• JOIN THE FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM: BOSSES’ PROFITS VS. WORKERS’ LIVES
• Looming Global War Spawns Rotting Economy
• PLP’s Ideas Spread at International Youth Conference
• Seattle Summer Project GI’s, Boeing Workers Debate Communist Politics
• Rally vs. Lynching in Prince George’s County Jail
• Abolitionist’s 1852 Independence Day Remarks By Frederick Douglass What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?
• Strikers Fight U. of Cal’s Poverty Wages
• Study and Practice Forge A School for Communism
• Soldiers Welcome PLP’s Politics
• Test Boycott Teaches Real Lesson
• Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca Workers’ Mass March
• Pentagon Behind Colombian ‘Rescue’ Circus
• General Strikers Battle Peru’s Cops in Anti-Gov’t Protests
• LETTERS
  • Communist Paper Acts to Unify A Party
  • Nationalism, Racism Splits Caribbean Workers
  • Media Used Floods to Fill Agribusiness Pockets
  • Rulers Want to Turn Our Minds to Mush
  • U.S. Civil War Shows Profits Drive Starvation
  • Film Builds Wave of Anti-Communism
  • Applying Historical Materialism to the US Civil War (1861-1865)
• REDEYE
  • Obama: ‘withdraw’ to Afghanistan
  • Obama and key Dems back wiretaps
  • Drug co. $ to docs hurts kids
  • US let 9/11 go on as jolt for war
  • General reports US war crimes
  • In ex-colonies, childbirth grim
• Bosses Use Black Pols to Promote Capitalism, Racism
• U.S. A-Bombed Japan As Political, Act of Mass Murder

JOIN THE FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM:
BOSSES’ PROFITS VS. WORKERS’ LIVES

From rising gas prices to foreclosures, lower wages and benefits, workers know things are getting worse. Will voting for Obama help? Is communist revolution really the viable alternative? These questions pose a tremendous challenge and opportunity for the PLP. Industrial workers and soldiers are at the center of the contradiction that all workers face: between the bosses’ need to squeeze maximum profits out of workers, while at the same time winning them to patriotic sacrifice for the bosses’ nation, versus the workers’ need to survive. It comes down to their profits or our lives.

An urgent battle is taking place for the allegiance of the working class. Through the election campaign the bosses are trying to mobilize workers’ loyalty to U.S. imperialism. The PLP Summer Projects are struggling to win workers to act in their own class interests against the racist, sexist exploiters, and to join the fight for the liberation of our whole class. The stakes are high.

The more war there is, the more crucial manufacturing workers become, because they’re the ones running the machines, building the parts and assembling the weapons. An army officer recently went to an aerospace shop to tell the managers that the parts being made were being shipped directly to Iraq and were essential to the success of the U.S. war effort. He said that if the managers couldn’t get the workers to produce the parts faster, the army would send someone to guarantee it!

This shows industrial workers’ central role in the war effort. These workers barely earn the minimum wage. Some have gladly taken communist leaflets and CHALLENGE. In the past, when faced with growing war and exploitation, Russian and Chinese workers, with communist leadership, took up the fight against their oppressors and led the fight for revolution and workers’ rule. Workers here today have great potential to join the fight for workers’ power.

Southern California has nearly one million manufacturing workers — many working for subcontractors in the defense industry. The Southeast forms the backbone of the new auto workforce and the soon-to-be-built “southern aerospace” corridor. Most of these jobs are in non-union, low-wage factories run by subcontractors. Like previous industrial areas, the basis of these subcontractors is the super-exploitation of immigrant and black workers. Conditions in these factories are unsafe — speed-up and machines that don’t have the needed safety guards make cut fingers and back injuries common. Workers get little or no health care. The bosses are relying on the most exploited workers to produce their weapons and fight their wars.

Due to the decline of the U.S. relative to its competitors in the world (see Editorial p. 2) there’s mounting evidence of growing fascism — from unemployment, police terror and immigration raids to unsafe racist and sexist conditions and speed-up in factories. The U.S. rulers are re-organizing their vital industrial sector on the backs of immigrant, black and other low-paid workers to be prepared for current and larger-scale military conflicts. These workers can become the backbone of a movement to take on the bosses’ attacks and lead the fight to turn the bosses’ imperialist wars into revolutionary class war.

