Challenge Newspaper - Progressive Labor Party

News that U.S. troops tortured and killed Iraqi prisoners should anger but not surprise us. Atrocities have always been the order of the day for the U.S. military, despite Donald Rumsfeld’s claim that they’re "un-American" aberrations. U.S. imperialism requires endless wars of conquest, in which U.S. working-class soldiers fight their class brothers and sisters in foreign lands. To get GIs to act against their own class interest, the rulers force on them a mindset that dehumanizes the enemy through racism, just like the Nazis catalogued as subhumans the millions of Jews, Gypsies, Russians and others they massacred.

The rulers’ agents put an ideological seal of approval on racist war crimes. Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz implored the U.S. government to "introduce a legal procedure for going to a judge and applying for a warrant to use torture" on Arab prisoners (Harvard University Gazette, 12/13/01). And Colin Powell’s much-touted doctrine of "overwhelming force" calls for the mass, indiscriminate killing of soldiers and non-combatants.

The racist U.S. war machine’s criminal record stretches from Abu Ghraib prison back to the days of George Washington. [See article page 2.] It cannot be reformed by eliminating "a few bad apples" as the Bushites say or by the "improved training" the liberals demand. The imperialists’ need for maximum profits and control of oil makes racist intimidation and killing the primary mission of the U.S. armed forces.

The storm of phony outrage on Capitol Hill amounts to nothing more than election-year maneuvering and a tactical dispute among U.S. rulers over how to conduct this and future wars. CBS first broke the prison abuse story on "60 Minutes II" in order to discredit Bush. As CHALLENGE has noted, CBS’s parent, Viacom — with Vietnam-era LBJ aide Joseph Califano and Clinton War Secretary William Cohen on its Board — belongs to the liberal wing of U.S. imperialism. It sees that far more troops, including allies, are needed to control Iraq and its oil. Viacom has just put out a slew of Bush-bashing books, including Bob Woodward’s "Plan of Attack," Richard Clarke’s "Against All Enemies," and Paul O’Neill’s "The Price of Loyalty."

Liberals demand Rumsfeld’s resignation while they count on a Kerry administration to "dramatically increase the size of the Army," as Max Boot of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations said recently. (Los Angeles Times, 4/29/04) If Rumsfeld does take the fall, his sin will not have been invading Iraq or allowing prison torture but doing so "on the cheap," thereby failing to ensure a windfall for Exxon Mobil.

The soldiers at Abu Ghraib served this capitalist class at the expense of their own class interests. Given the absence of a large communist movement, it would have been very difficult for them to defy the brass and unite with their working-class Iraqi counterparts. But history shows [See article on Strasbourg, page 8] that communist leadership can transform the carnage of war into working-class triumphs. The proper response to the horror stories from Iraq is to ignore all capitalist candidates and to build — and spread the ideas of — the Progressive Labor Party.µ

Imperialism = Torture And Brutality

As Marx pointed out over 150 years ago, the profit system was born dripping with blood from the world’s working class. U.S. capitalism was built on racist terror, the torture and mass murder of African slaves and genocide against the indigenous Native Americans. During the British colonization of India, the imperialists chopped off the thumbs of thousands of hand loom weavers to undercut their competitive edge in textile manufacturing. Capitalism and imperialism have always used torture and brutality as the "price of doing business." These butchers will pay a much higher price when they are swept away by communist revolution.

In 1776, the U.S. ruling class used 6,000 troops to raze more than 20 Cherokee villages, destroying crops and massacring noncombatants. In 1864, U.S. territorial military commander Colonel John Chivington ordered the brutal murder of as many as 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado, more than half being women and children. In 1868, Lieutenant George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh U.S. Cavalry attacked civilians in a Cheyenne village camped along the Washita River in Oklahoma, murdering more than 100, including women and children.

Today, the fact that John Negroponte has been named U.S. ambassador to Iraq reveals how much U.S. policy is based on mass terror. Negroponte was the Reagan-Bush Sr. ambassador to Honduras, commanding the death squads that murdered thousands throughout Central America. During Negroponte’s tenure, a 1983 CIA torture manual was used in Honduras (Baltimore Sun, 1/27/79). This manual’s methods have been used in Iraq and at Guantanamo.

Since World War II, the CIA has taught and practiced torture. In the late 1960s, Dan Mitrione worked for the U.S. Office of Public Safety, part of the Agency for International Development. In Brazil, he "advised" police how to apply electric shock to prisoners without killing them. In Uruguay, according to the former chief of police intelligence, he "professionalized" torture and "advised" on psychological techniques, such as playing tapes of women and children screaming, giving the impression that the prisoners’ families were being tortured. In Montevideo, he tortured four vagrants to death in the soundproofed cellar of his house for the benefit of Uruguayan police officers. Ultimately he was kidnapped and killed by the Tupamaros.

In 1968, the CIA experimented with trying to break suspected leaders of Vietnam’s National Liberation Front. In one, they opened the skulls of three prisoners and planted electrodes in their brains. They were then put in a room and given knives. The CIA hoped that when the electrodes were activated they would attack each other. When they didn’t, they were shot and their bodies burned. Groups of Vietnamese prisoners were routinely questioned in helicopters. Those who didn’t talk were handcuffed behind their backs and hurled to their deaths. (See "Hidden Terrors" by A.J. Langguth and "Journey into Madness" by Gordon Thomas)

One of the best-known and most heinous programs developed in Vietnam to destroy the insurgency was Operation Phoenix, involving the torture and murder of prisoners, and the displacement of whole populations into internment camps. Many civilians were also tortured and murdered in the search for information.

Jesse Leaf, former chief CIA analyst on Iran, said the CIA knew of the torture of Iranians by the Savak, the Shah’s hated secret police the CIA helped create. Leaf said a senior CIA official instructed the Savak on torture methods, and that CIA torture seminars "were based on German torture techniques from World War II." (New York Times, 1/7/79)

The Israelis are U.S. partners in torture. Palestinian youths as young as 14 are badly beaten, their heads shoved into toilet bowls. When Israel retreated from its "security strip" in southern Lebanon, journalist Robert Fisk visited Khiam prison. He wrote, "The torturers had just left but the horror remained. There was the whipping pole and the window grilles where prisoners were tied naked for days, freezing water thrown over them at night. Then there were the electric leads for the little dynamo — the machine mercifully taken off to Israel by the interrogators — which had the inmates shrieking with pain when the electrodes touched their fingers or penises. And there were the handcuffs, which an ex-prisoner handed to me yesterday afternoon. Engraved into the steel were the words: ‘The Peerless Handcuff Co., Springfield, Mass. Made in USA.’" (The Independent, 5/25, 2000)

But torture is not reserved for distant lands. LSD and other hallucinogens were given to U.S. soldiers without their knowledge. More than a thousand suffered serious psychological afflictions. The CIA funded Dr. Ewen Cameron at McGill University, a pioneer in sensory deprivation. Cameron once locked a woman in a small box for 35 days, deprived of light, smell or sound. CIA doctors were amazed since their own sensory deprivation experiments in 1955 had induced severe psychological reactions in less than 40 hours. Cameron also used Thorazine, Nembutal and Seconal, followed by severe electro-shock, after which taped messages were played repeatedly 16 hours a day.

"I can make anybody confess to anything," bragged former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge about torturing suspects at a South Side police station. The sister of another former detective said, "They began to boast about power and what really happens in a police station." She said, "When they get them in a police station, they give them hell...They beat the shit out of them. They throw them against walls. They burn them against radiators. They smother them. They poke them with objects. They did something to one guy’s testicles." In April 2002, a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate more than five dozen torture allegations.

In recent years the UN, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have charged the U.S. with tolerating torture in prisons in many states, ranging from solitary confinement for 23 hour a day in concrete boxes for years, to jolting prisoners with 50,000-volt shocks through a belt they’re forced to wear.

The rulers will do anything to keep the profits flowing. They have invested millions of dollars and hours to perfect the unimaginable. But no amount of torture or high-tech weaponry will save them from their fate. A mass, international PLP will take its best shots and ultimately smash them and their torture chambers. And all the torturers, death squads, racist/fascist killers and war criminals will get their just desserts.

May Day Marches And Activities 2004

a name="Cops Can’t Stop Communist May Day March">">"ops Can’t Stop Communist May Day March

BROOKLYN, NY, May 1 — The Flatbush neighborhood was the home of our May Day march and dinner celebration, and PLP was certainly at home here. Thirty-four hundred people bought CHALLENGE. May Day reminded us all of the working class’s boundless capacity to withstand and reverse the attacks of capitalism in the fight for a communist revolution.

While U.S. imperialism appears unstoppable in its drive toward endless wars, workers here welcomed our openly communist demonstration of about 200 workers and youth marching in the city that is the center of U.S. capitalism, under banners reading "Turn the Guns Around." In a period in which the rulers treat our youth, especially black and Latin youth, like garbage, youth were at the front and center of our march. When the fascist cops assigned to the march tried to rush us along our route to finish as quickly as possible, we stood firm in preventing our message from being cut short by NYPD goons.

Capitalist schools do their best to mis-educate and demoralize our youth, but we showed these schemes can be defeated. At our dinner — to which an additional 50 people came — young people gave speeches, sang revolutionary songs and performed skits. They listened to a rousing opening speech which exposed U.S. capitalism’s bald-faced lie that this is the "best of all possible worlds," reminding us that working-class revolution will triumph over imperialist exploitation and war. While attacks on the international working class grow more acute, we don’t despair. Instead, we take increased pride as we honor the communist heroes who opened this era of working-class revolution even as we continue to wage the struggle against the opportunism that reversed the great victories of these past giants.

May Day 2004 contained the seeds of a new future, a communist future. We need many millions more involved in bringing this to pass. This is a life and death question for our movement and for the future of our class. We’ve made some gains in our numbers this year, especially among youth. Even more important was the quality of these recruits.

The creativity, boldness, persistence and the love between working-class brothers and sisters displayed on this May Day, and in the organizing leading up to it, made a lasting impression on many new friends. Our ideas resonate deep in the souls of thousands now and many millions more we’ve yet to meet. Our potential remains earthshaking. Each May Day is a step in our march from the potential to the actual.

Youth Lead PLP Marchers In La Garment Center

LOS ANGELES, May 1 — Chanting "Fight for Communism! Power to the Workers!," PLP youth organized a very powerful, spirited May Day march here today of nearly 200 — bigger than last year — in the center of downtown, witnessed by thousands of garment workers, several of whom joined. Workers along the sidewalks eagerly grabbed all our CHALLENGES (over 600) and 4,000 leaflets.

The multi-racial parade, filled mostly with youth, proudly waved the red banners of revolution and championed communism as the answer to the racism, fascism and imperialist war that the capitalist system needs like a vampire needs blood. More than in recent years, workers and students joined the march. The security force of mainly black and Latin high school students was well-organized. It was formed from activity at and after school, and a consistent daily struggle about the nature of this rotten system and the need for revolutionary change.

Several workers came from leaflets. Some students came from a rally earlier in the week against racist cutbacks where they applauded a communist speaker calling on them to end a murderous system that kills our brothers and sisters in Iraq while cutting our schools’ education and health care. As he urged them to march on May Day, the mis-leaders tried to push him off the stage and Arriana Huffington tried to grab his microphone. Another student marcher had spoken for revolution at a rally against the cutbacks a few weeks before. Her entire class read the PLP leaflet and many expressed interest in marching. These events resulted from years of struggle and base-building.

A group of students came from a national student organization where they had fought for a resolution calling on students to help win working-class soldiers to resist imperialism. One Latina student from this group who had been to many different demonstrations, and paid the full fare for the long trip, said, "Thank you so much for inviting me. I didn’t know there was anything like this out there."

At the spirited dinner afterwards, we heard a very inspiring speech about the fight against the racist cutbacks in education and the war in Iraq. The speaker’s mother had to wait a long time for a needed operation because of staff cuts while the bosses spend billions to kill Iraqis for oil profits. He called on all present to join PLP. Another speaker described the fight for the resolution in the national student group and urged her fellow marchers to join PLP. Several marchers did just that! Others committed themselves to reading and distributing CHALLENGE. Revolutionary poetry read by its writers excited everyone. High school students performed "Good Morning Revolution" by Langston Hughes. The hall was decorated with CHALLENGE front-pages. We enjoyed a power point presentation about the importance of our press in galvanizing the anger of workers, students and soldiers toward revolution.

More youth than ever organized this May Day, collectively solving problems on the spot. This bodes well for PLP’s future. Although our numbers are modest, with a long way to go, we’ve seen hard work pay off, helping consolidate our victories, leading to ever bigger ones.

West Coast PLP May Day Dinner

Youth and workers took the lead in organizing a festive and yet serious multi-racial May Day dinner here. Over 170 attended an exciting program of revolutionary songs, poetry, and political speeches. Several who came joined PLP. The hall was decorated with red balloons and flowers, revolutionary art and posters and past CHALLENGES, including one showing PLP’s role in the 1964 Harlem rebellion.

An industrial worker described the fight for communism and building the Party on his job. A small group of his co-workers came, among 50 invited, all of whom take the party seriously and have the potential to become an important force as the bosses’ attacks make it increasingly impossible for workers to live in the old way. He said that it would be short-sighted to become discouraged at difficulties in building the Party now. He explained that in other countries at other times it also appeared that workers would never rise up. But while the process took years to unfold, they DID rebel in mass struggle against the rulers.

Now, he said, PLP is fighting for communism — not socialism — to eliminate the wage system and all bosses’ borders. "We will grow and we will win."

Another speaker related the history of working-class soldiers’ resistance inside the military. He urged those present to spread the fight for revolutionary politics among soldiers and sailors.

A third stressed the importance of an international party, explaining he joined PLP as an industrial worker in Mexico and now was forced to become a garment worker in LA, where he continues to build the Party, along with many other garment workers present.

A committee of youth and workers, some active for the first time, led the organizing of every aspect of the dinner. Its success lay in deep base-building and serious political work in several concentrations, in some cases over many years. Comrades vowed to continue the struggle with those who came and many who didn’t but who will attend in the future as we deepen our ties and struggle with them and against the murderous bosses.

Liberal-Led Caravan Takes Right-wing Road

Before the May Day march, some youth went to sell CHALLENGE and distribute Party literature at a liberal-led caravan for immigrant rights. We sold 60 papers to about 400 caravaners boarding buses for a day of speeches by politicians throughout LA. When they heard we were headed for a May Day March on Broadway, to unite workers and students against the bosses, many wondered why the caravan was headed to the West LA Federal Building instead. Many read CHALLENGE on the buses (see letter, page 6). Meanwhile, when a woman mistakenly waiting for the caravan at our march was told this was PLP’s communist May Day event, not the liberal-led caravan, she decided to march with us. But when two people headed for our march mistakenly went to MacArther Park, caravan organizers told them, "Get on the bus. We’re going to that march right now." Over the bus captain’s protests, they said, "We’re going on our own. We’ll see you at Olympic and Broadway." Of course, the caravan stayed as far away from the communist May Day March as possible!

NYC Dinner Reviews Historic May Days, Punctures Lesser-Evil Illusions

NEW YORK CITY, May 1 — PLP celebrated May Day, the international working-class holiday, with many activities here, including a militant march in Brooklyn and two dinners. At one dinner 250 enthusiastic workers and youth enjoyed a program which included speakers, musical and theatrical performances and an open mike session. First we heard the history of May Day, then a powerful keynote speech and then a series of inspiring testimonials from workers present at historic PLP May Day marches.

The keynote speech’s theme was "Dangerous Illusions." (See excerpts, p. 5) In this election year, workers are being offered the "anyone-but-Bush" concept, a "lesser-evil" line backing the Democratic Party’s Kerry, representing the liberal wing of the ruling class that wants to intensify the war in Iraq. Communists know there’s no such thing as a "good boss" or "lesser evil" when it comes to the ruling class and its capitalist dictatorship. So the good news is that we can expose these dangerous illusions by spreading communist ideas among the working class and organizing for a real alternative — communist revolution!

The testimonials from previous historic May Day marches included the very first one in 1971; the defeat of the fascist/racist ROAR in Boston, 1975; the smashing of the Neo-Nazis in Marquette Park, Chicago, 1979; and the Party’s participation in the militant May Day celebration in El Salvador, 1987. These May Day tributes demonstrate the Party’s strong commitment to organizing the international working class to fight for communism and against racism, fascism, sexism and exploitation worldwide.

The program also included talks by a new member explaining why she joined PLP and a veteran old-timer describing why and how he became a life-long communist (see excerpts, p. 5)

The PLP Singers sounded forth with several inspiring songs throughout the evening, including ones newly-composed about recent events.

After a delicious dinner, cooked by many of those attending, the open mike session was energized by powerful musical performances from workers in the audience. The high point was an inspiring letter from a comrade organizing in the military (see text, p. 6). This comrade proved that most workers serving in the bosses’ imperialist military are not sadistic torturers like the MPs and private mercenaries running Iraqi prisons. Working-class black, Latin and white soldiers in Iraq who enlist for education money or job training are becoming disillusioned by the profit motives of Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Mercs Inc. (the different private "security" companies and their war criminal fascist employees from South Africa, UK, Australia, France, Chile, Colombia, etc.) behind this war. Equally troubling is the vicious murder, rape, and torture of Iraqi workers, and by the utter lack of rations, equipment and benefits provided by the bosses’ military. Complaints are rampant. Communist organizing can win these soldiers to red ideas and transform this anger into militant opposition to the imperialists’ war machine as happened with tens of thousands of rebellious GIs and sailors during the Vietnam War.

This year’s May Day celebration was a modest advance for our movement. It was informative and will motivate us to intensify our efforts to build the Party and make next year’s May Day celebration bigger and better!

Internationalism Championed At Chicago Dinner

CHICAGO, IL, May 1 — "It was really great. Me and my brother were just talking about a lot of these ideas earlier in the day," declared a Ford worker about the PLP May Day dinner, attended by more than 80 workers and students. A bloc of workers from Stroger Cook County Hospital came, fresh from their fight that stopped the racist firing of nine black respiratory therapists. They were joined by a bloc of students from Purdue University—Calumet, a small group of auto and steel workers and more.

PLP’s internationalism was reflected both in the delicious food and the make-up of the participants. Immigrant workers and students from Mexico, the Caribbean, Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Ecuador, Ghana and Peru, gave life to the fight for international communist revolution and the need to smash all borders.

The program included songs led by the PLP workers’ chorus and a very funny skit, performed by the Purdue students — a "game show" featuring Bush, Rice, Cheney, Kerry, Clinton, Schwartzenegger and Howard Stern. Nine Stroger workers, including three respiratory therapists, gave a presentation accompanied by slides, describing their struggle against the bosses and union leaders and addressing questions raised by their co-workers.

A young black worker explained how he came to terms with the necessity of taking responsibility for the Party; exposed Kerry and the Democrats for demanding even more troops in Iraq; and invited everyone to join the PLP Summer Project in Boston during the Democratic Party Convention.

The keynote speech (see excerpts page 5) stressed having confidence in the workers, and the patience to win them to the Party as the way out of imperialism’s new Dark Ages. Building unbreakable ties with many workers, on many levels, will sustain us through hard times, secure the Party against fascist terror and ultimately destroy capitalism. Relying on the workers and organizing our lives around those we’re trying to win will make us a stronger Party. The dinner closed with everyone standing and singing the Internationale.

Rebuilding The Communist Movement

Red Symbols Shine in El Salvador

SAN SALVADOR, May 1 — "City workers, farm workers, students, unite!"; "Free the STISS political prisoners!" (Social Security workers arrested this week); "Send the children of the rich to Iraq!" These chants resounded through the main streets of the capital on this International Workers’ Day.

Thousands of workers marched to commemorate the historic general strike in Chicago and to protest the repression and brutality of the National Civil Police (created by the "peace" accords between the Government and the FMLN), as well as to oppose the war in Iraq and the sending of Salvadoran troops there.

"Marx Lives!" was one wall painting along the line of march, as well as banners, flags, berets, T-shirts, scarves, and CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, advocating the fight for communism. For many years, such symbols were absent from these marches. After the 1992 "peace" accords, only PLP revived these communist symbols. Today thousands of workers and students here are taking them up as their own.

Many workers nation-wide already know CHALLENGE. The youth distributing it were surrounded by many workers asking for copies. Among them were electrical, health and education workers, those from the maquillas, as well as university and high school students. Some exclaimed, "This paper is really something"; "How can we get it regularly?"

A health care worker said, "I always read CHALLENGE; the election articles were really good." He added, "PLP developed the successful movement against the war in Vietnam. Today we must do the same against the war in Iraq."

Over 500 CHALLENGES and 1,500 leaflets were distributed. We met friends who know PLP. We also made contact with a group of friends who had become inactive. We planned meetings and study groups with them about our communist ideas and about the war in Iraq.

This week workers from Social Security (the national public health care system) and from other organizations occupied the buildings of the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador, leading to a sharp 24-hour confrontation with the police. The cops’ brutality encountered the hatred of the working class.

"Today rocks, tomorrow guns" responded the May Day marchers to the provocation by cops who threatened university students with, "You’ll find Ricardo Monge [head of the Social Security union] dead on a coffee plantation." Monge is currently imprisoned along with 35 other workers, arrested during the fight at the Cathedral. They threw rocks at cops using tear gas and guns.

The National Civil Police includes ex-members of the FMLN and of the murderous National Guard, and engages in the same kind of reign of terror used in the 1970’s and ’80’s. But similarly, many workers are ready to struggle against the same oppressive capitalist system.

The working class here and worldwide proudly stands on the shoulders of past revolutionary giants. Long Live May Day, the international working class and the Progressive Labor Party!

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MEXICO CITY, May 2 — A PLP contingent of 70 workers and students raised the red flag of communist revolution on May Day. We marched with contingents of IMSS (social security) workers, electricians, phone workers and tens of thousands of others. Thousands of CHALLENGES-DESAFIOS were distributed and our chants like, "Only communism will liberate workers," reached tens of thousands of demonstrators. Many workers greeted us with clenched fists of solidarity and joined our chants.

The bosses are attacking the pensions of thousands of IMSS workers (see CHALLENGE, 5/12). The workers called for a strike against these attacks and demanded the resignation of IMSS boss Levy. IMSS workers that marched with PLP used the CHALLENGE article to call on fellow workers to take the offensive by grasping our communist politics. The article also said these attacks must be seen in light of world capitalism’s endless wars, jobless recoveries and imperialist rivalry.

Women and youth, who are guaranteeing the future of our Party and the future emancipation of the working class, formed most of the PLP contingent.

On May 2, half of the PLP contingent participated in a cadre school to strengthen their communist understanding and improve our efforts at building the Party. Several youth were critical, and self-critical, that even though we reached thousands of workers, our contingent was smaller than last year. This was partly due to a number of our comrades having had to move because of severe economic conditions. But we all took the criticism to heart and are committed to doing better in the future.

a name="Colombia’s Oil Strikers Defy Death-Squad Bosses">">"olombia’s Oil Strikers Defy Death-Squad Bosses

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, May 12 — On April 22, oil workers at the state-owned Ecopetrol struck for the first time in 25 years, though workers in many refineries have always fought the bosses’ attacks. In the last decade, many union activists have been killed or jailed, accused of being "terrorists." In recent months 100 militant workers have been fired.

Bush buddy Colombian President Uribe is carrying out orders from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to privatize Ecopetrol, selling it to various imperialist oil moguls. This requires busting the union (USO) and attacking workers’ wages and benefits.

In 2002, Ecopetrol proposed a contract with many cutbacks. It won an arbitration judgment against the workers, militarized the plants and harassed workers in order to avoid a strike. But workers kept fighting for their jobs and their lives. After dumping a sellout union leadership a year ago, they finally struck last month.

Colombia has become an important oil-producing country. Huge new deposits are being discovered. Colombia’s government, accused of being one of the world’s worst human rights violators, has sided with the U.S. in the capitalist-imperialist struggle for control of South America. Just this week, dozens of Colombian paramilitaries (many active or former soldiers) were arrested in Venezuela, accused of preparing a coup against President Chavez, who’s on the Bushites’ hit list.

But Colombia’s working class needs more than unionism or militant strikes. A combination of fascist repression and union hacks has devastated unions here, similar to the rest of the capitalist world. Today, USO represents only a small fraction of the Ecopetrol workforce. Just 4% of Colombia’s workforce is unionized.

PLP members have participated in many Ecopetrol strikers’ protests, bringing them our communist politics. Many — including those at the huge May Day march here — have welcomed our literature. We must redouble our efforts to ensure that strikes like those at Ecopetrol become schools for communism, and help build the only road out of this capitalist hell: communist revolution.

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PLP celebrated May Day, the International Working Class Day, with marches in the U.S. and contingents at trade union marches in several Latin American cities, as well as at dinners. Here are excerpts from some of the speeches at these events drawing important political lessons for the world’s working class and its allies. The full texts and other speeches are available on PLP’s website, PLP.org

Keynote Speech At a New York City Dinner

State Of The World Address

There is good news and bad news:

The bad news is that capitalism is still here. Class struggle is hardly on the radar screen for now, and workers still hold very dangerous illusions about reform.

The good news is that communist ideas and the Progressive Labor Party are alive and well and we are slowly, but surely, growing both in the United States and internationally.

Communists have the ideas and the practice that can turn bad news into good news for the working class….

Dangerous illusions…dominate the "anybody but Bush" movement. Of course Bush is an open liar and a mass murderer – but Bush and Kerry are more similar than different.

Kerry, unlike Bush, is slick and understands that workers in the US are angry. Kerry places the blame for cutbacks and job loss only on those companies who move production outside the US. Kerry does not criticize Boeing, which has downsized tens of thousands of workers from their Washington State and Missouri plants, while moving some of that production to US prisons. Kerry would NEVER make the link between the soaring war budget and job loss - or the racist and sexist nature of slave labor which is enabled by welfare reform and an overflowing prison population — the largest in the industrialized world. This is because Kerry likes to portray himself as a progressive. WE KNOW BETTER! Kerry supported "welfare reform," "immigration reform," "counter terrorism" and the "effective death penalty laws" all of which created the legal basis for the Patriot Act and U.S. fascism. And, Kerry criticizes Bush for not building the homeland security police state fast enough, and well enough.

Kerry wants to send more, not less, troops to Iraq. His "national service" plan is a trick to win more people into the military. That is because Kerry, like Bush, like Clinton, like Nixon, like Johnson, like Kennedy, like FDR, only serve the needs of the ruling class, especially when it comes to controlling the working class, vital resources and key strategic military positions. And, Kerry, like Bush, both serve and belong to the capitalist ruling elite. Their interest is fundamentally opposed to the interests of the working class….

Daimler/Chrysler’s boss Jorgen Schrempp echoed Hitler when he said: "We have a clear edge today in the world; we have Poland, we have Hungary, and we have the Czech Republic!"

Well, what do we have? —- WE have the Progressive Labor Party….WE have communist ideas…WE have the international working class and its allies with a world to win. Whether Bush or Kerry, Aristide or Putin, from South Africa to Haiti, from the U.S. to the EU, workers need to dump all their oppressors….

Keynote Speech at Chicago PLP Event

The good news is, it’s MAY DAY and we’re going to win, no matter how long it takes. The bad news is, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Capitalism is proving every day that it can only provide the world’s workers with endless imperialist wars, mass racist poverty, fascist Homeland Security and police terror, famines, "ethnic cleansing" genocide and more. This is the "triumph" of capitalism, and it will continue until it is smashed by communist revolution….

Iraq

One year ago Bush flew onto an aircraft carrier Lincoln and said, "Mission Accomplished!" Can you believe it? What an asshole! And before the war, Rumsfeld said the Iraqis would welcome US troops and throw flowers at them. Instead they’ve been showered with Rocket Propelled Grenades and roadside ambushes.

The "Go It Alone" gang in the White House is drawing US imperialism very close to a major defeat in Iraq and an even greater strategic setback in the Middle East and South Asia.

The US is in a tight spot…. Apparently no one in the White house or the Pentagon knows that in order to get out of a hole, you first have to stop digging.

This May Day, U.S. imperialism faces the specter of a strategic defeat in the Middle East, which threatens their position as the top dog among imperialists….

It’s possible the U.S. can prevail, or make a deal with the EU, Russia and China to share the spoils in return for some badly needed help. But a few things are clear. Their "aura" of "invincibility" has been badly shaken. And the morale of US troops and the US working class is deteriorating as the body bags pile up. The Vietnam Syndrome is very much alive, and US rulers may never be able to get past it.

But…whatever happens, in the Middle East or the upcoming elections, there will be no victory for the international working class. The Muslim fundamentalists are anti-communist murderers who want to seize the oil profits and cut their own deals. Kerry, McCain, Hillary Clinton and the N.Y. Times are attacking Bush for his failures, and are calling for even more troops and a long stay.

The only solution to imperialist bloodbaths is international communist revolution, and that’s why we’re here today….

Politics is primary over weapons….

The jihadists, nationalists, liberal Democrats…have no solutions for us. Saddam. Bush, the Taliban, Kerry & Co., they all represent one or another set of billionaires. But if we fight to make communist politics primary, we can build a mass international PLP, from Chicago to Baghdad….

The Dark Age Must End

Revolutionary communist leader Josef Stalin warned that the defeat of the Soviet Union would usher in a new Dark Age….The collapse of the old movement was the worst defeat the working class has ever suffered. Recovering from it is taking generations….

The most important error our Party made was to underestimate the significance of this defeat, brought on by the old movement’s own internal weaknesses…. We failed to understand the devastating consequences this would have on the international working class, and the new life it would give U.S. imperialism. Again, politics is primary….

[But] We have the Party and its line. And we have the strategy of building a base in the working class. The Party, with all its shortcomings and weaknesses, teaches us to be objective and to serve the working class rather than ourselves. We have a lot to offer the workers in terms of political understanding. But it’s a two-way street. The workers have a lot to offer us, maybe more. By having confidence in the workers, and the patience to win them to the Party, we can build unbreakable ties with many workers, on many levels, that will not only sustain us through hard times, but secure the Party against fascist terror and ultimately destroy imperialism. Relying on the workers, and organizing your life around those you are trying to win, will make you a better communist and make us a stronger Party. We can’t hope to win any other way.

Speech from an industrial worker At LA May Day

When they asked me if I wanted to give a speech for May Day, it seemed easy to say yes. But as the date got closer, it was getting harder and harder to remember everything that I wanted to say. However, I’m going to talk to you tonight about wars.

Under capitalism wars are inevitable. The ruling classes have to keep themselves constantly in wars, both internationally and nationally. They fight on the international level to plunder the wealth of others and nationally they fight to repress any attempt by the working class to improve our conditions.

If we go back in history a little, we’ll see that the US ruling class has been in wars almost all the time. To mention a few: Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Vietnam, etc. That’s why we shouldn’t be amazed or surprised about war. What should amaze us is that these wars only benefit the bosses. These wars only serve to increase the wealth of the Rockefellers, Morgans and other members of the top ruling class. While the bosses benefit from these wars, we workers have to pay more for food, rent, gas, and the price of housing is going through the roof! How can a garment worker buy a house? But it’s us, the workers and our allies the students, farmworkers and intellectuals who will personally or through our children die in these wars. It’s the workers of this country, like those of Iraq, who are spilling their blood in this war of plunder for profit. That’s why it’s very important for workers to understand communist ideas.

But the history of the working class is the history of class struggle. The slaves rebelling against the slave masters, like the struggle led by Spartacus against the Roman empire. The serfs fighting against the feudal lords, and the working class fighting against the capitalists. This shows that the oppressed, in this case the working class, have always fought and will continue to fight. Even if we no longer existed as a Party, the working class would have to rise up and fight again. So the problem is not whether the working class will fight or not. The problem is who will lead that fight. That’s why it’s so important that our party develop an aggressive struggle to win the leadership of the working class, of the students, the intellectuals, the farmworkers and the soldiers. We have to politically educate the working class so that as the class struggle heats up, they aren’t fooled by false leaders, whether democratic party politicians or the treacherous union leaders. That’s why our newspaper Challenge plays a key role in taking revolutionary communist ideas to the working class. We have to make sure that workers understand the important role of our paper, make sure that workers read it and develop an aggressive struggle to distribute it.

I’m one of the so-called "better paid" industrial workers. Someone could say that these workers don’t need to fight, that they earn enough. However, we’re still affected by the cut backs. The labor insecurity that increases today affects us. For example, the bosses are trying to force us to pay $200 a month for our health insurance. Before we paid $6 a month. But we also have our "friends", the labor leaders, who "defend" us. They tell us that they’re fighting so that instead of paying $200 a month, we "only" have to pay $190.

A few months ago, we were on strike. It’s ridiculous to see the way the unions conduct a fight. On the picket lines, they stopped the scabs for 3 minutes before letting them go in. This is due to a concession the union leadership gave to the bosses. Before, they stopped the scabs for 10 minutes, which is no big thing either. This reflects the sellout thinking of these traitors. By orders of the union representatives, shop stewards, there was never a lack of Bar-b-Q and beer. This is to try to keep the workers away from political questions. But the members of the party and our friends were the only ones who brought in a political tone and led more class struggle.

With a group of workers from the base we decided to organize a picket line in front of the company’s main offices. And we got out literature in the different shops. We extended the literature to the workers in other classifications, who the leadership of the union try to keep separate from the other workers. And that’s how more than 200 workers came to the first picket line. We took advantage of this to give political speeches, sell Challenge, and make contacts. The union leadership was afraid to openly attack this picket line since it had the support of so many workers. But they refused to participate, even though many people asked, "Why aren’t they participating?" They used a lot of excuses to "explain" why. We kept up the protests for several weeks because they gave us the opportunity to organize worker-student solidarity and most important because a group of workers from different classifications came to support us.

From this struggle have come study groups and a bigger base for the party. Tonight I thought there would be a large group of workers here from this base, since we invited about 50 workers, which is a good thing. But with many of them, the same thing happened as with me and my speech. At first, they bravely said "yes", but as the date got closer, they started giving excuses. Among the most advanced workers, some openly admitted they had fear. And I won’t lie to you, my wife is here and she can tell you its true, before coming here one of the workers closest to me called and said that on the way to the dinner, his wife got sick and they had to turn back. He couldn’t tell her he was coming anyway. The workers understand the seriousness of the struggle and know that joining the party means commitment, discipline, and that’s why they’re still thinking about whether they’re going to enter all the way or not. This shouldn’t demoralize us, because the bosses will squeeze us more, tighten the rope around our necks, and sooner rather than later they will see that we represent the alternative to this. And, despite these setbacks, tonight there is a group of young workers from our job who represent the strong potential to give leadership to the party in the future.

In these study groups, workers have expressed doubts about the real possibility of whether we can make a revolution that maintains the ideals we have now. Many think that upon taking power we’ll become dictators or a new oppressor class. Others think that the workers are cowards and won’t fight. But I tell them that we shouldn’t see the Russian and Chinese revolutions only as failures but as great experiences in struggle in which thousands of workers forgot their fear and took to the streets to fight for a society that they thought would be better than capitalism. That’s why I insist that our party investigate, analyze and put into practice the positive experiences of the past revolutions. We should throw out the bad. We are committed t recruit thousands of workers to have communist consciousness, because we understand that this is the best antidote against possible deviations or corruptions. Only the working class and its allies under the red banner of our party and affirming the revolutionary communist ideas will be able to win a society in which everyone will give according to his or her capacity and everyone will receive according to their need. Winning it and maintaining it is our task.

To end, I would like to tell you the story of a union leader in El Salvador. He was a very honest person, committed to defending the workers’ rights, but the Salvadoran ruling class killed him in the decade of the 1970’s, after not being able to buy him off economically. After his death, many well intentioned people told his mother that in spite of his good intentions, it was a useless death because in El Salvador the majority of workers were cowards and they would never rise up to fight. But 10 years later, thousands of workers were in the streets confronting the repressive forces of the bourgeoisie. At first they fought only with their hands, their chests and their backs. They were shot, beaten and arrested, until they began arming and confronting both the local rulers and the imperialists. If they had had real revolutionary communist leadership, the final story would have been different. The workers are going to fight in this country and all over and that’s why, when the workers rise up, we have to be there, in front, to lead the struggle for communism. Thank you.

GIs Are Crucial to Defeat Imperialist Warmakers

(Excerpt of veteran’s speech at LA May Day dinner. Full text available on PLP website.)

From October 2002 to March 2003, the largest anti-war movement in history protested the U.S. government’s [impending] imperialist invasion…. [But] it was painfully clear that the street demonstrations had done effectively nothing to stop the war….

A great historical lesson….is that the soldiers and sailors inside the military…must take up the resistance against imperialist war. Indeed…the history of such resistance…as well as among industrial workers is the history of revolution itself….

[There are] four levels of resistance inside the military.

Level one: reluctant fighters….passive resistance….

This…can quickly change to become limited active resistance, or level 2….

Letters from soldiers emphasize dissension in the ranks. One soldier noted… "Things are getting very bad, and they’re going to get worse…." As a veteran myself, I can tell you there is nothing like the disappointment of thinking you’re going home on a certain day and then having your term extended….

The Army admits to about 700 desertions since the war started…. [and] veterans’ benefits have been cut!

Level 3 resistance exhibits soldiers’ outright refusal to fight for the imperialist agenda. This occurred in Vietnam….

While the third level…sends capitalism into crisis, in the long run a full revolutionary army must emerge to confront the capitalist system [4th level].

….The rulers have been working hard to build racism and patriotism to try to win the soldiers to side with them. Resistance to imperialism needs to be built by class conscious organizers…. Soldiers must become convinced that they are not just against a corrupt and unjust system, but that they are for a new communist system. All the great revolutions in history achieved this phase….

More boots on the ground will be needed. The U.S. imperialists will not give up their efforts, literally at any cost…. Thus the common soldier and sailor will become the focal point of the battle between fascist ideas and practices and anti-fascist ones, for class consciousness and the struggle for a far better…communist system. We must communicate to our brothers and sisters in the military and prepare for the very serious struggles ahead. Young people should welcome the opportunity to organize their fellow working-class youth. It will be difficult and daunting, but it is absolutely necessary.

