly a greater danger than the "far enemy" of the Bush-Clinton "stay-the-course" crowd. Exposing their attempts to win mass organizations (like our church) to a disguised war program was a small step toward building our Party, inside and outside the military. We cannot keep saying each war "was a mistake." We need to understand that we're dealing with a war system, imperialism that capitalism makes inevitable. Workers and soldiers fighting against this bloody system with communist revolution is the only way to end it.

MINISTER O.K.'S Lenin

I had lunch with two ministers who were chatting about the Buddhist concept of "near enemy" and "far enemy." The "far enemy" is something's opposite - for example, Buddhists say the "far enemy" of compassion is cruelty. The "near enemy" is a quality that masquerades as the original, but is not the original: the "near enemy" of compassion is pity.

A speaker had argued that the "near enemy" was more dangerous and needed more attention. "So was Lenin studying Buddhism?" I joked. "He didn't polemicize against the Czar; he wrote pamphlets against enemies within the workers' movement." One minister thought for a moment, then laughed. "That's about right," she said.

LETTERS

Bosses Use Racism to Divide Katrina Victims

Nine months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still a city of ruin, racism and destructive divisions among workers. As part of a group of college students in the PLP Summer Project there, we found black working-class communities still destroyed. We also discovered local residents imprisoned by capitalist ideology, pitting them against people who actually share their class interests: immigrant workers, mainly from South America and Mexico, brought there to clean up this gigantic mess.

On our first day, we talked to a black woman who was working with the student volunteers. When asked about the arrival of Latino workers, she replied that they would never "take over New Orleans like they have in the rest of the country," and that Spanish would never be the main language in Louisiana.

This woman's outlook was shared by a number of working-class black residents. Thus, the bosses first use immigrants as cheap labor under the worst conditions, and then use the scarcity of jobs to divide workers.

The bosses brought these newcomers here for the dirtiest work -- such as cleaning mold toxins from streets and houses -- while promising them high wages and housing. Soon the wages were cut. In some cases contractors didn't pay them at all. After the immigrants' safety equipment broke or was used up it wasn't replaced. Eventually they lost their housing and their jobs, and were stuck in New Orleans with no support. Meanwhile, local black workers, also victims of the city's high unemployment rate, were misled into thinking that the few immigrant workers who still had jobs had stolen their means of a livelihood. But workers never create unemployment; it's capitalism that requires a vast army of unemployed and racist divisions to gain its maximum profit.

As communists, we understand that black and immigrant workers are part of one class. Their true enemies are the bosses of the capitalist system, from the politicians who are content to see black neighborhoods washed away to the corporate profiteers making a fast buck from the federal disaster relief bonanza.

Our experience in New Orleans reinforced the idea that the working class must not allow racism or capitalist borders to separate us. Because the woman we met was confused by the classic capitalist set-up -- inducing different groups of workers to fight for crumbs -- she failed to see the essence of how all workers are exploited. Even though we didn't convince this particular woman, we gave her a lot to think about.

This Summer Project will continue to give us opportunities to build a base for communism among the whole working class of New Orleans.

Two Volunteers

`Welcome to the United States of Slavery!'

I'm in New Orleans participating in the PLP Summer Project, and getting some education just being here. Fascism is running New Orleans, an occupied city like Baghdad.

When I went out for a hamburger late one night, Hummers with tinted windows were slowly prowling the neighborhood. One gas station was crowded with Blackwater mercenaries [contracted security]. The next one was crawling with cops, who were ordering people to move their cars here or there. National Guard vehicles were driving around downtown.

On Canal Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares, the median strip was filled with a long line of parked state trooper cars. At one intersection near the French Quarter, cops had two black people out of their vehicle and were searching it. This is an everyday occurrence.

It's evident that the bosses here are trying hard to pit black and immigrant workers against each other. They've managed to get 80% of the black workers out of the city, and now are replacing them with "guest workers" -- immigrants recruited mostly from Central and South America. The hotels have replaced black staffs with "guest workers" at $6 an hour. On a morning walk I saw immigrant workers operating the Waste Management garbage trucks and cleaning the grounds outside a high school. There was barely any Latino community here before Katrina.

Some Central American workers told about being brought to New Orleans to work, and on their first night were taken to a hotel. A black man was behind the reception counter, also a recent immigrant, not from New Orleans. When they entered, he stood up and said, in Spanish, "Welcome to the United States of Slavery!" At the time, they didn't understand what he meant, but now, three months later, they do.

The ruling class is replacing the previous wage-slaves--who had a history of militancy-- with new, even lower-paid ones.

I encourage whoever is dedicated to learning about and fighting racism and fascism to come here for a while, and then return to teach what you've learned -- and organize!

A Project Participant

Reform Won't Build GI Movement

It's good to see several articles on PLP's political activity among GI's. PLP has long been aware that this is essential in building for revolution, as the Bolsheviks and Chinese communists have shown. We have much to learn from our present-day military comrades. It's heartening to read about soldiers building a base for communism among GI's by making it clear to them that capitalism is the enemy, not Iraqis or immigrant workers. It helps combat the cynicism of the bosses' media, both about the soldiers and about the possibility for change.

We know it's important for communists to work in reform organizations in order to expose the hypocrisy of capitalism and win workers to revolution. It's essential to show the contradiction between revolution and reform, so that workers, students or soldiers we're working with will understand that the reform movement can never win for them. Unless we show this irreconcilable contradiction, we may build reform movements rather than our revolutionary Party. I don't think the article "GI Movement Stirs from its Slumber" (6/21) makes this contradiction clear.

The PLP'er is quoted as saying many true and important things. It's great that 50% of the meeting took CHALLENGE. However, the article quotes Cortright on the need for "reform and revolution," but doesn't explain that they are in direct contradiction with each other. Our Party's value to soldiers is that we fight to make revolutionary communism primary in our political activity and the networks we build -- one example, CHALLENGE networks.

More than half of the "GI Movement" article describes the reform organization. It's very important to know the history of GI resistance. But when the author writes about Cortright's answer to GI repression (substantial groups, lawyers and publicity), he leaves the impression that these tactics deserve equal billing to our revolutionary goal. This is not our idea about work among GI's, nor do we agree with Cortright's outlook on elections. Do we really want to urge more people to apply for conscientious objector status? (Not surprisingly, Cortright's book gives short shrift to PL's military work during the Vietnam era.) If Cortright really is a friend, then we must vigorously struggle with him around these ideas; if he's an enemy, then we should attack him.

The article would be more useful if it limited the description of Cortright and his ideas to one paragraph and devoted the remainder to how we advanced our ideas, the GI's response, how/if we plan to work in the organization, etc. To help our membership and friends worldwide, we must be consistently clear that while reforms may look good and seem worth fighting for, ultimately they will lead to more betrayal, destruction and death as capitalism tries to deceive workers into believing it can meet their needs. Patience and persistence in presenting PL's ideas and struggling every day with our friends/co-workers/fellow GI's/ students for communist revolution is what will win workers and ultimately what will win for our class.

A Comrade

Colombia Vote A Sham

Elections are over. The president spent over 700 million pesos in his dirty campaign. For the ruling class, voting is one way to legitimize "democracy." Sixty percent of the potential voters didn't show up.

Fascist Uribe changed the constitution so he could be re-elected. He received 23% of the potential electoral vote. None of the other parties could beat that -- the conservatives, the weakened liberal party, nor the democrats and their lackeys who ALL manipulate workers.

The majority of workers have no faith in the government, despite the propaganda spread by the churches and media, who serve the murderous ruling class.

Politicians have deceived us with false promises for many years. Lying is the government's art. Politicians have institutionalized the lie that they represent us. It is the bosses' philosophy. They impose these lies upon us with violence, and the perverse culture of the wage system.

Over 16 million people in Colombia didn't vote. We need to organize these workers into a truly revolutionary communist party of the working class to defend the real truth of dialectical materialism.

We workers need to channel our anger and discontent from long years of famine, war, unemployment and repression and direct it against the capitalists and their politicians who disarm our struggles and try to convert us into their followers.

Comrades in Colombia

War Criminal Murtha Spurs Anti-Arab Racism

I've always believed the war in Iraq -- the first Gulf War, the economic sanctions, Clinton's bombings, the current war and occupation -- was laced with anti-Arab racism. It's obvious that the Iraqi people are not viewed as human, and this explains the torture at Abu Ghraib, the execution of Iraqi men, women and children by Marines at Haditha and the widespread bombing.

Even those who call for withdrawal of U.S. troops do so to get "our" troops out of harm's way. Rep. John Murtha barely mentions the deaths of Iraqis when he argues for troop withdrawal. Concerning the massacre by Marines in Haditha, Murtha attempted to provide an excuse for the racially-motivated killers, stating, "Marines over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Well, Mr. Murtha, U.S. imperialism has been killing workers in cold blood for years. And yes, Mr. Murtha, you won your medals in the criminal war on the Vietnamese workers and peasants, who heroically resisted the imperialist intervention there. And finally, Mr. Murtha, it was you who closed your eyes to the murderous death-squad regime in El Salvador in the 1980's.

Personally, I do not consider U.S. imperialist troops to be my troops and I don't give a damn for this "support our troops" nationalistic campaign. If they get their ass kicked in Iraq, so be it.

Red Coal

CHALLENGE Comment:

Generally we heartily agree with the writer, although we would add that most U.S. GI's are working-class brothers and sisters who can be won to PLP's ideas and are a necessary part of our goals.

Pro-War Union Hacks Won't Make Mines Safe

"Red Coal's" letter (7/5) got me thinking. Red Coal wants "to win miners to communist ideas and struggle for workers' power, only possible when the bosses and their state are smashed." Great!

"However." the comrade continues, "a communist revolution is not around the corner and miners are dying right now." All true!

Red Coal "think[s] there will be a renewed struggle for unionization" and that "most of those interviewed stated that maintaining job safety lies in organizing a union."

Why does the comrade think there will be "a renewed struggle for unionization"? Is it just because of the increased exploitation and oppression or have particular plans been made?

As to union "maintaining job safety," my experience over the years with this in another industrial union has seen the union and the company set up an extensive joint "institute" supposedly to address safety. The contract provides that the company give this institute many million$. Scores, if not hundreds, of well-paid full-time and part-time positions have been created. The union misleaders reward their political operatives with these cushy jobs -- funded by the company! In fact, a number of rank-and-filers have sued, claiming this set-up gives the company direct control over the union.

Nationally, my union is financing and organizing with the bosses and the ruling-class think-tanks to push for a war economy. The union misleaders' plans for fascist collusion fit in nicely with the bosses' need for a dedicated workforce for expanded imperialist wars. How can one talk about safety for the working class when big capitalist wars are on the agenda? Could a similar motivation be involved in the United Mine Workers union leadership?

