Obama to Workers: Sacrifice To Save Racist Capitalism

• Imperialist War Still On The Agenda
• Communist Analysis Crucial
• Patience, Urgency, Action On The Road Ahead
• How ‘Unpopular’ Becomes ‘Popular’
• Exposed The Truth About Vietnam War
• Election Heightens Rulers’ Assault On Workers
• Promoting Unity With The Enemy
• Workers Can Build A Movement Based On Our Class Interests

a href="#LA, Brooklyn PL’ers Attack Obamamania">"A, Brooklyn PL’ers Attack Obamamania

• Without Red Alternative Volunteers Could Become Network for Fascism

a href="#Don’t Be a Sucker for Racism">"nti-Immigrant Hysteria Pushed by Bosses, ICE and Politicians Murdered Marcelo Lucero

a href="#Boeing Strike Sold Out But PLP’s Politics Spread">"oeing Strike Sold Out But PLP’s Politics Spread

• The Struggle Continues

a href="#APHA Marchers:‘Down With Borders, Up With Health!’">AP"A Marchers:‘Down With Borders, Up With Health!’

a href="#Strikers, Indigenous People Battle Colombia’s Army, Cops">"trikers, Indigenous People Battle Colombia’s Army, Cops

Gaza: One Vast Israeli Concentration Camp

a href="#‘Wall-E’: Its ‘Anti-Consumerism’ Opens Door to Fascist ‘Solution’">‘Wall-E’: "ts ‘Anti-Consumerism’ Opens Door to Fascist ‘Solution’

LETTERS

Haiti: Kids Buried Alive by Capitalist Greed

Boeing Strike Brings Solidarity and Communist Class Consciousness

High Schoolers Backed Boeing Strikers

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

• FDR’s capitalism needed war
• U.S. finances right-wing terror
• Peru workers in violent demos
• Rulers solution: screw workers
• Non-Marxist economics is bull
• Imperialism needs Obama

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Obama to Workers:

Sacrifice to Save Racist Capitalism

Upon the election of Barack Obama, the bosses’ mass media has flooded us with the idea that his victory will somehow alleviate 400 years of racism in the U.S. But ever since the anti-racist rebellions of the 1960s and early ’70s, the bosses have learned how to use black politicians like Obama to push the same myth of "the end of racism." Yet, since then mass racist unemployment, police terror, imperialist wars, wage-cuts and plant closings have continued, and they won’t stop with Obama.

Yes, there was "dancing in the streets" when Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago. The cheering had barely died down when his first official act was laying off 3,000 city workers, 80% of them black. Within 48 hours of the Obama election, NYC Mayor Bloomberg (he of the $20 billion fortune) announced plans to lay off 5,000 city workers (a large number black and Latino), close scores of poor children’s dental clinics, raise the 8.375% sales tax another 3% (highest in history), cancel the scheduled $400 rebate to working-class homeowners while raising their property taxes 7%, hike personal income taxes 15% and put a six cents tax on every plastic bag used in every store!

These objective conditions of capitalism — "solving" the bosses’ economic crisis on the backs of the working class — cannot be wished away and will result in intensified attacks.

OBAMA’S CAPITALISM WILL WIPE OUT JOBS, HOMES, PENSIONS

Obama will not prevent those tens of thousands of GM and Chrysler workers, victims of a probable merger, from losing their jobs.

Millions of homeowners will still suffer foreclosures.

The stock market plunge will still wipe out billions of dollars in workers’ 401(k) pensions.

Obama will not alleviate the super-exploitation of millions of subcontractor workers all across the South and California.

His promise to accelerate Clinton’s placing of 100,000 cops on the streets will continue the racist and strike-breaking role that the police play for the bosses.

Obama — as all presidents before him, Democrat and Republican — will still carry out the Carter Doctrine: to use military force wherever in the world U.S. rulers’ control of oil is threatened (U.S. "vital interests").

IMPERIALIST WAR STILL ON THE AGENDA

Obama will still maintain the hundreds of U.S. military bases worldwide, ready to start up new wars (assuming he can get the troops to fight them) which will continue to kill millions of people as has already occurred under Clinton and Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama has advocated 20,000 more troops for Afghanistan (and an invasion of Pakistan?) to guarantee an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

While no doubt the rulers will orchestrate an Obama trip to Africa before "cheering crowds," it will not stop the profit-driven war for vital minerals in the Congo which has already killed 5,000,000 people.(see page 5)

And whenever some troops may be withdrawn from Iraq, Obama still has championed holding them "at the ready" in bases around the Mid-East and South Asia, to "guard against terrorists" — meaning anyone threatening the U.S. bosses’ oil empire. The NY Times (11/3) revealed that Obama and McCain advisors, along with ruling-class "think-tankers," have been jointly discussing the military option for Iran.

All this will be part of Obama’s "program" because his job — and the job of any U.S. president — is to defend the capitalist system that creates these problems, which is precisely why the ruling class put him in position to take the White House. This was no accident. (See box, page 5 on Obama’s "Dream Team".)

Already, in his acceptance speech, Obama was pushing "sacrifice" and "service" — which will soon become "national service," a back door to a military draft. This first black president is being touted as the "culmination of the civil rights movement" of the 1960s (even Bush referred to that the morning after the election!), conveniently omitting the nation-wide black rebellions and then the racism that followed over the last 40 years, in unemployment, health, housing, education and police brutality.

COMMUNIST ANALYSIS CRUCIAL

In the face of the ruling-class media onslaught, Progressive Labor Party has Marxism and its analysis of capitalist exploitation: how workers’ labor power that produces all value is turned into bosses’ profits; how the contradictions that are built into capitalism lead inevitably to periodic recessions, depressions, mass unemployment and imperialist wars between rivals competing for super-profits, resources and control of energy. Marxism is still as valid as ever.

Interestingly enough, in this presidential campaign, when Obama was nonsensically attacked as a "socialist" or "communist" it was linked to the idea of "sharing" and "equalizing wealth." While they were rebuffing this "accusation," no doubt millions think "sharing" is a pretty good idea, one cornerstone of communist ideas.

The rulers are already flooding us with the "demockracy" garbage, about the U.S. as "the beacon to the world." It’s PLP’s job to answer this, as we have all along, in exposing the real U.S. role in the world — all the mass murder in the wars the rulers have launched: Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Iraq and Afghanistan. And all the fascist dictatorships U.S. rulers have generated or sustained: the Shah’s Iran, Guatemala, Chile, the Congo — under Johnson and Nixon, Carter and Clinton as well as Reagan and the Bushes. We cannot allow people to forget the nature of this "beacon."

In the long run, and many times in the short run, PLP’s analysis of the contradictions of capitalism/imperialism is the only thing that makes sense to the working class. We should never underestimate this. Over the past 47 years, it is what has enabled us to make it through many tough times and come out stronger.

PATIENCE, URGENCY, ACTION ON THE ROAD AHEAD

All this will not be easy, as workers and others get sucked into the rulers’ billion-dollar propaganda machine. Facing off against "the-first-black-president" business may very well put us into some unpopular positions initially (see box on right). But PLP’s Marxist analysis and communist ideas, combined with the understanding of objective conditions, will present us with untold opportunities to convert any "unpopular" position into a mass understanding among the working class that capitalism — white, black or whatever — is our enemy.

Patience and urgency must be the guide. Patience with our friends and within mass organizations as the objective conditions unfold, and the urgency to advance PLP’s ideas at every turn.

We should organize to take action against the ruling-class onslaught, to figure out ways to answer their attacks. Fighting evictions and foreclosures; organizing rank-and-file unity of the employed and unemployed. There will be increasing millions thrown on the street. We must raise the issue in our unions and fight the misleadership tooth and nail. This can become a mass issue and unite workers all across our class, union and non-union, employed and unemployed, black, white and Latino. Working-class unity is a prerequisite for revolution. Class war is our answer to the rulers’ "all-class unity."

This class struggle must be linked to the only solution to capitalism’s horrors: communist revolution. The absolute precondition for that goal is building the Party needed to lead it, the PLP.

It will not be easy. But as has been said, "Revolution is no tea party."J

HOW ‘UNPOPULAR’ BECOMES ‘POPULAR’

Exposing and opposing Obama and the ruling class he serves may not be "popular" at first. But in our 47-year history, PLP has never shrunk from upholding principled positions that may be "unpopular." And we not only have been proven correct eventually but emerged stronger for it.

Before even being a Party, in 1964, two years into the Progressive Labor Movement, when the Harlem Rebellion erupted, we were the only group supporting and encouraging that uprising. While now such support might be viewed as "automatic," we were opposed by all the reformist organizations, the preachers, the "Communist" Party, the press and TV and the full power of the State.

All those forces were calling for the rebels to "cool it." The rulers banned our demonstrations with injunctions (which we broke), sent us to jail, invoked a Grand Jury witch-hunt, tailed us, bugged our phones and so on. But our "unpopular" position mushroomed into huge rebellions throughout the country over the next four years. The masses ratified our position.

EXPOSED THE TRUTH ABOUT VIETNAM WAR

Not only were we the first to demonstrate against the Vietnam War, but we took the lead against the liberal, "Negotiate, stop-the-bombing" crowd, labeling it an imperialist war with nothing to "negotiate." We dared criticize the Ho Chi Minh leadership for not fighting for communist workers’ power but rather for "national liberation" and alliance with the sellout Soviet Union.

We were lambasted — "who are you to criticize the leadership of workers and peasants fighting in the jungles of Vietnam." But we stuck to our guns while organizing in the military for class war against the brass and solidarity with those Vietnamese workers and peasants. Our "unpopular" position exposed that mis-leadership which has now welcomed Ford and Nike into Vietnam to exploit workers on $2 a day.

PLP was one of very few to take the "unpopular" position of indicting the Soviet and Chinese Party leaderships for selling out the revolutions. Again, we were proven correct as these two fake "communist" parties sank into the swamp of full-blown capitalism. We exposed this in 1966 in the Soviet case (23 years before its so-called "demise") and in the early 1970s in China’s case, long before they were welcomed into the capitalist camp.

None of these positions came easily, although they may appear so now. But the Party emerged stronger, advancing communist ideology against the socialist return to capitalism, against the maintenance of the capitalist wage system, against the bosses’ nationalism, against the cult of the individual. PLP produced the ideas of one Party/one class, of fighting directly for communism. That is the only solution for the working class.

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President-elect Barack Obama has emerged as a propaganda machine for the U.S. ruling class, calling on the working class to "sacrifice" for the survival of capitalism while doling out nearly a trillion dollars to the banks, insurance companies and failing corporations. Thus, U.S. rulers scored a significant, but temporary, win over class consciousness on November 4th.

Barack Obama moved 63 million workers, students and professionals, including record numbers of black and young voters, towards capitalist "solutions" for the economic crises and imperialist wars that capitalism itself creates. Booms and busts are part and parcel of an inherently unstable profit system. Self-interested financiers constantly tout worthless "good-as-gold" instruments, like subprime mortgage bundles, credit default swaps and other "securities," to cheat one another and the public. Houses of cards inevitably collapse. And ceaseless worldwide competition among national ruling classes for markets, labor, and resources, especially oil, sparks ever-intensifying military conflict, that ultimately goes global.

As Obama’s choice of advisors shows (see "Dream Team", page 5), he intends, as every U.S. president since Washington has, to make workers pay for rulers’ problems. With his supposed all-class mandate, Obama hopes to enact anti-worker policies more freely than Bush, an obvious enemy of labor.

PROMOTING UNITY WITH THE ENEMY

Stealing a line from Nazi Germany, Obama promotes the notion, fatal to our class, that we’re all in this mess together. Nazis at Hitler’s 1930s’ rallies shouted "one people, one nation, one leader." At his election night media event in Chicago, banker-backed Obama spouted a similar ruling-class credo: "We rise or fall as one nation, as one people." So we must "sacrifice" to save the bosses’ nation. A multi-racial, largely working-class crowd cheered repeatedly, enthusiastically and illogically, "Yes we can."

The U.S. rulers, whom Obama serves, seek to restore profits at home through racist layoffs and across-the-board pay-cuts, modeled after Big Auto’s halving of younger, mainly black and Latin, workers’ pay packages last year. Replacing outright foreclosure with forcible renegotiation of mortgages on terms favorable to the banks forms another part of liberal Obama’s domestic assault on workers. He also seeks to lure or compel working-class youth into the expanded military that U.S. rulers need for their widening wars. Pakistan and Syria are the newest battlegrounds. Iran, Russia and China loom on the horizon.

The president-elect promises young, increasingly unemployed workers a college education if they live through a stint in the armed forces. But joblessness alone may not provide the 91,000 new troops Obama demands or the millions that war with China or Russia will require. That’s why a second tier of New Deal-style liberals like Robert Reich stands behind the bankers in Obama’s camp. Reich & Co. propose a large-scale program of federal jobs at rock-bottom wages to rebuild infrastructure and the military. If that doesn’t work, there’s always the draft.

WORKERS CAN BUILD A MOVEMENT BASED ON OUR CLASS INTERESTS

Obama’s victory, amid recession and war and the anti-worker onslaught it accompanies, constitutes a real setback for our class. But history shows that red-led workers can turn just such developments into their opposite and build a mass movement against capitalism. In the depths of the 1930s depression, the old Communist Party led militant sit-down strikes, as at GM in Flint, Michigan, in 1936-37, that fought layoffs and pay-cuts. It also organized thousands to physically block foreclosures and evictions. Unfortunately, that party failed to link these struggles to the need for communist revolution as the only solution.

The anti-Vietnam War movement of the 1960s, in which PLP played a leading role, mobilized millions. The Party exposed virtually every major university’s and company’s role in the U.S. war machine and organized strikes, sit-ins, walkouts, teach-ins and other aggressive actions against it. Learning from the old CP’s errors, it recruited many to a revolutionary outlook.

We can reinvigorate our working-class, communist Party today by reviving struggles like these while correcting the mistaken class politics that robbed them of revolutionary promise. The "C"P’s World War II era "United Front Against Fascism" encouraged allying with "good" anti-Hitler imperialists, like U.S. and British rulers.

Nationalism, which boosted local, usually non-white, capitalist bosses, turned sincere anti-war 1960s’ activists into a cheering section for capitalist misleaders like Nelson Mandela. Under the latter’s presidency, unions were told not to strike while his maintenance of capitalist exploitation under black bosses increased unemployment and poverty.

Within the U.S., nationalism enables workers’ enemy Obama and war criminals Colin Powell and Condi Rice to help preserve the profit system. Powell defended the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and directed the slaughter in the first Gulf War. (See CHALLENGE, 11/12)

Progressive Labor Party categorically rejects a united front with bosses, nationalism and all other forms of class collaboration. But correct ideology is only one prerequisite for a successful revolutionary communist party. Another is leading effective, inspiring, sharp class struggles — schools for revolutionary communist practice. The plunging economy, escalating imperialist warfare and the new Obama regime present our Party with opportunities to grow qualitatively.

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The emerging "Team Obama" boasts many of U.S. capitalism’s most vicious racist job-, wage- and benefit-cutters and imperialist warmakers. Economic hit-men like former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Clinton’s Treasury-Secy. Robert Rubin and his assistant Larry Summers, and Clinton’s NY Fed chairman Timothy Geithner comprise Obama’s money trust.

Their policies directly raised unemployment to levels unseen since the 1930s, dismantled Welfare and helped engineer Wall Street’s "restructuring," which this year alone has cost 1.2 million workers’ jobs. Government figures show 21.2 million workers out of work or unable to find full-time jobs. (NY Times, 10/8) Meanwhile, executives of failed firms haggle over the size of their multi-million-dollar "golden parachutes."