The bosses’ crisis is increasing, and with it the inability of this system to provide workers with even the most basic necessities. Just this week the federal government rescued another bank, Indymac, and pledged billions to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest holders of mortgages in the nation. No boss — not Obama, McCain or local politicians like L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa represents our interests. The only way to secure our interests is to forge unity and confidence among the workers with the clear goal of building a mass revolutionary communist party that can survive and grow under all conditions. Workers forced to work 9- to 12-hour days for low wages in unsafe conditions, while their families are harassed by the immigration police and the cops, are not in the hip pocket of the rulers. In fact, these workers will be won, over time, to the revolutionary alternative of fighting to build a movement that can take on the entire profit system.

Fight for Communism

Communists are committed to building strong ties with our fellow workers and organizing class and ideological struggle. We participate in day-to-day discussions and struggles to build unity and confidence among the workers for the long-term fight for communist revolution. The basis of the capitalist system is production for maximum profit. Through the bosses’ control of the means of production, they exploit workers and super-exploit black, Latino and women workers. They also exploit markets and resources.

Political discussions about these principles, combined with solid friendships and class struggle, can lead to more workers joining the Progressive Labor Party as it becomes clearer that capitalism only has more misery to offer workers. In its place we need a communist society where workers will control and organize production, not to make profits for a boss but to meet the needs of the international working class.

Through a fighting communist leadership committed to the working class, workers can come to see that we can rely on our class. We must expand CHALLENGE’s readership among industrial workers, soldiers and students. We must win the allegiance of our class to fight for its own futurenot for U.S. imperialism.

Looming Global War Spawns Rotting Economy

As the U.S. economy brings workers new miseries daily, Obama and McCain are proposing divergent, but equally unworkable pie-in-the sky “solutions.” Skyrocketing prices, job destruction and credit crises result inescapably from capitalism itself and its profit drive (which neither candidate attacks). They are worsened by the U.S.’s sharpening rivalry with imperialist and capitalist rivals.

For example, the free-for-all over control of Mid-East oil among the U.S., China, Russian-backed Iran, India, al Qaeda and the Taliban drives gas costs sky high. [See CHALLENGE, 7/16] Furthermore, to stay top dog, U.S. rulers must spend a large chunk of their capital on making war, which wastes funds that could otherwise go to rebuilding factories and infrastructure.

CURRENT DOWNTURN DATES TO U.S. VIETNAM GENOCIDE

The current wave of manufacturing layoffs reflects a permanent war-caused trend going back to the Vietnam era. At that time, European and Japanese manufacturers — having had their factories destroyed in World War II — invested heavily in the most modern technology, while U.S. bosses stood pat, having to pour huge sums into their imperialist war in Vietnam. Thus, these U.S. rivals leaped ahead in market share.

Meanwhile, U.S. workers’ real income then began an uninterrupted downslide, with rampant inflation sapping their purchasing power. Since Vietnam, with the U.S. unable to gain a military foothold on the Asian mainland, Chinese manufacturers have increasingly dominated the labor market there and undercut U.S. firms with rock-bottom wages.

Obama and McCain tout various schemes to boost industry, finance and employment, but a beleaguered imperialist power like today’s U.S. must ultimately “solve” its economic woes through world war. It will someday have to unleash its full military might and move in the direction of destroying much of its rivals’ productive capacity and labor force and then try to seize what’s left. This would require occupying vast conquered territories to regain markets and sources of raw materials, which it is attempting to do now, with very limited success, on a local scale in Iraq.

Communist leader V. I. Lenin detailed this unrelenting process in his 1917 “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”: “Imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists.”

In the 20th century’s two world wars, competing imperialists, seeking to win or maintain world dominance, managed to mobilize entire populations to kill hundreds of millions all over the world.

GOOSE-STEPPING McCAIN STILL DOESN’T ‘GET’ MOBILIZATION

McCain, though an ardent militarist, appears unable to grasp the economic aspects of the rulers’ approaching war needs. He would continue Bush’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich, enabling them to pocket the billions that the main section of the ruling class knows are necessary to preserve the long-range interests of their system.