I think all workers, including rank-and-file miners, should discuss questions like these. I don't think reform and revolution travel along parallel paths. Presently, the reform agenda of the union misleaders is being molded to serve the bosses' imperialist aims. "Support for the miner's battle," like support for the workers' battle, objectively requires winning our class to reject reformist illusions.

Red Industrial Fighter

Bosses' Profit Drive Murders Young Worker

PHILADELPHIA, PA., June 18 -- The May 30th murder of 18-year-old William Palmer shocked Hahnemann hospital workers. A recent graduate of Roman Catholic High School, William was shot and killed while working at the hospital parking lot during a failed robbery attempt.

The same petty criminals committed another robbery only two weeks before at the same parking lot. The parking attendant who had been robbed then quit on the spot. William replaced him and began working extra hours to save money for college. The two criminals returned and, seeing the same lax security, attempted another robbery. William refused to give them the money. The bosses had told him he was safe behind bullet-proof glass -- a deadly lie and the bosses knew it. One of the thieves shot William through the glass. He died in the operating room barely an hour later.

According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, William Palmer "was killed by someone who wanted to take a short-cut -- to get money without working for it." This hypocritical cop hit the nail on the head. William Palmer was killed both by the little criminals who shot him AND by the big criminals, Tenet Health Care and U.S. Security Associates, who left him unprotected. They are all guilty of murder!

Little Criminals, Big Criminals

Our bosses take the wealth created by us workers and keep it as their profit. They "get money without working for it." Communist founder Karl Marx discovered that the whole capitalist system is based on stealing. Workers receive only a small portion of the value they create in the course of production. The bosses keep the rest and re-invest some of it to make still more profit. To compete, each capitalist must bleed the workers to maximize profits in order to stay in business. Internationally, such a system breeds endless wars. This class of big criminals has created enormous suffering and death for the working class worldwide.

Capitalist culture glorifies individual success, but under capitalism only a tiny minority can achieve this "success." For one boss to succeed, he must steal from many workers. When some workers realize they have no "legal" way to steal, they turn to crime to "get money without working for it." These little criminals are only imitating on a small scale the really huge criminal actions of the big capitalists.

William Palmer would be alive today if the bosses had beefed up security in that parking lot. But this would have cut into their lousy profits. The capitalists have always sacrificed workers' lives to increase profits. A recent example: the wave of murdered coal miners because of the bosses' neglect of safety.

To William's family and friends we say: we will build our revolutionary Party to destroy the system that murdered him. Only then will he have not died in vain.

REDEYE

Suicides triple amid New Orleans debris

Last Tuesday in the French Quarter, Sergeant Glaudi's small staff was challenged by a man who strode straight into the roaring currents of the Mississippi River, hoping to drown. As the water threatened to suck him under, the man used the last of his strength to fight the rescuers, refusing to be saved....

New Orleans is experiencing...a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke 10 months ago.

Many people who are not at serious risk of suicide are nonetheless seeing their lives eroded by lowgrade but persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness and stress-related illnesses, doctors and researchers say. All this goes beyond the effects of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, Mr. Curie said. Beyond those of Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo and Ivan....

"You ride around and all you see is debris, debris, debris," he said.

And that is a major part of the problem, experts agree: the people of New Orleans are traumatized again every time they look around.

"This is a trauma that didn't last 24 hours, then go away," said Dr. Crapanzano, the Louisiana mental health official. "It goes on and on." (NYT, 6/21)

Workers may have to consider revolution

...The president of the United Auto Workers, Ron Gettelfinger, issued a...somber report to his union....

"The kind of challenges we face aren't the kind that can be ridden out," said Gettlelfinger, who has seen his union's membership drop from 1.5 million in 1979 to 600,000 last year. "They...require new and farsighted solutions."

...The June 10 issue of National Journal...argues that "the global economy's job machine may be breaking down, again."

...Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist and former vice chairman at the Federal Reserve, was right to warn us about how many jobs are in danger....In an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, he wrote that "we have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering." (Washington. Post, 6/13)

Supreme Court says money = free speech

To the Editor:

Re "Justices Reject Campaign Limits in Vermont Case" (Front page, June 27):

In its decision on Vermont's campaign finance restriction, the Supreme Court has again equated "money" with "free speech,"....

The larger your wallet, the larger your voice; the smaller your wallet, the smaller your voice....the court's decision says that you have less free speech when you have less money. (NYT, 7/3)

Non-red revolution leaves S.Africans jobless

Three decades later South Africa has been celebrating the [Soweto] uprising as the turning point at which black people seized the initiative. Ceremonies Last Week honored the students as heroes who laid the foundations for freedom....

The rethoric and pomp, however, masked a new struggle that is dividing former classmates in a way few imagined all those years ago when they stood shoulder to shoulder against dogs, bullets and teargas.

Some emerged from the tumult wealthy and successful...Others emerged impoverished and bitter, members of an underclass that feels abandoned.

South Africa is one of the world's most unequal societies...millions remain mired in unemployment and appalling living conditions....

Unemployment, which stands officially at 26.7% is really closer to 40%, one of the highest rates in the world...Not enough jobs have been created for those who reached working age in the past 20 years, forcing millions into an "informal" economy of activities not far removed from begging....

"My boy might benefit from the freedom we won, but I'm not. I have not eaten today. Visitors to this place think black people are free now -- they don't understand the economic struggle goes on." (GW, 6/29)

Rulers Use Non-Profit Groups vs. Workers' Class Consiousness

(Part I)

Today, "non-profit" foundations and organizations help capitalism's rulers hide wealth stolen from cuts in benefits and living standards which working people won through fierce battles against their bosses for over a century. "Non-profits" also delude many young and liberal-minded people into believing that capitalism can be reformed and improved.

From the Salvation Army to the NAACP, from the Green Party in Europe to the World Social Forum in Pakistan, the world's capitalist rulers build organizations that appear to help people but actually do the opposite, pushing nationalist divisions, pacifism and belief in reform instead of revolution. Because these "NPOs" and "NGOs" (non-governmental organizations) are all controlled by each country's rulers, their real goal is to destroy the working-class consciousness which induces workers to unite and fight capitalism directly.

In the U.S., big non-profits like the Salvation Army and Red Cross organized assistance for Katrina victims. Although millions of workers and students contributed time and money, what happened? New Orleans is still wrecked, except for construction to build a playground for the rich. Clearly the U.S. government wanted the racist elimination of New Orleans' poor population. But the non-profits helped do it. They moved and trapped people far from Louisiana and then provided no assistance to enable the city's workers to return and rebuild their neighborhoods.

The Catholic Church has food and housing assistance programs everywhere, and Immigration Clinics to help non-citizens in many cities. Decent people work and volunteer in these programs. But the bosses running these facilities guarantee that very few people receive real help. At the Immigration Clinics, often foreign workers' lives are wrecked because the bosses won't allow enough time for clinic workers to learn the law. In other poverty legal clinics, federal law forbids serious organizing and outlaws certain kinds of law suits, like class actions.

Most problems in non-profits appear to come from under-staffing and lack of funding. But that's only a cover story. The "non-profit" administrators measure success by meeting "grant requirements." Often they force poor workers to pay for their help, but then send the money "up the chain" to pay for "other services" which nobody ever sees.

These bosses pay themselves enormous salaries and get promoted if their "grant numbers" look good. Often these numbers are falsified. Also, the "grant" money comes from rulers' organizations like the Ford or Rockefeller Foundations or the government. These funding sources are "class conscious" -- they understand and work for the rulers' goals to subjugate people and prevent class struggle. They "succeed" if people believe the non-profits are "helping the poor" even when they're not.

Because of these non-profits' volunteers' and workers' efforts, some people are helped. But mostly the non-profits are doing their job for the rulers by pretending help is available when it isn't, and inducing honest liberal people to believe the rough edges can be taken off capitalism. Actually, these programs prompt workers to tolerate developing fascism while maintaining some faith in the capitalists' profit system.

How It Works on the Ground

The writer of this article just lost his job in a church-sponsored legal clinic after organizing co-workers to attend marches for immigrants' rights. His clinic charges every client $25 before deciding whether to help them. Since the boss wants large numbers of clients to pay the $25, there is little time left to really help anyone. The boss kept the writer in his office to take in the $25 fees rather than go to court with clients who were being evicted.

The boss threatened to fire the writer so he resigned before being sacked. His three co-workers suggested he "stay and make them fire you." One newly-hired co-worker had offered to work on a protest letter or force a meeting with the bosses. The writer should have done that, but everyone knew that an earlier group of workers had been fired for protesting before, many others had since quit and only three were left. The writer and his friends have lunch every week and still plan to protest and expose the problems. Other friends are demanding the writer be re-hired. Three people attended the immigration protest march. One co-worker will be a CHALLENGE reader soon.

Peru: Bosses' Dogfight Sharpens; Crook Back in Power

On June 4, the Social Democrat candidate Alan Garcia defeated Ollanta Humala of the Peru Union Party in a runoff election that Humala labeled "everyone against Humala." All the right-wing parties backed Garcia. Both candidates have hands bloody from killing peasants and workers during the dirty war against the Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") Maoist guerillas. This election reflected the sharpening rivalry among Peruvian capitalists and between imperialists over control of the resources and the value produced by the workers of South America. All these vultures are mortal enemies of the working class.

Garcia, when president from 1985-1990, was vocally anti-U.S.; prohibited foreign companies from off-shoring their profits; opposed the International Monetary Fund; and voiced support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Nationally his policies, benefiting only a handful of bosses, tripled poverty, destroyed over a million jobs, and increased inflation 7,000%. He ordered the murder of hundreds of political prisoners. When his term expired, he fled the country under accusations of rampant corruption. The U.S. bosses' current acceptance of Garcia only shows their economic and political weakness. They and some Peruvian bosses "preferred" him over Humala, fearing that the latter would become anti-U.S. like Venezuela's Chavez or Bolivia's Morales. Rightist Lourdes Flores was the Peruvian and U.S. bosses' candidate.

Morales and Chavez are nationalist reformers; both support Fidel Castro and spout vague "socialist slogans" and try to appear as a revolutionary alternative in order to deceive the oppressed masses. Both represent a section of Latin-American bosses who want to break with the U.S., hoping for a better deal with the European Union (EU), China and even Russia. The latter is selling weapons to Chavez and is investing heavily in Bolivia's gas industry.

