1. May Day 2003
   Workers of the World, Unite!
   Organize to Fight for Communism: Only Solution to Imperialist War
2. U.S. `Victory' in Iraq Intensifies Instability, War Worldwide
3. Industrial Workers Still Key to Society
4. `Liberation' Bush Style = Massacre
5. Saddam, U.S. Imperialists, Fundamentalists OUT:
   Iraqi Workers Need Communist Revolution
   1. The Role a Revolutionary Working Class Can Play
6. The Great Subway Heist:
   NYC Bosses Use `Deficit' Scam to Hike Fare
7. Airlines' Give and Take: Unions Give, Bosses Take; Workers' Unity Needed
8. Tens of Thousands Workers Protest Cutbacks,
9. LA Garment Workers Take to PLP's Ideas, May Day
10. Argentina's Bosses Try to Solve Crisis By Attacking Workers Who Seized Plant
    1. Women Workers Lead Factory Seizure; Attacked By Bosses' Cops
11. Rulers' `War At Home' Dumps 400 Brooklyn Workers on the Street
12. War Sparks Debate and opposition among GI's
13. Academic/Students Conference Must Unite With, Not Just Study Workers
14. Fight Military Recruiters At UMASS
15. D.C. Janitors Get $32 A Day; Pentagon Spends A Billion Per Day
16. Mystery and Class Struggle: Lenny Moss Returns
    1. Book Review: SOME CUTS NEVER HEAL (by Timothy Sheard; published by Carroll and Graf)
17. LETTERS TO CHALLENGE
    1. Don't Rely on Union Hacks
    2. Preaching Anti-War, Anti-Racist Ideas
    3. ESL Classes Learn About Revolution
    4. Rallies vs. Cuts, War Hit Bible Belt
    5. How Many U.S. Lives Did the Soviet Union Save?
    6. IN MEMORIAM
       Dennis Long
18. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Afghans: model for Iraq?
    2. TV: Freedom for the Foxes
    3. US hires Saddam's cops
    4. US military girds globe
    5. Good will can't fix system
    6. Poor kids get bad start
    7. For oil, get Iraqi stooges
    8. US: No $ for health
    9. Who Are The Real Looters?

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May Day 2003
Workers of the World, Unite!
Organize to Fight for Communism: Only Solution to Imperialist War

XsMay 1st , the international working-class's day, occurs amid war, instability and violent attacks against the world's workers. The profit system has entered a new period of savagery. The recent slaughter in Iraq will lead to wider war for the conquest of Persian Gulf oil. Without this treasure, U.S. bosses cannot maintain their place as the world's dominant imperialist power.

Both "liberal" and "conservative" bosses share this strategic goal and are prepared to fight to the last drop of our blood to achieve it. Their international rivals cannot yet challenge them head-on, but are planning for the future. This is a period of war, police-state fascist repression and mounting economic misery. It is a period of increasing turmoil and tempo. History is moving faster. PLP says that despite appearances and regardless of obstacles, our class will win. The horrors of capitalism will not last forever. However long it takes, communist revolution is an achievable goal!

We are a Party of the working class. History and science teach us that only two forces in modern society are capable of holding political power. Today, power is in the hands of capitalists everywhere in the world. They use it against the workers and against each other to achieve maximum profit.

The other force is the working class. In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels ushered in the era of modern scientific communism with The Communist Manifesto. They proved in theory that communist revolution was inevitable. Over the next 125 years, billions of workers fought under the Red Flag for aspects of a communist future, confirming theory in rich, militant, practical experience. Highlights of this process include the Paris Commune of 1871, the Soviet Revolution of 1917, the Soviet defeat of the Nazis between 1941 and 1945, the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the militant anti-imperialist uprisings of the 1960s in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

These great achievements turned into their opposite because of fatal political errors within the old communist movement. The PLP has analyzed these errors extensively in a number of strategic documents (Road to Revolution III and IV, among others). But the errors and defeats cannot obscure the fundamental truth that the working class is capable of seizing and holding political power. This is the most important lesson for us as the present period of war, fascism and general oppression sharpens. Our goal is the seizure of political power and the establishment of a workers' dictatorship over all bosses.

Capitalism will always require an industrial working class -- which also produces all of U.S. imperialism's armaments -- and therefore these industrial workers must remain the crucial strategic focus for revolutionary organizing. The class struggle never ceases. Today, the bosses have the upper hand. They're able to get away with murder, both in Iraq and against steelworkers. But sooner or later, workers will begin to fight back. The massive anti-war protests of recent months are a sure sign that mass passivity will not last forever in the face of war and fascism.

Everything we do now to carry out our revolutionary line will bear fruit later, when the working class flexes its muscles once again. Lenin was right; imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. It has blanketed the globe and has nowhere left to go, except constant wars to re-divide markets and control over exploited workers. If we have confidence in the working class and our Party, if we have confidence in the process of change, we can put millions of workers and youth on the road to revolution. In particular this means deepening our influence on the job, in the military. and in the mass movement, sharpening the class struggle and creating a mass base of readers and distributors for CHALLENGE.

We continue to hold high the Red Flag of communist revolution. We continue to fight to become a Party of the working class. The long, difficult period ahead must not deter us. If not revolution in our lifetime, than a lifetime of revolution. Making a lifetime commitment to serve the working class remains the best choice anyone can make. Join and build the Progressive Labor Party.

U.S. `Victory' in Iraq Intensifies Instability, War Worldwide

U.S. rulers had hoped that their massacre in Iraq would give them a hammerlock on its oil reserves and, thus, a huge advantage over their imperialist competitors. But although U.S. (and British) soldiers occupy the oilfields, Washington's control of the country is shaky at best. Anti-U.S. sentiment is running sky-high in Iraq and elsewhere, to the benefit of U.S. rivals. And while U.S. forces easily defeated Iraq's small, under-equipped army, the need to project force around the globe is stretching the U.S. military dangerously thin. The real fruits of Bush's victory are sharpening instability and armed conflict.

On April 22, over a million Shiites marched in Karbala turning a religious observance into a massive protest against U.S. occupation. Many came from Iran, with the blessing of the ayatollahs who had booted the U.S. oil bosses from that country in 1979. The London-based newspaper Al-Hayat (4/25/03) sees a developing power struggle between the U.S. and Iraq's Shiites. "This is because the Shiites -- some 60% of the population -- are the only indigenous force able to challenge the American military presence and, conversely, because the U.S. army in Iraq is the only force able to prevent a Shiite seizure of power.... The United States faces a formidable dilemma in Iraq. If it allows Shiite militancy to flourish unchecked it will, in effect, be handing power...to a Shiite Islamic revolution on the Iranian model. Yet if it seeks to repress the Shiites by direct military rule, it could find itself confronting a mass popular uprising with unpredictable consequences."

One consequence is already being debated in Washington's war rooms: a U.S invasion of Iran. Gen. James Woolsey of the Defense Policy Board is now engaged in World War IV against Iran and Syria, as well as Iraq (Time, 4/14/03). A U.S. campaign in Iran in forbidding terrain against forces fired by religious fervor would hardly be a cakewalk. Already the U.S. commanders have signed a "cease-fire" agreement with a group which for six years, right up until April 22, it has labeled terrorist, the People's Mujahadeen, which the U.S. bombed just three weeks before. Why? Because, says the New York Times (4/29), the "American military...already has its hands full trying to stabilize Baghdad and other areas of Iraq." But it also "raises questions about how consistently the Bush administration intends to apply a policy that had vowed to crack down on terrorist groups worldwide." The U.S. terrorists hope to use this group in any future fight with Iran.

Nor is it a sure thing that the victorious coalition's oil giants, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, BP and Shell will get immediate and complete access to Iraq's vast oil reserves. That was the stated goal of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, whom War Secy. Rumsfeld wants to make puppet ruler of Iraq. But Chalabi, who spent the last four decades living it up in London, has very little popular support. And Iraq's oil bureaucracy, which the U.S. spared in the war -- needing Iraqi know-how and manpower -- naturally opposes Exxon, Chalabi, & Co. In addition France and Russia are exploiting popular opposition to the U.S. occupation to try to ensure continuing UN management of Iraqi oil sales, which the UN now sends through French and Russian brokers. The latter could probably wind up at least as junior partners to the U.S. in pumping Iraqi oil.

Keeping 130,000 troops in Iraq to secure the oilfields weakens U.S. rulers militarily as well as among world opinion. Sen. John McCain complained that demands on troops during the Iraq war rendered the U.S. powerless to face down North Korea. "One of the chief problems, he said, is that the United States does not have sufficient active duty personnel. He said the Armed Forces cannot continue to activate reservists at the same rate and expect people to remain in the service. `Any lingering credibility that America has the capability to fight two wars on two fronts at one time should be laid to rest. We simply don't have it. That's why the North Korean situation was put on the back burner.'" (Associated Press, 4/26) McCain was hinting at restoring the draft. But as the wave of mutinies and rebellions by U.S. troops in the Vietnam War showed, a draft will create even more problems for the rulers.

The war in Iraq was in many ways a setback for U.S. bosses. At the same time thousands of working-class Iraqi soldiers and civilians died. Working-class GIs were turned into the tools of racist butchery. But the war revealed to many that capitalists value oil profits over human life. Workers must use the anti-capitalist feeling the war sparked to build a movement that will eventually eliminate the profit system.

Industrial Workers Still Key to Society

In the last generation, a lot of nonsense has been written about the working class. Today, one can read a good deal in the bosses' press about the transformation of the U.S. into a "service" economy. While the service sector has expanded, the industrial working class remains the key force in society.

Between 1983 and 2001, the work force grew from 100,834,000 to 135,073,000. The percentage of production workers, including transportation, communication, and technicians, fell from 31.6% to 28.9%, but the absolute number of production workers increased by over 7 million, from 31.8 million to more than 39 million.

Despite technological advances and moves to overseas sources of cheap labor that reduced employment in manufacturing, 18,970,000 workers still held manufacturing jobs in 2001. In construction and communications, employment increased by roughly 50%.

More than 30 years ago, our Party identified black workers as a "key force for revolution." Between 1981 and 2001, the percentage of black and Hispanic workers in production jobs increased from slightly over one-fifth to one-third.

One big trend has been the creation of a non-union "labor aristocracy" in high tech. This is clearly an obstacle to revolutionary organizing, and we must take it seriously into account. Meanwhile, a general consolidation of industry is targeting the better-paid workers of old. A case in point is the planned takeover of Bethlehem Steel by the newly formed International Steel Group (ISG). Tens of thousands of current workers will suffer pay cuts. Many retirees will lose benefits.

The architect of this attack is ISG boss Wilbur Ross, a liberal, who ranks among the Democratic Party's top donors in New York. Ross's Bethlehem buyout squares with West Virginia's Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller's "Stand Up for Steel" program. In preparing for the near future, they will need to extend their military adventures in the Persian Gulf. For the longer-range future, they will need to make war on far more powerful rivals than Iraq or even Iran. Therefore, the liberal rulers want to ensure the survival of the strategic steel industry in the U.S. Pushing formerly well-paid steelworkers into poverty is part of the plan. Similar trends are occurring in all key industries, particularly those related to the military.

`Liberation' Bush Style = Massacre

Iraqi workers and students are finding out what Bush, Rumsfeld and Colin Powell mean when they talk about "liberation" and "democracy." On April 28, invading U.S. troops murdered 15 Iraqi citizens and wounded 70 outside a school in Falluja, 40 miles west of Baghdad. About 200 students and their parents were demonstrating and chanting "Down USA!" while demanding U.S. forces quartered there leave so the children could return to classes. Musana Saleh abdel Latif, 41, lying in a hospital with his right foot amputated, when told the U.S. claimed troops were responding to being fired on, charged, "They are lying. They're ready to shoot for any reason. They're criminals." (The Guardian, 4/30)

On April 30, U.S. troops killed two more Iraqis and wounded another 14 when they shot into a crowd of 1,000 marching down Falluja's main street protesting the April 28th slayings. All told the U.S. invaders have killed at least 30 Iraqi civilians in the past two weeks, including 10 in Mosul and three others in Falluja on the same day as the April 28 massacre.

The town's Iraqi police inspector told The Guardian there was no reason for U.S. troops to be in Falluja. The people had chosen a new mayor, the imans in the mosque had stopped the looting and got some of the stolen goods returned. "We controlled the town," he said. "When the troops came eight days ago, they said they would stay for two or three days, but they're still here and the numbers have been increasing."

Ahmed Hussein, at the hospital bedside of his 18-year-old son, shot in the stomach and expected to die, expressed a common sentiment in telling the New York Times (4/30), "Either they leave Falluja or we will make them leave."

Saddam, U.S. Imperialists, Fundamentalists OUT:
Iraqi Workers Need Communist Revolution

The Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld gang claims to have liberated the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein but their goal is imperialist conquest. However, we shed no tears for Saddam and his fascist butchers, many of whom abandoned their troops after being bought off by the Pentagon. Over 300,000 Iraqis died in his eight-year war against Iran and 100,000 more perished when he invaded Kuwait. Bush is not the only one who makes war for oil! Saddam cynically used 500,000 Iraqi deaths from U.S.-imposed sanctions as a cover to maintain his regime and luxury. Just as he served U.S. rulers before and during the Iraq-Iran war, now he gave French and Russian oil companies good deals to try to use them as protection against a U.S. invasion.

It's no surprise that angry Iraqi workers stripped clean the palaces, government ministries and stores owned by the ruling class. While workers were dying from lack of medical care, the hospital treating the elite was as good as any treating U.S. bosses. Saddam built 19 new palaces, stuffed with fancy furniture. In one, he had hundreds of millions in $100 bills stored in boxes, more than Iraq spent on medicines in two years.

Arab nationalists like the Emir of Qatar who owns al-Jazeera, shed crocodile tears about those slaughtered in the U.S. invasion. But they never said a word about the thousands Saddam tortured every year, or the 100,000 Kurds he gassed or shot. These Arab dictators don't care about dead Iraqi workers. They want to oppress Arab workers, and keep U.S. imperialism out!

Some new oppressor will replace Saddam. There is vigorous competition among the various capitalist factions. The U.S. stooges are mostly the old pre-Saddam ruling class. For instance, Ahmed Chalabi, Rumsfeld's favorite and head of the Iraqi National Congress, also heads one of the richest old Iraqi families. His father and grandfather were both cabinet ministers under the monarchy, which was overthrown in 1958. The family is as well known in Iraq as the Rockefellers in the U.S. So Chalabi draws support from those who want a return to the monarchy's pro-Western, free market capitalism.

The Muslim clerics would install a vicious religious fascism like in Iran. There are several prominent families -- operating like Mafia families -- with power passing from one generation to another. The most powerful is the al-Sadrs. The young family head, Moqtadah al-Sadr, with very little religious training, had the chief of the pro-American family, Abdelmajid Khoei, assassinated in the holiest mosque. Then this thug's goons surrounded the house of the most respected elderly cleric, Ayatollah al-Sistani, demanding he leave the country. Al-Sadr is working fist-in-glove with the Iranian fascist clerical regime against U.S. rulers. The Iranians have provided him millions in cash and hundreds of militants.

Another of the big clerical families, the Hakims, is also in Iran's pocket. Tehran-based Ayatollah Bakr al-Hakim heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The U.S. has hopes of working with this group, but Iran seems to be putting more emphasis on al-Sadr's militant anti-U.S. camp.

The pseudo left-sounding pan-Arab nationalists want to restore Baath rule without Saddam, as in Syria. They attack U.S. imperialism's plan to plunder Iraq's oil wealth, but neglect to mention their own plans to grab that wealth for themselves. They attack the clerics who would bar women from public life and discriminate against the million non-Muslims, but they plan to perpetuate the racist system which, for several hundred years, has kept power in the hands of the elite claiming to represent the 20% of the Iraqi population who are Arab Sunnis. These pan-Arab nationalists have strong support from Syria, with quiet support from most of the other Arab rulers.

Actually, many Iraqi workers have a long history of support for communists in Iraq, through the Iraqi Communist Party which led the oil workers and organized general strikes that helped topple the monarchy there. They might have led a worker seizure of power had they not fallen victim to reformism, to supporting the "lesser evil" capitalists.

The Role a Revolutionary Working Class Can Play

The working class is not impotent. The vacuum created with Saddam's fall would have been an excellent opportunity for a communist-led working class to fight the imperialist invaders, overthrow all the bosses and install a revolutionary dictatorship of the workers. But without a revolutionary communist party with a mass base among the workers, the masses in Iraq will remain under the brutal heel of one capitalist or another.

Our job is to build a strong international revolutionary communist PLP. Building a mass PLP in the U.S., especially among Iraqi and Arab immigrants can help build a sister party in Iraq and the Middle East. Building a communist base among U.S. soldiers can also help. The nationalists and the clerics are no better than the U.S. stooges. The millions marching against war should realize that marching is not enough. They must be won to reject all the warmakers and fascist killers and fight to overthrow all the bosses with communist revolution.

The Great Subway Heist:
NYC Bosses Use `Deficit' Scam to Hike Fare

NEW YORK CITY, April 24 --

Fraud piled on top of fraud -- that's the continuing story of the robbery of this city's workers who ride, and work on, the subways and buses operated by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Claiming a budget deficit of a billion dollars, the MTA jacked up fares 33%, from $1.50 to $2.00, effective May 4. This is a racist attack since this increase falls most heavily on black, Latin and Asian workers who comprise 61% of the riders.

Last fall, the transit bosses said there was "no problem" and Gov. Pataki never mentioned a fare increase or "deficit" during his election campaign. Then in January, the MTA announced a $2.8 billion budget gap. Overnight that "gap" plummeted to $1 billion on which they still were able to justify that 33% fare increase.

Now it turns out the MTA was operating with two sets of books. The public set claimed a huge "deficit," while their "private" books showed more than a half billion dollar SURPLUS for 2002. Then they transferred that money to the 2004 budget, leaving 2003 with a deficit requiring a fare hike. "Now you see it, now you don't." (One source reported that by shifting the surplus to 2004, the rulers avoided enacting a fare increase in an election year.)

The real estate interests, the big department stores and the Wall St. financial district couldn't make a dime's worth of profit without a mass transit system bringing millions of workers and shoppers to the city. If these profiteers paid for this system through a transit tax, there would be no "deficit." There should be no transit fare at all, just as you don't pay every time the Sanitation Dept. picks up your garbage or the Fire Dept. puts out a fire.

And what's the reaction of the transit union to all this flimflam? Union president Toussaint and the TWU leadership hardly lifted a finger when nearly 200 token booth clerks' jobs disappeared down the drain. They allowed the MTA to continue the Giuliani Workfare program, failing to organize the 500 welfare recipients who replaced 500 union subway cleaners at slave labor "wages." And they hugged the MTA chief at the close of negotiations, rather than expose the bankers' robbery of the transit system through their collection of billions in interest.

The rulers established the Transit Authority in 1948 to play this exploitative role and provide a source of billions in profits for the banks. Capitalism has all sorts of gimmicks to pick the workers' pockets. That's why all workers should join the PLP to organize to destroy this blood-sucking system.

Airlines' Give and Take: Unions Give, Bosses Take; Workers' Unity Needed

The current crisis in the airline industry shows that in such times the unions' role is to deliver the workers to their exploiters. The entire industry is either in, or threatening, bankruptcy, mainly to void their union contracts. Since 9/11, over 100,000 jobs and billions in wages and benefits have been lost, with no end in sight.

The current crisis dwarfs Reagan's firing of thousands of air traffic controllers during the 1981 PATCO strike. The AFL-CIO's passivity in the face of that attack opened the door to two decades of union-busting and strike-breaking. Then, as now, the AFL-CIO leadership is worse than useless.

On April 25, American Airlines (AMR) workers surrendered $1.62 billions in give-backs. AMR bosses threatened to eliminate employee pensions by declaring bankruptcy if the workers didn't agree to these give-backs, while the top five executives voted themselves million-dollar bonuses and a special trust fund to guarantee the obscene pensions of the top 45 bosses.

In the past, when bankruptcy threatened, executives had to "get in line" behind other creditors to collect any retirement money. Now, through "secured trusts," these big shots own the pension funds, no matter what happens. The pensions of 70,000 Motorola workers are under-funded by $1.4 billion while the company socked away $38 million into a special pension trust for the top executives.

UNION FLIP-FLOPS

AMR workers were furious and, bowing to an outcry from the rank and file, union leaders refused to sign the concessionary contracts. "Good for them!" said one Boeing inspector. "Somebody had to put an end to this management arrogance." But the union leaders then reversed themselves and agreed to the give-backs after American CEO Donald Carty resigned.

To add insult to injury, the New York Times (4/26) ran an article claiming the "unions have been taking such a pounding ... because they have been so successful." By that logic, if we worked for nothing, we wouldn't have to give concessions!

"Will [airline] worker wage cuts become a model for other companies?" asks this same article. "The airline unions, like the steel and auto workers, are far weaker....But like the others, the airline unions hope to avoid the scrap heap by cooperating with employers, perhaps by granting concessions..."

We saw this cooperation at our last union meeting when we were told to lobby our state legislators to do "Whatever It Takes" to get Boeing to build its new jet plane in Washington State. What will it take? Boeing wants state college tuition increases to be free of any limitations imposed by state government. They also want a freeze on unemployment benefits. Attack our kids and the 35,000 laid-off Boeing workers!

We must reject the rules and laws of capitalism and set our sights on a communist alternative. Our class will not spontaneously learn this lesson, no matter how hard things get. Only resolute work by our Party over a long period will drive this home for the vast majority of our class. This means increasing the sale of CHALLENGE, patient long-term building of ties with workers and initiating class struggle, from within the union if possible, or outside it if necessary. We can't let the unions' capitulation hold us back.

We should do "Whatever it takes" to support the airline workers' fight against concessions: flyers, picket lines, demonstrations and ultimately a general strike in aerospace. Initiating class struggle, prepared for with increased CHALLENGE sales and personal ties, can open the door for more recruitment to PLP. "Whatever It Takes" to pave the road to revolution!

Tens of Thousands Workers Protest Cutbacks,

NEW YORK CITY, April 29 --

Tens of thousands of angry city workers flooded the City Hall area to demonstrate against layoffs and give-backs. The rally was called by AFSCME's District Council 37. These unionized workers were crying out for a fight-back strategy but all they heard were calls to vote out Mayor Bloomberg & Gov Pataki (and replace them with what?). No union leaders mentioned the war on Iraq or used the word strike. Other speakers were loudly cheered when they pointed out that these layoffs and cuts (racist to the core since they affect mainly black, Asian and Latin workers and youth) were occurring at a time when $200 billion were quickly found for an imperialist war.

LA Garment Workers Take to PLP's Ideas, May Day

LOS ANGELES, April 29 --

At 7 a.m. on any given day, hundreds of garment workers take a PL leaflet, fold it into their pockets to look at later. Others read it on the spot, wanting to know PLP's ideas on the war and on the solution to problems in the garment shops. This scene is repeated in various parts of the city.

In several garment factories, workers discuss how to celebrate May Day, the international workers' day. In one shop, over 100 workers say they'll participate. Many give $3 to buy food and celebrate May Day with a dinner and a speech inside the factory.

Preparations for the May 3rd March through leaflets, CHALLENGES, study groups and lunch-time discussions in the factories have brought PLP's message of the fight against exploitation and for workers' power to thousands. The leaflets describe the war in Iraq as a racist attack against workers worldwide. They've also read about the need to organize the working class to destroy this murderous system and build a new communist society based on meeting the needs of the international working class.

We've explained that the U.S. ruling class -- preparing for its imperialist wars -- attacks workers here as well as in Iraq. Among the most affected are LA County's 150,000 garment workers. Federal and state budget cuts took away billions of dollars from hospitals, clinics and schools, resulting in their closing and layoffs of thousands, all to pay for the bosses' murderous war for profit. The garment bosses provide no medical insurance, much less decent wages to pay for private doctors or schools.

Meanwhile, the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) is planning a $10 monthly fare hike, with no transfers or tokens. This attacks more than one million bus riders, including garment workers. The MTA's war contract also cuts bus drivers' and mechanics' benefits and wages while increasing harassment. Unity of garment workers and all others who ride mass transit with MTA workers is crucial to the fight against the bosses' assaults and war budget.

PLP can organize these workers into class struggle against the bosses while building ties with workers and their families. Although there may be much fear of the bosses' repression, workers' hatred of them is growing, forming a basis for growth of the revolutionary communist movement.

Argentina's Bosses Try to Solve Crisis By Attacking Workers Who Seized Plant

BUENOS AIRES, April 28 --

The ruling class here is doing everything it can to "solve its crisis and return to "normal" capitalist exploitation. Yesterday's presidential election produced a runoff between the two leading candidates for the first time in Argentina's history. Former President Carlos Menem (under house arrest for thievery not too long ago) will oppose Nestor Kichner, governor of an oil-producing province. and ally of the pro-European imperialists current interim President, Duhalde.

In something not seen anywhere in the capitalist world, two candidates from the same Party are running in a Presidential election. Menem represents a more pro-U.S. faction of the Justicialista (Peronista) Party. Menem, was responsible for the country's bankruptcy during his presidency in the 1990s. He privatized everything. He's campaigning to use the army to quell mass protests.

All the Peronistas have a long history of oppressing the working class. Although, Gen. Peron, an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler, took power during World War II with workers' support, his government and the movement which he founded were and are deadly enemies of workers.

On Dec. 18-19, 2001, la Casa Rosada, the Presidential palace here was surrounded by tens of thousands of angry demonstrators, causing President de la Rua to flee. This mass uprising grew out of the economy's total collapse. The Peronistas filled the political vacuum and seized the government, to protect capitalism.

Women Workers Lead Factory Seizure; Attacked By Bosses' Cops

During this uprising, workers seized factories abandoned by their bosses. The Brukman garment plant was one such plant. Since the mid-1990s, these workers had suffered increasing exploitation, being paid irregularly, denied paid vacations, bonuses and other benefits. Finally, amid the December uprising, Brukman union delegates went to see the bosses about missing wages, but they had fled. At first the workers thought the bosses had gone to get the money, but they didn't return, so the workers took over the plant. The bosses then offered some back wages, but workers demanded all that was due them. They realized the bosses wanted to trick them, to vacate the plant and then move everything out.

With the December mass uprising occurring simultaneously, some workers feared the cops would attack. One worker, "Juanita," stood in the gate and said, "No one is leaving." A few left but most stayed. They learned how to live from the solidarity of others, raising money from fellow workers. Some were very worried about the lack of money and food. Neighbors nearby placed a box in the street and people left all kinds of food.

The struggle inside the plant sharpened. Some workers believed the bosses' promises and left. Those inside began to operate the plant themselves. When the police tried to evict them, neighbors appeared and confronted them. The cops waded in, even clubbing a 5-year-girl. But when hundreds came to support the workers, the cops retreated. The mass mobilizations and such struggles continued for a few months after the December uprising.

This attack emboldened the workers. After many useless dealings with government bureaucracies, and many debates and discussions, the workers decided to run the plant by themselves. Much support followed, particularly from university students. The workers organized everything, bought and sold merchandise and paid themselves decent wages.

This lasted until last month, when two judges (appointed during the military dictatorship of the mid 1970s) ordered the eviction of the workers. Brunkman wanted his plant back. The cops came at night and threw out the few workers in the place.

A few days later, 25,000 people led by workers from Brukman marched to the plant. Celia Martinez, a Brukman worker, said: "Brukman abandoned us when all we knew was to sew. Now we know how to operate the plant. We know how much a suit costs. We learned it's not that difficult to manage a plant. And that, it seems, make us very dangerous people."

A few days before that, the cops tried to evict workers occupying the Zanon Ceramics plant in Neuquen province. The presidential elections are part and parcel of this "counter-revolution."

But Argentina's working class and its allies have learned they can run factories without bosses. They're also learning this can't happen under capitalism; soon the bosses, their judges, cops and courts take them back. They're also learning that the union hacks, who support one brand or another of Peronism, are not on their side. The bosses are gearing up for more violent attacks to erase these lessons. Building a revolutionary mass party to turn these struggles into schools for communism now becomes a matter of life and death.

Rulers' `War At Home' Dumps 400 Brooklyn Workers on the Street

BROOKLYN, NY, April 22 --

About 2.4 million jobs have disappeared in the last two years while the Bush gang spends tens of billions to kill Iraqi workers and uses tax cuts to swell the pockets of the rich. Then we read about the war on workers here destroying the lives of the workers who comprise those statistics.