John Podesta heads Obama’s transition team. The lobbying firm he founded fronts for BP, Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, and other cogs in the Pentagon war machine. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s new chief of staff, served in the neo-Nazi Israeli Defense Force during the genocide of the first Gulf War.

The Rockefeller wing of the ruling class, expecting potential opposition to capitalism’s putting the screws on the working class, has been planning Obama’s rise for some time. As CHALLENGE has reported, Rockefeller money sent Obama to Harvard and then to a professorship at the U. of Chicago and then to the "electric" speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention which gave him the national spotlight. It was then that he started pushing the rulers’ "all-class unity" ("We’re not blue states or red states; we’re the United States"), now his watchword. In Obama the rulers have the perfect guy to champion this.

According to the NY Times (10/5), Obama’s forces began organizing this campaign the day after he was elected to the Senate from Illinois two years ago. They figured out how to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, outspending McCain four to one.

a name="Students Open to LA PL’ers’ Exposé of Obama, Capitalism, Draft"></a"Students Open to LA PL’ers’ Exposé of Obama, Capitalism, Draft

LOS ANGELES, CA., November 4 — Today, election day, several black and Latino high school students delivered a Power Point presentation to over 300 of their peers, about half black and half Latino. They gave an historical, economic and political context to the U.S. election, particularly related to oil wars, and revealed the "hidden agenda" of the two candidates.

The presenters narrated and led discussions in four different sessions, getting better each time. Students were filled with anger and a thirst for answers when informed about Obama’s plan for youth to enlist for "National Service"; about old Clinton and Bush advisors now working for Obama and McCain; and about the inter-imperialist wars that will continue with either candidate.

Discussion and debate followed the presentation, also involving several teachers. Students then understood what’s behind the rising cost-of-living and how the war is causing school budget cuts, tax hikes and a collapsing economy.

One student raised eyebrows, saying, "Well if Obama is not fit, if McCain is not fit, then who is?" One presenter replied that, "No one is fit because it’s a question of the system and we know for a fact that capitalism is not a system fit for working-class people."

In another session a teacher declared, "I respectfully disagree with many of the points of the presenters. I think that Obama will bring positive change, especially after so many heads of states from other countries have expressed their support." Then another teacher commented that she understood the presentation as, "No matter who wins the election, the next President will have to mobilize the country for a bigger war. The danger is that Obama will try to convince an entire generation to commit to patriotism, to defend the U.S. government’s interests and to sacrifice for the American empire." Many students hissed, saying "not me."

It was clear from the discussions that after hearing a class analysis, an explanation of the nature of capitalism and imperialism’s need to wage war, youth and workers will not be easily swayed by patriotism, no matter which ruling-class spokesperson tries. As one black presenter put it, "Obama is just a shirt that they have put on because it is in style."

With this event we’ve not only developed our leadership but also will be able to increase our CHALLENGE networks. We realized that many young people are open to the anti-racist, revolutionary communist ideas and struggles found in our newspaper. Through political, ideological and class struggle and the fight to secure CHALLENGE networks, we can alert the working class to the rulers’ plans for wider war, leading to World War III, as well as help prepare our class for the long fight for revolution, and working-class state power.

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LOS ANGELES, CA, Nov. 4 — PLP’ers and friends went to three colleges with CHALLENGES, leaflets and the PL election pamphlets to offer students an alternative to capitalist elections — communism. The elections were on everyone’s mind and most seemed open to hearing that the source of our problems is capitalism and that Obama won’t solve them.

One comrade talked to a group of students about how Obama has positioned himself to appeal to the best sentiments of people. But the reality of who he is and who he represents is quite different. We mentioned that Goldman Sachs, etc., supports Obama and that both he and McCain are supported by capitalists and carry out their interests, not those of the workers.

The spirit of service and sacrifice which Obama is calling for really means that the young people who supported him will be the ones called on to fight imperialist wars. Obama has pledged to increase the army by 92,000 troops and send 20,000 to Afghanistan.

A young man gestured to his friend and said, "That’s just what we were talking about." His friend said he didn’t trust either the Democrats or the Republicans and he would rather vote for a Freedom and Peace candidate. Our comrade said that elections wouldn’t bring the change we needed, that it would take a communist revolution. He said it was worth thinking about and everyone there took our literature.

In several other conversations, mostly young black people said they had been thinking along the same lines, or that they agreed with what we said. They were particularly worried about Obama instituting the draft in order to field the troops needed for the war in Afghanistan, and saw the call to sacrifice and service as a code word for the draft.

We saw only one group of students who were sort of cheerleaders for Obama and didn’t want to talk to us. "You have to believe," said one older woman. We told her that we believe in the working class, that history has taught us not to believe in the Democratic Party. Despite being unconvinced, she took a copy of the election pamphlet.

One black student said, "My grandmother and I have been talking about that same thing (how Obama and McCain both support wider wars and bailing out the banks). Yes, I’d like to get together with you guys."

The overwhelming majority of young people we talked to were open to our ideas. Three people gave us their contact information to come to a study group and future activities. We distributed about 600 leaflets, 200 CHALLENGES and about 150 PLP election pamphlets.

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Nov. 4 –– PLP maintained a constant presence in the lives of our close friends and the broader working-class community today, warning of a future of more war and more fascism amid the euphoria that surrounded the election of Barack Obama. The highlight of the day was a paper sale at a main transportation hub in central Brooklyn where we distributed 300 CHALLENGES and over 500 leaflets about the election and the economic crisis.

The energy our group brought to Crown Heights flowed from a day when all our forces, including several high school youth who have grown much closer to the Party over the last year, talked politics with our peers all day long; in classes, on break and at home.

Our membership, new and experienced, fought for the line that Barack Obama’s popularity represents a greater danger for the working class than any movement the Bush/McCain crowd of open fascists could ever build. As the day wore on into the evening, several of our comrades hosted socials or were invited out to watch the election returns.

Even amid the hype, and among friends with whom we share deep agreement around anti-racist politics, we were able to win them to recognize that the "change" this election will bring will prove to be insignificant. The harder part is convincing them that things will get worse, but we are working on it!

We reminded our friends and ourselves that war in the Mid-East will widen, that workers will pay the price for this economic crisis, and that racist police attacks like the killing of Sean Bell will occur again and again as long as we live under this brutal capitalist system.

The enthusiasm for Obama, while rooted for many in an honest belief that racism took a defeat in this election, is bound to fade as war, depression and fascism intensify. It remains our task, wherever we have influence and on as many levels as possible, to offer careful analysis of the developing world situation and present our Party and the fight for communism as the only solution.

Without Red Alternative Volunteers Could Become Network for Fascism

Barack Obama’s loyalty to his capitalist paymasters on the "bailout for billionaires" and his call for wider war in Afghanistan/Pakistan reveal his true colors.

But by far the most dangerous aspect of this election is Obama’s bringing to the White House the biggest, best organized, fastest-acting grass-roots army in the history of presidential campaigning. In a text message sent out minutes before his election-night acceptance speech, Obama told followers, "We have a lot to do to get our country back on track and I’ll be in touch about what comes next."

The new president’s minions include 3.1 million Internet-linked donors and volunteers. The most active of the volunteers include the million registered on mybarackobama.com, a social network that the campaign established to communicate needs, events and assignments to volunteers. Participation and fund-raising totals were calculated and there’s a numeric score for each volunteer’s success.

This volunteer network will be asked to exert pressure on Congressmen who oppose Obama’s legislation, among other tasks. This mass support for concentrated power in the hands of the president, if it takes hold, will make Bush’s fascist executive power grab look inept and tame. We will "love our dictator."

The campaign maintained extensive and precise digital records, allowing the new president a zip-code by zip-code map of "loyal soldiers." No matter their individual intentions, they will be used to build a base for a program of more war and more fascism.

No doubt thousands of Obama-ites think they’ll push the president in a more "progressive" direction. We must be among those masses to offer them an alternative. We must go to the January 20th inauguration in D.C. with CHALLENGE. We must step up the fight against racist unemployment, police terror, foreclosures, imperialist war, cutbacks, and bring workers, soldiers and students our communist politics. This is the only way to turn the dangerous illusions many people have in Obama into opportunities to build a communist alternative.

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Anti-Immigrant Hysteria Pushed by Bosses, ICE and Politicians Murdered Marcelo Lucero

A racist gang’s murder of Marcelo Lucero, a 38-year old Ecuadorian immigrant, in Suffolk County, Long Island, is the logical extension of the anti-immigrant racism pushed by politicians, ICE (the immigration police) constant deportation raids, the media (such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs) and the government’s construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Mr. Lucero was walking with a friend near a Long Island Railroad station, when a gang of 16 to 17-year-olds, jumped from a car and attacked the two men. Jeffrey Conroy, 17, the leader of the racist gang, plunged a knife into Marcelo, killing him. The gang, all from the same H.S., told the cops they "went out to hunt for Mexicans."

This racist crime occurred just a few days after Barack Obama’s election, which many claim marks "the end of racism" in the U.S. Racism won’t end no matter what the color of the politicians who run the country. Racism is an integral part of this capitalist society, which was born with slavery, the massacre of the Native Americans and the Manifest Destiny policy which launched a war that stole a good chunk of land from Mexico (California and the entire Southwest).

Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that the number of hate groups targeting Latinos and immigrants has increased. They’re inspired by the Gestapo-type raids carried out by ICE, arresting thousands of workers in plants like the Iowa meat-processor and others nation-wide. These raids separate children from their parents. Undocumented immigrants are forced to carry tags resembling the yellow stars the Nazis forced Jews to wear in Hitler’s Germany. Mr. Conroy, the killer of Mr. Lucero, even has a tattoo of a small swastika.

As the economic crisis increasingly hits U.S. capitalism, the politicians and ICE target undocumented immigrants as scapegoats, while ALL workers are forced to suffer mass unemployment, wage- and benefit- cutbacks, home foreclosures, etc. This is an old divide-and-rule tactics rulers have used since the beginning of time.

In Long Island itself, racism against immigrants has intensified over the last few years. Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy has empowered racist mobs. Last year, Levy asked County cops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to raid homes where undocumented immigrants were believed to reside. Many people were routed from their homes and ordered to disperse without regard for where they could go.

The case of Orlan Enrique Moreno-Zavala, 22, a Honduran man found dead in February 2007 in the woods near Huntington Station, became a symbol of Levy’s abusive policies.

Lucero’s killers come from an area close to Farmingville, L.I., where attacks on immigrants is nothing new. In 2000, two Mexican day-laborers were kidnapped and brutally beaten, and in 2003 five teenagers set fire to a Mexican family’s home in Farmingville, destroying it.

On January 21, 2009, the day after Obama’s coronation, immigrant rights groups are calling for a march in Washington. D.C., to demand real immigration reform. But relying on Obama or on a Democratic Party-run Congress to do anything different than the racist hysteria built by the Bush administration is a deadly mistake. Now more than ever, the bosses need racism to super-exploit all workers to make us pay for their financial crisis and expanding wars. They aim to divide us so we don’t unite and fight back against their massive economic attacks.

We in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) call on all workers — black, Latino, white and Asian — to unite to fight mass unemployment, foreclosures, racist terror and social service cutbacks. Democratic Governor Paterson, Republican Mayor Bloomberg and all NY State politicians are united in imposing massive cutbacks and hikes in everything from tolls to subway fares. As communists, we in PLP believe that a system that promotes racist killings, war and mass unemployment, while bailing out bankers with trillions, must be smashed.

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SEATTLE, WA., Nov. 1 — "That paper better say reject it," said a Machinist to CHALLENGE sellers on his way to the final Boeing contract vote. He was happy to see our headline calling the sellout contract an attack on all workers. He expected our Party to take the side of the working class no matter what the popular sentiment at the time. Most agreed it was a sellout, but didn’t see any alternative after striking more than eight weeks. In the end the contract was accepted, ending the strike of 27,000 machinists.

This action began two months ago with a two-day rebellion against the gang-up of the company, the government and their union lackeys. The union leadership proved that they have the bosses’ interests in mind by asking everyone to go to work, despite an 87% strike-vote. Angry, militant workers responded by chasing them from the union meeting. Leading up to the rebellion and beginning of the strike, "Rolling Thunder," a campaign of disruption where workers bang their tools against the factory machines, could be heard throughout the plant.

The pro-capitalist union leaders set us up from the beginning. The union’s contract slogan, "It’s our time, this time" fed the illusion that those of us left in the traditional union plants could force significant concessions from the bosses on our own. To add insult to injury, the misleaders said they were blindsided by the worldwide economic meltdown that undercut their "bargaining power." Thousands of CHALLENGE readers were not so blindsided.

Their written pitch to sell the contract bragged, "We made significant gains with respect to…the ability to help guide this Company into the future." They continue to argue that the way out of periodic capitalist crises is to give more concessions to [union] workers. In essence, they say the unions (and their endorsed politicians) can save capitalism from the greedy politicians.

Years ago, Karl Marx proved that capitalism would always suffer periodic crises of overproduction, no matter what the wages of workers. Worldwide depression is built into a profit system that can’t pay workers the value of what they produce. The only way for the capitalists to resolve this contradiction is to destroy the productive capacity of their international rivals: in other words, war and world war.

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney made this perfectly clear in his now infamous memo during the fifth week of the strike. Citing foreign competitors and the "global financial meltdown," he admitted U.S. imperialism could not sustain decent wages, benefits and job security. He called for an end to these "repeated work stoppages." Within days of the contract acceptance, he vowed never to "go through this [a strike] again." This is a clear indication that the bosses are going to intensify their attacks on the working class.

Building CHALLENGE Networks Throughout the Strike

As the bosses’ system is shocked by internal contractions and threatened by imperialist competitors, we must turn every strike, big or small, into a school for communism, by intensifying the class struggle, promoting anti-racist, international working class solidarity. A highlight of building working-class solidarity, was when a pair of Boeing strikers traveled to Los Angeles to present a "thank you" (signed by fellow strikers) to non-union subcontractors for their support.

The trip was made possible because a Party-led group of strikers met every week during the strike. We struggled with each other at these meetings to leave behind the illusions spread by the hacks. Communist revolution was offered as the only answer to capitalism’s inevitable crises, the attacks on our economic well-being and the inevitability of racism and war.

As the strike progressed, we produced flyers, solidarity letters and blog posts. We argued in this literature for mass pickets and solidarity rallies. In addition, we visited thirty-five other strikers to discuss how our communist politics related to this strike and beyond.

The mass sales of the paper — and the network sales that have been going on for many years — laid the basis for these meetings. They also encouraged another comrade — who spent many hours distributing PLP literature to strikers — to organize for worker-student unity in his campus organization. Prior to and during the strike, over 40,000 PLP flyers and 18,000 CHALLENGEs were distributed and sold to strikers in the Seattle area, L. A. subcontractors and UAW members at Boeing’s Long Beach, CA. plant.

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

The struggle to consolidate and expand the modest revolutionary gains made during the strike is our next task. Although the strike is over, Boeing workers are incredibly angry with the sellout contract and there exists the potential for more action. We will continue to build our network of CHALLENGE readers, as well as building unity with sub-contractor workers in Seattle and L.A. Very importantly, we will push for unity between the commercial workers who went on strike and those in war production, who continued to work. By doing so, we can expand the class struggle and win more workers to the idea that revolution is the only solution!

a name="Profs Go To ‘Strike School’ on Stella D’Oro Picket Line"></a>"rofs Go To ‘Strike School’ on Stella D’Oro Picket Line

Communists know industrial workers’ labor is the major source of bosses’ profits and, with red ideas, the natural leaders of workers’ fight-backs and revolutions. Education workers like myself need to link up with more strategically placed industrial workers to fight part-timers’ exploitation, anti-strike laws, racist tuition hikes or imperialist war recruiters.

