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CHALLENGE, November 25, 2009

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25 November 2009 282 hits

From Ft. Hood to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan: Capitalism Guilty of Racist Murder

Oil-Driven Rulers Urge Afghan Surge, While Readying Nukes

a href="#U.S. War Planners Aim ‘Low-Yield’ High-Death Nukes at N. Korea, Iran, China">U.". War Planners Aim ‘Low-Yield’ High-Death Nukes at N. Korea, Iran, China

D.C. Transit Workers Prepare for Action

National Strike in Mexico

Workers Put Brakes on UAW-Ford Contract Gang-up

Fight Racist Cook County Healthcare Cut-backs

a href="#Open to PL’s Red Ideas on Battling School Budget Cuts">"pen to PL’s Red Ideas on Battling School Budget Cuts

Capitalist Killer: Soaring Racist Unemployment

  • a href="#How Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure">"ow Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure
  • Double Jobless Rates for Black and Latino Workers
  • a href="#A Phony ‘Silver Lining’: ‘Rising Wages’!">A Phon" ‘Silver Lining’: ‘Rising Wages’!
  • Killing the Jobless

Student Strikes Spread Across Austria, Germany

a href="#Iran: Workers’ Misery Worsens As Bosses Fight It Out">"ran: Workers’ Misery Worsens As Bosses Fight It Out

Colombia: Appearance of Progress, Essence of Exploitation

LETTERS

a href="#Religion Excuses Bosses’ Murder">"eligion Excuses Bosses’ Murder

a href="#Capitalism is Bad for Workers’ Health">"apitalism is Bad for Workers’ Health

H.S. Students are Inspiring Organizers

Today I Saw the Party and Felt Our Potential

a href="#Michael Moore’s Movie: ‘Here we go again..."">Mi"hael Moore’s Movie: ‘Here we go again..."

Songs, Poems, Spoken Word: Weapons in the Class Struggle

a href="#‘Capitalism: A Love Story’">‘C"pitalism: A Love Story’: A Movie in Love with ‘Reforming’ Capitalism

Red Eye on the News

  • Immigration jail: No-help hellhole
  • Fascist Colombia prez is U.S. pal
  • Could oil pipeline be a motive?
  • Racist poverty dooms many youth
  • 2 biz bribes = billion to Congress
  • Poor rejecting India’s democracy
  • Rulers’ newspeak: Jobless recovery
  • U.S. infant mortality is racist
  • Bias will feed health dangers
  • Insurance co’s lie on med spending
  • Capitalism unveils amazing idea!
  • Left Behind by ‘No-Child’ effect
  • ‘Public option’ won’t cut premiums

Thanksgiving: A Holocaust for Native Americans

  • Reservations: U.S. Concentration Camps

From Ft. Hood to Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan:

Capitalism Guilty of Racist Murder

The war for oil being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan is also taking its toll in the U.S. The 13 deaths at Ft. Hood can be added to the 5,300 dead U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and over one million Iraqi and Afghanis killed since the invasions of 2003.

We shouldn’t fall for either of the bosses’ media spins on the Ft. Hood shootings: the overtly racist Fox News take that "all Muslims are evil," or the liberal Obama-New York Times slant that "embraces all religions" in pursuit of imperialist war. The profit system itself stands guilty of all the murders, from Texas to the Mid-East to Central Asia. Our Party has long held the position of "Turn the Guns Around." Unlike Hasan, who targeted rank-and-file soldiers, we advocate mass, militant, anti-racist, anti-imperialist action against top officers and the capitalists they serve. This struggle forms part of our long-term strategy to build a mass communist party that will ultimately destroy the war-making billionaires in a communist revolution.

The profit-driven U.S. war machine had already slaughtered over 700,000 non-combatants in oil-rich Iraq by 2006, according to the British medical journal Lancet. In Afghanistan, U.S.-led forces killed 345 civilians between January and August 2009, the UN reports. These figures don’t include the 90 Afghan civilians wiped out in September by NATO or the six innocent farmers and three of their children incinerated recently by a U.S. missile. CIA and U.S. Air Force drones have slain over 700 Pakistani civilians since 2006. To perpetuate this serial killing, U.S. rulers are pouncing on the Ft. Hood incident to increase anti-Islamic sentiment.

Whether Major Nidal Hasan did this on his own or was put up to it, the shootings in the military processing center were not the actions of a sane stable person. Hasan cracked under the duress of hearing the stories of atrocities in the war told to him day after day.

By the military’s own admissions, this war is taking a tremendous mental toll on soldiers. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), anxiety over deployment, suicide, and domestic violence are all at very high levels in the military. (More next issue)

Racism is also to blame. The military has always used racism to dehumanize its victims. Anti-Arab racism is tacitly approved. Derogatory names for Arabs are the norm. Racist cadence and banter by the Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) and acceptance of racist comments by lower-rank enlisted soldiers drill disgustingly negative views of Arabs into the heads of soldiers.

The U.S, Chinese, Russians, and European bosses all have a stake in these wars. The Arab capitalists are maneuvering to protect their own interests by aligning with different sides. All sides are using a toxic mix of nationalism, patriotism and religion to motivate young men and women to kill for capitalism. Wars like this are how the bosses fight each other over resources and the "right" to exploit workers.

The mental toll comes from soldiers committing atrocities for a cause they don’t believe in. In the history of modern warfare, the two militaries that suffered the least mental breakdowns were the Soviet and German armies in World War II. Those armies were politically committed, the Soviets to Socialism, and the Germans to Fascism.

A big reason for the mental health problems among U.S. soldiers is because — despite the rhetoric about "protecting our country" or "helping" people in Afghanistan and Iraq — inside the military most soldiers know what this war is really about: oil. Fighting for that lie takes its toll.

Nidal Hasan is neither the first or last person to be driven crazy by a system that kills millions for profits. PLP is organizing for communist revolution and a society without bosses and profits, run by workers and for the needs of the working class all over the world. Join us! J

Oil-Driven Rulers Urge Afghan Surge, While Readying Nukes

Thus far, 4,400 GIs have given their lives for U.S. imperialism in Iraq and more than 900 in Afghanistan, besides the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis who have been killed in this imperialist drive for control of oil (see box). The majority of the U.S. and allied (mainly British) Afghan losses have come in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, along the route of the proposed U.S.-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

Now civilian and GI deaths are sure to soar with Obama’s coming surge. "Advisers to President Obama are preparing three options for escalating the war effort in Afghanistan, all of them calling for more American troops... The options include Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly another 40,000 troops; a middle scenario sending about 30,000 more troops; and a lower alternative involving 20,000 to 25,000." (NY Times, 11/08/09)

a name="U.S. War Planners Aim ‘Low-Yield’ High-Death Nukes at N. Korea, Iran, China"></">U.". War Planners Aim ‘Low-Yield’ High-Death Nukes at N. Korea, Iran, China

But even beyond the carnage of their Iraq and Afghan wars, U.S. rulers contemplate near-term use of their nuclear trump card. The Obama administration is currently overhauling U.S. nuclear policy, with a final determination due next year. To sway the decision, the latest issue of "Foreign Affairs," journal of the predominantly Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) features an article entitled "The Nukes We Need." Written by Pentagon-funded academics Keir Leiber and Daryl Press, it warns:

"Unless the world’s major disputes are resolved — for example, on the Korean Peninsula, across the Taiwan Strait, and around the Persian Gulf — or the U.S. military pulls back from these regions, the United States will sooner or later find itself embroiled in conventional wars with nuclear-armed adversaries... The threats that dominate U.S. military planning come from China, North Korea, and Iran." (These threats target Asian and Mid-Eastern populations, just as did the U.S. racist murder of 250,000 Japanese civilians in the 1945 atomic bombings.)

Dog-eat-dog imperialist conflict dictates that "even rational adversaries will have powerful incentives to introduce nuclear weapons...during a conventional war against the United States."

Thus, the authors argue, Obama should have his finger on the nuclear trigger. "The least bad option in the face of explicit nuclear threats or after a limited nuclear strike may be a counterforce attack [on enemy nuke sites]...with either conventional or nuclear weapons, or a mix of the two." Keir and Leiber "modeled low-yield [nuclear] airbursts rather than high-yield ground-bursts," on the "theory" that exploding nukes in the air will kill less than ground-level explosions.

Miraculously, "their fatality estimates plunged from 3-4 million to less than 700." In reality, the higher figures seem more likely. The CFR war planners count on impossibly precise intelligence on the location of hostile nuke bases. But the U.S.’s vaunted intelligence services can’t find Osama bin Laden and didn’t have a clue about "ally" Pakistan’s A-bomb program. Instead of precision strikes, expect a radioactive holocaust.

The deaths at Ft. Hood, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and U.S. rulers’ open threat to use nuclear weapons, all cry out for rebuilding a working-class anti-imperialist war movement with a revolutionary outlook. Only a mass PLP, based among workers, soldiers and students, can point our class in the direction of communist revolution, the answer to the horrors perpetrated by U.S. and world capitalism.J

Exxon Mobil Poised to Cash in on U.S. Genocide In Iraq, the new Saudi Arabia

Estimates of Iraq’s oil wealth continue to skyrocket. The Council on Foreign Relations foretold six million barrels per day (bpd) in its 2002 pro-invasion report. This summer, Iraq and the world’s oil majors (headed by U.S. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, UK British Petroleum, and Dutch-UK-U.S. Shell) talked of eight million bpd. But now, industry newsletter Energy Intelligence (11/06/09) reports, "All involved in Iraq’s colossal expansion program say it’s technically feasible to crank the fields up to 10 million bpd... allowing Iraq to rival top exporter Saudi Arabia."

Recent oil dealings proved the petrostrategic, inter-imperialist essence of the Bush-Obama war in Iraq. According to Reuters (11/05/09), "An Exxon Mobil-led consortium has beaten rival Russian, French and Chinese groups to secure initial rights to develop Iraq’s West Qurna field," one of the world’s largest. West Qurna stands to pump some 2.3 million bpd more than 30% greater than Exxon Mobil’s current sales.

D.C. Transit Workers Prepare for Action

WASHINGTON, DC, November 9 — On November 4, the arbitration award was announced settling the contract for Metro transit workers (Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689). It grants a 9.3% raise over four years, but a substantial increase in health care costs will eat up much of that "raise." The award also eliminates retiree health insurance for workers hired after January 1, 2010, creating still another division in the workforce.

While this was our worst contract in over a decade, the bosses immediately declared it was "too good" for the workers and have gone to court to overturn it. The New York City transit bosses are following the same tactic in "appealing" the arbitration award there.

The union president’s response was to take Metro to court to have the arbitration award enforced. When angry workers called for a strike, her main response was, "I’m not going to jail." But a union leader must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to represent, mobilize and lead the workers when we’re attacked.

Rank-and-file workers are aiming for a mass demonstration at the November 19 Metro Board of Directors meeting. Amid much confusion, one worker asked, "What are we fighting for? Should we fight to have a bad arbitration award enforced?"

Members and friends of PLP are trying to advance the fight on many levels. Workers want and need a decent pay raise, cuts in the racist wage-progression system — which lowers entry-level wages for the mostly black youth comprising the newly-hired — and lower health insurance costs. But above all, we need a movement exposing the nature of the racist profit system and to show both the need and possibilities for communist revolution.

This struggle has erupted weeks away from electing a new local president. PLP member and 30-year bus driver Mike Golash is running to regain the presidency and lead the workers in sharper struggle against the capitalist crisis. A job action in Metro could build support for similar actions in NYC. These struggles can open the doors to transit workers joining a fighting PLP. (Full story next issue.) J

National Strike in Mexico

Mexico City, Nov 11 — The call for a national strike to repeal the presidential decree that destroyed the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME) and sent 44,000 workers out into the street is being supported by hundreds of organizations. Thousands of workers, students and farm workers started in the early morning hours confronting the police to take over and temporarily close the main roads that come into Mexico City from Puebla, Queretaro, Toluca, and Pachuca. Also, starting Tuesday night, students from UNAM took over some installations and today they expect that other unions, mass organizations and farm workers, college, universities and grade school students and teachers will join the strike. This afternoon they await the main marches and mobilizations to meet in the Zocolo, the square in downtown Mexico City.

This struggle is linked to the international capitalist crisis and the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry. The bosses are repressing, exploiting, and killing the working class. This is the opportunity to expose capitalism and its sellout, reformist, and opportunist leaders. At the same time, it’s a great opportunity to fight for the revolutionary communist ideas of PLP. (Full story next issue) J

Workers Put Brakes on UAW-Ford Contract Gang-up

CHICAGO, IL, November 1 — "I am so proud of my coworkers. We really exposed the UAW leadership and their level of collaboration with the bosses!" declared a 30-year black Ford worker. He was describing his feelings about almost 75% of Ford workers overwhelmingly rejecting the UAW leadership’s latest attempt to force auto workers to pay for the current capitalist crisis.

This was the fifth time in five years that the UAW had tried to force more concessions on an ever-shrinking workforce. UAW President Gettlefinger said, "We underestimated the fatigue…of people constantly having to make a decision on a contract." (Translation: "Workers are tired of this shit!") He also added that it wasn’t a bad contract; "We just didn’t do a good job selling it to our membership." (Or selling them out.)

Ford wanted the same deal Obama and the UAW worked out with GM and Chrysler during their brief bankruptcies: a no-strike clause, a wage-freeze for new hires entering the workforce at about $12/hour, and the consolidation of many job classifications. In "return," Ford offered the vague promise of maintaining 7,000 jobs. Wages and working conditions would be set by binding arbitration, sidestepping the rank-and-file ratification process.

Another worker at the rebellious UAW Local 551 meeting at the Chicago Ford Assembly Plant warned, "If we agree to that, we’re signing off our basic rights as workers. We can never let that happen!"

A worker laid off last January stunned the packed meeting when she said, "I’m going to wear my fancy UAW local 551 jacket, take my two kids and get my picture taken on the welfare line." She explained that laid-off workers were promised $500-a-week from Ford, for 26 weeks, if their Supplemental Unemployment Benefits (SUB) ran out. Instead, she is getting a check for $5.63! "How do you expect us to survive?" she shouted at the leadership.

These attacks have a profound racist character. Racist unemployment for black males in the former auto centers of Detroit, Buffalo and Milwaukee is over 50%! Foreclosures and evictions among black workers from Flint to Chicago’s South Side are in the tens of thousands. And the shrinking tax base created by massive unemployment and low wages has left the schools and mass transit in shambles. In Detroit, bus fares are going up 30% on December 1 while routes and weekend service are cancelled.

No sooner had the UAW contract been rejected than Ford announced a $1-BILLION third-quarter profit, a more than 2% gain in U.S. market share. The Detroit Free Press called this "an incredible $3-billion turnaround in North American operating profit." There’s no doubt that Gettlefinger and VP Bob King — the inside favorite to replace Gettlefinger this June — knew about Ford’s improved fortunes while they were trying to ram through even more concessions. The UAW’s loyalty to the bosses is a bottomless pit.

For workers, there is no end in sight to the current crisis as racist unemployment soars and plant closings and wage cuts continue. But workers’ fight-back seems to be increasing: from the 11-month Stella D’Oro strike in NY to the ‘07 Boeing strike, various transit and healthcare rallies and this latest rejection of a U.S. auto contract. A big part of our job is, wherever possible, to fan these sparks into flames and flames into fires. At the Chicago Ford meeting, some of the most militant leadership came from workers who are long-time CHALLENGE readers and have participated in many actions, from the Jena 6 rally in 2006 to PLP May Day marches and dinners.

These battles can become schools for communism if we use them to deepen our ties to the workers and win them to see the need for communist revolution and building a mass, fighting PLP. Adding their experience, knowledge and boldness to our ranks makes us a much stronger Party. Victories like those are much harder to reverse. J

Fight Racist Cook County Healthcare Cut-backs

CHICAGO, IL, October 25 — With almost 50 million uninsured and racist unemployment at a 60-year high, Cook County Health Services CEO Foley and the new System Board, are slashing services and cutting jobs at a breathtaking pace. There are over 1 million uninsured workers in Cook County, and growing every day with plant closings and layoffs. These cuts are racist to the core as 82% of the patients we care for are black or immigrant workers. It is the second wave after the cuts of 2007 that closed half the clinics for uninsured workers and eliminated 2,000 jobs.

While the bosses carry out their charade in Washington over health care, Democrats are running everything from the White House and Congress to the City and County governments in Chicago and Cook County. On the ground, this is what the reality is. With trillions going to expand the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon Pakistan and Iran, and with billions going to save the bankers, Barack Obama’s adopted South Side of Chicago shows the real future the bosses have in store for us.

Foley and his henchmen who represent the bailed-out bankers propose eliminating all in-patient care at 2 out of 3 public hospitals in the overwhelmingly black South Side of Chicago. What once existed as a "public option" for uninsured, poor workers will now include $10-$50 for visits plus charges on prescriptions, if you can afford increasing bus fare to get to your appointments! More than 300 County health care workers have received termination letters, with hundreds more still to come.

On the wards, anger runs high! PLP members and some of the most militant workers are calling for a demonstration in front of the hospital. The unions, SEIU, AFSCME, the Doctors SEIU Local and the nurses’ union have kept the workers largely in the dark about the cuts and lay-offs, while PLP has been the first to inform the workers, raising the need for communist revolution and calling for a rally in front of the hospital on Nov. 4. Many workers support our call and began making more copies of the County CHALLENGE PLP newsletter.

The unions are doing very little. The angrier the workers get, the less the union leadership does. They fear workers who want to make some real changes and take on leadership themselves. It’s situations like this where the sellouts show their true colors and the Party’s outlook rings true for the workers we are in struggle with. As this class struggle heats up, we have to be bolder and more militant, while keeping our "eyes on the prize" of building the Party, increasing the number of CHALLENGE readers and distributors, and trying to move workers and patients closer to and into the PLP. This is the real victory for the workers, for our patients, and for our class!

We are trying to mobilize all areas of the Party to play a role. A community group linked to our PLP health care club has signed on to support and build for our demonstration. We have been building with the SK Tool workers who have been on strike since August because their boss cut their healthcare coverage and will try and connect the struggles. We will unite County workers with CTA bus operators who just received 1,000 lay-off pink slips and with our public school teachers and students who already know the effects of "privatization." There are a series of town hall meetings organized by the fascist governing board that we plan on shutting down. J

a name="Open to PL’s Red Ideas on Battling School Budget Cuts">">"pen to PL’s Red Ideas on Battling School Budget Cuts

BERKELEY, CA, Oct. 24 — Over 400 students, teachers, and professors gathered from across California at a conference to "Defend Public Education" to make a plan of action against the budget cuts that have severely affected education and health care. PLP distributed a pamphlet calling for a political strike against the system that cuts education to pay for war, and advocating communist revolution. We distributed CHALLENGE to many participants.

The leaders of the conference channeled debates to discussions of tactics and dates rather than the nature and source of the crisis and the solutions. They imposed a "one-minute rule" which made it very hard to fight for our ideas as effectively as possible. But the stakes are high because, while the leaders sought to stop serious discussion, there was great anger at the racist cuts — which will freeze out a disproportionately large number of lower-income black and Latino students — and an understanding by many that these cuts are an attack on the whole working class. This is fertile ground. If we plant the right seeds and cultivate them with lots of care, the results will be more organizers for communist revolution.

Within the limits of the one-minute rule, we pointed out in the general assembly that while we need to build unity against the system carrying out the racist cuts, capitalist public education itself has a strategic flaw: the capitalist legislature controls it and its capitalist budget and runs it for the interests of the capitalists. They push their ideas that defend the same system that trains people for war, along with the racism that puts more black and Latino youth in prisons than in college.

The depth of the crisis means there will be cuts. That’s why our goal needs to be to get rid of capitalism with revolution. We argued that this is a long-term fight that requires us to reach out to students and workers in all areas. Others raised that the budget cuts were helping fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that imperialist war and bailouts of banks were the priorities of the ruling class.

Many students overwhelmingly supported a general strike which was proposed by students from San Francisco State. When a professor tried to water down the politics of this strike, asking whether it should be a general strike for education and public service, people screamed "no! general strike," and it was clarified that it meant having people from all sectors join in the struggle. The majority of the room applauded. It was decided to have a statewide action on March 4th, despite our struggles to plan actions for May 1st, International Workers Day.

We said that May Day should be a day of protest for the whole working class as in the past, that it should be part of a Spring offensive linking the attacks on students and workers here to the expanding wars and the massive prison population. There are more people in prison in California per capita than peacetime Nazi Germany. This is a fascist state. We said that it’s probable that the bombs of World War III have already started falling, which is another reason we should fight for a revolutionary May 1st.

The anger of students and teachers at this conference led many to show open interest in our ideas. However, we should have brought more people and been better organized. We underestimated the difficulty of doing the work with the imposition of the one-minute rule. We plan to be bolder on campuses and schools to deepen the fight for a communist society so that education, production and all of society will meet the needs of the working class. J

Capitalist Killer: Soaring Racist Unemployment

While U.S. rulers kill millions of workers and their families in imperialist oil wars, they are ravaging tens of millions of unemployed in the U.S., directly causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands (if not millions). This is even truer for black and Latino workers because of racist discrimination, a legacy reaching back to slavery. There are probably well over 35 million workers who cannot find full-time civilian employment in this supposedly world’s richest country.

Unemployment is built into the profit system. The bosses use it to force lower wages and benefits, and to try to limit workers’ fight back. There has never been full employment under capitalism, nor can there be. It is a system in which produciton is not planned, where every capitalist tries to capture as much of the market as possible to stay ahead of competitors. Then overproduction is inevitable, forcing many bosses to contract production or go bankrupt, laying off millions.

This endless cycle will continue until the working class, led by the communist PLP, overthrows this hellish system and the bosses’ state power. Then we’ll establish a society in which workers share the full value that they alone produce, collectively distributing it according to need.

a name="How Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure">">"ow Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure

The latest government unemployment figures only reinforce this sick character of capitalism. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports an "official" rate of joblessness at 10.2%, representing nearly 16 million workers, the BLS and the media are finally highlighting the fact that the real percentage is 17.5% — which includes part-time workers who cannot find full-time jobs plus "discouraged" workers who have given up looking for non-existent jobs. And even that is not the whole truth.

The BLS itself admits that in 2009 it has overstated employment by about one million jobs. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) believes that it’s closer to two million illusory jobs. The latter says the real jobless percentage in September, 2009, was 21.3%, which is more than twice October’s "official" 10.2%. And even that is still not the whole truth.

These figures do not include hundreds of thousands of youth who joined the military because they could not find a job, victims of the "economic draft." And they do not include millions on welfare who would be working if there were jobs for them and day-care for their children. And they do not count at least half of the 2.4 million workers and youth in prisons who have been incarcerated for non-violent "crimes." If back in the workforce (as they are in many other capitalist countries) they would also be hard-pressed to find a job in this Great Depression II.