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The racist atrocities routinely committed by imperialist armies (see article, p.2) stand in stark contrast to the practice of communists in bosses’ wars. Communist parties put forth a two-pronged strategy:

Transform imperialist war into its opposite: civil war for communist revolution and workers’ power.

Urge soldiers on both sides of the trenches to fraternize with each other and unite against our real class enemies: the officers and the profit system they defend.

The history of imperialist war in the 20th Century has numerous examples of such mutiny and fraternization in the midst of imperialist slaughter. For obvious reasons, the capitalist-controlled media and the official version of history taught in the schools and universities, suppresses them. Our class must resurrect and cherish them, revealing our past accomplishments and confirming of our potential.

One such example is the mutiny and working-class solidarity that flew the red flag over the major cities of Alsace and Lorraine at the end of World War I. Alsace and Lorraine were then German provinces, seized from France in the war of 1870-71, which had led to the heroic Paris Commune, the first attempt ever at workers’ power.

In October 1918, a few German generals refused to recognize that they had lost World War I. They launched a last-ditch struggle, using the still-powerful German navy. But the sailors refused to obey. In Kiel, the main German port on the Baltic Sea, seamen mutinied and established a Soviet — a revolutionary workers’ council, similar to the workers’ organizations that had led the Bolshevik Revolution a year earlier.

A number of Alsatians and Lorrains who had been forced into the German navy joined the insurrection and incited their countrymen to follow suit. On November 9, thousands of demonstrators rallied in Strasbourg, Alsace’s main city, to hail the first insurgents returning by train from northern Germany. The train had to fight its way through troops loyal to the German emperor, but the rebels broke through.

These sailors took control of Strasbourg. Red flags flew throughout the city, including atop the 500-foot-high cathedral. A newly-established Council of Workers and Soldiers proclaimed: "We have nothing in common with capitalist states. Our motto is: ‘Neither German nor French nor neutral. The red flag has won!’"

But the Council made a fateful error by conceding power to the supposedly "lesser-evil" French army, which was marching on the city. The Strasbourg Soviet lasted only a few days.

Nonetheless, it managed to send a jolt of revolutionary inspiration throughout the region. Similar Soviets arose in the Alsatian cities of Haguenau, Mulhouse, Sélestat, and Colmar. Across the front, French and German soldiers fraternized and marched holding red flags. In Lorraine, Italian immigrants joined the insurrection. In Metz, the insurgents’ council seized the city hall, hoisting a Turkish flag whose nationalist crescent and star had been colored with red paint.

This short-lived heroism of French, German, Italian and Turkish workers in the midst of imperialist butchery should continue to inspire us and set a standard for PLP’s work now. We can learn from our predecessors’ errors. We also have much to learn from their magnificent accomplishments.

Many years after the Strasbourg revolt, an elderly participant recalled: "I was 18 years old. I will never forget those days." Workers everywhere should learn this history and honor it by duplicating and surpassing it.

Truckers Must Take Working-Class Route

LOS ANGELES, April 30 — "Truckers united will never be defeated"; "This struggle will lead to a general strike!"; "The workers will win the struggle against the bosses."

These and other slogans were repeated in today’s march organized by hundreds of independent truckers in Wilmington, ten minutes south of LA. Several speakers related the rising diesel fuel prices and taxes (lowering truckers’ income) to the war in Iraq.

Thousands of independent owner-operators held a state-wide work stoppage demanding lower diesel prices and lower taxes. The drivers who work out of the ports of Oakland and LA were central to this action. The port here was almost completely paralyzed.

The day started here with some drivers parking their big rigs in the middle of the freeway, temporarily immobilizing rush-hour traffic, causing chaos to highlight their demands. Three drivers were arrested and their trucks confiscated. Others drove their trucks in caravans on the streets and highways. At noon, hundreds marched in Wilmington.

Many owner-operators drive for large trucking companies, like Federal Express but — to become small business owners — have invested heavily and are deep in debt. The collapse of the labor movement has drastically impacted the trucking industry. Work that used to go to union drivers of company-owned trucks has been "outsourced" to independent drivers. Many poorer independent drivers would prefer to have decent-paying jobs with benefits, working for trucking companies, instead of the headaches of owning one’s own rig. However, because of racism and many being immigrants, they are frozen out of these union jobs. But still capitalist "own-your-own-business" psychology sucks many into the illusion of being "their own boss," as a way out of the working class. This leads them to side with capitalist ideology rather than with the working class.

Squeezed on all sides by exorbitant bank-loan interest, oil profiteers’ high fuel prices and rising taxes induced by imperialism’s war drive, these "independent" truckers are hardly independent of capitalism. In the heat of the class struggle, they must be shown that their best interests lie with the working class.

Pro-War, 2-Tier Contract Splits NYC Workers

NEW YORK CITY, May 9 — It’s difficult to give up the illusion that the union’s role is to protect workers. Too often it’s painfully clear the bosses rely on the unions to control workers. In a particularly blatant example, AFSCME’s District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union (121,000 members) just settled for a pathetically weak contract with the city bosses. Contracts like these divert funds away from already thread-bare social services to the bosses’ oil war. These pro-war contacts are being endorsed by unions that passed anti-war resolutions two years ago.

After settling for "double zeroes" (no increases) under hard-nosed racist mayor Rudi Giuliani, Lillian Roberts and the D.C. 37 leadership want us to agree to a $1,000 bonus the first year, a 3% raise the second year and 2% the third, with a paltry 1% more based on increased productivity (read: speed-up).

Worst of all, contract "savings" stem from a two-tier system selling out future workers (offensively called "newborns") with 15% lower starting salary and benefits, splitting workers’ unity. And the City isn’t even crying poverty — billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg brags about a billion-dollar budget surplus. Even the other municipal union officials, clearly no friends of the workers themselves, are outraged that the D.C. 37 leadership would settle for this.

Workers are disgusted, but reaction is mixed about what to do. Without a contract for a year and half, many are reduced to settling for "a bird in the hand." The leadership is pushing hard for ratification (54 of 56 Local presidents endorsed it). However, where there is principled leadership, workers will oppose it. At the Technical Guild local, after many members had spoken angrily against the settlement and its support from the Local president and 1st VP at the last meeting, the delegates unanimously rejected it. They applauded the point that billions are available for sweetheart deals like the proposed Jets stadium and especially for the Iraq war, but not for overdue raises.

It’s unclear why D.C. 37 would infuriate both the members and the other unions by accepting such a weak contract. Clearly the local misleaders disagree on how to maintain control of the rank and file. But the end result is demoralization, cynicism about fighting back and declining living standards.

The D.C. 37 leadership is mostly in the back pocket of the liberal Democrat wing of the ruling class, who are in virtual lock-step with the Republicans over backing the new gunboat diplomacy, eroding past gains and stifling dissent. While it’s not easy to advance a revolutionary, or even militant platform within the unions today, anger at the cutbacks and disgust with the union hacks are widespread. When we openly expose the leadership’s corruption and support of the profit system, workers can be won to a position that fights for working people and rejects capitalism.

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Vancouver, Canada: Union Hacks Betray 400,000 Ready for General Strike

Vancouver, British Columbia, May 4 — "Under democracy, you have the right to strike — until you need it!"

That was the response from one angry worker to the betrayal of this province’s 40,000 strikers in the Health Employees Union (HEU) by misleaders who are committed to working within the bosses’ rules — rules that change when their system’s crisis deepens amid endless imperialist wars and worldwide fascist terror. Only a revolutionary communist movement that leads a fight against pay cuts and mass layoffs, AND organizes to overthrow the capitalists can eliminate a system that contains such built-in betrayals.

Tens of thousands of grocery, postal, Hydro-electric and ferry workers joined bus drivers, carpenters and joiners, teamsters, Air Canada mechanics and most other government employees — including 40,000 teachers and 70,000 CUPE members (Canadian Union of Public Employees) — in threatening a general strike of more than 400,000 on May 3rd. Some had already walked out in solidarity with the health workers.

The massive strike action was ignited by the Provincial Government’s vicious sexist attack on the province’s 40,000 health workers (80% women). In trying to jam a 15% wage-cut down the workers’ throats along with contracting out thousands of jobs (in B.C. all hospitals are public), the rulers used the full power of their state apparatus to pass a law making the workers’ strike illegal, imposing unlimited contracting out and a 15% wage-cut retroactive to April 1, to be deducted from their workers’ paychecks.

After health workers defied the government ban, thousands of workers walked out in solidarity with their low-paid (roughly US $11/hr), hard-working and dedicated union brothers and sisters, often joining the HEU picket lines.

By Friday, April 30, workers from smaller industrial towns like Prince George and Comox showed up on the lines, as did 2,000 supporters in Nanaimo. On Saturday, May 1, almost half a million workers threatened a general strike for Monday, May 3. A multi-racial crowd of 6,000 workers and youth — reflecting the international population of Vancouver — held the most militant May Day in recent history here.

Government ministers spent all day Sunday secretly "negotiating" with HEU leaders and Jim Sinclair, the sellout weasel who heads the BC Federation of Labor. Almost certainly the government warned the unions that all the leaders and picketers could be arrested and the union fined into bankruptcy. So, by late Sunday evening a shabby deal was announced: a 15% pay-cut (but not retroactive), layoffs "limited" to "only" 600, while contracting out stays. HEU leaders agreed to return to work and call off Monday’s general strike — all without a ratification vote.

Some people still stayed out but the majority returned, angry, frustrated and blaming the union leadership for the cowardly betrayal. One member said, "We need leaders who can pull the trigger when the bullet’s in the chamber."

Betrayal is all one can expect from the bosses’ union lieutenants who work within, and defend, their system. Capitalism’s drive for maximum profits determines and destroys workers’ lives. The only solution? Bury it with communist revolution.

Remembering Andy Rakochy

In 1967, Andy Rakochy visited me in Cincinnati, Ohio. I had been in touch with the Party, and he came to recruit me. He said I should move to Chicago. "We’re building the party there."

I remember him as a quiet, modest person. He didn’t act like a "big leader" or brag about where he had been, what he had done. He was always able to laugh at himself.

When I arrived in Chicago, Andy was my club and study-group leader. He was always serious. We learned a lot about economics and Marxist theory. I suppose we were all a little naïve back then. We thought the revolution was on its way. Some of us were pretty full of ourselves, thought we were the hotshots. But not Andy. His attitude was, "Let’s do the work, let’s work together."

Whether it was a study group, a CHALLENGE sale, a demonstration, a meeting with some students or workers — Andy was always prepared. He never talked too much or acted like he had all the answers. He had what you might call proletarian modesty.

Andy Rakochy eventually stopped working with the Party, but until the end he was always a person on whom you could rely. He worked at Inland Steel until shortly before his passing. His fellow workers respected him. People always wanted to know what Andy thought about what was going on.

He passed on a sense of social responsibility to his children. Life and the struggle continue.

Andy’s mother was a Bolshevik courier in czarist Ukraine. He helped build the Party in New York and Chicago. His children, his family and the people he touched will carry on the struggle in a myriad of ways. Today, we remember and miss Andy Rakochy. But we are thankful that he was here. He did make a difference.

Red Steel Worker

LETTERS

Thinking Soldiers Are Dangerous for Bosses

In a recent discussion, an officer said that capitalism and oil propel the war in Iraq. He stated that the difference between U.S. soldiers and people in "third world" countries is, "They’re prepared to die; Americans are not." He noted that the Somali fighters portrayed in the "Black Hawk Down" movie were willing to die for their cause and, "We have to prepare ourselves to die."

Can working-class soldiers be won to fight for capitalism? During chow the other day, a group of us asked a young brown-skinned Special Forces soldier from El Salvador what he thought about being in the Middle East. "We’re just here to make money," he said. "Not our money, but their money. If you wear this uniform you understand that you’re just a pawn for the politicians."

I asked him how he felt about risking his life for the rich. He replied, "When we train, people break bones, people die. Coming to Iraq is just doing what we’ve been doing during training anyway: getting injured and losing our lives." One soldier in my unit coolly nodded his head in agreement. They were prepared to die.

Not all soldiers are. "No, I don’t think it’s worth fighting for," said one. "That’s what gets me mad, the fact that people get killed to make some people money." I showed him a pamphlet on GI rebellions in Vietnam and asked if it’s worth fighting to change the system. "A war within a war? That sounds like something worth fighting for. Maybe that’s what we need." When I asked him about the prospects of a revolution, he hesitated. "I don’t think it can really happen. The system works fine as it is. Let’s just give it a chance to get better."

Many soldiers understand that we’re fighting for oil profits in this war. But they’re either content with what this system offers or cynical about other workers and soldiers. One soldier said, "No, I don’t think a [communist] society like that is possible. People are just too greedy."

I showed a soldier an article about capitalism, revolution and why we’re here in the Middle East, and asked him what he thought about it. He said, "I never thought about it." I stared straight at him and asked what he meant. He stared back and said he knew we were here for money, but in terms of capitalism and revolution, "I never really thought about it."

After spending two months on a base training for deployment, I went home on leave and noticed things on my block I never saw before. One woman’s discount clothes were rough and mismatched. Old people walked the crowded sidewalks with canes and in wheelchairs. A slim bearded man with dirty jeans, stained turtleneck and layers of thin coats stood on the corner begging for change to get a sandwich. Those are normal sights almost anywhere in this capitalist world. But I saw things anew because the military creates an environment where you never have to think about what you’re fighting for if you don’t want to.

On base, almost everyone is in uniform, no one goes hungry because there are chow halls and MRE’s [Meals Ready to Eat], housing is free, even if it’s a tent, and few soldiers are old and sick. Overseas pay is tax-free, many are receiving generous housing allowances for the first time, and we get extra money for being in a hazard zone. The basic necessities are provided for as long as soldiers are willing to secure Iraq oil for U.S. imperialism.

As we train with live ammo, harden our vehicles to stop shrapnel and bullets, as we fuel HMVs, pick up armor plating for our flak vests and do our daily work in offices, supply rooms and motor pools, the military encourages us to enjoy the food, pay, shopping at the PX, and to visit the recreation center. They rarely discuss risking disease, heat injuries, small arms fire, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], and IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices].

"Do what you gotta do and go home," and "All we gotta get through is this year," are phrases heard often here. One sergeant advised me, "Just worry about your job and don’t think about anything else." Senior NCOs [non-commissioned officers] and officers encourage us to forget that our job is to occupy the Middle East for U.S. imperialism.

"We’re driven not to think about these things," the same soldier told me. He sat beside me gazing into the article we were reading for a long time, thinking. He thought about his people, especially poor people in his neighborhood. He saw how capitalism makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. Finally he said, "I think we need a revolution there." After a pause, he added, "Capitalism is set up to benefit the few and that’s what gets me mad."

In a poem, a communist told a general that a soldier can fly and can kill, but has one defect — s/he can think. The generals and politicians do all they can to correct that defect, because they understand that a thinking soldier is a dangerous thing.

Red GI

Backing Kerry Traps Anti-War Movement

The war in Iraq could be unraveling for U.S. bosses, and spreading. Usually springtime is a high point of student activity. Where is the anti-war movement? Why are the campuses so quiet?

I recently attended a worker-student speak-out at the University of Chicago, where nurses have taken a strike vote. When I spoke I tried to link the nurses’ struggle to the war by pointing out that UC plays a major role for US imperialism. Its graduates include Paul Wolfowitz, #2 at the Pentagon, Attorney General Ashcroft, who is implementing the fascist Homeland security police state, and Ahmed Chalabi, who the Bush gang wants to install as Iraq’s leader. I pointed out how at least three members of the Board of Governors, including the University President, are on the Council on Foreign Relations. They don’t call it the Rockefeller Chapel at this school for nothing.

I said that if the nurses strike, they would be fighting a war-maker and strike-breaker. Politically it would be on a par with a strike at a Humvee or missile factory. I said the best thing students could do was to strike against the war.

People liked it, and afterwards I asked a few students why the campus was so quiet. They basically said, "Students are too conservative."

I think it’s due to the lack of a fighting world communist movement, and the fact that the nationalist and Jihadist opposition to U.S. imperialism does not inspire the masses.

But also, the anti-war forces are caught in a trap. The movement’s main goal is to dump Bush, which means electing Kerry. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t call for the defeat of U.S. imperialism, or even to get the U.S. out of Iraq, when the political leadership of the movement is committed to electing the Democrats, the same gang calling for more troops and permanent military bases.

A Chicago comrade

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It shouldn’t really be any surprise that the liberal Washington Post — don’t we always point out that the liberals hold the door open for fascism? — helped screw D.C. area grocery workers (CHALLENGE, May 12). The Post’s dirty secret is that it has a lot of experience screwing its own workers.

In 1975 the Post led the way for newspaper publishers nation-wide by forcing its unionized pressmen out on strike, hiring scabs to keep the paper running until the union was broken. Once they succeeded, they forced other unions, including the Newspaper Guild, to surrender their union-shop rights in 1979. Of course, the Guild helped bring that on itself by not walking out with the pressmen.

Ever since, the Post has used the disunity of the workers to force down wages and working conditions. In 1975, the Post ranked #1 in salary scales among newspapers; now it’s #19…and sinking. In the latest contract negotiations, the Post even demanded that the Guild give up the right to distribute union materials and bulletins to members at work — a right guaranteed under Federal labor law!

A.J. Liebling said a long time ago, "Freedom of the press only belongs to those who own one."

Former member, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild

Riders Hear Real May Day Story

On May 1, I rode in the bus caravan for immigrants’ rights, although the caravan wasn’t really celebrating May Day. Generally, it made a joke of its real significance for the international working class.

But things got very interesting in my bus. A worker explained the origin and significance of May Day. He also said that next year we should demand a march in the center of Los Angeles. A leaflet about the history of May Day and the importance of workers’ international unity and solidarity, written by some students who helped with the caravan, was read in English and Spanish.

Many people agreed with the idea of marching in the center of LA instead of traveling on the buses. No one really understood why the buses went to the western part of the city.

I think the organizers mainly wanted to divert people’s anger at this moment and take us down the road of cheap politics, trying to make us believe these bosses’ politicians and their politics will solve workers problems here and worldwide.

Before boarding the buses, many people bought CHALLENGE and read it on the bus.

While these organizers did keep masses from marching together, they didn’t completely achieve their objective because we and CHALLENGE were there, bringing aspects of our communist ideas to the workers. Hopefully our efforts will help to build a mass movement, in which workers organize not only for legal residence and driver’s licenses but to destroy this system that oppresses us, that together we can fight for and build a communist society where no one needs "legal" documents.

LA comrade

May Day Is For All Workers

Even though the Party has been fighting for the idea of working in mass organizations, not all of us put it into practice. I say this from my own experience. But this May Day we had the opportunity to take on this challenge.

We participated in the bus caravan organized by the "official" immigrants’ rights groups. The leaders of these groups have always worried about pleasing the political parties, to win a few reforms. This time the bus caravan was called "pro-immigrant," in favor of obtaining driver’s licenses. It completely ignored the true significance of May Day.

After a lot of collective struggle in our Party clubs, we decided to participate. Why? Because it provides an opportunity to influence people and win them to the Party’s goal of uniting all workers in the class struggle against the bosses. The objective in this specific activity was to dramatize the importance of continuing to celebrate May Day as International Workers’ Day, not only for immigrants but for workers everywhere.

We pointed out the limits of this caravan in only allowing members of certain organizations to participate, not reaching out to the whole working class. We said that not only should the 400 participants take to the streets on this day, but also that thousands more would have come had these groups called for a true celebration of international workers’ unity.

A caravan rider

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Cops-for-profit grill Iraqis

The idea that extracting information from prisoners might be turned into a for-profit operation would have seemed a…joke not long ago….

Now…Security firms have an estimated 20,000 employees in Iraq — a huge private army….

So…hiring free-lance "intelligence specialists" must have seemed a no-brainer….

Private contractors in combat zones such as Iraq….are not answerable to any law….This legal grey zone may well not be entirely accidental, of course. It means that private contractors can be used to do dirty work for the military or the CIA with plausible deniability and relative immunity. (GW, 5/12)

Skim health aides’ wages

Medicaid and Medicare typically pay around $18 an hour for home health aides…but the people who do the work — most of them immigrant women — get about $7 of that.

Many of the government contractors and their subcontractors pay their executives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year….

Health aides say the people they care for would not survive without them….

"It’s hard work….Americans always say to us, they would never do what we do for what we are paid." (NYT, 5/3)

Brass knew prison facts

The International Committee of the Red Cross regularly complained to senior United States officials in Iraq and in Washington over the last several months about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison….

The reports were based on the Red Cross’s interviews with prisoners and "were very extensive and detailed."

"We knew everything that was going on." (NYT, 5/7)

US imperialism needed 9/11

The head of the United States-led coalition in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, warned six months before the Sept. 11 attacks that the Bush administration seemed to be paying no attention to terrorism. (NYT, 4/30)

Towns profit from prisons

A study mapping the prisons built in the boom of the last two decades has found that some counties in the United States now have more than 30% of their residents behind bars….

The prison network is now deeply intertwined with American life….

"It provides jobs for construction workers and guards, and because the inmates are counted as residents of the counties where they are incarcerated, it means more federal and state funding….Conversely, the federal money is lost to the home communities of the inmates or their families, creating a financial burden. (NYT)

Rich brought in Hitler & Co.

The Bolshevik Revolution…made conservative elites in Italy and Germany so fearful of Communism that anything — even fascism — came to seem preferable to a Marxist overthrow….

How on earth was it that Benito Mussolini, who won a mere 4,796 votes out of 315,165 in the 1919 election, could find himself appointed prime minister in 1922?....

It was the societal ills, the conservatives’ fear of a Communist revolution….

How could Hitler, whose Nazi Party placed him ninth in 1928 (with only 2.8% of the popular vote) soar to first in 1932 (with 37.2%)?....Paxton debunks the consoling fiction that Mussolini and Hitler seized power. Rather, conservative elites desperate to subdue leftist populist movements "normalized" the fascists by inviting them to share power…. At each fork in the road, they choose the antisocialist solution."

5 days jail per worker-kill

Employers…commit safety violations that result in the deaths of workers. These willful violations leave about 100 workers dead each year, yet prosecutions are almost unheard of….

The Times, which analyzed two decades of safety violations data, identified 2,197 workers whose deaths, according to safety inspectors, were the result of willful safety violations. In all, their employers faced…jail sentences totaling less than 30 years. (NYT, 4/28)

Iraqi-style abuses here too

[Two men were] picked up by federal agents in an anti-terror sweep. For 23 hours a day, they were locked in solitary confinement in the harsh maximum security unit….

The former cable technician and the former restaurateur have provided the most detailed personal account yet of the unit’s brutality….The accusations are similar to those now being made against military officers guarding prisoners in Iraq.

The lawsuit charges that the men were repeatedly slammed into walls and dragged across the floor while shackled and manacled, kicked and punched until they bled, cursed as "terrorists" and "Muslim bastards," and subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one during which correction officers inserted a flashlight into Mr. Elmaghraby’s rectum, making him bleed….

Investigators later recovered videotapes that showed…officers engaged in abuse….

The inspector general’s report said…little effort was made to distinguish between legitimate terrorism suspects and the many people picked up by chance during the investigation. (NYT, 5/3)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, May 12, 2004

Information: 12 May 2004 126 hits

March on May Day for Communism!

Democrats, Republicans: Warmaker Twins
MASS MURDER WORSE THAN HITLER
REAL REASONS FOR U.S. WAR ON IRAQ:
Control of Oil; Military Bases; Euro Vs. Dollar
1979 May Day March Ended Nazi Reign in Marquette Park
DRIVER-RIDER UNITY ATTACKS MUNI WAR CUTS
Mexico: Capitalist `Reform' Robs Retirees' Pensions
Red Leadership Growing in D.C. Metro, Isolating Pro-boss Prez
Kerry, Clinton No Friends of Women Workers
Boeing Union Misleaders Use Human Rights, Women's Conference to Promote War Strategy
1. Labor Strategy for Constant War
2. The New Economy and War
D.C. PEPCO
WORKERS WON'T BE FOOLED
Liberal Washington Post Helps Union Sell Out D.C. Workers
Justice for Apartheid Assassin
`Circular Logic' Dooms Working-Class Anti-Racist Struggle
1. THINKING IN CIRCLES
2. THINKING DIALECTICALLY
War Contract Creates 2 Tier System for NYC Workers
California Cuts Screw Students, Help Fund U.S. Attack on Iraq
Memories of A World War 2 Childhood in Britain
1990's Union Give-backs Rob Workers' Health, Pensions Today
NFL Poster Boy For Imperialist War
LETTERS
1. Driving the Nazis From Marquette Park
2. Racism Exposed By Class Analysis
3. Challenging Rockefeller's Church
4. Don't Mourn -- Organize
5. Workers Can Run Society
6. Cross Country Solidarity
7. Community Policing Blames Victims
8. White Skin Theory:
  A Bosses' Idea
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
1. US aims in Iraq need guns
2. Kerry backs Bush on Iraq
3. Keeping millions in prison
4. Liberals want bigger war
5. Workers saw deaths coming
6. Imperialism's world is sick

Democrats, Republicans: Warmaker Twins

This May Day, the international working class is marching amid endless imperialist wars, racist/fascist oppression and mass unemployment and poverty. More than ever, we fight for workers' power and a communist world without any bosses. Electing Kerry or Bush won't change the nature of this beast.

With the bosses' election campaign circus in full swing, the White House and Pentagon are drawing up plans to slaughter thousands more Iraqis and sacrifice more U.S. working-class soldiers in the city of Fallujah. Meanwhile, forces in both Democratic and Republican parties want a complete overhaul of Bush's tactics for conquering Iraq and its oil treasure.

Both parties agree that control of Persian Gulf oil is crucial to ensuring U.S. world domination for generations to come. They are all willing to murder millions of workers in order to seize, hold, and profit from Iraqi oil and establish permanent military bases there.

The main electoral parties serve the capitalists. The squabbling between Democrats and Republicans, and now among Republicans, over how to win this war, provides valuable lessons about the nature of political parties and elections under the profit system.

The 2004 presidential election offers workers a "choice" over how the bosses can rule the world and oppress us at home. Their agenda calls for unending war abroad and increasing police state terror at home. We reject this choice. No capitalist party can represent our interests. Only a mass, international PLP, committed to destroying the profit system with communist revolution can meet our aspirations. This process will take many years, but it is the only answer to all the horrors of capitalism.

Political in-fighting among the rulers has sharpened over Bush's failures in Iraq. Theodore Roosevelt IV, a managing director at Lehman Brothers Wall St. investment house, has a Republican pedigree a mile long. This great-grandson of President Teddy Roosevelt -- the butcher of Cuba and the Philippines -- spoke at the 2000 Republican convention that nominated Bush. On April 14, he turned up at a Kerry fund-raiser saying he was "distressed with the national leadership of the Republican Party." He was joined by a chorus of like-minded Republicans, all pillars of Eastern Establishment finance or commerce (New York Observer, 4/26), and part of a campaign spearheaded by the New York Times and the liberals to dump the Bush crowd.

Ruling the world is a serious, expensive business. Wars require huge sums of money. The rulers must discipline the working class into sacrificing, fighting and dying. The economy must be transformed into a true wartime operation. A police state requires a vastly more complex, centralized infrastructure than the half-baked models proposed by Bush and his two-bit Bible-thumping Nazi Attorney General Ashcroft. The liberals want to increase the speed, ruthlessness and efficiency of imperialist war and fascism.

On April 22, Senator/Vietnam War criminal John McCain (R-Arizona) warned the Council on Foreign Relations that the price "of failure in Iraq [is] unacceptably high." He criticized the Bush tax cuts, demanding, "discipline and sacrifice...at home." Iraq must be made safe for oil investment, and McCain-Roosevelt-Kerry fear that Bush's policies will never achieve that. They want the White House to crack down on bosses who won't cooperate.

As for "discipline and sacrifice" from the working class, the Kerry crowd complains that Bush has failed to provide enough of it. McCain wants to deploy "at least another full division [in Iraq], and probably more." (Speech to Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., April 22) Kerry has called for 40,000 more troops.

Times columnist Paul Krugman writes that Bush "wasn't willing to spend enough on security." He complains about "cronyism and corruption [as] major factors in Iraq's downward spiral," and warns that the war will cost "$50-70 billion over the next two years." (NYT, 4/23)

The Times' influential Sunday editorial page (4/25) calls Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "dismally wrong" about everything in Iraq except the initial estimate that a small force could easily overthrow Saddam Hussein. Ominously, the Times admits that the U.S. is in Iraq for the long haul and calls for dramatic increases in troop strength, "at least 50,000 in the short term."

MASS MURDER WORSE THAN HITLER

Scratch a liberal and you'll find a fascist. In the 20th Century, the Rockefeller-led Eastern Establishment surpassed Hitler in mass murder for conquest and profit -- from Cuba, the Philippines and Panama in the early 1900s to Siberia in 1919 to Nicaragua (15 invasions) to atomic- and fire-bombing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in 1945 to Korea to Guatemala to Haiti to the Dominican Republic to the Congo to Lebanon to Colombia to Vietnam to Chile to Kosovo to Gulf War I to Afghanistan and 10 years of bombing Iraq with depleted uranium, a long-term killer. The 21st Century begins with the threat that these crimes will pale before those they're about to commit. They'll stop at nothing to secure Persian Gulf oil. If Bush fails to fall in line, he can be replaced, one way or another. Either way, the result will be death and mayhem for our class.

Building a mass, international PLP will eventually smash imperialist war and police state terror. Great danger also brings opportunity. Our Party can grow, today, tomorrow and well into the future. The 21st Century will be an epoch of war and fascism. It can also usher in a new, communist dawn for humanity.

On this May Day, we recommit ourselves to a lifetime of revolutionary struggle. Every participant in PLP's international May Day activities is a ray of light, pointing the way out of the New Dark Ages capitalism has brought to the world. Let's make every marcher a member, and every member a leader in the Party and the mass movement. Fight for Communism! Power to the Workers! Workers of the World, Unite!

REAL REASONS FOR U.S. WAR ON IRAQ:
Control of Oil; Military Bases; Euro Vs. Dollar

Amid all the phony "reasons" the Bush administration has given for invading Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's possession of (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, his (non-existent) links to al Qaeda, and his assault on human rights (supported by the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war) -- Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" emphasizes some new ones: "Bush's conviction that he is a servant of God and history, chosen to liberate Iraq [and] bring democracy to the Middle East."

U.S. imperialism has never brought "democracy" anywhere. Exactly the opposite: it has supported, and often created, virtually every fascist dictatorship in existence.

CHALLENGE has long maintained that the Iraq invasion had everything to do with the need to, (1) control and profit from the supply of Mid-East oil and prevent a shift to its trading in euros rather than the dollar; and (2) establish a more definitive military presence in that region, ever since its puppet, the Shah of Iran, was overthrown and its base in Saudi Arabia was becoming increasingly shaky.

Much of this is confirmed in an article by William Pfaff (International Herald Tribune, 4/1) headlined, "Were U.S. Business, Military Interests At Heart of Iraq Invasion?" He reports that Lt.-Col. Karen Kwiakowski, a now retired U.S. Army career officer and an analyst for the Special Plans Office says that group "was...the driving force inside the government for the invasion."

Pfaff says Kwiakowski told him, "The reasons for an invasion...had little to do with weapons of mass destruction or Saddam Hussein's abuse of human rights.... They were fundamentally based on the assumption that U.N. sanctions against Iraq were increasingly

unsustainable...international[ly] . . .. Therefore, the sanctions were likely soon to be lifted, despite anything the U.S. might do."

Since the U.S. led the sanctions and maintained the no-fly zone over (and bombed) Iraq, Saddam "would...continue to consider it an enemy and would lock American business out of contracts and investment in what was potentially the richest country in the Middle East. Therefore, Saddam Hussein's government had to be replaced with a friendly one.

"Second, the U.S. needed bases in the Middle East, but those...in Saudi Arabia were likely...to be...shut down because of popular hostility.... They needed to be replaced with bases in Iraq.

"Finally, under the U.N. Food for Oil Program, Iraq's government had changed the pricing and sale of its oil to euros, the European common currency, in place of dollars, as oil had always previously been sold.

"...When U.N. sanctions were lifted, and Iraq could resume producing and selling as much oil as it wanted, it would undoubtedly continue to sell it for euros.

"Since Iraq could soon become the second most important oil producer in the world, this would be a serious blow to the dollar's role as the prime international trading currency.... One of...Bush's first post-invasion acts was an executive order re-pricing Iraq oil in dollars....

"It...apparently didn't really make any difference...whether Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass destruction."

The oil factor has been central to every Democratic (and Republican) administration since Democrat Jimmy Carter. The Clinton administration established "regime change" in Iraq as a policy aim and Gore had made this a presidential campaign pledge. Their tactics might have differed -- granting concessions to obtain more international capitalist support -- but the strategic needs of U.S. imperialism still rule. Now Democratic Party nominee Kerry and Hillary Clinton are calling for still more troops in Iraq.

U.S. imperialism cannot change its spots. It is driven to endless wars to maintain world domination for maximum profits.

1979 May Day March Ended Nazi Reign in Marquette Park

The 1979 May Day march in Chicago's Marquette Park was the culmination of several communist-led, anti-racist actions. PLP rallied, demonstrated and beat down the Nazis in their own headquarters (see CHALLENGE, 4/14) in response to racist attacks on black workers living near or working in Marquette Park. The May Day march, Chicago's largest and most significant since PLP revived the tradition in 1971, finally did the Nazis in.

From the start, the rulers tried to prevent the march. They said we needed insurance, although buying it was impossible. They said we couldn't march past a hospital, couldn't march on busy 71st St., and couldn't use a park as a starting point. We were determined to have our march and fought them every step of the way until we won a legal and political victory.

As PLP built for the march in the factories, hospitals, schools and communities, thousands of Midwest workers and students discussed and debated the causes of racism, the need for revolutionary violence, the meaning of free speech under capitalism and the feasibility of communism. We spent many hours with residents of the predominately-black Englewood neighborhood adjoining Marquette Park. Many had been victimized by the racists and supported our boldness and communist vision.

On April 27, 700 black, Latin and white workers and students from Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Madison, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbus, Ohio gathered in Ogden Park in Englewood. It seemed as if the entire neighborhood had turned out. Many agreed to march with us while others feared we "wouldn't make it back alive." The skies were gray as we linked arms and began marching.

At the front our security squad was outfitted in red hats, wearing large-buckled garrison belts. We came to a bridge with dozens of people standing on the overpass. The head of our security team told the cops, "We can get them off the bridge ourselves or you can get them off." In minutes, the overpass was clear.

Soon we crossed Western Avenue into the Marquette Park neighborhood, disciplined and ready, with anti-racist and communist chants. Several comrades infiltrated the crowds. One woman overheard a conversation between two young racists. "Should we attack them?" asked one. "I don't think that's a good idea," replied the other, "What do you think those belts are for?"

As we approached Marquette Park, chanting with red flags raised high, the sun began to shine through the clouds. The rally inside the park was short and dramatic. No Nazis were seen that day, even though they had called the PLP office warning, "You will be destroyed!" Instead, it was the end of that particular group of Nazis.

As we marched back across Western Avenue a spontaneous roar sprung from the march. Back in Englewood, we received a hero's welcome and ate the best cold fried chicken and warm pop we'd ever had in our lives.

Six months later, Nazi leader Frank Collins was in jail for molesting young boys and the Nazi office was closed. As a result of the march, charges against Susana Finley -- who was injured and arrested for several felonies in the 1978 raid on the Nazi office -- were dropped. For many years afterwards, we held integrated baseball games in Marquette Park, with plenty of bats.

The neighborhood has been integrated for years, but the struggle against racism continues. PLP has been involved in fighting racist attacks on Marquette Park's Arab and Muslim residents, resulting from the racist rulers' "War on Terror." The 1979 May Day march was a victory against racism, but not the end of the war. Only communist revolution will destroy the imperialist war-makers and the racist terrorists, from the White House to Marquette Park. This May Day, we recommit ourselves to this struggle!

DRIVER-RIDER UNITY ATTACKS MUNI WAR CUTS

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, April 23 -- The imperialist oil war in Iraq is an inevitable outgrowth of the "rules of engagement" of capitalist economics. Transit workers and riders face attacks on our wages, working conditions and transit service from these same "rules" in the current MUNI (mass transit) budget battles.

When our poster and various leaflets exposing MUNI's planned service cuts began appearing on buses, at bus stops and subway stations, MUNI brass panicked. Director Burns demanded that supervisors do a "search and destroy" operation on these "unauthorized posters," showing their fear of driver-rider unity.

MUNI has been pushing the lie that they were only planning "service adjustments." Riders and drivers showed up united at public hearings to fight the cuts. A PL member attacked MUNI and the MTA board for trying to solve their deficit with service, wage and benefit cuts and layoffs, while the Downtown Capitalists are left out of the picture altogether. Burns backed down on some service cuts this week.

Peter Straus, MUNI's manager of service planning, said the cuts are being "made to match current ridership levels." (SF Chronicle, 2/18) Riders and drivers trashed this argument. All-night "Owl Service" is a lifeline for many low-paid, non-white and immigrant service workers with irregular hours. Their needs must be met. We demand mass transit for the needs of the working class, not just rush-hour service for the downtown business corridor.

Every battle presents dangers and opportunities. By mainly pointing out holes in MUNI funding, workers can be seduced into supporting politicians who want Big Business to pay its "fare share." We can show that the government enforces a class dictatorship of big capital that won't end with a new mayor or president.

It is even more seductive to concentrate on Burns, who got a 26% raise to $280,000 a year while asking everyone else for concessions. Many drivers focus on Burns' personal racism (he once asked a driver why MUNI has so many blacks), but not on capitalism's racist institutions he administers.

