a href="#Liberal U.S. Bosses’ Army Following in Nazi Footsteps">"iberal U.S. Bosses’ Army Following in Nazi Footsteps
PLP Targets Racism in D.C. Metro Contract Fight
a href="#'Stand Up For Steel’ vs. Sit-Down Strike for LTV Workers">"Stand Up For Steel’ vs. Sit-Down Strike for LTV Workers
Rank-&-File Mass Militancy Can Foil 1199 Electoral Schemes
a href="#For Bosses Kids ‘R’ Guns">Fo" Bosses Kids ‘R’ Guns
- a href="#Editor’s Comment:">"ditors' Comment
LA Mayoral Vote-Racism/Nationalism A Deadly Trap
a href="#Boeing, Union Back Bush— Exploit Us Here, Bomb Us Abroad">"oeing, Union Back Bush— Exploit Us Here, Bomb Us Abroad
LA Teachers Back Removed B'klyn PL'er
a href="#The Dialectics of Biology: There’s More to Life Than Genes">"he Dialectics of Biology: There’s More to Life Than Genes
Unity with Jesse Jackson Is Pact with the Devil
60th Anniversary of Hitler Attack on USSR -- Red Army Smashed Nazi War Machine
Movie Review: This Rose Smells Rotten
LETTERS
a href="#Racist Ideas Don’t Fall From the Sky">"acist Ideas Don’t Fall From the Sky
a href="#Now It’s Ritalin To 3-Year-Olds!">"ow It’s Ritalin To 3-Year-Olds!
Peru CIA Man Was Capo of Drug Cartel
Anti-Racists Link Fight From Strike To Cop Murder
a href="#‘Peace Carnival’ Won’t Cut It">‘Pea"e Carnival’ Won’t Cut It
Steel Steals In More Ways Than One
a name="Liberal U.S. Bosses’ Army Following in Nazi Footsteps">">"iberal U.S. Bosses’ Army Following in Nazi Footsteps
After decades of imitating Hitler, U.S. bosses have finally begun to give him credit for inspiring them. As they prepare for long-range confrontation with their Russian and Chinese rivals, the rulers look to copy the Nazi army that conquered Europe in the first phase of World War II.
According to the New York paper Newsday (6/13), "A retired general advising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on transforming the military…recommended following in the footsteps of the Nazi army by changing the combat capability of only a small percentage of U.S. forces to achieve a dramatic improvement on future battlefields."
The "adviser" is James P. McCarthy, a former Air Force general. He wants to borrow from the German Army’s general staff, which relied on advanced technology to start Hitler’s war and on infantry to consolidate strategic victories: "…only about 10 percent of the force was transformed with [high technology, — Ed.]; 90 % of the forces that eventually conquered much of Europe was foot soldiers…So we are seeking a similar type of approach" (Newsday).
Liberals Are Masterminds Of ‘Springtime For Rumsfeld’
Life is now imitating the Broadway stage. The biggest hit in many years is Mel Brooks’ The Producers, a spoof about two crooks who try to pocket the fortune in money they raise for a show they plan as a sure-fire flop, a musical comedy called Springtime for Hitler. But the "flop" becomes a hit, and the "producers" wind up in jail. Now we’re getting Springtime for Rumsfeld. But there’s nothing funny about this plan. McCarthy’s advice to Rumsfeld represents an important step toward gearing society and the military for a future of imperialist warfare whose casualties will dwarf the tens of millions murdered by Hitler & Co.
The Rumsfeld-commissioned report is not the work of the open fascists in the Republican "right." It is the brainchild of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a think-tank with impeccable mainstream liberal credentials. Of the IDA’s twelve trustees, seven, including retired Army generals John Galvin and Andrew Goodpaster, are members of or advisors to the Rockefeller-run Council on Foreign Relations. Another, Ruth Davis, received the Rockefeller Public Service Award for her work as undersecretary in the Defense and Energy Departments. IDA trustee Sheila Widnall holds a Rockefeller-endowed professorship at MIT.
New Army Secretary Wants ‘More Lethal’ Force To Fight Bosses’ Wars
The bosses’ recognition of Hitler as a model comes in the wake of two other important developments that underscore the character of the period we are entering. The first is the recent appointment of Thomas White as Bush’s new Secretary of the Army. White is a former vice-chairman of the Enron Corporation, which has often pursued profit interests contradictory to the liberal Establishment’s. However, Enron also has a foot in the Rockefeller/Exxon camp. At his swearing-in, White made clear that he endorses the policy of copying the Nazis: "The Army today is in the midst of an enormous transformation, White said, from a Cold War-oriented force to one that is lighter, faster, more flexible, and—most of all—more lethal." (Stars and Stripes, 6/13, our emphasis — Ed.)
Imperialists Expand Oil Empire Defense Plans
The second important development occurred in October 1999, when Clinton’s Defense Department announced a major shift in U.S. imperialist strategic thinking. U.S. forces in central Asia, which used to be under the Pacific Command, are now under Central Command. This means that all U.S. military operations from the Persian Gulf to the Ural Mountains to China’s western border have been centralized.
"Since the Central Command already controls the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region, its assumption of control over Central Asia means that this area will now receive close attention from the people whose primary task is to protect the flow of oil to the United States and its allies. (Michael Klare, "The New Geography of Conflict," Foreign Affairs, May-June 2001, our emphasis — Ed.) This move clearly benefits Rockefeller/Exxon.
Klare explains "this shift in strategic geography" as a "new emphasis on the protection of supplies of vital resources, especially oil and natural gas…with global energy consumption rising by an estimated two percent annually, competition for access to large energy reserves will only grow more intense in the years to come." The problem for the main wing of U.S. bosses has become far more complex than simply dealing with pests like Saddam Hussein. The rulers must now devise a strategy that prepares for eventual military confrontation with both Russia and China.
Dump Liberal Warmakers, Build PLP
This is the context in which "Springtime for Rumsfeld" and the expansion of the U.S. Central Command must be viewed. We don’t know how far in the future the next war among the main imperialist powers will occur. But it is brewing, and we must prepare for it now. The working class must learn that war and fascism are inevitable under the profit system. Workers must shed the deadly illusion that liberal politicians and bosses who parade as our friends are anything other than gangsters and mass murderers willing to spill our class’s blood for their own maximum profits and the preservation of their political power. Only the growth of the Progressive Labor Party can help workers learn these lessons and put us in a position to smash the system that causes such wars.
Turkey-Russia Pipeline Deal Thumbs Nose At U.S.
At the moment, U.S. imperialism retains a lot of muscle and maneuverability. But these advantages are beginning to erode. Remember that the 1999 Clinton/NATO "humanitarian" bombing of the former Yugoslavia was conducted to ensure the U.S. could choose the pipelines that would bring Caspian oil through Turkey to market. The U.S. had favored a pipeline that would reach Turkey via the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, bypassing Russia. The Russians countered with a pipeline deal that would connect Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea. Well, the Turkish ruling class has just signed up for the Russian pipeline, which will increase Turkey’s dependence on Russian natural gas from 66 to 80 percent. The U.S. deal is dead in the water, and Turkey is supposedly a U.S. pal. This is a serious defeat for U.S. imperialism, specifically for U.S. oil interests at the hands of their Russian rivals, one the bosses will look to reverse by any and all means.
Who Won the 1999 Balkan War?
The recent Bush-Putin love-fest in Slovenia revealed the steadily widening conflicts between U.S. and Russian rulers. After making clear his opposition to NATO’s expansion to countries in the former Soviet Union, Putin flew to Kosovo, where he attacked U.S. Balkan policy and pinned medals on the Russian soldiers who still occupy Pristina airport. Russia had seized it from under NATO’s nose at the end of the 1999 "humanitarian" air war for energy pipelines (Associated Press, 6/18). The Albanian-backed forces Putin opposes in Kosovo are fighting for the route sponsored by Bush’s ally, the Halliburton company, which would transport oil and gas from Bulgaria through Macedonia to Albania. When bosses disagree about pumping, transporting, refining and selling oil, don’t expect an outbreak of peace to accompany the discussion.
As we go to press, another conflict emerged: Putin announced that if the U.S. constructed a missile defense shield, "Russia would eventually upgrade its strategic nuclear arsenal with multiple warheads [reversing the arms control agreements] to ensure that it would be able to overwhelm such a shield." (New York Times, 6/19)
PLP Targets Racism in D.C. Metro Contract Fight
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 6 — Hundreds of workers gathered at the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 meeting for an update on contract negotiations. The local president reported that management continues to stall on the union’s big five issues. The union will not continue discussion much longer unless the issues of wage progression (lower wages for the same work), a wage increase, improvements in health care and pensions and restrictions on contracting out of work are discussed seriously.
The Financial-Secretary then reported on wage progression, the union’s number one bargaining issue. It’s the issue that workers must win on to reach a contract settlement. It’s also the issue meeting the greatest resistance from Metro bosses.
When the Metro transit system was created in 1973, wage progression was one year. New operators started at 90% and moved up to full pay after 12 months but new unskilled workers stayed at 90% of operators’ pay. With the 1974 contract, management began an unrelentingly 27-year fight to extend wage progression for operators and to introduce it into the non-operating classifications, all in order to lower wages.
The basis of these policies is racism, pure and simple. Management gives them many different names (progression, restructuring, longevity), but the bottom line is a racist system keeping black workers pay as low as possible for as long as possible.
The fight against progression is much more than one to raise wages for new operators and unskilled workers. It’s a struggle to prevent further erosion of the value of transit jobs. These jobs were won because of the civil rights movement and rebellions of the 1960’s. They’ve been the vehicles for thousands of black workers in this area to achieve a decent standard of living. The bosses are using and intensifying racism to push us back.
This racist attack is not only against transit workers. The average life span for a black man here is 59 years and the infant mortality rate is double the national average. The closing of D.C. General Hospital will leave thousands, mainly black people, without any medical care and schools that are a disaster in D.C. and Prince George County. Racist police terror threatens every black worker in the region. Ending wage progression is an important part of continuing the fight against racism.
Workers Applaud Anti-Racist Unionist
The workers at the meeting loudly applauded the Financial Secretary’s report.
Making wage progression the central issue of the negotiations is no accident. PLP has been fighting over this issue for 25 years. These struggles have slowly raised the political consciousness — and awareness of PLP — of thousands of workers at Metro, both young and old.
Keeping wage progression central means: (1) Workers understand its relation to the fight against racism; (2) The development of a union committee to provide leadership on the issue; and (3) A more militant approach to achieving progress on the issue.
Ending wage progression will not destroy the wage system or end racism. But we can beat back a racist attack and get a glimpse of the strength of a unified working class guided by communist ideas. More workers can become CHALLENGE readers and distributors, to spread the influence of PLP and win workers to the long-term struggle for communist revolution.
a name="'Stand Up For Steel’ vs. Sit-Down Strike for LTV Workers">">"Stand Up For Steel’ vs. Sit-Down Strike for LTV Workers
E. CHICAGO, IN, June 14 — More than 300 steel workers rallied in the blistering heat against the closing of LTV Steel. Unfortunately, the politicians and union hacks only added to the hot air. LTV, the country’s third largest steel producer, is bankrupt and fighting for its life, losing more than one million dollars a day.
LTV is looking for more than $1 billion in wage and benefit concessions over the next five years. They’re closing a Cleveland mill, wiping out 900 jobs. They want to cut pension and healthcare benefits to retirees by as much as $600 a month, with the option to terminate pensions altogether "if necessary." They want no limits on contracting out work. They left the negotiations, saying, "Take it or leave it."
This may be more than the United Steel Workers union can give. If the union grants these concessions, the rest of the industry will demand the same. A bankruptcy judge may impose a settlement, taking them off the hook. Or LTV may be thrown to the wolves to cut the productive capacity of the steel industry.
This is a painful reminder that as long as the bosses hold power, the only guarantee is a hard way to go. The working class must seize power and organize production to meet our needs. Profits and wages must be abolished. These are our jobs, our pensions and our mill. But this is not our system. Capitalism is wage slavery. The bosses fight it out for markets, resources and cheap labor. We are cannon fodder, whether in their trade wars or shooting wars. We must keep our eye on the prize of communist revolution as this struggle unfolds.
The USWA has "led" us to "STAND UP FOR STEEL," against Permanent Favored Nation Trade Status for China, and for "import restrictions." "Import restrictions" are a con game. Big Steel imports 20% of all imported semi-finished steel. USX purchased a huge mill in Slovakia, which will account for 25% of its worldwide production. Workers at this mill make $2/hour. Nationalism only serves the bosses. We share one common flag with steelworkers in Russia, Slovakia, Korea, Japan and Brazil: the red flag of internationalism and communist revolution.
"STAND UP FOR STEEL" is an example of how the interests of individual steel companies have run up against the interests of the ruling class as a whole. Wall Street and the auto industry (to name a few) have opposed import restrictions from the start. They are demanding a leaner and meaner steel industry. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has proposed that the government subsidize a 20% cut in the productive capacity. That’s not good news for the 18 bankrupt steel companies or their workers.
Now is no time for passivity. Now is the time to occupy the mill with a sit-down strike! We can call on US and Inland workers to threaten a General Strike. Young workers, fed up with dead-end jobs and racist police terror, can defend the strike. LTV is the weak fish in a tank of piranhas. That’s their problem. A sit-down strike can be a shot heard around the world, teaching the need to overthrow the profit system. It may not win. It cannot lose. Right now, fighting is winning.
Rank-&-File Mass Militancy Can Foil 1199 Electoral Schemes
BRONX, NY, June 18 — On May 16 nearly 4,000 Local 1199/SEIU workers and their supporters rallied at Lawrence Hospital here. The rally was protesting the bosses’ coercion and intimidation blocking the workers from joining the union. The mostly black workers were given a rough time.
The bosses threatened to replace them; made calls to workers homes pushing a no-vote on unionization; and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire a Kentucky-based anti-union "consultant" to wage this dirty campaign, money the hospital received largely from New York State. The union lost by five votes, 119 to 124.
In 1965 Lawrence hospital workers had struck for 55 days for the right to organize into 1199. At that time hospital workers in New York State were excluded from collective bargaining rights. The Lawrence strike paved the way for such rights for all hospital workers in the State and for the growth of 1199.
However, the comparatively small turnout at the rally demonstrated that the 1199 union leadership refuses to wage all-out battle against Lawrence bosses. The union has over 150,000 workers at its command, but the leadership uses this large group only as an electoral bargaining chip to win a few reforms (maybe) from the bosses’ politicians. The bosses recognize that the union won’t wage an all-out fight. The 1199 leadership is loyal to the bosses’ capitalist system. They want to keep oppressed black, Latin and white workers in the polling booths instead of waging class struggles against the racist profit system.
The bosses use intimidation, threats, harassment and firing of workers to keep them in line. They violate union contracts. Very often many cases are tied up in arbitration. If the boss loses, the penalties are trivial. However, as long as the 1199/SEIU leadership refuses to mobilize all healthcare workers to fight the bosses’ attacks, the bosses will have free reign. Through communist leadership which doesn’t operate within the bosses’ laws, the working class can learn the necessity to get rid of the capitalist system.
a name="For Bosses Kids ‘R’ Guns"></">Fo" Bosses Kids ‘R’ Guns
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers released a report on June 12 protesting the use of 500,000 children worldwide as cannon fodder. It was issued in South Africa because most of the children used in wars are in Africa, although 87 countries throughout the world use child soldiers. The report says Britain and the U.S. are among the few imperialist countries who do. Britain recruits as young as 16 — sending them into combat at 17.The U.S. used youth under 18 in the Gulf War, Somalia and the Balkans. Capitalism’s technology has developed very light weapons, making it possible for children to use them.
Although a worldwide phenomenon (see CHALLENGE 6/6)), it is worse in Africa because of the many wars for diamonds and other resources. Judit Arenas, Coalition spokeswoman, reported that warring factions and even governments in Africa use children to guard lucrative oil and diamond fields that finance their wars. "Children are actually being kidnapped from other regions and countries where there are no conflicts."
It’s obvious that capitalism and imperialism are the world’s worst killers of children. Just prior to this report, another one detailed the worldwide use of millions of children as cheap and even slave labor, including the U.S.
However, these reports won’t change the situation of working-class children one bit. For the sake of our children, we must destroy the cause of this horror — capitalism — by fighting for communism.
A comrade
a name="Editor’s Comment:">">">">"ditor’s Comment
: To organize this communist revolution, a revolutionary leadership is needed. These children, who these murderers already train to wage war, can play a key role in turning the guns around to smash the biggest killer of children in modern history — capitalism/imperialism — once and for all.
LA Mayoral Vote-Racism/Nationalism A Deadly Trap
LOS ANGELES, June 18 — The LA Mayoral election runoff pitted two liberal Democrats against each other. The campaign’s last two weeks became a bitter fight based on racism from both sides. As CHALLENGE reported, Villaraigosa was supported by billionaire businessman Eli Broad and LA’s current mayor Riordan as well as by the Eastern Establishment and their liberal loyalists. The LA Times revealed that he received a big chunk of money from the East Coast. The old-line LA bosses backed Jim Hahn.
Hahn’s racism claimed Villaraigosa would be "soft on crime because of his background" and because he had asked Clinton to pardon a former drug dealer whose father is a millionaire businessman and a past Villaraigosa supporter. Hahn said he was a "friend" to black workers. Magic Johnson and black politicians like Assemblywoman Yvonne Braithwaite Burke supported Hahn. But the Police Officer’s Union also backed him. Hahn has been an LA City Attorney since the 1980’s. In 1987 he first implemented massive gang sweeps and gang injunctions. These measures gave cops open season for stopping and arresting anyone they "suspected" of being a "gang member" in any area defined as "gang-infested." This so called "friend" of the black community started by arresting and attacking hundreds of black youth in West LA’s Cadillac Corning neighborhood. His gang injunctions have been repeated city-wide—directed at Latino and black youth—and now in cities across the country as well.
The day after the election, Assemblywoman Burke told the LA Times that Mayor-elect Hahn must retain LAPD Chief Bernard Parks because Hahn’s black political supporters back Parks. Parks is a close ally and protegé of Darryl Gates, a previous arch racist police chief, a product of the old-line LA bosses.
One of the main issues in this election was LA policing policy. Villaraigosa supported "community policing," the liberal/fascist plan backed by the Eastern Establishment to win black and Latino ministers and others to support the cops and their attacks on black and Latino youth. Villaraigosa was pretty committed to dumping Parks. It remains to be seen how this fight develops.
Villaraigosa had the support of most unions. He appealed both to Latino nationalism and to a multi-racial coalition. He said he was from the heart of LA and "would make LA work for all." But Villaraigosa promised to be even tougher on crime than Hahn. He means it—for black and Latino youth, not for the drug-dealing son of a millionaire supporter. Villaraigosa doesn’t represent the interests of Latino, black or other workers anymore than Hahn does! He serves the interests of the country’s top rulers.
A New York Times op-ed article noted that even though Villaraigosa lost, he is the future. These rulers want the politicians who run the country’s second largest city to be loyal to them and their plans for community policing. Their goal is to win Latino workers (now 50% of LA) and black, Asian and white workers to vote and to believe that this system can be reformed to meet their needs. They desperately need a loyal working class to accept starvation wages and willingly send their children to fight coming imperialist wars for the bosses’ control of oil and empire. Neither Villaraigosa nor Hahn said a word or intend to lift a finger for the thousands of people here who will soon be kicked off welfare and forced into low-paying slave labor jobs.
Since the 1992 multi-racial rebellion, some LA rulers have been trying to build divisions between black and Latino workers. In this election, the bosses pushed racism in their dogfight for control of LA. They also spread the dangerous illusion that racism can be ended by voting for the "lesser evil" politician, or "one of our own."
Voting for slick politicians is a deadly trap. It’s clear that PLP must fight hard to unite the working class on every front. The working class must unite so that we can get rid of racist police terror, slave labor, wage slavery and imperialist war with communist revolution. Our urgent job is to build our party and Challenge among black, Latino, Asian and white youth and workers.
a name="Boeing, Union Back Bush— Exploit Us Here, Bomb Us Abroad">">"oeing, Union Back Bush— Exploit Us Here, Bomb Us Abroad
The recently signed contract between the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the military division of the Boeing Company in St. Louis generated a lot of interest at the last union meeting here in Seattle. The original deal was overwhelmingly rejected, the rank and file shouting down the union leadership at the ratification meeting. Workers were particularly angry at a provision allowing the company to shift workers among several "families" of job categories, thereby eliminating jobs. The leadership finally railroaded a new deal, seven days later, by offering a few extra bucks and a promise by the company of no more layoffs unless a "catastrophic" setback occurs. As one worker said at the last union meeting, the "no-layoff" pledge was a "sucker punch."
The average age of the St. Louis workforce is 49. (In Seattle it’s 46.) Many workers will be retiring during the three-year contract. The "no-layoff" pledge focuses our attention on our own job, while allowing the company to eliminate many more jobs through attrition.
"We’re supposed to organize for the common good of the working class," a member reminded us. "Is this what Dick Schneider, [International head negotiator] calls ‘good security language’?"
But class-consciousness is the last thing these misleaders want us to develop. "Think only about your own job" is their motto.
The International has taken this selfish ideology to its logical conclusion in the latest IAM Journal. "Bombs Bursting in Air" is the lead article and subject of International President Buffenbarger’s editorial. In supporting Bush’s plan to build a star wars missile "defense," the International pushes the usual imperialist claptrap about "rogue nations." Besides devoting nearly the whole magazine to this warmongering, they’re also distributing a free "Bombs Bursting In Air" video as well.
Class-consciousness, on the other hand, can lead to questioning to what use our labor is put. The bosses want to exploit us as much as possible to build weapons that kill other workers — in pursuit of still more exploitation and profit. We must reject not only the union misleaders’ sellout contracts, but their nationalism and selfishness as well.
For the bosses it’s "Bombs Bursting In Air"; for us it must be "Workers of the World, Unite!"
Boeing worker
LA Teachers Back Removed B'klyn PL'er
LOS ANGELES, CA, June 6 — Teachers in United Teachers Los Angeles’ Central Area voted overwhelmingly to support Progressive Labor Party member Joan Heymont in her struggle to return to her Brooklyn, NY science teaching position today. Teachers pledged to endorse a new business initiative supporting Joan in the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly in Los Angeles this summer.
As readers will remember, Joan Heymont is a veteran science teacher at Brooklyn’s Boys and Girls High School. She was removed from her job and sent to mark time in a district office for inviting students to a Saturday May Day march in Washington, D.C. Her colleagues, students and parents have mobilized to support her, and to protest the harassment and threats against students who have worn stickers and circulated petitions calling for her return. They have been threatened with suspension or not being allowed to graduate, and her students had no regular teacher to prepare them for the Regents exams.
The struggle to return Joan Heymont to her job teaching science at Boys and Girls HS — and years of PLP activity in the union’s Delegate Assembly — has forced the teachers union leadership to offer nominal support, evidenced by an overwhelming vote favoring her at the union’s Delegate Assembly meeting. Union president Randi Weingarten promised to move quickly in Joan’s defense, but as of this writing, the case is not yet resolved. Teachers around the country must support her fight.
a name="The Dialectics of Biology: There’s More to Life Than Genes">">"he Dialectics of Biology: There’s More to Life Than Genes
The Triple Helix
, by Richard Lewontin, discusses evolution and genetics from the perspective of dialectical materialism. It is a useful weapon to combat biological determinism being pushed at college campuses and medical centers. According to Lewontin, the idea that the development of living beings (organisms) is just a matter of genes is wrong.
Proteins–Not from DNA Alone
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the large molecule that makes up our genetic material. The idea that DNA sequence determines protein structure is overly simplistic and mechanical (as opposed to dialectical). One example of the dialectical complexity of protein formation is the production of artificial insulin.
Insulin controls blood sugar and is a critical medicine for people with severe diabetes. Scientists learned to transfer the insulin gene to bacteria, and tried to use these bacteria to create insulin in vats. They had the right protein sequence, but the "insulin" didn’t work right. They had to change the environmental conditions in the vat to get the bacteria to produce insulin.
Genes and Environment
One of the major themes in this book is the dialectical contradiction between genes and environment. Lewontin explains how knowing the genes of an organism (genotype), isn’t enough to understand its physical properties (phenotype). One must know about the environment in which the organism develops.
Lewontin gives several examples. Flowering plant A is genetically different from Flowering plant B. Plant A is taller than plant B at sea level. In the mountains, B is taller than A. Or, fruit fly Type A lives longer than Type B at one temperature; at another temperature, fly B lives longer than fly A. The characteristics of living beings reflect the dialectical contradiction between genes and the environment (elevation or temperature.)
Lewontin notes that geneticists tend to use a mechanical outlook in which genes alone determine physical characteristics. They ignore all the dialectical contradictions of genes and environment.
Chance is a Part of Life
Lewontin again uses fruit flies to explain the general dialectical category of contingency (chance) and necessity. The number of sensory hairs beneath the wings is different under each wing. This can’t be due to genes, since it’s the same genes in one fly. It can’t be due to the environment, since it is the same on the left and right side. The answer lies in random (chance) events.
Three cells give rise to the sensory hairs. They come from one "starter" cell. To produce hair, the three cells migrate to the surface of the developing fly. If division of the "starter" cell takes too long, the three cells may not arrive in time. Such random processes, not genes or environment, underlie a great deal of the differences between organisms.
Organisms Change Their Environment and Function Within Limits
Environment is not fixed and unchanging. For example, waste products for one species are food for another. We breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. The flower takes in carbon dioxide and gives off oxygen. All organisms alter not only their own environments, but the environments of other species as well. Genes, organisms and environments have a dialectical interrelation.
Organisms are built on the complex interaction of many relatively weak forces that keep it functioning fairly stable. For example, no matter what the temperature is outside or how hard we’re working, our body temperature stays around 98.6° F. This is due to many different biochemical and physiologic processes. Only when the organism is subject to major stresses that push it beyond certain limits do these regulatory devices break down. If you sit out in 120° weather for a few hours without water and shade, you’ll end up with hyperthermia (elevated body temperature, or heat stroke). Mechanical geneticists often ignore the many influences on the development of a biologic function.
History Matters
The "sensitive dependence of initial conditions" is an example of the second law of dialectics, quantity into quality. Very small differences in starting conditions can result in extreme differences in the final outcome. All species are the result of a unique historical process that might have taken many paths other than the one it actually took.
There are two kinds of rhinoceros. The one in India is one-horned. The one in Africa has two. The best explanation for this is two alternative outcomes of the same selective process (the horns probably serve a protective function) beginning with somewhat different initial genetic conditions.
The Big Picture: Levels of Causation
Finally, Lewontin shows that one must view "causes" at many levels. The death rate among the working class declined dramatically in 19th Century Europe. The "cause" was the decline in infectious disease. The bigger "cause" was the rise in wages and nutrition. And this could be traced to the struggle of the working class. Or, consider pollution caused by deforested mountainsides and non-degradable waste dumps. The "greater" cause is capitalist production for profit.
The Triple Helix (136 pages) is not easy reading. But it will reward you with a deeper understanding of the dialectical interplay of genes and environment in the development of all living beings.
At An Anti-Racist Conference:
Unity with Jesse Jackson Is Pact with the Devil
ANN ARBOR, MI, June 3 — This weekend a multi-racial group of hundreds of students met at a National Conference to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration, proclaimed by the leadership as the founding of "a new Civil Rights movement.
Reports included student fights: at Berkeley and Michigan against attacks on Affirmative Action; at Brown against the racist ad placed by David Horowitz, (see CHALLENGE, 4/25); at Penn St., against a state of racist terror on the campus; and at Harvard by students and workers fighting for a "Living Wage."
Conference participants discussed linking these struggles, and what’s next in the anti-racist fight. The conference was led by the Michigan chapter of the National Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration by Any Means Necessary, or BAM (By Any Means). Many BAM members were in the Trotskyite Revolutionary Workers’ League, which — despite its name — advocated forming alliances with Jesse Jackson.
Jackson spoke and tried to win support for the Democratic Party, saying (when pressed) that he’d help mobilize a September rally against racism at Penn State. A PLP’er moved to amend the Conference’s basic statement to disassociate the new movement from Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow/PUSH coalition, declaring that Jackson was part of the ruling class. He noted that Jackson supported Clinton’s Democratic administration that attacked workers with more prisons and prison labor, Workfare, more racist cops and the accompanying terror, the bombing of Yugoslavia, etc. He said Clinton was a war criminal, noting that Jackson was Clinton’s "spiritual adviser," supports U.S. imperialism and pushes U.S. patriotism. He declared that support for Jackson legitimizes capitalism and the racist/fascist attacks it was increasingly launching due to its growing crisis. He said Jackson has no place in our struggles against racism, exploitation and oppression. His motion of opposing Jackson was voted down 62-25 with 7 abstentions. In later discussions with students, several from Penn State agreed with this analysis of Jackson.
Our comrade kept communist ideas in the forefront. In discussions of the Harvard Living Wage sit-in and in a flyer he exposed Harvard as a booster of racism, capitalism and imperialism, inventing napalm; having Herrnstein, author of the racist Bell Curve, as head of its psychology department; Henry Kissinger as a professor; promoting E.O. Wilson, a Harvard professor responsible for sociobiology — "all human behavior is determined by genes"; and sponsoring the liberal fascist professor William J. Wilson who divides anti-racists by arguing that white workers are "too racist to be won to anti-racism." Professors like Wilson, along with the AFL-CIO leadership, are attempting to build a worker-student alliance for imperialism.
The PLP’er also noted that the whole capitalist education system generates inequality. He called on all those at the conference to fight for a communist revolution to destroy capitalism and its universities. He distributed nearly 40 CHALLENGES and obtained around 20 contacts.
The Penn State struggle highlighted the conference. In the past year, ten black students received death threats. Many racist/fascist groups are on campus and in the area. Campus cops’ racist tattoos signify membership in fascist groups and/or that they’ve killed at least one person of color. Lucrecia Wolf (Black Student Organization president) received a death threat; a week later the dead body of a young black man was found near where the death note had indicated.
In response, a multi-racial group of hundreds of students took over the building which houses the African American studies department. Thousands rallied outside. They decided to hold a demonstration in early September at Penn State protesting this racism.
Communists in PLP must be there to join the fight against the fascists, and to expose misleaders like Jackson as enemies who must be dumped for the fight against racism and fascism to succeed.
60th Anniversary of Hitler Attack on USSR
Red Army Smashed Nazi War Machine
On June 22, 1941, more than 3,000,000 Nazi troops invaded the Soviet Union. Fascist troops from Finland, Rumania, Hungary, Italy and Spain later joined them. The largest military attack in history was a second attempt by the capitalists to smash the world’s first workers’ state. Only 16 years earlier the Bolsheviks had defeated imperialist troops from 14 countries, including the U.S., Britain and France, who had invaded the Soviet Union in 1917 to "strangle the socialist infant in its cradle." Though 4.5 million Soviet workers lost their lives, the communist-led Red Army defeated them. Now Hitler’s armies would meet a similar fate.
Virtually all Western military experts predicted Hitler would be in Moscow in six weeks. Less than four years later, Soviet troops marched triumphantly into Berlin, having smashed the "invincible" Nazi war machine.
About 80% of Hitler’s armies were tied down in Russia on the 2,000-mile-long Eastern Front. By the time the allies launched the D-Day invasion of France in 1944, the Red Army had already swept the Nazis out of all of occupied Russia and part of Eastern Europe and Soviet tanks were rolling towards Germany at 40 miles a day.
Today a flood of movies, books and TV specials tell us how the US single-handedly won World War II, saving "Private Ryan" and the world. In fact, U.S. rulers were worried that if they didn’t invade France when they did, the Red Army would liberate all of Western Europe by itself.
Even Western historians agree the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the battle against Hitler and the Soviet victory at Stalingrad was the turning point of the WWII. The USSR lost over 20 million lives defeating the Nazis (75 times the 300,000 U.S. deaths). In the Nazi-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, "about two-thirds of the houses and productive capacity was destroyed." Not one bomb fell on the U.S. during the entire war. [All figures from The World Almanac of World War II.]
