- Obama Steps Up Afghan, Iraq Massacres
- Rockefeller Think-Tank Helps Biggest U.S. Capitalists Wield State Power
- Bosses’ Stimulus Package: Force Workers to Bail Out Bankers
- Worker-Student Alliance Fights Budget Cuts at Howard U.
- Battle D.C. Transit Layoffs, Service Cuts
- Debate Highlights Need for Class Analysis of Palestine-Israel
- Mexico’s Militarization Crucial to U.S. Rulers’ War Plans
- Homicide or Genocide?
- CORRECTION
- ‘Good Bosses’ are Deadly for Workers
- Solidarity with Guadeloupe General Strikers Spreads to Mainland France
- ‘Better’ Boeing Bosses Mean More Fascism On The Job
- Irish Eyes Aren’t Smiling
- Shatter Capitalism’s Double-Edged Sword
- Book Review: During World War 2, Communists Led Women’s Revolutionary Fight Against Fascism
- Movie review ‘Frozen River’ — System Fails Working-Class Women
- LETTERS
- RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Obama Steps Up Afghan, Iraq Massacres
On February 18, U.S. air strikes killed 13 civilians in Afghanistan’s Herat province, and Obama’s Afghan surge is just starting, with the first 17,000 troops on their way. The country’s non-combatant death toll, already up 40% from last year, is bound to skyrocket as Obama adds the 30,000 extra troops he promised, and then some.
Candidate Obama had told a war-weary U.S. public that shifting some forces from Iraq to Afghanistan would stabilize the latter country and finally help defeat al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban warlords there. Now that he’s in office, it’s the needs of the most powerful U.S. capitalists, rather than public opinion, that steer Obama’s deployment of the war machine. To counter Russia’s strengthening sphere of influence, rulers are demanding a far greater Afghan build-up. And since Iraq is crucial to U.S. rulers’ profit-pumping oil racket, U.S. troops must remain there permanently, awaiting an all-out Mid-East war.
U.S. Bankers and Oil Barons Demand More GIs and More GI and Afghan Deaths
On February 12, Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the influential Council on Foreign Relations think-tank [see box], testified before Congress on U.S. rulers’ escalating requirements in the war zones. Biddle told House members that combating Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan called for a massive, drawn out, Vietnam-style campaign with “around 300,000 counterinsurgents.”
He warned that the corrupt Karzai regime wasn’t up to the job. Thus, hundreds of thousands of GIs would be in it for the long haul. “[T]here is reason to doubt that the Afghan government will ever be able to afford the necessary number of troops. If any significant fraction of this total must be American then the resources needed will be very large. And the commitment could be very long: successful counterinsurgency campaigns commonly last ten to fifteen years or more.”
And that’s the “best” of scenarios. Unintended consequences, as in Iraq, could dwarf the Vietnam debacle in a never-ending war.
Biddle coldly calculated “acceptable” body counts. Among GIs, “fatality rates of perhaps 50-100 per month could persist for many months, if not years.” As for Afghans, Biddle assured the lawmakers that U.S. butchery of the innocent has yet to reach a tipping point where the U.S. appears as the main enemy. “In objective terms, violence in Afghanistan, though increasing, is still very low by the standards of most such conflicts,” Biddle says. “The death count for 2008 was under six per hundred thousand.”
He recalled that British imperialists killed at twice that rate during their “successful” 1950s crackdown in Malaya.
Possible All-Out Mid-East Oil War Keeps U.S. In Iraq Indefinitely
Biddle, a mouthpiece for Exxon, Chase, and Citibank has greater worries over Iraq. Further destabilization there “could eventually produce irresistible pressures for Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi, Turkish, or Iranian state entry into the war....The result could be a region-wide version of the Iran-Iraq War sometime in the next decade, but with some of the combatants (especially Iran) having probable access to weapons of mass destruction by that time.”
An event the U.S. can’t control might “plunge one of the world’s most important energy-producing regions into chaos.” So, says Biddle, at least 60,000 U.S. troops must remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future, no matter what candidate Obama promised.
Biddle, his billionaire bosses, Obama and the rest of the rulers’ politicians all well know the lessons of the last century’s wars: Military conquest entailing massive loss of human life is capitalism’s only sure-fire cure for depressed profits. But history teaches workers something else: Our class, organized in revolutionary communist parties can defeat the profiteering killers. During World War I and shortly after World War II, workers triumphed for a time in Russia and China, although grave political errors led to the restoration of capitalism and imperialism in both. Our goal is to build a party that will someday wipe out the war-makers for good.
Rockefeller Think-Tank Helps Biggest U.S. Capitalists Wield State Power
The nation’s top private foreign policy factory, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) represents the wealthiest bankers and industrialists, centered around the Rockefeller family’s billions. The CFR’s leadership intertwines with imperialist giants like J.P. Morgan Chase and Exxon Mobil. The former, with about half its business overseas, is one of the handful of megabanks the U.S. will save at all costs.
Hampshire College Professor Michael Klare, expert on resource wars and author of “Blood and Oil,” explains “that the U.S. military is being transformed into a global protection service whose primary mission is to defend America’s overseas sources of oil and natural gas, while patrolling the world’s major pipelines and supply routes” (“Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?”). This enables Big Oil to run what amounts to a worldwide energy extortion ring (now challenged by Putin’s Russia), holding entire nations hostage. Last year Exxon Mobil recorded the highest profits in the history of capitalism, despite the current depression’s onset.
The owners of these and similar companies run the CFR through deputies, who in turn advise the White House. For example, former Citigroup boss Robert Rubin (who took the fall for his firm’s role in the banking crisis) is CFR co-chairman, was a Clinton Treasury Secretary and advises Obama on the bailout mess. A CFR director, Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, served on now-defunct Lehman Brothers and bailed-out AIG’s boards.
Virtually all of Obama’s leading foreign policy advisors belong to the CFR, whose initiatives have a “habit” of becoming official policy. The concept of using the weapons-of-mass-destruction lie to invade Iraq and seize its oilfields (not Bush’s bungled execution of the war) originated as a major CFR study, as did the Iraq surge.
Never mind massacres like Herat, Biddle implies. Truly, to U.S. rulers, workers and soldiers are simply cannon fodder used to protect their profits.
Bosses’ Stimulus Package: Force Workers to Bail Out Bankers
Obama’s new economic stimulus package just passed by Congress is a hodgepodge of government spending and incentives to force the working class to pay for bailing out the bosses. It will slash hundreds of thousands of jobs, cut wages, undo Social Security and Medicare, and destroy pensions. When the plan fails to improve the economy, the Obama camp will look to blame something other than capitalism.
The fight over how big the bill should be, how to spend it, and whether or not to nationalize the banks and bankrupt auto industries are all signs of intense conflicts among the bosses. The U.S. ruling class disagrees not only about how to get out of this crisis, but about just how deep the crisis is. So the question becomes, how will they steer the ship?
One way they are doing this is with intensified racism as the bosses try to shift the blame for capitalism’s failure onto the backs of the working class. We’re seeing the prison population swell as black workers continue to be sent away and Latino workers now comprise 40% of all Federal prisoners because of the racist immigration raids. There is also growing anti-Arab racism as the ruling class attempts to justify their worldwide war for oil.
These fascist attacks still won’t save the capitalists. Their “stimulus” doesn’t have a shot. The $787 billion plan, includes a series of tax cuts and credits for individuals and businesses totaling $282 billion. This includes incentive programs aimed at inducing people to buy homes, and banks to restructure loans. Additionally there is $4 billion for hiring more cops and expanding racist community policing programs; and $120 billion for infrastructure.
As history has proven, tax credits don’t stimulate the economy; they simply concentrate wealth at the top. Tax credits for house and auto purchases will simply encourage sellers to inflate prices. During the last major recession under the Reagan era, the auto industry was bailed out, and then laid off tens of thousands while Chrysler was restructured.
The money set aside for infrastructure is supposed to create 3.5 million low-paying jobs, but without any guarantee. History shows that in tough economic times the bosses don’t hire
more workers; rather they use their tax credits to shore up their capital reserves. Most importantly, even if the plan could create 3.5 million jobs, which it can’t, it wouldn’t be enough to make up for the loss of jobs plus the new workers coming into the workforce as the population grows.
In a New York Times article, Maureen Dowd (2/13/09) criticized Obama for kowtowing to Republican demands, when he should have pressed forward with his plans and left the Republicans to explain to their constituents why they had “ignored their needs.” This is exactly what President Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) did in his Depression fireside chats, trying to bring more power to the executive.
Capitalism’s ‘Public Works:’ Make War, Kill Millions
But all of FDR’s New Deal programs did little for the economy. It was only World War II—the “largest-ever Public Works Program” (NYT 2/17/09) –– that bailed out U.S capitalism. This current crisis has put U.S. bosses in a similar jam. Only this time, instead of being the rising capitalists, U.S. bosses are the aging power, whose empire is being challenged globally.
Russian bosses have built an oil and gas empire while rearming their decaying war machine. They used this military might to challenge U.S. oil interests this past summer in Georgia and intimidate Eastern Europe and the EU (European Union) by cutting off oil and gas supplies.
Despite its own economic woes, the EU has continued its economic expansion into Latin America, a traditional U.S stronghold, taking advantage of the U.S. being forced to concentrate its attention on its oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise of anti-U.S. nationalists like Chávez, Evo Morales and Raúl Castro. On world markets the EU has offered up the Euro as an alternative to U.S. dollar hegemony, enticing Iran to break the dollar stranglehold on the international oil trade.
China has been the most active in its challenge to U.S. power. Chinese involvement in the race for African oil had Obama discussing direct military intervention in Sudan multiple times during his campaign. China has also pentrated Latin America, offering its huge markets to exports from Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, among others.
The U.S. is increasingly finding itself backed into a corner. China’s recent announcement that it will purchase less U.S. debt mirrors a general trend of rival imperialists turning away from the U.S. economy and looking inward. The international crisis that was tipped off by U.S. economic weakness is leaving international bosses with increasingly few options other than a move towards wider wars.
Rulers Seek Fascist Unity
Increasingly rising cries about Congress’s inefficiency in dealing with the inter-imperialist and financial crises mirror those heard in Germany, Italy and the U.S. in the ’20s and ’30s. Hitler dissolved the Reichstag to “bring about German unity” in the face of crisis. Mussolini’s corporatism was designed to circumvent the inefficiencies of Italy’s parliament.
The U.S. ruling class toyed with fascism in the 1930’s as FDR sent Hugh Johnson, the architect of his New Deal, to Italy to study Mussolini’s corporate state. The U.S. Congress effectively put aside its differences for the first two years of FDR’s presidency so the ruling class could deal with the economic and political crisis. This is how fascism works; it is not born from strength but rather is the ruling class’s call to unite itself amid chaos and disunity.
U.S. rulers cannot extract themselves from this crisis peaceably. New Deal ruling-class unity, along with Italian and German fascism, did not solve the Great Depression. Fascism was simply the means by which the imperialist powers mobilized their nations for war.
Just as Hitler, Mussolini and FDR couldn’t get out of the Great Depression without war, neither can the U.S. or Obama now. We must see the build-up of fascism as leading to wider war. Our only solution is not to rely on innately flawed stimulus plans but to organize the working class to fight the bosses’ attacks with communist-led strikes and demonstrations, spread PL’s ideas through the distribution of CHALLENGE, organize soldiers, workers and students to rebel against our masters and fight for communist revolution.
(For an analysis of how the falling rate of profit and the crisis of overproduction are behind the current crisis, see CHALLENGE 12/10/08, “Falling Rate of Profit Hits Workers in The Head”)
Worker-Student Alliance Fights Budget Cuts at Howard U.
WASHINGTON, DC, February 13 — Howard University students rallied against a15% tuition hike over two years that the Board of Trustees adopted with no public discussion. Students demanded that no campus worker be laid off or lose benefits, arguing that workers and students are natural allies while the administration and Board of Trustees were on the other side of the struggle. The students condemned John A. Thain as a multi-tasking exploiting boss. He’s both CEO of Merrill Lynch AND a member of the Howard University Board of Trustees!. He recently used $1.22 million of federal bailout money to redecorate his office as he picked the pockets of working-class taxpayers and students alike (see box).
A student leader from the nearby University of the District of Columbia (UDC) spoke at the rally, telling Howard University colleagues that the UDC Board approved a plan to double tuition at this working-class school, driving many students out. Over 1,000 UDC students noisily rallied to protest this racist anti-working-class plan.
At the picket line outside the administration building, the university showed its true colors by placing a line of campus cops between the students and “their” administration building! The Howard University Provost has declared that the university is undergoing “structural adjustment” due to a $15 million deficit.
“Structural adjustment” is precisely the term used by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund when it lends money to less-developed countries and demands that they privatize health care and water supplies and orient their economies towards exports and away from producing food needed to feed local workers. “Structural adjustment” at Howard
University means that workers and students will pay the price of the financial crisis that has engulfed the university with layoffs, cutbacks, and tuition hikes, just like structural adjustment has meant poverty and starvation for workers in the developing world.
Workers and students have a different strategy—to fight back! Under a program called “A Different Howard University Is Possible,” students are mobilizing in dorms and classrooms to oppose the capitalist character of the University and to insist that the students, workers, and neighborhood residents all have the same interest in revolutionary change.
Within this struggle, many different political views have surfaced. We are discussing with some urgency such key issues as what the alternative to capitalism is, what went wrong in previous revolutions, what strategy is needed to build a mass movement against capitalism, what do we think about the Palestinian struggle and the changes in Venezuela under Chavez and Bolivia under Morales, and can communism work? Dozens of students are reading CHALLENGE regularly and some are participating in a PLP study group. Many more need to read CHALLENGE and other revolutionary literature to strengthen these discussions so that the revolutionary impulse these students feel will turn into militant revolutionary activity with PLP.
Thain’s Top 16 Outrages
16) $2,700 for six wall sconces. 15) $5,000 for a mirror in his private dining room. 14) $11,000 for fabric for a “Roman Shade.” 13) $13,000 for a chandelier in his private dining room. 12) $15,000 for a sofa. 11) $16,000 for a “custom coffee table.” 10) $18,000 for a “George IV Desk.” 9) $25,000 for a “mahogany pedestal table.” 8) $28,000 for four pairs of curtains. 7) $35,000 for something called a “commode on legs.” 6) $37,000 for six chairs in his private dining room. 5) $68,000 for a “19th Century Credenza” in his office. 4) $87,000 for a pair of guest chairs. 3) $87,000 plus $47,000 for two area rugs. 2) $230,000 to his driver for one year’s work... And last but definitely not least... 1) $800,000 to hire celebrity designer Michael Smith, who is currently redesigning the White House for the Obama family for $100,000.
Battle D.C. Transit Layoffs, Service Cuts
WASHINGTON, DC, February 19 — Metro workers rallied today outside company headquarters to demand that Metro stop its plans to close its $154 million deficit on the backs of drivers and riders. Several workers, led by a communist PL’er, boldly testified at the first of a series of hearings, along with several supporters from Howard University and the broader community. All resoundingly demanded that the proposed layoffs, which could go as high as 15% of the active unionized workers, be dropped, that fares not rise, and that service routes not be cut. In short, the demand was to make the bosses take the losses.
The hearing dealt with the contracting out of one bus route to the DC Circulator, a privately-owned bus line. The D.C. government wants to expand it, at the expense of Metrobus. Why? Metro workers make about $25 an hour with health and pension benefits, while DC Circulator workers are paid only roughly $14 an hour, with fewer benefits.
The Chairman of the Board of Metro, a local city councilman named Jim Graham who pretends to be a progressive, was shaken by the twenty workers who surrounded him after the formal hearing. He slinked away, muttering that he had always been a supporter of labor and that he would convey their views to the Board. But we will never rely on his promise. Instead, this skirmish is the opening salvo of the next round of class struggle at Metro.
It is critical that workers remember the power they felt in 1978 when they wildcatted and closed the city down for several days to resist the bosses’ attacks. Even more importantly, workers must strengthen their commitment to revolutionary politics and the PLP in order to better lead the entire industrial working class and its allies to the goal of communist revolution and workers’ power.
Debate Highlights Need for Class Analysis of Palestine-Israel
QUEENS, NY, February 18 — First Student: “I’m Israeli and I thought the speaker’s presentation was completely inaccurate and one-sided.”
Second Student: “I lived in the West Bank – you haven’t – and I know that what the speaker presented is the truth.”
Third Student: “Your presentation completely misses the main point: Israel is struggling against Hamas and terrorism. We can only have peace once the terrorists are defeated.”
Fourth Student: “I am Palestinian and I don’t support Hamas. But the Israeli occupation of our lands preceded Hamas. You’re using Hamas as an excuse to justify the occupation and the mistreatment of Palestinians.”
These were just a few of the passionate exchanges between members of the audience at Queens College following an informative talk from a doctor who visited the West Bank in 2005 and 2008 with a group called American Jews for a Just Peace. They met with Physicians for Human Rights/Israeli and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society and together documented the terrible conditions that residents of the West Bank and Gaza have been forced to endure as a result of the Israeli military occupation.
Over 50 students and faculty, including a number from Palestine and other Arab countries, heard how the Israeli occupation has made it difficult for Palestinians to receive proper health care, go to school or, in the case of Gaza, be able to buy basic foods. Palestinians suffer from high unemployment, disastrous health problems and have difficulty just visiting relatives in another West Bank town because of the many military checkpoints and the Israeli construction of a border wall that cuts through Arab lands.
After the forum a PL’er gave out copies of two articles that the Party published recently: “A History of Middle-East Nationalism” and “A Class Analysis of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.” These articles explain how both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism have historically been promoted and used by various imperialists for their own ends, and how they offer no solution for the vast majority of the people who live in the Mid-East.
One friend of the Party asked, “Why is the Israeli occupation such an important issue for PLP? What does it have to do with communism since Palestinians seem to be nationalist and not communist?”
This is a class question since events in Palestine are tied to the current global situation of endless imperialist oil wars affecting millions worldwide. As communists we fight for the class interests of all workers exploited and oppressed by capitalism-imperialism, whether killed by Pentagon bombs in Baghdad and Kabul or by racist cops in Chicago or Stella D’Oro strikers fighting a union-busting boss. About 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in 1948, and millions today live under armed occupation or are in impoverished refugee camps.
We support their struggles just as we expose Hamas and the Palestine Authority as ruling-class elites that want to monopolize for themselves the exploitation of Palestinian workers. At the same time, Israeli rulers use anti-Arab racism to solidify their control and exploitation of Israeli workers.
As communists, PLP must show those millions who are seeing the true murderous nature of U.S. imperialism and capitalism in general that the only real solution is to unite all workers under the red flag of a communist movement to smash capitalism.
Mexico’s Militarization Crucial to U.S. Rulers’ War Plans
Facing their worst economic crisis since the 1930s, the capitalist-imperialist vultures — desperately fighting each other for their survival — are preparing for wider wars and eventually World War III. For this, the U.S. butchers must consolidate their backyard, building Fortress-North America — militarizing Canada and Mexico under U.S. command.
Using the cover of the “war on terror,” the U.S. and Mexican presidents and the Canadian Premier secretly met in 2005 and organized the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). In turn, the SPP created the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) which further consolidates U.S. domination over the Canadian-Mexican economies, a process spurred in 1994 by the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
While Canada’s bosses are not 100% behind the U.S. — they have signed oil deals with China and are building a gas processing plant with Russian money — Canada has supported U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is linked to U.S. arms companies as subsidiaries or sub-contractors and 87% of its exports go to the U.S.
Bosses’ Dogfight Over Oil Could Ignite Mexican Civil War
Since U.S. prosperity and security rest on imported energy, one of NACC’s main goals is privatizing PEMEX, Mexico’s state-run oil company. Last October, the PRI and PAN, two Mexican political parties supportive of SPP, voted for reforms that set up PEMEX for privatization under a “threeyear agenda” to make the required constitutional changes. But those Mexican rulers opposing privatization, represented by the PRD’s Lopez Obrador, have organized a national mass movement against it. This bosses’ dogfight could flare up into a full-scale civil war.
U.S. Assumes Military Control Over Canada-Mexico
In 2002, the Pentagon created the Northern Command for defense of the continental U.S., declaring it geographically responsible for the U.S., Canada, Mexico and parts of the Caribbean.
Now, to accelerate U.S. military plans, in May 2008 the U.S. Congress approved Plan Mexico or the Merida Initiative, allocating $1.4 billion to militarize Mexico under the guise of “fighting its drug trafficking.” In a global war, militarization will prove crucial to seize the country’s oil and its industries to produce for war and to win — or force — its youth to fight for U.S. imperialism.
A 1994 Pentagon briefing paper, declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, hinted at a U.S. invasion of Mexico if “... the country became destabilized or the government faced the threat of being overthrown because of ‘widespread economic and social chaos’...,” caused by a civil war between Mexican bosses for or against privatization, or by workers’ rebellions against the deepening economic crisis.
U.S. Militarization of Mexico Under Way and More Urgent
Mexico’s gang violence is being escalated by the U.S.-Mexican bosses to further their militarization plans. After thousands of Mexican troops were deployed in the cities, the violence is worsening; killings have more than doubled each year, with over 5,700 deaths reported in 2008.
Based on this scenario, the U.S. Joint Forces Command — with 1.6 million troops in the continental U.S. — reported last November that Mexico’s widespread violence could turn it into a failed state, “endangering U.S. security” and possibly triggering a U.S. invasion. Anticipating events, U.S. security agencies are training their Mexican counterparts. Some U.S. military elements already operate inside Mexico.
In the 1970s, the U.S. plan for world war included Fortress America, with almost the whole continent marching to U.S. imperialism’s war drumbeat. No longer. South America is forging ever stronger economic-military ties with U. S. rivals Russia, China and Europe. Central America and the Caribbean are not far behind.
This endangers U.S. strategic military bases in the region and access to its oil and other vital raw materials. With its war machine consuming almost one barrel of crude per day per soldier, controlling Mexican and Canadian oil is crucial. U.S. subsidiaries already own 33% of Canada’s oil and gas industry. The failed state forecast for Mexico is an excuse to speed up U.S. invasion preparations when it’s necessary.
Turn Imperialist War into Class War for Communism
During World War I, when Germany and Russia were at war, Russia’s communists led its working class to seize state power. Following their example, our slogans should be, “Down with capitalism! Power to the working class! Fight for communism!”
Nationalization or privatization — whether Obrador, Calderon or any politician — only serves the interests of Mexico’s bosses and their imperialist allies. Only workers’ power can guarantee that the world’s resources and production will serve the needs of the international working class. Our survival as a class dictates the destruction of this profit-thirsty capitalist system with a communist revolution, led by a mass international Progressive Labor Party of millions of workers, students and soldiers!
Homicide or Genocide?
OAKLAND, CA, February 23 — Johannes Mehserle, the Bay Area Rapid Transit cop who killed Oscar Grant, has been charged with murder. Seen as an isolated incident, the charge fits the crime. However, the murder of Oscar Grant is not an isolated incident. In Oakland, young black men are murdered at the rate of 186 per 100,000.
This is a near genocidal rate of murder. It’s a genocide that almost every politician in the Bay Area has learned to live with (Richmond and San Francisco have similar statistics). For a week after the murder Mayor Dellums was silent, until he appeared in the streets trying to subdue the protesters. The City Council and the Chief of Police said nothing. Now they act as if their silence was a “mis-judgement.” It wasn’t. It was capitalist business as usual.
A system that tolerates genocide, or near-genocide, is one that tolerates the development of fascism. Its institutions and politicians are incapable of organizing any sort of justice. Such a system must go!
In fact, rather than raise awareness of the genocide, the whole system steers public opinion away from even seeing it. Although the media reports all the murders in Oakland, it does so only as “homicides.” Likewise the Courts, as in the case of Oscar Grant, only look at “homicides.” By and large, homicides are committed by individuals, or small groups. It takes a government to commit, or be complicit in, genocide.
The media’s refusal to examine this narrows our understanding and limits our actions. CHALLENGE is the only newspaper reporting this genocidal murder rate.
Last year there were 124 murders in Oakland. Over 70% of the victims and suspects were black. Black-on-black crime is an element in this trend. Over 70% were unemployed.
Unemployed-on-unemployed crime plays an even bigger role! Add to that the racism involved in black workers’ double jobless rate; the politicians’ silence over Oscar Grant’s murder; and the failure of the bosses’ media to even print the actual murder rate of young black men, and together it’s a picture of government complicity in the genocidal situation and the vital importance of CHALLENGE, the communist newspaper.
If this year follows previous ones, the pattern will continue. As the pre-trial and then trial of Johannes Mehserle drags on, the murders of young black men will climb — to 25, 50, 75 and so on, marking a genocidal, or near-genocidal, record in the lives of young black men.
PLP has responded by increasing CHALLENGE sales. We will popularize the slogan that if Mehserle walks, we all walk out and call for similar protests as each and every genocidal milestone is reached. We will organize our May Day contingent here under these banners. It could be taken up nation-wide as well.
CORRECTION
In our previous issue (2/25), the headline on the article on page 4 from Gary, Indiana, should have read: “Gary Protestors Keep Heat On Racist Killer Kop” (not “Kop Killer”). Similarly, the headline on the first letter on page 6 should have read: “From Oakland to Athens: Solidarity vs. Killer Kops” (not “Kop Killers”).
‘Good Bosses’ are Deadly for Workers
The Bavaria brewery here in Colombia fired a former co-worker for “breaking down a machine.” He was denied severance pay although it was proven that the company’s failure to properly maintain the machine caused the breakdown. The chief of personnel told him all he could do was sue the company. A snowball in hell has a better chance than that.
Bavaria was bought by the multi-national imperialist conglomerate SAB-MILLER, one of the world’s biggest breweries. Under the guise of “job security” the company won many concessions from the workers due to the weakness of the union leadership and the workers’ lack of political consciousness. At first many workers believed SAB-MILLER was a “good boss.” Everything seemed great; the company offered bonuses, promotions and even parties. In exchange, they gave up all their labor rights, agreeing to a totally sellout contract.
But reality hit fast. The bosses’ dictatorship imposed its will on the workers. The “paradise” promised workers has now turned into a living hell. The bosses demand total submission. Any sign of dissent is punished with firings, even if workers are injured because of the bosses’ own slave-labor conditions.
This is a worldwide lesson for workers. Since the 1970s, we’ve seen U.S. auto workers make huge concessions to their bosses, with complete collaboration from the union sellouts, in exchange for “job security.” But this didn’t stop the bosses’ attacks in their boom years and have sharpened the current economic meltdown. Now GM and Chrysler have announced tens of thousands more job- and wage-cuts, following hundreds of thousands of past job losses.
There is no such thing as a “good boss.” Their only interest is reaping maximum profits, and they have the support of both the pro-capitalist union leadership and the entire bosses’ state apparatus to achieve that.
The tragic lesson workers at Bavaria and globally are learning is that being nice to the boss won’t help our class interests in the short- or long-run. PLP must win these and all workers to fight for a new system, one based on the interests of the international working class, not on the profits of SAB-MILLERs or GMs. What you do counts. Join PLP!