We're in this fight for the long term. As our co-workers become more fed up and angry, we can explain how the inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., Europe and Asia causes both the war in Iraq and the attacks on services at home. We have been discussing the draft of a new PLP article, "Who Rules the U.S." which has been especially helpful in revealing the unseen forces driving capitalism in this period.

Sometimes we meet in groups and often have many individual conversations. Deep personal relationships allow one to dig down and find out what workers really think about communism and the world, their questions and disagreements. CHALLENGE articles and leaflets can underline or crystallize ideas that our co-workers already have. A political economy group meets regularly, and we're active in the union and immediate battles on many levels.

There is a growing circle of people who see beyond Burns to the capitalist class he represents. They are critical thinkers and dangerous to the system. They have the potential to join PLP and lead a revolutionary movement that won't be limited by "the rules of engagement" set out by the politicians, MTA, Burns or the union leadership. Our June 30 contract deadline could provide more opportunities.

Mexico: Capitalist `Reform' Robs Retirees' Pensions

MEXICO CITY, April 20 -- Over 120,000 social security (IMSS), telephone, electrical, university and other workers marched through the historic center of this city rejecting the rulers' "reform" of the pension and retirement systems. They're offering a miserable pension of $5 a day to 40 million workers, ending the plan which provides full wages to retirees.

Angry workers called for a nation-wide general strike if this "reform" is imposed, but union "leaders" are already making deals with the government. Workers cannot defeat the bosses' attacks following these pro-boss sellouts. We need to develop a red leadership and turn these struggles into schools for communism. Then we can build a mass communist Party and fight for a society where our golden years won't be reduced to fighting for crumbs. Workers will run society and provide for all of us according to our needs. Under communism, older workers will be able to enjoy a full life teaching and serving as examples to the younger generation, without worrying where their next meal will come from.

Workers blame the corruption of the IMSS administrators for having brought its finances to the brink, risking the pensions of 120,000 IMSS retirees and 360,000 current IMSS workers. It's true that these bosses are crooks, but the "reform's" main purpose is to save bosses a bundle by eliminating future pension plan payments. This will help all bosses be more competitive in this capitalist world of endless wars for markets and "jobless recoveries." This system can never give workers a decent life. It must be swept away.

The demonstrators also denounced the enormous wage disparity in the IMSS. Director Levy gets 220,000 pesos ($20,000 dollars) a month, while a doctor gets only 19,000 ($1727). A specialized nurse receives 10,000 ($909) a month and a clerk only 2,200 ($200). To end this inequality we must abolish the capitalist wage-slavery system.

Demonstrators also warned that once the pension "reform" succeeds at the IMSS, it will hit other public and private sectors workers. Workers always on the defensive against the bosses' endless attacks risk dying a slow death while the bosses' drive for maximum profits sees no end. We in PLP must increase our efforts to bring our communist politics to all workers, and speed the process that will eliminate this capitalist hell.

Red Leadership Growing in D.C. Metro, Isolating Pro-boss Prez

WASHINGTON, D.C. April 15 -- About six months ago, over 1,200 transit workers voted for PLP member Mike Golash for President of the 6,000-member Local 689, Amalgamated Transportation Workers Union (ATU). While Mike didn't win the election, we applauded this as a significant political development. A largely black workforce showed a lot of support to an open communist, in the shadow of the White House, in the midst of an imperialist invasion and developing Homeland Security police state.

Many workers who supported and campaigned for Mike, including regular readers and distributors of CHALLENGE, didn't fully appreciate the results of their efforts at the time. Many were disappointed that we didn't win the election. Even some Party members thought it was a failed effort. But dozens of transit workers took part in the campaign and a core group became more committed to PLP's revolutionary politics.

Meanwhile, at the April union meeting, the winner of the election attacked everyone in attendance for being "out to get him."

A PLP collective is studying communist ideas and trying to breathe some militant life into their union, while the re-elected president is feeling isolated.

In an early sign of progress, they defeated the President's efforts to re-run elections for those union offices in which his cronies were defeated. They're starting a newsletter to give mass political leadership to the workers. This is winning. It is also the result of 25 years of patient and consistent base building for the PLP and winning the respect of the workers. Stay tuned as the struggle around the new contract intensifies.

Kerry, Clinton No Friends of Women Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 25 -- The night before today's huge "March for Women's Lives" here, PLP held a forum on a communist view of the fight against sexism. PLP's politics represented a 180° turn from that put forward by the leadership of the Women's March. Our forum discussed -- and condemned -- the broad range of women's oppression worldwide, from the slave-like conditions in Indonesian sweatshops to forced prostitution of 12-year-olds -- all caused by profit-hungry capitalism. Meanwhile, yesterday's demonstration became a big rally for Kerry, who wants to send still more troops to Iraq, another 40,000 women and men to kill Iraqi women and men.

This contrasted sharply with the history of the communist-led fight against sexism, including the mass burning by liberated and liberating women of the oppressive burkha and chador (full-length veils) in the Soviet Asian republics in the 1920s, to the battle against binding women's feet in China (and for their leadership in the struggle) under the slogan, "Women hold up half the sky."

Many at the forum took bunches of CHALLENGES and May Day leaflets to distribute the next day. We provided a revolutionary alternative in the fight against sexism to the boss-led march (featuring pro-war Hillary Clinton), which focused on voting for Kerry to get rid of Bush.

A woman who had attended the PLP forum and worked for Planned Parenthood, one of the march's main sponsors, called a PL'er the next morning to declare her disgust at the March's structure. She felt it was a publicity battle between Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League. The politics and consciousness never went beyond abortion rights and voting for Democrats.

She thought this was horrible at a time when U.S. imperialism was murdering thousands in Iraq, while fascism and economic crises grow in the U.S. and worldwide. She said the march represented a predominantly middle class view, not the class interests of workers, especially black workers who are being hit the hardest economically, and whose reproductive health needs were quite different from the affluent leaders of this rally.

Boeing Union Misleaders Use Human Rights, Women's Conference to Promote War Strategy

Seattle, WA, March 27--The Human Rights, Labor History and Women's Committees of IAM District Lodge 751 sponsored a day-long conference entitled, "Rosie's War; The Fight for Worker's Rights." About two hundred participants from various unions and retiree organizations heard our union misleaders brag that this first such gathering in IAM history demonstrated their commitment to diversity and women's rights. As the day wore on, it became clear that their only commitment was to aiding the bosses' war plans.

The highlight of the conference was awarding "plaques of appreciation" to two black women who worked at the Boeing plants during WWII, but were denied union membership because of racist exclusion clauses at that time. The awards ceremony praised their devotion to the "security of our nation and the rights of workers," and fit in with the patriotic posters hung around the Boeing workers' hall. A documentary was shown during lunch, featuring women and minorities who got jobs in basic industry during the war, at wages higher than they were used to.

Labor Strategy for Constant War

Everyone received the white paper, "Revitalizing American Manufacturing," publishing by the Industrial Union Council of the AFL-CIO. It calls for "strengthening the manufacturing base for national defense and homeland security...." The "Root of the Crisis," they assert, is an industrial policy that "encourage[s] American firms to move factories and jobs offshore." They call for an "industrial development policy" to help "the nations' manufacturing industries...become more globally competitive." (Democratic presidential candidate Kerry lifted his industrial policy directly from this white paper.)

The misleaders attempt to turn this conference into a forum to promote an industrial policy for constant war did not go unchallenged. "WWII is the theme of this conference, but there are big differences between that war and the present war in Iraq," warned one worker.

"Workers were won to fighting in WWII because that was a fight against fascism," she continued, "but the war in Iraq is about oil and capitalist domination." The union leaders did not dare contradict her, in contrast to last year, when they put up a big fight against any anti-war resolutions during the run up to the war.

"Besides, this time, as the wars spread, the bosses plan to create industrial jobs with low-wage, minimum-wage subcontractors here in the U.S. Any real fight against racism and sexism will have to focus on these jobs, where larger proportions of minorities and women work."

Apparently, this was too much! The misleaders didn't want anything like fighting racist, sexist exploitation, to get in the way of electoral politics.

The New Economy and War

The Internet and computers allow aerospace and other basic industries to switch large chucks of manufacturing to domestic and "offshore" subcontractors. In Boeing's case, the same bosses that run Boeing often control these subcontractors. By focusing solely on offshore manufacturing, the union builds nationalism and covers its own failure to fight racist, sexist exploitation in these domestic subcontracting plants.

Industrial workers are still key. Despite various recessions, the absolute numbers of manufacturing workers in the U.S. have remained fairly stable since 1965, between 15 and 20 million according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Millions of black, Latin and women workers are forced to work for low-wage subcontractors. Their ranks will swell as the bosses tool for more extensive wars. These super-exploited industrial workers can lead the march to revolution if we fight to build the Party and CHALLENGE.

The unions are using every trick in the book to win us to support the bosses' increasingly expensive war plans. But if the reaction of many disgruntled Boeing workers to this conference is any indication, they have a long way to go. If we initiate and intensify anti-racist, anti-sexist class struggle, we can make their job even harder.

D.C. PEPCO
WORKERS WON'T BE FOOLED

WASHINGTON D.C., April 23--The contract between the electrical workers and PEPCO expires May 31. The union hacks finished "negotiations" in less than a week, and after two angry meetings, the sellout contract was voted down. It's good to reject such a stinking contract, but it's better to reject the capitalist system and fight for communism!

The proposed contract included a two-tier benefits package. It eliminated a job security clause for new hires that said PEPCO workers with 12_ years or more could not be laid off until PEPCO dropped all contractors. The contract would have pushed retirement beyond 30 years service and 55 years of age and eliminated health insurance for retirees. Vacations for new hires would have been scaled back. Health insurance premiums would have risen every year of the three-year contract. A family plan would go up from $90 to $150 and more after that. PEPCO also wanted to change the contract expiration date from May 31 to March 31, removing the workers' "summer season" leverage. The dilapidated D.C. infrastructure is very old. In the summer more manhole covers explode and brownouts occur, along with other weather-related mishaps.

Now Maryland is granting PEPCO a 16% rate increase, something the union mis-leaders wanted to cover up so they could ram through the bosses' plan. PEPCO tried to terrorize workers because it is facing a lawsuit from Morant, which bought PEPCO's generators during deregulation, and PEPCO claims it could lose $600-700 million. But PEPCO and their pets in the union leadership failed to intimidate the workers, for now.

A few workers have been relating this contract battle to a larger worldview. Would Homeland Security ban a strike because PEPCO is a utility based in the nation's capital? As terrorist threats mount, civil liberties will go by the wayside. Explaining the necessity to fight fascism is essential for the survival of our Party, family, friends and co-workers. Workers dislike the bosses' government dictating to them what to do. More workers must join with the PLP and expand these discussions through reading CHALLENGE, and build a militant group, especially younger workers active in the union around revolutionary ideas.

Liberal Washington Post Helps Union Sell Out D.C. Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 2--The U.S. capitalist system is driving down workers everywhere, breaking unions, establishing multi-tier wage systems, and contracting out like mad -- all to expand its profits and lock down the working class as the rulers move onto a permanent war footing. Most union leaders help this along because they believe in capitalism, which drives to extract maximum profits from workers' labor. Better to cut a lousy deal and keep the dues flowing.

The United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) leaders in this area are part of this pitiful, let-the-bosses-screw-us operation. They called the recent grocery workers' contract a "victory," but new workers get shafted on health care costs and overtime pay -- with greater out-of-pocket costs and two- to six-year waiting periods for standard full-coverage -- while established workers barely break even.

The D.C. area contracts expired barely a month after the sellout of the Southern California grocery strikers. The latter had targeted Safeway for a boycott here. They came east to lead informational picket lines, a weak tactic in itself, but UFCW Local 400 didn't even inform its Safeway members about that, sabotaging even minimal worker solidarity.

The media conspired with management and sellout union officials to demoralize the workers. Giant and Safeway stores promoted fear and intimidation, advertising for and hiring scabs a full week before the contract expired. On March 30, a Washington Post lead story reported a contract agreement between the companies and the union -- before mass meetings of Safeway and Giant workers held that day and then expected an immediate workers vote, allotting no time for reading, digesting and discussing the proposals.Then Safeway workers met at 8 a.m. By 10:30 news "leaked out" that they'd ratified the contract, while Giant workers didn't meet until 12 Noon, when it was already a done deal. Giant workers wouldn't strike without Safeway workers.

The only media the working class can rely on is the communist press you are holding in your hand. The only answer to these boss-union schemes is for workers to move past their pro-capitalist union mis-leaders and fight for workers' power, where the working class runs society to serve its needs.

Justice for Apartheid Assassin

(From The Australian, 4/27)

Some of the worst human rights violators of the apartheid era, including a man who helped kill 14 civilians while they slept, have been employed as security contractors in Iraq.

A South African killed in Iraq...once worked for a secret apartheid death squad....assassinating civilians who sympathized with black liberation movements. Gray Branfield, 55, was the latest South African casualty...to have obtained lucrative employment...in Iraq. His decapitated and mutilated body was found after a gunfight between Shi'ite radicals and Ukrainian forces in Kut....

In 1981....Branfield helped plan a raid into...Botswana in which 14 people, including a child, were killed....Most of the dead were shot in their beds as they slept....

South Africa is a favoured recruiting ground, after the U.S. and Britain, for the private security firms. At least 1,500 of the estimated 10,000 private contractors operating in Iraq are South African....

After apartheid ended, the former soldiers found themselves unemployed....Many became mercenaries

When the war in Iraq broke out...they rushed to join what seemed to be a safe, well-paid venture. Instead, they found civilians who shot back.

`Circular Logic' Dooms Working-Class Anti-Racist Struggle

Recently, as an extension of Black History Month, students at the University of Washington held a three-day "White Skin Privilege Week," culminating in a forum to discuss these ideas. After a panel of three people from the People's Institute Northwest made a presentation, we asked to talk about solutions to racism. One woman said we couldn't because solutions "were too complex to discuss here." Another panelist said talking "linearly about solutions, about getting from here to there" was a "white way of thinking" and we needed to think "circularly." Instead of this dead-end logic, we need to intensify the anti-racist struggle here to serve the interests of all workers and students.

THINKING IN CIRCLES

The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond is one of the foremost advocates of white skin privilege (WSP) theory. A discussion among comrades revealed that the premises behind this approach to racism are completely wrong. WSP completely contradicts a class analysis, which says racism, has an economic as well as a political basis. All workers are exploited by capitalism, but racism enables the bosses to super-exploit black and Latino workers to extract super-profits -- paying some workers less for the same work. These racist attacks drag down wages and benefits for all workers, and divides them as well. As Marx said, "Labor in white skin shall not be free while labor in black skin is branded."

WSP theory says white workers can never really understand the oppression faced by blacks and Latinos and it is offensive for them to think they can, that white workers can only understand "their own privilege" and use this position to stop the oppression of non-white workers. WSP denies the need for class struggle to deal with racism, instead appealing to white people's morality. It blames racism on white workers rather than on capitalists who use and perpetuate racism in their class interest. WSP ignores the class nature of capitalism and promotes its reform rather than a real fight-back against racism and its cause, the profit system. Only a class analysis of racism, emphasizing that all exploited workers need to smash racism in order to build a powerful, united working-class force is capable of destroying the bosses' dictatorship.

THINKING DIALECTICALLY

The struggle at the panel discussion intensified after a comrade challenged the effectiveness of "educating" about racism without a plan to abolish it. A young man said we couldn't begin to deal with class issues without first dealing with racism. But when will we have "dealt" with racism? We can't separate racism from capitalism, from a class analysis. While we all struggle in a racist society with our own racist ideas, capitalism is the problem, not workers. We can only fight racist institutions by uniting multi-racially in our class interest to destroy capitalism and establish a communist society without exploitation of any workers.

WSP theory is the latest in a long line of ideologies designed to distract workers from a class analysis of capitalism. Various ruling-class foundations support this approach to racism because it works in their class interest (see article next issue). It appeals to young workers and students as a "new" approach to the nagging problem of racism. This ideology will further divide the working class. We must debunk WSP's "circular" logic with a dialectical analysis and expose its dangers to effective class struggle against racism.

Our best plan is to build class-conscious, anti-racist struggles at the universities, exposing the racist nature of the university system, the racist cut-backs in financial aid, the racist ideologies of "evolutionary biology" pushed by the ruling class, and the connections between racism in the U.S. -- the attacks on immigrants -- and endless wars for profit. Then we can show how ruling-class ideologies such as WSP will not end racism, that the only solution is communist revolution.

War Contract Creates 2 Tier System for NYC Workers

NEW YORK CITY, April, 21 -- At a shop stewards' meeting of Local 371, District Council 37, AFSCME, significant applause greeted a retiree's pro-war characterization of a proposed contract covering 125,000 city workers. The leader of this 15,000-member local summarized the proposals but chose not to endorse or oppose them. One long-time union activist called for an emergency membership meeting to discuss the proposals, saying union members struck in 1965 and 1967 not only for their own needs but for the workers coming after them. She labeled this settlement selfish because current workers would get a small raise in part funded by give-backs for newly-hired workers. (In fact, the '65 contract included benefits for welfare clients as well as members.)

The retiree explained that, (1) the assembled stewards needed to assert their leadership by voting to reject this proposal; and (2) this contract reflected the political/financial needs of the ruling class to fund their imperialist war aims and fight off their rivals by reducing labor costs and U.S. workers' standard of living. The leadership refused to call for a special membership meeting and declared that tonight's meeting no longer had enough members to vote on the contract.

An April 13 meeting of the retirees association discussed the direction of the contract talks, citing the lack of vision on the part of Lillian Roberts, recently narrowly re-elected head of DC 37. One retiree recalled the 1975 fiscal crisis when the NY Daily News ran a headline, "Ford to NY -- Drop Dead!" meaning zero money to solve the city's fiscal crisis. Now Mayor Bloomberg makes no pretense of asking for additional federal aid. This fits right into the nation-wide attack on the working class to fund the bosses' imperialist war. This was the reason, the retiree argued, that we should "oppose this war contract."

For all workers hired after July 1, the proposed settlement will reduce starting pay 15% for the first two years; cut 24 vacation days over 10 years; chop 10 sick leave days over five years; eliminate one holiday per year; cut 50% of the value of unused sick days when these workers retire; and reduce night differentials. This will create a downward pull on the pay and benefits for those currently employed who are not yet affected by these cuts.

PLP members and friends should fight to increase class struggle against the class collaboration reflected in this contract. We should call for local shop meetings to discuss it and for local demonstrations where possible, join with others opposing the settlement and demand a strike, uniting with other city workers like teachers who are still working without a contract. The reactions of these two large DC 37 groups, active shop stewards and retired members, indicate anger at the settlement and openness to PLP's class analysis of capitalism and imperialism.

California Cuts Screw Students, Help Fund U.S. Attack on Iraq

LOS ANGELES, April 26 -- Last January, Gov. Schwarzenegger proposed to slash the budget for the University of California, the California State University and the Community College System. The cuts included a combination of enrollment caps, fee increases, closed classes, layoffs and the elimination of outreach and retention programs that recruit nearly 50% of black, Latin and Asian students to higher education. The racist attack on EOP (Equal Opportunity Program) hits all students. The California Legislature will vote on Schwarzenegger's proposals in June.

A large coalition of organizations has formed to oppose these devastating racist cuts. Today, shouting "No more cuts," and "No cuts! No war! The cuts are for the war!" over 1,500 students rallied downtown, displaying students' and professors' anger. However, there is a difference between the masses and the leadership. The planning and the rally itself revealed strong ideological conflict about how to organize this movement.

At the rally, PLP condemned the budget cuts, the war and the capitalist system. We distributed a communist May Day leaflet on the buses traveling to the march. Once there our chants linking the war to the cuts were shouted by hundreds, in opposition to the leadership's chants.

One student speaker explained how the budget cuts were funding imperialist war, saying that every bomb falling in Iraq is an attack on us as well -- "Iraqi workers are our brothers and sisters." He condemned the system, calling for a revolutionary movement to destroy it, urging students to come to the May Day March. Almost all the protesters got our leaflet, some signing up to march.

Reformist notions of social change consume much of the coalition's leadership. Tremendous effort is directed at lobbying local politicians and letter-writing campaigns. This implies that social change happens by voting for better politicians and begging them to save education, healthcare and other social programs. But by passing the budget cuts, these politicians are merely serving their masters: the bosses.

The cuts are not just the "insane" plan of "evil politicians" like Bush or the Terminator, but systematic products of class oppression and a war budget. Under capitalism, bosses must always maximize profit; they will cut budgets and wages, lay off workers, and go to war -- and much more. The situation will change by organizing workers, students and soldiers not only for some social changes, but to build a revolution that will overthrow the profit system which lives by our misery.

We must appeal not to politicians, but to those who have no interest in supporting a racist system that massacres our social services, enabling the very few rich to get richer while masses suffer. We need to appeal to those who have no interest in supporting a war that defends the bosses' imperialist profits. We must rely on the working class, and build a movement to fight for communism, workers' power. The best place to start is to join PLP.

Memories of A World War 2 Childhood in Britain

We could see thin traces of the airplanes making fine, lazy patterns in the blue sky, intertwining with one another. We children watched from the playground of Southport's Methodist School. It was May, 1941. Southport is a seaside town 12 miles north of Liverpool, where my family had come because my father was stationed with the Royal Navy there. The Nazis wanted to bomb Liverpool, an industrial port from which British cargo ships sailed to re-supply the Russian Front at Murmansk. Ships also arrived from North America with grain and other foodstuffs.

Rationing was still strict. We lived in a boarding house with one kitchen-sitting room and two tiny bedrooms. We could hear the sounds of bombing to the south. One day school was dismissed early. When we came to school the next day there was a downed British Hurricane fighter plane smashed against the children's bicycle shed, filling most of the playground. We all pretended it was German and ran 'round chanting, "Down with Hitler," and banged the plane's sides. It took several months to clear the playground but our schooling continued.

In our one room where my mother, brother and I did everything, I stood on the arm of our only threadbare couch, glued to the radio atop the cupboard, listening for reports about the crashed plane in our playground. The radio reported bombs being dropped that wouldn't explode immediately. We kids called these landmines. (Later, back in London, we children were beating on the side of a landmine, pretending to take on the Germans, when an air raid warden screamed at us to get away. The bomb was later detonated.)

One Saturday our family was strolling on Lord Avenue, Southport's main street, to have tea and buns with a lovely pink icing at the Kardomah Tea Shop. Suddenly the air raid siren sounded. We all ran crazily to hide. An airplane came crashing down on Lord Avenue's northern end, a few hundred yards away.

Life was full of daily and nightly fears in a non-occupied country during World War II and was very unpredictable. We were worried about my father. Every night I went to bed praying that God would end the war. But He didn't. With so much death around, I found it increasingly difficult to believe there was a supreme being. Things looked gray. Some months later an American cousin in the US Air Force stationed nearby visited us. He brought some Libby's fruit cocktail. I shall never forget the half pink cherry, a shining light in an awful sea of grayness.

The radio reported Nazi armies overrunning Yugoslavia, moving into Greece, and soon to take Crete. We heard Malta was being bombed nightly and that the Nazis had chased the British back from Libya, deep into Egypt. Then in early 1943 came the amazing news that the Soviet Army had smashed the Nazi army at Stalingrad and the British were chasing the Nazis out of Egypt at El Alamein. Maybe there could be an end to the war. I felt that if there was a God, He would be on the side of Uncle Joe Stalin and the Red Army.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, a San Francisco group of gospel singers, the Golden Gate Quartet, recorded a number called "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'." Later Bob Hope recorded it also, praising the fighting strength of the Red Army and Uncle Joe Stalin. Unity between capitalist America and the red Soviet Union seemed to be robust then. This, however, was merely the external appearance.

1990's Union Give-backs Rob Workers' Health, Pensions Today

NEW YORK CITY, April 26 -- The billions of dollars U.S. bosses are spending on the war in Iraq to maintain control of Mid-East oil are not only killing thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of U.S. GIs, but also workers and others at home. The huge cuts in social services to help pay for the war are adding one other casualty: the health and pension funds of 117,000 NYC hospital workers in Local 1199-SEIU. Private hospitals owe $130 million to employee benefit and pension funds. (New York Times, 4/14) This is threatening workers with loss of health insurance and other benefits, and thousands of layoffs.

While the hospitals complain of being squeezed by mounting competition, cost-cutting insurance companies, decreasing government payments and a sour economy, they and the HMO's made billions in profits over the past ten years that didn't go to workers' healthcare.

Citing this financial "squeeze," the bosses will demand that we give back wages and benefits we struck to win, when our contract expires on April 30, 2005.

In 1994, the National Benefit Fund was over-funded by $70 million. The union granted the bosses a temporary reduction in employer contributions, which they used to pay for other benefits, like the so-called job guarantees.

In 1998, the National Pension Fund was over-funded by $200 million, and again New York State posted a budget surplus. Again, the union diverted Pension Fund "surpluses" to finance contract demands. From 1994-1998, the bosses saved millions of dollars by these rate reductions.

The Benefit and Pension Fund surpluses were based mainly on investments during the stock market boom. But stocks that go up inevitably come down. When the recession popped the stock market bubble, union give-backs turned $270 million surpluses into a $130 million "shortfall." The pension fund was supposed to be the workers' money. The chickens are coming home to roost.

The health care crisis will cause misery, pain and suffering to the working class. Thousands of hospital jobs, rehabilitation and home healthcare services face reduction or elimination.

There is an especially racist aspect to these attacks since most NYC healthcare workers are black, Latin and Asian. Massive racist layoffs and cuts in healthcare will cause greater disease. This, on top of the three million uninsured workers in NYC, will wreak havoc on the health of the working class.

Capitalist health care, based on profits first-workers last, and ignoring preventive measures, cannot meet the needs of workers and patients. Only communism, with no bosses, profits or exploitation, will assure health care for all in an anti-racist healthcare system.

NFL Poster Boy For Imperialist War

Pat Tillman, who left a multimillion-dollar National Football League career to join the Army Rangers, was killed during a clash with the Taliban-Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. The Bush Administration and the media now portray Tillman as the "ultimate" patriot who sacrificed" everything for his country. But the fact is that Tilman -- along with over 700 soldiers who have died in Iraq and many others in Afghanistan -- are victims of a lying ruling class who uses them to protect the profits of Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil, JP Morgan, Citibank, & Co.

Motivated by the 9/11 attacks, Tillman abandoned his pro-football career to join the army, thinking the U.S. was fighting a war on terror. First he was sent to Iraq, then later to Afghanistan. He believed Saddam was linked to al Qaeda in the 9/11 terror attacks. But it has been proven that the only "connection" between them is that they were once both darlings of his beloved CIA, who also trained Tillman. (See front page on the real reasons why Iraq was invaded.)

U.S. rulers will use Tillman's death to lead more working-class youth to their graves as the bosses try to maintain control of the oil-rich Middle East. A year ago the Bush Administration tried to fabricate the bravery of Private Jessica but was caught when she denied their story.

It's difficult for the bosses to find poster boys -- or girls -- for U.S. imperialism, given the death and destruction it wreaks, which is why they're pushing Tillman, someone who willingly gave up money and fame. But they've got an uphill battle. A system based on a culture of extreme egotism, racism, lies, exploitation and anti-communism doesn't inspire too many people.u

LETTERS

Driving the Nazis From Marquette Park

On the weekend of April 3, I attended the 25th anniversary celebration of throwing the Nazis out of Marquette Park in Chicago. PLP led 700 anti-racists to integrate the neighborhood in our 1979 Communist May Day March. It drove the Nazis from public organizing. I revisited the historic sites of Marquette Park and Haymarket Square, and saw old and young comrades.

The ruling class created a safe haven for racist-fascists in Marquette Park, including Nazi sympathizers from Eastern Europe. Our determination stopped this scheme. Before that, black and Latin workers couldn't drive or even take a bus through the area without being literally attacked.

At that time I lived in another Midwest city. Our PLP group had organized significant, militant opposition to the Nazis and KKK, pouncing on them at several radio stations where they were scheduled to speak and wherever they would try to hold street-corner rallies. In these efforts, we drilled in teams of three, our collective for the battle -- important for protection, as a buddy system and to organize the objective. We wore caps to shield our heads, steel-toed shoes and two jackets for protection. Women didn't wear earrings or jewelry. Everyone tied up their long hair. Comrade-soldiers in the National Guard helped us practice. While political will is essential, tactical preparation is very important.

The integration of Marquette Park was widely broadcast internationally. Huge headlines announced it in England, but it drew barely any mention in U.S. papers. This mirrored the continuing blackout of the 1886 Chicago general strike and the Haymarket Square battle that gave birth to the international workers' holiday, May Day. A little-known statue stands in the city's Waldheim Cemetery, recognizing the four framed labor heroes who the rulers hung after they had led this historic struggle for the 8-hour day.

A Marquette May Day marcher

Racism Exposed By Class Analysis

When I started attending my church, I heard some people in the congregation wanted to do something about racism. I liked this idea but had serious criticisms of their analysis of racism. They seemed to be saying the main cause of racism was that white folks liked the privileges they received from holding black people down. This does not address the real economic benefits this racist system gives to those in power, at the expense of all workers.

I was asked to join a church committee that would further identify and begin to change racism within the church itself. Though I disagreed with much of what had been presented, I joined the committee to struggle for a more realistic understanding within the group, rather than outside it.

I considered myself to be an anti-racist for many years but I still learned much from the training sessions and discussions which deal with racism on an institutional level. We also discuss how we internalize attitudes that contradict our best interests.

In the past few years the denomination's analysis of the racist nature of the system has developed and grown much deeper. This occurred because many church members refused to limit themselves to blaming individual whites for an entire racist system. Besides learning from the newer and better analysis, I've also contributed much to the discussions about the class nature and economic basis of racism. It's more than just a thug for capitalism; it's also the major cash cow and a divisive tool of a vicious economic and social system. In joining the committee I'm also getting to know some people on a deeper level. You have to be in it to have a serious effect on the process.

An anti-racist learner

Challenging Rockefeller's Church

In this era of growing imperialist rivalry, war and fascism, it's important to see more than just the open right-wing role of religious forces like Mel Gibson and his Passion. I belong to a large liberal church whose benefactors are the Rockefellers. Both Lawrence and David Rockefeller paid an Easter visit to the church and received praises from the senior minister. He, his think-tank consultants and certain members of the Church Council have mapped out an 8-month-and-beyond project called "Restoring America's Moral, Spiritual and Democratic Values."

These ruling-class "leaders" have set themselves up as the "progressive liberal Christian response" to Bush and the Christian Right, and are attempting to mobilize the peace and justice seekers. Having been "called by God" and the Rockefeller family, they are projecting "a church-wide effort to inspire, inform and rally the voting public." Those who have raised concerns have been told to "lead, follow, move over or leave."

Many in the congregation are enthusiastic, but others are doubtful. A couple of friends are moving closer to joining the Party, having been propelled to the left during this recent period. I have prepared the following statement to share with some friends. Depending on the response, we may do more with it or the essence of its ideas.

Thoughts and Questions for Your Consideration
All that glitters is not gold.
Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.
It's like the fox guarding the chicken coop.
Look before you leap.
Remember the story of the tortoise and the rabbit.

The Prophetic Principles of Mobilization 2004 are based on a couple of assumptions with which I disagree. "Restoring values," at least some, assumes that they were noble and true in U.S. history. It's also assumed that U.S. imperialism can be benevolent and righteous. I think the history of the U.S., as a capitalist system, has to be examined, as it really was in the practice. What is the nature of modern imperialism? Has it somehow changed? What is the objective situation in the world and what are the geopolitical imperatives of U.S. imperialism? What is the role of class struggle and revolution now and in history?

I see the church at this point as an instrument of the liberal ruling class in the U.S. At its service. What are the church's connections to liberal ruling-class think-tanks, including religious ones? I think these groups have chosen/drafted the senior minister as one of their servants, tools, agents. The words may rankle. Is this position one which will save the masses of suffering working-class people or one that will serve us up to the forces building fascism and waging war? We have to learn from history and look at the world as it really is now.

The process of launching Mobilization 2004 leaves little room for questioning at this point. You're in or out, with or against. "We're all together. Don't be Jonah."

Are we now policing ourselves to control dissent? A church council letter refers to "good behavior and responsibility." Are we being trained or molded to be good foot soldiers marching in step (words taken from a church service) for the "oneness" of country, God and church (in the words of the president of the Church Council)? That would conform to Kerry's platform called A New Army of Patriots. Are we becoming idol worshippers, not rational thinkers? In dismantling parts of active Social Justice groups and folding them into Mobilization 2004 we are cutting a structural way that we can use to challenge the system ideologically and analytically, while acting from below. This so-called "community policing" internally may prove to be more insidious than the openly repressive measures of the Patriot Act.

Regarding the Patriot Act and Homeland Security: Can we accept that a little fascism is O.K.? We need to consider how fascism was defeated historically and how it can be defeated now.

I/we have to choose our battles. We cannot allow our spirits to be broken. Taking on the whole of Mobilization 2004 may be too much for now. What can we expect to do or not to do at this juncture? Let's talk.

Another red churchmouse

Don't Mourn -- Organize

In Iraq, more U.S. soldiers have been killed and wounded in a year of war than in Vietnam during the first three years of that war. Iraq is a dangerous place but in the U.S. an average of 16 workers are killed and nearly 15,000 hurt or made ill on the job EVERY DAY. Each year 6,000 workers are killed at the workplace, 50,000 die from occupational diseases and millions are injured (5.2 million in 2001).

Like Veterans' Day, the AFL-CIO-sponsored Workers' Memorial Day (April 28) will be characterized by mourning and patriotic flag-waving staged by the bosses and the unions to promote the idea that workers are united with the bloodthirsty system the rulers represent. They want to misdirect our anger at the wholesale murder and atrocities they are inflicting on the working class in the U.S. and worldwide.

On May Day we can show that another world is possible, where communism serves workers' needs. We can march under the red flag of international working-class unity and join the struggles against murderous jobs, speed-up, layoffs, no health care and the profit system that forces unemployed labor into wars for oil and "free trade zones" as in Iraq and around the globe.

Joe Hill was a union organizer who was framed and executed by the capitalist bosses. At the very end, he told his brother and sister workers, "Don't mourn for me -- organize."

Survivor of corporate wars on workers

Workers Can Run Society

Recently in San Francisco I met an ex-coworker from SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications), the phone company. "Long time no see," I said. "How are you? Will SBC strike?" I asked.

We don't have much to say, one way or the other,' he replied. "If we strike, we strike."

"SBC is talking $60 monthly co-payments on medical," I went on. "Didn't we have three strikes to stop them? And this from a corporation that netted over $8 billion in profits."

"Yes," my friend answered, "Some of the bosses received 20% increases, and the CEO gets $20 million. But," he said, "we have to have bosses!"

"Not if workers have a revolution that smashes capitalism and creates communism," I shot back."

"You're still talking that stuff," my friend replied.

"Yes, more so than ever," I said.

"Well," he went on, "we'll still have to have someone tell us what to do."

"Does someone tell you what to do after 35 years at the phone company?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "I pretty much know what to do, and I show others, too."

"That's the kind of working together -- collectively -- and helping each other that we're talking about under communism," I said.

My friend then told me, "I've got to go to work."

"Take it easy," I concluded.

Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE.

West Coast phone worker

Cross Country Solidarity

Our public sector union voted to donate $250 to help the California grocery strikers. Unfortunately the workers settled for an awful contract (see CHALLENGE, 3/17). The same meeting decided Community Action Teams (CATS), composed of union members and community activists, would visit Safeway stores urging shoppers to boycott Safeway in solidarity with the California strikers. After that strike was settled, CATS would go to both Giant and Safeway stores pledging to honor their picket lines.

Our CAT group went to our neighborhood Safeway and talked to workers about a strike and pledged our support. We were warmly received.

At our March 25 membership meeting, our union voted unanimously not only to honor the picket lines, but to actively join the lines if the workers struck here.

Before the contract vote, my team went to our neighborhood Giant and Safeway stores. We told the workers we lived in the area and would support them if they struck. We mentioned our Local's support vote. Things were heating up. Safeway and Giant had already advertised and hired scabs. (See page 4) The workers were very grateful and pleasantly surprised to find the community and other workers would support them. One worker was confident people would honor the picket lines in this union town. Younger workers were unaware of the strike issues and of the union's response. The older workers were more informed and talkative. But few thought the union would call a strike.

The union shoved a two tier system of pension and health insurance and a three tier wage system onto the workers. I aim to keep up with some of the CAT members and invite them to social and political events this Spring and Summer. They already realize I'm an active anti-racist. At our first meeting, I mentioned my participation in a demonstration against the neo-Nazi National Alliance when they came to Washington in August 2002

D.C. Unionist

Community Policing Blames Victims

The "Community Policing" article in the April 28 issue was right on target. I live in a small New England city, and the politicians -- liberal and conservative -- are pushing for community policing. I got a notice on my door a while back and went to see what they were up to.

It was all about blame. It was stated over and over that "anti-social" young people first had to apologize for their bad ways and then make some kind of deal to work off, or whatever, the results of their actions. (The fact that young people acting "anti-social" might have real reasons for their aggression of course was never considered. Writing graffiti on a fence may not be the ideal social activity, but it might very well be a small indication of the hopelessness young people feel in this vicious capitalist society. Sure, they should find more constructive ways to show their displeasure -- most preferably in the fight for a fair communist society!)

A neighbor of mine, a very committed and active person, was singled out by the mayor as being an important element of the community policing movement.

He really tried to puff her up, but I went over to her -- and to other people in the room who indicated they weren't falling for the crap -- and told her she was being used to con other people into buying the mayor's line.

I asked her, "How come not one word was said about poverty or joblessness? It's always the fault of the poor, according to these creeps, never about the society and big business." She saw this was true, and I believe she got out of the clutches of these right-wing "reformers."