Humala was an army officer who killed many peasants in the war against the Maoist Sendero guerrillas. He is supported by Chavez and projects himself as another Morales or Chavez, meaning nationalizing the energy sector, raising taxes on foreign corporations, renegotiating their contracts and using some of the proceeds to fund social programs.

Fearing this, the U.S. and Spain supported Garcia; Brazil withdrew its support for Humala. The U.S. and Spain are big investors in Peru's energy and mineral sectors. Brazil has huge investments in Bolivia where Morales just seized the gas industry. Since Brazil wants to be the over-riding power in the South America bloc that's trying to break U.S. domination, it fears the popularity, influence and wealth that Chavez is wielding. Brazilian bosses fear Peru under Humala would join Chavez, helping to consolidate his influence.

Meanwhile, the EU bosses, like all bosses, are constantly driving for maximum profits and would like more subservient South American bosses. Thus, though they have significantly increased their trade and investment in the region at U.S. imperialism's expense, they don't want tax increases on their profits. Therefore, they supported Garcia.

But there is a flaw in both imperialists' plans: Chinese imperialism. China has become the second trading partner of Peru and is investing heavily in its energy and mineral sectors. Even more important, China is forging closer ties with Venezuela. China now imports 160,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela. This is expected to double by year's end and increase to 1.6 million barrels a day by 2007. To help Venezuela produce and transport it, China has sold Chavez 18 oil rigs and 18 oil tankers (costing $1.3 billion). Chavez has also granted China National Petroleum Corporation development rights in the Zumano oil fields and its 400 million barrels of light oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Therefore, "The significance of Peru's presidential election....is not Garcia's victory, but the politicization of Peru's social divide and especially the rise of Humala and the U.P.P. [his party]." (www.pinr.com, 6/9/06) Humala increased his 30% support from the first election round to 47%, winning 14 of Peru's 24 departments and capturing 45 seats, the largest bloc in Peru's legislature. Garcia has 36.

In the southern highlands, where the poor and indigenous population is concentrated, he received 80% percent of the vote. PINR says that the latter groups have, "for the first time, been organized electorally and are poised to become a permanent force in Peru's politics, just as....in Bolivia and Ecuador." Evo Morales, like Humala, lost his first presidential bid but gained a foothold in parliament and used that to successfully run a second time. Humala could do the same.

The struggle between the regional bosses, and between the world's imperialists, is sharpening. Reformers like Humala, Chavez and Morales, are only fronting for one or another set of local bosses and imperialists. They will lead the working class into the jaws of fascism and genocidal wars. That's the nature of the profit system. The only way to end exploitation is to build a mass-based communist party -- including a big presence in the armed forces -- to overthrow this exploitative system.

The potential for the growth of a real revolutionary communist party, capable of leading the Latin-American working class to state power and the building of a communist society, exists throughout Latin America, and the rulers know it. That's why they need these reformists, sellouts who promise the masses, "We can do it for you under a new socialism of the 21st century!" But workers don't need reformism or socialism. We need communism. We need PLP. We must build it in Latin America and the world.

Note to Readers:

The "Forward To Communism" column has been temporarily suspended to take into account critical letters received by

CHALLENGE.

 

No Real Debate Among Demopublicans: All Warmakers

U.S. Not Leaving Iraq Soon; Building $1.7 Billion Air Base, Embassy

‘From one into ten…’ Building A Mass Party

Bloody Battle in Mexico: 70,000 Striking Teachers Whip Fascist Troops

Racist Minutemen Get Taste Of Workers’ Anger

PL’ers Offer Revolutionary Ideas in D.C. Transit Contract Fight

Europe-Wide Auto Solidarity Backs Portugal’s GM Workers

Communist Politics Are Answer to Union’s War Plans

Imperialists’ Problem: How to Build a Big, Low-Wage, yet Motivated, Domestic Manufacturing Base

NEA Convention: Teachers, Students, Parents Must Unite Vs. Rulers’ Education For War

‘Reformers’ Pit World’s Working-Class Children Against Each Other

We Don’t Need Big Shots: WE Can Run the World!

Forum Hears New Orleans’ Plight; Raise Money to Aid Workers

ESL’ers Fight Gov’t Anti-Immigrant Racism

Letters

Rumsfeld and Vietnam Now Military Buddies

Narco Paramilitaries and Fascism Rampaging in Colombia

Internationalism and Anti-Racism Win Out

Halt Miners’ Murders Under Capitalism?

Protest Racist Killer KKKop’s Murder of Black Worker

Chicago Hospital Workers Fight Sellout Union, Gestapo Bosses

REDEYE

• Mandela made secret deal with big biz
• Iraq poll: "Americans, go home!"
• Courts take another step toward fascism
• Demos bring working-class students out
• Union retreating; workers need revolution
• Modern capitalism has slave auctions
• Racist Raids Attacked 400 Thousand Immigrants in 1930s

‘The Road to Guantanamo’ - U.S. Army Apes Nazi Death Camps

Fatal Errors in Soviet Union’s Early Years

---

No Real Debate Among Demopublicans: All Warmakers

Don’t think for a second that the Democrats’ "raging" Iraq debate offers a choice between war and peace. Both the Lieberman-Clinton "stay-the-course" camp and the Kerry-Murtha withdrawal time-liners back military force to preserve U.S. imperialism’s chokehold on the Middle East and its oil. "Staying the course" means continuing the Bush gang’s deadly quagmire, despite the shortage of troops and allies.

The Lieberman-Clinton-Bush goal is to establish permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq (see box, page 2) that can threaten Iran and Saudi Arabia. Kerry, however, proposes a tactical retreat from Iraq followed by a massive redeployment in the region of vastly expanded U.S. and allied forces. Both Democrat factions agree that the U.S. needs wartime mobilization, including some form of compulsory national service or the draft.

One exit strategist, Gary Hart, a top architect of U.S. rulers’ war and police-state agenda, calls for a U.S.-led international coalition of armies defending Mid-East oilfields from Chinese inroads. Hart sees making foreign bosses junior partners as the key to the plan. At a June 12 Democratic rally in Washington, Hart said, "We ought to declare the Persian Gulf a zone of international interest and take the lead in making it a commitment of the...international states that America will not be the sole guarantor of oil supplies in the world. We can organize...the consuming nations...that they have a job to protect those oil supplies."

Hart implies that if foreign rulers want access to Mid-East energy, they will have to send soldiers to fight under U.S. command. [The U.S. cut such a deal during the first Gulf War: France got minor Persian Gulf oil stakes in return for troops.] Likewise, liberal Kerry demands a tactical retreat from Iraq that will free U.S. forces to attack anywhere in the region. At the same D.C. rally, Kerry insisted on "the over-horizon capacity to deal with al Qaeda" and "the over-horizon capacity to be able to respond to Iran or other threats to our country."

Other signs point to broadening the oil war theatre beyond Iraq to Iran, the Indian sub-continent, and places farther east. The U.S. Navy has begun building the first of 55 planned "littoral combat ships" (LCS). Half the size of destroyers, but faster, these vessels can operate close to shore in water as shallow as ten feet. When the Navy says the LCSs will have minesweeping, anti-piracy and anti-submarine duties, it assures the rulers that they will fight to secure the world’s main oil shipping routes and chokepoints.

"Minesweeping" refers to Iran’s threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, which bottlenecks the bulk of Persian Gulf crude exports. The U.S. was caught short of minesweeping capability here in both the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980’s and Gulf War I.

"Anti-piracy" means asserting control over the pirate-plagued Strait of Malacca and Horn of Africa, the main chokepoints for Persian Gulf oil bound for ports in the East (including China) and West (Europe and the Americas), respectively.

"Anti-submarine" targets the super-quiet Russian-built Chinese submarines menacing the U.S. carrier groups that patrol the supremely strategic Indian Ocean-South China Sea route. Pentagon procurement meshes with liberals’ calls for regrouping.

Arms programs provide rulers the material means for executing their strategy. [By the mid-1990s, our Party was able to say that a second Iraq invasion was indeed in the works, in part because we noted that the Navy was building a huge fleet of supply ships destined for the Persian Gulf.]

But the primary factor is politics. U.S. rulers appear capable, for now, of producing the hardware they require for war but they have not yet forged adequate political will either among workers or among their own capitalist class. That’s why the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, just published a rally-round-the-flag, pro-war book called "With All Our Might." Showing that Lieberman-Clinton are really on the same page as Kerry & Co., chapter titles include "Create a Grand Strategy for the Middle East," "Shape the Global Battlefield," "Reconcile Democrats and the Military," and "Put the Economy on a Wartime Footing."

As Democrats and Republicans position themselves for the November and 2008 elections, we must recognize that there is no anti-war party here, nor even a Democratic anti-war faction. There is no lesser evil, only the greater danger that the Kerryites can win workers to an "Out-of-Iraq" program that masks a larger invasion. The alternative to the politicians’ war plans, both open and disguised, lies outside the electoral system in building a party that ultimately can put an end to imperialism through communist revolution.

PLP has always said "what you do counts." Every recruit, every group of workers and youth in every mass organization the Party influences to oppose the racist U.S. bosses, every new CHALLENGE network, all combine to bring that revolution that much closer.

(Next issue: the liberals’ ideological war efforts.)

U.S. Not Leaving Iraq Soon; Building $1.7 Billion Air Base, Embassy

While the Bush crowd keeps talking about "possibilities" of withdrawing from Iraq "at some point" in the future and the Democrats rant about sending more troops to be able to withdraw by the end of 2007, U.S. plans "on the ground" belie this. According to the French publication Le Canard Enchainé (5/24), "The construction of an immense U.S. embassy and a gigantic air base show indeed that the White House is looking far into the future. The new embassy has about 20 buildings, will be able to resist any attack, has an independent energy and water supply, and occupies an area equivalent to the Vatican. The cost…is $592 million."

The air base, being built 42 miles from Baghdad to be close to the embassy and the U.S. general staff, is slated to "accommodate 27,500 landings and take-offs per month, a record….The estimated cost is $1.1 billion," twice the amount for U.S. air bases already set up in Kuwait, the Emirates and Qater."

If U.S. rulers are spending nearly $1.7 billion on this project, it doesn’t appear they’re thinking of leaving Iraq any time soon. This follows U.S. policy in previous imperialist wars. For example, after bombing the former Yugoslavia, ostensibly to "stop ethnic cleansing," the U.S. then built one of the largest bases in Europe in Kosovo, containing 7,000 military personnel and all the "accessories" needed for them, including schools, stores, theatres, etc., plus the largest hospital on the continent, not to mention the military hardware. Wherever the U.S. military has entered a region, it has always built bases for long-range use, except in Vietnam where it was defeated. But even there, it may very well be pursuing the same policy, only through the back door (see letter, page 6).

