Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are part of the ongoing struggle of retired New York City (NYC) workers fighting against a union/city plan that would switch their health coverage into a Medicare “dis”Advantage program. These plans delay and deny needed treatments. They're requiring preauthorizations for expensive treatments and tests which would add new costs for care that low-income retirees can’t afford. It is a sign of growing fascism in the United States that the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), a group of over 100 unions, is aligning with the city bosses to attempt to force this change. As the ruling class struggles to deal with their crises, they must get the working class on board with making sacrifices needed to prepare for wider war.

Unions work protect capitalist class interests—not workers

At the end of February, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) showed which side they're on. Following orders of their President, Lee Saunders, eight union staffers from Washington, D.C. entered the DC37 Retiree Association offices and seized their books, records, phones, and computers. AFSCME replaced all the elected leaders with an administrator who will run the 26,000-member association as AFSCME sees fit. They said they did this because the retiree organization had failed to submit the IRS forms to retain their nonprofit status. The real reason is that the retiree leaders had voted to resume contributions to help fund the legal challenge to the new health plan. AFSCME threatened action last June to shut down workers' fightback.

Some workers see unions as organizations run by workers to fight around their day-to-day needs. The reality is that unions are run by bosses to give workers the illusion that they can reform capitalism to treat them better.

PL'ers participate in struggles workers need to survive in a capitalist-run society. We bring communist ideas into the struggle to build fighting unity of our class and the consciousness needed to combat the bosses’ ideas put forth by union misleaders. Only by winning masses of workers involved in class struggle to join the fight for communist revolution will we be able to build an egalitarian society where all share and control the fruits of their labor.

Attacks on Medicare expose a deeply racist and decaying capitalist system

On March 6th, 150 angry retirees and their allies rallied in front of the DC37 Retiree Association Headquarters. They expressed their anger at the proposed medical coverage change and how it's an attack on low-income (disproportionately Black, Latin, and women) retirees. They vented their anger at the AFSCME staff who were not even in the office to help a retiree who needed questions answered. They demanded an end to the administratorship. A retired school crossing guard who is battling cancer said, “They want me to die but I won’t die. I’ll fight!” Another worker called for ending contributions to the AFSCME political action fund which is being used to attack retirees in NYC. She previously campaigned for AFSCME-endorsed candidates in several states and volunteered to build AFSCME in Puerto Rico but not anymore!

Fightback and read CHALLENGE!

On March 14th, PL'ers were part of the crowd that packed the court for an appeals case. We circulated CHALLENGE at both events along with a Party flier. As we were leaving, one of the judges said she hadn’t seen anything like this before. We will continue to oppose these racist and sexist attacks on our fellow retirees. The city bosses and their union flunkies are finding out that we might be retired but we haven’t expired. We will fight back!

Fifty-one years ago, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) helped lead the Mack Avenue sitdown strike at Chrysler, the first such strike since the Flint Michigan sitdown strike of 1936-37 that launched industrial unionism and the United Auto Workers Union (see PLP’s The Great Flint Sit Down Strike, available at http://www.plp.org/leaflets-pamphlets/pamphlets/). 

Sitdown strikes in the 1930s included actions at the Akron Rubber Works and Woolworth’s Department store, but the tactic was abandoned by the reformist leadership of the labor movement as it sunk further into business unionism. The Mack Avenue sitdown strike exposed the union misleaders, strengthened the PLP’s work among industrial workers, and invigorated the PLP throughout the world. 

Communists have historically led the working class in struggles against the bosses. From such struggles, new revolutionary cadres can come forward to advance the vision of a wage-less, classless society if communists struggle for these ideas in the midst of such battles against the ruling class. 

What follows is an interview with a PLP member who was active in the sitdown action in Detroit. 

The PLP has for many years argued that building a revolutionary base among industrial workers is a central task for communists. Why is this important?

Of all workers, those who work in manufacturing, mining, or other heavy industries are generally forced by the conditions of production to cooperate rather than compete. This is why the formation of labor unions occurred first among such workers. Moreover, the capitalist class depends on industrial workers to produce the wealth of the society and the profits they draw from this. Accordingly, industrial workers are both best positioned and most experienced in the cooperative venture to stop production and the flow of profits until the capitalists grant their demands for better pay and working conditions. As we’ve seen with the recent rail workers, UPS drivers, and UAW workers, even the threat of a broad industrial strike terrifies the bosses and they kick into high gear to try to stop them. If communists are immersed among these workers and explaining how capitalism must be overthrown, then the struggle of industrial workers can be a stepping stone to the overthrow of the capitalist system.

You were in charge of coordinating the sale and distribution of the PLP newspaper CHALLENGE-DESAFIO in Detroit in 1973. Could you describe how auto workers responded to the newspaper and other literature we shared with them?