It would have been better if I had stood up and said my piece, but I felt I couldn't for personal reasons. Still, I got at least a couple of people away from a fascist line in liberal clothing.

One other thing: The *first sentence* of another article in that issue of CHALLENGE contained the following words: " indigenous," "chauvinist," and "permeating." What's wrong with "local," "male supremecist," and "filling"?

The simpler the word, the more people will understand our line.

New England Red

White Skin Theory:
A Bosses' Idea

A new form of nationalism is rising in academic circles called White Privilege. It's an offshoot of multi-cultural studies at the school where I work, and is taught in college departments of multicultural and ethnic studies. White skin privilege says the primary difference between people is "race" and that, in the U.S. and other societies with white rulers, if you're white, you have immediate advantages and are automatically racist. It says white people must first acknowledge this advantage and then teach others that whiteness is inherently bad. Many advocates of this theory are white themselves.

While it's true that the primary form of U.S. racism is the attack on black and Latino workers and youth, as well as all immigrants, the White Skin Privilege advocates mistakenly claim the main division between people is "race," not class. They don't see racism as the cutting edge of the attack on all workers and youth, including white workers.

They avoid political analysis of racial and economic differences in society. Many are hostile to communist ideas. They don't tie racism to economic exploitation and also ignore the advantages to the ruling class of dividing the working class by "race" and racism. In fact, the wages and conditions of white workers have declined even as those of black and Latino workers have been attacked even more. These failures result from their rejecting a class-based solution.

These theorists also don't see that electing black and Latino politicians do not improve conditions for most workers, black, Latinos or white. A glaring example of this is the end of legal apartheid in South Africa. Despite the illusion of "more democracy," despite a government overwhelmingly dominated by black politicians, poverty there remains staggering, especially for the masses of black workers. Terrible exploitation exists whether the rulers are white or non-white because these are capitalist countries.

The universities encourage theories of White Skin Privilege. However, some people who subscribe to, and even teach, this theory are open to understanding that capitalism and its wage system require racism to divide the working class and to maximize super-profits by exploiting some workers more than others. They can even see that multi-racial unity is possible to fight racism and unite the working class for revolutionary change.

At my school, a teacher of some white privilege ideas invited some PLP students to give a presentation in his class. A useful discussion led to the professor's participation in continuing discussions about class society and the need and potential to unite the working class against this racist system.

A friend of the Party

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

US aims in Iraq need guns

Beneath these machinations lies a fundamental dilemma for the Bush administration. While desiring the appearance of democracy for domestic and international purposes, it is afraid to surrender authority. Its problem is that a free Iraq is unlikely to implement the U.S. agenda: a secular state, permanent military bases, American direction of the oil industry, a privatized economy and a foreign policy consonant with Washington's. (Newsday, 4/5)

Kerry backs Bush on Iraq

Mr. Kerry was short on specifics, however, when asked what he would do were he president....

He found himself defending the president's stay-the-course approach in Iraq....

Mr. Kerry came under attack from the left....

"You said, `Stay the course,' but what the U.S. is doing is bombing hospitals, bombing mosques, killing hundreds of civilians," Mr. Daum said. "Is that the criminal course you want to stay? It's an imperialist country fighting an imperialist war....

As several people in the audience hooted in support, Mr. Kerry answered: "I have consistently been critical of how we got where we are...."

"I want the Americans out!" Mr. Daum shouted.

"Yes, and I want the Americans out --" Mr. Kerry started.

"No you don't, you say, `Stay the course!" Mr. Daum shouted again.

"Stay the course of leaving a stable Iraq," Mr. Kerry said. (NYT, 4/15)

Keeping millions in prison

Not only do all 50 states continue to punish and marginalize convicts after they leave jail, but most also have laws that punish millions for crimes for which they were never convicted....

Thirty-seven states permit prospective employers and all state licensing agencies to ask about and weigh arrests that never led to conviction....

One of the most damaging laws withholds highway funds from states that do not punish drug offenders by suspending their driver's licenses....

[In] many states....those who leave prison in desperate need of jobs cannot legally drive to work, to school or to drug treatment programs....

This country...traps ex-offenders at the margins of society and forces them back into prison. (NYT, 4/6)

Liberals want bigger war

It is past time for the president to let go of Mr. Rumsfeld's flawed theories of war and authorize a real long-term increase in the force in Iraq....

As...for greater international military assistance, it would be folly to count on more than symbolic help in the near future. Any real increase in the military force in Iraq will have to come from the United States....

We may, in the end, find that the task...is simply impossible to achieve. But we have not reached that point. This is not the moment for retreat and it certainly is not the moment for half measures. (NYT editorial, 4/25)

Workers saw deaths coming

ATLANTIC CITY, April 22 -- The garage collapse that killed four construction workers and injured 20 others last October during a $245 million expansion of the Tropicana Casino and Resort was caused by...changes...made to the design to speed the job and save money....

Laborers also reported troublesome-looking cracks in the concrete. But George Tolson, one of the Fabi laborers who noticed this condition, said he was told to keep working.

"All they wanted," said David R. Hand, 33, a laborer for Fabi who was pouring the concrete "is to go faster, faster, faster. Time is money. That was it." (NYT, 4/25)

Imperialism's world is sick

Britain's chancellor, Gordon Brown, has said that.... "There is no single more effective anti-poverty strategy than education...."

I recently visited rural Tanzania -- by no means the poorest nation in Africa, and where all the primary education is free. It was not a lack of school places, or the cost of school, that prevented children from learning. It was a lack of clean water and sanitary toilets....

Pupils and teachers have nothing to drink all day, which affects children's ability to learn. They use deep holes for their toilets, but cannot wash their hands afterwards.

Children and teachers are frequently ill from diseases related to dirty water and poor sanitation....

A staggering 1.1 billion people -- one-sixth of the world's population -- still do not have clean water, and 2.4 billion do not have adequate sanitation. A child dies every 15 seconds from water-related diseases. This amounts to 6,000 deaths every day, the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing. (GW, 4/5)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, April 28, 2004

Information: 28 April 2004 124 hits

Imperialist Oil War Massacres Thousands: Dems Push Bush For More Troops In Iraq

a href="#Uprisings Threaten Oil Barons’ Plans">"prisings Threaten Oil Barons’ Plans

a href="#PLP Says: Liberals — ‘Evil, Yes!; Lesser? No!’">PLP "ays: Liberals — ‘Evil, Yes!; Lesser? No!’

a href="#Bushites Can’t Conquer Iraq ‘On The Cheap’">Bush"tes Can’t Conquer Iraq ‘On The Cheap’

Liberal Rulers: Bush Failed to Use 9/11 to Build Pro-war Police State

a href="#Subway Sit-down Strike Beats Bosses’ Attack">"rgentina: Subway Sit-down Strike Beats Bosses’ Attack

Racist Firings Stopped!

a href="#May Day Dinner Honors PLP’s Historic Anti-Nazi March">"ay Day Dinner Honors PLP’s Historic Anti-Nazi March

a href="#Workers Who Abuse Women Fall into Bosses’ Trap">"orkers Who Abuse Women Fall into Bosses’ Trap

Health Care: A Class Question

a href="#PLP Revolutionary May Day Answer to Liberals’ Motorcade Diversion">"LP Revolutionary May Day Answer to Liberals’ Motorcade Diversion

Revolution Is Only Solution to Workers in El Salvador

Workers Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks on Day Laborers

a href="#‘Community Policing’— A Racist Killer in Liberal Clothing">‘Com"unity Policing’— A Racist Killer in Liberal Clothing

a href="#Profiteers Riding High in ‘Jobless Recovery’">Pr"fiteers Riding High in ‘Jobless Recovery’

a href="#More Rulers’ Robbery — Tax-free Corporations">Mo"e Rulers’ Robbery — Tax-free Corporations

CIA Created Worldwide Terrorism

Expose Anti-Stalin Lies About Spanish Civil War

LETTERS

GI Says Buddies Are Not Gung-ho

The Alamo: A Pro-Slavery Film

I Feel Good!

a href="#Kerry’s No Peace-nik">"erry’s No Peace-nik

Peruvian Women Prisoners Write

Oppose Fascists At St. Lawrence University

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

Bush: Era of peace begins
Imperialism loves Kerry
The same old capitalism
US could be forced out
Bosses feel free to rob us
US bosses bankroll Hitlers
$tadium yes, school$ no
‘Progressive’ taxes ain’t

Imperialist Oil War Massacres Thousands:

Dems Push Bush For More Troops In Iraq

Hundreds if not thousands of Iraqis, many of them innocent civilians, along with many GIs, have died or been wounded in the latest round of fighting. The U.S. bosses have taken a page from the Nazis and Israel’s Sharon in imposing "collective punishment," using tanks, helicopters and planes to massacre the people of Fallujah, a city of 300,000.

Many are happy to see the Bush gang eat their arrogant declaration of "victory" proclaimed almost a year ago. But in reality the leadership of the Iraqi insurgency is no friend of workers. The nationalists, jihadists and Shiite clergy don’t fight for the liberation of the working class.

On May Day in 1959 over one million workers and others marched in Baghdad waving red flags. But instead of fighting for workers’ power, the old "Communist" Party supported the "progressive nationalist bourgeoisie." This eventually produced Saddam Hussein, killing thousands of reds along the way, with the help of a CIA hit list.

Today, the much weaker CP of Iraq is part of the U.S.-led Provisional Government. The only way out of this imperialist-capitalist hell for Iraqi workers, and all workers, is to rebuild a revolutionary communist movement. That’s the goal PLP fights for, so no worker is forced to choose sides in the current gang warfare for control of Iraqi oil.

The present anti-U.S. uprisings in Iraq seem to confirm that the Bush crowd grossly miscalculated the obstacles it would face in conquering that country and pacifying it for oil investment. Initially, Bush & Co. estimated that Sunni forces loyal to Saddam Hussein had been smashed after the U.S, military had contained their October-November 2003 Ramadan offensive. Sunni resistance against U.S. Marines around Fallujah proves this was wishful thinking.

But the Sunni nationalists represent the lesser Iraqi threat to U.S. oil supremacy. The bigger danger comes from the forces under Shiite leadership (the Shiite population is by far the majority in Iraq), and a classic double-cross the imperialists have tried and apparently failed to carry out has now increased this danger.(See below)

After invading Iraq and ousting Hussein in 2003, the Bushites bet that the U.S. military could occupy the country and U.S. companies could rebuild its oil industry with no help from other imperialists and little help from Iraqi collaborators. This was another blunder. CHALLENGE has written extensively about how Bush’s go-it-alone policy has sharpened inter-imperialist rivalry and delayed the oil bonanza that was one of the main reasons for the invasion in the first place.

But Bush & Co. figured they could also do without inside help from the Shia hierarchy, particularly a guarantee from Shia religious bosses that they wouldn’t threaten the U.S. conquest militarily.

The Sunni guerrilla offensive in the fall changed that wishful thinking. Seeing with hindsight that they were under-manned, the U.S. imperialists cobbled together a quick deal with Iraqi Shiite big shots and their Iran backers. Bush’s Iraq viceroy, Bremer, promised that the Shia could hold elections, which the Shia political machine assumed it would win. The elections would install a Shia government that would allow the U.S. military to stay indefinitely and protect U.S. oil interests, in return for a share of the loot. The Shia VIPs were to promise that they wouldn’t lead an uprising that could seriously compromise the U.S. occupation.

Once the Sunni insurgency seemed to die down, Bush-Bremer tried to back-stab their new Shia buddies by calling for an un-elected "coalition" government to take power on June 30. This would include Kurds as well as Shia and Sunnis. In other words, the double-cross would remove the Shia bosses from the position of local dominance they thought the U.S. had promised them.

CHALLENGE is forced to rely on the capitalist press for most of the information we try to analyze. From what we can tell, however, the current Shia uprising seems to reflect an attempt by the main Shia leader, holy roller al-Sistani, and his buddies in Iran, to prove that the U.S. can’t conquer Iraq and make it safe for the oil companies, (1) without cutting al-Sistani in on the deal; (2) without backing off the June 30 "coalition" pipe-dream double-cross; and (3) without making concessions to Iranian rulers.

The loose-cannon Shiite cleric al-Sadr, whose forces are doing most of the present anti-U.S. fighting, has far less power than his bigger internal rival, al-Sistani. At the moment, al-Sistani may well be playing a cat-and-mouse game with the U.S., using al-Sadr as a threat of more havoc to come if the U.S. doesn’t alter its plans for post-war Iraq in favor of al-Sistani and his pals in Teheran. Al-Sistani’s forces could probably overwhelm al-Sadr’s, but at the moment, al-Sistani is giving his junior partner/competitor a long leash.

We can’t predict the outcome of this diplomatic and political wrangling. However, certain realities are clear:

The U.S. occupation is facing a crossroads. Either the imperialists cut a deal with the al-Sistani Shiite power elite, or else the U.S. may face "losing the peace, and with it the war." (Anthony Cordesman, "The Implications for the Current fighting in Iraq," Center for Strategic and International Studies, 4/8)

But U.S. imperialism’s need to dominate the world via control of Persian Gulf oil is absolute. Presently, U.S. rulers have accomplished only part of their goal: their occupation has succeeded in denying Iraqi oil to their French, Russian and Chinese rivals. But until the military can ensure a calm investment climate, the U.S. majors, led by Exxon Mobil, can’t rebuild the Iraqi oil industry and make it serve U.S. imperialism’s grand designs. Therefore, "the strategic reality of U.S. forces in Iraq is permanent" (Stratfor, 4/8). Leaving Iraq is not an option.

Moreover, the U.S. doesn’t have enough current military force in Iraq to crush a wide Shiite insurgency and deal at the same time with the remnants of Sunni opposition. Even if the U.S. manages to concoct a deal with al-Sistani and the Iranians, it will be built on sand, like all pacts among forces whose main interest is maximum profit. Therefore, regardless of the immediate results produced by today’s fighting and haggling, more U.S. troops will eventually have to be sent into Iraq and throughout the Persian Gulf.

Wider war — much wider war — is inevitable. None of it can serve the international working class. The only war in our interest is a class war, the workers’ armed struggle that sets the conquest of state power for revolutionary communism as its goal.

We must never lose sight of this purpose. The difficulty of the present period and of the days that lie ahead must never alter our resolve to fight for our class’s deepest aspirations and for the only future that can eliminate the curse of imperialist war. On May Day 2004, we will reaffirm our commitment to communism and to our conviction that our class will ultimately win.

a name="Uprisings Threaten Oil Barons’ Plans">">"prisings Threaten Oil Barons’ Plans

The intensified fighting in Iraq has dealt a serious setback to the investment plans of U.S., British and other oil barons. The Iraqi oil ministry has had to postpone until October 2004 a "landmark" conference of international oil companies originally set for April 18-19 in Basra. Presumably this conference would have attempted to strike a deal that might have placated Russian, French and other imperialists the U.S. and British bosses have tried to ace out of Iraqi oil profits. Basra was picked because of its "relative calm" compared to the Baghdad region. But now even Basra has become insecure, proven by the recent kidnapping of foreign mercenaries there. Imperialist "peace" is truly an oily graveyard. (Energy Intelligence World Watch, 4/9)

a name="PLP Says: Liberals — ‘Evil, Yes!; Lesser? No!’"></a>"LP Says: Liberals — ‘Evil, Yes!; Lesser? No!’

Bush’s bloody stumbling in Iraq has reinvigorated U.S. liberal politicians and, most particularly, the presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry. Even a number of liberal Republicans, formerly Bush loyalists, are getting into the act. Under no circumstances must we allow our justified class hatred of the Bush murderers to mislead us into backing these liberal politicians as "lesser-evil" solutions to imperialist war. Kerry agrees with Bush’s strategic goal of securing Iraqi oil for U.S. imperialism: "We cannot walk away…We should not abandon our mission." Kerry’s disagreement is purely tactical. He wants to reverse Bush’s tax cuts to raise more money for the military and a "homeland security" police state. He calls for some oil profit-sharing deals with other imperialists as a way to share the military burden. Most significantly, he complains that the U.S. "hasn’t stationed enough troops in [Iraq] to maintain order." (Speech at Brookings Institution, 9/30/03; Daily Times, 4/7/04). Once again, PLP says about the liberals: "Evil, Yes! Lesser? No!"

a name="Bushites Can’t Conquer Iraq ‘On The Cheap’"></a>"ushites Can’t Conquer Iraq ‘On The Cheap’

Now important Republicans and the traditionally Republican military brass are beginning to distance themselves from the Bush-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz dream-land view of conquering Iraq on the cheap. Conservative Republican newspaper scribbler Robert Novak takes Rumsfeld to task for underestimating the number of troops needed to conquer and hold Iraq. He recalls last year’s warning by former Army Chief of Staff Shinseki that the real commitment would be "several hundred thousand" for Iraq alone. This doesn’t count those required to pacify Afghanistan and, now, to launch operations in Pakistan. Novak cites plans by the current U.S. command structure in Iraq to demand that Rumsfeld send more troops. But this will be more easily said than done. (Chicago Sun-Times, 4/8)

Novak’s views are echoed by Republican Senators Lugar and Hagel and by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Republican think-tank that helped bring the current Bush White House into power, as well as by the generals in Iraq. The N.Y. Daily News reports (4/12), "General John Abizaid’s decision to press for bulking up U.S. firepower [in Iraq] is a polite but unmistakable rebuff to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who for months has rejected sending more troops to Iraq in a campaign year.

"‘…Abizaid is really…confronting Rumsfeld,’ a senior Pentagon official [said]. ‘He’s not going to let the election calendar determine what he needs to do the job.’"

This infighting among big bosses must not delude us into choosing sides among them. They all back imperialism. They all want to conquer Iraqi oil. They all plan wider war, and they will all fight to the last drop of working-class blood in order to secure U.S. world domination. Our goal remains to smash every last one of them.

Liberal Rulers: Bush Failed to Use 9/11 to Build Pro-war Police State

The liberal politicians and media are raking Bush over the coals for failing to anticipate the 9/11 terror attacks. They are reviving the old Watergate refrain about "what did Bush know and when did he know it." This finger-pointing is a diversion; workers shouldn’t be taken in by it. As CHALLENGE showed more than a year before 9/11, the bipartisan Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman commission warned about a "catastrophic" terror attack on U.S. soil. Hart-Rudman didn’t think it could be prevented. Most importantly, Hart-Rudman demanded that the attack provide an excuse to militarize the government, prepare the country for war and establish a police state.

The Clinton administration did very little about al Qaeda, despite warnings about an al-Qaeda attack planned inside the U.S. Bush continued the Clinton policy of relative inaction.

The liberals’ main complaint has less to do with a Bush policy that didn’t prevent 9/11 than with Bush’s squandering the opportunity to build a pro-war, pro-police state mentality among the population and, especially, to militarize the government: "The most serious charge that can be leveled against Bush is…that he did not drastically reshape his administration for war after Sept. 11." (Stratfor, 3/26)

Well before 9/11, Hart-Rudman talked about needing a "Pearl Harbor" mentality. After Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt cleaned house in his cabinet and prepared the conditions for direct U.S. entry into World War II. This is why the liberals have given Bush a failing grade for 9/11.

We should have no illusions on this score. The liberals don’t want to prevent terror. They want to turn the U.S. economy, government, military and society at large into a well-oiled terror machine to keep U.S. imperialism on top.

The only answer to the horrific future scenarios — if they are allowed to succeed — is the growth of our Party and of the international movement for communist revolution.

a name="Subway Sit-down Strike Beats Bosses’ Attack">">"ubway Sit-down Strike Beats Bosses’ Attack

Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 10 — A sit-down strike by hundreds of subway workers, with the support of riders and mass organizations, shut down the lines here and forced the boss-union gang-up to restore the 6-hour day for ticket vendors and re-hire 100 fired workers. Some workers slept and ate at the workplace, refusing to leave. Pablo, a conductor on Line B, echoed the feelings of most workers, saying, "We were not afraid because we were united for the same goal and wouldn’t return until everyone was taken back."

This tremendous struggle occurred amid a "recovery" welcomed by the world’s capitalist investors and bankers. Twenty-seven months ago, the economy had collapsed. On Dec. 20-21, 2001, tens of thousands of workers, unemployed and youth surrounded the Presidential palace, forcing President de la Rúa to flee for his life in a helicopter. The "R" word was in the air — the rulers feared a workers’ revolution. But the key ingredient was missing: a revolutionary party to lead it.

The workers and their allies continued fighting but the ruling class recovered, helped by the union hacks. When Peronista Kichner became President, he crafted a "recovery" based on cutting workers’ wages and selling huge amounts of wheat, meat and other products to China. The "recovery" rests on weak foundations, and workers continue to fight.

The four-day subway strike in early April followed subway workers’ rejection of the sellout by the UTA union, which signed a deal with the Metrovías (subway) bosses forcing ticket vendors to work 7 hours a day. All subway workers had worked a 6-hour day for a long time, except during the military dictatorship of the mid ’70s and early ’80s and during the free-market crooked Menem presidency — a Clinton buddy — of the early ’90s. The union hacks and the bosses tried to divide workers by forcing just ticket vendors to work the extra hour. It would have been an opening wedge to attack all workers. But led by rank-and-file union delegates, they united and struck. When the bosses tried to ban the Delegate Group leading the strike, and fired 100 strikers, their re-hiring became another key demand.

Stop Scabs

Strikers slept on the subways and blocked the tunnels despite being threatened by the cops. When the bosses tried to use supervisors as scabs to run some subway lines, the strikers blocked them by sitting on the rails. The bosses cut off the water to the stations seized by strikers and tried to get riders to blame the workers. Despite the summer heat, the workers stuck it out, supported by the public.

"The workers’ feeling during the strike was tremendous," said Christian, a rank-and-file delegate. "Some were here on the subway for four days, sleeping and eating there, seeing their children….Some were here all the time, others rotated, but there was always a good amount of strikers….

"The UTA leadership signed for seven hours, behind our backs and despite our potential for struggle. The union also gave the bosses a blank check by agreeing to ticket-vending machines, which will lead to more lost jobs."

He added: "The UTA leadership came to Line B and tried to convince workers this was a good deal, but they refused to accept the union’s arguments."

After several days, the company gave up and accepted the rank-and-file’s demands. The Metrovías bosses, the ministry of Labor and the UTA were forced to accept the rank-and-file delegates as the real voice of the workers. The plan to break this group failed. The victory broke the national government’s "labor reform" plan, a scheme giving the bosses more power to do whatever they want.

Workers, when united, can win some struggles. But we live in an age of growing capitalist crisis and endless wars. The economy’s "recovery" won’t last too long. The bosses will attack again. The burning question facing workers worldwide is how to turn their struggles into schools for communism, building a red leadership and a Party capable of finally putting an end to this capitalist hell. That is what PLP is striving to build internationally. Join us!

Racist Firings Stopped!

Chicago, Il April 6 — "We Don’t Need Another Union…We Need A Revolution!" That’s how one 20-year Stroger Hospital veteran responded to those who want to replace SEIU Local 73-HC with another union. The road to revolution is long and hard. To travel it requires a lifetime commitment, a long process of ups and downs.

The planned racist firing of seven black Respiratory Therapists, scheduled for March 31, has been stopped, for now. We had hundreds of discussions, collected over 100 signatures on petitions, held a forum of over 50 students at Malcolm X College, marched on the bosses’ office and more. Amid all this, the STROGER CHALLENGE newsletter played an important role. The growing momentum moved the union to schedule meetings with the bosses and distribute stickers protesting the firings. On March 30, the bosses backed down.

Also that day, more than 70 workers from Stroger, Oak Forrest, Roseland, Michael Reese and Northwestern Hospitals attended a union meeting and gave the local leadership an earful. One worker interrupted a presentation about Kerry and the Democrats with the challenge: "How long are you going to talk about this politician junk? I need to get some things off my chest about the job." Another said, "You got a problem with [STROGER CHALLENGE]? I passed them out all over the place. You want one?" Workers from other hospitals told her, "We need this at our hospital, too."

The bosses are trying to terrorize us in preparation for our upcoming contract fight. At least momentarily, the tables have turned. When hundreds of STROGER CHALLENGE newsletters appeared throughout the hospital, it was the workers who were fighting mad while the bosses were gripped by the fear factor.

The therapists’ victory shows that fear and passivity can be defeated. New members, especially black women workers, gave leadership to the struggle. They stood up to anti-communist attacks and are emerging as leaders on the job and in the Party. The PLP club struggles over everything, from estimates of people to how to criticize the union leadership. Often there are sharp disagreements and heated discussions, but they’re conducted in a comradely way. Frequently someone says, "You know I love you, but…"

Everyone contributes to the STROGER CHALLENGE newsletter and is developing a regular CHALLENGE readership. The club is eager about building May Day. We’re getting stronger, but there’s still a very long way to go.

Although there’s no revolutionary communist center to stop the imperialist war in Iraq or the fascist Homeland Security police state, and the majority of the world’s workers live in poverty, workers can emerge from these "Dark Ages" by building the communist PLP. We won’t win every fight, but we grow stronger by fighting. Public hospitals like Stroger face racist cutbacks and widespread firings, suspensions and harassment. Every fight can make us stronger for the next big class struggle: our contract fight next fall.

To take on the bosses, cops, courts and the racist profit system they serve, we must learn and apply revolutionary theory in struggle, and lead the workers to reject the bosses’ many traps — racism, nationalism, fear, passivity, or relying on ruling-class politicians. We must have confidence in our co-workers, and the patience to win them to join and build PLP. A strike against racist attacks on workers and patients can build a strong PLP at Stroger and beyond. The stakes are high. There’s not a moment to lose.

a name="May Day Dinner Honors PLP’s Historic Anti-Nazi March">">"ay Day Dinner Honors PLP’s Historic Anti-Nazi March

CHICAGO, IL, April 3 — Some 150 workers, students and youth joined our May Day dinner, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the May Day march in Marquette Park. This historic event was the culmination of a militant fight against the racist Nazis who terrorized both the white community of Marquette Park and the surrounding black neighborhoods. While we remember the victories of the integrated group of men and women who fought the Nazis at their national convention in 1977, stormed their headquarters in 1978, and the 700 black, Latin, Asian and white communists and anti-racist fighters that swept them from the streets on May Day 1979, we continue to build the revolutionary communist PLP in a period of escalating imperialist war and racist/fascist oppression.

For some, the day began with a tour of the historic sites and battlegrounds that gave birth to May Day. Our red tour guides gave passionate accounts, narration and the last speeches of the Haymarket Martyrs who were sentenced to death. We stopped at Ashland and Blue Island, still an industrial area here, where the police attacked striking workers with clubs and bullets on May 3, 1886. We stood at the alley where the bomb was thrown near Haymarket Square the following day and touched the still-standing Zeph Hall, where Haymarket leaders Albert and Lucy Parsons went, after the cops began their attack. We ended at Waldheim Cemetery, where the Haymarket Martyrs are buried, to toast them, sing the Internationale, and leave PLP’s red flag raised high on their monument. On the tour and at the dinner, we wore red ribbons that read "Haymarket Square 1886, PLP May Day 2004."

This momentous workers’ struggle, including a general strike of 350,000 workers for the 8-hour day, shut down Chicago. This led the International Workers Association organized by Karl Marx to adopt a resolution, presented by the AFofL representative, to celebrate May Day on May 1st worldwide.

About 40 veterans of the 1979 march attended, some from out of town. Some, although no longer in the Party, proudly remember their militant participation. One white couple who lived in Marquette Park at the time is now friends with the Party and regular CHALLENGE readers. "I am a Quaker and a pacifist," said the wife, "and while I don’t agree with everything the Party says, I thank you for running the Nazis out of town."

There was a skit by older and younger Party members, re-enacting scenes from the 1979 march. Youth took the lead in providing revolutionary culture. Two high school students performed revolutionary poems and raps. Two Langston Hughes poems were performed; one by six students from Chicago Vocational H.S., the other by students and a professor from Chicago State University.

The main Party speaker, a student at Malcolm X College, described the growing instability facing U.S. imperialism in Iraq and worldwide, as well as the difficulties facing the working class in the current "Dark Ages" brought on by the defeat of the old communist movement. His mother, who was injured and arrested in the 1978 raid on Nazi headquarters, introduced him, symbolizing the passing of the torch to a new generation of revolutionary leaders in PLP.

In these difficult times the Party can grow, and ultimately we will win. For example, three black women Respiratory Therapists from Stroger Hospital attended the dinner, straight from a sharp anti-racist struggle that saved their jobs (see article on left). The dinner raised about $1,000 for this year’s May Day march, and, with some hard work in the time remaining, will translate into more May Day marchers and new recruits to PLP.

a name="Workers Who Abuse Women Fall into Bosses’ Trap">">"orkers Who Abuse Women Fall into Bosses’ Trap

Mexico — Capitalism has successfully contaminated the indigenous cultures with its male chauvinist ideology. This poison is permeating family life. Domestic work is undervalued by both men and women. It is left to the women in rural areas, where they lack facilities that exist in the cities. Just starting a fire to heat soup mean lots of time and work as does taking care of the chickens and growing vegetables.. Water must be taken from far-away wells. Washing is a huge chore as is taking care of numerous children, In addition, women’s lives are always subject to their husbands’ opinions, about how many children to have, etc. Wives must ask their husband’s permission to get medical care.

[Various quotations below are true stories based on conversations with indigenous women in Sierra Negra, Puebla.]

"I am really hurting but Serafín says I shouldn’t go to the doctor, that God is going to punish me because it is a sin and the Bible doesn’t say anything about women getting their breasts examined."

For peasant families just having daughters is a great calamity because of the belief that women are incapable of working the land — "they’re not strong, or will end up leaving with their boyfriends." It’s believed only men can work the land, should go to school, do whatever they want, be promiscuous, etc.

"The baby girl was born yesterday, and all Serafin said, ‘another girl? You shithead!"

The super-oppression of women isn’t exclusive to farmworkers. Some 500 women have been killed in Ciudad Juárez in the last few years, many of them working in the maquiladoras there. They’ve been killed because they’re women. Millions of women are victims of domestic violence throughout Mexico. Capitalist culture creates the kind of climate which makes the lives of women, and all workers, worth very little.

"When I went to get water from the well, I also washed my feet and face. Just when I bent to take water, I felt someone touch my behind. I cried and fought, but I couldn’t stop him from being on top of me, covering my mouth so not one would hear me. I tried to close my legs, but I had no more strength. His breath smelled of alcohol and his eyes were red, and ‘his thing was quite hard.’ He hurt me bad."

But that wasn’t all...

"When I got home without my sandals, with my blouse and skirt all torn off, I told my parents, crying my eyes out. They said I was a whore. Was that the reason they were sending me to High School? My mother was crying and accused me of provoking Meliton (the one who raped me). My father hit me so hard that my mother had to defend me but said: ‘Stop Serafin, you are going to go to jail because of this whore. Let’s hope Melitón wants her now."

Capitalism is indeed the highest form of oppression of women. And this doesn’t just happen in Mexico or Afghanistan; it’s true all over the capitalist world. But workers who fall for sexism or racism must understand they’re just helping the system keep all of us down. We need to unite and fight for a society where these abuses won’t be tolerated, and where the cause of workers’ alienation from each other is destroyed. Join the PLP and fight for a world without bosses — for communism.

Health Care: A Class Question

The working class clearly has no choice with either single-payer health care or Jointly Managed Trusts. In this period of escalating imperialist war and fascist repression, the "health" plans our union leaders are pushing are really death plans for the working class.

Recently, one of the state’s largest public employee unions held a forum on health care. A representative of one of California’s Jointly Managed Trusts (JMTs) said 49% of those responding to a state-wide poll said the current health system needs fundamental repairs; 31% felt the system must be rebuilt from the ground up. At this meeting 55% of the workers polled said the system needs fundamental repairs and 45% said it needs to be completely rebuilt.

Are Jointly Managed Trusts the answer?

After activists at this forum declared the U.S. health care system in critical condition, the union recommended JMTs. In such a trust, employers and unions jointly contract with insurers for health and drug plans. But these activists were warned, Trusts are joint ventures. If things go wrong, "you can’t point any fingers because the State union organization appoints half of the trustees." Placing health care into JMTs and removing employee benefits from the collective bargaining arena means the state union wouldn’t have to support workers’ struggles.

The misleaders say collective bargaining generally deals with only the contribution portions to be paid by employer and employee. Some locals have 100% employer-paid health care. But under JMTs the state organization is pushing for no strike clauses to further control local struggles. They would rather pour all our hard-earned money into kissing legislative ass. In some locals, the state organization gets 96% of monthly dues. Member-run locals must stretch the rest to counter aggressive employer attacks.

What About Universal Health?

Bills pushed by liberal California politicians and unions are currently being touted as progressive solutions to the health care crisis (see CHALLENGE, 3/31). But they provide empty promises. In "normal" times, capitalism is incapable of providing health care that workers need. Amid deepening war and fascism, the rulers are playing fast and loose with the truth about health care. The working class will get universal health care only by eliminating the profit system with communist revolution. Then society will be organized to meet the needs of the very workers who produce all value.

Senate Bill 2 would have employers pay 80% of health insurance premiums or pay a tax for the uninsured. SB 921 (Kuehl), The Healthcare for All Californians Act, is the latest attempt at instituting state-wide, single-payer health care. This bill would still require co-payments and deductibles, would limit eligibility, and would ration care. If this or a similar "universal" health care bill passes, health care will be assumed by a nearly bankrupt state government, which will further pare benefits in a budget crisis, and leave businesses off the hook. Again, low-wage workers and the unemployed would bear the brunt of the cutbacks. Racist inequality would deepen. In our union, some members are pushing hard for this bill, while the state union is encouraging local chapters to adopt JMTs.

The fight for the health of ALL workers depends on fighting racism. After all, the bosses and union hacks are now trying to reduce the health care all workers receive to the level of care black, Latino and immigrant workers have suffered all along. In the long run, the only way to create decent health care for all is to fight to eliminate the system which makes huge profits off racism and our misery.

a name="PLP Revolutionary May Day Answer to Liberals’ Motorcade Diversion">">"LP Revolutionary May Day Answer to Liberals’ Motorcade Diversion

LOS ANGELES — For several years, the liberal immigrants’ rights groups and union leaders have organized an annual march celebrating May Day. They call it "Immigrants’ Workers’ Day." When May 1 fell on a week-day, they marched in the evening downtown. Thousands of workers participated. The leadership called for drivers’ licenses and a "piece of the American dream" for immigrants. But this year, when May 1 falls on a Saturday, when thousands more could have participated, when there is growing anger about the war and the cut-backs, they cancelled the march. Instead they’re organizing a bus/car caravan to several "key points," like Schwartzenegger’s Santa Monica office. They want to make immigration an election issue, to oppose Bush’s plans and support the legalization plan of — and build support for — for the Democratic Party.

They claim they’re not marching on Broadway LA because most marchers would be immigrants, who don’t vote. They want to talk about voting and for liberal reform on the buses. They say they need "media coverage," that the bosses’ press won’t cover a march in downtown LA. They maintain these workers aren’t organized, that they only come out for the day. Many are garment, construction and other industrial workers.

These leaders fear workers could adopt ideas of class struggle and revolution. They want leaders who will direct workers toward the bosses’ media and flunkies. They’ve invited politicians to speak and listen to demands for drivers’ licenses and legalization. Many leading Democrats support this plan as a way to win immigrants’ loyalty to U.S. bosses, to work for low wages in key industries and support imperialist war. These mis-leaders pose as friends of the working class, but are building patriotism to help the bosses win immigrants to willingly send their children into the army. Hundreds of workers and students will participate in this caravan and its day-long activities. All those planning to ride the buses have to reserve a seat ahead of time.

PLP will march to celebrate May Day, international workers’ day, on Broadway, in the center of the garment district, welcoming garment and all workers and students to join. We’ll be where some of the lowest-paid workers work. The racism directed against garment workers affects all workers and students.

We’ll march in an area of capitalist exploitation where a movement can grow, which has the potential to lead to thousands in the fight against the bosses, their murderous imperialist wars, and their racism and exploitation that attack the world’s workers. We invite those who want to fight the bosses’ system to march with us. We’re building the long-term fight to end its evils with internationalism and communism — workers’ power.

Our future doesn’t depend on the liberals or the capitalist politicians, Democrats or Republicans. Our future depends on winning the workers to fight for our class interests. PLP’s ideas, will reach thousands of workers and students through leaflets, CHALLENGE, discussions at work and after work, rallies at school, in many conversations and in class struggle.

May Day helps us sharpen the struggle against racism and imperialism and their agents in the mass movement. May Day gives us the opportunity to strengthen our friendships with co-workers and students. Let the bosses and their henchmen try to keep immigrants and citizens, black, Latin, Asian, Arab and white, from uniting against murderous capitalism. No matter how long it takes, the international working class will make PLP’s ideas their own, defeat imperialism and build a communist world.

Revolution Is Only Solution to Workers in El Salvador

San Salvador, El Salvador — After the right wing ARENA party won the March 21 presidential election, the bosses’ press unfurled an orgy of anti-communism. But this doesn’t change the miserable situation of the working class here. Unemployment, poverty, lack of health care, education and other services continue running rampant like mosquitoes in garbage. The bosses are incapable of meeting workers’ needs because their system is based on profits that can only be reaped by increasingly impoverishing the "half dead and half living" Salvadoran workers (as described by the revolutionary poet Dalton).

Even with an intense campaign of falsely labeling the fmln "communist," over 800,000 voted for them, a 59% increase compared to the last election. Many workers voted this way as a form of "resistance" to the capitalist system and to the bosses who have exploited and massacred our class for years.

Others thought the FMLN had a weak campaign, and that maybe if they had been bolder, they would have won. But won what? To change the name of the party that rules the country? To try to put one corrupt group in prison? Change the currency from the dollar to the colon? Negotiate more with the European imperialists? None of this changes conditions for workers because the underlying problem and the laws of capitalist exploitation remain. The capitalist laws, courts, army, police, production for profit and private ownership of the factories and fields stay alive and well in the hands of the bosses.