So the nearly 16 million jobless workers represented by the 10.2% "official" figure become approximately 33 million given the 21.3 percentage, which in turn totals well over 35 million when including the economic draftees, workers on welfare and those imprisoned, all of whom are denied full-time jobs in this capitalist crisis-ridden economy.

Double Jobless Rates for Black and Latino Workers

This situation is absolutely a Great Depression for black and Latino workers. The "official" jobless rate for black workers is 17.1%, which, when including the underemployed and "discouraged," is closer to 35%. For Latino workers, the "official" rate is 13.1%, meaning a true rate approaching 30%.

Meanwhile, teenagers overall have an "official" unemployment rate of 27.6%, which means, considering all the other above factors, more than half of job-seeking youth are on the streets.

Killing the Jobless

A 1976 Congressional study attempting to "estimate the cost in human suffering of people being out of work" (NY Times, 10/31/76), concluded that every 1.4% rise in unemployment in 1970, led directly to the death of over 30,000 workers in the next five years from stress-related ailments, suicide and homicide. So even taking the 10.2% "official" jobless rate, that would kill over 200,000 workers in the next five years. And given the real unemployment rate, there would be far more deaths (not to mention the death rate for unemployed youth who joined the military for a "job" in Iraq or Afghanistan). Of course, this pales before the millions of workers killed in those two countries by U.S. imperialist wars.

The brutality of unemployment under capitalism contrasts sharply with what happened in the communist-led socialist society in the Soviet Union during world capitalism’s Great Depression in the 1930s. Unemployment was ZERO in the profit-free USSR during that period.

I name="t’s Not Obama (Or Bush) — It’s Capitalism"></a>"’s Not Obama (Or Bush) — It’s Capitalism

In attempting to get the profit system off the hook as the cause of this depression (and make himself look blameless), Obama is pointing to Bush administration policies as creating this crisis. But Obama and Bush both represent capitalism, a system which moves from boom to bust, from recessions to "bubbles" to depressions. There is only one way to end mass racist unemployment and all the evils it produces: destroy the bosses, profits and the wars the imperialists embark on to "solve" their crises. Only a PLP-led communist revolution can accomplish this. Then the working class — which creates all value — will control society, its state and production. Join us! J

a name="A Phony ‘Silver Lining’: ‘Rising Wages’!"></a>A "hony ‘Silver Lining’: ‘Rising Wages’!

Amid all this horrendous unemployment, the rulers’ media points to "a bright spot" — "rising wages"! "The average hourly wage for rank-and-file workers," reports the NY Times (11/7), "actually accelerated in October."

Of course, this statistic conveniently omits the "wages" of the tens of millions of unemployed and underemployed. Jobless benefits run about half of a worker’s previous weekly wage. And only about 40% of the labor force is even eligible for unemployment insurance.

So in talking about "the average hourly wage for rank-and-file workers," why not include the millions of jobless? Their "hourly wage" is down to ZERO. If that were counted into the overall "average" for the working class, wage figures would be in free-fall.

Millions of workers are suffering losses in savings, homes and pensions. Whatever these workers won in past class struggles is taken away every time the capitalist system produces a crisis in which the workers take the losses. That’s why PLP says workers cannot win a decent life for themselves and their children through trying to reform this profit system. Only communist revolution can do the job.

Student Strikes Spread Across Austria, Germany

VIENNA, AUSTRIA, November 5 — "The university is burning!" has been the name given to massive strikes and demonstrations which began here two weeks ago when thousands occupied universities. They have now spread across the country and into Germany. On October 28, 50,000 university and high school students took to the streets here. In Berlin, 20,000 demonstrated, part of 100,000 nation-wide. International unity has marked the movement, with German students welcomed here and German-born and Turkish students joining together in anti-racist unity in Nuremberg, Germany.

The students in both countries are demanding abolition of fees, free education, more funding for schools instead of for banks, a 50% rule for women staffing, "more democracy" in running the universities, higher wages for public school teachers and increased hiring. The movement is an inspiration for students worldwide to organize strikes for their demands.

However, there is no communist leadership in this upsurge, which could point out that under capitalism the ruling class controls and uses education for its profit-making purposes and will never allow students any "democracy" to run the universities or public schools. Only a communist society run by the working class would insure that education serves our class, not profit-driven bosses and bankers. J

a name="Iran: Workers’ Misery Worsens As Bosses Fight It Out">">"ran: Workers’ Misery Worsens As Bosses Fight It Out

The protestors who took to the streets of Iran’s cities this summer, responding to the political games played by the ruling clerics and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are making the same deadly mistake their parents made 30 years ago: following leaders as bad as the fascists they are rebelling against. It’s as true in Iran as it is anywhere: every faction of the ruling class, while appearing to be different, is essentially a parasite on the backs of workers, sucking away our lives for their profit.

In 1969, students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Millions took to the streets to celebrate the closing of the "nest of spies." Iranians had (and have) many reasons to hate U.S. imperialism, including U.S. oil companies draining the country of billions of dollars per year while most Iranians were dirt poor. The U.S. also propped up the Shah, whose infamous Savak secret police tortured anti-Shah activists.

The protestors accepted the leadership of the religious fanatic Ayatollah Khomeini. Mistakenly believing that anyone was better than the Shah, many workers, including militant oil-field workers, backed the Ayatollah. (Actually oil-worker strikes were the main factor in forcing out the Shah, something the clerics try to hide.) In fact, the clerics who took over were medieval fascists at least as bad as the Shah. Soon Iran was engaged in what would be an 8-year war with Iraq in which over 300,000 died, including thousands of children used to clear mine-fields.

The Iranian working class paid the price for this mistake. As oppression and exploitation continued, many workers came to hate the current fascist dictators. The popular anger directed toward the clerics broke out into the open during this spring’s presidential election campaign.

Seeing that the "Green Movement" protests were going beyond election politics to reject the clerics themselves, a faction of the Iranian ruling class broke away from the crude and arrogant president Ahmadinejad and present "supreme leader" Khamenei. This Green Movement included a former prime minister (Musavi), a former speaker of parliament (Karubi), and a former president (Khatami). Their agenda is to reform and thereby strengthen the ruling class in Iran.

Unfortunately, many Iranian workers in the Green Movement also have illusions about Obama and U.S. imperialism. They figure that if the clerical leaders hate the U.S., then the latter must be pretty good. But, in fact, the rabid nationalists in small-time powers like Iran are often bitter opponents of U.S. imperialism because they want to reap for themselves the profits from exploiting the working class, rather than seeing U.S. companies take the lion’s share. Hugo Chavez is playing the same game in Venezuela, trying to oust U.S. bosses in order to enrich his ruling-class allies.

Ironically Obama reversed long-standing U.S. policy of trying to overturn the Islamic Republic, instead returning to the Reagan-era option of dealing with the clerical fascists. Then U.S. rulers wanted a common front against their Soviet rivals; now the issue is Iran giving up its nuclear weapons program in return for acceptance of the Islamic Republic.

Bush had talked about regime change, confident that popular protests would bring to power liberals eager to ally with U.S. imperialism. Obama thought that Bush was over-reaching because the clerics were too entrenched. This looked like a good call in early 2009, but now, given the summer protests, looks like much less of a sure thing. Obama is stuck with the policy he decided on; endorsing the protests would look like he’s returning to the Bush plan. So Obama continues to focus on dealing with the clerics while doing his best to ignore the protestors who adore him and the U.S.

Fifty years ago Iran had one of the world’s largest communist parties that was not in power. The Shah smashed that. Thirty years ago, Iran had a whole variety of popular movements and parties inspired by Marxism-Leninism. The clerics smashed them. In both cases, these parties were fundamentally flawed by their reformism and nationalism – what we call "revisionism" — because it revises the revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism. The gallery of Green Movement leaders listed above proves that they are totally pro-capitalist.

Leaders dedicated to preserving capitalist rule will never meet the needs of workers. Many of the protestors are angry about the grinding poverty of the working class, demanding reforms like higher wages and less corruption. At the moment, there is no communist leadership to turn these protests into the preparatory steps toward revolution and workers’ dictatorship.

Meanwhile, the clerical fascists will likely succeed at suppressing the liberal protests: liberal leaders are not willing to take up arms. And the clerics will continue to press against the U.S. and for nuclear weapons, attempting to become a big power in the Middle East. Iran, however, lies above the world’s second largest known reserves of oil, too tempting a prize for imperialists like the U.S., Russia or China to ignore. So the most likely forecast for Iran is war and fascism. J

Colombia: Appearance of Progress, Essence of Exploitation

The Colombian government has planned to turn its capital city, Bogotá, into an international business center. To do so, it is implementing infrastructural projects to make the city more "attractive" to investors. This lucrative deal for big capital, paid by Colombians’ taxes, is in reality a nightmare for thousands of workers and their families.

Transmilenio, the company that monopolized the transportation system in major cities, turning them into concrete hells and causing the homelessness of thousands of workers, now is getting ready to build a subway system that will increase the taxes of the working class. This project has already taken away the homes of thousands of families who were forced to "sell" to the state at ridiculously low prices and now wander the streets looking for apartments they cannot effort. Street vendors were evicted because, according to the government, they made the city "ugly," and were the cause of crime and lack of safety.

But now, old housing is going to be demolished to build modern units to be rented at higher prices, to benefit the big chain stores and rich merchants. This hurts many families who lived off maquila production and retail and will lose their jobs. These small vendors are always harassed, manipulated and coerced by cops and politicians, who seek their votes but who, once elected, turn against them to the benefit of their own businesses.

This time, things are not any different, and we are beginning to see the emergence of opportunists who come to offer every kind of legal and peaceful solution, of course. There are those who speak of the love of God, and those who argue that the government will provide subsidies for relocations, as it has done in the past. There are many who no longer believe in promises, see that capitalism is a dictatorship of misery, and are searching for other forms of struggle against these genocidal policies.

PLP and CHALLENGE are in the thick of things, arguing for unity and revolutionary organization. We argue that the elimination of salaries and private property will put an end to worrying about paying rent, taxes or public services. The mansions, cathedrals, offices and commercial centers, now used by capitalists, will be refurbished to address our need for housing, encouraging us to fight knowing that by changing this racist and individualist system, and replacing it with communism, we’ll put an end to all injustices.

To build a communist future for our class join PLP! J

LETTERS

a name="Religion Excuses Bosses’ Murder">">"eligion Excuses Bosses’ Murder

The essence of life is struggle, not a god. Recently, two events enabled the political development of a group of friends: the death of the brother of a comrade and of the brother of a friend. This opened a discussion about religion and the health care system in Mexico.

One death was caused by the racist lack of medical equipment in an indigenous marginal community and the other by the exploitation and terrible working conditions for minors. A child died because of an electric shock and the other now lives as a vegetable without an arm and unable to speak or walk.

These incidents are only two examples of a system that kills our working class in every corner of the world. However, the capitalist system has taken charge of telling us that death is "natural" because that’s how god wanted it. That’s why the majority of people in both situations commented that god had allowed these situations to make us see that we’re nothing in the world and that our destiny is in the hands of god.

However, as communists we can’t stay quiet. The pain can get into our deepest thoughts. But dialectics helps us to understand and able to express to our friends that these deaths were not caused by god’s will. In an open and convincing way we said that god doesn’t exist, that man only sees god because of the poverty and need in which he lives. Material need under capitalism induces many to have faith in something that doesn’t exist, in this case a god, and material abundance makes us thank god. The bosses take advantage of this ignorance to dominate and exploit the working class.

That night our friends commented on what happened, and how we saw the deaths. The next day one of them, who is a CHALLENGE reader, asked several questions. Later he commented that, for him and another friend, these things have made them doubt the existence of god and many other things and situations, and that they are confused. It’s encouraging to know that the seed of communism is growing in every person we know and that we only have to cultivate it.

Young comrade in Mexico

a name="Capitalism is Bad for Workers’ Health">">"apitalism is Bad for Workers’ Health

Lately work has been killing me, literally. This past summer I got pneumonia from working too many double shifts in a diesel exhaust-filled environment. Then last week I got a viral infection from the same thing. And tonight, per usual my back is bothering me again. These phony politicians yammer on about healthcare reform, but they don’t give a crap about workers’ health. Every day our jobs are hurting us, from industrial workers breathing in killer fumes to teachers getting bladder problems from holding it in too long. We need communism more than ever to give workers the power to change these things, and go see a doctor without worrying about sick time!

A Sick Red

H.S. Students are Inspiring Organizers

It has been an inspiring week in my school. A month after a student told me that she wanted to organize a protest; PL led a loud and militant action in front of the UFT Delegate Assembly. The students linked arms to secure our speakers from the kkkops and made two speeches that condemned the budget cuts, how they exist because of the war, and how the U.S. military is the largest contributor to Global Warming.

Two days later when the student who organized the protest and I were discussing it and the trip to Harper’s Ferry, another student came into my classroom and declared that she organized over a hundred people to go to Boston to help keep a hospital from closing. I gave her all the CHALLENGES that I had and she agreed to distribute them up there.

I asked her to write something for CHALLENGE. She wrote this:

It was a cloudy Saturday afternoon in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and students organized to fight for the hospital they were born in, Lowell General Hospital. Objects were being thrown. Students showed their anger with tears, while curses never heard on the face of the earth were said to police officers. "I have only been in two protests in my life, but this was the most breathtaking," said Lowell resident Priscilla Lara. She was also born in Lowell General.

People think that just because we, the teenagers, are not legally adults, we don’t have a voice to fight for what we believe in. Well, guess what? We fought back. We cried, we screamed, and we made sure our voices were heard:

VIVA LA PAZ

VIVA LA GUERRA DE CLASE

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!

Needless to say, PLP continues to grow and provide leadership to the students and teachers at this school, yet never fails to be inspired and awestruck at the sheer potential within these children of the proletariat.

Red Teacher

Today I Saw the Party and Felt Our Potential

I would have failed to bring students to a rally today if it weren’t for the work of another comrade. Working with a friend of one of my students, he ensured that three students from my school were able to attend and participate in the rally. Many members of PLP brought youth.

The phony leftists were there, looking like the old and decrepit parasites that they are, attempting to leech off others. One group brought some youth, but only ours were leading chants, distributing fliers, and fighting back.

It was great that a comrade’s activities in one school could really help the work in my school grow and develop. It’s a great time to be a communist, as the three students that I brought read the paper, two for the first time, and really liked it. They are looking forward to doing more things with us in the future.

The three students were given fliers by a veteran comrade, and they quickly fell into doing Party work. Though they were a bit nervous at first, they handed them out to everyone they came into contact with. They led some chants on a bullhorn. We were given the bullhorn because the students and I were being so spirited in our chants. We made plans to meet up with the other comrade and his students to see the movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story."

After that rally, the students were willing to meet uptown for an additional rally. After having a good discussion on communism, we all headed home. I have a renewed determination to destroy capitalism due to the inspiration of seeing our youth and Party in action.

Red Teacher

a name="Michael Moore’s Movie: ‘Here we go again...""></">Mi"hael Moore’s Movie: ‘Here we go again..."

Several friends and I went to see Michael Moore’s new movie. Moore powerfully attacks the inequalities of capitalism. I found myself applauding in agreement enthusiastically as Moore attacks capitalist vultures like AIG, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, Bank of America and Wal-Mart.

But at the end of the movie, I replied "Here we go again," as Moore implored us to put our faith in Roosevelt, Obama and democracy to reform capitalism. I don’t think so!

There are some very moving moments in the movie. "My family lived in this house for years; we always paid our bills and now our home is being repossessed by the bank. Sometimes I’d like to kill those people," stated an Oklahoma farmer.

In a more hopeful moment, Moore shows the militant sit-in strike of the workers at the Windows and Door factory in Chicago. They won a cash settlement from the Bank of America after the support of thousands of workers.

See "Capitalism, A Love Story." It will lead to lots of discussion and ultimately our answer… communist revolution.

Stockton Movie Club

Songs, Poems, Spoken Word: Weapons in the Class Struggle

The Stella D’Oro Bakery in the Bronx was closed October 8, perhaps for the last time. In the shadow of the elevated subway train, a rally of workers and supporters gathered outside the bakery. Workers were brought together and spirits roused by the sounds of "Rise Again," a revolutionary song led by a member of PLP. Two workers asked for copies of the song, and about 35 copies were also given to other workers.

This was not the first time in the past year where revolutionary songs, and other forms of such culture have played a role in helping to build class struggle and PLP. In December 2008, a successful holiday party was organized for the children of striking Stella D’Oro workers. It was wonderful to see children (and some parents) playing musical chairs to the live sounds of "Señor Inversionista," and "Bella Ciao." Several PLP songs were sung to an appreciative audience of strikers and their supporters. The songs lifted spirits while conveying aspects of the Party’s ideas.

In the spring, some PL members sang at a fund-raising concert for the same striking workers. As we sang "The Internationale" most of the audience stood with fists held high, many singing along; some were enthralled, hearing and responding for the first time to this classic working-class anthem. Since then, at several support rallies, we sang our ‘Stella D’Oro’ version of "Which Side Are You On," a famous song of strikers’ struggle and defiance.

A recent evening of songs, poetry and spoken word involved, inspired and informed the multi-ethnic audience of over 100 people about a legal case against anti-immigrant racism and a related act of police brutality. The program was enriched by the variety of styles, the powerfully sharp messages, the diverse backgrounds and political mix of performers, including several PL members. Among the performers was a Stella D’Oro Bakery worker and an active strike supporter who, in Spanish and English, read a Pablo Neruda poem, El Gran Mantel (The Great Tablecloth).

We should increase our efforts in creating and using culture as a weapon, in concert with base-building and engaging in class struggle. Efforts have begun to rebuild a culture committee and to record songs, in varied genres, for a new PLP album. If you have songs to be included, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

PL Singer

a name="‘Capitalism: A Love Story’"></">‘C"pitalism: A Love Story’ :A Movie in Love with ‘Reforming’ Capitalism

Our Study Action Group saw Michael Moore’s movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story." Why did the bosses allow this pseudo-anti-capitalist movie in theaters? Because Moore "criticizes" capitalism while reinforcing liberal capitalist ideology and supporting its "commander-in-chief" Barack Obama. Moore puts his hero Obama on a pedestal as representing a people’s fight-back movement that defeated the bad guys — the Republicans Bush and Reagan. He blames Bush for the bailouts, ignoring Obama’s doling out more hundreds of billions once in office.

Moore praised Franklin Roosevelt’s "second bill of rights" (which was never adopted) yet did not once mention the U.S. Communist Party’s role in the 1930s in fighting racism and in organizing the mass production industries. That’s what produced what passes for "the American standard of living" which Roosevelt used in his "bill of rights."

Moore’s only reference (implied) to communism was as "the other ‘ism’" and in depicting troops marching. He closed with a Sinatra-esque rendition (over the final credits) of the communist "Internationale" (which most movie-goers would not recognize) adapted to U.S. issues.

Moore says nothing about imperialism, which capitalism spawns. He ignores the union sellouts’ role in the demise of the labor movement. And in promoting the European social-democratic welfare state as "better than" U.S. capitalism, he also ignores the mass layoffs and anti-immigrant racism there.

Moore advances a monumental historical lie in saying that the National Guard was ordered out in the 1936 great Flint sit-down strike against GM to "protect the strikers from police attacks." (!) They were there to take the plants back from the workers, and were prevented only by the sit-downers’ determination to destroy the company’s billion-dollar machinery if attacked.

Moore’s analysis of capitalism and class struggle is the same old formula of rich vs. poor. It lacks an understanding of capitalism as a class dictatorship where the bourgeoisie owns the means of production and uses the working class to extract surplus value — its profits — from our labor. Moore basically defines capitalism as greed.

He says "democracy" is the only hope to defeat unregulated capitalism. One member of our group shouted out that he had already disproved "democracy" 30 minutes earlier when he showed Congress as not stopping the bailouts because the ruling class had decided to keep them. This abstract term "democracy" hides the true nature of the bosses’ dictatorship which allows us to choose our masters’ mouthpiece once every so many years. "Democracy" means voting according to the bosses’ rules and for one or another of their politicians.

The audience reacted strongly to images of evictions, the "dead peasant insurance" — companies insuring its workers while making themselves the beneficiaries when the workers die — as well as the story of corruption and fraudulent incarceration of Wilkes Barre, PA’s youth. They shouted, swore and agreed with much of the criticism of greed endemic to capitalism. Although the audience’s anger at capitalism is positive, Moore does the bidding of the liberal wing of the ruling class, the major imperialists, as they seek to curb the excess short-run greed of maverick capitalists in order to win workers and youth to defending capitalism in the long-run, especially in a wartime economy.

One friend said she was angered by the white middle-class lens that permeated this film. Only white teenagers were depicted as being falsely incarcerated in a rural community, not the black and Latino working-class youth routinely harassed and murdered by the state. Moore also omitted the constant police brutality against black, Latino and undocumented workers. He carefully navigated around the bosses’ need for racism to maintain capitalism.

He only portrayed the eviction of white families, though he did show a multi-racial (non-violent) struggle to keep a family in their home. This was the exception in the film, not the rule. The movie is clearly aimed at middle-class liberals and white and black workers who Obama needs for support.

Though the film doesn’t provide a structured analysis of the failure of capitalism, it does place the word "capitalism" back into the discussion of what’s wrong with the world.

Workers and students should see and discuss this movie with their friends and co-workers. It was entertaining, especially when Moore tried to make a "citizen’s arrest" of the corporate big shots who pillaged the treasury via "bailouts" and he himself was threatened with arrest. This climactic moment can easily lead to a discussion of how workers’ tribunals will arrest and punish the capitalists and their imperialist lackeys when our class has state power in a workers’ dictatorship.

Moore’s definition of "democracy" as a system where everyone can discuss what they need can only be realized through millions of workers fighting for a PLP-led communist revolution. J

Red Eye on the News

Immigration jail: No-help hellhole

NYT, 11/2 — A startling petition arrived at the New York City Bar Association in October 2008, signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the middle of Manhattan.

In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day.

The petitioners were among 250 detainees imprisoned in an immigration jail. The Varick Street Detention Facility takes in 11,000 men a year, most of them long-time New Yorkers facing deportation without a lawyer.

Immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice.

Volunteers, including lawyers from 16 corporate firms, say they can offer only rudimentary legal triage to a handful of detainees a week.

Yet a detainee from the former Soviet Union praised the jail. "Varick is heaven" compared with some county jails in New Jersey (Bergen and Monmouth) and Florida, he said, citing abuse by anti-immigrant guards.

A century-long line of Supreme Court decisions holds that immigration detention is not a punishment or deprivation of liberty, and does not require legal counsel for fundamental fairness.