Nearly 400 workers at AM Cosmetics will be thrown out on the street on May 30. New owners bought the factory from Lawrence Bathgate, a former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, who installed former Bush, Sr., cabinet member Jack Kemp, as a "trophy" director. Bathgate & Co. bought the business from AM's founder, a lunch buddy of ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

It was this cast of characters that has dumped workers like Ana Gutierrez, a 61-year old grandmother, from an assembly line job that "has been my life for 20 years and now nothing. I have to get another job. But who's going to hire someone my age?"

The United Food & Commercial Workers neglected to sign a severance pay agreement into its contract, so any worker with under five years gets nothing, while those with more than five years will get one to two weeks pay. That puts Jimmy Wright, 53, with seven years at AM, "little more than a paycheck away from homeless." (NY Daily News, 4/21)

When the Bathgate crew bought AM in 1996, they bought out rival companies left and right, amassing a $230 million debt while paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses and flying around in private jets. "They bought so many companies at the same time," says Elijio Abreu, 38, a 13-year veteran and a union steward, that "at the end they didn't have enough money to pay for supplies." Finally, in June 1998 they defaulted on a $6 million loan payment, and the bank creditors moved in. The company was put on the market and sold in March to Markwins International for $32 million. Markwins is closing the Brooklyn plant and another one in North Arlington, NJ and shipping the jobs to China where they can pay workers $2 a day.

So now these 400 workers, many of them single mothers, will become new "recruits" in the vast "reserve army of the unemployed." The bosses, their politicians and their union leader/lieutenants all represent a profit system that must create this mass joblessness. Those are the ones the working class must "lay off," six feet under.

War Sparks Debate and opposition among GI's

Being in the army has its advantages. The most important advantage is to have first hand interaction with soldiers. Back at home there was limited talk about politics. Everyone would sit around and either ignore politics or not mention much at all. Now, on the base where I'm stationed, everywhere I go, someone is having a political conversation. Things have changed dramatically. Two soldiers are well known to be against the war. They're called trouble makers who go around starting conversations and sparking debates. Both these soldiers are so convincing that some will refuse to argue with them because they make a strong case, with strong feelings. When they say its about oil, others have a hard time proving them wrong, and many agree.

One day as I walked through the barracks I decided to visit a soldier who had his door open. I didn't know him, and even though I `d seen him around, we had barely talked. He turned out to be very friendly and invited me in. To my surprise, this soldier is from my home city. After a while, our conversation turned to current events. The main thing in the minds of soldiers now is war. He correctly identified the US as an imperialist country that is trying to maintain its power around the world by its invasion of Iraq. This is a very quiet guy--someone who I least expected to have such strong opinions.

Given the two guys who are very outspoken and my new friend's opinions, I believe that many soldiers feel the same way. Being in touch with the party helps me inform myself and my fellow soldiers. I plan to maintain these relationships and further their understanding of the murderous capitalist system. The soldiers who decide to be outspoken and have a mind of their own are considered trouble makers of the company but in the future they can help many to become the revolution makers.

A Comrade

Academic/Students Conference Must Unite With, Not Just Study Workers

PL will have a strong presence at the Sixth Biennial Working-Class Conference in Youngtown, Ohio, May 14-17. The conference will include mainly students and academics. There will be about 150 presentations on the theme, "Intersections with Race, Gender and Sexuality."

PLP will champion the idea that the time is now for the working class and those professors teaching Working-Class Studies to attack the U.S. imperialist war that is attempting to convert working-class people into fascist killers. No one on the program is scheduled to speak on that topic. In fact, academics who study the working class almost always divorce their work from capitalism's sharpest contradictions. Few, if any, have paid attention to the recent maneuverings by the United Auto Workers in Michigan who passed resolutions opposing the war in Iraq. As CHALLENGE pointed out (4/2/03), the resolutions are against Bush, not imperialism.

Likewise, construction workers clearing the World Trade Center site have been used by the ruling class as patriotic pigeons, waving flags for television cameras and "supporting" the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq.

In contrast, CHALLENGE readers should recognize that the largely working-class U.S. military is being used by the ruling class both to carry out its international war for oil and to deflect attention from the massive ranks of unemployed, now close to 12% (including those who have given up looking for jobs but are usually not counted). Meanwhile a Shell oil executive will oversee the "transition" of the Iraqi oil industry while American Airline workers suffer huge pay-cuts and give-backs in order to help the bosses avoid "bankruptcy."

This conference can point out these contradictions and rally participants against U.S. imperialism's war to protect profits, and the blood shed for oil by the world's workers. The point is not to study the working class, but to build a worker-student alliance to move the working-class movement forward.

Fight Military Recruiters At UMASS

BOSTON, April 3 --

Military recruiters had a bad day today at the University of Massachusetts. Students were shouting at them, with one wearing a T-shirt stating, "Education not Enlistment -- Military Recruiters off My Campus!" Some students blocked their table while distributing leaflets commemorating the assassination of Martin Luther King. One recruiter said the students should be "shot in the head" for their views.

A professor of Africana Studies, defending the students, got into a shouting match with one recruiter. Then campus cops, acting on the racist assumption that the black person caused the confrontation, tackled the professor to the ground, ripped his jacket, shackled his ankles and brought him to the local courthouse for arraignment.

This racist incident reflects a broader struggle of workers and students on the UMASS campus against the increasing police and military presence. It has broadened the ranks of the campus anti-war group and increased its militancy. The recruiters have canceled their next visit and a legal team is fighting for their temporary removal. Teach-ins, rallies and informational sessions are all being planned to expose the role of the military on campus. The first action will be against an FBI recruiter on campus.

A contradiction exists within the campus anti-war coalition reflecting one within the entire movement, a struggle between those advocating a more militant, anti-imperialist position and the leadership which tries to narrow the struggle with a watered-down message limiting militancy and serving the liberal rulers. Here the campus group hesitates to take a formal stand against the military recruiters for fear of "isolation."

PLP'ers strive to point out the basis for imperialist war is capitalism and the drive by all bosses for maximum profits. The spread of CHALLENGE plays an important role in this fight.

D.C. Janitors Get $32 A Day; Pentagon Spends A Billion Per Day

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 29 --

Janitors cleaning offices of some of the wealthiest organizations in the nation's capital, including the American Medical Association, are paid $32 a day, with no benefits. Meanwhile, barely a stone's throw away stands the Pentagon, spending more than ONE BILLION DOLLARS A DAY. The U.S. rulers' war budget aimed at control of Middle Eastern oil spends more in ONE SECOND than these exploited janitors are paid in ONE YEAR!

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has launched a Justice For Janitors campaign to organize these workers. But based on past experience, the janitors should be wary of the SEIU. They have sabotaged more workers in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and elsewhere than they have helped.

The janitors were scheduled to demonstrate for their demands on May 1st, the day of international solidarity for the working class worldwide. In the spirit of this year's May Day, workers everywhere should express our support for these janitors' struggle for a decent wage and benefits. But we should also note that this kind of exploitation has existed throughout the history of capitalism and can only be ended when this profit system is destroyed.

Who Are the Real Looters?

Much has been made of the looting of Iraq's archaeological and ancient civilization treasures. War secretary Rumsfeld dismisses them as crimes that always occur when "freedom" reigns. But the looters were encouraged and protected by U.S. troops, some of whom participated in it, to say nothing of the big-time looters from Washington and Wall St.

The first "item of value" secured by the invading army was the oil fields, to be looted by Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and BP. While the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad was being sacked, U.S. troops were guarding the Ministry of Oil nearby.

An AsiaTimesOnline reporter went to the Museum on April 11, the day after the looting and was told by Dr. Doni George, a director of the State Board of Antiquities, "The whole administrative compound was completely destroyed and looted...There were people who knew what they wanted. They've taken the precious vase of Uruk, an Akkadian bronze statue from 3,200 B.C. Before they started looting, there were American armored cars outside and people inside. They asked for the American troops to intervene, but they did not...The chairman of the State Board of Antiquities went to the American HQ and explained the situation. But they sent no help. This shows they wanted the Iraqi Museum to be destroyed....

"In the following days, they [the curators] started collecting extremely disturbing evidence that this was a very well-organized operation. Archaeological files and computer disks simply disappeared. Glass-cutting tools were found on the museum's floor...Replicas... [of] the genuine article were still there, but the genuine artworks were stolen. The museum's vaults had been opened with special keys; and armed guards told AsiaTimesOnline that American soldiers...had opened the doors for `people from other nationalities' to loot. `The way they opened the locks, no Iraqi could do it.'" When British writer Robert Fisk (The Independent) rushed to U.S. Army HQ in Baghdad to report a huge fire burning at the main Baghdad historical library, he said they did absolutely nothing.

Specialists at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are convinced that this operation was organized outside Iraq. Citing "wanton and preventable destruction" of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities, members of the Bush administration's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property have resigned in disgust.

An Associated Press dispatch (4/25) reported that U.S. "military personnel took $13.1 million from huge caches of US currency." Another AP dispatch (4/8) reported that members of the U.S. "Army's 3rd Infantry Division stormed presidential palaces and helped themselves to gold-painted Arab glassware" and other items.

The British Independent reported (4/24) "investigations" were under way of troops who took $600 million in U.S. banknotes. A FoxNews TV engineer was caught at Dulles International Airport smuggling priceless Iraqi paintings and Iraqi monetary bonds, "one of several travelers returning to the U.S. with paintings and even weapons in their luggage."

But these are the small fry looters. The oil companies, Bechtels and Haliburtons, with their billion-dollar contracts socked away even before the invasion, are the big-time looters. And the White House "economic plan" has looted states and cities in the U.S. On July 1, "27 states and the District of Columbia were expected to have an aggregate deficit of $53.5 billion....Much of the cumulative deficit could be erased if the federal government paid the states what it owed to maintain programs that are federal requirements. Four items alone...have cost the states $83 billion." (New York Times, 4/26)

Where is the money going? To a $400 billion Pentagon budget, plus the extra $75 billion Bush got to pay for the initial costs of the invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile states are cutting billions in vital services to workers -- Medicare, Medicaid, education, etc. -- and laying off tens of thousands of state employees, adding to the climbing unemployment rolls. And the government continues to steal the over $100 billion plus annual surplus taken in by Social Security to pay for its wars, a violation of its own laws. But who's counting? When it comes to looting, no one beats U.S. capitalism.

Mystery and Class Struggle: Lenny Moss Returns

Book Review: SOME CUTS NEVER HEAL (by Timothy Sheard; published by Carroll and Graf)

Lenny Moss is the type of shop steward I'd want representing me if I got in hot water with management. He's also a savvy detective. This book combines two great interests of mine: solving mysteries and seeing workers band together to fight for their rights.

The story is set in a large public hospital in Philadelphia where Lenny is a shop steward, a janitor and a detective, in that order. This is Timothy Sheard's second mystery with Lenny Moss as his detective. Although references are made to the first book, you can enjoy this one without having read the other.

An attractive female pharmaceutical representative is found murdered in a vacant room on the ward where Lenny works. Woven in is a realistic story of workers dealing with staff cutbacks, asinine bosses, greedy doctors and a hospital management striving for greater profits and prestige rather than guaranteeing decent patient care.

Lenny does not sugarcoat or romanticize workers. He's fully aware of his own shortcomings, as well as those of his co-workers. What's refreshing is that the workers are not viewed as "deadbeats" or "problems" or "slackers." They have good and bad traits. Lenny looks for the good in his fellow workers and tries to help everyone, not to judge them. Consequently, although "just a janitor," he's respected by many throughout the hospital -- nurses, security guards, orderlies and even some doctors.

However, he's feared by management. Why? Because he organizes the workers in a collective way to fight the bosses. Although Lenny is the principal detective, he couldn't solve the murder without many co-workers constantly feeding him needed information, nor without his friends, who save his life twice. The crime solving is a collective effort.

One example of this collectivity occurs when the workers, overcoming many obstacles, try to get time off for a co-worker's funeral during the middle of the day. Lenny first appeals to the Housekeeping Supervisor who threatens to write up everybody if they're late returning from lunch. The head of Security is similarly very nasty. Then he goes to Freely, head of Human Resources, who will only allow an hour maximum. Lenny decides to gather as many workers as possible to meet in the lobby on the day of the funeral and confront Freely. A worker-filled lobby forces the extra time out of Freely for both the service and dinner/discussion afterwards.

With short chapters, the book is very readable, engaging and suspenseful. The hospital conditions dealing with staff shortages, organ transplants, grabbing prestige and headlines over patient care make it very relevant. It's hard putting the book down. I raced through it but hated to see it end. This is no surprise as the author is a 30-year veteran as a critical-care nurse. The hospital scenes ring true. For mystery lovers, this one's a must!

LETTERS TO CHALLENGE

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Don't Rely on Union Hacks

I've read CHALLENGE off and on for many years but recently I've become a regular reader and find myself in increasing sympathy with PL's positions, which represent a real communist alternative to capitalist exploitation, racism and war. PL particularly impresses me because it avoids the reformism and opportunism of other groups or tendencies which pretend to be "communist."

Therefore, I was a little dismayed to read in the April 30 CHALLENGE a reformist view on trade unions in capitalist society. In the article, "Liberal Oakland Mayor Orders Cops' Attack on Anti-war Protestors," the author writes:

"One key weakness was the lack of involvement of ILWU workers. The union leadership should have organized to put members on the picket lines to shut the entire port. Had the workers come out, the cops could have been defeated."

I certainly agree that the absence of the ILWU workers was a real weakness. However, the author makes a big error when saying "the union leadership should have put members on the picket lines to shut the entire port." Should have? It's impossible that the ILWU bureaucrats -- or any trade union in capitalist society for that matter -- would dare to really launch a fight against the fascist state and its cops. Posing such a possibility can only sow illusions among workers that the union tops can be "pressured" to "do the right thing," or that they can be replaced with a different, more "militant" union leadership which will "really" fight for the workers' interests. This is the sort of opportunism that Trotskyites push.

PL put it very well in the January 1998 issue of The Communist: "Defeat Right Opportunism -- Open the Door to Revolution," where it says, "...PL correctly views unions as the bosses' tool. They will never act in the workers' class interests. Even if they increase their militancy and force some minor concessions for their members, the result can only reinforce their reformist grip on workers." I hope this is PLP's firm position on the unions, because it's the communist position.

The ILWU workers could only have come out against the war and in defense of the anti-war demonstrators in a wildcat action (against the union bureaucrats as much as against the cops). Such actions require a communist PLP in workplaces, fighting to build workers' power through the Party rather than through a more "militant" union leadership.

A Boston reader

Preaching Anti-War, Anti-Racist Ideas

Over the years we've been active members and leaders in a church with moderate to conservative middle-class members. We have about a dozen regular CHALLENGE readers and head up a group that took the lead in opposing the U.S. racist-imperialist attack on Iraq. We participated in many demonstrations, including one of our own last November. We`ve distributed leaflets, held vigils and forums, and actively fought anti-Arab racism, including supporting a woman arrested last year because of racial profiling.

Our most important struggle resulted in passing a resolution against the war, after it had started. Regular CHALLENGE readers who meet with our PLP study group took the lead. Although it was a weak resolution -- liberals called for "supporting the troops" -- still it was one of those "little things" that count. Of 48 people at the meeting, 99% voted for it, enabling us to put out literature in the church's name.

At a convention with about 120 people representing churches throughout our region, young people led a workshop on racism. We opposed the idea that whites were basically racist, and that "until they deal with their racism" there's no basis for multi-racial unity. Some were won to uniting to fight racism, especially within ourselves. I explained how to build multi-racial unity in all-white churches.

At the plenary session we presented a resolution -- for debate and discussion only --- that our churches should become anti-imperialist, just as we're anti-racist and anti-sexist. We said the moment the American flag is raised over Iraq, the U.S. will become a new Roman Empire. We called for a resolution opposing imperialism to be voted on at our next convention.

At the president's suggestion, we advanced it as a motion, which carried with only three votes opposed. Six people agreed to serve on a committee to work on this anti-imperialist resolution. The Black Panthers had a slogan: "Seize the Time." Much of what our Party is advocating these days is right in that spirit.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the interest in our ideas and had no Party literature to distribute. A deacon and his wife, both leaders in a small, black, working-class church, are regular CHALLENGE readers, who always give a couple of dollars each issue from their small retirement income. Our deep ties with them and their friendship and faith in us is very sustaining in these times of depression, fascism and war. We want to win them to come to our May Day celebration.

Fight for communism under all circumstances, but with wisdom.

Red Prayer Group

ESL Classes Learn About Revolution

I teach two classes of English as a Second Language, Level 2, to members of a large union. These mostly immigrant women workers are facing the budget axe. The State is slashing $1 billion in services, closing agencies and cutting jobs, all of which will severely affect the clients -- elderly workers who will face severe hardships and/or be dumped into understaffed nursing homes.

Recently union members attended a large rally protesting these cuts. To prepare for this rally we used articles from newspapers and the union newsletter. We picked up new words in English like "give-backs" and "corporate loopholes." I used information from CHALLENGE about the huge interest the City and State pay to the banks on borrowed money. There's a "loophole" the official press and the union don't talk about!

We've been discussing the imperialist war on Iraq for oil periodically since last September. All my students immediately connected the enormous costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq to the economic attacks on workers here. We told our union rep to make this link at the rally. Everyone later noted that didn't happen.

In the course of the year I've been introducing CHALLENGE to a number of students. There are now 17 readers, current and former students. Three are now taking extra papers for friends. Almost all have been to a PLP activity in my home and some are participating in a Party study group. Many have agreed to come to May Day and some will invite family and friends. We will invite more of them to the study group after May Day.

It will be a big step for these workers and for PLP when some of them decide to join the Party. They face many difficulties in their lives which makes commitment to the Party a challenge, but we're all noticing greater interest as the imperialists take aim at more workers from the Middle East to Africa to South America to the U.S.

A comrade

Rallies vs. Cuts, War Hit Bible Belt

They're not called demonstrations here in the Bible Belt. They're called rallies. In the nine years I've lived in the South, I've never seen a rally here. But now I've seen three in the last month, two to demand more money for education and the third to protest the war.

Like the rest of the country this area has been hit hard by state budget cuts. One rally, organized by the local NEA (National Education Association) chapter drew 400. The second, organized by Friends of Education Coalition (education officials) had over 500. However, these substantial turnouts received very little publicity. The anti-war demonstration, although the smallest, was the most interesting, organized by a local anti-war group.

People I never thought would be interested in discussing politics are starting to share their viewpoints and sound more like mine than I expected. One co-worker commented that he didn't think the purpose of the education system was really to educate the youth. If it were, he said, then there'd be enough funding, and distributed equally to all districts.

Another co-worker thought the Bush administration lied about why the military invaded Iraq. He pointed out that their reasons kept changing over a short period of time and they were probably hiding the real one -- oil. Both these co-workers are now receiving CHALLENGE. And now that we're back from Spring Break, I plan to meet with both of them once a week to discuss the articles in the paper. It's nice to know that even in the Bible Belt, positive change can come out of this crisis.

Young Red

How Many U.S. Lives Did the Soviet Union Save?

(The following letter was sent to Newsday on March 29, 1995, on the occasion of Clinton's visit to Moscow when Russian veterans of World War II were being honored. The letter was headlined "Salute the Russians.")

Countless American baby boomers, Clinton perhaps among them, owe their existence to the Red Army.

We are here because our fathers came home in 1945. Who better to call these old men "tovarich" and salute them, perhaps for the last time?

Ask any veteran about the fighting on Omaha Beach, Normandy, the bitter and almost forgotten battles along the German border in the fall of 1944 or the Battle of the Bulge, to say nothing of Salerno or the Rapido in Italy. Then ask him to imagine fighting a German army two to three times larger, a German army not already reeling from two years of defeat in the East.

The Russians, Winston Churchill said, tore the guts out of the German army. Every German soldier they killed, captured or disabled meant one less for our men to fight. Stalingrad was an American victory in which no American fought.

Had the Red Army folded in 1941 or 1942, American soldiers -- our fathers --would have had to overcome at least 100 more German divisions. American casualties would have been almost beyond imagination.

We baby boomers are here in our millions because Russian soldiers fought and died in their millions. Because they did, our fathers came home. As we thank our fathers for our freedom, let's also thank the Russians for our fathers -- and our lives.

Edward B. Furey, Jr., Woodhaven, Queens, NY

IN MEMORIAM
Dennis Long

8/20/51 - 2/17/03

Born to a working-class family with five siblings, Dennis was raised by his widowed mother, his father having passed away at the age of 44. Despite the economic hardship of his early years, Dennis became an industrial worker, union activist, health care worker and teacher. He married as a teenager and fathered a son, Kelly, but soon divorced. A few years later, he married again and fathered a daughter, Corey. His wife, Sandy, died a few years later and Dennis raised Corey alone. After moving to Guatemala to teach in 1995, Dennis married again, to Diana, who gave birth to a daughter, Paola, and a son, Roberto Carlos. Roberto was born six days after Dennis' death.

Dennis always felt great compassion for the plight of workers around the world, and was active in many struggles to better their lives. He went to jail many times and lost jobs for fighting against racist groups like the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan when they appeared at rallies in public places. He was outspoken in his opposition to the present world order, believing that working people could make no true lasting progress under capitalism.

Because he held these beliefs and acted upon them as a member of the Progressive Labor Party, he was harassed, jailed and fired many times. He finally emigrated to Guatemala to find employment as a teacher.

An intelligent, witty speaker, he was popular for his friendly presence and for the integrity with which he lived his life according to his values, Not without contradictions, he battled alcoholism and drug addiction as a young man, but was successful in overcoming both to gain a rich and productive life. He loved music, history, literature, travel, languages and the companionship of acquaintances and friends. He was a kind and loving son, brother and husband, and a devoted father to his children. He is greatly missed by his family, his many friends and his political comrades. His life is an example for those of us left behind to emulate.

He was diagnosed with stomach cancer shortly before he died of an apparent heart attack.

He is survived by his mother, Denise, his sister Gavina, his brother Robert, his wife Diana, his children Kelly, Corey, Paola and Roberto, seven nieces and nephews, and ten great nieces and nephews.

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

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

Afghans: model for Iraq?

Afghanistan continues to have one of the world's highest rates of maternal mortality, with 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 live births. And what of the legal and political rights of women -- the cause so loudly trumpeted by President George W. Bush as he sent U.S. forces to liberate Afghans from the Taliban?

Sima Simar, guest of the president at his 2002 State of the Union Speech, was kicked out of the transitional government. Women are subject to extreme violence. They re mostly unemployed and often confined, still, to their homes....

Civil servants in the cash-starved central government may or may not get paychecks. In some rural areas, schools have been shuttered because there is no money to pay teachers. Children roam the village streets.

Only a quarter of the country's healthcare facilities have electricity....

It is not what...[the U.S.] promised the Afghan people, nor what...[it says it will] bring the Iraqis. (Newsday, 4/1)

US pals will rule Iraq

...While the United States has publicly described its roles as promoting a stable, secure environment in Iraq that might be conducive to democracy, administrative officials said they also recognize the need to move more aggressively to promote allies.

"You can't stand back completely," the Pentagon official said. (NYT, 4/26)

9/11 is excuse for fascism

Attorney General John Ashcroft has ruled that illegal immigrants who have no known links to terrorist groups can be detained indefinitely to address national security concerns....

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights sharply criticized the policy shift....

"What it means is that these people will languish in detention without the opportunity to prove to a judge or anyone else that they don't pose a threat to national security." (NYT, 4/26)

TV: Freedom for the Foxes

The two commentators were gleeful as they skewered the news media and antiwar protesters in Hollywood.

"They are absolutely committing sedition, or treason, one commentator. Michael Savage, said of the protesters one recent night.

MSNBC, the cable news network owned by Microsoft and General Electric....hired the two shortly before the war.....Others in the industry say the moves are the most visible sign of a phenomenon they call "the Fox effect"....

Fox News Channel...has emerged as the most-watched source of cable news by far, with anchors and commentators who skewer the mainstream media...and flay anybody else who questions President Bush's war effort....

Critics worried that Fox's success will push TV news to...."journalism...somehow dampened by a flock of Fox imitators. (NYT, 4/16)

US hires Saddam's cops

It has become apparent that Washington cannot restore governance to Baghdad without resorting to the party that for decades controlled every aspect of life. It has equally become apparent that the Ba'ath Party, whose neighborhood spy cells were as feared as the state intelligence apparatus will survive....

Two thousand policemen -- all cardholding party members -- have returned to the streets of Baghdad at the invitation of the US. (GW, 4/30)

US military girds globe

The United States is planning a long-term military presence in Iraq, in a move that will dramatically extend American power in the region and spread dismay and fear among its opponents across the Arab world.

....The Pentagon intends to retain four military bases in Iraq after the invasion force withdraws....

A permanent US military foothold in Iraq would profoundly change the political make-up of the Middle East. Part of its attraction is that it would offer the US an alternative to Saudi Arabia....

The past two years have seen a rapid expansion of American deployment across thousands of kilometers stretching from the Balkans to the Chinese border and taking in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent....

The US military now girds the globe as no power has done before.... (GW, 4/30)

Good will can't fix system

In 1988, Ewing M. Kauffman, a civic-minded man who owned the Kansas City Royals and made his fortune in pharmaceuticals, promised a free education to every ninth grader at his alma mater, Westport High, a poor, heavily minority city school....

But was it really a success?....Only 16 percent earned a bachelor's degree and only 6 percent more got a two-year or vocational degree. Over all, 78 percent were unable to convert Mr. Kauffman's offer.

"Mr. Kauffman had no idea how far behind these kids were," said Tom Rhone, the program director....

The...program spent about $6,500 per child. (NYT, 4/23)

Poor kids get bad start

A study has found that one of every four children in central Harlem has asthma, which...is one of the highest rates ever documented for an American neighborhood.

....About 6 percent of all Americans have asthma....

Previous studies have pointed to rates above 10 percent, and as high as the high teens, in the South Bronx, Harlem and a few other New York City neighborhoods where a long list of environmental factors put people at higher risk....

Asthma is the leading cause of school absenteeism in the neighborhood. (NYT, 4/19)

For oil, get Iraqi stooges

After insisting for months that it intends to let Iraqis run their own oil industry, the Bush administration is expected to announce next week a plan....

The chief executive would report to, and perhaps be a part of, an advisory committee that would include other Iraqi ministry officials and foreigners from the United States and its allies....

The advisory committee would be headed by Philip J. Carroll, the former chief executive of the Shell Oil Company, the United States unit of Royal Dutch/Shell.

He, in turn, would serve as the liaison to General Garner.

"The point is that the people of Iraq and the people of the Iraqi oil industry have their pride preserved," said the person who had talked to the administration, who spoke on condition of anonymity....

Having an American like Mr. Carroll at its head would fan claims in the region that the United States had invaded Iraq to grab its oil. (NYT, 4/26)

US: No $ for health

Millions of low-income Americans face the loss of health insurance or sharp cuts in benefits, like coverage for prescription drugs and dental care, under proposals mow moving through state legislatures around the country.

State officials and health policy experts say the cuts will increase the number of uninsured, threaten recent progress in covering children and impose severe strains on hospitals, doctors and nursing homes....

Painful trade-offs often pit the needs of impoverished elderly people for prescription drugs and long-term care against those of low-income families seeking basic health coverage. (NYT, 4/28)

Who Are The Real Looters?

Much has been made of the looting of Iraq’s archaeological and ancient civilization treasures. War secretary Rumsfeld dismisses them as crimes that always occurs when "freedom" reigns. But the fact is the looters were encouraged and protected by U.S. troops, some of whom participated in it, to say nothing of the big-time looters, those from Washington and Wall Street.

The first "item of value" secured by the invading army was the oil fields, to be looted by Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and BP. While the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad was being sacked, U.S. troops were guarding the Ministry of Oil nearby.

An AsiaTimesOnline reporter went to the Museum on April 11, the day after the looting and was told by Dr. Doni George, a director of the State Board of Antiquities, "The whole administrative compound was completely destroyed and looted….There were people who knew what they wanted. They’ve taken the precious vase of Uruk, an Akkadian bronze statue from 3,200 B.C. Before they started looting, there were American armored cars outside and people inside. They asked for the American troops to intervene, but they did not….The chairman of the State Board of Antiquities went to the American HQ and explained the situation. But they sent no help. This shows they wanted the Iraqi Museum to be destroyed….