Unfortunately, many oworkers see no other alternative to making their strength felt except through voting. The collapse of the old communist movement left many with the false hope that "maybe this time" bourgeois democracy will allow the workers to direct their own future. But there’s more chance of a turtle walking to the moon than there is of the bosses freely and peacefully allowing workers to run the capitalist system.

But despite this mishmash of "democracy," "free elections," fascist repression, anti-communist lies and illusions of the phony left, many workers deepened their understanding of communist ideas. This was an opportunity to expose not only the fascist ARENA but the liberals of the fmln as well — their elections cannot break the chains of exploitation and poverty. To liberate ourselves from this capitalist hell, "one vote" will not do. We need a real communist revolution which ends the capitalist dictatorship and installs the dictatorship of the workers, with the means of production in the hands of the workers and we produce to meet our needs, not the bosses’ profits.

Our party and its communist ideas represent the interests of the international working class. We rely on the strength and understanding of the workers, not on negotiations or deals with bosses. The struggle between wage slavery and liberation is one to the death. The bosses understand this; the workers must understand it too. More than ever we need to win workers to read and distribute CHALLENGE, organize study-action groups, win our friends in mass organizations to the Party’s ideas and to generate a massive presence at the May Day March.

Workers Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks on Day Laborers

Freehold, N.J. — U.S. bosses have always fanned the flames of anti-immigrant sentiments. They continue using 9/11 as a pretext to keep immigrants terrorized into accepting ever lower wages and lousier working conditions. This small, working-class town has become the latest in a series of cities nation-wide witnessing vicious attacks against Latino day laborers. Some attacks are orchestrated by racist groups — Sachem Quality of Life and PEOPLE — and have members with neo-nazi ties.

Freehold has a significant Latino population. In the past the town council had permitted the day laborers to gather each morning at a "muster zone" for potential employment by contractors. This zone is a narrow strip of muddy land near the railroad tracks. In December, the Mayor and the council closed it down, saying they would ticket any worker going there and the Immigration Service would be called in. A predominately African-American Baptist Church offered their building to the day laborers for several months. The workers, together with a group of local residents — the Monmouth County Residents for Immigrants’ Rights — organized meetings, meals and classes. They refused to allow the workers to be driven out of town,.

A lawyers’ group sued in federal court on the workers’ behalf. The town’s attorney told the judge the case had been settled, that the laborers could use the muster zone. Yet the very next day, the Mayor announced he had "discovered" that the land was really owned by New Jersey Transit and the laborers couldn’t use it. This astonished even the federal court judge. She ordered the zone to be made available. The workers have gathered there, but amid a heavy police presence, complete with video-cameras. The town is still attempting to find ways to "legally" exclude them.

It’s important for workers to stop nationalism from dividing immigrants from each other based on their country of origin. This is a key element of fighting fascism. It may appear that the ruling class is "favoring" non-Muslim immigrant workers (particularly Latinos), not forcing them to register at INS offices. Bush has "offered" Mexican workers his phony "guest worker" proposal. But meanwhile, the wages and working conditions of two million migrant farmworkers (most of them Mexican and other Latinos) are as bad as those of 50 years ago. Thousands of Mexicans have died crossing the Mexican-U.S. border as have other immigrants crossing the treacherous Mona Canal separating the Dominican Republic from Puerto Rico. The bosses will use anti-Muslim and anti-Latino racism to help build their police state and to ensure a steady stream of workers terrorized into accepting low-paying, dead-end jobs with no benefits. Workers worldwide have the same class interests.

While this struggle has displayed working-class unity between immigrants and non-immigrants, yet essentially these workers are struggling for the right to be exploited. Victory for them now is just the ability to stand on a muddy piece of ground waiting for a contractor to hire them for a day’s poverty wages. Workers won’t truly have won until we have a system where labor is not a commodity — communism. As the struggle amongst immigrant day-laborers continues, PLP will be there to back them, raise our ideas and win workers to the need for revolution.

a name="‘Community Policing’— A Racist Killer in Liberal Clothing"></a>"Community Policing’— A Racist Killer in Liberal Clothing

Newark, Nj — People’s Organization for Progress (POP), a community group here, sponsored a forum on "Community Policing." POP has long concerned itself with police brutality and usually responds to such incidents with protests and calls for reforming the police department or local government. Instead of advancing the liberal reform line, speakers sought a more radical response to police brutality and growing fascism.

Most of those on the panel tied the recent national increase in police murders and the building of fascist homeland security to "community policing," a relatively new ideology of "law enforcement." Cops are told to be highly aggressive and take the offensive against whomever they view as "criminals," overwhelmingly black and Latin youth. The latter are labeled "vultures" and "barbarians" in Rutgers Professor George Kelling’s book, "Fixing Broken Windows." When the racist killer cop Tom Ruane shot the defenseless Michael Newkirk in the head last year, Newark police admitted they were responding to a "quality-of-life" crime. This reveals that community policing is dangerous to the working class.

One speaker said the "broken windows" theory and the cops’ focus on stopping "quality-of-life" crimes stem from the same group of racist and fascist theorists that produced the vile book, "The Bell Curve." Kelling is this group’s main villain. While it’s important that workers support efforts to run them out of town, we must direct our anger against the capitalist system as a whole. The bosses have a material incentive to spread racist ideas — super-profits. The only way to destroy them is to destroy the bosses and their exploitative system.

Amid imperialist war, mass layoffs, and major cut-backs in social services, the ruling class must crack down more severely on workers’ dissent, using the fascist Homeland Security. Community policing is the local face of this nationwide attack. Kelling and his cronies want to link all levels of law enforcement more closely, from the FBI all the way down to the local precinct. They’re putting thousands of cops in the schools and have enlisted the support of local religious leaders in their effort to mislead the working class.

This community policing theory is basically a product of liberal politicians. Its main advocates are former liberal NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton, now LAPD chief, and Kelling. At the height of the protests against the police murder of Amadou Diallo, Kelling basically called the killing a casualty of the war on crime. We must wipe out the system that needs to criminalize and murder our youth, perpetuates racist ideologies and divides us against ourselves. Comrades in all areas must fight community policing and point to communist revolution as our response to it.

a name="Profiteers Riding High in ‘Jobless Recovery’"></">Pr"fiteers Riding High in ‘Jobless Recovery’

U.S. corporate profits are at the highest percentage of income growth in history, while workers’ wages/benefits account for the lowest share of income growth ever, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, (N.Y. Times, 4/5) The lengthy title of its report says it all: "The Unprecedented Rising Tide of Corporate Profits and the Simultaneously Ebbing of Labor Compensation — Gainers and Losers from the National Economic Recovery in 2002 and 2003." The profits stolen by the tiny group of bosses accounted for 41% of the growth in national income in those two years while the compensation of over 130 million workers amounted to only 38% of national income growth.

This increasing disparity between the bosses’ profits and workers’ wages is intensified by the war economy. The "Defense" Dept. budget is nearly half a trillion dollars annually, and this does not include the $150 billion allotted for the invasion/occupation of Iraq. This money is used to kill thousands of workers and their families in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as U.S. soldiers. Bombs, bullets and missiles are automatically destroyed in their "consumption." Military bases, aircraft carriers and the planes they launch cannot be used to feed and clothe workers. But their construction means billions in profits for the Boeings and Halliburtons that produce them, and for the oil companies who fuel them. These war profits are paid from workers’ taxes.

Much of this swollen corporate income is a result of the increased productivity, fewer workers producing more. The bosses invest more capital in machinery and technology to increase production with fewer workers, and lay off the rest. So less workers are producing more value for the bosses, increasing profits. There are "fewer payroll jobs now than there were when the recession ended in November 2001." (NYT, 4/5) Now the war production industries that normally pay higher wages are sub-contracting chunks of their production to low-wage companies, and to prison labor, both here and abroad.

‘Figures don’t lie but liars

can figure…’

Now along comes the latest government statistics that report 308,000 new jobs being created in March. It seems the government had removed 321,000 jobs from January’s count and added 153,000 to the March total! "Without this ‘birth adjustment,’ as the government calls it, the new jobs figure in March would have been a very ordinary 155,000." (N.Y. Post, 4/6) In fact, N.Y. Times "Economic View" columnist Louis Uchitelle writes (4/11), "Never mind that private employers added 277,000 jobs in March….It was somewhat of a mirage. Most of the…jobs were canceled out by a decline in total hours worked and total weekly pay."

Furthermore, nearly all of that so-called increase in jobs in March results from one-time factors — 47,000 grocery workers in southern California whose strike ended and 71,000 construction workers who returned to work with the end of winter weather. These "increases" won’t be repeated. One semi-conductor manufacturing worker who lost his job five months ago told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), "[We’re] going backward in the American dream."

Still worse, "Many of [these new]…jobs have been low-paying," in industries whose rates are "$8.88 an hour on average. Manufacturing, where employment was unchanged in March after 43 straight months of decline, pays $16 an hour." (WSJ,4/5)

Racism also fuels the productivity-driven "recovery." Black and Latin workers who suffer double the unemployment rates of white workers, and whose family income is less than 70% of white workers, are hit even harder by this jobless, productivity-driven "recovery."

The pro-capitalist AFL-CIO union leaders are worse than useless. They collaborate in the war economy by supporting the increased productivity squeeze on the workers. Their private-industry membership has declined to 9%, the lowest in 70 years, while continuing to support "lesser-evil" Democrats. Instead of organizing massive fight-backs, they tell workers to vote for Kerry, another defender of capitalism, while the bosses give us imperialist wars, racism and mass unemployment.

The value from trillions in profits that workers produce for the tiny class of billionaires who strive for world domination could provide a decent life for the international working class and free us from capitalism’s killing machine. March on May Day to help build for a communist revolution that will put the working class in the saddle.

a name="More Rulers’ Robbery — Tax-free Corporations"></">Mo"e Rulers’ Robbery — Tax-free Corporations

There’s no end to how the ruling class’s government enables the bosses to steal from the working class. Now we’re told that, "More than 60% of U.S. corporations didn’t pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000, years when the economy boomed and corporate profits soared." (Wall Street Journal, 4/7) The WSJ also reports that, by 2003, corporate tax receipts "had fallen to just 7.4% of overall federal receipts, the lowest rate since 1983 and the second lowest rate since 1934," in the depths of the Great Depression.

What makes up the difference to finance the government’s expenditures? Taxes paid by the working class, including the surplus paid by workers into the Social Security Fund which is used to pay for the skyrocketing war budget. All these loopholes and tax credits have transpired in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Bosses’ stealing from workers is a "bi-partisan" policy.

bin Laden’s Mentor:

CIA Created Worldwide Terrorism

Reporter: Would you apologize for failing...in the events leading up to 9/11?

Bush: The person responsible for the attacks was Osama bin Laden.

And who created Osama bin Laden?

CHALLENGE has cited U.S. rulers as the source of worldwide terrorism, beginning with the Carter administration’s $3 billion CIA mobilization of a jihad movement in 1979 to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. As we have reported, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda emerged from this imperialist Cold War adventure.

Now Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan-born political scientist and cultural anthropologist, confirms this in his new book, "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror." He proves that the spread of terrorism has nothing to do with Islamic culture or the "clash of civilizations" but rather grew out of U.S. imperialism’s Cold War foreign policy.

Because of the collapse of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and caught in the resulting wave of popular anti-war feeling, the ruling class shifted its strategy from direct military intervention against "communism" to support of low-level insurgency by private armed outfits and indirect backing of violent right-wing groups. The U.S., says Mamdani, decided "to harness, or even cultivate, terrorism in the struggle against regimes it considered pro-Soviet." (N.Y. Times, 4/12)

"The real culprit of 9/11," he says (as the Times paraphrases), "is not Islam but rather non-state violence in general, during the final stages of the stand-off with the Soviet Union….Using third and fourth parties, the CIA supported terrorist and proto-terrorist movements in Indochina, Latin America, Africa and…Afghanistan."

Mamdani writes that, "The real damage the CIA did was [in]…the formation of private militias — capable of creating terror." And "The best-known CIA-trained terrorist, he notes dryly, is Osama bin Laden." (NYT)

In its pro-Apartheid policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa, it helped sustain two proto-terrorist organizations" — in Angola and Mozambique — that were armed and trained by the South African Defense Force…. Drawing on the same strategy…the U.S. supported the Contras in Nicaragua and then created, on a grand scale, a pan-Islamic front to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan…. The Afghan jihad was created by the United States." (NYT)

The result, says Mamdani, was "the formation of an international cadre of uprooted individuals who broke ties with family and country of origin to join clandestine networks with a clearly defined enemy." Voila, September 11!

"The strategy of proxy warfare continued even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the U.S. looked…to sponsor low-intensity conflicts against militantly nationalist regimes." (NYT paraphrasing Mamdani)

Now events have come full circle in Iraq as the U.S. rulers resort once again to direct intervention. But now they must deal with both Al Qaeda attacks internationally as well as Islam insurgent counter-attacks inside oil-rich Iraq, a magnet for bin Laden forces as well.

The chickens have clearly come home to roost.

Expose Anti-Stalin Lies About Spanish Civil War

Many stories about purported "communist massacres" during the Spanish Civil War (SCW) have been circulating for years. Their constant repetition influences many people, but not one of them has been proven. (See CHALLENGE exposé of one flagrant example, "Anti-Communist ‘Research’ Uncovered," 4/2/03).

No one interested in the truth should accept anti-communist and anti-Soviet stories. PLP’s criticisms of our predecessors in the Communist International under Joseph Stalin’s leadership are based on what Communists actually DID, not on lies told about them. The following exposes another such lie, appearing on a mailing list devoted to this war.

In the film "Extranjeros De Si Mismos," Lance Rogers, British veteran of the International Brigades, says he saw André Marty, head of the Comintern’s international effort to defend the Spanish Republic against the Fascists, killing a group of young Spanish volunteers coming from the Brunete battlefield in July, 1937. "Their crime was to be shell-shocked and crying hysterically. Lance, said Marty, got his gun and shot them one by one in front of his horrified eyes." Rémy Skoutelsky, a French researcher, proved this was a lie. Marty had been in Moscow from May until December 1937.

But the same researcher referred vaguely to "the crimes of Stalinism in Spain." At this point another list-member replied as follows:

"I’d like to ask Prof. Skoutelsky: What were the ‘crimes of Stalinism’ in Spain?"

By the same token, "What were the ‘good deeds’ of ‘Stalinism’ in Spain?"

I’ve never seen a truthful account of any "crimes" by the communist movement in the Spanish Civil War. Until we see convincing evidence, the term "crimes of Stalinism in Spain" becomes nothing but scurrilous anti-communist propaganda.

As for the "good deeds" of "Stalinism" — meaning, the Communist movement — in Spain, they were many, weren’t they? There would have been NO international movement for the defense of the Spanish Republic, no International Brigades, Soviet advisors, and military materiel sold to the Republic, were it not for "Stalinism."

Therefore, we should be celebrating, rather than criticizing, "Stalinism" on this list.

Then there’s the use of the term "Stalinism" itself. This term is used by enemies of the Spanish Republic; by Fascists, overt and covert; by Cold-War defenders of imperialism — i.e., of imperialism’s mass murder and horrendous killing levels of exploitation; and, in general, by anti-communists. It’s a term implying ONLY "crimes," not "virtues."

The term "Stalinism" has no analytical value — none. It’s a term of abuse, masquerading as analysis.

Members of the Communist Parties associated with the Comintern did not normally refer to themselves as "Stalinists." It’s quite wrong, and out of place, to use that term any place where objectivity and truthfulness are valued.

A Comrade

LETTERS

GI Says Buddies Are Not Gung-ho

My friend returned from Iraq on a short family leave. Before he left for Iraq the first time, he wasn’t sure the real reason for the invasion was control of oil and oil profits. He thought Weapons of Mass Destruction might be found. "Now I know its about oil," he told me recently. All he saw on his convoy from Kuwait through Iraq were oil wells. "Everyone else knows it too," he said, adding, "everybody misses their families and doesn’t want to be there."

All his friends are trying to get home on leave. Technically everyone should have that opportunity, but it doesn’t work that way. When soldiers first arrive in Iraq, they’re put on a list. However, by the time their turn comes up, their deployment has often already ended.

He returned home after not having been in Iraq too long. He said some U.S. soldiers were hit by mortars lobbed into their camp. He also described sitting around a lot, and just taking care of basic duties. I had a hard time understanding that until I read that a Senior Pentagon Advisor said (New Yorker (3/7/04), "We’re entering a period of transition in Iraq. We will not be conducting a lot of ops, and so you redirect and exploit somewhere else." According to that article, "somewhere else" is Afghanistan and Pakistan where the U.S. government is sending more Special Forces to try to capture Osama bin Laden before the coming election.

My friend says none of his friends are "gung ho." His fellow soldiers wanted to know why the U.S. press made such a big deal about Jessica Lynch and not about the soldiers who died trying to help her. I said I wasn’t sure but thought they wanted to use her as a symbol of a U.S. white woman victimized by "terrible Iraqis," saved by the U.S. army. Except she herself acknowledged she wasn’t a hero, that others were more heroic. She thanked not only her fellow soldiers but also Iraqi doctors and nurses who helped her. He thought this was right.

He and his friends are clearly more open to questioning the whole system. After all, it takes them away from their families and makes them targets so that Exxon Mobil can guarantee the highest oil profits and control of the market, no matter what the cost in the lives of the Iraqi and U.S. working class.

A reader

P.S. This conversation and letter preceded the current offensive. I’m sure my friend’s situation, like that of all workers and soldiers in the area, has become more critical as imperialism attacks them even harder.

The Alamo: A Pro-Slavery Film

Concerning racism, the cultural front is very important. The rulers use their control of the mass media, books, etc. to promote this weapon in their war to divide the working class. In 1993, Harvard professor Sam Huntington wrote "The Clash of Civilization," portraying the growing imperialist-capitalist struggle for the control of oil, particularly in the Middle East, as a "clash" between "anti-democratic" Islam and "civilized" Western imperialism. Now he’s written a new racist book, "The Hispanic Challenge to the USAr," attacking Latin American immigrants, particularly Mexicans. He says their growing number "threatens" the U.S., that they will eventually try to re-unite Texas and California with Mexico.

The latest weapon in this racist cultural attack is the movie "The Alamo." This is the third "Alamo" film. The last one appeared in 1960, a megaoproduction by John Wayne. Even D.W. Griffith, the director of the 1915 pro-KKK "Birth of a Nation," produced his own "Martyrs of the Alamo.". All these movies are based on a racist myth that turned the fort’s defenders into heroes and "good guys."

To Mexicans and blacks, the Alamo’s defenders were no heroes. They basically fought to make Texas a slave state. An article in Counterpunch.com by Don Santina, a film historian and author of the Academy of Motion Picture Archive’s monograph "The History of the Cisco Kid in Film," reveals the truth about the Alamo.

Jim Bowie was one of the more notorious defenders of the Alamo. Hollywood has always portrayed Bowie as an adventurer but he was actually a slave-trader. Alter the War of 1812, the Bowie brothers (Jim and Rezan) entered the slave-trading business with the pirate Jean Lafitte. They used their profits to buy a Louisiana sugar plantation, employing slaves. Ten years later, they sold the plantation along with its 82 slaves for $90,000 (a large sum then, and even now).

Jim took his share to Texas and joined white settlers led by Stephen Austin in a fraudulent scheme to acquire thousands of acres from the Mexican govt. When the Mexican and U.S. governments fought, Bowie sided with those wanting no deal with Mexico but rather a "Republic of Texas." This scheme basically brought slavery to Mexico in 1821. By 1825, slaves formed 25% of Austin’s colony. By 1836 there were 5,000 slaves.

The white settlers aimed to get rich in Texas using slave labor. But the Mexican government was planning to abolísh slavery. In March 1836, the slaveowners declared Texas "independent" and established their own Republic. This occurred while the Mexican Army was attacking the Alamo. The defenders of the Alamo fought and died on behalf of this slave Republic of Texas. That’s the part of the Alamo story Disney won’t tell us.

Rex Red

I Feel Good!

"I feel good" are the words of singer James Brown. Well, I wanted to sing them when I heard the news of the respiratory therapy workers at John Stroger Hospital. They won. The workers will not be fired because of the certification requirement. They won because PLP showed the way. The limits imposed by pro-boss unionism were broken. Multi-ethnic unity was advanced.

Why not celebrate this victory of the workers by making it the best PLP May Day ever!

Red Pharmacist

a name="Kerry’s No Peace-nik">">"erry’s No Peace-nik

The "Anybody-But-Bush" lesser-evil ideas advanced by many anti-war activists are very misleading. Democrat Kerry is closely affiliated with the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), a hawkish group placing "the bold exercise of American power" at the center of "a new Democratic strategy, grounded in the party’s tradition of muscular internationalism."

In his book "A Call to Service," Kerry says, "The time has come to revive a bold vision of progressive internationalism" that adopts "the toughest-minded strategy of international engagement and leadership forged by Wilson and Roosevelt…and championed by Truman and Kennedy in the Cold War." He sees military force as the solution to meeting the challenges to U.S. political and economic superiority by their imperialist rivals.

In a speech at UCLA, Kerry criticized Bush & Co. for being "armchair hawks." He said, "I don’t fault George Bush for doing too much in the war on terror...I believe he has done too little," (La Ganga, LA Times 2/28) and he called for another "40,000 active service troops" in Iraq. Compared to the death tolls racked up by Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, the 50,000 Iraqis, 10,000 Afghans and nearly 600 U.S. soldiers murdered in Bush’s imperialist adventures must seem negligible to Kerry.

He said, "Allies will give us more hands in the struggle, but no president would ever let them tie our hand or prevent us from doing what must be done...As president, I pledge to you, I’ll never wait for a green light from abroad, from any other institution, if our safety and security are legitimately at stake." (Blum, "Counterpunch," 3/2).

In October 2002, Kerry and his fellow "New Democrats" voted for Bush’s imperialist war in Iraq. But now Kerry claims Bush mis-led Congress and the public, even though before that vote former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter informed him of the absence of WMD’s and any immediate Iraqi threat to the U.S. Stephen Zunes reported, "members of Senator Kerry’s staff have acknowledged that the senator had access to a number of credible reports challenging the (Bush) Administration’s tall tales regarding the alleged Iraqi threat." (Common Dreams.org, 3/01/04).

Even so, two days before the vote Kerry’s speech to the Senate repeated many of Bush’s lies. He maintained Iraq was "attempting to develop nuclear weapons" and "unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents." He even suggested "Iraq…is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing…anthrax for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland." ("Counterpunch," 2/28/04)

Kerry lied to justify the war for the same reason as Bush: profits. Kerry and Bush have their tactical differences, but both serve the U.S. ruling class which is hell bent on war and fascism to control the world’s resources, especially oil, and its markets. (See CHALLENGE, 3/31 on Kerry’s ruling-class supporters.)

Kerry supported FTAA fast track negotiations, and backed Clinton’s racist and devastating Welfare "Reform" Act. Saying, "We can’t afford not to fund homeland security," Kerry has endorsed the fascist tactics of the Dept. of Homeland Security. He promises to "strengthen…intelligence and law enforcement…to provide…the best chance to target and capture terrorists before they act." (Blum) In addition, Kerry and Democrats like Harlem’s Charles Rangel are laying the political groundwork for a military draft. Like Welfare "Reform," U.S. rulers find the Democrats most suitable to implement a draft.

Instead of choosing between two racist, fascist warmakers, PLP presents workers and youth with the alternative of eliminating the capitalist profit system — thesource of the problem — with communist revolution. March on May Day on May 1.

A Comrade

Peruvian Women Prisoners Write

Greetings to Progressive Labor Party and through it to the workers in and close to you.

Because of the internal war in our country, we’ve become political war prisoners, accused of being affiliated with the PCP (the Communist Party of Peru). We’re fighting for a political solution to the problems caused by this war.

Because of the imperialist policies of neo-liberalism, the working class and the people of oppressed countries as well as that of the U.S. are being attacked severely. This makes it necessary to unite all of us to continue in the struggle to transform this system of exploitation and opression into one where justice and liberty reigns.

We reiterate our dedication to continue this struggle and our solidarity with all those on the same road.

We hope this to be the beginning of an exchange of opinions in the pursuit of our goals.

Warm Greetings,

Women Political and War Prisoners, Chorrillos, Lima, Peru, March 2004.

CHALLENGE Responds: Thanks for your letter. We certainly hope for the freedom of all workers and youth jailed for fighting against the capitalist system worldwide. We believe that capitalism — whether free market, state or whatever name it takes — will never bring freedom and justice to the workers of the world and its allies. In this period of endless imperialist wars, growing fascist repression and capitalist crisis, more than ever the only political solution to class warfare is for workers and their allies to destroy capitalism and fight for a society without any bosses: communism.

Oppose Fascists At St. Lawrence University

In the early hours of February 27, a student working late in the Sociology building at St. Lawrence University (SLU) here in Canton, NY noticed several flyers taped to Professor Bob Torres’ door. One was titled "Reverse-Racism Exists on this Campus." The other called for Dr. Torres to be sanctioned (fired).

They seemed to be prompted by Dr. Torres’ personal blog (on-line journal), which contained an entry titled "Fascist, Racist College Republicans." It was a response to the College Republican National Committee’s "My Party Too Minority Recruitment Manual," a racist tract that characterizes Latinos as "emotionally driven" and repeatedly refers to them as "these people."

In reality, the posters were prompted by Dr. Torres’ Race, Class, Gender course, his anti-racism both in and out of the classroom and because he’s Latino. One member and two former members of the SLU College Republicans posted them. They were slipped under the doors of all faculty and taped on the office door of his wife Jenna, who teaches Spanish, in an act of cowardly racist intimidation.

That same morning, anti-racist students responded with a leaflet denouncing this racist attack and calling for action against those responsible. On the back of the leaflet were excerpts from the racist "Minority Recruitment Manual." Students began organizing a "Rally Against Racism" to "Defend Bob and Jenna Torres," and distributed a new leaflet titled "Reverse-racism: The Racist Myth."

The administration, including the head of Multicultural Affairs and a new Associate Dean — who herself had been the victim of a racist attack when she was promoted to that position — began coddling the racists. Each time the College Republicans went running to these two administrators, leftist students, some of whom were entirely uninvolved, were harassed and intimidated. This was particularly true with two students who worked in the mailroom. The liberal College Democrats attacked the racist manual, but defended the Republicans.

More than 100 students attended the Student Center rally. A Sociology professor cited how far fascism has progressed in the U.S., declaring we must fight back now. "Don’t catch the last train out of Warsaw," he said. A student described the racist attacks on Bob and Jenna, attacked the SLU College Republicans for developing a political movement with its own paramilitary wing, and called for the expulsion of those who put up the racist posters. He said we must turn the tide against racism.

The College Republicans went national with the issue, resulting in a Wall Street Journal editorial by a prominent fascist at the National Review, portraying conservative students as "victims" of liberal faculty. The university president has reaffirmed Dr. Torres’ "right" to "freedom of academic speech," but is taking no action against those involved in the racist poster campaign. Returning from spring break, everything is quiet; the issue remains just beneath the surface. It will arise again soon. The battle lines are drawn. Some students have formed an informal group to fight back, and the battleground has expanded all the way to the College Republican-run student government. You can visit Dr. Torres’ blog at www.bobblog.net. and post a statement of solidarity with Bob and Jenna.

A Student

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Bush: Era of peace begins

Mr. Bush portrayed the economy as recovering….

"The march to war was a difficult period for our economy," he said. "We’re now marching to peace." (NYT)

Imperialism loves Kerry

Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush started from a common point: The U.S. must not shrink from the challenge, wither in Iraq or elsewhere. Though he condemned what he described as a failed policy. Mr. Kerry declared that having gone to war, we have a responsibility to keep and a national interest to achieve….

Mr. Kerry…promised an expanded army, an expanded alliance in Iraq and a long list of benefits for soldiers….

[The] choice should be about how the U.S. can win the crucial battles now underway — not whether they should be fought. (Washington Post, in GW, 3/25)

The same old capitalism

When Lincoln Steffens traveled the country in the early 1900’s, most Americans blamed government corruption on immigrants and the poor. But after two years of putting big-city politics under a microscope, he disagreed.

"In all cities, the better classes — the business men — are the sources of corruption," Steffens wrote….

"The Shame of the Cities," one of the great works of American muckraking, turns 100 this spring, but it speaks uncannily to our times….

Wherever he traveled, Steffens found that businessmen of old American stock were deeply involved in the local corruption. (NYT, 4/5)

US could be forced out

Some officials, though, say they fear that time is running out. The real deadline, said one Pentagon planner, is not the June 30 date for passing sovereignty to a new government in Baghdad that has yet to be chosen, but "the point of vanishing consent from the Iraqi people."

Pentagon officials and military commanders acknowledge they do not have the trust and confidence of many ordinary Iraqis….

A senior official…said some members of the new Iraqi Army and police forces had as little as nine weeks of training but had been put in jobs that took years to learn….

Some officers are getting scared. Others are siding with anti-coalition forces, or have run and fled or just not shown up. (NYT, 4/12)

Bosses feel free to rob us

Drew Pooters said he was stunned by what he found his manager doing in the Toys "R" Us store in Albuquerque….altering workers’ time records, secretly deleting hours to cut their paychecks and fatten his store’s bottom line….

Mr. Pooters quit, landing a job in 2002 managing a Family Dollar store…. One day he said his district manager told him to use a trick to cut payroll: delete some employee hours electronically….

Experts on compensation say that the illegal doctoring of hourly employees’ time records is far more prevalent than most Americans believe….

Family Dollar…Pep Boys…Taco Bell…Wal-Mart…[and] Kinko’s…erased time….

Many of these employees are making $8 an hour. (NYT, 4/4)

US bosses bankroll Hitlers

Mohammed Suharto, Ferdinand Marcos and Mobutu Ses Seko ripped off up to $50 billion from the impoverished people of Indonesia, the Philippines and Zaire….protected by Western governments who turned a blind eye to their criminal activities in exchange for support during the cold war.

Mr. Suharto, regarded as a bulwark against communism in Asia, stole as much as $35 billion….

Mobutu cleverly used the threat of an invasion from the then Marxist government of Angola….

Western multinationals must take responsibility for allowing corruption to flourish….

Bribery of local officials by Western business is still widespread. (GW, 4/7)

$tadium yes, school$ no

[New York] city can’t afford to fund some of its most basic services.

For example, the bathrooms in many of the public schools are a scandal. Toilets are broken and filthy. Ceilings leak….

I guess it’s a matter of priorities. The mayor can’t find the money to pay the city’s…teachers what they deserve but he sure can come up with the cash for a stadium….

Unable to bear the thought of a billionaire with an unmet want, Mr. Bloomberg and Gov. George Pataki were only too happy to figure out a way to make this stadium happen.

The city that can’t fix the bathrooms in its schools will put up $300 million for this foolhardy project and the state will put up $300 million more. And that’s only the beginning. (NYT, 3/29)

‘Progressive’ taxes ain’t

Conservatives often cite these statistics: the top 5% of taxpayers pay 57% of federal income taxes, the top 1% [pay] 36%, and the bottom 80% a trifling 17%.

But this argument ignores the payroll tax, which finances Social Security, as well as excise taxes on things like liquor or tobacco. These take their biggest bite, proportionally, from lower-income Americans. Income tax will account this year for 42% of federal revenue, the payroll tax 41%. If you count the payroll tax paid by employees (which economists generally agree comes out workers’ wages), four in five workers pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes. (NYT, 4/11)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, April 14, 2004

Information: 14 April 2004 124 hits

BUSH OR KERRY?
TWO SIDES OF SAME WAR COIN
SAN FRANCISCO MUNI DRIVERS CONFRONT
HOMELAND SECURITY TERRORISTS
Navy Red Confident Sailors Can Be Won to Oppose Bosses
Winds of War: Getting `Drafty'
CONFLICT OF INTEREST?
Boeing 7E7 Giveaway Shows:
Workers Must Fight Bosses' Dictatorship
The Further Balkanization of Kosovo
DEFEAT THE COOK
COUNTY `FEAR FACTOR'!
No Matter the Pay,
It's Wage Slavery
MASSES MARCH AGAINST WAR IN IRAQ
KERRY-BETTER-THAN BUSH ILLUSION WON'T DEFEAT IMPERIALISM
March Spurs Students to Organize for May Day
West Coast ComradeWorkers Ahead of Anti-War Misleaders
Hamas Was Built by Mossad to Counter Intifada
PL Students Expose Capitalism As Source of Sweatshops
Salvador Election Circus Over, Workers' Problems Remain
Italy, World War 2:
REDS DEFEATED NAZIS, CAPITALISTS KEPT CONTROL
Workers Can't Take Sides in U.S.-Euro Dogfight
LETTERS
RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BUSH OR KERRY?
TWO SIDES OF SAME WAR COIN

Democrats openly supported invading Iraq as long ago as 1998. Al Gore made forcible "regime change" a key plank in his 2000 presidential platform. But now the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. rulers is pushing the election-year big lie that the current mess is all George Bush's fault. That's the phony message coming from the reports of the 9/11 Commission, especially from Richard Clarke's testimony and best-selling book "Against All Enemies,". Clarke, a terrorism advisor to Reagan, Bush, Sr., Clinton, and Bush, Jr. says the Iraq war seriously hinders the fight against Al Qaeda. But the rulers' chief gripe with Bush is that he went to war with insufficient resources and preparation. With more and bigger wars on the horizon, U.S. imperialism needs a president who can round up more allies abroad and militarize the masses at home.

Thomas Kean and Viacom, pillars of the U.S. imperialist establishment, put Clarke's criticism of Bush on the front page. Kean is the aristocratic, Rockefeller Republican ex-governor of New Jersey who heads the 9/11 Commission (see box page 2). Viacom, whose Simon and Schuster unit published Clarke's book recently elected liberal big shots William Cohen and Joseph Califano to its board. As Clinton's "Defense" Secretary, Cohen supervised the U.S. Air Force's slaughter of thousands of Serbians. Califano was Lyndon Johnson's domestic affairs advisor, a job that often entailed using armed troops against anti-war protesters and rebelling black workers. Today, he calls for restoring the draft. [See box page 2.]

Clarke blames Bush and Clinton for not preventing 9/11. But the 1999 Hart-Rudman report makes it clear that, as much as they feared a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, U.S. rulers actually hoped that such an attack would "galvanize" people and make them "ready to sacrifice blood and treasure" in the rulers' interest. Bush's shortcoming -- for the rulers -- was his half-hearted response. He blew a chance to institute full-blown fascism. In May 2001, Bush hired Richard Falkenrath, a Harvard professor, as his top terrorism expert. In late 2000, Falkenrath wrote a list of recommendations in the event of a large-scale terrorist attack that makes the Patriot Act look tame. He said the government would have the authority to:
*Impose a state of emergency, including curfew;|
*Compel people to remain in one location or move to another, including temporary detention;
*Use the military for domestic law enforcement and population control;
*Seize community or private property;
*Compel individuals to be quarantined;
*Censor and control the media;
*Liberalize standards for conducting searches and seizures;
* Compel civilian public servants to work.
Bush followed only part of the liberals' fascist game plan. Kerry appears more eager. Supporting either would be a lethal mistake for workers. A more rational choice is to join and build the Progressive Labor Party, which is dedicated to destroying the murderous ruling class that Bush, Kerry, Kean and Clarke all serve.

SAN FRANCISCO MUNI DRIVERS CONFRONT
HOMELAND SECURITY TERRORISTS

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- "What does a terrorist look like?" asked the teacher at MUNI's Security Awareness Class. "George Bush," answered a PLP bus driver. MUNI made these classes mandatory for all workers in October, November and December 2003. Total Security Services International (TSSI) and Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), two mercenary-style outfits in the lucrative field of Homeland Security, ran the classes. The teachers all have resumés with the Delta Force, and covert operations with U.S. and British imperialism. Battelle recently made retired Gen. Charles Wilhelm (38 years in the Marine Corps, commander of the U.S. Southern command) head of their Homeland Security Division.

MUNI has also joined an FBI-run anti-terrorist information system. The PLP driver kept hammering away: "Are you going to turn names over to the FBI of anyone who says things you don't like? You worked in covert operations for British intelligence, didn't you? What is [your] position on racial profiling of Muslims? Do you think that strikes by transit workers should be considered acts of terrorism?"

In another class, the teacher used a series of statistics about deaths and bombings that had occurred on busses. A PLP driver challenged him: "Do these figures include how many people the Israeli Army has killed, or how many children died from U.S. sanctions in Iraq, how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan?" "I did not make these figures," the teacher squealed. "Battle produced them. I'm neutral...We don't do racial profiling..." Yet every statistic and visual was about the Middle East.

He told a story about actor James Woods feeling very uncomfortable on a flight with three Middle Eastern men because they seemed very nervous and walked around the plane. After 9/11, the FBI came to see him and he identified three of the hijackers.

Another driver responded in disgust: "I don't believe that story. I'm always nervous when I fly. Some passengers act like they are suspicious of me because I'm black. In racist America, anyone non-white on a plane gets `the eye.' This government has been terrorizing black people for hundreds of years. That is the real terror we've got to watch out for."

Many workers complained that these ridiculous scenarios had nothing to do with the real security issues at MUNI: no lighting at terminals at night or around drivers' bathrooms, no station agents in some MUNI Metro (subway) stations and much more. "The main thing is the budget cutbacks," said one worker.

MUNI applied for a $2.4 million grant from the Department of Justice in compliance with the Homeland Security Department to conduct a "Security Awareness Training Program." That could buy a lot of bathrooms! Market researchers estimate that 170 companies are competing for their share of the $100 billion Homeland Security pie. The recent bombings in Madrid show there's no way to protect mass transit from terrorist attacks, so this money is a total waste, except for building fear. One driver commented, "To stop this threat of attacks against us, you have to change our foreign policy...and that would take a revolution."