So I and other professors in my union went to support the striking bakers at the union-busting Stella D’Oro, to bring them PLP’s ideas, and introduce other profs to workers in struggle. The Stella D’Oro strikers taught me plenty.

Lesson 1: Unlike many of my professional colleagues, workers stick together when the chips are down. The 135 strikers are solid — in nine weeks not a single scab from their ranks, workers of many backgrounds, senior and junior, women and men. One older South Asian worker was deeply moved by the solidarity of the young, mostly Latino/a workers, who refused to scab despite being there only one year. It made him determined to stay out, not so much for himself as for the next generation of workers. Those are feelings that help make everyone here a potential revolutionary.

Lesson 2: Class consciousness is alive. Though weaker now, workers feel it when things get tough. Members of their sister Local 3 brought a big cake they had baked for the strikers. A Verizon worker who refused to cross the line returned with ten pizzas and drinks for the picketers’ lunch. (My friend also brought two pizzas. And the picketers gave us food and drink, too, as we leafleted and talked with them.) A Local 3 electrician also refused to cross the line; the boss’s problem went unfixed. My own union’s members gave $450.

Lesson 3: Workers are open to communist thinking. As communists we tried to heighten class consciousness. The strikers agreed with our suggestion to leaflet nearby industrial sites to win those workers to their coming rally. In two hours we had MTA bus drivers, Time-Warner Cable electricians and Montefiore hospital workers coming to the rally!

The other side of class consciousness is hatred of the cops — who harass the pickets and chase motorists for their day’s ticket quota — and, of course, hatred of scabs. Professors were impressed hearing workers giving scabs hell. I asked my friend to relate how miners he worked with had fought scabs and also won some to stop.

Lesson 4: Many New York workers have family ties to the CUNY colleges, the basis of a real worker-student-teacher alliance. At Stella D’Oro almost every worker I asked had a nephew, a daughter, a friend, among the 400,000 CUNY students. It’s important to be there alongside our students’ families in struggle. We need to fight harder for the worker-student-professional alliance — a PLP idea — in the CUNY union.

On the line we learn it’s not as hard as some claim. There are many ways to broaden friendships made with strikers. We can’t build a revolutionary movement or recruit many intellectuals to PLP without this direct alliance with industrial workers.

Lesson 5: Workers think straight, figure things out, and know what has to be done. A strike is a great "school for revolution" (Bolshevik leader Lenin’s phrase). Many bakers have good political ideas far beyond the immediate strike issues — war, the elections and of course the bailout. And they’re open to the Left. One striker said the bosses actually did nothing in the plant; he saw that we don’t need the bosses at all, that workers can run everything.

Two leaders on the line were curious about our thoughts on the elections. They had little faith in the bosses’ two parties. One said war expenditures were part of the economic crisis (try to find that on CNN). He related a detail we hadn’t heard about, Iceland’s borrowing from Russia.

As a communist teacher, I was eager right then to start a "sidewalk seminar" to hear more of their ideas. It would have been one of my best classes, as both learner and teacher! The next step is discussing CHALLENGE.

One creep in my union said we shouldn’t do much to support this strike, since these little struggles were "a dime a dozen." Hogwash! Every worker in struggle is a valued part of that age-old tradition that ultimately leads to communist revolution. The Stella D’Oro line is full of such lessons. If you live in New York, go to 237th and Broadway, lend your support and bring CHALLENGE. They’re there 24/7, and for all of us.

Still Learning

a name="APHA Marchers:‘Down With Borders, Up With Health!’"></">AP"A Marchers:‘Down With Borders, Up With Health!’

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 30 — In the midst of a capitalist financial meltdown and days before the presidential elections, some 13,000 people attended the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual conference. In line with its theme of "Public Health Without Borders." The conference was held in this city near the U.S./Mexico border with Tijuana, the most populated border crossing in the world.

And yet, aside from slogans and location, there was little mention of the racist attacks on immigrant workers on this side of the border or the wage-slave conditions of workers in the Maquiladoras on the other. At least that was the case until a contingent of PLP health workers started raising the political issues more sharply.

It was clear when an anti-racist resolution advanced by activists was quickly rejected by the APHA leadership that they had no plans of even acknowledging the racist attacks on immigrant workers. Not unlike the decline of the anti-war movement or immigrant rights movement, or struggle around the Jena 6, what prior struggles that existed in APHA were virtually replaced with the movement to get Barack Obama into the White House. However, our Party contingent, consisting of veteran and younger comrades, was able to organize a couple of events that culminated in a march and demonstration from the convention center to the Federal Building.

Just in the past year, racist attacks on immigrant workers have intensified with increased raids and deportations by the ICE (the Immigration Gestapo). There are now over 300,000 immigrant workers held in detention centers throughout the U.S. which is already more than double the number of Japanese interned in concentration camps during WWII. Immigrant workers are dying in these detention centers as health care is being delayed and/or denied. Our resolution highlighted these racist public health attacks on our immigrant brothers and sisters and called on APHA to make a public statement opposing this racist injustice.

One APHA caucus had originally planned a bus tour of the Maquiladoras in Tijuana but was forced to change plans due to the increasing gang violence. Instead they held a small forum at a community college in the area. At that gathering we passed out copies of our resolution and called on the group to organize a protest at the border wall. The leadership of the group dismissed our suggestion but others supported it. With the leadership of a young comrade and a young doctor we met there, we were able to use the next few days to organize in our various workshops to build for our "radicals breakfast" as well as the march on the Federal Building.

At the opening plenary, California comrades helped us distribute a PLP flier stating that, "as public health people, we are right in the middle of a crossfire. In our clinics and hospitals we can see how capitalism’s inequality spreads sickness and death. Today’s keynote speaker, Michael Marmot, has written a great deal about the ‘social determinants of health.’ The ‘Unnatural Causes’ PBS series makes the point clearly that inequality is making us sick. Yet none of the critics of this savage inequality will name the real cause. Much is said about the web of causation, but nobody will name the spider. The spider is capitalism. It cannot be tamed. It must be destroyed!" CHALLENGE was sold outside the plenary and distributed to our friends hand to hand. Another flier exposed Obama’s connections with Wall Street bankers and warmongers like Colin Powell.

At our "radical breakfast" one young black woman we met the day before exemplified the younger public health activists we need to attract in larger numbers. Her impassioned account of fighting for the health needs of her Mexican immigrant clients in a small southern city was inspiring to hear. Other friends, including colleagues and CHALLENGE readers met at earlier conferences, joined in the discussion about how to build a more activist group in APHA.

At our demo, we organized over 20 people, multiracial, young and old, that marched and chanted "Public Health Means, We Got to Fight Back" and "Down with Borders, Up with Health!" We met two young hotel union organizers that joined and brought their bullhorns to amplify our message. Overall, it was a small and yet spirited group, which wants to continue these actions in the upcoming conferences. We also met many others before and after the march, exchanged contact information and forged new relationships that we hope to develop over the year. More importantly, it also energized our veteran comrades and we’ll be planning more events to strengthen our work in our locations, like the fight against 500 new layoffs in the Cook County Health System. This work needs to intensify as the deepening economic crisis and expanding wars intensify the attacks on public health and safety-net hospitals where many of us work.

a name="Bosses’ Dogfight Over Congo Wealth Threatens New Genocide">">"osses’ Dogfight Over Congo Wealth Threatens New Genocide

On Nov. 7, African leaders held a summit meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, demanding an immediate cease-fire to the latest fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands have fled the Eastern Congo due to the fight between government soldiers, UN forces and General Nkunda, who’s supported by Rwanda’s rulers and bosses. The fighting is much more than an extension of the Hutu-Tutsi clashes that led to the massacre in Rwanda in the mid-1990s.

Francois Grignon of the International Crisis Group explains, "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now are beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has used the army to support Hutu militias who fled to Eastern Congo from Rwanda. They perpetrated the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in the 1990s and now also control lucrative mines there. Thus, the fight is for control of the region’s mineral wealth.

However, there’s also an imperialist dogfight over Congo’s cobalt and other key minerals for weapons and in modern technology. In the Walikale region, the Rwandan army forced local communities to mine coltan, a mineral vital to mobile phones and laptop computers. In 2000, coltan was earning Rwanda $20 million a month.

The fight over Congo’s wealth already killed over 5.2 million people during the 1997-2003 civil war following the overthrow of long-time CIA puppet dictator Mobutu. Then Angola and Zimbabwe sent forces to fight alongside the new Congolese government against the armies of Rwanda and Uganda in what became known as "Africa’s world war."

Today, China is heavily involved in the Congo and the rest of Africa, including oil-rich Sudan, at the expense of U.S., British and French imperialist interests.

Two years ago, President Kabila announced plans to rebuild Congo’s infrastructure. Denied loans or aid for this from the U.S. or British governments, Kabila turned to China. (Washington is mainly taken up with costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.)

Chinese rulers, needing Congo’s minerals and other raw materials, have given the Kabila government $8 billion for infrastructure projects. Its import-export bank has pledged money for Congolese road and rail construction. A new Chinese-built railway is proposed to link Katanga (another mineral-rich province) to the coast. (In the 1960s, the CIA financed Col. Tshombe’s Katanga secessionist movement, opposing the then Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who the CIA eventually assassinated.) Major hydro-electric projects are in their initial stages.

Capitalism’s global economic meltdown will surely sharpen all the contradictions in the Congo. The commodity price drop might have the same effect as the collapse of world prices for coffee (Rwanda’s main export) which impoverished much of the population and sharpened ethnic rivalry. This led to the Rwanda genocide in the 1990s as local bosses and politicians fought to control the shrinking economic pie. Today a similar mixture is bound to lead to more "ethnic cleansing" and a wider civil war.

Local bosses are fighting for control of the region’s mineral wealth to compensate for any losses in the world market. U.S. rulers have established Africom, a Pentagon command center for Africa, aimed mainly at China, in an attempt to re-gain control on the continent using the military.

For African workers and their allies, the only way out of this hellhole is to unite along class lines, breaking with all the ethnic-based warlords and bosses, and forging a revolutionary communist leadership. It’s a long hard task, but is the only road for real liberation.

a name="Strikers, Indigenous People Battle Colombia’s Army, Cops">">"trikers, Indigenous People Battle Colombia’s Army, Cops

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, November 6 — More than 19,000 sugar cane cutters, subcontracted by co-ops in the Cauca Valley, have been striking since September 15 in eight sugar mills. The workers, represented by several unions, are demanding decent wages and working conditions, permanent jobs (ending subcontracting), the right to unionize and elimination of the ecological and social harm caused by the production of agrofuel (ethanol).

The bosses have rejected the workers’ demands and are supported by the government, which has militarized the mills. Cops and paramilitary forces have attacked the strikers with tear gas and rubber bullets, using military tanks armed with water cannons. Several strike leaders have had their lives threatened. The bosses’ government and media have labeled the strikers "subversive," a death sentence in Colombia.

Boss Carlos Ardila Lülle, who controls 80% of the sugar and ethanol business, is also connected with Coca Cola, Nestle, Postobonm Bavaria Brewery and RCN Radio-TV network. These corporations are heavily involved in using death squads to kill militant unionists and other activist workers.

A national march by 22,000 Indigenous people (see CHALLENGE, 11/12) opposed the fascist repression and land seized from Indigenous communities by landlords using death squads. These landlords raise cash crops on stolen land — African palm, sugar cane and poppy plants for cocaine. The army and cops attacked the march, killing several people and injuring dozens more, but the struggle continues.

Initially, President Uribe — the U.S.’s most loyal ally in South America — denied the attack, but then admitted it and accused the marchers of being "infiltrated by guerrillas." He aims to bust this struggle as was done with the 43-day judicial workers’ strike, who were also threatened by death squads and mass firings.

The Uribe government is so discredited that, after claiming several youths recently killed were guerrillas who died in clashes with the army and cops, finally admitted the truth: these youths were executed in cold blood so the government could claim it was "killing guerrillas." The scandal has forced several high-ranking military officers, including Colombian army chief General Montoya, to resign. This is the kind of "democratic" governments U.S. bosses are backing in Latin America.

We in PLP have been modestly participating in some of these struggles, discussing our communist politics with workers and youth. But we must do more. While such struggles are good, they’re not enough. Capitalism cannot be reformed or changed, even if electing "progressive anti-Uribe politicians," as some reformists and fake leftists claim. The main lesson for workers and youth is that a revolutionary communist leadership must be forged to fight for a society without any bosses, their racism, fascist death squads and imperialist warmakers.

Gaza: One Vast Israeli Concentration Camp

Visiting Israel/Palestine gives a glimpse of the reality of fascism, racism and nationalism in full force. Recently I was one of a delegation of 120 health professionals from around the world invited to a long-planned World Health Organization conference on mental health in Gaza. The conference was organized by the renowned Gaza Community Mental Health Project. Just days before the meeting, Israel announced that no foreigners would be allowed in as they would be "supporting the Hamas agenda."

We went anyway to protest at the gate, along with Israeli activists and the international press. A hundred strong, we marched and chanted in front of the high wall with gun turrets and under the spy blimps that surround Gaza, a virtual concentration camp. We then had the conference by video from Ramallah, but there were many technical hitches, and the Gazans remained as isolated as ever. However, many progressive contacts were made, some interested in our communist analysis and in getting our literature.

Before and after the conference our group of anti-occupation doctors traveled around the West Bank (WB) and witnessed the devastation wrought by poverty and occupation. Since Palestinians’ travel within the WB is hindered by military check points everywhere, and there are very few health facilities, they receive spotty medical care.

Preventive care, diagnostic tests, medical records, and even blood work is hard to come by. Patients with chronic diseases like diabetes or cancer get only haphazard and inconsistent services. Life expectancy is in the early 60s, while a few miles away the Israelis have the most modern facilities.

In severe emergencies, like a heart attack, local hospitals are not equipped to handle the situation and transport to Israel or East Jerusalem is hampered by lack of permits. A doctor I worked with in Tulkarem for a morning told me he sees about five patients a year die from lack of emergency care.

In Nablus we met a 17-year-old boy who was paralyzed from the waist down from a bullet. Israeli soldiers surround this city, which has a history of resistance, and make frequent nighttime incursions. This boy had been walking with friends when he was wounded by their gunfire at age 15. He now lies in a room up two flights of steep steps and has two deep bedsores, from which he will probably die in time. Leaving Nablus, we drove on the narrow winding roads that Palestinians have to use, because they’re banned from the Israeli highways. We came upon a severe car accident in which a woman died and four others were badly hurt – a very common occurrence.

We visited a village where Israeli volunteer doctors go once a month and bring their own medicines. The examining table was a mattress laid across four school desks. All we could do was a quick blood pressure, breast exam, prick the finger of diabetics and give a month’s worth of pills. The villagers were so grateful they prepared us a huge feast. No matter how poor the people, we were feted wherever we went.

Despite the primitive and shocking conditions in most of Palestine, Israelis are largely unaware and/or unsympathetic. There is extremely potent racism against Arabs, who many Israelis see as sub-human, and a conviction that Jews are the victims in their own apartheid state. Most Israelis are taught a very distorted view of history. Many have failed to understand that anti-Semitism was used historically to divide workers and shift blame from the ruling classes of Western and Eastern Europe, just as racism against all groups is used and is still used today. Racist Israeli workers and students fail to understand that not only are they building up hatred against themselves around the world, but that they are poisoning their own society with the pathology that militarism and racism breed and cutting themselves off from allies to fight for a better society.

