Stella D’Oro Strikers, Auto Workers, GI’s Inspire NYC May Day
NEW YORK CITY, May 1 — May Day 2009 was a great day for the working class in NYC. Workers involved in class struggle against the bosses, was a highlight of the spirited rally and march in Brooklyn and at three dinners throughout the city, which were attended by over 800 people. Stella D’Oro strikers, Axel workers from Detroit’s auto industry who struck against the bosses and their union lieutenants last year, an airport worker fighting to regain his job all were applauded as they spoke at the dinners.
Several decided to join the Party, after having seen the multi-racial unity in the May Day activities and how PL’ers actively supported them on the picket lines and in the spread of communist ideas, especially through the distribution of CHALLENGE. Fifteen hundred dollars was raised for the striking Stella D’Oro workers.
Particularly outstanding this May Day was the participation and leadership of the youth who organized the march and the dinners, which bodes well for the growth of Progressive Labor Party. All told over 3,000 CHALLENGES were distributed.
Participants came from Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Boston, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore to join the march and dinners in New York. The rain failed to dampen the spirits of the marchers in Brooklyn and then the sun broke through as we strode through the working-class Flatbush neighborhood where over 30 onlookers who took CHALLENGE joined the march.
Comrades and friends led chants all along the route, calling for multi-racial worker unity and communist revolution to destroy capitalism, a system built on racism, sexism, police brutality and exploitation.
At all three dinners speakers clearly explained the state of the bosses’ crisis-ridden world and how workers, students and soldiers were beginning to step up to the plate to fight the misery it has produced, citing communism as the only answer. Other speakers described the history of May Day, born in the 1886 general strike for the 8-hour day in Chicago.
Stella d’Oro strikers spoke about their long and heroic struggle against their bosses — not one striker has crossed the solid picket line in nine months. They recalled their introduction to communism and the PLP, about how the Party was the first to support their struggle and how we’re still with them 100%. Another striker narrated the history of the strike and thanked the Party for its support and for “putting us on the map.” One comrade said when he joined the picket line, workers took him to their trailer headquarters and showed him CHALLENGE.
The dinners heard from transit and other industrial workers, from teachers and students. A young black soldier and Iraq War veteran, now a transit worker, kicked off one dinner describing battles at the plant gate and PLP’s effect on the struggle, linking it to the need to build the Party. Messages were read from comrades in jail who vowed to come out stronger in fighting the system that put them there.
A Detroit auto worker painted a picture of the real-life effects of what the ruling class was doing to workers. “Have you seen my city?” she asked. “It’s like Katrina without the water!” While describing the devastation in auto-worker cities, it was no sob story. She said she was inspired by last year’s May Day and demonstrated her revolutionary optimism by joining the Party this May Day. She was among many who raised their hands when the question was asked, “Who is ready to join PLP?”
At another dinner an airport worker spoke about the PL’ers who were supporting him in his efforts to fight a frame-up that cost him his job. Students involved in battles against the budget cuts were there. The dinner heard about the recent Boeing strike in which the Party played a leadership role. “We must fight back” was a great song performed by a group of teachers and students.
As always the food was excellent amid some super entertainment. Skits and songs prevailed throughout. At one dinner “What’s Going On” was sung to introduce the state-of-the-world speeches. History came through with the Depression song “Brother can you spare dime” and “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night.” Youth jump-started that dinner with an excellent rap and Langston Hughes’ “Good Morning Revolution.”
The walls at the dinner sites were decorated with vintage front pages from past CHALLENGES. The Brooklyn crowd applauded a skit written and performed by high school students who had picketed scab-produced Stella D’Oro cookies being sold at a supermarket. It dramatized a real event in which one student had smashed boxes of them inside the store while on a shopping trip. The traditional working-class lesson that scabs must be fought was cheered as it rang out loud and clear.
At another dinner a skit by a high school debate team demonstrated how the battle between communist and capitalist ideas was not merely an intellectual discussion. A call was made for comrades and friends to participate in the Party’s Summer Projects this year in Seattle and Los Angeles.
All the dinners closed with the singing of the international working-class anthem, The Internationale. Workers, students and soldiers, inspired by the day’s events, vowed to return to their factories, transit barns, barracks, schools and campuses more determined than ever to fight this murderous system with the only solution: the battle for communist revolution. J
Mobilization for War Behind Rulers’ Flu Panic
Anti-Mexican racism and windfall profits for some drug companies are mere side benefits that U.S. capitalists are reaping from the swine flu mania. Its main value to the rulers lies in preparing for a future Pentagon-led mobilization of the nation.
The current, exaggerated outbreak falls short of triggering the dire measures outlined in a Defense Department’s 2006 memorandum, a plan to deal with a health catastrophe, entitled, “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza.” But the dramatic official response — closing schools, stockpiling vaccines, endless public announcements — suggests a dress rehearsal. And it has the effect of diverting workers from the really massive problems caused by the capitalist depression.
Pentagon Penned Flu
Scenario In 2006...
Scenario In 2006...
In a health epidemic, the 2006 Pentagon study says the military’s first task is forcibly securing the profit system’s physical plant, “sustaining infrastructure and mitigating impact to the economy.” In addition, the Department of Defense (DoD) would take over airport passenger screening from the inept Homeland Security.
To guarantee profits for the biggest U.S. bosses, the U.S. Army — not Immigration and Customs — would also enforce “a comprehensive border and transportation strategy that strikes a balance between efficacy of interventions to limit the spread of disease and the economic and societal consequences.” Obama & Co. would have a perfect excuse for establishing martial law in humanitarian guise. “DoD will augment civilian law enforcement efforts to restore and maintain order,” with local police taking “instruction” from Army officers.
...Bosses Today Recite Script
The present “crisis” suspiciously resembles the top brass’s 2006 scenario. The report reads, “An efficient human-to-human outbreak will most likely occur outside of the United States....It will enter the U.S. at multiple locations and spread quickly to other parts of the country.”