U.S. rulers need to squeeze the working class to pay for their world empire. To compete with Europe, Russia and China, they need a passive, divided work force that will give up wages, medical and pension benefits. They want to make workers forget who the real enemy is. A fearful and passive work force helps the bosses impose a police state like the Patriot Act.

Someone said, "I wish I had said something in class because the teacher made derogatory comments about Irish people. I wish I had gone to the class you were in." Other comments ranged from, "I hate these people. They are such fascists," to "This is like Nazi Germany." Our leadership gave confidence to many who already oppose growing fascism and U.S. imperialism. This, along with our other struggles and political involvement with drivers, is helping to spread the Party's influence. The stage is set for a sharper fightback when our contract expires in June. Stay tuned.

Navy Red Confident Sailors Can Be Won to Oppose Bosses

The fight against capitalism/imperialism has entered a new stage. The ruling class is incorporating identity politics into its basic line. I've seen this in my Navy training. Much of civil rights, women rights, and even gay rights are becoming official Navy doctrine. I've been trying to show my fellow sailors how misleading this can be.

Unlike the past, the military is using many aspects of the social justice movements of the last 50 years. It's celebrating Black History and Women's History month; integrating almost every form of religious worship for its troops; reinforcing both white and black nationalism -- all to better carry out the ruling class's imperialist designs. Any division among politicians today is just over tactics needed to help the ruling class maximize its profits.

We must win workers away from all forms of nationalism; fight religious ideas which obscure our understanding and often divide us, using materialist analysis -- all to unify our class. We must see ourselves as workers, as soldiers of the working class, not as black or women or Latino soldiers.

We must win workers in the military away from the narrow viewpoint one of our officers expressed recently, of supporting the Republicans because they give us pay increases (not that the Democrats would be any improvement).

Since I've had some great experiences with workers in the Navy. I've even been able to get CHALLENGE to some of them. Here are six examples of worker/soldiers we can win:
* As a child participated in Equal Rights Amendment marches with his mother. Has a sister fighting for Dennis Kucinich. Liberal politics, but winnable.
* An atheist who was kicked out of his mother's house for denouncing God. Was raised a Mormon.
* Participant in a five month fight against Wal-Mart and scabs to help his mother win her job back. Went to jail several times as a result.
* An anti-capitalist who loves Lenin.
* A Louisianan who had friends in the Klan. Did not understand at first why we need to study Black History. At end of boot camp, he had grown to like a black peer (me!) who openly espoused the teaching and learning of the history of black workers' struggles and wanted to stay in touch with me.
* Former nazi in high school, but has changed a lot, learned from the movie "Bowling for Columbine." Very much questions the system, the reasons for invading Iraq. Thought Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond were not racists, but changed his mind upon hearing Thurmond had a black child with the family servant. Unsure about his winnability, but he sure hates the system!

Black workers in general have been the most distrustful of the system, joined the Navy to escape jail, poverty and lack of opportunity. Double consciousness must be fought -- there should be no eating of imperialist pie in exchange for our loyalty to their system. We must destroy it and get the entire pie for the world's workers.

The potential to win workers -- within the most powerful military on earth -- to a working-class movement is there. We must keep our eye on the ball. On to May Day! Navy Red

Winds of War: Getting `Drafty'

The question, "Will the draft be restored?" has three answers: probably not right now; in the near term, perhaps; and in the long term, surely, but not in its old form. Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institute recently wrote an essay called "The Need to Increase the Size of the Deployable Army." Weighing the draft's unpopularity, both with the public and among generals who would have to command unwilling troops, O'Hanlon concludes, "the draft is not the answer." But, he concedes, "Some day this assessment could change, [after] a sustained period of high casualties in Iraq or another place. At that point, to maintain a viable military, the nation might have no option but to consider the draft." Endorsing John Kerry's fascist "Army of Patriots" scheme, O'Hanlon favors "mandatory national service of some kind, with the military being one option from which individuals could choose."

The Pentagon is already on the job. "Richard Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, said planning for a possible draft of linguists and computer experts had begun last fall after Pentagon personnel officials said the military needed more people with skills in those areas...The agency already has in place a special system to register and draft health care personnel ages 20 to 44 in more than 60 specialties if necessary in a crisis." (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/13/04)

The U.S. military, the mightiest and deadliest in history, has an Achilles' heel. Ultimately, it will not be able function without working-class draftees who have no interest in serving it and are likely to rebel against it

CONFLICT OF INTEREST?

Who would have thought that the chairman of the 9/11 Commission mandated to investigate the terror attack on the World Trade Center has business ties to the brother-in-law and alleged financier of Osama bin Laden?

Commission chairmanThomas Kean is a director of the Amerada Hess oil company, which is a partner in the Hess-Delta Corporation, a joint venture established in 1998 for the development and exploration of oil fields in the Caspian Sea region. Hess-Delta is also an equity holder in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhon oil pipeline. Hess's partner in this venture, Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia, is owned by powerful Saudi financier Khalid bin Mahfouz, bin Laden's brother-in-law. According to 1998 Senate testimony by then-CIA director James Woolsey, bin Laden is married to bin Mahfouz's younger sister.

In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. Treasury Dept. froze the assets of 150 Saudi individuals, companies and charities suspected of providing millions of dollars to al Qaeda. But bin Laden's brother-in-law Mahfouz was exempted.

Kean, a "moderate Republican," became Bush's choice to head the 9/11 Commission after Henry Kissinger was dumped in a "conflict-of-interest" embarrassment for representing companies like ExxonMobil doing business with Saudi oil firms.

Kean is a member of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations, and was selected because the former Governor of New Jersey was "close to the families of the 9/11 victims, an important credential to the White House." (Scripps-Howard News Service, 12/17/02) The Baltimore Sun (12/26/02) hailed him as one who "lacks obvious conflicts of interests."

But a $1 trillion law suit filed last August by families of the 9/11 victims lists Khalid bin Mahfouz, Kean's business partner, as an alleged "financier" of al Qaeda.

Boeing 7E7 Giveaway Shows:
Workers Must Fight Bosses' Dictatorship

Washington State Governor Gary Locke said the recent $3.2 billion giveaway to Boeing demonstrates the state is "open for business in a way we have never been before." Just how open we'll never know because Locke sealed the records. Nevertheless, a few leaked details show the state plans to dole out our tax dollars to big business "six ways to Sunday," exposing the government's class nature as it has "never been before."

Democracy at Work!

Apparently, liberal Democrat Locke paid Deloitte Consulting $715,000 to formulate the bribe to land the Boeing 7E7 Dreamliner assembly plant. Boeing is a $5 million client of this same firm. Deloitte and Touche, another arm of the New York-based Deloitte financial empire, is the company's outside auditor. Together, the Deloitte companies have made over $50 million in fees from Boeing since 2001, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Seattle Weekly, 2/18). Who better to give the state "objective, independent" advice than Boeing's own paid consultants?

"Not only did the [state] do all we asked them to do, they also fixed other things," bragged Deloitte's local boss Tom Captain to the weekly Mercer Island Rerporter (Business Week, 3/18). The "other things fixed" include kicking mostly-Latin farmworkers off unemployment compensation in an atrociously racist fashion; weakening workers' compensation; and secret deals to fund a Boeing training center, reinforce the runway so the company can fly in outsourced sub-assemblies and pave a road to a proposed subcontractor plant near final assembly. Our tax dollars are literally paving the road to cheap labor.

To ward off complaints about this sweetheart deal, the state is also paying for state employees to advise Boeing how to defend itself against lawsuits and take advantage of other lucrative loopholes in the state tax code.

Opening up Minds

Last year, the Boeing union leadership campaigned in support of the company's demands, rallying under the slogan, "We Can Do It!" "These might as well have been Deloitte and Touche rallies," said an angry Machinist, when the news broke about these consultants. Two shop stewards were particularly mad. They had honestly supported the union leadership, despite all our misgivings. Now they felt betrayed.

The capitalist crisis of overproduction in aerospace, as well as the rise of imperialist competitors like Europe's Airbus and others, has forced the bosses' hand. Their need to maximize profits has now become obscenely apparent. The ugly face of class dictatorship, embodied in governmental power, has been more openly employed.

Many workers, like these two shop stewards, are now more open to our communist politics. The bosses' naked use of state power to finance their profits can help lead to the communist-led movement necessary to defeat this boss-government-consultant gang-up, but only if we build a base for PLP and CHALLENGE. Economic crises and corruption by themselves can lead to mass cynicism and workers marching behind yet another set of politicians.

We Can Learn From Past Mistakes and We Can Win!

The old communist movement collapsed because of concessions to capitalism. One was the incorrect notion of separating the state apparatus from the Party, undermining the understanding that government is the embodiment of class dictatorship. Despite heroic efforts and great accomplishments -- like the organizing of industrial unions -- ideological weaknesses like this eventually did in the old movement.

Now we must build a movement, no matter how long it takes, that holds no illusions about class dictatorship and the government, which the rulers hide behind pious hosannas to democracy. There is no answer short of smashing the bosses' dictatorship with the rule of the working class led directly by its Party.

Last year, the bosses and their labor union lieutenants had their "We Can Do It!" campaign, with devastating results. This summer, the union will compound this mis-leadership by campaigning for John Kerry, spreading the illusion that workers can "vote the bosses out of power." We must answer with a bold campaign -- in the union and on the shop floor -- that lays bare the bosses' dictatorship. The ball is in our court!

Mussolini Would Have Been Proud

As we go to press, the Seattle Times (2/27) reports, "Boeing received pledges from the state's leading politicians to help it smooth the way with its employees to implement radical changes to its production processes that would enable it to produce the 7E7 with fewer workers and at unprecedented speed.

"Gov. Gary Locke, Sen. Maria Cantwell, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Norm Dicks, all Democrats, pledged to help Boeing navigate the changes with its workforce in a letter to Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Alan Mulally on Sept. 15.

"`Finding new ways to improve efficiency and productivity will require a true partnership between labor, Boeing and the state of Washington,' the letter said. `We understand that the discussions needed to achieve these goals could prove challenging. Each one of us stands ready to assist in making sure these innovative ideas are realized.'"

In the years leading to World War II, the Italian fascist leader Mussolini installed what he called "a corporate state." The Democrats' vow to form a labor misleader/company/state cabal to speed us up so Boeing can cut jobs would have made Mussolini proud.

The Further Balkanization of Kosovo

During the 1999 bombing of the former Yugoslavia, Clinton-Blair-Gen. Wes Clark-Chirac-Schröder & Co. claimed they were making war against Milosevic and the Yugoslav government because Serb nationalists were carrying out "ethnic cleansing" against Albanians in Kosovo. But the real cause of the war was Milosevic and his gang's plans for an oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian region to Western Europe, which conflicted with U.S. and Western Europe bosses' plans. However, just like Bush's WMDs, the ethnic cleansing of Albanians was exposed as a big lie. The Albanians in Kosovo began to flee en masse when U.S.-NATO planes dropped their bombs.

Kosovo is nominally part of Serbia and Montenegro but has been administered by the local UN mission since the 1999 war. It's now home for 7,000 U.S. military personnel at Bondsteel, one of the largest U.S. military bases overseas.

Serbs comprise only 10% of the Kosovo population; the rest are Albanians. In mid-March, racist riots erupted in Mitrovica and Pristina, 28 people died and 500 houses and 42 Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed. Some 3,500 Serbians were forced to flee their homes.

Major Tim Dunne, a Kfor (UN forces in Kosovo) spokesman, said the mob violence had been carefully orchestrated. "We stopped numerous buses carrying men aged 18 to 40 from going to Mitrovica," he told the London Telegraph (3/29). The troops believed that the men [Albanian nationalists] were being bussed in to take part in the unrest.

The violence flared when three Albanian children drowned after allegedly being chased into a river by Serbs. Unrest spread quickly. One UN official said the "subsequent disturbances all over Kosovo, and their prolonged nature, point to widespread orchestration."

There are doubts over how the children came to drown. Suspicions grew that the blame had been wrongly placed on Serbs, an allegation made by a fourth child who survived. Yet during the violence a UN spokesman, Derek Chapple, said that police had no conclusive evidence. On March 24, senior UN mission officials ordered Chapple "moved to other duties" because he may have been "too frank."

The Albanian nationalists in Kosovo -- all coming from the Kosovo Liberation Army, the drug-running gang used by the U.S./NATO during the 1999 war -- are trying to divert Albanian workers and youth there from the fact that five years after "victory" unemployment is even higher, as privatized factories are barely producing and social services have been cut. Meanwhile, the coalition govt. of Kostunica, the Serb leader picked by the imperialists to dump Milosevic (now on trial in The Hague), has no answers either. The imperialists rejected the Serbian army offer to go to Kosovo to "restore order." Then the Serbian govt. backed rallies to "support Serbs in Kosovo" drew only a few thousand, mostly non-workers.

And the European Union's "solution" is to Balkanize Kosovo even more, dividing Serbs and Albanians into "cantons."

So nationalism has spawned unemployment, imperialist war and ethnic cleansing to the workers throughout the former Yugoslavia. After defeating the Nazis occupation, the Partisan movement led by Tito was able to unite all the ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia. When Tito was alive, the various extreme nationalists were held in check. But, unfortunately, Tito was one of the first Eastern European "communists" to turn to state capitalism and then to private capitalism. When the Soviet Union imploded, the imperialists -- led by Germany -- used their "national liberation" movements (many led by WW II Nazi collaborators) in the various republics of the former Yugoslav Federation to divide them even further into "independent" countries. Slovenia and Croatia, the first to break away, are now basically German spheres of influence.

The seeds of working-class unity were destroyed by this deadly combination of fake leftists, nationalists and imperialists. Once Tito died, all hell broke loose. Milosevic and all the other nationalists in the former Yugoslavia used nationalism to build their base and profits. Workers in the former Yugoslavia need to unite and rebuild an internationalist communist Party to smash all the nationalists and their imperialist backers.

DEFEAT THE COOK
COUNTY `FEAR FACTOR'!

CHICAGO, IL, March 19 -- Today a delegation of about a dozen workers and doctors marched on the offices of Respiratory Therapy Director Frank Brown and hospital administrator Yogi Mahendra. We delivered petitions with more than 100 signatures demanding they stop the scheduled racist firing of seven black, licensed Respiratory Therapists and Technicians, scheduled for March 31. The petitions also demanded upgrades for the certified Indian therapists. Only after we waged a mass campaign supporting these dedicated long-term workers, forced by Stroger bosses to pass a certification test at the end of their careers, did the union start to act more aggressively.

The attacks and struggles we face go far beyond Stroger Hospital. U.S. bosses are on a mission to remain as top dog of the imperialist gang, and the international working class is being ground up in its wake.

Stroger Hospital bosses are trying to "shock and awe" workers with more write-ups, suspensions and firings. "Other duties as assigned," is the order of the day. These increased attacks signal the opening of our contract fight, and mean more racist attacks on patient health care.

The Nursing Dept. is leading the way in write-ups for being sick. After transferring from the Emergency Room, where patients wait up to 48 hours for a bed, Med-Surg. Divisional Director Greg Murphy is wreaking havoc, firing two workers and planning more. Labor Relations boss Lavender is bolder than ever in firing workers, backed up by former SEIU union rep.-turned Labor Relations Manager Jim Dyson. In fact, former Local President Pia Davis and former Vice President Tom Brem have been well rewarded for years of loyal service to the bosses, working in management for Cook County Administration.

The majority of the world's workers live in abject poverty, facing wars and famines. In the U.S., retired steel workers are losing their pensions and health care and over 45 million live with no health insurance, as public health care providers like Stroger are whittled down to nothing. This is how the rulers are paying for their occupation of Iraqi oil fields and building a fascist Homeland Security police state.

Only communist revolution can wipe out racism, imperialist war, fascist terror, poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease. We're the ones who do the work and create all value. Building the PLP is the best way to prepare for all the battles ahead, to develop confidence and trust in each other so we can shut Stroger down when our contract expires in November and smash the bosses' fear factor.

FLASH -- As we go to press, County bosses have backed down and the terminations of the black Respiratory Therapists have been canceled! At a meeting of SEIU Local 73HC tonight, angry workers blasted the union leadership for failing to fight for them and defended PLP and the STROGER CHALLENGE newsletter. Workers from other hospitals said they need a CHALLENGE newsletter at their worksites. More next issue.

No Matter the Pay,
It's Wage Slavery

NEW YORK CITY, March 26 -- Chanting, "$5.15 Is Not Enough," dozens of immigrant workers and immigrant rights activists rallied at City Hall yesterday, campaigning to change the state minimum wage. One worker declared, "The minimum wage doesn't cover anything. Poverty is going up...Everything's being cut back, and for what? For war. We don't want war."(El Diario-La Prensa, 3/26) The demonstrators said a raise would directly benefit more than 165,000 immigrant workers here.

A study by the Fiscal Policy Institute for the New York Immigration Coalition says the hourly minimum wage should be increased to $7.10. But just to reach the government's "official" poverty line of $18,000+ a year for a family would require a $9.00 hourly rate.

The minimum wage goes to the heart of capitalist exploitation. Low wages for some workers depress the wages of all, allowing the bosses to make super-profits out of the labor of the entire working class. Racism hurts ALL workers.

But a higher minimum wage won't end capitalist exploitation. Even the highest-paid workers have faced devastating attacks on wages and benefits as well as suffering speed-up to increase productivity while losing millions of jobs. All of these attacks, and many more, are paying for the imperialist occupation of Iraq and the fascist Homeland Security police state.

Low-wage immigrant workers make up 62% of the city's estimated 267,000 workers currently earning less than $7.10 an hour. The largest immigrant employer is the restaurant industry, with some 125,000 workers, many at or below today's minimum wage. A large number are home-care attendants.

"We know that immigrants are the people...at the base of the service industry," said Ana Maria Archila, executive director of the Latin American Integration Center. She added, "They are the people that bring food to our tables, that clean our houses, that take care of our babies and...are less covered by protections."

The state's minimum wage matches the federal rate, $5.15. Neither has been raised in five years. James Parrott, an economist who prepared the study, said the purchasing power of the current minimum wage is actually 40% below what it was when it was first enacted. That means it has actually dropped to $3.10 an hour in terms of purchasing power! Meanwhile, profits for U.S. corporations jumped 29% in the last quarter, the "biggest jump in almost 20 years" (Wall Street Journal, 3/26). That's capitalism: the bosses get richer and the poor get laid off!

The study identified Dominicans as the largest bloc of low-wage immigrant workers, 18% of the total of the 377,200 earning below $10 an hour. The next-largest blocs were Mexicans (13.7%), Chinese (6%) and Jamaicans (5.7%).

As much as we need it, a decent wage won't end wage slavery, fascist terror or imperialist war. The union leaders and immigration rights organizers will use the fight for a higher minimum wage to line workers up behind Kerry and the Democrats, and their plans for U.S. imperialist world domination.

We can use this fight to show that under capitalism, based on profits, racism and exploitation, workers can NEVER receive more than a small fraction of the value we create. Most is siphoned off in profits by the bosses, bankers and landlords. Workers can only be free by fighting for a communist society that will abolish wage slavery. Join immigrant and citizen workers on May Day to march with the PLP for a society without any bosses and where production serves our needs.

MASSES MARCH AGAINST WAR IN IRAQ
KERRY-BETTER-THAN BUSH ILLUSION WON'T DEFEAT IMPERIALISM

I was at the New York City March 20 anti-war march, part of the international day of protest on the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. According to the organizers and even right-wing newspapers, there were some 100,000 protesters. Having been at the Feb. 2003 march to the UN, just before the war began, I know this one was considerably smaller. So were other marches around the world. Part of this decrease stems from many people who consider themselves "progressives" and were adamantly opposed to the invasion, feeling conflicted about what should happen now.

I helped my union organize for the march, leading to lots of discussions. Many people who marched last year now feel the U.S. must stay to "clean up the mess it caused." Many believe withdrawing troops now would lead to a sectarian bloodbath. The U.S. occupation, while based on lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction and about "ties to terrorism" and which shouldn't have happened, is now "temporarily necessary," they say, to allow formation of a "representative government."

Many of these people, some who consider themselves leftists, not liberals, would prefer that the UN replace the U.S. occupation with a "multi-national peacekeeping force." This resembles Kerry's position, maintaining the occupation but "internationalizing" responsibility. One could clearly see at this year's rally and march that the bulk of the anti-war movement will be backing Kerry for President. Signs about "Bush's War" and "Regime Change Begins At Home" were abundant. Some posters were witty -- "Let's Not Elect Bush Again in 2004." What's interesting is the virtual absence of visual support for Nader, and the real antagonism that many "on the left" have toward his candidacy because they feel he'll hand Bush the election.

Approaching November, the feeling will grow that Bush must be defeated and we should therefore mute criticism of Kerry. Many of our friends, while agreeing with our criticisms of Kerry -- he voted for the war, the Patriot Act, NAFTA, dismantling welfare ... the list is long -- believe Bush is "much worse," especially on "social" issues and must be dumped.

We need to address this liberalism -- illusions about "building democracy in Iraq," the United Nations, the Democratic Party -- in our literature, in study groups and maybe a column in CHALLENGE directly responding to these oft-heard positions. At the same time, realistically we know that many of our friends and co-workers may very well vote for Kerry. So, while we should patiently explain why we don't think that's a solution, we should also continue working with these friends to build a mass movement to oppose the rulers' attacks on our class.

A Red Marcher

March Spurs Students to Organize for May Day

On March 20, several local anti-war coalitions organized a march against the U.S. occupation of Iraq and called for the government to "bring home the troops." Thousands of demonstrators expressed their anger against the war in Iraq as well as the billions being spent to fund U.S. imperialism with the consequent cutbacks in healthcare, education and other social services The dominant sentiment was frustration with the Bush administration, blaming Bush for lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and his blatant anti-working class domestic policy. Many thought the solution was to replace Bush with Kerry.

PLP participated, distributing hundreds of CHALLENGES and thousands of leaflets. We agreed with the anger at Bush but pointed out that he's only an agent of the U.S. capitalist ruling class, which includes both the Republican and Democratic Parties.

The U.S. ruling class invaded and occupies Iraq to push their imperialist agenda. The billions spent on it shows their seriousness about pursuing their class interest at the expense of the U.S. and Iraqi working class. But replacing Bush with Kerry wouldn't solve the problem; it would simply change the face of the U.S. ruling class.

Our leaflet said that Kerry favors sending 40,000 more troops to Iraq. It's capitalism that must be replaced, requiring a revolutionary communist movement that fights to destroy it. In our leaflets and conversations we also explained that an important step towards this goal was marching on May Day. Several high school students participated with the PLP contingent. They were inspired by the positive reception to our leaflets and CHALLENGE. One student said this event gave her more energy to build for May Day.

West Coast ComradeWorkers Ahead of Anti-War Misleaders

A group of us at the March 20 anti-war march in New York City distributed Party's literature. A high school student, another comrade and myself quickly distributed and sold 115 copies of CHALLENGE and about 250 leaflets. We easily could have distributed double that amount.

I was impressed with how receptive the marchers were to the words I kept repeating in a bold voice as they passed: "This is CHALLENGE, the revolutionary communist newspaper. It's not just Bush, it's the capitalist system. You can't vote out capitalism. They have these elections, but afterwards, the capitalists always remain in power. We need revolution; we need workers' power."

People's eyes lit up as they stopped to take one and make a donation. On many occasions, they heard me and came over to request the paper. While a couple of people said, "We must get rid of Bush first," many more said, "You're right; it's the system."

Maybe I've missed a change among the workers by not having mass-distributed CHALLENGE in a while, but workers are more receptive to our paper! This is especially encouraging given the barrage of propaganda by the Democratic Party-led anti-war movement that's trying to steer working-class anger into these dead-end, pro-capitalist elections. My experience today shows me that the working class is more advanced than these misleaders. It gives me confidence in the road to revolution ahead.

Red Teacher

Hamas Was Built by Mossad to Counter Intifada

Thousands marched in Gaza protesting the Israeli murder of the leader of Hamas by a missile fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter. Sharon wants to destroy Hamas before withdrawing Israeli troops from the Gaza strip. This is creating more instability and war. Just as the CIA originally groomed bin Laden, Hamas was built by Mossad, the Israel secret police. The latter used Hamas to counter the 1980s Intifada rebellion in the Occupied Territories and to oppose the leadership of the nationalist but secular PLO.

PL Students Expose Capitalism As Source of Sweatshops

ATLANTA Feb. 15 --Two comrades attended the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) national conference here. Besides meeting people and distributing literature, our other main goal was to win support for our proposal against university support for war and racism. Our proposal explained that the universities' essential function is to defend capitalism through the production of racist ideology and new weapons.

The Party has struggled at national and local USAS gatherings. We've advanced the need for anti-racist class struggle and communist revolution, versus the liberals' calls for "embarrassing" particular corporations and voting for the Democrats. This conference was no different.

Panel presentations included militant U.S. labor struggles around the 8-hour work-day and the current violence against union leaders at Colombia's Coca Cola plants. The common thread of capitalists using violence whenever necessary to maximize their profits was clear. Some students responded warmly to our championing the necessity of workers seizing power to end sweatshop conditions. We exchanged contact information with nearly everyone we met.

Not all was friendly. USAS invited AFL-CIO officials who lauded the unions and called for Bush's removal. We exposed these misleaders' sellouts of workers' struggles and support for wars against workers abroad.

At an all-black panel of union officials, a black comrade challenged the panelists claim to be anti-racist when the unions they run support the racist oil war in Iraq. Perhaps a fourth of the 300 students present applauded. A handful talked with us afterwards and we made more contacts. We used a leaflet and CHALLENGE to show that neither Kerry (the unions' choice) nor any other politician will stop imperialist war.

Before the plenary session to vote on proposals we had distributed 50 copies of our anti-war/anti-racism resolution to ensure rank-and-file USAS members would see it. At two previous conferences the USAS leadership prevented similar proposals from being discussed.

At the plenary, one comrade argued for the importance of our proposal, especially its campaigns against military research and recruitment on campus. The 70 remaining conference participants raised many questions, mostly about the details of its implementation rather than its politics. Unfortunately, eight of our nine contacts had already left for home. Our proposal was defeated by a large margin.

Even though it was voted down, we did get nearly everyone to read and consider its ideas and actions. Through personal conversations and bold distribution of over 100 pieces of literature, we spread revolutionary communist politics. We'll continue to advance the Party's ideas in our local USAS clubs and invite our contacts to May Day.

Salvador Election Circus Over, Workers' Problems Remain

SAN SALVADOR -- "I'm not going to vote because whoever wins, he won't change the situation," remarked a worker here. Like her, one-third of the eligible voters didn't vote in this electoral farce. Yet, more than two million people did. Millions of workers still have the illusion we can achieve a better life for ourselves and our families through elections.

Under the capitalist system there is no such thing as "democracy" or "free elections." There is only a dictatorship of the ruling class. The group of bosses led by the ARENA party and their friends, the U.S. imperialists (especially the Bushites now) used all their tricks to terrorize the population with lies and threats. U.S. representatives said that if the fmln (the leaders of the former guerrilla group) won, Salvadorans in the U.S. ran the risk of massive deportations of Salvadorans, ending the $2 billion+ they send to help maintain their families in El Salvador.

The bosses' press launched anti-communist attacks against the fmln and Shafik Handal and his gang -- who were never communists -- because these wannabe capitalists were allied with the Salvadoran capitalists who ultimately want to separate themselves from the U.S. imperialists and ally with their European rivals. In seeking this alliance, they aren't concerned with the workers' well-being, but want a bigger cut of the wealth Salvadoran workers produce.

One of their demands was to return the country's currency to the colon instead of the dollar. The U.S. wants to "dollarize" Latin America. The Europeans would like to "euro-ize" it. This is part of the fight over which currency will dominate the world. Also, the fmln supported the agricultural landlord oligarchy who are bankrupt and losing out to the industrial capitalists in their fight for dominance. Both groups of bosses have spilled rivers of workers' blood.

The misnamed "leftists" of the fmln never attacked capitalism as the main enemy. Instead Shafik Handal said capitalism could be improved. He promised deals with European and U.S. imperialists to benefit Salvadoran workers. With friends like this, we don't need enemies. Whether workers voted or didn't, they can see that in this farce, whichever political party gains power, the bosses are always the winners and the workers are the losers.

"The conditions for a new war continue to exist," said a Salvadoran farmworker. (LA Times, 3/22) But this time it must be a class war for real communism, a society based on production for the needs of the working class. We cannot achieve that goal through capitalist elections. We must build PLP as the real communist alternative to the misery and wars of the profit system. That goal can only be won through a revolution for workers' power.

Italy, World War 2:
REDS DEFEATED NAZIS, CAPITALISTS KEPT CONTROL

In our last issue we described how at the end of World War II, the communist-led Resistance had seized all of northern Italy, defeated 14 German divisions (which had taken over for the fading Mussolini fascists) and controlled the region's major cities. Yet the communists did not attempt to lead the working class to the revolutionary seizure of power. The reasons lay in the nationalist errors and weaknesses of the old communist movement. Its ultimate collapse was a defeat the international working class is still paying for.

U.S. and British imperialism, although allied with the Soviet Union, viewed Italy as "their province." To prevent the communists from running post-war Italy, they wanted to insure that the Nazis surrendered to U.S. and British forces, not to the communist-led Resistance, and that the Resistance would be disarmed.

The capitalists feared communist revolution and even viewed Mussolini as the "alternative to a Communist Italy." In his memoirs, Churchill wrote, "Even when the issue of the war [Allied victory] became certain, Mussolini would have been welcomed by the allies."

Despite the successes of the Resistance in the North, the main objective was not communist revolution but to have the Communist Party of Italy (CPI) "accepted" in a "parliamentary democracy." Since the mid-1930's, the international communist movement had pursued the "United Front Against Fascism," opportunistically uniting with the "liberal" sections of the ruling classes against the "reactionary" wings, especially against Hitler. During this struggle within the world communist movement, Palmiro Togliatti defeated the more militant wing of the CPI who had sought a more revolutionary course. He spent the early years of the war in Moscow but returned to Italy on March 26, 1944 to direct the Party, and carry out that policy, in the waning year of the war.

To the CPI, the Resistance was a tool to defeat fascism, not to make revolution. Togliatti advocated "national liberation" to free Italy from fascism. The seizure of power in the North was "suicide," given the presence of the Allied armies in the South, which Togliatti feared would attack the Partisians if they pursued revolution in the North. "The Italian road to Socialism" led the CPI to join the royal "anti-fascist" government the Allies had established in the South, a policy backed by Stalin and the Soviets in the name of unity with the Allies. Togliatti told the Party in June 1944:

"...the insurrection that we want has not got the aim of imposing social and political transformations in a socialist or communist sense. Its aim is rather national liberation and the destruction of Fascism. All the other problems will be resolved by the people tomorrow, once Italy is liberated, by means of a free popular vote and the election of a Constituent Assembly." (Quoted in Paul Ginsborg: "A Contemporary History of Italy," Penguin Books, 1990; p. 43)

The CPI proposed a continuation of the wartime unity of all forces that wanted a "democratic and progressive Italy." (Ginsborg, p. 43) Many communists in the North felt it was wrong to postpone advocacy of revolutionary goals. Many of them figured that when the Allies left, Togliatti would pursue those goals. They continued fighting and defeating the Nazis, leading to the take-overs described. But pressure from the Togliatti leadership combined with a threatened denial of arms and supplies from the Allies led them to drop their demands and sign onto the "Protocols of Rome" in December 1944, agreeing not to pursue an independent revolutionary state in the North.

The Allies promised money, food, clothing and arms in exchange for the CPI subordinating itself to the Supreme Allied Command (Eisenhower), following orders of the military government both before and after liberation. The two-stage strategy -- liberation first, social and political reform (not revolution) later -- "caused them [the CPI] to dissipate the strength of the Resistance and of worker and peasant agitation. As a result they were completely outflanked by the Allies and by the conservative forces in Italian society." (Ginsborg, p. 47)

The U.S. and Britain vigorously pursued their imperialist interests. They told the Resistance to "lay low" in the winter of 1944-45 and began reducing arms shipments to them (although the Partisans captured many weapons from the Nazis). Allen Dulles, head of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA), met secretly with the commander of all Nazi forces in Northern Italy in Switzerland in March 1945. Dulles told them to remain in position and surrender only to U.S.-British forces, while maintaining all public utilities and essential services. However, thousands of German soldiers fled, and the Nazi generals wound up surrendering to the Resistance (see last issue).

But within four weeks of the Nazi surrender, two-thirds of the Partisans turned over their weapons to the U.S. and British armies and gave up their rule to the military government. The Allies remained in Italy until the end of 1945 to re-establish a police force they controlled, drawn mainly from wartime fascists.

The degeneration of the CPI is now history. "Sharing" power in a capitalist state means subordinating communist revolution to capitalist dictatorship. Communists who try to "share power" with capitalists will discover that capitalists NEVER share power with communists. Nationalism and cooperating with the "liberal" wing of the ruling class guarantees the maintenance of capitalist rule. Smashing the bosses' state apparatus and erecting a communist-led workers' state is the only road to workers power.

(A future article will discuss: the imperialists' sabotaging of the Soviets' fight on the Eastern Front; the Vatican's post-war role in helping the U.S. save Nazi war criminals; the CIA/Vatican/Mafia anti-communist Axis and the deal with Lucky Luciano to open up the drug trade via Italy to the U.S.; the rebellion of U.S. GIs in Italy against being sent to fight the Cold War in Asia; and how the Communists' opportunism blunted the revolutionary struggle in the name of the "United Front" against Hitler and led to the defeat of the old international communist movement, even as the Soviets virtually single-handedly smashed Hitler's armies.)

Workers Can't Take Sides in U.S.-Euro Dogfight

The defeat of Aznar's right-wing Popular Party in Spain after the terrorist bombing in Madrid and the victory of the PSOE (Socialist Workers Party of Spain) have scared the pro-U.S. rulers in Europe (Italy, Poland and even Tony Blair). Zapatero, Spain's new Prime Minister, is threatening to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq unless the UN oversees the occupation. Influenced by events in Spain, on March 20 two million marched in Rome and other cities against the war, the biggest of the worldwide protests held that day. Italy's Prime Minister Berlusconi not only is confronting a massive anti-war movement, but also rising working-class militancy.

A general strike on March 26 -- the third against Berlusconi in a year -- filled the piazzas of Rome, Milan and other cities with workers and pensioners protesting his pension "reform," which will raise the retirement age.

All this occurs in the context of the imperialist rivalry shaping world events. The building of a new international communist movement to prepare workers, soldiers and youth to fight all the bosses and crush them all with revolution is the only way out of this endless wars/fascist hell. Slowly PLP is being built in many areas. The following are excerpts from a CHALLENGE flyer distributed by PLP comrades in Italy.

*******************

Economic rivalry between the different capitalist nations is growing. This contradiction won't be solved by negotiations, but by war. The U.S. is the shark inside the imperialist aquarium, but all the others are not just watching; they're organizing themselves. The European imperialists are preparing to face the U.S. economically and militarily. Central to this competition is the control of oil, still the engine of the world economy.

We shouldn't be tricked by "left" reformist governments who promise a "new deal." They'll be the same or worse than Berlusconi. The "left" government favored bombing Yugoslavia. The DS (Left Democrats), led by former "Communist" Party of Italy leaders, refuses to sign a parliamentary resolution to get Italian troops out of Iraq, saying it will hamper future "peacekeeping" activities in Kosovo and Afghanistan. DS chief Fassini was booed and physically kicked out of Rome's March 20 anti-war protest by angry workers and youth. Meanwhile, Bernitoni, head of the RC group that "re-founded" the CPI, is no better. He's adopted a Gandhi-type pacifism, opposing any militant workers' violent struggles, saying they're as bad as the bosses' or terrorists' violence.

The workers suffering the most now are in the Middle East, but eventually European workers will be affected with wage cuts and military destruction. Many workers are being called to the army and losing their lives fighting for the capitalists in Iraq. They're dying not only at the front but also of cancer afterwards from depleted uranium that's poisoning thousands.

Anti-Americanism is powerful in the pacifist/anti-globalization movement. This movement views France as an ally, seen by the fake left as a "good" capitalist country, the example of bourgeois opposition to U.S. imperialism. But this "opposition" is merely capitalists fighting each other over Iraq, a contradiction between these two capitalist leaderships. We shouldn't support these French capitalists who are a leading, murderous imperialist class. Anti-Americanism is not an answer. It means siding with European imperialists and dividing us from U.S. workers. This is a mistake. U.S. workers will organize movements like their fight against imperialist war in Vietnam.

LETTERS

Everything We
Do Counts

The 1991 Persian Gulf War reinforced my commitment to communist revolution. It was the first -- but not the last -- time I witnessed the power of imperialism, sending over a half million troops and state-of-the-art weapons of mass destruction to invade a country for profit. It moved me to action. I thought of all my friends and family who had received CHALLENGE before, or who might accept it if I offered. I wrote them an open letter and began mailing them papers which I have continued to this day. I have kept in touch with some of those folks in other ways, and some I haven't seen since. CHALLENGE remains our only connection.

Recently I paid a surprise visit to one of these old friends. I had invited her to May Day events several times with no success. Once I asked her if she would distribute more papers and she agreed to distribute two on her job. I didn't know if she still reads the paper, or what happened to those extra papers. I feared she would ask me to stop sending them.

We had an emotional reunion and spent several hours lovingly recalling old times of political anti-racist struggle, and how my old stomping grounds had changed. After a while, one of her co-workers stopped by, and she introduced him as one of the people who read CHALLENGE. I discovered he loved the paper. He spoke of the oppressive conditions in his country, Micronesia (a little-known group of islands in the Pacific Ocean), and the need for revolution worldwide.