‘From one into ten…’ Building A Mass Party

It seemed to happen so fast when, in just a few weeks, 10 people around our club joined the Party. But, as usual, the truth lies deeper. These new members, almost all youth, joined because of painstaking base-building and sharp ideological struggle occurring over a year’s time. In particular, the work of one high school teacher demonstrates how our Party can recruit groups of people.

This teacher has opened her house to young people, conducting sprawling study groups of ten to fifteen students or more in her living room, gatherings that last hours on topics ranging from racist police terror to the need to abolish wages to influencing soldiers to the brutality of sexism and racism.

The floor is open to students’ comments and questions. Often one topic flows into another as students engage in hot debates. Everyone is required to express themselves. They read and report on articles from CHALLENGE, various PLP documents, articles from the bosses’ newspapers and watch and evaluate movies together. The teacher even covered an apartment wall with blackboard paint so students can write major themes right on that wall!

It’s no small thing that these study groups always include a meal collectively prepared beforehand by virtually the entire group, during which all types of discussion occur — about relationships, drugs and the need for a completely new society. It’s this kind of personal, communist collectivity that has built a solid core of committed Party members.

In addition, this group of mostly young people has staged a series of open mics to display their creativity. They compose poems that reflect aspects of PLP’s ideas and perform them in front of their peers. They read poetry written by famous poets like Langston Hughes who were deeply influenced by communism. These open mics are held in a Party member’s home or in a neighborhood community room. They help bond the group and also explore each member’s personal perspective on the Party’s ideas. It’s exciting to be in this club!

Finally, when asked to join the Party en masse, for most the decision was easy. Since then, they’ve increasingly taken leadership, particularly around May Day, where they led chants on the immigrant marches, publicly sold CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, and acted as MC’s at our May Day dinner.

Recently our club discussed the PLP document Road to Revolution IV. (Of course, there was food — we had a cookout!) Several youth invited friends. It was striking to see these young people, all new Party members, embrace and express PLP’s ideas so confidently. They reviewed the international scope of capitalist exploitation, the need for a violent revolution to establish a workers’ dictatorship, the need for a Red Army of working-class soldiers to defend the revolution, and the need to abolish the wage system as the workers’ state directly institutes communism.

These new leaders also urged the Party to further explore sexism, for example, and want the Party to focus more on explaining its practice so they can learn to better function as communists on a day-to-day basis. They also want to learn more about what the dictatorship of the proletariat means and how to overcome the strong pull of religion among workers.

The club’s next step is to have these new members struggle with their friends to win them to the Party. As these new members become convinced that communism is the only way to resolve the contradictions of capitalism, they will realize that their friends can also overcome their own contradictions and join. The future is bright.

Bloody Battle in Mexico: 70,000 Striking Teachers Whip Fascist Troops

OAXACA, MEXICO, June 17 — The strike of 70,000 teachers in Oaxaca State, which began May 22, erupted into an all-out battle with the fascist police at 4:00 AM on June 14 when the state’s governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz ordered 1,500 Federal cops, waiting on the city’s outskirts, to attack a massive encampment in the city’s center. The workers fought back with stones, clubs and whatever they could lay their hands on in confronting the helmeted cops armed with clubs and using shields, aided by a helicopter spraying tear gas at the encamped strikers and their supporters. Despite all that force, the cops were defeated, sent running like whipped dogs.

However, this criminal government action killed two women teachers and two children. One pregnant teacher lost her baby, another teacher lost an eye, many were wounded and other arrested. Although the encampment was destroyed, many police were beaten and several taken hostage. Then the workers, armed with clubs and using school buses as battering rams against the cops, retook the plaza and reconstructed their encampment. Two days later a "mega-march" brought out 300,000 teachers and their supporters, demanding the Governor’s resignation.

The strikers have also blockaded the city’s airport, destroyed political campaign posters, and delivered the "remains" of the city’s new parking meters to the doorstep of the state capitol building.

Many workers, unions, mass organizations and students from four schools have united in solidarity with the striking teachers, expanding the fight into a virtual social movement. The murder of teachers and their children shows that capitalism, whether neo-liberal — as the brutal Governor has been described — or state capitalist is the mortal enemy of the working class. It cannot be reformed to meet workers’ class needs.

PLP members have been participating in the struggle and bringing in communist politics through CHALLENGE-DESAFIO and massive distributions of Party leaflets, openly calling for communism amid this mass and violent battle.

One leaflet brought PLP’s "strong support and solidarity" with the strikers who "find themselves in…the struggle for a decent life and better education" for their children, "marginalized by the capitalist class." It accused the Governor of "orchestrating a campaign of lies…and disinformation," using "the bosses’ organizations [and] their servile…agents in the press, radio and TV" to help break the strike."

The leaflets, distributed in the thousands, exposed the government as "the faithful…defender of the…bosses’ interests," not caring "at all about the welfare of the teachers or about the real education of the working class" but "only the profits they can make from the merciless and criminal exploitation" of the workers and youth.

It pointed out that the ruling class views "the schools as centers of production of future workers, of the cheap labor they need to increase their political and economic power" while stripping students of working-class consciousness and knowledge of wage slavery," meanwhile "preparing young workers to be…soldiers…who defend and die for the bosses’…riches."

It also took note of the fate of workers "fleeing from poverty and unemployment, choosing not to die of hunger,…not caring about the bosses’ artificial borders," for which "they are called criminals and killed like animals" as "immigrants in the United States."

The leaflet closed by exposing the ruling class as "flaunting its power" with "electoral political parties, their laws, their prisons, the police and the army" and citing the working class’s "historical necessity to build a new society…a communist system where production will…satisfy" workers’ needs, with "no exploitation, no oppression, no racism and no borders." It further added , "The Progressive Labor Party, a revolutionary, international and multiracial organization, faced with the failure of Socialism today fights directly for Communism in order to bury once and for all this unjust and murderous system, invites all conscious and determined workers and students to join our ranks."

The best victory for the working class from this struggle would be to win the strikers and their supporters to take the offensive, not to reform the schools but to build a mass PLP that will lead the fight for communist revolution. PLP urges workers and students worldwide to support the Oaxaca teachers struggle.

Racist Minutemen Get Taste Of Workers’ Anger

LOS ANGELES, June 17 — Anti-racists set back the racist Minutemen and SOS ("Save Our State") when they staged a motorcycle and car caravan downtown today. They and their racist signs were protected by swarms of cops.

When some of the racists who decided to risk walking on the sidewalk began taking pictures of anti-racists, including PLP’ers, who were demonstrating against them, one racist must have tripped because his camera hit the ground. As he yelled for police to arrest demonstrators, bystanders shopping in the downtown area attacked him. He told cops to arrest a demonstrator on a bus but they found no such person.

In a separate incident, another racist tried to assault a PL’er addressing the crowd in Spanish, exposing who these racists represented. The racist pushed her, yelling, "Speak English. This is America." A worker standing nearby stopped the racist cold, forcing him away. At the racist’s insistence, the police arrested this worker who was defending the speaker. People chanted "let him go" and "Minutemen y la policia, la misma porqueria!" ("Minutemen and cops — same garbage").

A group of anti-racist youth demonstrating against the racists and the system that builds them were very inspired by these actions and by bystanders who demanded the release of the jailed worker and who distributed PLP leaflets to other workers. Many youth took leadership.

Some anti-racists, including PLP’ers, then went to a conference about immigration reform at the teachers’ union office. Some explained that cops had just arrested a worker for standing up to the racist Minutemen. A teacher — a member of the coalition organizing the conference — rose to back the call for bail money, saying that these fighters have been in the forefront of the struggle against racist attacks on all workers and must be supported. The conference participants contributed about $340 bail money on the spot for the jailed anti-racist worker.

One nationalist leader of the coalition grabbed the box of donations and gave it to the person raising the money, telling her collecting money was not allowed! This didn’t stop many from continuing to give money, both during and after the conference. But it did help expose this "leader" who wants to build a "safe" immigrant rights movement that doesn’t challenge racist capitalism.

At conference workshops, PLP members and friends raised many topics, including the need for multi-racial unity and to destroy imperialism with communist revolution. CHALLENGE and communist leaflets were distributed.

Many came to the conference seeking ways to fight racism and an alternative to the patriotism of the liberal imperialists. But some conference leaders want this group to be the loyal opposition inside this immigrant rights movement, opposing the open racists and demanding amnesty but not attacking the whole capitalist system.

We must be active in these movements, exposing the bosses’ promise of reforms being used to hook workers into loyally working and fighting for U.S. imperialism. Only working-class power can end the growing attacks from the open racists and liberal imperialists. More angry youth need to join PLP to help bring this fight to the streets, schools, factories and barracks.

Teachers’ Locals Support Oaxaca Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, June 19 — In an important expression of international working-class solidarity, the faculty-staff union at the City University of New York, AFT Local 2334, joined CUNY students and others to picket Mexico’s consulate here, supporting the 70,000 striking teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca (see front page) who fought 1,500 Federal Police and suffered four deaths. The local’s Delegate Assembly unanimously passed a resolution condemning the brutal attack on their brothers and sisters in Oaxaca and fully supporting their demands.

On the same day, AFT Local 2121 at the City College of San Francisco also picketed the Mexican consulate in that city. (Full story next issue.)

PL’ers Offer Revolutionary Ideas in D.C. Transit Contract Fight

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 17 — The real story of the recent contract struggle between the 9,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 and the Metro transit system is not the reduction in racist pay differentials for new workers. It is not the 3% annual wage increase, the pay equity for station managers, the improved pensions or the increased health care costs. The real story is that PLP waged a struggle to build revolutionary communist consciousness among many transit workers.

Trying to fight the bosses’ attacks while concentrating on building the revolutionary movement, the contradiction between reform and revolution, is very complicated and difficult. Despite our weaknesses, in the course of this struggle some workers joined PLP, participated in May Day and more began distributing CHALLENGE.

PLP Metro workers, including the local president, told workers the honest truth — that U.S. capitalism is facing stiffer challenges internationally, from Iraq to China, and will increase its attacks on workers. This drive to world war and fascism cannot be resolved by unions or at the bargaining table, but can only be answered by building a mass PLP for communist revolution. The workers appreciated this honesty, in contrast to the opportunism of our enemies in the union, who promise the workers everything and then can’t deliver.

During the NYC transit strike, interest surged among Metro workers about the possibility of a strike here. This led to many meetings and countless discussions about how a strike led by PLP would be viewed as a political rebellion of thousands of black and white workers, and how the bosses would call us terrorists for shutting down the center of power of U.S. imperialism. We said such a strike would be met with severe repression, and that sharpening the struggle requires much more mass revolutionary consciousness.