The military’s 2006 proposals are playing out uncannily now. “Voluntary, community-based measures, such as limiting public gatherings, closing schools, and minimum manning procedures, are most effective to limit exposure to the disease if implemented before or at the onset of the event.” “Afflicted” schools from Texas to Long Island have shut down. New York’s Catholic archbishop Dolan said he would call off Sunday Mass if the authorities saw fit. Boston’s Northeastern University banned graduation handshakes.
The war needs of a challenged U.S. ruling class transformed an ordinary illness into an “emergency.” The U.S. war machine itself provided the hype. According to the Scripps Howard News Service (5/3/09), “On April 16 — five days before the public first learned about the flu surfacing in Mexico [our emphasis — Ed.] — scientists at San Diego’s Naval Health Research Center spotted an unusual sample from a 10-year-old son of a service member, who was part of an ongoing influenza surveillance study. The Navy sent the sample across the country to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which identified it as the current swine-flu strain.” Politicians then began a good-cop-bad-cop routine to alternately sow panic and urge reliance on government. Biden warned us to stay off planes and trains. Obama said, “Trust me.”
The Massachusetts Senate passed a pandemic flu preparation bill 36-0 that would allow the public health commissioner to close or evacuate buildings, enter private property for investigation and quarantine individuals, and would fine people $1,000 for violating public health orders. (AP dispatch, 4/28)
But “the current outbreak...may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare. As we go to press, there were 22 deaths (19 in Mexico) of 1,001 confirmed cases worldwide. Yet the flu kills 36,000 in the U.S. every year, of 60 million who come down with it, and over a million globally (about 7,500 annually in Mexico). (LA Times, 4/30)
In the face of this, U.S. bosses are pushing the most vile racism against Mexican-Americans, blaming Mexico for an illness that, if anything, is spawned by U.S. corporations (see box) and fades in comparison to the “normal” flu statistics cited above. They use this racism to divide and weaken the working class, internationally. They use a pandemic scare to distract workers here and worldwide from fighting the massive attacks on our class: millions laid off, thrown out of their homes by bankers’ swindles reaping billons in profits and bonuses; unaffordable health care; and millions of children gong to bed hungry every night. That’s the real pandemic — capitalism.
Bosses Push Pro-War Obama
As ‘People’s Savior’
Bush, while launching two foreign wars after 9/11, failed to put the U.S. on a war footing at home. Capital, unregulated, poured into flimflam investments instead of into strategic industry and infrastructure. Much of the public considered Bush’s Iraq invasion deceitful and immoral.
Today, with China rising and Russia ever more belligerent, U.S. rulers hope Obama, far more popular than Bush, can refocus both bosses and workers on preparing for global conflict. A major “disease control” effort along the lines of the 2006 report would enable Obama to exert even more economic clout than he already has and help reverse the public image of government, especially the military, from nuisance and enemy to savior and defender.
The Pentagon paper shows that the rulers’ public health “concerns” are masks for building fascism and militarism. Obama and his masters think that, if masses of workers roll up their sleeves for a federally-administered flu shot they might also someday don a uniform.
The masses of workers who marched with our revolutionary, communist party on May Day displayed the kind of mobilization that aspires to lead the working class away from capitalist depression and imperialist war, the bosses’ twin evils which constitute the longest-running pandemic in human history. It slaughters hundreds of millions through world wars, extreme poverty, wage slavery for billions making less than a dollar or two a day, profit-created famines, preventable diseases, and deaths due to mass racist unemployment.
Only communist revolution can end this butchery of the international working class. That’s the goal of the Progressive Labor Party. Join us! J
U.S. Company is Real Swine Spreading Disease
While assuming the source of this latest flu virus are pigs (still not proven), consider this: La Gloria, Vera Cruz, a community of 3,000 in Mexico, is the suspected location of the development of this new strain of swine flu. The U.S.-based company Smithfield — the world’s biggest pig producer — moved here after environmental violations forced it out of the U.S.
Smithfield owns 50% of the outfit that raises and slaughters almost a million hogs a year. From this operation it has turned the surrounding area into “manure lagoons,” the dumping ground for the feces, urine and waste excreted by these hogs. These lagoons are the incubators and breeding grounds of toxic pathogens and of the clouds of flies that transmit them to the human population.
In the U.S., the Rockefeller Foundation funded a project in the 1950s which radically transformed pig farming into a massive concentration of hyper-crowded pens — from 53 million pigs raised on over a million farms to today’s 63 million on just 65,000 farms. It is profit-driven capitalism that is the source of any diseases spawned by this kind of agri-business, a fact which Obama and his ruling-class-owned media keep well-hidden.
MEXICO: ‘PILOT PROJECT’ FOR POPULATION CONTROL
The bosses in Mexico and the U.S. are using the current flu scare as a “pilot project” in Mexico for massive population control that will be needed in mobilizing both countries for war. Keeping 32 million school children at home, closing tens of thousands of restaurants in Mexico City (largest population concentration in North America), soccer games played in empty stadiums, and, incidentally, prohibition of the May Day march in Mexico City, usually the world’s largest — all parts of keeping masses of workers in check, in the guise of an “epidemic” that is nowhere near the figures for the “normal” flu outbreaks every year.
Whatever deaths do result from the current virus can be traced to the crushing poverty affecting 47 million workers in Mexico, denied medical care by the government’s draconian cuts in social services, made more dire by the deepening economic meltdown (the worst in Latin America). Then, of course, the bosses turn around to try to win workers to rely on “their” government rather than organizing against the massive attacks of the bosses’ crisis.
Support is Spreading for
Stella D’Oro Strikers
Stella D’Oro Strikers
Bronx PL’ers Win Teachers to Join Struggle
BRONX, NY, May 3 — Twenty-five teachers and paraprofessionals at a Bronx elementary school recently attended a school union meeting of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) with five Stella D’Oro strikers as special guest speakers.
Producing this meeting was a big struggle. Although many staff members were enthusiastic about it, the school’s UFT Chapter Chairperson, right-wing staff members and the Bronx UFT District Representative were against it. The PLP Delegate at the school challenged their refusal to invite the strikers and built support to counter the opposition.