Establishment mouthpiece, The New York Times (7/12), chastised McCain’s shortsightedness, “Following in those footsteps does not, however, make a good case for his candidacy. Americans face hardship in the years to come. The tanking of the economy, coming on top of years of unmet needs — for health care, infrastructure repair and alternative energy [not to mention rebuilding the military — Ed.] will require the next president to spend more and to raise taxes to support that spending.” So the Times wants all of us to “pull our weight.”

McCain would reverse the job slide with tax breaks for “entrepreneurs...at the heart of American innovation, growth and prosperity. They create the ultimate job security –– a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away.” (McCain website) In other words, “open up a small business.” Such fairy-tale promises will never provide a decent income for millions of jobless auto, aerospace, airline and steel workers, nor reduce the racist double unemployment rate for black and Latino workers. (GM has gone from the world’s top automaker to the verge of bankruptcy, shedding tens of thousands of jobs from Detroit to Oshawa, Ontario to Toluca, Mexico.)

LIBERAL OBAMA’S ‘HIGH-WAGE’ MILITARISTIC REBUILDING LACKS CASH

Obama better understands the rulers’ agenda and hopes his own version of the New Deal will mimic Roosevelt’s success in rallying a Depression-ridden nation for World War II. Obama’s campaign calls for jacking up taxes on corporations and the rich to fund “five million new jobs” at good wages in a centralized technology and infrastructure rebuilding effort. But U.S. bosses, beset by foreign competition, simply don’t have the cash to willingly forgo short-term profits for such a program. Unlike Roosevelt, who entered office when federal outlays, including military, made up only 7% of U.S. gross domestic product, the next president will inherit a state apparatus that eats up more than 20%.

A more likely scenario for “economic recovery” than Obama’s phony high-wage, voluntary-mobilization proposal involves restoring the draft and forcing workers into poorly-paid industries. Obama buried his call for mandatory national service, reaching into high schools, in a July 4 press release: “Obama will make it a presidential imperative to restore...public service to the agenda of today’s youth, whether it be serving their local communities...as teachers or first responders, or serving in the military and reserve forces or diplomatic corps that keep our nation free and safe.” (Obama website)

Soon after winning nomination, Obama picked Jason Furman, a champion of anti-union Wal-Mart as his top economic advisor. Furman is a protégé of Robert Rubin, CEO of Rockefeller’s Citibank and was Clinton’s Treasury-Secretary who led the racist dismantling of welfare.

The rulers have their work cut out for them in this period of economic decline and intensifying war. So do we. More than 400,000 U.S. workers have lost their jobs since December. Many of those still employed are spending one-fifth of their pay just on gas. But organized working-class fight-back is at a low level. PLP must expose the connection between these economic assaults and the rulers’ broader war agenda, initiate class struggle and build a party that can ultimately overthrow their deadly profit system.

PLP’s Ideas Spread at International Youth Conference

ATHENS, GREECE, July11-13 –– Seven young PLP comrades from New York City are attending Resistance 2008, a youth conference here. We are bringing our line of communist revolution to establish the dictatorship of the working class— where workers, through their revolutionary mass party, lead society—to a thousand young workers from all over Europe who are attending the Conference.

PLP’ers are the most vocal group here and so far PL’s literature has been well-received. These young comrades met some young workers who are already translating our literature into Greek. They’ve invited us to visit them on the job and talk to their fellow workers. On Sunday afternoon the group spoke at the Conference and their speeches were applauded, especially PL’s ideas on the need to fight nationalism and destroy racism and sexism. A complete report next issue.

Seattle Summer Project GI’s, Boeing Workers Debate Communist Politics

SEATTLE, WA, July 13 — “Man, this leaflet is an eye-opener,” exclaimed a Boeing machinist after reading the PLP’s flyer. “It’s a reality check.”

Two thousand of those leaflets entitled, “Boeing’s Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage For Boeing Contract Fight” based on the CHALLENGE editorial were distributed by young volunteers at three Boeing plants during the first week of the Seattle Summer Project. Workers grabbed 900 CHALLENGES. Troops at nearby Ft. Lewis took an additional 100 plus 200 “GI Notes,” the Party’s soldier’s newsletter, with a supplement by an Iraq veteran (see page 4). Communist politics were debated in the factories and the barracks throughout the week.