Fascist Colombia prez is U.S. pal

GW, 10/23 — Under Uribe’s rule the country has made impressive gains. But scratch the surface of the shiny new Colombia and enamel flakes away…

Scandals have felled dozens of senior allies and officials — illegal wiretaps, bribes and links to narco-traffickers and paramilitary death squads. The army slaughtered hundreds of slum-dwellers and dressed their corpses up to look like guerillas. And yet Uribe has emerged pleading innocence.

Uribe has risked journalists’ lives by publicly accusing them of being terrorists, obliging them to flee before rightwing hit squads took the hint…. The message to investigative journalists was clear, expose wrongdoing by the state at your peril.

The lowlands are controlled by rightwing paramilitaries who quietly re-formed after a much-trumpeted demobilization…. Thousands of families live in shacks, too afraid to return to their farms, seized for palm oil plantations and protected by paramilitary thugs and government officials.

The U.S. regards Uribe as a key ally, a bulwark against not just leftist guerillas but South America’s anti-Yankee tide.

Could oil pipeline be a motive?

Creators.com, 10/10 — Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the statement of the president’s national security advisor, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan:

"The al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Less than 100! And he is basing his conservative estimate on the best intelligence data available to our government. That means that al Qaeda, for all practical purposes, does not exist in Afghanistan – so why are we having a big debate about sending even more troops to fight an enemy that has relocated elsewhere?

Racist poverty dooms many youth

MinutemanMedia.org, 9/25 — So many poor babies in rich America enter the world with multiple strikes against them: born without prenatal care, at low birth weight, with poor, poorly educated, and very young mothers and absent fathers. At crucial points in their development more risks pile on, making a successful transition to productive adulthood significantly less likely, and involvement in the criminal justice system significantly more likely.

Children with an incarcerated parent are more likely to become incarcerated. Black children are nearly nine times and Latino children are three times as likely as white children to have an incarcerated parent.

Black children are more than three times as likely as white children to be poor, and are four times as likely to live in extreme poverty. A poor black boy born in 2001 has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime.

2 biz bribes = billion to Congress

Washington Post, 10/8 – The financial, insurance and real estate industries – the troika at the heart of the meltdown – spent more than $459 million lobbying Congress last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That is more than any industry sector other than the unsurprising lobbying champion of 2008, the health care industry. The tally for 2009 has not been calculated.

If I spent nearly a half-billion dollars to win your ear, would you listen? This is the bet the financial industry makes. It continues to yield excellent returns.

Poor rejecting India’s democracy

NYT, 11/1 – India has tamed some secessionist movements by coaxing rebel groups into the country’s big-tent political process. The Maoists, however, do not want to secede or be absorbed. Their goal is to topple the system.

Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality.

"The root of this is dispossession and deprivation,"…If the Maoists’ political goals seem unattainable, analysts warn they will not be easy to uproot, either…Maoists dominate thousands of square miles of territory and have…a so-called Red Corridor stretching across central and eastern India… "We are not fighting an enemy here. We are fighting citizens."

Rulers’ newspeak: Jobless recovery

MinutemanMedia.org, 10/17 – Bankers back, to steal and rob; But I haven’t got a job. "Jumbo shrimp" and "military intelligence" now have a new competitor in the battle for America’s favorite oxymoron. It’s "jobless recovery."

The Federal Reserve has crafted this artful term to describe an economic condition where banks are again doing fine and bonuses are flowing, but most everyone else is still in the tank.

U.S. infant mortality is racist

NYT, 11/4 – High rates of premature birth are the main reason the United States has higher infant mortality than do many other rich countries…The smallest, earliest and most fragile babies were often born to poor and minority women who lacked health care and social support. The highest rates of infant mortality occur in non-Hispanic black, American Indian, Alaska Native and Puerto Rican women.

Bias will feed health dangers

NYT, 11/4 – Public health researchers in California said they were dismayed at the large numbers of immigrants, primarily who would remain uninsured even if the health care legislation passed, arguing they would perpetuate costly inefficiencies in the system.

"They may have conditions that don’t get identified and infectious diseases that could be prevented that put the public at risk, and they may need to use higher cost hospital services when other services become inaccessible…You can either keep those immigrants healthy now, or exclude them and wait until they’re really sick, then pay for it down the line."

Insurance co’s lie on med spending

NYT, 11/3 – The health insurance industry likes to cite figures showing that 87 cents of every dollar in premiums is spent on medical claims.

But a new Senate analysis suggests that for-profit insurance companies are spending much less than that…as little as 66 cents of each dollar paid in premiums goes toward doctor and hospital bills.

Capitalism unveils amazing idea!

NYT, 11/4 – The Investor Protection Act of 2009…will impose a fiduciary standard on brokers who offer investment advice, requiring them to act in their clients’ best interests.

Left Behind by ‘No-Child’ effect

NYT, 10/30 – A new federal study shows that nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under the No Child Left Behind law. But lowering standards also confuses parents about…children’s achievement…

"At a time when we should be raising standards to compete in the global economy, more states are lowering the bar than raising it."

‘Public option’ won’t cut premiums

NYT, 10/30 – The Congressional Budget Office estimated that six million people would sign up for a public insurance plan.

But the budget office said the premiums in the government plan would be "somewhat higher than the average premiums" charged by private insurers, in part because the public plan…would have to accept all applicants.

Thanksgiving: A Holocaust for Native Americans

In the United States, Thanksgiving is a holiday of family and food. But the politics of the holiday — taught to elementary school children across the U.S. — are a racist and patriotic lie, representing the holocaust for millions of Native Americans.

The Thanksgiving that colonial Puritans — a group of religious fundamentalists — practiced was originally thanking god for the slaughter of Native Americans by colonial swords and diseases. There were many such Thanksgivings.

In 1637 a faction of Puritans occupied an area that is now Connecticut with the aid of British and Dutch colonial forces. In the pre-dawn hours they slaughtered more than 700 adults and children of the Pequot Tribe, who had gathered for their annual Green Corn festival. The next morning the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" for the occupier’s murder of the native population.

The truth about Thanksgiving helps us see the bosses’ lies. Progressive Labor Party aims to smash their grip on our minds so that we can build a fighting mass anti-racist communist movement that ends the bosses’ sexist, racist and genocidal system for good.

The Truth About Pilgrims and Indians

The "first" Thanksgiving dinner between "pilgrims" and "Indians," reenacted by the U.S. ruling class in schools and TV specials, was in 1621 between the Wampanoag — a confederation of several Native American groups located mainly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island — and a group of 121 English colonists led by 28 Puritans that landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Contrary to the idea that the colonists shared their food with the Wampanoags, the Puritans had too little to share. They only invited two natives, Squanto and Samoset, and sachem (tribal leader) Massasoit. They brought more than 90 fellow tribespeople as well as most of the food, in the egalitarian tradition of their communities. Whereas Wampanoag men and women ate together at the same time, Pilgrim women had to dine after their men were done, following their sexist Puritan tradition.

Without Squanto and Samoset, colonists would not have survived. Half of them died from diseases and starvation. The two taught the colonists how to fish, hunt, and grow crops. However, the Puritans regarded Native Americans as "heathens," and saw Squanto as "god’s instrument" to help the "chosen" people, the pilgrims. Squanto had been captured more than 15 years earlier and brought to Europe, where he was taught English and became a Christian. When he returned to New England 14 years later, settled with the Pilgrims, aiding them not only in their survival, but in their campaigns against the Wampanoag.

An elder pilgrim gave a Thanksgiving sermon in 1623, two years after the Wampanoag saved them, thanking god for small pox killing Wampanoag "young men and children… thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth."

A generation later, in 1676, colonists killed off the Wampanoag in a genocidal land grab — including decapitating sachem Metacom, son of sachem Massasoit. The Wampanoag actually won early campaigns against the Puritans in 1675, attacking more than 50 colonial towns and destroying 13. But the Wampanoag had been plagued by deadly diseases that cut their population more than 90% just before the arrival of the Puritans in 1621.

The spread of deadly diseases that came from continuous contact between Europeans and Native Americans was spurred by the colonialists’ search for gold, slaves, trade and colonies — not romantic exploration. The Puritans, as well as Spanish, French and English occupiers, believed that "god" cleared natives out of the Americas for colonial settlement. Their ideas were supported by a religion that endorsed genocide and slavery.

Modern scientists speculate that frequent bathing, low population densities and few disease-transmitting livestock kept Native Americans healthy. But they generally had no natural or childhood immunity to diseases common in Europe, where dense populations bathed infrequently and were routinely exposed to disease-ridden livestock. Before disease — mainly smallpox — ravaged native communities, Massachusetts natives successfully drove off French colonists in 1606 and English colonists in 1607.

But in 1676 the English regrouped from their early defeats and went on to wipe out the Native Americans. After the colonialists’ victory against Wampanoag they declared a "day of public Thanksgiving for the beginning of revenge upon the enemy." A generation after sachem Massasoit helped feed the "first" Thanksgiving diners, the occupiers placed his son’s head on display in Plymouth for 24 years.

Patriotism and Racism — The Purpose of Rulers’ Lies

Ruling-class U.S. historians developed the modern Thanksgiving myth in the 1890s to help unify workers around a common, patriotic history. However, U.S. rulers continued the policy of exterminating native peoples for their land after the War of Independence against England. George Washington suggested only one day should be set aside for Thanksgiving instead of rejoicing after each massacre. Later, during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day a national holiday on the same day that he ordered union troops to march against the starving Sioux tribe in Minnesota.

Teaching lies about "generous" Puritans of the past supports modern U.S. rulers’ racist, patriotic lies about democracy. They want us to believe in the good intentions of the government at the same time bosses are using state power to strip away workers’ few gains. But none of the few benefits that U.S. workers gained were graciously handed down to us from the successors of the Puritans. They were all fought for with militant strikes, demonstrations and occasionally guns.

Also, much like the Native Americans cut down by early capitalists, more than one million workers have been killed in Iraq. In Afghanistan uncounted thousands have been killed. Then and now the capitalists’ motive is competition for profit. It is the capitalists — with their genocidal wars — that are the savages, not workers.

As workers in the U.S. try to enjoy the holidays, Progressive Labor Party gives thanks to all those around the world committed to smashing the bosses’ racist, sexist and genocidal capitalist system. We invite all workers to join PLP and fight for communism so that one day future generations can feast on food and drink, free from the capitalists’ exploitation and lies. J

SOURCES

"The Hidden History of Massachusetts: A Guide for Black Folks"

"Are You Teaching The Real Story of the ‘First Thanksgiving’?"

James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me

Chuck Larsen, "Teaching About Thanksgiving: An Introduction" & "The Plymouth Thanksgiving Story"

Reservations: U.S. Concentration Camps

U.S. Native Americans that survived the bosses’ wars and diseases were forced into concentration camps — also know as reservations — with the worst, least irrigable land. Today, racism against Native Americans remains extreme. Median incomes for the latter and for Alaska Natives are 27% less than the overall U.S. median. According to the Census 2000 Special Report, of those living below the official poverty level in 1999, there were two Native Americans and Alaska Natives to every one person in the general population.

The racist oppression of Native Americans is also evident in health demographics. While the death rate for the total U.S. population has decreased by 17% between 1991 and 2006, the death rate has surged by upwards of 20% for Native American women and has remained flat for Native American men. Almost 12% of the deaths among Native Americans and Alaska Natives are alcohol-related — more than three times the percentage in the general population (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report 08/08).

A worker on an Arizona reservation reported to CHALLENGE that Homeland Security harasses and attacks workers on reservations, much like police brutalize black and Latino workers in the ghettos. It was only in 2004 that Boston, Massachusetts overturned a law banning Native Americans in the city. The law had been on the books since 1675, the year war was raging between colonists and the Wampanoag.

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Derrion Albert Is Not Racist Capitalism’s First or Last Victim

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13 November 2009 344 hits

Students gather after the beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert.CHICAGO, October 10 — The fatal beating of 16-year-old Derrion Albert on September 24 left more than one victim. Anjanette Albert, Derrion’s mother, was correct when she identified the young men charged with first-degree murder in her son’s senseless death as “victims too.” Capitalism — which creates poverty, homelessness, unemployment and war in its relentless drive for profits — causes this violence. Racism is one of the system’s main weapons that victimizes and divides our class.

Only communist revolution can make a real difference in the lives of the young black workers in these neighborhoods.

Communists fight for a future of equality for the entire working class, black, Latino and white. We will have to eliminate the rich bosses who run this society in order to guarantee a future for our young people.

Tale of Two Communities Victimized by Racism

At Fenger High School, located in the “Ville,” an area in the predominantly black Roseland community, only 6% of last year’s students met or exceeded standards on the reading portion of the Illinois State Achievement Test. This community is plagued with an astronomical number of black households now in foreclosure. One-third there lives in poverty, with no job stimulus on the horizon.

Another victimized community is the neighboring Altgeld Gardens. CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) developed this isolated far-South Side housing project for black factory workers during World War II. The Pullman Company dumped its waste on the spot Altgeld Gardens now stands. One of the nation’s five worst concentrations of toxic waste is on Chicago’s South Side. The “Gardens” has a high poverty and unemployment rate and is among the 15% lowest-income communities in the U.S.; 85% of Chicago’s children live in poverty.

The Rulers’ ‘Answer’: Military School and National Guard

The youth violence infecting our communities will only sharpen with capitalism’s economic crisis. Any recovery, just like the Olympics, will not be coming to poor black and Latino neighborhoods. Obama knows this. That’s why he dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) — to the city this week to meet with angry parents, and students. “Chicago won’t be defined by this incident but rather our response to it” was the three-second sound bite Duncan told the TV news cameras. But it’s Duncan’s racist Renaissance 2010 school reform that is directly responsible for driving the escalating numbers of youth deaths even higher.

While running CPS, Duncan closed dozens of  public schools, opened more charter schools and sent thousands of students outside of their poverty/gang-infested neighborhoods into new unfamiliar poverty/gang-infested neighborhoods. Before Renaissance 2010, the intolerable number of CPS students fatally shot in these neighborhoods was 15. In the 2006-07 school year it rose to 24; in 2007-08 to 23 deaths and 211 shootings. Now in 2008-09 it’s risen to over 40 fatalities and 290 shootings (five in the first two months). These resemble numbers from Iraq or Afghanistan.

The war-makers’ “answer”? The miniaturization of the schools. Duncan closed Carver High, Altgeld Gardens’ neighborhood school, turning it into a selective enrollment military school. He “turned around” Fenger High School, meaning he fired all the teachers, clerks, engineers, etc., hiring all new personnel.

Mayor Daley and Jesse Jackson’s response is using the National Guard to patrol the streets in these black neighborhoods, to “provide safe passage to school for our youth.” Marilyn Stewart, Chicago Teachers Union president and collaborator with Duncan, responded by calling for special schools that house only “trouble-making” students. They have plenty already; they’re called juvenile detention centers.

PLP’s Education Club took the lead from the youth and held a rally and CHALLENGE sale in the Roseland community, distributing leaflets and 130 papers and speaking on the bullhorn. A college student printed a sign reading, “Beep 4 revolution.”

Overall, the young people were encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the workers and youth they talked to. This has sparked a revival in our regular Saturday CHALLENGE sales, and spurred us to join an anti-violence youth organization, enabling us to meet more workers interested in PLP’s ideas on multi-racial unity and revolution. Through such mass organizations, we can help organize anti-racist class struggle, possible school walkouts and mobilizations against these increasing racist assaults.

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Stella D’Oro Workers’ Heads High, Keep Up the Fight

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13 November 2009 287 hits

BRONX, NY, October 2 — Over 200 bakers, mechanics, electricians, teachers, professors, city workers, day care workers, teamsters, and transit workers chanted together, “The workers, united, will never be defeated!”; “Keep Stella in the Bronx”; and “Whose factory? Our Factory!” in front of the Stella D’Oro factory.

The Stella workers and their supporters are still fighting to keep their jobs and to obtain compensation if the plant is sold. Brynwood Partners (owners of the factory) is in the process of selling the company and equipment to a non-union factory owned by Lance Co. in Ashland, Ohio.

One Stella worker who spoke explaining that the fight continues, and that whatever happens the workers are holding their heads high; the bosses are the losers. Another worker said they never believed that we would last three months on strike. “But they were wrong. They never thought that all of us would stay out. But they were wrong. Not a single one of us went back until we all went back together after eleven months.  They think that we will give up now. But they are wrong.” The multi-racial, men-women unity of the workers defeated the racism and sexism of the Stella bosses.

At one point, the manager of the plant was seen in his car.  One of the shop stewards leapt toward the speakers’ platform.  Grabbing the microphone from a speaker he screamed, “Dan Meyer, you a------, the factory belongs to us!” The crowd roared, “Whose factory, our factory” and surged forward. Only metal barriers backed up by a solid line of cops prevented this hated boss from getting what he deserves.

A spokesman from IBEW Local 3 (electrical workers) explained how Brynwood Co. is stealing from the workers and the taxpayers of NYC because the city bosses had given tax breaks to Brynwood to help them pay for some of the plant equipment.  His suggestion was concrete. When the bosses start to move out the machinery we must be there to stop the trucks.

More and more workers in NYC are reading CHALLENGE and coming closer to PLP due to the heroism of the Stella workers. We ALL need to redouble our efforts to build the revolutionary communist movement that will dump the Brynwood bosses and all the bosses in the ashcan of history. Join us! 

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CHALLENGE, November 11, 2009

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11 November 2009 304 hits
      • Workers Fight Back CHALLENGE Inspires Transit Workers to Fight Racist Murders, Union Sellouts
      • WORKERS AND STUDENTS UNITE AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY
      • D.C. Bus Drivers’ Slowdown Speeds Fight vs. Bosses’ Attacks
      • Afghan ‘Drug War’ Scam Hides Real War for Oil
        • Obama’s War on Afghan Drugs a Deadly Farce
        • U.S. ‘Fights’ Drug Lords to Secure Pipeline
        • U.S. ‘Anti-Drug’ Bases in Colombia to Target Chavez
        • Racism Central to Rulers’ Drug Policies
      • Stella D’Oro Workers’ Heads High, Keep Up the Fight
      • Mexico: 44,000 Fired Electrical Workers Plan Mass Strike
      • France: 3,000 Undocumented Workers in Sit-Down Strikes for Rights
        • Condemn Government’s Racist Policy
        • ‘We’ll Occupy This Place For a Year if Necessary...’
      • Wanted for Murder: Bosses’ Racist Healthcare Cuts at Cook County
      • Boeing Bosses Building Bridges to Fascism; Workers Need Red Revolution
        • Reject Capitalist Illusions; Build A Workers’ Movement
        • Students, Profs Support Hunter College Cafeteria Workers
      • Derrion Albert Is Not Racist Capitalism’s First or Last Victim
        • Tale of Two Communities Victimized by Racism
        • The Rulers’ ‘Answer’: Military School and National Guard
      • Reality Produces Qualitative Change; Youth Blames Obama for Racist ‘Mess’
      • Anti-Racist Fight Turned Water on for Newark Residents
      • Can’t Depend on Rulers’ Laws: Turn Militant Outrage into Fight vs. Bosses’ System
        • What Next?
        • The MTA — Wall Street’s ATM
      • Capitalism’s Racist Jaws Trap Another Black Airport Worker
      • CHALLENGE Helps LA Teachers Intensify Class Struggle
      • ‘Recovery’ for Bosses, Depression for Workers
        • Jobless ‘Recovery’
        • Racist Devastation
        • Two Paths: Endless Profit Wars or Communist Revolution 
      • Red Eye on the News
        • Dump toxic costs on the poor
        • For insurers, sick are the enemy
        • Big biz decides what media say
        • Red atheist risked her life vs. Nazis
        • Clean the air by poisoning water!
        • Biggest democracy tops child deaths
        • Different law for non-rich
        • Women abused by playboy priests
        • Mo’ child left behind...
        • China grabs trade of U.S., Europe
        • U.S. politics’ best isn’t good enough
        • Nations ducking bill for climate
        • Environment hits workers hardest
        • U.S. is the problem, not the solution
      • Steady Rain Couldn’t Dampen Throng Celebrating John Brown’s Raid
      • Forging Parent-Student-Teacher Unity Inspired by John Brown
      • Organizing Against Layoffs
        • The Result of This Week
        • HOW WE ORGANIZED

Workers Fight Back
CHALLENGE Inspires Transit Workers to Fight Racist Murders, Union Sellouts

LOS ANGELES, CA — After trying to pass a motion for a “5-minute strike” to protest the racist murder of Darrick Collins by the LA Sheriffs, LA transit mechanics have been trying to increase CHALLENGE networks. The following are excerpts of these discussions:
After the union meeting, a group of CHALLENGE readers, African-American, Latino, and white, went to a coffee shop to continue the discussion. Even though the motion hadn’t passed, there was a feeling of victory, because they had been able to successfully carry out an organized political fight.
A comrade told the other workers,” As we know, there’s a lot of talk of rebellions and other actions against police terror. These things will happen. The question is who will lead them and with what politics. The working class and the Party need more African-American workers to take leadership, and that’s why it’s so important for you to be involved and help build a communist base.”
An office worker in transit, sitting in front of his computer, exclaimed, “Wait a minute...This looks important,” as he read out loud the title of the PLP leaflet, “Wanted for Mass Murder: L.A. Sheriffs and Capitalism.” Then he continued, “Let me turn off this computer and read this right now.” He gave $3 for CHALLENGE and said, “What you’re doing is very good. We need this.”
“What a dog!” exclaimed a transit worker when he found out how the mechanics’ union leader had tried to stop Darrick’s uncle, a driver, from speaking at the mechanic’s union meeting.
“And aren’t we all the same union?”
“No, but when they go on strike, we support them and when we go on strike, they support us.”
A third worker said, “This is the role of the sellout union leaders, to keep the workers separated. That’s why it’s so important that we take leadership. Because with a bigger political base, these sellouts won’t be able to get away with this.”
When he gave CHALLENGE to a regular reader, an African-American worker, he said, “Here, take this 50-cent donation.” But then he took out $2 and said, “Better take this so that the paper keeps coming out. Even though I’m not a communist, I know that this is capitalism — and it stinks.”
In a study group a worker reacted furiously at the treatment received by the driver, and he agreed to begin getting out two CHALLENGES to his friends. Here, a comrade explained what we’re trying to do, “Imagine that its 4:00 pm when dozens of thousands of workers and students are riding the buses home. Suddenly the drivers announce to the passengers that they are stopping for a ‘five-minute strike’ to protest the racist murders of the working class by the cops. They pass out leaflets and ask for the support of all those on the buses. At the same time, young Party members on the buses give speeches and pass out CHALLENGE.”
After a gathering at his mother-in-law’s house, a driver who is a CHALLENGE reader sent us a text message about the funeral of Marco Salgado, a bus driver and Iraq war veteran, killed by the police in Ontario, California (40 minutes from Los Angeles) two days before. The driver who sent the text is helping build the struggle in transit against the racist police murders. He says that he’s shown CHALLENGE and Party leaflets to another seven drivers. “Could you give each edition of the paper to your friends?” we asked him. “Of course I can,” he answered.