When I asked if he knew anyone he could give the paper to, he said there were many, but he was afraid due to his immigration status. We worked out a plan and he asked for ten more. I now mail my old friend 13 papers instead of three.

I spent over ten years without contacting my friend, having my subjective doubts -- those are my weaknesses. But the ten years of my friend reading the paper and distributing it to others is her strength, and the strength of CHALLENGE. Our paper has a life of its own, when we put it into the hands of the working class.

Red Baby Steps

`White Skin Privelege' Theory Boosts Racism

Recently two PLP members were invited to speak to a class at a state university on "white skin privilege." There's been much controversy on this campus about this topic. Some professors teach this idea while other professors and students are fighting against it. "White skin privilege" says whites are privileged because of their skin color and benefit from racism directed at non-whites. This theory is dominant in "left progressive" circles that deal with the issue of racism.

The PLP speakers explained that this dangerous theory ignores the nature of racism. The capitalist class has developed racism to justify the super-exploitation of black and Latino workers and divides them along racial lines. Thus, racism weakens the entire working class and allows the ruling class to oppress and exploit ALL workers, including whites.

Many in the class agreed but argued that racism still affects non-whites differently than whites. For example, if a white worker and a black worker were applying for a job, the white worker would have a better chance than the black worker. The PLP speakers agreed but pointed out that the white worker was still a worker and would be exploited at his job. They added that this example exposes the fact that "white skin privilege" shifts the focus away from the real benefactor of racism, the capitalist.

Another student who supported the "white skin privilege" theory argued that racism is so strong and ingrained in our lives that it's just something we must learn to live with. But since this dangerous theory obscures the class nature of racism, it actually cannot fight racism.

As long as capitalism exists, racism will have an economic and social necessity to exist. However, if we build a revolutionary movement to destroy capitalism, we'll eliminate the origin of racist ideas and practices. In building a movement against capitalism, we must and can fight racism to unite the working class.

Most students thanked the PLP speakers for coming and said they now had a better understanding of racism and the need to fight it. The class's professor told other colleagues to invite PLP speakers to their classes. But he questioned whether it was possible to build unity to fight racism.

It's clear that the "white skin privilege" theory is being pushed and has a strong effect but it can be taken on by presenting a revolutionary alternative. We will write more about the fight at this school against "white skin privilege" as we fight the racist budget cuts which are a direct result of the war in Iraq. In this way we plan to unite more students against this racist murderous capitalist system.

Two PL comrades

UAW, `CAT' Bosses Partners-in-Crime

Underlying the hype about the recent strike vote by UAW members at Caterpillar lurks a grim reality: it ain't gonna happen! Strikes have been plentiful at Caterpillar and helped secure nearly every contract, but that's a bygone era when the UAW leaders had just enough leadership quality to listen to rank-and-file demands. UAW mis-leadership has digressed via "Quality Circles," "Employee Involvement Programs" and "Partnerships," into a species that requires neither vertebrae nor tolerance for resistance. UAW bureaucrats now view themselves as partners in helping the employers remain "competitive," even if it means lowering the standard of living for its members and assisting the industry in the wholesale slashing of their jobs.

UAW's history at Caterpillar has darkened in the last decade, in particular the ill-fated 1992 strike. The UAW walked out without a battle plan and voluntarily returned when scabs gave CAT the edge by crossing picket lines. Skilled Trades Unions aided CAT, performing maintenance on machinery allowing production to continue, further weakening the strike. The dispute lasted six years before a concessionary contract was reached. The betrayal of the members' sacrifices has left them with bitterness that will endure for generations.

When the UAW struck in 1992, Caterpillar sued the UAW over having to pay UAW reps that served on the shop floor in their "partnership." That suit may have meant the end of thousands of pork-chop positions throughout the UAW. The auto industry uses them to keep members in line and the UAW uses them to control elections, votes and the continuance of their lavish lifestyles, huge salaries and perks.

Also, more than 250 members were discharged during the dispute. Some never returned but the issue was dear enough to the membership that the contract was voted down twice.

At the 1995 AFL-CIO convention, UAW International President Yokich was questioned by Decatur UAW members about settling without protecting the fired heroes. He responded, "I am not going to hold up a contract for thousands of UAW members for a few hundred discharge cases." Yokich got an earful prior to being rescued. While Local 751 in Decatur was smaller than 974 in Peoria IL, the percentage of no-votes was high enough to twice turn down the contract until language was included to return most of the discharged members.

That result was due mainly to rank-and-file members who leafleted at plant gates, revealing the UAW sellout attempt. Despite 450 NLRB violations against Caterpillar, the UAW surrendered, dropping all the charges and allowing scabs to remain on the job. Caterpillar dropped their lawsuit.

When workers returned, CAT and the scabs made the workplace a living hell. The York, Pa. parts plant was closed and the work moved to North Carolina. Parts workers' wages were so low that UAW members in Denver, Colorado became eligible for food stamps. Caterpillar retirees suffered huge losses in benefits. During the CAT dispute, workers at John Deere suffered a concessionary settlement. The UAW claimed "victory" in those disputes.

After the CAT struggle, the UAW agreed to spin-offs of the parts divisions at Visteon and Delphi at Ford and General Motors. That devastated UAW wages; thousands of UAW members lost their jobs. The CAT parts division was an omen of things to come.

Caterpillar has slowly divested itself in Illinois. Thousands of jobs have been out-sourced to small parts suppliers and many have been moved south. Decatur CAT workers once numbered more than 5,000. Today, less than 1,600 remain. The "circus" is on between Caterpillar and the UAW but it amounts to little more than street theater. Strike? I seriously doubt it!

Decatur War Zone Vet

CHALLENGE comment:

Thanks for your letter. This demonstrates that the class collaboration between the bosses and their labor lieutenants has hit high-paid industrial workers by laying off thousands permanently and increasing the productivity of those remaining, working them still harder for lower wages. This is one of the leading causes of the "jobless recovery." On the one hand, the bosses need workers in war industries to produce the weapons required to launch their imperialist adventures. But at the same time, they're squeezing these same workers to reap maximum profits, in the name of patriotism -- "support the war against terror."

The real terror is the attack on workers such as at CAT, as well as on the entire international working class, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Illinois. Industrial workers in the U.S must unite with their brothers and sisters worldwide -- not with their own bosses and union misleaders --to fight imperialist warmakers, the enemy of workers everywhere.

Gov't Terrorists Attack Immigrant
Airport Workers

At our airport, two well-liked workers from El Salvador were fired because their green card information wasn't being processed fast enough. They were used as an example to control everyone else. The government and the bosses use "the war on terrorism" to intimidate and harass immigrant workers, randomly checking employee records.

We've been trying to get our working-class sisters reinstated, gathering information to help them and relaying it to the SEIU union office. SEIU is providing a lawyer. Our effort has been multi-racial and internationalist, involving black and Latin workers, who are native-born U.S., Salvadoran and Mexican. CHALLENGE is being distributed.

Through this struggle, I can show workers that as long as capitalism exists, bosses will have power to hire and fire workers. Under communism, workers will run the workplace and society in our interest. Worldwide communist revolution, from San Salvador to Chicago to London, will eliminate the bosses' racist and fascist attacks. March on May Day!

An airport comrade

WRONG CARTOON

In the March 31st CHALLENGE, a cartoon adjoining the health care article (page 4) could give the wrong impression that white workers benefit from racist medical care. We believe all forms of racism hurt ALL workers. Only the bosses benefit from racism, reaping super-profits and weakening working-class unity.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Democracy in action

As Jay Leno noted, the choices in the presidential election range all the way from a rich, white guy from Yale to a rich white guy from Yale. (NYT, 3/20)

Poor have more distress

Residents of the city's low-income neighborhoods suffer the highest rates of emotional distress, new Health Department figures show....

"We know there is a close correlation between poverty and mental health," said Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden....

The statistics, which also break out figures by ethnic groups, say a shocking 10 percent of Hispanic high school students attempted suicide in the past year....

...36 percent of New Yorkers who have jobs report significant emotional distress. For the unemployed, the figure is 60 percent. (NY Post, 3/24)

Powell soothes dictators

Kuwait, March 29 -- Secretary of State Colin L. Powell sought this weekend to allay the furor in the Middle East over the Bush administration's proposed democracy initiative for the region, assuring the leaders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that there was no intention to impose reforms on their countries....

A resolution calling for democratic reform...stirred an uproar when a copy was leaked to an Arabic-language newspaper. (NYT, 3/21)

Eco-spiel aims at workers

Listen to any politician and the spiel goes something like this: "We must become more flexible and dynamic. Rigidities in the economy must be eliminated so that we can be more competitive when facing the new global challenge...."

Translate...into plain English. "We must become more flexible [accept lower wages] and dynamic [enjoy fewer in-work benefits]. Rigidities [trade unions and welfare states] must be eliminated so that we can be more competitive [companies can make bigger profits and pay less tax] when facing the new global challenge [if you don't like it buster, there are plenty of people ...willing to take your job]." (MG, 3/31]

Haiti exposes US lies

This coup [in Haiti] sends a chilling message to leaders across the world. Turns out all that rhetoric about supporting democracy as a centerpiece of U.S. policy is just words, not policy.

This administration values governments that protect private investment and stability for U.S. multinationals. Stable dictatorships are preferred to unstable democracies....

[It's] all for elections, but only if they come out the right way. (Tribune Media, 3/2)

Chicago schools' no-pass fails

The Chicago Board of Education voted yesterday to ease some of the strict promotion requirements that have served as a model for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan to end social promotion in New York City's schools.

The action in Chicago came in anticipation of new research expected to show that Chicago's seven-year effort to end social promotion had not raised test scores for third graders and in most cases resulted in lower test scores for sixth graders....

The Chicago board voted yesterday to create an intensive reading program for schools with large numbers of failing students that would include full-day kindergarten, smaller classes in lower grades and mandatory summer school. (NYT, 3/25)

More troops to Africa

US special forces have arrived in several north African countries over recent months amid Pentagon warnings that the region runs the risk of becoming an al-Qaida recruiting ground and a possible back door into Europe....

US army's 10th Special Forces Group are [sic] already installed, or are due to arrive, in Mauritania, Mali, Chad and Niger to train their armies in anti-terrorism tactics and to improve coordination with the US military....

US generals...have been touring the region looking for temporary bases and airfields to use in possible operations in Africa. (GW, 3/24)

Gov't twisted 9/11 to Iraq

Very early on the morning of Sept. 12....Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counter-terrorism chief, writes:...

"I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were....Instead I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq...."

"I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. `But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.'

"`I know, I know, but...see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred....'"

The president wanted war with Iraq.... (NYT, 3/26)

Information: Print

CHALLENGE March 31, 2004

Information: 31 March 2004 121 hits

Kerry: Another Candidate of the Big Bosses

a href="#200 More Workers’ Lives Blown Away In Spain By Bosses’ Endless Wars">20" More Workers’ Lives Blown Away In Spain By Bosses’ Endless Wars

a href="#‘Jobless Recovery’ New Feature of Bosses’ Boom- Bust System">‘Job"ess Recovery’ New Feature of Bosses’ Boom- Bust System

Collapse of Old Communist Movement Gives New Life to Capitalism

Hit Racism of Warmaker, Strike-breaker U. of Chicago

a href="#Anti-Racist Struggle Helps Workers Fight Bosses’ Ideas">"nti-Racist Struggle Helps Workers Fight Bosses’ Ideas

Protest Racist Cop Murders in N.J.

a href="#Bosses’ Health ‘Reforms’ Won’t Solve Workers’ Needs">Bosses’ "ealth ‘Reforms’ Won’t Solve Workers’ Needs

a href="#Phony ‘Leftists’ Help IBM Shift Low-Wage Hi-tech Jobs to India">Ph"ny ‘Leftists’ Help IBM Shift Low-Wage Hi-tech Jobs to India

a href="#Red Ideas Strengthen Garment Worker’s Resolve to Fight Boss">"ed Ideas Strengthen Garment Worker’s Resolve to Fight Boss

The Battle For Marquette Park

Rulers Now Sending Grandpas to Iraq

a href="#Ford Profits Spill Workers’ Blood">"ord Profits Spill Workers’ Blood

a href="#GI Says Army’s ‘Psychotic’ Cases Are Really Anti-War Views">GI S"ys Army’s ‘Psychotic’ Cases Are Really Anti-War Views

a href="#The WW2 Communist-led Insurrection That Defeated the Nazis in Northern Italy —Part I">"he WW2 Communist-led Insurrection That Defeated the Nazis in Northern Italy —Part I

Memories of World War 2: Living Through the London Blitz

LETTERS

Learning by Doing At Pro-Aristide March

Object and Organize

China & U.S.: Whose $ Are Helping Whom?

a href="#‘The Passion’ and ‘DaVinci Code’ Book Mirror Church Split">‘The P"ssion’ and ‘DaVinci Code’ Book Mirror Church Split

From Altar Boy to Communist

Atheist Says Class Struggle Primary

Challenge Comments

Red Eye On The News

Liberals are capitalists too
Iraq war is not vs. terror
Greenspan overlooks poor
Kerry won’t calm Mid-east
US has low-wage future
US trained Haitian army to kill Haitians
Unions can’t fix capitalism

Kerry: Another Candidate of the Big Bosses

U.S. workers have lost 2.7 million jobs since 2001. Presidential hopeful John Kerry blames "Benedict Arnold" corporate executives for moving the jobs overseas and proposes stiff tax penalties for "offshoring" corporations. But Kerry is a complete hypocrite. Like George Bush, Kerry both serves, and belongs to, the capitalist ruling class. Its interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the working class. Capitalists relentlessly seek maximum profit, whether it entails exploiting cheap labor in China and India or spilling workers’ blood to secure Mideast oil. A Kerry administration would be just as deadly to workers as Bush’s has been.

When Kerry and his AFL-CIO backers, in effect, demand "American jobs for American workers," they are blaming other workers (along with a few CEOs) for unemployment here. While doing nothing to fight U.S. joblessness, his "anti-corporate" baloney — supported by Sweeney & Co. — is designed to build nationalism to get workers to support war and fascism, to fight for "our" jobs, "our companies" and "our" country — meaning the bosses’ class interests.

Even the capitalists steering Kerry’s campaign fear that workers will see right through his blatantly phony anti-corporate stance. Says James Neal, an investment banker on Kerry’s national finance committee: "It would behoove him to tone down the rhetoric on Benedict Arnold CEOs. … CEOs are doing what they’re supposed to do: maximizing growth for their shareholders. To criticize them as being unpatriotic is not consistent with the values of a democratic [that is, capitalist — Ed.] society." (CBS news, 3/11) By "shareholders," Neal means the financial institutions (banks, mutual funds, etc.) that hold controlling interests in most major U.S. corporations.

The same finance capitalists who are directing firms to cut U.S. payrolls while squeezing super-profits out of workers here and overseas are bankrolling Kerry. "Executives at Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have contributed over $186,000 to Kerry’s coffers. In his Senate career, Kerry can count Goldman, Citigroup, Time Warner and FleetBoston Financial Group among his top all-time donors." (CBS)

Don’t expect Kerry to relieve unemployment if he wins. The economy looks pretty good to the rulers. "Corporate profits as a share of national income are at an all-time high...up $223 billion in the past year, according to the latest data from the Commerce Dept." (Business Week, 3/12) But workers face the uncertainty, dislocation, and poverty that go along with joblessness.

Racism compounds these problems for black and Latin workers — double the unemployment rates, a higher percentage suffering poverty, higher rates of disease along with less health insurance coverage and subject to fascist attacks by racist police. Kerry’s pro-racist record includes approving Clinton’s destruction of welfare and blaming the victims for their poverty: accusing them of "shift[ing] from self-reliance to indulgence and dependence…,from public accountability to…abdication and chaos."

The root of the problems is that the capitalist class, which puts profits above human life, rules society. Tinkering with economic policy or electing this or that candidate won’t end the worldwide exploitation of workers. The only thing that can is the working class’s seizure of state power through communist revolution.

Bush-Blair Buddy Kicked Out:

a name="200 More Workers’ Lives Blown Away In Spain By Bosses’ Endless Wars"></">20" More Workers’ Lives Blown Away In Spain By Bosses’ Endless Wars

MADRID, SPAIN — Over 1,600 workers and youth were the latest victims of the "war on terror" — over 1,400 injured and 200 killed, including immigrant workers from South America, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe. This tragedy again proves that terrorism is a deadly enemy of the international working class. Whether it was ETA, the Basque separatist group, or an Al Qaeda-affiliated group(AQ), these terrorists kill innocent people, just like the big imperialist terrorists they claim to oppose.

Perhaps even politically deadlier than the carnage itself, about 11 million people marched nationwide against terrorism the following day, behind Spain’s Prince of Asturias, Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, the French foreign minister and other European rulers. The Socialist Party (PSOE), who won the March 14 elections, the opportunist left and the union leadership supported this all-class call for "national unity." They misled the angry masses to march behind these "good guys" whose attacks on workers far surpass the terrorists, including racist laws against immigrant workers in their own countries, pension cuts plus much more. Many immigrants killed in Madrid had no rights because of the racist "Ley de Extranjería" (anti-foreigner law). Pro-immigrant groups say many relatives of the immigrant victims fear claiming their remains because of the racist law, made even tougher in December.

But even at the "national unity" march, the mood of the masses began to change. When now-defeated Prime Minister Aznar appeared next to the Prince of Asturias, thousands booed them both. The next day, tens of thousands of angry workers and youth protested at Aznar’s right-wing Popular Party (PP) headquarters, chanting, "We want the truth, down with the war, no blood for oil." There were confrontations with the police, who tried to disband some of the protesters, labeled "illegal" by the government. The masses chanted, "The PP government is illegal."

This anger turned into a rout of Aznar’s PP, who just before 3-11 was a sure winner. Aznar’s attempt to first blame ETA for the bombing to assure electoral victory backfired. All the evidence soon pointed to a Qaeda affiliate, and several suspects have been arrested, supporting this connection.

Zapatero, the PSOE candidate, seemed surprised at his Party’s victory. But basically the masses, lacking any serious revolutionary communist leadership, voted for what they thought was the anti-war Party, the social-democrats. The PSOE — which represents pro-European anti-Bush/Blair capitalists in Spain — is saying if there’s no UN resolution supporting the occupation of Iraq, it will pull out the troops. But the masses are in no mood to be fooled again, and the now "lesser-evil" PSOE might become the opposite. Again, the best victory workers and youth can have from this struggle is to build a revolutionary communist movement. Nothing short of that can end imperialist war.

Aznar deployed some 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq which lead several hundred more troops from El Salvador, Honduras and Dominican Republic. Aznar sent the troops even though 90% of the population opposed the war. On February 15, 2003, 10% of the population joined tens of millions worldwide in the biggest coordinated international protest ever, against the pending war.

The terror attack also exposed the Bush/Blair lie that the occupation of Iraq made the world safer from "terrorism." The fact is this is a war for markets and oil. The Bush-Blair-Aznar gang is trying to give Exxon, Halliburton, BP, Shell and Repsol a bigger piece of the oil pie in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The AQ types represent Saudi and other Arab bosses who want the oil bonanza for themselves instead of sharing it with U.S. and British oil giants. Remember, these same forces, led by bin Laden himself, worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. and its CIA in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet occupation of that country.

Religion and "democracy" are just a cover for profits. Workers and youth must reject all these terrorists and fight for a communist world, without any bosses.

a name="‘Jobless Recovery’ New Feature of Bosses’ Boom- Bust System"></a>"Jobless Recovery’ New Feature of Bosses’ Boom- Bust System

The "jobless recovery" may reflect a new feature in capitalism’s boom-bust cycle. A combination of greater productivity, shipping jobs overseas to low-wage areas and the increasing use of temporary workers could cut short the recently reported economic growth and send the "recovery" into a tailspin.

This has an especially racist character to it since black and Latin workers, suffer double the jobless rates of white workers. These groups, along with women workers, are more concentrated in temporary, part-time and low-wage jobs, and endure even longer periods of unemployment.

This has nothing to do with whether Bush or Kerry is in the White House. It has everything to do with a system based on each boss’s need to make maximum profits or fall by the wayside to domestic or foreign competitors. The profit system cannot be reformed. It must drive down the cost of labor, causing permanent massive unemployment. Democrats and Republicans both defend the capitalists’ class dictatorship, including imperialist war to dominate international rivals.

As long as there is no revolutionary communist movement to stop them, the bosses, with the help of their union leaders, can survive any crisis and continue to get away with murder. While the Soviet and Chinese revolutionaries had many weaknesses, they did throw out the capitalists and their liberal and nationalist defenders, and eliminate unemployment until their internal weaknesses caught up with them. The collapse of that international communist movement was a devastating defeat for the international working class which we are still paying for today.

‘That’s the way it is’

"Normally," as the economy grows, so does employment "At no other point since World War II has the economy grown for such a long period without adding jobs at a healthy pace…Never before has the American economy seen such a prolonged divergence between economic growth and job creation." In fact, in six of the last eight months, the labor force has contracted. "In most recoveries, exactly the opposite occurs." (N.Y. Times, 3/6 — all subsequent quotes from the March 6 Times unless otherwise indicated.)

Compared to "the early 1990s, at the same stage of the [business] cycle…non-farm payrolls had already SURPASSED their previous peak." Now, "total non-farm payrolls remain almost 2.5 million BELOW their pre-recession peak." (London Financial Times, 3/9) Employment industry executive John Challenger told MSNBC (3/4), "Real job creation at the scale [of] the 1990s is impossible…It doesn’t matter what you do — that’s the way it is."

‘Squeezing Blood Out of the Existing Workforce’

One reason for the lack of jobs is the vast increase in workers’ productivity — producing more with fewer workers. The vice-president of the American Management Association told the New York Times, "The goal of companies is not to hire." Says the Times, "Executives are focused…on fattening profits to push up stock prices…Since they cannot raise profits by raising prices [during]…low inflation, they are doing it by suppressing labor costs — getting more output from the existing workforce." The chief economist at a N.Y. economic research firm told the Times, "To the extent that companies can squeeze another drop of blood out of their existing workforce, they’re doing it."

‘Like a stomachache that won’t go away’

Jobs are also being shipped overseas. In the past, companies "invested in new machinery, computers and other capital goods…The capital goods manufacturers…added workers, who then spent their salaries on goods and services, and employment rose in those sectors, too…But a growing portion of the spending is going abroad, creating jobs in other countries rather than the U.S." Dave Doolittle, who works at an Electrolux refrigerator plant in Michigan that’s moving to Mexico, told the Times, "It’s like a stomachache that will not go away."

Another factor is the widespread use of temporary and part-time workers. Temporaries do not get benefits like full-time workers, and "The most important benefit…is that they can easily be dismissed if business conditions turn sour." (Financial Times, 3/9) Of the 290,000 jobs added since April 2003, 215,000 are temporaries. Without the 32,000 temporary workers hired in February, private sector employment would have fallen. About 250 of the 800 workers at GM’s Locomotive plant in Chicago are temps, despite having worked there for six years!

Temps are the fastest-growing segment of the workforce, "who can be brought in and sent away as demand fluctuates…Companies…think of staff more like inventory, keeping things to a minimum." (FT)

The 4.3 million part-timers who want full-time jobs, but can’t find them, have grown by one million since January 2000. Considering all these factors, no wonder there’s a "lingering fear…that the weak labour market itself could start to undermine the economic recovery." (FT)

So what is to be done? Follow the AFL-CIO hacks whose only plan is to spend $44 million of workers’ money to help dump Bush and elect Kerry, another millionaire warmaker? He won’t change much for workers. But building a mass base for PLP among all workers, including the unemployed, can go a long way to rebuilding a new international communist movement. And organizing black, Latin, Asian and white workers, soldiers, citizens and immigrants, men and women, young and old, employed and unemployed, to march on May Day with the Communist PLP is a good start to end this new "dark age" of mass joblessness, endless wars and racist/fascist terror the profit system has heaped upon us.

Collapse of Old Communist Movement Gives New Life to Capitalism

The "jobless recovery," the ability of U.S. rulers to boost profits by firing millions of workers, is an economic phenomenon with political origins. Key to this success for the bosses is the collapse of the old communist movement into capitalism and the subsequent disintegration of the capitalist Soviet empire, which once presented a real threat to U.S. imperialism.

Tremendous gains in productivity, from high technology and the "offshoring" of jobs to low-wage locales like India and China, are fattening U.S. firms’ bottom lines as never before. A weak, corrupt, pro-capitalist U.S. labor movement has immeasurably aided corporations in slashing millions of jobs and cutting wages. In the 1930s, when the Soviet Union served as a beacon, and U.S. unions had some red leadership, workers countered such attacks with violent strikes. Today’s labor hacks barely peep. U.S. companies now exploit cheap labor in China and India. This would have been unthinkable before China embraced the profit system, or when India was a staunch ally of Soviet imperialism.

The same factors help Western European bosses. Volkswagen recently won a 5% pay cut from a formerly militant union in Spain by setting up plants in lower-wage Eastern Europe, now a part of the European Union. The Red Army once freed the workers of Eastern Europe from Nazism. Then, in one of history’s greatest political setbacks, these lands became vassals of a capitalist Kremlin. Now they are again subject to Western European bosses. Recalling how he threatened a German metalworkers’ union, Daimler Chrysler boss Jurgen Schrempp echoed Hitler, "We were very clear in the talks. We said, ‘We have Poland. We have Hungary. We have the Czech Republic’" (Wall Street Journal, 3/11/04).

The dismal political situation worldwide does not make our party’s task to preserve and build the communist movement, any easier. It does, however, make it all the more necessary.

Hit Racism of Warmaker, Strike-breaker U. of Chicago

CHICAGO, IL, March 5 — "Brick by Brick, Wall by Wall, Police Brutality’s Got to Fall!" That’s what 75 students and members of local churches and community groups, black, Latin, Asian and white, chanted outside the University of Chicago (UC) Police headquarters today. It was the third and last stop on their march protesting the beating of a black student by University cops.

UC, the "Harvard of the Midwest," is a major weapon in the arsenal of U.S. imperialism, fascist Homeland Security, and racist terror. It’s a warmaker, strike-breaker and racist slumlord. Its murderous alumni include Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading war criminals of the current Iraq War, and Attorney-General John Ashcroft, enforcer of the fascist Patriot Act. Their police force, with arrest powers, patrols the campus and surrounding neighborhoods, from 39th to 64th Sts., and from Stoney Island to Cottage Grove.

On January 24, student Clemmie Carthans was walking to meet a friend after a party when he was stopped by UC cop Jenkins. "What are you doing around here?" Where do you live? Why are you out so late?" Clemmie answered this racist interrogation and the cop moved on. When Clemmie met his friend, a white woman, they hugged and Jenkins ran up behind them yelling, "Ma’am, are you alright? Are you OK?" Even though they both said they knew each other, Jenkins called for back-up, and soon Clemmie was beaten, in handcuffs, and in the back of a squad car. After being subjected to almost an hour of racist abuse, the cops removed the handcuffs and said, "You’re cool. Go home!" Clemmie replied, "I’m not cool. My hands are bleeding, my mouth is busted and you’re going to hear from me again!"

The demonstration began at the Administration building, where a delegation presented petitions with over 800 signatures demanding University action against their cops. It marched to the site of the actual beating for another rally, and finally to police headquarters, where a preliminary police "investigation" found that nothing ever happened!

The racist assault on Clemmie is what neighborhood youth get as a steady diet. Recently about 200 mostly black and Latin workers were fired from UC Hospitals for parking in the wrong lot! Contract negotiations are underway for both the Hospitals and the University, covering thousands of workers. While University President Randall boasts about having raised half of a $2 billion fund drive, the bosses are shredding campus and hospital workers’ health care and job security. Meanwhile, the bankers and billionaires who have been trained by, are tied to, and run the UC, are moving full speed ahead with imperialist war and fascism.

PLP will use all of these struggles to rip the "liberal" mask off this "ivory tower." Communist revolution will destroy universities like this, and the murderous profit system they serve. A UC presence on May Day will be the next measure of our success.

Building PLP:

a name="Anti-Racist Struggle Helps Workers Fight Bosses’ Ideas">">"nti-Racist Struggle Helps Workers Fight Bosses’ Ideas

CHICAGO, IL, March 15 — "I really underestimated the hold that the bosses’ ideas had on the union leadership." Those remarks by a Stroger Cook County Hospital worker reflect how the struggle to stop racist firings here is spreading the fight against racism, overcoming dangerous illusions and building a stronger PLP. The bosses are threatening to fire eight licensed, high-seniority black respiratory therapists on March 31 if they fail to pass a useless "certification" exam.

We’re not only struggling to defeat the bosses’ racist attacks against workers and patients but we’re also fighting the bosses’ ideas within our own ranks. A good sign is that at a PLP club meeting, 11 workers and professionals took more than 125 May Day tickets to begin organizing their friends, families and co-workers.

The inaction of the new "reform" leadership of SEIU Local 73-HC only whets the bosses’ appetite. The misleaders refused to finance or even "loan" the workers money for a weekend review class. The "best" they could do was request an extension of the March 31 deadline, which the bosses quickly refused.

Meanwhile, PLP organized a forum of 50 students at nearby Malcolm X College to support the therapists. One teacher brought a class of respiratory therapy students. We’re organizing professionals and students to tutor the therapists in their homes to help them pass the exam. Meanwhile, workers are collecting more signatures on a petition demanding an end to the racist firings, to be presented to the bosses in the near future. We’re struggling with the workers to more boldly confront the bosses and union leaders, relying primarily on the regular readers and distributors of CHALLENGE.

This campaign is one of a thousand battles that can be waged here. The workers face endless attacks and patient care is a racist horror. This is the "shock and awe" that will set the stage for the coming contract fight in the fall.

Public health and all vital social services are being gutted to pay for the continued occupation of Iraqi oil fields and the fascist Homeland Security police state. Patients wait 48 hours in the Emergency Room for a bed, or over 24 hours in the Pharmacy for a prescription. This reflects how racism is the cutting edge of fascism and imperialist war.

The heat of class war and political struggle will help us deepen our ties to new and future members of the Party. From this fight we hope to bring a bloc of County workers to the PLP Dinner on April 3, celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the integration of Marquette Park. (See p. 5)

A few weeks later, Carol O’Neal, a dietician and chief steward who was fired last year for being "behind in her paperwork," will have her arbitration hearing. More than 100 workers rallied to her defense then, facing down Chicago and Hospital cops. We plan to give them more of the same, and build a bigger and bolder May Day. No matter what happens on March 31, PLP and the workers will be stronger than before.

Protest Racist Cop Murders in N.J.

JERSEY CITY, NJ, March 15 — Clearly understanding his role in the racist and anti-working-class judicial system serving and protecting the bosses’ system, Weehawken cop Alejandro Jaramillo pled not guilty today to killing high school student José Luis Ives last July 16. That night the now-suspended cop Jaramillo brutally beat the youth unconscious. He died after being in a coma for eight days.

The hearing lasted 10 minutes while the parents of José Luis and 30 supporters were searched at the courthouse entrance, delayed long enough to prevent their presence in the courtroom. The angry parents said the judge should have waited until they were allowed inside. Outraged at this, they held a protest outside the courthouse. Judge Kevin Callahan set April 29 for another hearing to review the evidence.

Cop Jaramillo senses victory following the dropping of charges the week before against the four cops who caused the death of Santiago Villanueva. In 2002, when Villanueva suffered an epileptic attack at his factory job in Bloomfield, the cops said they "thought he was on drugs," so instead of helping him, they choked him to death. The cops got away with racist murder because the judge used a technicality, saying no one could identify by name or badge number the cop responsible for this murder. This means cops now have another license to kill with impunity — "group murder." A protest against this murder was held outside the Newark courthouse. More actions are planned.

(Next issue: How cops and their allies are using Community Policing to carry out their racist agenda, including the role of Rutgers’ Professor Robert Kelling and his book "Broken Windows" in this campaign.)

a name="Bosses’ Health ‘Reforms’ Won’t Solve Workers’ Needs"></a>Boss"s’ Health ‘Reforms’ Won’t Solve Workers’ Needs

CALIFORNIA — "People with employer-based health insurance feel that universal health insurance would give us a lower standard of care," the union rep told a chapter meeting. "But employer-based health care is on the way out. If SB2 [requiring employers to pay for insurance] is voted down in November, and if the grocery workers lose their fight to maintain company-paid insurance, it’ll be gone. Conservatives are calling for a ‘consumer-based’ plan with individual health savings accounts and tax credits. [Democratic state senator] Sheila Kuehl’s universal health insurance bill will be the only alternative."

"So we’re between a rock and a hard place," a worker responded. "Privatization will mean more inequality and worse health care, but Kuehl’s plan will lower the standard of care too. Labor shouldn’t get suckered into supporting the Democrats’ ‘lesser evil’ health plan. We need a better response." Heads were nodding, but nobody voiced what most needs to be said: This health care crisis is caused by capitalism, and the only solution is revolution.

"Whose problem is health care?" asked business writer Daniel Gross (New York Times, 1/8/04) Ours, obviously. Sixteen percent of U.S. workers and their families have no health insurance. That includes 20% of black families and 34% of Latino/as. For insured workers, rising costs and shrinking benefits are major contract issues.

It’s also a problem for U.S. bosses. "American manufacturers’ costs exceed those of [their] counterparts," Gross writes. "One of the main culprits is health care." U.S. corporations, especially large industrial firms, pay more for health costs compared to capitalist rivals. They "compensate for higher health care costs by holding down growth in wages" and cutting retirees’ benefits, but that’s not enough. "Health reform is a fiscal imperative," said a senior official of the National Economic Council in the mid-1990s. That means: make the workers pay, either individually or as taxpayers.

Bosses’ Reforms Mean Rationing for Workers

International capitalist competition is a big reason why U.S. bosses can’t reform their way to better health care for the working class. They must fight to maintain profits while pouring all the money they can find into the military.

U.S. bosses will focus health care expenditures on guaranteeing a workforce for war production and the military. The rest of us — including retired and disabled workers, the unemployed and those with jobs not directly related to imperialist war-making — will find health care strictly rationed according to the bosses’ needs. That’s the real meaning of "health care reform."

Big insurance companies, tightly linked to the giant financial institutions through which the rulers rule, will have a large say. (The Clintons’ first choice for Attorney-General, while pushing health reform, was insurance-company lawyer Zoë Baird.) Some bosses, such as the very profitable drug companies, will be reined in for the "greater good" of the ruling class as a whole. But the working class — black and Latin workers especially — will be the big losers.

Liberal Politicians, Union Officials Mislead Workers

How can the racist rulers build national unity and get workers to sacrifice "blood and treasure" for continual war on behalf of a system that cannot even provide decent health care? That’s the liberals’ job, singling out particular companies or industries but never indicting the capitalist system as a whole. Politicians complain about drug companies or malpractice lawyers, while the AFL-CIO calls for "affordable health care.

Last year, California Democrats outvoted Republicans and passed Senate Bill 2 ("Pay or Play"), requiring companies to pay 80% of workers’ health insurance premiums or else pay a tax to help care for the uninsured. When the California Chamber of Commerce challenged SB2, claiming it would be a hardship for small businesses, large corporations (more often unionized) responded: "We have to pay for benefits, why shouldn’t they?"

Meanwhile, Kuehl is fine-tuning SB 921, which would set up a state-run single-payer health insurance program. A 1999 state-mandated study concluded that "under a single payer health insurance system, California could afford to cover all California residents at no new cost to the state" by incorporating existing programs like Medical, negotiating economies of scale, decreasing use of expensive emergency rooms for primary care, and getting physicians to ration care. Other cost controls include postponement of new benefits, cancellation for inappropriate provider utilization, co-pays and deductibles, and eligibility waiting periods. That’s the real purpose of SB921, which states bluntly that, so far, "efforts to control health care costs and growth of health care spending have been unsuccessful."

Fight Racist Health Care ‘Reform’

Health reform advocates say they want to help workers lacking any health care. In the short run, they might gain a little from SB921. But it really would reduce benefits for most workers while intensifying racist inequality and rationing. Black and Latin workers, forced into the hardest and most dangerous jobs, and pushed into the most crowded, polluted, and unhealthiest neighborhoods, have the greatest health care needs. Rationing would hit them the hardest.

The capitalists are jockeying over how to organize their profit-saving, racist health-care rationing system. Wherever the issue arises — in unions, schools, workplaces and professional associations — we must fight cuts in care while exposing capitalism’s inability to provide decent health care for the working class. We must organize to destroy this racist system that is incapable of meeting the workers’ most basic needs.

a name="Phony ‘Leftists’ Help IBM Shift Low-Wage Hi-tech Jobs to India"></">Ph"ny ‘Leftists’ Help IBM Shift Low-Wage Hi-tech Jobs to India

India’s government announced that IBM is planning to double its work-force in Calcutta to 4,000 by December, making it the second largest IBM workforce after Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley. This is part of IBM’s globalization plan to better compete with other computer and software companies.

IBM wants to take advantage of the huge pool of engineers and other technical staff available in Calcutta, which, like those of Bangalore, work for a fraction of the wages received by similar workers in the U.S. and Western Europe.

Recently IBM announced it will export 4,700 jobs overseas. This is adding to the debate in the U.S. electoral campaign over outsourcing, even though it represents just a small number of the millions of job lost in the U.S. the last few years. It’s the productivity drive that’s causing job losses here, which increases the bosses’ profits by using fewer workers to produce more. (See pages 1, 2.)

An important factor aiding IBM’s move to Calcutta is its government (and that of the West Bengal state where the city is located), run by the so-called Communist Party of India — CPI(M)— ("Marxist"). These fake leftists are now guaranteeing a stable workforce: "Calcutta is an unusual choice…. Until recently, the city best known as the home to the late Mother Teresa wasn’t a hot destination for software companies, while West Bengal was better known for its long-serving Communist government and labor strikes." (Wall Street Journal, 3/12/04)

But the WSJ added that this is now changing`; the CPI (M) government is "discouraging unions from striking."