After negotiations with the UFT District Representative, permission from the school principal and the city’s Department of Education’s lawyer, plus increasing interest from staff members, the meeting was eventually approved. Still several reactionary teachers attempted to organize a boycott.
A few teachers helped the PL delegate draft a leaflet explaining the meeting’s importance, which was placed in every teacher’s mailbox. One teacher on each of the three floors organized other co-workers on their floors. Despite the controversy and a mild climate of fear and intimidation, 25% of the staff attended one of the most educational experiences of their lives.
First, the strikers explained why they struck the Brynwood Corporation and the hardships visited on the workers. Two of the five strikers described the importance of sticking together, preventing the bosses from dividing them. One striker elaborated on Brynwood’s attempt to split the so-called “skilled” workers from the “unskilled.” He explained that the bosses use such classifications to super-exploit one group of workers over another with lesser wages, benefits and working conditions.
“We are all skilled workers,” this worker explained, “and that was one of the big reasons we decided to strike.” One teacher added, “The Brynwood bosses’ attempt to divide the workers in this way is similar to the [Dept. of Education’s] attempt to divide new teachers [from] experienced teachers during contract negotiations.”
Building solidarity with these heroic strikers was only one purpose of this meeting. Meeting the strikers first-hand induced many teachers to ponder their own vulnerability during this current capitalist crisis. One teacher (a CHALLENGE reader) remembered the proposed lay-off of recently-hired teachers, saying, “Looking at this period of massive cutbacks and hearing the strikers talk about their struggle made me think that it can be any one of us out there on the picket line. Supporting these workers,” she added, “is no different than fighting for ourselves.”
Another teacher and CHALLENGE reader declared, “The situation these workers find themselves in is because of one reason — capitalism.” Although none of the teachers agreed to join the picket line, eight signed up to leaflet local supermarkets currently selling Stella D’Oro products produced by scabs.
Since then, three teachers and three strikers leafleted a neighborhood supermarket. Residents shopping at the store responded extremely positively. “As a fellow worker in a union, it’s great to see teachers... supporting factory workers,” remarked one customer. When asked, a number of them offered to distribute the boycott leaflet on their jobs and to friends and family members.
This active unity between teachers and the strikers was important for the latter and for workers city-wide. It sets an example for other local UFT chapters to invite the Stella D’Oro strikers to their schools. With constant struggle, this can produce real action.
Five of these teachers have become CHALLENGE readers and one attended May Day with her family. Since then, the teachers doing the leafleting have been encouraged to organize more boycotts at local supermarkets selling scab cookies. Our next step is organizing a day of support for the strikers, having staff members and parents visit the picket line with coffee, donuts and vocal support.
Finally, three teachers are interested in becoming more active in the union and possibly joining a CHALLENGE readers group. Consistent struggle with the staff over various union-related issues; the distribution of CHALLENGE; and joining the class struggle of the Stella D’Oro strikers, has galvanized a change among some of the teachers. The struggle continues!J
Westchester Teachers Back
Strikers, Defy Cops
Strikers, Defy Cops
BRONX, NY, April 27 — “Scabs in Blue, What’s Wrong with You?” “Police State? Fight Back!” These chants blew into the faces of strikebreaking cops closing in to try to confiscate our bullhorn, as the stubborn little international group of bakers on strike here for nine months were joined by a busload of Westchester teachers from NYSUT (New York State United Teachers), representing 600,000 teachers. The teachers, lifelong unionists, some presidents of their town locals, were not deterred by the cops’ aggression and the militant chants but joined right in. For the moment the cops were foiled, in a glimpse of workers’ power. More important, strikers read the new CHALLENGE as we invited them to May Day.
From the beginning of the rally, the police changed the city’s own regulations on sound systems, and told the rally leaders they couldn’t use the bullhorn for chants or speeches. Strike leaders and union representatives attempted to appeal the cops’ order to turn off the bullhorn.
When the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) President was to begin introducing speakers, she started using the bullhorn, and charged the cops with violating the rights of the strikers and those that support them. The cops began to move into the rally, but strikers and other demonstrators linked arms, attempting to stop the cops. The NYSUT teachers stood their ground as they witnessed the true nature of the police.
Eventually, the PSC President turned off the bullhorn and the cops backed off. Then the protesters began chanting, “Let us Speak” and “Scabs in blue!” Others began heckling the cops, charging them with protecting the bosses and attacking the workers. “Go arrest the scabs!”; “Go arrest Brynwood! They’re the criminals!” some workers yelled at the cops. They attempted to give the PSC President a violation but it was later dropped.
City University union activists (including PLP’ers) had brought the NYSUT teachers into this struggle by getting the NYSUT convention to pass a strike-support resolution. NYSUT was here today to present the strikers with a $2,500 check, and the strikers and supporters, three hundred strong, responded with the chant “Strikers and Teachers Will Never Be Defeated!” Links between us and these teachers will be sustained. A strike leader led the chant of “Thank You! Thank You!” as the teachers, almost all women, filed back into their bus, their faces glowing with the energy of picketing, some holding copies of CHALLENGE to reflect on.
Like the City College students who joined the line last week, this busload of teachers slowly builds the momentum of strike support, and with it the tension with the cops who protect the company and its scabs. May 12 is the day an NLRB court is set to render a decision that could require the bosses to go back to the bargaining table. Can we expand the support and up the militancy of the strike, against the company, the courts, the cops? This May Day, around the world, many battles like this must be raging. All point to the need of PLP organizers embedded for life in the working class, to drive on these endless class struggles holding the red flag of communist revolution. The strikers’ children on the line today — playing, dancing, holding our hands in their’s — must learn to fly that flag.J
Immigrant Workers Join the Picket Line
BRONX, NY, April 28 — It was a hot evening on the picket line; we’d been eating ices brought down by a nurse at nearby Montefiore Hospital, whose picket some strikers had joined the week before. This Friday, May Day, there’s an immigrant march in Manhattan, and three strikers were painting a banner spread out on a table: “Workers, Immigrants, Women...Unite...Support the Stella D’Oro Strikers.”