WORKERS AND STUDENTS UNITE AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY

Last week two workers from the Los Angeles MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) came to speak to several classes at a local high school about the racist murder of Darrick Collins, a young black man, by the LA Sheriffs last month in a nearby neighborhood. Darrick’s uncle and another transit worker came to our school because some other students at the school had been involved in the protests and leafleting that the Party had initiated immediately following the shooting.
Darrick’s uncle asked the students, “How many of you young people have ever been stopped by the cops just for walking down the sidewalk? Raise your hand. “Several dozen went up. “How many have been stopped twice?” A few less hands. “Three times?” At least a dozen of the 70 students raised their hands.
Another transit worker said “Get involved; confront this brutality. From here, some of you are going to college, some to work, and some to the military. In all these places, you’re going to find the same problems that make it next to imposible for the working class to have a decent life. In all of these places we can buld the fight to overthrow the capitalist system that took Darrick Collins from his family and friends.”
In one class, since the presentations, the concept of working-class unity has been brought up by students several times. In a discussion about the “similarities and differences between Hispanic and African Americans” the first thing a student said was that the two groups had no real differences because they were both part of the working class!
Some students are writing a letter of solidarity to the family of the young man who was killed by the police. Other students are writing a petition against the racist police killings.
This is just one example of the steps forward we can take when we unite our forces: students, teachers, workers, soldiers, etc., together and support each other’s struggles. As one student said later, “Worker and student alliances like these are key to revolution. Only a worker-student-soldier alliance will bring an end to this exploitative and murderous capitalist system. The time for a communist revolution is now!”

D.C. Bus Drivers’ Slowdown Speeds Fight vs. Bosses’ Attacks

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 13 — Metro bus drivers launched a work-to-rule action last week against growing disciplinary attacks. Workers — overwhelmingly black and Latino — are being written up, suspended, and fired by racist bosses determined to soften up workers for the coming cutbacks in health care, pensions and jobs. But Metro workers let management know they’re not taking this increased harassment lying down. With communist leadership from PLP members, they will sharpen this fight-back even further!
The weak union leaders presented this action as simply “following company rules.” Roland Jeter, union vice-president, publicly declared, “We wouldn’t advocate a work slowdown.” But rank-and-file workers who launched this movement see it as the beginning of resistance to management’s attacks.
On the key North-South lines, on 14th and 16th Streets and Georgia Avenue, buses backed up in rows of six, seven and even more as they headed downtown during the morning rush hour, often with delays of 30 minutes or more. This bold rank-and-file action gave workers a sense of their real power, overcoming the union leadership’s lie that we workers would not stick together. We saw who talked the talk and who walked the walk!
At Northern Division, many younger workers indicated they were ready to provide more leadership in this class struggle, to meet fire with fire! But to do this, we must be prepared to clash with the bosses’ whole system. That means more workers must become revolutionaries, not just militants. They must join with the PLP group and plan to fight not only the Metro bosses, but join with workers globally against the whole system of capitalism that destroys the lives of countless workers, both here and worldwide.

Afghan ‘Drug War’ Scam Hides Real War for Oil

Every year, more people die from Afghan opium than any other drug in the world: perhaps 100,000 globally. While 90% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan, less than 2% is seized there. (UN report cited below)

Obama’s War on Afghan Drugs a Deadly Farce

Obama appears to be awaiting the results of Election Fraud II before he decides on a comprehensive war plan for Afghanistan. But one part is already certain. U.S. rulers are insisting that Afghanistan remain a linchpin in the anti-working class global drug trade. While substantial funding for the Taliban comes from illicit drugs, the U.S. has no intention of wiping drugs out in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Drugs are far too useful to the ruling class, both as a means of social control and as a pretext for imperialist military action.
The ruling class’s Brookings think-tank is publishing a new book called “Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs,” promoting “a laissez-faire policy toward illicit crop cultivation.” Its author, Brookings’ fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown, testified in Congress recently praising Obama’s new Afghan narcotics strategy of “defunding and deemphasizing eradication and focusing on interdiction.” In effect, letting the drugs flow gives U.S. forces greater policing power over the Afghan people.

U.S. ‘Fights’ Drug Lords to Secure Pipeline

U.S.-led NATO has made Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, a focus of its phony anti-drug campaign. It’s no coincidence that the city sits on the route of the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline (TAPI). Just three years ago, there were no combat battalions in or near Lashkar Gah. When plans for TAPI resumed in earnest last year, six NATO battalions (mainly U.S. and British) suddenly appeared. Today seven full battalions patrol the Lashkar Gah region, in the guise of “combating drug lords.” In the same period, poppy-producing Kandahar saw a similar troop surge. It, too, bestrides the TAPI route.
A recent UN report, “Addiction, Crime, and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium,” ties the “War on Drugs” to widening and worsening wars for gas and oil:
“Drugs are funding insurgency in Central Asia where the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Party of Turkmenistan, the East Turkistan Liberation Organization and other extremist groups are also profiting from the trade. The Silk Route, turned into a heroin route, is carving out a path of death and violence through one of the world’s most strategic, yet volatile regions. The perfect storm of drugs, crime and insurgency that has swirled around the Afghanistan/Pakistan border for years, is heading for Central Asia. If quick preventive measures are not put into place, a big chunk of Eurasia could be lost — together with its massive energy reserves.” The report’s racist anti-Islamic language suggests strong U.S. influence.

U.S. ‘Anti-Drug’ Bases in Colombia to Target Chavez

U.S. rulers are staging the same charade in South America. In August, Obama upgraded the U.S. security agreement with Columbia to “allow the Pentagon to lease access to seven Colombian military bases for U.S. support in fighting drug traffickers and guerrillas involved in the cocaine trade.” (Reuters, 8/7/09) The top brass’s real objectives are, of course, stifling insurgency in coal-rich Columbia (Exxon Mobil’s biggest source) and establishing a military beachhead against oil-rich and anti-U.S. neighbor Venezuela.
Back in the U.S., illicit drugs, with most heroin originating from Afghanistan, help the rulers in two ways. Using drugs promotes docility among workers, and anti-drug laws strengthen the leverage of the burgeoning police state.
Cops made 1,841,200 drug-related arrests in 2007. More than 350,000 prisoners stand convicted of drug charges. So U.S. authorities condone wide-open drug trafficking, seizing a few shipments now and then for show. The vast U.S. law enforcement establishment stops about 9% of the opiates entering from Afghanistan (UN report).

Racism Central to Rulers’ Drug Policies

U.S. racist discrimination has led to the jailing of most of the black and Latino youth and workers who comprise 70% of the U.S. prison population of 2.4 million, highest in world history. At least two-thirds of these inmates are non-violent offenders (who are not incarcerated in Western Europe).
The racist drug-law sentencing in the U.S. metes out mandatory prison terms that are ten times longer for use and possession of crack cocaine (the cheaper variety pushed in black and Latino communities) than for the more expensive powder cocaine (mainly used among middle-class whites). New York State’s racist Rockefeller drug laws passed 30 years ago imprisoned predominantly black and Latino youth and workers for decades of wasted lives. This is the brutality of racist capitalism.
Obama’s U.S. war machine is not a humanitarian organization. It won’t end the drug scourge because its capitalist masters have no interest in giving up such an effective anti-working class weapon. Communists, however, eradicated the opium poppy from China shortly after they took power in 1949. Now that China’s rulers have fully embraced capitalism, the nation consumes 13% of Afghan opiate production.
The lesson? Stopping drug trafficking, or any evil the profit system thrives on, requires a real communist revolution. We must rebuild such a mass, PLP-led movement on sounder, irreversibly working-class principles.

Stella D’Oro Workers’ Heads High, Keep Up the Fight

BRONX, NY, October 2 — Over 200 bakers, mechanics, electricians, teachers, professors, city workers, day care workers, teamsters, and transit workers chanted together, “The workers, united, will never be defeated!”; “Keep Stella in the Bronx”; and “Whose factory? Our Factory!” in front of the Stella D’Oro factory.
The Stella workers and their supporters are still fighting to keep their jobs and to obtain compensation if the plant is sold. Brynwood Partners (owners of the factory) is in the process of selling the company and equipment to a non-union factory owned by Lance Co. in Ashland, Ohio.
One Stella worker who spoke explaining that the fight continues, and that whatever happens the workers are holding their heads high; the bosses are the losers. Another worker said they never believed that we would last three months on strike. “But they were wrong. They never thought that all of us would stay out. But they were wrong. Not a single one of us went back until we all went back together after eleven months. They think that we will give up now. But they are wrong.” The multi-racial, men-women unity of the workers defeated the racism and sexism of the Stella bosses.
At one point, the manager of the plant was seen in his car. One of the shop stewards leapt toward the speakers’ platform. Grabbing the microphone from a speaker he screamed, “Dan Meyer, you a------, the factory belongs to us!” The crowd roared, “Whose factory, our factory” and surged forward. Only metal barriers backed up by a solid line of cops prevented this hated boss from getting what he deserves.
A spokesman from IBEW Local 3 (electrical workers) explained how Brynwood Co. is stealing from the workers and the taxpayers of NYC because the city bosses had given tax breaks to Brynwood to help them pay for some of the plant equipment. His suggestion was concrete. When the bosses start to move out the machinery we must be there to stop the trucks.
More and more workers in NYC are reading CHALLENGE and coming closer to PLP due to the heroism of the Stella workers. We ALL need to redouble our efforts to build the revolutionary communist movement that will dump the Brynwood bosses and all the bosses in the ashcan of history. Join us!

Mexico: 44,000 Fired Electrical Workers Plan Mass Strike

MEXICO CITY, October 25 — “Strike, Strike, Strike,” clamored thousands of workers inside and outside the offices of the Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME), historically one of the country’s most militant unions. President Felipe Calderon fired 44,000 workers, aiming to destroy the union, while arguing that public companies “don’t work.” Hundreds of thousands, including PLPers, have marched through the city to back the workers.
Dozens of unions, mass organizations, university, farmworker movements and representatives of the AFL-CIO are joining together to support the electrical workers to plan actions and a national strike to be announced on November 5.
Many of the leaders of these groups are reformists and pro-capitalist opportunists who will once again betray the workers. Only guaranteeing communist ideas which workers can make their own can convert them into a powerful revolutionary reality.
This government move follows the privatization of banks, railroads, and the telephone system. Despite the fact that these companies were supposedly not productive, Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest capitalists, using non-productivity as an excuse, bought up TELMEX.
The government blames the workers for the supposed “bankruptcy” of the electric company, but it’s the government — which serves the capitalists — that administered it, not the workers. Whether companies are private or public, workers are being attacked more sharply because of the crisis of capitalism.
The workers are demanding abolition of Calderon’s decree that fired them and complete rejection of the new “economic package” that raises income and sales taxes on workers’ already-poverty wages.
During a meeting, masses of rank-and-file workers applauded thunderously when several speakers demanded paralyzing Mexico City, its factories and schools, take-overs of buildings, highways, and confronting the police who’ve taken control of the Department of Power in downtown Mexico City. But immediately Martin Esparza, SME leader, said, “We can’t fall for provocations...the police and the army are part of the people...we have 100 lawyers who will help us.”
To that the workers again clamored “Strike, Strike!,” forcing other “leaders” to try to calm them. Meanwhile, Esparza is seeking support from the city’s Mayor, and from Lopez Obrador, both of the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution).
But neither the government, the sellout leaders, Lopez Obrador, nor the lawyers defend the workers’ interests. In 1997 the workers were attacked when the government reformed the Social Security Law. Recently they reformed the law again, depriving millions of older state workers of all rights to a secure, dignified retirement.
This time it’s the workers for the Dept. of Light and Power who are being attacked. Soon it will be those in the Federal Commission of Electricity and the PEMEX oil workers and the whole working class, to serve the interests of either U.S., European or Asian imperialists. No boss or imperialist bloc will defend the working class. They all exploit workers and keep us living in poverty.
In the last few days, marchers have supported the SME and protested massive attacks on the country’s working class. In one march, Oaxaca’s unionized teachers participated and some, together with industrial workers from Mexico City, helped distribute a PLP communist leaflet. It attacked capitalism and imperialism for the attacks on the workers and called for building PLP and communist revolution to destroy this system.
Capitalism, by its very nature, generates exploitation, poverty and wars, killing workers. We workers, the vast majority of the population, are the only ones who create everything of value. In a communist society, we workers will determine how to distribute this wealth we create, eliminating the oppression a handful of bosses imposes on us with their laws, police and sellout leaders.
Mexico’s working class, like workers internationally, are under sharpening attack from the worldwide capitalist economic crisis and intensifying imperialist rivalry. This increases the potential for PLP’s growth. We aim to mobilize all our friends to join this class struggle and be active at work or in school to build CHALLENGE networks and the Party.

France: 3,000 Undocumented Workers in Sit-Down Strikes for Rights

PARIS, October 23 — Nearly 30 worksites were still occupied here today in the 2009 mobilization of 3,000 undocumented workers, striking for “legalization” and for decent working conditions. Since October 12, around 160 undocumented workers have been occupying the FNTP, the building trades’ employers association. On the building’s façade the brass FNTP plaque rubs shoulders with a small red flag.
This Autumn “Act II” 2009 strike follows the big strike movement of undocumented workers in the Spring of 2008 — “Act I.” “We want to come out of the shadows, we can’t go on this way,” Dèh Barou told one newspaper. The undocumented Mauritanian immigrant has temped for eight years in the automobile industry. “We’re exploited, underpaid and haven’t any rights — if we don’t say ‘no’ at some point, things will never change.”
X. Macalou, a fortyish building trades worker from Mali, is a veteran of “Act I,” the Spring 2008 strikes (see CHALLENGE, 5/31/2008). Today he’s a strike organizer, leading the occupation of a temporary work agency by 200 to 300 undocumented workers. The strikers take turns manning a picket line day and night. “We’re ready to hold out to the end,” Macalou said.

Condemn Government’s Racist Policy

On October 10, over 10,000 protesters marched here to condemn the government’s racist policy of case-by-case “legalization” of undocumented workers. They castigated “a policy that segregates undocumented workers in a no-rights zone of administrative uncertainty, preventing their social integration.”
The strike was symbolically kicked off on October 13 when 23 undocumented temporary workers from West Africa who maintain the RATP subway station platforms erected a tent camp in the parking lot of the RATP Paris regional transport depot. They told how “for hours on end, we break up the asphalt on the station platforms, take 110-pound chunks up to street level, and then go back down with buckets of bubbling tar” – all this at night, “without a break, without a safety helmet, without safety shoes, without a mask ... and without ever seeing a doctor,” because none have documents.
Then, without a warrant, the government sent in the police to evict the workers and their tent camp, parroting the racist line of the French fascists, who claim that “foreigners” rob the French social security system. On October 20, the 70 strikers occupying the tax collection office in Vitry-sur-Seine were violently evicted by the police, two workers requiring first-aid treatment.
Fed up with being afraid to walk in the street, tired of being confronted with ID checks, a man from Mali, in his fifties, searches feverishly in his wallet and holds out his building trades worker ID card. Having lived in France since 1994, he has been working eight hours a day in industrial cleaning. “I’ve got all my pay stubs. I pay taxes and sales taxes like everybody else. But I have no right to social security, or to a retirement pension, or to unemployment benefits, because I haven’t got any immigration documents. That’s why I’ve joined the occupation.” To get a job, undocumented workers have to submit fake papers. “Nobody checks if they are fakes when it is a question of paying social security contributions and taxes, but they’re fakes because they don’t give us any rights,” commented Mamadou Sognane.
“If you protest, if you are tired, they tell you that you can go, because there always another undocumented worker who will take the job,” said Aboubacar. He has worked with fake documents, which cost him 4,000 euros, for the past eleven years. Undocumented workers comprise a majority in some trades.
“For the temp agencies, undocumented workers are pure profit,” said Aberkhane Boukhalfa, a union steward who works for Manpower and who makes the rounds of the picket lines “to lend a hand.” The racist super-exploitation of immigrant workers nets super-profits for these bosses.
The strikers are backed by five trade union federations and five associations. A support statement from the Paris SUD-Education teachers union said: “The exploitation of undocumented workers, the most insecure of the insecure workers, opens the way to the destruction of job security for all workers. They are the main victims of a development which is depriving increasing numbers of workers of stable jobs, generalizing job flexibility, deregulating work codes and putting pressure on workers.”

‘We’ll Occupy This Place For a Year if Necessary...’

“We’ve got to set up a solidarity fund to be able to buy food to eat,” said Kouaté Kandjura, one of the spokespeople at the FNTP occupation. “We’re determined to occupy this place as long as is necessary, for a day, a month...or a year if necessary.”
These undocumented immigrant workers are fighting for the whole working class, internationally, setting an example for workers everywhere who are exploited by the same profit system. They’re fighting the bosses’ attempts to divide us by nationality (borders established by capitalists worldwide). The “legality” of workers is based on racist laws that serve the bosses. They use it to set one group of workers against another and thereby drag down conditions of all workers.
The international working class must support this fight and adopt PLP’s slogan: “Smash all borders!”

Wanted for Murder: Bosses’ Racist Healthcare Cuts at Cook County

CHICAGO, October 26 — With almost 50 million uninsured, and racist unemployment at a 60-year high, Cook County Health Services CEO Foley and the new System Board, are slashing services and cutting jobs at a breath-taking pace. There are over 1 million uninsured workers in Cook County and with plant closings and layoffs the number grows every day. These cuts are racist to the core as 82% of the patients are black or immigrant workers.
The new strategic plan calls for closing in-patient services at Provident and Oak Forest hospitals, including the Provident OB service. They are cutting staff at Stroger and issuing a blizzard of memos and write-ups to make workers fear for their jobs. They want to make every patient pay $10 at every clinic visit, even if they can’t afford bus fare.
The Cook County Clinic in Robbins is being sold to the Christian Health System, a private for-profit outfit that charges for care on a sliding scale. If you are one of the thousands of unemployed or uninsured workers in the south suburbs, this leaves you without a doctor or without that $40 you were planning to use to put gas in the car. That’s the racist profit system; you have freedom to choose, health care or gas, food or medicine, a CT scan or next month’s rent.
Staffing in some units is being cut drastically. In the Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nursing bosses Antoinette Williams and Zina Jones plan to use 40% fewer nurses for the same number of babies. Not only is this a threat to those we serve, but nurses, doctors, techs and other workers will get fired and  disciplined when mistakes inevitably occur. Nobody will write up the bosses making the cuts.
Cook County patients and health workers have two problems: racist health care cuts and capitalism. The “free-market,” organized around profits, has made public health care an endangered species. Regardless of political party, the President, Congress, Governor, mayor and health board must all serve profit needs rather than workers’ needs. Capitalism’s poverty, stress
unemployment, pollution and wars cause the health problems. The only solution is communist revolution and a worker-run system, where racism and profits are outlawed and meeting the needs of the working class comes first.
This is deliberate, premeditated understaffing, ordered by the same CEO and Board that the medical staff and unions hailed as the “savior of the system.” Maximum work from the minimum number of workers is the standard operating procedure under capitalism. This is doubly true during an economic crisis and two wars (despite the “Peace Prize” president). In a hospital, especially in an intensive care unit, this amounts to cold-blooded, racist murder.
Health workers and professionals must join forces with those we serve, who are the main victims of these attacks, to fight these viscious, racist cuts. We should begin by protesting at town hall meetings, organizing job actions and preparing for a strike to fight these attacks every way we can.
Some people believed the new “reform” board and the new “turn-around” CEO would make the County system better. Forget it! No group of wealthy administrators taking orders from the billionaire bankers, who got bailed out by the Obama gang, can meet the needs of the working class. That’s why we need workers’ power — communism. Join the PLP and help dump this murderous system for good.

Boeing Bosses Building Bridges to Fascism; Workers Need Red Revolution

SEATTLE, WA, October 26 — As CHALLENGE reported (10/28), Boeing International Association of Machinists (IAM) union district president Wroblewski hasn’t found the time to attend our local meetings since the Party’s summer plant-gate demonstrations against the no-strike deal. He has, however, found time to participate in secret no-strike talks in Chicago and Washington, D.C. led by international IAM president Buffenbarger (Seattle Times, 10/22, front page).
This shocker reemphasized how serious the bosses are about imposing fascist conditions on industrial workers. These times call for nothing less than the long-term fight for communist revolution. Increased CHALLENGE networks and revolutionary class-conscious leadership moving workers into class struggle are paramount.
In contrast, the day before many local union officials joined Boeing representatives in company cafeterias praising “20 Years [of] Building Bridges Together,” celebrating joint safety and training programs. More like building bridges to capitulation to fascism!
The UAW at Boeing is doing its class-collaborationist part. Refusing to let workers strike after their contract expired earlier this month at the Philadelphia military helicopter plant, the union leadership rammed through an extra-long 5-year contract last week. This pales before the plans discussed at the IAM secret talks — a 10-year no-strike pledge!

Reject Capitalist Illusions; Build A Workers’ Movement

Wroblewski’s e-mail response to the Times article is patently absurd: “There are no ‘secret talks’ ...just ongoing discussions.” Calls to the International have resulted in equally unbelievable assurances. “Maybe, we’ll wait till the new contract comes up [in 2012] to consider a 10-year pact,” an international official suggested by way of “reassuring” us. Why believe anything these fascists-in-waiting say? They’re clearly not opposed in principal to disarming us for 10 years.
These “reassurances” negatively affect our ability to fight back. We should not underestimate U.S. rulers’ absolute need to develop fascist control as their empire wanes because of international capitalist rivalry. Many of us may have the vain hope of some negotiated, relatively “peaceful” solution.
For years we’ve followed a certain path: Contracts come every three or four years. Often we strike, trying to stop Boeing from cutting our wages and benefits. Sometimes we even override the union’s sellouts. But we never break the chains of wage slavery, only fight to change the shape of exploitation.
As fascism is consolidated, these contracts, more than ever, clamp down on class struggle. “You can’t strike. You are under contract,” the Seattle Times editorial gleefully declares, saying we must give in to the bosses’ demands.
Boeing bosses have used racism to contract out work to factories with predominantly immigrant, black and Latino workforces, at poverty wages, a central part of fascism.
Advancing under these conditions requires strengthening the Party’s anti-racist communist political base-building, our CHALLENGE networks and developing the closer personal ties allowing us to struggle for a revolutionary outlook among readers, sellers, their families and friends.
Real gains are harder to come by because of the bosses’ fascist plans. The union misleaders’ snake oil will never spontaneously disappear. As our campaign against this no-strike deal gathers steam, our success will be judged, in part, on how much we can win workers away from capitalist illusions and to our Party. Let’s replace 5, 10, 20 years of building bridges to fascism with 5, 10, 20 years of building for communist revolution!
BULLETIN — As we go to press, Boeing has abandoned the no-strike talks. U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D.-WA.) and Washington governor Chris Gregorie intervened over the weekend. That led to further direct talks between the IAM general vice-president and Boeing, with the union offering further concessions to get a 10-year pact. The talks’ end most likely means the second 787 production line will be moved to Charleston, S.C., eventually employing 3,800.
The union wants to continue the talks, hoping for a deal that won’t result in a rank-and-file revolt. Last time the leadership pulled a stunt like this, they were greeted with a hail of chicken bones. Let’s make sure this time they have more to worry about than chicken grease on their fancy suits.