Red Worker, Colombia
Solidarity with Guadeloupe General Strikers Spreads to Mainland France
POINTE-A-PITRE, GUADELOUPE, February 21 — Workers and youth here are showing the world’s workers how to fight the bosses’ plans to make us pay for their international economic meltdown. Fearing that the militant two-month general strike here will spread to mainland France, French rulers have added 300 cops to the 1,000 already here. They are notoriously racist and used to repress the mostly black workers and youth here, who are beginning to rebel.
Already, D.A. Jean-Michel Prêtre has falsely accused young rebels of shooting at Jacques Bino and Peter O’Brien, two strikers driving home from the picket line. As Bino was turning his car around at a roadblock, a bullet pierced his chest, killing this husband and father, a tax worker and member of the General Confederation of Labor of Guadeloupe (CGTG) trade union.
His real killer is the French government and its strategy of stonewalling until the workers surrender.
On February 19, the government’s “new proposal” offered a 35-to-120-euro monthly bonus (paid by local bosses) to workers making under 1,850 euros a month. But bosses would not have to pay any employer’s social security contribution on the bonus for two years.
The LKP collective of unions leading the strike is demanding 200 euros a month. Under a complicated proposal, the government is offering to kick in 80 euros a month — beginning in 2010, for one year only — claiming 25,000 workers would get the bonus. But actually fewer than 5,000 would really be eligible. The proposal just drags out negotiations, hoping workers will give up.
On February 20, French Prime Minister François Fillon said it’s now up to the Guadeloupe bosses to offer a wage increase. Then Elie Domota, an LKP leader, declared, “The offers made by the bosses are very inadequate; we are continuing the mobilization.” Negotiations are to resume February 23.
The bosses and their media have emphasized the wage hike, just one of the LPK’s 120 demands. Guadeloupe poet and playwright Gerty Dambury denounced this, saying: “How many points have not been mentioned! .... Evictions from public housing projects,...youth who experience excessive unemployment and are cut off from the rest of the population by drugs and violence,...violence against women,...education — ...19 primary school classes have been without a teacher since September — ...the handicapped, whose prostheses cost 50% more than on the mainland....The list is indeed long.”
By focusing on wages, the bosses and their government hope to prevent workers from realizing low wages are integral to capitalism. With red leadership, this realization could lead workers to the only real answer: revolution to destroy capitalism. That would turn this general strike into what the bosses fear most — a school for communism.
Build Anti-Racist International Unity from the Caribbean to France!
According to a February 15 opinion poll, almost two-thirds of the French believe the Guadeloupe general strike might spread to mainland France.
On Feb. 18, a collective of associations and trade unions called for a demonstration in Cayenne, Guyane (French Guiana), for “lower prices and more purchasing power.” (Guyane is a key center for France’s space program).The trade unions on Corsica are demanding the opening of talks on the price of staple goods, “like on Martinique.” A three-month general strike by public workers paralyzed Corsica in the spring of 1989.
Various “fake leftist” groups are also calling for workers in France to follow the lead of Guadeloupe workers — but it is basically on the basis of “dump Sarkozy and vote for me” instead of “dump capitalism.”
In Paris, immigrants from the overseas départements are beginning to organize, setting up an association calling for a support demonstration. The “apolitical” Collectif DOM lobby planned to join the protest to prevent people from the overseas départements from becoming radicalized — 757,000 workers from the overseas départements live in France, according to Cabinet Solis Conseil, a market study company.
Workers in France and worldwide should follow the lead of these militant workers in the Caribbean. Anti-racism is key here since the French government is counting on racism to keep workers and youth in France from supporting and following the lead of their brothers and sisters overseas. Contrary to reformists, electoral fake-leftists and union leaders, we in PLP say racism hurts ALL workers.
The specter of May ’68 still haunts the French bosses. In order for this struggle not to be sold out like the ’68 worker-student general strike (betrayed by the French “Communist” Party), the main lesson workers must learn from it is to build an international anti-racist communist movement to smash capitalism once and for all.
‘Better’ Boeing Bosses Mean More Fascism On The Job
SEATTLE, February 23 — A 33-page rant entitled “Unacceptable,” first posted on the web, is being circulated throughout Boeing plants. Authored by a retired manager, it blames the current bosses for serious, systematic problems on every new and derivative plane development program, resulting in long delays and lost market share. The author demands Boeing bring back its pre-McDonnell Douglas merger management style.
Although initially popular because it blames the current management, this paper hides dangerous illusions. Essentially, it proposes more fascist “accountability” and speed-up as an “answer” to layoffs.
Union president Wroblewski backed-up this idea in a recent letter sent to every Machinist. After vowing to build a “positive relationship with Boeing,” he calls for management to “recognize the true value of our members.” He asks us to believe we can avoid the carnage ahead if only management would see the light.
It’s Not Bad Management, It’s Capitalism
The federal government forced the takeover of McDonnell-Douglas (MD) in 1996 when it became apparent the company’s weakened economic position was driving it to “give away the keys to the kingdom.” MD tried to preserve capital by giving 40% of its new commercial jet development to Taiwan. From the ruling class point of view, the biggest crime was trading key aerospace technology (with military applications) to the Chinese for future market share.
Then President Clinton’s economic council chief Laura D’Andrea Tyson testified this could not be allowed to continue. It would eventually weaken Boeing and the rest of the U.S. aerospace industry. The government denied McDonnell Douglas a key military contract, starving the company of capital. Boeing swooped in to pick up the pieces.
The newly-merged Boeing-McDonnell Douglas enjoyed a brief period of hegemony in the late ‘90s abetted by the collapse of the old Soviet bloc. But now the company faces competition from EU’s Airbus and a half dozen new rivals nipping at its heels, including the Brazilians, Japanese, Russians and Chinese.
Inter-imperialist rivalry is forcing Boeing to implement many of the same measures McDonnell-Douglas used more than a decade ago like seeking cheap labor. Boeing is shifting production to low-cost subcontractors which largely employ black, Latino and women workers while out-sourcing development and production of key sections of its new Dreamliner. The intensified racist and sexist exploitation in subcontractor factories was inevitable under this system as it continues to drive down wages for ALL workers for maximum profits.
Need Communist Revolution To ‘Repeal’ Laws Of Capitalism
The “falling rate of profit,” brought on by automation, leads each company and country to increase production. Too many firms produce too many planes for the market to bear. Each company is forced to attack its own workers as the crisis of overproduction spreads worldwide. Ultimately, the only way out for the capitalist is to destroy or steal his competitor’s productive capacity. In short, this means war and world war.
“Better” bosses can’t repeal these laws. In fact, better capitalists more quickly attack workers and start wars attempting to ensure their survival. Rather than plead for better management, we must reject their system and meet every attack with escalating fight-back.
One way we are doing this is with “recession pot-lucks.” We just had one to discuss the economic stimulus plan and are planning to have another in a month about immigration. These potlucks are a way for us to gather our base for not only political discussion, but to plan to up the ante against the Boeing bosses and union misleaders. We will also plan for May Day and demonstrations against layoffs during the PL Summer Project.
Communist revolution is the only way to “repeal” these laws. Under communism, we will produce for the needs of the working class, not the bosses’ profits. We will be able to welcome helping hands, distributing the fruits of our labor to the world’s workers according to need, not ability to pay. The periodic destruction of what took millions of generations to build will be relegated to the trash bin of history. The sooner we smash this dog-eat-dog capitalist system the better.
Irish Eyes Aren’t Smiling
DUBLIN, IRELAND February 21 —
Some 200,000 workers and their families marched today here against a “levy” on public workers’ pensions. The size of the march — the Irish Republic population is only 4 million so it would be like 15 million marching in the U.S.— shows the anger of workers who refuse to pay for the capitalist crisis, particularly since the government has just bailed out local banks while attacking workers more. The march was headed by a pipe band of firemen and included workers of Waterford Crystal, involved in an occupation of their plant, and those from SR Technic aircraft maintenance whose 1,100-strong plant face closing. Unemployment is expected to reach 500,000.For a while Ireland was known as the Celtic Tiger, but its growth was based on speculation, construction and exports to Britain. It could now go into bankruptcy just like Iceland did.
The ICTU union leadership, forced by rising workers’ anger to call the march, is talking tough now but in the past has colluded with the bosses and government. The speech by ICTU President, Patricia McKeown, asked the workers to use the vote to change the government, instead of calling for a general strike.
The working class from Dublin to London to Guadaloupe needs to see that capitalism can never serve their interests. We must turn our anger into a revolutionary storm to get rid of all these bosses.
Shatter Capitalism’s Double-Edged Sword
Capitalism’s current worldwide crisis forces workers to work harder for less. In one industrial factory workers were told to take a $3 hourly cut or be fired. They were mad, but felt they had no choice — for now. In other factories, while overtime is cut and layoffs threatened, production quotas are being raised, with increased harassment to meet them.
Many workers are reacting to these pressures and safety hazards by slowing down production, finding ways to make fewer parts. This is growing from small spontaneous actions to more planned larger ones. One worker said, “If they’re going to be all over us, then we’ll just take our time,” a sign of more to come!
With the highest unemployment in decades many workers have to accept wage-cuts and watch their savings vanish in the crashing stock markets. We know nine-member families living in two-bedroom apartments while thousands of houses sit vacant. Anger is growing. When will enough be enough?
Competition for Maximum Profits, Falling Rate of Profit Caused this Crisis
The bosses need to make ever more profit or face rival take-overs. When fewer people are buying their products they maintain profits by squeezing more value out of the workers, and making war to destroy their rivals’ capacity to produce.
Their motto is to outdo the competition by selling more for less. One way is by spending more on technology and less on workers’ wages and benefits. Their rate of profit tends to fall because they make profit not from machines but by stealing the value we workers produce. This is a contradiction of capitalism — all profits come from workers’ labor so with more investment in technology comes a lower rate of profit.
China developed advanced manufacturing with the help of the U.S. and other imperialists so companies could invest in a super-exploited, low-wage workforce to increase profits. But with higher U.S. unemployment and lower wages worldwide, workers cannot buy all the products manufactured.
With one edge of their sword, capitalists cut jobs and wages by developing machines in which one operator can produce the work of ten. With the other edge they need us to sacrifice our wages and lives to save their profit system.
U.S. bosses blame the 3.8% decline in Gross Domestic Product on “consumer belt-tightening” (LA Times), but workers don’t have the money to spend because of these attacks. In turn, the government prints money for stimulus packages, further reducing the dollar’s value and our real wages.
Obama Can’t Change This World
The bosses hope Obama can help them climb out of this recession by shifting the blame from this capitalist crisis of overproduction to the Bush administration’s mismanagement. For this he needs workers’ support. As one worker from a sub-contracted aerospace shop said, “This is just a strategy to seduce the workers. We will still have to come to work like slaves just to pay all our bills.”
Revolution Is Our Answer!
Workers are starting to challenge speed-up, increased production quotas and unsafe conditions. In this struggle, the lasting victory is for workers to recognize that a racist, super-exploitative system that can’t provide a decent life for the people who produce for and sustain society must be destroyed, replaced by a communist system where production and all activity will be for workers’ well-being and safety. CHALLENGE’S communist ideas in these struggles help our base grow.
The anger and slowdowns show workers’ potential to act in our class interests over the long haul. We must unite to take the double-edged sword of the bosses’ exploitation out of their hands, take control of our children’s education and produce for the needs of the international working class instead of bosses’ profits.
The Progressive Labor Party consists of workers, students, soldiers and professionals who know that with time and struggle we can create a world without bosses or borders. Join us.
(For more on the falling rate of profit see CHALLENGE, 12/10/08, “Falling Rate of Profit Hits Workers in The Head”)
Book Review:
During World War 2, Communists Led Women’s Revolutionary Fight Against Fascism
March 8 is International Women’s Day. Communists say that working class women are key to fighting capitalism and all the ways it oppresses the entire working class. Ingrid Strobl’s book “Partisanas: Women in the Armed Resistance to Fascism and German Occupation (1936-1945)” shows just that. It uses original source material to explain well the important role of the Communist movement in the worldwide struggle against the Nazis.
The book focuses on the role of women in the armed struggle against fascism, dispelling the myth that women were only auxiliary forces. Women did not just clean the clothes, cook the food or tend the wounded, but picked up arms, from guns to light bulbs filled with hydrochloric acid, in fierce battles with the Nazis. They derailed trains, blew up Nazi cafés, assassinated German officers, carried secret packages and information to the underground, robbed banks to fund the underground, went hungry and cold and helped Jews hide or escape from Europe. Many risked torture and death to journey back to the occupied territories to help rescue families, loved ones and perfect strangers.
Strobl is very sympathetic to the Communist Party’s organizing of the women. She explains how many of the women “modeled themselves ... upon revolutionaries in the protracted struggle for a life of dignity for human beings upon this earth, and involved in the fight underway in Russia. And when a ... girl ... tight-lipped and head held high... gazed upon all the pictures of socialist students, those open, serene faces and closed mouths; was it perhaps not inevitable that they would make this resolution in their hearts: I undertake to live that life and do my damnedest to be that way, too?”
Many of the myths about the fact that the Nazis’ victims “went like lambs to the slaughter” are dispelled in this book. It is an invaluable resource for history teachers to teach about the international struggle against fascism, led and organized by the USSR under Stalin’s leadership. She attacks the historians who portray all of fascism’s victims as helpless and passive in the face of oppression. Confronting the world with those “who did something ... raises the issue of the Aryans who did nothing. And gets us used to the idea that we need not accept things as they are, that fighting back is possible.”
“Partisanas” advances the maxim that “it is always necessary to question who recognizes what actions as resistance and why.” We are introduced to the heroic struggle of undocumented immigrants, young Jewish men and women and others like them within the international communist movement and the Red Army that defeated fascism. Strobl really does a good job of showing how much of a force of liberation the Red Army was and how the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian nationalist forces played a counter-partisan role as they would rather shoot the Communists and the Jews than help the resistance against the Nazi occupying forces.
These women and men who fought fascism are our heroes. We in PLP firmly believe that all workers eventually, given communist leadership, will fight to destroy capitalism, the creator of fascism. We will learn from the achievements of our movement in the past and from their errors of not destroying capitalism in all its forms.
(The book is available for $21.95 on www.AKpress.org and may be available in various left-leaning book stores.)
Movie review
‘Frozen River’ — System Fails Working-Class Women
The vast majority of Hollywood movies push greed, individualism, racism and hopelessness. The movie Frozen River, which received a limited national release last year and is currently available on DVD, is a rare exception.
This is an anti-racist movie with strong female, working-class leads. This was the directorial debut for Courtney Hunt who also wrote the screenplay. Ms. Hunt was nominated for an Academy Award in the screenplay category. The star, Melissa Leo, was nominated for a best actress Academy Award. The movie has won many international awards.
Leo’s character, Ray, is a struggling dollar-store cashier, trying to raise two sons in a trailer home in upstate New York. The story begins a few days before Christmas, during a brutal winter. Ray’s husband, a chronic gambler, has already left with what little money they had. Ray has been saving to move her family into a doublewide trailer, but now is unable to pay what is owed on the new trailer. While searching for her husband, she crosses paths with a young Mohawk woman Lila (Misty Upham), who has “borrowed” Ray’s car. Ray quickly learns that Lila is involved in a smuggling operation, driving immigrants from Canada to the U.S. across the frozen St. Lawrence River. Like Ray, Lila has faced hard times: her infant son was taken from her and she is trying to raise money to get him back.
Ray joins Lila in smuggling and the two women, while hostile to each other, realize that they can make more money working together. The contradiction of workers exploiting fellow workers is never explored. The film implies that the women are caught in a bind created by the capitalist system. While Ray isn’t an outright bigot, we do sense she has some anti-Native American attitudes, and her teenage son is heard making racist remarks about Indians. Lila quickly acknowledges that whites have it a lot better than Indians. However, the audience can see that both these woman have more in common than not — the system has failed both of them.
At first, Ray is completely consumed with making enough money to pay for the larger trailer. She is rude towards Lila and doesn’t care at all about the immigrants she is smuggling across the border. However, an incident causes her to question whether her tough times have caused her to lose some humanity. Both women begin to learn more about each other and start to realize that they are both screwed by the system. Towards the end of the movie, Ray makes a huge sacrifice for Lila and Lila agrees to help Ray take care of her sons.
The movie’s plot makes it clear that the women need each other and their differences are trivial compared to what they have in common. It portrays class-conscious Native Americans who are forgiving towards Ray and her son despite their negative experiences with whites.
While this movie offers no political solutions to the plight of these people, it does make the profound point that all working people need each other and can rely on each other for support. The writer of this review also liked the fact that these women were portrayed as strong individuals, who are capable of compassion. You could see a thousand Hollywood movies and not run into one as good as this.
Friend of PLP
LETTERS
Co-Worker’s Communist Attitude Inspires PL’er
I work in a hospital in southern California. In the year I’ve worked there, I developed a friendship with a Filipina coworker who is 73 years old. She was a nice person and a really hard worker. She would walk in to work every day with her cane. She taught the new employees everything they needed to know about their job.
I asked her once why she didn’t retire. She told me that if she did retire, she couldn’t afford the medicine she needed to keep her alive. She passed away of heart failure recently, having worked until the day she died. She worked at the hospital for a little over 40 years. Capitalism sucked all her productive value her whole life. I think wanting to work, to do a good job and to teach others is what kept her going.
In the Party we believe in “from each according to their ability and to each according to their need.” She had outstanding ability to teach, but capitalism couldn’t provide her with what she needed to live...medicine. She had to be exploited in order to receive it.
There are a lot of older people working at this hospital. There are a lot of people around the world that work until they die. My co-worker is my real-life example of all these workers around the world, of my comrades’ future and my own under capitalism. I’m tired of being exploited, tired of the exploitation all around me. The only solution to this exploitative environment is to destroy the system that creates it, capitalism, and build a society that promotes the health and well being of all. I hope to learn from my co-worker’s attitude and dedicate my time to teaching my fellow workers about revolution. Sell CHALLENGE, participate in study groups and join PLP.
Red Cyclist
Priest: No Passing Marks for Belief in Marxism
Karen is a 14-year old student at a Catholic school run by priests who always preach love, tolerance, understanding and respect. But, like any other bourgeois institution, the representatives of the Vatican don’t practice what they preach.
During the school year, her parents went to many parent-teacher meetings where they were told she was doing well in her classes and in the school in general. But at the end of the year they were told that Karen didn’t pass her courses. Startled by this, they made inquiries and finally discovered why she failed: because Karen didn’t believe in God. In the same class, several students who were found drunk in class passed to the next grade. When the parents confronted the priest in charge, he said that the drunk students believed in God and therefore they were being given another chance. But Karen, a young CHALLENGE reader, was denied that second chance.
Karen and her family have always been very analytical, critical and rebellious against the inequalities of capitalism. Karen has debated many times with fellow students and teachers about aspects of PL’s line on the fight against sexism, nationalism, low wages paid to workers, police brutality, etc. This was the real reason she was attacked by the priests.
The racist, fascist double morality preached by the Church and all bourgeois institutions will continue as long as there is wage slavery. This and many other attacks just reinforce our commitment to build PLP as an international communist party to fight for a society where religion and all other reactionary ideas won’t be the opiate of the masses. Our work among young students and workers is ensuring that that day comes sooner rather than later.
A Comrad, Colombia
Postal Bosses’ Speed-up Stamping on Workers’ Jobs
The United States Postal Service (USPS) workers are under attack by the bosses in this capitalist depression. Mass lay-offs and retirement buy-outs are in the works as the union misleaders sit back and watch. The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which represents thousands of mail carriers, meekly accepts these conditions.
I recently attended the only 2008 union meeting for NALC members in my area. The union misleader explained how every second of the carriers’ time was recorded to show how long it takes to deliver mail throughout the route. This data is then used against workers when we take as little as five minutes longer to finish the route. Capitalists always try to maximize profits by pushing workers to work more within less time, and when we don’t comply we’re threatened with write-ups and eventually termination.
The union leaders’ solution to preventing the bosses from “punishing” carriers was to fill out time-extension forms with reasons why the carrier would need an extra five or ten minutes! We were also informed of major delivery route changes and extensions that will make it possible to cut some routes and extend others while also laying-off thousands of workers.
The carriers desperately need PLP’s communist ideas to challenge the union’s passivity and unfortunately I have to keep a low profile for now because my temporary employee status gives me no job security. Some solutions we should be fighting for are shorter routes with more time to spend delivering and more full-time job openings for the many unemployed workers. But the best solution is communist revolution led by PLP so I’ll be hard at work struggling with my brothers and sisters at USPS!
Red Mail Carrier
PL Youth ‘Retreat’ Shows Big Advance
I went to the PLP retreat February 13-16. The level of the understanding of the youth is very high. They are about to become people who make up PLP, or already are members, who already understand the reform vs. revolution debate — the need to fight directly for communism.
However, I believe that we didn’t talk about anti-racism enough, but maybe that was a product of the event’s integration, or multi-racial unity. There was no racism there to speak of so maybe people forgot that it exists on such a large scale in society.
I gave my club leader $100 for the event, but he gave me back $40, saying that if I don’t need it, give it back to the Party. I am sending $20 to CHALLENGE. I know it’s not enough but it’s what I can give.
Also, I would like to see a CHALLENGE article about the NPA in France, an anti-capitalist party which says they have signed up over 9,000 people ready to move on a moment’s notice to violently overthrow the current French government. What’s up in France? An article I read by Ted Rall says they are moving to the left, even criticizing the “Communist” Party for not being left enough.
Red Worker
CHALLENGE Comment: Once the French Socialist Party blew its “left-wing” cover — resolutely
pursuing neo-liberalism, deregulation and privatization, both in power (1997-2002) and out — French bosses needed a new “left-wing” electoral party to keep workers in France tied to the election circus. Of the parties jockeying for the role, the NPA (New Anti-Capitalist Party) wants to become the front-runner. Any NPA talk of revolution is exactly that — talk. In 2003, the Trotskyite LCR, NPA’s forerunner, stopped pretending its goal was establishing workers’ power (the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat) and has moved more openly to the right ever since. As the NY Times reported (9/12/08) in profiling Olivier Besancenot, one of the NPA leaders, he “guides his comrades towards France’s mainstream,” i.e., to the right.
Forum About Armed Insurrection
Recently our Party club in LA had a forum in which we discussed the question of armed struggle. Before this forum we had one on the elections, followed by another on the economic crisis. The idea for the most recent forum came from workers who attended the previous forums and were interested in knowing more about how the working class can take power and run society.
Much of the information for the forum came from the article, “Armed Insurrection,” written in PL Magazine in 1972. During the presentation we acknowledged the history of past revolutions and the achievements of the working class in these revolutions. We explained that armed struggle will not occur from one day to the next, and that such a process will take a long time. We explained that first we need to win people to our political line and to engage in class struggle and that revolution requires winning the masses at our work sites, schools, army bases and other sectors of society. We analyzed the failures and successes of the Communards, Bolsheviks, Chinese and Vietnamese Communists.
Workers have attended the forums because they like the information and it is helping them understand our political line. Furthermore, the workers gave money in support and took extra copies of CHALLENGE to distribute.
LA Comrades
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
World’s workers in a stir
NYT 2/15 — Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009... High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France... In emerging economies like those in Eastern Europe, there are fears that growing joblessness might encourage a move away from free-market, pro-Western policies.
Like old times, fighting eviction
NYT 2/18 — Instead of quietly packing up and turning their homes over to banks, homeowners are now fighting back. ...A broad civil disobedience campaign is starting in New York and other cities to support families who refuse orders to vacate their homes. ...Through phone trees, Web pages and text-messaging networks, the effort will connect families facing eviction with volunteers who will stand at their side as officers arrive, even if it means risking arrest.
Obama keeps US line on Israel
NYT 2/8 — We saw Mr. Obama as a symbol of justice. We welcomed him with almost total enthusiasm until he underwent his first real test: Gaza... This massacre killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, many of them civilians. (I don’t know what you call it in other languages, but in Egypt we call this a massacre.) We... wanted Mr. Obama... to recognize what we see as a simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation. But Mr. Obama has been silent. So his brilliantly written Inaugural Speech did not leave a big impression on Egyptians. We had already begun to tune out. I imagine the same holds true for much of the greater Muslim world.
Dems continue Bush detentions
NYT 2/18 — In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials.
It’s really a war on workers
NYT 2/22 — The main problem is not that the country is catching too few undocumented immigrants. It is catching too many. Latinos now make up 40 percent of those sentenced in federal courts, even though they are only about 13 percent of the adult population. The numbers might suggest we are besieged by immigrant criminals. But of all of the noncitizen Latinos sentenced last year, the vast majority 81 percent—were convicted for unlawfully entering or remaining in the country, neither of which is a criminal offense. The country is filling the federal courts and prisons with nonviolent offenders. It is diverting immense law-enforcement resources from pursuing serious criminals—to an immense, self-defeating campaign to hunt down ... workers.
Who is La Migra arresting?
NYT 2/11 — To the Editor: When congress allocated millions of dollars to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the [stated] goal was not to lock up women who scrub toilets in courthouses after 5 p.m.; or cooks and waiters who serve authentic ethnic food; or seamstresses who work double shifts without overtime to turn out high-quality back-packs under government contracts; or meatpackers who work in hazardous conditions. But all these people were targets of ICE enforcement. Arresting these people won’t improve this country’s national security. It only terrorizes hardworking families and devastates stable communities...
a href="#Bosses’ Stimulus Plan: $4 Billion for More Racist Cops">"osses’ Stimulus Plan: $4 Billion for More Racist Cops
White House Militarization Intensifies, Despite Clumsy Cover-Up
a href="#Rebellion, Not Non-Violence, Is Black Workers’ Real History">"ebellion, Not Non-Violence, Is Black Workers’ Real History
- Black Workers’ Armed Struggle
- Black Politicians Have Never Served the Working Class
a href="#500 Marchers Back Stella D’Oro Strikers">"00 Marchers Back Stella D’Oro Strikers
a href="#Strike Diary: ‘Peaceman’ and ‘Hopeman’ — Gaza and Stella D’Oro">Strike Dia"y: ‘Peaceman’ and ‘Hopeman’ — Gaza and Stella D’Oro
- Budget Cuts, Tax Hikes:Racist, Anti-Worker
- Capitalism is the Problem,Communism is the Solution
$20 Billion Mayor Laying Off 23,000 NYC Workers
Gary Protestors Keep Heat On Racist Killer Kop
Guadeloupe General Strike Spreads to Martinique
a href="#Chavez’s Cops Attack Strikers, Kill 2 Auto Workers">"havez’s Cops Attack Strikers, Kill 2 Auto Workers
LETTERS
From Oakland to Athens: Solidarity vs. Kop Killers
a href="#‘Get out in front’ on Politics Behind Capitalist Crisis">‘G"t out in front’ on Politics Behind Capitalist Crisis
Sunday School Teaches Class Solidarity
a href="#Arab-Jewish Workers’ Unity - Antidote to Nationalist Poison">"rab-Jewish Workers’ Unity Antidote to Nationalist Poison
Lauds PLP at Boeing, Poses Sit-Down Strike Strategy
Win Oaxaca APPO Congress Rank & File to Red Ideas
- Migra lied on immigrant raids
- Clinton workfare strangles poor
- Army suicides at 30-year high
- Workers see capitalist betrayal
Afghanistan Center of Imperialist Dogfight over Oil, Gas
Russian Imperialists Ready to Defend Their Backyard
Racist D.C. Metro Bosses Attack Transit Workers, Riders
a name="Bosses’ Stimulus Plan: $4 Billion for More Racist Cops">">"osses’ Stimulus Plan: $4 Billion for More Racist Cops
To help keep a lid on the New Depression’s growing millions of angry, jobless workers (now 26 million unemployed and under-employed), Barack Obama is giving new life to racist community policing. Obama earmarked $4 billion of his $827-billion stimulus package for Community Oriented Policing Services and "other law enforcement needs." (New York Times, 2/6).