The imperialist conspiracy to smash the Soviet Union began long before WW II. The British and French rejected five separate Soviet proposals for an alliance against Hitler in the 1930s. The West supplied Hitler with oil, rubber and bank loans for his war machine. They hoped Hitler would move east and crush the Soviet Union and thereby prevent the spread of the overthrow of the profit system. When Hitler marched into Poland, Britain and France "declared war," the "Phony War," because 110 Western divisions did nothing while the Nazis mopped up in Poland, hoping Hitler would continue to move east.
But before they took on the Soviets, the Germans occupied Holland, Belgium and Norway. Hitler then invaded France. The French high command went over to Hitler’s side, allowing him to march into Paris in three weeks, driving British troops into the sea at Dunkirk.
In almost all of Europe, the communist underground led the resistance that helped defeat the Nazis over the next four years. Communist-led partisans behind enemy lines in the Soviet Union alone destroyed one million Nazi troops, more than the combined total destroyed by the U.S. and British in the entire war.
When Hitler finally invaded the Soviet Union, the predicted "six weeks" victory never happened. German troops found total destruction and desolation in every captured Russian city or town — the "scorched earth" policy. Soviet defenders burned everything to the ground that they could not take with them — and then organized armed resistance behind enemy lines. Over 6,000 factories were dismantled and moved east of the Ural Mountains, re-assembled to produce weapons again, a feat requiring total unity and support of Soviet workers, unmatched by any country, before or since.
By Dec. 2, 1941, the Nazis were just 20 miles from the Kremlin. Stalin stayed in Moscow throughout this period and rallied the Soviet workers and Red Army. On Dec. 6 (the day before Pearl Harbor), the Soviets launched a counter-attack on a 500-mile front and drove the fascists from the gates of Moscow. Hitler was forced to halt this offensive.
By September 1942, the Nazis had begun another offensive, reaching the outskirts of Stalingrad. They planned to take that city and then seize the oil of the Caucuses to the south (bordering oil-rich Iran) and drive on Moscow to the north. But it was not to be. Soviet soldiers and workers fought for Stalingrad block-by-block, house-by-house and room-by-room to halt the "unbeatable" Nazi invaders. Workers in arms factories produced weapons for the Red Army working 24 hours a day. When Nazi troops captured factories, heroic Soviet workers and soldiers would take them back.
The entire German Sixth Army and 24 of Hitler’s generals were surrounded and killed or captured in the battle of Stalingrad. Never again would the Nazis mount an offensive against the Red Army. Stalingrad was truly the turning point of the Second World War. The communist-led Soviet Union smashed the largest and most powerful army every mounted by a capitalist power.
Internal weaknesses eventually destroyed the first workers’ state. Socialism retained too many capitalist concepts, especially wages and money. But as a British general remarked in introducing a documentary about the Battle of Russia, "if it were not for the heroism of the Soviet workers, if Hitler had conquered the Soviet Union, millions of citizens in Britain and the United States would be dead today." We are slowly learning the hard lessons from the defeat of the old communist movement. But emulating the mass heroism and determination they displayed in defeating fascism is the goal of PLP in our fight for communist revolution.
Movie Review: This Rose Smells Rotten
"The union leaders gave free tickets to see the movie. My friends and I tore them up!" exclaimed Julio, a janitor for 20 years and a rank-and-file leader, about the new film "Bread and Roses." "They told us we could be extras in the movie for $200 but how many millions are they going to make? They put the sellout union leaders in the movie to make them look good."
Another worker commented, "They’re trying to use our struggle to make people think the system can be made to serve our needs."
This started a lively discussion on a film, made by Ken Loch, about the struggle to build the union among Los Angeles janitors. The New York Times and the head of the LA County Federation of Labor are recommending it. Union organizers are being encouraged to see it as a "training film." It says that capitalism can be made to be worker-friendly and democratic — today’s unions can give immigrant workers a piece of the "Great American dream."
The movie does show immigrants forced to cross the border illegally and then clean the big LA office buildings, "rewarded" with racist and sexist harassment. One good scene shows a worker teaching his new co-worker how to clean the grooves on the ground at an elevator entrance. Two lawyers literally walk over them to get on the elevator, never even noticing them. But the film never blames capitalism for the rotten conditions workers face.
In the movie, two Mexican capitalists offer a scholarship to a janitor struggling to go to law school if he can only raise the rest of the money. Mexican capitalists are big friends of the workers, right? An activist janitor tells him not to forget about his co-workers and then risks everything to help him. It’s clear: college is the way up and out.
The janitors’ leader is a young ex-college student who "defies" his leaders by organizing actions to embarrass the building owners into recognizing the union. But his leaders let him do this. And the owners give in because his publicity stunt makes them look bad. It’s not the loss of profits based on workers’ strength that forces the boss to give in temporarily — it’s the exposé in the liberal media. The student tells the union leader that the union is more interested in giving money to the Democratic Party than organizing the workers. In reality, the janitors are forced to pay increasing union dues for Democratic Party candidates like Antonio Villaraigosa who are loyal only to the liberal bosses.
The older sister of the movie’s central character tells her she’d become a prostitute to support the family in Mexico, going on and on about it. While some women are forced into prostitution, making this the symbol of immigrant women is a racist and sexist slap at all the women who’ve worked long hours in factories, clean houses and lead fights against oppression to support their families.
Most striking janitors felt they got next to nothing — about a 30¢ hourly increase — not the huge victory depicted in the movie, which says small reforms, led by the AFL-CIO, are our only goal.
The janitors did win a victory. Some now see the fight against racist and sexist oppression as part of the international working class fight against the capitalist system. More see the limits of reform struggle and the need for a long-term, revolutionary communist outlook.
If you see this movie, see it with friends and then discuss workers’ real conditions, what causes them and how to end oppression and racism.
In the movie, a janitor tells a rally that he had organized workers, students and farmworkers in El Salvador to unite, and that he was doing the same here in LA. The promoters of this movie would like to turn such past fighters against U.S. imperialism into current fighters for crumbs, loyal to the AFL-CIO, liberal Democratic politicians and U.S. bosses. While our task, to fight for communist revolution, is not easy, capitalism is bucking the tide of history.
LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write Us!
Donate Rebate to PLP
George W. Bush has presented us with a great opportunity to collectively spit in the government’s eye. Let’s take the tax rebate most of us will get this summer and give it all to the Party.
Think of the satisfaction! The ruling class is in desperate straits, brought on by the contradictions of capitalism, and some of them are hoping this tax rebate will help their economy. Instead, let’s use it to build the Party that is working for their destruction. If every Party member and friend contributed their tax rebates, that would be a big help to the Party’s continuing to build for communist revolution, covering the expenses of international work, youth work and publishing CHALLENGE.
Of course, we could use this tax rebate for many things, but let’s face it, we didn’t expect to have this money and most of us can do without it. Think of how much more satisfying it will be to be part of a collective cash donation to the Party.
I’m Always Broke Too But That’s How It Is Under Capitalism And That’s One Reason We Need Communism"
a name="Racist Ideas Don’t Fall From the Sky">">"acist Ideas Don’t Fall From the Sky
I work in a large Chicago area hospital. Over the years I’ve experienced a number of racist incidents. Once a black man, a pedestrian hit by a car, arrived in the emergency room via ambulance. A resident doctor examined him, and although the man was unconscious, complained about how bad the patients’ feet smelled. A co-worker and I wrote a letter to the head trauma doctor about the incident. Although we received no reply, the offending doctor was not seen again.
On another occasion, a co-worker stated, "They hired another dirty n——- while we were getting her report for the previous shift. When I confronted her about her racist remark, she blamed her mother for raising her that way and verbally attacked me for my communist ideas. After word spread about the incident, I was called into the boss’s office and threatened with suspension if I continued mentioning it.
Most recently, a co-worker described racist remarks she’d heard from the night shift nurses. Some disparage the young black and Latino patients because they assume they’re all gang members. My co-worker had a similar experience when visiting a relative who’d been shot. She thought his treatment was affected by some of the nurses’ less-than-favorable attitudes. I encourage my co-worker to write to CHALLENGE to expose these incidents.
Racist ideas don’t fall from the sky. They are fostered and nurtured by the capitalist system (through TV, books, newspapers, movies, etc.). If we are only exposed to racist ideology, racism will flourish. By distributing more Party literature, like CHALLENGE, and discussing anti-racist ideas with our friends and co-workers, we can make progress in the anti-racist/anti-capitalist fight.
Chicago hospital worker
a name="Now It’s Ritalin To 3-Year-Olds!">">"ow It’s Ritalin To 3-Year-Olds!
Last week 50 people from various churches and organizations concerned about the abuses of the foster care system and the overmedication of children with psychiatric drugs picketed an office of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) in the Harlem State Office Building.
The most moving speaker was Cecil Reed, whose 16-year-old son died while a patient at Bronx Children’s Psychiatric Hospital. Unbeknownst to Mr. Reed, his ex-wife had turned over custody of their son to ACS, which approved the use of multiple anti-psychotic drugs for Cecil, Jr., over the objections of Mr. Reed. He pointed out that nearly all the children in state psychiatric facilities are black or Latino, and that nearly all are on multiple psychotropics.
Presumably his previously healthy son died from the effects of these drugs, although now, a year later, an investigation has yet to be launched. Moreover, the main reason the son was barred from moving in with Mr. Reed and his second wife was that their apartment was "too small." But neither ACS nor the Housing Authority, for which Mr. Reed works, was willing to help them find a larger apartment.
Over half of all children in foster care are on psychiatric medications, many because of the trauma suffered by being removed from their families abruptly and placed in group homes or in multiple foster families. Although ACS may save some children from imminent danger, they remove many children on the slimmest of pretenses and without any investigation. Recently, children have been removed for "medical negligence," meaning parents object to giving drugs like Ritalin to their children. Poor parents, the main victims of this system, have no access to meaningful legal assistance. It often takes years for them to recover their children despite the often fraudulent allegations against them.
Other speakers discussed the rash of psychiatric medication of school children, 20% of whom are diagnosed with "mental illness" and given drugs like Ritalin or Prozac. The National Institute of Mental Health is currently sponsoring a national study of Ritalin in 3-year-olds. They want to pacify our children so they will not become restless or distracted in crumbling, overcrowded schools whose aim is to teach children to conform and take multiple choice tests. A union member from AFSCME Local 371 of welfare and ACS workers pointed out that an alliance between his members, professionals and the workers they serve is necessary to fight these fascist conditions that are increasingly evident in education, social services and psychiatry.
Healthcare Worker
Years of Work Pay Off In UFT
Relative to the article, "Fight Grows Behind PL Teacher’s Battle for Job"(CHALLENGE, 5/6), for eight years PLP members have been active in the UFT Delegate Assembly. Some were also active 30 years ago. People often remind us about the "old days," but most of us know little about that, not having been involved in those struggles — though we understand our history.
The CHALLENGE article made it appear as though we had some kind of power that overwhelmed the UFT leadership who then let Joan Heymont speak after she boldly demanded the floor. However, eight years of hard work and gaining the respect of the membership did that.
During these years we’ve sold CHALLENGE outside every meeting (more than 80), and distributed communist leaflets on some current issue. We have raised May Day on the floor every year, struggled with people, made friends (and enemies), had suppers with friends after the meetings, brought friends from work to the Assembly, and so on. After every Assembly we would write a delegate’s report for our respective schools, always raising communist ideas. We’ve brought specific problems in our schools to the Assembly and brought the answers back to the schools, including fights over a fired teacher, a teacher removed from his school, etc. We have also become active in UFT committees.
Because of our consistency and the fact that we make sense, teachers have become more interested in our communist ideas. Eight years ago we had a more reformist line in the Assembly. Since the PLP document "Road to Revolution 4.5" we have brought more advanced political ideas directly to the Assembly (after some struggle among PLP members).
In some respects we have helped change the nature of the Delegate Assembly. Because of our presence and our communist ideas, other people are now able to express more left idethat previously would have been considered "too radical." In addition, the former UFT local president, Sandy Feldman, has become the head of the national union and been replaced here by Randi Weingarten. With a new contract currently being negotiated, Weingarten — who has her own style — must take into account membership rejection of the previous contract recommended by the Feldman leadership and therefore be wary about the reaction to any new contract. (When the UFT membership finally accepted the last contract, it followed the AFSCME DC 37 contract pattern which, as it turned out, had been "approved" by a fraudulent vote concocted by DC 37 leaders who have since been convicted of vote-fixing.)
Over the last five years we usually get the floor regularly, now being recognized as the 3rd or 4th force in the Assembly. In our struggles there and with individuals members as well as in our work in general, we have gained confidence in our ability and experience in action. And within the Assembly we’ve gained grudging respect for our persistence and for our communist ideas.
No victory comes easy under capitalism, and all victories come under attack within a short time. In the Delegate Assembly and in our schools we have become a little more seasoned and can make our way through some of the muck and mire. The article does not give full credit to that process.
A Brooklyn teacher
Peru CIA Man Was Capo of Drug Cartel
General Barry McCraffey, anti-drug Czar during the Clinton administration, used to congratulate the now fugitive Vladimiro Montesinos, for "his important actions against drug trafficking." Montesinos was the real power during the Peruvian regime of Alberto K. Fujimori (1990-2000). Montesinos was also an active operative of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Now, a 1500-page report issued by the interim government which replaced the Fujimori-Montesinos duo, revealed that all along Montesinos had been Peru’s biggest drug dealer. He ran a cocaine-processing lab in the port of Pisco, south of Lima, and supplied the drug cartel of Tijuana, Mexico, with mountains of drugs.
Montesinos also dealt with drug cartels in Colombia. Roberto Escobar, brother of slain Medellin drug lord Pablo Escobar, reported that Pablo and Montesinos worked together, and that Escobar helped finance the 1990 Fujimori electoral campaign. Montesinos, along with General Nicolas Hermoza, army chief, jointly protected landing strips used by drug lords in Peru. They also stole $246 million from overcharging the government for MIG-28s purchased from Belarus (part of the former Soviet Union). The aircraft were so run-down they couldn’t be used (one pilot died during a crash when testing one).
The Drug Enforcement Administration not only praised Montesinos and Fujimori, but also ran bases in Peru to supposedly interdict drug shipments. Today, the U.S. government’s Plan Colombia is supposed to be fighting drugs in that country. Well, expect the drug problem to worsen as U.S. involvement grows in that part of the world.
Say no to drugs. Fight capitalism!
Siempre Rojo
Anti-Racists Link Fight From Strike To Cop Murder
Class struggle has been heating up in two Seattle neighborhoods. In a 3-week period, three groups of workers struck at the University of Washington. Meanwhile, nearby the cops killed Aaron Roberts, an African-American father of three. Angry workers immediately took to the streets of the Central District, spontaneously showing hatred for the racist cops.
The rulers' response in both areas was to ensure its lackeys maintained control. The union misleaders carefully led striking workers away from militant actions, from truly uniting with students, and from fighting for their class interests against police brutality (see recent CHALLENGE articles).
Meanwhile, so-called "community leaders" are diverting anger over the Roberts murder away from a class outlook, pushing nationalism and pleading to reform the system. The People's Coalition for Justice, associated with the New Hope Baptist Church, held a rally and march. Hundreds showed up. Speakers were mainly leaders of churches and nationalist groups advocating "unity" but emphasizing that a civilian review board and electing better politicians would bring justice. Despite this crap, the marchers were spirited and seemed glad to be in the streets.We started some good chants and people joined in. Another brief rally was held at the spot where Roberts was murdered. From there the march headed to the nearest "cop shop," where more speeches and some disagreements about tactics ensued. Eventually the crowd scattered.
At a community meeting the following Saturday, a multi-racial group of over 300 filled the New Hope Baptist Church The main speaker was the church minister Rev. Jeffrey, a powerful orater. Within minutes most of the crowd was vehemently responding to his emphatic message. (He reminded me of another black minister who has misled large numbers of black and other workers, Jesse Jackson.) He called for an Independent Review Board for the cops. These powerless boards are designed to deceive people into thinking justice is possible under capitalism. The other proposal was a boycott of the Central District Starbucks. I'm happy to boycott Starbucks, a notorious exploiter of workers in coffee-growing regions as well as of its own workers here, but his demand was for more black-owned businesses. (Ironically, this Starbucks is owned by Magic Johnson!) Just like Jackson, he calls for black capitalism to solve the problems of black workers. Capitalism exploits workers no matter what the boss's color.
We brought some people to the rally and had some good struggles with them. We sold too few CHALLENGES, which hampers out winning workers and students away from these misleaders. We will try harder to connect these two struggles for our friends. When university workers see the importance of fighting racism and police murders, and black workers and youth join strikers on the picket lines to demand access to university jobs, then real class unity will emerge.
Struggling Seattle Comrade
a name="‘Peace Carnival’ Won’t Cut It"></a>"Peace Carnival’ Won’t Cut It
On June 2, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) held a "peace carnival" in Glasgow, Scotland. They were very disappointed at the turnout, expecting 2,000 and getting about 300.
Literature stalls included Trident Ploughshares, the Communist Party of Scotland, Communist Party of Britain, the Greens, the Scargill Labor Party and several others.
About 12:15 we marched around the block led by the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) front group, Globalize Resistance. There was little chance to get active in the march, as the SWP had the megaphones.
Speakers included Robin Harper from the Green Party, who, standing with his hands on his hips, acted as though he was superior "because he’s a Green." He pictured himself as a left activist, bragging, "a few months ago, we were demonstrating in Paris against the French", while totally forgetting why he was demonstrating. This brought a few laughs from the local anarchists.
Then Tommy Sheridan, a left standby, spoke, in a sense doing exactly what Hitler did in his book, Mein Kampf — he criticized present society and gave only a very vague picture of what "socialism" would be like. Sheridan seems to love himself; he’s depicted on all of The Scottish Socialist Party’s election posters shaking his fist.
After this, people lost interest and started leaving — a very unsuccessful day for the anti-nuclear movement. The event was scheduled to last until 6 P.M. but most people, including this PLP member, left around 3.
The people in power are not going to be pressured into getting rid of nukes just because people want them to. They’ve had them 40 years and still have them. We need to organize within one party and take over the positions these politicians hold so that we don’t just demand a better world, we take it for ourselves.
Glasgow Youth Comrade
Steel Steals In More Ways Than One
The crisis in the steel industry is affecting the schools that depend on tax revenues from steel mill jobs. Retired steelworkers could lose a large portion of their pensions and healthcare. If they do, it will affect the health-care providers that depend on the workers’ health insurance to pay medical costs. Directly or indirectly the working class pays out a large portion of their income for education and healthcare. The bosses steal the best for themselves and spend a small portion of their profits for education and healthcare for the working class.
Workers produce the steel and should control education and healthcare. In a capitalist economy, the bosses’ control these things based on their need for profits. Money, wage labor and profits will not exist under communism. Workers, led by their revolutionary PLP, will decide what and how much to produce, and control the distribution of necessities like education and healthcare. The choice for international communist revolution, led by PLP, is a choice to begin the process of achieving control of our labor as a class. At the moment, taking control means leading all workers in your community to join PLP and work for communist revolution.
Mid-West Comrade
- Senate Counter-Coup:
Working Class Unity Answer to Liberals' Trap - Oppose AFL-CIO `Me-Firstism'
Link Workers' Struggles Worldwide - Jailed Anti-Racist Cincy Rebels Need Mass Support
- Morristown Trial:
`No Plea Offer For Fighting Racism' - Washington Strikers Need To Defend Entire Class
- CONTRACT STRUGGLE CAN DERAIL METRO RACISM
- Faculty-Student Worker Alliance Backs Anti-Racist Teacher
- Corrupt AFSCME Honchos Ape Rotten System
- STRIKE SHUTS [RICH] PEOPLE'S ENERGY
- Death in the Desert...
SMASH ALL BORDERS! - Mexico's Fox Sells Slaves to Canada
- NO Free Spech for Racism
- Chile's `Democracy': Big Bucks on Workers' Backs
- Capitalism Fails This Test
Book Review: How To Take an Exam...& Remake the World, by Bertell Ollman. - Youths Puncture Rulers' Free Trade Balloon
- LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write! - KIDNEY DONOR NEEDED
Editorial:
Senate Counter-Coup:
Working Class Unity Answer to Liberals' Trap
Don't believe the hype that glorifies Vermont Republican Senator Jeffords as a "man of conscience" because he turned his back on Bush and the Republican Party. Jeffords' only "conscience" is his loyalty to the Eastern Establishment wing of U.S. imperialism. His recent move is part of a counter-coup, in which the liberal rulers are trying to teach upstarts in the Bush camp who's really boss. It could be called "The Empire Strikes Back." Workers must not fall into the trap of following the liberals, who parade as our friends. Their agenda -- if we accept it -- will lead us straight into mass graves.
After using vicious racism to steal the Florida electoral vote -- a racism which the Gore Democrats refused to challenge -- the Bush gang took over the White House as though they had won by a landslide. They began promising all sorts of goodies to domestic oil, gas, and arms interests that had helped Bush's electoral campaign. This didn't sit too well with the liberal rulers, who, for reasons related to their own class interests, don't like Bush's plans for tax cuts, Alaskan oil and missile defense, much of which aids Bush's backers. The liberals also worry that Bush & Co.'s open pandering to giant energy companies like Enron and Halliburton will alienate the majority of U.S. workers. The liberals want to win workers to their own agenda for war and fascism.
To force Bush to recognize his true masters, along comes "white knight" Jeffords -- whose move out of the Republican Party gives the Democrats control of the Senate. He's followed closely by Republican McCain, in open conflict with Bush while meeting with Democratic leaders, and then by the Democrat Daschle, the new Senate majority leader, being lauded as "the people's leader." A closer look at these characters should reinforce our conviction that the liberals are by far the greatest danger to our political development as a class. This is, once again, the story of the wolf in sheep's clothing.
Beware of Wolves in Sheep Clothings
Jeffords is a dyed-in-the wool imperialist. He served as an officer in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserves from 1956 until 1990, right through the Vietnam War, retiring as a captain. In 1991, he voted to authorize Papa Bush's Desert Storm, in which the U.S. military slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers and children to defend the Persian Gulf oil interests of Exxon et al.
John McCain, the so-called "war hero," is really a war criminal. McCain, as a Navy pilot, committed his own share of mass murders in Vietnam from the air. (His liberal colleague, former Senator Kerrey, massacred Vietnamese peasants on the ground.) CHALLENGE readers may remember McCain's angry demand that Clinton send ground troops to Kosovo in 1999, when U.S. and NATO rulers were dropping "humanitarian" bombs to ensure access to energy pipelines. McCain has since learned his lesson -- U.S. imperialism will indeed need ground troops for oil, but for Exxon in the Persian Gulf rather than for Halliburton and BP Amoco in the Balkans. Unlike Bush, McCain isn't a slow learner. He now understands whom to salute.
Daschle, now the Democratic majority leader, has also spilled plenty of blood to serve the liberal rulers. After graduating college in 1969, he joined the U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command, one of the military's most openly fascistic branches, as an intelligence officer. He voted with Jeffords in 1991 to authorize oil genocide in Iraq. More recently, in the final days of the Clinton administration, he argued for continuing to bomb Iraqi kids, "despite domestic political differences in the United States...in defense of our nation's vital interests" (Associated Press). Liberal Missouri Democrat Gephardt joined Daschle in this call. Daschle also voted for Clinton's racist welfare "reform," known as "Workfare," forcing masses of workers into a form of slave labor. And Daschle fully backs the liberals' "community policing" strategy, which is implementing police terror with a smiling face. Daschle's own public relations releases boast of putting "300 new cops on the beat since 1994 [in South Dakota]...and of plac[ing]...officers in our schools."
Of all Bush's proposals, the tax cut has drawn the most fire from the liberals. They state the obvious in order to cover their true purpose. Sure, Bush's plan represents a huge gift to certain corporations. The liberals object, because they want to use that money to carry out U.S. imperialism's long-range plans for war with its emerging Chinese and Russian rivals: "Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut...is...one of the largest obstacles to his military agenda. The fiscal plan has drastically reduced the amount of surplus dollars available to develop the kind of advanced weaponry the administration desires, not only for its missile shield but also for modernizing conventional forces" (NY Times, 6/3; emphasis ours--Ed.). Conventional forces are vital to the success of the liberals' war against rising capitalist rivals. Just to make sure the point is clear, West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller, who knows a thing or two about what makes his family's Exxon Mobil happy, says the Bush tax plan "saves too little and it invests far too little in America's long-term needs" (MSNBC).
The liberals' counter-coup is an attempt to forge the class unity the big bosses will require to meet these "long-term needs." But their needs and ours have nothing in common. They require class unity to continue ruling the world and oppressing us. They also require workers' political allegiance and obedience, including the mass sacrifice of our lives. We must not give it to them! We must recognize the traps set for us by these liberal imperialists and keep our heads clear. We have to forge our own working-class unity, against them and for communist revolution. Its most important expression, now and in the future, is the Progressive Labor Party
Editorial 2
Oppose AFL-CIO `Me-Firstism'
Link Workers' Struggles Worldwide
At a spring anti-globalization teach-in, a University of Washington (UW) professor predicted this academic year would be "hot," filled with activism. That forecast appears to be on the mark (see article on Washington State strikers), especially since it follows on the heels of similar struggles reported in the past few issues of CHALLENGE. But these articles also point out another disturbing trend. The AFL-CIO union leadership and those student groups allied with them have fought hard to contain these struggles within the federation's economist "take-care-of-No.-1-first" philosophy.
The AFL-CIO has always peddled crass individualism -- think only about yourself, or your trade, or your own job. Even when pushed to unite workers and students, these misleaders have sought to limit the struggle to a 1% pay raise here or defeating a $10 deductible there. When more advanced graduate students wanted to talk about the class content of university courses, the union leaders shelved that demand for "later" (meaning never). When students asked the sweatshop groups to build political support for campus workers, the sweatshop group leaders said they hadn't received a "formal invitation" from the AFL-CIO.
The AFL-CIO's petty reformism builds cynicism. Sure we fight against the bosses' economic attacks, but focusing solely on your job or a better contract for your union doesn't build the class-consciousness that can inspire masses of workers and students.
For instance, on May 30 Seattle cops (SPD) gunned down Aaron Roberts, a 36-year-old black father of three in the nearby Central District (C.D.) where many campus workers live. An SEIU member at the UW lost her son at the hands of the SPD recently. The UW has the largest law enforcement school in the Northwest. It is not only a strikebreaker but a promoter of racist terror as well.
Communists must lead workers away from the poison of individualism and trade union reformism. Fighting racist terror is a class question. The same capitalist system that attacks campus staff and Teaching Assistants murders black workers.
This type of class-consciousness has suffered from the lack of impact of a strong communist party and the demise of the old communist movement. Reversing that is difficult but not impossible. Our Party is organizing to win UW pickets to demonstrate against racist terror in the nearby C.D. We're bringing the issue of racist terror as a class question to all the unions and student groups in which we participate. We will make a special effort, in the classrooms and the lecture halls, to confront racist and anti-working class ideology that attempts to justify these racist murders.
Our class-conscious approach to racist terror stands in stark contrast to the debilitating economism of the trade unions. The think-of-yourself-or-your-own-little-group mentality often leads to a "my-city, my-state, my-country" nationalism. It's also a backhanded defense of "exploit-someone-else" imperialism. On the other hand, putting your class first can lead to revolutionary understanding in the heat of class struggle.
Jailed Anti-Racist Cincy Rebels Need Mass Support
CINCINNATI, OH, June 2--"There they go again. They want to make sure we understand this is a peaceful march," a black worker commented as 2,000 black, white, Latin and union workers marched to protest the racist police murder of Timothy Thomas. The 19-year-old unarmed black worker was killed on April 7 by cop Roach who chased him because of traffic warrants. He was the 16th black man killed by the Cincinnati police in the last five years.
A huge rebellion exploded in response to this racist police terror. The bosses, politicians and cops used even more terror and violence to suppress it, arresting over 600 people and imposing martial law. Many are still in jail facing federal charges.
However, today there were no cops in riot gear. During a two-hour rally, speakers called for "peace," from Rev. Damon Lynch of the "Black United Front" to former Ohio Governor John Gilligan. A black cop from "Black Cops Against Police Brutality" said he represented the "good cops," working hard to fight against the "bad cops."
PLP participated in the march. A high school student we met during the rebellion marched with us. Our flyer, "Wanted for Racist Murder -- Cop Stephen Roach," cautioned workers not to act alone, but to organize millions for communist revolution. We sold 150 CHALLENGES and distributed hundreds of the Cincinnati CHALLENGE special edition.
We marched to the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, site of the racist murder and rebellion, and led many anti-racist and communist chants. A young student chanted "Over the Rhine to Palestine, Fight Back!" Many joined us. A young woman asked to help pass out our literature. The march ended at a park in West-End, another poor black neighborhood being heavily gentrified.
These "peace makers" have no plan to fight for the jailed workers. A 15-year-old black youth is being tried as an adult, charged with a "federal hate" crime for attacking a white truck driver. He faces 25 years. Racist killer cop Roach, who murdered Timothy in cold blood, is charged with two misdemeanors and faces less than nine months (if convicted). There's no justice for the working class under capitalism, and therefore there can be no peace. We are planning a speaking tour for some friends we made during the rebellion, to raise money for those still locked up.
Morristown Trial:
`No Plea Offer For Fighting Racism'
MORRISTOWN, NJ, June 5 -- Six of the remaining adults arrested on trumped-up charges for opposing a Nazi rally in Morristown last July 4th were finally arraigned yesterday, ten months later. The only juvenile began fighting her case now against the Morris County court. These anti-racist fighters refused to take any plea bargains for fighting racism!
Over 30 supporters packed the courtroom yesterday to show solidarity. As the first "defendant" was arraigned, the judge read off the indictment and asked if we would accept a plea offer. The defendant's attorney said "we wouldn't accept any offer for fighting racism." The crowd in the courthouse applauded, annoying the judge who then threatened to kick everyone out if the "disruption" continued.
Last July 4th, Morristown authorities made clear which side they're on. They employed more than 20 state, local and federal police agencies to guard the openly-fascist white supremacist Richard Barrett and his Nationalist Movement. They coordinated an assault on anyone who protested Barrett's racist filth. Ten protesters were arrested on various trumped-up charges.
Barrett was in town to support racial profiling and to demand the rehiring of former NJ State Police Chief Carl Williams, an architect of that racist policy. Barrett was opposed by ministers and their congregations, members of groups like Food Not Bombs, National Organization for Women, People's Organization for Progress, the Progressive Labor Party, as well as many local residents. Barrett plans to demonstrate again this July 4th to celebrate "Independence from Crime Day." He has invited murdering KKKops like Steven Roach, who killed Timothy Thomas in Cincinnati, as well as other gestapos-in-blue.
Morristown has become a base for racist attacks and terror. Over a year ago the church across the street from the Morris County Courthouse was suspiciously burnt down. The church is known for providing help to the homeless. Then, resembling the attacks against immigrant day-workers in Farmingville, NY, Morristown officials wanted to implement an "anti-loitering" law that would fine immigrant workers $500 for waiting for work on street corners. In Farmingville, two of these day-workers were viciously attacked and beaten by racists. Immigrant workers couldn't even play soccer in Morristown public parks! The recent murder of a Latino child, Walter Contreras Valenzuela, has united Morristown residents against racism even more so. Now the racist Nationalists are coming back to divide this community once again, protected by the cops.
The recent police killings in Cincinnati demonstrate that police terror and racism are intensifying. As conditions worsen for us workers, these arrests and terror campaigns become part of the bosses' fascist plan to subdue working-class anger against capitalism. After all, it's this profit system that exploits these immigrant workers, spreads racism to divide and weaken workers' fight-back against this exploitation and then -- under the guise of "free speech" -- protects Nazis like Barrett who serve the bosses by spreading capitalism's racist ideology.