Then down the iron rungs of the elevated train staircase came a flood of blue shirts: they formed a group at the bottom of the stairs, unfurled their banner, raised their fists, and started chanting as they marched up the street to the evening shift of pickets: “¡Del norte al sur, del este al oeste, Luchamos hasta el final, Cueste lo que cueste!” [“From north to south, From east to west, We’ll fight to the end, Whatever the cost!”]
It was Hace el Camino al Andar, Make the Road by Walking, a community-based immigrant organization come from Brooklyn for a moment of solidarity with these workers, 97% of whom are from twenty different countries. We mingled, we had cool drinks, we spoke in a mix of Spanish and English, they studied our banner, we hung their’s on the fence, and we chanted for half an hour or more — communists and non-communists together — sang and chanted non-stop into the Bronx night. J
MAY DAY 2009 AROUND THE WORLD
Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES, May 1st — “Capitalism always fails! Communism will prevail!” was chanted by our red May Day contingent in the immigrant rights march. Our PLP contingent with red flags, shirts and communist banners was led energetically by communist youth, who chanted and spoke without stopping for three and a half hours before and during the march.
Youth took leading our contingent seriously. Throughout the year they were involved in organizing and presenting forums in which communist politics were used to explain the budget crisis, the recession, the election, and the attacks on the working class. They also led several protests against the cuts.
Workers donated money for CHALLENGE, red PLP shirts and flags. The multi-racial group of youth drumming, chanting communist chants, and giving communist speeches was very appealing to other marchers. Some joined us. We distributed thousands of PLP leaflets and about 1,000 CHALLENGES.
Leaflets and speeches attacked the Dream Act, the crisis of overproduction, imperialist war and capitalism. This was important as the leadership of the march is trying to lead immigrant workers into the arms of the ruling class.
Three of the youth leaders had spoken at the May Day dinner about how they read CHALLENGE, distribute it to their friends, and discuss it with them. This has changed them and their friends.
At the end of the march, teachers union President Duffy had the nerve to speak, after he had sabotaged the motion to strike against layoffs on May Day. He said that the U.S. was the land of hope and promise; and we just have to keep demanding reform and our dreams will be fulfilled.
A PLP youth leader spoke on our loudspeaker to call Duffy a liar. He said the only purpose of the U.S. ruling class was to maintain their profit system through exploitation and wars. “We’re not here to beg the politicians for crumbs,” he said. “ We’re here to show that the working class has to take matters into our own hands and build a mass party to fight for communism.” Despite the union mis-leaders’ attempt to sabotage a May Day strike, teachers at one school stopped work for about an hour.
As the current crisis deepens, our choice is: their profits or our survival. Capitalism needs to bail out the banks, not meet workers’ needs. We fight to use our May Day events to show that communist revolution is the only way out of the crisis for workers.
Dinners the week before the march built PLP. More than 270 workers, students, teachers, soldiers and professionals participated. The speeches, poems, songs and a skit showed the need to destroy capitalism with communist revolution.
Two industrial workers (a man and a woman) said during their speeches, “We work in aerospace subcontractors, where the current economic crisis has brought more pressure, speed-up, and layoffs; but this has also brought more opportunities for our Party to grow, lead battles and build a base for communist revolution. CHALLENGE sales have doubled in our shops. Now we all need to double them again.”
A transit worker said, “It’s inconceivable that people are dying of hunger while stores are full of food; it’s incredible that thousands sleep in the streets while there are thousands of homes unoccupied. This crisis is not caused by lack of resources. It’s due to the anarchy of capitalist production. It’s intolerable, even immoral, to remain passive politically in the face of so much pain and suffering by our class.”
His speech ended with, “These crises, holocausts, catastrophes, worldwide massacres, will not be ended by reform movements or electoral parties. They’ll end with a COMMUNIST WALL of millions of workers, students, and soldiers, white, African-American, Latino, Asian, Arab, united in one single fist. Because the freedom of the working class can’t be begged for or negotiated, but won by the force of communist ideas and the power of the working class organized in the factories, schools, and the military. The future will be ours, comrades.”
Several people told how CHALLENGE had been key in bringing them to the Party and they now distribute it to friends. Regular CHALLENGE readers donated money to receive more papers for their friends, and others to receive it for the first time.
May Day was a culmination of a long hard struggle carried out throughout the year. As a result there are new groups of youth and workers around the party, some of whom joined PLP. Between now and the Summer Project we plan a series of meetings and activities to consolidate these youth and workers. Then they can help provide leadership in the upcoming Summer Projects. J
Bay Area
OAKLAND, CA, May 1 – Our PLP contingent joined the immigrant rights march on May 1st. Among our members and friends were young and old, students and workers, vets and civilians of many heritages and nationalities. For some younger people, this was their first May Day or political activity. What a start! They ignored the rain and cold to participate and were very enthusiastic.
In fact, the whole march was enthusiastic and loud. There was a walk out from Skyline High School earlier in the day. Oakland-based youth groups who provided the bulk of the march — over 85% were under twenty-five; mainly organized immigrant youth. The mainstream Church groups pulled out this year. Although the labor leadership officially endorsed the March, they did not mobilize their membership. This and the rain may have made the march smaller in numbers but, as in the Oscar Grant rebellions, the presence of younger people bodes well for the future. Estimates were about 500.
Our younger leadership had reviewed PLP’s participation in last year’s May Day and made improvements. They made sure that we had a well-coordinated and public presence in the march with our red flags, chants, and speeches. Everything was in English and Spanish. Some marchers distributed CHALLENGE and flyers.
Chants like: “Primero De Mayo, Comunista y Proletario – Long Live Communism, Power to the Workers” rang out from our contingent. We made some contacts who were attracted to our chants and communist orientation; follow up is in the works. The groups participating included a student “Revolution Club,” and a Filipino rights contingent. Of course, all the groups don’t agree on a common strategy, but a revolutionary spirit was in the air. A few “veteran” PLP comrades were given words of thanks “. . . for joining us today” by younger immigrant workers. They were quickly told that we weren’t joining them for the day. We’re all in it together from start to finish, until a united working class takes full power.