The Clinton regime, in a glaring example of fascism disguised as liberal "progress," had put 100,000 new cops on the street in the name of "community policing." Now Obama wants to double that to 200,000.
Community policing began in earnest in Boston during the early 1990s. The Boston Police Department (BPD) then formed the Ten Point Coalition with pastors in the city’s mainly black Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan sections. The cop-loving clergy created a network of stoolpigeons. Tips about "criminal activity" — usually minor offenses like drug use or vandalism — poured in from pastors, principals and merchants. Arrests soared.
Under this scheme, cops expand their ability to terrorize black and Latino neighborhoods by finding allies among church, school and other local leaders. Pretending to combat gang violence, community policing in fact targets rebellion. That’s why it hits the most oppressed — unemployed black and Latino young people — the hardest and why Obama needs it desperately in today’s collapsing economy.
The cops had won the ministers to consider "all youth as their responsibility regardless of the parish the youth lived in or the youth’s denominational affiliation" and to "spend time on the streets at night, getting to know the kids." (Encyclopedia of Police Science, 2006) In effect, the notoriously racist BPD succeeded in creating a new version of the Nazi’s World War II-era Judenrat. The Judenrat were Jewish "community leaders" who, collaborating with the Nazis, betrayed their neighbors to the gas chambers.
Boston’s top cop in the early 1990s was Bill Bratton, the rulers’ leading apostle for community policing. Bratton has since brought the liberal rulers’ racist gospel, with varying success, to New York and Los Angeles.
Liberals have a long vicious history. It was the liberals (anti-communist Social Democrats) who ushered in Hitler in Germany. And his party adopted the name "National Socialist" (NAZI in German) because a majority of German workers had voted for socialism so the Nazis figured they could use the liberal fig-leaf of "socialist" to win the working class to fascism.
That’s why it would be wrong to think that the beleaguered U.S. bosses need to assert police power only in inner cities. They need to control all of society and Bratton-style policies help immensely. In mostly white, suburban, middle-class Topsfield, Mass., "Police are arresting twice as many people and writing twice as many citations as they were just two years ago [after the police chief] adopted several community policing strategies." (Salem News, 1/22)
With the whole working class — black, Latino and millions of whites — being hit by the bosses’ Depression, the rulers fear working-class rebellions like the ones in the 1930s, when they had to order out the National Guard every week in 1937. With Guard troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, they’ll need those 200,000 extra cops here, while pushing patriotism among white youth as well to get them to join the Army.
White House Militarization Intensifies, Despite Clumsy Cover-Up
Intensifying militarization — again masquerading in liberal guise — accompanies Obama’s burgeoning police state. Facing armed conflict now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and eventually with Iran, China or Russia, Obama seeks to avoid imperialist predecessor Kennedy’s disastrous choice of advisors.
Obama has put four-star officers in key war-planning posts. General James Jones is National Security Advisor and Admiral Dennis Blair directs national intelligence. In launching the U.S. genocide in Vietnam, Kennedy relied on academic Ivy League experts like McGeorge Bundy, who had read all the books but hadn’t a clue about the technicalities of waging war.
"Anti-war" Obama’s preference for war-bloodied brass has become so obvious that he backed off on appointing General Anthony Zinni as ambassador to Iraq, whom he had already promised the job. "Late last week, Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, a former top military commander in Afghanistan, was named as the next ambassador to Kabul. That made it unlikely that the White House would name another general to a high-profile diplomatic post, and fuel criticism that it was militarizing American foreign policy." (NYT, 2/6) Phony peacemaker Obama then made the obvious move of replacing Zinni with Peace Corps alumnus Christopher Hill.
Obama’s coziness with the cops and generals destroys his credibility as an agent of pro-working-class change. His choice of Paul Volcker to head a panel on economic restructuring proves Obama serves only the highest, imperialist echelons of the U.S. capitalist class. Volcker was once top economist at Chase Manhattan Bank when David Rockefeller ran it. In the early 1980s, as Federal Reserve chief, Volcker threw millions out of work by jacking up interest rates for the bankers’ benefit. Now he and Obama preside over an effort to restore U.S. rulers’ profits through misery and war.
In these hard times, workers can rely only on our own class. And the only purely working-class political organization is the Progressive Labor Party. We encourage the rebellions Obama and his bosses dread. It is our long-term goal to crush their top-down oppression with bottom-up base-building in the working class for a communist revolution.
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As the U.S. government celebrates black history month this February, the bosses’ media are painting Barack Obama’s presidency as the positive legacy of a pacifist civil rights movement. But the real history of the civil rights era is militant black workers rebelling, often violently, against racism.
This is the history of the international working class that the Progressive Labor Party celebrates every day in our fight to smash capitalism — the system that gave birth to racism and continues to profit from it.
The many gains of the civil rights era — the end of legal race segregation, free breakfast programs, jobs for blacks, affirmative action — were concessions won by militant, mass working-class struggle. The civil rights movement involved thousands of black workers heroically putting their lives on the line. Many, many were killed in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and throughout the South in the fight against racism. While the movement also involved whites, including some who died, the opening of freedom schools, marching against segregation, integrating lunch counters and other struggles brought the full force of the racist system down on those black workers who stood up and fought.
Obama is part of King’s legacy of misleading working-class anti-racists into the dead end of supporting the bosses’ politicians and laws. There was tremendous political struggle within the anti-racist movement in the 1960’s. At the famous 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom where King gave his "I have a dream" speech, King and other march organizers toned down a student’s speech attacking Kennedy, the Democrats, and the Civil Rights bill itself for failing to address police brutality, racist unemployment, and low wages.
This militancy wasn’t only, or even mainly, inside the organized movement. In 1965, police harassment of a black man sparked an anti-racist rebellion in Watts, California. King went to Watts and supported the armed cops and National Guard troops, while urging rebels to be peaceful. When his pacifism was rejected, King phoned President Lyndon Johnson (who had sent him to Watts) complaining about "all of these tones of violence from people out there in the Watts" (New York Times, 05/14/02). King’s last campaign to support 1,200 striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in the spring of 1968 is supposedly his most radical. But King fled the March 28th protest when a group of demonstrators, frustrated with pacifist leadership, smashed downtown store windows.
Black Workers’ Armed Struggle
Black workers’ militant and sometimes armed struggle won the victories that are credited to King. In 1964, the Louisiana-based Deacons for Defense emerged as an armed organization to defend non-violent civil rights workers and spread to 23 communities across the south. Their actions helped win integration battles and fight off racist terror from the police, the Ku Klux Klan, and racist white mobs ("The Deacons for Defense," Lance Hill, 2004).
Then, in June 1964, the first mass big-city rebellion erupted in New York City’s Harlem when masses of black workers and youth took to the streets to protest a 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 "Communist Party" tried to cool the rebels and attacked PLM. The latter was barred from Harlem but defied the ban and held a mass demonstration, which sent several in PLM to jail. This rebellion laid the basis for many to follow, including in Newark, NJ in 1967.
The Detroit rebellion of 1967 — sparked by police harassment of a party for returning black Vietnam veterans and suppressed by 82nd Airborne troops diverted from Vietnam — led directly to 10,000 jobs in the auto industry for black workers.
When King was assassinated in 1968, anti-racist rebellions flared up in hundreds of U.S. cities. These rebellions led to an increase in jobs for blacks, especially in the public sector, although unemployment and underemployment remained (and remains) higher for black workers than for white.
Black Politicians Have Never Served the Working Class
The U.S. bosses want us to focus on political victories for black politicians (like Obama) but these black bosses are part of the same racist ruling class that is responsible for the reversal of the civil rights gains and the racist conditions today.
Despite decades of black, Latino, and Native American mayors, governors and lawmakers, racism thrives by every indicator — higher incarceration rates, lower wages, more unemployment, higher home foreclosure rates, less access to health care and fewer education opportunities for black, Latino and Native American workers. Over and over cops get away with racist terror — such as the murders of Oscar Grant in Oakland, California and Sean Bell in Queens, New York — while Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton urge us to be peaceful and seek victory in courts that acquit or slap cops on the wrist.
Like King, Obama can only offer empty hope and promises. His role is to win anti-racists to support the racist ruling class.
In referring to the "muslim world" as a "clenched fist" Obama uses anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism to win U.S. workers to support oil wars in Afghanistan and continued occupation in Iraq, which have killed over one million Iraqis since 2003. (Opinion Research Business, Feb 2008). Obama constantly draws inspiration from racist slave-owning founding fathers who systematically committed genocide against Native Americans to increase their profits.
Obama will not wage the battle against racism. So, just as workers in the ‘60s did not rely on a servant of the ruling class to wage their battles, we can’t rely on the current servant to wage ours.
The gains won by our class in the ‘60s have been reversed. Those good-paying auto industry jobs won by black workers in Detroit have vanished. The mass anti-racist rebellions were good, but the crumbs given our class in response have been taken back. The fight against racism must take place within the context of fighting for communist revolution, the only outcome where workers can win power and establish a world free of capitalism and its racism.
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‘No Contract, No Cookies!’
BRONX, NY, January 31 — Braving freezing temperatures, 500 Stella D’Oro strikers and supporters marched down Broadway chanting, "No Contract, No Cookies!"
As CHALLENGE readers know, the 135 Stella strikers are 100% solid on the line. They’ve been out for nearly six months but are determined not to let the Brynwood bosses (who own Stella D’Oro) bust their union and take away holidays, healthcare benefits and sick days, while demanding annual wage-cuts for the next five years.
While the strike involves a limited number of workers, it is significant on two counts: (1) it not only sets an example of militant workers fighting back against the bosses’ attempts to make workers take the losses resulting from the bosses’ crisis; and (2) it involves predominantly black and Latino workers — who, because of racism, suffer disproportionately from the bosses’ attacks — giving leadership to the whole working class.
This march and rally was larger and more spirited than previous ones. Supporters came from the PSC (Professional Staff Congress-CUNY), the teachers union, District Council 37, RWDSU (supermarket employees), nurses from the NYS Nurses Association, other unions and the community. But critically important, most speeches at the closing rally were by the strikers, not politicians who had dominated earlier rallies.
PSC’s president vowed continuing support for the struggle, telling Stella strikers that, "You must win; we cannot allow you to lose." A George Washington H.S. student took the mic and showed the crowd support letters from his fellow students and funds collected at their school.
In sharp contrast to this genuine display of solidarity from working-class youth was the shameful performance of Ed Ott, NYC Central Labor Council director. He appeared for only a few minutes at the pre-march rally. When someone in the crowd called out, "Ed, Ed, tell us how much money the Central Labor Council has given to support the struggle," his pathetic answer was, "We haven’t been asked yet."
PLP members have played an active role throughout the strike. At the closing rally, a PL speaker explained how the Stella workers inspired all workers and how communist revolution is necessary to eliminate the bosses and their system. During the rallies and march, 555 people bought CHALLENGES.
When some phony leftists chanted, "People’s power," PL’ers overrode it with "Workers’ Power!" And when they said, "People, united, will never be defeated," PL’ers responded with, "Workers, united…" In both cases, the great majority of the crowd joined PL’s most class-conscious chants. PLP opposes the slogan of "people’s power" because it means an alliance of workers with bosses and politicians.
One weakness in the strike is scabs working in the plant. It’s estimated that production in 30% of normal. With mass support at the picket line, stopping scabs becomes possible. While workers try to build a successful city-wide boycott of Stella products, the bosses’ strategy may be to take losses until August when the strikers’ benefits run out.
PL organizers are encouraging greater militancy. The Stella workers can reach out to other members of Local 50 in other bakeries and to other locals of the bakers’ international union.
In picket line conversations we have found that the workers are interested in discussing political questions, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the collapse of Wall Street, and how these events will affect the working class. One worker e-mailed us a set of pictures showing the horrors resulting from the Israeli invasion and massacre in Gaza.
Many strikers are reading CHALLENGE. We plan to organize a contingent of Stella workers and their families and friends to attend this year’s May Day dinner. Fight the bosses! Build the Party!
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BRONX, NY, January 13 — Today, a multi-racial group of 500 Stella D’Oro strikers and supporters, including PLP’ers, marched to a Target store that’s selling scab-made cookies. In thinking about this strike, much in the world situation comes to mind: the economic meltdown, the imperialist oil wars, racist unemployment, and in particular, the Israeli invasion of Gaza and this strike — two sieges in a long class war — so this diary is dedicated to Peaceman and Hopeman, two friends on either side of the Gaza border who write a blog together: http://gaza-sderot.blogspot.com
They’re ordinary folks (Hopeman is a student who can’t get out of Gaza to attend his college), not very "political," who maintain their friendship to have something to rebuild with when the war and siege forced on them are over. Of course that’s very political!
They’re showing how workers can build solidarity across borders, dodging Israeli bombs and Hamas rockets to find cell phone reception so they can talk, at least when Hopeman has enough electricity to charge his phone. Most of the Stella strikers who are becoming my friends are like that — they’re building a base for the future. Communism does that too.
Recently A. told a young teacher and community arts organizer (who’s planning a video documentary about the strike) that it was forced on the workers. The Israeli fascists and Hamas religious nationalists did the same thing to Palestinian and Israeli workers with their war.
But hidden behind the Israeli and Palestinian politicians who the bloggers despise are all the rival imperialists who’ve shaped the Middle East: the Ottoman emperors who ruled there until World War I; the British Mandate rulers who set up this impossible situation by guiding the founding of Israel as a European settler colony; the U.S. rulers funding Israel as their client state and military proxy; and all the others (the EU, Russia, China, Japan, Iran, India) feeling their way into a serious challenge to the declining U.S. empire.
Those same clashing imperialist elephants are trampling the grass in this bakery strike too, hard to see until some communist comes and talks it up. Three strikers are now reading the article "A Class Analysis of the Israel/Palestine Conflict" from PL’s journal "The Communist."
Imperialist rivalry caused the economic crisis smashing into the Bronx bakers and also intensifies it. Brynwood Partners, which own Stella D’Oro, is a Wall Street speculator like those who brought us this deepening depression, a "vulture capitalist" who swoops down on struggling companies to strip and flip them for resale.
Economists call it "financialization," turning real plants into fictitious capital and trading them like bad mortgages or baseball cards. The capitalist economic pressures that forced this strike are the same ones producing war in Gaza.
A. tells the young video artists the strike was forced on them, but there’s nothing forced about how these workers love and honor one another, just as no one is forcing or even organizing Peaceman and Hopeman to continue their blog. The strikers stick together, like Peaceman and Hopeman, so there’s something to rebuild with when the strike ends (win or lose). This solidarity grows from their working together so long, but it’s really for the future, as they pull on their long johns and layer up for picket duty on the five-month anniversary of their brave strike. (Continued on PLP blog: challengenewspaper.wordpress.com.)
Students Fighting Cuts: Ally With Workers, Not Liberal Pols
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — "The rally for community colleges on February 27 is being organized by Chancellor Jack Scott and college public-relations officers," a student leader commented, "so members of our club will need to make sure students’ wants are voiced."
Most community college students belong to the working class. Like other workers, they’re hit hard by the current capitalist crisis. They don’t want classes cut, teachers to lose jobs, and student fees to go up.
Unlike tuition at California’s two university systems, community college fees go into the state General Fund. They help pay interest going to banks and investors, which the state constitution requires to be paid before any other expenses! Community College fees also help pay for the state’s huge and viciously racist prison system.
The governor plans to cut funding for state financial aid by $87.5 million by freezing income eligibility limits, reducing the maximum award and eliminating the "safety net" for recipients’ children.
Budget Cuts, Tax Hikes:Racist, Anti-Worker
Most students don’t want higher taxes either, but that’s what the Democratic Party and the California Teachers Association want us to fight for. California Community College Chancellor Scott, as a "pro-education" legislator, pushed for a sales tax hike at a Pasadena rally against education cuts last spring.
Sales taxes are racist and regressive. They come down hardest on lower-paid workers and the unemployed, including a high proportion of black and Latin workers. The poorest 20% of California households paid nearly 12% of their income in taxes, while the richest 1% of households paid only 7% of theirs.
Budget cuts are racist, too. Cuts in Medi-Cal eligibility and benefits will make things much worse in a health care system so overloaded that it already turns away many – especially in neighborhoods like South LA, where the MLKing Hospital was shut down and clinics are closing.
Legal immigrants and US citizen children of undocumented immigrants are singled out for specific racist cutbacks. Gov. Schwarzenegger has proposed eliminating the California Food Assistance Program, which feeds certain legal non-citizens who are ineligible for federal programs because of their immigration status.
Capitalism is the Problem,Communism is the Solution
The California budget crisis is a direct result of the capitalist crisis of overproduction and imperialist war. Because capitalists compete to maximize profits, and because lower wages mean higher profits, they produce more than can be sold. Then workers are laid-off so that they can afford to spend less on consumer goods.
Meanwhile, "corporate income taxes have declined over time as a share of General Fund revenues and as a share of corporate profits. If corporations had paid the same share of their profits in corporate taxes in 2006 as they did in 1981, corporate tax collections would have been $8.4 billion higher," concludes the California Budget Project. (www.cbp.org) Because of Prop 13 (1978) huge corporations pay property taxes on the assessed value of their property — like Disneyland — 30 years ago!
Community colleges are promoted as a "way out of the working class." But they are training the workers who can be the key to building a new system. Students need to ally with industrial workers and soldiers in a movement to destroy this capitalist system that brings us economic insecurity, racist inequality, and increasingly murderous imperialist war.
The alternative to capitalism is communism, a classless society where workers hold power. Cynicism will get us nowhere! PLP communists are in the class struggle – like the fight against California budget cuts – to win workers and students away from reform and to the long-term fight for communist revolution. We invite you to subscribe to Challenge, join a PLP discussion group, and march with PLP on May Day – International Workers Day!
$20 Billion Mayor Laying Off 23,000 NYC Workers
NEW YORK — Billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg has unveiled his doomsday budget proposal for workers here. To close a projected $4 billion budget deficit, Bloomberg — whose private fortune totals $20 billion (Forbes, 10/6/2008) — wants to lay off 23,000 workers and get the city worker unions to give back $1 billion from pensions, health benefits, etc. He counts on the union leaders to convince members to take all these attacks without fighting back. That’s exactly what happened during the NYC fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Union workers were told they were saving the city. What they really saved was capitalism. They never regained the contract givebacks from thirty years ago. The working people of NYC lived with a level of city services that didn’t come close to meeting their needs. As is always the case, black and Latin workers were hit the hardest by both layoffs and the resulting service cuts. Let’s not make the same mistake this time.
Strikers at the Stella D’Oro bakery show that some workers are willing to fight against their vicious bosses. Communists in PLP vow to give leadership in the struggle to fight Bloomberg’s proposed layoffs. We will help to build the unity needed to fight the cutback plans. We will explain the nature of the capitalist system that exploits us and destroys our lives. We will explain how a communist revolution will put an end to racism, inequality and oppression.
Workers here as elsewhere are already reeling from the financial meltdown, home foreclosure crisis and an uncertain future for themselves and their children. During 2008, city agencies twice had their operating budgets slashed by $1.5 billion. What do an additional 23,000 layoffs mean? 15,000 of the layoffs target the city schools. They mean more students per teacher, less support staff and longer waiting time for needed repairs in school buildings. In city hospitals, people will literally die from the layoffs. That’s what happens when wards, rooms and halls are not kept clean. That’s what happens when patient-to-staff ratios increase. Every city agency will see similar results as they become less able to provide needed services from providing clean water to repairing pot holes.
What about the so-called fat pensions, health benefits and pay those on city payroll get? "Good government" types say that the average city worker earns about $100,000 per year. In reality, the average wage of 120,000 District Council 37 city workers is about $33,000 per year. Since 1995, they have lost between 7-10 % in real wages because their pay hasn’t kept up with the rising cost of living. Contrast that to the pay of New Yorkers making $200,000 and over. They saw a real increase in pay of 96% during the same period (3/28/08 Chief Leader). Since pensions are a fraction of gross pay, DC 37 members can hardly have fat pensions. Likewise, city workers have been forced to pay an ever increasing share of their medical costs. If this seems similar to what’s happening to you, it’s because workers all over this country and around the world are facing a similar attack on their living standards.
We shouldn’t pay for the problems that capitalism creates. We didn’t cause the financial crisis. We should make the bosses take the losses caused by their system and their greed. If the union leaders call for sharing the pain of cutbacks "fairly," we should say no! Rather than saving this racist, exploitative rotten system, we should be fighting to overthrow it. We should be planning to replace it with communism, a society of production to meet human needs not greed, a society where working-class unity is built while racism and sexism is outlawed.
Gary Protestors Keep Heat On Racist Killer Kop
GARY, INDIANA, Feb. 6 — A mistrial was declared today in the trial of the racist cop who murdered Vincent Smith. In near zero degree weather, a group of protestors again held a demonstration at the courthouse to keep this struggle alive. The judge declared the mistrial because supposedly some jurors had "contact" with some of the workers and youth who came to protest the racist murder and demand justice. This has fired up the community and the campus. A new trial is set for July — more time for members of PLP and friends to build a bigger movement and recruit to communism.
Vincent Smith, who was a freshman in high school, was shot in the back while running from the killer cop three years ago. The police claimed that young Vincent was a criminal because he was once arrested for shoplifting! As a result of the demonstrations organized by community groups, a local campus organization and PLP, the state had to charge this cop.
When a Gary cop admits to shooting a fleeing, unarmed teenager in the back of the head, and is indicted by the prosecutor for murder, he is assigned to desk duty with full pay until the trial! That’s the racist, capitalist "justice" system at work! The phony internal police investigation concluded that the killer cop did everything right, and the city is asking the state to drop the charges – basically saying that it is legal for cops to hunt children in Gary.
Gary is among the most depressed, oppressed cities in the USA, where the steel mills sucked the life out of the working class for a hundred years and capitalist chaos has left much of the city abandoned or in deep racist poverty. The Gary police force is known for corruption and brutality. A past chief was just convicted of breaking into someone’s home and brutally beating him. Young people often talk about which cops are brutal and which cops work with drug dealers and gangs.
The bosses need vicious cops to control the working class that does not buy into the empty promises as our lives get worse day by day. So there will be more police terror and more innocent young lives will be lost. Organizing protests against police terror are one way to build a movement that can grow and bring anti-racist, communist ideas to life.
Beyond these courthouse demonstrations, we will continue to publicize and organize workers on the job, students and teachers in school, and other members of the community to fight back against these racist attacks—to take this killer cop off the streets forever, to send a message to other cops that we will not let these racist killings just pass by, and to build a movement and a Party for communist revolution, workers’ power!
General Strike Jolts France:
2.5 Million Marchers Say Make the Bosses Take the Losses
SAINT-NAZAIRE, FRANCE, February 7 — On January 29, as part of a massive general strike of hundreds of thousands of workers, 2.5 million people marched for jobs and against government cutbacks in almost 200 cities across France, with 300,000 demonstrating in Paris and 200,000 in Marseilles.
At least 18,000 demonstrated in this ship-building port in western France. When the sub-prefect (the local representative of the national government) refused to receive a union delegation, protesters began throwing beer cans at the riot police protecting the sub-prefecture. When the police attacked with tear gas, workers tore down the entry gate and four hours of street fighting ensued. The cops injured a number of protesters, one seriously and rounded up 16 people, partly at random, some of whom have already been sentenced to jail.
The bosses in France are very nervous. Even the government’s under-stated figures show nine months of rising unemployment have left 2.1 million workers jobless, while another 2.8 million have given up finding a job. Result: a real unemployment rate of at least 17.5%!
This high unemployment has made workers anxious and angry, sparking this huge general strike and demonstrations called by eight union confederations. From 20% to 40% of public sector workers — hospital, telephone, postal and electric company workers and half or more of secondary and elementary school teachers — walked out.
All the major state radio networks shut down, and a third of television network workers struck. Almost one-third of flights from Orly airport were cancelled. Almost all the Paris commuter train workers, half the Métro (subway) workers and at least a third of urban transport workers in the rest of France went on strike.
In addition, unexpectedly large numbers of private-sector workers went out, in the banks, Renault auto plants and at Alcatel-Lucent (the world’s second-biggest telecommunications equipment-maker). Autoworkers completely shut down PSA’s Poissy and Rennes factories, and partly closed the Sochaux plant.
Private-sector workers do not enjoy the same job security as public workers and consequently strike less. Thus, many Auchan supermarket, Celanese chemicals, Dynastar ski, Ford auto, Free telecommunications and Tefal kitchenware workers used their holiday time to join the protest marches.
Many marchers bore signs saying, "Can you see this strike, you stupid jerk?" — a reference to French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s July statement that "nowadays, when there’s a strike in France, nobody notices" and his telling a farmer who refused to shake hands with him in February, 2008 to "beat it, you stupid jerk."
As usual, union leaders here are tailing the militancy of the working class. The bosses wanted to reduce the duration of unemployment benefits. The signature of two trade unions was necessary for the measure to pass, so on February 2 the traitorous CFDT and CFE-CGC obliged the government and signed.
President Sarkozy responded to the workers’ strike with insult and scorn, reflecting the ruling class’s estimation that any deviation from the set course could lead to their losing control. In his February 5 speech, his "answer" to the general strike, Sarkozy offered another, 8-billion-euro tax break ($9.5 billion) to French bosses and told the working class he would continue to push through his neo-conservative counter-reforms, notably the non-replacement of half the public workers who retire. He announced a meeting with union leaders on February 18.
The more radical unions want to stage another strike and protest before the 18th, a move the conservative unions are resisting.
These struggles need to confront racism since police repression, mass unemployment, among other problems have hit non-white and immigrant workers here for a long time. International solidarity with strikers in Martinique and Guadeloupe must also be part of the struggle. In this age of endless imperialist wars and economic meltdown, this means developing a revolutionary anti-racist communist leadership of these militant struggles, breaking with the union misleaders and fake leftist electoral parties.
Teachers Shut Universities
On February 2, teachers struck at over half the 83 French universities on February 2, with the strike continuing and general assemblies being held on February 4 on many campuses. Students are gradually joining the protest movement.
The teachers are opposing counter-reforms which make it harder for members of the working class to become primary and secondary school teachers and give university presidents greater control over faculty working conditions and careers. These counter-reforms are the French enactment of a May, 2006 European Commission decision to force all European universities to serve the capitalist class more directly. A national university protest is scheduled for February 10.
Guadeloupe General Strike Spreads to Martinique
FORT-DE-FRANCE, MARTINIQUE, February 7 — The general strike which began January 20 in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe spread February 5 to neighboring Martinique, 122 miles to the South. These workers — 90% African or African-white-Indian mixture (Indian from India) — are refusing to pay for the world capitalist crisis.