When transit workers were attacked inside Iran and the AFL-CIO called a rally to use the incident to advance the bosses’ war plans, METRO workers went to the rally and pointed out that transit workers in Iran and NYC were facing similar attacks and chanted, "Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World, Unite!"

When two Metro workers, one black and one Asian, were killed by the bosses’ negligence within six months, we picketed Metro headquarters. Fighting racism, marching on May Day, the NYC transit strike, Iranian bus strikers, the Iraq war, health and safety, immigration and more all provided the backdrop for the political education of the workers during this contract struggle.

Now workers understand capitalism a little better and are more aware of the limits of unions and reform struggles. Many understand their crucial role in society and are thinking more critically abut the world. More workers have confidence in PLP, are studying our revolutionary outlook and more will join. This is the lasting victory that matters most.

Europe-Wide Auto Solidarity Backs Portugal’s GM Workers

While the UAW hacks were stepping up their sellout of GM workers and sucking up even more so to the big bosses’ future of endless imperialist wars, on June 16, 1,100 GM workers in Azambuja, Portugal, marched, chanting and carrying signs, 1.5 miles from city hall to the Opel GM-owned auto plant protesting a threatened December plant closing. VW workers at Autoeuropa, Portugal’s biggest auto producer showed solidarity with Opel workers.

In a signal example of international auto workers’ solidarity, workers at most of GM’s European factories have agreed to support the Azambuja workers with work actions. GM’s European workers fear that GM will move some of their own jobs to other plants in eastern Europe and Asia. This is the kind of unity workers at the Big Three plants in the U.S. need to organize over the heads of their sellout leadership in the UAW.

Since the Azambuja workers produce parts for other GM plants in Germany and Spain, their short walkouts have forced the company to use helicopters to transport emergency supplies to keep the other plants operating. One major obstacle facing autoworkers globally is their union leaders. IGMetall, Germany’s biggest union, is in complete cahoots with Opel, VW and auto bosses there, just as the UAW is in the U.S.

As long as workers continue relying on these bosses’ agents, and don’t break with all forms of capitalist reformism, we’ll have our hands tied while the world’s auto bosses gear for an era of intensifying competition and endless wars. The fight must be one for a new red leadership of auto workers worldwide,

Red Internationalist

Communist Politics Are Answer to Union’s War Plans

UPPER MARLBORO, MD., May 3 — International Association of Machinists (IAM) president Tom Buffenbarger hosted a "surge roundtable" today, inviting executives from key war-machine producers to the IAM national headquarters. They and a gang of union vice-presidents were joined by representatives of ruling class think-tanks, like the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and regular contributors to Foreign Affairs, the public mouthpiece of the Council of Foreign Relations. Deputy "Defense" Secretary England opened the conference.

In 2004, the IAM Journal published an article entitled "North America’s Might," bemoaning attacks on industrial workers and the demise of manufacturing. The Journal mentioned a general strike, but concluded "such a massive work stoppage cannot and will not occur, at least not by the unilateral decision" of the IAM. This class collaborationist "surge roundtable" is the union misleaders’ answer to the prospect of class struggle.

The conference concluded that the U.S. doesn’t have the industrial base needed for "surge production" to wage war against a serious imperialist competitor like China or some other combination of foes. They plan to continue hammering out a war industrial policy over the next 30 months, coinciding with the next U.S. presidential election. We will likely see 2008 presidential candidates campaigning for this program of imperialist bloodshed camouflaged under a slogan like "save American jobs." No matter who’s elected, the roundtable plans to build political momentum around its imperialist agenda going into the next presidential term.

Meanwhile, every IAM local and district is publicizing this recipe for fascist collaboration in defense of the bosses’ empire.

Imperialists’ Problem: How to Build a Big, Low-Wage, yet Motivated, Domestic Manufacturing Base

Leaving no stone unturned in preparation for war, Buffenbarger endorsed the Senate’s latest immigration bill. Unlike the House’s more obviously racist proposal, the Senate’s version aims to assure low-wage labor for the arms plants and subcontractors — with 11 years of virtual indentured servitude — by holding out the hope for eventual citizenship, more than a decade from now. A few honest low-level local officials thought Buffenbarger’s position better than outright xenophobia.

Even so, they smelled a rat. "Like the brother said at our last meeting," one said publicly, echoing some who fought for our anti-racist May Day resolution (see CHALLENGE 5/10), "these immigrants are all workers and it’s our job to make sure no worker is exploited."

Hacks’ Plan: Anything but CHALLENGE

The top international and local union officials want to limit the debate to the two capitalist bills before the House and the Senate, which after all only represent tactical differences about how best to support U.S. imperialism.

What they can’t stand is internationalist communist class-conscious politics embodied in CHALLENGE. In fact, a business agent tried to rip up the May Day issue, but workers stopped him. Immediately, more began to circulate the paper, expanding our network of readers and sellers.

The horrors of imperialist war and exploitation can only be ended with communist revolution. The expansion of these CHALLENGE networks will put these communist politics into play. Workers have come from — and will continue to emerge out of — these networks to challenge the hacks, and their capitalist masters. These workers have more on their minds than a change in tactical leadership. Years of reading, selling and struggling over the communist politics of our paper will continue to prepare them to change the political landscape.

Help distribute CHALLENGE, the workers’ beacon. Not a minute to lose!

NEA Convention: Teachers, Students, Parents Must Unite Vs. Rulers’ Education For War

As we go to press, 9,000 teachers are headed to the annual Representative Assembly of the U.S. National Education Association (NEA), in Orlando, Florida. This assembly is important in U.S. bosses’ plans for preparing the schools’ response to the sharpening international capitalist crisis which will lead to widening wars and eventually world war. The rulers want teachers to carry out the "reforms" that will prepare students to be the future technicians, workers and patriotic soldiers for the wars to maintain U.S. domination.

But teachers teach future workers and soldiers, and have a huge impact on this future. They can unite with their colleagues, their students and their parents to fight these attacks and to help turn the bosses’ coming world war into a revolutionary war for workers’ power. That’s what the Progressive Labor Party fights for.

As other articles in this issue point out (see article right), school reform reflects the move towards widening war. Construction of new schools, turning older, larger ones into "small schools," and the barrage of standardized tests are mostly an attempt to increase the technical ability of working-class children.

The ideological function of the standardized curricula and tests includes (1) the meritocracy argument — "this is a fair system; if you aren’t making it, it’s your own fault"; and (2) indoctrination — teaching patriotism, especially to immigrant youth, to prepare them, all youth, and the whole society for war.

To enforce the rulers’ plans, there’s been a series of initiatives, pre-dating Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) program. It began with NEA Pres. Bob Chase’s 1997 speech advocating a "new unionism" tied to school reform and calling for "teacher accountability," enforced by union-sanctioned peer review, verified by the tests and tied to explicit standards. They have transformed the previously anarchic "local school board" educational system into a tightly-controlled system, requiring student and teacher accountability to standardized tests in systems increasingly controlled by big city mayors.

"No Child Left Behind" and its sanctions are used as a stick to get teachers in line. Everything must be tied to the tests — no more "frills" like art and elementary school science! Teachers who question authority are threatened. In middle-class schools, and surely in the elite academies, student achievement was already at or above the level of the tests. But in working-class schools, particularly with immigrant and black students — because of generations of racist oppression and education — the failure rate has been unacceptably high and the pressure is on.

However, school reforms are being instituted simultaneously with money being diverted from social services to war. The result: more students being denied high school diplomas because they can’t pass the tests, rather than having smaller classes and more materials.

There should be no illusions about the bosses’ interests in our students; they see the working class as wage slaves and cannon fodder. In a racist society that leaves thousands to die in New Orleans while sending thousands to kill and die for oil profits in Iraq, the schools are organized to serve the profit system. Schools can only meet the needs of the working class in a society of share-and-share-alike communism. To end imperialist war, racist exploitation and racist education, society’s goal must be human need, not profits, where communist relationships of cooperation and solidarity are primary. Then, schools will develop the skills all students require to collectively meet the needs of the working class.

So teachers have a crucial role — to teach the history of the fight against racism and imperialism. The students most under attack by NCLB historically have struggled against racist mis-education, imperialist war, police terror and racist attacks on their community. Far from being passive victims, young people in these schools are the future of the working class, the workers and soldiers who will lead the fight for its emancipation from the racist system of wage slavery. No reform can solve the problems of racist education. Teachers uniting with students and their parents in the long-term fight for a communist system run by the working class can then provide education that serves the needs of the working class.

‘Reformers’ Pit World’s Working-Class Children Against Each Other

Like the invasion of Iraq, education reform is being driven by the needs of a sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry — especially (but not limited to) an emerging imperialist China. The gauntlet is thrown down.

The capitalists are not playing. As Kevin Philips points out in his book American Theocracy, "...China is already responsible for the bulk of the rapidly growing U.S. deficit in what Washington calls ATP — advanced technology products. Here we are talking about major categories such as biotechnology, weapons, opto-electronics and nuclear technology."

Teachers, parents and students are immediately challenged. Are we educating our youth to compete against Indian, Chinese and European youth for life-giving jobs? The Eli Broad Foundation, one of the major players in education reform, says, "We are convinced that as a country, we face a crisis of epic proportions, one that threatens ‘our’ economy, ‘our’ democracy and ‘our’ very standard of living."

Do we really want an intellectual climate that raises a Broad-like slogan,

"(Sons and daughters of) Workers of the World, compete."? Or would we prefer, (Sons and daughters of) Workers of the world, unite."?  It is in this sense, not the sense of barricades and a revolution tomorrow, that the call for "fight for communism" is urgent. We must fight tooth and nail to put a communist analysis and vision into the bosses’ movement for education reform.

The strains on U.S. imperialism can be seen in all its institutions. K-12 education, for example, finds itself over-run by this new situation. In the late 1970’s the world began to adjust to what seemed like a growing and intractable crisis of overproduction. Trade wars were looming, most major markets were nearing saturation and the prospect of capital investing profitably in manufacturing looked dim. Consequently, capitalists increasingly turned to speculation in money and bond markets, junk bonds, hedge funds and all sorts of financial wizardry. The stock market went through the roof.

Whereas a few years ago the Economist magazine said the world’s auto industry had 60 plants too many, today it reports that the next ten years will see the need to complete 180 more plants to meet growing world demand, especially in China and India.

According to some analysts, the heart of capitalism — the exploitation of an industrial working class — is on the brink of the biggest expansion in its history. Whatever its exact dimensions, the U.S. finds itself in a comparatively weak position to benefit fully from this potential expansion. If real life plays out these predictions, U.S. imperialism will no longer be top dog in the world.