May Day Picnic a Step Forward
for Local Party
for Local Party
The Party’s May Day picnic held the Sunday before was a step ahead for the local groups, as younger members stepped up to give the main speeches and presentations of PLP’s
ideas to the dozens of co-workers and friends of all ages — students and teachers, junior high to retirees — who joined in the celebration of comradeship and internationalism. The range of nationalities was very broad, with at least nine countries, including Mexico, Germany, Japan, Kenya, and Cuba represented. More than a few sang the Internationale for the first time. As we broke up, a worker from Kenya, a friend of a friend, for whom this was the first encounter with PLP, told me, “I really liked this. These are my kind of people.”
ideas to the dozens of co-workers and friends of all ages — students and teachers, junior high to retirees — who joined in the celebration of comradeship and internationalism. The range of nationalities was very broad, with at least nine countries, including Mexico, Germany, Japan, Kenya, and Cuba represented. More than a few sang the Internationale for the first time. As we broke up, a worker from Kenya, a friend of a friend, for whom this was the first encounter with PLP, told me, “I really liked this. These are my kind of people.”
It’s going to be a long, hard road, but as a comrade told a potential new member, “Nothing can be more rewarding than this kind of work.”J
Seattle
SEATTLE, WA, May 1 — “I see capitalism and this crisis leading to mass racist unemployment, and World War may become the only way out for the bosses, but how do I know that communism is the answer?” asked a black university worker at the PLP May Day dinner prior to today’s immigrant rights march. “How do I know we’re not going from the devil to the deep blue sea?”
We made progress answering this question during the recent struggle within the union at Boeing, at our May Day dinner and at today’s march of 2,500.
Only PLP’s contingent raised communist revolution within the march, which was led by reformist immigrant rights organizations that support Obama’s DREAM Act, Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation designed to keep immigrant workers in poverty-wage jobs and recruit their youth for U.S. imperialist wars.
Revolutionary Communist
Contingent
Contingent
“Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!” and “Working people have no nations, smash racist deportations!” rang out from the PLP contingent marching through downtown Seattle. Nearby marchers joined our chants, including two Latino teenagers with their own bullhorns.
Our communist signs — blow-ups of the Party’s May Day poster and a PLP Magazine cover — drew attention. Many marchers snapped pictures. “I agree with everything on that sign. Can I join your group?” asked a friend from an anti-war group.
Marchers snatched up over 1,000 PLP flyers calling for “workers of the world to unite, smash borders and exploitation, and fight for communism by joining PLP.” Between the march, the dinner and sales on the shop floor over 400 CHALLENGES were distributed. One Boeing worker gave $5 for a paper, declaring, “You won’t find articles like these in the union newspaper.”
Our Summer Project plans encouraged many to bring these politics to industrial Boeing workers and soldiers July 5-12.
PLP May Day Dinner Prepares
The Ground
The Ground
At our May Day dinner, after a delicious meal, a young laid-off construction worker — now a machinist in-training — set the tone.
“Class consciousness is the knowledge that there are those who sell their labor to survive and those who exploit those who sell their labor. These two sides are locked in conflict.” But that’s not enough, he continued.
“We need communist ideas to lead us out of the boom-and-bust quagmire that is capitalism. Historically, only communist ideas have provided solutions for workers in capitalist crises.”
He reviewed the history before World Wars
I and II and the capitalist “solution,” whether fascism or today’s “Obama Mania.” Crisis then world war: eerily familiar to today.
I and II and the capitalist “solution,” whether fascism or today’s “Obama Mania.” Crisis then world war: eerily familiar to today.
We know what’s coming and know the only solution. Class-consciousness is not enough. Workers must have communist ideas and leadership.
A discussion followed about the realities and depth of the current crisis and the chances for reform solving it. PL’ers raised the need for communism; our guests voiced both reservations and support.
Our May Day activities began with political struggle during a good meal. Though unable to convince all of our dinner guests to march with our contingent, we did end the week with a dozen marchers at a local restaurant after the rally. A Latino hospital worker picked up the tab. Two community college students, whose relatives are long-time CHALLENGE readers, invited us to their student organization’s events.
May Day strengthens our resolve to fight for communism. As the economic crisis deepens, the working class needs this fight more than ever. We will continue to struggle to bring our friends from the dinner and march closer to the Party. J
El Salvador
EL SALVADOR, May 1 — Thousands of workers organized in the main unions here marched in the streets to demand better wages, job security and respect for their rights. Many comrades and friends came from all over the country. Factory and farm workers, students, teachers and youth organized the distribution of our communist literature: 5,000 leaflets and 500 CHALLENGES were put in the hands of workers who welcomed our communist ideas. Nevertheless, even under repressive fascist conditions, this accomplishment was based on the discipline and perseverance of the comrades involved.
On the other hand, FMLN speech-makers said, “Friends, this is a celebration. Let’s not spoil our march, and celebrate the victory of the FMLN.” Then a war veteran declared on the microphone, “Here the only thing that’s been ‘won’ is the government, but the capitalist bosses will stay in power and we workers will continue to be oppressed. Here there’s been no triumph of the revolution.”
Another person in this contingent followed this by saying, “Comrades, we’re facing a class struggle against the capitalists. Those who’ve won are the bosses and their servants. The international working class continues in struggle.” There was much applause for these condemnations of the politicians.
A worker from the Union of Workers of the University of El Salvador (SETUES) said, “They [the FLMN] will repress us just as the fake left has done in other countries. Now we’ll see the red bourgeoisie.” He said he knew people in the FMLN leadership.
The current crisis of overproduction has capitalism sinking daily, similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s which fiercely attacked the international working class. Then the Second World War was on the horizon. Today we’re threatened by a Third World War.
In the ‘30s, revolutionary forces led by Farabundo Marti correctly saw that bourgeois national liberation movements would not liberate any workers from the yoke of capitalism, that only an armed revolution of workers, students, soldiers and farm workers, led by a communist party, could achieve that.
The Progressive Labor Party also has full confidence in our class and, learning from the experiences of the international communist movement, understands that the liberation of the working class depends solely on communist revolution. Like Marti, we reject national liberation because it only perpetuates national capitalism and its imperialist allies of the moment.