Over 20,000 people demonstrated here February 5, completely halting public transport. The marchers included all job categories from dockers to Catholic schoolteachers. They chanted, "Sarko [French President], Fillon [Prime Minister], we want jobs!" and "Jobs, yes! Precarity [poverty], no!" The twelve unions calling the strike united in a Collective, welcoming other unions and associations to join.
The Martinique strikers are demanding price cuts and higher wages for all, especially those in low-paying jobs. A Collective study shows milk costs 44.7% more and noodles almost 80% more on this island than in mainland France.
On Guadeloupe, the junior minister for the overseas departments, Yves Jégo, claimed agreement on about one-third of the 146 demands advanced by Lyiannaj kont pwofitasyon (Link Against Extreme Profiteering - LKP). In a clear maneuver to pressure LKP and Guadeloupe’s workers to end their strike, French interior minister Michèle Alliot-Marie immediately released a lying communiqué claiming "an agreement has been found on most of the questions raised."
The people of Guadeloupe are super-exploited by capitalist monopolies and the Guadeloupe wealthy class. This island’s population of 405,000 is 69% African or African-white-Indian mixture.
A trade unionist told French radio that four or five families control imports to the island, so rice is almost twice as expensive here as on mainland France; a toothbrush costs four euros ($5.14).
Gasoline and diesel fuel distribution is effectively monopolized by the Caribbean Refinery Inc. (SARA), owned 50% by France’s Total company, with Exxon and Texaco also holding a stake.
Jégo claims to have obtained a one-year 10% price reduction for 100 staple goods in 60 supermarkets. He says he’ll "put heavy pressure" on the bosses to grant demands for higher wages. LKP wants an across-the-board, 200-euro-a-month wage hike. Jégo said before negotiations even opened that all workers would get at least a 2% raise. If accepted, a percentage-based raise would widen the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers, potentially dividing workers when the bosses inevitably move to eliminate the increase.
LKP is also demanding a rent freeze, improved health care, permanent jobs for all temporary workers and no racism in hiring. "The high rate of unemployment on Guadeloupe [35%] has to be taken into account," said Jean-Marie Brissac, CGTG trade union general secretary. "Even though our young people are highly qualified, they can’t get a job here. The big corporations get their job applicants through Paris job agencies in order to exclude Guadeloupe youth."
Jégo claimed LKP has asked him to be the "moderator" in negotiations. Posing as a "neutral mediator," Jégo has induced the strikers to lower their guard. All gas stations were to re-open February 5, and two hypermarkets and a large number of shops have re-opened.
Meanwhile, in this good-cop-bad-cop routine, Guadeloupe bosses are dragging their heels at throwing any crumbs to the strikers. "Have a thought for the companies!" one local boss is said to have shouted at Jégo.
On the other hand, LKP called for a demonstration on Feb. 4 to shut the hypermarket and shopping center in Baie-Mahault, which had re-opened.
This apparent indecisiveness is reflected in the LKP platform: "People of Guadeloupe, workers, farmers, artisans, retirees, unemployed, entrepreneurs, young people, Lyiannaj kont pwofitasyon is our organization, our idea, our tool, our consciousness." The inclusion of "entrepreneurs" — capitalists — in the Collective indicates confusion about the nature of the struggle. LKP apparently believes in unity with some bosses on a nationalist basis, because these bosses form part of "the people of Guadeloupe." Such illusions are fatal in the class struggle.
It’s the job of communists worldwide to explain that the government is never "neutral" — it is always on the bosses’ side. The working class can obtain justice only by overthrowing the bosses’ government with communist revolution, in order to institute workers’ rule.
a name="Chavez’s Cops Attack Strikers, Kill 2 Auto Workers">">"havez’s Cops Attack Strikers, Kill 2 Auto Workers
CARACAS, VENEZUELA, February 3 — Chanting "Workers, united, will never be defeated," and "Punishment for Killer Cops," over 1,500 workers and community residents marched from the Mitsubishi plant in the city of Barcelona, state of Anzoátegui, to the governor’s house demanding justice for two workers — one from Mitsubishi and the other an auto parts worker — killed by cops on January 29. In that afternoon, a judge came to the Mitsubishi Motors plant to evict the workers who had seized it.
After a January 12 workers’ mass meeting, 863 workers voted to take it over, with only 21 opposed. The workers were demanding permanent jobs for 135 Induservis subcontracted workers, used for maintenance by Mitsubishi.
The state’s pro-Chávez governor, Tarek William Saab, obeyed the company’s demand and sent a judge with cops to evict them. The company also had its supervisory staff "rally" in front of the plant to demand the occupation be ended.
When the workers refused to leave, the cops viciously shot at them, killing two and injuring many others.
This is the second time governor Saab used cops against workers. Before becoming governor, he had made a career of being a "human rights advocate." Workers should never trust any bourgeois politicians, even if they claim to be pro-worker.
Repression against militant workers is increasing under Chávez’s "Bolivarian Revolution." On January 22, the National Guard arrested two workers following a protest by 250 workers fired by contractor Costa Norte near Barcelona city.
On December 30, Caracas Metropolitan Police attacked subcontracted workers protesting at the office of the country’s Vice-President, demanding to be rehired by the Sidor steel company. Over 8,000 Sidor workers are still working as subcontractors, even after the government bought a majority share from the Argentine steel company Technit, precisely using the argument that it refused to give all Sidor workers permanent status.
Also in December, two dissident union leaders were killed by hired gunmen in the state of Aragua, provoking a regional general strike on December 2. And the list goes on.
Meanwhile, a February 15 referendum is again confronting Chávez and his Bolivarian bosses, fighting the old pro-U.S. ruling class that has lost most of its political power. The balloting will decide whether Chávez can run for re-election in 2012.
Workers shouldn’t take sides in this dogfight among these capitalist factions. Most hate the old pro-U.S. bosses, remembering how 20 years ago in 1989 Social-Democrat President Carlos Andrés Pérez sent the Army and tanks to crush the mass uprising by workers and shantytown residents of Caracas, rebelling against an IMF-imposed austerity package. Over 1,000 protestors were killed.
The workers’ anger after this massacre gave rise to Chávez. But Chávez’s "Bolivarian nationalism" has revealed its limitations. When oil prices were sky-high, he gave workers some crumbs, but now that the price has tumbled and the world’s capitalist crisis has hit Venezuela like a ton of bricks, Chávez is again trying to make deals with the foreign oil companies he attacked just a year ago.
While posturing as "anti-imperialist," he’s bargaining with Russian, Chinese, Iranian and European imperialists. He’s now hoping relations with the U.S. will improve, with Obama in power. Just last week, he even signed a trade pact with Colombia’s President Uribe, who he had labeled as a Bush lapdog in Latin America not too long ago.
Workers must shed all illusions in any so-called bourgeois "savior" like Chávez. Some militant workers are demanding the government nationalize some imperialist-owned companies, but as Sidor’s case has shown, state capitalism is no solution. The only road which will lead to workers’ liberation is to forge a revolutionary communist leadership and fight for working-class power
Recently, our Sunday School has been very politically active. Just before Christmas we bought books as gifts for the children of the striking Stella D’Oro workers and wrote them letters inviting them to take part in our activities.
We performed a play for the church showing how King Herod killed all the little boys in Bethlehem to wipe out any rivals to his power. Each of us then gave some food to our own "baby Jesus" in the name of a child who has been killed in Iraq or Gaza. Two weeks later six of us from the church marched against the Israeli attack on Gaza. Most important, three of our high school students will participate in the PLP winter retreat!
Sunday School Students and Teachers
a name="Arab-Jewish Workers’ Unity - Antidote to Nationalist Poison">">"rab-Jewish Workers’ Unity - Antidote to Nationalist Poison
"We hate Obama, too" said one comrade to me, a student and leftist active in a left-wing party in Palestine. Israeli massacres of civilians in Gaza, which killed over 1,300 men, women and children, recently have come to a temporary halt. But, in the West Bank and Gaza, dissatisfaction is boiling over with the new U.S. imperialist president Obama and his puppet, Mahmoud Abbas of the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) party, Fatah.
Thousands of working-class Palestinians have demonstrated in the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza, fed up with the collaborationist, U.S.-supplied- and-trained PA leaders that have done nothing while civilians in Gaza are massacred. Workers are facing detainment and torture at the hands of these outsourced-Israeli-occupation forces, their supposed "representatives."
These attacks are aimed at trying to smash dissidents and grassroots resistance to the occupation and Israeli fascism. The racist Israeli ruling class has detained over 750 Arab-Israeli citizens participating in anti-occupation demonstrations side-by-side with Jewish workers. These leaders fear working-class, Arab-Jewish solidarity
more than anything!
PA leaders like prime minister Salam Fayyad, an ex-IMF executive, have close ties to international capitalists and support the World Bank, the European Union, and rich Arab tycoons’ capital investment in the West Bank, which will only lead to more worker exploitation, unemployment, and police repression. They are pushing for a "two-state" solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but this would continue to be a capitalist state, no friend of the working class.
These corrupt capitalist leaders are appearing more and more despicable to the working class in Palestine.
LETTERS
From Oakland to Athens: Solidarity vs. Kop Killers
At the airport where I work many workers heard about the outrageous police murder of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black worker in Oakland, California by racist BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cop Mehserle on New Years Day. We had many political discussions about how this racist murder is a part of how capitalism operates. Since the economy is in ruins (because of capitalism itself) the racist bosses need fascism and racist goons like Mehserle to terrorize workers so they don’t fight back against the system.
One of my coworkers, an Ethiopian woman, said "Obama will stop these things from happening." It was pointed out that this is a deadly illusion because at the time of the murder Obama was President-elect. A black president and still black workers are being murdered! His being black won’t stop business-as-usual for capitalism any more than South Africa having had two black presidents stopped racist oppression against workers there. South African workers are poorer now than they were under fascist apartheid! Black nationalism is deadly.
There was a well-received SEIU union resolution condemning this murder that was circulated to union members at the airport. This resolution was also sent to the Oakland SEIU. The Oakland murder was connected to the anti-working class murder of 15-year-old Greek student Alexandros Grigoropouls by a fascist Athenian cop, which sparked a national mass rebellion against fascism. There will also be a PLP leaflet coming out connecting this fascist killing to capitalism.
My fellow workers and I read the letter to CHALLENGE (1/14/09) from an airport worker in Greece. As fellow airport workers we share your anger over the senseless killings of our working-class brothers and sisters by these fascist pigs. We applaud your mass fight-back against the killer cops. As you might already know, there was a mass rebellion in Oakland by multiracial workers angered over Oscar Grant’s racist murder. While these anti-fascist actions are good, we as workers need to take it a step further and have a worldwide communist revolution led by PLP to get rid of the whole damn capitalist system! If you have not yet joined PLP we urge you and your friends to join us in fighting for a new world so there won’t be any more Oscars and Alexandros’s being butchered. In international solidarity, from Oakland to Athens, workers need communist revolution!
Airport Red
a name="‘Get out in front’ on Politics Behind Capitalist Crisis"></">‘G"t out in front’ on Politics Behind Capitalist Crisis
"My father is in his nineties and says this is worse than the [Great] depression," said my friend at Boeing. His father lives in Detroit; generations of his family worked for GM. My friend asked me to explain racist unemployment and, in particular, the 10,000 layoffs announced by Boeing CEO McNerney. "I just don’t get it!" he admitted.
Turned out he understood more than he was letting on. Holding a minor office in the union, his initial reaction mirrored the union leadership’s line that all the company had to do "was the right thing." After a little discussion, this CHALLENGE reader revealed his understanding of the worldwide crisis of capitalist "overproduction." "World war seems the only way out of an ‘economic’ crisis this big," he concluded.
We discussed the Obama administration’s panic over Afghanistan. They’re rushing in troops by the 10,000s, while publicly abandoning any pretext of humanitarian development and aid.
We discussed Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s overtures to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO, led by Russia and China, counts among its members all the "stans," except Afghanistan. Even India and Iran are considering joining. My friend enthusiastically agreed this military buildup was about oil and oil pipelines, not terrorism as Obama paints it.
"Just wait," I warned, "pretty soon we’re going to hear all the dirty shit about Karzai that the bosses have been hiding from us for seven years." Sure enough, within days the bosses’ press began to expose Karzai’s brother-in-law’s drug connections. It was shades of Vietnam’s President Diem all over again. (The U.S. had their own man killed in 1963 to better carry out their imperialist carnage in Southeast Asia.)
Interestingly my friend never tried to defend Obama on this issue.
I have no illusion that one conversation has won my friend to abandon his hope in the new administration, but it does show that we have to get "out in front" on the political implications of the worldwide capitalist crisis. Confidence in the working class will be richly rewarded as this crisis unfolds. We went back to our workstations agreeing that the situation cried out for more struggle and CHALLENGES.
- One who’s beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel
Sunday School Teaches Class Solidarity
Recently, our Sunday School has been very politically active. Just before Christmas we bought books as gifts for the children of the striking Stella D’Oro workers and wrote them letters inviting them to take part in our activities.
We performed a play for the church showing how King Herod killed all the little boys in Bethlehem to wipe out any rivals to his power. Each of us then gave some food to our own "baby Jesus" in the name of a child who has been killed in Iraq or Gaza. Two weeks later six of us from the church marched against the Israeli attack on Gaza. Most important, three of our high school students will participate in the PLP winter retreat!
Sunday School Students and Teachers
a name="Arab-Jewish Workers’ Unity Antidote to Nationalist Poison">">"rab-Jewish Workers’ Unity Antidote to Nationalist Poison
"We hate Obama, too" said one comrade to me, a student and leftist active in a left-wing party in Palestine. Israeli massacres of civilians in Gaza, which killed over 1,300 men, women and children, recently have come to a temporary halt. But, in the West Bank and Gaza, dissatisfaction is boiling over with the new U.S. imperialist president Obama and his puppet, Mahmoud Abbas of the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) party, Fatah.
Thousands of working-class Palestinians have demonstrated in the West Bank in solidarity with Gaza, fed up with the collaborationist, U.S.-supplied-and-trained PA leaders that have done nothing while civilians in Gaza are massacred. Workers are facing detainment and torture at the hands of these outsourced-Israeli-occupation forces, their supposed "representatives." These attacks are aimed at trying to smash dissidents and grassroots resistance to the occupation and Israeli fascism. The racist Israeli ruling class has detained over 750 Arab-Israeli citizens participating in anti-occupation demonstrations side-by-side with Jewish workers. These leaders fear working-class, Arab-Jewish solidarity more than anything!
PA leaders like prime minister Salam Fayyad, an ex-IMF executive, have close ties to international capitalists and support the World Bank, the European Union, and rich Arab tycoons’ capital investment in the West Bank, which will only lead to more worker exploitation, unemployment, and police repression. They are pushing for a "two-state" solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but this would continue to be a capitalist state, no friend of the working class.
These corrupt capitalist leaders are appearing more and more despicable to the working class in Palestine. Now Hamas is gaining popularity throughout the Arab and Muslim world, even among some leftists, after the recent Gaza attacks. But the illusion that Hamas is the only alternative and the only real resistance to Israeli violence and oppression needs to be shown for what it really is: an enemy of the working class. Religious fundamentalism does not offer the working class liberation, and Hamas’ charity programs do nothing to attack the core of exploitation and imperialism — capitalism.
Palestine has a long tradition of leftist activism, but after years of repression and demonizing propaganda by ruling-class stooges on both the Israeli and Palestinian side, the left has been weakened. Now more than ever, nationalism and alliances between the left-wing parties and the pro-capitalist ruling agents (Fatah) are commonplace. As communists, we must struggle to build the left and show that Hamas is not the only alternative to PA capitalist-class corruption, and that nationalism is only a dead end for workers. Communist revolution is the only way to bring about long-term victories and justice for working families in Palestine, the exploited Israeli working class, and all workers of the world.
The struggle against Israeli fascism, imperialism, and capitalism must move beyond national boundaries and nationalist solutions. International unity between Palestinian and Israeli workers is vital to this struggle. PLP must push communist politics against nationalism, and struggle with our comrades on the Palestinian left as well as the Israeli left to see nationalism as the worker’s enemy. Working people have no nation! Fight the occupation and exploitation!
Red in Palestine
Lauds PLP at Boeing, Poses Sit-Down Strike Strategy
The Boeing strike has been over for a while now, but unlike most of capitalist culture, we communists don’t just forget about yesterday and move on to today’s hot news. During the strike, the Party seems to have done a good job getting out PLP’s communist ideas, especially CHALLENGE newspaper and building communist study groups. These are crucial to building a communist movement instead of a reformist movement. It seems that solid efforts are being made to deepen close personal ties with other workers, which is a key way to learn and teach that communism is a way of life.
I have a question about the Party’s strategy. In the past, during strikes, we have often called for militantly completely shutting down the plants, blocking production and organizing a sit-down strike inside the plant. Of course, we might not win enough workers to carry this out. But shouldn’t we still be putting that forward in all of our literature as the strategy to work towards?
A reader
Win Oaxaca APPO Congress Rank & File to Red Ideas
OAXACA, MEXICO, February 10 — In a very violent setting, due to the sharp contradictions among the leaderships of the organizations comprising the APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), Section 22 of the SNTE (teachers union) has pushed for the convening of the Third Congress of APPO on February 20-22. The APPO participated in the mass social-political movement of 2006, fighting to oust the fascist Governor of Oaxaca, Ulisis Ruiz Ortiz (URO). The goal is to develop another intense period of actions locally and nationally to confront the privatization, unemployment, repression and poverty enforced by the ruling parties and to insist on the ouster of the murderous governor.
The brutal repression in 2006 unleashed by the criminal Oaxaca Governor in open alliance with Vicente Fox, departing President of Mexico, could not destroy APPO. However, the sharp contradictions within APPO — as revealed in the corrupt actions and betrayals of the opportunists — have divided and challenged APPO, sowing discontent, disappointment and apathy among thousands of the participants.
They and many others had great hope for APPO to bring important changes to society, eliminate injustices and corruption, and above all, to end the capitalist dictatorship, represented by the PRI, the ruling party which oppressed Mexico’s workers for nearly 80 years.
But to destroy these evils, it’s necessary to get rid of capitalism-imperialism with a communist revolution. That requires winning thousands of city and farm workers, teachers, students and soldiers to communist ideas. This means recruiting millions to the working class’s only communist party, the Progressive Labor Party. To achieve this goal we must spread communist ideas, including reading and building networks of distribution for our communist newspaper, CHALLENGE.
APPO cannot, nor could it ever, assume this role. APPO grew as a broad spontaneous movement that mobilized thousands, but lacked founding principles, discipline, organization and correct political leadership. Opportunist and revisionist (fake leftist) groups took advantage of the movement to seize the leadership of APPO and use it for their own interests.
Among them, the Popular Revolutionary Front-Union of Workers of Education (FPR-UTE), subsidiary of the misnamed "Communist" Party of Mexico Marxist Leninist, maneuvered ts leader, Zenén Bravo, to become a deputy in the local Congress. Meanwhile, Flavio Sosa, after having been imprisoned, as the most publicized leader has waged a propaganda campaign to become a deputy for the PRD (Party of Revolutionary Democracy), like César Mateos.
We workers must understand that any organization that is not a communist party fighting for communism will eventually betray our class interests. Good intentions are not enough. Even the giants of the old international communist movement saw the great Russian and Chinese revolutions reversed because they carried too much baggage of capitalism (the wage system, etc.) into their socialist society which they thought they could transform into communism. But the opposite happened. Today Russia and China are capitalist, imperialist vultures fighting with the U.S. and European imperialists for control of the world’s resources, especially oil.
Amid deepening capitalist economic crisis, expanding imperialist wars and the threat of World War III, the honest participants in the APPO Congress should think seriously about waging communist class struggle to confront the enemy and advance as the working class to our necessary goal, building a new communist society. Only then can we destroy capitalism, a chaotic and murderous system that only meets the needs of the rich.
Capitalist elections won’t help workers. Participating in them perpetuates the chains that bind us to capitalism’s evils. Only communist revolution will end them. That’s why it’s necessary to read and distribute CHALLENGE and join the Progressive Labor Party.
REDEYE
Migra lied on immigrant raids
NYT, 2/4
Run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even as complaints grew that teams of armed agents were entering homes indiscriminately….Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among immigrants they would concentrate on rounding up the most threatening — criminals and terrorism suspects.
Instead newly available documents show the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them.
Clinton workfare strangles poor
NYT, 2/2
Despite soaring unemployment and the worst ecoomic crisis in decades, 18 states cut their welfare rolls last year, and nationally the number of people recieving cash assistance remained at or near the lowest in more than 40 years…Signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 amid bitter protest…The program, which mostly serves single mothers, ended a 60-year-old entitlement to cash aid, replacing it with time limits and work requirements….While it was widely praised in the boom years that followed, skeptics warned it would fail the needy when times turned tough….Years of pressure to cut the welfare rolls has left an obstacle-ridden program that chases off the poor, even when times are difficult.
Army suicides at 30-year high
NYT, 2/6
The suicide count for last month would exceed those killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan during the same period…."If we lost this many soldiers to an enemy weapon, the entire country would know about it and we would demand defensive measures."…Most soldiers were reluctant to seek help for fear it would derail their careers.
Workers see capitalist betrayal
GW, 2/6
Workers around the world began to mobilise in reaction to rising unemployment and increasing fear about the economic crisis. France was paralysed by a wave of strike action….But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma looks graver. Exactly 20 years ago they put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power.
Afghanistan Center of Imperialist Dogfight over Oil, Gas
The U.S. imperialists are desperately trying to regain full control of their empire’s cornerstone at any cost: possessing the world’s energy reserves, especially those of the Greater Middle East. Since their main focus now is the Caspian Region, Afghanistan is Obama’s main foreign policy objective.
How many more U.S.-NATO troops Obama will sacrifice in this war is not known yet, nor how many more Afghan workers, women and children will be massacred. But the stakes are high for the U.S. rulers, and they aren’t going to let the prospect of more blood on their hands stand in the way.
The stakes are also high for their capitalist-imperialist rivals in the region, particularly the Russians and Chinese bosses. Russia’s rise as an aspiring hegemon is dependent on controlling the world’s energy resources; while China needs ever-greater quantities of crude to fuel its industrial and military might. Their contradictions with the U.S. will develop into military clashes, with large-scale war looming on the horizon.
If pacified enough, the U.S. rulers hope Afghanistan’s strategic location will transport vast energy resources, bypassing Russia’s territory, and positioning them to replace Russia as the main controller-distributor of Caspian-Central Asia’s energy.
This would break the energy chokehold Russia has on the European imperialists, crucial if the U. S. hopes to get the EU’s support on important geopolitical issues, wider wars and the coming global war (See Box). A U.S. success in Afghanistan would also pressure China to become U.S.-energy dependent.
All Roads to Afghanistan Go Through Moscow, China and Iran
U.S. bosses’ military success in Afghanistan depends on supplying their troops, which has become ever more difficult. At present, three-quarters of supplies bound for Afghanistan must pass through Pakistan where "almost half of the US supplies …… [are] pilfered by motley groups of Taliban militants, petty traders and plain thieves…" (Asian Times on Line, 1/27/09)
With the Pakistani rulers less willing or capable of guaranteeing their supplies safe passage, the U.S. rulers must find alternative routes. But, the only possible routes, besides Iran and China, run through either the Caspian Region or Russia, all of which require Russian cooperation. Thus, the U.S. rulers’ big dilemma is how to get it and at what price. Nevertheless, whatever agreement these imperialist butchers reach will only intensify their contradictions and speed up their military confrontation.
Afghan President Karzai too Close to Russia and China
After seven years of racist U. S. terror and genocide against Afghani workers, a resurgent Taliban controls between 50% and 70% of the country and the U.S.-NATO forces are losing the war. To try to salvage the situation, Obama’s approach is to pacify Afghanistan enough to build the pipelines to safely transport energy resources to market. Thus the U.S. bosses are trying something that was unspeakable in the days after 9/11, the "inclusion of the Taliban or Taliban elements in a coalition government." (George Friedman, Stratfor, 1/29/09)
This plan calls for dumping Karzai, who is refusing to go quietly. He is railing against Afghani civilians murdered by U.S. raids and moving closer to Russia and China. Against U.S. opposition, he recently accepted Russian military aid offerings. Also, in Moscow last January 23, Russian and Afghan diplomats "pledged to continue developing Russian-Afghan cooperation." (Asia Times Online, 1/27/09)
Furthermore, Moscow will host a conference on Afghanistan under the aegis of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization, comprised of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan). Russian President Medvedev is adamant that "nothing can be resolved (regarding Afghanistan) without taking into account the collective opinion of states which have an interest in the resolution of the situation".
Russian Imperialists Ready to Defend Their Backyard
Russia will soon approve a new national security strategy that identifies the United States as Russia’s primary rival. It singles out controlling global energy resources as the long-term source of conflict, which could develop into military confrontation. (Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 2 January 6, 2009) To this end Russian just gave Kyrgyzstan $2.4 billion to kick the U.S. out of its Manas airbase, used to supply allies’ troops in Afghanistan.
Workers, soldiers and students worldwide must realize that capitalism inevitably leads to wider wars and eventually to World War 3. We must break with all politicians and bosses, be it Obama, Putin, Karzai or the religious holy rollers. Let’s turn their imperialist wars into a revolutionary storm to wipe out capitalism and build a communist society where we share and allocate the world’s natural resources according to our needs, not the bosses’ profits.
Russian Ukraine 2009 Gas War
The European Union imports 40% of its gas from Russia, 80% of which transits through the Ukraine. The U.S. encouraged the Ukrainian bosses to shut this pipeline when Russia stopped subsidizing the price of gas sold to the Ukraine. The U.S. bosses were hoping to divide the European and Russian imperialists. Had it been successful, it would have put the EU squarely on the U.S. side, especially on Afghanistan. The gamble failed as the EU pressured the Ukraine to re-open the line. Now Obama can’t count on the EU to pressure Russia. "Given their dependency on the Russians… the Germans, - and many of the Europeans, - are in no position to challenge Russia on anything, least of all on Afghanistan." (Obama Joins The Great Game, George Friedman, Stratfor, 1/19/09)
Racist D.C. Metro Bosses Attack Transit Workers, Riders
The bosses are using the financial crisis to bludgeon workers all over the country, and the action has begun at the D.C. Metro Transit system. The Metro bosses have declared that there is a $154 million operating deficit for the coming fiscal year. That could mean layoffs and position reductions of up to 15% of the workforce. Despite the rising demand for mass transit, the local governments that own Metro have decided to cut service and lay off workers. Whether this is their real plan or just a ploy to justify a fare increase is yet to be seen.
Rank-and-file workers at Metro are getting ready to fight back. A public hearing on cutting back Metro runs in D.C. is planned for February 19 at Metro Headquarters. Workers will be there in large numbers to say no to cutbacks in service, no to layoffs, and no to fare increases, with no help from the union leadership. Although the union contract expired on June 30, 2008, a new one has not been negotiated. The union has refused to mobilize the membership to fight for a new contract. The union president’s excuse is that the workers don’t want to fight, and instead is relying on her political friends. Some good that will do! But many workers remember the mass demonstration we had with communist leadership during the last contract fight and declare that we should do more bold and militant actions.