Students, Profs Support Hunter College Cafeteria Workers

NEW YORK CITY, October 5 — Over 150 Hunter College cafeteria workers rallied today after receiving a letter saying that their new bosses, AVI, will not pick up their health coverage. The non-union AVI recently took over the contract for these workers but refuses to honor the workers’ old collective bargaining agreement, which included a pension plan and free family health benefits.
The mainly black and Latino workers’ hourly wage averages $10.15/hr., not enough to afford the wage reduction needed to pay for part of their health coverage. AVI also wants to substitute a 401(k) plan for their current pension.
The protest started with union chants but quickly changed to the more class-conscious, “Workers, united, will never be defeated.” There were many support messages from students. Also, the professors’ message declared, “Today it is you, tomorrow it can be me, so we must fight together.” A Stella D’Oro worker linked the cafeteria workers’ struggle to their recent 11-month strike and called for a boycott of the cafeteria. 
The union mis-leaders were exposed when one said they would take a petition to the school president, so the protesters yelled, “Let’s all go.” His response was, “Let’s not rush into things.”
PLP is supporting the workers’ fight while pointing out that although workers view the racist AVI food company as the enemy, we should see the main racists as the Hunter College administrators. They contract this work out to companies that exploit workers on campus while sitting back as if they had nothing to do with it.
In the coming weeks we will demonstrate against the administration and AVI and try to organize a boycott and other actions to build a base for class consciousness and ultimately to win fellow students, workers and professors to see the need for communist revolution.

Derrion Albert Is Not Racist Capitalism’s First or Last Victim

CHICAGO, October 10 — The fatal beating of 16-year-old Derrion Albert on September 24 left more than one victim. Anjanette Albert, Derrion’s mother, was correct when she identified the young men charged with first-degree murder in her son’s senseless death as “victims too.” Capitalism — which creates poverty, homelessness, unemployment and war in its relentless drive for profits — causes this violence. Racism is one of the system’s main weapons that victimizes and divides our class.
Only communist revolution can make a real difference in the lives of the young black workers in these neighborhoods. Communists fight for a future of equality for the entire working class, black, Latino and white. We will have to eliminate the rich bosses who run this society in order to guarantee a future for our young people.

Tale of Two Communities Victimized by Racism

At Fenger High School, located in the “Ville,” an area in the predominantly black Roseland community, only 6% of last year’s students met or exceeded standards on the reading portion of the Illinois State Achievement Test. This community is plagued with an astronomical number of black households now in foreclosure. One-third there lives in poverty, with no job stimulus on the horizon.
Another victimized community is the neighboring Altgeld Gardens. CHA (Chicago Housing Authority) developed this isolated far-South Side housing project for black factory workers during World War II. The Pullman Company dumped its waste on the spot Altgeld Gardens now stands. One of the nation’s five worst concentrations of toxic waste is on Chicago’s South Side. The “Gardens” has a high poverty and unemployment rate and is among the 15% lowest-income communities in the U.S.; 85% of Chicago’s children live in poverty.

The Rulers’ ‘Answer’: Military School and National Guard

The youth violence infecting our communities will only sharpen with capitalism’s economic crisis. Any recovery, just like the Olympics, will not be coming to poor black and Latino neighborhoods. Obama knows this. That’s why he dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan — former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) — to the city this week to meet with angry parents, and students. “Chicago won’t be defined by this incident but rather our response to it” was the three-second sound bite Duncan told the TV news cameras. But it’s Duncan’s racist Renaissance 2010 school reform that is directly responsible for driving the escalating numbers of youth deaths even higher.
While running CPS, Duncan closed dozens of public schools, opened more charter schools and sent thousands of students outside of their poverty/gang-infested neighborhoods into new unfamiliar poverty/gang-infested neighborhoods. Before Renaissance 2010, the intolerable number of CPS students fatally shot in these neighborhoods was 15. In the 2006-07 school year it rose to 24; in 2007-08 to 23 deaths and 211 shootings. Now in 2008-09 it’s risen to over 40 fatalities and 290 shootings (five in the first two months). These resemble numbers from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The war-makers’ “answer”? The miniaturization of the schools. Duncan closed Carver High, Altgeld Gardens’ neighborhood school, turning it into a selective enrollment military school. He “turned around” Fenger High School, meaning he fired all the teachers, clerks, engineers, etc., hiring all new personnel.
Mayor Daley and Jesse Jackson’s response is using the National Guard to patrol the streets in these black neighborhoods, to “provide safe passage to school for our youth.” Marilyn Stewart, Chicago Teachers Union president and collaborator with Duncan, responded by calling for special schools that house only “trouble-making” students. They have plenty already; they’re called juvenile detention centers.
PLP’s Education Club took the lead from the youth and held a rally and CHALLENGE sale in the Roseland community, distributing leaflets and 130 papers and speaking on the bullhorn. A college student printed a sign reading, “Beep 4 revolution.”
Overall, the young people were encouraged by the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the workers and youth they talked to. This has sparked a revival in our regular Saturday CHALLENGE sales, and spurred us to join an anti-violence youth organization, enabling us to meet more workers interested in PLP’s ideas on multi-racial unity and revolution. Through such mass organizations, we can help organize anti-racist class struggle, possible school walkouts and mobilizations against these increasing racist assaults.
Progressive Labor Party invites you to join us in building such a movement. The fight for a communist society — the main answer to these racist attacks — will destroy this profit system and replace it with a society based on the needs of the international working class. Join Us!

Reality Produces Qualitative Change; Youth Blames Obama for Racist ‘Mess’

“She wants us to think like Obama?” my student asked incredulously. “He’s the one who got us in this mess!” Moments earlier, we were meeting with a student-led social justice organization. Instead of discussing the fatal beating of a black student and it’s connection to our struggles against public school sabotage, a professor was ringing a chime and announcing, “We are progressing!” to transition from task to mind-numbing task.  This is progress?
The last straw was when an adult said our mission statement was too confrontational. Mission statement authors were stunned when the principal
suggested the students who were fighting at school “take it outside.” The authors were students from near where Derrion Albert had been beaten to death. The moderator added, “We need to think like Obama.”
At this, I walked out. To my surprise, a Summer Project participant was at my heels. I asked why he walked out. Though hesitant in L.A. about blaming Obama, he was dead-set today: “He got us into this mess!” From what the students learned fighting attacks on neighborhood schools, they instantly blamed Arne Duncan for what happened to Derrion. I asked if that made it Obama’s fault and they said “Yes!”
In the hall, we agreed Derrion wasn’t the only victim, all the young men involved are victims of this racist system. If they don’t get killed, they will be lost to prisons. When we returned, the meeting hadn’t changed. My friend struggled with me to give it a chance. I said it’s patronizing the students and wasting time we could discuss issues. I said telling students to be compliant with the system that’s destroying their schools invalidates their experiences with attacks and neglect in their schools.
He asked how PLP meetings are run. “With respect!” was my first answer. “We talk about immediate issues first. Everyone sees themselves as a leader, so everyone makes sure meetings run well. Our job here is to develop our students into leaders.”
Just then, a student interrupted the professor. “Why are we ignoring communication issues [between black and brown students] and talking about pens and paper?” He opened a dam, all the students chimed in, “This isn’t what’s wrong,” “We don’t run meetings like this!” When the students spoke up, my friend admitted, “I was wrong, you were right!”
Last year, this group organized and participated in more actions than ever before. They got the attention of teachers who want to get involved due to our militant line against the (now nationally-led) attacks on, and re-segregation of, Chicago Public Schools. Students who come around PLP are stepping up their political leadership. The student who walked out of the meeting now meets with a club and is pulling this group to the left as we struggle to recruit Chicago students to the Party.
Red Teacher

Anti-Racist Fight Turned Water on for Newark Residents

NEWARK, NJ, October 21 — Forty black and white workers in front of City Hall demonstrated against the racist cut-off of water to over 1,000 tenants and homeowners. People with families and many with small children have been denied water for drinking, bathing, heating and sewage since the end of August. Many of these are tenants in apartment buildings where the landlord is responsible to pay the water bill.
Meanwhile, Prudential Insurance Company has refused to pay its bill of over $2 million, and New Community Corporation, which owns many buildings, land and businesses, owes hundreds of thousands in delinquent bills. Neither has been denied service.
Prior to the demonstration various groups of concerned individuals met to discuss organizing tenants door to door, initiating class action suits and moving to physically turn the water on. Tenants even offered to pay their rent to the City to reinstate water service, but the City took the position that it did not want to “interfere with a tenant-landlord relationship.” Can it be any clearer that the corporations, landlords and City work hand-in-glove to protect profits?
Most people at the demonstration were members of the People’s Organization for Progress (POP). POP demonstrates frequently against police brutality, but the leadership calls for citizen review and never links the capitalist system’s laws to racist oppression. One speaker even pressed for “Black Power.” A nurse who joined the picket line distributed and sold 30 CHALLENGES, pointing out the article on John Brown and the need for multi-racial unity. She spoke, saying that the capitalist system was responsible for this racist attack, and called for action, “Politicians, corporations, all be gone; Black and white workers’ power turns the water on!”
Two days later, the water was reinstated but we know that the City bosses may very well turn it off again come January in their effort to extract every penny from the poorest residents of Newark. We will not cease our organizing efforts to build mass unity among Newark’s workers to prepare for future action against these racists attacks and build communist consciousness that the only way to defeat the attacks against workers is with communist revolution.

Can’t Depend on Rulers’ Laws:
Turn Militant Outrage into Fight vs. Bosses’ System

NEW YORK CITY, October 28 — Hundreds of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 workers are marching across the Brooklyn Bridge today. They are protesting the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) decision to appeal a legally-binding arbitration award granted in August. Some workers also organized slowdowns on October 14, a union-labeled “Day of Outrage.”
Slowdowns and other on-the-job actions are workers’ best responses to these attacks. But the political direction of militancy matters as much as the militancy itself. Reforms under capitalism can be taken away. For lasting progress, workers need to overthrow the bosses and build a communist society where workers hold power and work for need, not profit.
Many transit workers who were fined for the illegal 2005 strike are furious that the MTA is challenging workers for following the arbitration law. Protest signs read, “What part of binding don’t you get?”
The award is based on the cops’ and firefighters’ contracts, whose majority white workforces got better deals than transit. But the city’s racist rulers chose to attack transit’s mainly black and Latino workforce.
The boss’s laws enforce the will of the capitalist ruling class. The Taylor law was a reform “victory” that allowed municipal unions to organize after the 1966 transit strike. But the bosses used it to punish transit workers in the aftermath of the 1980 and 2005 strikes. The bosses’ laws serve their needs, and arbitration is binding only when it favors them.
The August award they’re fighting gave workers an 11% pay raise over three years, and reduced the healthcare contribution to 1.5% from 1.53%. But the 2006 arbitration award, received after the strike, punished workers and so went unchallenged by the bosses.

What Next?

More slowdowns and demonstrations are needed but rank-and-file workers, not union misleaders, or politicians like Bill Thompson, John Liu, and Bill De Blasio, must lead fight-backs. Local 100’s two main factions are trying to direct workers’ anger only at Mayor Bloomberg, for backing the MTA board’s racist decision, but all politicians serve the capitalist class. Following them will lead to similar deals that deceive and attack workers.
Lasting victory means building the Progressive Labor Party to raise the ante of class struggle and organize against capitalism. That’s the only way to ensure that the militant action of October 14 was not just blowing off steam, but serves as a small example of the tremendous class struggle needed to unite for communist victory. J

The MTA — Wall Street’s ATM

The bosses want the city’s workers to resent “greedy” transit workers for their above-average contract. The real greedy ones are MTA bosses and Wall Street banks that made transit generate millions in bank profits.
As Track Equipment Maintainer Kevin Maloney explained in a letter to the civil-service newspaper The Chief (10/9), the real cause of the MTA’s budget woes is “debt service,” not
“out-of-control” labor costs.
Fifty-five percent of the MTA’s funds are paid by riders. To fill the budget gap created by a lack of government funding, the MTA colluded with major banks to borrow money in the form of bonds. Now two billion dollars, nearly 20% of the MTA’s 2009 budget, is going to “debt service” — paying the interest on those bonds. This is the fastest growing part of the MTA’s deficit (Straphangers Campaign).
The liberal Drum Major Institute reported (4/9), “Between 2003 and 2008, debt payments and non-labor expenses grew by 45 percent and 40 percent, respectively, whereas labor costs grew by 16 percent. Debt payments are expected to grow another 51 percent by 2012 — a financially unsustainable trend.”

Capitalism’s Racist Jaws Trap Another Black Airport Worker

NEW YORK CITY, October 26 — Last week a young black worker was pulled over by the cops on his way to work at LaGuardia airport. Initially the cops told the worker he had been pulled over for a broken taillight, but on the ticket, they cited him with not stopping at a stop sign. Why did the police pull him over? DWB (driving while black) seems his most likely offense.
When the racist cops questioned the young worker, they found his license was temporarily invalid and placed him under arrest. After dragging him to jail, the police rifled through the worker’s car and found a laptop in his trunk. The racist cops went to the exhaustive step of running the serial number on the computer. At this point, they discovered it had been reported stolen at the airport six months earlier.
Right now, it is not known if the worker stole the laptop. What is known is this: the NYPD proceeded to contact the fascist airport police, who confiscated the worker’s airport ID, making it impossible for him to work and notifying his bosses of the proceedings, which will undoubtedly lead to his firing. The cops then charged him with theft on federal property, a mandatory felony, and threatened to send him to Riker’s Island prison.
What is also known is this: last November the airport police (to fill a quota of arrests) attacked a worker helping passengers. Every day the NYPD harasses black and Latino workers doing nothing more than coming and going from work. Every week the black worker was harassed by the racist airport bosses for petty uniform violations and the like. And on every flight that the arrested worker loaded and unloaded, the bosses stole thousands of dollars from him and other workers by paying them as little as $7.50 an hour and reaping $10,000s in ticket sales (per flight).
Capitalism is based on wage slavery, a system where bosses steal from workers every day. It uses the brutality of the police to enforce and defend this law. At the same time, it tries to teach us as workers to be individualistic and only look out for ourselves.
PLP does not condone hurting other workers, and this includes stealing. However, we should remember that workers under capitalism steal either because they do not have enough or because the system teaches us selfish individualism and to not care about others. Fighting for communism means not only fighting to meet the material needs of the working class but also fighting for more collective, pro-worker thinking.
This young worker was definitely influenced by capitalist ideology, as we all are. But primarily, he is just one more worker who has fallen into the racist jaws of the capitalist justice system. If he had been a white boss, it is likely that the police never would have pulled him over. But the NYPD pulled over a young black worker, and under capitalism that is often as bad as a death sentence, either by the bullet or by starvation from a lost paycheck.

CHALLENGE Helps LA Teachers Intensify Class Struggle

We are happy to see CHALLENGE again printing letters critical of the work; this will help us to have a useful dialogue about how best to organize for communism in the day-to-day work. In Los Angeles we are doing our best to organize students and teachers in the union meetings and at our local schools around CHALLENGE and to build a base for the revolutionary line of the Party. We have been able to increase our distribution to about 250 papers per issue. We are active in the teachers’ union and this spring organized two illegal one-hour work stoppages against teacher layoffs at our school that were about 90% effective.
These actions were organized by CHALLENGE readers at our schools, raising the need to defy the bosses’ laws and the union contract to fight against the attacks on the schools in school, area and city-wide meetings. We fought for a one-day job action within the city-wide union, and had a successful vote at our schools, but when the union leadership folded in response to a court injunction, we could not pull off wildcat strikes at our schools.
Nevertheless, we have increased the paper sales and recruited a new PL club of young people active in these struggles and in school and the Summer Project. We advanced the political understanding of teacher and student CHALLENGE readers by refusing to let the union leadership define the limits of discussion. As fascism develops, the ruling class uses cutbacks and “school reform” to cheaply prepare the schools for war, especially in a school population that is overwhelmingly Latino and black. We put the struggle against charter schools in that context, rather than opportunistically echoing the “anti-privatization” rhetoric of the union leaders and revisionists (fake leftists).
We have also been self-critical about being misled, like so many honest teacher activists, into believing the hype about “bottom-up” school reform. Many honest trade unionists and good anti-racist teachers are willing to believe in reforms because they want something better for kids. We struggle with our political friends to see that racist capitalism has nothing good for the schools: that “school reform” is a fascist plan to teach a few technical skills and a lot of patriotism as they increase class size and teacher hours, and lay off experienced teachers and union janitors. We’re trying to spread an understanding that reform and revolution are a contradiction, united in the struggle of teachers and students for a decent education.
We are not fighting to make the bosses’ schools work better for them, but for a communist world where education will serve the working class. Calling for a strike against cutbacks and school reform is part of fighting for the political leadership of students and teachers, showing them the direction of the fight for communist revolution and winning them to the Party. Although we have a lot of weaknesses, we measure our success in recruitment, in increased distribution of CHALLENGE, and our friends’ deeper understanding of the attack on the working class as the crisis of capitalism sharpens, inter-imperialist rivalry accelerates and communist revolution becomes increasingly necessary.
Los Angeles Comrade Teachers

‘Recovery’ for Bosses, Depression for Workers

Despite the media trumpeting the end of the U.S. economic crisis, the U.S. is in a depression. This depression is a necessary part of the capitalist system and reflects capitalism’s racist nature. Ultimately, the only way to make conditions better for workers worldwide is communist revolution. 
Capitalism is unplanned and competitive — the measure of success of any company is maximum profit. U.S. manufacturing is in long-term decline compared to its world rivals, mainly due to the falling rate of profit in highly automated U.S. industries. Since the 1970s, falling wages for U.S. workers have meant they can’t buy the very commodities they produce. This in turn has led to one new credit gimmick after another. The latest of these were mortgage scams, which caused home prices to soar. The inevitable collapse of those prices has set off a chain reaction of foreclosures and economic crises. 

Jobless ‘Recovery’

Conditions of workers in Africa, Asia and South America are much worse than those of U.S. workers. But workers here are already at depression-era levels of unemployment. A U.S. Federal Reserve chief concedes that the “official” national unemployment rate would skyrocket to 16% from 9.7% if discouraged workers are added to figures (Agence France-Presse, 8/28/09). Include those workers who work part-time but would take a full-time job if they could find one and that number goes to 21%, fully 30 million workers. 
In Detroit, the former center of the U.S. auto industry, the official unemployment rate is 28.9%, the highest number since records started being kept (ABC News 8/28/09). The New York Times (NYT) reports (8/11/09) that about a third of the unemployed have been jobless for more than six months, the highest number ever.
Unemployment depresses wages and benefits, improving the boss’s bottom line at the cost of higher exploitation of employed workers. Whatever “recovery” takes place for bosses’ profits, it will be a jobless one for workers.  

Racist Devastation

This crisis has a particularly racist character. Even before this depression started, one-third of the so-called black middle class “was already in danger of falling to a lower economic level” (NYT, 9/13/09). As bad as white workers have been hit, black and Latino workers have suffered even more. 
Subprime and other lousy mortgages were aimed disproportionately at black and Latino workers in urban areas. As mortgage rates adjusted upward, more and more black workers couldn’t pay their bills. Also, by 2010 “40% of African-Americans nationwide will have endured patches of unemployment or underemployment”  (NYT, 9/13/09). Those factors combined have spelled devastation for many black workers.

Two Paths: Endless Profit Wars or Communist Revolution 

The strategy of the U.S. Federal Reserve and Obama’s economic team “was to create staggering amounts of money out of thin air” (NYT, 8/20/09). They printed hundreds of billions of dollars, not backed up by actual value, and used that money to “stimulate” the economy. This has created a budget deficit of $1.8 trillion. U.S. rulers are arguing amongst themselves about what to do next. But it will take nothing short of a major war or series of wars for U.S. and other bosses around the world to get out of this crisis. 
During the Great Depression, the economic growth of 1934-1936 was followed by government spending cuts. But another collapse followed in 1937-1938. What ended the Depression and gave the U.S. capitalists an advantage over it’s competitors was the destruction of German, French, and British factories in World War II and the mobilization of millions of unemployed into the U.S. military. 
Only the overthrow of the racist profit-driven capitalist society can solve the problem of unemployment and economic wars. Communist-led reform struggles for more jobs, higher wages and against the bosses’ wars can build a base for anti-racist class unity against the bosses. But there are no reform solutions for capitalism’s problems. Communism would organize production to meet the needs of the working class. No profit calculation would enter this picture. Join our fight for a communist world.

Red Eye on the News

Dump toxic costs on the poor

GW, 10/2 – The oil trading company Trafigura last month agreed to pay compensation to 31,000 people in Ivory Coast, after the Guardian and the BBC’s Newsright obtained emails sent by its traders. They revealed that Trafigura knew that the oil slops [waste products] it sent there in 2006 were contaminated with toxic waste... It is one of the world’s worst cases of chemical exposure since the gas leak at the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India. But in all other respects the Trafigura case is unremarkable, just another instance of the rich world’s activities. Dump your telly over a hedge and you will be in big trouble. Dump 10,000 in Nigeria and you will get away with it. It suits all the rich nations not to ask too many questions, as long as the waste goes to faraway countries.
The Trafigura story is a metaphor for corporate capitalism. The effort of all enterprises is to keep the profits and dump the costs on someone else. Price risks are dumped on farmers, health and safety risks are dumped on subcontractors, insolvency risks are dumped on creditors, social and economic risks are dumped on the state, toxic waste is dumped on the poor, and greenhouse gases are dumped on everyone.