"In the following days, they [the curators] started collecting extremely disturbing evidence that this was a very well-organized operation. Archaeological files and computer disks simply disappeared. Glass-cutting tools were found on the museum’s floor….Replicas…[of] the genuine article were still there, but the genuine artworks were stolen. The museum’s vaults had been opened with special keys; and armed guard told AsiaTimesOnline that American soldiers…had opened the doors for ‘people from other nationalities’ to loot. ‘The way they opened the locks, no Iraqi could do it.’" When British Guardian writer Robert Fisk rushed to U.S. Army HQ in Baghdad to report a huge fire burning at the main Baghdad historical library, he said they did absolutely nothing.

Specialists at the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization are convinced that this was a concerted operation organized outside Iraq. Citing "wanton and preventable destruction" of Iraq’s National Museum of Antiquities, members of the Bush administration’s Advisory Committee on Cultural Property have resigned in disgust.

An Associated Press dispatch (4/25) reported that U.S. "military personnel took $13.1 million from huge caches of US currency." Another AP dispatch (4/8) reported that members of the U.S. "Army’s 3rd Infantry Division stormed presidential palaces and helped themselves to gold-painted Arab glassware" and other items.

The British Independent reported (4/24) "investigations" were under way of troops who took $600 million in U.S. banknotes. A U.S. TV engineer was caught at Dulles International Airport smuggling priceless Iraqi paintings and Iraqi monetary bonds, "one of several travelers returning to the U.S. with paintings and even weapons in their luggage."

But these are the small fry looters being caught. The oil companies and the Bechtels and Haliburtons with their billion-dollar contracts socked away even before the invasion are the big-time looters. Not to mention what the White House’s "economic plan" has looted in this country. On July 1, "27 states and the District of Columbia were expected to have an aggregate deficit of $53.5 billion….Much of the cumulative deficit could be erased if the federal government paid the states what it owed to maintain programs that are federal requirements. Four items alone…have cost the states $83 billion." (New York Times, 4/26)

Where is the money going? To a $400 billion Pentagon budget, plus the extra $75 billion Bush got from Congress to pay for just the initial costs of the U.S. imperialist invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile states are cutting billions in vital services to workers — Medicare, Medicaid, education, etc. — and laying off tens of thousands of state employees, adding to the climbing unemployment rolls. And the government is continuing to steal the $100 billion plus annual surplus taken in by Social Security to pay for its wars, a violation of its own laws. But who’s counting?

When it comes to looting, no one beats U.S. capitalism.

Bosses Tell Workers in Iraq, U.S.: DROP DEAD

a href="#Liberal Oakland Mayor Orders Cops’ Attack on Anti-war Protestors">"iberal Oakland Mayor Orders Cops’ Attack on Anti-war Protestors

a href="#Capitalist Killer on the ‘Home Front’ — Mass Unemployment">Capi"alist Killer on the ‘Home Front’ — Mass Unemployment

Transit Workers Must Bypass Leaders And Shut Chicago Down

a href="#Hospital Union’s Reliance on Politicians Leads to Mass Layoffs">"ospital Union’s Reliance on Politicians Leads to Mass Layoffs

AFL-CIO Hacks Support Massacre of Iraqi Workers

a href="#PL’ers Bring Revolutionary Answer to Anti-War Marchers">"L’ers Bring Revolutionary Answer to Anti-War Marchers

Students Organize Against Police Terror and Imperialist War

Red Leadership On NYC Cuts Crucial to Break Out of Reformist Box

May Day Message Sparks Fight Against Rulers

a href="#No ‘Free Speech’ For Anti-Worker Politics">No"‘Free Speech’ For Anti-Worker Politics

Chicago City College Cuts Hit Immigrant Workers, Teachers

Euro Bosses Less Than Awed of U.S. Rulers

a href="#‘The Mountain That Eats Men’">‘T"e Mountain That Eats Men’

Fascist U.S. Prison System: Black/White Ratio is 7.5 to 1

LETTERS

a href="#Many GI’s Not Won To Fighting">"any GI’s Not Won To Fighting

Colombia: Iraq War Same as Death Squads

Death Penalty For Cuba Hijackers

a href="#Bringing DESAFIO-CHALLENGE to Peru’s Prisons">"ringing DESAFIO-CHALLENGE to Peru’s Prisons

Retired Unionist Hits Sweeney War Cry

a href="#Bosses’ Patriotism or Workers of the World Unite?">"osses’ Patriotism or Workers of the World Unite?

In Memoriam - a working-class, communist dad

Red Eye On The News

---

Bosses Tell Workers in Iraq, U.S.: DROP DEAD

U.S. rulers have done in Iraq what they do better than anyone else: murder and terrorize workers. The mass slaughter and devastation of civilians count among Bush’s "greatest achievements" to date. Otherwise, the U.S. military victory against a vastly overmatched Iraqi army has isolated the Washington warmakers politically and sharpened every important problem they face in their drive to maintain world domination.

Bush’s "liberation" of Iraq is the liberation of the grave. The bombing of every major city has led to a severe health crisis.

•By March 31, half of Basra’s 1.5 million population lacked drinking water.

•According to a January 2003, UN document estimating the human costs of a U.S. war in Iraq, as many as 500,000 Iraqis could require treatment as a result of direct or indirect injuries.

•The same report predicts that 39% of the country’s 25 million people will not have drinking water and that a large number of workers will succumb to disease.

•The report adds that over three million people — two-thirds of them children — will find themselves in a "dire" nutritional situation and that as many as 900,000 Iraqis will have been forced into refugee status.

Largely because of genocidal sanctions forced on the Iraqi people by U.S. imperialism since 1991, 16 million — 60% of the population — depended on monthly government food rations for survival.

Tens of millions of workers and others aren’t fooled by the new "freedom" Bush and his cronies have bestowed upon Iraq. The Feb. 15 anti-war marches in most major cities around the world were the largest one-day international mobilization in history. Despite their many political limitations, they reflect growing mass hatred against U.S. imperialism. Within this movement, many can be won to a revolutionary communist perspective.

Many workers, who don’t necessarily participate in these marches, feel increasingly disaffected from Bush & Co. In the U.S., this is particularly true of black workers, who are the most oppressed and the key force for communist revolution. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer (April 6), very few black workers support the war. This is a potential nightmare situation for U.S. rulers. Black people constitute 12% of the population and 21% of the armed forces. A young college student said, "Bush is more of an immediate threat to me than [Saddam Hussein]." As U.S. imperialism’s military adventures spread throughout the Persian Gulf, we could see mass militancy erupt both inside and outside the armed forces. Our Party can encourage and organize this opposition and win workers and soldiers to a revolutionary solution and to join PLP.

The rulers are also increasingly isolated from the rest of the world’s major bosses. On the one hand, no individual or group of rivals can prevent U.S. rulers from occupying Iraq and preparing new wars in Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, each U.S. "victory" brings problems that further complicate the U.S. juggernaut.

All U.S. rulers agree on maintaining world supremacy through control over Middle Eastern energy sources, and all agree on the need for more wars of conquest and occupation. Nonetheless, important tactical differences persist, and our Party must lead workers to reject the "lesser evil" trap posed by the liberal politicians. The New York Times (April 13) editorializes: "The U.S. must sheath its sword until really needed."

The Times opposed Bush’s rush to war in March, arguing that he should wait until striking a deal for sharing oil profits with French and Russian bosses. When Bush launched the war, the Times scrambled to get on board, flush with triumphant headlines. Now the Times and other liberal mouthpieces for the Establishment want to get back to their own tactical agenda, which includes building the type of military required for seizing and holding all the major oil-producing countries. This approach conflicts with the Rumsfeld line of relying on heavy bombing and a small number of ground forces. Oil must be pumped on the ground, and the liberals worry that the U.S. infantry is too small and too overextended to conquer and occupy Iran and Saudi Arabia.

They want to prepare the political conditions to restore the draft. Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel’s Big Lie is that compulsory military service is the only way to reduce the class inequities in the present U.S. military. Rangel doesn’t care about social justice. He wants to provide the U.S. war machine with more cannon fodder.

This raises another problem. The political motivation of the troops, which wasn’t seriously tested in Iraq, is very shaky. The bosses can still field the world’s best-equipped, most destructive military. But even the highest level of destructive technology requires human brains and hands to run it. This is U.S. imperialism’s Achilles’ Heel, both inside and outside the armed forces.

The liberals blame Bush for squandering the "opportunity" of 9/11 to build aggressive patriotism. They hope for another "cataclysmic" event as a way of promoting war fever. Our Party faces a future of tough challenges in the years and decades ahead. U.S. imperialism’s future is no less difficult. Each of its "solutions" creates sharper problems. As its mass murder for world domination expands, its isolation from the world’s masses and the rest of the world’s rulers will continue to sharpen. The weakened economy will give the U.S. reduced maneuverability to grant concessions to workers. We all face a future of more stick and less carrot.

The source of these contradictions is the capitalist profit system. Progressive Labor Party’s ability to politically lead the erupting class struggle can enable us to grow, both in numbers and political strength. The young workers who march with us on May Day, 2003, will provide the first gauge of our success in building upon this new opportunity.

a name="Liberal Oakland Mayor Orders Cops’ Attack on Anti-war Protestors">">"iberal Oakland Mayor Orders Cops’ Attack on Anti-war Protestors

OAKLAND, CA, April 7 — Today, PLP members along with hundreds of other demonstrators showed up at the American President Lines (APL) berth at the Port of Oakland for an anti-war action. Together with the ILWU (International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union), the protest was designed to create a non-violent picket line at the berth’s gate to stop the loading of military cargo. The ILWU contract bars members from picketing but they could be sent home if their working conditions were considered "unsafe" (that is, if others staged a picket line.)

Under orders from "ultra-liberal" mayor Jerry Brown, the Oakland police department was determined to crush the protest from the start. The cops harassed drivers as they unloaded protestors at the initial meeting place and stopped shuttle vans at the port entrance. Once the picket line began in front of APL, the cops gave the order to disperse "within three minutes." After one minute, and with no provocation whatsoever, the cops opened up with wooden and rubber bullets, tear gas and concussion grenades. Many people were shot at nearly point-blank range, most in the back as they ran. Those who didn’t run fast enough were brutally arrested.

After regrouping at a transit center, people noticed grapefruit-sized welts on their bodies from the wooden bullets. One woman suffered a concussion. As we learned later, one ILWU member had to have surgery. All told some 30 people were injured by the fascist cops. Despite this, an ILWU member reported that APL was shut down that day.

The fear created by this attack was evident. As people formed a second picket line at another berth, the cops only had to emerge from their bus in order to scatter people. Fearful protestors began leaving immediately. Once the cops had chased the crowd from the port, they stood smugly with shotguns, letting trucks in.

After that second picket line, the protestors debated about the next step. Although some union workers in the crowd suggested going back again, the leadership made it clear the next move wasn’t open to debate. Protestors marched to downtown Oakland, intending to rally at the Federal building. As the cops tried to herd the march down a deserted side street, a PLP member foiled that scheme and helped lead the march through downtown on Broadway. The police clubbed protestors and ran their motorcycles into people who "disobeyed" orders. The handful of cops had to back off as it became clear the march could not be stopped. The role played by the PLP member enabled us to distribute all of our CHALLENGES and leaflets and have good political discussions with other protestors.

One key weakness was the lack of involvement of ILWU workers. The union leadership should have organized to put members on the picket lines to shut the entire port. Had the workers come out, the cops could have been defeated.

The liberals behind the police brutality showed the true face of capitalism. This protest was not a sanctioned "die-in." It was aimed at uniting workers with the anti-war movement and stopping the profit system’s war machine. The cops’ "non-lethal" weapons are known to be lethal at close range. Someone could have been killed. Our friends with us that day saw whose side the cops are on. This can help them understand revolution means the working class must smash the bosses’ state power.

a name="Capitalist Killer on the ‘Home Front’ — Mass Unemployment"></a>"apitalist Killer on the ‘Home Front’ — Mass Unemployment

While U.S. imperialism is killing workers in Iraq, capitalism is killing workers’ jobs here. The government reports — themselves suspect — 108,000 jobs were lost in March. That’s 2.4 million jobs gone in the last two years, the longest stretch without job growth in 20 years.

While the unemployment rate "remained" at 5.8%, that figure (conveniently) omits five million jobless workers who have given up looking for non-existent jobs but are NOT counted as unemployed.

Add those 5 millions to the 8.5 million "officially" unemployed plus:

•the several million working part-time who want but can’t find full time jobs;

•those on welfare who also would work if there were jobs available;

•the one million in prison for non-violent crimes who in most other countries would not be incarcerated.

If all these were correctly counted as unemployed, the amount of jobless would approach 20 million and the rate would more than double, to about 14%.

Meanwhile, black and Latino workers suffer double the jobless rates of white workers because of racist discrimination — first fired, last hired.

All sectors of the economy showed job losses. For manufacturing it was the 36th consecutive month. And the March figures do not include recent airline layoffs nor state and city cutbacks like the 5,400 getting the axe in New York City. Businesses have shown increased sales but have cut jobs anyway because they can get the remaining workers who fear layoffs to work harder, increasing productivity — for the boss.

Why the continued job losses? "Businesses simply aren’t sufficiently profitable to fuel new hiring," says Richard Yamarone, New York economist for Argus Research. "Why would you," he answers, "when you have slipping demand, skyrocketing productivity and global overcapacity?" (New York Times, 4/5)

So there it is. Capitalism in crisis "solves" its problems on the backs of the working class, again and again. To Iraq’s workers we say, if this is the "democracy" U.S. rulers plan for you, watch out! Only international working-class unity to dump this inhuman system can solve perpetual unemployment.

Transit Workers Must Bypass Leaders And Shut Chicago Down

CHICAGO, IL April 7 — More than 400 members of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 241 were in a fighting mood at tonight’s union meeting. President Lee Robinson faced a sea of opposition as he gave his report, but it could have been anyone on the Executive Board. Finally he said, "If the membership wants me to sit down, I’ll sit down." The auditorium rocked as everyone said in one voice, "SIT DOWN!"

On March 18, over 5,000 workers (almost 90%!) rejected the tentative agreement between the union and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). We’ve been without a contract for almost three years. The proposed 4-year agreement would impose "Rostering," which means drivers who work less than 8 hours while covering 12-to15 hour split- shifts would no longer be guaranteed 8 hours pay. Overtime would be paid only after 40 actual hours worked. It would increase the number of part-timers to 25% of the workforce, increase the hours they can work, and drop any restriction on their use. It also set up alternative retirement plans, threatened the existing pension fund and eliminated medical benefits to future CTA retirees.

ATU 241 members rejected similar sellout contracts at the PACE Heritage and PACE Western suburban bus lines. One member said, "In 27 years I’ve never seen anything like it. This contract would asphyxiate the union; choke us to death."

Some Executive Board members used this meeting to bring charges against their own president for having signed the three rejected contracts without their consent, and illegally transferring $42 million from the workers’ pension fund to the CTA. Robinson has been suspended without pay and is probably through.

This is a struggle against racist attacks on a mostly black workforce. It is a struggle for the future. The company and the union leadership want to deprive young workers of medical benefits when they retire. Over 1,500 workers would have retired with a new contract over the past three years, but with this contract they would have been replaced with hundreds of low-wage, part-time young workers. This is the fight of all workers — black, Latin and white, men and women, retirees and new hires.

ATU leaders say the only paths to a new contract are negotiations or arbitration. We need to send a message with a strike vote and then shut the city down! This fight can erupt into a mass anti-racist struggle at a time when racist terror is on the rise from Chicago to Baghdad. It could win the support of workers and youth who rely on mass transit while the bosses and bankers pour billions of dollars into oil wars and a fascist Homeland Security police state. That would be the best way to celebrate MAY DAY in the city that gave birth to this international working class holiday!

a name="Hospital Union’s Reliance on Politicians Leads to Mass Layoffs">">"ospital Union’s Reliance on Politicians Leads to Mass Layoffs

NEW YORK CITY, April 13 — On a cold and snowy April 1, 40,000 healthcare workers — black, white, Asian and Hispanic — descended on Albany, NY, demanding Gov. Pataki rescind his healthcare cuts. According to state officials, this was the largest demonstration ever held in this state capital. Workers came from NYC, Long Island, Buffalo and other upstate areas. Many CHALLENGES were sold that day.

The 1199-SEIU leadership had not planned for such a large turnout, making it difficult for many workers to find their buses for their return home.

Many workers felt betrayed by the union leadership who had endorsed and financed Pataki’s re-election campaign. Then the politicians posed as workers’ friends to get funds and votes, but as one worker declared on the bus, "The politicians present a utopian outlook during an election year, promising everything under the sun but, as soon as they take office, their real face appears."

Workers who spoke at the rally said these cuts would surely devastate their institutions and cause more pain and suffering to the patients.

The 1199 leadership, the NYC transit union head and others advocated making alliances with other politicians who opposed Pataki’s cuts. These union leaders are always misleading workers, saying we should rely on our class enemies. The hospital bosses and politicians represent the capitalist profit system. Meanwhile, the union leaders never mentioned the $80 billion in workers’ taxes being spent for the war on Iraq. Barely one week later, the bosses’ newspapers revealed the hospital crisis brewing in NYC:

• St. Mary’s Hospital in Brooklyn will be closing it’s maternity ward, laying off 50 workers and leaving the community’s mothers without a nearby hospital in which to give birth;

• St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Greenwich Village has laid off 80 hospital workers and will cut 500 more by the fall;

• Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan is cutting 500 jobs, with 800 more to follow in the fall;

• Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx is laying off 250 workers.

Many more hospitals around the city will be facing similar cuts. The hospital bosses insist that patient care is not being compromised by these layoffs. This defies the fact that thousands of workers die each year due to lack of healthcare.

Since hospitals are run for profits, patient care will never be a priority. The capitalist-run healthcare system is bleeding the hospitals to their bones.

AFL-CIO Hacks Support Massacre of Iraqi Workers

As the first bombs fell on Baghdad, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney declared, "The AFL-CIO…[is] unequivocal in support of our country and America’s men and women on the front lines..." The AFL-CIO dropped any pretense of opposition and lined up squarely behind Bush’s oil war on Iraq, showing once again that it is an instrument of U.S. imperialism. The AFL-CIO hacks call for supporting U.S. troops in order to line up workers behind an imperialist war.

The AFL-CIO boasted, "4,000 members of the maritime unions…are loading and transporting equipment, supplies and materiel to support the troops in the Persian Gulf."

The AFL-CIO leadership chose to mobilize dockworkers to aid the war, in spite of White House union-busting when West Coast longshoremen were locked out by shippers last fall. Bush imposed a Taft-Hartley injunction and conspired with the shippers to impose a job-cutting contract. Homeland Security Fuhrer Ridge said that a strike would violate national security and threatened dockworkers with using troops as strike-breakers.

The AFL-CIO has backed every imperialist adventure by U.S. rulers, from Vietnam to Kosovo to Afghanistan. It has worked hand-in-glove with the CIA for over 50 years to crush militant and communist-led labor movements around the world. It helped the U.S. government topple left-wing governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa and replace them with fascist torturers, like Saddam. Many "left" organizations believed that Sweeney’s rise to AFL-CIO president in 1995 was a positive step for workers. They predicted the AFL-CIO would oppose an invasion of Iraq.

In the wake of the invasion, the airline industry has announced thousands of layoffs. Tens of thousands of additional jobs are threatened by the impending bankruptcy of American Airlines and others. Companies are ripping up union contracts and imposing drastic concessions. The cost of the war will mean more racist cutbacks. The first installment will be $75 billion, with billions more coming.

The AFL-CIO does not defend workers’ interests, and is incapable of speaking for their needs. Sweeney & Co. view the war as an opportunity to demonstrate their usefulness to the bosses by promoting patriotism and nationalism. However, they will only find themselves more isolated from the millions of workers, organized and unorganized, who oppose the war and resent their passivity in the face of increased attacks. Building a mass PLP will lead the working class out of the grips of the bosses, Democratic and Republican politicians and their servants in the AFL-CIO, and onto the road to communist revolution.

a name="PL’ers Bring Revolutionary Answer to Anti-War Marchers">">"L’ers Bring Revolutionary Answer to Anti-War Marchers

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 12 — Today over 30,000 people marched against the war and occupation of Iraq, once again demonstrating deep-seated opposition to U.S. bosses’ imperialist actions. A rival, pro-war demonstration, featuring scum like G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame and ultrapatriotic country singer Aaron Tippin, punked out with a few hundred flag-wavers.

The anti-war march was quite smaller than the three previous mobilizations held here because many people have despaired of influencing the government through marches. They are partially right, marches by themselves won’t end imperialist wars. The Vietnamese defeated the U.S. militarily, with important help from GI rebellions. Communist revolution ended World War I in Russia. But communist participation in these marches can help win many to see this revolutionary outlook. However, we won’t get that from the current leadership of the anti-war movement.

ANSWER, which organized today’s march, ignored these historical examples and continued to spread illusions about how protest itself can stop imperialism. Worse yet, they build illusions in the Democratic Party hacks as a "solution" to the Bushite gang — nothing about revolution or a mass communist movement as the real path to defeating imperialist war, or to crush local butchers like Saddam Hussein. "Watering down" the truth is a policy of revisionists (fake leftists). Real communists tell the truth, however difficult that truth might be.

Other anti-war forces didn’t attend this march because they feel the war is over; there’s nothing more to protest. This is a big mistake. The coming period will be filled with endless imperialist wars. We must all sharpen the struggle on our jobs and campuses, in the military, unions, houses of worship and communities to attack imperialism and racism.

A PLP leaflet distributed widely at the demonstration called for closing ROTC, ending Defense Department research on campuses, striking against military production, GI’s organizing against the war machine and smashing racist police brutality. This sharply contrasted with the words from the podium.

PLP members who participate in several of the organizations involved in the action, joined them in the march, on the buses, and in the rally, urging the groups and individuals to make a commitment to revolution and a lifetime of struggle with the PLP.

That night, at a D.C. PLP forum, several new people came, including some from the march itself. That may well be the most important thing that could happened at the march — more people became involved in the long-term struggle for revolution. Yet the Party as a whole can do much more to provide the leadership and build the ties needed to keep pace with the rapidly developing world imperialist crises. PLP’ers and our friends must redouble efforts at building the party and its influence. Make no mistake — revolutionary waves are building and passivity is ebbing as imperialism and fascism make their brutality more evident. We must "catch the wave" and lead the working class to international victory, from Baghdad to D.C.!

Students Organize Against Police Terror and Imperialist War

RIVERSIDE, CA — On March 20, campus cops viciously attacked a student protest against the war at a local community college. This was an extension of the unjust imperialist wars waged against the working class worldwide. Physical abuse and intimidation by local and federal police agencies are necessary to the survival of the capitalist system.

Students called for a boycott of classes to protest the war in Iraq. They received informal approval to march through one school building’s hallways to draw more students from classes. When they entered the building, they were assaulted immediately without even an order to disperse. Some of the campus cops were in plain clothes and didn’t identify themselves as they attacked several students leading the march.

Students demanding the release of their classmates were answered with punches, kicks, baton blows, and pepper spray in their faces. One student reported that students in custody were being "threatened, choked and walked on."

Students and community members accused the cops of trying to ambush them and instill fear in the increasingly large activist community here, as well as racist aggression. Racism was evident in the excessive violence and severity of the criminal charges brought against two Latino students. In contrast, the only white student detained received relatively civil treatment and was immediately released.

This attack is one more example of increasing attempts to suppress the voice of the working class, of which working-class students are a vital part. City cops arrive at demonstrations in full riot gear, with cameras intended to intimidate and document dissenters. The INS continues to indefinitely detain and deport people based on racist policies. Just as U.S. rulers have attempted to "shock and awe" the Iraqi people into submission, the campus police have launched an offensive against working-class student activism. But this ratcheting-up of oppressive measures has united the campus and local community against this threat, as it continues to unite people around the world.

In response to this assault, students went ahead with their demonstration, marching and chanting down a busy city street to the nearby military recruitment center. When the group of about 200 students marched back to campus, they were confronted by city cops in full riot gear, trying to block their return.

They marched to the campus police station and demanded the police free the two arrested students. Inciting-to-riot charges were later reduced to "disturbing the peace."

Students, faculty and community members met with the school President and demanded a formal apology from the school and the suspension of the campus police who attacked the students. They also demanded that all charges be dropped, and that no charges be brought against anyone involved in the demonstration.

The students vowed not to let this abuse distract them from opposing imperialist war. One week later, they again entered the building in their most organized, disciplined march yet. Students refuse to be swept under the rug. We are learning valuable lessons about the nature of a system that makes war on the working class from Iraq to California, as well as the long-term nature of the fight to change it.

Red Leadership On NYC Cuts Crucial to Break Out of Reformist Box

NEW YORK CITY, April 14 — City workers are apprehensive, knowing cutbacks and layoffs are imminent. Workers, as always, are bearing the brunt of capitalism’s growing crisis. Black and Latin workers, who comprise a large percentage of city workers here, are especially victimized by these racist cuts. Across the country state and local governments are slashing services to pay for widespread deficits, federal tax cuts to the rich and the oil war in Iraq. Now with the war in Iraq virtually over, Mayor Bloomberg comes out swinging, announcing another 5,400 layoffs. Working people are forced to fight for jobs and basic services. And the union leaders? They’re holding press conferences, if that.

Here AFSCME’s District Council 37, the largest municipal union, has scheduled a demonstration for April 29 as negotiations end, and is doing almost nothing to build for it. The City rulers have just screwed the transit workers and are preparing a similar fate for DC 37. No one’s organizing city workers to hit the bosses where it hurts — on the job.

City services are being privatized. Corporate taxes have declined for the last 30 years. A 5¢ tax on all stock sales was abolished in 1982 (re-instituting even a 2¢ tax would abolish the city deficit). Assessments of commercial real estate have been dropping since 1991, even though sale values have been skyrocketing. The city increased homeowners’ property taxes 18%, but haven’t raised commercial taxes at all. Meanwhile, the city unions are explaining how the city bosses could cover their deficit, and complaining that the City isn’t listening. They’re calling for a 1¢ stock sale tax, and even that’s being rejected.

The union publicists ignore one basic fact: the bosses don’t care about workers’ suffering, in New York or Baghdad. Workers are caught between politicians and union hacks who spin endlessly about why we have to take cutbacks, layoffs, speed-up and give-backs.

Breaking out of this box means mobilizing against the cuts, by-passing the union hacks and going directly to the rank and file to demonstrate, picket, slow down, work to rule, walk off for as long as it takes, to know that when one union goes out, all go out. Otherwise we’re defenseless.

Many workers are reluctant to move without union authorization, but many are angry, both at the situation and the inaction of leaders whose large salaries are paid with our dues. Real class leadership means exposing capitalism, and not collaborating with the "better" bosses or politicians. Appealing to politicians is like spitting in the wind. No matter who the union leaders support, Pataki or the Democrats, we’re still facing these massive attacks.

There is mass support for fighting back. Working people can and do link layoffs to the devastating cuts in social services. Meanwhile the union leadership doesn’t reach out to the working class, negotiates in secret, advocates "fair budgets," and begs the City to make the layoffs "equitable."

Communists need to give class struggle leadership: demand rank-and-file formulation of demands, including no layoffs, no give-backs, no cuts, and form rank and file committees to organize walk-outs to oppose the bosses’ plans. It means linking tax cuts for the rich and funding for imperialist war to the hits we’re taking; pointing out the racist nature of the cuts and the layoffs.

The profit system keeps us on a treadmill — they cut, we fight, the cycle goes on and on. As long as we have capitalism, we must fight, but until we get rid of capitalism, the system will keep us in this perpetual wrestling match just to feed our families.

Change can only come from building PLP out of leading militant class struggle. Otherwise, we’ll listen once again to why the next lousy contract is "the best we could have hoped for," and swallow seeing our brothers and sisters laid off and scrambling to feed their families. We can mobilize for demonstrations like the one on the 29th, but if we don’t exert militant class leadership, communist leadership, we’ll just wind up shouting that afternoon, and watching the cuts on the evening news.

May Day Message Sparks Fight Against Rulers

(The following is excerpted from a speech by a young comrade at a recent May Day dinner attended by over fifty workers and students, including a dozen Boeing workers and their families. The speaker had just returned from the struggle at a MEChA conference. See letter, below)

Seeing you all here tonight gives me hope, so I thank you. There is a war going on, of one imperialist butcher against a local butcher. There’s no justice in such wars fought by our working-class brothers and sisters while the rich rulers stay safe. They think that by arresting, deporting and killing our brothers and sisters they make the world safe — safe for imperialism and capitalist exploitation, while we are told to sacrifice "for the good of our country."

What sacrifices have we made so far? Half of my friends are out of work. They want me to sacrifice half my friends, but I refuse. I also have friends in the military. They want me to sacrifice them as well, but I will not. I have many friends who, once they implement all of their "security" procedures, will be harassed and labeled "terrorists." They want me to sacrifice them as well. That’s almost everyone I know! I won’t do it!