The implications of this “reality check” took shape when a multi-racial group of young volunteers was invited to dinner with two older white Boeing workers in mid-week. One veteran machinist, a friend of the Party, willingly acknowledged the increased oppression, racism and sexism brought on by the sharpening imperialist dogfight. He feared, however, that we didn’t have the “fortitude” to answer these attacks that workers had in the 1930s and ’40s. We then examined what led to that fortitude, how did we lose it and how can we get it back. We had been trying to answer this question all week.

Boeing Union Workers Chime In

A toolmaker made a point of how much better was our leaflet’s slogan — “This Time, This Contract: We Must Fight For Our Class, The Working Class” — than the union’s “It’s Our Time, This Time.” Class-consciousness is a must he said. Narrow trade unionism won’t work when the capitalists outsource work to low-wage, non-union subcontractors. Long discussions followed about how — and if it was possible — to build international unity between, black, Latin and white workers.

The toolmaker didn’t just talk. He helped circulate throughout the plant an open letter written by Boeing machinists for workers to sign that answered the bosses’ claim that our wages were “above the market rate.” It explained how the bosses used racist super-exploitation to lower the “market rate” for all workers and called for international solidarity.

Another machine operator commented how pleased he was that the young volunteers visited him. He hoped they felt welcome. He did, however, note they talked a lot about the plight of workers, but not too much about the evils of capitalism and the virtues of communism.

The vision of communism was one of the reasons workers in the 1930s had fortitude. They saw the Soviet Union as a beacon. Unfortunately, the old communist movement had the strategy of building socialism, which maintained the capitalist wage system. They thought socialism would be a halfway house to communism. Just the opposite happened. Socialism, with all its concessions to capitalism, eventually undermined the revolution, leading back to capitalism. This demoralized the left and, in good part, led us to lose that fortitude.

Non-Union Subcontractor Workers Say Build A Life Around Your Co-Workers

We continued this discussion in study groups (see page 4) and meetings with young industrial workers, mostly non-union, who came here from around the country. These newer, young comrades set themselves the long, hard task of rebuilding this communist vision among their co-workers. The first job was to increase their CHALLENGE sales and networks. But how do we answer our friend’s fears and doubts?

An auto subcontractor worker related his difficulty in getting a religious CHALLENGE reader to Party events. He realized that to win his friend to act on CHALLENGE’S ideas he would have to reciprocate. So he read a little of the Bible and with his wife went to their friend’s baby shower. His friend hasn’t joined the Party yet, but she did say that our comrade was a model she wanted her children to emulate.

A new recruit from a California aerospace subcontractor told an amusing story at a BBQ about how she came around. Her friend, who had read a CHALLENGE, invited her to a social event. “These people are communists,” our new recruit told her friend. “Oh, no,” her friend assured her. Then they attended another meeting where revolution was openly discussed. “You see, I told you so!” she said to her friend. Her friend got scared, but stuck around, joined and now sells CHALLENGE in a key plant. So it pays to know not only your co-worker, but their friends and family too!

Other stories described how these new comrades were trying to center their lives around those of their co-workers. We vowed to double and triple our efforts. It is these kinds of personal/political relationships that will expand the limits of class struggle and revolutionary potential. The first Boeing worker we ever met, now 82, said he thought this strategy was “an excellent idea.”

Rally vs. Lynching in Prince George’s County Jail

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD., July 4 — Today 30 residents of this Washington, D.C. suburb rallied under the leadership of the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability at the jail where Ronnie White, a 19-year-old African American youth, was strangled to death in his cell by either a cop or a prison guard. White was accused of killing a police officer by running him over with a car during an arrest. Apparently some cops and/or guards decided to be cop, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner!

Dorothy Elliott, whose son was murdered by County cops over a decade ago, decried the murder and called for justice. A second speaker linked this murder to others by County police as well as to the killing and torture by the U.S. government at Abu Ghraib. A third speaker charged that this murder was a lynching, which showed the need to unite working people and students in a mass movement to fight racism. The speaker linked the present struggle to the fight against slavery by reading part of the famous July 4, 1852 speech of Frederick Douglass (see box).