For insurers, sick are the enemy

MinutemanMedia.org, 9/25 – We hardly need to recite the shortcomings of our malevolent insurance companies. Their executives are paid millions, their duplicative approval systems are bankrupting all of us, and their customers are viewed as the enemy, always sick and presenting medical bills. The obvious goal for them is to sign up folks who are healthy and dump folks who are ill. It’s just good business. That’s the genius of the free market we hear so much about.
To promote this common-sense business model, insurers hire battle groups of lobbyists, pay fortunes to political campaigns, and advertise profligately.

Big biz decides what media say

MinutemanMedia.org – This is the big picture of the U.S. media system: On the most important issues — questions of war and peace, liberty, social justice, public health and prosperity, and the fate of the planet — it has failed us time and time again.
And that’s not surprising, because the system is founded on a couple of very bad ideas: It’s a bad idea to have journalism mainly carried out by large corporations whose chief interest in news is how to make the maximum amount of money from it. And it’s a bad idea to have as these corporations’ main or sole source of revenue advertising from other large corporations, so that the news industry’s overwhelming financial incentive is to keep those advertisers happy.

Red atheist risked her life vs. Nazis

NYT, 10/1 – Dr. Strobos, a sturdy 89, is honored every so often for the quietly valiant things she did almost 70 years ago as a medical student during the German occupation of the Netherlands: working with her mother, she hid more than 100 Jews who passed through their three-story rooming house in Amsterdam.
That sanctuary... was just a 10-minute stroll from a more fabulous hideout: Anne Frank’s.
Tina Strobos... was seized or questioned nine times by the Gestapo and was once hurled against a wall and knocked unconscious. Why would she take such gambles for people she barely knew?
“It’s the right thing to do,” she said with nonchalance...
But such an outlook has an origin, what Donna Cohen, the Holocaust Center’s executive director, calls “learned behavior.” Dr. Strobos comes from a family of socialist atheists who took in Belgian refugees during World War I and hid German and Austrian refugees before World War II.

Clean the air by poisoning water!

NYT, 10/13 – Much power plant waste once went into the sky, but because of toughened air pollution laws, it now often goes into lakes and rivers. Air pollution was causing respiratory diseases and acid rain.
So three years ago, when Allegheny Energy decided to install scrubbers to clean the plant’s air emissions, environmentalists were overjoyed. The technology would spray water and chemicals through the plant’s chimneys.
But the cleaner air has come at a cost. Each day... the company has dumped tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh... “It’s like they decided to spare us having to breathe in these poisons, but now we have to drink them instead.”

Biggest democracy tops child deaths

GW, 10/9 – India’s growing status as an economic superpower is masking a failure to stem a shocking rate of infant deaths among its poorest people. Nearly 2 million children under five die every year in India — one every 15 seconds... World Health Organization figures show it ranks 171st out of 175 countries for public health spending.
Malnutrition, neonatal diseases, diarrhea and pneumonia are the major causes of death...”The difference between rich and poor is huge...The health service has failed to deliver.”

Different law for non-rich

NYT 9/30 – Nearly a million poor people continue to be denied representation in the nation’s courts because legal aid clinics lack sufficient financing...for low-income clients in civil cases across the country...People without means...”lose their homes” and “lose their kids because they don’t have access to a lawyer that the rest of us take for granted.”

Women abused by playboy priests

NYT 10/16 – The group, Good Tidings, was founded by Cait Finnegan and her husband, a former Catholic priest, originally with the idea that they would help priests who had fallen in love...”We were naive,” Mrs. Finnegan said. “We quickly discovered that many of these priests were playboys...they were simply staying and playing. It was the women who needed the support. Unfortunately, many women accept the kind of abuse from a priest that they would never accept if they were dating another man..”
She said that in 25 years, Good Tidings had been contacted by nearly 2,000 women who said they were involved with priests... A landmark study in 1990 by the scholar A.W. Sipe, a former Benedictine, found that 20 percent of Catholic priests were involved in continuing sexual relationships with women, and an additional 8 percent to 10 percent had occasional heterosexual relationships.

Mo’ child left behind...

NYT 10/15 – The latest results on the most important nationwide math test show that student achievement grew faster during the years before... No Child Left Behind law... the law requires schools to bring 100 percent of students to reading and math proficiency by 2014.
On the most recent test, 39 percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level.
An unintended consequence of the law has been that many states have lowered the rigor of their standards and the difficulty of their tests to avoid sanctions the law imposes on failing schools, a process Secretary Duncan has called a “race to the bottom.”

China grabs trade of U.S., Europe

NYT 10/14 – SHANGHAI – With the global recession... China is grabbing market share from its export competitors, solidifying a dominance in world trade that many economists say could last long after any economic recovery.
China’s exports this year have already vaulted it past Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter. Now, those market share gains are threatening to increase trade frictions with the United States and Europe...European officials are clamoring for China to reduce its flood of exports and pressing for antidumping investigations...
The United States... has largely been silent... because Washington is trying to improve relations with Beijing at a time when it desperately needs China to purchase American debt. “China is getting stronger,” Mr. Tao at Credit Suisse says. “Its competitors are getting weaker... as exporters.”

U.S. politics’ best isn’t good enough

GW 10/16 – It is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversatiom about Obama... Any conversation about what he does morphs into one about who he is and what he might be...
In Oslo, where he was last week awarded the Nobel peace prize, they think he might be Mother Teresa. A peace prize for a leader, nine months into his term, whose greatest foreign policy achievement to date is to wind down one war so he can escalate another, is bizarre, to say the least...
He is now turning out to be the most progressive president in 40 years...But the limits are also all too apparent. Being the most progressive American president in more than a generation is not the same as being progressive... what U.S. politics can produce right now... may just not be good enough.

Nations ducking bill for climate

NYT 10/15 – The price tag for a new climate agreement will be a staggering $100 billion a year by 2020, many economists estimate; some put the cost at closer to $1 trillion. That money is needed to help fast-developing countries like India and Brazil convert to costly but cleaner technologies as they industrialize, as well as to assist the poorest countries in coping with the consequences of climate change, like droughts and rising seas...
Industrialized nations like the United States and those in Europe have agreed in principle to make such payments... but they... put no new cash on the table...
Equally contentious is the issue of which countries should give, and which should receive. Should the contributors be only industrialized nations, or should they include rapidly developing – and increasingly wealthy – polluters like China?
Xie Zhenhua, the lead Chinese climate negotiator... said the United Nations should not expect China to pay.
“Global warming is a result of carbon dioxide from developed countries during their industrialization.”

Environment hits workers hardest

LAT 9/15 – For the affluent leftists in the audience, environmentalism might be about polar bears and other “charismatic megafauna.” But “in the poor part of town, when they say, ‘Oh, the environment is terrible,’ they’re talking about air pollution, asthma, cancer clusters and birth defects.”

U.S. is the problem, not the solution

GW 10/16 – To the editor:
One of the main reasons why the U.S. cannot solve the world’s problems alone is the bald fact that the U.S. – like all of history’s pretenders to world domination – is itself the world’s number one problem... The culture of violence, fear, noise, excess, militarization, money – and celebrity-worship etc, is all conveyed by a mendacious and largely proto-fascist array of media...
At the U.N. general assembly, rapturous applause greeted Obama’s mainly platitudinous 40-minute oration...Gaddafi’s rambling address, which seriously analyzed western hegemony and arrogance as a root cause of international friction and injustice, was consensually dismissed as a predictable lunatic rant...
Let us not forget that it is insane U.S. (and European) warmongering that has caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan; nor that the 50,000 U.S. soldiers killed (for what?) in Vietnam stand in stark contrast to the “between 1 and 2 million Vietnamese dead” (as it is usually loosely phrased)...Mad “leadership”, though not exclusive to the west, is a significant part of our legacy to the rest of the world.

Steady Rain Couldn’t Dampen Throng Celebrating John Brown’s Raid

HARPER’S FERRY, WV, October 17 — Braving the cold and rain, nearly 300 antiracist workers and students from around the country commemorated the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Celebrants, more than half under the age of 25, acknowledged the need to continue Brown’s fight against racism through multiracial unity and militancy.
Teachers introduced the events in their classrooms and encouraged coworkers to help build for the events. Many months of fundraising, including a 50-50 raffle held in all attendees’ cities, helped make the day possible.
The program kicked off with a recitation of Brown’s speech from his trial, given by a founder of the Harper’s Ferry Historical Society. Brown pointed out that if he was rich, fighting against workers, instead of a worker fighting against the system of slavery, his fate would have been different. When asked about his participation in the program, the Historical Society member was excited about the rally and exasperated with the National Park Service for not including these events on their official activities’ calendar.
Students performed a skit, playing Brown, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass planning the raid. It focused on Douglass’ aversion to violence and Tubman’s actions. Brown’s collective included Harriet Tubman, whose role was celebrated as well. The skit was followed by the crowd warming up with anti-racist and communist chants and singing “John Brown’s Body.”
There was a performance of spoken word and song about Emmett Till, a young black boy, whose lynching helped spark the Civil Rights movement. A performer recreated Till’s fear of his lynching. Another performer sang Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” written after seeing a lynching in the segregated South. The crowd responded with a strong cadence of “smash racism, power to the workers.”
The fired-up crowd thronged together to march through the streets of Harper’s Ferry with militant chants and red flags, taking its anti-racist message to the townspeople and National Park Service visitors. Everyone braved a steady rain reminiscent of the conditions 150 years prior.
A closing rally was held at the original site of the federal armory which had housed the 100,000 weapons which were Brown’s goal. A long-time anti-racist fighter spoke of Brown’s good plan and the lessons the current generation needs to learn to fight racism. He ended with the passing of the “Sword of Struggle” to the younger generation to once and for all smash racism. A college student accepted the sword with humility and renewed commitment to the struggle.
The rally ended with a speech calling for the need to destroy capitalism, fight for communism, and join the Progressive Labor Party. The day’s commemoration reinforced the lessons of multiracial unity, militancy, and boldness as the guideposts to our lives.

Forging Parent-Student-Teacher Unity Inspired by John Brown

BROOKLYN, NY, October 18 — What a week we’ve had at our High School! Class struggle has been alive and well: We’ve helped fight the layoff of a co-worker, built our union chapter, fought back against a racist attack by the principal, and, out of all our activities, nearly 40 students, parents, and friends joined us to celebrate John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry (see article above).
We started the week with a parents’ dinner for the parents whose children were interested in coming with us to Harper’s Ferry. Seven students and eight parents came. While we ate we talked about our reasons for going to Harper’s Ferry, and celebrating John Brown’s raid, and the fight against slavery. The discussion broadened, as we talked about layoffs on other jobs. One parent works for a city agency, which has laid off 700 workers and replaced them with temps. Other parents talked about their struggles in their schools.
We explained that the reason we were organizing to go to Harper’s Ferry was because we were revolutionaries who wanted to win other workers to see the need for revolutionary violence to overthrow capitalism, the same way that John Brown saw the need for violence to overthrow
slavery. Three parents came on the trip, and another couple gave us a contribution. A post Harper’s Ferry potluck celebration is in the works.

Organizing Against Layoffs

In NYC, 530 school aides are being laid off (NY Daily News, 10/9), a racist attack because most are black and Latino. At our school, one aide is being “bumped” for a more senior worker who was laid off at another school.
In response, PL members and leaders of the teachers’ union chapter at the school organized a petition to build support and anger among the workers in the building. Almost everyone signed the petition. We then campaigned to bring teachers and other staff to the UFT Delegates Assembly (DA) to get more support. We weren’t able to get other staff to come, but we were able to get our co-worker into the meeting, and pressure the UFT misleaders to help fight for her job.
The following day we had two union-chapter meetings in the school where about 25 workers met to make plans to fight the harassment and micromanagement by our school administration. We also distributed stickers that many staff and students wore, saying essentially, “No Layoffs... Make the Bosses Take the Losses.” We assigned members of each department in the school to build for a dinner on Friday to take our soon-to-be laid-off coworker out after her last day, and struggled with staff to come out to a picket line Friday morning.
Friday morning about 20 staff picketed the school, against lay-offs and cutbacks, chanting, “They say cut back, we say fight back,” and, “The workers, united, will never be defeated.” It was difficult to get more staff out, but we’re setting the stage for more protests in the future.
Mid-day one of our comrades was called into the racist principal’s office and warned not to bring students to Harper’s Ferry. This racist attack on student-staff unity only made us angrier and more committed, and we found later that even conservative members of our staff were infuriated.
We followed all of this activity with a social in a local bar Friday. About 30 of us toasted our co-worker, and shared stories, and built ties.

The Result of This Week

Over thirty-five students, parents and teachers joined us in a day of celebration of the fight against racism with working-class violence and multiracial unity in Harper’s Ferry. We are developing plans, with students, staff and parents, to fight the racist principal. We will start a campaign to fight for student-staff unity. The future is ours, the struggle continues.

HOW WE ORGANIZED

During the summer, some PL’ers began thinking about organizing a trip to Harper’s Ferry to celebrate John Brown’s raid. Some of us were in a position to organize official school trips while others were in a more fascistic situation. In one instance, the principal said if a teacher arranged to meet a student at an AIDS Walk, that would be a “school trip” and it needed his approval. This was obviously false, but this principal was more intent on attacking certain teachers than in educating students.
In one Brooklyn high school, teachers had nearly 50 students interested in the John Brown trip. Everything from politics to logistics was explained to the students’ parents. There was an overwhelmingly positive response. Several parents wanted to go with their children. An information/parent permission slip was produced along with a pamphlet about the activities in Harper’s Ferry. Those materials were circulated to all the interested students.
Excitement grew and new students became interested. Calling parents became a daily activity. Money and permission slips began coming in. A parent informational meeting was organized and a sizable group of parents and their children attended.
In the end, the trip had an excellent turnout. Several parents and dozens of students came. Most thought it was a great trip despite the rain. Now the struggle moves on.
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CHALLENGE, October 28, 2009

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28 October 2009 273 hits

a href="#Stella D’Oro Strikers’ Anti-Racist, Anti-Sexist Unity">St"lla D’Oro Strikers’ Anti-Racist, Anti-Sexist Unity

  • Capitalism: Billions for the Banks, Joblessness and Debt for Workers
  • What Is Winning?

a href="#Norway’s Oil, Gas Bosses En‘Nobel’ Obama">Norw"y’s Oil, Gas Bosses En‘Nobel’ Obama

  • a href="#McChrystal-Biden Debate Over War Focus Behind Phony ‘Peace’ Prize">Mc"hrystal-Biden Debate Over War Focus Behind Phony ‘Peace’ Prize
  • a href="#Gore’s Nobel Had Same Imperialist Energy Motive">"ore’s Nobel Had Same Imperialist Energy Motive

a href="#Hundreds Protest Killer Kops’ Racist Murder">"undreds Protest Killer Kops’ Racist Murder

Cal Campus Rally Ties Budget Cuts to War Spending

Capitalism Breeds Racism

  • Obama A Cover For U.S. Imperialism
  • a href="#‘Founding Fathers’ Justified Slavery">‘F"unding Fathers’ Justified Slavery
  • Communists Led Fight Against Racism
  • Haitian Revolution Crushed French Slave-owners

Bus Mechanics Fight Union Hacks, Demand Action vs. Racist Murder

  • a href="#‘We’re the ones they come down on…’">‘We’re"the ones they come down on…’
  • For The Future

a href="#‘I really want NATO and U.S. troops to leave….’">‘I r"ally want NATO and U.S. troops to leave….’

  • CHALLENGE Comment

a href="#Imperialists’ Fight Over Pipelines Ignites Wider Wars">"mperialists’ Fight Over Pipelines Ignites Wider Wars

Racism Rampant in France

a href="#3 Minutes on Workers’ Revolution Panics Bosses’ Labor Lackies">3 "inutes on Workers’ Revolution Panics Bosses’ Labor Lackies

Red Eye

  • Big biz media let Katrina die
  • Capitalism globalizes toxic waste
  • Jobless recovery, poverty growing
  • 9/11 outrage outranked by Vietnam
  • Oil wealth doesn’t reach workers
  • We feel better working together
  • California may be leading a rout
  • Some big co’s block climate fight
  • Socialists can’t bury capitalism
  • Just how sexist can rich men be?
  • Rich capitalisms starve the poor

John Brown, Harriet Tubman: Models for Multi-Racial Unity and Action

  • From Childhood, Brown Vowed to Fight Slavery
  • Tubman Single-handedly Freed 300 Slaves
  • Black Rebels Petrified Slave-owners
  • Class Struggle Trumps Racism
  • Join PLP

Inspiration for All Workers:

a name="Stella D’Oro Strikers’ Anti-Racist, Anti-Sexist Unity"></">St"lla D’Oro Strikers’ Anti-Racist, Anti-Sexist Unity

BRONX, NY, October 8 — Stella D’Oro strikers, the working class salutes you!

You have shown the world an unbreakable solidarity that defied the attacks of profit-driven bosses for eleven long months during which not one worker scabbed, not one worker crossed the picket line.

You have shown how Latino, black, white and Asian workers, women and men, immigrant and native-born, can fight the bosses’ racist divisive tools and unite as a class.

You have shown that capitalist sexist ideology can be defeated, as men workers refused to take the bosses’ bribe offers to return to work, refusing to allow their sister workers to suffer a $10,000-a-year wage-cut over five years.

You have not let the bosses’ cops’ intimidation — tearing down your tent shelter in the dead of winter — break your spirit.

You have inspired thousands across the city — postal, transit, hospital and office workers, teachers, students and college professors — to come to support you and take back these lessons to their co-workers.

You have refused to succumb to anti-communism, working with supporters from PLP, discussing our communist ideas, edging closer to adopting the red flag as your flag, waving CHALLENGE as your flag as you entered the factory. As one striker said, "We’ve all been ‘infected’ now. Who knows where we’re all going to end up? But wherever we go, we’re going to spread PLP."

You have seen, on the one hand, the Labor Board supposedly "order" the Brynwood bosses to take you back honoring the old contract and then these same bosses, following their capitalist laws, close the factory, and sell the equipment and brand name to a low-wage, non-union boss in Ohio. From this you can learn the lesson that as long as the bosses have state (government) power, they can manipulate their laws to throw workers on the street.

Capitalism: Billions for the Banks, Joblessness and Debt for Workers

Yes, it is true that, after this long struggle, you have joined the ranks of 30 million other unemployed workers who have lost their jobs, their wages, their savings, their health insurance and many their homes. This must not be minimized. It is the terrible tragedy that a capitalist system, based on the drive for maximum profits, visits on the working class which produces everything of value but sees most of it stolen by the bosses only concerned with their bottom line.

And it is also true that the Obama administration gives hundreds of billions to the bankers who are responsible for these massive attacks on the working class. Meanwhile, it conducts wars seeking control of oil supplies and using our children as cannon fodder to kill brother and sister workers to maintain their profits in their fights with rival imperialists worldwide.

This combined oppression at home and abroad adds up pure and simple to fascism, U.S. style.

Through all this we can see the true colors of the labor "leaders" of unions who with over two million members in this city barely lifted a finger to support your valiant struggle. It is clear that, in their defense of capitalism, they are on the bosses’ side.

It is for many of these reasons that, on short notice, over 50 supporters, mostly organized by PLP, came to salute you, cheering and clapping as you left your final shift. After having chanted inside the factory, "The workers, united, will never be defeated!"— as you did at every shift change leading to the closing — you came out wearing your bakers’ caps, some in white uniforms, seemingly unwilling to let go of their craft.

One rank-and-file leader told us he learned as much in the last three days trying to organize workers to carry out a sit-down occupation than he had in the previous 14 months. His team did their best and did persuade a considerable number, but not, in their judgment, enough of a critical mass to spark a seizure of the factory.

What Is Winning?

So despite having been unable to overcome the whole system, its profit-protecting laws, its cops, its courts, its whole government, victory can be measured in lessons learned for the future:

• The multi-racial unity of black, Latino, Asian and white workers practiced in this struggle must guide our class.

• The international unity of native-born and immigrant from all over the world can defeat the nationalist divisions the bosses use to set us against each other.

• The equality of women and men is essential to every fight against the capitalists whose exploitation and degenerate sexist culture weakens our fight for a decent life.

• The solidarity of all workers — all for one and one for all — is our guiding light.

• The communist ideas of PLP are necessary to fight this capitalist system until it and the bosses’ state power are ultimately destroyed and a workers’ society replaces it in which the working class that produces all value will collectively share the fruits of our labors.

• Our biggest victory can become the joining and building of PLP — and the circulation of its ideas through the spreading of CHALLENGE, the only paper to report the truth of this long struggle — all to lead the overthrow of the racist, exploitative bosses who profit from our sweat.

A simple sign on the fence near the factory revealed the most important strategic lesson here: "The Stella D’Oro struggle shows that workers must take state power — PLP."

This is one battle in a long war against capitalism. The Stella D’Oro workers, especially those who join PLP, can spread their experiences among masses of the unemployed and among all co-workers on future jobs. The collective strength of the working class, led by communist ideas, has the power to eventually smash this hellish system.

Once more, we hail the magnificent struggle of the Stella D’Oro workers, a model for the whole working class.

a name="Norway’s Oil, Gas Bosses En‘Nobel’ Obama"></a>"orway’s Oil, Gas Bosses En‘Nobel’ Obama

Why did Barack Obama win the Nobel "Peace" Prize when he presides over two wars and the sharpest assault on jobs and wages since the Great Depression? The short answer is that the award has nothing to do with peace and workers’ needs.

Arms millionaire Alfred Nobel created the prize in his 1896 will, and subsequent war-making capitalists have controlled it ever since. U.S. arch-imperialists Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Henry Kissinger all won Nobels. A more detailed explanation of Obama’s award involves the Norwegian-prize givers’ role in an increasingly deadly global energy rivalry.

Choosing Obama was the brainchild of a committee hand-picked by the government of Norway, a major energy producer and strategic U.S. ally. Its giant Statoil Hydro is the world’s largest source of offshore oil and gas. Until recently, the deputy chairwoman of the Nobel panel, Kaci Kullmann Five, sat on Statoil’s board.

Nobel chairman Thorbjorn Jagland acted as Statoil’s virtual CEO as prime minister from 1996 to 1997 when the company was 100% state-owned. Jagland helped engineer sale of a 24% stake in Statoil to private investors led by U.S. banks State Street, J.P. Morgan and Bank of New York Mellon.

a name="McChrystal-Biden Debate Over War Focus Behind Phony ‘Peace’ Prize"></">Mc"hrystal-Biden Debate Over War Focus Behind Phony ‘Peace’ Prize

Through Obama’s prize surprise, Statoil/Norway is attempting to sway him in the direction of the McChrystal-McCain "surge-for-total-victory" model during the developing Afghan policy debate. Statoil aims to cash in on a U.S.-backed proposed pipeline — named TAPI — to carry gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. (See map page 6)

Next month, Statoil will serve as a "Silver Sponsor" — Exxon Mobil is a Gold one, BP is Platinum — at Turkmenistan’s 14th International Oil and Gas Conference. TAPI will be high on the agenda as western oil majors seek to break Russia’s stranglehold on Turkmen supplies. But TAPI’s success hinges on pacifying Afghanistan.