We aim to rescue the true revolutionary spirit of May Day from the premature grave in which the bosses and all traitors of the working class have tried to bury it. We reaffirm our commitment to our class, to struggle shoulder to shoulder with our fellow workers — in the fields, the factories, the classrooms and barracks — to bring them revolutionary communist ideas and organization. J
Spain
SPAIN, May 1 — This May Day was a true workers’ celebration in which thousands and thousands of people from all over the world, mainly immigrants, demonstrated. This gave a great impetus to PLP’s activity in the march where we distributed leaflets explaining the significance of May Day. Workers, who represented some of the unions, asked to help us hand out the PLP leaflets.
Once more we went to the streets to spread the communist ideas of PLP, the only ideas that will lead the workers to join the struggle to get rid of capitalism. We showed once again that PLP’s ideas are the only ones that offer a clear way to uproot this rotten system, to build the only solution to the problems of the working class, a communist system.
The PLP in Spain, consisting of some members with the support of friends of the Party, has said to the working class that we need to fight to organize workers, students, and soldiers to convert the wars for control of oil profits into revolutionary wars for communism. PLP took to the streets to tell the working class that communism isn’t Fidel or Chavez, that communism means abolishing wages, money and profits, abolishing racism and sexism, that communism will destroy all the weapons that the capitalists use against the working class. The comrades were very happy because the march was massive and our ideas were welcomed by the people who marched. We feel reborn, with more strength to continue giving leadership to our party, the Progressive Labor Party. Long live Communism! Long live the working class! Long live the PLP! J
Mexico
MEXICO CITY, May 1 — Tens of thousands of workers, teachers, students and farmworkers defied Mexico’s rulers’ using the swine flu to ban May Day marches and took to the streets in Oaxaca, Puebla and other cities.
When the PLP group arrived at the place in this city where they were supposed to meet up with hundreds of thousands of workers to celebrate May Day (traditionally one of the world’s largest), the streets were deserted. Not so much because of swine flu (AH1N1) but because the union leaders, the electoral parties and other organizations joined the fascist plans of President Calderon and his gang.
To date, the schools, restaurants and government offices are closed, but not the factories, nor the barracks nor the police stations. This experiment in terror and control of society using the bosses’ “flu” excuse did not stop the masses.
In Oaxaca, more than 25,000 teachers, students, city and farm workers challenged the prohibition and marched, blaming the government and capitalism for all the evils the workers suffer. Hundreds of PLP leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed along the way.
In Puebla, two hours from Mexico City, more than 20,000 marched, especially teachers. A column of at least 2,000 teachers confronted the police in riot gear to rescue the building (Local 51) that the government had seized and was under police guard. The teachers shouted slogans against President Calderon, Governor Mario Marin and the fascist Ester Gordillo, leader of the national teachers’ union (SNTE). Elsewhere there were also marches and May Day celebrations.
The capitalist crisis is sharpening and the desperate bosses fight like wounded tigers. Our role as communists is more important than ever. As fascism spreads more darkness, the light of the communist alternative shines brighter. (More details next issue.) J
Colombia
BOGOTA, May 1 — The May Day march organized by unions and anti-government groups gathered some 60,000 workers and students. In its usual fascist way, the police attacked the marchers even using tanks to split the march. Young workers and students fought back and many were arrested by the cops of the “best friend”the U.S. has in South America, President Uribe.
A PLP contingent of 75 workers and youth also marched, distributing over 3,000 communist leaflets and several hundred copies of DESAFIO.J
letters
Detroit Mom’s Decision Inspires
Red Grandma
Red Grandma
Thank you to the NYC PLP for organizing a wonderful May Day March and banquet! The march was a shining example for the working class. It’s hard to assess what workers felt who were viewing the spirited and united multi-racial mix of men and women, older and younger, marching through Brooklyn, but I know they liked it! It was definitely easy to get out CHALLENGES.
Among the many inspiring moments at the dinner, one stands out for me as a mother and grandmother many times over. A woman from Detroit was describing the devastation there and comparing it to “New Orleans after Katrina, without the water.” Then she talked about herself, saying it was her participation in last year’s May Day that made her decide to keep her baby.
She didn’t explain, but I think it was that the message of May Day — the fight for a communist future — gave her HOPE for the working class, and for her own unborn child. My mind jumped to news that my husband had just received from his family in Tanzania that his teenage niece is pregnant. In Tanzania, when a girl becomes pregnant, her options close forever. It’s as though her life is over, a time of mourning.
How can it be that new life brings sorrow when it should bring indescribable anticipation and immeasurable joy? Our niece made a mistake, but should it end her life? She, too, was once somebody’s “bundle of joy”! It is the epidemic of poverty created by capitalism that causes these perverse and unnatural reactions. If we lived in a society where children were perceived as the greatest gift and were cared for collectively, then rarely would people need or want to consider ending a pregnancy.
Communism is a powerful message. It can nourish hope and deliver babies!
Red Grandma
May Day Greetings From
Friends in Peru
Friends in Peru
Revolutionary greetings to workers all over the world. Our commitment to fight for communism is as strong as steel. Marxist-Leninism is the scientific ideology of the proletariat, which unites all communists. This is what guides our practice as we fight to break the chains of wage slavery.
May Day born in Chicago in 1886 as a day of struggle against capitalism is today being turned into a “feast” by the imperialist bourgeoisie and lackeys trying to turn workers away from class struggle against the bosses, particularly today when the economic crisis sinks more and more workers into misery.
Communists in Peru are fighting hard to build a communist party that unites urban and rural workers, students, and peasants to fight for a proletarian revolution. This task requires every minute of our lives to bring our ideas to the masses and fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism.
Aora, the ruling party, the servant and lapdog of U.S. imperialism, just approved another law attacking workers, increasing fines for traffic violations supposedly to curb “drunk drivers and protect passengers.” But this is just an attack on transport workers.