(Next: short history of situation in Palestine/Israel.)

a name="‘Wall-E’: Its ‘Anti-Consumerism’ Opens Door to Fascist ‘Solution’"></a>‘Wall-"’: Its ‘Anti-Consumerism’ Opens Door to Fascist ‘Solution’

I took my 13-year-old daughter to see the new Walt Disney film, Wall-E (now just out in DVD). We were both disappointed. The film seeks to condemn pollution, blind consumerism, passivity and obesity, but the message is muddled.

On pollution, human beings have been forced to leave the earth because it’s too polluted. They take refuge on a spaceship while robots clean up the planet. Which, after all sorts of incidents, is what finally happens. No explanation of the source of pollution — capitalism — is given. Ultimately, the slogan is simply to sow seeds. Does this mean a return to nature, the theme of Thoreau’s Walden? As if it was possible to return to a pre-industrial Golden Age.

Meanwhile, humans have become the happy slaves of a totalitarian consumer society, where no one works (except the ship’s captain). They do nothing but blindly consume, obeying the exhortations of commercials projected on the screens that they watch continually. They remain sitting all day long in motorized armchairs, no longer able to walk or even stand. They do nothing but clap their hands to give orders to an army of robots that do all the work. This is a denunciation of the consumer society, and of the obesity crisis in the U.S.

But once again, there’s nothing about where this consumer society comes from, a society in which sterile consumption replaces the creativity of production. And this is where the film’s message becomes really muddled. First, because the heroes of the film are the robots Wall-E and Eve, and not human beings. They are the ones who lead the rebellion against this situation, and who act. And these robots were conceived with spin-off products in view, in particular video games the filmmakers hope kids will passively consume. Moreover, entire sequences in the film are drawn from video games, which the theater audience consumes passively.

The film projects an ambiguous image of feminism. Debatable: Eve is a violent robot equipped with an energy cannon, and — as the bosses want U.S. soldiers to do — she shoots first and asks questions later. She makes her partner, Wall-E, tremble. But also positive, when Mary, another robot, initiates the action to save the children during a crisis aboard the spaceship.

The treatment of race relations is also ambiguous: there are white couples and black couples who help one another but there aren’t any inter-racial couples.

The favorite film that Wall-E watches continually — and which represents the lost Golden Age — is one from the 1950s. A Golden Age for pollution — and anti-communism…

All this makes for a neutral film that offends nobody. But because the film doesn’t denounce the capitalist system which engenders pollution, blind consumption, passivity and obesity, it opens the door to the "solution" that capitalism also offers: fascism, which can very well accept a spirit of sacrifice [renunciation of personal consumption in favor of government (military) consumption], the glorification of physical fitness [developed for (military) service for the fascist order], and the abandoning of passivity in favor of (military) action directed by heroes (führers) — who are to be followed as sheep follow a shepherd — as the masses of human beings in the film follow Wall-E and Eve.

LETTERS

Haiti: Kids Buried Alive by Capitalist Greed

On November 9, an angry crowd went to the site of the collapsed La Promesse school building in the town of Petionville, Haiti, where 92 children and adults were buried alive. They were demanding that the rescue operation be stepped up. The three-floor building had crumbled two days earlier. Fortin Augustin, the evangelical pastor who built and ran the school, was arrested, accused of shady construction.

The thousands in the crowd were angry over rumors that some rescue workers, including a group from Fairfax, Virginia and another from the islands of Martinique and Guadalupe, were working slowly in order to make more money. The crowd shouted: "We don’t need money to work in the rescue operations!"

This tragedy was somewhat different from the many in which hurricanes, floods and mudslides have killed thousands in Latin America’s poorest country. It occurred in a relatively well-off part of Port-Au-Prince.

It’s estimated that two million people of the nine million living in this Caribbean nation reside in rotten houses. Hills across the country are full of huts, churches and schools that could crumble just like this school.

President Preval and the UN forces occupying Haiti are making big noises about how bad this tragedy was. But not much will change since the government doesn’t enforce its own construction codes. (Two days after the rescue operation ended at La Promesse, another school, Divine Grace, partially crumbled, injuring several students). And the UN military occupation force is too busy shooting at civilians in its so-called war against drug gangs.

This is another capitalist/imperialist-caused murder of innocent children and workers. A system that, in order to make a few bucks, cannot even guarantee the lives of school children must be smashed.

Toussaint Rouge

Boeing Strike Brings Solidarity and Communist Class Consciousness

Two solidarity dinners were held here in Los Angeles, gathering a multi-racial crowd of 85 workers, students, teachers, parents, children, men and women. Subcontractor workers introduced striking workers from Boeing, who spoke to the group about their recent strike in Seattle. Over $700 was raised at the dinners to help sustain our Party’s effort to build communist class-consciousness among strikers and subcontractor workers.

Many of the attendees expressed how inspired they were to hear about workers at one of the primary manufacturers of defense products in the U.S. striking, and not only for better wages and benefits. They were also fighting for future generations of workers and to build anti-racist international unity with subcontractor workers.

The Boeing strikers told of lunches, visits, CHALLENGES, and communist leaflets that helped build class struggle and revolutionary consciousness among many of the 24,000 strikers in the Seattle area. Strikers presented subcontractor workers with a letter thanking them for their support and calling for unity against the aerospace bosses. Over 30 Boeing strikers signed the letter.

"The speech was good because I learned a lot about what the workers are doing while on strike and what they are striking for. Also it became very clear to me how the union leaders really try to screw the workers instead of help them get what they need," said a Party friend who attended.

After the strikers’ presentation, the group discussed how people can understand communist ideas, whether they make $30/hr at Boeing, $12/hr at a subcontracted aerospace plant or 7 cents per piece in a garment factory. Consistent and clear explanation of the current situation facing workers shows that only communist revolution can solve our problems.

Like a good number of strikers, many students and workers had questions about how we assure that communism will succeed this time around. "Why only one Party?" "What about human nature?" "How can we get high school students more interested in CHALLENGE?" Revolutionary history, a dialectical materialist explanation of society’s development, and requests to write more for the paper were discussed.

Recently this strike was also discussed with workers in Mexico City and teachers in Oaxaca who sent congratulations and support to the strikers. The political work we did during this strike can affect workers, students and soldiers everywhere.

This strike has given us a glimpse at the opportunity we have as PLP to build and grow internationally during this period of economic crisis and strikes. Students and teachers pledged to step up the visits to Boeing and the subcontractors with CHALLENGE. We will continue raising communist ideas on the job, in the classroom and outside those walls to build a movement capable of destroying capitalism with a revolution for communism led by the PLP.

A Comrade

High Schoolers Backed Boeing Strikers

Dear Boeing Strikers,

We are a group of students in Los Angeles who read about your strike in CHALLENGE. The following are statements from some of us:

* A strike can make a difference. As the daughter of a working-class family, I know the struggles and hardship the working class goes through on a day to day basis. I know that the strike will be successful due to the fact that workers are the ones who make this world. All the wealth that the bosses have comes from the working class; we create their profits. If the workers go on strike, the bosses aren’t making any money.

* It is important that this article talked about unity. Our class, the working class, is strongest when all of us — union and non-union alike — are lined up together against our common enemies.

* I learned about the important role of workers who make airplanes; especially war planes. It’s good that we have the power to stop making airplanes. If we want to stop the war, you guys are really important.

* Unity among workers — citizens and non citizens, students, and every single person who belongs to the working class — is important. We are all struggling to get what we need, but if we don’t unite, there’s no point. We want to end the bosses’ rule because in one way or another, workers are being exploited. Here in California we have a lot of immigrant workers who get paid less than many others.

* It’s an inspiration to me as a working class comrade to see all of you out there on the front line everyday in unity, side by side, fighting back. I just want to say on behalf of the youth of LA, you have all of our support. Tough times are ahead. I just hope you all can keep your chins up and fists in the air. We all can win this fight and will, sooner or later. Many of the bosses will try to put you down and divide the workers, but if you all keep the unity, you are a strong force. Keep up the struggle.

High School Students

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

FDR’s capitalism needed war

NYT, 11/10

FDR did not, in fact, manage to engineer a full economic recovery during his first two terms. And the reason was the fact that his economic policies were too cautious. FDR was eager to return to conservative budget principles. That eagerness almost destroyed his legacy. After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits. What saved the economy, and the New Deal, was the enormous public works project known as World War II. This history offers important lessons for the incoming administration.

U.S. finances right-wing terror

NYT, 10/30

The wave of killings has increasingly opened the United States to criticism because it is required to make sure Colombian military units have not violated human rights before giving them aid. Almost half of the reports of civilian killings in 2007 involved units that received American aid.

Peru workers in violent demos

NYT, 10/30

Thousands of people demonstrated in five provinces on Wednesday, threatening politicians in one, setting a police station on fire in another and demanding a larger share of the taxes generated by local mines in several others. Three police officers were taken hostage in Moquegua.

Rulers solution: screw workers

NYT, 10/28

If G.M or Chrysler were to go under, tens of thousands of people would be thrown out of work. But if General Motors and Chrysler were to merge, with some sort of government assistance, the story might end pretty much the same. To make a combined General Motors-Chrysler work—let alone flourish—the company would need to win big concessions from the U.A.W., cut salaries and benefits, and lay off a lot of people, fast.

Non-Marxist economics is bull

NYT, 11/2

Questions For James K. Galbraith

Q: There are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country, and you’re saying only two or three of them foresaw the mortgage crisis?

A: Ten or 12 would be closer than two or three.

Q: What does that say about the field of economics, which claims to be a science?

A: It’s an enormous blot on the reputation of the profession. There are thousands of economists. Most of them teach. And most of them teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless.

Imperialism needs Obama

NYT, 11/5

A new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. "It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen" This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service.

• RULERS TO OBAMA: SELL WAR expand WAR Recruit for war
  • U.S. RULERS COUNT ON OBAMA TO EXPAND ARMY AND NAVY
  • WARMAKING RULERS ALWAYS EMPLOY BIG LIE
  • Each of these “noble” U.S. efforts claimed over a million lives, mainly civilian.
• Fight vs. Bosses’ Racist Unemployment
  • Smash Racist Unemployment With Communist Revolution
• CAPITALISM: THE UN-SAFETY NET
• Unite vs. Racist Murders of Immigrant Workers
• TWU Hacks Attack Rank-&-File, Help Rulers Squeeze ALL Workers
• Organize School Strike; Don’t Pay for Bosses’ Crisis
• Marchers Slam Racist Anti-Immigrant Raids
• PL’er Spurs Union Backing of Stella D’Oro Strikers
• Boeing Welcomes Back Workers With Layoffs
• Jewish, Palestinian Workers Must Unite Against Israeli Fascists
• U.S. Bombs Pakistan, Escalating U.S. Afghan War for Oil
• ‘Big 3’ Would Solve Auto Crisis on Workers’ Backs
• UAW-GM’s VEBA SCHEME ON THE BRINK
• Barcelona Nissan. Argentinian GM Worker Fight Back Against Mass Layoffs
• November 24, 2008 No Financial Meltdown for Challenge-Desafío
• Political Economy: FALLING RATE OF PROFIT HITS WORKERS IN THE HEAD
  • SNAKE OIL
  • Grand Theft Capitalism
• LETTERS
  • Racist Cops Frame Airport Skycap
  • Sunday School Lesson: Obama, No! Organize, Yes!
  • Thanksgiving: ‘New World’ Genocide
• REDEYE ON THE NEWS
  • Capitalism killing our globe
  • Obama an ambidextrous virtuoso
  • Long Afghan war still ahead
  • The ‘Big Steel’ is GM plan
  • Agencies rob the most vulnerable
  • Influential docs take drug co. $

---

RULERS TO OBAMA: SELL WAR expand WAR Recruit for war

U.S. RULERS COUNT ON OBAMA
TO EXPAND ARMY AND NAVY

WARMAKING RULERS ALWAYS
EMPLOY BIG LIE

Each of these “noble” U.S. efforts claimed over a million lives, mainly civilian.

Fight vs. Bosses’ Racist Unemployment

Smash Racist Unemployment
With Communist Revolution

CAPITALISM: THE UN-SAFETY NET

Unite vs. Racist Murders of Immigrant Workers

TWU Hacks Attack Rank-&-File, Help Rulers Squeeze ALL Workers

Organize School Strike; Don’t Pay for Bosses’ Crisis

Marchers Slam Racist Anti-Immigrant Raids

PL’er Spurs Union Backing of Stella D’Oro Strikers

Boeing Welcomes Back Workers With Layoffs

Jewish, Palestinian Workers Must Unite Against Israeli Fascists

U.S. Bombs Pakistan, Escalating U.S. Afghan War for Oil

‘Big 3’ Would Solve Auto Crisis on Workers’ Backs

UAW-GM’s VEBA SCHEME ON THE BRINK

Barcelona Nissan. Argentinian GM Worker Fight Back Against Mass Layoffs

November 24, 2008
No Financial Meltdown for Challenge-Desafío

• (1) Checks can be made payable to Challenge Periodicals. If not in position to send personal checks, then:
• (2) Money orders can be made out to Challenge Periodicals and we will fill in a “sender’s” name (not yours).
• (3) Cash can be given to a Party member who will forward it to us immediately via check or money order or cash directly in person.

Political Economy:
FALLING RATE OF PROFIT HITS WORKERS IN THE HEAD

SNAKE OIL

Grand Theft Capitalism

LETTERS

Racist Cops Frame Airport Skycap

Sunday School Lesson: Obama,
No! Organize, Yes!

Thanksgiving: ‘New World’ Genocide

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Capitalism killing our globe

Obama an ambidextrous
virtuoso

Long Afghan war still ahead

The ‘Big Steel’ is GM plan

Agencies rob the most vulnerable

Influential docs take drug co. $

a href="#Communism Is Only Solution Bosses’ Election: Capitalism Wins">"ommunism Is Only Solution Bosses’ Election: Capitalism Wins

Team Obama: Imperialists One And All

Bosses Use Elections To Settle Their Own Conflicts

From Iran to Guatemala to Chile, U.S. Foreign Policy Pushes Fascist Dictatorships

Company-Union Gang-Up Dampens Class Struggle

The Revolutionary Communist PLP: Indispensable Organization Of The Working Class

Stella Strikers Face Phony Pols, Cops, Scabs

Howard U. Students Demand Halt to Racist Execution

a href="#PL’ers Foil Mis-Leaders, Win UFT Backing for Stella D’Oro Strikers">PL"ers Foil Mis-Leaders, Win UFT Backing for Stella D’Oro Strikers

a href="#Cops Trample Iraq Vets; Pacifism Won’t Work">"ops Trample Iraq Vets; Pacifism Won’t Work

a href="#East Coast PLP Youth Back Strikers, Expose Bosses’ Elections">"ast Coast PLP Youth Back Strikers, Expose Bosses’ Elections

a href="#Do-Nothing ‘Leaders,’ Scabs Undercut Vought Strikers">Do"Nothing ‘Leaders,’ Scabs Undercut Vought Strikers

a href="#Mass Strikes Hit EU Bosses’ Bailout Attacks on Workers">"ass Strikes Hit EU Bosses’ Bailout Attacks on Workers

• Greece Paralyzed
• Thousands March In Italy
• Teachers, Parents Protest in France

Auto Workers Must Strike Against Racist Unemployment

a href="#Colombia Fascists Can’t Stop Raging Class Struggle">"olombia Fascists Can’t Stop Raging Class Struggle

Union Leaders Show How Not To Organize Support for Boeing Strikers

CHALLENGE Binds Striker and Red Transit Worker

Retirees Back Boeing Strikers; Hacks Balk

H.S. Students Support Boeing Strikers

a href="#Capitalism’s Mass Unemployment Spreading Worldwide">"apitalism’s Mass Unemployment Spreading Worldwide

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

• Let’s make up for lost time
• Bush-speak proves Marx right!
• Quick relief, but not for hungry
• Age + foreclosure = catastrophe

• ---

a name="Communism Is Only Solution Bosses’ Election: Capitalism Wins">">"ommunism Is Only Solution Bosses’ Election: Capitalism Wins

One of two events, both disasters for the working class, will occur on November 4. Either Barack Obama, spouting his phony "end-of-racism" message, will prevail (as polls predict), or a sudden upsurge in overt racism (always a possibility in the U.S.) might propel John McCain into office. We in Progressive Labor Party do not believe in voting in the bosses’ election system. They completely control this electoral circus and only those who swear allegiance to them are even allowed access to it.