The Eli Broad Foundation — whose Board of Trustees includes politicians like Henry Cisneros, union leaders like Andrew Stern and board members from AIG (insurance) and Northrop Grumman — is interested in urgent education reform for three reasons. First, although the U.S. spends $455 billion a year on K-12 education, it fails to graduate 30% of its students. Secondly, U.S. 12th graders perform below the international average among 21 rival industrial capitalist countries. Thirdly, in 2004 Chinese universities graduated 600,000 engineers, India graduated more than 350,000, while the U.S. graduated only 70,000.

"With children in India and China," they continue, "hungry for the jobs that historically belonged to ‘our’ children, we must improve our education system in this country to graduate students who are equipped to compete in the global workforce."

It’s not an easy fight to combat the rulers’ goal to pit U.S. workers’ children against workers’ children among the rulers’ imperialist rivals. In the recent contract struggle in Oakland, Ca., there were many honest forces won to battling issues such as privatization, getting rid of a State-appointed Superintendent, Randy Ward, or relying on Mayoral elections. Too few voices pointed out that the real nature of capitalism — whether Chinese or U.S. — is to set one group of workers against the other, all for the profits of the bosses.  (Next: Fascism, U.S. style and education reform.)

We Don’t Need Big Shots: WE Can Run the World!

NEW ORLEANS, June 5 — On the weekend of June 3 and 4, things happened here that might seem small and local, but a closer look reveals the seed of something huge.

Last August, when Katrina hit, the racist city fathers figured it would be a good idea to leave black people in New Orleans to die in the flood. These were the workers who kept the city and the tourist business in the money, but the businessmen decided they didn’t want them any more. This story is about us deciding to take things into our own hands. And that’s just what happened on that June 3-4 weekend.

On the 3rd, the New Orleans Survivors’ Council organized 60 people to open up and clean out the Florida Projects. The government had refused to do it — they just want workers to stay away. But residents from Florida Projects asked the Council for help moving back in. The longer we stayed cleaning out apartments, the more residents asked us to clean out their place, too.

Meanwhile, people from a trailer park in Baker were gutting out their first home back in New Orleans. The week before that they had met and decided that if they wanted to return home, they’d have to help each other fix up their places. They made a list of homes and volunteers to gut them. Then they collected their tools and fixed one house on Saturday and another one on Sunday.

Why is this such a big deal? Because previously we’ve depended on the government or some big shot. We were waiting for them to fix our homes, even though we knew they wouldn’t do it. Until now, we didn’t come together to take care of ourselves; we thought we were alone and helpless.

The racist system wants us to think we’re weak and stupid. That’s because the system is run by rich folks who live off sucking our blood — working us for little or nothing and reaping the profits for themselves. That system is called capitalism. If they want to stay in power, they need to convince us we’re helpless. But we’re not — we’re the ones who know how to do all the work, not them!

Once we see reality, we know we have the power to move ourselves back into New Orleans. We just have to organize ourselves! As a matter of fact, we have the power to run New Orleans — and the country, and the world! Working people have the experience. When we get together and flex our own muscles, we can and will run everything. To put that idea into one word, it’s called communism.

And that’s why what happened on that weekend was so earth-shaking.

To find out more about communism and workers’ power, read some of the

other articles in this paper and talk to the person you got it from. This paper can help us reach and organize ourselves in cities all throughout the country and the world.

Forum Hears New Orleans’ Plight; Raise Money to Aid Workers

BROOKLYN, NY, June 1 — At a forum organized by a local church, a young woman from New Orleans — speaking with deep emotion — brought an audience of nearly 100 to its feet upon hearing her story of the city’s destruction. She’s now in college in Washington, D.C. and the nightmare haunts her constantly. Her father is black and her mother is white, and somehow the politicians’ crass racism arranged for her parents to vote in separate electoral districts despite living in the same house! She, who "looks white," was sent to vote with her mother.

The event’s main purpose was to collect money to finance volunteers from the church and elsewhere to go to New Orleans to help rebuild the infrastructure as well as hope. This led to discussing the racist nature of the Katrina disaster.

Speakers from other churches and community organizations described the rebuilding problems while exposing the city’s election as a farce. One 30-year New Orleans resident had seen a friend on TV — a grandmother long involved in working-class struggles there — begging for help with her grandchildren outside the Convention Center. She was shocked into action when she heard another person watching the telecast — in referring to this community organizer — make an obviously racist comment about "those people" always asking for help and "what can you expect from them?"

Two members of the Progressive Labor Party, a student and a teacher, described how teachers and students went to New Orleans not only to help the rebuilding of homes but to rebuild spirit as well. We also went to organize to change the system that allows such disasters to happen. The teacher said we must learn from the people of New Orleans how to organize and build the community’s infrastructure and camaraderie under such devastating conditions. The student indicted the basic racist nature of capitalism, calling on people to organize to end it.

The forum’s moderator said that although individuals can do a lot, only the government can function at a level that meets this crisis. The moderator urged a "hurricane of activity" to match the hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, and Wilma) that were allowed to destroy poor working-class, mostly black, neighborhoods while the government stood by and did not help.

Individual speakers detailed their own activities, from helping hurricane victims in New York City to get proper housing, to involvement in rebuilding in Mississippi to bringing food and other necessities to New Orleans. A positive but measured spirit of purpose permeated the entire evening, at which two collections helped defray costs of volunteers going to New Orleans. All agreed the multi-racial event was a huge success.

ESL’ers Fight Gov’t Anti-Immigrant Racism

I work in a Family Literacy program, teaching English as a Second Language to young immigrant mothers, more than 60% undocumented. In April I attended a large immigrant rally with some of my students and their families. We made signs saying "Workers Struggles Have No Borders," later displaying them in our classroom with pictures of the protest.

The day after Bush’s speech on suggestions for Congressional legislation, students came to class very angry. One after another spoke: "It has nothing to do with terrorists, but with terrorizing us." "The guest worker program is servitude." "No worker is going to turn himself in at the border." "It’s not worth it to risk your life in Iraq to get U.S. citizenship!"

This led to a thorough discussion, in English, about why workers migrate, the proposed Congressional legislation and the purpose of borders. In the students’ words: "Workers are the same. We all need jobs to support our families." "We should never be divided."

We discussed a cartoon showing workers uniting to fight the boss. And finally, "Borders have to do with controlling and exploiting workers," said a Mexican immigrant woman. Everyone agreed. "Capitalism is a system that can’t serve the working class," I added. 1 gave all students the pamphlet supporting anti-racists who fought the fascist Minutemen. Later I introduced CHALLENGE to five students and another teacher in our program.

The following week an immigration lawyer from a church group presented a workshop to the classes. Through all this activity we’re building relationships of support and trust that will serve us well as we face day-to-day racist incidents, more widespread attacks and the struggle to build multi-racial, internationalist unity of the working class.

Recently, four staff members and I from our program were summoned to a meeting with the assistant principal and the guidance counselor of the elementary school where we work. These administrators wanted information about a 3-year old son of West African immigrants in our program who had applied for Pre-K in the school. The assistant principal said the school can use its "discretion" to accept or not, or "exit" kids it doesn’t want. "We don’t want problem kids," he said. He and the guidance counselor then let loose a series of vile racist remarks: "Families of these children are being evicted [from their apartments] because the kids are in the hallways singing from the banisters." "In the African culture, they beat the kids and we have to call ACS [Administration for Children’s Service]." "Just how religious is this [Muslim] family?" "Does dad have more than one wife? He’s probably never home." They glowed when explaining how they’re becoming "behavioralists" at a special administrators’ workshop.

To protest their "behavior" at the meeting I took notes to document every racist remark. I answered questions with "yes" or "no," declining any evaluation of the mother. who is my ESL student. Later, when I asked my students what they thought about the school’s "discretionary Pre K program," they said it’s "discrimination." "Right," I said. "Keep your eyes open and fight it if this happens to you or anyone you know." Then I learned that the administration accepted the boy to Pre-K because they feared being accused of discrimination on the basis of "race," nationality or religion.

During this period I attended a workshop by a literacy center. Officials from the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the head of the corporation overseeing public health clinics and hospitals attended. The purpose was to build collaboration between literacy and health providers, specifically to win literacy teachers to deliver and explain a letter to their classes from the hospital corporation saying immigrants shouldn’t fear visiting city hospitals and clinics; their immigration information would be kept "private."

Sounds OK; no doubt many sincere healthcare workers don’t want to give an immigrant’s status to Immigration Service. But beware. Teachers and healthcare workers can’t rely on City officials. We must do much more to protect our students and patients. The government can order access to records at any moment and City officials may shrug, maybe even whine. We need to organize working-class unity, strength in numbers, rank-and-file leadership, and especially leadership of committed communists.

Letters

Rumsfeld and Vietnam Now Military Buddies

Funny how the worm turns. Nearly 40 years ago when PLP criticized the Vietnamese leadership for abandoning the fight for workers' power as a goal of their struggle against the U.S. imperialist invasion of that country, we were roundly criticized by many pseudo-leftists for "attacking" the heroic practitioners of Peoples War. We said fighting for something less than the dictatorship of the proletariat would end up with some form of capitalism and would be betraying Peoples War.

Actually, PLP organized the first anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in 1963 and was the first to put forward the slogan, "U.S. imperialism get out of Vietnam." Eventually millions adopted this slogan, rather than the liberal "Stop the bombing" one which let imperialism off the hook. Eventually the heroism of the Vietnamese workers and peasants - which PLP supported, inside and outside the military - drove out the U.S. invaders.

Unfortunately PLP's warnings proved all too true. Soon the nationalist/state capitalist Vietnamese leadership allowed BP Amoco, Ford, Nike and their ilk to build factories there to exploit Vietnamese workers on $2-a-day wages. Now it appears the situation has come full circle.

On June 5, U.S. war hawk and "Defense" Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with Vietnamese government officials and enthusiastically greeted the resurgence of capitalism there. The N.Y. Times reported (6/6) that, "The United States and Vietnam agreed…to increase their military contacts and to…broaden their defense cooperation." Rumsfeld declared "with evident satisfaction" that the two nations had decided to step up "exchanges at all levels of the military." While criticizing Iran, Russia and China, Rumsfeld "heaped praise on his [Vietnamese] hosts….laud[ing] Vietnam's economic development." They agreed on sending Vietnamese officers to a Pentagon military language school in San Antonio and expanded medical training for other officers.