The rally had three demands: suspend all guards who had access to White’s cell until the murderers are caught; install video cameras on all isolation cells; and establish full and timely communication with the public about the investigation. These demands, even if met, cannot solve the problem of police terror against the working class.

The state (the government) has demonstrated its determination to use racist police brutality and now lynchings to terrorize workers, deepen racism and maintain its power at all costs, both at home and abroad. No reform of capitalism will change that basic need of the bosses’ state.

That’s why PLP’ers, deeply involved in this struggle, are building a revolutionary Party to destroy the bosses’ state and replace it with a workers’ state that will have no interest in promoting racism and terrorism against the working class. The latter will eliminate the bosses and their profit system, the source of racism which divides our class and drags down the lives of all workers.

Abolitionist’s 1852 Independence Day Remarks By Frederick Douglass
What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

[To defeat slavery] . . . it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Strikers Fight U. of Cal’s Poverty Wages

LOS ANGELES, July 14 — Over 8,500 service workers at the state-wide University of California (UC) Medical System struck today, supported by many of the 11,500 university healthcare workers also represented by AFSCME Local 3299. Their wages are so low that 96% are financially eligible for some kind of public assistance!

One worker on the picket line told us, “We’re striking for dignity. Without us [the workers], the empire wouldn’t exist. We’re the cement that the empire is based on.”

He and many other workers eagerly took a PLP leaflet and CHALLENGES and gave them to their friends. He said he liked communism and that real communism was different from the socialism of the past. We agreed and said workers could run society without wages — to produce and share what we need. He and his friends asked that CHALLENGE write about their struggle.

These workers struck after 11 months of negotiations in which the UC bosses refused to grant any real wage increase. While food and gas prices are skyrocketing, their latest “offer” would raise the starting minimum hourly wage from $9.67 to $11.50, in a three-year contract but would not increase wages for workers making more than the new minimum.

The strikers and those honoring the picket lines are Latino, black, Asian and white. The marjority are Latino immigrants facing poverty wages and fighting back against this attack on our class.

The UC bosses are trying to break the strike with an injunction. We advised the workers not to rely on the bosses’ legal system but rather to build unity to defy any injunction.

We are calling on workers and students to come to the picket lines and build support for the walkout. However, we’re also raising the need with these angry strikers for the long-term struggle for communism and workers’ rule. We intend to continue joining the picket lines and to spread the defiant attitude of these strikers to other workers being attacked by the same bosses’ crisis.

Study and Practice Forge A School for Communism

SEATTLE, WA, July 10 –– Throughout the 2008 Summer Project here, we had intense struggles in study groups about the Party’s ideas on “race,” the military and industrial work, and dialectics. This was my first summer project. I was very excited about immersing myself in such schools for communism and in selling CHALLENGE. Some comrades were veterans and lifelong fighters against racism and imperialism, while some were very new to the Party and for the first time met with Party members outside their local collective. We came from across the U.S., united in our fight for a PLP-led working-class struggle against imperialism and capitalism.

Military Work Study Group

Led by a comrade who is an Iraq war veteran and current reservist, we engaged in role-playing exercises of possible scenarios we would encounter while leafleting on the Ft. Lewis base. Everyone had some anxiety about this. We discussed topics to be highlighted in discussions with soldiers: their role in ending the war; the history of soldier resistance in Seattle during the Vietnam Era; and their own anger at U.S. imperialism’s drive for profits at the cost of international working-class lives. The veteran said we should be careful in raising perceived accusations of soldiers being murderers and active supporters of imperialism by their participation in the war. We distinguished between being “anti-war” and being for class war against the bosses. (See article below on selling CHALLENGE to GI’s.)

The study group successfully emphasized the importance of continuing and expanding involvement with our working-class brothers and sisters in the military. Rebelling against the brass and uniting with the international working class is a big step towards communist revolution.

Industrial Work Study Group

Industrial work was the other focus of the Summer Project. We leafleted the Boeing plant several times and visited some current workers and retirees who had a good relationship with Party members working in the plant. (See page 3) We stressed how invaluable it was to win industrial workers — who make the bosses’ weapons of war — to building PLP and fighting for a communist revolution. Many workers are painfully aware of the exploitation they face on a daily basis under capitalism. Many know that the union hacks are in bed with the bosses, have sold them out and will again to save their own skin. They’re aware of the bosses’ insatiable pursuit of profit and that they’re only cogs in the machine, disposable and replaceable at the whim of the capitalists.