Although important tactical differences exist between Democrats and Republicans, both are committed to capitalism and U.S. "democracy." The rich and powerful who own and rule the U.S. clearly will never give up their power peacefully. They will also spill the blood of millions of workers and soldiers to protect their imperialist interests overseas from their capitalist rivals, waging wider wars which will lead to another world war.

They offer us the chance to vote for "our representatives" when both parties are actually financed by the richest of the rich, who they serve in all important matters. For instance, in the current financial crisis, polls showed that voters opposed the government bailout plan. But even mere weeks before an "historic" election, the politicians of both parties approved rescuing the banks. The richest bosses feared that panic would undermine their ability to pocket their profits as usual and that imperialist rivals would be able to take advantage of their weakness. After a momentary show of reluctance, the "representatives" fell into line with the rulers’ program.

How Electoral System Serves Rulers’ Needs

All politicians work for the ruling class. However, if the parties and politicians were completely alike, the electoral system wouldn’t serve all the rulers’ needs. First they want workers, students and professionals to believe we can elect someone who represents their "interests." Anti-racists have black and Latin candidates, anti-sexists can vote for women and those concerned about the environment are given candidates who talk about fighting global warming as long as business profits aren’t affected.

The presidential primaries had someone for everyone, an attempt to win workers to see the electoral system as the only option for change.

A secondary effect of drawing workers into the election circus is to build the illusion that voters determine government policy. Workers are encouraged to feel they’re responsible for the government’s actions. If something goes wrong, then just vote for a replacement. But in reality, the candidates and parties will do the opposite of what they campaigned for if important interests of the rulers are involved.

With his broad appeal, probable victor Obama poses the graver danger. Many workers and youth see him as a "solution" to the catastrophe of the Bush years. Obama & Co. seek to lure masses of workers to the rulers’ agenda of ever-expanding wars paid for by workers.

The ‘Carrot And The Stick’

Rulers also use the electoral system to co-opt mass protests against capitalism and its racism, sexism and wars. When millions took to the streets to protest the Vietnam War, liberal Senator Eugene McCarthy was trotted out to entice them back into the fold of dead-end campaigning and voting that changed nothing.

In the 1960s, millions of students and workers rebelling against the harsh racism and segregation, north and south, were given black mayors and "anti-poverty" programs that bought off a few and left masses of black workers still facing police brutality and the lower wages of a racist system.

However, while the rulers can use the "carrot" of an "anti-war" Eugene McCarthy or black legislators and "anti-poverty" programs, they simultaneously will use the "stick:" the cops, National Guard and the Army to kill anti-war demonstrators (Kent State and Jackson State); repress black uprisings (sending the 82nd Airborne to put down the 1967 Detroit black rebellion); covert state terror (the FBI’s COINTELPRO); and imprison 2.4 million people, 70% black and Latino.

When the rulers worry that our struggles may threaten their profits, they may give us a crumb: a dollar more on the minimum wage, OSHA laws (governmental on-the-job safety regulations) with one inspector for every 10,000 workplaces, laws against discrimination that are rarely enforced. Later, those crumbs are taken away when they see that we’ve bought into the election shell game instead of militant working-class struggle.

Relying on elections to improve our conditions is a treadmill to oblivion.

Freeing ourselves from the passive pull-the-voting-lever mentality starts with militant struggle like the Boeing machinists’ strike in Seattle, or the teachers’ strike in Morelos, Mexico. Mass marches, demonstrations and standing up to the boss may help teach us to fight back instead of accepting the "democratic" program. But to really overcome capitalism’s exploitation and wars, we also need to struggle for more profound change — a new system where workers will be in control.

U.S. rulers are desperate to maintain their system of wealth and profits. They killed 3,000,000 Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers trying to control a small country’s workers and resources. They’ve killed over a million Iraqi workers with eight years of Clinton bombing surrounded by eight years of Bush aggression trying to maintain control of the world’s oil supply.

Raw Deal For Workers

But now, to marshal the forces U.S. imperialism requires, Obama may try an end run around blatant militarism and the draft. With the crippled U.S. economy shedding 200,000 jobs a month, he may opt for a Roosevelt New Deal-style employment program to rally workers around the flag. The Times (10/26/08) reports that Obama "proposes increases for education, infrastructure, research, foreign aid, and the military."

For workers, voting for warmaker Obama is no better than backing McCain. Viewing Obama’s election as a triumph over racism would be a serious political error. By every measure imaginable — from wages to health to education to imprisonment to jobs and home foreclosures — racist disparity rages in the U.S. Because capitalism breeds racism and imperialist oil wars, Obama can’t and won’t end or even alleviate either. Only the working class can.

U.S. rulers claim to be "democratic," but they really preside over a capitalist dictatorship. They own the wealth, control the mass culture and media and use their government and its military and police forces to maintain their power. Communists in PLP believe the working class must overthrow their dictatorship and replace it with a workers’ dictatorship where the vast majority will be armed to prevent the capitalists from ever returning to power.

To achieve this, millions of workers must join PLP to embrace communist ideas of sharing the wealth we produce according to everyone’s needs, along with anti-racist, anti-sexist and internationalist ideas which are necessary to unite the working class in its struggle for power.

Team Obama: Imperialists One And All

Before Obama was given the resources to campaign for the presidency, he had to meet with, be vetted by and swear his allegiance to the bosses’ flag of profits before a committee of Wall Street financial tycoons and then they donated $7.9 million to Obama’s campaign (Reuters, 6/5.08).

Obama’s economic advisor is the ruling class’s top economic assassin Paul Volcker, who has frequently met with the candidate since the financial crisis broke. As Federal Reserve chief, Volcker "solved" the bankers’ inflation crisis of the early 1980s by jacking up interest rates and causing unemployment rates unseen since the Great Depression.

Today, Volcker and Obama push for a fascistic concentration of finance under tightened state control. Volcker was chief economist at Chase Manhattan bank when David Rockefeller ran it. With Rockefeller, he co-founded the imperialist Trilateral Commission.

On October 25, The New York Times published a list of "Possible Presidential Appointments." As Obama’s treasury secretary, the Times pointed to Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers. Geithner, head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, has toiled for Rockefeller’s Council On Foreign Relations and Kissinger Associates, which advises Exxon Mobil and other firms that depend on the U.S war machine. Geithner was a leading engineer of J.P. Morgan Chase’s takeover of Bear Stearns and the $250-billion federal buy-in to major banks.

Summers, who as Clinton’s treasury boss helped dismantle Welfare, tried mightily to restore officer training at Harvard when he was its president. The Times says Richard Lugar may run the State Department. In 1997 and 1998, Lugar sponsored a little-known terrorist attack drill that put local police under Pentagon control in cities from coast to coast.

Bosses Use Elections To Settle Their Own Conflicts

In addition to countering any worker protests against the system, elections are also used to provide a peaceful way to deal with conflicts among different sections of the ruling class. Various capitalists who are united in pursuing profits can sometimes have different economic and political needs. Those who are deeply invested in oil production internationally (tracing back to the Rockefeller and Morgan fortunes) are sometimes in conflict with those whose fortunes are tied to domestic oil production.

The government is used to mediate these differences. For instance, the "liberal" internationalists use environmental regulations to hamstring domestic oil producers. As a side effect, the liberals can appear to be pursuing the environmental goals of their supporters.

Health care "reform" is an issue where mediating conflicts between the rulers is combined with attempts to con us into believing that the government represents our interests. The older established section of the rulers, whose fortunes are centered in large industrial and financial institutions, provides most of the health care insurance available to U.S. workers. For decades they’ve been trying to reduce that expense by creating a system where more bosses (and also workers in general) will share that burden by increasing the number of workers who are insured but making the coverage considerably poorer and less expensive than the largest bosses pay now.

Small and medium-sized bosses, who rarely provide insurance coverage, fight these plans by having "their" politicians argue that they will lower the quality of health care available to workers (true). But they downplay the reality that tens of millions of uninsured workers must often choose between paying for food or for medical care.

Resolving this debate may solve problems for some set of bosses, but whether workers support one side or the other, all of us will wind up with the short end of the stick.

From Iran to Guatemala to Chile, U.S. Foreign Policy Pushes Fascist Dictatorships

U.S. rulers have constantly shown that their professed love of "democracy" is just a sham. In 1953, the CIA organized the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Iranian government led by Mossadegh, whose fatal flaw was believing that the world’s major capitalist powers would sit by and allow him to nationalize Iran’s oil resources. Thousands of his supporters were massacred in order to put the autocratic Shah in power so U.S. companies could gain control over Iran’s oil.

In 1954, the CIA overthrew Guatemala’s democratically-elected Arbenz government — which had nationalized 70% of the country’s land previously owned by United Fruit — causing the murder of hundreds of thousands, many of them indigenous peasants,.

In 1973, the CIA joined with local capitalist and military forces to overthrow the Allende government in Chile. Allende described himself as a Socialist and believed that after he won the presidential election, industries could be nationalized and workers would benefit. He believed in "democracy" and refused to organize and arm workers to defend their gains.

This "belief" left workers defenseless against the U.S.-supported forces of the newly-installed brutal dictator Pinochet, leading to the murder of thousands of workers and leftists.

Today, Iraq and Afghanistan look more like U.S.-occupied colonies than like independent democracies. If the U.S. ruling class shows such hypocrisy defending its interests from imperialist rivals and their lackeys abroad, we have to assume that their concern for the electoral process at home serves their own interests, not ours.

Boeing Sellout: An Attack on All Workers; Reject It!

As we go to press, the company and the union have hashed out a new sellout offer. This is not just betraying Boeing workers. The International Association of Machinists (IAM) and pro-capitalist AFL-CIO misleaders are helping the bosses attack all workers’ wages and conditions.

We need to vote "NO!" and surround the plants with mass picketing to really shut the company down. Today, one worker at our weekly luncheon meeting said, "I’m voting "No" because it will screw the next generation." All agreed. We must expand our modest Party-led efforts to build striker-subcontractor worker anti-racist, international unity and organize solidarity rallies among our supporters locally and nationally.

Boeing CEO Jim McNerney has attacked our "repeated work stoppages," inviting the pro-capitalist union mis-leaders to help him "change this dynamic." They’ve obliged in this sellout. It’s similar to the one we rejected, which sparked this strike initially — except it’s a four-year contract, not the traditional three. (We’ve struck three of the last four contracts.)

Essentially this means a lower wage in the 4th year: normally the biggest increase is up front in the first year, but now what would have been a bigger increase in the first year of the next 3-year contract becomes a smaller one as the 4th year of this contract. For example, pensions increase a scant 2% in the 4th year, not even enough to keep pace with inflation.

New younger workers are attacked the hardest. Starting wages have been frozen for 15 years. Now the offer of a $2.28/hr increase is less than the $3.82/hr advance in the state’s minimum wage over the last 15 years! This contract preserves the same wage increase but over four years, not three. New hires will still make an average of $15/hour in 2012 — if they can get a job at Boeing! The subcontracting regime stays put with a few insignificant face-saving changes in language.

Company-Union Gang-Up Dampens Class Struggle

To win acceptance of this latest contract offer, both the company and the union want to isolate us strikers and wear us down. Both fear any sign we might put our faith in the might of a united working class.

Significantly, the IAM leadership sabotaged any attempt to hold a support rally at Corporate Headquarters in Chicago (see letter page 6). We exposed this treachery to dozens of workers we’ve visited. Every one responded, "That figures!"

What Is Success?

Given all this, one crucial measure of success is how many strikers and supporters are won to seeing the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party as the indispensable organization of the working class. There are two new Party-led study groups and other CHALLENGE readers who’ve agreed to attend Party club meetings.

This is a product of having organized numbers of rank-and-filers to build unity with subcontractor workers, to request and receive support letters and to speak at meetings of workers and students for the first time. One worker at a check distribution point, upon hearing about the need for this unity, exclaimed, "So it’s not us against them, it’s all of us against the company!"

"I’m new to all this," said a striking CHALLENGE reader who traveled to Los Angeles to personally give the "thank you" letter he wrote (and helped gather signatures for) to Boeing union and non-union subcontractor workers who the Party has organized to support our strike. "But it seems to me," he continued, "that you can advance your revolutionary [communist] cause by first educating workers and students like those here about the history and ideas of your movement and through action.

"I can’t speak for all the 27,000 Boeing strikers, but I was impressed by the letters of support from subcontractor workers and was inspired by the response of Los Angeles high school students. I’ve heard how these workers that supported us slave under horrible conditions. The most important thing you can do is advance that struggle here. Pick a factory, any factory! You have enough to fight here to keep you busy for a lifetime!"

Between the two LA meetings involving 85 union and non-union workers and students, black, Latino and white, and a similar support dinner in Chicago, we collected more than enough to pay for our tickets to the LA solidarity event and the continued distribution of over 1,000 CHALLENGES per issue and tens of thousands of communist flyers. Overall, in the strike in Seattle and among the Boeing subcontractors in LA, we’ve distributed over 40,000 PLP flyers and 17,000 CHALLENGEs since the beginning of our industrial summer projects in July.

Local college students, inspired by the emerging anti-racist, international unity between strikers and subcontractor workers, wrote their own leaflets about this outstanding development. They’ve organized through their campus groups to bring students to the picket lines. Internationally, we’ve received more than a dozen support letters (often with donations). Hundreds of rank-and-filers organized by PL’ers have taken the initiative to support us, by-passing the union misleaders.

Our weekly CHALLENGE readers’ luncheon group wrote another "thank you" note to these hundreds who’ve supported us internationally, stressing the need to mobilize the might of a united working class. It advocates mass pickets to shut down the bosses, organizing huge solidarity rallies based on anti-racist unity locally, nationally and worldwide. When we brought this letter to the picket lines for signatures, the overwhelming majority of workers who talked to us signed. We’ve also sent a support letter to the Bronx, NY Stella D’Oro strikers linking their struggle to the anti-racist, international unity we aim to build between subcontractor workers and ourselves.

The Revolutionary Communist PLP: Indispensable Organization Of The Working Class

Boeing CEO McNerney says decent wages, benefits and job guarantees are "unsustainable" in this period of intensified inter-imperialist rivalry exacerbated by "global financial turmoil." The pro-capitalist union hacks agree by running to support the bosses’ global subcontracting regime. They only want a few "ancillary jobs" to remain unionized (which the new contract offer may not include) so they can stay in business.