The Progressive Labor Party opposes the rise of fascism by (1) actively leading campaigns in some of these cases to fight the arrests and court cases, fighting all criminal charges as they arise; and (2) fighting for a society run by the working class that outlaws bosses and their profits, eliminating racism, police terror and exploitation of workers. That's communism!
Washington Strikers Need To Defend Entire Class
SEATTLE, WA, May 24 -- Washington State workers had a one-day strike, appealing to the State Legislature to give us a 3.7% cost-of-living raise and maintain our healthcare benefits (see CHALLENGE, 5/23). At the University of Washington (UW), over 500 workers stayed out of work and attended a rally led by the SEIU (Service Employees Int'l Union), Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) and the King County Labor Council. The union leadership extolled the virtues of the Democratic Party, setting up the enthusiastic, multi-racial crowd to be misled by reliance on the bosses' politicians.
Many workers understand that neither the Democratic Party nor the Legislature has workers' best interests at heart. However, that doesn't mean that they understand that capitalism is the their enemy.
Some are cynical about what workers are willing to do. This only benefits the ruling class -- it keeps workers from being willing to unite and fight.
A lack of class-consciousness weakens workers' ability to struggle. One co-worker, exemplifying the feelings of many others, said, "We need to not get rough or angry, because we need to have the public on our side." This concept of a classless "public" is a losing one for government employees. Strike issues are class issues. We need to fight for what's good for the whole working class, not for some faceless "public" which mixes the bosses' interests with workers' interests.
The night before the strike some union members went to the SEIU office to make picket signs. When one member made a sign saying, "On Strike for Decent Healthcare," he was told not to use the word "strike," only "job action," as agreed to by the union coalition. Such ideas hold workers back from really fighting in their own interests. Ironically, the day of the strike hundreds of WFSE members -- SEIU's "coalition partners" -- were carrying pre-printed pickets signs with "On Strike" in big red letters.
We distributed about 150 PLP flyers calling for a general strike and explaining whom the law really serves. Too few CHALLENGES were sold, considering the size and nature of the crowd. We underestimated the potential to make contacts and get information to more people.
Class Struggle Cancels Classes
As we go to press, the graduate teaching assistants are on strike, fighting for their right to bargain with the University with a binding, enforceable union contract. We plan to raise our ideas among these workers and among students. The strike may go on for more than a few days. These struggles can become a training ground for revolution if we use the tools of dialectical materialism and spread CHALLENGE with that information. Building hand-to-hand CHALLENGE networks is job # 1 in the coming period.
CONTRACT STRUGGLE CAN DERAIL METRO RACISM
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 5 -- The fight for a new contract for over 6,000 Metro transit workers is underway. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 is making the fight against wage progression (a multi-tier wage system) a key demand. Management has expanded wage progression for 25 years and says it will not move on this issue. The potential exists for a sharp struggle.
Metro's wage system has created many contradictions for the union and the bosses. Young bus drivers make $11.31 per hour, while senior operators make $22.66 doing the same work. The last contract drove down starting wages so low, the bosses are having a tough time hiring and retaining drivers. Thousands of young, mainly black men and women drivers are looking for a raise to feed their families.
Meanwhile, the mostly white skilled workers want to widen the "skill" differential between themselves and the mostly black operators. Management will use this racism within the union to divide and weaken all Metro workers.
The underlying problem is the capitalist system of wage slavery. Even if we win a few demands, it will not significantly alter our lives. To keep moving forward, the Party and its revolutionary ideas must grow. One of our main goals is to expand the number of workers reading, distributing and writing for CHALLENGE.
A group of workers has been meeting informally to focus the struggle on wage progression, because it raises the issue of class solidarity and our concern for the next generation of workers and the future of our class.
Metro transit workers have a long and militant history. They have won some battles and lost others. As this struggle unfolds, many ideas about how to fight will emerge. There are thousands of young militant workers who are tired of being attacked by management. PLP will fight against racist wage progression and link this fight to the racist terror faced in every facet of life here in the capital of the U.S. imperialist butchers. But primarily in such struggles we can win many more to see the need to abolish wage slavery and fight for communism.
Faculty-Student Worker Alliance Backs Anti-Racist Teacher
BOSTON, MA, May 29 -- Thirty-five Roxbury Community College (RCC) students, faculty and workers picketed the meeting of the RCC Board of Trustees where it was voting to deny tenure to a highly-qualified faculty member, Ruth Kiefson-Roberts. RCC faculty and students widely recognize that denying tenure to Kiefson-Roberts is blatant retaliation against her for standing up for students and other faculty. It's clearly designed to intimidate the entire RCC faculty.
RCC is the State's only college serving an explicitly black, Latino and immigrant population. The State has allowed the Brown Administration's corrupt mismanagement to run RCC into the ground, including worn, ill-kept school buildings with no cafeteria, no librarians, poor quality tutorial programs and computer labs and under-funded academic programs. Because of inadequate training, RCC students don't get admissions priority into state-certified nursing programs. President Grace Brown and her administration have wasted millions of our tax dollars giving themselves big raises and perks and dealing out high-priced consulting contracts to their cronies instead of beefing up student services and academic programs.
Unrest against the RCC administration is exploding. Law suits and union grievances are being filed against Brown and her managers for using vindictiveness, threats and intimidation. Two weeks ago 100 students demonstrated against Brown and Provost Jones. Two days later an historic meeting of all three RCC unions discussed the racist education foisted on students and the need to dump the Brown administration. The following day at graduation almost the entire faculty wore stickers saying, "Tenure for Quality Faculty" and gave out fliers to students and their families explaining the reasons for the protest.
The State aims to reduce and privatize public education at every level. Ten years ago it cut the community college budget by one-third. It also let each of the 15 colleges negotiate individually with the State Legislature for funds. In 1997, they required each college to assess its own "effectiveness," preparing for the elimination of "failing" schools. Now it will compare and assess the community colleges according to "measurable outcomes" and then deal with "failing" community colleges the way it's dealt with 12 "failing" elementary schools: eliminate some outright and "restructure" others into training academies for low-level workers.
Although these may be politically risky racist attacks on the Northeast's only historically black college, the ruling class is clearly determined to "solve" its economic crisis by cutting back public education as it did the welfare system. They will step up attempts to intimidate, terrorize and divide us with every kind of racism and sharpening fascism. Students, campus workers and faculty are beginning to understand these developments and to respond militantly; they're increasingly open to class struggle.
PLP is right in the middle of this struggle to beat back the bosses' attacks on RCC. Through CHALLENGE, PLP leaflets and our direct participation, we will fight to win RCC'ers to see we're not just confronting a collection of corrupt and racist stooges, but also a concerted attack on the working class by the capitalist class. In this battle students, workers and faculty can become involved with PLP and together we can learn how to fight capitalism and be won to comunist revolution.
Corrupt AFSCME Honchos Ape Rotten System
NEW YORK CITY, June 4 -- An audit of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) NYC District Council 37 was just made public. Detailing four years of corruption, it could have been subtitled, "let `em eat shrimp," declared the May 18th edition of the civil service newspaper the CHIEF-LEADER. (The leadership spent $23,000 to supply shrimp as "finger food" at a union conference.)
Under capitalism unions negotiate the terms and conditions under which workers are exploited. Class struggle reflects the need for workers to fight back against their exploitation. Union reformers say with honest leaders we could live well under capitalism. On the other hand, communists have long understood that unions can be schools for communism. Involvement in the class struggle enables communists to unmask the capitalist system and its henchmen.
The audit reveals that AFSCME's DC 37 is a corrupt business union. It exists mainly as a cash cow to be milked by the bureaucrats who run it. It offers little pretense of organizing workers to fight the bosses. Because workers do want to fight back, the bosses need to create a facade of "honest reformers." They want workers to rely on the federal government apparatus (as the national Teamsters union has done), or on the international union leaders (as is happening in the NYC Transport Workers Union Local 100) or on the local District Attorney's office as in the DC 37 investigation.
A facade, however, is all they want. As the recently ratified DC 37 contract shows, a trustee installed to replace corrupt officials can sell out workers more effectively than can the overt thieves. Indeed, Mark Rosenthal, one of the leaders of the reform movement in DC 37, praised the negotiating process as being "open."
The audit details how: (1) in a four-year period starting in 1995, $18 million in assets were stolen and squandered; (2) a five-year contract providing for a two-year wage freeze and allowing slave labor Workfare was passed via massive vote fraud; and (3) the leadership of DC 37 used corrupt practices to keep themselves in power.
Since 1998, AFSCME's national leadership put DC 37 and two of its biggest locals (1549 and 372) in receivership. The presidents of these two locals, Diop and Hughes, have each been convicted of stealing over $2 million. Half of the Council leadership has either pleaded guilty, been convicted or is under indictment. At the June 2000 AFSCME convention, President Gerald McEntee declared that "DC 37 is back." This was widely understood to be a threat against anyone who would fight against the pro-McEntee old guard rather than indicating DC 37 would fight for the working class. The fact is, the International commissioned the audit to convince workers that the union no longer has any corrupt officials. However, McEntee's "DC-37-is-back" catchword revealed its true meaning when one of McEntee's International Vice-Presidents and Secretary of DC 37 Helen Green, Local 758's President, was indicted just last month.
STRIKE SHUTS [RICH] PEOPLE'S ENERGY
CHICAGO, IL, June 5 -- As we go to press, 1,050 members of Gas Workers Union Local 18007 are in the third week of their strike against People's Energy (PE). The union has no strike fund, and the workers must pay hundreds of dollars a month to maintain their family health insurance.
PE is trying to cut labor costs by changing work rules and increasing workers' health cost payments. They want to eliminate two-man crews to one, attack seniority and contract out more work.
The bosses made their "final offer" and broke off contract talks. On May 31, about 500 workers picketed PE headquarters in a show of unity. The morale of the strikers is good and their willingness to fight is strong. But the SEIU and AFL-CIO leadership does not seem to share their enthusiasm.
One of the statewide AFL-CIO leaders said, "You are not alone. One million union members are behind you." But if she collected one dollar from each of its one million members, the strikers' health insurance would be paid for the duration of the strike. Another fat cat talked about "unity," meaning strikers should shut up and stop complaining about being kept in the dark.
Even Jesse Jackson has gotten into the act, hosting strike-support "rallies" and showing up on the picket line. But give the Devil his due. Jackson has organized the only protest movement against utility shutoffs. If a ban on shutoffs became a workers' demand, it would greatly strengthen the strike.
We plan to get Party members and friends out to the picket lines to introduce more strikers to CHALLENGE, and to raise money from our local unions to send to the strikers.
Death in the Desert...
SMASH ALL BORDERS!
LOS ANGELES, CA -- "The price of coffee has dropped so much we can't live. We have no choice but to risk everything and try to make it to the other side," said a farm worker from Guerrero, Mexico. She was waiting at the airport for the body of her son. He was one of 14 youths who died May 21, trying to cross the desert near Yuma, Arizona in 109[[ordmasculine]] temperatures without water or shade.
During the past "Holy Week," eight women and children died crossing the freezing mountains of California. More than 1,600 have died since 1995, when Clinton's Operation Gatekeeper began using an unscalable fence with increased military control at the U.S.-Mexican border, forcing workers to seek death-risking alternatives.
There is sharpening imperialist competition between the U.S., Europe and Asia for markets, resources and cheap labor. As this rivalry sharpens, and the crisis of overproduction deepens, more workers are forced to immigrate anywhere they can to sell their labor. While Operation Gatekeeper is the immediate cause of these deaths, the underlying killer is capitalist exploitation. These same U.S. bosses are responsible for killing hundreds of thousands in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua and millions throughout Latin America.
The bosses are fighting over immigration policy. President Bush sent condolences to Mexico's President Fox over the 14 deaths. The U.S. State Department and the Mexican Foreign Minister issued a joint communiqué about, "...the urgent need...[for] a new agreement on immigration and security at the border." (LA Times, 5/25) Bush and others want to re-establish the bracero ("guest worker") program, where Mexican workers would temporarily work in the fields in the U.S. They would be rented slaves at the mercy of the bosses, not allowed to bring their families or fight for their rights.
The New York Times (5/29) ran a front-page article praising immigrant workers as beneficial to the U.S. economy and their families in Mexico. The liberal New York Times first praised, but now criticizes Operation Gatekeeper. The Democratic Party and AFL-CIO call for legalizing more immigrants and modifying Operation Gatekeeper. They want to fill the depleted ranks of the Army with immigrant workers to defend the Exxon-Mobil empire. This is the "best" capitalism can do.
Hundreds of garment workers, janitors and others here are angry over these border deaths. Workers shouldn't have illusions. Politicians like LA mayoral candidate Villaraigosa, are the most dangerous because they pose as friends of the workers. In fact, the bosses cannot rule without Latino and black politicians!
We need to build a new communist society, where there are no borders and we produce for the benefit of our class. The best way to avenge the deaths of millions is to build PLP in the factories, schools and unions. Smash All Borders! Workers of the World, Unite!
Mexico's Fox Sells Slaves to Canada
LEAMINGTOWN, ONTARIO, Canada --On April 23, 109 temporary workers (braceros) struck the Mastron-Enterprise Green House farm for four days. They were fighting the bosses' harrassment, rotten living conditions and the lack of decent medical insurance. "In the last five years they have only raised our pay 10 cents and we must buy our own gloves for applying pesticides," said 71-year-old Juan Gomez. "When we get sick, they refuse to take us to the doctor." (Los Angeles La Opinión, 6/4).
The Mexican consul in Toronto, Manuel Uribe, defended the bosses, saying the "guest worker" program had many advantages. After the bosses fired 19 strikers, the consul -- who intervened to break the strike -- said the firings were "a misunderstanding...questions of language." These workers were then flown back to Mexico, with the cost of the tickets deducted from their pay.
The bracero program between Canada and Mexico goes back 27 years and employs some 10,000 workers. "They promise us $7.10 per hour, but with deductions, including the unemployment insurance which doesn't cover us, they pay us only $4.20 per hour," charged Juan López. Another worker declared that, "Fox [president of Mexico] only came to Quebec to sell more slaves to Canada."
Workers' struggles have no borders, one more reason to fight for a communist society without bosses.
NO Free Spech for Racism
Anti-Racists Fit KKK Hood On Fascist Horowitz's Head
David Horowitz, the fascist author on a speaking tour to promote his racist ad, was invited to the University of California-Santa Barbara by the Future Fascists of America (aka, the Young Republicans). After reading about him being run off the Berkley campus, I decided to help protest his speaking engagement. To my dismay only a brave few showed up. Our group rallied together and entered the hall with the hope that our jeering alone might be able to throw Horowitz off guard.
We attacked him after comments like "Blacks in America should never be paid reparations" and "Black problems are not America's problems." We yelled at him with great energy amidst threats from the crowd full of the bosses' minions. One comment in particular by Horowitz really set our group on fire. Horowitz, apparently taking liberties because of the number of fascists like himself in the crowd, voiced support for the mass murder Bob Kerry had committed in Vietnam. We quickly fashioned a KKKlan hat out of paper and attempted to place it on Horowitz's head. After a struggle we were kicked out.
We didn't give up, however, and decided to call some friends including a couple of local black fraternities to help stop this racist piece of dung from talking on campus. Within 20 minutes we had about 30 protestors, including many African-American students. We marched back into the lecture hall and stood in the aisle to the dismay of the fascist. This apparently made Horowitz very nervous because he started to stutter and sweat and drink lots of water. Making more noise now, we were eventually driven out by the university cops but with our heads high. I invite every student to battle this fascist if and when he comes to your school!
Between organizing for May Day and the above action, CHALLENGE sales are moving ahead. Some people are stopping by my house every issue to pick them up. I will be starting a reader-discussion group in the fall.
Chile's `Democracy': Big Bucks on Workers' Backs
SANTIAGO, CHILE--For several years this country was being called a "Jaguar" for its so-called economic growth. It was "bound" to follow the path of the Asian Tigers (Thailand, S. Korea, Taiwan, etc.) in its economic dynamism. Well, that was before capitalism's crisis hit these "Tigers" and the rest of the world.
The economic growth of the late '80s and early 1990s was based on the super-exploitation and extreme oppression of the working class which accelerated after the bloody 1973 Nixon-Kissinger-AT&T-organized coup by General Pinochet. Within three years of the coup workers' real wages fell 35% below the 1970 level. By 1983 they had dropped 86.7% below the 1970 level.
When the leftist Allende became President in 1970, Chile's poor numbered one million. By 1992 seven million were living below the poverty level (today's population is about 15 million). By 1987, Chile's ruling class junked the Pinochet regime, not because of its attacks on workers, but rather because its policies were harming the entire capitalist class, while benefiting only his family and a few of his allies.
The return of bourgeois democracy in the second half of the 1980s didn't change much for most workers. Now, under socialist President Lagos, the extreme exploitation imposed by capitalist wage slavery has accelerated. Unemployment has reached double digits (the official figure is 9%).
But where there is oppression inevitably there is rebellion. Lately we have seen:
* Mass protests by the Mapuche indigenous people against the racist discrimination they have long suffered, worsening in the last few years.
* Two weeks of protests by high school students last month, fighting street battles with the cops in Santiago and other cities, demanding reduction of the cost of a school transportation pass and rescinding of massive school cutbacks.
* College students demonstrating against government "reforms" which will increase the cost of entering college.
* Rebellions by inmates against rotten prison conditions (30 prisoners have died in these rebellions).
* A larger-than-usual turnout by workers and others to the May Day marches throughout the country. This is a response to the intensifying exploitation of the working class imposed by the bosses and their "socialist" government.
Unfortunately, all these protests have resulted only in "dialogues" with the authorities, solving nothing. The reformist leadership of these struggles uses them to gain advantages in the coming elections. Whether workers and their allies follow the official slogan of "Growth with Equality and Social Justice" or the right-wing opposition call for "changes" or the reformist/left call for "growth for all," it leads to the same dead end road of preserving capitalist exploitation.
The government is trying to change its image. Under the new slogan of "Think Positive," it is trying to make us believe that all its reforms in health care, education, work, etc. will make the system work for us. But capitalism can never be reformed permanently -- the socialist rulers know that very well. They just approved $2.3 billion for Pinochet's Armed Forces. Their idea of fighting poverty is to fight poor people. Indeed, social-democrats (reformists) are the best friends fascists have.
As the bosses prepare a circus in December to elect new hacks to Congress here, PLP will again issue its leaflet "Voting: the Big Con," calling on workers not to vote or vote blank, and to join us in building a revolutionary communist movement as the only way out of the constant exploitation capitalism requires.
Capitalism Fails This Test
Book Review: How To Take an Exam...& Remake the World, by Bertell Ollman.
Say you're a student or a teacher and you'd like to read a good book on test-taking strategies to help you or your students perform better on exams. But you'd also like to read a book that explains why capitalism can't serve the interests of the vast majority of people, and how socialism and communism can. Which do you read first? Thanks to Bertell Ollman, a college professor and author of this entertaining and politically enlightening book, you can do both at the same time!
Ollman's main goal is to convince the reader that capitalism has long outlived whatever usefulness it once had, and that Marxism is necessary for both understanding capitalism and replacing it with a social system run by working people. In easy-to-read and lively language he explains how capitalism--with its bottom-line concern for maximizing profits--produces poverty, miserable jobs for some and none for others, wars, alienation and environmental destruction. Cartoons, photos, poems and songs all illuminate the excellent points of the text.
The author does a great job of introducing and explaining key Marxist concepts, such as class struggle, the labor theory of value, surplus value, alienation, how nationalist (patriotic) ideas help capitalism, the features of imperialism (what is popularly called globalization), how and why the government serves the interests of capitalism and the differences between socialism and communism. This makes it a valuable resource to use in PLP study groups with students and teachers.
But how does the book's test advice fit in? While giving students helpful tips on how to prepare for and take tests, Ollman also explains how exams are used to place students into slots A, B, C or F, and how they are used to prepare students to take their place within the capitalist order and to accept those places. His criticism of exams under capitalism is connected to his criticism of capitalist society itself.
This is a very enjoyable and insightful book but also has its weaknesses. It doesn't say enough about racism and sexism, and in spots puts forth liberalism, such as the possibility to vote out capitalism in a few countries.
Almost 100 years ago, Jack London wrote a book called The Iron Heel, explaining how the capitalists would resort to fascism rather than give up their wealth and power. History has proven London right.
Recently, Ollman gave a well-received talk at our school to about 20 students and four teachers. Now a half-dozen students and teachers are reading his book and we hope to have many more discussions of revolutionary Marxism and the need to overthrow capitalism.
Reviewed by NYC teacher
Youths Puncture Rulers' Free Trade Balloon
As a member of a citywide, high school-age activity/discussion group, I've been attending meetings of a heavy-duty, Rockefeller-dominated international think-tank. It and the youth group are influenced by various Rockefeller/Clinton liberals -- George Stephanopoulos and Peggy Rockefeller Dulany are on the advisory council. Dulany also sits on the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, which funds the youth group. These regular think-tank meetings train young people to advocate the Eastern Establishment "program" for youth.
The last meeting covered the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The discussion posed the questions of whether free trade is good or bad and what are the effects on poorer countries vs. rich countries. Students' opinions teetered between Free Trade helping to lower wages and cut jobs to Free Trade mutually benefiting all participating countries. I said the FTAA is a form through which the U.S. imperialists try to keep other imperialist rivals out of the Americas.
A lot is at stake here for the bosses. "The planned Free Trade Area of the Americas could also turn the region into a powerful force in international economic diplomacy. With 800 million people, a third of the global economic output and more than a quarter of the total exports, it would be the world's largest trade grouping." (London Financial Times, 4/20) U.S. bosses want to reassert their dominance in the region over the European bosses' increasing influence (CHALLENGE, 4/25).
But Brazilian and Venezuelan rulers have both made it clear they will no longer crack to the U.S. whip. Peter Hokin, President of the Inter-American Dialogue, fears, "The country [Brazil] seems bent on establishing a second pole of power in the western hemisphere....Brazil's independence policy has put it at odds with the United States....Venezuela has refused U.S. planes permission to fly over its territory for counter-narcotics activities.
Among OPEC members, it has most strongly resisted U.S. appeals to increase oil production to ease pressure on prices. In August, Chavez [President of Venezuela] became the first head of state since the Persian Gulf War to disregard UN sanctions by visiting Saddam Hussein. And Chavez has consistently flaunted his friendship with Fidel Castro, recently agreeing to subsidize petroleum exports to Cuba. A direct clash with the U.S. may be brewing, particularly if the Venezuelan leader suffers political reversals at home and starts looking for scapegoats." (Foreign Affairs, March-April 2000 issue)
Essentially "Free Trade" determines which bosses get to control lush markets and cheap labor. The imperialists' profits do not wind up in the pockets of workers of any countries. Under NAFTA, "40% of so called U.S. exports are parts for assembly at low-wage, U.S.-owned plants which quickly return finished products to the United States for sale." (HoustonChronicle.com, 1/1/99) NAFTA cut jobs in the U.S. and lowered wages for Mexico's workers (which in turn lowered wages for US and all workers), all amid a bosses' economic boom. The U.S. bosses' pretense of making concessions to labor and environmental rights in the FTAA agreements always proves to be a mirage. Our class in every country can only answer the Free Trade attack by uniting to fight for communist revolution, not by allying with bosses in any nation.
Although ties between the youth group and the think-tank are strong, the latter has not won students or even some of the staff politically. The group develops leadership skills and multi-racial unity, giving students a feeling of activism, awareness, friendship and some academic guidance, but it fails to really analyze social, political and economic relations. Instead it delivers a misleading goal of liberal reform through vague ideas, games and role-playing.
However, one student raised the danger of trade wars leading to shooting wars. Other students took up that point. The youth group president tried to "clear it up" by falsely stating there was no war in Latin America! I later pointed out that the war in Colombia is very much linked to trade. The U.S. Plan Colombia, a $1.6 billion "aid" package, mainly purchases military hardware to reassert U.S. dominance in the Americas.
This contradiction between the liberal imperialist line and a communist analysis -- through the Party and Challenge -- provides an opportunity to introduce youth to PLP. These liberals actively recruit those students most interested in understanding how to change the world. It then offers them a ruling-class point of view, a little bit here, a little bit there but always under capitalism. Our Party strives for the revolutionary understanding and practice to change the world for the betterment of workers. I am trying to bring some young people around to PLP, to participate in that revolutionary change.
LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!
Vieques Arrests A Warning to All
The "Vieques Four" -- Al Sharpton, Adolfo Carrión, Roberto Ramírez and José Rivera (all linked to the Democratic Party here) -- are now serving time in Brooklyn after being sentenced in a one-day trial in Puerto Rico for protesting the Navy bombing of the island of Vieques. Ruben Berrios, leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, was also given four months.
It is interesting how fast these defendants were tried and sentenced. Berrios and Sharpton got the heavier penalties, supposedly for prior convictions for political protests.
These verdicts must be seen as part of the growing fascism of the U.S. judicial system. On May 22, the Vieques Four were told their case would be tried the next day by a federal judge in Puerto Rico and were denied any delay. Then they were convicted in a one-day trial and jailed immediately for civil disobedience against the Navy's use of Vieques island as a bombing range.
This is a message to anyone involved in anti-imperialist political activities -- even if they are liberal politicians -- that protests against the bosses' plans for war and fascism won't be tolerated.
This shouldn't surprise workers and students. After all, the U.S. already has more people in prison than any other country in the world --two million. Seventy percent are black and Latin workers and youth, most jailed for non-violent offenses, and many framed. We shouldn't fear these attacks but should organize to continue the struggle against capitalism and for a society without bosses -- communism.
A Reader
Are There Any
`Good Cops'?
I found the article "New Jersey Police Terror Proves No Such Thing as a Good Cop" (CHALLENGE, 5/23), of much interest.
I've been involved in the Police Committee of PUEBLO (People United for a Better Oakland) where the question of reform, revolution and capitalism has become much sharper.
On May 22, we had a march of about 200 people from the main police station in downtown Oakland to City Hall, to protest the racist murder of a young black man, Jamil Muuwakil, by the cops. For several years, Oakland has had a Civilian Police Review Board which channels the anger of workers away from the ruling class. At most, guilty cops receive a "slap on the hands." This board was set up largely in response to the militancy of the Black Panthers and Oakland's working class.
I agree with CHALLENGE that the police were established to protect the interests of capitalism's ruling class, and operates in a racist, fascist manner. But I have also seen a few "good cops," those willing to stand up for principle. What about police reform? Is it possible to organize within the police? What did the Bolsheviks do? What should be our strategy in mass organizations like PUEBLO?
Keep up the good work in CHALLENGE.
Oakland Comrade
CHALLENGE comment: Your question is a common one. Some say there are just a few rotten apples in the barrel, others that the few rotten apples make all cops look bad. But that's really not the point. There may be a few cops who really believe their job is to fight crime, like Serpico (a NYPD cop shot at by fellow cops because he refused to go along with taking bribes from criminals). But the fact is the primary function of all police departments is to protect the bosses' criminal attacks on the working class, not to fight "crime." It's almost like saying there were a few decent Gestapo cops; it didn't really matter.
Workers' Unity Rides The May Day Bus
Our bus ride to the Washington May Day demonstration was a really good example of "you never know where things will go." Many on the bus were workers from a large Philadelphia hospital and the bus captain who gave the opening welcome urged some of his fellow workers to speak from the truck when they arrived at the demonstration. There was much reluctance to do this. It seemed as if it just wouldn't happen.
Then someone involved with the Connecticut nursing home strike pointed out that those workers were in the same union and fighting the same kind of battles as were the Philadelphia hospital workers. This led to several of the latter detailing the many horrible aspects of their jobs. One young woman said she and her co-workers were very likely exposed to an agent causing Parkinson's Disease! Not only is the hospital denying everything but the workers are being harassed daily for revealing what happened.
After this, someone suggested it would be a good idea for the Philadelphia hospital workers to write a letter of support to Connecticut strikers. Again some reluctance, but someone started writing some things down and asked the Philly workers to help. Very soon, several people were busily engaged in composing a letter. Following this, two people who had felt that they couldn't speak at the march, said they would. Both overcame any remaining fears and spoke.
When the Connecticut marcher delivered the letter to the striking nursing home workers, it was a huge success. The workers were elated to learn that other workers were supporting them.
So what seemed to be a "dead end" at one point in our bus ride quickly mushroomed into a significant event. People discovered they really could do things they initially thought they couldn't. Out of this the fight against both bosses in Philadelphia and those in Connecticut was greatly advanced. Workers have taught themselves some very good lessons in how to do it.
A Pennsylvania May Day Marcher
Business of Unions Today is Capitalism
The June 11 issue of the liberal weekly The Nation has a whiny little article titled, "Writers Wilt, [Screen Actors Guild ] SAG Sags." As usual, liberalism cannot look at capitalism realistically.
At one time in the nineteenth century, virtually all union constitutions and by-laws contained an explicit call for eventual socialism as a goal. This was true whether for a trade or craft union, whether run by militants or moderates.
Eventually, though, because of corrupt sweetheart deals and sellouts, the principle of socialism was abandoned.
Practically, what this meant was that, without socialism as a goal, capitalism was implicitly accepted as the permanent reality. So the logic of the workers' need for a strike was always tempered by a simple argument by business: "We're broke. If we give you more money, we can't survive"--and survival of business, with no alternative presented by union leadership, was primary. That is, there's a limit to what a union can ask for and still maintain capitalism.
We've all seen in recent years that business and the rich are doing great--at the cost of wages, here and abroad. Autoworkers and others gave back benefits in order to keep their jobs in this country. But those jobs are almost all gone and former autoworkers now have to compete with their children for McDonalds wages.
To fault only the SAG and the Writers Guild is to ignore the true enemy, capitalism itself. With the exception of militant locals, all unions enter bargaining crippled by the assumption that the rich and the poor have common goals. They don't and never did.
Brooklynite
Who's Teaching Who?
I am a pink diaper baby. My Mom works at Cook County Hospital and knows some PLP members. I wrote this letter about my day at St. Luke (Lutheran)Academy, a racist and fascist school.
Graduation. It's supposed to be a time of celebration. For me it is a time to tell the truth and anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist history. Eighth grade graduation is a time to go on to high school. As we were getting ready for our end of the year field trip, everyone had noticed my shirt except the teachers. I had gone to Cincinnati for the police brutality march. I purchased the "Danger - Police In Area" T-shirt. My friends and other students liked this shirt.
As the school day ended around 2:00 p.m., the eighth grade class went to graduation practice. Finally a teacher noticed my shirt, but did not do anything until after practice. My homeroom teacher asked to see the front of my shirt. Then she asked to see the back of it. She said, "Don't wear your political ideas, which are mixed up anyway." Then I said, "No, my political ideas are not mixed up." When we get in the hallway she tells the class to go ahead and for me to wait. Then she starts telling me, "Why are you wearing something that is not true?" Then I said, "Oh. So ten innocent black men who are shot just because they are black is not true?" Then she says, "Oh that stuff just happens." Then, when I am going up the stairs I say, "No, that's called racism."