We must increase PLP’s presence in factories. As a veteran Boeing worker lamented, much of the solidarity the working class had in the 1930s and ’40s — like swift, militant reaction to scabbing, and allegiance to each other — is sorely missing from the ranks of younger workers who have a more individualistic attitude. We need to lead these workers in class struggle, consistently distribute CHALLENGE and form study groups in winning these workers to join the Party. –– A Project Participant

(Next issue: Study groups on Racism, Immigration and Class, and Dialectics.)

Soldiers Welcome PLP’s Politics

As a PLP Seattle Summer Project volunteer approached a soldier in uniform, the soldier quickly asked, “Are you anti-war?” “No I’m not anti war,” responded the volunteer, “I’m pro-war, I’m for class war, and I’m not a pacifist. I’m for a war to overthrow capitalism”. These remarks threw the soldier off guard and he asked, “What do you mean by “class”? This started an extended conversation and at the end the soldier took all the literature the volunteer handed to him. Finally the soldier asked, “What do you want me to do?” “We want you to read and discuss these ideas with your buddies”.

This and many other positive conversations occurred when 15 or so PLP volunteers descended on the military town near Fort Lewis where hundreds of soldiers from the base go for lunch. As they approached soldiers, the volunteers were armed with G.I Notes, the military newsletter of the PLP, “Soldiers Unite Against Imperialist War,” a leaflet written by an Iraqi veteran participating in the Summer Project, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, and “Red-Led GIs Blast Racist Brass,” a pamphlet documenting soldiers rebelling during the Vietnam era. Over 100 G.I.s received one of these pieces of literature and at times all four items.

Although most soldiers welcomed us, some were clearly threatened by our ideas and wondered how receptive soldiers could be to PLP literature. At the local Taco Bell, the GIs streaming in for lunch were accepting our literature. All of a sudden the restaurant’s manager came out to the parking lot after a sergeant complained about the literature distribution. Volunteers continued with the distribution and again the manager came out to ask them to leave. At this point, the same sergeant came out and yelled, “Hey, stop doing that” to the volunteers. One of the volunteers yelled back “Hey, is this freedom of speech”? The sergeant had no response, quickly got in his truck, slammed his door and left. “Listen I know that guy over there does not want you to read this but here is G.I. Notes, written by soldiers for soldiers.” “Don’t worry about it, give it here,” said a young G.I. walking across the parking lot who heard the yelling.

Volunteers also went door to door in the housing around the base. “I’m not in the military but my husband is,” said a young woman as she came to the door. She called for her husband to join her. A long time was spent with this couple who listened to us describe the nature of imperialist war. Even though the soldier did not say much he was listening intently and in the end he took all of the literature. A different conversation led another volunteer into saying to a different soldier “in some cases it will become necessary to frag some officers, every single soldier knows of a sergeant they want to frag.” The soldier nodded in agreement. Another soldier told us, “I am going to photocopy this stuff.”

It was an inspiring day for the volunteers who engaged in important conversations with so many soldiers about revolutionary ideas. Continuing these visits is a significant part of the plan for this Summer Project since we recognize that soldiers are indispensible for the revolution.

Test Boycott Teaches Real Lesson

(In part 1, a PL teacher learned that a new standardized test was being tried out in his school which would allow administration to further oppress students and track them and their teachers. After discussions with CHALLENGE-reading staff and students, young members and friends of the Party planned to boycott the test.)

NEW YORK, NY –– On the day of the test the students said that they were not going to take it, even though their PL teacher was forced to administer it to keep his job. The students understood this contradiction and although they respected their teacher they also recognized the test was against their interests.  

The speech they were expected to take notes on and write about in the test was an apology for the rise in oil prices and blamed the working class and winter for the rise in heating oil prices. Many students disrupted the speech, wrote notes about oil and imperialism on their answer sheets and exclaimed that this test was trying to justify the price of oil and shift blame away from the oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

A student then said, “I’ve had enough. Let’s go!”  After a moment of silence half the class rose up and followed her. When told to return to their desks, the students raised their fists, shouting “Hell no!  We won’t go!”  The security guard shrugged his shoulders and walked off. The PL teacher returned to his room. 