Most workers have learned from their own experience not to trust the pro-boss union mis-leadership, condemning them in language we can’t print here. Given the worldwide capitalist economic crisis, some are even questioning the viability of trade union reform, particularly around job security. No organization that is dedicated to preserving capitalism can provide viable answers for our class.

We will need many more Boeing CHALLENGE sellers to maintain the mass character of our paper now evident among strikers. As the economic crisis opens the door, we have to rush in with CHALLENGE and our revolutionary alternative to the bosses’ plans for war, racism and rapidly accelerating attacks on our livelihoods.

A CHALLENGE reader who is joining our study group declared, "You have to know what’s going on in the world and how the world works just to survive these days." He knows that our Party — through his reading and selling CHALLENGE, through the discussions and organizing at the CHALLENGE readers’ lunch, and through the anti-racist, international solidarity and class struggle we are attempting to build — gives him the tools to survive. As they say, revolution is the only solution. Now that’s worth a lifetime of struggle.

Building Solidarity Between Boeing Workers in Seattle and Long Beach, Cal. In Spite of Union Sellouts

PLP members took picket signs, leaflets and CHALLENGES to a Boeing plant of UAW members in Long Beach, California. Some said that while they support the Seattle strikers, the IAM leadership "steals jobs from us!"

We told them that all Boeing workers have the same enemy and the same interests. "We aren’t supporting the leadership of the IAM or the UAW. They’re trying to divide you. We’re communists. We’re building unity between Boeing workers in Seattle, Boeing workers in Long Beach, Vought workers, and the subcontractor workers who also work for Boeing." Most workers were then more than willing to get CHALLENGE and our leaflet which stated "Workers Power is our only Security." Our signs supported the Boeing strikers and also said "Warmaker Boeing—stop super-exploiting subcontractor workers!" As the Seattle striker said, Long Beach workers, under the same attacks as workers in Seattle, should strike too!

We also held solidarity dinners with Boeing strikers, raising over $700. Subcontractor and other workers, students and teachers vowed to increase our support for the Boeing workers and fight to increase CHALLENGE sales to build communist class consciousness.

Stella Strikers Face Phony Pols, Cops, Scabs

BRONX, NY, October 18 — Fighting Stella D’Oro strikers were joined by fellow workers from different locals for a rally in support of their strike. PLP students and teachers were also in attendance with revolutionary greetings and anti-scab anger.

Since elections are approaching, several Bronx politicians showed up at the rally. They spoke one after another and made promises to support the strikers. But in reality they have done virtually nothing.

A PL’er exposed the role of scabs, cops and politicians. No matter how badly you need a job, scabbing is never justifiable. When you scab, you are a traitor to your class — the working class. Scabs must be stopped. The politicians have allowed the bakery to remain open even though no quality-control inspector (legally required) is there. The politicians have allowed the cops to remove the shelter and chairs used by the strikers.

The politicians and the cops are on the side of the bosses, whether the Stella D’Oro bosses, the Boeing bosses or any others. The politicians depend on big business for the money to win elections. Their job is to protect the rich rulers of New York City and the country as a whole. As long as the rich run the system, things will always get worse for workers.

Since the rally, the cops have again demonstrated that they are the servants of the bosses. This week, in an attempt to break the strike, the Stella D’Oro bosses and NYC police orchestrated the arrest of one of the strike’s key organizers. One of the bosses falsely claimed to have received a phone threat from this organizer. The organizer was pointed out by the general manager, arrested and held for two days at Bronx central booking on $20,000 bail. Though charged with only two misdemeanors, this was clearly not only an attempt to remove the organizer from the struggle, but also to deplete the union’s strike fund.

As a result of this and other attacks, the strike fund is rapidly running out. Any contributions will be well-used and greatly appreciated. Since the arrest, PLP comrades have met with the strike leadership to push for immediate demonstrations to call for the dropping of these trumped-up charges against this strike leader.

The only way we will have decent lives is through working-class revolution. Many workers responded enthusiastically to the Party’s ideas. Counter to our message, the union president pushed the line of following the law, doing whatever the cops say and counting on the politicians. This is a losing strategy. We must count on our fellow workers and ourselves. We must build a united fight-back that takes on the bosses, their politicians, their cops and their scabs.

Howard U. Students Demand Halt to Racist Execution

WASHINGTON, DC, October 24 — During two days of rallying, members of Howard University’s Political Education and Action Committee (PEAC), were joined by members of Malcolm X Grassroots and the American Civil Liberties Union to fight the wrongful execution of Troy Davis.

PEAC speakers declared that Davis’ execution, scheduled for October 27, is one more example of the entrenched racism of the U.S. system. Davis, a black man, has been in prison almost 20 years for supposedly killing 27-year-old Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989.

The District Attorney and police intimidated and coerced witnesses to get a conviction of then 19-year-old Davis. Now decades later, seven of the nine key witnesses have recanted, and other witnesses have identified a person they believe to be the actual killer — but innocence is not a defense, according to the U.S. Supreme Court and the State of Georgia!

Campus police were sent to stop the PEAC rally, and a leader was detained when he refused to stop speaking on a bullhorn. Students continued their bullhorn rally despite the attack. The University administration’s effort to harass and suppress student activism — using the pretense that the students were "disrupting classes" — stands in stark contrast to the University’s endorsement of ear-splitting concerts and fraternity celebrations on the main campus at the same time of day.

This confrontation demonstrated that the so-called "legacy" of Howard University in civil rights struggle and progressive action is in reality a legacy of student and worker movements in opposition to the University. The University is a corporation dominated by big businessmen and the bosses’ politicians. We have no unity with the University administration which parades behind a fig leaf of liberalism while trying to blunt the revolutionary spirit of its students!

On the second day of the rally, Davis’s lawyer announced he had received a 30-day stay of execution, but this is only a temporary respite while the government figures out how to move forward with the execution of an innocent black man.

The racist (in)justice system is critical to the U.S. ruling class’s strategy of intimidating superexploited black workers and dividing them from other workers. But repression breeds resistance, and racism must give rise to anti-racist revolutionary unity.

Today’s financial crises and wars will give rise to ever-greater racist offensives against the working class as the rulers become increasingly desperate to build their profits and power. It is urgent that struggles like the Troy Davis case be linked to the battles of workers throughout the world. We must turn these into a fight for communist revolution to destroy the capitalist roots of racist oppression.

a name="PL’ers Foil Mis-Leaders, Win UFT Backing for Stella D’Oro Strikers"></">PL"ers Foil Mis-Leaders, Win UFT Backing for Stella D’Oro Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, October 15 — Four Stella D’Oro strikers brought by PLP members to the teachers union Delegate Assembly (DA) here won a rousing standing ovation from the approximately 1,000 delegates as well as a solidarity endorsement and a "sizeable contribution" to their strike fund. The PLP’ers’ effort overcame the union leadership’s attempt to stop the strikers from speaking, worried that the workers’ militant actions would expose the misleaders’ pacifist response to the growing economic crisis and $700 billion bailout to the banks. The latter was the reason for the emergency meeting.

The UFT (United Federation of Teachers) leadership showed more allegiance to the interests of the bosses than to the workers they allegedly represent.

In the debate on the resolutions, the leadership’s position on escalating cutbacks and mass racist unemployment was to react with our "head and not our hearts." This in a school system with 85% black, Latino and Asian students whose budget has been cut by $500 million and that sets them up for either poverty-wage jobs or as cannon fodder in the U.S. bosses’ imperialist wars. Although members and friends of PLP could not defeat resolutions supporting pacifism and the bosses’ elections, we did mobilize a different message.

Along with bringing the four strikers, over 200 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed as well as hundreds of leaflets entitled, "Support the Boeing, Morelos and Stella D’Oro strikers; Bosses’ Bailout only Bails Out Bosses: Workers’ Revolution Will THROW Them Out!" The well-received leaflet contained a resolution calling on the UFT to endorse all three strikes and provide financial aid for the Stella D’Oro strikers.

One PLP delegate was expecting to get the floor to present our resolution. But in attempting to divert the strikers from speaking, the misleadership claimed we were "acting hastily" and should follow protocol and wait for the workers’ local President to receive a "proper endorsement."

One PLP delegate declared there’s no "protocol" when it comes to a strike. "These workers have been on strike since August 13, just saw the cops remove their picket-line tarp and chairs and traveled all the way from the Bronx to get our support and all you have to talk about is protocol. Put them on stage and let them speak!" Knowing our history of boldly raising revolutionary politics at the DA, the union hacks quickly backtracked, saying they’d allow the strikers to speak.

To guarantee this, another PLP delegate escorted the four strikers on stage amid a roaring, standing ovation. UFT President Randi Weingarten sanctioned a unanimous resolution containing a general endorsement of the strike and a "sizeable contribution" to their strike fund. It encouraged members to attend the October 18th strike rally.

The strikers were congratulated with dozens of handshakes and words of encouragement. PLP members emphasized that they represent a working-class response to this economic crisis, which is why the leadership tried to ignore our resolution.

They did succeed in watering down our original motion. In supporting the Stella D’Oro strikers, Weingarten’s resolution omitted the other two much larger strikes and still hasn’t mentioned either of them — no accident.

We will return to the November DA with an even stronger push. Several delegates are reporting these struggles to their local schools. A few have published reports calling for support for all three strikes and openly criticizing the UFT’s pacifist misleadership during this vicious period of giveaways to the bosses and cutbacks for the working class.

a name="Cops Trample Iraq Vets; Pacifism Won’t Work">">"ops Trample Iraq Vets; Pacifism Won’t Work

Hempstead, NY October 18 — The final presidential debate was hosted here today but the most important message of the day unfolded outside.

Several days before the debate, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) demanded that members be allowed to address questions to the candidates on war resisters and funding for the Veterans Administration (VA). The vets received no response, so an hour before the debate a march was organized in order to enter the debate and ask the candidates the questions.

Over a hundred anti-war protestors followed the vets and chanted, "Let them in!" Several vets were arrested as planned but then mounted riot police charged the crowd, injuring several demonstrators including IVAW member, Nick Morgan, who was knocked to the ground and trampled. Morgan suffered a gashing wound to his face and a displaced cheekbone from the horses’ hooves.

An IVAW member and former army National Guard sergeant, Jabbar Magruder, angrily responded, "How can you treat veterans like that in America?...It is not what I gave eight years of my life [in the military] for. It is not what I served in Iraq for. This is not the America I believe in." Many patriotic vets and protestors shared Magruder’s rage and disbelief; however the attacks showed the real truth about America.

The police attacks are a systemic problem, and not caused by a few bad cops. Civil disobedience is a failure as a tactic to stop the war; and the media and politicians’ silence on the incident equals their consent for the police attacks.

What the police, media, and politicians don’t want is for people to conclude that pacifist strategies don’t work, the candidates don’t care, and police brutality is systemic to capitalism. However, facts prove otherwise. The Winter Soldier hearings, eyewitness accounts of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, paint a brutal picture of what capitalist competition does to both working-class occupied and working-class occupying troops.

The cops treatment of protestors at Hofstra — similar to cops day-to-day racist treatment of black, Latin, and immigrant workers as well as the racism inherent in U.S. troops attacks on the Iraqi’s and Afghans — show that the bosses will widen fascist brutality as they see fit in order to achieve their goals of making U.S. workers accept more war, higher prices, and less government services.

Many in IVAW honestly believe in their power to build a non-violent movement of resisting troops to force the Iraq war to end, full funding for the VA, and reparations for the Iraqi people (some in IVAW are even pushing the organization to formally address Afghanistan). However the root of the problem remains capitalism’s pursuit of maximum profit and no capitalist has ever peacefully stopped profit wars.

Vietnamese fighting and U.S. troops’ rebellions — including physically fighting racists and the killing of higher-ups — led to the withdrawal of US ground forces in the U.S. war on Vietnam. And a generation after the anti-Vietnam war struggle, the international working class faces even longer and deadlier wars and the same attacks by police because the root of the problem remains: Capitalist’s grip on state power. Only the communist-led revolutions in Russia in 1917 and China in 1949 have smashed the bosses grip on state power. Those revolutionaries made many mistakes that led to their demise but the fight for workers’ power remains the important correct lesson that we still must fight for.

a name="East Coast PLP Youth Back Strikers, Expose Bosses’ Elections">">"ast Coast PLP Youth Back Strikers, Expose Bosses’ Elections

New York City, NY, October 18,--About twenty-five black and Latin high school and college students spent today engaged in building a communist alternative to the bosses’ electoral circus. Instead of settling for a choice of which candidate will lead us into a future of more war and more fascism, a new generation of young leaders planned and executed a day of activity that solidified our determination to build the only movement that represents a true choice for workers, the movement for workers power. Our recent experiences at the Summer Project in Los Angeles reminded us all how inspirational and necessary it is for us to bring our forces together, and so we held a day of activity for East Coast comrades and friends.

Due to ongoing and deepening relationships party members have built among striking workers at the Stella D’Oro cookie plant in the Bronx, we were invited to begin our day at a rally outside the factory gates. The time for the rally was pushed back by cops from twelve to ten on Saturday, but our young people understood the importance of strike support and all who committed to show up at twelve made the effort to meet up earlier, including our young out-of-town comrades who had arrived late the night before.

Communist consciousness ("we need to be at the workers’ rally") beat out capitalist individualism ("let me sleep") so our day got off to a splendid start! A young Baltimore comrade moved the crowd when she spoke about the need for unity between students and workers.

At the CUNY Social Forum, young comrades led a workshop on the elections where fake leftists once again revealed themselves to be far more interested in arguing with other leftists than in fighting the bosses. Finally we headed down to Brooklyn for our evening forum at a local church entitled "Elections in the Shadow of Imperialist War."

An aspiring young teacher gave a clear and sharp overview of the current economic crisis, followed by a high school comrade whose presentation on the candidates exposed how this election really is about who the bosses think can best lead the U.S. working class into a future of more fascism and more war. In this light, our line that Obama is the main danger was driven home.

Then comrades from Baltimore put on a powerful show, including a short movie, about their struggle against budget cuts in Maryland and the need for revolution, not reform. The program was rounded out by other young leaders who spoke on how striking workers represent the real leadership we need, not politicians, and a group from a local high school who recounted past class struggles in their school against budget cuts and how more struggle will be needed in the future as the answer to economic crisis and war. The future of the working class is in good hands, with these motivated and dedicated young people learning to lead the way to a revolution. J

a name="Do-Nothing ‘Leaders,’ Scabs Undercut Vought Strikers"></">Do"Nothing ‘Leaders,’ Scabs Undercut Vought Strikers

Nashville, TN –– Nearly 1,000 Machinists (IAM 735) have been on strike since September 27 against Vought Aircraft Industries, a huge aerospace subcontractor. Vought wants to freeze the pension plan for employees with less than 16 years seniority and replace it with a 401(k) plan. Meanwhile, Vought’s net income so far this year is over $108 million, more than double last year.

Since the strike began, the capitalist financial meltdown has made it crystal-clear what the economic impact of the pension freeze would be on the workers. The political impact would be to weaken class solidarity by dividing younger and older workers. A striker commented, "Fortunately the older employees recognize this and are not willing to accept this offer at the expense of their younger union brothers and sisters."

Dallas-based Vought has brought in managers and other scabs to run the Nashville plant, which assembles wing and tail structures for commercial and military aircraft. Strikers are warning these scabs that "You’re being told how they need you [but] in the end they wont care about you, and your fellow employees will despise you. You will end up in your own private hell."