Young Red
KIDNEY DONOR NEEDED
To All CHALLENGE Readers:
An ailing comrade needs a kidney transplant. Anyone interested in being a possible donor, please contact PLP at
1-800-330-9953
a href="#Boom or Bust Crises Won’t Topple the System: Workers Must Bury Capitalism">"ditorial: Boom or Bust Crises Won’t Topple the System: Workers Must Bury Capitalism
- All for One and One for All
- Youth Fight to Learn and Learn to Fight
- Ideological Struggle Is Key
- a href="#Crisis Can’t Bust Capitalism, Only Workers’ Revolution Can">Cr"sis Can’t Bust Capitalism, Only Workers’ Revolution Can
a href="#Fight Grows Behind PL Teacher’s Battle for Job">"ight Grows Behind PL Teacher’s Battle for Job
Workers, Students Step Up Drive vs. Racist/Imperialist Harvard
Jews, Arabs Unite Vs. U.S.-Israeli Fascism
Diamond Wars Murder Millions in Africa
Salvador Struggle Shows No Lesser Evil Capitalism
a href="#Ecuador’s Sellouts Use May Day For Electoral Rally">"cuador’s Sellouts Use May Day For Electoral Rally
Janitors Union Oppresses Rank and File
a href="#Rezulin—Bosses’ Prescription for Death">Re"ulin—Bosses’ Prescription for Death
a href="#FBI McVeigh Blunder Explodes Rulers’ ‘Humane’ Mask">FBI "cVeigh Blunder Explodes Rulers’ ‘Humane’ Mask
LETTERS
a href="#May Day: Revolution’s ‘Theme Park’">May "ay: Revolution’s ‘Theme Park’
First-time Marcher Puts Communism In New Light
Misdemeanor or Murder? Racism Decides Verdict
a href="#For Bosses’ Media, Racism Defines Terrorism">"or Bosses’ Media, Racism Defines Terrorism
a name="Boom or Bust Crises Won’t Topple the System: Workers Must Bury Capitalism">">"oom or Bust Crises Won’t Topple the System: Workers Must Bury Capitalism
(The following is based on a discussion at the recent PLP central committee.)
The U.S. bosses’ long economic boom is now sputtering. No one can say for sure whether the present slowdown will end in a few months or become a full-blown, long-term recession. The bosses don’t seem to know. Neither do we.
Nevertheless, our Party and our friends can learn an important lesson from the current economic downturn and its effect on the working class. As the article on page 2 points out, booms and busts are an inevitable part of the profit system’s economic cycle, and workers pay for both. This will continue as long as capitalists hold state power. A bad economy, even a disastrous depression, won’t by themselves lead to revolution or fundamentally change society. Communist leadership is needed to win workers and soldiers to turn the bosses’ endless crises and wars into revolutionary battles. The absence of this leadership and of mass revolutionary communist parties explains why communist revolutions have not occurred in many parts of Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe, where misery and starvation devastate billions of lives.
In the past, communists, including some of the movement’s greatest leaders, have often made the mistake of believing that economic conditions were primary. Our class has paid dearly for this error. So the main lesson we must learn from today’s economy is a political one.
The rulers still enjoy great maneuverability in the class struggle. The death of the old communist movement has removed their mortal enemy from the front lines—for now, but only for now. Communists understand the crucial necessity of building class consciousness. For example, our Party must win the entire working class to take decisive, militant action against murderous imperialist wars and U.S. fascist slave labor schemes like Workfare or racist prison labor.
All for One and One for All
Communists must lead workers away from the poison of individualism — each one out for him- or herself — and replace it with collective solidarity that can lead to revolutionary understanding in the heat of class struggle.
Our Party fights for these ideas. But we are still not strong enough to lead masses of workers onto the offensive against the ruling class. This is the primary reason why the ruling class can continue attacking workers here and around the world in times of both boom and relative bust. The bosses’ leverage remains a consequence of the old communist movement’s demise. A defeat of this magnitude can’t be reversed overnight. However, it can be reversed.
The PLP has a long, hard road to travel before it can lead the fight for state power, but despite our present small size, we have great opportunities for significant growth on many fronts. Viewed in terms of numbers alone, our recent May Day actions represented only a slight improvement over last year. We held our own. This in itself is no small achievement in today’s political climate. But in the immediate future, we have the potential to do much more than just hold our own. The May Day period offers some solid reasons for optimism—provided we make necessary improvements.
Youth Fight to Learn and Learn to Fight
More young comrades than ever played an important leadership role in most aspects of the May Day organizing, particularly among our young teachers, who are constantly trying hard to carry out the line of "fighting to learn and learning to fight" in the public schools. Workers at key industrial sites, including many who didn’t march on May Day, continue to react favorably to CHALLENGE. The mass response to our Party by hundreds of Cincinnati rebels against police terror shows that workers in struggle quickly realize who’s on their side. Despite some mistakes—an inevitable part of class struggle—our members played an important role in the recent Harvard University sit-in for a "living wage." A number of our comrades in greater New York, New Jersey and Chicago have faced a variety of serious attacks by the bosses and emerged the better for it. These attacks prove repeatedly that the class enemy fears our Party’s key potential for influencing workers toward revolutionary politics.
Ideological Struggle Is Key
In the class struggle the crucial battle we must wage now and in the future is ideological. True, the bosses rule at gunpoint, but the guns can be turned around. Doing so depends on the ideas in the heads of those who hold them. The bosses know this and work 24/7, including holidays, to imprison us in capitalist thinking. Look at popular "culture." Tens of millions of people watch the Survivor show and others like it. These vile spectacles try to convince us that society is a contest for the "survival of the fittest," and that our main relationship with others should be to get ahead at their expense. This greed and cruelty is justified by theories like "sociobiology," which teach that everything from wealth to warfare is pre-determined in the genes. "Sociobiology" is becoming the standard curriculum in science "education."
These two examples, among many others, show we have our work cut out for us, particularly in broadening the struggle against racism. But that’s exactly the point. We have plenty of good, essential work to do on all fronts and among all sections of the working class and its allies. In doing it, we will find ways to sharpen the struggles we enter or launch. Our young cadre will gain experience; our older cadre will become reinvigorated; and we will begin to win growing numbers of fresh recruits among workers, students, and soldiers. Capitalism knows nothing outside the cycles of boom, bust and war. We fight for a different sort of world, and everything we do to advance our line will sooner or later bear fruit.
a name="Crisis Can’t Bust Capitalism, Only Workers’ Revolution Can"></">Cr"sis Can’t Bust Capitalism, Only Workers’ Revolution Can
With all the talk about the "boom of the Nineties," capitalism still means mass joblessness, racist unemployment and plenty of pain and suffering. As each capitalist tries to capture as much of the market as possible, this anarchy adds up to a tremendous overproduction and unsold goods, leading to the need to cut costs to preserve profits. And the costs most likely to be cut are workers’ jobs, wages and benefits.
The "difference" between boom and bust is that millions suffer during a boom but millions more suffer during a bust. As unemployment dropped during the ‘90’s, so did workers’ wages. Millions who worked for poverty wages sought second and third jobs to support their families.
Now unemployment is at 4.5%. This represents 6.2 million workers. These figures do not include two million in prisons, the jobless joining the armed forces, those who’ve given up looking for jobs, or people on welfare. The jobless rate for white workers is 4%. For black workers it is 8.2%. This shows the racist nature of unemployment.
In the last ten months, 500,000 factory jobs have been lost. Overall, 223,000 jobs were lost in April alone, the highest monthly total in ten years. Industrial production has been down for seven consecutive months. The utilization of productive capacity is the lowest in a decade. Business Week reports that profits of 900 leading companies fell 25% in the first quarter of this year, the largest quarterly decline since the 1990-91 recession.
In the late 1990’s, business poured huge sums into machinery, office buildings, factories, computers, software, new airlines, Web sites, trucks, cell phone networks and more, based on "the promise — or mirage — of fat profits." (New York Times, 5/14) Then last spring they "pulled back abruptly on their spending...realizing… they could produce much more than they could profitably sell."
The recession began in the telecommunications high-tech industry. This "power of the new economy," was built on debt that increased from $75 billion to $300 billion in five years. This led to a collapse of investment. Companies went bankrupt and tens of thousands were laid off.
According to Morgan Stanley’s chief economist (London Financial Times), this cycle of overproduction is worse than anything experienced in the past 50 years, and very similar to the pre-World War Two recessions resulting from over-capacity. A number of "structural flaws" have developed in the U.S. economy: record capital spending, rising corporate and consumer debt and a record balance of payments gap (more imports than exports). Since "these structural and cyclical excesses took years to build, it seems highly unlikely they will be purged quickly." The Washington Post says that the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of interest rates may not do the job. "Companies will not borrow and invest if they already have ample ability to meet demand."
But capitalism’s crises don’t mean the profit system will topple by itself. As long as the ruling class holds state power to enforce its system and is not challenged by a revolutionary movement to overthrow it, capitalism will always be able to climb out of any hole it has dug for itself.
a name="Fight Grows Behind PL Teacher’s Battle for Job">">"ight Grows Behind PL Teacher’s Battle for Job
BROOKLYN, NY, May 21 — The struggle to return Progressive Labor Party member Joan Heymont to her job teaching science at Boys and Girls HS (BGHS) has forced the teachers union leadership to offer nominal support, evidenced by an overwhelming vote favoring her at the union’s Delegate Assembly meeting. Joan was removed from her job for organizing students to go to May Day. The campaign to win her job back opens the door to win students, parents and teachers closer to and into PLP.
A first step was asking many of Joan’s students’ parents to call the school to protest her removal and rally with us. In fact, when an Assistant Principal called one student to the office to question him about his participation in May Day, the next day his mother confronted this AP to say emphatically that she supported May Day and her son’s participation and that any further questions should be addressed to her.
The response to leaflets, stickers and petitions we distributed outside the school has been really great, despite administration threats and harassment. Some students gave us their names and pledged their help.
Then we took the struggle to the May 9 citywide Delegate Assembly union meeting. Everyone entering the meeting knew something was happening. Progressive Labor Party brought signs, leaflets, petitions and CHALLENGE. The signs criticized the educational system, supported the students and protested the removal of this communist teacher from BGHS, where she is a respected and loved science teacher. However, the administration is opposed to Joan taking students on an educational and political trip to celebrate May Day, our international working-class holiday. They ignored the fact that it was a weekend trip and that Joan had permission and support from the students’ parents.
She has been removed from her classes when the students need her most, just before the Regents exams. No charges have been brought against her while she marks time in an isolated office away from the children to whom she has dedicated her life.
A combination of the clearly unjust nature of the administration’s action and delegates’ awareness of it due to our efforts forced union president Randi Weingarten to call a special vote which passed overwhelmingly, supporting Joan’s right to speak. Joan gave a rousing statement, centering on fighting for students’ needs. Weingarten promised to move quickly in Joan’s defense. Of course, experience and a class analysis make us skeptical of Weingarten’s pledge of support, but it provides an opportunity to continue to raise Joan’s case on the floor of the Delegate Assembly and in other union forums. It demonstrates that the union considers Joan and the collective she leads a force to be reckoned with.
The union’s real face was revealed when a group of PLP teachers attended its May 12 Spring Conference to attack the union’s presentation of its top award to Bill Clinton, as "the education president of the century." When we distributed CHALLENGE and a leaflet entitled "Politicians are not our Friends," we were moved still further away from the conference site by what appeared to be Secret Service agents, no doubt because the response to our literature and to the petition defending Joan’s job was very positive. Workers and students grabbed even more papers when the Secret Service forced us to leave.
On May 17, the UFT had a contract rally. The UFT leadership further exposed who their friends are when they urged 20,000 frustrated education workers to form an alliance with the police union! We distributed over 100 CHALLENGES and 2,000 flyers calling on workers to: (1) reject a contract which doesn’t fight for our students, and which supports merit pay; (2) form committees to oppose such a contract; and (3) support the fight for Joan’s job. Workers eagerly gabbed the leaflets while many teachers stopped to discuss Joan’s removal, offering support and suggestions for the struggle.
We hope to bring many BGHS parents, students and staff together at our annual Brooklyn-wide Memorial Weekend Picnic on Sunday, May 27. We’re forming a committee to plan and build the next steps in this struggle.
All these activities create the opportunity to discuss communist ideas and the need to join PLP to fight for a revolution based on these ideas.
Workers, Students Step Up Drive vs. Racist/Imperialist Harvard
CAMBRIDGE, MA, May 22 — The Living Wage student sit-in at Harvard ended without granting a living wage to all Harvard workers ($10.25/hr + benefits). This past week, dining workers ratified a new contract. Despite union leaders praising it as "the best contract in history," it does not guarantee all workers a living wage. For many it doesn’t even keep pace with inflation. Worst of all, the union misleaders inserted a no strike clause promising five years of "labor peace" (which workers can break).
Even so, students and workers have continued to struggle against Harvard’s poverty wages. PLP members and friends continue their involvement in these struggles, declaring that no matter what Harvard pays its workers, it will remain an exploiter and a bastion of racism, capitalism and imperialism. After all, Harvard is the intellectual center for concocting and then justifying U.S. rulers’ murderous policies, including the following, partly or wholly devised at Harvard:
• The strategy for killing 3,000,000 Vietnamese and 58,000 U.S. soldiers, the "strategic hamlets," napalm, etc.;
• Controlling Mid-East oil and murdering a half million Iraqis;
• The fascistic "community policing" concept;
• The racist eugenics theories, used by Hitler;
• The Herrnstein-Banfield racist garbage which paved the way for Clinton’s welfare repeal;
• The "sociobiology" nonsense which traces all human behavior — racism, exploitation, sexism, etc. — to one’s genes, not to capitalism.
The need to fight Harvard is part of the struggle to win workers and students to join the struggle for communism.
Currently, we are leading the fight against Harvard’s intimidation of workers who spoke out in this recent battle. Dining workers in the freshman dining hall (the largest) have been threatened if they put up a sign thanking the students for the sit-in. Harvard has suspended one custodian, Wilson St. Clair, for supporting the sit-in (CHALLENGE, 5/23). Along with Wilson and other workers and students we’ve organized, we’ve gotten at least 200 signatures on a petition calling on Harvard to remove the suspension letter from Wilson’s file and are helping him get the union to defend him against Harvard. In addition to circulating a leaflet in English, Spanish and Creole protesting Harvard’s harassment of its workers, we’re trying to contact and work with other custodians being attacked similarly to Wilson.
The Katz committee established by Harvard to deal with the workers’ demands dilutes students’ and workers’ understanding about Harvard being the enemy. While students have not agreed with us that "winning" this committee is not a victory, many have understood that continued actions are necessary. We’ve called for militant actions like strikes (including a general strike) to win a living wage and proposed a rally against Harvard during commencement. One student said it would be best to win a living wage through a strike, since Harvard would still be seen as the enemy. After the dining workers’ contract did not win a living wage for all workers, another student said: "Especially when the SEIU (custodians) negotiations start in December, we need to hammer it home that regardless of what the committee declares, if every worker...doesn’t get a living wage, we must be willing to shower Harvard with a hail of actions the likes of which it hasn’t seen before: strikes, civil disobedience, etc."
In general, comrades have raised revolutionary communist class-consciousness in this struggle also by distributing CHALLENGES and leaflets as well as a pamphlet outlining Harvard’s support for racist police terror and imperialist war. It also exposes the liberal fascist Harvard professor William J. Wilson, who downplays the importance of fighting racism even as it intensifies. In meetings bringing together workers from the different unions, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, we’ve placed this struggle in the broader context of fighting capitalism and exposed the union leaders’ role in serving the bosses.
Inside and outside the union meetings, we’ve explained why the sit-in is a victory but the settlement is not, and raised the attack on St. Clair among dining workers. Indeed, the dining workers’ union leader revealed his true anti-worker colors by stopping us from collecting signatures for the St. Clair petition at the contract ratification vote. In discussing the contract with the dining worker who marched on May Day, we’ve helped him see it is not what the leadership says it is. Our learning continues step by step and they all lead toward fighting for a society without capitalist institutions like Harvard and the big bosses who control it.
Jews, Arabs Unite Vs. U.S.-Israeli Fascism
NEW YORK CITY, May 20 — Today over 300 Jews, Arabs and others united to protest the murderous campaign of the Israeli government to suppress Palestinian Arabs seeking an independent state as well as the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes.
The occasion was the annual "Salute to Israel" parade. It’s an opportunity for local politicians to pander to the worst nationalist and chauvinist ideas of a substantial bloc of voters. Most of the mayoral candidates turned out, including the leading liberal, Mark Green. Probably 75% of the paraders were children from Jewish parochial schools, herded along by their teachers. These children were astonished to see people denouncing the racism of the Israeli rulers, probably the first time they’d heard this. Most of the opposition to the counter-demonstration came from a few adults.
A coalition of about 10 different groups opposed to Israeli government policies organized the protest. Jews Against the Occupation (JATO) and Al-Awda took the lead. JATO’s members are mainly militant young people very hostile to the vicious racism of the Israeli leadership. Al-Awda is made up of mostly Arab youth intensely concerned with the right of refugees to return to the land from which the Israelis expelled them. JATO also supports the right of return, a crucial anti-nationalist issue. If implemented, it would change the area’s demographics. This could open the doors for serious anti-racists to unite all workers and youth, Palestinian and Jewish, to build a mass revolutionary movement in this region across religious and ethnic lines. This is the way to fight all forms of nationalism on all sides (whether pushed by Sharon, Arafat or Hamas) and help build the only kind of state that can liberate our class, a working-class state.
The coalition ranged from several dozen members of an anti-zionist orthodox Jewish Hasidic sect to a large number of militant young Arab women to a fair number of older Jewish people, more so than in previous actions.
The coalition demands include: end the illegal occupation of all captured territories; support the Right of Return for the Palestinians; stop U.S. aid to Israel; and stop the killing, torture and home demolitions of Palestinians.
The protesters were very militant. Signs read, "Israel is an Apartheid state"; "End the Occupation"; and "End U.S. Aid to Israel." They shouted, "1-2-3-4, We won’t fight a racist war, 5-6-7-8, Israel is a racist state!"; "It’s a racist march"; and "Ariel Sharon, whaddaya say, How many kids have you killed today?" The loud protesters startled many of the marching schoolchildren by chanting, "Your parents are lying, Children are dying."
After this protest, many participants marched as a group from 5th Avenue to Columbus Circle to hold a rally. A JATO activist pointed out the lessons of anti-semitism and past persecution of the Jews. She explained that the leaders are fostering racism and nationalism, dividing Jewish and Arab workers to control the situation for profits and prevent workers from uniting in their own interests. She said U.S. rulers supported the Israeli leadership in order to maintain Israel as an anchor in its effort to control Middle East oil.
But some of the rulers’ efforts are faltering. Thousands of Israeli military reservists are refusing to serve in the occupied territories despite being imprisoned for doing so. And here Arabs, Jews and Palestinians protesting together defied the rulers’ racist campaign.
PLP members at the protest distributed 500 leaflets emphasizing that control of Mid-East oil was crucial to explaining the rulers’ policies. The latest fighting engineered by the U.S. and Israeli ruling classes has killed over 400 Palestinians and over 100 Israelis. The leaflet said there could be no permanent peace in the region until a united Arab-Jewish working class carried out a communist revolution and workers’ power is in control.
Diamond Wars Murder Millions in Africa
Imagine the entire population of Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Seattle and Boston killed or injured in the last few years. Well, that’s what’s happened to nearly three million people in the Congo.
In 1998, the armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi invaded the eastern part of the Congo and still occupy it despite many agreements to leave. Responding to that invasion, the governments of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe have backed Congo’s central government with troops and aid. The imperialists, particularly France and the U.S., are also involved in this regional war.
Although the Congo is rich in many minerals, some very important for the imperialists’ war industries (like cobalt), the fight for control of diamonds is behind this regional war. Diamonds are not the "best friends" of workers and peasants in Africa. This industry generates $6.7 billion annually. It’s not just lucrative as a business; 4% of that total finances wars throughout Africa.
The rulers of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi control an area of the Congo 15 times the size of their countries combined. A UN report states that General Saleh, brother of Uganda’s President, and General Kazini, head of the Ugandan forces occupying the Congo, run very profitable businesses dealing in diamonds, gold and copper.
The main opponent of these occupying armies was Congo’s President Joseph Kabila, who originally came to power backed by these very same armies of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. But with the support of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, he soon changed sides to fight the "invaders." Then Kabila became too much of a liability even to his own allies. He was killed some months ago by one of his bodyguards soon after he had given the Israeli company Idi Diamonds the exclusive franchise to commercialize Congolese diamonds. When Kabila’s son was named successor to his murdered father, his first act was to revoke that deal and then travel to Paris, London, Brussels and Washington to get his new orders.
The assassination of Kabila, Sr., brought hope for a peace deal but no one wanted to forego the huge profits being made from this continuing war with Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, which is now on the "rogue" state list of Britain and the U.S., is unlikely to pull out a quarter of his army stationed in the Congo, not while his economy is in such bad shape. South Africa’s DeBeers, with a near monopoly of the world’s diamonds, relies on the military support given by Namibia to the central government of the Congo, plus the diplomatic pull of the South African government, to prevent these invading competitors from moving in on that country’s diamond wealth. DeBeers, along with liberals and pacifists in Europe and the U.S., is behind the "clean diamonds" campaign, to push jewelers and traders not to buy diamonds sold by forces in Africa not allied with DeBeers.
In addition to the Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia are also being ravaged by civil wars over diamonds. These wars create and massively spread death-dealing effects on Africa’s masses — AIDS and other diseases, starvation from unemployment, and much more.
The only way out of this hell is to take the long but sure road of building a revolutionary communist movement to smash all the local and imperialist bosses and their tribalism and nationalism. This movement must build a society uniting all workers and their allies from Pretoria to Kinshasha.
Salvador Struggle Shows No Lesser Evil Capitalism
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — The May Day march here was bigger than in recent years, but not because its organizers represented workers’ class interests.
Driving his car, donated by the European Economic Community, a mayor and member of the FMLN (the former guerrilla group turned electoral party) said, "Fabio Castillo [General Coordinator of the FMLN] ordered FMLN mayors to mobilize their townspeople to attend the May Day march in San Salvador, to make it a forceful demonstration."
The orthodox pro-European FMLN leadership had two main reasons to ensure May Day was a huge success, neither serving workers’ interests: (1) build momentum for the FMLN electoral campaign; and (2) show their European sponsors that the FMLN is a major force here willing to ally itself with the European imperialists against their U.S. rivals.
But when you mobilize masses of workers and youth not everything will necessarily go according to your treacherous plans. Students shouted down speeches by FMLN leaders, yelling, "Get down, you liars! You just want people to vote for you!" and "We don’t want any election speeches!"
Another group in the FMLN, the "Renewed Tendency," led by Facundo Guardado — a supporter of the U.S. bosses — was nowhere to be seen. This opposition to the leading FMLN faction has become a tiny minority in the group.
There Is No "Lesser Evil" Capitalism
Obviously neither FMLN faction defends the best interests of the working class. Workers and youth should not support any "lesser evil" alternative to the ruling right-wing ARENA Party. They are all capitalists fighting among themselves over which group will be the main exploiters of workers.
PLP was warmly welcomed by thousands of workers at the May Day march. Our communist leaflets and DESAFIOS were widely distributed (see CHALLENGE, May 23). Although our Party is still small, we have the potential to become a revolutionary alternative for workers and youth sick and tired of all bosses. Our job is to bring our politics to workers so no politicians will ever again use our struggles to further their capitalist profit needs.
a name="Ecuador’s Sellouts Use May Day For Electoral Rally">">"cuador’s Sellouts Use May Day For Electoral Rally
QUITO, ECUADOR — May Day exposed the growing contradictions between workers from the cities and countryside (mainly indigenous) and the sellout leadership of the unions and other mass organizations. While workers came out on May Day to fight the bosses and their system, the opportunists used the marches as another electoral rally to get themselves and their friends elected to Congress.
These traitors have used every mass struggle in the last few years—like the uprising by indigenous people in 2000 — to get a better deal for themselves inside the system.
In the last general elections, some of them supported right-wing retired General Paco Moncayo’s candidacy for mayor of this capital city. Now one of these opportunists, Napoleón Saltos, has been exposed as a CIA agent. The imperialists mobilize on all fronts to sabotage the mass struggles.
Meanwhile, the so-called left of this movement, like the heads of the Pachatucik indigenous group and the congressmen of the Democratic Popular Movement (led by fake communists), voted in Congress to increase the IVA (value added) tax on consumer goods. These politicians then had the audacity to attack globalization and free market capitalism during the May Day rallies.
PLP came here with a contingent of workers, teachers and students. Some comrades marched with their mass organizations while the rest formed a small independent PLP group in the march. From all this we were able to distribute 2,500 leaflets and many CHALLENGES. Our leaflets contained a brief history of the revolutionary birth of May Day and attacked Plan Colombia, the U.S. war plan for the region.
We’ve got a long way to go but we are on the road to forging a revolutionary alternative for all workers looking for a way out of the misery and oppression of capitalism.
Janitors Union Oppresses Rank and File
LOS ANGELES, CA. — The top-down leadership and betrayal of the workers by the leadership of Local 1877 of the Janitors Union is more evident every day. The following story, beginning two years ago, shows the struggle of one woman and her co-workers against the bosses and union misleader Mike Garcia.
"Although I am a worker who cleans bathrooms and floors, I have dignity and deserve respect. But if I have offended you in any way, I ask you to forgive me," said the janitor.
"This apology didn’t come from your heart...you didn’t even cry, " shouted the boss, and left his office, leaving the worker and the union representative behind.
"Why didn’t you cry?" shouted the union rep furiously. "If it was necessary, you should have kissed his feet!"
The worker could have expected something like this from the bosses, but never from the person who was supposed to help her. Feeling humiliated and alone, she started to cry. "That’s how you should have cried with the boss," the union rep told her. "If you had, you’d have gotten your job back." With "friends" like that, who needs enemies?
Months before this incident, the worker was being harassed by the boss about her legal residency documents. Although she’s a legal resident, and had given proof of it, the boss wasn’t satisfied. During an informational meeting between bosses and workers, the boss harassed this worker again. She couldn’t take it, angrily slapped the boss’s desk and walked out of the meeting. The boss fired her immediately. Her fellow workers pressured the union to get her job back which led to the first "apology" meeting.
Later, the union organized a second meeting, where the worker would "apologize from her heart" and would sign a document surrendering all her rights. One more "problem" and she’d be fired without warning. But this meeting never occurred. The boss received a letter from the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) — the worker had sued him for discrimination. Then the NLRB ruled for the boss, a common occurrence. These government agencies exist to help the bosses, not the workers.
"Señor García [the union leader], what’s going to happen with my case? I have always supported the union; I’ve gone to the marches; even though I’m not working, my union dues are paid up," said the desperate worker.
"It was your decision not to apologize," said the union "leader." But he said he would help her. Months passed, a year, and nothing happened.
"This was a very hard year," the worker told CHALLENGE. "Without work, with my father very sick, my son in the hospital, and being a single mother, I didn’t know what to do,"
Some workers advised her to sue the union in small claims court. She won the suit and the judge ordered the union to pay her $5,000. But she still had no job.
Union honcho García, who earns about $90,000 a year, decided to appeal the case. Although this worker believed she had finally gained a little bit from the system two years after losing her job, but Local 1877 wouldn’t allow even that. The union was exposed essentially as an exploiter of workers, no matter who leads it.
When members and friends of PLP among the janitors discovered this injustice, we decided that the Committee of Janitors in Struggle would organize support for this worker. We want the thousands of janitors and garment workers to know this story, so we are writing this to CHALLENGE. We will spread leaflets to these workers, organizing social and political activities to involve dozens of workers in this fight.
This injustice demonstrates clearly how the capitalist system, and its many Union servants like Mike Garcia, crush workers’ lives. We need to destroy this system of profits, corruption and exploitation and build a communist society where workers won’t have to apologize to racist exploiters, where the bosses and their lackeys will be six feet under.
a name="Rezulin—Bosses’ Prescription for Death"></">Re"ulin—Bosses’ Prescription for Death
CHALLENGE often says capitalism kills. This again was proven true in the story of the diabetes drug Rezulin. Officials of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) conspired with Warner-Lambert, a giant pharmaceutical company, to bring Rezulin to market in 1996, despite evidence that the drug killed some of its users (Los Angeles Times, 3/11). This collusion occurred while Clinton and Congress were directing the FDA to act like "partners" of the $100-billion-a-year drug industry. The FDA is merely the regulatory agency responsible for protecting us against unsafe foods, cosmetics, drugs, blood products and medical devices.
Rezulin was only taken off the market a year ago after killing 391 people, 63 dying from liver failure.
The FDA uses outside "expert" panels to advise on which drugs to approve, but the panel chair, Dr. Henry Bone, was part of the collusion. He helped the company hide Rezulin-caused liver problems from the rest of the panel. As a result the panel recommended approval, despite the fact that an FDA medical officer (a doctor who reviews drug applications), Dr. John Gueriguian, criticized Rezulin for having serious side effects, revealed during clinical trials in which hundreds of volunteers took the drug to test its safety and effectiveness.
The panel members never saw Gueriguian’s review. According to internal Warner-Lambert (W-L) memos, Gueriguian was taken off the case by the Deputy Director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation, Dr. Mac Lumpkin, in response to W-L’s complaints that Gueriguian was impeding the drug company’s effort to sell Rezulin. W-L raked in over $2 billion from Rezulin in its three years on the market, about $5 million per death. By last October, W-L was facing 383 law suits.
In 1998, after it became glaringly obvious the drug was causing liver failure and deaths, another FDA medical officer, Dr. Robert Misbin, asked Parke-Davis (W-L’s drug unit) to warn all doctors of Rezulin’s dangers. Instead the company merely sent a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine, prompting the company’s Japanese partner to criticize it for not having told them sooner.
In 1998, a scheduled public talk by Dr. Misbin on the drug’s dangers was canceled by Deputy Director Mac Lumpkin. Company memos "thanked Mac for his help" in preventing Misbin’s appearance.
Even during the approval process back in 1996, FDA officials Lumpkin, Dr. Alexander Fleming and advisory panel chair Bone colluded with W-L to keep a warning off the drug label instructing doctors to monitor the liver functions of all patients for whom they prescribed the drug. W-L knew this warning could have prevented liver damage from going too far. But they also knew this would hurt their sales, since there were nine similar, but safer, anti-diabetes drugs already on the market.
W-L told an advisory panel meeting in 1996 that in the clinical trial the Rezulin group had no more side effects than the group taking a placebo (a fake drug). Such so-called control groups are used to compare those taking the tested drug with those taking a useless one, in evaluating the drug’s safety and effectiveness. But actually almost four times as many Rezulin users suffered serious side effects compared to the control group — 2.2% versus 0.6%.
When its lie was exposed, W-L claimed there was no big difference between two such small numbers. While the percent of people suffering serious side effects from a drug is usually small, when millions of people take one, the difference between 2.2% and 0.6% affects tens of thousands of people. These figures clearly proved the drug was terribly dangerous. Furthermore, as it turned out, it was not significantly more effective than taking nothing.
In 1998, still a third FDA medical officer, Dr. James Bilstad, was foiled when trying to force W-L to add to its label the warning to doctors about monitoring liver functions. Throughout the more than three years Rezulin was killing people, many of the internal FDA documents concerning the approval of Rezulin were declared off-limits to the Freedom of Information Act by Deputy Director Lumpkin.
This story illustrates how, under capitalism, government officials serve big business. The health of the working class is often endangered by such a system, even though in this case many honest medical officers tried to protect the public health, only to receive reprimands and warnings from their bosses. Workers cannot rely on a bosses’ government to protect their health but can only do so through working-class rule — communism.
a name="FBI McVeigh Blunder Explodes Rulers’ ‘Humane’ Mask"></a>"BI McVeigh Blunder Explodes Rulers’ ‘Humane’ Mask
U.S. rulers hope that postponing the killing of one man, Timothy McVeigh, will help them build up for the slaughter of millions. The Oklahoma bomber avoided lethal injection on May 16th because the white knight image with which the bosses cover their imperialist wars needs serious polishing. The U.S. tries to sell the next Persian Gulf oil war as "rescuing" Iraqis from the tyrant Hussein. In Washington double-talk, the goal in a major conflict with Russia or China will be "democracy," not capitalist domination of markets and resources. But the U.S. bosses’ sanctions policy in Iraq exposes them as baby killers. And executing McVeigh in a frenzied media circus rivaling the Super Bowl wouldn’t have helped matters. The delay in Terre Haute must be seen in the same light as the U.S. move to lessen openly barbaric sanctions on Iraq.