Tiny Norway plays such a big part in Obama’s war in Afghanistan because it could provide Statoil access to neighboring Turkmenistan’s gas riches. Norway has 500 troops in Afghanistan, a sizable contingent for a nation of 4.6 million, and the largest refugee bureau (Nobel’s current and Statoil’s ex-vice chair Kullman Five is a trustee). A Norwegian diplomat, Kai Eide, a former Statoil adviser, holds the highest UN post there. He recently "expressed support for the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan’s [McChrystal’s] call for more troops." (Voice of America, 9/29/09)

Eide recently fired his top U.S. aide Peter Galbraith for exposing the blatant rigging of Afghan president Karzai’s re-election. Statoil’s envoy fears that publicizing the fraud might fuel Vice-President Biden’s camp, which calls for toning down the Afghan war in favor of pushing into Pakistan.

Norway has cast its lot with U.S. imperialists for the long haul. During the Cold War, it was a staunch anti-Soviet strategically-located NATO member. It now houses NATO’s vast Joint Training Center at Stavanger, Statoil’s hometown. Norwegian, U.S. and other forces regularly practice there, not only for defending Statoil’s nearby oil and gas rigs but for invading Russia, just across the border. The "Peace" Prize move indicates Norway’s rulers are asserting their loyalty to their U.S. senior partners and demanding a piece of the imperialist pie now.

"Peace," as the Nobel Prize embodies it, actually means military conquest by U.S.-led imperialist coalitions and the loss of millions of workers’ lives. War will exist so long as the profit system endures. Capitalism thrives on armed conflict to carve up the world. It would be a serious political error to view Obama’s award as encouraging an end to U.S.-sponsored torture or ending Israeli-Palestinian strife or creating a new opening with Russia or Iran, as the New York Times says (10/9/09). For the working class, safety lies ultimately in joining PLP and building for a communist revolution to overthrow the profit-driven war-makers.

a name="Gore’s Nobel Had Same Imperialist Energy Motive">">"ore’s Nobel Had Same Imperialist Energy Motive

Al Gore’s 2007 "Peace" Prize for his efforts against global warming bears the Statoil hallmark, too. It so "happens" that Statoil, the world leader in trapping carbon emissions at gas plants, would profit mightily from the restrictions Gore advocates. In addition, such caps aim at stifling growth in U.S. rival China and potential rival India. On September 22, Statoil CEO Helge Lund joined the UN’s Expert Group on Climate and Energy, the only oil and gas executive invited. Lund’s booster Gore had helped found the panel.

a name="Hundreds Protest Killer Kops’ Racist Murder">">"undreds Protest Killer Kops’ Racist Murder

Rockford, IL, October 3 — Hundreds of workers and youth from Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan rallied today in Rockford against the racist police murder of Mark Anthony Barmore, a 23-year-old African American man. According to eyewitnesses, Mr. Barmore ran into a church day care center to avoid two cops who supposedly wanted to question him about a domestic violence incident. The cops ordered Mr. Barmore to come out of a closet where he was hiding and then shot him down when he came out, unarmed, with his hands raised.

As he lay on the floor face down and bleeding, they shot him three more times in the back, in front of over a dozen children who might have been killed by ricocheting bullets. Then, according to witnesses, the cops moved the body to rearrange the crime scene and then took family members to the police station and tried unsuccessfully to intimidate them into telling a false story. For this, the cops have been put on paid administrative leave while the case is being investigated.

Capitalism is declining and anger is rising. The real unemployment rate is over 20% and for young black men it’s over fifty percent. The cops fear the militancy of black youth and are intensifying their direct brutal assaults and intimidation in the hope of stopping rebellion. Only when there is fight-back do the big bosses decide to do a whitewash like the "legal" clearing (with Obama’s blessing) of the cop who killed Sean Bell in NYC, or if protests threaten to get out of hand to jettison a few "bad apple" cops.

Several members of PLP from the Chicago area attended the NAACP rally. Over two hundred people, including a number of youth, directed their anger against the cops and the system, instead of against each other. The bosses complain about youth violence but they would rather have youth killing each other than fighting against the capitalist system! When the anti-racist movement of the 1960’s retreated, there was a rapid rise in youth violence and gangs in our cities.

A mass anti-racist movement, led by communists, can channel this anger back against the capitalist system that is the cause of our problems. Of the many speakers that day, only one said positive things about Obama. Most made no mention of him at all. Many in our communities are coming to understand that he is not a cure for racist capitalism and that we have to fight back ourselves. About 40 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed and Party members are making plans with members of community groups to work on more projects together back home.

Over the past 50 years, many national leaders of the NAACP have worked together with the government to take the militancy out of the anti-racist movement, even to the point of attacking grassroots militants and siding with the police against them. But like many other unions, community groups, churches and schools whose leaders push capitalist dead-ends like electoral politics, the NAACP on the local level has many dedicated grassroots members who struggle hard to fight racist oppression. Communists must unite with these militant forces in struggle against racist oppression while we struggle with them to oppose the reformist leaders who support the capitalist system.

Modern racism was born in the slave trade with the rise of capitalism, and capitalism needs racism to keep workers divided and maximize profits from lower wages paid to black, Latino and immigrant workers. PLP has been in the forefront of the struggle to destroy racism and capitalism for almost 50 years. Join PLP and help build a world-wide communist revolution to destroy racism and all oppression once and for all.

Cal Campus Rally Ties Budget Cuts to War Spending

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, Oct. 6 — A student-faculty anti-war group held a rally on campus against the budget cuts in the California State University (CSU) system, and the war spending that contribute to these cuts. One speaker explained that in the U.S., war spending trumps all other priorities, amounting to about $760 billion in 2009.

Over the period since the Iraq war began in 2003 up to 2008, the U.S. has reduced the funding for states and cities to provide services like Medicaid by about $136 billion, including about $16 billion for California. The one-time stimulus grant to California in 2009 of $8 billion doesn’t even make up for funds diverted to the wars in the previous five years! Clearly the fight against campus budget cuts must be linked to the fight against imperialist wars.

Two other speakers protested a racist change in the admission policy that is a part of the cutbacks. This policy gives preference to students from other parts of the state, and is likely to reduce the percentage of black and Latino students on this campus.

Another speaker explained that the current economic crisis "provides us with a clear view of the priorities that the state of California, the United States, or, more generally, any profit-driven economy must take." He pointed out that California’s huge spending on its racist overcrowded prison system, where 70% of released inmates are sent back to prison, takes billions that should be spent on education and public services. The state spends $49,000 each on its 170,000 prisoners, more than 60% of whom are black and Latino, but has reduced state support of the CSU to $4,600 per student. "We should take the economic crisis as an opportunity to see clearly that the state’s priorities are not in the interests of working people, and recognize that these policies for war, for prison and for education cutbacks are not in our common interest as a working class."

Several hundred students heard some part of the rally, 300 leaflets were distributed, and about a dozen students signed up to be contacted further. It is our responsibility as communists to show students and faculty that fee increases and layoffs are a result of racism and imperialist wars created by capitalism.

Workers Must Destroy System

Capitalism Breeds Racism

Many of us identify ourselves by "race" and ethnicity in daily conversation as well as on government forms. However, according to the American Anthropological Association, there are no biological foundations or genes for "race." Humans are genetically more alike than different, yet the idea of "race" is embedded in our everyday dialogue. This is because "race" is an idea, a concept carefully reinforced and reproduced by capitalist society in order to maintain itself.

Over 140 years after the end of chattel slavery in the U.S, the ruling class still wields racism, as it’s most vicious tool against the world’s workers. In New York, official unemployment among blacks is four times the rate among whites. The college graduation rate of blacks is half that of whites in the U.S. Around the world, virtually every measure of health, from infant mortality rates, to stress and high blood pressure, to diabetes and heart failure, is worse for blacks. In the U.S., 1 in 10 black males age 30-34 is in prison, 1 in 4 is in the criminal justice system. On a daily basis young black and Latino men are gunned down in the streets by racist cops, or killed by crime that rises with the unemployment and poverty rate.

Obama A Cover For U.S. Imperialism

The election of a black president has not blunted racism. On the contrary, the bosses hope that Obama provides a cover to the horror of U.S. Imperialism. Already the ruling class is licking its chops at the rise in black military recruitment since Obama’s election. These young men and women will be sent to kill and risk death in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Meanwhile destitute workers from Uganda are being used as soldiers in Iraq, paid only a fraction of the wages of the U.S. military, and used as shields in a protective ring around U.S. mega-bases. Building anti-racist, international unity among these soldiers with a revolutionary outlook is the way forward to eliminate racism.

Racism is not merely a vestige of an old system, but an essential part of capitalism. From the very beginning of capitalist society, the ascending ruling class was profiting enormously from slave labor and indentured servitude, a system by which poor workers were committed to a single boss for a set period and then "freed" to become wage laborers. But as black and white indentured servants began uniting with Native Americans to resist exploitation in this new social order, race laws were enacted and brutally enforced to divide the colonial work force.

In 1662, Virginia passed a law that enslaved blacks for life. Legislation was passed to determine what a "black" person was since so much intermarriage occurred. These laws were also used to justify the enslavement of children produced from the rape of black slaves by the colonial rulers. While black slavery was enshrined in law, a 200-year genocide against Native-Americans was carried out, led by butchers such as Andrew Jackson who would go on to become President.

a name="‘Founding Fathers’ Justified Slavery"></">‘F"unding Fathers’ Justified Slavery

Slave-owning racist Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence, said in 1789 that he could never imagine a "biracial republic." The hypocritical "founding fathers" needed to justify their brutal ownership of enslaved African workers while simultaneously touting the "ideals" of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The Abolitionist movement grew in reaction to the continued brutality of chattel slavery. Many people spoke out. John Brown and Nat Turner led the most militant attacks on slaveholders, with John Brown trying to unite white and black workers alike. They planted the seeds for anti-racist actions that played out in the U.S. Civil War, and continue to inspire workers all over the world.

At that time the ruling class was becoming divided between the Northern industrialists and the Southern slaveholders. The industrialists used the mass hatred of slavery to weaken the southern bosses, eventually leading to the Civil War. After hundreds of thousands died fighting slavery, Lincoln saw it was no longer politically tolerable and reluctantly ended chattel slavery in 1865.

The limited politics of the struggle didn’t allow for racism to be defeated, as the Abolitionists did not make the fight against capitalism the issue, but only against slavery. So, chattel slavery became wage slavery; it didn’t end, they just changed the rules. The bosses have since stolen trillions of dollars of additional profits through the super-exploitation of black, Latino and Asian workers being paid lower wages.

After chattel slavery, new laws against integration, called Jim Crow, physically and politically separated workers. White capitalists, using former confederate officers and soldiers to protect their privilege through terror, formed the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. They attacked black workers organizing, speaking out or uniting with white workers.

Great strikes such as the New Orleans General Strike of 1892 illustrated that white and black workers could see past racism as the struggle united them. They fought scabs and the U.S. army and were stronger together than they ever could have been apart. From the 1930’s to ‘50s, uniting black and white workers in the struggle against racism became a cornerstone of the old Communist Party.

Communists Led Fight Against Racism

From building a mass movement to defending the young black men framed in Scottsboro, to organizing integrated sharecroppers and steel workers unions in the south, the communist movement led the fight against racism. Our Party came out of this movement, and by learning from its successes and mistakes and fighting many battles against the Klan, Nazis and racist cops, we have advanced our understanding of racism.

In June 1964, the first mass big-city rebellion erupted in New York City’s Harlem when many thousands of black workers and youth took to the streets to protest another police murder of a black teenager. They marched through Harlem’s streets, displaying the front page of CHALLENGE as their "flag."

PLM (Progressive Labor Movement, forerunner of PLP) was the only organization to support the rebellion — all the reformist black leaders and the old "Communist" Party tried to simultaneously cool the rebels and attack PLM. We defied being banned from Harlem by the state, and held a mass demonstration during the height of the rebellion calling for the bosses, their judges, and their cops to be hanged.

In the ‘60s and beyond, the bosses have tried to turn anger against racism into a wedge to keep workers of different "races" separate. Nationalist groups like the Black Panther Party called for blacks to stick together in a militant way. More mainstream ideas called for black-owned business, black cops and black politicians. President Obama is the ultimate figure in the disarming of the struggle against racism. His rhetoric about the "post-racial" society is an attempt to delude workers into not seeing the realities of racism all around them.

Racism As Widespread As Ever

The foreclosures and unemployment rates of the current economic crisis affect blacks more than whites. Racist police brutality persists, and during his candidacy, Obama’s only comment on the assassination of Sean Bell was that the police were justified. During his inaugural speech, this supposed trail-blazer described himself as following in the footsteps of the "founding fathers" who created the racism he downplays.

Racism was created by the ruling class and developed as capitalism developed. It allows bosses to keep workers of different colors apart so they will not join forces to rebel. Racism creates a group of super-exploited black and Latino workers, keeping wages lower for all, as workers fear asking for more because others work for less.

The most heroic class struggles of workers have been waged by building multi-racial unity. The battle of the Stella D’Oro workers over the last year has been the most recent example of this, with workers of every nationality standing in solidarity and male workers refusing to take deals that would not benefit the women workers in a stand against sexism as well. PLP was founded on the belief that we must fight racism in order to create a new world and that only a communist revolution can destroy this capitalist creation. The rulers built racism to make more profits for themselves. Workers don’t need or want the ideas that separate us from each other. Workers will destroy racism as they destroy the whole capitalist system and build a world that serves our needs instead.

Haitian Revolution Crushed French Slave-owners

The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) was the most important revolution of its time. Haiti was the richest colony in the Caribbean, and it would have been a launching pad to begin a French offensive into the North American continent. The enslaved workers of Haiti, with nothing but meager weapons, managed to defeat the powerful French army. They fought Napoleon’s armies that were rampaging all across Europe, and they gave that despot his first defeat. The uprising was successful in overthrowing the French landowners, as well as defeating the European armies that came to France’s aid in order to restore "order." The former slaves also freed the slaves of the Spanish colony that would be later named "The Dominican Republic." The former slaves managed to wipe out their oppressors, but they were trapped in the ideology of race. They saw white workers as the enemy, and this racism became nationalism as it was co-opted by pro-capitalist misleaders like Toussaint L’ouverture.

The Haitian Revolution foreshadowed the failures of all of the future National Liberation Movements, as they did not fight against all bosses, but only the white bosses, not recognizing just how virulently racist the black slave-holders were. Haiti became the first example of neo-colonialization as well, as the capitalist nations forced Haiti to pay billions of dollars in today’s currency in reparations to the French slave-owners, thus impoverishing the Haitian workers and enslaving them economically to the designs of the imperialist nations. Haiti has been punished to this day for daring to rise up and defeat capitalism while it was ascending, and their great revolution has been carefully removed from the capitalist’s textbooks.

Bus Mechanics Fight Union Hacks, Demand Action vs. Racist Murder

LOS ANGELES, October 12 — After a bus driver’s nephew, Darrick Collins, a young black worker, was murdered by a racist county Sheriff (see CHALLENGE, 10/14), we asked the driver to speak at our union meeting of mechanics about this racist terror. When we talked to the family at the funeral, they called the uncle, and after a long phone conversation he said he’d be glad to speak to other union members. He related a dozen other recent police killings, news of which we distributed in our PLP flyers, "Wanted for Mass Murder: LA Sheriffs and Capitalism."

We told the driver we wanted to introduce a motion to condemn the Sheriff’s Dept. for this brutal racist murder and call for a five-minute work-stoppage in protest. "But," we said, "we know the union leadership will do everything they can to prevent the motion." The driver was unfazed, saying "I’ll have to get time off from work to make the meeting, but I‘m coming."

When the driver arrived at the meeting, the union president said, "You’ll have to wait outside. You’re in the driver’s union. This is a mechanic’s union." This "warm show of unity" toward another transit worker brought by a mechanic was followed by the divisive union hack’s warning the membership, "Watch your pockets!" (In other words, "he’s just here looking for money.")

But the rank-and-filers at the meeting rejected the mis-leadership’s motion to exclude the driver, saying they wanted to hear the brother. The Party, through CHALLENGE readers and friends, fought to make sure workers supported this fight in the union and at work.

a name="‘We’re the ones they come down on…’"></a>‘W"’re the ones they come down on…’

After waiting half-an-hour in the lobby, the driver was received and spoke humbly but urgently for us to take a stand against the killings. "I didn’t come here for pity or charity. I came to raise your awareness. I’m no one special; I’m just a blue-collar worker like all of you," but he warned, "We are the ones they come down on, the ones they kill, like this young man in my family."

Then there was a long discussion where workers talked angrily about experiences of racist police terror and jailings, while the union president sat numbly at the back. But soon he resumed his real role by ruling a job-action motion "out of order." "We have contracts," he cried. "We would get huge fines like New York City’s transit union [in 2005]." A service attendant asked sarcastically if we could now expect cops to shoot us with picket signs in our hands, when we go on strike, recalling a cop killing of a man with a stick in his front yard. "We won’t be going on strike," the president told him. But another worker said, "We need to go on strike!" Another worker said that everyone should wear red arm bands in protest of the racist murder of Darrick Collins.

Afterwards, in discussions in the parking lot, a black technician thanked a worker for inviting him and "for staying on my ass to make sure I came." One mechanic was disappointed in himself for not "shoving the president’s words down his own throat. It crossed my mind to make a motion to give a thousand dollars to the family since the driver never even thought about money. "He [the president] insulted all of us."

For The Future

As U.S. capitalism declines, it increasingly unleashes racist terror. Workers plan to take this motion to the drivers’ union as well. Even though we didn’t win the motion, more workers are reading and distributing CHALLENGE. The confidence of newer and older PLP members in the workers and the Party is growing.

Our leaflet, distributed outside and inside bus divisions, declared that these racist, cold-blooded murders by the bosses’ death squads are aimed at instilling terror in all workers, to accept passively the bosses’ economy of sacrifice and their genocidal wars for oil. It called for revolution to destroy racist capitalism.

Advocating a political strike against a capitalist system that thrives on racist exploitation and mass murder at home and abroad deepens workers’ understanding about the nature of the beast we’re fighting and the need to destroy it, together with its cops and union misleaders. In this fight, we’re going beyond calling for removing Sheriffs from transit security and restoring the Transit Police, as suggested by the union president. Instead we’re raising the need for communist revolution to bury our class enemies entirely.

a name="‘I really want NATO and U.S. troops to leave….’"></a>"I really want NATO and U.S. troops to leave….’

[A CHALLENGE reader received this message from a friend in Afghanistan.]

Today there was an explosion in an area in Kabul close to the U.S. embassy, NATO and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), killing 80 people, not 16 as the media reported. I don’t know when they will stop killing innocents. The U.S., NATO and ISAF, the Taliban, the Jihadis (warlords) — they are all killing innocent people. Westerners are committing most of the explosions and killings.

I really want NATO and U.S. troops to leave. If they can’t bring security, why are they here?

The election will go to the second round. There will be chaos and, according to the constitution, a state of emergency. There will be a loyal jirga (a nation-wide council of representatives) but I’m afraid that the warlords who are now in power, like Masud, Rabani, Fahim (vice-president and minister of defense), Sayyaf and Dostum will dominate it again.

All those in power, including [president] Karzai, are rich, making money from the situation. They have militias and weapons and are only looking to fill their pockets. (Russia and Iran recently gave money to two warlords who control territory close to the Russian and Iranian borders.) They are criminals. They stole the reconstruction money. In eight years of U.S. occupation, they built no public projects. Even foundation work has not been started!

Who will bring work, education and security? Do you think the Americans will do this? They have done nothing in the last eight years. And they say they will not leave until 2015.

The military situation is very bad. They have plans to divide Afghanistan like Yugoslavia. But they will not succeed to divide Afghans; we will fight against that.

A friend in Afghanistan

CHALLENGE Comment — PLP supports our friend and the exploited masses in Afghanistan. We are fighting wherever we can against the U.S. rulers’ imperialist invasion of that country, which leads to our thoughts about the question our friend poses: "If they [NATO and U.S. troops] can’t bring security, why are they here?"

U.S. bosses invaded Afghanistan not to bring its people security but to attempt to control oil and gas pipelines from that region and its strategic military position, in their inter-imperialist rivalry with China and Russia. All of the forces the writer mentions are enemies of the country’s workers and farmers. This bosses’ battle is what is killing innocent people.

The U.S. ruling class is trying to remain the world’s dominant power to be able to exploit the world’s working class, not bring it security. In fact, it is these profit motives that are the source of the insecurity that tramples on the aspirations of the masses in Afghanistan and everywhere else, including on the U.S. working class.

a name="Imperialists’ Fight Over Pipelines Ignites Wider Wars">">"mperialists’ Fight Over Pipelines Ignites Wider Wars

The threat to U.S. political and economic domination of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas today centers on pipelines that U.S. oil companies and rival coalitions of the area’s weaker powers are proposing to build to transport oil and gas to lucrative markets in Europe and Asia.

Afghanistan is a vital transit route for U.S. multi-billion-dollar oil and gas exports, going from the energy-rich Caspian Sea on Afghanistan’s northern border to the Arabian Sea. Five U.S. oil giants — Unocal, Chevron, Pennzoil, Amoco and Exxon — have invested heavily in the region, said to have the greatest energy potential outside the Middle East. Bush-Cheney, with strong oil company ties, invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to secure a flow of oil and profits. This policy — not the hunt for Al Qaeda — is also the driving force behind Obama’s continued military occupation.

Last year’s stand-off in Georgia highlighted the potential of Russia-U.S. military confrontation. Behind the clash was the U.S.-backed BTC pipeline, which by-passes Russia and Iran to transport Caspian oil from Baku in Azerbaijan through Tbilisi in Georgia to Ceyhan, the Turkish port on the Mediterranean.

In May, Iran signed a deal to export 150 million cubic meters of gas per day to Pakistan via a proposed Iran-Pakistan pipeline, which Russia and China are planning to fund. (India, initially involved in this project, recently backed out at U.S. insistence, sweetened by a deal giving India U.S. nuclear power technology, although India’s decision may not be final.) It would be routed through the Pakistani province of Baluchistan which shares a common border with Iran. China is potentially interested in extending the pipeline to its northwestern provinces bordering Pakistan.

All this intensified the conflict between Iran and the U.S. and revealed the dangers the U.S. faces from its so-called allies, Pakistan and India, and from its major competitors, Russia and China. The latter’s economic growth depends on a steady supply of oil and gas so it’s also making deals with Iran, whose oil reserves rank as the world’s fourth largest while its gas reserves are second to Russia — much of it undeveloped.