A fight-back is needed! In addition to service cuts and layoffs, the workers’ pension fund is in trouble, having lost about 1/3 of its value due to the crash, and the bosses are trying to weasel out of their contractual responsibility to make the fund whole. The bosses are building racism by using the crisis to pit D.C. area workers against the mainly black workforce of Metro.
Metro bosses have joined in this racist onslaught and have begun a terror campaign against operators. Minor safety violations, which have always been punished with a written warning, now result in a five-day suspension. Talking on a cell phone while laying over is now a five-day suspension. An operator with a poor work record as defined by the bosses can be terminated without warning, i.e. no final warning. These attacks are to soften up the workers to be savaged by the bosses who want to take out their crisis on our class.
There have been no actual layoffs at Metro since 1995. At that time, we organized large numbers of workers and riders to protest the cuts in service and the loss of jobs. The bosses backed down and reduced their plans for cutbacks. This time the crisis is much more serious, and our efforts must reflect that.
We must unite with the community as well to oppose any fare increase that the bosses may be planning. Our brother and sister workers who use Metro are being squeezed from all sides by the bosses. We must not be part of this.
A system that can find billions (and even trillions!) of dollars for oil wars and to bail out bankers who still get billions in bonuses — but can’t pay Metro workers without further soaking the working class — such a system needs to be smashed with communist revolution. Metro workers and riders should join in this fight.
- OBAMA: SAVE RACIST SYSTEM OVER WORKERS’ DEAD BODIES
- PLP RALLIES AGAINST THE NEW CEO OF RACIST CAPITALISM
- Obama Blesses Torture, Wider Oil War, Wage-Cuts
- Strikers, PLP Agree: ‘MAKE THE BOSSES TAKE THE LOSSES’
- Confront Aerospace Layoffs, Pension Theft with Red-Led Class Struggle
- Salvador’s Election ‘Choices’: Who’s the Next Hangman?
- Jobs, Union Struggles and PL Ideas Pays Off
- Workers’ Protests vs. Bosses’ Crisis Heats Up Iceland, Baltic Nations
- France: Workers Must Unite Immigrants, Youth in Looming General Strike
- General Strike Shuts Guadeloupe
- The Devil Does Wear Prada
- LETTERS
- PLP Won 6,000 to ‘71 March vs. Racist Unemployment
- Capitalist ‘SILO’ Tax Schemes Threaten All Transit Workers and Riders
- REDEYE
- Valkyrie: Fascist movie about nazis versus nazis
- The Crisis of Capitalism: Earthquake for California Workers
OBAMA:
SAVE RACIST SYSTEM OVER WORKERS’ DEAD BODIES
PLP RALLIES AGAINST THE NEW
CEO OF RACIST CAPITALISM
Obama Blesses Torture, Wider Oil War, Wage-Cuts
The Sham of ‘Closing’
Guantanamo
DEADLIER WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
Strikers, PLP Agree: ‘MAKE THE BOSSES TAKE
THE LOSSES’
Confront Aerospace Layoffs, Pension Theft with Red-Led Class Struggle
Union ‘Leader’ Hopes For ‘Labor Peace’
Class Struggle Building For
Revolution Our Only Hope
Salvador’s Election ‘Choices’: Who’s the Next Hangman?
Jobs, Union Struggles and PL Ideas Pays Off
Workers’ Protests vs. Bosses’ Crisis Heats Up Iceland, Baltic Nations
CAPITALIST CRISIS HITS BALTIC COUNTRIES
France: Workers Must Unite Immigrants, Youth in Looming General Strike
General Strike Shuts Guadeloupe
The Devil Does Wear Prada
LETTERS
PLP: A Compass, A Happy Birthday
Constructing Red Fight vs. Layoffs
Students, Teachers Reach
Out to Marines
Mexico: Red School Analyzes
Capitalist Exploitation
PLP Won 6,000 to ‘71 March vs. Racist Unemployment
Capitalist ‘SILO’ Tax Schemes Threaten All Transit Workers and Riders
Our Challenge in LA Transit
REDEYE
Murderous capitalist world
Do-gooders rescue evil system
I learned firsthand from my grandmother, Eleanor Roosevelt, that “Pa’s great strength” lay in what was behind his thinking — a genuine sense of starting programs that addressed the places and issues where Americans were hurting. (And in the process saving capitalism for this country.)
Ruling class IS above any law
U.S. pushed Korea prostitution
Capitalism’s ‘dream’ sweatshops
Poisoned on job, can’t win case
Churchill, not Stalin, a Hitlerian
Richard Gott’s favourable review of books rehabilitating Churchill is misguided, although he did mention in passing that Stalin defeated Hitler, not Churchill or Roosevelt and their horrific bombing of German civilians.
Valkyrie: Fascist movie about nazis versus nazis
The Crisis of Capitalism: Earthquake for California Workers
Communists Fight Budget Cuts, Racism, Liberal Misleaders, Capitalism
Our Future Depends on Revolution, Not Reform
Racist Murder Sparks Oakland Rebellion
a href="#‘National Service’ — A Back-Door Draft To Supply Cannon Fodder For The Bosses’ Oil Wars">‘Natio"al Service’ — A Back-Door Draft To Supply Cannon Fodder For The Bosses’ Oil Wars
Is This The Racism We Can Expect From Obama?
U.S.-Backed Israeli Fascists Bring Genocide to Gaza
U.S. Liberals Fear Losing Arab Allies
a href="#Obama Peacemaker? Don’t Buy The Hype">"bama Peacemaker? Don’t Buy The Hype
Arabs and Jews March in Tel Aviv Against Gaza Attack
a href="#No Debate About Bosses’ Crisis Causing Cuts">"o Debate About Bosses’ Crisis Causing Cuts
Racist Lynching Must Be Punished!
a href="#Obama’s Racist Education Secretary Wrecked Chicago’s Schools">Ob"ma’s Racist Education Secretary Wrecked Chicago’s Schools
a href="#Mexico’s Cabbies Defy Union Goons While Building Co-op and PLP">"exico’s Cabbies Defy Union Goons While Building Co-op and PLP
27 Million Jobless in U.S. Racist Unemployment an Attack on All Workers
The Only Growth Industry: Prisons
LETTERS
Used Labor Reform Laws, GI Bill Used to Deepen Racism
a href="#New Salvadoran PL’ers Pledge to Build Party">"ew Salvadoran PL’ers Pledge to Build Party
Lauds CHALLENGE, Vows to Spread It
More Info About Organizing for Teachers Demonstration
- Capitalist insiders love a crash
- Bad arrests by cops in schools
- Greedy U.S. backs Afghan crooks
- Best black jobs first to go
- Capitalism lives off Madoff-ism
Cuba: No Clear Line To Communism Brings State Capitalism. Part 2.
Che Gripping Film But Lacks for Real Revolution (movie review)
Racist Murder Sparks Oakland Rebellion
OAKLAND, CA, January 12 — On January 1, Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old black man, was murdered by a racist BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cop. Grant cried to the cop, "Don’t shoot me! I have a four-year-old daughter!" whereupon the cop shot him in the back while he lay on the ground, sparking hundreds of youth to rebel. This state-sponsored execution-style murder is one of the latest examples of "business-as-usual" under the racist capitalist system.
On January 7, workers and youth held a protest rally at BART where the murder occurred. As anger grew, up to 500 people eventually marched from that BART station to downtown Oakland where a rebellion occurred. Youth attacked police vehicles and businesses along the route.
The murdering BART cop is part of a force for which Homeland Security allotted millions of dollars specifically to transit police in the rulers’ "war on terror," now being turned into a racist war against black and Latino youth.
Many of the young people who marched for immigrant rights on May Day last year were present. The united anger of young people from all backgrounds was inspiring. Some held signs with Oscar Grant’s picture, linking his murder to the massacre in Gaza as the latest examples of state-sponsored terror. When Oakland’s black mayor Ron Dellums showed up, he was booed. When he pleaded for "calm" later at the rebellion, he was ignored. PLP’ers brought our class analysis and internationalism to the protest and distributed CHALLENGES.
The rally’s open mike heard most speakers call for a calm protest, requesting a "police oversight commission." But angry youth called for action. One youth declared, "This isn’t just a black thing, all of Oakland needs to unite and do something about it." Another young man said he "would personally organize a riot if the cop wasn’t convicted." Thuyen Tran, 24, of Vietnamese descent, despite the damage to his family’s business, said he understood the protesters’ anger: "It doesn’t make sense, using brutal force. It doesn’t feel good because No.1, I’m a minority, and No 2, I’m a young kid." (NY Times, 1/8/09)
All these comments contained the seed of a class analysis about the difference between state-sponsored, institutional violence from the police and violence among youth due to being saturated with divisive capitalist ideas. They present an opportunity for PLP’ers to raise with co-workers and friends that pacifism towards the police won’t stop cops’ violence (nor gang violence). Only developing class consciousness among young working-class people will do that, understanding that they are all in the same boat, and have a common, often violent, class enemy that controls the government and uses the police to repress workers’ opposition to ruling-class oppression.
Whether through unemployment or underserved schools and resources, capitalism has always marginalized black and Latino youth. The large, militant response to this murder shows that these youth are a potential force for rebellion. However, they need to see the connection to the overall capitalist system, which depends on racist super-exploitation for super-profits.
It is precisely these angry youth who the ruling class wants Obama to divert away from rebellion against racist oppression into patriotic "national service" to fight in U.S. imperialist wars. (See editorial front page.)
As the bosses’ economic crisis deepens, continued attacks here and abroad will intensify. The current massacre in Gaza reflects what this system has in store for the working class worldwide.
This protest showed the need for communist leadership to develop this kind of analysis among these youth. We must step up our participation in the community organizations in and around Oakland and build our influence on our jobs, in our unions and in the schools and not be caught off guard. Calling for strikes on the job against these police-state murders is more relevant in light of this rebellion.
Just as we saw in Greece, where the working class was already in motion against austerity measures and was inspired by the action of young people, this rebellion here shows that the working class is smoldering and impatient, that working-class-wide unity is possible.
The door is wide open in these events when we go with our friends and co-workers.
Oscar Grant’s murder has outraged vast numbers worldwide who know the intimate details from the internet. To go from outrage and rebellion to class-conscious, planned, working-class-led revolution is a long process. It requires a communist party — PLP — active among workers and youth to lead to this goal.
New CEO For U.S. Imperiali$M
The expanding "war on terror," the stock market crash, mass racist unemployment and home foreclosures, police terror, fascist immigration raids and racist budget cuts are all built into the racist profit system. These are the issues that moved millions to respond to Barack Obama’s call for "CHANGE."
But Obama isn’t offering anything new, except a liberal face in the White House. His cabinet and top advisors are mostly Clinton and Carter re-treads with decades of loyal service to Chase, Citibank and Exxon-Mobil. His National Security Advisor is mass murderer General James Jones who led the saturation bombing of Yugoslavia, killing thousands.
Every president is a defender of capitalism, a system composed of two classes: the bosses who own everything and profit off the backs of the overwhelming majority, and the working class, who only own our labor power and produce all value, including the profits of the bosses.
The government is run by this ruling class, which makes Obama the new CEO for U.S. imperialism.
The bankers and billionaires comprising the U.S. ruling class will continue spilling rivers of blood to maintain their control of Mid-East oil and their rank as the top imperialist power. While they try to secure a permanent presence in Iraq, they will escalate the war to Afghanistan, Pakistan and, if necessary, Iran.
a name="‘National Service’ — A Back-Door Draft To Supply Cannon Fodder For The Bosses’ Oil Wars"></a>‘N"tional Service’ — A Back-Door Draft To Supply Cannon Fodder For The Bosses’ Oil Wars
One of Obama’s main goals is winning millions of youth, especially black youth, to wrap themselves in the American flag and fight for U.S. imperialism in these oil wars. Right now, amid this emerging Depression (see page 5), millions of black and Latino workers and youth as well as workers in general are becoming fed up with the effects of a racist profit system gone wild. So Obama’s job is to win them back with his all-class unity — "we all have to pull together and sacrifice" to save the system — which masks his role as the bosses’ servant. The rulers’ National Service scam is designed to get millions, especially youth, to work for low, or no, wages, as volunteers "to support America," particularly in the military.
Obama, Bush and McCain all fell in line and supported the $700 billion bailout of the bankers and Wall Street parasites while millions swell the unemployment lines. Racist misery is built into the profit system. Black workers suffer twice the unemployment rate of white workers (four times the rate for black youth). In Detroit, Milwaukee and Buffalo, over 50% of black males, age 16-64, are unemployed. Millions more are either under-employed or have given up looking for work. Twelve million undocumented workers and youth face racist detention camps and deportations just for looking for work.
Obama will now preside over the world’s largest prison population, 2.4 million, 70% black and Latin males. Hardly a black or Latino family in the U.S. doesn’t know someone who’s either in jail, on probation or parole. This result of racist police terror rivals the old South Africa apartheid system.
One of Obama’s mentors, Chicago’s Mayor Daley, rose to power as a State’s Attorney prosecuting black workers and youth who "confessed" to crimes they never committed while being tortured in Chicago police stations. The prison doors will not swing open on Obama’s watch. The victims of racist police terror will not be sent home to their families.
The change we need won’t come from reshuffling capitalist politicians and bureaucrats no matter how "smart" they appear. We need mass actions and a mass movement, not to "fix" capitalism but to smash it. We need to turn every attack into an opportunity to build a mass revolutionary communist PLP that can ultimately lead the working class to power and to a world based on meeting the needs of the international working class.
FIGHT BACK!
• IN THE FACTORIES AND UNIONS. Oppose every plant closing; organize strikes and plant occupations, like the 240 Latino and black workers at Republic Windows did in Chicago last month. Learn from the striking UAW workers at American Axle in Detroit, Seattle’s Boeing workers and Stella D’Oro workers in the Bronx. Show solidarity with rebelling students and workers in Greece, throughout Europe and China who fought fascist conditions this year. Build unemployment committees on our jobs and in our unions to unite laid-off workers with their still-employed brothers and sisters.
• IN THE COMMUNITIES. Organize factory, union and neighborhood committees to fight evictions and immigration raids. Work in community centers and church soup kitchens and food pantries, talking to volunteers and those in need about the racist profit system and the need to destroy it.
• IN THE SCHOOLS. Fight budget cuts, racist testing, militarization and fascist conditions.
• IN THE MILITARY. Bring the fight against imperialist war and racist police terror in all these organizations to show how the only way out of this endless and escalating war on terror is to win soldiers and sailors to rebel against the brass and overthrow the capitalist war-makers.
The more we do, the more we can expand the circulation of CHALLENGE. The more we expand the readership of CHALLENGE, the more we can do in the class struggle.
The nature of the capitalist beast will not change because a liberal face is in the White House. He won’t bring peace, full employment or freedom for immigrant workers or to workers jailed by this criminal INjustice system
Yet, in the absence of a mass revolutionary movement, millions of potential revolutionaries hold out hope. Many illusions must be shattered. We have a big job before us. Let’s engage the enemy everywhere we can, and use every battle to build the revolutionary communist PLP.
Is This The Racism We Can Expect From Obama?
• When Chicago’s Cook County Health Bureau closed half the clinics used by predominantly black and Latino uninsured workers, slashing 2,000 jobs in 2007 — and just destroyed another 500 jobs on January 1 — not a word of protest came from Obama as clinics closed in his South Side neighborhood.
• Obama was directly involved in the destruction of Chicago Housing Authority projects on the West Side, displacing tens of thousands of black working-class tenants. The Boston Globe reported (6/27/08): Chicago’s "Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator…[was] subsidized by the federal government….But it’s not safe to live there….Collapsed roofs and fire damage….Mice….Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks….
"Thousands of apartments across Chicago…built with [government]…subsidies — including several hundred in Obama’s former district — deteriorated so completely that they were no longer inhabitable.
"Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters….[who] profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
"As a state senator…[Obama] co-authored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers….He…campaigned on a promise to create [a]…Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year….
"Grove Parc…[symbolized] giving public subsidies to private companies…an approach strongly backed by Obama…."
• Obama’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is Shaun Donovan who, as NYC Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), laundered public-housing renovation funds through private not-for-profit social service agencies to evade paying union wages. Donovan used HPD low-income housing funding to bring racist gentrification to Central Harlem, replacing long-time African-American, African immigrant and Latino working-class residents with luxury housing for affluent professionals and business owners. This is the guy Obama has picked to set national housing policy!
U.S.-Backed Israeli Fascists Bring Genocide to Gaza
Israel’s racist U.S.-backed rulers have murdered or maimed thousands of Palestinian children and civilians with aerial bombs and tank shells. One attack struck a UN school. On January 11, Israeli storm troopers began even more deadly face-to-face urban warfare in densely populated Gaza City. The current blow-up in the Middle East is part of the battle for control of oil that has been going on between the capitalists for the last 80 years. Israel has been doing its part as an arm of U.S. interests since its formation in 1948. Their indiscriminate butchery has already killed nearly 1,000 people including hundreds of women, children and elderly, and wounded 3,340 others in the first two weeks.
Israel’s murderous invasion of Gaza is particularly brazen. After Hamas won control of Gaza in the 2006 elections, Israel responded with a military blockade cutting off all supplies to the 1.5 million Palestinians living there. The Israeli strategy was to starve the Gazans into turning away from Hamas and towards the Palestine Liberation Organization, the group Israel prefers to deal with now. Using food and medical supplies as a weapon against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Hamas was originally nurtured by the Israeli secret service Mossad, as a weapon against the PLO, controlled then by Yasser Arafat. This backfired on the Israeli ruling class in much the same way the the U.S. ruling class’s building of the Taliban as a weapon against the Russians came back to haunt them. Hamas went from an invention of the Israeli military to an armed ally of Iran’s rulers.
Israel’s crimes against humanity have sparked protests across the Middle East and beyond. The sight of young workers taking on the tanks and planes of the U.S.-funded Israeli military, as well as the many thousands who have demonstrated around the world against this genocide, is an inspiring sight, but the capitalists are leading workers down political dead-ends. The lack of a mass communist movement has made it easier for the bosses to do this. As a result, many Arabs and Muslims are supporting Hamas or other forms of militant Islam, and in the West, workers are counting on liberals like Obama to solve the crisis.
Hamas does not represent the class interests of Palestinian workers. Whatever its financial ties to Iran’s mullahs, Hamas is, in effect, doing the dirty work of these energy barons masquerading as religious leaders, who seek to replace U.S. dominance of the Middle East’s vast oil and gas reserves. Hamas shares Teheran’s long-term goal of destroying the U.S.’s hired gun, Israel. Hamas’s reaction to Israel’s vicious onslaught mainly serves Iran by stirring anti-Israel sentiment among workers in supposed U.S.-allied states like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. A perceived Hamas victory over Israel would not liberate Palestinians but "bolster Iranian influence and ambitions in the Arab world" (Council on Foreign Relations, 1/8/09). Consequently, it would make the oft-repeated U.S. threat (Obama, too, uttered it) to confront Teheran militarily all the more likely.
U.S. Liberals Fear Losing Arab Allies
U.S. rulers are just as eager as the Israeli fascists to see Hamas destroyed, but there is an important difference. Israeli bosses worry about their survival. U.S. rulers have a world they want to run. So the dominant wing of U.S. capitalists, fearing Iran 1979- style defections from their empire, dons a liberal guise and wants Israel to "tone it down." Max Boot, a fellow at the Rockefeller-run Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, urges Israel not to cease, but to calculate cold-bloodedly the number of working-class Arabs it murders. "Brutality can be counterproductive. Killing too many people, especially if they are the wrong people, risks jeopardizing popular support for elected governments that are likely to be important American allies in the future" (Wall Street Journal, 1/4/09). The U.S. will need the Arab allies Boot speaks of in a wider Mid-East war with Iran, China or Russia, or an even broader conflict that includes Europe.
The liberal establishment had installed Gates in the palace coup that ousted Rumsfeld. Covert action and diplomacy, the Times says, are better ways to confront Iran, until, that is, the U.S. can build a coalition and raise its own troop strength to confront Iran militarily. The New York Times (1/11/09) revealed that the Pentagon had refused Israel’s request for a bunker-buster bomb to take out Iran’s growing nuclear facility unilaterally. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, a protégé of Robert Gates, whom Obama is keeping on as defense boss, played the key role.
a name="Obama Peacemaker? Don’t Buy The Hype">">"bama Peacemaker? Don’t Buy The Hype
So Obama, whose advisors includes a host of past, present, and would-be mass murdering war criminals, is trying to project a worldwide image as peacemaker. The following, from Britain’s liberal Guardian newspaper (1/11/09) reflects this phony effort. "Obama has selected people whose doveish credentials seem impeccable. They will be responsible for reversing the political unilateralism of the Bush years and opening direct negotiations with hostile states, potentially ranging from Syria to Cuba and Venezuela and maybe including Iran and even Islamic militant group Hamas."
The Guardian mentions unambiguously those who counseled Clinton on his genocidal bombing of Serbia: Dennis Ross, understudy of James Baker, the Exxon Mobil heir and Bush buddy who helped orchestrate both Iraq wars; and Kurt Campbell, a Clinton Pentagon figure who penned a militaristic book unambiguously titled Hard Power.
Obama’s pledge to withdraw from Iraq is a similar lie. His establishment handlers represented by the liberal Brookings Institution remind him (Memo to the President, 1/5/09) that forcibly controlling petroleum profits trumps campaign promises, "Oil-rich Iraq’s long-term stability remains a vital U.S. interest. Everything else your Administration seeks to accomplish in the Middle East will require Iraq’s stability."
In the face of the greater genocide that the Gaza carnage only hints at, we need to build a working-class anti-war movement with the outlook of communist revolution. Every other kind of organization — nationalist, religious, pro-liberal — ultimately serves one camp or another of capitalist war-makers. J
Unite with Israeli, Palestinian Workers
Several comrades joined thousands of people in Lafayette Square outside the White House on Saturday, January 10th to demand an end to the siege of Gaza. We distributed CHALLENGES and communist leaflets to the demonstrators. Hundreds of Palestinian families traveled from the East Coast to rally against U.S. support of the war and against Israel’s genocidal policies.
We argued that if people didn’t try to forge working-class unity now, there would never be an end to war and genocide in the Middle East. One man carried a sign attacking all the Arab leaders in the Middle East and talked about his childhood in Palestine when his family lost their home in 1948. He had no illusions about the betrayal of nationalist leaders!
A long-time Palestinian friend of the Party helped distribute the PLP leaflet. She stressed international worker solidarity when we distributed the communist leaflet. All of us had good conversations with people about our long-term goals and our opposition to nationalism.
Asking people for some contribution for the paper when we are in large crowds like this is important, given the Party’s financial crisis. Expressing ideas about the economic crisis and pointing out that our Party is made up of workers hit home; and I collected about $15 for 25 papers. One man gave $5 and took another copy to give to a friend.
I hope that everyone in the Party takes their international responsibility to express solidarity with our brother and sister workers in Palestine and Israel quite seriously. I was thrilled to hear that over 10,000 Arab and Jews demonstrated in Tel-Aviv and tens of thousands more demonstrated worldwide!
D.C. Red
Arabs and Jews March in Tel Aviv Against Gaza Attack
Demonstrations against the criminal Israeli rulers’ attack on Gaza are spreading worldwide, including in Israel itself where some 10,000 Arab and Israeli marchers protested in Tel Aviv as soon as the invasion began. Five hundred residents of Sderot, the town most targeted by Hamas rockets, have signed a petition to stop the Israeli bosses’ violence. Others have been arrested lying down across the entrance to a military airfield. Dissident Israeli vets and reservists have also denounced the invasion.
Meanwhile, the bosses’ media, especially the NY Times, wants us to believe there is virtually no opposition inside Israel. These current protests contrast with the much smaller ones during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
It’s a life-and-death question for workers and their allies in Israel and throughout the Mid-East
to stop supporting their own rulers on the basis of religion and nationalism. Behind all the bosses’ talk about "our people" lies the profit interests of the local capitalists and their imperialist backers
a name="No Debate About Bosses’ Crisis Causing Cuts">">"o Debate About Bosses’ Crisis Causing Cuts
Brooklyn, NY, January 9 — During a high school debate tournament here, a "speakout" of over 100 students and teachers was organized against the budget cuts. While awaiting the final awards ceremony, debaters described how the budget cuts affected them and their schools. Usually this time is spent just hanging out but coaches city-wide responded well to PL’s call to push debate from talk to action.
Initially it seemed interest in the speakout would be low, but as the ball got rolling and some stated they lacked books in class and others stated that they had no lunchrooms, a hush fell on the room. Scores of teens listened intently to each other, and applauded more vigorously than for awards later on. Many made direct connections to the war in Iraq.
A PLP’er and debater attributed the budget cuts to capitalism, accusing the bosses’ government of shelling out $700 billion to save Wall Street and then attacking workers by making us pay by cutting our school and hospital budgets and laying us off. She also advocated organizing fight-backs and described a walk-out the year before on May Day against budget cuts and the immigration raids.
Another ex-debater, now a college student, championed the need to fight racism and other divisions existing under this system. She focused on the importance of shaking hands after a debate round, remembering that we are one community, not each other’s enemy.
Then teachers spoke up, relating the hardships in their schools caused by the cuts and being inspired by students taking a stand at this speakout. Others declared that more than a speakout was needed, calling for actions and demonstrations against the budget cuts and environmental injustice, a topic relevant to this year’s debate.
The speakout must have hit a nerve because at the end the leader of the debate organization said that while our talking about issues was good, we need to complain to our political leaders, especially now with Obama’s election. He said that he kept hearing students blame "them" (the government) for these problems. We in PLP applaud the indictments of the rulers by the youth at the tournament but this "leader" advanced his rotten liberal line — "we all need to take responsibility" for a degraded environment, racism and a collapsing economy.
He didn’t want us joining together and proposing action to find a solution. It was good to see him exposed in his closing remarks; the applause for him was minimal.
After the tournament, students and teachers showed their openness to communist ideas, taking over 100 CHALLENGES. Some coaches have also agreed to take subscriptions and use them with their debate teams.
The bosses’ economic crisis and Mid-East invasions will intensify in the immediate future. Today’s debaters will be tomorrow’s national service "volunteers" and draftees. We must continue to organize workers and youth to reject liberal misleaders who try to deflect our righteous anger away from the billionaires, their politicians and their system and to win them to embrace the communist PLP.
Racist Lynching Must Be Punished!
PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, December 22 — The People’s Coalition for Police Accountability, joined by CASA de Maryland and other community organizations rallied today at the Upper Marlboro Courthouse. The rally demanded that the State’s Attorney (the county prosecutor) Glenn Ivey indict the prison guards who, without a doubt, strangled Ronnie White in his jail cell. The medical examiner’s final report determined that he was, in fact, murdered in his cell.
The lynching of this 19-year-old black man must not go unpunished! Capitalism maintains extreme racism to keep the working class intimidated and divided, so there’s no surprise that Ivey dismissed the grand jury investigating this case, without an indictment. Under capitalism, there’s no justice in cases like Ronnie White’s. Only a revolution for communism will end racism and the ruling class’s attacks on the working class.
Anti-racist organizers leafleted hundreds of people at Metro stations and at the courthouse. White’s family stepped forward boldly to attack the media’s demonization of Ronnie. Tens of thousands of people in the Washington, D.C. area saw TV and journal news reports about the rally. The bold, loud demonstration at the courthouse made it impossible for Ivey to ignore it. He felt compelled to speak to the press and continue his lie that he was still investigating the case and just had "a few loose ends" to finish up! He spent an hour with a protest delegation trying to sweet-talk his way out of trouble. We will never let him make this lynching a "cold case"!