Pretending to be a benevolent protector of justice, the government has made the FBI the fall guy for the McVeigh fiasco. The Boston Globe demands a "top-to-bottom shake-up" at the bureau (5/12). Steeped in a time-honored culture of brutally enforcing some laws while colluding with organized crime in other areas, the FBI has sinned in ignoring the greater political needs of the rulers. News of the FBI’s mishandling of the Oklahoma files followed hard on the heels of the Hanssen spy case flap and revelations that the bureau’s Boston office had made gangsters like Whitey Bulger virtual G-men. (As a high-level "protected informant" doing dirty work for the ruling class—see CHALLENGE, May 23—Bulger committed murder, rape and extortion and trafficked in prostition in prostitution, drugs and guns.)
Time Magazine, a major popularizer of the rulers’ ideas, blamed the FBI for tarnishing the government’s supposed reputation as a guardian of liberal tolerance. "We don’t want people stockpiling weapons and holding children hostage in Texas religious sects, but we don’t want tanks firing on church camps in Waco either. We want something done about hate groups, but we don’t want FBI sharpshooters killing militants’ wives on Idaho mountaintops. We don’t want China stealing our nuclear secrets, but we don’t want a racial-profiling witch-hunt (5/21)."
For their war efforts, the bosses require allegiance to the flag from all quarters. The FBI’s bungling of the McVeigh case threatened to revive the militia movement that the main wing of the ruling class had tried so hard to suppress. "Keeping this mistake under cover would have only fed the anti-government paranoia that was, in part, the root of the Oklahoma bombing in the first place," commented James Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School.
U.S. rulers are trying desperately to project the appearance of "fairness" in the McVeigh case. We must continue to expose their essence as the deadliest gang of murderers in history.
LETTERS
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, WRITE!
a name="May Day: Revolution’s ‘Theme Park’"></a>"ay Day: Revolution’s ‘Theme Park’
Thank you PLP for once again providing my daughter, stepson and me with one of our most enjoyable "vacation" experiences ever. While most people plan their vacations around visiting amusement parks, relatives, different countries, etc., the highlight of my vacation plans is participating in the annual May Day march.
This was my seventh May Day march (third in a row in Washington) and this year’s event was without a doubt the most enjoyable and satisfying for my children and me.
As part of the Chicago contingent, our group was near the front of the march as we left Malcolm X Park. As we wound our way through Washington’s streets, I would turn around from time to time to look at the marchers behind me.
The thrill and elation I felt seeing hundreds of red banners held high and waving proudly in the wind, hearing the thousands of voices raised in unified protest was again another personal mind-blowing experience and a sight to behold. It just seems like each May Day march keeps getting better and better. The enthusiasm of the marchers as they chanted loudly, the seemingly boundless energy of those selling and distributing CHALLENGE was exciting beyond words.
As an older individual getting closer to senior citizen status, I like to think I’ve seen and done it all. However, nothing can compare to the intensity, enjoyment and personal satisfaction I feel after each May Day march. It’s a humbling experience to be a participant in such an ever-increasing mass movement dedicated to improving the life of the workers of the world. Our work will never be finished until we wipe out this fascist government and way of life. Our May Day march once again proved that there are workers in this world willing to demonstrate and dedicate their lives toward this goal.
I can’t wait until next year’s May Day march, but in the meantime there is work to be done. I urge all workers to join us in rising up against the bosses and overthrowing this capitalist government we live under. Remember it’s your life, your liberty and your freedom that’s at stake here. Stand up and fight for it! Power to the Workers! PLP Forever!
May Day Forever
First-time Marcher Puts Communism In New Light
The following comments occurred at a youth club meeting after May Day:
May Day was very organized this year. People actually wanted to be there to fight against the bosses. We concluded that to get someone to want to be in the Party, we must bring them to May Day where you actually see the entire Party in action, see we’re a big group of people that can do whatever we set out to do.
I’ve been going to May Day for at least six years. This one was different. It was like going for the first time all over again. For the first time I brought a friend from my school. She asked many provocative questions on the bus ride. She put communism and May Day in a new light for me. She was skeptical, curious and excited, and chanted throughout the march. I am encouraged by her reaction to "my secret communism." It should not be a secret and I will continue to struggle about this with myself and others.
To make that extra leap of bringing a person to this special day makes all the difference. I could have easily not told her about May Day but I’m so glad I did. The best part is I think she’s glad too. To bring more people next year will only feel better. This was my qualitative change after years of internal struggle. I know there are more changes to come because life is struggle, conflict and change, not necessarily in that order.
What impressed me most about my first May Day march was the pure energy and enthusiasm of almost everyone involved. PLP members had a much larger purpose in mind than just a "show." Maybe this pure energy was a result of the meeting of so many diverse bodies and minds. It felt, to me, like a community….hmm….community — communism. People wanted to be together and enjoy the march and its contents, as I did. I saw two people join the march from the sidelines and they looked pretty happy in it. I liked the discussion that we had on the bus.
But I appreciate most what I left with: the sheer joy of knowing that others want to actively work for change to benefit all people.
Red Youth
Quantity Leads to Quality
This letter follows up on our May Day organizing efforts in light of the dialectical materialist principle of quantity into quality. After all our hard work, some of it on the mark and some off, about 54 people came, including many minorities and a few youth. A block of young workers showed up as enthusiastic participants. The ride to Washington, the opening rally and march, the closing rally and picnic, the ride back, even a bus breaking down, all added up to an exciting, politically engaging event.
We held a successful picnic on May 5. Some 45 people came, many who had marched and some who didn’t. We heard some music, watched an amateur video of the march, looked at pictures, socialized and ate. The kitchen was packed with people, as it was rather cold outside. People were on the porch and in all the rooms, interacting in a very multi-racial way, with old and young, black, Latin and white.
Toward the end, we discussed people’s reactions to the march and heard stirring reports about how people felt. The overall response was enthusiasm and being impressed with the character of the march. Three of the youth, all first-time marchers, stated that they enjoyed it, and were looking forward to the next march.
There was some constructive criticism about how to make it better. One woman, silent at first, gave a stirring picture of the march. Someone said the bosses have their CIA and we have ours: "Communism In Action." CHALLENGE was distributed. A really positive woman worker was so impressed by the march and the people she met, she joined the Party.
So all the quantitative work we did in preparing for May Day — the fundraisers, dinners, desserts, discussions, leafleting and paper sales — paid off qualitatively in strengthening the Party and drawing people closer to us. One of the next qualitative goals is to ensure that this new member eventually becomes a Party leader.
Midwest Comrades
Misdemeanor or Murder? Racism Decides Verdict
Want to see an example of how racist the justice system is? In Cincinnati, cop Stephen Roach, who killed 19-year-old Timothy Thomas sparking a rebellion that shook that city for several days, only faces two charges: "obstructing official business" and negligent homicide, both misdemeanors. It’s very unlikely this cop will spend any time in jail. Most cops who commit racist murder in the U.S. don’t. The four NYPD cops who fired 41 shots killing African immigrant Amadou Diallo were all exonerated.
While Roach faces misdemeanor charges for racist murder, Timothy was murdered by the cops for alleged misdemeanors — traffic violations. He was the 15th black man shot by Cincinnati cops in the last few years.
Indeed, for workers and youth, particularly blacks, there is no justice under this racist system.
A Reader
a name="For Bosses’ Media, Racism Defines Terrorism">">"or Bosses’ Media, Racism Defines Terrorism
I just searched the last two weeks of the Washington Post website for articles concerning the following: "Birmingham bombing"; "Thanh Phong" [Kerrey’s massacre]; and "terrorism" or "terrorist." There are 15 articles on the "Birmingham bombing" list, 13 on "Thanh Phong" eight on the "terrorism/terrorist" list, which includes articles about Tim McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber), Sudan, Peru, Macedonia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Guess what? Not one article that appears on either of the first two lists also appears on the third list. That is, neither the 1963 bombing of the church that killed four black girls in Birmingham nor Kerrey’s 1969 killing of more than 13 Vietnamese women and children are included on the list of terrorist events.
Conclusion: According to the media and the government, terrorism means the killing only of white people.
A reader
Moving Left
We had a Pueblo (People United for a Better Oakland) forum against police brutality at Laney College, the local community college. Twenty-five people attended, including 15 who were new, most of whom signed up to be contacted by Pueblo.
At the end, a Pueblo staff member summed up by saying, "We’re a diverse group of communists and non-communists." To me that meant we moved the debate to the left.
Bay Area PL’er
Nurse Of The Revolution
To my mother who has gone, the nurse of the revolution,
"My Mother" Trinidad died at 77. Her life was hard, like that of all workers, but she was always ready to participate in PLP cadre schools and always said she dreamed of being the "nurse of the revolution." She used to say she imagined PLP leading the revolution and herself, together with hundreds of others, taking care of the wounded and urging them to return to the battle.
Trinidad was a Dominican worker who dedicated her life to the cause of communist revolution. Several of her children are members of the Party, and she always said she wished she had had more to dedicate to the revolutionary cause.
Trinidad was not my natural mother. The first time I arrived at a cadre school in the Dominican Republic, she called all of us "my children" and we responded affectionately, calling her "Mother." Through her house passed comrades from many parts of the world.
Our "Mother" has gone, but with her spirit of revolutionary solidarity, she has left us with the resolve to continue the struggle. Both her natural children, as well as her children in other parts of the world, can say her life was not in vain, but in fact her actions helped to build the Party that will create the new communist society she dreamed of.
A Los Angeles Comrade
- PLP Red May Day
Communism Lives! - Indigenous Youth Leads PLP May Day Contingent in Mexico City
- San Salvador: Red Ideas `Like Hot Bread
in Mouth Of Workers' - Bogotá: 150,000 Workers March Against Death Squads
- Editorial
U.S.-China Relations Boiling Over Oil - One-day Strikes A Loser; Building PLP A Winner
- Fight Growing Over Texas School Racism
- PLP Teacher's `Crime': Inviting Students, Parents To May Day
- NJ Police Terror Proves
No Such Thing As A Good Cop - Communism Rides the NJ May Day Bus
- Conn. Strikers Block Scabs, But Cops, Guard Do Bosses' Job
- SOLIDARITY LETTER
- Your Philadelphia sisters and brothers in Local 1199C
- The Kerrey `ConfeSSion'
- The Boston Mafia-FBI Connection
- Protest Boston Cops' Racist Murder Of Two Youths
- Workers Student Alliance CHALLENGE Supplement
- LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!
PLP Red May Day
Communism Lives!
WASHINGTON, D.C., April 28 -- "Fight for communism, power to the workers! "Bush, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide! Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world, unite!" resounded in English and Spanish as over 1,300 workers and students, black, Latin, Asian and white, immigrant and citizen, marched to the White House with PLP on May Day, the international working class holiday.
For the first time in 31 consecutive May Day marches, we were barred from picketing the White House. It was off limits in fear of protests against the Finance Ministers of the Group of 7 (the top imperialist countries) who were meeting in Washington that weekend. But that
didn't dampen the revolutionary spirit of the marchers. At the end of the march, when the Bush chopper was landing in the White House backyard. the marchers let loose with a chorus of boos at the current bosses' henchman residing in that rat's hole.
The marchers were emboldened by the recent struggles our Party has been involved in:
* Mid-West comrades who had gone to Cincinnati to support the anti-racist rebels there and helped lead a march at the funeral of Timothy Davis, the youth killed by the cops;
* Young comrades fresh from the militant anti-globalization protests in Quebec;
* Participants in the Living Wage sit-in at Harvard;
* Youth who organized protests against racist journalist David Horowitz;
* Philadelphia hospital workers who expressed their solidarity with striking nursing home workers in Connecticut;
* Youth from a Brooklyn high school who marched, despite being threatened by their principal and his suspension of their teacher, Joan Heymont, the day before the march.
The speeches and songs at the beginning and end of the march showed the growing anger of workers and youth against the attacks of capitalism. Workers are fed up with:
* Growing police terror -- the day before the march, the NYPD declared that the cops who shot African immigrant Amadou Diallo 41 times did nothing wrong.
* Layoffs -- in April, 223,000 jobs were lost in the U.S., the highest monthly total since 1991.
* Becoming cannon fodder in another imperialist butchery -- the Bush administration has been beating the war drums against China louder and louder.
Over 2,000 CHALLENGES were distributed among the marchers and during the march. Indeed, May Day 2001 was an important step towards fighting for a society without racist terror and imperialist bosses. Join the communist PLP!
LOS ANGELES, April 28--Shouting "Fight for Communism, Power to the workers!" four hundred workers and youth marched downtown today for an end to racist terror and imperialist war with communist revolution. When the marchers stopped at Parker Center, headquarters of the LAPD death squad, the mothers of Michael Fitzsimmons and Michael Ealy spoke. Their sons were killed by the racist police -- the first in LA, the second in Seattle. Mrs. Ealy called the hundreds of riot-clad LAPD present, "Murderers! Murderers!"
Every marcher was furious. Then she challenged the crowd to continue the fight against racist police terror and asked, "What are you going to do about it?" The marchers chanted back, "Seattle cops, you can't hide! We charge you with genocide" , "LA cops, you can't hide..." and "The only solution is a communist revolution!"
High school and college students marched side by side with garment workers, janitors, Boeing workers, bus drivers, mechanics, teachers and others. One teacher marched for his friend who was recovering from surgery. He said her commitment to her students, to PLP and May Day was an inspiration to him. A Bay Area bus driver called on the marchers to fight for revolution. A striking garment worker from Hollander Home Fashions told of scabs breaking their strike, thanked the PLP for our support and asked for more workers and students to join the picket lines. A comrade waved the very first issue of CHALLENGE with the headline, "Police Terror in Harlem" and called on one and all to read, subscribe and sell our communist newspaper.
Over 1,000 CHALLENGES and 1,500 leaflets were distributed as thousands viewed the march, many walking on the sidewalk along with us. Despite a huge police presence, some spectators did join the march.
A student PLP'er described fights against racist Horowitz (see centerspread) and for communism at the Democratic Convention and at school. He emphasized the importance of youth leading the revolutionary movement and building PLP, urging all marchers to join the Party and deepen our fight for communism in the classroom and the mass movement. Another PLP'er said that the bosses and their agents in the unions and mass organizations are incapable of changing to serve the interests of the workers. But PLP is learning daily how to fight every attack, to build the fight for communism -- on the shop floor, in the classroom, the barracks and the mass movement. Several people joined the PLP at the march and others have asked to be in Party study groups.
While the march was smaller than last year, the struggle to build it and the leadership given by youth and young workers to all aspects, represents the huge potential for our Party to grow as we fight the bosses' increased racist terror, unemployment and wars. Let the bosses and their agents push racism, nationalism, reformism -- all in the service of imperialism. We have the answer -- fight for communism!
Indigenous Youth Leads PLP May Day Contingent in Mexico City
MEXICO CITY, May 4 -- "When indigenous people join the fight for communism, the bosses tremble from the factories to the Mountains," chanted a group of indigenous youth who joined our Party's contingent at the union-organized May Day march here. The PLP communist contingent was twice the size of last year's. The bosses' growing fascism did not intimidate us. We showed it is crucial than ever to spread our communist politics to confront the bosses and their imperialist partners.
The indigenous youth who joined the PLP May Day contingent was the best response to the "new indigenous law," approved by the Mexican Congress, which only perpetuates racism against 10 million indigenous people, divides the working class and strengthens the property rights of the racist landlords. This law smashes the illusion built by the Zapatistas, who last month implored the same racist Congress to protect the rights of the indigenous people. The new law will only make it easier for imperialist bosses to control the oil in Southern Mexico, particularly under NAFTA and the coming Free Trade Zones of the Americas negotiated in Quebec. But the imperialists will be fighting each other for this control over the workers' dead bodies. Today more than ever the indigenous people need to unite with the working class against local bosses and various imperialists trying to enslave them.
Industrial workers chanting "We Are One Working Class, Under One Party; Workers of the World, Unite!" marched with PLP protesting still another fascist law approved by the Supreme Court. This law, supposedly meant to break the monopoly of the CTM (the old union federation) and allow other unions to organize, in reality gives bosses more flexibility to impose fascist working conditions and smash any union organizing. This is one campaign promise President Fox has kept.
In the last 10 years, the minimum wage has been devalued by 43%, while the military budget has doubled in five years. The Army grew from 175,000 to 250,000. Meanwhile the crisis of capitalism forces 35 million people to survive on less than $2 a day.
UNAM students in the PLP contingent chanted "Fox, fascist, imperialist butcher," rejecting his new budget cuts under the guise of "finance reform." This will impoverish workers even more, forcing them pay for capitalism's crisis.
A few days after May Day, the government blamed the loss of 96,000 private-sector jobs on the economic slowdown in the U.S. Delphi Automotive Systems slashed 7,600 jobs; DaimlerChrysler shut down its engine and transmission plant in Toluca, cutting 2,600 jobs; Goodyear is closing its 50-year-old plant near Mexico City; Motorola is cutting 1,000 jobs, etc.
"The coming war is for markets," cynically announced Carlos Slim, Mexico's richest boss and owner of Telmex. Fascism and war are the bosses' answer to their crisis of overproduction. That's why our communist march grew in importance. We spread the message of the need for communist revolution to thousands of workers. We reaffirmed our commitment to build a mass party of millions to take on the capitalists and destroy them.
San Salvador: Red Ideas `Like Hot Bread
in Mouth Of Workers'
SAN SALVADOR, May 1 -- Over 50,000 workers from every corner of this country marched through the streets of the capital to celebrate the 115th anniversary of May Day. Workers from Chalatenango, Morazán, Santa Ana, La Unión, San Miguel and Usulután joined in the march to honor the Chicago Martyrs. Many protested against the dollarization of the economy. Others demanded better working conditions. But many opportunists pushed "democracy" and "voting" to "improve the capitalist system." Faced with all these bosses' views, PLP's communist ideas were like hot bread in the mouths of the poor!
Hundreds of DESAFIOS and PLP May Day stickers, and thousands of leaflets were distributed to the masses of workers, who await us anxiously year after year. "Give me the paper; don't you have any more?" was heard on all sides. "Damn, I'm a Party member, and I don't have a single sticker left; you have to get me one, at least," said one Party member.
Many workers flooded the streets with graffiti like: "Long Live May Day"; "Long Live the Working Class"; "Long Live Communism."
It wasn't easy to get to the march, but police barricades on all the highways couldn't stop the working class from coming and celebrating this powerful historical event. " Every bus must have farmworkers, students, teachers and workers combined so the cops can't suspect we're going to the march," suggested a PLP member. "The experience of the guerrilla war taught us how to evade these police barriers; we mustn't let ourselves be stopped. We have to get to the march on time for the beginning," said a PLP member to the leaders of the teachers and students.
El Diario de Hoy, the country's most fascist daily newspaper, ran a picture on the front page of a worker painting one of those famous graffiti slogans. The impact of communist ideas terrorized the bosses, who for days spewed forth hatred and poison about our class, calling the working class "delinquents" because they respond with revolutionary violence to the capitalist system.
The day before the march, the editorial of this fascist rag begged, "We hope that the Salvadoran workers don't fall into the trap of subversion and class struggle." This call by the enemies of the working class defies history -- the class struggle is in every work place where there is a single worker oppressed by the capitalist system.
Participating in this historical working class event is an opportunity to grow quantitatively and qualitatively in the struggle for the system of the working class: communism.
Bogotá: 150,000 Workers March Against Death Squads
BOGOTA COLOMBIA, May 1 -- Over 150,000 workers in three different marches converged on the Plaza Bolivar here in the biggest May Day march in recent history. Workers came out to protest:
* The recent murders of dozens of union activists by the military-supported death squads;
* The anti-working class economic policies of President Pastrana, following the austerity measures imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund;
* Plan Colombia, the war program of the U.S. government and the Pastrana regime oppressing the working class.
A PLP contingent distributed 3,000 communist flyers and sold 300 DESAFIO-CHALLENGES. Our communist literature and banners were like a beacon dispelling the confusion reformism, class collaboration and "peace"-with-our-murderers line of the union leaders. We called for workers to organize and build a movement to replace this living hell of capitalism with a society where workers rule -- communism. Many chanted our slogans, asked us to stay in contact with them and want to continue reading our communist paper.
Editorial
U.S.-China Relations Boiling Over Oil
Some of the Bush administration's recent flip-flops over U.S. China policy reflect tactical disagreements among the big bosses over dealing with rising Chinese imperialism. But a general trend is emerging. Despite these internal differences, the U.S. ruling class is charting a course that will eventually lead to a war for world domination. The profit system makes such wars inevitable. However long the next one takes to materialize, we should have no illusions about the amounts of working class blood the capitalists must spill in order to hold power. And we should build our Party as the only weapon that can smash them.
Bush's policy looks like the "brinkmanship" game U.S. and Soviet bosses used to play during the Cold War: push the other side to the edge and then pull back. So on April 30, U.S. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announced that Washington would stop all military contacts with the Chinese. Then the Defense Department retracted the decision.
This maneuver followed Bush's promise to do whatever necessary, including using armed force, to defend Taiwan. Many liberal media pundits called Bush to task for his stupidity in revoking 30 years of U.S. foreign policy. But although Bush is certainly no mental giant, his policy advisors put those words in his mouth as part of a calculated plan.
Taiwan is strategically crucial. The map shows it commands the oil shipping routes from the Middle East to China and Japan. Exxon Mobil and its Saudi oil billionaire pals are building a big refinery in China's Fujian province, which sits on the Taiwan Strait--a great excuse to keep the U.S. Seventh Fleet patrolling the area.
For the past 30 years, U.S. presidents haven't threatened to defend Taiwan militarily, based on the estimate that the mainland Chinese rulers were too weak to invade it. However, things are changing. The Chinese bosses were already beginning to make noise under Clinton. They have embarked on a significant military build-up across from Taiwan, deploying an average of 50 surface-to-air missiles per year, in addition to the 300 they had before starting the build-up. China's overall defense budget for 2001 is up nearly 18%, the largest hike in 20 years. As CHALLENGE has frequently mentioned, the Chinese rulers have also developed a strategic plan to build a deepwater navy, which can eventually challenge U.S. imperialism's supremacy on the high seas.
So Bush's threat must be viewed in the context of Chinese imperialism's attempt to become a key U.S. rival. The Chinese are still not strong enough to meet the U.S. head on. The Bush gang's approach seems to be to force them into an arms race their economy can't afford. So, for example, Bush recently approved a large arms package for Taiwan, although the headlines emphasized that the U.S. had decided not to sell the Taiwanese the Aegis radar-equipped destroyers they'd been demanding. But this decision will not slow down the arms race. Just the opposite: "Focusing on the Aegis destroyers...misses the unfolding reality. Taiwan will get key capabilities...that would degrade China's military capabilities in a battle for Taiwan...[and China] will respond accordingly" (Stratfor, 5/4).
U.S. rulers are therefore making a cynical gamble in their drive to keep China in the second rank of imperialist powers. They know that Chinese capitalism, whose energy consumption is rising by 4.3% a year, needs "a peaceful domestic and regional environment conducive to its sorely needed social and political development"(Brookings fellow Bates Gill in Foreign Affairs, July/August 1999). But for now, Washington holds a big trump card. "The United States can influence [China's] Persian Gulf oil supply," warned Gill.
Forcing the Chinese rulers to allocate a growing amount of production to their military--and then threatening to deny them Persian Gulf oil--is an attempt to weaken this economic development. Many U.S. businesses have significant investments in China. The U.S. is China's largest export market, and the U.S. balance of trade deficit with China is second only to the one with Japan. But investments and trade deficits are one thing. Dealing with China as a potential economic superpower capable of challenging U.S. domination of world markets and energy supplies is another. The Bush arms race with China could be viewed as a tactic for bankrupting the Chinese rulers before they reach this stage.
Bush & Co. may reason that the same approach more or less worked under Reagan in the last days of the Soviet Union, when the cost of the arms race administered a final blow to a socialist economy that had long since become corrupted by the profit motive. Rumsfeld's push for a strategic missile defense--even one that doesn't work--may be a ploy to sucker the Chinese into committing large amounts of money for a similar program to keep pace with the U.S. military.
All these calculations by U.S. rulers are based on the assumption that things will stay the same and that the U.S. will continue to dictate the course of events to a perpetually weak Chinese ruling class. But things change. Forces are growing within China that "increasingly view the United States as a threat to the structure and stability of the Chinese state" (Stratfor). The logic of this situation shows a future of increasing, and increasingly sharp, confrontation between U.S. and Chinese imperialists.
We are in a new period. The U.S. "new world order" is rapidly turning into a struggle in which the self-styled "super-power" must face a variety of long-range challenges to its domination. The arms race over Taiwan is just one of several. All of them will lead to shooting wars, although we can't predict the exact timetable. In the crucible of these inter-imperialist slaughters, our Party can and must grow. This is the challenge we and our class must meet and conquer.
One-day Strikes A Loser; Building PLP A Winner
SEATTLE, May 7 --" Five of the six union members on our unit stayed home without pay to respect the picket line!" exclaimed a University of Washington (UW) employee, a long-time member of SEIU/CSA 925. "I never thought we could do this, but we decided we would all do it together, and we did!"
This was just a one-day strike, one of a series of rolling strikes AFSCME's Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) was conducting across the state. To support the UW picket line, some Contract Staff Association (CSA) employees refused to go to work on April 20. Both WFSE and CSA workers were protesting the legislature's "offer": a 2.2% cost-of-living "raise" (the Consumer Price Index rose 3.7%, making this "raise" a pay cut), as well as a huge cutback in our medical benefits.
Some CSA Local 925 members had fought within the union's strike committee to support the WFSE strikers. The CSA leadership had the usual sellout arguments: "Not enough time to contact the members; illegal for state workers to strike; won't get enough support; and it will make us look worse." But we pushed the strike committee hard enough to put it before the Organizing Council. Although this proposal was defeated, the fight for it helped us win CSA members to honor the picket line.
Since then WFSE is re-starting its rolling strike. The teachers in many Western Washington counties had a one-day strike. In a straw poll, more than 50% of the members favored a strike authorization vote, which will happen next week.
While this show of solidarity which overrode the leadership is excellent, one-day strikes are a loser. They are designed to influence the legislature and elect Democrats to Congress, as "the way to win." We've seen what the Democrats give us -- wars and Workfare. PLP members and friends have a different job.
We must build unity with students, other State employees and workers in other job classifications. We need to fight racism and sexism by struggling arm-in-arm with immigrant workers and workers from lower-paid jobs. Because of these bosses' ideas, UW workers in the lowest-paid jobs at the University tend to be black and Latin women. We must fight for leadership from these workers to expose racism and nationalism as losing strategies for the working class. By doing this, we will learn how to fight harder and better, how to win some small battles and prepare for class war.
To arm workers with the ideas to conduct class struggle and relate them to the need for revolution, we must sell CHALLENGE. We want workers' worldwide struggles to be common knowledge among our class and win more of our friends to become sellers, not just readers.
It is important to bring workers today the history of the massive class struggles waged by U.S. workers against brutal working conditions: the Seattle General Strike, the Everett Massacre, teachers' strikes in other states, the fight for the 8-hour day and many more. What if all State employees struck simultaneously? Think of the class understanding to be gained by seeing who is protected by state power, what role solidarity can play, how racism and sexism destroy our ability to fight.
All this would help fight the cynicism built by the union leadership. They demean the membership as being "uninterested," and then use this as an excuse to limit communication and meetings and lead us straight into the arms of the legislature. When workers honor the picket line in large numbers, it fights cynicism.
Out of all this we must recruit to and build the Party Ultimately, it is the Progressive Labor Party that will lead the workers worldwide in the only fight from which the working class can truly emerge the winner -- a communist revolution. Every worker, student and soldier we recruit to the Party brings us one step closer to that goal.
Fight Growing Over Texas School Racism
LUBBOCK, TEXAS, May 3 -- Workers here are organizing to stop the racist plan of this city's School Board -- flunkies of big real estate developers -- to close or reorganize six schools in black and Hispanic working-class neighborhoods. Black and Hispanic ministers and many others formed the Concerned Citizens of Lubbock (CCL) to fight back.
The CCL immediately organized several mass meetings and militant attendance of hundreds at Board assemblies, school boycotts and demonstrations at Board members' homes. Once local bosses nervously ordered police to drag a black minister from the podium and into the parking lot. The entire audience cheered his return. Politicians and police have tried to stop questions from CCL and others.
Recently the group joined the Black History Day Parade, with banners proclaiming "Fight Racist School Closings --Our History is One of Struggle -- Unite to Fight Racism." The CCL has emphasized multi-racial unity, inviting participation of Texas Tech University students who had organized workers and students here to support the struggle against the racist arrests of young black workers in Tulia, Texas.
So far CCL's mass actions have halted the closing of one junior high, but several schools are still slated to get the axe. This will aggravate other problems -- excessive discipline against black and Latin students, overcrowding and inferior education in remaining schools, physical segregation inside magnet schools, 2nd class education caused by over-concentration on state test preparation and the channeling of these youth into ROTC programs for war preparations.
The racist School Board claims declines in poor neighborhood school populations caused funding shortfalls, but white flight to neighboring districts was the real cause. While white schools enrollment declined, only minority schools were closed. In fact, school officials were awarded big raises while major new construction was under way at white schools.
The local developers who dictate school policy are using school funds stolen from working-class families' education to gentrify neighborhoods near Texas Tech University, building new homes for new faculty. The latter will teach Tech's new E.O.Wilson/Stephen Rockefeller "business-friendly" genetic superiority curriculum and will do research in Texas Tech's new germ warfare laboratory. These events, all in this small city, show that U.S. rulers have a plan, based on racism and war, to profit from exploitation of workers everywhere, to maintain U.S. world domination.
School closings throughout the U.S. are part of a larger plan to destroy or re-segregate working-class neighborhoods, forcing all workers' children into jail-like schools and bootcamps, with no books, no homework, and no future, except to become the first to die as U.S. rulers prepare for oil wars in the Mid-East. As the bosses' economy declines, education cuts will worsen.
School closings and re-segregation reveal once again that racism is always the cutting edge of the capitalists' efforts to survive and grow. Many become cynical and hesitate to join the struggle because they see each battle for reform, each battle to save a school, as temporary and will quickly be reversed if they win at all. It is here that the ideas of PLP, especially as expressed in the increased circulation of CHALLENGE, and the Party's immersion in the class struggle, become crucial. This makes being won to revolution all the more possible, especially to those in the most exploited communities.
Hoping endlessly to reform capitalism and allowing revolution to "wait for later," or never, leaves the bosses in power. When workers rely on themselves and use multi-racial unity to organize as a class against the bosses' racism, they pose a great danger to billionaire capitalists. The only greater danger for the bosses is workers fighting to take it all, for a true communist society that destroys capitalism and racism altogether.
PLP Teacher's `Crime': Inviting Students, Parents To May Day
BROOKLYN, NY, May 7 -- Joan Heymont, a science teacher at Boys and Girls H.S. here, and a member of the Progressive Labor Party, was removed from the school on April 27. Her crime? Inviting her students and their parents to our May Day march in Washington, D.C.
Teachers, parents and students have been outraged and dismayed. How can inviting students to join this march on a non-school day be wrong? Joan is a committed and excellent teacher whose students will be taking end-of-the-year Regents exams in just a few weeks. Obviously the school doesn't care at all about the students!
We're contacting dozens of parents, students and teachers, asking parents to call and visit the school to protest. Students and staff are circulating a petition which already has several hundred signatures. We've leafleted the school and rallied on May 5, drawing a great response. We also distributed stickers demanding Joan's return. We will rally outside the monthly teachers' union Delegate Assembly meeting and at the Board of Education.
There is tremendous intimidation and harassment of both students and staff at the school. They've threatened to suspend students or to change their transcripts so they can't graduate, or even to report immigrant students active in the campaign to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Despite all this, many people have come forward to help and to organize the fight to return Joan to her school.
NJ Police Terror Proves
No Such Thing As A Good Cop
IRVINGTON, NJ, May 5--Once again the reality of racist police terror has snuffed out the life of another worker. Bilal Colbert, 29, a black worker, was killed by an Irvington cop last Monday. Colbert had stopped at a store, while driving his girlfriend's daughters to school to get something to eat. Cop William Mildon brutally shot him in the neck in front of the girls when Bilal supposedly "didn't get out of the car and tried to flee." Mildon lied that he shot Bilal to save himself and the life of one of the young girls, who he said was trying to get out of the car!
