‘When bosses cut back, we say fight back!’
On April 11, although New York City Mayor Adams and his friends, the leaders of the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), finalized their agreement to privatize retiree health coverage, retired city workers continue to fight back. On March 31st and again on April 11th demonstrations were held in front of City Hall. Hundreds rallied on March 31 and over a thousand rallied today. A loud chorus responded to a speaker's call, “Bosses say cut back, we say fight back”. In the midst of this struggle we are getting out CHALLENGEnewspaper to our friends and inviting them to our Progressive Labor Party study group. We are learning from these older workers that you can’t retire from the class struggle and in turn are teaching them how this racist capitalist system works.
As CHALLENGE has pointed out, the bosses throughout the U.S. are shifting health care costs onto the backs of workers. This is because they are preparing for war with their capitalist rivals in China and Russia and need to build their war chests. Union leaders are playing the role of willing accomplice as they “save” money for the bosses. Older workers face greater hardships when health care is denied, delayed or made too expensive for them to afford.
As this struggle plays out in street demonstrations, court suits, proposed legislation and union meetings, we will have ample opportunity to point out how the capitalist state apparatus and its agents in the mass organizations are used to keep workers, old and young, under the oppressive heel of the ruling class. Our involvement in all aspects of this struggle allows us to build schools for communism among workers fighting back.
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‘My first communist dinner’
Growing up here in America, I always thought I knew what communism was and what a communist looked like. Communism was something that was the work of the devil himself and anyone who dared call themselves a communist was a traitor to all that was right and good in the world and that they should be turned into the C.I.A. immediately. I never believed all that of course but I did grow to dislike the movement after learning about men like Joseph Stalin, and Lavrentiy Beria so when it came to meeting my U.S. history teacher I was very surprised to hear that she was a communist.
Here was a woman who fought for what was right and goes out of her way everyday to make sure that every student gets what they need and challenges the authority who neglects and (many times) abuses the students’ rights. This woman led me to the place that I volunteer with now and later led me to my first communist dinner.
I had no expectations going into the dinner. I had met many of the people organizing the event just the day before and they all were incredibly welcoming. Setting up for the dinner was fun as I got to know more of the people I was helping. Once people started to trickle in I got to see the nice community that has been made in that small building in Brooklyn. The hugs were only matched by the smiles people gave one another. I was introduced to many great people who talked with me about college and how they got involved with the movement.
As we ate the amazing food, we heard fantastic speeches from the organizers explaining the importance of the Party. After, came the main event of the night, the auction, in which all proceeds go to preparing for the big event of the year “May Day” or “International Workers Day.”
A massive show of force by workers all over the planet. The auction was filled with an insane amount of content, ranging from a communist history walk tour to posters made by the organizers celebrating community and working together. By the end of the event hundreds of dollars were raised and while I myself am not a communist, I believe that the community work that they are doing is absolutely critical in making sure we have a better tomorrow.
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It takes a village to make a banner
The collective process at work produced communist banners today.
We had a victorious banner-making this afternoon where comrades as well as folks not yet in the Party--children as well as someone over 80—traveled miles to participate. The surprising aspect to me was not only the beauty of the many finished products but how the banners were perfected. The main banner, huge at about 4 feet by 10 feet, was sketched in advance by a practiced graphic artist who could not attend. It took a literal army of most of us participants to color in the red silhouetted army of marching workers and the illustrating words. Later, some smaller, poster-board sized creations revealed true communist principles in the making.
During poster making, a worker worked with three children who were arguing over who should color in the words at the top of a poster board. The adult worker simply suggested turning around the poster itself so that no one needed to reach over the others and thus avoided a squabble.
Finally, on this very day in an email there appeared a summary from an article discussing the errors and lessons from the Soviet and Chinese Revolutions. Specifically, the Cultural Revolution brought out how “Struggle over capitalist versus working-class ideas is best when it fuses theory and practice. The theoretical side (the ideas in our banners) is conscious understanding of class relations.
The practical side is how they operate in the village, the work unit, etc. The struggle is not over ideology by itself; it is about how we run things, overall (i.e., how the banners were produced)."