Mobilizing workers around the racist brutality of the law enforcement system is the order of the day. We must attack the "blue wall of silence," the culture of racist police violence and the cops’ and guards’ ability to kill with impunity. As capitalism’s current international financial crisis intensifies, the bosses will use the full extent of their state power to terrorize workers even more.
We in PLP must bring our communist politics to the struggle against the racist brutality of the bosses’ goons (cops, guards, etc.), showing that only a society without bosses — communism — is the long-range end to this horror. CHALLENGE must become our ideological weapon in this vital task.
a name="Obama’s Racist Education Secretary Wrecked Chicago’s Schools"></">Ob"ma’s Racist Education Secretary Wrecked Chicago’s Schools
On December 16, Barack Obama presented Arne Duncan as the new Education Secretary at a press conference at Dodge School. The claim was that this school exemplifies his "Chicago miracle"—low-performing, low-income African American or Latino schools with rising test scores. Students, teachers and parents who dominated the Board of Education meeting the next day knew better. In Duncan’s seven years as CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), he has intensified racist stratification, privatized 10% of the schools (with plans for more), and militarized CPS with the complicity of the Chicago Teachers Union.
Duncan, friend to Chicago’s Business Roundtable, Mayor Richard Daley, and Obama, is no friend to the majority of Chicago students. Duncan (and Daley’s) signature plan, Renaissance 2010, closed 19 schools, mostly in formerly black or Latino neighborhoods now being gentrified. With the working-class students in schools far from the neighborhood, Duncan then built "Renaissance" schools for the wealthier families. Daley’s plan to bring middle- and upper-income families into the city (while driving out the poor by tearing down their housing) depended on having schools for their children.
As the U.S. military involvement abroad deepens, Chicago has JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp) programs in 31 high schools and 21 middle schools, 7 military "schools within a school" and 5 Military Academies. Next September, when the Air Force Academy opens, Chicago will have the distinction of being the only city with an academy for every branch of the Armed Forces. Duncan calls this militarization "choice."
Also under "Ren 2010," 75 new charter schools have opened. Charter teachers are not allowed to join the union. Their salaries are capped at ¾ that of senior union teachers, and they work longer hours. Charter schools are not about better education. They are about saving money, destroying unions and turning control of schools over to private companies.
Duncan’s new "turnaround" fires all the teachers in poor black schools and turns them over to private enterprises. The racist result has been that most of the experienced African-American teachers at these schools are replaced with inexperienced, predominately white ones. There are 2,000 fewer black teachers in CPS now than in 2002, a significant reversal of the hard-fought struggles of the 1960’s and 1970’s to integrate Chicago’s teaching staff.
Duncan and Board president Rufus Williams tried to intimidate students who spoke out at the Board meeting against Ren 2010, claiming "someone is feeding you wrong information," but the students held their ground. Students and teachers described the harmful effects of a CPS policy which refuses to staff new teachers until October, while students sit in overcrowded or teacher-less classes. Those subject to this attend schools in neighborhoods ravaged by capitalism, where low-paid jobs and a myriad of housing and economic problems force them to move around. Duncan and his cronies know this, but deliberately refuse to staff schools based on predicted fall enrollment.
Under Ren 2010 (now extended to Ren 2015) a number of schools were shut down and replaced with smaller, more selective schools with adequate numbers of teachers and renovated buildings. Such was the case with Dodge School. As one parent activist said, the "rising" test scores occurred among completely different students than the ones attending the old Dodge. Other parents, teachers, and students exposed the Board’s racist "shell game" where higher performing students are moved into a building and Arne Duncan is given credit for "increasing test scores."
PLP members are playing an active role in the struggle against these attacks on students. Many of the teachers, students and parents involved in struggle understand that capitalism equips students only with the knowledge and skills needed so the system can exploit them. The system "trains" many to be unemployed or cannon fodder by providing no education and then blaming the students themselves for their lack of knowledge, or indoctrinating them through military presence in the schools (and in many other ways as well). PLP is winning students, parents and teachers to a different vision of the future: one where young people will be cherished and active participants in the building of an egalitarian communist society.
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Mexico City, Mexico — The fight against the rulers of economic and political power in the transportation industry is heating up. This community has become the center of attention for hundreds of taxi drivers, their friends and families. That’s because a group of taxi drivers, tired of years of abuse, deception and fraud by their union leaders, decided to start a movement against injustice. They began organizing other taxi drivers to leave that institution and set up a Cooperative Society.
The gangster bosses, trying to stop workers organizing, sent goons to beat and shoot at these workers in their attempts to intimidate and stop the movement. They are also using the State Secretary of Transportation to crack down on drivers by impounding their cars if they don’t have the required documents, taking away the worker’s job. These actions by the bosses, far from discouraging the workers, have generated more anger to sustain the movement. The movement has begun to spread to workers in the same company in different areas and a few weeks ago the workers set up their Co-op. This motivates many workers to keep up the struggle.
We know that the cooperative is only a temporary form of winning certain improvements in working conditions. That’s because capitalism continues exploiting and terrorizing the whole working class. We’re in this struggle so that hundreds, thousands and millions of workers will see the need to destroy this rotten capitalist system with a communist revolution.
In this movement the Progressive Labor Party has played an important role. Several workers have joined PLP. There’s a tremendous potential that other workers can join the struggle to free the working class, since CHALLENGE newspaper is well read by many. We’re sure that some day we workers will raise the banner of liberty for all workers. Long live Communism.
27 Million Jobless in U.S. Racist Unemployment an Attack on All Workers
U.S. capitalism — the "world’s greatest superpower" and "history’s most powerful economy" — is sinking into another Great Depression. Its Total Unemployment figure (see below) is nearly 25 million, 13.5% of the labor force (NY Times, 1/10/09, and all following quotes) and by early next year could conceivably hit 20%. "This recession is going to be…long and…deep," the longest since the 1930s. Millions of workers are also losing their jobs, from Spain to China.
Great Depression II is causing untold hardships for tens of millions of workers, and double that for black and Latino workers because of the racist nature of unemployment (see below). Lost wages, stolen pensions, workers losing their homes in the 8th "recession" in 60 years: that’s the "fruit" of an anarchic economic system driven by profits. Despite the bosses’ claims that "communism doesn’t work," that "communism is dead," it is capitalism that is destroying the lives of hundreds of millions worldwide, through Depressions and imperialist wars for oil and pipelines to defend their system. Only a massive communist-led workers’ revolution will end this capitalist nightmare.
In the Great Depression 75 years ago, the capitalist world threw tens of millions onto the streets. Only one country had no unemployment: the Soviet Union. Its system was not motivated by profit but by collective actions of its working class to produce for the needs of the whole class, not for the profits of a few bosses, which is why world capitalism tried to destroy it. Although that revolution was reversed, the ideas that produced it did not die and will live again based on the revolutionary ideas and actions of the communist Progressive Labor Party.
Well over a century ago, Karl Marx discovered the source of capitalism’s anarchy, of the never-ending cycle of boom and bust, of periodic depressions: the over-production of the means of production. Within every industry, in the drive for maximum profits, each capitalist builds factory after factory, attempting to capture as much of the market as possible without any overall plan, trying to slow the falling rate of profit. The result? Far more is produced than the market can absorb. So in their attempt to maintain profits, or even survive, bosses must reduce costs, the "easiest" being labor costs. This is precisely what’s happening now, and without mentioning Marx, the capitalist pundits agree.
NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, one of the system’s leading economists, wrote (1/9/09): "A huge gap is opening up between what the American economy can produce and what it’s able to sell." Krugman quotes the Congressional Budget Office statement that "economic output over the next two years will average 6.8% below its potential," which Krugman says "translates into $2.1 trillion of lost production." And the bosses’ latest hand-picked defender of their system, Barack Obama — in attempting to close this gap between what capitalism can produce and what it can sell — has a plan that Krugman says "could easily end up doing less than a third of the job."
So the bosses handle this crisis of overproduction "The simplest way…drain their inventories and fire their workers." The Times says there is "a pervasive fear among employers that if they fail to shed workers quickly, their companies may go under in a recession poised to become the worst since the 1930s" — "everywhere you look that is what is happening now." For the bosses, "laying off [workers] is an effort to survive." Bosses "solve" their crises on the backs of workers. (For PLP’s fight-back plan, see editorial page 4)
The "official" figure of 11.1 million unemployed, plus 8 million part-timers unable to find full-time jobs, plus 5.2 million "discouraged" workers — those who have given up looking for non-existent jobs — the Times calls this "Total Unemployment" — or 24.3 million. Add 1.7 million imprisoned for non-violent offenses (70% black and Latino), who would be unable to find work in this crisis, plus possibly another million who joined the military because they couldn’t find jobs, and a Grand Total Unemployment" becomes 27 million! (This excludes those on welfare because they can’t find jobs.)
Such is "American prosperity" in the 21st Century.
This recession for workers overall is already a depression for black and Latino workers because of racist discrimination: last hired, first fired. Their jobless rates are twice that of white workers. If the Total Unemployment rate quoted above is 13.5% for workers in general, it is 27% for black workers. The Big 3 meltdown is even deadlier for black auto workers in cities like Detroit and Flint. This super-exploitation of black and Latino workers — central to the existence of U.S. capitalism — produces super-profits for the bosses, through lower wages and benefits, accounting for one-third of the nearly $700 billion of U.S. net corporate profits in 2003.
The bosses’ media say the Madoffs, the sub-prime mortgage scam and the housing bubble led to this crisis. But overall, these swindlers are motivated by the drive for maximum profit as fast as they can get it. That profit drive is behind the overproduction leading to periodic recession/depressions. U.S. capitalism had no unemployment during World War II when it "solved" the 1930s Great Depression by putting 14 million workers and youth into the military. "Peacetime" capitalism has always created millions of jobless and always will.
It is in the class interest of all workers to fight racist unemployment because the bosses use this political and economic weapon to divide and super-exploit ALL workers. Many workers support union leaders’ claim that immigrant and "foreign" workers "steal ‘our’ jobs." This racism lets the bosses carry out mass firings, weakening the entire working class.
The anti-racist, international unity of all workers is crucial in the fight for a system without any profit-hungry bosses and their racist unemployment. Only with a system based on workers reaping the full benefit of their collective production and allotting it according to need — communism — will the working class realize our full potential, free of the horrors of capitalist depressions and wars. That’s PLP’s goal. Join us.
The Only Growth Industry: Prisons
"Larger Inmate Population Is Boon to Private Prisons." (Wall Street Journal, 11/18)
It looks like the only "growth industry" in the U.S. is expanding the prison system.
"Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails."
"As a crackdown on…[undocumented immigrants], a lengthening of mandatory sentences for certain crimes and other factors have overcrowded many government facilities," (WSJ) thousands of inmates are being contracted out to private prison corporations like the Corrections Corp. of America (CCA).
Inmate population in 10 states is expected to increase by 25% or more by 2011. The net profits of CCA, the largest private-prison operator, has risen 14% to $37.9 million. "There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future," said Damon Hininger, CCA’s president.
California has shipped more than 5,100 inmates to CCA prisons since late 2006. "Prisons were so overcrowded that hundreds of inmates were sleeping in gyms….
Outsourcing incarceration to prison companies can reduce a government’s cost…by as much as 15%....Private operators say…"their payroll costs are lower and they can consolidate prisoners from many far-flung jurisdictions into facilities located in areas where land and building costs are very low."
"Profit is…structured into the way these prisons are operated," says Judy Greene, a justice-policy analyst…." (WSJ)
An ACLU suit charged CCA with "operating an overcrowded, unsafe immigrant-detention center…. Detainees were routinely assigned in groups of three to sleep in two-room cells — meaning one had to sleep on the floor near the toilet….The suit also alleged that detainees had little access to mental-health care."
It was under Obama’s Democratic Party predecessor, Clinton, that the prison population skyrocketed to over two million and the immigration "reform" law was passed which is being used to jail undocumented immigrants. Somehow, "changing" this situation escaped Obama’s promises.
As the fascist attacks on immigrants intensify while unemployment rises and workers become more desperate, look for thousands of the jobless and immigrants to find themselves behind bars, and then "employed" in prison factories turning out products at 23¢/hr "wages." Thus do U.S. bosses jail their unemployment problem and reap slave-labor profits.
LETTERS
Used Labor Reform Laws, GI Bill Used to Deepen Racism
Congratulations on the excellent history of communist-led struggles during the Great Depression (CHALLENGE, 1/14), especially its emphasis on fighting racism. (We might have mentioned this history focused on the U.S. while communists were active internationally.)
One addition, about racism and U.S. history. The labor reforms ("organizing rights") and the GI Bill of Rights of the 1940s were profoundly racist. Their racism creates a central problem for communist struggle in the U.S. today: the profound inequality within the working class between black and white workers.
Because the labor reforms purposely excluded areas where black workers were concentrated (farms and domestic work), they increased the income gap between black and white workers. In World War II, unlike later wars, the U.S. military was disproportionately white (because racist IQ-like tests were used to exclude black youth). So GI benefits in housing and education went disproportionately to white vets.
Moreover, many black vets were excluded from the GI benefits by racial bans in education and housing (racial covenants; Levittown, NY, barred black homeowners; southern black vets were unable to attend colleges).
Consequently, over the years white vets improved their employment skills and accumulated assets in their homes which they then passed down to their children. Black workers were unable to accumulate similar assets, which serve as a back-up in hard times and make it possible to finance more education for a person’s kids. This sustains the hope (and, to an extent, the reality) of escaping the worst effects of capitalism through individual achievement for yourself and your kids.
In contrast, many black workers live in overwhelmingly black neighborhoods with poor public schools, where their homes have little value. Black workers often have no net assets or fall into debt. Overall, the black family has less than one-tenth the assets of the white family.
Now the entire working class is under attack. To the extent that government programs may protect homeowners, they may be protecting primarily white workers and maintaining racial inequality.
As we sharpen the fight against racism, we need to come to terms with the material basis of racism today. There’s a large racial inequality within our class. I’m not sure how to address these issues, but communists must do so.
Chicago Comrade
P.S. Useful books on this history include: Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White, about the racism of government programs that created inequality in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s; Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro’s, Black Wealth, White Wealth; Dalton Conley’s Being Black, Living in the Red; and Thomas Shapiro’s The Hidden Cost of Being African American. All are about wealth inequality and its effects.
a name="New Salvadoran PL’ers Pledge to Build Party">">"ew Salvadoran PL’ers Pledge to Build Party
We are new members of PLP here in El Salvador. We’ve been active in many social struggles here. We want to send revolutionary greetings to our comrades around the world, and to the comrades who came to talk to us about a factory struggle, giving our work more focus. That’s when we discussed how capitalism is the root cause of the suffering of workers and youth all over the world, from criminal drug gangs to wars, unemployment and the break-up of families because of racist immigration laws. Even more importantly, we discussed the building of our revolutionary movement.
It’s important to us to organize ourselves as workers, in order to defend our rights no matter who comes to power. The bosses’ politicians are never going to make major changes because the capitalist system always benefits a few and punishes the many. When the capitalists make huge profits they put them in their own bank accounts, but when there are losses or deficits, they pass them along to the workers to pay. This is as true with Barack Obama in the U.S. as with Funes, the candidate of the FMLN. That’s why we see the PLP as the only alternative for the struggle to meet our needs through revolution.
We respect workers’ rights and fight to end the wage slavery the capitalists subject us to paying us a few crumbs while they make huge profits off our labor. That is why we organize to put an end to all the evils of this capitalist system. And to do that we will fight to make workers and youth conscious of the need to completely change the system and build one without borders or divisions, where workers and their allies run society.
New comrades in El Salvador
Lauds CHALLENGE, Vows to Spread It
Responding to your financial appeal, I have pledged a monthly donation. I’m on a fixed income, but I intend to increase that amount as much as I can.
The December 24 CHALLENGE was one of the best I’ve ever read. How wonderful to see "Workers Occupy Factory" as the cover headline. It was exciting to see that PL is organizing a food and clothing drive.
Let’s all remember that the modern union movement, though sold out by the Walter Reuther gang, began with sit-ins and spread, along with communist ideas, rapidly around the country. (I was working in a Ford plant when Reuther died in a private plane crash, and another comrade and I laughed at the news.)
The rest of the issue was as good, especially the exposures of Obama. A friend of mine voted for him, and almost immediately phoned and told me that I (that is, PL’s line) was right again. Also, the good news out of China about "Mass Uprisings of Jobless" (same for Greece) warmed my heart and made me want to do more, and I will.
PL’s founder once said that fascism is a sign of weakness — that the ruling class can no longer rely on liberals and payoffs — which means now is the time to go on the attack. To begin with, everyone should attempt to sell three more CHALLENGES an issue. Take the paper’s name literally!
North Country Red
More Info About Organizing for Teachers Demonstration
In the last issue (CHALLENGE 1/14), we reported about the city-wide demonstration protesting cuts in teachers’ health benefits, increase in class size, a hiring freeze and other possible cuts. Below is a more detailed account of PLP-led work to organize our base around this struggle.
The students and teachers most involved in the preparations leading to and during the action have been CHALLENGE readers for a while. The preparations included writing and defending a leaflet attacking capitalism , making the picket signs, writing and presenting a petition, visiting classrooms, making and carrying the banner, leading chants and distributing the paper at the demonstration. This shows that a Challenge Readers Group (CRG), here made up of black and Latino students, can be mobilized under the Party’s leadership for united action. Also, the CRG defended the Party repeatedly before and during the demonstration.
At the union meeting weeks prior to the demonstration, in a highly energized debate about the huge attack on teacher’s health benefits, when union leaders declared, "we must do everything within our power to defend our health benefits," a comrade said "It’s very good that all of us are angry at this attack on our benefits but if the board leaves our benefits intact at the expense of our students and parents (class size) and working conditions it will be a tremendous defeat. We will not be divided." Also, when a comrade proposed the amendment "to start preparations for a strike" to a resolution and was shot down by the union leadership, many teachers applauded and congratulated us.
In a period of U.S. imperialism declining and expanding inter-imperialist rivalry which will ultimately lead to World War III, the U.S. rulers must attack the workers more ruthlessly. The bosses are not in a position to grant reforms — unless they divide the working class and grant temporary improvements for some while attacking others. It now seems that the teachers union (UTLA) is negotiating a reduced attack on teachers’ health benefits at the expense of 1,000 teacher layoffs and a class-size increase from 20 to 29 (in K-3rd grade). This will have a racist nature to it; it is an attack on the students, who are 85% black and Latin, and also attacks the teachers, the majority of whom are white.
The role of unions, to focus on narrow trade unionism, means more racist division of the working class. The question becomes how we defeat narrow reformism and build revolutionary working-class consciousness, unity of the working class and fight for a communist future? We are fighting to blame capitalism, distribute the paper regularly and organize CRGs to encourage black and Latin students to act under the leadership of the Party and defend it. The CRGs study CHALLENGE, organize class struggle and fight reformism. Our security and livelihood does not lie within this murderous racist system but in building a mass communist party.
L.A. Comrade
Turn Anger into Action
We’re glad that CHALLENGE received and printed the letter from Greece in the last issue (1/14/09). The letter was written by an airport worker angry and frustrated with the fascist police and unemployment, saying "we’re just pissed off… our whole system needs to go down." We need to take this anger into communist organizing.
The only way to end police terror, unemployment and poverty — all products of capitalism — is by organizing a revolutionary communist party, the international PLP, based on Marxism-Leninism, among workers, students and soldiers to destroy capitalism with communist revolution. Without such a party, the workers, youth and soldiers of Greece will continue to be angry and frustrated, but without knowing the source of their problems or how to end them.
CHALLENGE is a crucial tool for us in the struggle to win angry and frustrated workers such as this one, in every corner of the world, to fight for communism.
Some comrades
1930s Lesson: Turn Class Hatred into Class War
The CHALLENGE article (1/14/09) "1930s Depression: Red-Led Working Class Fought Like Hell" was excellent. Given what were facing today, it’s so important for workers and others worldwide to learn the history, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, of the struggle of our class against the bosses’ Depression, racism and wars. As the article says, we must also promote the need for communist revolution, not reforms, to get off what appears to be a never-ending cycle of misery, deprivation and horror for the working class.
"Government stimulus packages" or massive public works did not end the 1930s Great Depression. After some initial recovery, another serious economic downturn occurred in 1937. A world war, with the U.S. on the winning side, led to a post-war expansion for U.S. imperialism. The U.S. used its resulting power to shift some of the burden for future crises onto workers’ backs worldwide.
The current U.S. decline relative to its main rivals makes it harder for U.S. rulers to emerge from this Depression and wars in the lead. But as the U.K. example shows, their system will survive any potential loss of top-dog status. That’s why PLP’s analysis of past revolutionary history is vital.
Although the Bolsheviks definitely linked the fight for reforms to the fight to overthrow capitalism, they organized for socialist, not communist revolution. Even though communists led society under socialism, ultimately the many concessions to capitalism inherent in the old movement’s two-stage strategy in moving to communism doomed the aspirations of hundreds of millions for permanent change. These reversals have given capitalism a new lease on life. In hindsight, in one way socialism was a radically reformed version of capitalism. In this sense, the article was unclear about PLP’s disagreements with the old movement.
There is simmering worldwide working-class anger over the capitalists’ attacks of mass layoffs, evictions, against immigrants, police terror, etc. One missing ingredient is the transformation of this spontaneous anger into class hatred for, and class war against, the bosses’ attacks. PLP has many opportunities to give leadership to this process, while advancing the full range of communist ideas about the causes of, and our solution to the horrors of the bosses’ system. Such leadership can slowly but surely rebuild the heroic class consciousness and militancy of the 1930s at a higher political level.
New Jersey Reader
A Thank You To Veteran Comrades
My girls seemed even more beautiful to me when I got home from a series of meetings this weekend. I looked at my girls and saw them as even more powerful – as if for them anything was possible. I looked at my beautiful daughters and realized their gender, brown skin or surname wouldn’t limit them. Unlike the masses, this wasn’t the result of the most recent of the bosses’ clever tricks – the Obama phenomenon – but instead the incredible work of the comrades who have come before me.
Leaving my girls for meetings is tremendously difficult for me. However, as I heard of the incredible work the Party is currently doing, and the daunting obstacles and remarkable gains Party veterans have made over more than four decades of work, I was humbled and inspired. I listened in stunned silence as seasoned comrades shared their stories of struggle, and felt proud to be a part of it all.
Without sacrifice, dedication, and the disciplined work of those who came before me, there might not be a group who could stir the confidence to believe my girls will one day realize their full potential and become powerful warriors of the working class. Without the commitment of veteran comrades who have created a strong and sustainable Party, I would have been disillusioned and desperate, as many of the masses who have not yet learned about PLP are.
And so as we celebrate Veteran’s Day, a holiday to pay tribute to those who serve the capitalists’ agenda in the bosses’ army, I would like to extend an all too rare "Thank You" to the veterans who have served in the army under our flag, the workers who toil in the factories spreading the message of working class unity, the professors and students who bring our line to the schools, and those who have dedicated the better part of their lives to offer the working class of the world a true alternative. I thank you for the opportunity to learn the priceless lessons you have to teach, and I thank you for my daughters and theirs to follow, for the promise of a tomorrow free from capitalist chains.
A Comrade
REDEYE on the news
Capitalist insiders love a crash
NYT 12/29 –– …like the last go around, a great deal of money will be made by a select group of investors and business operators particularly close with government contacts…They acknowledge they intend to be among the winners who emerge. "Fortunes will be made here, no doubt about it….The opportunity going forward is unprecedented. It is fantastic. It is as if I had been training for this for the past 40 years of my career.".…Billions of dollars worth of real estate or at least mortgage-backed securities and other "illiquid" financial instruments will most likely need to be sold off at discounted prices.
Bad arrests by cops in schools
NYT 1/5 –– More than 17,000 police officers patrol school hallways nationwide.…Often the arrested students suffer from learning disabilites or mental health problems that, if addressed, could alleviate the behavior that got them in trouble in the first place.
With this as a backdrop, the American Civil Liberties Union and its Connecticut affiliate examined school-based arrests in Hartford….Minorities were far more likely to be arrested than white students who committed the same infraction. In Hartford’s overwhelmingly minority school system, police arrested students at disturbingly young ages: 86 primary grade children in a two-year period, including 13 in grade three or below....
Connecticut is hardly the only state with these issues….
Greedy U.S. backs Afghan crooks
NYT 1/6 –– Obama is planning to commit thousands of additional American troops to the war in Afghanistan, which is already more than seven years old and which long ago turned into a quagmire….The government we are supporting in Afghanistan is a fetid hothouse of corruption, a government of gangsters and weasels whose customary salute is the upturned palm. "….The state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it."
Think about putting your life on the line for that gang.
Best black jobs first to go
NYT 12/30 –– "African-Americans earn much higher wages in the auto industry than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be devastating"….
By last month, nearly 20,000 African-American auto workers had lost jobs, a 13.9 percent decline in employment…. That compares with a 4.4 percent decline for all workers in manufacturing.
Capitalism lives off Madoff-ism
NYT 12/ 27 –– …While $50 billion is a lot of money to defraud, there’s nothing particularly modern about Mr. Madoff’s ethics or technique.…
Some say that Mr. Madoff’s fraud is a harbinger of the downfall of the 21st-century’s frenetic variant of capitalism. I would suggest that it underscores how stable the strategies and institutions of finance really are.… And Mr. Madoff’s strategy…is strikingly similar to that of brokers and the financiers who built lucrative legal businesses convincing investors that something…would appreciate forever for some superspecial reason.
Cuba: No Clear Line To Communism Brings State Capitalism, Part 2
Part I (CHALLENGE, 1/14/09) described the mass strikes and naval uprising that, along with the Castro-Che Guevara-led guerrillas, helped overthrow the Batista dictatorship in Cuba 50 years ago.
The July 26 Revolutionary Movement (J26M), formed to support the guerrilla fight against the Batista regime, included different forces, students as well as businessmen, who just wanted to eliminate Batista without changing much else in Cuban society.
However, the J26M had no base among the unions, which the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) did. The PSP was the old Cuban Communist Party. It had followed the CPUSA, which had been dissolved by Earl Browder during World War II. Browder was later attacked and removed from the leadership. It was then that the Cuban CP, loyal to the CPUSA, changed its name to PSP. The PSP’s policies were always very opportunist, even supporting Batista in the early part of his regime.
The J26M’s urban leadership decided to call for an insurrectional general strike for April 19, 1958, to overthrow Batista. The PSP — while advocating armed struggle in the mountains, opposed it in the cities — was not part of the building for the strike.
While many cities were totally shut down, the strike came up short in Havana. By mid-afternoon it was finished because of its premature call, the sabotage by the PSP and some right-wing J26M leaders and because of repression by the regime. The PSP leadership was hoping the strike’s failure would force the Castro-led movement to include in a post-Batista government followers of former Presidents Grau and Prío Socarras, and hoped the guerrillas would tone down their anti-U.S. stance.