Four years ago, Mildon got away with murdering another black man, Keion Williams while he was also in a car. He was vilified by the cops and bosses' press as a drug dealer who tried to run Mildon over.
The Colbert family called for a 9 A.M. protest march to the Irvington police station. PLP members helped lead a rally and then a march from the intersection where Colbert was killed. We chanted, "Racist Cops You Can't Hide, We Charge You With Genocide!"; "The Cops, the Courts, the Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses' Plan"; and "Racism means...Fight Back." Workers and youth grabbed our leaflets and CHALLENGES. Many people on the street joined our chants or raised their fists in support.
When we reached the police station by 11:30, our numbers had grown to about 60. The New Jersey NAACP and the People's Organization for Progress (POP) had called for a noon rally. A young woman yelled disgustedly at the racist cops because they tried to cover up the killing by accusing Bill of being a drug dealer. Others spoke angrily about the racist harassment and terror that is a daily occurrence in their neighborhood. After the head of the New Jersey NAACP spoke, Fred Bost, a councilmen for the ward where the shooting occurred and the husband of Irvington's mayor, said he was a law-abiding citizen and expected everyone to act similarly. He then had the audacity to say he would push for "sensitivity" training for the cops. This hack was booed and heckled off the bullhorn.
Because we had not built enough of a base in the mass organization in which we are active, we were unable to mobilize scores of people in these groups to march. Therefore, when Bost was attacked, we couldn't take the offensive to explain the role of police in a capitalist society as protectors of private property and servants of the ruling class. We needed to do a better job connecting the shooting of Bilal to the mass jailing of black and Latin youth, "community policing" and the growth of fascism in general.
POP's Larry Hamm said they were calling in the U.S. Justice Department, never mentioning the latter's exoneration of the cops in the Amadou Diallo murder.
By this time, POP and the NAACP's supporters had arrived, and the crowd had swelled to about 300. Hamm then led a demonstration around the block, changing our militant chants to "Stop Police Brutality" and simply calling out Bilal and Keion's names. Later, Hamm was joined by Delacey Davis, head of Black Cops Against Police Brutality (BCAPB). Hamm hugged Davis and told the crowd, "See, we're not against all cops. We're for law and order. We're only against the bad cops."
But the reality is that racist cop terror is a necessary part of capitalist rule. Ultimately, the bosses hold power at the point of a gun. They know militant black workers present the gravest potential threat to their continued domination. POP's program calls for civilian complaint review boards, the hiring of black and Latin cops and federal investigations in the grossest cases of police murder. Al Sharpton, who arrived later, implied that police terror and racist attacks can only be fought through reforming the system. The leaders of the NAACP, POP and BCAPB reinforce the idea that capitalism can be fixed to serve the interests of the workers. But it never can be.
As police killings in Cincinnati show, police terror and racism are increasing, part of the bosses' fascist plan to prepare for war and squelch any fight-back against capitalism's crisis by an angry working class.
We sold over 75 CHALLENGES and distributed over 200 leaflets. People were open to our ideas. Scores of drivers honked their horns in support of the fight against police terror. Our main goal must be building the Party's base in mass organizations. Then we can fight Hamm, Sharpton & Co. for the leadership of this movement. Carrying out this plan is the key to our advance in the near term and crucial to smashing the class rule behind the racist cops who are murdering our brothers and sisters.
Communism Rides the NJ May Day Bus
NEWARK, NJ, April 28 -- This was one of our best May Day bus rides to Washington yet. We brought two nearly-full buses from New Jersey, about what we expected. Although our numbers were modest, our marchers had a great common experience, especially on the return trip.
Many of our riders came to May Day through our long-time political activity at a local housing complex near an elementary school where one comrade works. Many of them are black and Latin, men and women, young and old, who in their daily lives experience all the ills of capitalism. They have seen homelessness, AIDS, drug dealing, murder, the ravages of unemployment, police terror, lousy schools and mass incarceration of local youth. The racist nature of capitalism is a very real element in their lives. These families, and quite a few other people on our bus, are loyal supporters of PLP and have marched on May Day many times in the past.
On May Day morning, not everyone from the complex showed up at the bus on time. We were short of transportation to the buses and one of the adults who came was sick, and had to take time to get her medication. Though we knew the bus drivers would be reluctant, we asked them to make a special trip to the complex. These families have shown their commitment to the Party over the years; we decided to respond in kind.
On the way back, we asked all marchers to take the bus microphone and say what they thought about the march. Initially most people were hesitant, possibly out of fear or shyness. Slowly but surely, a trickle of speakers turned into a stream. One after another of the young people came up to relate how much they had enjoyed the march, and that they would be returning next year. A few began to ask questions about communism.
At this point, an experienced comrade began to break down in systematic fashion what communism is and how it relates to the lives and experiences of the relatively newer marchers. It was clear that many of the young people were listening intently as the comrade described the "beautiful new world" we are trying to build. Other experienced comrades added short comments as well.
Even though we could have done a better job on the bus ride down explaining what PLP stands for, the march itself helped us and our friends change that on the way back. Seven of the young people agreed to join a study group, and four of those expressed interest in joining the Party. We're determined to "hang" with these friends through the ups and downs of all our lives, and win them to the cause of communism. The feeling of collectivity on our May Day bus was electric. We have a great future!
Conn. Strikers Block Scabs, But Cops, Guard Do Bosses' Job
HARTFORD, CONN., May 7 -- The strike of 4,500 workers at 40 nursing homes throughout the state resumed on May 3 following a one-day walkout last month (CHALLENGE, 4/11)). That action turned into a four-day lockout at many of the homes.
Strikers have blocked vans and buses carrying scabs into the homes, howling at them and poking at the vehicles with their bright yellow flags. But state troopers, the National Guard and local cops are escorting the scabs past the picket lines.
The state government has been bankrolling the bosses' strike-breaking efforts by paying for the scabs' hotel rooms, supplying transportation to the homes and by helping to foot the bill for the $280 per day each scab gets for crossing the line. That would add up to an annual salary of $70,000, more than double what most workers are paid. Strikers say if this money was used to increase staff (their major demand) and raise wages, instead of trying to break the union -- District 1199, New England Health Care Employees, SEIU -- and destroy the workers' living and working conditions, the strike could be settled immediately. But that's not the way things work under capitalism.
One striker at the Salmon Brook home said the bosses threatened the workers just prior to the walkout. "We work hard," she declared. "We suffer in there. Our residents suffer because we don't have adequate staffing." Another striker at the Connecticut Institute for the Blind/Oak Hill asked, "If they've got the money for scabs, why don't they put that money in the budget" for us?
Progressive Labor Party has played a modest role in the strike. In last month's strike/lockout, workers were cheered by PLP support leaflets and CHALLENGES they received. Then, on the bus ride home from the April 28 Washington May Day March, Philadelphia hospital workers involved in sharp struggles at their own Jefferson Hospital drafted a support letter for the Connecticut workers -- not on strike at the time. Comrades in Connecticut brought the support letter to the picket lines, along with copies of CHALLENGE and bagels, and received a rousing response from the people on the line. After reading the letter, one woman exclaimed, "We want to be on that march next year!" A similar support greeting came from workers at a Brooklyn, NY hospital.
The strikers are generally in good spirits and are determined to prevail. There is great potential for supporting the strike. Many people honk their horns in support driving past the lines. However, years of give-backs and sellouts by the AFL-CIO leadership has weakened the union movement to such an extent that little union support has been organized for these workers on the front lines.
For many strikers, the CHALLENGE they received was probably their first contact with communist ideas. One comrade said as he distributed papers on the picket lines, "We want communism. We want the workers to run society. We want the workers to run the nursing homes for the benefit of the residents and dump the owners who run them for their own profits." We urge all workers to take these ideas seriously and join the PLP.
BULLETIN: As we go to press, it was reported that one nursing home operator has signed an agreement that adds staff and increases wages at seven of its homes. However, workers at these locations said that after their shifts they intend to join the other 4,000 striking workers on the picket lines.
The strike is expected to spread to 2,000 other workers who care for mentally ill patients at private agencies. They are paid far less than their counterparts at state agencies doing similar jobs.
SOLIDARITY LETTER
Hello, fellow union sisters and brothers of Local 1199.
We are writing you in support of your struggle for more staff and better pay. We are workers in environmental services (housekeeping) and laboratory animal services at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
We just attended a May Day March in Washington, D.C. and are writing this letter to you on the bus back to Philadelphia. We came to the march to find out different ways to unite people. We need to fight back as a stronger movement. We need to make our workplace better. We need to get the bosses off our backs!
We work at a hospital in Philadelphia where they use part-timers and temporary workers instead of hiring full-timers. Part-timers work full-time schedules, but don't get health care benefits. Some part-timers go 13 years before they get a full-time job.
Last April we started to organize for full-time jobs. We had meetings and passed out flyers. We started "solidarity lunches" in the cafeteria. By the third one, two hundred workers showed up. The bosses tried to stop the rallies, but they couldn't. The workers kept coming and signed petitions (which were illegal).
We did it without the union, but after 200 showed up, even the president of 1199 jumped on the bandwagon. At a city-wide union rep meeting, he said that the solidarity lunches forced the hospital to schedule a special negotiations meeting for full-time jobs for part-timers. We won 50 new full-time jobs!
ONWARD WITH THE STRUGGLE!
Yours in solidarity,
Your Philadelphia sisters and brothers in Local 1199C
To: The striking workers at Connecticut nursing homes
From: The workers at a Brooklyn hospital
We support your demands for higher wages, staffing levels and other working conditions.
The workers on strike have taken a strong stand to insure better staffing for the future.
The nursing home bosses are only interested in making profits from the patients and are NOT interested in patient care.
We are also aware that our brothers and sisters from 1199 SEIU are joining the picket line.
At our hospital, workers toil every day to take care of the wards, crowded with patients and to keep a safe and clean environment.
We have fought very hard in the past against sub-contracting and layoffs. Our contract expires on October 31 and everything we've fought for is up for grabs: our wages, job security, benefits, pensions, staffing levels and other working conditions.
However, workers are always waging battles with the hospital and nursing home bosses to keep whatever little benefits we have and for better patient care.
We must fight the bosses' system by uniting workers across all borders to wage war against capitalist exploitation.
The Kerrey `ConfeSSion'
The rulers are trying to use the "confession" by ex-Senator/Governor/war "hero" Bob Kerrey (and now college president, naturally) to prepare today's working-class youth for the "war-is-hell-but-we've-got-to-fight-and-die-for-`our'-country" syndrome. The massacre of unarmed civilians by Kerrey and his Navy Seals -- and his current attempt to justify it with the crap about the "confusion" of war --once again highlights the fact that arch liberals like Kerrey are just as fascist as, and therefore even more dangerous than the open right-wingers.
The New York Times editorializes (April 26): "The nation...must stick with the ongoing task of remembering the horrible lesson of the physical and psychological damage to people on both sides when a great power undertakes a war without a rationale." (How neatly the Times equates "people on both sides": three million Vietnamese dead and 58,000 U.S. deaths.) Now, implies the Times, there must be careful justification of any future war by this "great [imperialist] power" so that what happened in Vietnam doesn't happen in Iraq. Of course, the Times conveniently forgets they did present a rationale to the world at that time -- "saving Vietnam from communism." However, while U.S. rulers were driven from Vietnam militarily, U.S. imperialism won out because the Vietnamese leadership had a nationalist (essentially capitalist) outlook, not a communist one. So Ford, Nike & Co. are now in Vietnam paying workers $2 a day and Vietnam is a capitalist country.
Kerrey told ROTC cadets at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) that his massacre of the Vietnamese "could be justified militarily": "the people we killed were probably enemy sympathizers." No kidding! The "enemy" was the entire population of Vietnam, fighting a people's war, defending themselves against a Nazi-like invasion by the world's most powerful imperialist power, bent on making Vietnam a source of U.S. corporate exploitation and low-wage labor. (Unfortunately, the latter is the current result.) Since the Vietnamese were (Kerrey's) "enemy," and in his mind "sub-human" anyway, it's O.K. to slaughter them. But there were hundreds of thousands of GI's who were not "confused" and did not view the Vietnamese as the enemy. In fact, they saw the Kerreys as their enemy, and killed hundreds of such officers (see below).
In his VMI speech, Kerrey quotes a career Army officer friend defending the drafting of 18 to 25-year-olds: "Give me power over when and how much a young man can eat and sleep and I believe I can get him to do anything I want. After 25, they start to ask questions. And...[then] they're no good to me anymore." Then the liberal Kerrey shows his true colors, saying, "My friend was right."
Not so fast. Opposed to Kerrey's (ruling class) "morality" were plenty of those 18 to 25-year-olds who not only refused to fight the "enemy" -- over half a million deserted -- but who turned the guns around:
* GI's hurled fragmentation grenades at officers ("fragging"), killing at least 551 by mid-1972 according to the Pentagon, not including killing countless others by rifle fire in combat. In the Americal division alone, fraggings were running at one a week in 1971. According to Marine Colonel Robert Heinl, bounties were raised by GI's chipping in "anywhere from $50 to $1,000...put on the heads of leaders whom the privates...wanted to rub out." Says Heinl, "Word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs at certain units."
* The U.S. War Department reported 503,926 "incidents of desertion" from July 1966 to December 1973. Instead of following orders of "search and destroy," said Heinl in a 1971 article entitled, "The Collapse of the Armed Forces," the watchword had become, "Search and evade (meaning tactical avoidance of combat by units in the field)...now virtually a principle of war."
* With the "near mutinous" resistance so widespread that U.S. commanders hardly had any reliable ground armies to send into battle, the brass chose massive air power to "bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age." But sailors on the Navy's seven largest aircraft carriers put a huge dent in the carpet bombing of north Vietnam by disabling the USS Constellation, Coral Sea, Kitty Hawk, Ranger, Midway, Forrestal and Ticonderoga operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. At one point, five of them were tied up all at once in San Diego for repairs due to sabotage by rank-and-file sailors.
* In Oct. 1972 black sailors on the carrier Kitty Hawk led a major rebellion, including hand-to-hand battle with Marines sent to break up a meeting on board. Four days later the fighting spread to the ship's oiler, forcing the carrier back to San Diego and its removal from the war altogether.
* Reconnaissance crews of the 6990th Air Force Security Service in Okinawa staged a work stoppage bordering on open mutiny, refusing to warn bombers about Vietnamese air defense communications. During this stoppage they cheered whenever a B-52 bomber was shot down. Some were later court-martialed. (from Seymour Hersh's 1973 book, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the White House)
No wonder Marine Colonel Heinl wrote that "morale, discipline and battle-worthiness" were "worse than at any time...possibly in the history of the United States." Interestingly, he could only compare it to "the collapse of the Tsarist armies in 1916 and 1917," which led to the Bolshevik Revolution.
This "collapse of the U.S. Armed Forces" was a major factor -- other than the biggest one, the heroism of the Vietnamese themselves -- in forcing U.S. bosses out of Vietnam: increasingly, U.S. soldiers and sailors wouldn't fight.
U.S. rulers, now planning how to fight the wars that will secure their profits worldwide, want youth to follow the liberal Kerreys, not the rebellious GI's who turned the guns around. Without a reliable military, U.S. bosses would be hard put to carry out any of their imperialist wars. That's their biggest worry. It's up to us to win the youth to understand who the real enemy is -- not our brother and sister workers abroad, but the ruling class on Wall Street who exploit all of us.
(For more information on the GI rebellions against the Vietnam war see the Challenge Military Supplement of Jan. 2001--to be reprinted in the new Communist magazine, coming in June)
The Boston Mafia-FBI Connection
The U.S. ruling class is the deadliest gang of criminals ever to roam the earth. So when the rulers' press exposes vice and corruption, watch out. Both of Boston's major newspapers, the Herald and the Globe, as well as CBS television, have recently decried the unpunished wrongdoings of James "Whitey" Bulger, a fugitive South Boston gangster. For over 30 years, protected by the FBI, Bulger has committed murder, rape and extortion and trafficked in prostitution, drugs and guns. Now the media "demand" Bulger be brought to justice. But for decades they had idolized him as a "Robin Hood." The reason for the sudden change of heart lies in the shifting needs of the main U.S. capitalists. The rulers' move towards tighter, more fascistic control of the FBI and other law enforcement is only one part of a larger story.
In the 1960s, the Kennedy-Johnson administration was launching a massive, genocidal war in Vietnam and escalating the Cold War against the Soviet Union and China. To free up resources for operations overseas, the Pentagon shut down hundreds of military installations in the U.S., including a big shipyard and army base in South Boston. Workers there suffered a body blow to their living standards. As the better paying jobs evaporated, so did working class support for the liberal politicians. South Boston had solidly backed Roosevelt and Kennedy. Now it voiced hatred for the Kennedy clan. Boston's bosses, needing to re-gain control of these workers but no longer having the old liberal diet of trade unionism and imperialism, began feeding them gutter racism, crime and drugs.
Whitey and his brother Billy, a conservative politician, led the transition. While Whitey supplied the drugs and violence, Billy tried to attract workers to overt racism by opposing busing for school integration. From this newly impoverished section of Boston, racist leaders like Louise Day Hicks and Jimmy Kelley sprang up to join Bulger. These open fascists got indispensable help from the media, which covered their every word, and from the Kennedy-run Democratic Party, which never censured them. In the mid-1970s, PLP battled these racist forces in the streets, exposed their connection to the main rulers and brought down their chief organization, ROAR. We won many white workers away from the racists.
The Bulgers and the rest have always served the interests of the biggest capitalists. Whitey remains free because of his role as a high-level "protected informant" for the FBI. He has done some of the rulers' dirtiest work. In 1981, the main wing of the ruling class was trying to rob the Soviet Union of revenue by keeping oil prices at rock bottom. But the move punished domestic U.S. oil producers, too, and they were near rebellion. To send a clear message about state power, Bulger orchestrated the murder of Roger Wheeler, a Tulsa oil man whose business partners included executives at major domestic Oil Patch firms like Phillips and Williams. Bulger's FBI ties exempted him from prosecution.
Brother Billy serves the same masters. In 1997, as a reward for misleading Southie's workers, the Kennedy clan had him appointed president of the University of Massachusetts, which houses the JFK Library. At Bulger's installation, the chairmen of both General Motors and General Electric paid homage to a man whose followers had thrown stones at black schoolchildren.
But elevating Billy knocked him off his politician's soapbox. And the liberal press now makes Whitey Public Enemy Number One. It once used to say things like, "You needed shoes for your kid? Whitey took care of it" (LA Times, 9/23/99). Today's U.S. ruling class has marginalized the Bulgers because, as it builds for war, it requires allegiance to a nation, not a neighborhood. One purpose of the assault on Whitey is to discredit the mayoral candidacy of Peggy Davis-Mullen, an avowed fan of both Bulgers, who is campaigning for "neighborhood," that is, segregated schools. Such two-bit racism is not enough for U.S. rulers who plan to retake Iraq's oilfields by force and some day confront China's growing military might. They need soldiers ready to commit imperialist genocide. Under capitalism, cracking down on corruption often means disciplining
society for war.
Protest Boston Cops' Racist Murder Of Two Youths
BOSTON, May 9 -- In the wake of the Cincinnati rebellion against killer cops, 50 students and several professors packed into a classroom at Roxbury Community College on April 25 to hear family and close friends of Ricky Bodden and Carlos Garcia talk about the murders of these two young men at the hands of Boston cops. The room was filled with sorrow and anger as speakers revealed the same old story--lying police and young black and Latino victims who are criminalized.
Ricky Bodden was shot in the back of the neck as he was running from the police. Witnesses say he was unarmed, but the police "found" a gun. Carlos Garcia, unarmed, was shot in his car seven times after the police finally trapped the car, and Carlos couldn't get out because of a jammed door. They called it a "suicide," citing as "evidence" despairing lyrics they found in his wallet!
Another speaker exposed the true role of the police as the "security guards of the rich" and the ruling class's first line of defense against the working class. She gave overwhelming evidence that the police cannot be reformed because the courts and the government systematically protect their crimes. Discussion followed on what can be done to stop police terror. Students were invited to join Progressive Labor Party's May Day March.
Today, a follow-up meeting planned a fund-raising event to raise money for a headstone for Carlos Garcia. We also aim to publicize the Grand Jury's decision to charge the Cincinnati killer cop who murdered Timothy Thomas with a misdemeanor!
Workers Student Alliance CHALLENGE Supplement
STILL NEED TO SHUT DOWN HARVARD!
CAMBRIDGE, MA, May 9 -- The student sit-in in Massachusetts Hall calling for the elimination of poverty wages at Harvard University has ended. For 21 days, students had occupied Mass Hall demanding a $10.25 minimum wage plus benefits for all Harvard workers. They courageously exposed "liberal" Harvard's hypocrisy as a corporation getting rich from oppression of its own workers. Dining, clerical, custodial and building service workers walked the sit-in picket line shoulder to shoulder with students.
But we should make no mistake about it--all that Harvard bosses "agreed" to was a committee of 19 (including only three workers) to make "non-binding recommendations" on wages and benefits. In other words they agreed to exactly nothing. Harvard's workers are still making poverty wages. "Non-binding committee studies" are nothing new. They've been screwing workers for centuries. Only a general strike by all Harvard workers and supported by thousands of Harvard students can force these liberal fascist bosses to give up even a tiny part of their billions.
Beware of any "settlement" worked out by Harvard bosses and AFL-CIO lawyers and supported by liberal ruler Kennedy and John "massacre man" Kerrey. The AFL-CIO has been selling out workers for 46 years and they're not about to change. And Kennedy, Kerry & Kompany, like Harvard, are servants of the dominant Eastern Establishment wing of the U.S. ruling class. They oppress billions of workers throughout the world. They preach "support" for workers' rights -- they "backed" the sit-in -- in order to win students and workers to support U.S. imperialism and its prospective oil wars in the Mid-East. They're not about to offer a living wage to any workers, much less those at Harvard. Their job is to make profits, not give them away.
During this period, workers and students have fought much more militantly, which is why this "agreement" has been worked out, to sap that militancy. On May 3, dining workers took a unanimous strike authorization vote. They've held two rallies where over 250 workers and hundreds of students picketed Mass Hall and stopped traffic. One banner read, "Workers and Students Unite to Shut Down Harvard." These dining workers, in particular, are fed up with Harvard's terrible treatment of them. If encouraged and supported, they could force a call for a campus-wide strike.
But they're up against a local union leadership that, following the antics of the national AFL-CIO, allowed the bosses to divide the workers into a patchwork of various separate unions, enabling them to pick off groups of workers one at time. The previous dining workers' union leadership accepted a two-tier wage system, denying most workers wages and even unemployment insurance during the summer; accepted a 5-year contract with a no-strike clause; allowed the bosses to force workers to take vacation time during school vacations and pay the workers for eight months instead of nine.
The growing specter of worker-student unity forced Harvard to move to break it up. They handed out a 3-day suspension without pay to a custodian who was very outspoken in his support of the sit-in. He has addressed many rallies and been very open to PLP.
Throughout the sit-in, we boldly and repeatedly indicted Harvard as a long-time bastion of racism, capitalism and imperialism. We put forward the need to smash capitalism and replace it with communism. We have continued to work with friendly students and workers, though too sporadically. They have been open to PLP's analysis. We have distributed thousands of PLP leaflets and more than 100 CHALLENGES (which could be a lot better).
Students have defended us against red-baiting attacks. The response to our communist analysis from workers has been very positive. No rank-and-file worker has attacked our communist line in this struggle. We were able to win six workers to attend our last worker-student unity meeting. Most importantly, one Harvard dining worker marched on May Day. He liked it and said he wanted to return next year and bring his friends. Strengthening our ties with this worker and the other workers and students will mark a small but important step on the road to communist revolution which would eliminate the elitist, racist, pro-imperialist Harvard.
Racist Horowitz Shouted Down At U. of Washington
SEATTLE, WA., May 1 -- When racist journalist David Horowitz came here today to the University of Washington, he got more than he bargained for. As he tried to spew his fascist filth, anti-racist students defied a mass of cops and a somewhat pro-Horowitz audience and openly challenged him from the floor. The anti-racists' reading of CHALLENGE also played an important positive role in the outcome.
Horowitz was sponsored by the College Republicans. His topic was "freedom of speech" because some campus newspapers chose not to print a racist ad he submitted. (See previous CHALLENGES for a description of Horowitz's racism.) We wanted to oppose him.
Beforehand, a group of black, Latin and white students discussed our strategy. The group's leaders advocated "letting him speak" and simply carrying protest signs. A few of us thought this was wrong. A comrade emphasized that racist speech led to racist actions and that "free speech" is determined by those who hold power. People understood this and were angry at being silent while Horowitz would be spewing his racist garbage. One protester even wrote "No Free Speech For Racists!" on her sign.
Some discussion about communism and reparations (for slavery) caused much debate, but as we walked into the hall, we were silent. We simply sat down in front with our signs and were quiet.
Armed police and security guards were present. Soon it became obvious who they were protecting. As soon as we sat down, a cop told us we couldn't sit there. We moved to the back. Once these cops made it quite clear which side they were on, it encouraged the pro-Horowitz people in the audience to ridicule us. They yelled at us to "sit down" or laughed at us. This angered the protesters, which increased when the question-and-answer part of the program was explained: Horowitz would not give up the mike to allow debate on his answers! People discovered that "free speech" was the last thing Horowitz wanted.
Almost all of his talk was distortion at best and racist lies at worst: "no one in America is oppressed today"; "if it wasn't for the White Christians in the North, there would never have been an anti-slavery movement," etc. We were mad, interrupting him however we could. Every time he'd say something stupid, we would laugh. Cell phones began playing "Yankee Doodle" and "The National Anthem." We shouted to expose his lies.
Horowitz had trouble spreading his garbage so he started insulting us, saying we "needed to learn some manners" and implied we couldn't count. He called us "campus fascists" and said we all got into college "through Affirmative Action." We stood up to debate him while he was talking, despite being "barred." When cops tried to kick out those of us standing, they realized there would always be someone else popping up. They couldn't stop us. Horowitz had no answers for us.
Ignorance is hard to fight, but the response of the militant anti-racists who came to protest him was encouraging. Every one read PLP's leaflet or CHALLENGE. That affected the outcome of this event, even though there was only one comrade there. Others asked to learn more about the Party. Fifteen papers were sold.
We must continue to try to stop racists like Horowitz and work with those people who want to get rid of racism wherever it exists.
Workers Studies Conference Needs Action
PLP will be well represented at a May 16-19 conference at Youngstown State University of teachers, workers and artists who will discuss the crisis facing the working class from the attacks by bosses and their police in Ohio and across the nation. Our members and friends aim to prominently present the long history of the international working-class fight for communism.
Past conferences have defined Working Class Studies as one of recovering and preserving working-class history and culture but missed the purpose of such study of the working class: the abolition of the social relations of capitalism, and the institution of communist-led workers power. While we recognize the importance of preserving and recapturing working-class history, the former is more crucial to workers worldwide.
The conference site is less than 300 miles from the fascist shooting of Timothy Thomas, an unarmed 19 year-old Cincinnati black youth. This is the 15th shooting of a black person there since 1995. Anti-racist rebellions followed the latest shooting (see Challenge April 28). It was the first major race rebellion in Cincinnati since Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968. Black workers and youth in Cincinnati appeared willing to resist capitalist violence with working-class violence.
The rebellion was a cumulative protest against racist discrimination by Cincinnati's bosses who had systematically stolen work from the city's black workers. This shooting follows a whole spate of killings in major cities throughout the U.S. It continues a history of attacks on black workers from the slave trade to lynchings and "criminal justice" frame-ups. They are often carried out by cops who represent the bosses' strategy of a divided working class which maximizes profits while minimizing the chance of working-class unity.
Like Cincinnati, Youngstown's working-class is under attack. Republic Steel and Youngstown Sheet and Tube shut their doors and threw tens of thousands of workers into the streets. Capitalist overproduction and rivalry with Japanese steel bosses caused this crisis. Many fled Youngstown looking for jobs. Today, Youngstown's unemployment rate is about twice the rest of the state and the nation. Youngstown's working class has nowhere to turn.
Youngstown's biggest industry today is prisons. The nation's largest private prison company opened one several years ago. Prisoners essentially are sold into long-term bondage. Meanwhile, thousands of unemployed black and white workers laid off when the steel mills closed down live in dire poverty in Youngstown, right between the burned out mills and the new private prisons.
Friends of PLP who live near Youngstown should come to the conference to win participants to a pro-working-class understanding and support the struggle to build communism.
LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!
Soup Kitchen Eats Up May Day
The weeks leading up to May Day were exciting ones in our church soup kitchen. Twelve of the regular volunteers pledged to march and to reach out to friends and family. We also presented our guests with a May Day leaflet that grew from a discussion about what a world would be like under workers' control. The kitchen volunteer, who distributes 10 Challenges in her apartment building, and I canvassed two floors there and met some very nice and interesting people. The priest even put the March notice in the bulletin, announcing it two Sundays in advance.
Importantly, there was some class struggle occurring simultaneously. Our church has been pressing for a boycott of Spanish tourism because of a union leader there who was fired for exposing brutal intimidation of immigrant women workers in Granada. (One marcher carried a poster: "Rehire Miguel, Fascists go to hell!") We've also taken a leadership role in fighting racist police brutality and discussed linking up with an anti-racist church in Cincinnati for joint communication and action. Most important, though, are the friendships that have grown in supporting each other in joyful and difficult times and in carrying out the mission of the kitchen.
By 6:30 on May Day morning, 25 marchers had shown up at the church! The day was glorious. One worker proudly carried a poster from our learning center: "Workers are smart, Workers are capable, And when we read and think, Our power is inescapable!"
Feedback from the marchers was very positive. The great spirit of a militant, multi-racial presence in a working-class neighborhood, the active participation of youth and children, the quality of the speeches -- all were applauded.
On the real May Day ("St. Joseph the Worker") Tuesday, we had an ecumenical prayer service to share experiences of exploitation and oppression and to unite the neighborhood to fight racist unemployment. Alliance with religious people is not only possible, it is essential. Four more people want to join PLP or be in a study group.
In struggle (For Jeez and Cheese),
The Red Churchmouse
S. African Worker Felt At Home On May Day
A friend of mine, raised in South Africa, drove to the Washington May Day March. He had to leave early, and we didn't get to speak to each other at the march. Afterwards, I said it was very different from most anti-capitalist marches in the U.S., much more militant and openly revolutionary. I asked him what he thought. He said he liked it a lot. "I felt at home--reminded me of all the marches and protests and demonstrations I participated in or witnessed at home over 15 years, or so."
Considering that he was comparing this May Day to the militant, heroic marches in South Africa of the 1980s and '90s , that's a mighty strong compliment! When the experience and knowledge of the past is taken up by militant young workers, there is no stopping the revolutionary movement!
Red Marcher
More Marchers?
It's Up to Us
We had a great group of students and teachers from several New York City high schools on our May Day bus and shared good conversation both down to Washington and back.
On our return, our bus co-captain, a new marcher and new member of PLP, suggested we ask everybody on the bus to pose a question (to encourage people to talk). Brilliant idea! Almost everybody participated in a lively exchange.
Some examples of questions we posed were: Why were there no other political groups on the march? Why couldn't we march in front of the White House? What were the bystanders thinking? Although we march every year, why don't things change? Why weren't there more people? What does the red flag symbolize?
Some interesting answers and comments included: one comrade said our May Day march is the only one explicitly for communist revolution. Our Party -- in contrast to the old communist movement -- believes the working class is capable of fighting directly for a communist society. We openly connect struggles for reforms in the system to the necessity of revolution. Other so-called revolutionary groups put communist politics in the distant future, if they talk about them at all.