The ruling class is very smart and very powerful. But we are even more powerful. We control the machines that make the weapons. The workers at Boeing, some of whom are here tonight, are the ones who make the planes that bomb our brothers and sisters in Iraq. They make the planes that fly the soldiers to the Middle East. Because they control this, they have power. They can refuse to do the work. Our working-class brothers and sisters also do the fighting; they are the soldiers. No son or daughter of a rich boss will ever get near the actual fighting. It’s the sons and daughters of the working class who are expendable to them. Yet, because they control the guns, they have the power. They can refuse to fight, or use the guns against their true enemy, the bosses.

There have been many times in history when this has happened. It can happen now. But we need to become organized. That’s why I am so happy to see you all here. It’s a step towards organizing ourselves, and it truly gives me hope.

Just last week I went to a MEChA conference. I saw hope there as well. Mid-way through the conference, over 500 students held an impromptu rally and march against the war in Iraq. They understood that they had power. Also, a number of faculty, staff and students at campuses here have become more involved in anti-war groups and we in PLP have been there with them every step of the way. We have also been distributing more CHALLENGES, talking to more people and increasing our bases. This has given me the most hope.

It is our job to show the working class that there is hope for justice for our class. We must keep learning and teaching. One of my favorite ways of learning is to go to May Day. We march every year in the heart of Los Angeles’ garment district. This year it’s May 3rd. Every year I go I learn more and I have more hope. All the people here tonight should march. I assure you it will be a worthwhile experience.

a name="No ‘Free Speech’ For Anti-Worker Politics"></">No"‘Free Speech’ For Anti-Worker Politics

Activities in an anti-Iraq war union caucus on a West coast campus has initiated a struggle over a class outlook on "free speech" and whether unions should support anti-working class politics.

A petition urging the Local’s leadership to make an anti-war statement is being circulated, an educational piece has been written and a poster has been designed for our union bulletin boards. All this has involved more than 30 rank-and-file members, who have been talking to their co-workers and getting feedback and encouragement.

This has forced the union to E-mail the membership announcing formation of our caucus and inviting participation, stirring up controversy. Nasty mail came from some of the more right-wing, "love-it-or-leave-it" union members, suggesting that the union "has no business being political." Of course, unions have always been political. The question is, do they embrace the politics of the working class or do they tail behind the bosses?

Some have said the pro-war members could form their own caucus if they want to, advocating "free speech," in which every position should be heard. The Party member and friends in this caucus have explained that imperialist war destroys the working class, that the union should never support any anti-working class position. Theoretically the unions represents the workers, even though we know they’ve become an arm of the Democratic Party. A PL’er raised the question, if we had an anti-racist caucus, would the union also support the formation of a racist caucus? Communists believe in struggling around ideas, changing tactics and strategies, but all on behalf of fighting for the working class and building the Party. Support for racism, sexism and imperialism are not up for discussion.

Meanwhile, the university plans a "day of reflection." Faculty and students are free to attend and classes can be canceled. Staff, on the other hand, cannot leave work. We’re urging the caucus to demand staff be free to attend and call for a strike if the university won’t allow it.

These issues present opportunities to win the membership to understand what benefits workers and see the need to fight for our lives. Current events offer favorable circumstances for class struggle.

The Party member can win a number of workers to the left, using CHALLENGE to stimulate discussion beyond the caucus meetings. He’s developing friendships with a number of caucus members, and is spreading CHALLENGE among them. This can lead to bringing some caucus members to May Day.

Anti-War Militants Seize the Day At MEChA Conference

The 10th Annual National MEChA Conference was held at the Univ. of California at Berkeley on March 29-30. MEChA is a Chicano student organization and has a reputation for being extremely nationalist and/or apolitical (organizing dances and BBQs, but doing little else). However, that’s not true at our school. We’ve been active in our campus chapter for three years and have developed a small group of CHALLENGE readers.

About 1,000 high school and college students and community people came. We discussed a resolution against the war in Iraq while riding on the vans going to the conference, hoping this would raise the level of struggle among our friends and in the entire group. We decided to broaden the resolution to include imperialism and the Patriot Act.

Although normally resolutions must be submitted 60 days in advance, fortunately many people there liked ours and helped push it to the floor. Unable to stop it, the conference leadership tried to change its thrust to one of opposing violence in general. The arguments made by the many friends we made at the Conference defeated this pacifist outlook, maintaining its anti-imperialist content.

At a workshop discussing Marxism-Leninism and the possibility of armed revolution, many of the 50 people attending agreed we eventually would need a revolution in order to change the system. In fact, many became excited and we began to discuss the war in Iraq and why the leaders of MEChA didn’t want to discuss our resolution.

That evening, during dinner, an impromptu rally against the war was held on campus. As the crowd quickly grew to over 500, many people felt the energy and wanted to march into the neighborhood, but the Conference leaders stopped them, using the excuse that the high school students didn’t realize they could be arrested and that those who "instigated" it weren’t concerned with their safety. In reality, high school students had taken the lead. Many had protested that it was their decision, but ultimately the march was halted.

This demonstrated the potential for real struggle and understanding in MEChA, but also the danger of the misleaders’ reformism which cooled the righteous outrage of these working-class youth. This is not an isolated incident. The bosses use the misleaders of black and Latino organizations to divert anger of the working class. But as communists we recognize that such anger is an appropriate and welcome response to this system. Workers and students must utilize it in our fight against the ruling class.

A Student Comrade

Chicago City College Cuts Hit Immigrant Workers, Teachers

CHICAGO, April 14 — Students and teachers at City Colleges here have been subjected to more attacks on their education and livelihoods. The Board of Education has been cutting back since last year when both federal and state monies began drying up. The rulers were busy rounding up and deporting some of our Arab and Latino students and beefing up their military budgets for endless imperialist wars. They have continued destroying social services, funding more war and attacking immigrant workers.

The Democratic Governor of Illinois recently announced an austerity budget with a 5% reduction for the City Colleges. At one school that’s another $80,000 right away. Next year’s projected deficit is $16 million. This means the District Office and each of the seven campuses must cut $2 million.

The Board’s "solutions" include a wage and hiring freeze, firing staff, serving fewer students and shutting down schools. The Intensive Program is being eliminated. Previously the intensive English program met for 16 weeks for 16 hours a week. Now these 256 classroom hours have been chopped to 64 — 8 hours a week for 8 weeks. Immigrant students would come from miles away for this special program.

This follows the elimination of counselors and reduction of tutors. At one school the library is closed and the computer lab has reduced time. The administration is planning to charge for classes as opposed to our free ones.

The teachers’ union sabotaged the members’ strike and the Board’s offers get increasingly insulting after each negotiating session. Teachers are being fired, especially anti-war and union activists who defend other teachers and students.

The City Colleges really don’t care about education, educators or students. The capitalist system that dictates what the City Colleges do is in crisis. The rulers’ need to dominate the world and its resources contradicts the interests of the workers who need education. The best way to oppose the rulers’ plans for more war and fascism is building the revolutionary communist PLP. Big May Day marches, dinners and events will help pave the road to revolution.

Euro Bosses Less Than Awed of U.S. Rulers

Nazi-like "shock and awe" is a political, not just a military strategy. U.S. bosses want to intimidate any potential geopolitical competitors as much as crush any thought of Iraqi resistance to the U.S. invasion. Although the U.S. military has murdered and injured tens of thousands of civilians, the bosses’ invasion has failed on a number of political fronts.

Nowhere is the political failure more evident than in "Old Europe." With the war barely a week old, the European Union (EU) began organizing to confront the U.S., economically, politically and militarily. "Old Europe" does not seem willing to accept junior-partner status in a world run by U.S. imperialism. All this despite — or perhaps because — U.S. bosses may control the flow of Mideast oil in the near future.

The EU Commission, EU’s executive branch, has solidified its political power behind a constitutional proposal for a permanent presidency, rotated between France and Germany. Not even waiting for passage of the EU constitution, the Commission has forged ahead in the economic and military realms.

Recently German-owned DHL worldwide express offered cash for the ground operations of Airborne, the U.S.’s third-largest package-delivery service, despite protests from UPS and Federal Express. DHL would have bought the air operations as well, but U.S. laws prohibit foreign ownership of domestic airlines. The EU Commission has pushed for the U.S. to modify these laws as a condition for renegotiating "open skies" agreements. The EU Commission nullified past bi-lateral "open skies" agreements negotiated with the U.S. trade commission, which allowed U.S. carriers access to Europe, saying that now the EU alone will speak for all European airlines.

After the Kosovo war, the Europeans announced plans to build their own rapid deployment force. Since then, they’ve started on their own GPS satellite system and the A440M military transport plane to be built by Airbus Military. On March 26, German Defense Minister Peter Struck announced that the countries planning to build the A440M would use Russian Antonov transports rather than Boeing C-17s until the new aircraft are ready.

On the eve of the Iraq war, the EU Commission announced plans to form a pan-European defense acquisition and research bureau. This is the latest governmental body that binds various European ruling classes together, and could avoid years of haggling that such military projects usually entail. Not quite a nation-state, the EU is rapidly become more than a momentary alliance of nations.

The imperialist invasion of Iraq has been greeted with near universal condemnation from workers in Europe, culminating in a brief general strike across the continent. This points to opportunities for winning workers to communist politics worldwide. The EU will try to use this widespread anti-U.S. sentiment to provide a cover for the French and German rulers’ own imperialist ambitions to consolidate and increase political and military might versus U.S. bosses. This will drive them to intensify oppression of their own workers. The millions of Muslim workers in Germany and France know well the racism of the cops and bosses of those countries. All EU workers and bosses have nothing in common in opposing U.S. war in Iraq.

It’s premature to say whether these latest moves by the EU Commission are harbingers of things to come. It does seem, however, that "shock and awe" has not slowed down the sharpening imperialist rivalry. Maintaining the empire will not come any cheaper in the days ahead. As Challenge says, capitalism means endless imperialist wars.

a name="‘The Mountain That Eats Men’"></">‘T"e Mountain That Eats Men’

The 10-year-old miners of Potosi, Bolivia, are testimony to the cruelty and torture that capitalism forces on the children of the working class. They toil 12 hours a day so they and their families can barely survive before the mountain eats them alive, according to a New York Times report (3/24). Of course, the Times does not trace the miners’ plight to the profit system. But their situation is not a freak of nature. When mineral prices collapsed in 1985, all the miners were laid off. Then the government company abandoned them, forcing them to organize mining "cooperatives" to fend off starvation. The minerals bring the lowest possible price, because of the world crisis of capitalism, hitting this poor nation of 8.3 million, gripped by recession, particularly hard.

"In its heyday," says the Times, "Potosi was as big and rich as London. Its silver helped build the Spanish Armada and bankrolled Spanish military expansion." But 350 years under Spanish domination brought "the deaths of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Indians in the mines,…falling to illness and starvation, or simply overwork." The following are excerpts from the Times’ article:

---

Once so famed for its abundant silver that the Spanish named it Rich Mountain….today those who mine its seams call it the "Mountain That Eats Men."

Here, 250 feet down in a warren of caverns,…boys — as young as 10, most hardly 15 or 16 — ….clear rocks with picks and shovels and heave 100-pound loads on their bare backs….

Older miners, wheezing and slowly dying of lung disease, have trouble keeping up. By their 40’s most are finished. Few live past 50….The labor falls to their sons, until they, too, wither generation by generation.

The mountain does not discriminate. It eats boys, too.

"At first when I came into the mountain, I just cried," said Grover….But I had to work….

Sweat pouring from under his helmet, he had already worked 2 hours, and had 10 more to go….

There is no lighting. No rail cars to carry out minerals. No pumped oxygen. No safety regulations….No face masks or gloves or heavy work boots….

In an industry badly battered by collapsed commodity prices, poverty is the harshest taskmaster of all….The take is miniscule: miners make, at most, $100 a month and usually far less.

In Latin America, languishing in its worst economic cycle in decades, the use of child labor is becoming more widespread….An estimated 800,000 children work in this country….

….The mountain itself appears devastated — heaps of slag and shavings have created noxious mounds of contaminants hundreds of feet high. Polluted water flows down its sides…

Into this labyrinth go Agustin Quispe, 46, and his son, Santos, 15…They buy sacks of coca leaves [to] chew to ward off hunger and fatigue. They will not eat during their entire 8 or 10 hours in the mountain….

The work is backbreaking….Rock slides are common. Fingers or limbs are often mangled. At least 21 miners were killed in the last two years. A 15-year-old was crushed to death in January….

"I regret this so much," said Aurelio Isla, 35, who started mining when he was 12 and is now a victim of black lung disease, unable to draw a full breath….This mountain has finished me off…."

Grover said he had to stop going to school when his father, Severino, died two years ago. At 14, Grover quickly took his place in the mine, to help his mother and his siblings.

"There was no one else to take care of the family, and I was the oldest," he said. "So I went in."

Fascist U.S. Prison System: Black/White Ratio is 7.5 to 1

With a U.S. prison population of 2,019,234 last year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics calculated that 28% of all black men will be Imprisoned sometime in their lifetime. Right now, 12% of all black men between 20 and 34 are in jail, compared to 1.6% of white men in the same age bracket.

The largest number of convictions stem from drugs, two-thirds of which are non-violent crimes. (In Texas, possession of 4 ounces of marijuana gets up to two years in prison.) Federal law mandates five years without parole for possession of 5 grams (one-sixth of an ounce) of crack cocaine. But for POWDER cocaine, 500 grams — one hundred times as much — is required for a 5-year sentence. The overwhelming majority of crack users are black and Latino. The overwhelming majority of powder users are middle- and upper-class whites. This "war on drugs" is a essentially a racist war on black and Latino workers and youth.

This combination of long prison terms for non-violent offenders possessing an ounce or two of crack cocaine, the zeroing in on the predominantly black areas of big cities by racist police forces, and the framing of tens of thousands of black youth by corrupt racist cops (as in LA and Miami) has resulted in HALF the inmates in this country’s prisons being black (although they constitute only one-tenth of the total population).

Illegal drug use among white men is approximately the same as for black men. Yet because of the above racist factors, "black men are five times as likely to be arrested for drug offenses" as are white men. (Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1998, p. 57)

Black men — 10% of the male population in the U.S. — are imprisoned at more than FOUR times the rate of black men in South Africa, where they constitute 75% of the male population! And once in prison, inmates — half of them black — are subjected to slave labor, producing goods for big corporations at "wage" rates of 23¢ an hour.

The Civil War presumably ended slavery for black people in 1865. Now U.S. capitalism has succeeded in re-introducing slavery into the largest prison system in world history. (For a complete analysis of this slave labor prison system, see PLP pamphlet: "Prison Labor: Fascism U.S. Style," available on our website —www.PLP.org)

LETTERS

a name="Many GI’s Not Won To Fighting">">"any GI’s Not Won To Fighting

At drill last month, a sergeant whispered in my ear, "They can send me to Fort Drum or Texas, but I’m not going over to fight in Iraq." Later on, while another soldier and I were discussing the invasion of Iraq, he joked, "Yeah, I’ll go through this pre-mobilization paperwork, but they’re crazy if they think I am going to Iraq!" Make no mistake — many soldiers are not won to fighting.

There are a few key reasons for their cynicism. First, most soldiers (especially those in the Army Reserves and National Guard) are workers who bought into the military’s pitch for college benefits. When they get called up for combat situations, many feel manipulated upon seeing that the same military supposedly guaranteeing them a better life could also be responsible for their deaths. Second, many soldiers believe that this war is personal for President Bush. In short, many, many soldiers view this war as someone else’s problem that they’re being forced to fight.

But cynicism alone will not lead soldiers to understanding the nature of capitalism and inter-imperialist rivalry, which is what this war is all about. So at one point, during our "hurry-up-and-wait" time, I organized an informal discussion with a group of soldiers about the war in Iraq. After a few minutes, one soldier cautiously informed us of his presence at an anti-war protest in March.

After some more intense exchanges, one soldier remarked, "We’re talking about all these problems, but what’s the solution?" Everyone looked at me. These soldiers are hungry for answers, and it’s our responsibility to deliver. At the time, my response was limited, but this discussion has now given me the opportunity to raise the question of communist revolution with a few more soldiers and increase my CHALLENGE distribution. Several soldiers have agreed to come to a pre-May Day dinner.

While the anti-war movement is using its pacifist line to encourage youth to avoid the military, PLP has a real solution. "Turn the guns around" is the revolutionary position that fights for the international unity among soldiers across all borders. Without an army of soldiers fighting for the liberation of the working class, a future of peace and stability will never be guaranteed for our class.

Red Soldier

Colombia: Iraq War Same as Death Squads

Contrary to "Death Squad" Uribe, Colombia’s President, workers and youth here understand very well what imperialist massacres mean. As in the rest of the world, we have had many anti-war protests, mainly led by college students, NGOs [Non-government organizations] and left-wing groups. Most workers oppose the war, since they have seen the effects of "imperialist democracy" first-hand here, where thousands of trade unionists and others have been murdered by the paramilitary death squads. But unlike the workers, the union hacks have remained silent on this war, just as they do on most attacks against workers.

A clear example is Luis Eduardo Garzón, former head of the CUT union federation. "I am tired of hating, we need reconciliation," he said in one of the many get-togethers he’s been having with politicians seeking to "improve the system a little."

But this system is so rotten and criminal that nothing can make it better for workers. These hacks have shown once again they are part of the problem not of the solution.

PLP members have participated in anti-war demonstrations in Colombia, distributing DESAFIO-CHALLENGE and leaflets. Contrary to union hacks and all kinds of reformists, we clearly tell workers and youth that capitalism causes war, fascist terror, unemployment, etc. Workers and capitalists have irreconcilable differences that will only intensify as the world’s rulers create more wars and death squads. The only way out of this hell is to fight for a society without any bosses: communism.

A Red Worker, Colombia

Death Penalty For Cuba Hijackers

Three persons holding 50 passengers hostage hijacked a ferry boat from Cuba and were headed to Florida but were caught by Cuban authorities, tried, found guilty and executed. Meanwhile, some 65 dissidents were jailed and sentenced to long prison terms for collaborating with Bush’s man in Havana. The Cuban government had infiltrated several agents into the dissident movement and then showed proof of how James Cason, in charge of the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba, had met with the dissidents in his house and office. Cason paid them $100 a month to serve as spies for the U.S.

In a recent three-week period, two air taxis were hijacked and flown to Florida, along with one ferry. These were not regular "boat people" but rather part of a sinister plot.

A 1994 immigration agreement signed by the U.S. and Cuba provided for hijackers to be returned to their home country for trial. But instead of sending these international pirates back to Cuba, the U.S. treated them as minor offenders and released them on bail in Florida. Finally, the Cuban government took action and, after rescuing this last hijacked ferry boat, tried the three kidnappers and executed them.

This has sparked much controversy, even among supporters of Cuba overseas who oppose the death penalty. Some even say Cuba shouldn’t behave like Texas or other U.S. states, where the death penalty is applied regularly. I disagree.

The Cuban government fears it might be next in Bush & Company’s line of fire, particularly since the right-wing Cuban exile leadership in Miami carries a lot of weight in the Bush gang’s foreign policy. Moreover, the Cuban dissidents function mostly as paid agents of the U.S. government.

The death penalty is not above class or politics. In the U.S., it is mostly working people (a majority black and Latin) who are on death row for crimes caused by the racist exploitation of capitalism. Cuba, while not really the revolutionary system claimed by many of its supporters, has applied the death penalty in a very different situation. After all, if these dissidents get away with supplying the U.S. with intelligence information, Havana could become another Baghdad, killing thousands in the name of "democracy."

Che Rojo

a name="Bringing DESAFIO-CHALLENGE to Peru’s Prisons">">"ringing DESAFIO-CHALLENGE to Peru’s Prisons

Greetings! Your bi-weekly publication is indeed a tribune reflecting the feelings of the U.S. working class and that all of us in one way or another reject imperialism and work towards a worldwide communist society. This future will only be achieved through the organized struggle of the working class.

I also want to condemn U.S. imperialism represented by Bush and his gang of butchers which, under the guise of fighting international terrorism, massacres the people of Iraq. What they call terrorism has been created by the imperialists, who dig their own grave since the world’s oppressed and exploited are fighting back internationally. It doesn’t matter what the imperialists call this struggle. For oppressed people it is one for liberation.

It is well known that the U.S.-British butchers will win this invasion of Iraq, since they have a very sophisticated genocidal military machine. But the people of Iraq have shown that one can fight back against this monster.

Here in Peru, political violence began in the 1980s between the PCP (Communist Party) and the state. Today, this violence has eased after 25,000 deaths, 80% of them murdered by the State and its armed forces. There are 1,000 political prisoners and another 1,000 hiding to avoid arrest.

Toledo, who replaced the Fujimori-Montesinos dictatorship a couple of years ago, continues with the same cruel jail system, refusing to free many who have been imprisoned for over 10 years.

A friend gave me a copy of DESAFIO-CHALLENGE. I decided to bring it to some of these prisoners. But the guards, seeing it was a communist paper, got very nervous and refused to allow it in. So I was left with the goal of bringing the paper to the prisoners in some other way.

I will keep in touch and wish you many victories.

A Friend in Peru

Retired Unionist Hits Sweeney War Cry

Unions, in general, look to John Sweeney as their leader because he is the AFL-CIO president. I’m a member of the ARA (Alliance for Retired Americans), NYC chapter, which is an arm of the AFL-CIO.

Seventy of us attended the March 26 monthly meeting, discussing the Iraq War. All agreed it was bad but mainly that services would be cut due to the billions the government would spend for the military.

I said not only was the U.S. purpose to gain oil for domestic use and profit but also for the U.S. to control which consumers of which countries got the oil, at what price and that the oil was paid for in dollars, not Euros.

I noted that the war was in no way fought for democracy since the U.S. had a long record of supporting fascists like the Shah, Trujillo, Somoza, Suharto, Duvalier and every other dictator who has ever existed so long as they played the roles the U.S. wanted.

The ARA members agreed with me almost totally and made similar points. But there was one other important issue where there was less unity, the one which Sweeney always exploits — patriotism in the guise of support for U.S. troops.

This is also the line of politicians like Rangel and Clinton and of course, the media. We know some workers swallow it. I advocated, "U.S. imperialists out of Iraq now," that this was class war, meaning we could not unite with any capitalists, Saddam included.

Afterwards, two members approached me. One, a fireman, said belligerently, "I agree with you on the oil issue but we must support the troops." I repeated my case and left it at that. I realized that patriotism and "support your troops" are among the biggest obstacles to the unity of the U.S. working class now or anytime.

Later, I remembered history, which demonstrated that when the time is ripe, soldiers will turn their guns around and the workers will use whatever weapons they have to remove their never-ending exploiters.

ARA Member

a name="Bosses’ Patriotism or Workers of the World Unite?">">"osses’ Patriotism or Workers of the World Unite?

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" said Samuel Johnson. In the name of patriotism, several thousand people rallied at Ground Zero, NYC, on April 10 to support the slaughter of Iraqi men, women and children by the hi-tech weaponry of U.S. imperialism. CNN, FoxNews, MsNBC, the NY Post, Washington Post, etc., were full of "patriotic pride" as they covered the massacre of Iraq. It was disgusting to see the construction union hacks rally for war while thousands of jobs are being eliminated in NYC and across the country by the same bosses who perpetrated this war. But these hacks do nothing about this job massacre.

"Patriotism" seems to be a classless concept since it lumps bosses and workers together in defending "our" country. But patriotism and nationalism are ideologies favoring one class: the capitalist. The bosses very much own "our" country and use these ideologies to win workers to support bosses’ wars that are only in the bosses’ class interests and that kill our brothers and sisters around the globe. The "stars and stripes" is the bosses’ flag which represents the almighty dollar and is used to oppress the working class.

Many leaders of the anti-war movement advocate patriotism. The groups that organized the huge protests of Feb. 15

and March 22 —United for Peace and Justice and Win Without Wars — are guilty of that. Medea Benjamin, of the anti-globalization group Global Exchange and leader of Win Without Wars, said the peace movement must "reclaim the flag and patriotism from the right-wingers."

These groups want to ensure that the "progressive" elements of the Democratic Party win the next election. There already is a section of the ruling class and the Democratic Party, while not opposing the Iraq war per se, believe the Bushites are the wrong gang to do the job needed after the war to continue the U.S. bosses’ world domination. Tom Kerry, a leading Democratic running for president, already called for "regime change" in Washington. He’s setting himself up to be the candidate of the millions who opposed the war and who will continue to oppose the Bushites now that the Iraq war appears over.

An article in the April 13 New York Times (Section 4) reviewed the history of patriotism in the U.S. — from the "Communism-is-20th-Century-Americanism" of the old Communist Party USA, to the current "peace-is-patriotic" theme of parts of the anti-war movement. That is why even though the song printed in CHALLENGE (April 16) changed the words of the patriotic song, "Rally ’round the Flag," I believe it’s a mistake to use it, even with a progressive anti-war line. It just perpetuates the myth that somehow patriotism is useful to workers and their allies.

We in PLP have attacked patriotism and nationalism as reactionary creatures of capitalism. We put forward the line of "Workers of the World, Unite!" and "Smash All Borders" to counter these ideas.

An "unpatriotic" Comrade

In Memoriam

On March 20, my father died of cancer. While he wasn’t a giant of the communist movement, he put the "work" in working class. He quit school to go to work at age 13 and didn’t stop until he was 77. Like millions of his generation, he grew up in the Great Depression and came of age fighting fascism in World War II.

He spent 45 years as a furrier in the NYC garment center, just a few minutes from where he was born and raised on E. 4 St. He was a militant member of a communist-led union, that took on the Mafia and the Nazis and provided security for Paul Robeson’s Peekskill concerts. We grew up with stories about strikes and picket lines. He told us of following scabs into the freight elevators with a butcher knife while "Acid Arnie" sprinkled the scab fur coats, turning them to garbage. Our dinner table was the liveliest spot in the house, full of discussion and debate — no racist jokes allowed.

He retired only to find that his union pension was less than $100/month. After moving to Florida, he went back to work as a security guard. He said, "At my job they call me ‘The Rabbi’ because I’m always preaching to the young guys. What do I tell them? ‘Teach each other. Look out for each other.’"

In the last few weeks he said, "In the end what have you got? It’s nice to have some money when you’re working, to do things, to paint the town red. But in the end, all you’ve got is people. Anyway, the world is not about me. It’s about how you lived in it, what you did for it, and what you didn’t do. And that’s it.

He lived his life for others, for those he loved, and he always knew what side he was on. What could be more noble than that?

Red Son

RED EYE ON THE NEWS

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

 

No mass weapons found

Britain and the United States suffered a fresh blow last weekend when their main justification for war was undermined by reports that special forces have failed to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq….

John Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation, said that US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was desperate to find a "smoking gun." (GW, 4/9)

After troops, anti-Muslims

Poised behind the troops, waiting for a signal that Iraq is safe enough for them to operate in, are the evangelical Christians — carrying food in one hand and the Bible in the other….

Muslim worries have been heightened because the man leading the charge into Iraq is Rev. Franklin Graham, who delivered the invocation at President Bush’s inauguration. The son of Billy Graham and a fierce critic of Islam, he is on record as calling it a "wicked" religion, with a God different from that of Christianity. "The two are different as lightness and darkness," he wrote. (GW, 4/16)

 

Bechtel backs into billion

Andrew Natsios…set out last week to counter accusations that $600m worth of contracts for reconstruction in Iraq…were examples of cronyism.

"If you need a surgeon…or a college, you seek out the names with the reputation for quality and the ability to get the job done," he said. Strange, then, that a frontrunner is construction giant Bechtel, whose record in managing America’s biggest public works project has been, by most accounts, disastrous….Bechtel’s record in managing the "big dig," a $23b project to burrow a highway under Boston….according to Senator Robert Havern:…."is the biggest works project in the history of America, and it is the largest cost overrun of any project…."

According to Pratap Chatterjee, of the California-based Corpwatch, the Halliburton subsidiary…stands to make a killing. "The main money is not in reconstruction. The main money is in supporting the troops. Whoever gets that money will be running all the army bases for an army that is not going to leave. About 80% of the budget goes to the military, and the rest on reconstruction." (GW, 4/16)

Immigrants reject cops

Washington, April 13 — A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups is challenging the Justice Department’s decision to allow state and local police departments to pursue illegal immigrants as part of the war on terror. (NYT, 4/14)

 

Sounds like Syria’s next

President Bush accused Syria today of harboring senior Iraqi military and government officials and demanded "cooperation."