The more disgusting side of this visit was the fact that, "The Vietnamese greeted their guest with a resplendent military honor guard, which played the Star Spangled Banner" - this for a butcher who negotiated military agreements with Saddam Hussein in 1984 and then launched the latest war in Iraq which has killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, murdering them in their homes. Greeting such a killer and "deepening military cooperation" (the Times headline) is not what Vietnamese workers died for.

Soon after Rumsfeld's visit, who shows up but arch reactionary and Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, in "trade talks" with "his Vietnamese counterpart [which] turned into a lovefest…choreographed by the hosts to show their affection for America." (NY Times, 6/19)

All this reflects a battle between the U.S. and Chinese ruling classes "for the allegiance of Vietnam, a growing capitalist power," says the Times.

As PLP has always rightly maintained, nationalists are part of capitalism and will always betray the working class.

Old-time PL’er who remembers

Narco Paramilitaries and Fascism Rampaging in Colombia

The rural and indigenous population of Colombia is under siege. Narco paramilitaries are seizing their land and raping women while the government either turns a blind eye or supports it. Over four million people in rural areas are now refugees in their own country, with no job prospects and many turning to begging and prostitution to survive. Workers in the cities also face mass unemployment while cops and military officers are in the pockets of the drug mafias. Meanwhile, fascist President Alvaro Uribe, Bush’s favorite ally in the region, was re-elected with money and support from the drug cartels.

However, many are also fighting back. A recent protest blocked roads; police repression killed six and gravely wounded 30. The protestors defended themselves with sticks and rocks, injuring a dozen anti-riot cops.

Many had illusions that the mayors of Bogota and Cali — leaders of the so-called Democratic Pole opposing Uribe, and led by union hacks and fake-leftist politicians — would bring changes. But they, too, have ordered attacks on protesting workers and students. Again, workers and their allies are paying dearly for illusions about lesser-evil politicians.

The road to follow is hard for workers and sometimes seems impossible, but there’s no other path but class struggle, as the history of the working class here and worldwide has demonstrated.

The political work of the PLP group here is slowly growing, Using DESAFIO, we’re showing workers and youth that the only road out of this capitalist hellhole is by fighting for a new world without bosses — for communism.

A Worker in Colombia

Internationalism and Anti-Racism Win Out

Recently an internal medicine resident who is returning to South Korea was signing out when he stopped and looked at the photo of me and my family holding a poster: "From The Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf: RACISM KILLS." Quite confused until he confirmed that this was indeed my family, he then said, "I never thought of you that way, I know you care about the poor patients we treat but I didn’t realize that you were so political. I didn’t think Americans thought like this."

I was encouraged and asked him if he was a U.S. government supporter since he’s from South Korea. He replied, "Things have become much more liberal there. No one wants another war with the North — too many people died last time. We are afraid the U.S. is moving its base to the south, away from Seoul and artillery fire from the North, so they will be able to attack North Korea more easily. I believe I understand why Iran and North Korea should not give up their nuclear weapons."

We talked more about internationalism and anti-racism and left each other rather amazed at how wrong our stereotypes were.

The U.S. imperialists have fewer and fewer friends. We must be confident in reaching out to immigrants from throughout the world.

Red Doc

Halt Miners’ Murders Under Capitalism?

The CHALLENGE article (6/7), "Profit System Murders Five More Miners," about the deaths in Harlan County, Kentucky, makes clear that in a communist society every conceivable thing would be done to ensure "the safety of those workers who descend into the bowels of the earth." It also said that the U.S. government — of, by and for the bosses — has allowed coal bosses to get away with murder. Indeed, miners cannot rely upon the capitalist state and its political parties to solve the problem of safety on the job, a life-and-death question for miners in the here and now.

Historically, miners have relied on their own power, fighting shooting wars against company gun thugs and capitalist state armies and cops trying to control working conditions. The state exists to defend the interests of a particular class, so the miners must wage their battles for rights and unionization independent of the state. And they will!

The CHALLENGE article also says, "The only way to prevent such murders is to destroy the system that perpetuates such atrocities." However, a communist revolution is not around the corner and miners are dying right now.

I’ve lived most of my life in the coal fields of Western Pennsylvania and come from a family of miners. The miners fought courageously to build the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA); I think there will be a renewed struggle for unionization. In fact, most of those interviewed stated that maintaining job safety lies in organizing a union.

Today, none of Harlan County’s mines are unionized, though miners there have a long history of struggle and will no doubt fight again to halt this murder. As the film "Harlan County, USA" documents, miners stood up to gun-toting company goons and scabs in fighting for a union. When miners rely on their own power, they can win. So I don’t totally agree with the idea in CHALLENGE that only a communist revolution can halt the murder in the mines.

Certainly, as a communist, I will support miners’ struggles for a UMWA unionization campaign, which will happen and should have the support of all labor. Miners can and will fight to gain more control over job safety. With a union they can shut down unsafe mines. Essentially, mine safety should rest with those who mine the coal. So it’s still possible for miners — among the most combative in the working class — to do something now about safety, even if it means armed struggle.

At the same time, it’s necessary to win miners to communist ideas and the struggle for real workers’ power, only possible when the bosses and their state are smashed. So I give all-out support to miners struggling for a union, while battling to win them to PLP’s revolutionary communist ideas.

Meanwhile, in "Red" China 57 trapped miners drowned in a flood in the northern Shanxi province. Nearly 6,000 miners died in China’s coal mines last year, many of them privately-owned.

Thus the problem is really international — U.S. and Chinese coal miners have a common enemy, a profit-hungry capitalist system. While U.S. miners wage their struggle, so will those in China. A revolutionary communist leadership is needed in both cases.

For those on the U.S. "left" who claim China is "a workers’ state," does China’s government represent workers’ interests? With 6,000 miners dead, the answer is obvious.

The miners’ fight for unionization is not a liberal-reformist struggle; it’s one for basic survival, a struggle that can become a school for communism. I give my total support to the miners’ battle.

Red Coal

Protest Racist Killer KKKop’s Murder of Black Worker

BRONX, NY, June 14 — On April 27, officer Rob Morero handcuffed Jamale Roberts, beat him to death and then dragged his body under a fire escape. Jamale’s mother said that many neighbors in the Bronx project looked on in horror. Then Morero beat on doors threatening the same treatment to anyone who revealed what they had seen.

This rabid murderer has been terrorizing working people in the 48th precinct for years. He would attack gentle and vulnerable people just to set an example. In fact, he recently told Jamale, "I’ll be BACK for you!"

This 23-year-old worker had been laid off from his construction job for some time, and was trying hard to turn his life around. Respectful and caring, he was greatly loved in the neighborhood, and was striving to be a responsible father to his three-year-old son.

With unemployment at 50% for young black and Latino men in the Bronx, racist cops like Morero are on a loose leash to instill fear of fascist repression in workers and students who want to fight for jobs, education, health care and housing. But workers and students don’t aim to take the likes of murderer Morero any more. Already there has been a militant march and demonstration at the precinct demanding an indictment and conviction. Politicians are already moving to betray the struggle; the district’s city councilwoman was trying to be friendly with the demonstrators, but later was seen laughing with the cops. Sellout FBI informer Al Sharpton promised to come but didn’t. Good! Workers don’t need the bosses’ politicians.

What we do need is the mass militancy of working people. Jamale’s mother — a nurse’s aide who usually has worked two jobs to support six children — understands this need. She’s working with her pastor and a community coalition to organize another march on the precinct.

One of Jamale’s friends is in a Sunday School class taught by a PLP member and they’ve begun to reach out to a network of congregations and to a Bronx PL teacher to mobilize students and parents as well. Numbers are vital to begin to put the fascist police and the politicians who control them on the defensive and to increasingly sharpen resistance to their racist terror.

Even more vital is the political perspective the Party brings to this struggle. The slogan "No Justice, No Peace" is, in fact, a reformist lie under capitalism. Seldom can "justice" be won from capitalist courts, even with the sharpest protracted struggles. And there will never be "peace" until long after communist revolution has not only swept away capitalism, but also defeated all capitalist ideology in the centuries-long process of building a world communist society. Recruiting new PL members will be the primary victory in the period ahead.

Chicago Hospital Workers Fight Sellout Union, Gestapo Bosses

CHICAGO, IL June 17 — "Who’s gonna listen to you?" That’s what SEIU Local 20 Financial Secretary Greg Kelly told a Stroger Hospital ward clerk with more than 25 years on the job when she disagreed with him during contract negotiations. As this militant black woman told Kelly that she had deep ties to the workers and he was an arrogant, isolated racist and sexist, local President Byron Hobbs walked over and asked Kelly, "Do you need any help?" (The two of them together couldn’t handle her.) Hobbs and Kelly think it’s easier to attack the workers than fight the bosses. They’re about to learn a very profound lesson. Masses of SEIU health care workers will soon be asking them, "Who’s gonna listen to you?"

For the past 17 months Hobbs & Co. have been begging for crumbs from County bosses while the latter have been attacking the workers and patients harder than ever. The union gave $800,000 to re-elect County boss John Stroger, trying to buy a new contract, only to have Stroger suffer a crippling stroke.

Meanwhile, workers are being fired, suspended and disciplined in unprecedented numbers with few if any arbitration hearings. After Stroger workers voted to strike, the union — rather than preparing for one — issued a flyer trying to scare workers about how they could be fired for striking!

They want to sell us a contract where increased health care costs will more than wipe out any small wage increase. They also want to increase union dues, as they just did at Northwestern Hospital.

Now the bosses are using mass racist Gestapo tactics to break us down. Recently groups of workers were fired in housekeeping and food service. Another woman was picking up her check while on vacation. Her 10-year-old son was waiting in the car. Stroger security dragged her off the elevator, through the main lobby and down to their office because they didn’t like the way she showed her ID! She now faces being fired. The County CEO’s use terror to keep control of the workers, sending the message, "This will happen to you if you don’t stay in your place."

Greg Kelly is also the lead negotiator at Hektoen, where workers unanimously voted down the last agreement and staged a one-day strike which the leadership tried to sabotage. Hektoen bosses imposed the contract that had been defeated, costing each worker hundreds of dollars in increased healthcare costs. It’s taken the union months to try to restart negotiations. At his first session, Kelly told the bargaining team that he and the union want to be partners with the bosses.

Workers won’t follow a cowardly union leadership that insults their intelligence and works with the bosses. They will not follow "leadership" that wants to be partners with our racist oppressors and exploiters. Working conditions are stressing workers beyond all limits, making them sick, while the bosses refuse to allow us to use our own sick-time and medical leaves. They threaten workers who are out sick — "if you don’t return you’ll lose your job."