Someone else noted that the red flag traces back to 1871 and the Paris Commune, where tens of thousands of communists were lined up in the cemetery and shot. The red in the communist flag came to symbolize the blood shed in the fight for communism. Although one comrade said he loved the sea of red flags, another marcher suggested next time we make more signs explaining to bystanders exactly what our movement represents and fights for.
Several marchers commented on the generally warm welcome we received on the streets of Washington, with bystanders chanting with us, pumping their fists, and even joining the march. We also discussed how the goal of our march is not to "change" Bush or any other capitalist politician's mind but rather to mobilize our forces and strengthen ourselves for the fight ahead.
The overall mood of our marchers was enthusiastic. We realized there are many more people we could draw to our movement. Although some people we invited at the last minute could not attend, others did come, and we realized we need to start planning earlier. We estimate we could double our turnout next year.
The answer to the question of why there were not more people? It's up to us!
High School Reds
Workers Fed Up
I'm a member of PLP and did not bring as many people as I would have liked to the Washington May Day March but I must say those who did come were very enthusiastic about the turnout and the response of the people watching. As we marched I saw a woman on the roof of a church waving her fist in support.
I spoke briefly about the need to organize ourselves as a class to confront the bosses and their system of exploitation. People came to the mike and agreed with those sentiments. On the return trip, I again asked people to take the microphone to share their impressions of the march. I felt great when these workers said they want to be part of this movement to fight back against this system of misery and exploitation. I think workers are becoming fed up with the ruling class's attacks. They're realizing their only alternative is to join with us to get rid of capitalism once and for all with a communist revolution.
New York Taxi Driver
CPUSA Made Right Choice In Scottsboro Case
The May 9 CHALLENGE supplement contains a fine review of the Public TV documentary about the 1931 frame-up of nine young black men -- the "Scottsboro Boys" -- in Birmingham, Alabama. They were convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death for a "rape" of two white women that never occurred. The review reveals that the documentary itself committed a rape by deliberately obscuring and massively downplaying the primary role the Communist Party (CP) played in leading the defense, exposing the frame-up and eventually --after a seven-year struggle -- saving all nine from being hanged. That was well brought out in the review and absorbingly written.
However, I feel the reviewer erred in claiming the CP made a "mistake" by hiring a "famous trial lawyer," Sam Leibowitz, for the re-trial because "he was anti-communist and close to the Democratic Party, the party of Southern segregationists." This decision must be objectively evaluated in the context of the times in which it was made.
Given the defenselessness of the Scottsboro boys, being framed in a deeply racist South where black people were tortured and killed, could the CP have told these nine young men that although it had halted the death sentence...for the moment, and could obtain an excellent, nationally famous trial lawyer for their re-trial, that they wouldn't hire him because, (1) he is an anti-communist and "we are communists," and (2) because he is close to the Democratic Party that is supported by a majority of the voters but not by us (the CP)?
Could the CP have refused to hire Leibowitz despite the difficulty of finding someone as able and as willing as he? I think not and the CP correctly did not take that approach, and did hire Leibowitz.
Leibowitz, an "anti-communist," agreed to unite with the CP under the national glare of general anti-communist and racist attitudes. Such a public decision certainly had a positive influence on many sections of the population and added to the CP's courageous efforts.
Finally, some people who become involved in fighting racism can definitely move to the Left, especially if communists are present and influencing the situation, as happened here. True, Leibowitz did not move in that direction, but one of the two women who falsely accused the Scottsboro Boys of rape did! Ruby Bates "became a defense witness, admitting she (and other witnesses) lied," and then became pro-communist in her activity and politics, if not an actual member.
PLP's movement into mass organizations, unions, etc., is based on this factor -- people can be won over in groups filled with anti-communism and whose members belong to the Democratic or Republican parties.
People who commit their time and efforts to the fight against racism and ally with communists are worthwhile having anytime.
A New York reader
Fight Anti-Chinese Racism
The arrest of two Chinese computer scientists, Hai Li and Kai Xu, accused of industrial espionage, is not an isolated incident. They worked for the New Jersey-based Lucent Technology. The FBI charged them with selling software for voice mail over the Internet to Datang, a high-tech company owned by the Chinese government. It's being called "one of the most devastating case of industrial espionage ever."
These arrests occurred just a few weeks after the U.S. spy plane landed in Hainan Island, China. It's still there. The arrests followed a couple of days after Bush announced his Star Wars Lite plan to build a limited missile defense system against "rogue" states (China, North Korea, etc.).
All this has spawned a rash of racist anti-Chinese incidents. Last month, the national syndicated cartoonist Oliphant filled a drawing with racist Chinese stereotypes. A radio talk show on WQLZ in Springfield, Ill., called for the U.S. government to intern Chinese-Americans in concentration camps as it did with Japanese-Americans during World War II. The hacks from the United Association of Union Plumbers, Pipefitters and Sprinkler Fitters spent $500,000 in radio ads during baseball games urging a boycott of Chinese products. This type of racism, making China the focus of all that is wrong with globalization (imperialism), sucks in many in the anti-globalization movement. Racism has always been part of the bosses' war plans. Workers and students must fight them both.
A NYC Anti-Racist
TO OUR WEB READERS: This issue of CHALLENGE includes another special supplement, on the film "Scottsboro" and how it deliberately hides the role of communists in that anti-racist struggle. Again, we ask our web readers to help us keep both versions of our newspaper (the digital one and the printed one) spreading communist politics as an antidote to the poisong of capitalism and all its different ideologies. You can help subscribing to the printed version of the paper or sending a contribution. One year sub to CHALLENGE cost 15 dollars. You can send a check or MO made out to Challenge periodicals and mail it to PLP: GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, USA.
CHALLENGE, May 9, 2001
Communism lives! March on May Day!
Rebellion Rocks Racist Rulers!
a href="#‘Listen to the Youth: Fight Back!’">‘L"sten to the Youth: Fight Back!’
Continue Struggle Vs. Police Terror!
a href="#Strike Against Ltv, Union Bosses’ Gang-Up!">"trike Against LTV, Union Bosses’ Gang-Up!
SSEU Protests Cincy Cop Murderer
Quebec Militants Must Be Won to PLP
a href="#‘The Hands That Labor No Longer Want to Serve Any Boss’">‘T"e Hands That Labor No Longer Want to Serve Any Boss’
a href="#PLP Leads Resistance To Horowitz’s Racist Roadshow">"LP Leads Resistance To Horowitz’s Racist Roadshow
Worker-Student Unity Hits Liberal Harvard Hypocrites
IN MEMORIAM: Grandell "Tony" Pollard
a href="#Cabbies Rip Taxi Cops’ Brutal Beating of Driver">"abbies Rip Taxi Cops’ Brutal Beating of Driver
Young Rebels of Ethiopia Need Red Leadership
CIA Bay of Pigs Fiasco Hatched Generation of Terrorists
"Whither Cuba?" – from a friend in Cuba
LETTERS
Cincy Rebels, PLP Need Each Other
Capitalism Breeds Prostitution
a href="#Film Distorts Communist Action In Freeing ‘Scottsboro Boys’">CH"LLENGE SUPPLEMENT: Film Distorts Communist Action In Freeing ‘Scottsboro Boys’
a href="#KKK—A Racist Beast Unleashed By Steel Bosses of Birmingham">"KK—A Racist Beast Unleashed By Steel Bosses of Birmingham
Another Racist Cross Burning in Indiana
Communism lives! March on May Day!
Thousands of May Day marchers, under the Progressive Labor Party’s banners will prove it on April 28, in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, CA, and on May 1st in Mexico City, San Salvador, Dominican Republic, Bogota, Quito and Calcutta.
The bosses love to boast that communism has died. They are wrong. The specter of communism will haunt them for as long as it takes to drive the last capitalist from the face of the earth. True, our class has endured a terrible defeat. The old communist movement, which carried out great revolutions in the Soviet Union and China, destroyed itself with its own internal political weaknesses. Capitalism now rules over every country in the world. But the rulers who gloat over this setback won’t have the upper hand forever. Every day their system exposes its disgraceful inability to solve the atrocities it creates. Here, in part, is the sorry record the capitalist world and its "only remaining super-power" can boast of in the ten years since the Soviet Union’s collapse:
- Nearly three billion people in the world live on less than $3 a day;
- Slavery is as strong as ever in many countries;
- AIDS ravages the entire continent of Africa, plus many other countries;
Today’s "peace" has dozens of wars all over the globe, forcing workers to become cannon fodder for the profit interests of old and newly-made billionaires. U.S. rulers are gearing for their next oil war in the Persian Gulf. Their "peace process" has turned the Middle East into a bloody tinderbox. Chinese, Russian and European rulers are trying to overtake the U.S. in a rivalry that must ultimately lead to another world war;
Racism and police terror have become the order of the day in most countries. U.S. rulers are intensifying their preparations for strong-arm fascist rule. Their slave labor-style "Welfare reform" is a sign of things to come.
- The U.S. ruling class has criminalized unemployment by jailing 1.3 million non-violent "offenders" and creating the world’s largest prison population, exceeding two million.
- Over 350,000 layoffs in the US since January. In Mexico, workers’ wages average 25% less than in 1980.
The profit system will never produce anything better than this! But even worse than the horror of daily life under capitalist dictatorship is the illusion that things can’t change. This Big Lie, more than any law or act of state terror, keeps the bosses in power and ruling over us.
Our Party’s marches and actions this May Day should be viewed in light of their potential for growth. Our present numbers fall far short of the millions needed for revolution.
However, we can grow, perhaps slowly for now, but always planting the seeds for dramatic growth in the future.
Already the signs are pointing to a period of increasing class struggle. Thousands of workers in Cincinnati rose up against racist police murders of unarmed black men. Tens of thousands of students and others have been conducting militant struggle in Quebec against "globalization," the bosses’ name for imperialism. Campus movements are gaining steam against the exploitation of workers by university bosses and by certain U.S. companies. Workers are striking — from garment workers in Los Angeles to Domino refinery workers in Brooklyn to brewery workers in Bogota to mass transit workers in LA to Seattle newspaper workers to healthcare workers in El Salvador and on and on. In some of these strikes and in several other struggles, PLP has played a leading role.
These struggles, and others sure to erupt as the contradictions of capitalism sharpen, are fertile ground for our Party’s growth. Participating in them and putting forth our revolutionary communist politics will influence many. Our activities in Cincinnati prove this again. A handful of Party comrades who brought our ideas to thousands of rebellious workers there, created the possibility of winning some and establishing a continuing presence. Our daily participation on the job, in unions, on campuses, at schools, in the bosses’ military and in various mass organizations teaches us how to learn from our mistakes and earn the right to call ourselves the leadership of the working class.
If we don’t do this, the bosses will continue to use these movements to mislead the working class into supporting them and their plans for war.
The spreading of our ideas through the mass sale of CHALLENGE can give the working class the tools of revolution.
Capitalists talk about the "bottom line"—profit vs. loss. They think only in terms of money. We communists have a bottom line too—the growth of the Progressive Labor Party. We think in terms of people—the international working class and its needs. We must not be deterred by the defeats of the past, from which we can learn many lessons. But especially, we must never give the bosses the victory of conceding the future to them. The future belongs to our class and will be communist! The future begins now, with the decision to join and build the PLP.
Let every May Day marcher not yet in the Party, as well as many others who didn’t or couldn’t march, consider this. Becoming and remaining a communist is the most profound and best choice one can make in life. We invite you to make it. Join PLP!
Rebellion Rocks Racist Rulers!
CINCINNATI, OH, April 13 —"To see the fear in the faces of those cops for those few minutes was good. I’ll always remember that," declared a black youth describing hundreds of workers and youth chasing the cops out of the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood. They were rebelling against the racist murder of 19-year old Timothy Thomas. The rebellion, and the warm response to PLP, is a sure sign that the racist rulers will have a tough time building a loyal, committed army willing to kill and die for their oil profits.
Timothy was unarmed, with a three-month-old son, starting a new job and planning to be married. He was killed over outstanding traffic warrants, many of them for "not wearing seatbelts." The cops have killed fifteen black men here in the last five years, five since November.
The average annual income in Cincinnati is $14,420 per person, but in Over-the-Rhine it's just $5,359. Some 48% of area residents are on public assistance. Over the past five years, the unemployment rate for the greater Cincinnati region has averaged 3.8%. But the jobless rate among black workers in Over-the-Rhine is nearly 30%.
Militant workers and youth surrounded and took over the City Council for three hours. They shattered the glass entrance to the police station, and ripped down the American flag. They repeatedly stood up to the cops’ use of rubber bullets, beanbag shotguns, police horses and live ammunition. "If they keep killing us, it ain’t gonna be peaceful," declared one protester.
After four days the mayor admitted, "Despite the best efforts…the [rebellion] is uncontrolled." He imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, called in State Police reinforcements and threatened to call out the National Guard. Workers had to get passes to leave their homes to go to work.
PLP members from Chicago went to support the rebellion and build the revolutionary communist movement. We distributed 2000 fliers and 200 CHALLENGES. Forty people gave us their names to be contacted.
Cops serve the racist rulers. They are strikebreakers and terrorists, protecting the factory owners and slumlords, bankers and politicians. Integrating the police force, "sensitivity" classes and black police chiefs will not change this basic fact. Detroit has a black mayor, city council and police chief, and the highest ratio of police murders in the country. The bosses have unleashed their killer cops to terrorize black and Latin workers and youth into accepting a future of poverty and war.
The rebels who attacked police headquarters and City Hall, the centers of capitalist power, have the right idea. Racist police terror will never end as long as we are wage slaves under the dictatorship of the billionaires. Only a mass armed movement for communist revolution can put our class in power, and end this racist system.
a name="‘Listen to the Youth: Fight Back!’"></">‘L"sten to the Youth: Fight Back!’
CINCINNATI, OH April 14 — There were tons of riot police at Timothy Thomas’s funeral today. The scene outside the church was one of quiet anger. Another racist cop killing; the tip of the iceberg of all those destroyed by unemployment, prison, drugs, wars and poverty — life under capitalism.
But there was another side. Many workers and youth had said, "Enough!" They marched on City Hall and fought the police. They started thinking about what it would take to bring about permanent change. One man had been part of a group who encouraged the youth to stop fighting, to protect them from the police. He said he knew he was wrong when a youth told him, "We die for drugs, we die for clothes, now we’ll die for freedom." They didn’t need protection. They needed support.
A woman brought poster boards and encouraged everyone to make signs. "We’re tired of crooked cops killing blacks. Fuck the police." "Shoot back." "Listen to the Youth." "Time for Our Curfew to end, Time for the Pigs Curfew to start." "Bush is part of this too, he belongs with the cops."
At the end of the block, some drummers attracted a big crowd. A PLP leader started chanting on the bullhorn, to the beat of the drums, "Racist Cops, You Can’t Hide, We Charge You With Genocide!" More and more people gathered around her. She passed around the bullhorn. One woman spoke about breaking the curfew. Another spoke eloquently about the need to stop the police from killing our sons. We chanted, "We’re Ready, We’re Ready, We’re Ready, " and "Racist Cops, You Can’t Hide…!"
There was not a "black leader" in sight. They were all in the church and in front of the TV cameras. But there was plenty of black working-class leadership.
The PLP leader gave an impassioned speech about the need to bring an end to the whole racist capitalist system and to march on May Day. Applause, more chanting, more speeches. Someone suggested we march. A guy from the NAACP was soundly booed when he said a march would be "too provocative." P. started the rally off. MJ stepped forward, spoke on the bullhorn and we were marching. Everyone on the street followed. As we marched, we picked up more people. Cars honked in support. We had a taste of power. For a short time, the streets belonged to workers and youth.
Then reality hit us in the form of dozens of police, rifles pointed at us, blocking us from going further. We continued the rally in Washington Park. Many said what they had to say. There were disagreements and passion. Some favored violence, others didn’t. Some saw white people as the enemy, others as allies. Some wanted to "civilize" the police, others said that would never happen. This was a day none of us will ever forget. Sometimes change happens slowly, and sometimes quickly. This week was one of the fast ones.
Continue Struggle Vs. Police Terror!
The only riot that took place in Cincinnati was a police riot against the mostly black anti-racist rebels. Police repeatedly shot rubber bullets and beanbag shotguns into unarmed groups at point blank range. Men and women were shot with their hands in the air. Tear gas and pepper spray were used totally indiscriminately. At Timothy Thomas’s funeral, a carload of cops used beanbag shotguns in a drive-by shooting of unarmed mourners. They have been given time off for a "stress leave."
Thousands of workers and youth were arrested. As we go to press, about 65 felony indictments have been issued, and the city prosecutor says he will seek the maximum penalty. Over 600 remain in jail.
PLP members returned to Cincinnati and met with more rebels who want to continue the struggle against racist police terror and free all those arrested. Most are interested in our Party and were invited to May Day. We urge all members and friends to raise resolutions of support for the rebellion in your unions, schools, churches and other mass organizations. Send copies to PLP, PO Box A3156, Chicago, IL 60690. We’ll make sure they get delivered.
a name="Strike Against Ltv, Union Bosses’ Gang-Up!">">"trike Against Ltv, Union Bosses’ Gang-Up!
GARY, IN, April 24 — The bankrupt LTV steel bosses have given us an ultimatum: give up concessions in retirees’ health care and pensions, health care costs, vacations, work rules and however many jobs they see fit, or they will close the doors by the end of the month. These industrial terrorists want us to pay a huge ransom to save their ass.
LTV is trying to survive the crisis of overproduction. The worldwide steel industry has 300 million tons of excess capacity. The collapse of the Russian and Japanese markets, and the slowing of the U.S. economy has left the capitalists with too many steel mills. They are fighting tooth and nail for markets, resources and especially cheap labor.
Eventually this imperialist rivalry must lead to war. This has not been lost on the union leaders and politicians who say that without the steel industry, U.S. bosses won’t be able to "defend the national interest." Only communist revolution can end the cycle of crises and wars that is the very fiber of capitalism. Production for profit must be replaced with production for need.
‘Stand Up For Steel! Bend Over For The Bosses!’
In the face of this emergency, the union leadership is like a deer caught in the headlights. No union meetings have been called; no plans have been made to fight back. Rumor has it that the union has agreed to cut our benefits in return for a seat on the Board of Directors. "Stand Up for Steel" has become "Bend Over for the Steel Bosses!"
Today was a "Steel Forum" day at Indiana University Northwest (IUN). A rogue’s gallery of bankers, businessmen, politicians, academics and union hacks whined about stopping cheap imports, blamed the crisis on bad trade policies, and repeated the chorus, "We’re all in the same boat!" Right — just like the slaves and the slave traders!
About 25 LTV workers crashed the party looking for answers, but didn’t get any. A retired Inland worker took the floor and asked the experts, "What about our pensions? Why are you attacking us?" An IUN professor of economics arrogantly replied, "What are you so angry about?"
The union leaders, bosses and politicians all want to blame foreign steel. But it wasn’t Japanese steel that killed two Bethlehem workers, or Russian steel that killed two Inland workers in deadly explosions last winter. Where was their "restraint" when the bosses imported the technology to wipe out tens of thousands of jobs and increase worker productivity by 174%? Where were they when USX bought a mill in Slovakia to pay workers $2.00 an hour?
We must prepare to strike for our jobs, pensions and health care. Begging for mercy and throwing retirees to the wolves will only make matters worse. We should take a page from the workers and youth in Cincinnati who took to the streets to fight racist police terror. The industrial terrorists deserve no less.
SSEU Protests Cincy Cop Murderer
NEW YORK, NY, April 18 — Tonight, the delegates assembly of Social Services Employees Union (SSEU) Local 371 overwhelmingly passed a resolution introduced by a PLP member instructing the Local to send a message of "sympathy and outrage" to the family of Timothy Thomas, a victim of racist police murder in Cincinnati, Ohio. This occurred during a discussion of how to organize against the latest sellout contract facing city workers. As aspects of fascism grow — increased racism, intensified attacks on and disciplining of the working class and mass organizations — PLP must attempt to answer them.
Five years ago the corrupt and pro boss union leadership of the District Council 37, who bargain for most non-uniformed city worker unions here, used massive vote fraud to force through a terrible five-year contract. Scores of corrupt union officials and staffers have been convicted of this fraud and others await trial.
That contract: (1) allowed the city bosses to use workers in the slave labor Workfare program as replacements for salaried unionized city workers; (2) Froze wages for two years; (3) Instituted a two-year below-entry wage rate for newly-hired workers; and, (4) Instituted give-backs in fringe benefits and work rules.
During this same period, racist NYC cops had tortured Abner Louima and murdered Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond and others. Countless more had suffered the indignity of being stopped by the police for the crime of BWBB, "Breathing While Being Black.
SSEU members are angry! We don’t want to accept another rotten contract. We don’t want to see union rate jobs replaced with Workfare. We don’t want to see ourselves, our children or someone else’s child become the next victim of racist police murder! We must weave the seeming separate fibers of class oppression into a fabric of class-conscious understanding which can turn righteous anger into class struggle for communist revolution!
Quebec Militants Must Be Won to PLP
QUEBEC CITY, CANADA April 21 — PLP members from Boston University (BU) and St. Lawrence University (SLU) joined thousands of workers and students protesting the Free Trade Area of Americas plan (FTAA) at the Summit of Americas. This city was a war zone as a highly militarized, fascist police force protected the capitalist leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere nations. The U.S. hopes to use the FTAA as a weapon against the penetration of European and Asian imperialists in Latin America.
Friday’s meeting was overshadowed by fierce street battles between protestors and heavily armed police. Hundreds of youth tore down a section of the several-mile-long security fence surrounding the summit. Everyone cheered. Then we toppled the inner fence. Protestors grabbed metal barriers and used them to battle the cops. Cries of "Revolution!" were everywhere. The police used tear gas and pepper gas, but protesters hurled the gas canisters back at them.
When the cops finally began forcing people back, we began smashing the sidewalk and hurling small pieces at them. They answered with concussion grenades and small explosive devices. Molotov cocktails were thrown at the cops, but were pretty harmless. Amid this battle, a small group of "peaceful protesters" formed a line in front of the police, to keep us from throwing rocks, but the rock throwing continued.
Before and after the many battles, we passed out a PLP leaflet in English and French titled, "Whether Free or Fair Trade, Capitalism is about Exploitation and War." It called for worker/student unity to eliminate global capitalism and march on May Day. This is in stark contrast to the pro-capitalist leadership of the anti-globalization movement, including the Global Exchange, whose agent Danaher we exposed the week before when he spoke at SLU. As a result, several SLU students are building for May Day.
While driving to Quebec City on Saturday, BU students were searched by Canadian Customs police. We had to get rid of all literature, including PLP anti-globalization pamphlets. We had to show ID as they ran background checks on us. Each van was searched for 35 minutes. All bags and jacket pockets were opened and searched. All notebooks and loose papers were read for protest information. After this fascist search and seizure, it was on to Quebec City.
We joined thousands of students from Laval University in Quebec and the Canadian Federation for Students. Laval is one of Canada’s major public universities. FTAA will threaten public education (just as NAFTA sparked the 18-month UNAM student strike in Mexico City in 1999). We marched to the Plains of Abraham (the site of Friday’s street fighting), and joined the Operation Quebec Printemps march, dominated by the Quebec separatist movement.
We talked with many marchers about internationalism and the need to fight all bosses, including those in Quebec. We pointed out the need to destroy capitalism, not just the FTAA. Many agreed that capitalism doesn’t work, and liked the sign in French calling for a worker-student alliance and "No to the FTAA and to capitalism." "National liberation" only plays into the hands of European imperialists and will not end capitalism.
The march then joined over 30,000 Canadian and U.S. workers in the union march, while others left to take direct action against the police. Many workers wanted to participate in this action, but the union leaders would not support anything "illegal." A PLP member urged workers to support the students and called for a worker-student alliance.
On Saturday evening, we joined with the other BU students. The cops fired tear gas, quickly engulfing us. Hundreds of students formed a solidarity ring and chanted, "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses’ Plan," and "This is what democracy looks like! That is what fascism looks like!" while pointing to the wall, and the cloud of gas. We spoke with many fighters about the rise of fascism in the U.S., Canada and throughout the hemisphere, and how those in power break their own laws whenever they’re threatened.
The mass militancy was inspiring. But many of the protesters identify with anarchism because they don’t believe communism can work. Anarchism will never lead to the end of capitalism. We must win these fighters to a long-term perspective of building a mass communist PLP with the deepest ties to the working class. We have to oppose the growth of prison labor and smash racism, the main tool the bosses use to attack all workers. Communist revolution is the only real, long-term solution to eradicating oppression and exploitation.
a name="‘The Hands That Labor No Longer Want to Serve Any Boss’"></">‘T"e Hands That Labor No Longer Want to Serve Any Boss’
LOS ANGELES, CA, April 24 — The following letters are part of a discussion with a group of workers who’ve been striking Hollander Home Fashions for nearly 50 days.
Dear CHALLENGE,
I’ve been working for Hollander Home Fashion for over 25 years. The struggles against these bosses haven’t been easy. In 1979 when we unionized into the ILGWU [now UNITE] the bosses called the Migra [Immigration Service] and deported many workers. But despite this, the union won.
Workers like myself, slaving away here for many years, have left part of our lives in these dangerous machines that produce thousands of pillows a day. Even though my bosses are rich with money, they’re poor in their hearts. They lack intelligence because with what they’ve lost in this strike, they could have paid us a pension plan or a 401K.
Bernard Hollander began by selling pillows door to door. He’s the son of Jewish immigrants who fled Nazi persecution in Europe during World War II. Now, thanks to the sweat and blood of thousands of workers, Hollander has a U.S. empire of eight plants, with over 1,000 workers and annual profits topping $200 million.
I want to express through CHALLENGE that I feel proud of all my striking co-workers, especially the women who’ve shown courage and anger against the bosses and their injustices.
We hope all workers and students who read this article help and support us however they can. Thank you,
Zorro
Dear CHALLENGE
I’ve worked at Hollander for 20 years. I’ve left my whole youth in this factory. Ever since I started I’ve seen so many injustices that, for me, this strike answers all of them. They’ve always made us work overtime. The speed-up is unbearable. The minimum wage is our average pay. Our struggle for a pension plan or 401K is just.
The bosses say they’re offering a "good contract": 15¢ an hour for the first year; 25¢ the second; and zero the third year — nothing!
But I don’t understand why the boss, who has so much money to buy new machines, refuses to give us a retirement plan or a wage increase. And worse—the new machines enabled him to cut our pay 50% at the beginning of the year. Fifteen years ago three workers operated one of these machines and we earned more. Then they lowered it to two workers per machine. Now only one worker operates it and we make less money. What is this?
Discontented Worker
Dear CHALLENGE,
CHALLENGE brings news of the struggle, the idea of uniting workers. We’re on strike to fight for our rights. As long as the oppressor exists, we’ll be ready to defend our struggle with our fists and make it worthwhile.
"Let the drums of struggle sound, and with them the beat of our hearts. It’s the song of the hands that labor, and that no longer want to serve any boss."
We’re going to the May Day March to let thousands of other workers and students know about our struggle.
The Poet
CHALLENGE comment:
The bosses exist to make maximum profits by exploiting workers to the fullest. All the bosses are thieves who rob the value we produce. It doesn’t matter if they’re Mexicans, Salvadorans, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Chinese or Anglo-Saxon U.S bosses.
Bosses buy new machines to reduce costs and make more profits, not to benefit workers. They must increase production, reduce wages and sell more products to pay for the machines. In essence, the workers are paying for these new machines.
Under capitalism, this robbery is legal. If workers rebel, as in this strike, the bosses try to smash it using their state apparatus — the courts, the police and their laws, including anti-union restrictions.
That’s why Progressive Labor Party is building a mass revolutionary communist movement out of the workers’ daily struggles, to smash exploitation and the whole capitalist system. As we support this and other strikes, we’re fighting to build a new communist society in which workers produce for the benefit of our entire international working class, not for the bosses’ profits. No matter what the outcome of this strike, we call on Hollander workers to continue fighting for a secure future for their families by joining PLP and the long-range fight for a communist society.µ
a name="PLP Leads Resistance To Horowitz’s Racist Roadshow">">"LP Leads Resistance To Horowitz’s Racist Roadshow
DAVIS, CA, April 16 —Anti-racists, led by PLP’ers, blasted racist journalist David Horowitz when he appeared here today to again spew his fascist filth at the Univ. of California/Davis campus. Horowitz had taken out advertisements in college newspapers across the country claiming that black people "should be thankful" for what this country has done for them (yeah, racist terror and living conditions); that "White Christians" organized the anti-slavery movement and that poverty and unemployment were due to "defects" in black people’s character, not because of the bosses’ profit drive.
When Horowitz recently appeared at the Univ. of California/Berkeley, we only protested outside. But today at UC/Davis we learned from that. Here it was a different story.
The entire front section of the room where Horowitz was speaking was dressed in black, organized by "100 Black Scholars" to protest Horowitz’s racism. While a majority were black, it was truly a multi-racial group.
We got into the room and when Horowitz took the mike, we began to chant loudly, "Horowitz, Cops, and the Ku Klux Klan, All a part of the bosses’ plan!" Although some of us were very nervous, we overcame it. When we let up, Horowitz tried again, but we started chanting once more. Many anti-racist students gave Horowitz the finger.
We also raised the banner that our East Coast comrades had sent us: "Horowitz Is The Racist Of The Year." Though forced to leave, we kept chanting. The majority of the audience cheered us loudly.
Later, all the other protesting students walked out in the middle of Horowitz’s speech. We had plenty of CHALLENGES. Many people asked us, "Could I get one of those?" "What newspaper is that?…" We said it was PLP’s communist paper. We distributed 80 CHALLENGES. More than 75% of the protesters got the paper. About 15 people signed up to find out more about May Day and PLP.
Outside the hall, students gave spontaneous speeches exposing Horowitz as a racist and a liar. One speaker, who signed up for May Day, blamed the capitalist system for racism. A PLP speaker said Horowitz was only a little racist; the big ones were those who paid for Horowitz’s cross-country "tour." The PLP’er invited everyone to march on May Day against racism and capitalism.
Later we discovered that Horowitz has received $3.5 million since 1988 for advancing his fascist views. (The Nation, 7/3/00). Being a racist pays millions in capitalist society. Under communism, racists like Horowitz will pay — and be wiped out.
This anti-Horowitz protest showed anti-racists in action. As the song goes, "Black and Brown and White Unite on May Day." That’s the road to communism.
Worker-Student Unity Hits Liberal Harvard Hypocrites
CAMBRIDGE, MA, April 23 — Recently the struggle against poverty wages at Harvard University has reached new heights. About 50 Harvard students have occupied Massachusetts Hall since April 18 demanding a $10.25 minimum wage plus benefits for all Harvard workers. They have courageously exposed "liberal" Harvard’s hypocrisy as a corporation enriching itself from oppressing its own workers. They’ve also exposed how the boom of the ’90s was achieved by cutting workers’ standard of living. Dining workers and custodians have walked the sit-in picket line shoulder to shoulder with students. The potential for unity is far-reaching.
Harvard is outsourcing (subcontracting) jobs to non-union companies, cutting workers’ wages and benefits. Outsourcing also helps maintain sub-minimum, no-benefit jobs. It attacks all workers. Harvard uses outsourcing to threaten all workers with firing unless they accept a contract with lower wages and benefits. The dining workers contract comes up for re-negotiation this June, the custodial workers in 2002. We need to shut down Harvard to get it to stop all outsourcing now.
Harvard has always been a bastion of racism, capitalism and imperialism. It serves the interests of the dominant Eastern Establishment wing of the U.S. ruling class. Harvard’s Board has Directors from Exxon-Mobil, Chase Manhattan Bank, Enron and leading ruling class think-tanks — the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution.