….Mr. Bush also asserted that "there are chemical weapons in Syria." (NYT, 4/14)

Red statues are different

Lately parallels have been drawn in the press between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the…Communists who ruled Russia….

But with polls showing that more and more Russians are looking on the Soviet past with fondness, there is a distinct possibility that one day we will see the once-toppled monuments back at the heart of Moscow. (NYT, 4/10)

Many wars after Iraq

"The national security strategy of the United States," published in mid-September….declared that the president would take pre-emptive action against hostile nations and terrorist groups developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons….

"The publication of the strategy was the signal that Iraq would be the first test, but not the last," said one senior official involved in its drafting….

Senior Pentagon officials and…counterterrorism officials have suggested that the United States government will now turn its attention to Hamas, the Palestine group that has used terrorism to fight for a Palestinean state, and Hezbollah, which has strong ties to Syria and Iran. (NYT, 4/10)

 

Big Iraq kill uncountable

Neither British nor American military officials will provide even rough estimates of Iraqi soldiers killed in the war….

For example, relentless bombing and a week of ground combat left the Baghdad division of Iraq’s army reduced to "zero percent strength," according to Marine officers who engaged the division, once thought to number about 10,000 soldiers. Where are they?

One military official…said the number of Iraqi dead was certainly high but ultimately unknowable.

"In the bombing of the different divisions, the destruction there was terrifying," the official said, speaking on condition that he not be named….

The world will probably never know how many, and no Iraqi authority is left to count them and notify their families. (NYT, 4/10)

1. `Shock and Awe' Atrocities Isolate U.S. Rulers As
2. Liberal Hypocrisy about "Unfairness" in U.S. Military Covers Plan to Restore Draft, Widen Imperialist Wars
3. British Soldiers Refuseto Fight
4. New York City Streets:
   250,000 Anti-War, 600 Pro-War
5. Bosses Hand Machinists Layoffs, CEO Gets Millions
   1. If We Produce All Value, How Come the Bosses Make All the Important Decisions?
   2. Workers' Power Is The Answer
6. Parent-Teacher Allegiance Is Pledge to Oppose War
7. Chicago State Students' Walkout Opposes Invasion of Iraq
8. Tens of Thousands in LA March, Walk Out vs. Iraq War
9. NJ Schools Forum Hears Attack On Iraq War, Fascist Laws
10. Brazil: Auto, Steel Workers Launch
    Mass Strike vs. Lula's Attacks
11. Thousands Tell Democratic Gov. `No War, No Cuts!'
12. H.S. Students Take Leadership in Anti-War Struggle
13. National Guards: World Views Bush Klan as new Nazis
14. Anti-racist GIs: `Won't Kill Iraqis'
15. 10,000 in D.C. Hit Racist Anti-Affirmative Action Suit
16. Imperialists' Bombs Make Big Bucks for U.S. Profiteers
    1. RECONSTRUCTION PLAN EXPOSES MASS MURDER
    2. MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX RIDING HIGH
17. TALK ABOUT `HARM'S WAY'....
18. 80,000 in Bolivia Battle Army in Mass Uprising
19. Film Review: In Whose Interest?
20. Destroy the World To Save It?
21. LETTERS
    1. Do the Math-- It's the Racist War For Oil
    2. Racist Airport Cops Attack 12-year-olds
    3. War Turns Pledge Upside Down
    4. Patriotism Undercuts Anti-War Fight
    5. Aim Struggle At Wall Street
    6. Rummy to Saddam: Let's Make A Deal
    7. CHALLENGE Reader Receives Cheers
22. RED EYE ON THE NEWS
    1. `Real men want Iran'
    2. No Iraq chem. attack plan
    3. Snipers hit some civilians
    4. The rich don't volunteer
    5. World: US is imperialist
    6. US Black people feel Iraqi pain
    7. US Muslims fear attacks
    8. God not on rulers' side?
    9. Depends what's globalized

---

`Shock and Awe' Atrocities Isolate U.S. Rulers As Millions Protest Imperialist War

"I honestly don't think the Iraqi people want us here...these people are not going to give up as easily as everyone expects. They're going to fight." (Chief Warrant Officer Sean McNeal, as his Apache helicopter was nearly hit by rifle fire)

"We are invading their country. I'd be on my window with a shotgun too." (Chief Warrant Officer, Glen Woodard)

--From Newsday, March 29

Bush's war of terror against Iraqi workers is turning into a serious political defeat for the U.S. ruling class. "Shock and Awe" has boomeranged to become a catalyst for mobilizing millions around the world into a movement against U.S. imperialism. The mass base of this movement is militant, angry and thirsty for an alternative to bosses' oil wars. Only the revolutionary communist politics of the Progressive Labor Party can meet this need.

We've entered a new period of danger and opportunity. The danger stems from U.S. rulers' united determination to invade and occupy Persian Gulf oil-producing nations, despite their internal differences over tactics. Control of cheap oil remains crucial to Washington's plan for world domination far into the future. Bush's brutality in Iraq is just a first step. Once the bosses secure Iraq's oil fields, as they probably will, they are likely to target Iran next. After Iran, they may have to occupy Saudi Arabia. Widening imperialist war is the main international aspect of this new period.

But this danger also brings the richest opportunity for revolutionary growth since the Vietnam years, an aspect to be grasped and acted upon. The world-wide anti-war demonstrations on February 15 caught the rulers napping and have shown no signs of slowing down since Bush invaded Iraq. On March 22, several hundred thousand people marched in New York City, against only 600 who came out to support the war on the following day. In London on the 22nd, perhaps "as many as 700,000" protested the Bush-Blair atrocities in Iraq, and, according to The Observer (3/23), "Britain's biggest wartime demonstration was a more dour, determined, and altogether angrier affair." Similar demonstrations continue throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

U.S. imperialism is conducting this war in a state of increasing isolation from both the world's working class and the overwhelming majority of its own rivals. The Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz hawks around Bush thought the war would be a cakewalk. They made boasts that have all proved futile. The Saddam Hussein regime is far from crippled. The vaunted anti-Saddam rebellions by Shi'ite Muslims in southern Iraq haven't materialized. And, most importantly, the Iraqi population seems to be greeting its U.S. "liberators" with bullets and car bombs rather than the flowers Rumsfeld had promised.

The Iraqi military and some of the population are fighting back and sucking the U.S. into the guerrilla war it wasn't prepared for. However, the U.S. is still likely to win an eventual victory and occupy much of the country. But this occupation may cost far more in money and lives than Bush & Co. had predicted. Controlling Iraq after the war will be no picnic. Although French, Russian and Chinese bosses won't have sufficient strength to confront U.S. rulers head-on soon, the process of the U.S.'s political isolation will continue to accelerate. This development will proceed amid growing militancy against U.S. imperialism throughout the Arab-Muslim world, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia.

This contradiction provides fertile ground for growth of a communist movement! The anti-war movement has just begun. It has the potential to continue growing in size and militancy. Despite the lies in the rulers' media about overwhelming support for the war, key sections of the U.S. population already oppose it. The numbers in the streets don't lie, and the marchers reflect millions more at home who aren't yet ready to march. The highest rate of opposition to this war comes from black workers.

As the quotations above show, even "lifers" in the U.S. military are at the very least skeptical about the true nature of their mission in Iraq. Rank-and-file soldiers, who make up the bulk of U.S. casualties, will die in greater numbers as the fighting worsens. They are likely to begin asking hard questions about this war. The "Vietnam Syndrome" is far from dead. This skepticism can eventually turn into rebelliousness. The so-called "all-volunteer" military is in reality an economic draft. Most of the young workers in it signed up to get job skills, not to pitch and catch bullets in the desert for the greater glory of Exxon Mobil. U.S. imperialism is politically isolated from many of its own soldiers.

Liberals and other fakers within the growing anti-imperialist movement will continue to try duping it into a pro-imperialist trap. We must expose and oppose them, and organize activity around revolutionary communist politics. It may be a long time before PLP has enough political and numerical strength to alter the fundamental relationship of forces in the class struggle, but the current opportunity is the best in many years. We can and must seize it.

Liberal Hypocrisy about "Unfairness" in U.S. Military Covers Plan to Restore Draft, Widen Imperialist Wars

The liberal media, along with their rented retired generals, are blasting the Bush-Rumsfeld White House for invading Iraq without enough ground troops. The liberals have claimed for months that hundreds of thousands of troops were needed to cover supply lines and provide reinforcements for casualties or forces tied up in battles against an Iraqi military underestimated by Bush & Co.

This tactical spat among the bosses reveals a need they have long feared to discuss in public. Iraq is just the first step of their grand plan to occupy Middle Eastern oil fields and to suppress "terrorists" (i.e., anti-U.S. nationalists) around the world. If, as the liberals assert, Iraq alone requires a minimum of 300,000 ground troops (with an additional 200,000 at sea and in the air), then comparable actions in Iran and Saudi Arabia, will call for multiples of that figure.

The dirty little secret the liberals are now letting out of the bag is that the "all-volunteer" military has reached its limits. Bush's patriotic flag-waving after 9/11 didn't exactly produce a stampede to military recruiting offices. As the main Establishment media are now beginning to suggest, the return of the draft is just a matter of time. The liberals' Big Lie here, first uttered by Harlem Congressman Rangel, is the pretense that a draft would make military service more "democratic" than the present system. "It's just not fair," opines the Congressman, "that the people that we ask to fight our wars are people who join the military because of economic conditions, because they have fewer options." Rangel makes this statement in a long New York Times article (3/30) that laments the relative absence of the middle class in today's U.S. military.

Behind this façade of equity, the liberals' real goal is to increase the deadly fighting strength of the U.S. war machine. There's a precedent for this maneuver. At the end of World War II, when U.S. imperialism had to gear up for the Cold War against the old international communist movement, the Pentagon under the liberal Democrat Truman integrated the U.S. armed forces and expanded military opportunities for women. The lesson is that when the bosses begin mouthing off about "social justice" and "sharing burdens," their real goal is to sucker millions of workers, students and others into fighting and dying for their rotten system.

Watch for the Democrats and Rockefeller Republicans to begin hopping on the Rangel draft bandwagon, perhaps as soon as the 2004 presidential election. They'll probably paste a fig-leaf name like "national service" on it. We can't prevent the rulers from restoring the draft. But we may have a lot to say about the conflict between workers and bosses that will surely sharpen once the draft and its cost, both economic and human, becomes apparent.

British Soldiers Refuseto Fight

Two British soldiers in Iraq were ordered home after protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians. They're from the 16th Air Assault Brigade, which has been involved in heavy fighting in southern Iraq, "protecting" oilfields. A third soldier in the reserves refused orders to travel to the Middle East. The soldiers face a court martial and up to two years in jail.

A military affairs lawyer said one of the soldiers "told his superiors that he wasn't prepared to enter into a conflict that involved the killing of innocent civilians." (Sunday London Times, 3/30) The two soldiers were sent back to the Brigade's barracks in Colchester, Essex.

British troops have been plagued with boots that melt in the desert sun, assault rifles that jam when sand gets into them, and whole units without enough ammo, food, toilet paper and showers. Recently a soldier discovered that two plates were missing from her body armor and she had to buy them out of her own pocket. All this, together with massive opposition to the war and increasing difficulties in the military campaign, is affecting soldiers' morale.

On top of this, British soldiers have been the targets of "friendly fire" from the U.S. blitzkrieg. One British soldier was killed and three were wounded 35 miles north of Basra when U.S. anti-tank aircraft destroyed two British armored vehicles.

One survivor criticized the American pilot for shooting when there were civilians so close to the tanks. He said, "There was a boy of about 12 years old. He was no more than 20 meters away....There were all these civilians around. He had absolutely no regard for human life."

If the war goes on and the number of dead and wounded in the imperialist armies increases, we could see mass opposition among soldiers. A key factor in the defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam was the refusal of U.S. soldiers to continue fighting, and openly rebelling against their officers.

New York City Streets:
250,000 Anti-War, 600 Pro-War

NEW YORK CITY, March 31 -- The Bush/Rumsfeld/Gen. Tommy Franks' "shock and awe" blitzkrieg attack against Iraq not only failed to win a quick victory, as they expected, but also failed to deter the anger of the growing anti-war movement. Millions have demonstrated worldwide against this war.

One of the biggest protests occurred here on March 22. A quarter of a million people marched for hours over a two-mile route from Times Square to Washington Square. They included young and old, from veterans of many previous anti-war movements to youth in their first activity against an invasion created by a system based on endless imperialist wars.

PLP members and friends participated in many ways, marching with various mass organizations we work with and distributing thousands of special CHALLENGE supplements as well as CHALLENGE itself. A group of PLP'ers rallied at one corner of 37th St. and Broadway where our chants of "Muslims, Jews, Black and White, Same Enemy Same Fight, Workers of the World. Unite!" were well received by the marchers.

Tens of thousands heard our attack both on the Bushites for launching the war, and on the Democratic Party politicians (NY Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer) for supporting it. Pointing out that many have been marching since the '60s during the Vietnam war made it clear that capitalism and imperialism make war for profits inevitable. Capitalism and peace don't mix. The only way out of this living hell is to organize a mass communist movement of workers, students and soldiers worldwide to fight for a society without any bosses -- communism.

As the crowd reached Washington Square Park, after hours of marching, the cops yelled that the march was over and ordered people to disperse. Thousands refused. Several dozens youth who left the park to march in the street were beaten by the cops. Then over 1,000 marched through the neighborhood confronting riot cops, police vans and cops on horses. More cops arrived but despite their violence many remained chanting, "Shut down the war, open up the streets!"

The next day a "pro-war" rally in Times Square organized by right-wing groups only drew 600 people. Even though polls say a majority support Bush and the war, the streets definitely belong to the anti-war forces.

Bosses Hand Machinists Layoffs, CEO Gets Millions

"But what about the CEO?" complained a union machinist at a recent crew meeting. "He just got a million-dollar bonus, but you tell us the company can't afford to keep our jobs." The big boss had just finished describing management's plan to surplus a bunch of our machines and offload our jobs.

"The CEO's bonus is not something you can affect," the boss answered. "You can't control the economic environment. You can't control the [Iraq] war. The only thing you can control is the job you do, so do the best job you can. That's what we have to focus on now."

If We Produce All Value, How Come the Bosses Make All the Important Decisions?

It's not every day a boss states capitalism's failures so clearly. Our labor produces every penny of capital the company has to invest. Yet the bosses decide what to do with that capital. In essence, the surplus of capital produced by our labor -- the value above and beyond raw materials, machines and the cost of labor, etc. -- is stolen from us.

The bosses flood the market with goods, while cutting workers' wages. Inevitably, this leads to a "crisis of overproduction." More goods are produced than can be sold at a profit. Since capitalists produce only for profit -- not for workers' needs -- they cut back production. Millions are laid off.

Many of us are Vietnam veterans. Millions of our class brothers and sisters, both U.S. and Vietnamese, died on the altar of U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia. Now it's our children's turn to fight and die for the bosses' empire. U.S. imperialism plans to control the world by controlling the flow of oil. The bosses' foreign policy think tanks have been planning to invade Iraq for at least the last four years.

We spend a lifetime making the bosses rich, and powerful. Capitalism and its governmental forms are designed that way. There's no way to restrict the bosses' power under capitalism. Elections are bought; the so-called "free press" is "free" only to the corporate world that controls every significant media outlet. Unions that defend the capitalist system end up supporting one boss or another.

Workers' Power Is The Answer

If we workers want the power to decide where the value we produce goes, if we want to eliminate these endless crises of overproduction, if we want to end imperialist wars that claim the lives of so many, we must think outside the limits of capitalism. We must do a lot more than a "good job." We must build for communist revolution!

Communist production is for need, not profit. This allows us to organize a rational system based on the needs of the working class. "Crises of overproduction" will disappear.

Only communism can end imperialist wars. Communism relies on the might of the international working class to defeat ALL bosses. Communist internationalism stands in sharp contrast to the nationalism of the IAM, which chose "American Might" as the theme of next year's calendar. Such nationalist messages pave the way for endless imperialist wars.

Certainly we can do a lot about the economic environment and about the bosses' wars. We can reclaim the power that is ours by right. Although long and difficult, the path to communist revolution is the answer. In times like these, capitalism's failures become clear for all to see, providing opportunities for revolutionary growth. Join the PLP! Fight for Communism!

Parent-Teacher Allegiance Is Pledge to Oppose War

BRONX, NY, March 31 -- A fight against an elementary school principal's demand that young children be forced to stand and acknowledge the pledge allegiance to the bosses' flag has mushroomed into a parents' rebellion and about 35 staff members wearing pledges against the war in Iraq. This offensive by parents and teachers has put the school administration on the defensive in their attempt to carry out the ruling class's aim of indoctrinating young schoolchildren with nationalism and patriotism.

As reported in the March 19 CHALLENGE, the administration's fascist tactic of forcing a PL teacher and his pre-Kindergarten students to stand for the pledge of allegiance backfired when the teacher fought back, exposing the principal's breaking of their own rules and foiling his attempt to escort the 4-year-olds to the classroom next door.

Parents, one who was a PL member, boldly demanded, via a petition, to have their children returned to their classroom and be allowed to sit during the pledge. Many involved in this fight are CHALLENGE readers.

Three days after the principal backed down, anti-war staff members distributed 50 stickers with a different allegiance: "I PLEDGE TO STOP THE WAR IN IRAQ!" Twenty-five wore them. One, with a 19-year-old son in the war, took a sticker and, although she felt conflicted, said, "Look I want to support the troops but I'm against this oil war!" The administration told them to "keep their political views at home," but many kept wearing their stickers. One teacher said, "If people can wear American flags then I can wear my sticker!"

The next day, six parents in our classroom -- all wearing the sticker -- led a sit-in against the pledge of allegiance. The administration tried to bar the parents from the room. The PL parent shot back, "We're telling you we're going to sit with our children during the pledge." The principal then said the children needed a parental note with permission to sit. The parents wrote notes right there in the classroom. The Pledge came over the loudspeaker and the teacher from next door entered to lead the class. Not one parent or student stood nor recited the bosses' pledge nor sang the "Star Spangled Banner." This teacher vowed to never return again.

Then, after the parents left, the teachers union rep entered the classroom -- on the principal's side! Instead of supporting the teacher, the rep shot questions at him, about the anti-war sticker he was wearing and about the parents who had just left. Then ten more teachers wore stickers that day.

The next week, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) entered the case. The NYCLU lawyer said harassment of those refusing to participate in the pledge is widespread. She said recently an immigrant student sat during the pledge and the racist principal ordered him to stand or "get out of the country"! The lawyers at both agencies applauded the courage of the fighting parents and teachers. The CCR director sent a letter to the principal demanding she stop sending someone into the classroom to recite the pledge and cease harassing and/or ostracizing the PL teacher. It emphasizes that the pledge is voluntary (2nd Court of Appeals, Goetz vs. Ansell).

The 35 staffers wearing anti-war stickers, the parent "sit-in" against the pledge and NYCLU/CCR involvement put the administration on the defensive.

Although we've won some ground, the battle is far from over. The principal still recites the pledge with the PL teacher's students "if they choose"; parents have not been notified of their rights; and a student note is still informally required to abstain from the pledge. Of course, most Pre-K through second-grade students are too young to understand the words to be able to "choose."

The administration wants all the students to stand and salute the bosses' imperialist flag, under threat of intimidation and ostracism. This is how fascism works. Walk to the beat of the bosses drum' or you'll be made an example of. But the working class is too smart for this!

Many parents and teachers see that "liberty and justice for all" directly contradicts their material existence. While they understand the pledge is hypocritical, they think maybe they should stand out of respect for others who do participate. But we should have no respect for this cruel, unjust and murderous system which offers nothing to the working class. They slaughter thousands in Iraq to secure the bosses' oil while simultaneously putting all Pre-Kindergarten programs on the chopping block.

As capitalism's anti-worker attacks intensify, workers and students will not only "sit-in" against this hypocritical pledge, but will help build a movement to eliminate this fascist system.

Chicago State Students' Walkout Opposes Invasion of Iraq

CHICAGO, March 21 -- Fifty mostly black, working-class students from three classes walked out at Chicago State University today to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They marched across campus and boldly entered the Student Union and Administration Buildings with signs, chanting and bullhorn blaring. Class-change rallies on a path between buildings involved even more students on a picket line. One group of students demonstrated for two-and-a-half hours and then returned later to urge another class to walk out.

The students gave the leadership to these actions, which were initiated by two PLP professors who refused to maintain "business as usual" in class. They made signs and initiated chants, "No war, more peace, stop fighting in the East," "No Blood for Oil" and "Books not Bombs." Tonight six CSU students and friends came to a citywide meeting, blasting capitalism, racism and imperialist war, providing an inspiration to all present. These events were preceded by a March 5 student speak-out against the war. Here too, the PLP students took leadership.

Twelve years ago the PL professors protested Desert Storm by giving the speeches themselves. We have learned to rely on the students. They came through for the working class.

Tens of Thousands in LA March, Walk Out vs. Iraq War

LOS ANGELES, CA -- In the last two weeks, things have changed very fast! On March 22 there was a march of over 10,000 people in Hollywood. The previous Saturday, over 20,000 marched in downtown LA. At the Hollywood march, PL'ers arrived early to sell CHALLENGE and invite the demonstrators to march on May Day in solidarity with workers of the world, and to destroy racism and imperialist war with communist revolution.

The marchers' mood was changing from pacifism to anger. There were more black and Latin marchers and more workers. A PLP member declared the workers of the world will unite against the bosses and their system of imperialist slaughter if given the alternative of revolution for workers' power. She asked people to buy CHALLENGE and many gladly took out $1 and $5 bills. One said, "I knew PLP 37 years ago! It's great to see you!" Some gave their names to find out more about May Day and PLP.

Although they had no permit, marchers took over the street and marched to CNN headquarters to denounce their war coverage. As we marched, three young black and Latin women led hundreds of marchers in chanting, "1-2-3-4, We won't fight your racist oil war! 5-6-7-8, We don't want your police state"; "ExxonMobil, You can't hide, We charge you with genocide,"; "No sangre obrera por ganancias petroleras,"; "Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World Unite," and many others. Other marchers used the bullhorn and we chanted with them. A black woman denounced Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Lieberman and Pelossi for being racist warmongers. "Fight the power!" she chanted. As we approached the CNN building people yelled, "No Blood for ratings," and "Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Shell; Take your war and go to hell!" After a while, the police started moving demonstrators out of the area.

The LAPD reported that over a one-week period, there were 22 demonstrations in LA involving tens of thousands of people. Their excuse for beating demonstrators who sat down at the Federal Building? They were overworked! Black, Latin and white high school students had walkouts and marches, facing threats from administrators and police attacks. Cops came in swinging and attacked students at one high school after a small fight between students. The night the bombing started, CHALLENGE was grabbed at demonstrations as people looked for answers to how the bosses could carry out this carnage knowing there is worldwide opposition.

At a nearby college, local and campus cops beat up and arrested three Latin students as they and many others were preparing to walk out after the bombing started. This only made students angrier, leading to more protests.

The fight for May Day is part of the long-term fight to give these angry demonstrators a solution to the bosses' crises and murderous wars. The Party is growing modestly. If we seize this new period, lead with CHALLENGE and build strong ties with angry workers and students, this modest growth can accelerate. We should not underestimate the importance of mass CHALLENGE sales. As Marx said, when ideas are seized by the masses, they become a material force. We are being tested, and plan to pass the test.

NJ Schools Forum Hears Attack On Iraq War, Fascist Laws

One hundred parents, teachers, and students attended a forum at a New Jersey high school on the war in Iraq, fascist laws and racist attacks on immigrants. PLP's communist ideas were enthusiastically received by many. We defeated the principal's anti-communist attack, won new respect for our ideas and helped spark a campaign against military recruiters in the school.

Several comrades, both parents and students, have been active in this working-class school's PTA for several years. We have tried to bring a communist analysis to the issues facing our school: overcrowded classrooms, inadequate physical facilities and supplies, and metal detectors and surveillance cameras inside the school. We've led several student actions against these conditions. When we've explained how capitalism is the root cause of these conditions, the administration and/or its supporters have said "politics does not belong in the PTA." But as reality becomes clearer, our friends in the PTA are increasingly recognizing the truth of our analysis.

Last fall, our current school principal told the teachers he had been sent here to "get (the) parents under control." Before the forum, he told one Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) member that he would call the police, if necessary, to keep communists out of the forum. However, the discussion turned things around.

Several speakers reviewed the history of the Middle East and the imperialist role of the U.S. One speaker linked the war for control of oil in Iraq to the "No Child Will Be Left Behind" law. This law forces schools to give students' names to military recruiters.

Many students engaged in enthusiastic and intelligent questioning of, and discussion with, the speakers. One student called for a walkout when the bombing started. Other audience members advocated internationalism and described the phoniness of the bosses' "democracy" and the need to attack the whole capitalist system.

As a result, the principal stood up and said HE would lead the student march to join the local demonstration planned the day after the bombing! That didn't happen, but the following week at a PTA committee meeting parents expressed outrage over an Army recruiter being stationed at our school. They decided to launch a petition campaign against the recruiter. We will try to make this a city-wide drive, to force the Board of Education to stop assisting the ruling class in turning our children into cannon fodder.

Two of our Party's strengths -- communist collectivity and persistent activity in mass organizations -- have helped move people into action against the class enemy. Over time, some will seriously consider joining PLP. It's clear we have a long way to go before seeing the full fruits of our labor, a communist revolution. It is equally clear, however, that the inevitability of economic crisis, wars and growing fascism under capitalism will continue to spur workers to consider a communist alternative.

Brazil: Auto, Steel Workers Launch
Mass Strike vs. Lula's Attacks

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL, March 27 -- Some 23,000 auto and steel workers walked out in the industrial belt here in the first major strike since President Lula took power in January. Lula, former auto/steel union head, was elected posing as the candidate of the working class and the poor. The strike was called by Forza Sindical, the second largest auto and steel workers union, which supported Lula's candidacy.

Forty plants were shut on the strike's first day. It could escalate to eventually affect 1,500 plants and shops. The workers are demanding a 10% wage hike. The C.U.T. labor federation (backed by Lula's Workers' Party) tried to block the strike, saying on the day the strike began that it had asked for a 10% wage increase without strike action. A 10.26% pay raise last November has been eaten away by inflation.

In addition, 800,000 federal workers are threatening to strike against the Lula administration's plan to "reform" social security and privatize their pension plan. In this era of international capitalist crisis, the billions in pension funds will be open to speculators. The federal workers' union also supported Lula's election.

Workers cannot rely on politicians to represent their interests, even one like Lula, who started as a rank-and-file union leader before running for office. The rules of the capitalist electoral game are stacked against workers. Whoever becomes president must serve the class interests of corporations and bosses.

Thousands Tell Democratic Gov. `No War, No Cuts!'

LOS ANGELES, March 28 -- Thousands of students, workers, faculty and administration from community colleges here rallied downtown against the cuts initiated and carried out by Democrat governor Gray Davis. He's slashing 10% of the Community College budget, which means canceling classes, summer sessions, laying off counselors among other attacks.

Students at LA Trade Technical College marched to the downtown rally chanting "No cuts!" protesting the 118% tuition hike, program cuts and teacher/worker layoffs. One student started chanting, "No War! No cuts! These cuts are for the war!" linking the current cuts to the war in Iraq. Others joined in, but some from the Associated Students (AS) tried to shut him up. They said such chants would lead to police repression and violence, that people weren't ready for them. Students from another college were told they couldn't board a bus for the rally with signs linking the cuts to war.

Unlike the AS leadership, people at the rally were able to relate the cuts to the war and to the growth of prisons. A fellow Trade Tech student carried a poster with the chant written on it. PLP passed out thousands of flyers denouncing the racist cuts, showing that the war would cost $1.9 trillion including the occupation of Iraq and its oil fields. Many students bought CHALLENGE. Some asked for more information about the Party. One student said his brother-in-law was killed last week in Iraq, while he himself was laid off from his school job. He was glad to get the paper and wants to stay in touch.

PLP'ers are building ties with fellow students and plan to increase regular CHALLENGE sales at school, leading to a study-action group.

The budget cuts and the war are part and parcel of the same attack. The Chancellor of the Community Colleges wants the cuts spread more evenly instead of disproportionately against the community colleges. This pits community colleges against elementary and high schools, instead of uniting everyone against the war budget.

These cuts are racist since the community colleges are where many black and Latin students learn a job skill or take courses needed for transfer to a 4-year college. Racism and wars for profits stem from capitalism, which must be fought and, in the long run, destroyed by communist revolution.