We recognize the struggle being waged by PLP spreading communist ideas in the belly of the beast, CHALLENGE helps us share ideas and analysis based on Marxism-Leninism. We promise to soon send PLP our proposal to help in the unity of all communists in the fight against capitalism, which only brings us imperialist wars, sexism, racism and exploitation
Red October Communist Nuclei
Marcher Picks Up Red Flag
on May Day
We were marching in the pouring rain toward Oakland City Hall, miles away on the horizon. I’m struggling with my cap tangled up in my umbrella in one hand and a red PLP communist flag in the other. I’m asked, “Hey, can I give you a hand?” “O.K. You want to carry the flag?” I replied to the day laborer who had moved up with his friends to march with our contingent. “Sure.” He carried our flag for the rest of the march. He told us that he and his partners did all kinds of construction jobs. E-mail addresses and cell-phone numbers were exchanged between them and us. They were drawn to us by our chants in Spanish and English: “Las luchas obreras, No tienen fronteras!” “Can we win communism? Si, se puede.”
As we marched, drenched to the bone, we sang the Internationale and kept up the revolutionary chants. Onlookers on both sides of the street in the long corridor of worn-down shops and apartments raised their fists and cheered. Cars and AC bus drivers honked horns in support.
At the end, I looked over the hundreds who had marched under a banner of “Justice for Immigrants,” which was quickly transformed to a demand for an end to all borders in the signs and chants of the marchers — overwhelmingly young workers and high school and college students.
Bay Area Comrade
Pope is Angel of Death for
AIDS Epidemic
AIDS Epidemic
In his recent trip to Africa, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) opposed the use of condoms in fighting AIDS. This is a criminal, unscientific attack on the millions of people infected by the HIV virus, from Washington, D.C. — one of the most affected cities in the imperialist world — to Soweto.
The World Health Organization reports 22.5 million people in Sub-Sahara Africa infected by the HIV virus, 60% of the world’s total. A UN report said one person is infected by this virus every 13 seconds. Worldwide, 32.9 million — 30.8 million between 15- and 49- years old — suffer from AIDS. Half of those are females. Each year, two million die from AIDS, for a total of 25 million in the last couple of decades.
The Pope proposes sexual abstention as the best option. But this myth contradicts nature. At the International AIDS Conference last August, Dr. Nancy Padian and Dr. Myron Cohen of the Univ. of North Carolina concluded that male use of condoms is one thing proven to prevent AIDS.
So the Pope has become just another angel of death of world imperialism and local capitalists who have already ravaged Africa with wars for slave labor and raw materials (over five million have been killed in the Congo since the mid-1990s). Pope Joseph Ratzinger seems to want to continue with the Nazi-like extermination campaigns of his Nazi past by trying to win Africa’s growing Catholic population away from using condoms.
- Teo
The Great Train Robbery:
Bankers Profit, Workers Pay
Bankers Profit, Workers Pay
NEW YORK CITY, May 6 — The latest swindle of this city’s working class will jack up subway and bus fares while handing $2 billion of the 2009 Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) budget (nearly 20%) in “debt service” to the banker-bondholders. This has been going on for decades. This interest is the profit that these bankers steal off the backs of transit workers and riders, while Obama hands over hundreds of billions to these same banks and his administration doles out $12 billion a month to fund imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The department stores, shopping malls, real estate interests or any big boss in the city would make zero profits without a functioning mass transit system that transports their customers and workers.
Meanwhile, masses of workers, many subsisting on poverty wages, and those jobless because of the bosses’ crisis, now must fork over still more money to get to their jobs or try to find one. A huge proportion of these riders are black and Latino, so the bosses use widespread racism to help get away with this robbery on their backs. And Mayor Bloomberg, the $16-billion robber baron, says we must “share the sacrifice” to balance the bosses’ budget.
The transit union “leaders” never utter a peep about the tie-in of the banks, the MTA and the billions spent on the bosses’ wars, nor about the bankers’ $2 billion-a-year gravy train.
PLP fights for a system without profits, bankers and phony “deficits”: communism. Workers will put these leeches six feet under. J
France: Million May Day Marchers Need to Dump Labor Sellouts
PARIS, May 2 — Over one million protesters — five times more than last year — participated in over 280 May Day demonstrations across France. It was the first time the eight major trade union confederations marched together on May 1.
But this was a show of unity at the “lowest common denominator.’’ The confederations’ March 30 call only put forward “making May Day a new key moment in the mobilization,” and repeated the four previous demands of the March 19 demonstration: opposition to public- and private-sector job cuts; opposition to non-permanent jobs and economic deregulation; maintenance of purchasing power; and maintenance of social security.
The call lied to the workers, saying the January 29 and March 19 protests had forced the government to limit the bosses’ stock options and golden parachutes. This is contradicted daily in the media.
Whereas last year striking undocumented immigrant workers led the Paris May Day march, this year there was less visible support for these mostly black and Arab workers. With the Sarkozy government launching a media blitz on “security” — which amounts to building racist fears — multi-racial unity with first- and second-generation immigrant workers is more crucial than ever for the working class in France.
The unions’ strategy of organizing bigger and bigger demonstrations every six weeks has not brought meaningful change for the workers. The movement’s momentum has been broken. Another day of action may very well be smaller, and the union leaders have little idea of what to do now. They are counting on the approaching summer holidays to let them off the hook.
However, they have succeeded in restoring their image. They appear to be doing something, which attracts many workers who have been depoliticized. (Trade union membership is below 8% of the working population, and less than 5% of the private sector.) The world capitalist crisis is pushing many into a new activism. The union leaders hope to continue shadow-boxing with the government, striking ferocious poses in public while signing sweetheart deals in private.
While the union misleaders are short on future plans, the “left-wing” electoral parties are all proposing to “give a political outlet to the labor movement” in the June 6 European parliament elections. These politicians all hope the economic crisis will induce workers to forget past betrayals and get on the electoral treadmill for another round. In any case, the unelected Council of the European Union has greater legislative powers than the European parliament, meaning that the different national ruling classes always have the final word, no matter what the elected representatives decide.
