SOUTH TEL-AVIV, October 13 ­— Hundreds of workers of various ethnicities — Jews, Palestinians and African refugees — marched in the south of the city against the horrible neglect of their neighborhoods by the racist, capitalist city hall. They called for the dissolution of the “ghettos,” for an end to racial segregation and for power for the local residents. This working-class rally came a mere week after a racist march by fascists, also in south Tel-Aviv, against the “infiltrator problem” (what racists call the African refugees, who escaped genocide in Darfur or murderous tyranny in Eritrea.)
While the fascist thugs do the bosses’ bidding by dividing workers and blaming the victims for the horrid conditions of the working-class neighborhoods, today the working class fought back and placed the blame on the real culprits: city hall and its capitalist masters. The workers came in high spirits with signs and drums, and the cops didn’t dare to obstruct their way. Progressive Labor Party distributed an anti-racist flyer, as well as CHALLENGEs in Hebrew, Arabic and English, which were well-received.
The mayors of Tel-Aviv have been neglecting the southern part of the city, which is mostly working-class (both Jewish and Arab), for decades. While fat-cat mayor Ron Huldai authorizes the construction of fancy high-rise towers for the rich, the south suffers from failing infrastructure, bad public transit, pollution and massive crime. The area around the central bus station has a high concentration of drug pushers, striptease halls and brothels, where, in many cases, human trafficking victims are being exploited. Muggings of workers and rape of working-class women by criminals are commonplace. This has existed for decades, while the cops do nothing. The sewage runs in the streets and rats abound. All of this contrasts to the fancy, northern parts of town, where the mostly Ashkenazi (European Jewish) small-scale bosses and bourgeoisie dwell; there crimes are solved or moved to the south, and infrastructures are good.
In the early 2000s, thousands of workers fleeing East Africa went north to Egypt, where they were murdered by Egyptian soldiers (who, according to testimonies we have heard, get an evening off duty for every refugee they kill). Others are kidnapped by local criminals in Sinai and held for ransom while being tortured. So they flee further north to Israel, where the government intensifies these racist attacks by busing them straight from the border to the already overcrowded working-class neighborhoods of South Tel-Aviv. They rarely get work permits and are forced into the underground low-wage economy.
These refugees work at starvation wages for local contractors, who pay them as little as $3-$4.5 USD per hour, about half the minimum wage. They are further exploited by slumlords, who pack ten of them into a tiny apartment at high rent. Survival “crime” is common, as many refugees must steal in order to eat.
But of course the bosses’ government blames the refugees! The local fascist politicians accuse them of spreading diseases and crime, call them racist names. Slum residents are being taught by the government to blame the refugees for the neglect of their neighborhoods. But things are changing.
A working-class fighter whom PLP knows and used to hold strong racist ideas, said to us at the demonstration, “it’s a shame not many people from the slums come to this kind of demonstrations. It’s because of racism.” She is beginning to see that racism is the enemy of the working class.
Multi-racial working-class unity is the real way to change how South Tel-Aviv is being neglected by the government of the rich. By building working-class consciousness and eventually, building our revolutionary Party, we stand a chance of turning things upside down. When the communists liberated China 64 years ago this month, they ended slums, freed and rehabilitated the prostitutes, shot the pimps, pushers and slumlords and eliminated opium dens. For three decades they struggled to build a society free from those ills. While their achievements were eventually reversed, we can learn from their experience and build ourselves a new world from the ashes of the old. Join us!