Rumor has it that when one scab told the boss he’d gotten a couple of flat tires, he was told that the company "wasn’t buying tires." Company officials admit that the strike is hurting productivity, but with the plant open, time is on their side. Workers need to shut it down! Instead of organizing mass picketing, IAM 735 leaders are encouraging workers to find temporary jobs elsewhere.

Vought is the largest subcontractor to Boeing on the C-17 program and builds the aft fuselage sections for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. The website of IAM 735 in Nashville features video clips from the Boeing strike, but IAM leaders are doing NOTHING to build rank-and-file solidarity among Boeing and Vought strikers, let alone broader support.

Vought facilities producing Boeing commercial airplane products and most impacted by the Boeing IAM strike include Stuart, Fla.; Grand Prairie, Texas; Milledgeville, Ga., and North Charleston, S.C. Vought is trying to use workers from these plants to break the strike in Tennessee. Clearly, aerospace workers across the board need to fight the racism and drive for maximum profit that has slashed wages of workers all over. Workers with communist leadership need to make this part of the long-term fight to destroy the profit system.

"It just seems like we are going backwards rather than forward," commented a Vought striker. And that’s in aerospace, an industry that will continue to grow as the U.S. imperialist ruling class steps up its preparation for wider war. But in this period of capitalist crisis and increasing attacks on the working class we can move forward by taking on the bosses attacks with increased fight-back, spreading the communist ideas of CHALLENGE, and building PLP.

a name="Mass Strikes Hit EU Bosses’ Bailout Attacks on Workers">">"ass Strikes Hit EU Bosses’ Bailout Attacks on Workers

Ever since European bosses formed the European Union (EU) in 1993, workers’ demands for any improvements in their lives and working conditions have been rejected because the EU guidelines "wouldn’t allow it." When working-class voters massively rejected the unified European Constitution in referendums in France and Holland in 2005, the rulers simply had the national parliaments adopt the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, allowing privatizations, cutbacks and other attacks on workers throughout Europe.

But when the current economic tsunami hit Europe’s bosses, their EU guidelines were the first thing to go as each national group of bosses nationalized and bailed out banks and cut each others’ throats. Britain threatened Iceland because the latter’s banking crisis affected billions invested by British bankers there. European "unity" went out the window as each capitalist country’s ruling class tried to save its own bankers and bosses.

But the crisis has also sharpened workers’ militancy, involving mass protests and strikes, including a general strike in Belgium on October 6 (see CHALLENGE, 10/29).

Greece Paralyzed

On October 21, a massive general strike paralyzed Greece, the ninth one against the conservative Karamanlis government since 2004. There were huge protests nationwide, two in Athens organized by different union groups. The strike shut down airlines, heavy industries, transportation, health services and schools. It also opposed the 2009 draft budget, headed for parliamentary debate.

The Greek budget would "reform" the pension system, adversely affecting millions of workers. They are also angry at the recent $37 billion bailout of failed banks, the privatization of companies such as Olympic Airlines, the ports, utilities and education. This would attack even more public-sector workers.

Workers were even more irate because while billions of euros of public money are being used to bail out banks, huge financial scandals are erupting, involving many government cabinet members and the "holy rollers" of a Greek Orthodox Church monastery.

Thousands March In Italy

On October 17, a mass strike took place in Italy against the anti-working-class policies of Prime Minister Berlusconi. A governmental education "reform" threatens 87,000 teaching jobs, huge cuts in health services and allows temporary contracts in many industries, leading to wage cuts.

Workers marched in many cities, including 300,000 in Rome, where the cops had to guard the education ministry to protect it from angry college and H.S. student protestors. In Milan, students and cops clashed when students tried to take over the Polytechnic college.

The attacks against workers and students are occurring amid a huge racist campaign against immigrant workers and youth which has led to murders and pogroms of Roma people and violent attacks against immigrants from Africa and Asia.

Teachers, Parents Protest in France

In France, the teachers’ unions and the main parent organization called a national demonstration in Paris on October 19. It had tepid demands — "to defend the public education service, to demand a halt to the budgetary policy of austerity and that necessary reforms be made in a different manner," according to the leader of the Christian teachers’ union. The "church bazaar" atmosphere only mobilized 40,000 protesters, although the union misleaders are claiming twice that number. Some analysts believe workers in France are "disoriented" by the economic crisis, not surprising since no organization is putting forward revolutionary politics.

The mass strikes in Greece and Italy are good but are not enough. Union leaders and opponents of conservative governments in Italy and Greece are using them as an electoral tool to bring back "pro-worker" bourgeois governments. In Italy, such a government preceded Berlusconi’s return to power last year. It was supported by Refondazione (the remnants of the old "Communist" Party). That government also attacked immigrants and workers, and sent troops to fight in the imperialist war in Afghanistan.

In the current situation of sharpening dogfights among imperialists to save their own skins during the global economic meltdown, any bourgeois government must attack workers more sharply.

A big victory workers and their allies could gain from these struggles is the building of a new revolutionary communist leadership, breaking with all the capitalist collaborators calling themselves "leftists." Only then could the working class construct a truly united society without any bankers or capitalists.

Auto Workers Must Strike Against Racist Unemployment

The current global economic crisis places auto workers at the beginning of a worldwide depression. Ground zero may be on Wall Street, but all workers will feel the effects. There will be no billion-dollar bailouts for us, no matter who wins the bosses’ White House. We need communist revolution.

Already, more than $25 TRILLION has been destroyed, much of it workers’ pensions, 401(k)s and IRAs. But the storm is just starting, and the bosses may have to amputate more of the domestic auto industry than they save. Before the crash, more than 140,000 auto jobs had been wiped out with the collaboration of the UAW International leadership.

Janesville, Wisconsin GM and Minneapolis Ford — where over 80% of the workers are Temporary Part-Timers (TPTs) — which already set to close, will close sooner. The Chicago Ford Assembly plant — almost half the workforce being TPTs — was losing a shift. This workforce also includes workers on parole or recently released from jail in the "Second Chance" program and is overwhelmingly black. That’s why racist Ford can get away with paying them about $7/hr!

Over the last year, GM stock dropped more than 80%, and Ford over 75%. With the crash, GM shares fell to $4.00 and Ford to $2.00. Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian started selling his $1 billion investment in Ford as it shrank to $300 million. Cerberus tried to sell Chysler to GM (after buying it for $7.4 billion a year ago), but no group of panicked bankers will finance the deal. Such a deal would cost over 30,000 jobs.

"Conditions in the industry are so perilous they are scaring away even the most fearless investors," said a partner in a major automotive consulting firm. "It’s reaching a point where we’ll have to decide if we’re willing to let the U.S. auto industry fail," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. (NY Times, 10/22).

There are still more than 200,000 "Big 3" auto workers and more than a million retirees. But the emerging depression could cut these numbers in half. GM and Ford have lost more than $28 billion in the first six months of this year and are burning through more than $1 billion in cash each month. Despite massive cutbacks they can’t stop the bleeding.

This depression is pushing the bosses closer to another world war. They ultimately resolve their crises by destroying the factories, and factory workers, of their competitors. The U.S. is also moving more rapidly to full-blown Nazi-style fascism, with racist terror the cutting edge of the bosses’ attacks. Capitalism doesn’t work. The bosses’ future for us is expanding war, racist unemployment, poverty wages and police terror.

UAW President Gettlefinger and Ford CEO Alan Mulally (formerly of Boeing), can hold hands and go over a cliff but we don’t have to join them. Instead, we should follow the lead of 27,000 striking Boeing workers and strike for jobs.

In Chicago, we should keep our laid-off brothers and sisters active in our local unions and reach out to unemployed workers and youth in the region. Employed and unemployed Ford workers can unite with full and part-time CTA bus operators, working and laid-off hospital and city workers, immigrant workers and unemployed youth, and demand jobs on election night in downtown Chicago, not celebrate the bosses’ election.

Amid this struggle against racist unemployment, we must win workers to fight for communist revolution. More Ford workers are reading CHALLENGE newspaper, and are learning how the world works and how to change it. Our union contracts aren’t worth the paper they are written on in the face of fascism, depression and war. The bosses will survive this and all crises until we destroy them. By patiently building a mass PLP, this current depression can open the door to communist revolution.

a name="Colombia Fascists Can’t Stop Raging Class Struggle">">"olombia Fascists Can’t Stop Raging Class Struggle

Class struggles rage on amid more fascist repression here in Colombia. On August 15, a heavily-armed death squad called Los Rastrojos entered the house of Pablo Bolaños, a poor peasant, in a rural area of the State of Cauca. Several days later his mangled dead body was found with his nails pulled out and his tongue and the soles of his feet cut off.

He was murdered in the Argelia municipality, totally militarized by an Army Infantry Battalion. Cops covered the area. Clearly the death squads operate freely, backed by the Army and police.

In the municipality of Soacha, 20 youth were found buried in a common grave. People there say they saw soldiers and civilians jointly recruiting youth to work in another region with higher wages. The bosses’ media said these young people were all "guerrillas killed in combat." But their relatives and friends labeled this a blatant lie. There have been up to 200 youths murdered recently throughout Colombia under similar circumstances.

Hundreds of youth have been slain to try to crush any kind of organizing against the bosses and their death squads. Some victims were involved in fighting in the neighborhoods and towns. One was a revolutionary-minded worker who was offered a well-paying job as an electrician in another town. He was brutally killed, along with another worker, and their bodies dumped in a town near Bogotá.

Guillermo Rivera, while taking his daughter to school, was one of 42 union activists killed so far this year. A video camera showed Rivera being forced into a police car and taken away. His dead body was found four months later.

But these fascist murders have not halted the class struggle. Indigenous people have been blocking highways during several days of mass anti-racist protests in the State of Cauca and other rural areas, demanding an end to the repression, and that land seized by the landlords’ hired death squads be returned. They have not fallen for the government’s slander of being "infiltrated by guerrillas." An Army attack failed to stop their nationwide mass march on October 21.

On October 23, 500,000 workers, mostly state employees and teachers, went out on a 24-hour general strike called by the CUT union federation to protest the state of emergency declared by the government to smash a long strike by judicial system workers. Some 56,000 marched in Bogotá as well as thousands in other cities.

Amid the current global capitalist meltdown, the rulers’ attacks are bound to sharpen since Uribe has tied Colombia’s economy much closer to that of the U.S. Building for the general strike, on October 16 tens of thousands of public school teachers in the State of Sucre demonstrated against recent layoffs and a government plan to downgrade their health plan. It was part of a national day of protest by teachers against government attacks on their jobs.

Some 9,000 sugar cane cutters have been on a month-long strike in Cauca, affecting the ethanol and paper production industries. The strikers are demanding better pay and working conditions.
So it’s clear that the capitalist rulers’ fascist attacks, using their hired killers in and out of uniform, cannot stop the class struggle. The anger and militancy of workers and youth here offer our PLP group great opportunities if we redouble our efforts in bringing them our communist politics, exposing the reformists, union sellouts and others who say Uribe is the problem instead of the entire capitalist system. Using DESAFIO as our revolutionary ideological weapon is crucial for our Party to make serious inroads among workers and youth in the near future.

A Comrade, Colombia

Union Leaders Show How Not To Organize Support for Boeing Strikers

A friend of mine is a local union officer and wanted to organize a picket of various unions at the Boeing World Headquarters in Chicago. He told me the following story:

A local president told him to call Jobs With Justice, an AFL-CIO strike support group. The guy at JWJ told my friend that they couldn’t do anything until they were asked by the striking union, the IAM.

So my friend called the local IAM. The IAM guy said it was a great idea and said they represented Boeing workers in St. Louis. My friend asked him if he could bring a busload of workers from St. Louis to picket the world headquarters. He said, "of course we can do that."

He said he had to "check with the boss," and he’d get back to him after the weekend. He never did, and when my friend called him, the IAM guy said that negotiations had just resumed, and "the boss" didn’t want to do anything to upset the talks. My friend asked, "A few hundred workers picketing the world headquarters will hurt your chances?" The IAM guy said we’ll just have to wait.

Another guy in my friend’s local called the IAM spokesperson in Seattle and asked her to call JWJ so we could have the strike support picket line at Boeing world headquarters. She said, "We don’t want to bypass the local union in your area, you better go through them." "But they’re not the ones on strike," he replied.

Without a mass base for PLP that is constantly challenging the union leaders, we are at their mercy. If we can’t move people into battle, we are left with the demoralizing union hacks, who don’t want to fight or up the ante. Workers have to take control of these battles, and having a mass base for PLP is the only way to do that. From organizing mass picket lines at the Boeing strike to mass demonstrations at the Chicago world headquarters, we have to challenge the union leaders and move workers into battle.

A Reader

CHALLENGE Binds Striker and Red Transit Worker

I work for the NYC transit system and during my lunch break I visited the picket line of the Stella D’Oro factory workers. After speaking to some strikers one gave me a CHALLENGE. One striker told me that some teachers, professors and students had been there in support and they gave the picketers this paper that explained their struggle. We exchanged contact info and I returned to the picket line days later for a strike rally with several comrades and friends.

The rally, and PLP’s participation in it, allowed us to raise good conversations about the Party’s ideas with my friends on the car ride home. A comrade, who is a teacher, plans to return to the picket lines with her students and I’ve raised the strike with my co-workers.

I plan to stay in touch with the worker who gave me CHALLENGE and invite him to participate in PL activities. While he likes the paper and told me the strike is important for all workers — not just the strikers — in this economic crisis, he spent most of the rally talking to local politicians and doesn’t see building a revolutionary communist movement as the most important aspect of the struggle. Hopefully, we’ll make long-term ties with him and transform his superficial agreement on the Party’s support for their strike into active participation in future Party actions.

Red Transit Worker

Retirees Back Boeing Strikers; Hacks Balk

At the September meeting of my union retiree association, the attendees agreed to send a resolution of support to the Boeing strikers. The response from my fellow retirees was so enthusiastic that I brought a similar resolution to the retirees Association of AFSCME’s DC 37. This group represents 50,000 retired city workers. These workers’ response to supporting the Boeing strikers was overwhelming also. Both organizations quickly sent letters of support.

I was asked by a leader of the DC 37 retirees, "Why hadn’t Kourpais called for support of the strike?" George Kourpais, the head of the AFL-CIO retiree nationwide network, was the former President of the International Association of Machinists (the union which represents the striking Boeing workers).

After such favorable responses from retiree organizations, I brought the same resolution to the active members of AFSCME’s 125,000 strong DC 37 at a meeting of its delegate assembly. Although initially ruled out of order when I tried to raise Boeing strike support, I persisted and was able to again bring a resolution to the floor. The President of DC 37 again tried to block the motion, saying that a retiree could not present resolutions to this assembly. Another delegate, however, was willing to move my resolution that passed overwhelmingly. After the vote I asked to receive a copy of the support letter.

A week later I checked, there was no letter. Three weeks later, no letter. I called the secretary of DC 37. He said no letter had been sent yet.

Fighting for these support statements revealed that rank-and-file members are willing to support building solidarity and working-class unity, while at the same time the upper level and national leadership actively try to hold back such efforts.

Brooklyn Retiree

H.S. Students Support Boeing Strikers

Dear Boeing Strikers,

We are a group of students in Los Angeles who read about your strike in CHALLENGE. The following are statements from some of us:

* A strike can make a difference. As the daughter of a working-class family, I know the struggles and hardship the working class goes through on a day to day basis. I know that the strike will be successful due to the fact that workers are the ones who make this world. All the wealth that the bosses have comes from the working class; we create their profits. If the workers go on strike, the bosses aren’t making any money.

* It is important that this article talked about unity. Our class, the working class, is strongest when all of us — union and non-union alike — are lined up together against our common enemies.