Another important way Harvard serves the ruling class is by producing academic scholarships used to justify racist attacks against workers. Former Harvard professor Richard Herrnstein wrote many racist tracts, including The Bell Curve (1994), advancing the racist lie that black workers (and workers generally) were genetically less intelligent than their bosses, and thus "deserved" to live in poverty. This racist trash justified Clinton’s repeal of welfare with slave labor Workfare. Another Harvard professor, E.O. Wilson, has spewed forth his "Sociobiology — now called "Consilience," — the main form of fascist biodeterminism, a Nazi-style theory of society that influences everything from university science departments to TV programs like Survivor.
PLP members and friends have participated in this struggle. One has been meeting with the Harvard Living Wage campaign — the group conducting the sit-in — for two years. Other comrades have been picketing and distributing leaflets exposing Harvard’s racist role, calling on everyone to march on May Day and linking attacks against workers to increasing inter-imperialist rivalry. We organized a discussion on the 1969 Harvard student strike and how to build a worker-student alliance. A few workers have expressed a desire to go to May Day. Several students want to learn more about communism and PLP.
We have sharpened the class struggle here by encouraging worker/student unity, fighting students’ illusions about liberals like Clinton Secy. of Labor Robert Reich, AFL-CIO president John Sweeney and Ted Kennedy (who have "supported" the sit-in). We exposed their loyalty to the ruling class as they preach "support" for workers’ rights in order to win students and workers to support U.S. imperialism’s next war in Iraq or elsewhere.
The Harvard bosses are not budging on workers’ demands for a living wage. We must hit Harvard where it hurts. We are struggling with Harvard workers and students to understand that Harvard is our enemy. Moral persuasion or "shaming" Harvard won’t do. We need to fight the enemy, not try to convince them. Instead of destructive hunger strikes, or bringing in millionaire, ruling-class politicians like Kennedy, we must stop Harvard from functioning as much as possible, if not shut it down completely.
The students have begun this by taking over Mass Hall and hindering administration functioning and occupying a growing section of the Harvard yard with a tent-city. However, workers are not being fully mobilized. On April 21, while students protested Harvard President Rudenstine’s speech to incoming freshman, they did not call on students and workers at the general rally to join in. Such a force could have silenced Rudenstine and won a victory for the Harvard Living Wage campaign.
All Harvard workers need to support the students and build the budding worker-student alliance to bolster worker/student unity in the fight of the dining hall workers and the next one involving custodial and building service workers. We are calling for a general Harvard strike if the cops smash the sit-in. Bringing our communist ideas into this struggle can produce the kind of victory the rulers fear the most, the building of the revoutionary movement that can destroy them.
IN MEMORIAM
Grandell "Tony" Pollard died on April 22nd, losing his battle against lung cancer. He was 49 years old and is mourned by a large extended family and friends. Tony had a hard life, suffering many of the horrors of racist capitalist society. He loved May Day and respected fighters for a better world. We will miss him.
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NEW YORK CITY, April 23—Three weeks ago some 300 medallion taxi drivers (yellow cabs) demonstrated at the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), protesting the beating up of cab driver Hisham Amer, an Egyptian immigrant, by two TLC inspectors. Amer nearly died. They also demanded the resignation of TLC Chairperson Diane McKechine.
A PLP driver, one of many speakers at the protest, urged all workers to continue fighting this brutality and to unite multi-racially and internationally against the system which creates these rotten conditions, and uses brutality to try to control us. Many others expressed similar sentiments about the abuses suffered by drivers.
Cabbies are fed up with the TLC because it has refused to suspend or fire the inspectors who beat up Amer. The TLC has even refused to talk to the media about the case. Now there are rumors that the TLC Chair may be forced to resign. When workers unite and fight back, temporary gains may be made.
For years, taxi drivers have been fighting these types of attacks by city officials, including constant police harassment. The attacks increased after a successful taxi strike last year. That action followed mass protests in the last few years by construction and transportation workers.
When this rally ended, a driver congratulated the PLP’er for his speech. We want this driver to come to the May Day march in Washington, D.C.
A few days later, the PLP driver called on the taxi driver group which organized the TLC protest to celebrate May Day in NYC. He was told that a group has invited them to a celebration on May 1, and asked our comrade to represent it at the planning of this event. This opens the door to bring PLP’s communist politics to this group, and to show that May Day shouldn’t simply call for some reforms, but should fight for the only solution to the hell of capitalism—communism.
Young Rebels of Ethiopia Need Red Leadership
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA, April 24 — Thousands of students shut down Addis Ababa University last week, protesting the TPLF government’s fascist policies. The TPLF is a former guerrilla group from Tigray province, then allied with U.S. bosses, which is now in power. Forty youth were killed by police, several hundred injured and over 2,000 jailed. The rebellion spread to the city itself, where hundreds of youth joined the students.
Hunger and disease ravage Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa. In addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths from malaria and AIDS, 40,000 children will die of measles this year. These are preventable diseases, but capitalism is unconcerned with solving such problems. The news media barely mentions these things, while they chatter about so-called human rights abuses elsewhere.
The old ruling group (the Dergue) led by Col. Mengistu, allied with the former USSR and established a corrupt dictatorship. The TPLF overthrew them, made and broke alliances and split people along ethnic lines, enabling it to stay in power.
They jailed tens of thousands, including labor leaders and journalists, and killed many opponents. Then they went to war with former "friends" in Eritrea and also warred among themselves. Meanwhile, they kicked thousands of students out of the university, replacing them with students loyal to the regime. Now even these students are rebelling!
Russian and U.S. capitalists are trying to buy allies, with the Russians sending them arms and U.S. bosses wanting to use Ethiopia against the Sudan. Simultaneously there are uprisings by ethnic nationalists in the south and in the east near Somalia.
These uprisings show the limits of U.S. influence, which seems unable to stabilize many areas of the world. Ethiopia influences central Africa as well as the Middle East and is important militarily. The uprisings also show the limits of rebellion without communist leadership. Lacking that, all these movements will either be used by the big imperialist powers, and/or will remain narrow, nationalist movements that only benefit a few ethnic bosses.
We need to build strong ties with workers and youth from Ethiopia and all over the world as the first steps towards building an international movement that can destroy capitalism worldwide.
CIA Bay of Pigs Fiasco Hatched Generation of Terrorists
It was 40 years ago, April 17, 1961, when 1,500 Cuban exiles of the so-called National Liberation Army 2506 Brigade landed at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba to "free the island from communism." They aimed to establish a beachhead, form a "Provisional government" and call for direct U.S. military intervention to topple the Castro regime,
Two days earlier, several B-29 bombers piloted by U.S. and Cuban CIA agents bombed Cuba from a Nicaraguan base, destroying several of the few planes Cuba had available.
When the invasion began, the Cuban government mobilized the National Revolutionary Militia forces near the Bay of Pigs. Soon 15 light infantry battalions from the Militias, forces from the Rebel Army (the regular army) and the National Revolutionary Police were sent to attack. The Castro government knew it needed a quick victory over the enemy to avoid direct U.S. intervention. The Revolutionary Air Force only had 10 ancient planes and seven pilots who had never seen action. But these pilots were able to down five CIA planes piloted by exiles, sink four ships, stop two invading battalions from reaching land and sink most of the invaders’ supplies.
Meanwhile, the militias, outgunned by the invaders, advanced inch by inch even though they suffered huge casualties. The invaders were disoriented by the bravery of these ill-armed militias who just kept on advancing chanting "Palante" (Forward). And young gunners, 14 to 20 years old, dueled with the invaders’ planes, shooting down several.
Two days later the invaders were on the verge of defeat. Two U.S. Navy destroyers, which had escorted the invading force, sent small rescue boats, mainly to save the invasion leaders. The Militias’ batteries were aimed at those boats, thinking it was another invasion force. The U.S. Navy rescue operation failed.
At that point the invading force surrendered. Many fled into a nearby marsh. When captured most of this mercenary force claimed they "were deceived" by the CIA.
It was the biggest CIA failure ever. From the beginning, the invaders, trained and armed by the CIA in Guatemala, were doomed. U.S. President Kennedy’s promise of air cover never came. The so-called uprising which the CIA said the invasion would spark never materialized. The fiasco just consolidated the Castro government, which allied itself with the Soviet Union.
CIA and Cuban Exiles: Terrorists-At-Large
Sometime later the 2506 Brigade invaders were exchanged for tractors and food supplies. Many then became terrorists and right-wing extremists in the U.S. One of them, Jorge Mas Canosa, founded the Cuban American National Foundation, which financed the kidnappers of Elián González.
The CIA put dozens of other Brigade members to work in "Operation Mongoose" to kill Fidel Castro and topple his regime. They created groups like Omega 7 and Alpha 66, involved in hundreds of bomb attacks on pro-Castro targets in the U.S. and Latin America. Cuban exiles provided the explosives used by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet that blew up Chilean exile socialist Orlando Letelier’s car in Washington, D.C. in 1976. That was the worst case of terrorism involving a foreign government in the U.S. capital. Two former Brigade members are in jail for that murder.
Two weeks after Letelier’s murder, a Cubana Airlines plane was blown up taking off from Barbados, killing all 73 passengers. These included 19 members of Cuba’s national junior fencing team, mostly teenagers, returning from Venezuela. Two Cuban exiles were jailed in Venezuela for that explosion. One was Orlando Bosch, who had left the U.S. after being paroled from a 10-year sentence for firing a rocket at a Polish ship in Miami’s harbor. The other was Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA agent trained as a demolition expert for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He escaped a Venezuela jail disguised as a priest and later surfaced in El Salvador where he became part of the Reagan-Ollie North covert operation to supply the mercenaries fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Posada’s boss at the Ilopango Salvadoran air force base was Felix Rodríguez, the notorious CIA operator who was working inside Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was later sent to chase Che Guevara’s small guerrilla group in Bolivia.
Posada was arrested in Panama last November trying to kill Castro at an international summit meeting. During a 1998 New York Times interview, he admitted masterminding a 1997 wave of bombings of Havana tourist areas from his El Salvador base, killing one Italian tourist. He conceded that Mas Canosa and the Cuban American National Cuba Foundation financed these bombings as well as his escape from Venezuela.
U.S. rulers like to point the finger at "terrorists" and "rogue states." But just look at the long trail of blood left behind by the Cuban exiles or the Osama bin Laden gang (trained by the CIA to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the 1980s). When it comes to terrorism, the U.S. is number one.
PLP Routed CIA-Trained Alpha 66 Thugs
On June 19, 1971, PLP organized marches all across the U.S. to protest racist cutbacks and unemployment. The NYC march in Upper Manhattan condemned the racist care and layoffs at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, the area’s biggest employer. The neighborhood was in transition. For many years it was known as "Little Escambray," because of the many right-wing Cuban exiles living there. (A group of anti-Castro guerrillas financed by the CIA had operated a few years back in the hills of Escambray, Cuba.) Alpha 66, the CIA-funded Cuban exile terrorist group (led by mercenaries from the Bay of Pigs invasion) had an office on 181st St, 13 blocks north of the hospital.
As immigrants from the Dominican Republic moved into Upper Manhattan, the Cuban "gusanos" (worms, as they were called) began leaving for Miami or New Jersey. The new Dominican immigrants arrived with an anti-imperialist tradition. A few years before, right-wing Cubans had viciously attacked a demonstration by Dominican leftists protesting the U.S. Marines invasion of that country.
Alpha 66 organized to stop the PLP communist march. When the PLP sound truck parked at 138th St. and Broadway, about two dozen gusanos gathered on rooftops across Broadway and began hurling eggs at our truck. Most of the eggs fell on the helmeted cops supposedly sent to "keep order." When that failed, the gusanos tried to storm the trucks. They were beaten badly. One exile was hit so hard by a muscular Dominican comrade that he fell down the steps from the street to a basement. Not even the cops, sent to protect the exiles, could save them.
Our march of 600 workers and youth proceeded to Columbia Presbyterian. The few right-wing Cuban exiles who dared to follow us did so from a very safe distance. It was the last time Alpha 66 tried any terrorist attacks against us or any other anti-racist and anti-imperialist gathering in that neighborhood.
As the march approached the hospital, the cops tried to prevent us from getting too close. CHALLENGE reported on the cops’ attempt to stop the march: "They feared the workers and patients would hear a program that would combat the lousy conditions there, [but] the demonstrators defied their edict. One PLP’er leaped to the hood of a truck to make that point and others. When he was arrested, the cry of ‘asesinos’ [murderers] was leveled at the cops-flunkeys."
Whither Cuba?
The following is part of a letter sent to a young PLP member by a friend in Cuba.
Unfortunately I believe my country, Cuba, is moving more towards capitalism than towards communism or even socialism. There is a trend towards private corporations even if they work with state-owned companies. This ties us more to the world economic market. Also, the younger generations of Cubans, of which I’m a part (although I don’t think that way) forgets what we’ve fought for and want the cars and houses they believe young Americans have. For this they’re willing to become puppets of the U.S.
As far as I’m concerned I’d rather starve to death than accept the U.S. morality (or lack of it). When I’m feeling optimistic I believe we’re working towards socialism, and will get there some day. When I’m pessimistic I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time before we’re invaded by the rest of the world and must surrender. Of course, if this happens those of us who believe in the revolution will just have to begin again.
About 20% of the population belongs to the Communist Party of Cuba. No other party is allowed. Being a Party member is a privilege. We must maintain a standard as a political guide to other Cubans. A member must have an impeccable record of serving the country. I am very proud of being a member. To become a member one must be recommended by another Party member.
Well, this is for now. I will try to talk about China and the former Soviet Union in other correspondence with you.
A Friend, somewhere in Cuba
Doctors Prized for Profits
BROOKLYN, NY — The March 27th New York Times reported, "Doctors Punished By State, but Prized At Hospitals." At one hospital here, workers were surprised to learn it has more doctors who’ve been disciplined or investigated for negligence than any other in the city.
The article stated that hospitals employing doctors with such records are among the top 20% revenue-generators of all hospitals. These doctors bring in millions of dollars to the hospital industry. One worker pointed out that capitalism is responsible, in its drive for maximum profits.
In a 1999 report, the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences concluded that such negligence kill 44,000 to 98,000 patients each year. NYC hospitals are among the worst in the state at reporting medical mistakes.
The people killed by mistakes are doomed by the capitalist-run healthcare system, although these reports try to shift the blame to healthcare workers. This system puts profits ahead of patient care. Most of these mistakes happen to uninsured black and Latin workers. Some examples:
A 38-year-old woman complained to her doctor of pain in her side and lumps in her abdomen. Without consulting the radiologist who had taken a chest X-ray, the doctor performed a hysterectomy. But afterwards the X-ray revealed a problem with the patient’s lungs.
In another case, a doctor performed a hysterectomy and terminated a woman’s pregnancy — a pregnancy she was unaware of — without conducting proper tests to determine why she was bleeding.
In still another report, a baby suffered brain damage after a doctor tried unsuccessfully to deliver the infant using forceps.
Most patients rarely know about a doctor’s past problems. Hospitals will not discuss doctors’ records. The rulers blame the doctors and the hospital industry for the inefficiencies but the root of the crisis is the many consolidations and competition for worker-patients. Patients and hospital workers are like commodities, being bought and sold, with needed facilities often closing because of lack of profits.
While in China from 1954 to 1969, Dr. Joshua S. Horn wrote, "A doctor’s attitude to mistakes should be: prevent them, admit them and learn from them."
Under capitalism, hospital interns work very long hours for low wages. The hospitals make millions from their labor. By the time the interns complete their residency, most have profits on their minds, not uniting with workers to fight the capitalist healthcare system.
Under a communist society, our vision for health care is to improve the quality of life, not to make profits. This means we, the working class, will make healthcare decisions based on our needs.
LETTERS
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, WRITE!
Dialectics of May Day
We tried to apply dialectical materialism to bringing people to the May Day march. Potentially, many people have expressed an interest in marching but the actual will emerge with the unfolding of the process; i.e., how many folks actually get on the bus.
A certain quantitative amount of work will produce a certain quantitative and qualitative result. Many will actually march. Some will join PLP. Others will become more committed.
About 75 people attended a May Day jazz fundraiser at a local church where we have a modest base. Nine people from the church attended, including Wilma, a black woman who expressed anti-communist ideas about us being members of the church. But she said she decided to support our efforts because we are dedicated church members, not just mechanically using the church to pick off a few recruits. We raised almost $1,000, had a great time, and demonstrated PLP’s multi-racial unity. Wilma was "impressed by the number of black folks you have around your group."
Next was the May Day dinner, with plenty of food and drinks and a political program. About 70 people showed up at a community center in a Latin neighborhood where we’re involved in immigration issues. This event reflected the developed leadership of one of our key women leaders, Anita.
First came a skit about the amnesty issue. Then Rosa, another PLP leader, reviewed the international scene, especially related to Latin America. Then we presented a pageant celebrating three great May Days in our Party’s history: our first, in 1971; the march that took on the Nazis and cops in Marquette Park in 1979; and the 100th anniversary of May Day in 1986.
English and Spanish speakers, side by side, narrated using short bursts of information, first in English, and then in Spanish. Simultaneously we projected a movie about the Marquette Park march on a back wall.
The high point of the evening was a great speech by Dolores, renewing her commitment to the Party after having dealt with many personal/political problems. Then a young white worker joined the Party. We concluded by singing that great hymn of the communist movement, the Internationale. All in all, we saw quantity turning into quality, and the potential into the actual. Now we’ll see how many seats are filled when the May Day busses start to roll. On to Washington!
Midwest Reader
Cincy Rebels, PLP Need Each Other
I drove with the Chicago PLP members to Cincinnati to pay our last respects to Timothy Thomas and join and support the rebellion against racism. The workers received us very well. We had many good conversations about the rebellion and the need for revolution. The workers were definitely not toeing the NAACP’s line. They had their own ideas and were expressing them in their practice. When the rally started, they called for more action, marches and for breaking the curfew. When the NAACP sent someone to "calm" them down, they listened but didn’t stop the rally.
There was a mix of black nationalism/anti-racism, anger at the police and the mayor and a desire for fairness. There was much anti-capitalist feeling, though that’s not what they called it. There was an acknowledgement that the system has never served the black masses. There was a sense that without militant rebellion, the mayor and the rulers would not change. They knew their housing needs were being submerged by gentrification. They cheered our call for revolution. They were inspiring as they marched in defiance of marshal law.
As we approached the riot cops blocking downtown, the rebels calmly and thoughtfully struggled with themselves against adventurism. They decided to turn back and rally at the park. They correctly predicted that the cops were waiting for a provocation. They estimated the forces at play. We did not then have the numbers or the organization to take on the cops.
To sustain the rebellion workers need PLP’s revolutionary program. In order to sustain the revolutionary PLP we need these anti-racist rebels to join and lead our movement. Capitalism will never serve the workers. Its endless crises will impel workers to rebel. The rulers’ use of racism to divide us will become increasingly evident and workers will fight back. We must dig deep roots among the workers to lead even larger numbers.
Our potential is incredible. We invite the anti-racist rebels to lead our May Day march in Washington. We invite them all to join PLP and develop the long-range outlook to eradicate this murderous system.
Chicago comrade
Capitalism Breeds Prostitution
Recently the Dominican Republic press reported that thousands of young women from that Caribbean country are emigrating to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and becoming prostitutes. Such news is no longer so shocking. Lately there’s been a tremendous upsurge of women (including children) leaving countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the formerly socialist countries of Eastern Europe, induced by offers of phony jobs and then forced into prostitution. Many do it knowingly because it’s the only way to survive.
A correspondent from the Ultima Hora daily of Santo Domingo writing from Buenos Aires reported that: "It seems like a coincidence that just as in Santo Domingo the Dominican women in Buenos Aires who work in the ‘world’s oldest profession’ do it near the Congressional building where senators and other politicians work. Our Porteño (as Buenos Aires residents are called) taxi driver, a very enlightened man, told us jokingly ‘hold onto your wallet’ as we passed by the Congressional building."
An article in another Dominican daily explains why so many young women had to sell their bodies to survive: "Recession in the USA causes mass firings; 10,000 jobs in the Corporation of the Industrial Free Zone of the city of Santiago will cease to exist because of the drastic reduction in the sales of their products in the U.S. market….The job losses in these duty-free garment shops will affect all free trade zones in the country, although Santiago will be hardest hit."(Listini Diario, 4/9).
Last year, Hipólito Mejía was elected President of the Dominican Republic, promising "improvements" in workers’ lives and an end to the rampant official corruption of the previous government. But things have just grown worse. The world crisis of capitalism has made life a living hell for workers from Santiago to Buenos Aires.
Organizing for a new society, without any bosses and politicians, is the only solution. Join the communist PLP and make that happen!
A Comrade
CHALLENGE SUPPLEMENT
a name="Film Distorts Communist Action In Freeing ‘Scottsboro Boys’"></">Fi"m Distorts Communist Action In Freeing ‘Scottsboro Boys’
In 1931, nine black young men were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train in Alabama. The poor youths, ages 13 to 19, were riding the rails looking for work. They were quickly convicted by an all-white jury. Eight were sentenced to death, another cruel episode in a long history of lynchings and frame-ups. However, the U.S. Communist Party (CP) initiated and led a world-wide struggle involving millions to free the "Scottsboro boys."
This struggle was the subject of a documentary, Scottsboro, An American Tragedy," nominated for an Academy Award and broadcast recently on Public Television. It contains fascinating film footage of the trials and the mass demonstrations in support of the Scottsboro boys. The best sections are interviews with communists active in the case, such as Mary Licht, the CP organizer who met with the parents of the nine jailed youth and explained that the International Labor Defense (ILD), established by the CP, would not just conduct a legal defense, but would organize mass support for their sons’ release. The parents appreciated the way Party members treated them with respect and equality, in contrast to the NAACP, which tried to take over the case and called the parents "ignorant" when they rejected their anti-communist pleas. The parents spoke at dozens of CP-organized rallies in a worldwide campaign to win freedom for their children.
Despite these interviews, the documentary echoes the anti-communism of the NAACP, which accused the CP of excluding it from the defense in order to "exploit" the case for its own "revolutionary agenda." The documentary ignores the fact that the NAACP initially refused to support the young men and never had plans to wage a mass campaign. The NAACP’s leaders only became interested when the ILD took the case. However, neither the ILD nor the NAACP lawyers could win the case in Alabama’s courts, where the verdicts were predetermined. Only a mass movement in the streets could ever free the young men.
A week after CP organizers in the South learned of the arrests, the CP newspaper, the Daily Worker, editorialized that the Scottsboro frame-up was "part of a campaign of terror against the Negro workers and impoverished farmers and sharecroppers of the South, to ‘teach the n——- his place,’ lest he join with his natural comrades, the white workers and poor farmers of America in their struggle against starvation and boss rule."
The international communist movement organized hundreds of rallies and marches, in scores of U.S. cities, as well as Europe, Japan, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. The Scottsboro case became known to hundreds of millions worldwide. One Baltimore minister summed up the opinion of many blacks when he said that "the Communists go out and fight for Negro rights. The International Labor Defense is communism in action for Negro rights and Scottsboro is the supreme example." Blacks and whites united in hundreds of fundraising events and demonstrations under the banner of "Black and White, Unite and Fight!"
This was the "agenda" that the film attacks, but to its credit, the CP did use the case to expose the system of racist oppression in both the South and the North, including the racist "justice" system. It also used the case to advance black-white unity in the fight against a capitalist system that had thrown millions onto the unemployment lines and into dire poverty. The CP pointed out that capitalism had created and benefited from the racist hell suffered by millions of black workers and that the fight to free the Scottsboro boys was just one battle in the war to end capitalism and build a society without racism.
The CP explained to white workers that class solidarity was absolutely necessary to fight capitalist exploitation, and that the first step in forging this solidarity was to fight against the special oppression of black workers. Every Party member was responsible for raising the Scottsboro case in whatever union, neighborhood group, or unemployed council he or she belonged to. Hundreds of these organizations passed resolutions and donated money in support of the struggle. The CP’s focus on the case was indicated during a confrontation between a CP-led Unemployed Council and a Bronx, NY landlord who exclaimed, "I’ll fix the plumbing and paint the halls, but I can’t free the Scottsboro boys!"
The CP’s expert legal team ripped apart the shabby prosecution case. The medical evidence showed conclusively that the women had not been raped. Ruby Bates, one of the two accusers, became a defense witness, admitting that she and Victoria Price had lied. The lawyers took the case twice to the Supreme Court which, in response to the mass movement, overturned the convictions and ordered new trials, but new all-white juries again returned guilty verdicts.
The CP did make mistakes, including hiring Samuel Leibowitz as defense counsel for the retrial. Although Leibowitz was a famous trial lawyer, he was an anti-communist and close to the Democratic Party, the party of Southern segregation. Before the case was finished, Leibowitz would attack the CP. In 1937 and 1938, the CP, in its "popular front" period, abandoned radical mass protest and relied on liberals to negotiate a pardon for the remaining defendants (four were released in ’37) with the Governor of Alabama. The last defendant, Haywood Patterson, escaped to freedom in 1948.
Since it was virtually impossible for the film to ignore the presence of the CP, it is presented in a way that feeds anti-communism. The "tragedy," the film says, is that no one was really concerned about these nine young black men as human beings. Yet had it not been for the mass campaign organized by the CP, the Scottsboro boys would most certainly have been executed. That is the "agenda" the film avoids like the plague.
a name="KKK—A Racist Beast Unleashed By Steel Bosses of Birmingham">">"KK—A Racist Beast Unleashed By Steel Bosses of Birmingham
Birmingham was "founded after the Civil War, the heavy manufacturing mecca of the South…built by post-Emancipation slaves. Under a system popular all around the Old Confederacy known as the convict lease, the state of Alabama hired out half its prisoners to the tuberculosis-breeding coal mines of Birmingham’s founding industrialists. The ‘crimes’ of these mine slaves—the vast majority of them black—were often nothing more than gambling, indebtedness or idleness….The system had ‘all the evils of slavery without one of its ameliorating features,’ as one critic noted, like the slaveholders’ vested interest in keeping their property alive. Slackers were hung on crosses…with ropes….Fugitives were mauled by bloodhounds and then whipped with leather straps until they begged for death. Those who got their wish were dumped in a common hole in the woods, saving the superintendent the nuisance of a funeral appearance. The [convict] lease…provided the industrialists a cheap, strike-proof workforce." (From Carry Me Home, Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, by Diane McWhorter, Simon & Schuster, 2001; all quotations are from this book.)
Birmingham was a classic example of U.S. fascism, built on racism, segregation and the ruling class using and building the Ku Klux Klan to divide and rule black and white workers. The fortunes of U.S. Steel and J. P. Morgan were extracted from the enslavement, torture and murder of tens of thousands of mainly black people, working untold numbers to death. For them, Birmingham was Auschwitz.
"Birmingham’s saloons — the most per capita in the country — had been safeguarded by the industrialists’ anti-Prohibition crusades as an essential ingredient of the three Ds of ‘labor tranquility’: Depress ‘em, disperse ‘em and drug ‘em. The first two were fulfilled simultaneously by the isolated company villages, with their communal outhouses hunched over open typhoid-hatching ditches. Epidemic disease was the leading cause of death in Birmingham..."
The city’s reputation of such horror was so widespread that it inspired popular stories: a black man in Chicago tells his wife that Jesus came to him in his dream and said he should go to Birmingham. She objects: "Did Jesus say He’d go with you?" Her husband replies, "He said He’d go as far as Memphis."
Every aspect of life in Birmingham was controlled by the owners of a few large corporations, led by Tennessee Coal & Iron (TCI), a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. These barons were known as the "Big Mules." And black workers "were the cornerstone of their success. Segregation—with its…life force, racism—had kept their workers divided, wages depressed. The industrialists…had honed [segregation] into the ultimate money-making instrument."
Their "worst fear…was that their labor force might organize into a union. In their exertions to prevent that…—forbidding workers to grow corn in their gardens, lest the tall stalks serve as a cover for union-organizing meetings—they had built a stunning example of… the ‘latent fascism’ of the American South."
These corporations used every feature of their state apparatus. "U.S. Steel had virtually invented industry’s union-beating game plan during the great, failed national steel strike of 1919, when its private detectives infiltrated the workforce and supplied the propaganda that fueled that year’s Red Scare," the infamous Palmer Raids on radicals. "The point of the propaganda was to equate organized labor with ‘bolshevism’ and organized money with ‘Americanism’."
Texas Congressman Martin Dies, their "point man against the CIO," followed the lead of these corporations by creating the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the late 1930s. One example of their extreme anti-communism emerged when, during an investigation of the Federal Theatre Project’s production of 17th century playwright Christopher Marlowe, Alabama’s representative on the committee, Joe Starnes, "asked…if Marlowe was a Communist." (HUAC recieved its deathblow in the late 1960s when PLP defied its witch-hunt of the anti-Vietnam war movement and sent it six feet under.)
In 1907, when J.P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel—then the world’s largest corporation—bought Birmingham’s TCI mills, it became the centerpiece of "The elite establishment of the city…[that] nurtured the Ku Klux Klan." In the 1920s, the Klan claimed four million members. McWhorter reports that in the 1940s the Alabama attorney-general wrote to Alabama Senator Lister Hill, "The Alabama Klan IS unquestionably and undoubtedly…directed from one certain tall building." And McWhorter says that was "U.S. Steel’s corporate offices on First Avenue, which issued the paycheck to E.E. Campbell [the head of Klan], a skilled worker in TCI’s Fairfield plant."
These Mules counted on the Klan: "As long as their ‘native-born’ laborers were fighting the large Catholic-immigrant portion of the workforce, there was no danger of union solidarity even among the whites, let alone across color lines."
In the 1930s and ’40s, the Klan’s leadership directed its members to disrupt the CIO….Between the Klan’s ‘boring from within’ work and the employer’s race-baiting…the CIO’s flagship union at TCI, the United Steelworkers of America, was…essentially an arm of management."
When in 1944, during World War II, the Klan was forced to disband nationally because it could not pay its back taxes, "U.S. Steel set up a League to Maintain White Supremacy to spread ‘the white supremacy gospel’…among…its workforce." But two years later, "One of the Big Mules’ old Christian American tabloids called for the revival of the Klan." They had their man in City Hall, the infamous police chief Bull Conner, later the leader of violent attacks on the Civil Rights movement. And "The vigilantes to whom the industrialists would now assign the hands-on anti-union fight—under cloak and hood….would answer to…the man the Big Mules had put there, Bull Conner." Conner, the Klan’s "patron saint," had already remade the police force into "his personal militia."
The corporate baron’s and Connor’s political battle against the Communist Party and civil rights activists to maintain racist segregation in Birmingham in the following two decades, and the struggles of black and white miners to unite against the coal barons there, would require another lengthy article. Suffice it to say here that the Klan’s role is not that of "crackpots" acting on their own. They have been organized, financed and protected by sections of the ruling class to spread the rulers’ racist ideology among the working class. In many areas they function right in the plants. It is the duty of all anti-racists and communists to smash them as best we can and expose their links to the ruling class that oppresses us all.
Another Racist Cross Burning in Indiana
GARY, IN April 12 — Another family has been victimized by a cross burning here. Debra Dominguez found a partially burned wooden cross in her front yard in the Chesterton area. This latest racist attack comes just two weeks after a cross was burned in a black family’s backyard in Valparaiso, and is the second in four weeks since 300 riot cops protected a KKK rally.
Debra said the cross burning may stem from a problem between her daughter and other students at Chesterton High School. She said the school has not responded to her calls, and the school’s director of security said there’s no connection between the school and the cross burning. The Dominguez home has been vandalized for weeks, with shaving cream, eggs and toilet paper put on or around the house.
These cross burnings are a direct result of the Klan rally held here. This is why PLP says, "No Free Speech for Fascists!" The Klan has applied for a permit to rally in downtown Gary on May 19. Mayor King says they can have the permit for $5,000. The ACLU has come to the aid of the fascists, saying there is no connection between racist speech and racist action.
There are plenty of angry steel workers here, the victims of plant closings and threatened shutdowns. There are also plenty of angry young people here, fed up with racist police harassment. Most of all, there is a growing PLP here. And workers and youth have taken note of the anti-racist rebellion in Cincinnati. If the Klan gets their permit, we’ll have something for them.