One speaker proudly announced that one of the first U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq graduated from an LA community college, and that these schools provide front-line soldiers. But these same soldiers, used by U.S. bosses to kill Iraqi workers, then come home (if they make it) to find their jobs have been eliminated to pay for a war to seize Iraq's oil.

H.S. Students Take Leadership in Anti-War Struggle

BROOKLYN, NY, April 1 -- "Why is the U.S. at war?" a Brooklyn high school teacher asked. "OIL!" shouted the class. This awareness, and the walkouts that have accompanied it, are a good start for what may become a new generation of anti-imperialist fighters.

Millions worldwide are protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. New York City students joined this movement twice last month, walking out of class.

March 5th was a national student strike for "Books not Bombs." Students from over twenty-five schools converged on Union Square in an impressive show of opposition to imperialist war. It has become customary to view Bush as the problem -- "regime change begins at home" -- but oil was also a word on many lips.

The day the war started, students again walked out, linking them to workers and students throughout the world. They were joined at Union Square by other students, representatives from several NYC unions, and average New Yorkers who understood that when the bombs fell some kind of immediate response was needed. The students had a great impact on the crowd, including a World War II veteran who said he's been opposing war for over sixty years.

Sixty years from now do we want to still be protesting another imperialist war? No, we want a better future than that. In this connection, it was highly significant that new comrades got involved in planning these walkouts and bringing the Party's analysis to their friends.

Only two futures lie ahead: imperialist war or working-class internationalism through communist revolution. There's really no middle road.

National Guards: World Views Bush Klan as new Nazis

(The following are some of the ideas discussed at a National Guard weekend drill.)

Somebody forgot to tell Iraq they were supposed to surrender. Instead of being a video game, where "only" nameless Iraqis die, the war is now being fought in the mud and the sand. And it looks like it could get worse. Many more young men and women will be killed before it's over.

But this is just the beginning. While the bodies of Iraqi children are still being carried out of the rubble in Baghdad, the fearless leaders of the U.S. are already planning the next blood-letting, and the one after that as well.

This is no war of liberation. It's an imperialist war. For all the U.S. rulers' attempts to equate Hussein with Hitler, most of the world views the U.S. as the new Nazis. The invasion of Iraq resembles Hitler marching into Czechoslovakia.

U.S. soldiers have been thrown into a meat grinder to kill and be killed in order to continue a 30 year strategy of the U.S. to dominate the Middle East and control of the oil flow to Europe and Asia.

In every imperialist war soldiers from all sides are victimized. They have been killed and wounded and have become killers themselves. But on many occasions they have also taken matters into their own hands. In World War I, German and Russian soldiers fraternized on the front lines, even playing soccer together rather than fight. U.S. soldiers in Vietnam developed the strategy of "search and evade" missions to avoid orders to kill Vietnamese peasants.

In this war we're already seeing dissent and uneasiness within the U.S. military. Many soldiers feel mis-led by their leadership and by the U.S. ruling class.

But soldiers must realize they have a responsibility for what is happening. No order from the chain of command takes away a soldier's ability to think. No contract absolves a person from a moral responsibility to decide right from wrong.

In the past soldiers have done great things to unite with workers from "enemy" countries and fight for a better world. In this war soldiers can once again play such an historic role.

Anti-racist GIs: `Won't Kill Iraqis'

A friend related a conversation she overheard at her health clinic job. A worker was telling her friend that her nephew, a 19-year-old black youth, is in the Army in the Persian Gulf. He called to tell her he was all right. He said, "Auntie, don't tell Mom, but my friends and I are working as a group. We're doing what we need to do to protect each other, but we see that these Iraqis are brown-skinned like us and even though the brass want us to kill them, we're not doing it and we're not going to do it. So don't worry Auntie."

My friend's reaction was, "Racism is the weak point of this system!"

A Comrade

10,000 in D.C. Hit Racist Anti-Affirmative Action Suit

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 1 -- Last night over 2,500 students from Howard University and a dozen other HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) converged for a teach-in on affirmative action, followed by a night time march to the Supreme Court. Students stayed out all night at the rally and to wait in line to attend the arguments in the affirmative action case of the University of Michigan (UM). They joined a rally of 10,000 today. The protest was aimed at fighting racism.

Racists are claiming in their lawsuit that the UM is violating their civil rights by admitting black students who, they claim, are not as qualified as they are. So far the courts have supported these racists. The Supreme Court probably will as well. While the attack on affirmative action is racist, affirmative action itself has done very little for working-class African Americans. Its main beneficiaries have been white women and middle-class black students. The ruling class has used it as a tool to whip up racist sentiment nationwide.

The march itself was an inspiration, as students applauded those who linked the fight against racism to the worldwide struggle against the U.S. war in Iraq. Signs said, "Our war is not with Iraq." Chants opposed the war as well as affirmative action. Many students correctly understand that there is a racist war abroad and a racist war at home, and that the perpetrator of both is the U.S. ruling class.

At the rally the Amnesty International (AI) chapter announced a teach-in against the war. Some AI members won the crowd to move in a more leftward, anti-war, anti-racist direction. PLP members participating in this action explicitly called for violent revolution against the racist, capitalist system.

Imperialists' Bombs Make Big Bucks for U.S. Profiteers

U.S. imperialism is built on death, destruction and the dollar. Former Marine General Smedley Butler once testified in the 1930s that he and his Marines were "racketeers for capitalism" who were used to make country after country "safe" for the Wall Street bankers and giant corporations. Never was this more true than for the Bush administration's plan for Iraq.

First. workers in the U.S. and worldwide are being forced to pay for the weapons and troops to destroy Iraq, with Bush asking for an initial $74 billion down payment "for the first six months." But, in February, even before they started raining bombs on Baghdad, U.S. corporations were being asked to bid on the contracts to rebuild what the Pentagon is now destroying, which, according to an investigative report in The New York Times (3/23) could cost at least another $100 billion, also financed by U.S. taxpayers. And the "free market" rules GUARANTEE these billionaires at least a 10% profit over and above whatever they say it will cost.

Contracts are restricted to U.S. corporations, which, says the Times, "has added to the profound international divisions that already surround the war." Not only that, but Secy. of State Powell says, "We're going to use the assets of the people of Iraq, especially their oil assets..."

Of course, it's the oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco that will be profiting from these Iraqi assets, not the people. When has capitalism ever allowed "the people" to reap the fruits of their labor?

U.S. rulers intend to control the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq (assuming, of course, they're successful in occupying it). But the main reason for this reconstruction is the fact that Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, and the cheapest to get out of the ground, which has U.S. oil moguls licking their chops. If not for the oil, the key to U.S. imperialist world domination, there probably would have been no invasion in the first place.

RECONSTRUCTION PLAN EXPOSES MASS MURDER

Interestingly, contracts are being let not only for the oil fields and seaports, but also for the infrastructure whose destruction is killing the Iraqi people -- electric power plants, roads, airports, railroads, irrigations systems, potable water -- AND for schools and hospitals! It seems those "smart" bombs know exactly what to destroy.

MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX RIDING HIGH

The corporations bidding for these "fruits" of capitalist war are among the largest in the U.S. -- Haliburton (from which its former CEO, Dick Cheney, moved to become Vice-President), Bechtel (on whose board sits Reagan's former Secy. of State George Schultz, Fluor (who hired Kenneth Oscar, former acting assistant secretary of the Army overseeing Pentagon purchases, and Bobby Inman, former admiral and deputy head of the CIA). How's that for a military-industrial complex?

Pay, bomb, kill, destroy. Then pay, re-build, still more profits, rule the world. The story of capitalism -- until the working class writes the final chapter: communist revolution.

TALK ABOUT `HARM'S WAY'....

With all the Bush administration blather about "supporting our troops in harm's way in Iraq -- where the rulers ordered them -- they don't seem too concerned about the condition of veterans disabled from previous wars, not to mention the current war of aggression in Iraq. "Cutting already under-funded veterans' programs to offset the costs of tax cuts is indefensible and callous," declared the commander of the Disabled American Veterans. He was alluding to the Bush plan to slash $470 billion from domestic spending, including health care for sick and disabled vets. "You are asking veterans to swallow a bitter pill to remedy an illness of your own making," he said.

The White House is so "concerned" about U.S. troops that it's cutting millions from their health benefits -- scaling the heights of hypocrisy.

80,000 in Bolivia Battle Army in Mass Uprising

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA -- Last month, pitched battles between tens of thousands of rebellious workers and the Bolivian army shook this country to its heels. Militant workers attacked government buildings and sacked the offices of the parties comprising the government coalition. The army murdered twenty demonstrators.

Workers, students and peasants were protesting the latest austerity measures imposed by President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, a multi-millionaire businessman. To meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund, Losada imposed a 12.5% tax on the already low wages of workers. Even the cops protested -- their wages will be taxed also. Several were killed by Military Police.

On Feb. 12, shots rang out just a few blocks away from the Executive Committee of the Labor Federation (COB) meeting. Tear gas streamed through the windows and three women entered shouting, "The Army is killing us, shooting at our husbands!" Two delegates from the Miners' Union reported, "The Alto [shantytowns bordering this capital city] is rising up. Workers are leaving their factories and the Army is beginning to shoot. Several have been inured."

One union leader said, "Enough discussion. We must be with the people." A miner from Potosi exclaimed, "It's hard to reach Plaza Murillo, the area is militarized," but then he shouted, "Let's go!" responding to the unanimous feeling at the meeting.

Despite the fear of military snipers, twenty union representatives lined up behind the labor federation's red flag and marched to the Plaza to join those already fighting. A military policemen watching through binoculars from the nearby Air Force building warned that the COB was marching. As they neared the Plaza, the demonstrators cheered.

The army was shooting with rifles and machine guns. Tear gas flooded the area. Marchers chanted, "The people won't be shut down by machine guns," as they entered the Plaza. The army shot several demonstrators and the workers fired back, forcing the President to withdraw the troops.

The next day, 80,000 miners, teachers, students and indigenous peasants faced armored vehicles and tanks as they prepared to march. The previous day's injuries and 17 deaths didn't scare the masses. They chanted, "The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated," and "Goni [the President], assassin, hanging from a lamppost awaits you!" The army opened fire murdering several demonstrators and injuring many more. The protestors fought back attacking government buildings, despite the army's advantage.

Several days later, the President spoke to the nation, saying he "is doing his part to help the economy" and won't collect his salary. This from a man worth $200 million is an insult to the impoverished workers and their families. The masses responded magnificently, burning and sacking offices of the government's coalition parties.

A pre-revolutionary situation has arisen, with some cops joining the demonstrators, creating divisions within the repressive arms of the ruling class. But, like similar uprisings in Argentina and Ecuador, there is no revolutionary leadership to guide these struggles. From all this, the workers and their allies must learn that now is the time to build a revolutionary communist movement to fight for a society without any bosses.

Film Review: In Whose Interest?

This 30-minute documentary, produced by independent film-maker David Kaplowitz, asks the vital question, "Who benefits from U.S. foreign policy," and vividly answers it by examining the U.S. role in Guatemala, Vietnam, East Timor, El Salvador and Palestine/Israel. Some of us teachers have been showing it in our classes, but it also should be shown and discussed in community groups, churches and union halls.

The film begins with the U.S. overthrow of the democratically-elected Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954. Arbenz had instituted a land reform program that seized some of the United Fruit Company's unused land and given it to landless peasants. The Eisenhower administration feared that this "lack of respect" for U.S. business interests might spread so it engineered a coup, installing a military regime that slaughtered more than 200,000 peasants, mostly Mayans, over the next 36 years.

Then, in the 1960s, in order to protect its Pacific empire, the U.S. tried to crush a popular insurgency in Vietnam, replacing the defeated French. It dropped the equivalent of one Nagasaki atomic bomb per week for 7_ years. There are fascinating interviews with Vietnam veteran GI's, who testify how soldiers were misled about the war's real reasons, the way GI's are being misled today about Iraq.

The next segment provides powerful footage of atrocities committed by Indonesian troops in East Timor. U.S. President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave Indonesia's military dictator Suharto, the green light for the assault only hours before the invasion. Close ties with Indonesia were vital for U.S. corporations, especially because of its large oil deposits and other natural resources and its friendly investment climate for U.S. multi-nationals. Indonesia also sits next to the most important oil transportation sea lanes in the Pacific. So one-third of East Timor's population was wiped out to satisfy U.S. corporations! This was a repetition of the 1965 bloodbath when Suharto, backed by the CIA, carried out a coup and slaughtered one million, many of them communists.

In El Salvador, the U.S. spent $1 million a day to back a military regime that killed 75, 000 workers and peasants.

Finally, the film reviews Palestine/Israel, where the U.S. finances Israel's brutal occupation by giving the Israeli government over $3 billion a year and selling it tanks, helicopters and jet fighters.

The film concludes by again asking whose interest U.S. foreign policy represents. Noam Chomsky replies that economic power is highly concentrated in a few mammoth corporations, which use their control over the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the media, to shape foreign policy for their own benefit. One important idea absent from the film is an examination of why this concentration of economic and political power is inevitable under capitalism -- a good topic for discussion with our students and co-workers after watching the film.

High School Teacher

Destroy the World To Save It?

They say rally around the flag
They say rally once again
`cause We must destroy the world to save it

While the people fight and die
keep them going with a lie
We must destroy the world to save it.

Control all the oil fields
Hooray, boy hooray
The rich count the profits
While we fire away

Should we rally around the flag
even when the war is wrong?
Must we destroy the world to save it?

Boys and girls who volunteer
No one whispers in their ear
that we must destroy the world to save it

They say Freedom is our aim
But they plan a different game
We must destroy the world to save it!

There's a world full of workers
Who shout that it's wrong!
Money gives the orders--
Why should we All go along?

So let's raise a different flag,
And Let's march a different road;
It's OUR world, and we must fight to save it!

LETTERS

Do the Math-- It's the Racist War For Oil

I'm a math teacher and on the day the war started I wrote four numbers on the board: $100,000,000,000; 3000 in 48 hours; 29% compared to 12%; and 112,000,000,000 barrels.

First I asked students what they thought each number stood for. Then I gave them some math problems and we discussed the implications. The first number, of course, is the amount of money the Bush administration plans to spend on this war just for starters. We calculated how many schools could be fixed up, how many houses for the homeless could be built, how many people we could send to college, etc., with the $100 billion.

The next number is the bombs they will drop in 48 hours, which we calculated to be about one a minute and we discussed what this would mean.

The third number compares the percentage of black youth in the army to the percentage of black people in the population. We talked about the racism in society which drives black workers and youth into the army in order to get money for college or for job training or for a job, period.

The last figure is the 112 billion barrels of oil in Iraq, which of course is what this war is really about. They can get the oil for $1 a barrel and sell it for $30 a barrel. This war is about profits for the oil companies.

Although I am dismayed by the prospect of so many lives being destroyed to serve capitalism, I was heartened by these classroom discussions. We must plant the seeds of opposition to this system, particularly among high school students who can turn into unwilling soldiers for the U.S. bosses.

Red Mathematician

Racist Airport Cops Attack 12-year-olds

I work at a large Mid-West airport where I witnessed a sickening racist, fascist incident. After my shift ended, I was waiting for a city bus at the airport transit center when six airport cops surrounded five young Somali working-class immigrants. They were about 12 or 13 years old. These youths had gotten off at the wrong stop, ending up at the airport instead of the Mall of America. They tried to explain themselves, but the cops wouldn't listen. One very fearful young boy kept looking down, a normal reaction coming from a fascist war-torn Somali society where any militiaman with a gun can stop you. A cop yelled, "Hey, you, look at us when we're talking to you!" The racist cops told them they had "no right" to be at the airport's public transit depot and detained them until the next bus arrived.

Aboard the bus I told these boys, "You've got to be very careful around cops; in this country they like to kill black people." (U.S.-style racism was still new to them.)

In this post-9/11 time, airport cops will harass you, especially if you're Muslim and/or immigrant. Their anti-working class and anti-immigrant racism will only get worse, given the U.S. bosses' imperialist attack on Iraqi workers.

For the past few years I've been getting CHALLENGE to my co-workers, immigrant and non-immigrant. We have many discussions about why U.S. bosses want war with Iraq. In light of this racist attack, I intend to, (1) get more CHALLENGES out, and (2) inform my co-workers about this racist incident and how it relates to the bosses' drive for fascism at home and imperialist war overseas.

The only way workers can stop fascist cops and their masters, the U.S. bosses, from oppressing us is communist revolution to destroy capitalism.

Airport Red

War Turns Pledge Upside Down

On a usual day in my first class, when the Pledge of Allegiance is said over the loudspeaker, at least 30 kids stand up and pledge to the flag (out of 34; I'm one of the four who doesn't). However, this morning (the day after the war began), I was shocked to see that only eight kids stood up. I asked aloud who was for the war, and of course, it was only the people standing. And at that, not even all of the kids standing were pro-war. So how do you like that?!

Brooklyn High School Student

Patriotism Undercuts Anti-War Fight

On March 20, at least 1,000 students and faculty here in Towson, Maryland shut down York Road and surrounding avenues in a huge protest against the Iraq war. Despite the horrendous rainy weather, 100 Towson University students and faculty, 600 from Goucher College (one-half the entire student body) and several dozen from the local high school marched from the town's main traffic circle to the Towson Armory. Many businesses stopped work as awe-struck workers looked on.

This walkout/protest was part of a nationwide call by the umbrella group ANSWER, and endorsed by our Towson University Anti-war Coalition. At Towson, it began with 100 students massing on the Beach and shaking noisemakers. A very small pro-war group holding a massive U.S. flag stood Directly across from us.

At this point, the chants from our side, modestly left-leaning with no nationalist rhetoric, suddenly turned into "USA! USA!." When I asked a member of our group why the antiwar side was using this, she said, "Well, if peace is patriotic..."

I replied hotly, "I hate patriotism!" She didn't answer. I suspect she disagreed tactically, not ideologically.

On the bus on the way home, black workers I talked to seemed to think it was insufficient to stop imperialist war but thought the real solution was either to stay home and "live your life as always," or to trust in Jesus, or both. The walkout appeared to upset rather than inspire them. Communist ideas need to make deeper inroads among these workers.

The "peace-because-we-want-it" and "the-people-control-the-country" platform is a dead end in and of itself. The Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Times both interviewed me during the march. I told them that the show of support was great but insufficient. I said U. S. rulers need this war to protect their long-term investment in crude oil and to exercise direct control over the regions where it's most plentiful. I doubt either publication will print that.

A school friend I've been talking to seems receptive to our ideas even though she's still easily swayed by reformist slogans when enough people are shouting them. We really need to continue building revolutionary consciousness on our campuses and elsewhere. It's becoming clearer by the day that phony left/liberal politics are actually far more damaging than the mainstream ones coming from the U.S. government. Students, faculty and workers should all recognize the dangers and build on the opportunities.

A Towson Comrade

Aim Struggle At Wall Street

In a discussion about war in Iraq among retired workers who support labor causes, one brother said, "There are no winners or losers in this war." I disagreed, saying that although the U.S. economy has been in deep recession, as soon as the bombs started falling the stock market zoomed upward. Then Bush asked Congress for $75 billion in emergency funds to replace expensive missiles fired off in just a few days.

I said the billionaire class that profits from this war and runs the government don't panic at protests in Washington, Albany or City Hall against the war and the murderous cuts in our life support systems. They laugh all the way to the bank while the Republican and Democratic politicians blame each other for our suffering. Meanwhile they serve the military-industrial complex responsible for the war by unanimously supporting it.

But these rich bosses would be deathly afraid if workers attacked their pillars of power like Wall street, targeting our real enemies, those responsible for our misery.

I concluded that the labor movement was born in struggle against corporate tyranny and capitalism and it needs to get back to that task if it expects to grow.

Retired Worker

Rummy to Saddam: Let's Make A Deal

The April 2 issue of CHALLENGE correctly described the U.S.-Saddam Hussein connection ("CIA Trained Saddam To Be a Fascist Killer"), linking the collaboration of the CIA and other agencies as far back as the Kennedy Presidency. Adjoining the article was a picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand when Rummy was a special envoy for the Reagan Administration. A recent Village Voice article by James Ridgeway explains more details of that meeting.

As CHALLENGE pointed out, U.S. rulers supported Saddam in the 1980's during Iraq's war against Iran, which had overthrown the U.S. puppet regime of the Shah. But Rumsfeld, coached by then Secretary of State George Schultz, was negotiating a plan for Schultz's former employer the Bechtel Corporation, "a huge engineering and construction company." Documents from the Institute of Policy Studies suggest that Rumsfeld tried to broker a deal to build an oil pipeline from Iraq across Jordan to the port of Aqaba. In return, the U.S. would give special loans, military aid, and ignore Saddam's gassing of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Says the Institute, "He never raised the issue of poison gas. In fact, when the UN undertook consideration of an Iranian resolution condemning the use of gas, the U.S. worked against it." Saddam ultimately reneged on the pipeline deal, although the U.S. continued supporting him.

All this indicates once again how crucial Iraqi oil is to the region. If the U.S. captures Iraq, companies like Bechtel, who benefit from contracts to "rebuild Iraq," will profit in the tens of millions from the war. [See page 5]

Chilltown Red

CHALLENGE Reader Receives Cheers

I'm a student at Cal State University. I have a steady CHALLENGE-DEASFIO readership of five, through which about 10-15 high school and university students read the paper and PLP pamphlets I copy with my own resources.

Last month we had a walkout protesting the U.S. war on Iraq. Given it is a conservative area it went well. Two CHALLENGE readers and myself organized it. About 60 walked out, including 15 professors. Amnesty International, International Answer and the Peace and Life Center spoke about peace and that kicking Bush out of office is the answer to the current situation. Some cheered. But the greatest cheer of all was for a CHALLENGE reader who explained the reasons behind war. She said replacing Bush with a Democrat or a Green was not the answer. Rather the solution lay in communist revolution. to smash the profit system that causes war. Everyone cheered. even some people walking by. The local Univision channel interviewed me about my reasons for walking out. I explained the unjustness of the war against the people of Iraq and the real reasons behind the war.

Cal State 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)

`Real men want Iran'

It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely....a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Teheran." In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.

Will Iraq really be the first of many? It seems all too likely.... (NYT, 3/18)

No Iraq chem. attack plan

In the abandoned headquarters of the Iraqi Army's Eighth Infantry....gas masks...and detailed instructions on how to use chemical weapons protective suits were found....

No evidence of instruction in the use of chemical agents as offensive weapons was found.... (NYT, 3/29)

Snipers hit some civilians

"We dropped a few civilians," Sergeant Schrumpf said, "but what do you do?"

....More than once...he faced...one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians....in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.

"I'm sorry," the sergeant said. But the chick was in the way." (NYT, 2/29)

The rich don't volunteer

The soldiers, sailors, pilots and others who are risking, and giving, their lives in Iraq represent a slice of a broad swath of American society -- but by no means all of it.

Of the 28 servicemen killed who have been identified so far,...just one was from a well-to-do family.... (NYT, 3/30)

World: US is imperialist

Nearly one week into the war in Iraq, the public mood in many countries around the world seemed to become angrier and more sarcastic than ever....

Today, there were huge demonstrations in Spain, smaller demonstrations in South Korea, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and one that involved angry clashes with the police in Sydney, Australia.

....A common image...was of the United States as an imperial power intoxicated by its military supremacy....

In Germany, Der Spiegel wondered on its Web site whether the difficulties American troops have encountered in Iraq might spell the end of the American empire. (NYT, 3/27)

US Black people feel Iraqi pain

...78 percent of white respondents to the poll said they approved of how Mr. Bush was handling the situation, while just 37 percent of blacks agreed with that position....

Some...said that they identified at least somewhat with poor Iraqis, whom they saw simply as people of color being attacked by a rich, and largely white, American government. (NYT, 3/27)

US Muslims fear attacks

Many Muslim Americans say the backlash they have felt since the attack of Sept. 11 has intensified since the United States attacked Iraq. Other Americans, they say, are making them feel scared, anxious and obligated to change their life styles....

Some of the most recent incidents have been violent....Women who wear a traditional scarf, known as a hijab, say they feel especially vulnerable. (NYT, 3/29)

God not on rulers' side?

The leaders of the many mainline American churches opposed to a war with Iraq....have not been able to see Mr. Bush to express their anxieties....

"There's never been such unity among the churches in the country, even during Vietnam," said the Rev. Jim Wallis, the editor of the evangelical magazine Sojourners.... (NYT, 3/10)

Depends what's globalized

For the most part, the same elected officials and media commentators who have applauded money-driven globalization are now appalled by the sight of anti-war globalization: The recent spectacle of millions of people demonstrating against war on the same day around the world.... (Liberal Opinion Week, 3/3)

 

EDITORIAL: Profit System Dictates Endless Imperialist Wars

• Contradictions Galore Between Washington and the Rest of the World
• Tactical Differences Between Bush Gang and Liberals
• Liberals' Worry: Present Ground Force Not Deadly Enough

'If You Make Me Kill You, It's Your Fault'

Transit Workers Link Cuts to War

Millions Stop Work Worldwide To Protest War

100,000 Workers in Turkey Protest War

a href="#Clinton’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless">Clin"on’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless

Union Deals With Gov. and Bosses Cut Heart Out of Health Care System

a href="#Campus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus">"ampus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus

a href="#Rally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts">"ally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts

Students Angry Over Oil War, School Cutbacks

Political Anti-War Message Rings A Bell Among Many GIs

Transit Workers Hail Student Solidarity Against War

Oppose Liberal Pol Preaching War Draft

a href="#Youth Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth">"outh Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth

Berkeley Anti-War Marchers Reach Out To Workers

D.C. Marchers Hear Class Analysis Exposing ALL Bosses

Youth Raise Red Banners

UAW Opposes Bush, Not Imperialism

Demonstration Against KKKop

CIA Trained Saddam To Be Fascist Killer

a href="#"Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"">"Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"

a href="#"Don’t Drink from a Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered">"Don’t Drink from a Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered

LETTERS

a href="#CHALLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . .">CH"LLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . .

. . .Crucial to Class Struggle

U.S. Sponsors Mass Terror In Colombia

a href="#‘Billions For War, $0 For Jobless’">‘B"llions For War, $0 For Jobless’

a href="#Protest ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth">Pr"test ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth

NY Student Walkout Denounces Oil War

Boeing Speed-up Behind Shuttle Blow Up

Students Need To Take Leadership

Vietnam Vets Know the Score

---

EDITORIAL: Profit System Dictates Endless Imperialist Wars

A little over 48 hours after President George W. Bush ordered Saddam Hussein, French President Chirac and the whole world to surrender, bombs and missiles began to fall over Baghdad. It is the beginning of a war for control of Iraqi oil. Bush’s thuggish "diplomatic" maneuvering has isolated U.S. imperialism politically in a way unprecedented since the end of World War II. He holed himself up in the Azores, at a U.S. Air Force base in the Atlantic Ocean, with the prime ministers of England and Spain, the only two European powers he can either bribe or intimidate into playing along with his current war scenario. Recently, he suffered humiliating snubs from Turkey, Mexico and Canada, all countries that U.S. rulers used to command at a whim.

Meanwhile, the leaders of France, Germany and Russia are busy solidifying their own growing anti-U.S. coalition. Workers must draw an important lesson from these antics. Bush may go to war now. But a central law of imperialism is already operating. The nature of the profit system creates rivalries that no deal-making or negotiation can smooth over. These rivalries inevitably lead to war. The U.S. may be top dog now, but the rest of the world’s rulers can’t and won’t tolerate this domination indefinitely. The U.N. Security Council posturing and all the behind-the-scenes diplomatic scrambling merely provide cover for the deadly logic of a system based on the universal drive for maximum profit.

Contradictions Galore Between Washington and the Rest of the World

The threat of a U.S. oil war in Iraq has already sharpened every contradiction between Washington and the rest of the world’s bosses. War will speed this process. The U.S. drive to continue dominating the world through control of Persian Gulf oil aims for full-scale occupation of the Middle East which would produce an ever-widening series of wars, eventually pitting the U.S. against a coalition of the other imperialists. This scenario may take years to unfold; brief periods of relative calm may occur amid the violence, but the general trend is toward war. Nothing can necessarily prevent it. But organizing to smash it once it starts is an entirely different matter.

Now and in the months and years ahead, workers have an excellent opportunity to build our forces. We face a long, difficult march. However, our future as a class remains bright. The march will eventually lead to communist revolution and working-class seizure of political power.