* I learned about the important role of workers who make airplanes; especially war planes. It’s good that we have the power to stop making airplanes. If we want to stop the war, you guys are really important.

* Unity among workers — citizens and non citizens, students, and every single person who belongs to the working class — is important. We are all struggling to get what we need, but if we don’t unite, there’s no point. We want to end the bosses’ rule because in one way or another, workers are being exploited. Here in California we have a lot of immigrant workers who get paid less than many others.

* It’s an inspiration to me as a working class comrade to see all of you out there on the front line everyday in unity, side by side, fighting back. I just want to say on behalf of the youth of LA, you have all of our support. Tough times are ahead. I just hope you all can keep your chins up and fists in the air. We all can win this fight and will, sooner or later. Many of the bosses will try to put you down and divide the workers, but if you all keep the unity, you are a strong force. Keep up the struggle.

a name="Capitalism’s Mass Unemployment Spreading Worldwide">">"apitalism’s Mass Unemployment Spreading Worldwide

Both bosses’ candidates, Obama and McCain, build false consciousness among many U.S. workers. McCain jabbers about Joe the Plumber, a non-union, right-wing plumber who has illusions about owning a plumbing business. Obama babbles on about how the "middle class" is hurting. But the working class, the overwhelming majority, did not benefit from the "boom" years of the ’90s and is now hurting even more from the current capitalist economic tsunami.

For millions of workers, capitalism in the U.S. and worldwide in the last three decades has meant lower wages, union-busting, racist and fascist ethnic cleansing from the Balkans to Iraq to Rwanda to the U.S. (with 2.4 million in jail, mainly black and Latin males). Endless wars, racist-fascist terror and mass unemployment are the main aspects of global capitalism. In fact, the director of the UN’s International Labor Organization estimates that the current capitalist crisis will increase unemployment by 20 million worldwide.

According to the AFL-CIO (and it ought to know), over 45 million U.S. workers earn $10.20 an hour or less. One of four earns $9.60/hour, the official poverty rate for a family of three. And 15 million workers earn the minimum wage, $6.70/hour. Among black workers, one of three earns the poverty wage or less.

Throughout the entire history of the profit system, the only time "full employment" has ever existed is during world war — and then only in the more advanced capitalist countries which are the main antagonists of such wars.

Many compare the present crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s when one-third of the working class in the leading capitalist nations was jobless. It was only when a military draft was enacted and during World War II when countries’ industries became completely devoted to war production that anything approaching "full employment" materialized.

Of course, that presumes that tens of millions in WWII uniforms could be labeled "employed" (at least 14 million in the U.S.). Meanwhile, the main warring capitalists in Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Britain geared total production for the weapons of war. It was only then that capitalism could claim the unemployment problem had been "solved." The German and Japanese fascists used millions of slave laborers for their war production. The war wiped out 100 million people permanently, including tens of millions of workers. A similar capitalist "solution" to the current crisis is not far-fetched.

The only country without any unemployment before WWII was the Soviet Union which had no private profit system; the source of unemployment, racism and war. It lost 25 million people in the war while its Red Army defeated the bulk of the Axis fascist armies.

Capitalism is based on the accumulation of maximum profits. The only source of profit is the value created by workers in the course of production. However, workers’ wages do not equal the full value they create. If that were true, there would be no profit for the boss. So the bosses try to keep workers’ wages at the lowest level possible, turning as much of the value workers create into profits for the bosses.

But each individual capitalist is competing against all his/her rivals for the maximum share of the market, and produces as much as they think they can sell. However, nothing is planned. So overproduction results, exceeding what the market can buy. Those capitalists who can produce at the lowest possible cost push aside many of their rivals. The latter, seeking to reduce costs to stay in business, feel compelled to achieve that by cutting labor costs, leading to either wage-cuts or mass layoffs, or both. Thus, unemployment is intrinsic to capitalism.

Racism is one of the main weapons capitalists use to reduce their costs. Historically, they relegate various sections of the working class to "second-class" status — the lowest wages, the hardest jobs, the last hired and first fired, and the worst-off in other aspects of life: housing, healthcare, education, etc. In the U.S., this super-exploitation has fallen on black workers, going back to slavery, and in the last two centuries also on Latino and Asian workers. (This does not include the genocide perpetrated against Native Americans who suffer the highest rate of joblessness, 90%.)

The capitalist class reaps super-profits from this racism, partly from the difference in family income between white workers and that of black, Latino and Asian, and partly because the bosses use the lower wages of super-exploited workers to drag town the wages of the entire working class. In the U.S., this difference amounted to $250 billion annually a decade ago, and is probably much higher when figuring in capitalist competition using racism on a world scale, not just within each capitalist country.

Since China has become a full-blown capitalist country, the imperialists have used its huge cheap labor to shift production away from relatively higher-paying areas. Others — India, Latin America, Vietnam and the former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe — have been used to "outsource" jobs. This "globalization," in turn, has also been used to lower workers’ wages in the imperialist countries, and even to subcontract key industrial jobs in auto, steel, aerospace, etc., to low-paying non-union areas all across the southern U.S. and California. Racism against immigrant and black workers has been crucial in this process. The pro-capitalist policies of the union leadership have helped the bosses carry out this massive attack.

This competition for profits, and for resources such as oil, gas and minerals needed for modern capitalist production, as well as to equip modern armies, is what leads to military confrontation: war. And not limited to wars between two countries, but to world war. This "solution" to inter-imperialist competition plus the mass unemployment produced by the general competition among bosses in one country and between corporations internationally is part and parcel of capitalism. This is what produces the cycles of "boom" and "bust," of recessions and depressions. This is the history of capitalism.

Obama and McCain constantly prattle about concern for "the middle class." They rarely, if ever, use the term "working class." But classes are defined by their relation to the means of production. U.S. workers who might earn $50,000 a year and manage to hang on to their houses and cars are labeled "middle class" and are even portrayed as "future owners of small businesses."

But auto or aerospace workers (or plumbers) can be laid off tomorrow, victims of the bosses’ drive to cut costs to maintain profits, and their homes and cars go up in smoke. Currently millions of U.S. workers are losing their houses because of the capitalists’ scams to make paper profits from subprime mortgages, because profit rates from these swindles exceed those that can be reaped from industrial production.

Workers and youth who think a President Obama will "create good jobs" will soon be disillusioned. These jobs will either be civilian ones, the "National Service-type," with low wages and no benefits or contain the military "option" to carry on U.S. rulers’ oil wars worldwide.

We must be involved with these working-class youth in their mass organizations and win them to see that, under capitalism, their desire for "decent jobs, healthcare, education and housing" is a mirage. We must be part of their daily fights in order to transform them into intensified class struggle between the two classes and use this opportunity to build the Progressive Labor Party. Our goal must be communist revolution to abolish capitalism, its system of wage slavery and racist super-exploitation.

While capitalist crises in and of themselves will not topple the system, they do open the door to building a movement and Party that can lead to the destruction of that system. This is the working class’s only way out of the insufferable horrors of the profit system.

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Let’s make up for lost time

GW, 10/17

The markets no longer have any faith that the world financial system they helped create has any future. The model is bust…. This is history’s joke: the crisis of capitalism long predicted by communists…

Bush-speak proves Marx right!

NYT, 10/18

Everybody knows that anything our president says is very likely wrong, and certainly won’t happen….

So hearts sunk throughout the nation when Bush appeared at a Chamber of Commerce gathering to say that the economy would recover.

"America is the most attractive destination for investors around the globe. America is the home of the most talented and enterprising and creative workers in the world," said the president, who also insisted that "democratic capitalism remains the greatest system ever devised."

Which translates into: all the money is going to Asia, nobody will ever get a job again and Karl Marx was right after all.

Quick relief, but not for hungry

GW, 10/24

"Rich countries are directing their attention to… turmoil in the financial sector, but the number of malnourished people in the world rose by 44 million in 2008. Nearly one billion people are now going hungry. When you consider the speed of the world’s response to the credit crisis, the delay in acting is shocking," an Oxfam spokesman said…

Age + foreclosure = catastrophe

NYT, 10/18

Losing a home to foreclosure is a disaster for anyone. It’s a catastrophe for older people….

"I had all these stacks of papers at the closing," she told me, "and they were just passing papers back and forth to me, back and forth, telling me to sign. And I kept saying, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute.’"

She was assured that nothing untoward was going on.

Ms. Richardson did not have a fixed-rate mortgage. Her monthly payment rose, and rose again, eventually passing $800, which she could not pay….

"You find yourself gradually climbing down the economic ladder, and you start thinking, ‘How am I going to survive, and where am I going to go?... Oh, my god. I’m going to end up sleeping in my car.’"

Seeking Cannon Fodder, Obama Enlists Mass Murderer Powell

War criminal Colin Powell’s recent endorsement of Barack Obama speaks volumes about the Obama camp’s militaristic intentions. Powell has a long military history of serving U.S. rulers, from Vietnam to Gulf Wars I and II (see below). This endorsement means Obama embraces the "Powell Doctrine," which demands rallying wide popular and international support to unleash overwhelming force against any imperialist rivals threatening U.S. bosses’ interests, particularly oil.

As part of this strategy, the Obama-Powell love match aims at reversing the sharp decline — 41% last year — in black enlistment in the armed forces. They especially want to stem the loss — mainly due to the racist nature of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — of black sergeants, who train recruits and thus form the backbone of the Army and Marines. The rulers also count on loyal retired black non commission officers (NCOs) to recruit and spread patriotism in their neighborhoods.

In 1996, Charles Moskos, who later worked on Clinton’s Hart-Rudman Commission reports outlining U.S. imperialism’s goals for the 21st Century, co-wrote a book called "All That We Can Be: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way." In it he said, "The beneficial impact of black sergeants extends beyond the Army. Every year 2,000 black NCOs in the Army (4,000 in the military as a whole) retire from service....The impact of this group of men — and now women as well — on the civilian black community will be tangible and positive." Obama hopes having Powell on board will help him get the 91,000 additional soldiers he demands for, among other stated aims, expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan.

With 35 years as a professional soldier, Powell rose to full General. He got his start as a captain and later a major in the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, serving as a South Vietnamese Army advisor and as assistant chief of staff for the Americal 23rd Infantry Division. He was assigned to investigate the My Lai Massacre of Vietnamese women and children, which he whitewashed, saying that "relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." (So "excellent" that 3,000,000 Vietnamese were slaughtered).

In 2004, Powell told TV interviewer Larry King, "I was in a unit that was responsible for My Lai. I got there after My Lai happened. In war, these sorts of horrible things happen every now and again."

Adding to his executioner "laurels," Powell — as senior military assistant to Reagan’s Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger — helped carry out the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the 1986 air strike on Libya.

Powell drips with the blood of the millions of Iraqis he helped kill in Desert Genocides I and II to benefit Exxon Mobil’s oil empire. Powell personally directed the slaughter in the first war as chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs. He "justified" the second invasion by lying to the UN about Iraq’s weapons programs. Powell currently serves as a director in the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. imperialism’s top think-tank.

An Obama presidency would put into practice Powell’s strategy for mass murder, while attempting to win working-class youth, especially black youth, to become cannon fodder for U.S. rulers in present and future oil wars.

• Union Sellouts in Bed with Boeing: WORKERS’ POWER IS OUR ONLY FUTURE
  • CEO Is Serious About Fascist Economic Regime
  • Communist Ideas: The Alternative To Fascist Capitulation
  • GLOBAL CRISIS WEIGHS ON STRIKERS’ MINDS, LEADS TO DISCUSSION OF REVOLUTION
• U.S. Rulers’ Biggest Bailout Scheme: Global War
  • MEGA-MONEY BOYS SOROS, BUFFETT, BLOOMBERG TAKE CHARGE
• GLOBAL WAR: OBAMA, MCCAIN AGREE ON GOAL, DIFFER ON APPROACH
• Troops, Cops, Tanks and Copters Can’t Crush Morelos Teachers’ Strike
• Anti-Racist Unity Key to Stella D’Oro Strike City Univ. Staff Backs Bakery Workers
• Strikers Defy Cops, Stand Fast
• Sellout Unions Battle for ‘Right’ to Screw Rebellious Hospital Workers
• Expose Obama/Spike Lee Drive to Win Youth to Fight Bosses’ Oil Wars
• Belgian General Strike Blasts Bailout Assault on Workers
• Anti-Immigrant Raids Attack on All Workers
• Public Health Workers Can’t Count on Obama
• LETTERS
  • Boeing Striker on Bosses: ‘Hang ’em all!’
  • ‘Service Nation’ Masks Obama-McCain War Draft
  • Talking Communism with Stella D’Oro Strikers
  • Ayers No Radical, Just ‘Establishment’ Liberal
  • Workers Need Class Analysis
• France-wide Protests Hit Bosses’ Meltdown of Wages
• Obama Healthcare Plan Hazardous to Your Health
  • WILL OBAMA FIX THIS PROBLEM?
• ‘Religulous’: Methadone for the Masses
• REDEYE
  • Rich/poor gap hits 1928 record
  • Nervous Brits in a gold rush
  • Read Lenin, fight capitalism
  • Russia’s poor: Capitalism = death
  • Old quotes suggest new trouble
  • Smile, and keep on overspending
  • ERs don’t solve workers’ health
  • Russia prepares for a big war
  • People lose faith, tighten belts
  • Blame capitalism, not US greed
  • ‘Humanitarian’ war usually isn’t
  • Market shows dialectical truths

---

Union Sellouts in Bed with Boeing:
WORKERS’ POWER IS OUR ONLY FUTURE

CEO Is Serious About Fascist Economic Regime

Communist Ideas: The Alternative To Fascist Capitulation

GLOBAL CRISIS WEIGHS ON STRIKERS’ MINDS,
LEADS TO DISCUSSION OF REVOLUTION

U.S. Rulers’ Biggest Bailout Scheme: Global War

MEGA-MONEY BOYS SOROS,
BUFFETT, BLOOMBERG TAKE CHARGE

GLOBAL WAR: OBAMA,
MCCAIN AGREE ON GOAL, DIFFER ON APPROACH

Troops, Cops, Tanks and Copters Can’t Crush Morelos Teachers’ Strike

Anti-Racist Unity Key to Stella D’Oro Strike
City Univ. Staff Backs Bakery Workers

Strikers Defy Cops, Stand Fast

Sellout Unions Battle for ‘Right’ to Screw Rebellious Hospital Workers

Expose Obama/Spike Lee Drive to Win Youth to Fight Bosses’ Oil Wars

Belgian General Strike Blasts Bailout Assault on Workers

Anti-Immigrant Raids Attack on All Workers

Public Health Workers Can’t Count on Obama

LETTERS

Boeing Striker on Bosses: ‘Hang ’em all!’

‘Service Nation’ Masks Obama-McCain War Draft

Talking Communism with Stella D’Oro Strikers

Ayers No Radical, Just ‘Establishment’ Liberal

Workers Need Class Analysis

France-wide Protests Hit Bosses’ Meltdown of Wages

Obama Healthcare Plan Hazardous to Your Health

WILL OBAMA FIX THIS PROBLEM?

‘Religulous’: Methadone for the Masses

REDEYE

Rich/poor gap hits 1928 record

Nervous Brits in a gold rush

Read Lenin, fight capitalism

Russia’s poor: Capitalism = death

Old quotes suggest new trouble

Smile, and keep on overspending

ERs don’t solve workers’ health

Russia prepares for a big war

People lose faith, tighten belts

Blame capitalism, not US greed

‘Humanitarian’ war usually isn’t

Market shows dialectical truths