Shame on the weak leadership of Local 20! They should be tarred and feathered for continuing a slave mentality and keeping the shackles around our necks, making workers more cynical and demoralized instead of mobilized and organized. The answer is to build a mass PLP and prepare healthcare workers for mass struggle and communist revolution. This is the only way to open a dialogue among workers to determine our future, and to tear down the walls of wage slavery.

REDEYE

Mandela made secret deal with big biz

What about the "authorized version" of reality in South Africa since the end of apartheid? Pilger notes that while average household income has risen by 15%, average black household income has fallen by19%. "The unspoken deal" Pilger writes, "was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule." Thus secret meetings were held in Britain before 1994 between the current president, Thabo Mbeki, members of the Afrikaner elite and companies with big commercial stakes in the country. Mandela told Pilger: "We do not want to challenge big business that can take fright and take away their money.…privatization is the fundamental policy." (GW, 6/22)

Iraq poll: "Americans, go home!"

Brookings Institution Iraq Index cites a poll showing that 87 percent of Iraqis want a timeline for American withdrawal, and 47 percent approve of attacks on American troops. (NYT, 6/18)

Courts take another step toward fascism

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11….

Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal yesterday’s decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any noncitizen in the United States for any reason.

"This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the president." (NYT)

Demos bring working-class students out

The next morning [March 30] the school television channel showed a news clip of school walkouts in Los Angeles, Austin and Dallas. "The students went wild," says Sotelo, who is now under investigation for disrupting school activities for urging her students to leave school. "The administration quickly got on the intercom, instructing the teachers to turn off the television. But by then it was too late."

About 700 El Paso students walked out that day. In predominantly Hispanic schools throughout the country the story was the same. An estimated 70,000 walked out in San Diego county; in Los Angeles county 35,000 students left school over the course of the protests; in Dallas about 3,500 demonstrated….

The past few weeks have seen more than 600,000 schools students skip classes in Chile….

The people involved in the demonstrations today are in general younger, poorer and darker than those of 40 years ago. Young women are more likely to take a leadership role; their parents are more likely to support them. These are not middle-class students seeking an alliance with the workers; they are working-class students… (GW, 6/22)

Union retreating; workers need revolution

Las Vegas, June 11 — The president of the United Automobile Workers union told his members in a strikingly blunt report released Sunday that they cannot ride out the automobile industry crisis and should be prepared to make tradition-breaking decisions to help rescue the industry….

"Usually you rally them for the fight that’s ahead; he’s rallying them for the hard times that are ahead," said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worchester, Mass. (NYT, 6/12)

Pope protects pervert

To the editor:

Pope lets priest off the hook would have been a more appropriate headline to your article Pope gets tough on sex abuse (May 26). Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ, has been accused by nine men (who were novices at the time) of sexual molestation. But according to the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Maciel has declared his innocence and, "following the example of Jesus Christ, [has] decided not to defend himself in anyway."

To cap all this tragic nonsense, the Pope, after years of vacillation, has finally decided not to investigate those allegations of paedophilia any further. Rather, according to a Vatican statement, the Holy see has decided to "invite [Fr Maciel] to a reserved life of prayer and penance …" Apparently he has accepted the invitation. Being sent out to grass is doubtless a better option than the chance of spending the rest of his life in the slammer.

But to cut through all this mumbo-jumbo and get directly to the point, your subeditor could also have considered simply; Pope protects pervert. (GW, 6/15)

Modern capitalism has slave auctions

Women are being sold off in so-called slave auctions in the arrivals lounges of British airports, according to authorities desperate to crack down on the burgeoning trade in human trafficking. The Crown Prosecution Service says foreign women are being sold as sex workers as soon as they arrive… (GW, 6/15)

Brazil landless march against government

Almost 500 landless protesters were being questioned in Brazil’s capital last week after a violent protest in the country’s parliament left at least 23 people injured and one man in intensive care. Organisers said the protest which lasted about two hours, was intended to draw attention to the lack of progress in their fight for land reform.

Television images showed confrontations between activists, with windows being smashed and an attempt to roll a car into the congress building. Police rounded up about 490 suspects…organised by the MLST — the Movement for Liberation of the Landless. (GW, 6/22

Racist Raids Attacked 400 Thousand Immigrants in 1930s

"They came in with guns and told us to get out," recalled Ignacio Pina, 81, a retired railroad worker in Bakersfield, California. "They didn’t let us take anything," not even a trunk with birth certificates proving that he and his five siblings were born in the U.S. The family was jailed for 10 days before being deported to Mexico. This is not from today’s racist anti-immigrant attacks, but from the 1930’s anti-immigrant campaign known as "The Repatriation."

Possibly more than 400,000 Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were either deported or coerced into leaving the U.S. through racist immigration raids and a campaign to deny them jobs. Many, mostly children, were U.S. citizens.

Anti-immigrant racism exists to justify the racist economic super-exploitation of immigrant labor, and to divide citizen and immigrant workers so they cannot unite to overthrow the bosses. Anti-immigrant racism and mass deportations have accompanied periods of economic crises. In the late 1870’s, an economic slump led to a wave of anti-Chinese racism. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, there was the "Repatriation" against Mexican immigrants. The political crisis brought on by World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution led to the Palmer Raids of 1919 against European immigrants. The bosses saw them as "carriers" of the Russian revolution and engineered mass deportations and the infamous frame-up and execution of Sacco and Venzetti.

The same government and gutter racists who attack immigrants launch racist terror against black workers too, one reason why it’s important for all workers to fight racism.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union of the 1930’s, Josef Stalin’s revolutionary leadership waged a campaign against all forms of racism. The famous 1936 USSR Constitution (the "Stalin Constitution") made racism a political crime against the Soviet state and the working class. The Bolshevik leadership elevated the cultural, political, economic and material progress of Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Tartars, Uzebeks and other "minorities" who had been persecuted in Czarist Russia.

These ethnic groups became artists, scientists, skilled workers and political leaders. Dark-skinned workers became mayors of many Soviet cities when many black and Mexican workers were being attacked and lynched in the U.S.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, U.S. imperialism was acquiring a strong hold on the Mexican economy. U.S. mine operators and other industrial bosses paid poverty wages in Mexico, forcing many workers to look for work in the U.S. Sound familiar? Once here they were further victimized. Many Mexican workers joined and followed the lead of the old Communist Party in the U.S., which is one reason the bosses turned on them so viciously in the 1930s.

Understanding what happened during the racist "Repatriation" is important because it is a part of our history that has been all but erased. The more we know about our history, the better we can fight our oppressors. Workers need to reclaim our history from the bosses and expose the racist murders, from killing union organizers to the Rosewood massacre of black workers in Florida. As we fight for a communist world, not only will we understand history to change the world, but we will — to paraphrase Marx and Engels — "finally see the real start of human history."

‘The Road to Guantanamo’ - U.S. Army Apes Nazi Death Camps

(The following review was sent us by a friend in France where this film has already opened.)

The Road to Guantanamo. Docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross.

This film is based on the Tipton Three, three Pakistani youths in the U.K. who return to the old country for a wedding. Then they go to Afghanistan for adventure and are captured by the Northern Alliance — what Bush and Rumsfeld call the "tribals." And then they’re sent as "suspected Taliban fighters" to Guantanamo.

These are real people, with family and friends — one is on parole and another works in a restaurant — but they never come alive in this film. The directors only hint at this stuff, maybe because they think it’ll turn off the audience. So you get these sanitized heroes. The film-makers pull their punches. They don’t trust the viewers enough to put the naked truth up on the screen?

However, this is the first time somebody has recreated exactly what’s going down in Guantanamo. The government has been working overtime to sweep this dirt under the rug and this film pulls up a corner to show what’s there. Any article you’ve read or picture you’ve seen on TV is nothing compared to the way this film sits you down in a cell at Camp X-Ray.

There’s a row of dirt-floored chicken wire cages and you’re in one. You have one white plastic bucket with water and another one to defecate in; that’s all the "furniture." Burning tropical sun all day and football stadium floodlights all night. Armed guards walking up and down shouting "don’t talk!" and "don’t move!" and "don’t exercise!" Try disobeying — a special helmeted white-uniformed squad of five soldiers enters your cell and beats the living daylights out of you.

Just when you think you’ll go crazy with boredom, they haul you off for interrogation. They have a million techniques and you never know what to expect. A smiling hypocrite trying to get on your good side? Or the guy who, with a flick of his eyelids, has the guards hit you upside the head every time you give a "wrong" answer?

And then there’s the torture. They chain your wrists and ankles to an eye-bolt in the floor. You can’t stand, sit, or lie down. Just squat hunkered down. You can’t put your hands over your ears, understand? Then they turn on the music — full volume — ear-splitting heavy metal. The movie audience is squirming in their seats after 30 seconds. The prisoners are tortured like this for 4, 5, 6 hours at a stretch.

This is totally twisted inhuman stuff. Nazi stuff? You’re 100% right. The U.S. Army has been studying Nazi techniques. The prisoners are not allowed to look the guards in the eyes — just like in the Nazi death camps — or the segregated South in the 1950’s.

Why is this happening? This film won’t answer that question. It’s strictly apolitical. A simple denunciation of the barbarism at Guantanamo. Nothing about the organized brutality of the U.S. ruling class, whether Bush & Co. or the liberal war hawks calling for more troops and more blood in Iraq.

This is an experiment. This is having the concentration camp machinery tuned up and ready to take off, to be used against anyone who opposes U.S. imperialism at home or abroad. (And has been used in U.S. prisons forever, especially in the Jim Crow South.)

The film never traces any of this to the system these modern-day Nazis represent — capitalism on the loose in the 21st century.

See the film. Think about what we must do to fight fascism. For starters, joining PLP and building a movement to destroy this barbarous system.

Fatal Errors in Soviet Union’s Early Years

(The following was mistakenly omitted from last issue’s "Forward to Communism" column on the Soviet Union, Part 3)

In the early 1920’s, the Soviet Communist Party had made a major retreat, adopting a "New Economic Policy" that promoted private business.

Their main and fatal error lay in not believing that masses of workers and peasants could be motivated to work for political incentives rather than for narrow material ones like wages, and to meet the needs of the whole working class in building communism. If they had believed in the workers, they would have made the solution to the problems of production the property of the entire working class, based on the urgent need to build new relationships among workers in the process of production.

The point of communism is not that the government and Party should feed or produce goods for the workers, but rather that they should organize the entire working class to carry out these tasks. PLP would handle such problems, not by telling people to fend for themselves and build small businesses, but by launching a massive struggle/campaign to increase food production in as collective a manner as possible, guided by a political struggle over the importance of building communist relationships in the process of production.