The strike’s failure was a set-back for the mass militant actions in the cities but reinforced the guerrillas’ leading role in the anti-Batista struggle. Batista figured the strike’s failure meant the movement was near collapse, so on May 24 he launched a massive military campaign — with 17 army divisions, planes, tanks, napalm bombs and U.S. advisors — to crush the 300 guerrillas in the mountains.
The Batista offensive lasted only 25 days, suffering heavy losses from guerrilla ambushes and attacks by the peasant population. Within a month, the Army had retreated in disarray from the Sierra Maestra mountains. Troops deserted and refused to fight, marking the end of the Batista regime. In six months, the powerful Batista army totally disintegrated. On Jan. 1, 1959, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic, ruled by fellow dictator Rafael L. Trujillo. A January 1st insurrectionary general strike in Havana — with support of the PSP trade unions — crushed the plan to maintain the old society, just without Batista and without Fidel and the guerrillas in control of the new government. A few days later the triumphant Rebel Army entered Havana, greeted as liberators.
The Movement’s program was basically radical-nationalist, but some forces in the anti-Batista movement just wanted conditions to remain the same. The most pro-U.S. forces in the J26M refused to let the PSP into the new ruling coalition — since Washington feared it despite its opportunist politics because it was pro-Soviet — even though Fidel fought for it. The PSP was only admitted to the coalition’s union section because of its leadership role in the labor movement.
Eventually, the workers and peasants wanted more than just cosmetic changes. They seized factories and sugar mills owned by U.S. multi-nationals and were pushing the revolution to the left. But the PSP began to play a bigger role in the government and basically followed the Soviet pattern. By then, the Krushchev-ruled Soviet Union, the right-wing of the communist movement, was becoming increasingly state capitalist.
The Progressive Labor Movement, later becoming the Progressive Labor Party, was born in that period, breaking with the CPUSA and its opportunist politics. We were the first one to break the U.S. travel blockade to Cuba and carried out many activities opposing the attacks against the new Cuban government. But as the latter became more and more pro-Soviet, PLP sided with the forces in the international communist movement attacking what became known as "Soviet revisionism."
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China was the last mass attempt to reverse the move to the right of that movement. The GPCR was defeated and now China, as well as the former Soviet Union, are completely capitalist.
Fifty years later, the world capitalist crisis is hitting Cuba hard. It is trying to deal with it by forcing workers to sacrifice even more. If the goal was a real communist-type society, that sacrifice would be worthwhile. But it’s basically an attempt to maintain a state-capitalist system. And capitalism by any name means exploiting the working class.J
Che Gripping Film But Lacks for Real Revolution
"Che," now in theaters in the U.S. and worldwide, makes strong points. But, being a commercial movie, it misses the main political reason why Che’s guerrilla tactics failed: without building a mass-based Marxist-Leninist party, communist revolution will fail.
"Che" is directed by Steven Soderburgh, and is based on the writing of Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentinean doctor who fought in the guerrilla rebel army against the Batista dictatorship. Shot in documentary style in two parts, this four-and-a-half hour film realistically depicts the military operations of 1956 to 1959 that defeated the Batista army and the 1967 failed guerrilla attempt in Bolivia that led to Che’s murder under orders from the CIA.
The film treats revolution as a serious business, showing armed struggle necessary to end capitalist exploitation. It shows the tough, day-to-day struggle of guerrilla warfare, the rigorous training, the hardships when food is scarce and lives are lost. We see the constant effort needed not to degenerate politically in life-threatening circumstances and experience the exhilaration that comes when, in village after village Cubans join the guerrilla army, providing the support to make the uprising successful.
Guevara is portrayed as a committed revolutionary who gave his life in the service of the working class that inspired him, not as the glamorous "Icon of Revolution and Liberation," of the face on a million T-shirts. But still Guevara comes across as a central figure in the struggle to overthrow Batista.
Barely acknowledged is the critical role of the Cuban workers, peasants and students who for decades had been organizing against the regime and U.S. imperialism. Its concentration on the military aspect of the struggle against the U.S.-supported Batista regime, with only passing reference to the politics, raises many unanswered and important questions.
The first part, "The Argentinean," hints at ideological struggle between different factions within the Cuban guerrillas but doesn’t present the ideas fueling their disagreements. Battle scenes are cut with flash-forwards to 1964, with Guevara — now Cuba’s ambassador to the UN — addressing the General Assembly. He attacks U.S. imperialism and its lackeys in Latin America and correctly places the blame for poverty and misery on capitalism. But we don’t learn what kind of society was being built in Cuba or where, for instance, Guevara stands on the great political debate of the day, between the revisionist betrayal of the Soviet Union and the more leftist forces led then by China.
In Part II, "Guerrilla," Guevara leads a small group of Cubans and Bolivians in an attempt to seize power in Bolivia. The armed struggle fails, largely because the indigenous peasants don’t join the guerrillas and because of the betrayal by the pro-Soviet Bolivian "Communist" Party. "Che" doesn’t discuss how Guevara’s main political idea, the "foco" theory of revolution, contributed to the failure. Abandoning the Marxist idea of building a mass base in the working class, Guevara believed that a small band of insurgents, a "focus group," could jump-start a revolution by example. Tragically in Bolivia, practice disproved this theory.
"Che" is a gripping and thought-provoking film but lacks the complexity the revolutionary process deserves. In the struggle to change society, the ideological battle to win the masses to communist politics is as important as the military, if not more so. "Che" adds to the knowledge of our past and, with discussion and further reading to fill in the blanks, can strengthen and inspire our fight today. (See the above article and the 1/14/09 issue, for PLP’s analysis of Cuba, past and present.)
This is a three-week issue of CHALLENGE. We will return to our bi-weekly schedule with the issue going to press Jan, 14, 2009. We wish our readers a new year full of struggles against this racist crisis-prone capitalist system which aim to sink the world’s working class into more misery and wars. We also want to thanks our readers for their response to our call for financial help for CHALLENGE. Please continue supporting your revolutionary communist newspaper.
Bosses’ New Year’s Resolution: Win Workers To War And Make Us Pay
U.S. imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a major financial crisis and increasing military rivalry with the rising power of China, Russia and the European Union pose both grave dangers and big opportunities in 2009. U.S. workers — with black and Latino workers hit the hardest because of racism — face massive job losses and pay cuts (as in the Bush/Obama auto "rescue"). All this is worsened by waves of foreclosures, deportations and police terror. The U.S. war machine, with its racist disregard for human life, will expand operations in Afghanistan and continue occupying Iraq.
The entire Middle East, is, in fact, headed for wider conflict as economically-troubled imperialists and regional powers compete more fiercely for its cheap oil. [The low cost of Mid-East oil raises the risk of war. Driven to seek the highest rate of return, capitalists fight fiercely to control the least expensive resources.]
Other, potentially nuclear, tinderboxes range from the Pakistan-India border to Korea to the Taiwan Strait. But our working-class Party can grow by exposing and organizing class struggle against economic misery and imperialist war as inevitable products, goals in fact, of the profit system. (See page 2 on workers’ fight-back in the Great Depression.)
Obama’s New Deal Has Same Aim As Roosevelt’s: Mobilizing For World War...
One focus must be Obama’s deceitful 3-million job, trillion-dollar "stimulus." Like the bank and auto bailouts (supervised by Obama adviser Volcker), under which the rulers are wielding fascistic state power to discipline finance and industry, Obama’s scheme has a political ulterior motive. He seeks to win the masses who elected him to collaborate more closely with the war-bent rulers.
Obama hopes to copy Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), who in the Depression put millions to work in rock-bottom-wage federal projects, which proved to be political rather than economic triumphs. After launching the New Deal in 1933, FDR won 46 states in his 1936 re-election. Portraying the government as savior and protector helped FDR boost U.S. troop strength from 400,000 in 1940 to 14,000,000 at the height of World War II.
Today, Obama wants to restore patriotism, especially among the young. The mass movement against U.S. genocide in Vietnam, with advanced political and organizational leadership from PLP, rightfully discredited mindless flag-waving. Bush blew his 9/11 chance to bring it back. Obama thinks his "rebuild-the-nation" scheme can.
...As U.S. Rulers Plan Their Bloody ‘Big Bailout’
The vast future military undertakings for which Obama must lay ideological groundwork reach far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan. The National Intelligence Council (NIC), the government’s "center for mid-term and long-term strategic thinking," has just issued a report titled "Global Trends 2025." Referring to rising powers China, Russia, and India, it says any one of them could invade Middle Eastern oil fields:
"Energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case this could lead to interstate conflicts" prompting U.S. response: "the need for the U.S. to act as regional balancer in the Middle East will increase."
Another scenario involves a face-off between vast alliances, "Anti-China antagonism in the U.S. and Europe reaches a crescendo; protectionist trade barriers are put in place. Russia and China enter a marriage of convenience; other countries — India and Iran — rally around them. The lack of any stable bloc — whether in the West or the non-Western world — adds to growing instability and disorder."
Then again say the war planners, it could be that "conflict breaks out between China and India over access to vital resources." "Global conflagration" could result, according to the NIC. And pointing at Pakistan and perhaps Israel, the NIC warns of minor leaguers sparking a nuclear holocaust before a clash of major powers, "Episodes of low-intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict."
We may not be able immediately to keep the rulers from putting millions into federal "stimulus" workfarms or army barracks. But we can organize in Obama’s coming slave-labor infrastructure projects and in the communities, schools, colleges, and industries that provide the Pentagon cannon-fodder, ideas, and material. Doing so is essential to developing the revolutionary communist force that will some day bury the money-grubbing system that impoverishes and slaughters workers.
1930s Depression: Red-Led Working Class Fought Like Hell
Politicians, policy-makers and pundits are calling the current economic crisis the most serious since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The similarities between then and now are remarkable: skyrocketing racist unemployment, massive layoffs and evictions, attacks on immigrants and general police terror. Then as now, the government bailed out banks and corporations while leaving workers to starve. Also, while then and now war and fascism threatened the world, one important difference is that in the 1930s the U.S. was a rising economic power; today U.S. imperialism is in decline and fighting two wars. But the difference between the two periods to be dealt with here is the working-class response to these attacks.
In the 1930’s working-class militancy boiled over. There were strikes, mass marches and battles with the cops and National Guard at nearly every turn. Now, because of the collapse of the old communist movement, class-consciousness has been greatly diminished. Working-class response is at its lowest ebb — and the bosses would love to keep it that way.
PLP aims to revive class-consciousness and working-class militancy, and simultaneously link them to the need for communist revolution. It is useful, therefore, to review how our class, led by communists, fought back against starvation and death.
Anti-Racist Struggle
The capitalist economy crashed in 1929 and every country worldwide, except the Soviet Union, was engulfed in the Great Depression. Over 17 million U.S. workers were unemployed, one-third of a 50-million labor force. Capitalism has always relied on racist terror; the 1930s were no exception. Black workers suffered higher levels of unemployment and were viciously hunted and murdered by racist groups like the KKK.
The U.S. Communist Party (CP) was at ground zero when this crisis struck, having been building a mass base for a decade. Among its most consistent fights was the one against racism. Whether against evictions, wage-cuts or unemployment, the fight against racism was central because communists understood that capitalism required the super-exploitation of black workers and counted on racism to divide and weaken the working class.
Even in the Deep South, the CP organized the Sharecroppers Union, which, in rural Alabama in 1933, successfully blocked evictions and forced plantation owners to cancel sharecroppers’ debts. (1) The CP also famously took on the racist court system in the Scottsboro case (see box).
The CP gained much confidence amongst black workers in these anti-racist battles. Today, PLP also recognizes the central importance of this fight.
Fighting Unemployment, Scabs and Homelessness
During this period, the CP led the way in organizing unemployed workers. The central demand was for unemployment relief and insurance. On March 6, 1930, the CP led an estimated 1,250,000 workers into the streets, from New York to Detroit to Los Angeles, demonstrating against unemployment and for jobs. In NYC, 25,000 cops attacked 110,000 workers in Union Square.
Then on July 4, 1930, the CP helped organize the National Unemployment Council (UC), which grew to branches in 46 states. The CP and UC organized militant actions against evictions and foreclosures. "Squads of neighbors were organized to bar the way to the dispossessing officers. Whole neighborhoods were frequently mobilized to take part in this mutual assistance…"(2) In New York City alone, the UC moved 77,000 evicted families back into their homes."(3) The same tactic was widely used throughout the urban Midwest.
Even before the Depression, in 1929 CP’ers organized rent strikes in Harlem. In 1933, when New York City cops attempted to evict rent-strike movement leaders, as many as 4,000 people took to the streets in pitched battles with the police.(4)
The government estimated there were 1,000 home foreclosures each day in 1933.(5) In the first eight months of 1932, 185,794 families in New York City were served with eviction notices. Millions nationwide became part of the army of homeless that slept on streets, living in "Hoovervilles" (shanty-towns named for Herbert Hoover, president until 1933). Like many liberals blame the current crisis on Bush, Hoover was targeted then. Like the PLP, the CP explained that capitalism creates crises, no matter who is president.
Meanwhile, farm foreclosures and abandonments drove 60% of the population from the Dust Bowl region of the Midwest and Southwest.(6) But here, too, farmers organized. At a bank auction of a foreclosed homestead, area farmers would gather while one farmer would "bid" $1.00; no one else bid and the farm would be "sold" and handed back to the owner.
Fighting For Job Security
"For the first time in history there was virtually no scabbing during a depression, the unemployed instead appearing on the picket line under the banner of the Unemployed Council, helping win the strikes of those still working."(7)
While millions of unemployed workers were fighting for jobs, those still working and in unions were also under attack. Then, as now, the old American Federation of Labor (AFL) union leaders were in bed with the bosses and helped pacify workers, getting them to accept wage-cuts almost without resistance. The communists came up with the answer: organize the unskilled workers in the basic industries — auto, steel, electrical, etc. — into industrial unions (not the old AFL craft type), black and white, men and women.
This sparked a sea change in the U.S. labor movement. The communists led the organization of the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). In the winter of 1936-37, workers led by communists and left-wing militants seized GM plants in Flint, Michigan, and "sat in" for 44 days and nights. Thousands of workers supported them from the outside. When Roosevelt had the National Guard aiming their machine guns at the strikers, 40,000 workers from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan arrived to surround the plants. They told GM that any attack would mean the destruction of $1 billion worth of machinery. GM surrendered. The workers won union bargaining rights, an 8-hour day and a wage increase.
CIO-organized sit-down strikes swept the country, from electrical factories to Woolworth 5&10-cent stores. Within four years, four million workers were organized into the CIO. Big Steel fell without a fight, the bosses fearing their mills would be held hostage. This was the high-water mark for the U.S. labor movement.
Unfortunately, the militant reformers in the CP omitted one vital ingredient in this struggle: the fight for revolution and state power. So within a decade the ruling class, still holding state power, was able to turn the clock back.
What Went Wrong?
In the U.S. the CP attempted to take up the torch set ablaze by workers in the Soviet Union who had seized state power from the capitalists. While the CP led many heroic battles, it made a critical error avoided by its Soviet counterparts. While leading militant class struggle, the Bolsheviks simultaneously linked it to, and organized for, the final goal — communist revolution. The CPUSA, however, failed to tie the struggles here to the need for a revolution. In essence, the CP became militant reformers.
Indeed, the militancy of U.S. workers so frightened the bosses that it forced them to respond to the upheavals with President Franklin Roosevelt’s "New Deal": the right to unionize, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, the 8-hour day, Social Security, welfare, etc. This was the U.S. ruling class’s attempt to prevent potentially revolutionary communist ideas from becoming mass ideas. While all these reforms were credited to Roosevelt, they resulted from mass, communist-led working-class struggle.
Unfortunately, without much CP opposition, the rulers’ plan worked. The working-class was disarmed and misled into believing that capitalism could be made to work for them.
In a sense, workers now are reaping what the CP sowed then. As always under capitalism, the reforms were either reversed or slowly eaten away. The 8-hour day has been replaced by workers needing two jobs or overtime to get by. Unionization has shrunk from 35% of the private workforce to 7%, abetted by companies’ active union-busting and the betrayals of today’s anti-communist union leaders. States are cutting unemployment insurance, leaving the millions of the newly jobless in dire straits. Less than 40% of the unemployed are even eligible for benefits. The minimum wage is nowhere near enough to support a family.
The PLP applauds the CP’s historic role as a leader of militant working-class actions. We are dedicated to reawakening the mass militancy and class-consciousness seen in the 1930’s. However, we are also dedicated to NOT repeat the CP’s errors. In every strike and soup kitchen, unemployment line and anti-war, and anti-financial crisis demonstration, PLP’s message is clear: the working-class doesn’t need reforms. What we need is to arm our class with revolutionary communist ideas and our newspaper CHALLENGE is our main tool in doing so.J
Footnotes:
1. Winter, Carl, 1969. "Unemployment Struggles of the Thirties", Political Affairs magazine September, as reprinted in Highlights of a Fighting History: 60 Years of the Communist Party USA, Philip Bart, Chief Editor, New York: International Publishers, 1979. Winter, 1969, p. 75
2. Winter, p. 61
3. Boyer & Morais, Labor’s Untold Story, p. 260)
4. Lawson, Ronald, with assistance of Mark Naison. 1986. The Tenant Movement in New York City 1904-1984, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lawson, 1986, pp. 104-5)
5. Fish, Gertrude, editor. 1979. The Story of Housing, New York: Macmillan, sponsored by the Federal National Mortgage Association. Fish, 1979, p. 195
6. Foner, Eric and Garraty, John, 1991. Reader’s Companion to American History, Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Foner and Garraty, 1991, p. 303
7. Boyer, p. 261
Communists Led Worldwide Fight vs. Scottsboro Legal Lynching
On March 21, 1931, nine black teenagers, the youngest being 13, were jailed in Scottsboro, Alabama, falsely charged with raping two white women on a freight train. Legal lynching has historically been part of the racist Jim Crow system that dominated the U.S. since the Civil War, especially in the South. "The Scottsboro Case," the most infamous case of legal lynching, exposed the U.S. ruling class throughout the world. This charge was later repudiated, especially by one of the women, Ruby Bates. But after a few days, a kangaroo trial still sentenced the Scottsboro 9 to the electric chair.
The Communist Party rallied to their defense, sending the veteran communist lawyer Joseph Brodsky to defend the victims. While it was fought back and forth in the courts, the communists launched a national and international campaign to free the nine young men, organizing demonstrations, marches and rallies in cities across the country and abroad. The case became one of the most famous battles against racist frame-ups in U.S. history.
All this was occurring simultaneously with mass movements of the unemployed and among industrial workers for unionization, led by communists, reflecting the great ferment in the working class battling the effects of capitalism’s Great Depression.
Forced by heavy mass pressure, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial, on the grounds that in the original "trial" the accused had inadequate legal counsel. Only after the communists’ campaign had drawn worldwide protests did various reformist organizations — the NAACP, the Urban League and the A.F. of L. — join the international struggle. Great respect for the communists grew among masses of black people.
The fight saved the Scottsboro 9 from the electric chair but the savage Southern courts sentenced them to prison terms up to 99 years. It was only in 1950 that the last of the young men was released.
The case became known around the world, especially among the workers in imperialist colonies. This became a powerful force that somewhat restrained the racist lynchers and exposed U.S. rulers as among the most racist in the world. The Scottsboro fight serves as a telling lesson that anti-racist forces organizing mass militant struggle among all sections of the working class can return blow for blow against the rulers’ racist oppression.
Fight For Working-Class Unity Against Racist Murder
BROOKLYN, December 14 — A multi-racial group of hundreds of workers gathered for a march and vigil in a local park in Bushwick to condemn the racist murder of 31-year-old Latin immigrant, José Sucuzhañay. José and his brother, Ecuadorean immigrants, were brutally attacked with a bottle and bat by a group yelling racist and anti-gay insults (confusing their brotherly embrace as a gay act). This is the second such racist incident in the area in the last month since Marcelo Lucero, another Ecuadorean immigrant, was knifed to death by a racist gang in Suffolk County, Long Island recently.
The multi-racial aspect of the march was an important way of countering the media barrage trying to divide black and Latin workers and youth because supposedly Sucuzhañay’s killers were black. Racism, no matter who carries it out, is an attack against the entire working class.
The march and vigil were called by a coalition of groups, including Make the Road NY, the Ecuadorian Alliance and the Anti-Violence Project. The mood of the marchers was both somber and angry. Only the organizers of the event and politicians were allowed to speak at the rally, trying to calm down the anger of the crowd.
One speaker, politician José Rivera, was the only one to show some anger but his aim is still to channel the masses to the dead-end politics of the Democratic Party. The politicians blamed families for teaching hate, a few bad people and the broken immigration system as the roots of hate crimes. They called on the protesters to "trust" them to get "justice" in our "great democratic system."
Immediately an organizer of the event warned speakers that this event was organized simply as a call to end violence, hate and anti-immigrant, anti-gay insults. In spite of the attempted restrictions, numerous times militant protesters shouted chants of outrage. Members of PLP sold 200 CHALLENGES.
As the march began protesters ended the "vigil" by chanting loudly, showing how workers understand the importance of fighting back. Marchers were met with chants and appreciation as we made our way to the site of the killing.
Immediately after the attack PLP and friends began to talk about the attack in our classes and community organizations. In two classes the students and the teacher talked about the relationship between the racist attacks on immigrants and the growth of the immigrant community in Bushwick, and the division between largely Latin and black workers here.
They spoke about the absolute need to build working-class consciousness and unity as we fight back against skyrocketing rents and gentrification. Bushwick has one of the highest rates of foreclosure in NYC. Our schools and Adult-Ed classes are already feeling the effects of the budget cuts and thousands of workers are losing their jobs. The working class cannot allow racist crimes and divisions to stop us from fighting back.
With our friends and co-workers, we began to call for mass action. Our daily work in our classes and organizations, an expanding network of 50 CHALLENGE readers and a new study group helped us motivate people. However, the community leaders quickly mobilized behind closed doors to limit anger, rank-and-file initiative and working-class consciousness, manipulating protesters to be obedient to the capitalist system.
As PLP continues to organize in Bushwick we are making progress as our friends more fully understand how capitalism works and why communist revolution is necessary.J
Hospital Workers Storm Bosses’ Office Over Pay Cuts, Layoffs
BROOKLYN, December 18 — Ten days ago, workers throughout a Brooklyn hospital stormed the Human Resources department shouting "No Layoffs!" — refusing to forego their 3% wage increase. This hospital’s workers are largely black, Latino and immigrant, who, because of racism, suffer disproportionately from the bosses’ economic meltdown, making their fight an anti-racist one as well.
This militant action was answering the hospital bosses’ "request" that healthcare workers give up the upcoming 3% increase because Governor Paterson is cutting State funding. This would also lay off healthcare workers statewide, in line with the bosses’ financial crisis.
The 1199 SEIU leadership "rejected" this wage-cut "request" because it didn’t include hospital CEO and managers also being cut!
Before this action, workers met to discuss a plan of action. Some wanted to forego the 3% increase in order to save jobs. Others felt giving up the wage increase wouldn’t prevent layoffs. One worker stated, "In 2007, the union leadership re-opened the contract by foregoing the 4% wage increase due that July. The hospital bosses saved one million dollars and then reduced the workforce the following June."
Then the workers voted overwhelmingly for the "walk-in."
While, the 1199 SEIU leadership is always boasting about being a powerful and effective union, it has no plan of action to fight the threatened attacks by the hospital bosses and Governor Paterson.
The union leadership’s close collaboration with the hospital bosses and politicians have encouraged workers to believe that capitalist reform programs can save jobs. But the nature of the capitalist healthcare industry compels the bosses to constantly cut jobs. It drives small institutions to close, creating a huge pool of unemployed workers and reaping greater profits for the bosses.
PLP’ers must bring our communist politics to this battle against-short staffing violations in patient care and to maintain their benefits. In doing that, we can win them to see the real solution to rotten healthcare and racist wage-cuts: communism.
10,000 Hit LA Racist School Cuts, Call for Strike
Los Angeles, December 10 — Over 10,000 teachers and students held a city-wide demonstration protesting cuts in teachers’ health benefits, increase in class size, a hiring freeze and other possible cuts. At one rally in front of the Los Angeles district office over 800 teachers and students heard a Latina high school student speaker ask: "What kind of a system bails out banks but not schools, and puts profits over human life?"
In a school district that has 74% Latino and 11% black students, these cuts are un-deniably racist and we must make fighting racism the central issue in fighting these cuts while uniting teachers, students and parents.
Prelude to a Demonstration
A few weeks before the demonstration high school students produced and distributed over 800 PL flyers for their fellow students, along with over 500 CHALLENGES. While calling for a united strike, the leaflet emphasized the fight against capitalism and racism, pointing out that the crisis wasn’t just the fault of a few greedy speculators, but was the inevitable result of a system based on competition for maximum profit.
In making signs for the demonstration, a student said we should take the word capitalism out of the leaflet, but another student declared, "No, we have to say ‘fight capitalism’ because that’s what we are really fighting against." This led to a deeper discussion of the nature of the cutbacks. "The capitalist system is in crisis and they want us to pay for it — I say no way," a student added. Another said, "This is part of a longer and bigger fight."
Days before the rally several teams of students went to classrooms with flyers and a petition, which stated, "We do not want to pay for the current financial problems of the city, state or county....Why are major banks being bailed out, and not schools?" Students collected about 600 signatures.
On the day of the demonstration students held a banner reading, "Black Brown Unity Fight the Cutbacks" in front of their school. They then marched with teachers to the local district office. High school students led chants and helped distribute over 600 PLP leaflets and CHALLENGES calling for a strike against the cuts and for building PLP. Many people at the demonstration agreed that a system that bails out the banks but not the workers has to go. During the demonstration, a student delegation tried to present the petition to the local school bosses. But the local representative allowed only one student in, together with a teacher.
Meanwhile, several dozen teachers and students stood outside directly in front of the glass door shoving picket signs against the doors and windows. The frightened representative said that students had to evacuate the walkway before he would receive the petition. The protesters moved and the student representative presented the petition.
Support for Strike Grows
In union meetings, PL members and supporters fought for a strike against the cuts and the bailout. We received a lot of support for a strike as rank-and-file anger grew. In the union’s House of Representatives, the "fake lefty" vice-president attacked a call for a strike in a motion against statewide cuts. A PL’er responded that a strike would give the workers a taste of what a united working class can do in the face of the bosses’ crisis. He said that we must not accept attacks on other school workers in exchange for less cuts for teachers.
At the demonstration, union members and students chanted, "Racist budget cuts mean…A war budget means…Capitalism means…fight back!" A union hack yelled "Stop saying those chants and stick to the union chants." Everyone continued with our chants, isolating the union sellout.
No trade union reform or any other kind of reform will help solve the problems of the working class; therefore, we are fighting to turn our CHALLENGE readers into leaders of the class struggle in the fight for communist revolution — the only path to security for our class.
Report from Greece:
Millions of Youth, Workers Rebel Against Killer Kops
It’s HELL over here in Greece! Students and workers have all been putting up a lot with this government, and this dead system. Officially, unemployment is listed as 11%, but more than one in four people are below the "poverty line." The police kick and hit practically every young person they see, especially immigrants, who comprise over 20% of the country’s population. This police shooting in Greece has been world news.