These phony leftists are acting as agents of the bosses. Interesting enough, the CPI (M) and other such groups here used to portray themselves as "defenders of Indian capitalism" against imperialist competition. One reason IBM is increasing its Indian operation is to "match cost advantages enjoyed by their smaller Indian rivals." (WSJ).

For many years, CHALLENGE has criticized fake leftists like CPI (M) for being revisionists (acting for the bosses inside the working class). Day by day these traitors sink even lower. It’s time for workers to join us in rebuilding a new revolutionary communist movement based on fighting all the bosses and building a society without capitalism, where production serves the needs of the working class.

a name="Red Ideas Strengthen Garment Worker’s Resolve to Fight Boss">">"ed Ideas Strengthen Garment Worker’s Resolve to Fight Boss

"I want my pay now," I yelled at the factory owner while pounding my fist on the table. I had never done anything like this, and I was afraid. "I’m changing," I said to myself, but I felt good. I felt strong.

I’m a garment worker and a single mother. All my life I’ve been passive. I don’t know why. I’ve always been afraid to confront the bosses or contradict others. Many times the owner has made me cry and feel alone. Before I thought this kind of "humility" was a virtue. But now I want to teach my children that they shouldn’t be the way I was; they should fight back and not fear confronting anything.

Some years ago I met a co-worker, a communist friend, who always talked to me about workers’ struggles, about organizations that fight for change, etc. Although we stopped working in the same factory, we continued being friends. She always told me, "We must fight back; we can’t give in. We workers are strong." I believe her consistency helped me change.

The day of the confrontation, the owner had changed the pay day from once a week to once every 21 days. When I told her I had to pay my rent, she said, "That’s not my problem." Like water that finally boils over, everything my friend had told me flooded my mind. I reacted with such strength and conviction that the boss got nervous and started to cry! Then she asked me to forgive her and started praying to a saint, saying she would no longer treat the workers badly. I don’t believe her, but at least now I’m not the same. We’re organizing in the factory and fighting together with the other workers, who were very happy to hear about my action.

I’m learning about communist ideas. For example, recently we went with some other workers to the city center. When we were returning on the bus, we started discussing a book about political economy, commodities, use value and exchange value. I don’t understand a lot about these things, but what I’m learning seems good. Also, for the first time, I participated in a study group about dialectical materialism. Now I feel more secure and have more confidence in the Party and in communist ideas.

A garment worker who is changing

The Raid On Nazi Chicago HQ, April 7, 1978:

The Battle For Marquette Park

In Part I of this series, we described the long, racist history of Marquette Park. The segregated Southwest Side neighborhood was a bastion of racism, with a large population of resettled Nazis from Lithuania, the Ukraine, etc., plus cops and city workers.

Black workers had been segregated to the east, but a growing number of black auto and steel workers, teachers, city and county workers, were leading a migration west.

Early in 1977, the Nazis announced plans to march in Skokie, IL, a Jewish suburb with more than 7,000 Holocaust survivors. Virtually every a day newspaper or TV stories appeared about the Nazis and their leader, Frank Collin.

A movement quickly sprang up to "Keep the Nazis out of Skokie." The "liberal" ACLU intervened to defend the Nazis’ "right to free speech," and took their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in their favor. The Nazis reaped millions of dollars in free publicity while racist attacks on black workers increased near the Marquette Park area. Between the media, the ACLU and unending racist attacks, the Nazis built up an aura of invincibility. It was then that PLP decided to smash them on their home turf, to stop them from spreading their racist filth and to end the violent attacks on black workers.

On July 2, 1977, PLP organized 150 black, Latin and white workers to demonstrate in front of Nazi headquarters during their "National Convention." Surprised by the PLP advance security team, the Nazis and police rushed out, to be quickly beaten down. A picture of a uniformed Nazi being beaten over the head by a multi-racial group became very popular here.

But the media never tired of covering the Nazis. The fascists still talked of marching in Skokie, but PLP warned that their intention was to strengthen their hold on Marquette Park, where the city had banned all demonstrations.

In 1978, a plan was developed to attack the Nazis in their headquarters. The fascists had made an annual ritual of bombing and attacking Englewood’s black workers on Hitler’s birthday, so we decided to attack their weekly Friday night meeting on April 7.

Members and friends of PLP volunteered for the raid. Very serious thought was given to this dangerous action. While some disagreed and others were fearful, a committed group of 20 men and women was organized.

On that evening, this group gathered at a comrade’s house and dedicated the action to: (1) The millions of Jews murdered by the Nazis, especially those of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising; (2) The black workers of Englewood, especially those who fought the Nazis’ attempt to march there; and, (3) The Red Army soldiers who destroyed the Nazis at Stalingrad and saved the world from fascism.

PLP’ers arrived at the Nazi headquarters armed with bats, ax handles and pipes. We gained entry with a simple trick. Two white women knocked on the door, pretending to be students. They asked if they could come in and listen. When the door opened, the 20 attackers pushed their way in and immediately set upon the Nazis.

Many of the 30 Nazis and supporters fled out the back door. Many of those remaining were beaten down. One Nazi had his skull fractured; another had his arm broken. Bats and clubs were flying everywhere, as racists dropped like flies.

On a prearranged signal we left, leaving the Nazi office in a shambles, with "PLP" proudly painted on the front of the building. One Nazi started shooting down the block, grazing one comrade. Another comrade, Susana Findley, was injured and accidentally left behind in the commotion. She had bravely run to the back of the room, and unknown to the rest us, was injured and unable to retreat.

While in the hospital, she was charged with several felonies. A judge threw out the charges due to conflicting testimony from several Nazis, but the State’s Attorney re-indicted her and tried her. PLP organized a nationwide campaign to support her, including demonstrations at every court appearance. Eventually she beat the charges.

The raid’s effects were felt immediately. The next Friday night, Nazi headquarters looked more like Hitler’s bunker. The fascists had barricaded themselves inside; only their members were allowed in. Supporters feared being seen near the office. It was the second nail in their coffin. May Day 1979 would finish them off.

(Part III — The May Day March in Marquette Park)

Rulers Now Sending Grandpas to Iraq

Staff Sergeant James Brown, a 53-year-old grandfather of seven, standing guard at Fort Irwin, Calif. Like many reservists and National Guard soldiers, he was activated to be deployed in Iraq, forced to leave his job at a seed company.

The bosses’ endless wars impel them to call up even granddads, and there’s no end in sight. CIA director George Tenet, testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, presented a "bleak vision of a war on terrorism without end, in which even the destruction of al-Qaeda would not make America safe." (The Telegraph, London, 2/25) — all this to protect the profits of Exxon, Halliburton, Chase Morgan & Co., from Baghdad to Kabul to Port-au-Prince. This is the future capitalism offers all workers. Let’s organize to fight for a world without bosses and their wars. Join the communist PLP and march with us on May Day.

a name="Ford Profits Spill Workers’ Blood">">"ord Profits Spill Workers’ Blood

MEXICO CiTY—Four months ago, Cándido Rivera was being treated in Ford’s medical service department, sick with a chronic gastrointestinal illness. The company, claiming production was slow, let him go. They couldn’t care less about this worker.

Without a job Cándido went to a public clinic and was immediately diagnosed with stomach cancer. They removed part of his intestines and stomach. Now, Cándido is close to death, with no health insurance. For 18 years, this worker gave his life to Ford. Now they reward him with unemployment and no health care.

The medical service at the Ford Plant in Cuautitlán, Mexico, is more than inefficient; it’s criminal. Their main "diagnosis" is "don’t send a sick worker home, give him an aspirin and order him back to the assembly line." The company keeps a medical record for each worker. When they detect one with a serious illness, they get rid of him.

Whether medical negligence or premeditated murder, Ford is responsible for the possible death of Cándido and of many other workers. The plant’s deadly chemicals and fumes cause many workers’ illnesses, and Ford’s fascist medical policies worsen them.

Toyota had replaced Ford as the world’s No. 2 auto producer. In capitalism’s dog-eat-dog competition of capitalism, particularly in this era of endless wars and economic crises, Ford must intensify the exploitation of its workers to compete with its rivals. Murdering workers is just another by-product of making Ford more competitive. The criminal capitalist system must be crushed by workers, to build a society based on production for our needs, not for the bosses’ profits. The communist PLP fights for that society.

Many workers have been visiting Cándido on his death bed. He’s a kind man, loved by his fellow workers because he’s been a fighter. He always showed his class hatred against capitalist exploitation. His fellow workers will never forget him. We will honor him by winning more autoworkers to fight for communism.

a name="GI Says Army’s ‘Psychotic’ Cases Are Really Anti-War Views"></a>"I Says Army’s ‘Psychotic’ Cases Are Really Anti-War Views

Nine soldiers in my National Guard unit are either en route to Iraq or are already there. Although they all volunteered, the imminent threat of everyone being activated has destroyed the already low morale of myself and many other troops. To prevent soldiers’ personal objections to deployment from becoming politicized, a psychiatrist spoke to us about coping with combat-induced stress.

Her talk was disturbing because it implied that soldiers who freak out during combat situations are somehow personally weak and dysfunctional. I remarked that soldiers who become stressed out by the genocide against the Iraqis and the senseless murders of fellow soldiers are hardly being irrational. Many of the "psychotic" cases of stress in Iraq are actually intense — though unformulated — political objections to the invasion.

Though I received a warm reception from several soldiers, the psychiatrist quickly co-opted my statement by mentioning that she too, an Army officer, personally disagreed with the war. But to convince us that even cynical soldiers must carry out orders, she told us she would cope with her disagreements and carry out her duty, as should all soldiers.

I thought I had lost the debate, but some soldiers saw through this officer’s pacification strategy. One approached me later and told me she liked what I said, and that the officer basically told us to shut up and follow orders. Another soldier turned around and said he agreed that the officer basically ignored the question of politically induced stress.

My unit failed to convince the soldiers to turn political objectives to the invasion into personal, "private problems" that the Army could solve. For many, the idea of "coping" was clearly another way of forcing us to fight and die for a war we’re not won to fighting. The military will face increased resistance from soldiers like me who voluntarily or forcefully become activated.

Red GI

a name="The WW2 Communist-led Insurrection That Defeated the Nazis in Northern Italy —Part I">">"he WW2 Communist-led Insurrection That Defeated the Nazis in Northern Italy —Part I

One of the least publicized events of the Second World War was the communist-led mass insurrection that threatened a working-class seizure of power in Northern Italy in the spring of 1945. From June 1943 to 1945, the Communist Party of Italy (CPI) grew from 5,000 members to 1.7 million. Its most important base was in the industrial north where it led the anti-fascist Resistance movement. By the end of 1943, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS-forerunner of the CIA) classified the Resistance as a primarily revolutionary political movement, not a military one.

Early in 1944, with the U.S. and British armies fighting in Italy’s south, the CPI, the Socialist Party and the smaller leftist Action Party formed the Committee of National Liberation of Northern Italy (CLNAI). The communists were the largest and leading section. By March 1945, the OSS estimated the armed Partisans of the CLNAI at 182,000, with 500,000 potential recruits, overwhelmingly workers and peasants. They were tying down 14 German army divisions.

The communists led this movement partly because of "their outstanding record of resistance during the fascist era, but even more from being the Italian representative of Communist Russia. Russia’s charisma in this period cannot be overstressed. Tens of thousands of Italian workers looked to Russia for their model and to the Red Army for the decisive contribution to the creation of Communism in their own country. Stalin was a working-class hero, Togliatti [CPI chairman] his trusted emissary in Italy." ("A History of Contemporary Italy," by Paul Ginsborg; Penguin Books, 1990; p. 54)

"In Arezzo, for example, the Psychological Warfare Branch reported:….The support of the majority of people who style themselves Communists seems to derive from the success of the Russians against the Germans. People say that Communism must have something in it if it can produce such results." (Report No. 29, Aug. 5, 1944, quoted in Ginsborg, pp. 466-67)

In the North, workers were starving between the cold and mass unemployment. In the late winter of 1944, the Resistance organized nearly a million workers in mass strikes, lasting eight days in the industrial city of Turin. All this, in the teeth of the Nazi army which had taken over military operations from the fading Mussolini fascists.

The Resistance was growing by the tens of thousands. In fact, "where the Partisans had gained complete control, they set up their own republics:…Carnia in the northeast with 150,000 inhabitants, Montefiorino in the central Apennines with 50,000…, Ossola in the extreme north with 70,000. " (Ginsborg, p. 55) In August, the Tuscan Partisans took control of Florence north of the Arno.

The Nazis struck back viciously, massacring whole villages, transferring entire workshops with their workers to Germany. They took 15 political prisoners into Milan’s piazza, executed them and left their bodies for the entire day as a "lesson" to the population.

But on April 10, 1945 the Communists issued their famous Directive No. 16, ordering the Resistance to prepare for armed insurrection. Between April 24-26, Genoa, Turin and Milan rose against the Nazis.

In Genoa, the Partisans faced two full German army divisions. The Germans had mined all bridges and tunnels and the entire port area, and prepared the industries for demolition. The Partisans defied the threats and began the insurrection at 4 AM on the 23rd. By 10 AM they had seized city hall, the telephone exchange, police headquarters and the prison. Clandestine action squads mushroomed from 5,000 to 20,000 men and women, young and old, armed with weapons seized from Fascist forces. The Germans threatened to kill 20 women and children if not allowed to leave. The Partisans then said they’d execute 1,000 German prisoners in their hands and all those taken thereafter. Then the Germans heard a reserve division had been surrounded by Partisans in the mountain and had surrendered so they were forced to give up as well, It was the first time in Italian history that a fully-equipped army corps had laid down its arms to "civilians."

The Partisans occupied the auto factories in Turin and drove the Nazis from that city.

On April 24, the 3rd Garibaldi Brigade stormed the fascist barracks on the outskirts of Milan while fighting began in and around the factories. Both groups coordinated their actions, and Milan was seized in two days. Mussolini had been there, but fled towards Switzerland with his Nazi SS escort, disguised as a German soldier. On April 27, the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade blocked their path. Il Duce was recognized, taken prisoner and shot, defying Allied requests to the contrary. He was hung by his heels, along with his mistress and other fascist leaders, in the very piazza where the Nazis had executed the 15 political prisoners.

By May 1 the Resistance had freed all of northern Italy. They executed up to 15,000 fascists and Nazi collaborators. The CLNAI was in full control of the state apparatus. The U.S. and Britain now had a problem. "How to take physical possession of northern Italy, for revolution in the wake of fascism was for them merely the prospect of a Pyrrhic victory," [one that’s too costly].

(Next issue: why there was no communist-led revolution in Italy after the war).

Memories of World War 2: Living Through the London Blitz

The sidewalls at the end of the cellar gave way. Masonry collapsed, though the structure held. We could still hear reverberations of the bomb in our ears. The dank, evil-smelling drains suddenly opened, emitting an awful smell. Our eyes and ears were filled with what seemed to my young eyes as a million rats, running and shrieking without fear, from one broken wall to another. Masonry was still falling. My grandma, ever ready, lit another candle, replacing the one blown out by the blast. She began singing an old music hall song, "She’s My Lassie from Lancashire." This was civilian life in Britain during World War II.

After a cold, miserable night huddled in the broken-down cellar, we returned upstairs — my mum, my brother, my grandma and me. The "all-clear" had sounded very late, but we waited, fearing what was destroyed above. The old Victorian house still stood on Calcott Road, but nearby houses had been destroyed. The air raid wardens, neighbors and police were looking for people under the rubble. They brought out Mrs. Greene, looking like a smashed, flattened doll. They took out others, all dead. Their house had taken a direct hit.

People soon went about their daily routine. Grandma made tea, and mum made powdered eggs with toasted, gray-looking bread and margarine. We ate and talked about the bombing the night before.

* * * * *

Britain entered the war on September 3, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland. I was a young child. My mother, my brother and I, along with the majority of London’s children, left the city for farms, small villages and seaside resorts throughout Britain. People in more rural areas "guest-housed" city families to save the children. We lived in Dorset. We all had our ration cards, our new identification cards and our newly-issued gas masks. Mine hung around my shoulder. After we hadn’t been attacked in about six months, people began to drift back to their London homes. We did too. This was the "Phony War." Britain and France were waiting and hoping for Hitler to attack the Soviet Union.

In the latter part of 1940, the Blitz started. Daily air raids on the south of England involved hundreds of Nazi bombers. At first they attacked military installations, the docks and the hundreds of small factories producing airplane parts. But soon the terror bombing began, mostly at night, on the working-class homes in the surrounding areas. This frightening daily terror profoundly affected me. When air raid sirens wailed, people ran for the cellar, if they had one, or any shelters they could find. Air-raid shelters had been built on many streets. Many people took shelter in the subway system. The London Underground was built deep under the city’s clay and bedrock. We could hear waves of bombers flying over every day, and dogfights between the Royal Air Force and the Nazi Luftwaffe. The ground would shake. We heard terrifying loud noises, fire engine bells and shouting in the streets. We sat terrified during each bombing wave, hoping the next bomb would miss us. Soon we got used to it.

Thinking of those years, all I can picture in my mind’s eye is rubble everywhere, streets littered with bits of broken airplanes, downed trees, destroyed houses. Everyone had black window shades so the city’s lights could not be seen from the air. I remember bright moonlight piercing through a little pinhole in my bedroom nightshade, as I wondered if Hitler could see my room through that little opening. The bombing continued off and on for a number of years.

After listening to the radio news, my family would always talk about the hoped-for death of Nazism. My father was attached to the Navy; my uncle Joe joined the Army. Right away he grew a mustache, in the style of Joseph Stalin. When we first saw him in his uniform, my grandmother exclaimed, "You look like Uncle Joe!" My uncle beamed. Joseph Stalin and the Red Army were well regarded in our household, and many working-class families. We would always ask, "Uncle Joe, are you going to kick Hitler?" and he would laugh. My uncle’s experiences during the Second World War turned him into a communist, and he joined the Communist Party.

From Red Mate

LETTERS

Learning by Doing At Pro-Aristide March

Recently some comrades, including two high school students, attended a pro-Aristide rally in Brooklyn. As we joined the rally, people grabbed our leaflets, translated into Creole, which attacked Aristide and capitalism for the poverty in Haiti. One woman shook our hand and thanked us for being there. Others read our signs — "Workers of the World, Unite," and "Workers Need to Dump Capitalism" — and nodded agreement.

We had distributed about 30 leaflets when one woman handed it back to us, screaming, "I don’t want this." Another man followed her lead. Soon there was a small but angry group yelling at us to leave, calling us "C.I.A." for our politics opposing Aristide (who Clinton returned to power in 1994 with 20,000 U.S. troops) and the Tontons Macoute "rebels" (put in power by Bush’s Marines). For a while we sold CHALLENGE across the street and then headed for a forum on Haiti we had organized. Unfortunately at this morning rally we were a small, mainly non-Creole-speaking group.

As our forum was starting, we heard the Haitian demonstration march by. We now had a larger group of about a dozen, some of whom spoke Creole. The youth at the meeting decided that since the forum was about Haiti we should join the march. We made signs in Creole which read "Capitalism is the Problem" and went out with our remaining 470 leaflets from the morning.

The demonstration had grown to several hundred. As we joined it, we received a much better response. We sold many CHALLENGES and distributed most of the leaflets. One young person said that another man even danced with him. Although there was still some disagreement with our ideas, many people agreed that the capitalist system and its cronies were responsible for Haiti’s chaos and poverty.

Although ultimately three of the organizers asked us to leave — because we dared to criticize Aristide and the "rebels" as agents of capitalism and imperialism — we accomplished our goals. The youth, especially the two who had been with us in the morning, saw many workers responding positively to the party’s critique of capitalism and to our solution, communism, even while we were being attacked. The youth also saw the importance of being part of the action and bringing our message to the working class as opposed to just talking amongst ourselves. We were all excited about our actions that day and about our coming May Day organizing efforts.

Brooklyn Comrade

Object and Organize

Sgt. Camillo Mejía of North Miami, Fla. has caused quite an uproar. His National Guard unit declared him AWOL when he failed to report for duty. He had come home from Iraq in October, on leave after having served there for five months. He's refusing to return to Iraq, declaring himself a Conscientious Objector (CO). He is remorseful over a shooting in which several Iraqi civilians were killed. "This is a war over oil," he said, "and I don't think any soldier should enlist to fight for oil." He added that he was ready to go to jail for his beliefs.

Mejía first reported to a Massachusetts Air Force base where he declared himself a CO. They ordered him back to his unit, the 1st Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment in Florida. Upon his arrival at the Ft. Lauderdale airport, he declared himself a CO while being supported by his mother, an aunt, his lawyer and Oliver Perez, who served with him in Iraq. "I fought alongside him in many battles," said Perez. "He is not a coward. He is a brave leader and should not be jailed." (El Diario-La Prensa, NYC, 3/17)

Mejias, an immigrant from Nicaragua, spent three years in the Army and five in the National Guard. He was studying at the Univ. of Miami when he was activated for duty in Iraq. Like many other soldiers, he is part of the potential weak link in the U.S. bosses' war machine. Two more soldiers in a medical unit in Iraq have also declared themselves COs and want to be sent home. These soldiers increasingly are realizing that the rulers' endless wars only serve the interests of Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Texaco, Shell, etc.

Although their courage is to be admired, it would be more productive to stay in and fight to win other soldiers to organize against the profiteering bosses' wars.

A NYC Reader

China & U.S.: Whose $ Are Helping Whom?

Recently I attended a meeting where workers were analyzing the Party’s work. It began with a report about inter-imperialist rivalry, a presentation about petro dollars and euros. The reporter said that, the U.S. has the world’s most powerful military, it’s also the number one debtor nation. Another participant said that China is now the world’s number one exporter and is investing here, helping finance the U.S. deficit.

Then another worker, who’s very active on his job, thanked the comrades for their reports. "This will really help me on my job," he said. "A lot of my friends think the U.S. is funding China. They think that’s one of the reasons for the attacks on our benefits. But it’s just the opposite. China’s helping fund the U.S. debt."

This worker is fighting to bring an entire world view to his friends. The more he and they do that, the more the workers respond with more questions and discussion, and the more they read CHALLENGE.

A Comrade

a name="‘The Passion’ and ‘DaVinci Code’ Book Mirror Church Split"></a>‘T"e Passion’ and ‘DaVinci Code’ Book Mirror Church Split

Some time ago, CHALLENGE ran an article on the visible struggle within worldwide Catholicism over the growing child abuse scandal. It argued that this battle reflected underlying inter-imperialist tensions, especially the drive by U.S. bosses to undermine the allegiance of U.S. Catholics to the European-papacy-run Church. This is relative to all the hoopla about Mel Gibson’s box office smash, "The Passion of the Christ," and the best-selling book, "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown.

Gibson’s movie revives the medieval passion play that focused almost exclusively on the torture and brutalization of Jesus, the son of God according to the Christian theology/mythology. The passion plays were popular during Europe’s Black Plague and the 100 Years War, an era of widespread misery among much of the population. Perhaps the graphic depictions of torture and execution somewhat mirrored real life and provided some solace to people living amidst massive exploitation, disease and death.

But some passion plays blamed Jews for Jesus’ death. This spawned notorious anti-Semitic writings and ultimately racist attacks on Jews. Gibson’s movie promotes this anti-Semitism.

It’s hard to know where this stuff fits into the broader politics and ideology of Catholicism. The Catholic Church, under Pope Pius XII, made all kinds of deals with the Nazis before, during and after World War II. Church officials helped many Nazis escape to South America. Gibson’s father, Hutton Gibson, is a long-standing Nazi-defending holocaust-"denier." Gibson belongs to a fundamentalist Catholic sect that’s even to the right of the Vatican, and rejects Vatican II (when the Church adopted the position that Jews were not responsible for Jesus’ death). So the Gibson movie reflects a particularly vicious, racist and fascist brand of Catholicism.

In "The DaVinci Code," the Church is the bad guy, especially the secretive, conservative Opus Dei group that figures heavily in the plot. The book shines a positive light on a pro-feminist tendency within Catholicism which says that Mary Magdalene was really the political companion and lover of Jesus and a leader in her own right of a movement that was far more egalitarian and pro-woman than the dominant, more conservative tendency. The conservative church attacked Mary Magdalene as a prostitute and forbade the ordination of women, excluding them from power. The Holy Grail was not a cup but actually the documentation of Mary Magdalene’s true historical role.

There’s lot’s more to the story (it’s not a bad read), but this book promotes the idea that the Catholic Church, governed by the Vatican, is a reactionary force that has long suppressed progressive forces and ideas. This fits right in with the anti-child abuse movement and further reinforces the split within worldwide Catholicism.

These cultural phenomena are very much on people’s minds these days and can make for valuable political discussion among our friends and co-workers. Readers who know more about it, or have had some recent discussions, should write in.

Mid-Western Comrade

From Altar Boy to Communist

The article "Did Jesus Exist?" (CHALLENGE, 3/17) has caused some disagreements among friends. Even some religious skeptics believe there was a Jesus. I was raised as a Catholic, educated by nuns in early childhood and was an altar boy. I believed there was a Jesus who went through Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection. Hell, I even participated as a Roman soldier in a Holy Week procession marking the crucifixion. But after being involved in the anti-war, anti-racist struggles of the ’60s and early ’70s, and studying historical and dialectical materialism, I began to understand.

First of all, the whole idea of dying and returning from death during Harvest time began with the gods of Ancient Babylon (modern Iraq). Christianity copied this and many other ancient pagan rites from the Roman Empire (like Christmas).

The name Jesus (Joshua in Greek) was used by many rebel leaders in ancient Judea. The Talmud mentions one from about 100 B.C. But there was no Jesus as portrayed in the Bible and by Gibson. The REAL question is, are the New Testament Gospels basically historical? The Gospels are the New Testaments’ sources for the life of Jesus. The writings of "St. Paul" — himself probably not a real person — do not discuss Jesus as though he was an historical person. No, the Gospels are theology. The book by Price, "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man," debunks the idea that Jesus Christ existed.

Most people with religious beliefs want a better world, a society without war, oppression and racist terror. They are the victims of the collaboration of capitalism with the religious establishment, from Rome to Baghdad to New York City. They can and will be won to fight for a better world since their interests contradict those of their religious leaders. But we must wage ideological struggle with them about the anti-working-class ideas pushed by the rulers — racism, individualism, sexism, patriotism and religion. We must fight the idea that the more you suffer now the better you will be in the after life (like the Passion or the Islamic jihadists say).

A. Teo

Atheist Says Class Struggle Primary

In CHALLENGE’s "Did Jesus Exist" article (3/17), the author makes good points about the Mel Gibson Christ film being used to promote anti-Semitism and U.S. imperialism against Islamic fundamentalists. But the title and article make the arrogant claim that a man who hundreds of millions of workers see as a symbol of their resistance to oppression and who died for his people — simply never existed!

According to the article, "There is historical evidence for…even James, ‘the brother of the Lord,’ called Jesus’ brother in the Book of Acts, but NOT for Jesus." But that statement raises the question, if there is historical evidence for the existence of Jesus’ brother, how could Jesus not have existed? Whether Jesus existed or not, a more important question is, does PLP win Catholics to the Party by opening up a debate on issues like this or by, for instance, showing how the Pope and his Church are aiding imperialists to oppress Catholics?

Billions of people are born into families and societies that accept religion’s mythology but many were able to engage in revolutionary and workers’ struggles. One relevant example is devout Irish Catholics who rejected religious non-violence and learned how to organize and fight against British imperialism. Then they came to the U.S. and used that experience to defeat cops and bosses’ goons and organize the Transport Workers Union (TWU). Mike Quill, union president when it was a mostly Catholic union, said, "We never heard a peep out of the Bishops when we were slaving 12 hours a day and being abused by the bosses, but now that we have a strong union and a 48-hour work-week, the Bishops say we are all communists and going to hell."

I think unity will be earned and more will be learned through class struggle than from debates on mythology.

TWU Catholic turned red

CHALLENGE COMMENTS: Thank you for your letter. As the article says, there is historical evidence for a man named James but not for Jesus. The Book of Acts, which is not history but rather theology/mythology, says this man called James was the brother of Jesus. But again, the Book of Acts and the entire New Testament is not history. They were written one to two centuries after Jesus was supposedly crucified. To make the claim that Jesus didn’t exist isn’t "arrogant" but a matter of scientific and historical analysis. All serious historians know there was no historical Jesus.

But the letter’s main point is that saying Jesus did not exist is not a good way to win people who believe in Christianity to our politics. This raises two questions:

Since 9/11 and the priests’ child abuse scandal, the whole question of religion has become an even more prominent part of the ideological/cultural barrage pushed by the rulers and their media. "The Passion of the Christ" has been seen by tens of millions of people here in the US and worldwide. Religious fundamentalism has become a weapon of war, fascism and racism from the Middle East to Middle America. It would be very opportunist of us not to participate in the ideological debate on this question.

The second question involves organized religion. CHALLENGE has a long history of exposing the Pope, the Ayatollahs, the child-abusing priests, and both the Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists. PLP’ers are active in churches and church-based religious organizations where we debate all these issues with many people, always based on fighting war, racism, fascist terror, and so on. The world communist movement has always attacked religion in all its aspects (since Engels’ "The Origins of Christianity" and many writings by Lenin and others). Historically, communists have attacked religion ideologically and the pro-capitalist church hierarchy while never attacking people with religious beliefs. On the contrary, when we expose organized religion and its concepts, we’re better able to win people involved in class struggle to our politics.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

BELOW ARE EXCERPTS FROM MAINSTREAM NEWSPAPERS THAT CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION:Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly (UK)

Liberals are capitalists too

To the Editor:

Emblazoned across the cover of the Feb. 15 Book Review, as an introduction to your review of "The Working Poor," is the most consequential falsehood in American political culture. "Millions in America are employed but remain poor. Why? No one likes it this way; not liberals, not conservatives."

The sad fact is that they both like it this way. If they didn’t, they would do something about it…rather than continue to reap the (illusory) benefits of cheap labor. (NYT, 3/7)

Iraq war is not vs. terror

The Bush administration…baffled the world when it used an attack by Islamic fundamentalists to justify the overthrow of a brutal but secular regime….

The truth is that Mr. Bush [was] eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of an unrelated war…. By the summer of 2002, bin Laden’s name had disappeared from Mr. Bush’s speeches. It was all Saddam, all the time.

This wasn’t just a rhetorical switch; crucial resources were pulled off the hunt for Al Qaeda, which had attacked America, to prepare for the overthrow of Saddam, who hadn’t. (NYT, 3/16)

Greenspan overlooks poor

Mr. Greenspan’s view is that household balance sheets are "in good shape," and perhaps stronger than ever, because the value of people’s homes and stock portfolios have risen faster than their debts….

Other analysts have begun to dispute Mr. Greenspan’s benign view of rising household debt….

Mortgage foreclosure rates, personal bankruptcies and credit card delinquencies have been rising steadily and at record levels. Most of that stress has taken place in lower-income families, which is why it has not made a big impact on aggregate data about national wealth. (NYT, 3/16)

Kerry won’t calm Mid-east

Mr. Kerry…sought to assure the attendees that he was as strong a supporter of Israel as Mr. Bush….

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League…. said that Mr. Kerry "came very close to where the president is" on several fundamental positions. "There was very little room between him and Bush," he said. (NYT, 3/1)

US has low-wage future

Bush’s own labor department reports that of the 30 occupations that will account for the highest job growth between now and 2010, two-thirds require minimal skills….freight movers, home health aides, janitors, waitresses, security guards, office clerks, and cashiers. The number one job-creator for America’s future? Restaurants, including fast food…. All of these jobs pay pitiful wages. (Jim Hightower)

US trained Haitian army to kill Haitians

The question of the Haitian Army also overshadows the country’s future. Mr. Aristide dissolved it in 1995, the armed rebels have announced its resurrection. The army was created by the American military after it occupied the country and imposed martial law in 1915….

Mary A. Renda, author of "Taking Haiti," an award-winning history of the American occupation, said the Marines created "a military that was intended to be used against the Haitian people."

Many Aristide loyalists are still hiding from rebel death threats and many elites support…the reconstitution of the army, which has always served the elites at the expense of its poor. (NYT, 3/7)

Unions can’t fix capitalism

Today, South Africa’s underclass is bigger than ever. Counting those who have given up the search for work, unemployment has jumped to more than 40 percent….

"If things go on like this, we could experience a new struggle, a class struggle," said Sample Terreblanche, an economist….

At a new marine park in Durban last month…10,000 people showed up to apply for 300 openings….

In other developing countries, legions of unskilled workers have kept down labor costs. But South Africa’s leaders, vowing not to let their nation become the West’s sweatshop, heeded the demands of politically powerful labor unions for new protections and benefits. According to a study conducted in 2000 for the government’s finance department, South Africa’s wages are five times higher than Indonesia’s, even though its workers are only twice as productive….

Investors….weigh…those factors…in deciding where to build plants. (NYT, 3/13)

Page 745 of 770

CHALLENGE, May 26, 2004

Torture Under Capitalism: Business As Usual

Imperialism = Torture And Brutality

May Day Marches And Activities 2004

a name="Cops Can’t Stop Communist May Day March">">"ops Can’t Stop Communist May Day March

Youth Lead PLP Marchers In La Garment Center

West Coast PLP May Day Dinner

Liberal-Led Caravan Takes Right-wing Road

NYC Dinner Reviews Historic May Days, Punctures Lesser-Evil Illusions

Internationalism Championed At Chicago Dinner

Rebuilding The Communist Movement

Red Symbols Shine in El Salvador

a name="Mexico: Workers Greet PLP’ers">">"exico: Workers Greet PLP’ers

a name="Colombia’s Oil Strikers Defy Death-Squad Bosses">">"olombia’s Oil Strikers Defy Death-Squad Bosses

a name="Progressive Labor Party’s 34th May Day Marches On">">"rogressive Labor Party’s 34th May Day Marches On

Keynote Speech At a New York City Dinner

State Of The World Address

Keynote Speech at Chicago PLP Event

Iraq

Politics is primary over weapons….

The Dark Age Must End

Speech from an industrial worker At LA May Day

GIs Are Crucial to Defeat Imperialist Warmakers

a name="‘The Red Flag Has Won!’"></">‘T"e Red Flag Has Won!’

Truckers Must Take Working-Class Route

Pro-War, 2-Tier Contract Splits NYC Workers

a name="Colombia’s Oil Strikers Defy Death-Squad Bosses">">"olombia’s Oil Strikers Defy Death-Squad Bosses

Vancouver, Canada: Union Hacks Betray 400,000 Ready for General Strike

Remembering Andy Rakochy

LETTERS

Thinking Soldiers Are Dangerous for Bosses

Backing Kerry Traps Anti-War Movement

a name="A ‘Free’ Press for Those Who Own It"></">A "Free’ Press for Those Who Own It

Riders Hear Real May Day Story

May Day Is For All Workers

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

CHALLENGE, May 12, 2004

March on May Day for Communism!

Democrats, Republicans: Warmaker Twins

MASS MURDER WORSE THAN HITLER

REAL REASONS FOR U.S. WAR ON IRAQ:Control of Oil; Military Bases; Euro Vs. Dollar

1979 May Day March Ended Nazi Reign in Marquette Park

DRIVER-RIDER UNITY ATTACKS MUNI WAR CUTS

Mexico: Capitalist `Reform' Robs Retirees' Pensions

Red Leadership Growing in D.C. Metro, Isolating Pro-boss Prez

Kerry, Clinton No Friends of Women Workers

Boeing Union Misleaders Use Human Rights, Women's Conference to Promote War Strategy

Labor Strategy for Constant War

The New Economy and War

D.C. PEPCOWORKERS WON'T BE FOOLED

Liberal Washington Post Helps Union Sell Out D.C. Workers

Justice for Apartheid Assassin

`Circular Logic' Dooms Working-Class Anti-Racist Struggle

THINKING IN CIRCLES

THINKING DIALECTICALLY

War Contract Creates 2 Tier System for NYC Workers

California Cuts Screw Students, Help Fund U.S. Attack on Iraq

Memories of A World War 2 Childhood in Britain

1990's Union Give-backs Rob Workers' Health, Pensions Today

NFL Poster Boy For Imperialist War

LETTERS

Driving the Nazis From Marquette Park

Racism Exposed By Class Analysis

Challenging Rockefeller's Church

Don't Mourn -- Organize

Workers Can Run Society

Cross Country Solidarity

Community Policing Blames Victims

White Skin Theory: A Bosses' Idea

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

US aims in Iraq need guns

Kerry backs Bush on Iraq

Keeping millions in prison

Liberals want bigger war

Workers saw deaths coming

Imperialism's world is sick

CHALLENGE, April 28, 2004

Imperialist Oil War Massacres Thousands:

Dems Push Bush For More Troops In Iraq

a name="Uprisings Threaten Oil Barons’ Plans">">"prisings Threaten Oil Barons’ Plans

REAL REASONS FOR U.S. WAR ON IRAQ:
Control of Oil; Military Bases; Euro Vs. Dollar

D.C. PEPCO
WORKERS WON'T BE FOOLED

White Skin Theory:
A Bosses' Idea

BUSH OR KERRY?
TWO SIDES OF SAME WAR COIN

SAN FRANCISCO MUNI DRIVERS CONFRONT
HOMELAND SECURITY TERRORISTS

Boeing 7E7 Giveaway Shows:
Workers Must Fight Bosses' Dictatorship

DEFEAT THE COOK
COUNTY `FEAR FACTOR'!

No Matter the Pay,
It's Wage Slavery

MASSES MARCH AGAINST WAR IN IRAQ
KERRY-BETTER-THAN BUSH ILLUSION WON'T DEFEAT IMPERIALISM

Italy, World War 2:
REDS DEFEATED NAZIS, CAPITALISTS KEPT CONTROL

Everything We
Do Counts

Gov't Terrorists Attack Immigrant
Airport Workers