Millions around the world have demonstrated their hatred of U.S. imperialism, Bush and his war plans. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ruefully writes (3/16), "George Bush has managed to lose a global popularity contest to Saddam Hussein." On February 15, in every major city across the U.S., North America, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, "the United States government became the target of what was apparently the largest coordinated one-day popular protest in the history of the world." Polls regularly show that most people consider the U.S. a "greater menace to peace and safety than Iraq." (The New Yorker, 3/17).

Growing mass anger at Bush & Co. provides the raw material for political growth. But that won’t happen all by itself. We must fight to strengthen the mass hatred of imperialism, lead the fight against intensified racism — especially against Arab workers and fascist deportations — and show how the U.S. rulers’ war in Iraq is also a war against workers in the U.S. and worldwide. Every bomb dropped on Iraqi workers is an attack on U.S. workers, both as class brothers and sisters as well the deepening of mass poverty here, increasing unemployment and destroying social services.

We make no distinction among members of the class enemy. We must expose the so-called "lesser-evil" capitalists. Bush is the obvious bad guy. Naturally we should help those who want to fight him, but opposing only the obvious enemy won’t get the job done. Far more dangerous than Bush are the liberal rulers, who pretend that imperialism offers alternatives to war or who scold Bush simply because of his inability to build a coalition for the present war.

Tactical Differences Between Bush Gang and Liberals

The differences between Bush and the liberals are purely tactical. They don’t disagree at all about the need to maintain U.S. dominance as a super-power, and they’re completely united in their desire to monopolize Persian Gulf oil. The differences concern the timing of the war and the extent to which either gang is prepared to bribe the French and Russian rulers with junior-partner Iraqi oil contracts.

For various reasons, Bush wants the war to start now. The liberals worry that an isolated U.S. may achieve easy initial victory in Iraq but will then get bogged down and overextended in a costly occupation with unpredictable dangers. And Iraq is just the beginning. As the Times warns (3/16), U.S. troops are likely to turn next to Iran. Even Iran is just another step in the U.S.’s strategic drive to lock in the entire region’s energy treasure. So, reason the liberals, a few crumbs to Russian and French oil and gas moguls might not be such a bad idea. Bush just wants to bulldoze ahead without the niceties. Barhim Salih, whom Bush seems to have made a leading candidate to head a post-Saddam puppet government, threatens to punish the uncooperative French and Russians by not honoring "oil and gas contracts signed with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq." (UPI, 3/14)

On timing, the liberals’ chief mouthpiece, the New York Times editorializes (3/18) on the eve of war, "This page has never wavered in the belief that Mr. Hussein must be disarmed. Our problem is the wrongheaded way this administration has gone about it."

This is liberal capitalist "realism:" debating how and when to wreak havoc on millions of Iraqi workers and their children and to place thousands of young working-class U.S.. British and Iraqi soldiers in harm’s way — all for the sake of the most ruthless, murderous system in world history.

The huge mobilizations against war have shown that masses of people have expressed ideas far more advanced than their leadership. As this war is unleashed, and as sentiment mounts against it, we must build on this and direct it against the entire system.

Bush is just one capitalist among many. The monster has a hundred heads. They must all be cut off. We need communism, not old capitalist poison in new bottles. Only the working class, led by the Progressive Labor Party, can accomplish this task. We’re pursuing these aims in the new anti-war movement. We can do much more. May Day 2003 will give us a good yardstick by which to judge our efforts and their results.

Liberals' Worry: Present Ground Force Not Deadly Enough

At the core of the liberals' discontent with Bush's war plans is their concern about his inadequate preparation for ground war. The New York Times quotes "military experts who are worried" about Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's plan to attack before assembling a full complement of ground forces. At the moment, U.S. forces are more heavily weighted in favor of assault troops - the Nazi-style strike forces Rumsfeld openly envies and admires - than occupation troops. Much of the hardware needed for ground fighting has yet to be unloaded in Kuwait or even shipped from U.S. ports. The Times (3/16) quotes a retired Marine general, Richard I. Neal, as warning: "You need enough forces to fight the war itself and sustain it."

The foregoing should make clear that any of the liberals' hesitation is not due to genuine anti-war sentiment. Just the opposite. With the Times as their mouthpiece, the liberals want the deadliest force possible. Their only gripe with Bush and Rumsfeld is that they're acting too rashly and jeopardizing U.S. imperialism's strategic goals.

'If You Make Me Kill You, It's Your Fault'

The hypocrisy of liberal rulers' supposed "humanitarianism" appears boundless. Remember Clinton's bombing the former Yugoslavia back to the Stone Age in 1999 to "save lives" or the U.S. officer's remark about having to destroy a Vietnamese village "in order to save it?"

The Iraqi people are about to become the latest beneficiaries of this imperialist philanthropy. By now everyone knows that U.S.-imposed sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly children, since 1991. Now two leading lights at the Council on Foreign Relations, which until recently backed these sanctions to the hilt, have concocted a remarkably twisted rationale for abandoning them. According to Walter Russell Mead and Rachel Bronson, "sanctions exist only because…(of) Saddam Hussein." These "scholars" point out that the containment policy the sanctions supposedly support allows Saddam "to control the political climate of the Middle East….Worse, (it) forces the United States to keep large conventional forces in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region." Worse yet, "Osama bin Laden founded al Qaeda because U.S. forces stayed in Saudi Arabia."

Mead and Bronson have a solution to reverse the "[destabilization] of the very countries [containment] aims to protect." The solution is war. Of course, as Mead recognizes, "…war brings with it its own strategic problems and moral challenges."

But what are a few "strategic problems" and moral scruples when there are trillions of dollars in oil profits to win and a world to dominate? "It is time for a change," thunders Mead.

We agree. Our idea of change is called communist revolution.

(Sources: Washington Post, March 12; Newsday, March 15)

Transit Workers Link Cuts to War

CALIFORNIA, March 7 — Last week the city transit board met in closed session to discuss forcing a war contract down the throats of union service attendants and mechanics. Outside, some transit workers held a noisy and spirited demonstration.

The workers leafleted and held signs attacking the U.S. government’s plan to spill the "blood and treasure" of the working class to guarantee their supremacy over Middle East oil. During the demonstration, nearly 100 bus drivers, carrying several thousand passengers, honked their approval of signs beautifully lettered by a worker: "HONK IF YOU THINK TRANSIT MONEY SHOULD FIX BUSES, NOT TANKS"; and, "$32 BILLION TO TURKEY FOR OIL PROFIT WAR, 50 CENTS TO BUS MECHANICS."

Drivers waved for leaflets to take back to their division break rooms. Transit workers boarded buses loaded with workers and made brief speeches linking the transit cuts on workers to increased transit fares in cities nationwide to the $200 billion being spent for imperialist war in the Mid-East. Workers’ power could dump the warmakers and their system.

Unfortunately we ran out of leaflets because we underestimated the receptivity of the drivers and passengers and their contempt for the company. There was nothing small about the disgust these workers have for transit management or, as recent months have shown, the hatred they have for the misery that U.S. imperialism is bringing to the working class worldwide.

Although the demonstration was hastily organized, several transit divisions got leaflets. All morning, workers were asking if the demonstration was happening. As some were preparing to go to it, others scolded them saying, "Hey, get moving; it’s already past time." Although those who were unable to participate because they were on the clock, still had an interest in an organized protest against the company’s war contract.

The next day a worker said that although he’d been off work on the day of the demonstration, he wanted to help organize a larger one in the coming weeks. This time it could involve the whole day-shift after punching out, with signs, leaflets and a bullhorn, to demonstrate our opposition to the rotten contract offer.

This worker questioned whether the transit cuts were really paying for the U.S. tanks in the Iraq war. A good discussion followed about the many ways U.S. imperialism sucks the blood and squanders the treasure of the working class.

Millions Stop Work Worldwide To Protest War

Millions of workers across Europe stopped work for 15 minutes on March 14 to protest a U.S. invasion of Iraq. In Germany, the strikes halted production at three Volkswagen plants and a DaimlerChrysler factory. Italian workers downed tools from Sicily in the south to Turin in the north.

In Australia protesters hounded Prime Minister John Howard, hurling eggs and tomatoes at his limousine as he drove through the southern city of Adelaide. Traffic was brought to a standstill.

In Turkey two dozen activists chained themselves to the wheels of a truck blocking an entrance to the eastern port of Iskenderun, where U.S. forces were unloading equipment.

In Moscow, protesters hung a huge "Veto War" banner on a bridge across the Moscow River.

Anti-war protests also erupted in Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, New Zealand and Japan. And on March 15, millions again protested against the war worldwide. One million marched in Spain alone.

100,000 Workers in Turkey Protest War

Perhaps the most significant working-class action occurred in Ankara, Turkey on March 1, demonstrating what workers' power can accomplish. With the parliament meeting to decide whether or not to allow U.S. troops to invade Iraq from Turkish soil, over 100,000 workers and others from every corner of the country, especially from Kurdish provinces bordering Iraq, jammed the streets near parliament. They represented the 95% opposed to a U.S. war.

Then the strains of the working class anthem, The Internationale, swept through the crowd. This display of working-class might helped force parliament to reject permission for the U.S. to use Turkey as a northern front into Iraq.

The active participation of the world’s workers is crucial to the struggle against imperialist war. We need more actions like these, including work stoppages and walkouts, building to an international general strike. But that requires red leadership to break with the reformist union leaders who consider the imperialists of Paris, Berlin and Moscow as "peacemakers."

a name="Clinton’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless"></a>"linton’s ‘Reform’: Welfare-To-Work Becomes Welfare-to-Jobless

Clinton’s welfare "reform" was supposed to move workers on welfare to seek jobs. But a nasty thing got in the way — capitalism.

The "prosperity" of the 1990s never reached tens of millions, especially those living below the poverty line. But the welfare rolls kept declining. Most who found work ended up in minimum wage jobs. But the inevitable recession/depression of capitalism’s business cycle hit with a vengeance. As the Wall Street Journal said (3/11), the job market is tough for everyone now, but "hiring prospects are even more grim for welfare recipients." This is particularly true in a war economy where the drive to finance the military leads to cuts in vital social services and mass layoffs.

Clinton signed the "reform" law in 1996, mandating state cut-offs for welfare in five years. Meanwhile, in the last two years over two million jobs disappeared. An official of the Saginaw Valley Rehabilitation Center (Mich.) that tries to help welfare recipients said, "We couldn’t bribe an employer into hiring right now."

With unemployment approaching 20 million (see CHALLENGE, 3/5), former welfare recipients who are now excluded from benefits must compete with laid-off workers with more experience, who have fewer child-care problems and more access to transportation. The early corporate "backers" of welfare-to-work policies have disappeared as capitalism’s economic crisis catches up with them. United Airlines dropped out in 2000 and is now in bankruptcy proceedings.

Since Ohio’s welfare cutoff in 2000, nearly 16,000 families have been slashed from state welfare rolls, while nearly 200,000 jobs have been lost in the state. "Even if they had job skills right now," said a senior researcher at the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland, "what we’d then have is better-educated unemployed people."

Those like Jesse Jackson and the liberal reformers who PUSH education as the solution to poverty and unemployment are essentially apologists for capitalism. Karl Marx pointed out over 150 years ago that the profit system must have a "reserve army of the unemployed," even if one has a decent education. Capitalism breeds unemployment. And because of racism, black and Latin suffer a jobless rate twice that of white workers. Only the communist society that Marx advocated can solve unemployment and the other horrors of capitalism. Without profits and with workers in control, we well collectively reap all that we produce and distribute it according to need.

Union Deals With Gov. and Bosses Cut Heart Out of Health Care System

NEW YORK CITY, March 11 — On March 3, hundreds of workers from Local 1199, SEIU, met here to plan a fight-back against Gov. Pataki’s proposals to slash $2 billion from the health care industry, mostly in Medicaid funding.

The union leadership had endorsed Pataki in the last election in exchange for small raises workers received in their last union contract. Proposed layoffs will wipe away these increases. The love affair between the union leadership and Pataki was short lived. Now politicians, from NYC Mayor Bloomberg to county leaders across the state, are demanding Albany rein in Medicaid costs. Actually Pataki could solve the budget shortfall by raising taxes on the rich and closing corporate tax loopholes. But that runs counter to bosses’ profits.

As one worker declared, "The politicians and bosses must be held accountable for any workers’ deaths and layoffs as a result of these cuts."

A massive rally is planned for April 1 in Albany, the state capital. A coalition with hospital management to lobby the politicians against the cuts is being formed. At the meeting, several workers opposed uniting with hospital management and relying on politicians. This would mislead workers to depend on their class enemies, the hospital bosses, politicians and the rich who all represent capitalism’s profit system.

The bosses have already started cutting jobs, including 200 after the closing of Caledonia Hospital. The bosses always find new ways to increase profits, even without these cuts — heavier workloads on an already over-burdened and short-staffed workforce; cross-training more workers; and shortening patients’ hospital stays.

Pataki is resisting taxing the rich, saying it will "drive jobs out of the state." But his proposals will drive thousands of workers onto the unemployment lines. The proposed cuts will cause misery, pain and suffering for the working class. For every dollar Albany cuts from Medicaid, Washington would cut $2.

Right now Medicaid assists those who need it most: the disabled, elderly and poor families. Medicaid cuts will drastically reduce hospital reimbursements, jeopardizing thousands of hospital jobs, eliminating rehabilitation services and reducing home-care services.

These cuts are racist. NYC’s health care workers are mostly black and Latin. These workers already suffer a high unemployment rate. With still higher joblessness and less health services, more diseases will spread through these communities.

The State’s 50,000 home health care workers make between $8 and $10 per hour, barely enough to survive. Pataki’s plan will wreak havoc with their lives and devastate the sick, the elderly and the disabled for whom they care.

All this is due to U.S. capitalism and is intensified by the Bush administration’s budget proposals and war plans, causing huge cuts in social services and other vital programs. Meanwhile, hundreds of billions of workers’ taxes are spent for a war to maintain control of Mid-Eastern oil, which will ravage the health of, and kill, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers and children.

Capitalism’s racist health system cannot meet the needs of workers and patients nor provide preventative measures against illness. Only under communism — with no bosses, politicians or rich rulers — can the working class live long, healthy, productive lives.

a name="Campus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus">">"ampus Workers’ Struggle Leads to Anti-War Caucus

Millions of workers worldwide have joined marches protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Petitions have been signed, phone networks developed, teach-ins held. It’s important that PLP members be among those workers, spreading the winning ideas of revolutionary communism, to combat the cynicism when marching and chanting do not stop Bush & Co. from murdering masses of Iraqis and others.

In the largest union on our West Coast campus, some rank-and-file leaders wrote an anti-war resolution in January, to convince the local to take a firm stand against the war. Although a lower leadership body passed it, it lost in the Executive Board. They said they had to maintain neutrality since not everyone in the union was against the war. Some workers argued there’s no neutrality on this issue. If you don’t actively oppose the war, then you’re complicit in supporting it.

Some members were angry because there hadn’t been more support from our union leadership. One nominated a Party member for an opening on the Executive Council. Although he was hesitant, the Party club decided that, whether he won or lost, this offered an opportunity to raise issues the union might otherwise ignore.

The nominations and voting occurred at a small leadership meeting later that week. The two candidates were asked to speak. The PL member raised broader issues — the fight against racism, police brutality, for immigrant rights, etc. He received 40% of the votes. A number of people congratulated him, saying," We’ll do better next time."

This confidence of his co-workers has enabled him to organize an anti-war caucus in the union, which scheduled its second meeting in mid-March. This is an opportunity to discuss many political issues and move workers further left. It’s important to make clear that more than marching is needed to stop the imperialists’ war drive. War is one of the main ways they maintain their wretched system.

We must ensure that caucus members read and discuss CHALLENGE. As capitalism exposes itself, workers will become increasingly disgusted, which will help them grasp communist ideas.

a name="Rally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts">">"ally to Hit California Governor’s Racist Cuts

LOS ANGELES, March 17 — "Did you know they’re laying off all our night-time counselors and may cancel all summer classes?" a student exclaimed. "We need all the help we can get!"

Students and faculty in the community colleges here are rallying on March 28 to protest the devastating budget cuts proposed by Governor Gray Davis. The $274 million cut from the 2002-2003 budget has already cancelled hundreds of classes, dumped part-time instructors and closed out thousands of students from courses needed for graduation. Funding for 2003-2004 will be even lower, while student fees would more than double.

These attacks are racist, sexist, and anti-working class because community college students have a heavy proportion of:

• Recent immigrants in ESL programs;

• Black, Latino and white working class students trying to make it to a university in the face of a racist education they received in school

•those seeking a trade to become a skilled worker or paraprofessional;

• Youth who can’t afford to go directly to a four-year college; and,

• Women returning to school while raising a family.

Their aspirations are under attack from a capitalist system intent on solving the bosses’ budget crisis on the backs of the working class. The state budget crisis is real and likely to worsen. Federal funds for education are drying up as $1.9 TRILLION finances a war to destroy, occupy and control Iraq. California plans to borrow as much as $11 million in June, partly to make payments on another $12.5 billion borrowed last year. Energy price gouging and a $5.27 billion prison-building spree have worsened conditions still further. In fact the prison budget is the ONLY one that Davis is NOT planning to cut! Nor will he release thousands of black and Latin youth who shouldn’t be in prison in the first place, or declare a moratorium on debt payments to bankers in order to maintain workers’ education and health care. As fascist "homeland security" intensifies, and U.S. imperialism is increasingly challenged by rival imperialists, this crisis will deepen.

The current union leadership denounces the budget cuts in marches and press conferences. But teachers and students need to link the cuts to the war for oil and to prison growth, organizing a serious fight against them.

The Faculty Association of the California Community Colleges say the cuts should be "shared more equally" between the different levels of education. But that’s self-defeating, giving in to the cuts. We need to build unity among all teachers, students and parents against these attacks, at all educational levels. We must place the blame for the cuts squarely on Davis (a Democrat) as well as on Congress and Bush, on a capitalist system hell-bent on war and building a police state. Teachers should not fight each other over where to cut education. No level should be slashed to fuel the war machine.

For the first time many are stepping forward as active participants, organizers and leaders in this struggle. Some are starting to question the very nature of a system that cannot meet their needs but instead builds more prisons and sends their friends to a bosses’ war for oil.

Students Angry Over Oil War, School Cutbacks

HYATTSVILLE, MD., March 5 — Over 800 students at Northwestern High School crowded into the auditorium for a teach-in against war in Iraq. Entire classes and many individual students joined the call for a "Student Strike against the War." Energy was high as students streamed into a slide show about worldwide protests, with music from Bob Marley, Tracy Chapman, and Tupac Shakur. ("Stand Up for Your Rights," "Talkin’ About a Revolution," "Changes")

Speakers explained that the U.S. invasion aims to control Iraq’s oil fields for U.S. corporate profit and control of oil distribution to China and Japan. Students were angry over cutbacks in the school’s health center, books and teachers’ salaries. One speaker said millions were being spent for war every 10 seconds. The local county council chairman said he was against this war and that students here, not Bush’s children, would be fighting in it. Two students read a poem and were cheered when saying "Stop feeding the rich, start feeding the poor!" Half the auditorium was ringed with 5-foot-tall pictures of Iraqi people. Hundreds joined the last speaker in chanting, "Move Bush! Get Out the Way, Get Out the Way Bush!"

Students had been passing out red armbands for a week and had originally planned a walkout and picketing. However, they agreed to the principal’s offer of the auditorium instead. This was partly due to threats of suspension and arrests if they walked out. Then, on the day of the event he refused to allow outside speakers, except for the Democratic councilman who tried to direct the students’ militancy toward the ballot box.

The students were upset but well prepared. The event reached many more students than expected. Students saw they could rely on themselves instead of "experts." They also learned that, as the struggle intensifies, administrators are not to be trusted. The next day they found that their absence was unexcused, a lesson for the future.

Elsewhere in the Washington area 300 Blair H.S. students walked out when Tom Ridge came to offer money for "Homeland Security." Other students staged smaller protests led by Peace and Justice groups which emphasized moralistic and pacifist views.

Northwestern students have a sharper and more militant analysis, in great part because of connections with PLP. The most advanced students and experienced adults must develop closer ties and start study groups among the many who’ve come forward in this anti-war movement. We need to strengthen student understanding of the necessity for communist revolution and class struggle and smash imperialist warmakers once and for all.

Political Anti-War Message Rings A Bell Among Many GIs

In the Vietnam War, over 500,000 GI’s deserted, refusing to fight Vietnamese workers and peasants. Using grenades, they "fragged" their officers who ordered them into combat. Sailors sabotaged six aircraft carriers, forcing them back to the U.S. This is what created the Vietnam Syndrome, leading a Marine colonel/historian to describe it as "The Collapse of the U.S. Army." Many GI’s in today’s "professional army" can be won to oppose imperialist war. Witness the following from the N.Y. Daily News, March 16.

Al Jaber Air Base, Kuwait — Many of the U.S. troops poised for battle here would give peace a chance if they had a choice. Doubts about going to war can be heard openly in conversations among the troops at night….

Several military chaplains…said airmen, sailors, Marines and soldiers…have shared the same misgivings in private sessions….The kick-butt attitude appears to be dominant. But even those most eager for combat tend to allow that their disagreeing buddies have valid points about what they sarcastically call a "do-over war," meaning that they would be finishing a job left undone by then-President George Bush in 1991.

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Barber, a Catholic chaplain….told of a fighter pilot who sought counsel "not just about his personal fears, but about the prospect of killing innocent civilians. And then there’s that Iraqi conscript who bears us no ill will. His crime would be that he was born Iraqi…."

Barber said the political anti-war message…[has] resonated with many….Even some of the officers are wondering — if it was up to them, they wouldn’t have this war.

Transit Workers Hail Student Solidarity Against War

March 5 — "The budget cuts are screwing us all — and it’s all because of this damn war for oil," exclaimed a transit worker to several students from a state university in California. He said his son attends our college and is suffering from the recent tuition increase. He explained that he used to feel lucky to have his transit job because he was recently laid off from Boeing due to cutbacks. But now the bosses are trying to jam a horrible contract down transit workers’ throats because of the budget cuts.

Another transit worker welcomed us, saying, "We’re glad you came to pass out anti-war flyers because many of us are also against the war."

Earlier we rallied at a busy intersection near our campus, displaying banners and chanting anti-war slogans as thousands of cars passed on their way to work and school. Many, including truck drivers, honked their horns in support. The rally’s energy and positive reception inspired us to march through campus, shouting, "1,2,3,4, we don’t want your oil war! 5,6,7,8, don’t recruit us for your hate!" We marched through buildings and past classrooms encouraging students to walk out to protest the upcoming war. Several students and professors joined as we strode to the ROTC building.

Moving several students to take the anti-war sentiments to the transit workers was an advance, leading to ideas about how to really block imperialist war. We discussed the power workers have to stop military production, about how a transit strike could encourage dockworkers (angry about their contract) to strike against the war. Dockers could follow their brother workers in England and refuse to load military equipment onto ships bound for the Persian Gulf. We discussed the need to stand in solidarity with striking workers everywhere.

Rallies and marches are useful in showing our dissent, but they will not stop imperialist war. Doing the hard, day-to-day organizing of workers and working-class students against the capitalist system will, in the long run, lead to revolution and end imperialist war. Connecting the war on Iraq and the budget cuts in health care, education and jobs to the bosses’ relentless drive for profit, can help workers understand they have no interest in maintaining this system.

Oppose Liberal Pol Preaching War Draft

I belong to a church in a large city. Recently the pastors invited a liberal congressman to address the congregation about his "anti-war work in Congress" and his bill to "re-instate the draft as an anti-war tactic." CNN filmed his appearance.

The Congressman reviewed his opposition to the war on Iraq, outlining familiar Democratic Party themes regarding timing and planning. He even said Iraq’s oil is the main reason for war because people here are "over-consumers of oil" and because the U.S. wants to control oil prices. He said the U.S. should get on Korea’s case instead because they’re "the really bad guys." He then painted a picture of Bush as a "born again" Christian who isn’t thinking right, a bit loony.

His championed the draft because most soldiers volunteer for economic reasons, making the military disproportionately black, Latin and poor — indisputably true. He paraded his credentials as a Civil Rights leader and a Korean War veteran. Riding on the back of the anti-war movement, he congratulated the efforts of "the people’s movement" and said we shouldn’t give up on "our great country."

He was slick, clearly showing how the Democratic Party is positioning itself at the head of the anti-war movement, in order to control and direct it ideologically. He was applauded, but challenged as well. When a friend and I held up a "Stop War on Iraq" banner, the pastor admonished us that this was "a house of worship." We held it up anyway.

During the question and answer period several people opposed the draft proposal as an anti-war tactic. Another said that historically the elite never served. Still another said the brains behind Bush’s policy were often Democrats. I said that, "For any administration the conquest of oil and empire defines U.S. political strategy for world domination. The Jan. 5 New York Times magazine section published an article by Michael Ignatieff entitled, ‘The American Empire: Get Used to It.’ Today it’s Iraq. Tomorrow may be Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and the Philippines. And eventually larger conflict with competing empires, European and Asian, raising the specter of World War III. I have two questions: 1) Do you really think the elite will serve? 2) Won’t the draft serve U.S. strategy as it seeks a larger pool of working-class soldiers it needs not only to pursue its far-flung empire but also to militarize U.S. society under Homeland Security?"

The Congressman ignored my questions, saying people should keep doing what they’re doing and as well as register to vote and participate in elections.

Afterwards a friend told me we need to "re-define patriotism." That led to a discussion about how it’s impossible to be patriotic to the capitalist system. Other friends there are in a study group that’s discussing imperialism, the role of the liberals in the anti-war movement and the necessity for revolution as the only way to end imperialist war. The strengths and weaknesses of socialism historically and what communism will mean, have been front and center. These friends heard and discussed my questions before the event.

Over half the members of the church are against the war; the majority of these are committed to liberal ideology. Some of us have participated together in forums, marches and conferences over the past two years. We have plans for what to do when the war starts. Little by little I’m introducing a communist analysis and making a few good friends. The opportunities are growing, but patience and persistence are still required.

a name="Youth Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth">">"outh Club’s Stepped-Up Activity Leads to Growth

SEATTLE, WA, March 9 — In the last several months there have been the most massive demonstrations — against war — taking place in the streets here since the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting. Our youth club has been out in the rain distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES at least once or twice a month since early January, leading to new contacts or friends joining our meetings. We are trying to make the most of our potential. But we also understand the limits of these demonstrations. They haven’t stopped the push towards war and never will as long as the bosses do not face an international working class under the leadership of an organized party fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat. As the growing anti-war movement gets dragged further under the thumb of the liberal Democrats, our work in the schools and on the job is the main tool to fight imperialist wars.

In line with this, we are organizing study groups with our friends and inside mass organizations. For example, one member has arranged to give two talks on her campus to a local chapter of Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MeCha), entitled War in Iraq and The History of Communism. Another comrade is active in an anti-war organization in his neighborhood. Other youth have attended our club meetings from both of these groups as well as from comrades’ circles of friends.

The only way we can win is to discuss our ideas with as many people as possible. But quality is primary. Our base of friends must develop a comprehensive understanding of capitalism. Without it the numbers we attract mean very little. Our club itself has grown. This gives us more hope that we will be able to influence the millions demonstrating in the streets.

Berkeley Anti-War Marchers Reach Out To Workers

BERKELEY, CA, March 5 — In solidarity with students around the country, PLP members participated in a lunchtime walkout held at UCal-Berkeley today. At least half of the 150 protesters were high school students who braved suspension to be there. They added real energy, making up for the lackluster leadership of the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition who said that two walkouts — the second set for the day the bombing starts — were "too much." Fortunately these high school students felt differently.

PLP members and friends struggled to build a larger event and attempted to include workers, especially campus workers. After the rally, we marched to various campus buildings, including Cory Hall where the crowd chanted, "University of mass destruction! Shut it down! Shut it down!" A speaker explained that the Electronics Research Lab was given $60 million dollars in military grants for weapons designs.

During the march we sold CHALLENGE, created signs, distributed flyers and had productive talks with college and high school students. Our anti-war, anti-imperialist message was well received and brought a number of contacts.

We’re trying to join students and workers in the anti-war movement, bringing workers to the anti-war meetings and anti-war students to the workplaces. In classes we’ve called on students to reach out to campus workers and to those in industries like transit, indicating that a successful anti-war movement must base itself on the tremendous power workers represent. Workers are definitely open to these messages, as seen at a recent social workers’ conference organized for social justice.