The Iran-Pakistan deal revived a proposed rival U.S. pipeline, TAPI (see editorial, CHALLENGE, 10/14), which would transport gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India. TAPI is funded by the Asian Development Bank whose major investors included U.S. financial institutions and oil companies.

TAPI would go from Turkmenistan through Western Afghanistan, head south across Helmand province — the stronghold of the Taliban and local drug lords — through the neighboring Pakistani province of Baluchistan to the Arabian Sea for shipment to Europe and Asia.

The Afghan government is expected to receive 8% of TAPI’s revenue. Given the corruption in Afghanistan, very little of that would benefit the desperately poor Afghan population. There will be more civilian deaths, refugees and devastation in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the U.S. fights to protect the proposed pipeline routes.

In Baluchistan, where nationalist groups are already fighting for greater autonomy from Pakistan’s central government, the presence of a Pakistani pipeline could precipitate a break-away. Anger is rising at that government throughout Pakistan’s four provinces and federally-administered tribal areas.

Pakistani Senate Deputy Chairman Jan Muhammad Jamali told the Upper House recently, "Time is running out…. There is no other option left but to grant provincial autonomy to all the provinces, including Baluchistan."

U.S. government circles have also considered a Yugoslavia-style break-up to be advantageous to U.S. domination in the area. Baluchistan — where the CIA has been secretly training and funding the rebels — would become a U.S. client state, creating a buffer between Iran and India. It would help thwart China which is building a refinery in the Baluchistan seaport of Gwadar to be connected to the proposed pipeline taking Iranian oil north to western China.

With challenges and confrontations from enemies and allies, U.S. imperialists will do what they’ve always done to hang onto their economic and geopolitical power: use more military force.

To fight against these warring imperialists who are sucking the blood out of the masses, a revolutionary party is needed, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to mobilize the working class and the peasants towards the goal of destroying the profit system which is exploiting tens of millions in this region.

Racism Rampant in France

PARIS, October 7 — Brice Hortefeux, France’s Interior minister — the "top cop" in charge of the national police and the gendarmes — has been subpoenaed to appear in criminal court on December 17 for making racist insults. The chances that the bosses’ courts will condemn a government minister are, of course, microscopically small.

The suit was brought by the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples (MRAP) following the Internet publication of a video in which Hortefeux cracks racist jokes about North Africans. Hortefeux first tried to deny his racism; later he apologized to the French Council of the Muslim Faith.

Government Racism

Before being promoted to Interior minister, Hortefeux was the Immigration minister who (as CHALLENGE reported 10/31/07) launched a racist anti-immigrant rampage. Immigrants were so terrorized that they leapt from windows to escape the police, some leaping to their deaths.

Hortefeux’s racism is replicated by the cops he commands. One recent example: on May 9, during a clash between police and youths in the Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, the cops fired tear gas and "flash balls" [rubber bullets] in all directions. Two black men lost their eyes.

Bruno, 31, a truck driver, told an interviewer: "It was a friend’s birthday. About a dozen of us were ordering sandwiches.... The riot police…entered the housing project, [and] started firing right away.... I wasn’t involved at all... I was eating with my friends, like we often do. And all of a sudden I was hit right in the head.... I fell down…. My friends…took me to the hospital.... My eye is dead. There’s no hope…. They’re going to operate to take it out and put in a prosthesis."

A rigorous study of police ID checks published on June 30 and conducted by the CNRS (a research organization financed by the Ministry of Higher Education) shows that the cops stop "Arab-looking people" seven times as often as whites, while blacks are stopped 11.5 times as often.

The Ministry of Higher Education itself spreads racism. Every year, the ministry-run academy of overseas sciences offers a 4,000-euro (US $5,880) prize for the best book dealing with "the positive aspects of colonization."

Similarly at the Ministry of Education, Serge Bilé and Mathieu Méranville have just published a 160-page book detailing the racism faced by black teachers on the part of the ministry, fellow teachers, parents and pupils.

a name="Bosses’ Racism">">"osses’ Racism

The bosses’ racism here — revealed in a university study published September 9 by the Observatoire des inégalités — shows that, on average, to get a single interview for an accounting job, a person with a Moroccan first and last name must send out 277 job application letters. A person with a French first and last name, with exactly the same qualifications, only has to send out 19 letters before landing a job interview.

According to sociologist Saïd Bouamama, the bosses here try to get all workers to accept this racism by promoting so-called "positive stereotypes." In a Sept. 29 interview, Bouamama said that "for this system to function correctly, they have to add an ideology that makes this situation less revolting. For example, blacks are supposedly better bouncers because they are ‘more diplomatic.’ North Africans are supposedly ‘naturally good’ in the building trades, and Asians are ‘painstaking’ in the garment industry.... There are supposedly ethnic capacities, or rather qualities. The strategy is to get as many people as possible to accept as self-evident the limitation of blacks or North Africans to a certain type of job."

Racist discrimination in housing, according to a French government study (September 3), shows landlords twice as likely to invite people with a French name to visit an apartment as people with an Arabic or African name, and four times as likely to sign a rental contract if the applicant is white.

Because of this racism, 22% of North African immigrant families live below the poverty line, compared with 6% of the general population.

France is sick with the racism bred by capitalism and imperialism. Racism generates super-profits through the super-exploitation of these groups. Their low wages drag down the wages of all workers. Most importantly, racism prevents the working class from realizing the class unity necessary for communist revolution, which is the only way to eliminate capitalist exploitation, the material basis of racist ideas. That’s why communists here and everywhere fight racism and promote the multi-racial unity of the working class.

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"A system that destroys decent jobs doesn’t deserve to exist," said a Machinist at a recent Boeing local union meeting. That was too much for the local president.

"Three minutes, brother!" he shouted, invoking a seldom-used rule to cut us off. Eventually he succeeded, but not before we called for demonstrations, strikes and sit-ins against a system that offers us nothing but fascism and war.

Interestingly, the district president Wroblewski hasn’t attended our local meeting since PLP’s well-received, much discussed Summer Project demonstrations at factory gates. We were protesting the no-strike deal demanded by the company, Democratic and Republican politicians and the bosses’ media. "Are you surprised?" asked another machine operator. "He knew we’d string him up if he ever agreed to such a thing after you guys passed out those leaflets at the gates."

But we should have no illusions; the union mis-leadership is trying desperately to find some kind of accommodation. Two meetings ago, the district president’s representative denied that Wroblewski even discussed this issue when he had a private meeting with the new Boeing Commercial Aircraft chief. He then droned on praising Wroblewski for "listening to the company’s ideas."

Cutting Through the Rhetoric

"That’s the worst non-denial denial I ever heard!" exclaimed an exasperated shop steward at an impromptu post-meeting meeting that discussed how to take the offensive. Now the bosses and their agents are floating code words like arbitration and contract extensions in a poor attempt to camouflage the no-strike regime.

Capitalism’s economic and political crisis is forcing the major union mis-leaders to look for new positions in an increasingly warlike world. Their trade union politics demand it.

At IAM (International Association of Machinists) national meetings they spread the illusion that the system is basically sound, that militant rhetoric and electing the right politicians can answer any "temporary" attacks. They contend the system will soon right itself and resume negotiating decent contracts. "It’s enough to make you sick," said an honest official after returning from just such a gabfest.

But actually the top union hacks have become overt members of the repressive bosses’ state apparatus. The New York AFL-CIO chief now heads the New York Federal Reserve, meeting with bankers from Chase and Goldman (government) Sachs to plot the salvation of the empire. The IAM international president calls for a national (actually fascist) industrial policy and commission in which he will no doubt be a major player.

To expose this charade, the union meeting speaker listed nation-wide examples marking the bosses’ real plans for re-industrialization through intensified racist exploitation. These include shutting down Pratt and Whitney aerospace engines in Hartford, Conn., moving the work to low-cost, non-union Georgia; closing unionized G.E. in Arizona to take advantage of cheaper non-union labor in the Southeast; moving work from Republic Doors in Chicago after a historic sit-in; and closing the Stella D’Oro bakery after a courageous 11-month strike and moving the work to a non-union outfit in Ohio.

The list ended with the threat of erecting a new Boeing-787 line in South Carolina after workers there rejected the union. "We can no longer assume that even hard-fought contracts can provide any immunity from the attacks of this sick system," concluded our speaker.

Adding an exclamation point, the company just announced another billion-dollar charge for the new 747 primarily because the crisis has forced airlines to delay orders. This means "thousands of layoffs" (NY Times, 10/7). So far this year the company has charged $3.5 billion to production delays. What seemed impossible just a short while ago is now a marked possibility: a federal take-over like GM, trashing our contracts and mounting job cuts.

The right-wing union leaders understood the implications of all this. That’s why they risked discarding any illusions of "democracy" to cut us off. Our friends and CHALLENGE readers were aware of the stakes as well. To win this struggle, these co-workers must help bring this developing revolutionary working-class understanding to the vast center in the shops, selling CHALLENGE to their friends and workmates, building class struggle and recruiting communist leaders.

Who Needs Three Minutes?

Unlike the union mis-leaders that must conceal their class-collaboration schemes, we "communists distain to conceal our views and aims." What Karl Marx said 137 years ago is still true today.

One doesn’t need three minutes to state the obvious: capitalism can’t meet the needs of workers and must be smashed. As the Communist Manifesto declared, "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist Revolution. [We workers] have nothing to lose but [our] chains. [We] have a world to win."

LATE BULLETIN — More auto union sellouts in the works: The "leaders" of the UAW at the Philadelphia Boeing factory (making mostly military helicopters) scheduled to strike October 19, won’t call the local out on strike despite the contract expiration.

Meanwhile, the UAW leadership accepted an agreement at Ford freezing wages for new hires and containing a no-strike clause at the end of the contract. It awaits a membership vote. More next issue.

Red Eye

Big biz media let Katrina die

MinutemanMedia.org, 9/10 — Four years later, corporate media outlets seem to have largely forgotten about Katrina and its survivors, let alone the conversations about race and poverty that were supposed to accompany it. Neither the Washington Post nor the Los Angeles Times ran a single piece on Katrina in the week surrounding the anniversary. ABC and Fox News didn’t mention the hurricane or its aftermath once. In the New York Times, readers found only a few articles on Katrina; it mentioned that "fundamental problems" still exist, like high unemployment, and some neighborhoods that seem "barely touched" since four years ago. Race, the elephant in the room, wasn’t mentioned a single time.

In addition to the estimated 1 million people still displaced by Katrina, rents in the New Orleans area have increased by 40 percent since the hurricane, and an estimated 11,000 people are currently homeless there. A report also reveals striking racial disparities in the impacts.

Capitalism globalizes toxic waste

NYT, 9/27 — Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become a vast and growing international business, as companies try to minimize the costs of new environmental laws. Trash is bound for places like China, Indonesia, India and Africa. There, electronic waste and construction debris containing toxic chemicals are often dismantled by children at great cost to their health. Other garbage that is supposed to be recycled according to European laws may simply be burned or left to rot, polluting air and water.

The temptation to export waste is great because recycling properly at home is expensive: Because of Europe’s new environmental laws, it is four times as expensive to incinerate trash in the Netherlands as to put it – illegally – on a boat to China.

"The traffic in waste exports has become enormous."

Jobless recovery, poverty growing

GW, 9/25 — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said last week that the recession is "very likely over." Bernanke cautioned that the recovery may not be strong enough in 2010 to generate significant job growth or bring down unemployment. The global recession is expected to push 89 million more people into extreme poverty by the end of 2010, the World Bank said last week.

9/11 outrage outranked by Vietnam

Creators.com, 9/11 — As assaults on a society go, the Sept. 11 attacks, which left 3,000 dead and are sure to be described in this anniversary week as being among the greatest historical outrages, were something less than that, given the world’s experience with the ravages of war. The countless Russians and the 6 million Jews killed... come to mind. The 3.4 million Vietnamese, mostly rice farmers, whom Robert McNamara admitted to having helped kill with his carpet-bombing of their country, are a forgotten footnote.

Oil wealth doesn’t reach workers

NYT, 9/27 — Destruction, or at least a lack of progress, has been the fate of most nations unlucky enough to sit on top of large pools of oil today. They have grown corrupted by oil, their leaders relieved of the need to show accountability as long as they can buy off well-connected foreigners and pay for the security and protection they need from their own angry, disenfranchised citizens.

Equatorial Guinea’s vicious leader, Teodoro Obiang, plunders virtually every cent of his nation’s wealth, aided by Riggs Bank of Washington, which sometimes sent employees to the embassy to pick up bulging suitcases of cash. Locals don’t even get the benefit of jobs because the manual labor is supplied by Indians and Filipinos brought in by Marathon Oil. One does manage to find a booming source of local employment: young Guinean girls called "night fighters" because they jostle for a chance to sell their bodies to the oilmen from Texas or Oklahoma. "Más Petróleo = Más Pobreza." So say graffiti on the pipelines.

We feel better working together

GW, 9/25 — Team players can tolerate twice as much pain as those who work alone. Researchers at Oxford University found that members of its rowing team had a greater pain threshold after training together than when they performed the same exercises individually.

Working as a group is thought to boost the rush of endorphins, a feel-good chemical that is released in the brain.

California may be leading a rout

GW 9/25 — Arnold Schwarzenegger described California as a "golden dream by the sea" when he was inaugurated as the state’s governor six years ago. The state that ocne boasted the best public schools, colleges and highways in America now has some of the worst. Its healthcare is ranked lowest of all the 50 states. Its prisons are overflowing; it has six of the 10 worst cities in the U.S. for air pollution ; its public finances are a disaster. In many ways, the golden state’s sickness is an extreme, hypertrophied version of the politico-economic problems of the whole United States in the early 21st century. The odds may be against the reformers.

Some big co’s block climate fight

NYT 9/28- In a rational world, the looming climate disaster would be a dominant political and policy concern. But it manifestly isn’t. Why not? This truth is just too inconvenient. Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would shuffle the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don’t.

Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It’s also a matter of vested ideas. For decades the dominant political ideology has extolled private enterprise, but climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through [collective] action.

Socialists can’t bury capitalism

NYT 9/29- Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, European Socialist parties have not found a compelling response. In France, asked this summer if the party was dying, Bernard-Henri Lévy, an emblematic Socialist, answered: "No – it is already dead."

The French Socialist Party "is trapped in a hopeless contradiction." It espouses a radical platform it cannot deliver; the result leaves space for parties to its left.

Just how sexist can rich men be?

GW 9/25- Food and sex, sex and food. Well, boys, here comes the best ever food-and-sex combo. Nyotaimori, the Japanese practice of eating food off a woman’s naked body, has arrived in London. The Nyotaimori evenings will rotate monthly around a number of posh restaurants and will cost just over $400.

With Nyotaimori the woman can be your plate and while she plays dead you can prod your metal chopsticks all over her naked form. What could be better?

Rich capitalisms starve the poor

GW 9/25- Eliminating the millions of tons of food thrown away annually in western countries such as the U.S. and U.K. could lift more than a billion people out of hunger worldwide, experts claim. Excessive consumption in rich countries inflates food prices in the developing world making grain less affordable for poor and undernourished people in other parts of the world. "There are nearly a billion malnourished people in the world, but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and North America. That means we’re taking food out of the mouths of the poor."

John Brown, Harriet Tubman: Models for Multi-Racial Unity and Action

On October 17, PLP’ers celebrate the raid on Harper’s Ferry as a revolutionary action showing today’s need for militant, anti-racist, multi-racial, revolutionary struggle!

The southern slaveholders were terrified by the Harper’s Ferry raiders’ militant, multi-racial unity, a real-life rebuke of their racist stereotyping. One of the raiders’ five black freedom fighters, Osborne Anderson, described the atmosphere before-hand:

"I have been permitted to realize to its furthest, fullest extent, the moral, mental, physical, social harmony of an Anti-Slavery family, carrying out to the letter the principle of the Anti-slavery cause. In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united into one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self — no ghost of a distinction found space to enter."

From Childhood, Brown Vowed to Fight Slavery

This trust among whites and blacks did not happen overnight. John Brown’s father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad in Ohio. At 12, Brown met a fugitive slave boy and saw the suffering slavery had inflicted on him, influencing Brown forever. He believed blacks and whites were completely equal. He put this knowledge into action daily.

As an adult, Brown moved his family to a farm in North Elba, N.Y. near a black community of former slaves. Blacks were regularly invited to the house for dinner with Brown’s family. He addressed them as "Mr." or "Mrs.," sharply contrasting with the era’s racist mores (true even among many slavery opponents).

Preparing for the raid, Brown turned to both black and white abolitionists. In April 1858, while gathering money, arms and volunteers in Canada, he visited Harriet Tubman. She was well-known to the black fugitive slave community there, having personally guided many to freedom. Tubman supported his plans, urging him to set July 4, 1858, for the raid and promising to bring volunteers. They agreed to communicate through their mutual friend Frederick Douglass, black abolitionist and former slave.

Tubman Single-handedly Freed 300 Slaves

Tubman’s own experiences made her and Brown allies. Born around 1820 of enslaved parents on a Maryland plantation, Tubman performed house and field work, was subjected to physical abuse and tearfully saw many of her nine siblings sold away from the family. In her teens, Tubman suffered a broken skull from brutal plantation life. Her "owner" tried selling her as "damaged goods." Instead she fled, walking for several weeks, mostly at night, the 90 miles to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. She returned shortly afterwards, guiding her family out of slavery to Canada. And that was just the beginning.

Over the following 11 years, with a bounty on her head, Tubman made approximately 13 trips south and guided an estimated 300 slaves to freedom in Canada. This resolute, daring revolutionary declared, "I never ran my train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger."

Tubman warmly endorsed Brown’s armed struggles in Kansas against the pro-slavery gangs. Brown, in turn, knew Tubman’s courage, militancy, and knowledge of the land and Underground Railroad network, and felt Tubman would be invaluable in executing their plans to free the enslaved by any means necessary. He always addressed her as "General Tubman." Both believed in direct action and armed violence to end slavery.

Tubman became ill and could not bring her forces to Harper’s Ferry, but her work inspired the rest of the raiders. Tubman’s example, like that of Osborne Anderson and the other black raiders, discredited the image of black people as passive victims, terrifying the southern slave-owners and politicians, and inspired the abolitionist movement.

Black Rebels Petrified Slave-owners

To those today who say workers won’t fight oppression, the stubborn facts of history show struggle is universal. The slave-owners, although talking of "docile" blacks, knew this well. They were petrified of potential black rebels and of "outside agitators." They patrolled all night with dogs and guns to intimidate their enslaved workers and to keep Yankees and abolitionist literature away from them.

Today the "outside agitators" are PLP communists, fighting to abolish racist capitalism. The bosses assure us that the impoverished working class is too ground down, too alienated to fight back collectively, saying workers hate communism. Yet they organize cops, plant security, the Minutemen, black nationalists and sellout union "leaders" to try to keep communists out, and instantly fire them when they’re discovered in a factory. Why are they afraid if the working class is supposed to be so passive?

Today, uniting to fight the mutual class enemy is one of the main ways people of different backgrounds are able to overcome the "natural" segregation capitalist society promotes. Brown and Tubman demonstrated that racist and nationalist ideas cannot be overcome primarily inside one’s head. It requires material change in the way one lives. Among the black and militant white abolitionists, multi-racial unity developed over years of working together, getting to know each other while struggling over their differences.

Today, U.S. capitalism has created its own contradiction. Workers still often live in neighborhoods separated by "race" but many are integrated within their workplaces and schools. The bosses try to divide us there as well, with racist job classifications and different types of bourgeois culture to keep workers apart (e.g., soul "versus" country music). Nevertheless, workers rub shoulders every day. Class-conscious workers in PLP must develop these acquaintances into friendships and unbreakable bonds in struggle.

Class Struggle Trumps Racism

As in Tubman and Brown’s time, racism permeates society. But rebellions and strikes reveal multi-racial unity and struggle against the bosses. At the Smithfield Ham Factory in Tarheel, NC, for example, a 15-year unionization fight witnessed intense intimidation from the bosses to scare workers from signing union cards. But by organizing support from grocery workers from far and wide, Smithfield workers felt part of a larger community. When the bosses got immigration agents to raid the plant, targeting Latino workers for deportation, the workers saw through this divisive trick and, in November 2006, 500 marched out in a two-day strike protesting this raid, forcing the company to re-hire all the fired immigrant workers!

In the Bronx, NY, the Stella D’Oro workers struck for 11 months. These immigrant workers from across the world, men and women, overcame differences and stuck together. Not one worker crossed the picket line! PLP organized friends, comrades, teachers and students onto the picket lines, bringing solidarity and communist leadership. PLP members steadfastly stood in solidarity with the strikers via donations, rallies and marches, and supported their fight against plant closure.

John Brown’s raid and Harriet Tubman’s courage in freeing 300 slaves along the Underground Railroad teach us many lessons. Militancy was foremost in their thinking. Tubman declared she would never return to being a slave, that she would rather die fighting. Brown, after fighting in Kansas, realized that only bloodshed could end slavery. Many workers agreed with them, especially after the 1857 Dred Scott decision legalizing slavery nation-wide.

Multi-racial unity is essential in any fight. Black workers escaping from enslavement received needed help from white abolitionists to reach the North. Thousands of workers, black and white, helped escaping slaves along their journeys and defended them when attacked by slave-catchers. These workers attended public meetings, donated money, passed word to their friends and helped harbor fugitive slaves.

PLP does similar things today. We discuss political struggles and the vital need for multi-racial unity against the racist system with friends, coworkers and neighbors. We urge them to join in militant anti-racist demonstrations, build a multi-racial base with fellow workers or donate to CHALLENGE. Every time someone we know does one of these simple acts, they’re making a political commitment in the fight against racism, capitalism and imperialism, just as thousands of anti-slavery supporters did against slavery — taking small steps to serve and defend those who had escaped slavery as well as those who fought it directly.

Join PLP

We invite all workers, soldiers and students who participate in these struggles to join Progressive Labor Party.

Today’s supporters of anti-racist struggle understand — just as did the thousands backing Brown and Tubman 150 years ago — that revolutionaries like the raiders then and PLP now are the honest, reliable leaders in struggle. When direct action is required, they know to whom to turn. CHALLENGE constantly reports workers being won to militancy and multi-racial unity in struggles against the racist bosses, hailing those joining our ranks. Step by step, the communist movement will grow and lead the working class to revolution and a new world based on members of our class mutually meeting each other’s needs, without racist bosses and their profit system.

  1. CHALLENGE, October 14, 2009
  2. CHALLENGE, September 30, 2009
  3. CHALLENGE, September 16th, 2009
  4. CHALLENGE, September 2, 2009

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