During the PL teacher’s prep period, several student comrades discussed politics and the test. They decided to disrupt the test. One had a class with five other CHALLENGE readers. She was charged with the more militant act of defiance. The other was in a less supportive situation. She chose to use a silent resistance against the test by refusing to take it. This showed PL’s ability to adapt tactics based upon available forces, and maintain struggle and advance under fire.

One of the members described how her 5th-grade cousin had led a walk-out against the test in her elementary school. Her cousin was sent home from school and her mother had told her that she was proud of her for standing up for what she believed in. The brave act of a 5th-grader inspired her cousin to provide militant communist leadership against the test.

Two other teachers resisted the test. One has met with PLP, reads and distributes CHALLENGE and is a close friend of the PL teacher. The other acted out of conscience after a conversation with the PL teacher about the necessity for resistance. He told all of his students that they could take the test as homework, invalidating the test.

The student PL’er loudly declared that the test would be used for a future draft because students who fail out of school have less options and many join the military (more to come in part 3), and that resistance was necessary. When the teacher tried to silence her in front of the supervisor, another five students stood up and declared that they would not take the test.  That teacher became quite angry and took the political attack personally. 

It turned out that a fourth English teacher, acting independently, told his students the test was garbage. His classes also refused to take the test. All in all, over half a dozen classes in two grades refused to take the test, over half of which occurred through direct PL leadership.

The testing coordinator told the PL teacher not to worry because the test was a joke and supported the struggle as well!

Acts such as this illustrate that every little thing we do counts as patient, slow work can pave the way to direct resistance.  These acts alone will not stop capitalism, let alone the “test craze,” but they do help teach students how to fight, deepen the commitment of PL members and help spread CHALLENGE. This struggle won 10 new CHALLENGE readers. The future for revolution looks bright –– bright red!

Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca Workers’ Mass March

OAXACA, MEXICO — Thousands marched in Oaxaca City on June 14 during the second anniversary of the failed attempt by fascist governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, local authorities and the cops to bust the 2006 teachers’ strike. The strike led to the mass occupation of Oaxaca for several weeks by teachers and other workers and students. The march today included teachers from Section 22 of the SNTE (National Teachers’ Union), farmworkers, members of neighborhood associations, students and activists in APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca).

This march came at the end of over 27 days of intense activities to pressure Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, the government agent who runs the national leadership of the SNTE, to meet many section 22 demands. Because of these actions to pressure the government, the movement advocated recalling the leadership of Section 22 and to get compensation through a trust of 5 million pesos (US$ 500,000) for the immediate family members of the 14 activists of APPO who were assassinated in the social-political conflict, among them U.S. Indy media cameraman Bradley Roland Will. The government rejected demands to free four APPO members and return control of the schools to the original strikers.

During the march, members of PLP passed out 4,000 leaflets denouncing the reforms to the Social Security Law (ISSSTE) which reduce social security and weaken the right to a pension upon retirement, sickness and other services. We attacked the great robbery where the banks and other financial institutions will consume the workers’ savings, the food crisis which will affect the farm workers and the whole population of the poor and also the privatization of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company, the electricity company) etc. which will generate greater poverty for the working class and enormous wealth for the capitalist class.

We also put up posters on the walls which applauded the victory of the teachers against the bosses’ fascist police on June 14, 2006 and called for the fight for communism (see poster attached). Our leaflets were well-received, encouraging us to continue our work to expand the fight for communism and invite activists of these movements to join the Progressive Labor Party to achieve this vital goal.

From the Streets to the Houses — The Ideological Struggle

That night we saw and discussed the PLP movie “Road to Revolution.” The discussions afterward on how maintaining the wage system, along with other concessions to capitalist ideas, caused the historical failure of socialism encouraged many to decide to work closer with our organization which fights directly for communism. We will continue our work inside APPO to build the Party and the international revolutionary communist movement.