We’re also linking the fight against imperialist war with an attack on openly fascist elements. Students recently disrupted a forum entitled, "Why the Left Hates America" held by the Young Conservatives Foundation. By broadening the politics of the anti-war movement beyond the narrow vision of "peace" under capitalism, we can bring our friends to realize that revolution is the logical solution to these inter-related struggles.

D.C. Marchers Hear Class Analysis Exposing ALL Bosses

WASHINGTON, DC, March 15—Today, about 50,000 people marched against the war in Iraq. A small number of Party members and friends organized a rally on the edge of the protest to provide an alternative to the reformist and opportunist misleadership of the main march. We pointed out that a life-long commitment to revolutionary struggle was needed because imperialism creates endless wars, not just this one. We pointed out that, had Gore taken office, we would most likely still be in the same situation. We also criticized the notion that France was moral. (Quite a few people held signs saying "Vive La France" because Chirac, France’s leader, has attacked Bush for his invasion plans). We stated that the French bosses just wanted as big a piece of the oil action as they could get, and if the US occupies Iraq, they will be cut out and once again a vassal of the U.S. So it’s all about battles among imperialists—we have no "friends in high places" in any imperialist country! With struggle, we will see more signs like the one that said, "Soldiers turn your guns around!"

Lots of marchers picked up our revolutionary chants, gave us strong support, and received over 100 Challenges and 2500 leaflets. Several contacts were made for future struggle. And it will intensify!

Youth Raise Red Banners

LOS ANGELES, March 15 — Constant rain did not dampen the spirits of marchers here, protesting the war in Iraq. Youth in the PLP contingent waved red banners of workers’ revolutionary communist internationalism throughout the march. When they chanted "Same Enemy, Same Fight! Workers of the World Unite!" and "Las Luchas Obreras no Tienen Fronteras," workers in the adjacent union contingents joined in.

UAW Opposes Bush, Not Imperialism

DETROIT, MI, March 16 — On Feb. 3, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 600’s General Council, representing 30,000 active and retired members at the Ford Rouge and other plants, voted unanimously to oppose war on Iraq.

Over 120 local unions have passed resolutions against the war, including UAW 1700, 600, 909 and 1981.On Feb. 22, Local 600 hosted an anti-war forum, attended by about 200 people. One speaker tied the war drive to "third world" conditions in Detroit. A UAW-DaimlerChrysler-Jeep member described how the bosses are using the war atmosphere to justify forced overtime.

UAW Vice Pres. for Organizing, Bob King asked why Detroit labor couldn’t turn out more members for anti-war events. The answer? They don’t want to. Located in the largest concentration of Arab workers and students anywhere outside the Middle East, the unions have mobilized very few, even though most oppose the war. Only 20 black workers attended the Feb. 22 forum.

The union leaders and liberal politicians have a tiger by the tail trying to control the mass movement against the war. They want to rush to the head of the march and lead it to the voting booths and the Democratic Party. By mobilizing hundreds of thousands of workers, they risk unleashing strikes and job actions that might oppose the imperialist plans of the liberals and open up workers to communist leadership.

The union leaders are against Bush, not the ruling class. They’re cynically using mass anti-war sentiment to win working-class acceptance of fascist Homeland Security and even larger, more deadly wars down the road. The UAW backs "joint company-union" programs that help U.S. auto bosses fight the "foreign" competition. They organize auto parts-supplier plants while abandoning the right to strike. They have failed to organize a single "foreign" auto assembly "transplant." Straight-jacketed by U.S. nationalism and class collaboration, they won’t mobilize too much of anything.

The international anti-war movement presents an opportunity to seriously challenge the misleaders’ patriotic, pro-capitalist outlook. Supposing autoworkers from Toronto to Argentina staged a General Strike against the invasion of Iraq and the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas? Daimler workers from Germany to Brazil could help organize Mercedes "transplants" in Mississippi. "Workers of the World, Unite!" could become a mass outlook. CHALLENGE and bold May Day activities can push things ahead.

Demonstration Against KKKop

Community residents protest the flagrantly unjustified, racist shooting of Desmond ("Man-Man") Ray by cop Charles Ramseur. Ray, a 22-year-old African-American youth, is paralyzed for life after Ramseur shot him in the back. People are signing petitions demanding the firing and indictment of Ramseur. The People’s Coalition for Police Accountability in Prince George’s County, MD, [adjoining the District of Columbia] is organizing the grassroots campaign. Ramseur has shot four people in recent years and has escaped any punishment.

CIA Trained Saddam To Be Fascist Killer

The Saddam Hussein that the Bush gang is painting as evil personified is a creature of four U.S. administrations, Democrats Kennedy and Johnson, and Republicans Reagan and Bush, Sr. The Saddam Hussein we now know didn’t "suddenly" appear in 1991. His roots go back to the Kennedy era.

In 1958, General Abdel Karim Kassem ousted a pro-Western monarchy in Iraq. During that decade, the Communist Party of Iraq (CPI) had become arguably the largest mass organization in the Middle East. With a multi-ethnic membership and leadership of Arabs, Kurds and Jews, and a mass base among oil workers, the CPI organized huge general strikes and might have taken power. But it backed off under its "united front" with the "progressive" wing of bosses opposed to British and U.S. imperialism, which led to its downfall. Thousands were killed by the same generals and bosses it had sought unity with.

By 1961 Kassem was "Seeking new arms rivaling Israel’s, threatening Western oil interests…[and] talking openly of challenging the dominance of America in the Middle East….Kassem was regarded by Washington as a dangerous leader who must be removed." ("A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making" by Roger Morris, New York Times, 3/14)

By 1963, Kennedy had the CIA set up shop in Kuwait from which it radioed orders to, and organized rebels in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Iraq itself, including arming Kurdish insurgents, to overthrow Kassem. (All this was disclosed by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and by David Wise, an authority on the CIA.)

On Feb. 8, 1963, CIA-organized forces staged a coup, backed by Britain and Israel. The Kennedy administration "immediately befriended the successor regime. ‘Almost certainly a gain for our side,’" Kennedy National Security aide Robert Komer wrote JFK on the day of the coup. (Morris, NYT)

Then, says Morris, "As its instrument, the CIA had chosen the…anti-communist Baath Party….Among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein" [then 25]…. The 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists supplied by the CIA, the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers… — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself…participated."

The U.S. "also sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. had backed against Kassem and then abandoned. Soon…Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum were doing business in Baghdad — for American firms, their first major involvement in Iraq."

Then in 1968, in-fighting within this regime led to still another CIA-backed coup, during the Johnson administration, enabling a Baathist general to seize control and bring Saddam Hussein next to the seat of power.

In the 1980s, during the Iraq-Iran war, the U.S.backed Saddam— the U.S. had lost Iran when its puppet, the Shah, had been overthown in 1979. They sent Iraq’s dictator arms and chemical and biological materials (see CHALLENGE, 3/5, and the UN weapons inspectors’ report). These formed the basis of his celebrated Weapons of Mass Destruction that the Bush gang is so "upset" about. But we should be very clear: Saddam Hussein, a fascist dictator, is an enemy of the Iraqi and international working class. The CIA taught Saddam how to kill workers and Reds. He deserves to be smashed — along with U.S. imperialism — by Iraqi workers and workers everywhere.

The "icing" on the U.S.-backed "cake" came in 1990 when Bush, Sr.’s ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, told Saddam that any dispute with Kuwait was "an internal matter," of no concern to the U.S., giving him the green light to invade. Of course, U.S. rulers soon decided that Saddam’s control of Kuwaiti oil fields might make him too much of a threat to U.S. "friend" Saudi Arabia, world’s largest oil producer, so for the first time in three decades, the U.S. reversed gears on the "evil" it had created.

Concludes Morris, ‘In the last half century, regime change in Iraq has been accompanied by bloody reprisals….If a new war in Iraq seems fraught with danger and uncertainty, just wait for the peace."

Why, on the eve of a U.S. invasion of Iraq, has the New York Times printed such an exposé of the U.S. creation of Saddam? Perhaps it’s their way of telling the Bush crowd they’d better be prepared because they may be opening up a Pandora’s box of uncontrolled opposition to U.S. imperialism worldwide.

a name=""Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"">">"Desert Quicksand — Mideast Invasions Hold Many Pitfalls, History Teaches"

This was the headline in the March 19 Wall Street Journal.

"For two centuries, foreign powers have been conquering Mideast lands for their own purposes….but in nearly every incursion…have endured a raft of unintended consequences. From Napoleon’s drive into Egypt through Britain’s rule of Iraq in the 1920s to Israel’s march into Lebanon in 1982, Middle East nations have tempted conquerors only to send them reeling….

"[Entering Egypt] said Napoleon…I have come to restore your rights!....Napoleon’s real goals involved France’s colonial rivalry with Britain….The French left within three years….but lost both money and men from its Egyptian adventure….

"Britain’s troops landed in what’s now Iraq in 1914…’bursting with confidence in an easy and early victory’…wrote Lawrence of Arabia….Instead it took four years for Britain, with vastly superior arms, to conquer all of Iraq….British troops killed 6,000 to 10,000 Iraqis putting down a revolt…in 1920….To suppress later rebellions by Iraqi Kurds, the British invented the technique of strafing civilians from the air…"

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden lost his post when his attempt to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956 failed.

Then the Israelis "surged into Lebanon in 1982 to crush Palestinian guerrillas….But as Ariel Sharon…pushed to the outskirts of Beirut [and] killed thousands of civilians, the offensive stalled amid furious criticism" and eventually Israel was forced to withdraw.

When Reagan sent the Marines into Lebanon in 1983, a suicide bomber in a truck killed 300 of them in one shot. Reagan also withdrew.

Israeli military historian Col. Meir Pial predicts that, "The longer the Americans stay [in Iraq], the deeper they will find themselves in the mud."

a name=""Don’t Drink from a Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered">">"Don’t Drink From A Poisoned Well": Anti-Communist "Research" Uncovered

The Soviet Union was the only country that gave aid and manpower to the Spanish Republic’s 1936-1939 fight against the fascist armies of General Francisco Franco, who got massive aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. All the "Allies" — Great Britain, France and the rest of Europe, plus the USA — tacitly helped Franco and the fascists by refusing to aid the Republic. The Communist International organized thousands of workers worldwide to join the fight against fascism in Spain — the "International Brigades."

Capitalist and Trotskyite historians have spread many lies about this massive act of proletarian internationalism. From some discussion among friends, the following example of anti-communist lies was discovered.

In his book Modern Times (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), reactionary historian Paul Johnson writes:

"During the rest of 1937 and well into 1938, many thousands of POUM (Party Of United Marxists) members, and indeed other Leftists of all descriptions, were executed or tortured to death in Communist prisons. They included a large number of foreigners, such as Trotsky’s former secretary, Erwin Wolff, the Austrian socialist Kurt Landau, the British journalist ‘Bob’ Smilie and a former lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, José Robles. Among those who just managed to escape were Orwell and Willy Brandt, the future German Chancellor." [note 87] pp. 334-335.

Note 87, p. 739 reads: "Thomas, op.cit., 705-6; Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life (London 1980), 224-6." According to note 48 to the same chapter, "Thomas" is Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 1961 edition.

Here is what Thomas really says:

"Although Nin was the only member of the POUM’s leadership to be killed, a number of international sympathizers with it also died in mysterious circumstances: these included Erwin Wolf, half-Czech, half-German, another ex-secretary of Trotsky, who was kidnapped in Barcelona, and never seen again; the Austrian socialist, Kurt Landau; Marc Rhein, the journalist son of the old Menshevik leader, Rafael Abramovich (Abramovich himself made two fruitless journeys to Spain to discover what had happened); José Robles, sometime lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, perhaps killed because he had been interpreter to the disgraced General Berzin; and, perhaps, ‘Bob’ Smilie, the English journalist, son of the miners’ leader of that name, who had come to Spain on behalf of the British Independent Labour party and died apparently of appendicitis, in a prison to which he had been sent without justification."

In short, according to Thomas, (a) nothing about "thousands"; (b) no evidence that Wolf, Landau, Rhein, Robles, or Smillie had been killed by Communists. Wolf disappeared. Rhein’s father failed to clarify his son’s disappearance. Robles and Smillie were "perhaps" killed – though then we learn Smillie "died apparently of appendicitis, in a prison."

The only things said on Crick, pp. 224-226, of any relevance to Johnson’s quotation are the following:

"On returning to the front from leave, Orwell had learned that another member of the International Labor Party contingent, Bob Smillie (the grandson of the great Scottish miners’ leader), had been arrested after coming back to Spain from a propaganda tour in England. Smillie was in prison in Valencia (and he was to die there, though whether from acute appendicitis or murdered by the Communists has never been cleared up)." (p. 224)

"They [Orwell and two friends, McNair and Cottman] tried to persuade Brandt to come with them to England but he refused.

According to Crick, then, (a) Smillie’s death "has never been cleared up." No evidence is given for the allusion to possible Communist murder; (b) nothing is said about Brandt having "just managed to escape," or being under any special danger at all.

Every single statement and allegation in this paragraph of Johnson’s is a fabrication, unsupported by the very sources — both highly anti-communist sources — to which he refers in his footnote. Further research by others has confirmed that there is no evidence at all that those mentioned by Johnson — Wolf, Landau, Robles, or Smillie — were killed by Communists.

LETTERS

Workers of the World, Write!

a name="CHALLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . ."></">CH"LLENGE Spreads ‘The Word’ . . .

Can we doubt Iraq will be bombed and invaded? By the time you read this it may have begun. In our interfaith coalition we’re trying to battle the illusion that imperial butchery can be prevented merely by demonstrations. We also want to plan a vigorous response as soon as the war moves to the next level (it’s being going on since January, 1991).

On Ash Wednesday (beginning the Christian season of reflection and growth called Lent) we’re picketing our liberal Democratic Party warmongering Senator’s offices. One poster reads, "Does the concept ‘Recall Vote’ get your attention?" This is one proposed organizing tool for the coming war.

Once a month my parish is holding a "Study-Action Evening." Last month was "Savage Inequalities," a discussion of how racism lies at the basis of all oppression and imperialist conquest. This month, "Is the U.S. the New Evil Empire" will try to understand how the Iraqi slaughter is not just for cheap domestic oil consumption, but also for economic, political and military world domination. We’re reading, "The Grand Chessboard," Democratic policy advisor Brzezinski’s road map for U.S. imperialist design. We will plan class struggle at every session and review the progress of one of our new members against racist gentrification in a neighboring building.

The main thing is the Party is growing, modestly. We have regular club meetings and discuss CHALLENGE editorials and articles. I select 10 or so difficult and political "key words" in the editorial for each meeting. We learn them and discuss how they are tied to the Party’s line. Then we take turns reading and discussing the editorial, paragraph by paragraph. Little by little, members and friends are developing a broader and deeper understanding of the Party’s ideas. They are seeing CHALLENGE as an organizing tool for political struggle and circulating it at mass anti-war actions. One member takes an additional paper for her brother who is a truck driver. We are scheduling our next meeting at her apartment to suit his schedule.

We also discuss how to raise the Party’s ideas in a mass-distributed church journal. Our last interfaith conference expanded the circulation by 300 and a national conference produced an additional 150 addresses of people who do anti-racist organizing in inner city parishes around the country.

I also met with my old college roommate who I thought would never organize anything. Sharpening world events have led him to become active in our denominational national peace fellowship. He’s writing a piece for the journal debating me about whether UN Security Council approval means anything amid U.S. imperialist war. Even this pacifist lawyer can be won closer to PL! The horrors of U.S. empire building are opening up new opportunities in churches and communities to recruit new comrades!

Gnawing away in struggle, Red Churchmouse

. . .Crucial to Class Struggle

I want to add one point to the excellent article "Challenge Crucial to Revolutionary Consciousness" (3/19). It says:

"The coming war is both a great danger and a greater opportunity. Millions of workers and young people opposing U.S. imperialism can be won to becoming revolutionary communists. In order to win them, we must have a mass readership for CHALLENGE. Every anti-war rally should be viewed as another chance to spread mass communist consciousness through CHALLENGE. This struggle will be won or lost based on the commitment and understanding of workers and our young comrades and friends. Their efforts will make the difference."

The importance of mobilizing the Party, and particularly the young comrades, to distribute CHALLENGE at mass anti-war rallies can’t be overstated. Many current PLP leaders were trained through our activity in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and the Vietnam anti-war movement, and the rebellions against racist police brutality when PLP and our allies in Canada and other areas grew by 15 or 20 times in size. At one point during the 1970s we were selling 100,000 CHALLENGES per month, mostly in street sales.

One reason we grew significantly then was because of our activity in many struggles which linked imperialist war to local issues. Today we also use another important method of increasing the mass local readership of CHALLENGE — distribution among our friends within the many mass organizations that our members are part of. Increasing these efforts could enable our Party to have a profound effect on the millions now in motion against the war. What if multi-racial groups of scores of workers under our political leadership, chanting our slogans, began challenging the liberal and phony "left" leadership of the anti-war movement? This could influence hundreds of thousands of honest anti-war forces worldwide.

We estimate there is a greater openness to our ideas than at any time in the recent past. We must take advantage of this situation, pushing harder for regular CHALLENGE discussion groups or PLP study groups. This could lead to more commitment by our friends and new members to the mass distribution of CHALLENGE. In turn, this could lead to greater worldwide growth of PLP.

Longtime Reader

U.S. Sponsors Mass Terror In Colombia

A peasant in Santa Ana (Arauquita) had his home burned to the ground by an anti-guerrilla army group which accused him of being a guerrilla. "The soldiers told us to get out of the way, that the house was going to be set afire," said a neighbor who fled the area with her little baby. "They threw gasoline and everything blew up." The burnt-out peasant said he fears denouncing the soldiers because, "If we do they accuse us of being a guerrilla sympathizer and treat us very badly. If we don’t keep quiet one might end up dead. We barely earn enough to eat and buy medicine for malaria, which is widespread here."

Two months ago an entire family, including two young children, had their heads cut off. This is part of a mass uprooting of poor families by land-grabbing cattle owners and drug-dealing landlords, backed by fascist paramilitary gangs who murder those who don’t move.

Some months ago the army surrounded Saravena and jailed 5,000 people for "investigation." One hundred were kept in jail suspected of "subversion." "It resembled a World War II movie showing fascist atrocities committed by the Nazis," said a local resident.

In the Comuna 13 district in Medellin, the army launched two military operations with U.S.-supplied tanks and helicopter gunships, killing 50 and jailing thousands as "suspected guerrillas." Many families were forced to flee their homes, leaving everything behind. When they returned they found their homes turned into barracks for the paramilitary death squads.

In poor working-class neighborhoods of Bogota, Cali and many other cities, a so-called "census" is accompanied by military raids, arrests and mass dissapearances. The army claims to have carried out over 50,000 "voluntary raids." But everyone knows what could happen if you don’t accept it "voluntarily."

This mass terror has occurred for decades, but lately it’s been even more intense due to the fascist "Fight Against Terrorism" of Bush’s buddy, President Alvaro Uribe. Generals are ordered to produce "results," putting the entire population under siege — fascism under the guise of "protecting democracy from terrorism." On top of that, workers are suffering from the worldwide capitalist crisis with mounting unemployment and hunger.

PLP considers this local war part of the international class war imperialists are waging against workers to redivide the world’s resources and wealth. We must unite the world’s workers and allies to turn this imperialist war into a revolutionary upsurge to destroy capitalism and build a communist society where workers rule.

Red Worker, Colombia

a name="‘Billions For War, $0 For Jobless’"></">‘B"llions For War, $0 For Jobless’

On January 18, a group of people from our high school and other schools participated in the Washington, D.C. protest against a war in Iraq and to fight for equality. We met tens of thousands willing to protest, more than we could imagine — African-Americans, Caucasians, Muslims, Latino, Jewish people and others. People carried different signs, such as: "War is not the solution"; "Profit prevents peace"; "You have billions for war but $0 for the jobless."

U.S. imperialism wants war for control of oil profits. Workers and their families suffer in Iraq as well as in the U,S., from the soldiers who fight the wars, to the many thousands of innocent working-class people who will die. Billions of these dollars should be used for poor people, workers, immigrants and the homeless. This imperialist war could lead to World War III and a possible nuclear war.

We will continue protesting and studying this issue to learn more about changing the world. We need a new system and new leaders.

The NYC Revolutionary Youth Knights

a name="Protest ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth"></">Pr"test ‘Reducate’ NYC Youth

In February, some teachers at our high school who were very concerned about war in Iraq organized an assembly for several classes to discuss it. Speakers represent the views of Bush, Saddam Hussein and the "no war" position. A student friend who’d been to some anti-war protests was invited to present her view. She said students had to evaluate what they saw at these protests — just blaming Bush or supporting war if the U.N. backed it, didn’t make sense. On the other hand, slogans like, "No workers’ blood for oil profits," and "A war budget leaves every child behind," made lots of sense. She concluded by calling for a student peace club that would involve more students in the movement.

One friend asked why nobody else had mentioned oil. Then everybody jumped to explain about oil, but they’d already been exposed. One teacher disagreed with the "no war" speaker calling soldiers and ROTC members "trained killers." Someone said soldiers are also thinking people who are trying to figure out what to do. She gave several examples from World War I and the Vietnam War of soldiers fraternizing with the so-called "enemy" and refusing their officers’ orders. She said many of us have friends and family members in the military and that we should start a pen pal club with them, because they must be really having a hard time now.

After this assembly we organized the peace club. On March 5, when many schools had strikes and walk-outs, we had a picket line before school with 35 students and 15 teachers. Some of us went together to the March 15 demonstration and are planning more activities. We know from watching Bush on TV that by the time CHALLENGE comes out the war will probably be on. We will also have had more protests against it.

Some people probably thought that if the protests were big enough, there wouldn’t be a war. They can see by now it didn’t happen that way. We have a job to do within the student club at our school and in the movement in general to help others see that wars for profits are inevitable under capitalism — that it’s not just Bush but the whole capitalist system — and that we can and must organize a revolutionary movement to put an end to capitalist wars for oil profits. The sooner the better.

A student comrade

NY Student Walkout Denounces Oil War

I attended the March 5 youth anti-war rally in New York City with two dozen students from my school. It was very exciting. Thousands of high school students from around the city converged on Union Square. They had either refused to go to school that day or walked out of dozens of high schools in order to be at the noon-time rally. Scores of students — black, Latino, Asian and white — eloquently denounced the planned invasion of Iraq, calling it "a war for oil, a war for profits."

Speaker after speaker explained how this imperialist war would not only kill our brothers and sisters in Iraq, but also would take money from our already under-funded schools. City University students are being threatened with a 40% tuition increase. Huge budget cuts loom for NYC public schools. Yet the ruling class is willing to commit hundreds of billions of tax dollars to seize Iraq and control Persian Gulf oil. Many speakers said that the cops who threaten to arrest students if they try to march have a long history of brutalizing and murdering black and Latino workers like Amadou Diallo.

In my school, students organized for the rally by distributing sign-up sheets asking students to commit themselves to attending. The halls were buzzing with talk about "striking against the war." An Anti-War Faculty Committee will have its first meeting on March 12, a day when U.S. Labor Against The War has called for workplace anti-war activities.

At the rally we passed out copies of the PLP pamphlet against the war. It got a great reception. Thousands of students now consider themselves anti-war activists and are serious about learning more about the roots of an interventionist U.S. foreign policy. They’re open to PLP’s explanation of imperialist war as a natural outgrowth of capitalism, and to working toward the day when that system is part of our study of ancient history.

High School Red

Boeing Speed-up Behind Shuttle Blow Up

CHALLENGE was right — again. A Feb. 19 front-page article on the Columbia Shuttle disaster said the explosion was caused by the drive for maximum profits and that the whole shuttle program was a military operation. "That’s the nature of capitalism in this day and age," it concluded, "everything is militarized for the endless wars the U.S. imperialists are planning in order to rule the world."

Now the Washington Post (3/3) admits as much in an article entitled "NASA’s Culture of Certainty: Debate Was Muffled On Risks to Shuttle."

"The agency [NASA] unquestioningly accepted [a fatally flawed] technical analyses [on damage sustained during lift-off] done by a contractor with a huge financial stake in the shuttle’s success."

Boeing was that contractor. Those of us working in Boeing’s commercial plants are well aware of the company’s plans to implement "self-inspection" — a process riddled with conflicts of interest designed to get the parts produced faster. You could call it the "NASA inspection plan comes to commercial aircraft production."

Even more revealing, Boeing CEO Phil Condit told CNN’s Lou Dobbs that the company has no intention of exiting the space business—no matter what the cost in lives or money. "From the military side (my emphasis), we are absolutely convinced that space-based [activities] are a critical element of our strategy and we have to be there," said Condit.

He’s worried about the competition. For instance, Greece’s Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou called for "European companies [to] develop the sort of scale they need to take on the American defense industry." The European Union Commission has responded, "just before the possible outbreak of a Middle East war, by approving plans to set up a pan-European armaments [procurement] agency," similar to DARPA, the U.S. counterpart. (Dow Jones, 3/10) The bosses know more is at stake here than market share.

The International Association of Machinists is goose-stepping right behind the imperialists. Last month our union leadership railroaded resolutions in favor of "missile defense." This month they maneuvered to block a resolution against the Iraq war signed by more than a dozen rank-and-file workers — including many Vietnam veterans.

Millions are looking for an alternative to the bosses’ press and its war propaganda. Let’s offer them CHALLENGE! You can’t do better!

Boeing worker

Students Need To Take Leadership

About 1,500 people at my college attended a March 5 teach-in against the war. Afterwards, 300 joined a rally called by Books Not Bombs, a student anti-war group. There, high school students from throughout the city spoke about risking suspension or other punishments for walking out of class. Then we marched, chanting, "ExxonMobil, BP, Shell - Take Your War and Go to Hell!" These events exposed the bosses’ lie that there’s overwhelming support for this war. But the events on my campus exposed some critical weaknesses in the anti-war movement.

For example, , the main speakers at our teach-in were professors; students mostly just introduced them. One student even said he "wasn’t here to talk about politics. That’s what the professors are here for."

Capitalist ideology discourages all workers and students, especially youth, from analyzing politics critically. Students are directed to sit passively while "knowledge" is handed down to them from teachers. Communists believe all workers are equally capable of analyzing political situations and should be urged to do so. Youth should not only be encouraged to understand politics, but also to take positions of leadership within organizations to put those political ideas into action. At a meeting of the teach-in organizers, I suggested that students lead the next event. Many students agreed, but there will be more struggles to convince my classmates that we can discuss politics without a professor.

Another political weakness was the group’s lack of political ideology. We’re only against "this war." This led to having an anti-war leaflet on our literature table written by the racist Pat Buchanan. He opposes the war not because it’s an imperialist war for control of oil, but because it involves America getting involved with "alien societies." In the same leaflet Buchanan calls the Vietnam War a "heroic struggle, which bought ten years of freedom for Southeast Asia."

The struggle against this opportunism led to the creation of a committee to work on the group’s "line." This is an advance because it’s made political ideology more of a central idea. Our continued work in the group will attempt to bring up ideas of multi-racial unity and communist revolution.

A Comrade

Vietnam Vets Know the Score

I had coffee with two Vietnam vets recently at an anti-war forum at the medical center where I work. One of them got pissed off and walked out after somebody covered up the US flag. These guys had a pretty good analysis on the Iraq war, exposing one government lie after another. "Can you believe Bush and Cheney already let a contract to some company to rebuild Iraq? The damn war hasn’t even started yet!" "Who got it, Haliburton?" I asked. We all had a good laugh.

They’d been in Vietnam during the Tet offensive, about the time I was finishing my college pre-med courses. I told them how I started to understand the economic cause of that war and got swept up in the anti-war and anti-racist movements sprouting everywhere. I told them the part of the movement that had impressed me most was the Worker Student Alliance within SDS. "They didn’t tell people to dodge the draft. They said if you were really against the war you should join the army and help organize rebellions."

"Yeah, I know," said the one who had been pissed about the flag. He seemed to have the most understanding of all the political/economic connections. His friend introduced him as the person in charge of research for their veterans’ group. "I got into it with one of those SDS guys and beat him up," he said After pausing he added, "I’d like to see those guys again. I would tell them they were right."

"Funny thing. I still get their newspaper," I said. "Here’s my copy. I just finished reading it." We talked a little more about things we could do together in the weeks ahead, then shook hands and went our separate ways.

They were in Vietnam and I was in college 35 years ago. History moves at its own pace, but it never stands still. Every person and every situation is a mass of contradictions, but some aspect is primary. A long-range outlook is essential, but so is a sense of urgency. I plan to see those guys again real soon. It seems the pace of events is speeding up, so we had better move with it.

Red Doctor