Recently, on one of our holidays a group of 15-year-old young people were celebrating their friends’ birthday at an apartment in downtown Athens. That night, as they were heading home, they encountered two cops. Behind these boys, there was another group of youth who had been throwing empty plastic soda bottles at the police. One cop became angry and pulled his gun.
Someone sent a video of the incident with the cop (recorded on their cell phone) showing there was never any "warning" shot fired into the air. He aimed all three times at the boys. Actually there were about 15 people who witnessed the crime; he just didn’t hit any with the first two shots. When he finally hit the boy, the cop just turned his back and walked away from the innocent 15 year-old child, named Alexander. Murder in cold blood. Without a reason!
Now EVERYONE got angry, especially the students, and immediately shut down every school and university and went to the streets demonstrating against the murderous death of Alex.
But the anger didn’t stop there. The workers called a general strike and came out onto the streets with us by the millions, not just here in Athens but throughout the whole country and then spread all over Europe. Everyone is frustrated with this murder! (Meanwhile, the social-democratic PASOK party and the fake-leftist KKE ["C"P] have joined the rightwing Karamanlis government in denouncing the young rebels, Ed. Note)
Three lawyers quit their jobs because they didn’t want to defend the cop. They say he was lying and even blamed Alex for his own death. Now there is one particular cop-loving lawyer who’s defending the cop. He has always been defending these criminals.
We aren’t making many demands right now. Mostly we’re just pissed off. Our whole system needs to go down! The police sucks, the government sucks…and here we go again! Everything here needs to be changed
Airport Worker from Greece
Sit-in’ers Win Back Pay, Lose Jobs; Dems, Sellouts Claim ‘Victory’
CHICAGO, December 15 — "Isn’t it great when the workers win?" yelled a local Teamster President as Democratic Party politicians and local union reformists staged a "Victory Party," celebrating the end of the 6-day occupation of Republic Windows and Doors. The 240 Latino and black workers, members of the United Electrical Workers union (UE), took over the plant after the owners and Bank of America (BoA) tried to close it on three days notice and beat the workers out of 60 days pay, medical care and vacation pay owed to them. The bosses are building a new non-union plant in Iowa, and BoA just raked in a $25 billion bailout.
While the sit-in drew mass support from workers and youth, the Democratic Party hijacked the struggle. Jesse Jackson delivered a truckload of turkeys. Congressman Luis Gutierrez became their main advocate and the City Council called for an end to doing business with BoA. Even the Governor stopped by on his way to the federal lockup. There was not a racist cop in sight. After six days, the workers won their demands, but lost their jobs. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
The Democrats know there will be many more plant closings and layoffs, especially affecting black and Latino workers. They’re trying to rush to the head of the long line of angry workers so they can mislead our struggles.
Of about 250 who showed up to celebrate, less than a third of the Republic workers were there. Many are mad about losing their jobs and have nowhere to go in this failing economy. One who spoke said he felt guilty during the occupation because those inside the plant were eating better than their families at home. Meanwhile, the stage was filled with full-time union leaders and politicians, who haven’t lost a dime, patting themselves on the back.
During the event we distributed 125 CHALLENGES that featured the sit-in on the front page. Comrades who know Republic workers came with them and planned a post-holiday meeting. We’ll fight the politicians and union leaders for the political leadership of the workers, and slowly but surely make communist ideas mass ideas.
TWU Hacks Attack Rank-&-File, Silent on Coming Layoffs
New York City, December 13 — Racist fare increases, service cuts, and pending layoffs are hitting New York City transit riders and workers hard. Meanwhile, Roger Toussaint, President of Transport Worker Union (TWU) Local 100 — New York City’s 30,000 municipal transit workers — is trying to get the workers, who have the power to shut the system down, to rely on the politicians to settle the upcoming contract.
Without mentioning the coming layoffs and job cuts, Toussaint pledged to work on getting the 1.5% worker contribution to medical costs — a concession he helped negotiate during the 2005 strike — reduced or eliminated. Toussaint also mentioned, almost in passing, a possible fifth pension tier. Current fourth-tier workers can collect a pension after 25 years of work and 55 years of age. A fifth tier would mean an increase in years of work or age or both.
Toussaint’s strategy to settle the contract as soon as possible and to lobby politicians to get the best deal, does nothing for the millions of working-class riders, mainly black, Latino, and immigrant, who are looking at a 25% fare increase and reduced service. The main speakers spent three-quarters of the mass meeting talking about Obama and the Democrats, trying to get us to rely on politicians and give up on fighting back.
But transit workers should not be fooled into dumping class struggle and thinking that we should accept anything we get because of tough economic times.
James Little, President of the TWU international, gloated that he is on Obama’s transition team and proclaimed that now workers "have a seat at the table." Somehow both Little and Toussaint forgot to mention that the Democrats voted for the national bailout for banks, NY State bailout of AIG, and now the auto industry bailout. A lot of good that elections and having a seat at the table did!
The real problem is capitalism, not lack of lobbying. Over the past 30 years, competition for maximum profit has led to massive overproduction in the auto industry, the bank’s financial schemes, and more debt for U.S. workers. Both Democrats and Republicans have responded with oil wars and cuts to government services because they serve their capitalist ruling-class interests, not workers.
Thousands at the meeting were cynically led to attack their fellow transit workers by Ed Watt, Local 100’s Treasurer chanting "No Amnesty!" a reference to suggested plans to bring members into "good standing" immediately after paying normal dues and a catch-up amount. The courts took away Local 100’s automatic dues check-off after the 60-hour strike in December of 2005. Currently about half the union is not fully paid up and 5,000 to 6,000 paid no dues without the check-off. Given that the union leadership spent so much time talking about Democrats they’re probably also upset that there wasn’t more money to give to politicians!
At other times the union has collected it’s own dues and workers fought hard to keep the union together. In several incidents during the early 1940’s union members stopped work when a worker dropped out of the union or didn’t pay their dues. Today the story is different. The sellouts by the leadership have demoralized many of the workers, and they question where their dues are going.
Toussaint called members in "bad" standing "traitors and collaborators" but he praises collaboration with politicians that are screwing the workers, both transit and riders!
In these times of widening war and cutbacks, a transit strike like that in 2005 could be the spark all workers need to resist the massive racist attacks by the bosses. But, the only way this can be done is dumping the union sellouts and their politicians and rebuilding a class-concious leadership among the working class. It won’t be easy but it is the only road out of a system that only takes us on the road to more wars and economic meltdowns. Join us in the communist PLP to take the express train to a world without racist bosses: communism!
Warm Welcome for PLP at Int’l Conference in Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, December 20 — An audience of 150 at a recent State University international conference here cheered a PLP speaker who declared, "The 19th century anti-slavery Haitian revolution against French colonialism taught the world how to fight back. In Haiti today I see so many intelligent and powerful people willing to reconstruct society, but jobless, with no opportunity to find work."
The PLP’er added that workers and youth today must learn from the achievements as well as the errors of the old communist movement, and rebuild it internationally. He said its basis must be one worldwide working class requiring one unified communist party whose aim is to destroy, not reform, a rotten capitalism system. The audience was very receptive to this message and to CHALLENGE and other PL literature.
Professors and students organized the conference to examine why the State University had not implemented any of the three principles under which it was to be reformed. The 30 days allotted for developing such a plan has become 11 years. For example, the principle of "research adapted to the needs of the population" has no budget whatsoever.
But in reality it’s an illusion to believe that education under capitalism can serve the masses, particularly in a country ravaged by imperialism like Haiti where the state barely functions. Forty percent of the children never attend school. Most who graduate from high school cannot go to universities because the places are lacking. Most university graduates cannot find jobs.
Most Haitians have no jobs, no potable water and not enough food. Infrastructure — roads, electricity, sewage systems — are in disrepair. Many foreign-owned factories have closed. Local farming has been underpriced by global agribusiness, and millions have moved from rural villages to Port-Au-Prince and the neighboring Dominican Republic seeking work.
Since the 2004 coup — supported by the U.S., France and Canada — which deposed President Aristide, a U.N. military force led by the Brazilian army has occupied Haiti. Significantly, Obama, who made a statement in September on hurricane relief to Haiti, has said nothing about the coup, nor about the racist U.S. immigration policies against Haitian boat people. This contrasts with the favorable treatment for Cuban refugees. Few at the conference had any illusions about Obama.
Haitian students and professors must try to build an alliance with the urban and rural workers here. During the mass uprising in the Spring, when tens of thousands rebelled against the high cost of food, students joined with angry protestors from the shantytown in trying to storm the Presidential Palace. This is the road to follow.
The best lesson to learn from these struggles is the need to rebuild a revolutionary communist movement here to unite with workers and youth worldwide. Some at the conference actually saw how capitalism — especially during this financial meltdown — cannot be reformed to serve workers and youth. It’s up to PLP’ers to follow up with our new friends here, to learn from them and simultaneously provide them with our red politics as a path out of the capitalist hellhole entrapping all of us.
Cops, Politicians, Priest Behind Racist Immigration Raid
EAST CHICAGO, IN, December 15 — Mariachi music filled the air and youth dressed in traditional Aztec costume danced down church aisles. It was supposed to be a day of celebration. But more telling than the warm greetings and hugs were the smiles that never quite reached the eyes. The eyes betrayed the fear, outrage and tremendous suffering that dampened the festivities. As people celebrated the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, their minds and hearts were worried about their friends who had been arrested in an immigration raid the day before at the nearby BP Amoco refinery.
Cleaning workers for a BP subcontractor were called into a meeting "about parking" early Wednesday morning. A manager waited while the workers trickled in. When all were present, she locked the door and made a call. In a flash, immigration police stormed into the room, throwing workers against the wall to handcuff them, yelling that BP had asked them to "take out the garbage." The agents applauded and laughed as 15 immigrant workers, four men and eleven women, were herded into the van.
Some were mothers, forced to sign documents they didn’t understand, with the threat of losing their children. Some were released with ankle bracelets to monitor their location while they await a court hearing. Others remain in custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have visited high school students to threaten them with being next.
PLP is working in community groups and churches to obtain legal aid, food and Christmas gifts for workers and their families. More important, we’re trying to organize action against the ICE terror against immigrant families.
At a meeting held at the church, the priest said that "our" main concern should be "being at peace with the Lord." He said the Bible says, "Blessed are they who weep and mourn." From within our local community group we have worked hard to offer workers an alternative to remaining on their knees. A meeting at a community center discussed the needs of the workers and taking action against BP and the ICE raids.
Workers complained of rude treatment by Congressman Luis Gutierrez’s secretary, who suggested they pack their bags and move back to Mexico. This is the same Congressman who made himself the lead negotiator for the Republic workers during their 6-day factory occupation (see page 4). PLP members reminded them that all politicians and government officials, regardless of "race" or nationality, were tools of the bosses and the savage cruelty of the racist profit system. We said that only the workers had the power to transform society and build a new world.
While they are grateful for whatever help we can offer them, they are painfully aware that the capitalist laws are against them. Without a mass movement, there’s little hope for a happy ending.
We must work patiently and diligently to counter the church’s lies that would keep workers helpless victims, offering their suffering to the heavens. It will take time and dedication to convince them their "kingdom" can, in fact, be here on earth — a world without borders and bosses, run by and for the workers. We must show them that the nightmare they’re now living — the prospect of being torn from their children — is as much a part of the profit system as the dollar bill.
Racist super-exploitation of workers is needed for the bosses to reap super profits, and will only increase as the rulers scramble to protect a failing economy. We must drive the message home that the equality for which they pray can only be achieved by building a mass international PLP and fighting for communism.
How Cuba’s Batista Dictatorship Was Overthrown 50 Years Ago
January 1, 2009, marks the 50th anniversary of the victory of the rebel forces in Cuba, led by the Castro brothers, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and others. The fictional movie "Godfather 2" depicts well how dictator Fulgencio Batista went to a New Year’s Eve ball filled with rich local and U.S. bosses and Mafiosi and announced he was surrendering power.
The rebel forces had almost been annihilated when they landed in a boat from Mexico in 1956, with only a few making it to the mountains of Sierra Maestra. How could one of the most powerful armies in Latin America be routed by this group of rebels? Actually the small guerrilla army had much active support in all the major cities among workers and peasants who hated the corrupt and repressive Batista regime.
Fidel Castro came from the Orthodox Party, a bourgeois electoral party. The political program of the movement he later founded to fight the Batista regime, the MR26J (July 26 Revolutionary Movement), was basically one of "revolutionary nationalism" to reform capitalism, not replace it with a revolutionary Marxist system. The movement itself had many tendencies — some just wanted to eliminate Batista without changing anything; others, like Fidel, wanted more reforms.
After the small guerrilla band landed from Mexico on November 26, 1956, it was limited to some small clashes with Batista’s military. But in cities like Santiago, strikes, marches and even attacks against government installations were common. Frank País, a 22-year-old student leader, led the movement in the city of Santiago. He was also in charge of supplying the guerrillas in the mountains.
Early in May 1957, the Revolutionary Directorate (DR), that worked with the MR26J movement, attacked the presidential palace in Havana trying to assassinate Batista. The attempt failed. It was opposed by MR26J and Castro who wanted to publicly try Batista for his crimes. The DR commander died in the attempt. The other DR leaders joined the guerrillas in the mountains. Several weeks later, the guerrillas became more active and were able to open a second front led by Che Guevara.
On July 30, 1957, the cops killed Frank País, sparking a five-day general strike shutting down Santiago. The strike spread throughout Oriente province, to the city of Camaguey. País’s funeral was the biggest protest in Santiago’s history.
The MR26J attempted an insurrection, supported by the sailors at the Cayo Loco naval base, who had rebelled against their officers and the regime. On September 5, the sailors, with civilian help, arrested the base commander and handed out weapons to the local population. The mutineers seized the neighboring city of Camaguey. The Batista air force bombed the city for 12 hours, and used tanks and artillery to crush the uprising. The rebellion’s leader surrendered and was shot. Dozens of other sailors and civilians were also executed. But the rebellion demonstrated that the military rank and file did not support the dictatorship.
As the Batista dictatorship began to lose the war in the mountains and the cities, it became more repressive. Meanwhile, the U.S. ruling class was looking for a way to dump Batista while relying on the right-wing capitalist opposition to assure U.S. interests in Cuba. But the masses of workers and students were in no mood just to replace Batista with another U.S. lackey. They wanted radical changes. So the struggle within the anti-Batista opposition sharpened, between those who later ended up in Miami and those wanting radical reforms (the Castro brothers, Che and their allies).
(Next: The end of the Batista regime; how the sellout pro-Soviet "C"P — which earlier had supported Batista — later was able to influence the new Castro government, so that the Cuban revolution was born containing all the errors of the old communist movement and therefore never led to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.)
Stop Torture: Destroy Capitalism
As Hurricane Katrina exposed the vicious racism of U.S. capitalism, the increasingly open practice of torture has exposed its unspeakable racist brutality.
Our Party and others organized modest protests against the 2005 Abu Ghraib revelations. Since then, a broad religious coalition has launched the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) with a large conference at evangelical Mercer College.
NRCAT’s first big project was to demand that the next U.S. President issue an executive order banning torture. At the same time, Richard Holbrooke, who’s likely to become Obama’s special envoy to South Asia or Iraq and Afghanistan, wrote in Foreign Affairs (Oct./Nov. 2008) that the "most compelling" early action that the new president could take "would be issuing a clear official ban on torture and closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." Says Holbrooke, "restoring respect for American values and leadership is essential … because respect is a precondition for … enduring influence."
This campaign first tapped into widespread disgust, directing it into anger at the Bush administration. Now it’s encouraging the hope many place in Obama, while mainly promoting a new wave of U.S. patriotism. Says NRCAT: "Nothing less is at stake in the torture abuse crisis than the soul of our [sic] nation." U.S. rulers will try to use such nationalism to win us to support "good wars" in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere leading to a new surge of racist murder and torture.
This contradiction opens the door to sharp political struggle. College teachers have worked the topic of U.S.-sponsored torture into their curriculum. On one campus, a screening of the film "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" sparked a discussion of why the U.S. military is in Iraq, and of the importance of winning soldiers to an anti-racist and anti-imperialist perspective. We’ve raised that this is not "our" nation — it belongs to the capitalists.
U.S. foreign policy has systematically relied on torture. In the 1950s the CIA paid Cornell University researchers to develop the torture techniques used on a massive scale in Vietnam (Operation Phoenix) and, forty years later, in Guantánamo. Author Darius Rejali says that "Britain, France, and the United States were perfecting new forms of torture long before the CIA even existed. …The modern repertoire of torture is mainly a ‘democratic’ innovation."
Making the campaign sharply anti-racist (by bringing up connections with torture in U.S. prisons, for example) will help our friends see that while cosmetic reforms are likely (for example, closing Guantanamo), partial temporary reforms will not lead to lasting, systemic change. As historian H Bruce Franklin put it, "our (sic) prison system has helped make torture a normal, legitimate, even routine part of American culture."
Challenge readers have noted that the UN Convention on Torture says torture includes official acts of inflicting physical or mental suffering on someone for the purpose of "intimidating or coercing him or a third person." The whole racist U.S. system emerged from the massive use of torture to intimidate and coerce slaves and Native Americans.
Wage-slavery (capitalism) relies on torture and the threat of torture inflicted by its army, police and prison system to intimidate workers. Racist unemployment leads to illness and death. Torture is built into the whole system of exploitation and only communist revolution to eliminate capitalism and imperialism can abolish these evils. J
Ford Foundation: Imperialism, Slavery, and Torture
Princeton theologian George Hunsinger started NRCAT in 2005 but it took off in spring 2007 with a grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation.
The openly anti-Jewish Henry and Edsel Ford chartered the Ford Foundation in 1936, shortly before Ford’s German subsidiary began racking up enormous profits by manufacturing military vehicles for Hitler using slave labor. After the war, the Ford Foundation switched its allegiance to the CIA, which was already training operatives in torture techniques.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA used the Ford Foundation to funnel money into covert propaganda projects. Today the Ford-CIA relationship is more discreet, but the foundation is openly committed to serve the interests of US imperialism.
Ford Foundation trustee Afsaneh M. Beschloss is a former CEO of the Carlyle Group, which profits hugely from Middle-East investments. Previously she was a top executive of the World Bank, JP Morgan, and Shell.
Trustee Thurgood Marshall Jr. (a staffer for Al Gore and Bill Clinton) is a director of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison operator in the US, which has been charged by Amnesty International with practicing torture in its facilities.
PL’ers Taking Aim at Racism, War, Cutbacks at MLA Convention
The Modern Language Association of America (MLA) — professional organization of teachers of modern languages and literatures, and the country’s largest college teachers’ organization — has its annual meeting in San Francisco in late December. PLP professors and our friends have been involved in struggle in the MLA for almost 15 years.
College teaching in the U.S. faces a deepening crisis every year. State and Federal government support for public higher education is cut continuously. Consequently a decreasing percentage of college classes — now below 50% — are taught by full-time professors. Part-time faculty teach most classes. They literally do not receive a living wage; almost none get any benefits.
While fewer college teachers earn decent pay nor have any job security, still conservatives have attacked us for almost 20 years for "not being conservative enough." Professors — mainly part-timers but some full-timers — have been fired for being "too left" (meaning liberal), and the rest have been intimidated.
The sharpening contradictions revealed by the wars and the current economic crisis have caused many more people to question the ability of the system to provide even for those who’ve supported it until now. Many are ready for more serious discussions of alternatives, especially given the following realities:
• Whatever "liberal" intentions and wishes might be, the economy will speed recruitment to, and implementation of, national service which will feed the war machine (see CHALLENGE, 12/24);
• Obama, perceived initially as "anti-war," has appointed the same old people who promote war to top government positions, and he’s now warning that even in Iraq some combat troops will have to be stationed in the cities (i.e., not just on the bases);
• All these policies have an explicitly racist component — not only via the increased attacks on black, Latino and Asian people in the U.S. but also in the targets of U.S. military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the forces of war, super-exploitation, racism and economic depression create the basis for both economic and ideological attacks on college teaching. Budget cuts force universities to do what corporate sponsors want them to do. Thus, public universities do more and more research for businesses. Tuition rises, making public colleges and universities less and less affordable for the working class that pays for them through taxes. This affects all workers, but especially black and Latino workers.
PLP will work with our friends in the MLA’s Radical Caucus to protest attacks on immigrant workers; oppose the MLA’s invitation to racists and fascists like David Horowitz.
PLP’ers will also stress that good education — for workers and others — cannot exist in an exploitative capitalist society, and that its profit system cannot be reformed away.
We are determined to explicitly make anti-capitalism and anti-racism the "bottom line" of all our public statements in sessions and meetings.
Most of our friends believe that a "humane" capitalism, without imperialism and war, is possible. They think, and want to believe, that U.S. bosses "can be won" to making the U.S. like what they think Denmark or Switzerland are. This is impossible, but most of our colleagues "want it to be true." Obama and the Democrats, along with "Dump Bush!" revisionists — phony "communists" and "socialists" — are building those illusions, leading our class down the path to world war.
We must win more and more teachers to understanding that capitalism offers no hope, that they need to join PLP, to destroy capitalism with revolution for a communist world. We will circulate CHALLENGE among our friends and others and uphold elements of a communist position as best we can.
LETTERS
Hospital Workers Back Republic Sit-in
A PLP healthcare worker from Brooklyn called for fight backs against the banks and bosses at the December delegate assembly of 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East. The PLP delegate introduced a resolution to support the Republic strikers (see p. 4) by taking actions at Bank of America (BOA) branches close to our work locations and by sending a $1,000 donation from the local to the strikers. It was seconded by at least a half dozen other delegates and unanimously adopted by the delegate body.
The action by the delegates and the Republic workers stands in stark contrast to the 1199 SEIU leadership. New York State is facing a $15 billion deficit for the coming fiscal year. These sellouts are proposing $5 billion in budget cuts, $5 billion in tax hikes on the well-to-do, and $5 billion in federal aid to meet the deficit. Since half the state budget is used for Medicaid, over $2 billion in cuts to nursing homes, hospitals, and healthcare workers will mean closing some institutions and huge layoffs in others.
This is the bosses’ plan being imposed on the workers. We should be inspired by the example of the Republic workers’ sit-in — the largely Latino immigrant workforce, victims of blatant racism — and organize to join workers in militant struggle against all the bosses’ attempts to make us pay for their financial crisis. Healthcare workers need the communist leadership of Progressive Labor Party as found in Challenge. This means not only reading our paper, donating to sustain it, but joining study-action groups to learn and practice the science of communism and joining the PLP.
A Hospital Comrade
Recipe for Red Ideas: DESAFIO and Fish Soup
Every day, social and political activities are occurring here in Morazan, El Salvador. As PLP members dedicated to spreading communist education to the masses of workers, we do it through DESAFIO.
One day, we made fish soup, from fresh fish from our community. As a group of ten comrades — including some who’ve been Party members for many years — we invited and gave three DESAFIOS to two teachers for the first time. One teacher said, "We have to be consistent with the workers’ political line so that people don’t get confused by the electoral parties." The other teacher made the soup. As he was cooking, he said, "I feel happy being close to you comrades. I feel I’m doing political work united with students, teachers and farmworkers."
This activity lasted over four hours in an open field where we served the delicious fish soup with piñicos, a local vegetable. Such activities help us learn the workers’ ideas and the experiences of each one and how we can unite the working class.
The farmworkers’ club affirmed that PLP is the maximum expression of communist education for our class.
A Salvadoran PL’er
Capitalist Crisis: The Worst Tsunami
Capitalist crises are real tsunamis, as destructive and murderous as natural cataclysms. It would be too simplistic to hold responsible only speculators guilty of an ordinary slip-up in the system. The capitalist system today is in complete collapse, neither manageable nor reformable. Its anarchy stems from the fact that capitalists never produce to satisfy the needs of populations but to realize a profit.
But contrary to the rulers hopes, the working classes are not dead. The left in Haiti is an example. We have been able to resist despite efforts on all sides by open and hidden forces (including some from the international "left," such as Brazil), which have done all in their power to reduce our potential and our resources and indeed to wipe out the left.
Today, the international working class has an enormous responsibility in the face of this global capitalist crisis, an obligation to find solutions to avoid wage-earners becoming its victims yet again. The international left will make proposals to that end [our proposal is to build an international communist party, the PLP, to make an international revolution that ends capitalism once and for all — Ed.]. This crisis must be the last one in the history of an unjust economic and political regime, neither regulable nor reformable, whose death pangs have lasted too long.
Ti Karl, A Haitian Communist
REDEYE ON THEW NEWS
Wall Street Robbery and A World Gone Madoff
"How different, really, is Mr. Madoff’s tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?....[It] has claimed an ever-growing share of the nation’s income,…making the people who run the industry incredibly rich. Yet,…it looks as if much of the industry has been destroying value, not creating it.
"So how different is what Wall Street in general did from the Madoff affair?....The end result was the same (except for the house arrest)….
"We’re talking about a lot of money here….$400 billion a year in waste, fraud and abuse….
"What we’re looking at now are the consequences of a world gone Madoff." (Paul Krugman,. NY Times, Dec. 19, 2008)
U.S. ‘liberation’ brings atrocities
NYT 12/14- -— The archive, housed at the University of Michigan, holds documents… that reveal widespread killing and abuse by American troops in Vietnam…. The crimes are similar to those committed at Mai Lai in 1968. Yet …most Americans still think the violence was the work of "a few rogue units," when in fact "every major division that served in Vietnam was represented,"… When troops fight among a civilian population, in conflicts that extend for years, atrocities are almost bound to happen. …we rationalize it as isolated acts, as we did in Vietnam and as we’re doing with Abu Ghraib.
‘Law’= 11-year delay for union
NYT 12/13 — After an expensive and emotinal 15-year organizing battle, workers at the world’s largest hog-killing plant, the Smithfield Packing slaugherhouse in Tar Heel, N.C., have voted to unionize….The United Food and Commercial Workers lost the 1997 election because Smithfield broke the law by intimidating and firing union supporters…alter years of litigation,…The court ordered Smithfield to reinstale four union suppporters it found were iillegally fired.…The court also said Smithfield had engaged in other illegal activities.
Foreclosed? Who do we shoot?
NYT 12/21 — About old movies…I’ve been confronted with a disconcerting jolt of reality. Those silvery images don’t seem to belong to the past, but to the scary here and now….Consider "The Grapes of Wrath," which I’d come to think of ... as a slightly corny artifact. Early on in the film, a flashbacks shows Muley Graves, an Oklahoma dirt farmer, being dispossed by a well-fed gentleman with a fine car and a big cigar who disavows any personal responsibility. He’s just doing the bidding of the bank and the land company which is doing the bidding of the bank, and on the chain goes — all the way up to the fat cats back East. That no one is to blame puzzles poor Muley. "Well, who do we shoot?" he asks. A similar question may be forming in the minds of more than a few Americans in 2008.
‘Free Choice’ to sail vs. pirates
NYT 12/21 –– One-third of the world’s merchant sailors are from the Philippines....…
More than 100 Filipinos are being held by the Somali pirates who have made the Gulf of Aden a terrifying place to sail....…The added dangers did little to faze the men who showed up at the recruitment market...economic considerations almost always trump concerns for personal safety…with many familes here relying on remittances that émigrés send home, there has been no public outcry about the sailors.