But we also understand that APPO is a reformist movement with opportunist, fake leftist leaders from groups and organizations like the Communist Party of Mexico, Marxist Leninist and its branch, the Popular Revolutionary Front. Their main leader, Zenén Bravo, joined the leadership of APPO in the movement of 2006, and negotiated to become a delegate with the bourgeois party Convergence and with the assassin Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Now cynically, and without caring that the people have rejected him, he has dubbed himself “representative deputy of APPO in the Congress, defender of the people and firm fighter for socialism.”

We concluded that our newspaper CHALLENGE plays an important role helping workers understand that while the struggles over the reform demands of Section 22 help unite workers and advance our struggle, only the fight for communism holds the promise of freeing our class from capitalist economic and political dictatorship. CHALLENGE must be our indispensable and permanent tool.

Pentagon Behind Colombian ‘Rescue’ Circus

BOGOTA, July 13 — The Colombian army’s “rescue” of Ingrid Betancourt, the former Presidential candidate, along with three U.S. mercenaries working as contractors for the Pentagon, and several Colombian soldiers held prisoner by the FARC was praised by the bosses’ media as “perfect.” (The FARC is the largest and oldest guerrilla group here and in Latin America.)

But more and more reports have revealed what really happened, including a $20 million payoff to free the hostages. A FARC communiqué accused the two guerrilla leaders guarding the hostages of selling out to the government to free their prisoners (El Tiempo, Bogotá, 7/11). The whole episode looks increasingly like a Jessica Lynch-type media-Hollywood invention. (Lynch’s “heroic rescue” from her Iraqi captors turned out to be a complete Pentagon fabrication.)

While initial reports said it was a strictly Colombian operation, the NY Times (7/13) revealed that, “The U.S. played [an] elaborate role...including the deployment of more than 900 American military personnel...earlier this year...to locate the hostages.” This also included “Hundreds of American support personnel...on the ground in Colombia,...a frenzied intelligence-gathering operation located in the U.S. Embassy here....intercepts of the rebel group’s radio systems, human intelligence, satellite imaging” and piloted surveillance aircraft. U.S. “military and intelligence personnel [were] alongside Colombian officials planning the operation” — all part of the $600 million per year “aid” U.S. rulers give to Colombia.

Mrs. Betancourt, the three Pentagon mercenaries and the Colombian soldiers looked pretty healthy and in good shape after these many years of captivity in the jungle. Some time ago, the media said Mrs. Betancourt was on the verge of death because of mistreatment. Mrs. Betancourt herself, supposedly a “humanitarian” liberal, went on to embrace the two death-squad heads here: President Uribe and General Montayano (army chief), and racist anti-working class Presidents Sarkozy and Bush in France.

Compare this treatment Betancourt and the others got to the thousands of workers and youth brutally killed by the Colombian army and its paramilitary death-squad thugs. Or to the thousands held captive and tortured by the CIA and the Pentagon in Gitmo and other “secret jails” worldwide.

While the evil Empire (the U.S. bosses and their allies) is striking back in South America, the so-called “Bolivarian socialist” movement led by Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales is compromising more and more with the forces led by U.S. imperialism. Chávez has even attacked the movement in Venezuela for protesting today’s visit here of Colombia President Uribe.

Chávez has called on the FARC to give up its weapons because its guerrilla war gives U.S. imperialism “an excuse” to act in a pro-war manner. Even Fidel Castro has criticized the FARC, telling it to free all the war prisoners it holds. FARC is being pressured to join the “political” struggle, meaning become an electoral party. But when it tried that a decade or so ago, forming the Patriotic Union and participating in the electoral process, the Army and the death squads murdered thousands of its supporters.

Chávez has toned down his rhetoric, even asking Venezuelan capitalists opposed to his “Bolivarian socialism” to join with his government to increase production. Chávez wants to look “moderate” to gain a better deal from an Obama-led White House. After all, Chávez, despite all his anti-imperialist rhetoric, has not stopped selling oil to the U.S. while seeking deals with other imperialists like China, India and Russia.

Republican candidate McCain was actually in Colombia during the “rescue” operation, probably tipped off beforehand, and tried to use it to score political points.

While Chávez and Fidel opportunistically criticize the FARC, FARC’s politics are not that great either. Long ago FARC gave up any claim to Marxism. Its aim is to make a deal with a section of the Colombian bourgeoisie.