Millions of workers, in France and worldwide, are seeking answers to mass unemployment, the destruction of social security guarantees and increasing government repression. But the real solution — communist revolution — will not fall from the sky. It’s up to communist revolutionaries to explain that reformism is a dead-end and advance the alternative to capitalism.J
Workers Fight Back As Foreclosures Breed
New Profiteers
New Profiteers
In the midst of staggering job loss and foreclosure rates, and while most people are too busy trying to figure out how to pay bills that are twice as high with half the money, the bosses’ media continues to avoid blaming capitalism. Instead, they create the anti-working class myths of “irresponsible home buyers.” When anger still rages, the bosses throw an individual capitalist like Madoff, under the bus.
Hours on radio talk shows and prominent headlines wax poetic about the evils of corporate greed, pointing to the few among the bosses who have been disciplined and rallying “good Americans” to dutifully assume the burden of “shared sacrifice.”
The bosses have played the part masterfully, finding a politician in Obama that could woo the most exploited among the working class. The current foreclosure crisis, while suffocating the working class, has fattened the pockets of many who can afford to bide their time hoping the economy evens out. A recent New York Times story, Homeowners’ Hard Times Are Good for the Foreclosure Business (April 5, 2009) celebrated the entrepreneurial spirit of real estate agents who are cashing in on workers’ misery by selling homes banks have grabbed through foreclosure. With 700,000 bank-owned properties on the market (compared with only 100,000 two years ago), some of the very same people who helped create the housing bubble are still able to expect a profit.
Many cities are purchasing these homes and refurbishing the area for sale to developers. Boston, Minneapolis, and San Diego have been using both private and taxpayer money to convert working-class communities into the “it” neighborhood of tomorrow. While the economy lags, developers have time to work at their leisure, anticipating huge rewards in the future.
Even in areas not ravaged by foreclosures, politicians and developers have found ways to try to force struggling working-class families from their homes to make way for the money. With Tax Increased Financing (TIF), which lets cities keep tax increases in areas being “redeveloped” and gives tax incentives, developers have moved into neighborhoods scourged by poverty that predates the crisis by generations. While this money could be used to improve the abysmal conditions of schools and clinics in the area, it is instead being used to build luxury homes and condos that for the time being remain unoccupied- betting on the promise of tomorrow’s profit rather than giving people basic necessities.
Developing class-consciousness in these neighborhoods and fighting back are the only hope we have of turning this crisis into a fight for revolution that will free us from the backward logic of capitalism. Earlier this year, in a beautiful gesture of solidarity, workers in New York, Oakland, and Houston organized resistance campaigns to help keep families in their homes. Supporters formed human chains in front of homes in efforts to keep sheriffs out and their working-class brothers and sisters in.
Across the country, people are refusing to leave their homes, and their neighbors are rallying around them (NYT 2/17). In neighborhoods facing gentrification and take-over by developers, residents have begun flyering campaigns and have hung banners. They have organized their own rallies and demonstrations to save their neighborhoods and are struggling to find ways to create their own economic opportunities. PLP members must reach out to these people who want to fight the effects of capitalism’s contradictions, and present them with a real solution- revolution for a communist society.
Until then, corporations, developers, and politicians will continue to devastate our communities with impunity.
It is precisely this drive for ever-greater gains — even in the face of capitalism’s failure — that has condemned the working class to the tremendous suffering we are experiencing today. The production for profit is the essence of capitalism. The brutal cycles of boom and bust inevitably lead to depressions and ultimately the capitalists resort to war to get out of them.
Our Party has a vital role to play in this chapter of worker history. We must make the most of every opportunity, every struggle to bring to light the misery that comes with capitalism and the promise of a better tomorrow only communism can offer. While the bosses flounder, we must be more disciplined and dedicated than ever. In this critical juncture in history, we must make the most of all of capitalism’s contradictions; the working class is ready to see them. While everyone else says “Wait, it will get better,” we must offer our hand and lead them to the only true solution, the battle for communism.J
Subcontractor Workers, Facing Cuts,
Speed-up, Welcome CHALLENGE
Speed-up, Welcome CHALLENGE
LOS ANGELES — “Oh, this is the newspaper they pass out in front of the factory. I make sure to get it every time and read it right away,” explained a worker in an aerospace plant when his co-worker showed him CHALLENGE.
The bosses are taking advantage of this crisis by forcing fascist conditions. PLP is responding to their attacks by expanding our networks.
Raises were supposed to go into effect, but instead the bosses have cut some workers pay by as much as $3 per hour. With all overtime cut, many struggle to survive on $8-12 per hour. Rumors of lay-offs stop workers from asking about their raises, fearing they may lose their job. In some of these shops 80% of our working-class brothers and sisters are undocumented, making their situation more critical.
The aerospace industry is crucial for war, but the bosses must reduce costs, so they force workers to speed up. What used to be produced in 10 hours is now made in 8. The bosses cut breaks, raise production goals, audit production daily and require operators to document every minute of their shift in the computers. Workers joke when they see new office furniture saying, “Oh, there goes your bonus and overtime.”
They joke but almost everyone understands the contradictions they face every day. The workers are angry. With communist class-consciousness these workers have the power to stop production and spark a wave of strikes and fight-backs that could advance the battle for communist revolution. With workers’ only other option being to sacrifice more for the bosses’ profits, the PLP must and is spreading communist ideas and literature both inside and outside the factory walls.
CHALLENGE networks have doubled since the speed-up started and every member should struggle to double them again. Thanks to many discussions, barbeques and meetings with our friends, they were the first to react and consciously slow down production to fight back. One recruit told us of three more workers who should receive CHALLENGE and be a part of our activities. One of them has now come to a Party event for a discussion on the economic and political situation. This worker and others will be some of the participants in our upcoming Summer Project.
The two past Summer Projects have mobilized workers, students and soldiers to pass out communist literature and visit workers in Seattle and Los Angeles. These projects build a worker-student-soldier alliance and make the PLP stronger. The PLP invites everyone to participate with us this July in our Summer Projects in Seattle and in LA.
In this period the necessity for a communist revolution is clear. The Progressive Labor Party can act and grow. The bosses’ system will never provide for the needs of the working class. Join us in the PLP and fight to build a new communist world without fascist exploitation. J