Detroit was a manufacturing center in heavy industry, automobiles and trucks with numerous auto plants in the area. This setting created a great opportunity to meet workers going in or coming out at shift changes. A group of about five or six comrades would rotate from one plant to another and return to each on a weekly basis. We would, over time, befriend many of the workers and talk with them about capitalism and how it created bad conditions on their job forcing them to constantly strike or take some other job action in order to improve their working conditions and wages. One interesting story about this was when we argued that they should walk out until their demands were met if management refused to improve the ventilation or cooling in the summer months. When a strike would occur at a plant across town we would use it as an example of what they too could do. Often the response was, “I’d be willing, but these other guys would never do that.” One day we arrived at the Ford River Rouge compound and found the entire shift milling around in the parking lot. “What’s happening?” we asked. “We walked out over the heat,” came the answer-- from one of the guys who said that his companions would never take such an action! So to rub it in, we said, “We thought you said your friends would never do this.” “Well, I was wrong,” came the answer. Workers need to act together to know how the others think.

The Mack Avenue sit-down strike was an iconic event in both the PLP’s work and in auto workers’ history. Could you describe the events that led up to the strike, how the strike proceeded, and how it ended?

Sure! Two PLP members worked in the plant on the same assembly line. The Party leadership suggested that they organize a sitdown strike, occupy the machinery, and refuse to work or let other workers on other shifts take their place. This was to be the first sit-down strike in the auto industry in 36 years. The plan unfolded by the two comrades asking all the other workers on the line whether they would be willing to sit down in order to improve their conditions and wages. When most of them agreed, the other workers joined in as well, so the day of the sit down was set. When that day arrived, the team of Mack Avenue workers carried out their plan, sitting down on their machines and refusing to work. The PLP mobilized all of the PLP members in the city to come to surround the plant and distribute leaflets to passersby explaining what was happening. This was the main event in the center ring in Detroit for several days. The workers sat down on their machines, refused to leave, and closed down all production at that plant. The bosses were furious but couldn’t budge the workers.

After three days, the police and plant guards were finally able to oust the strikers who then set up solid picket lines around the plant. The PLP brought reinforcements from throughout the city to join the picket line, all the while passing out leaflets and selling CHALLENGE. A PLP leader came to Detroit from New York to help the struggle and  write an article for the next issue of CHALLENGE.

Shawn Fain, today’s UAW president, has frequently referred glowingly to the 1936-37 Flint Michigan Sit Down Strike that propelled the auto workers' union forward. CHALLENGE-DESAFIO also noted in 1973 that the Mack Avenue Sit Down strike was the first sitdown strike in auto since then. How did the union leaders of that time react to the Mack Avenue sitdown strike? Why do you think they reacted in this way?

The UAW leadership opposed the Mack Avenue sitdown strike for its boldness, its open challenge to Chrysler’s control, and its defiance of the collective bargaining agreement that barred such actions. These reformist union misleaders were not prepared to engage themselves, not wanting to jeopardize union property or face jail themselves. In fact, they acted as if they were Pinkerton agents for Chrysler, building up a band of local union officers from UAW locals  from throughout the Midwestern states —but not for solidarity! Just the opposite! This band of close to a thousand men (they were all men) marched on the picket line to break it up. They were armed with baseball bats; they were not kidding. The two comrades were warned that this mob would be looking for them and were spirited away by some workers to safety. But this assault by the supposed leaders of the workers ended the strike, and the workers were forced back to work. 

Were there other repercussions from this action?

Definitely! Following the end of the strike, some of the workers who played a central role were fired, and the two comrades were arrested and charged with pipe attacks on the plant guards who first tried to oust the strikers. The trial was presided over by a “leftist” judge (many former radicals became stooges for the bosses, including Coleman Young, the mayor, who had at one time been a member of  Communist Party!). The judge had been elected overwhelmingly to his position in this union town, but rather than being a friend to the accused comrades, he did everything he could to help the prosecution and stymie the defense. The defense lawyers were friends and former colleagues of the judge, and were shocked at his behavior. One of them, objecting in frustration to a ruling by the judge, said loudly, “But Chuck, I mean, your honor, how can you make such a ruling?” It was a fiasco. But the jury selection was not in the prosecution’s favor. The prosecution tried to weed out any Chrysler workers, members of their families, or other auto workers and their relatives, but in Detroit, that didn’t leave many people. So the jury was filled with working class people who refused to convict, even though there were numerous witnesses who confirmed that the comrades had indeed defended their position in the plant by striking the guards with pipes!

Please tell us about some of the individuals who were important figures in the strike, both PLP members, friends of the PLP, and other workers?

The two comrades were one white and one Black. Most of the workers on the assembly line were also Black, which was characteristic of the auto industry in Detroit. Friends of the PLP among the workers who helped lead the strike were fired, along with the two comrades. But the unity of the entire assembly line of around 50 workers was a stirring example of the militancy, anger at their condition, and willingness to fight even against the police and plant guards. This is a microcosm of what workers are capable of doing, once they are convinced that they can count on each other.

Looking back on the strike, what were the strengths and weaknesses of the action, both in terms of advancing the day-to-day conditions of workers and in terms of building the revolutionary movement for communism?

I think that it’s very difficult in the early days of building a movement for the abolition of capitalism to ask workers to risk their jobs and livelihoods. The building of confidence in each other, both within the Party and between the Party and the working class is a long process, and it takes close relationships among comrades and fellow workers to bring this about. We call this base building! This is true for both the day to day struggle and even more so for the longer-term fight for communism.

A Party has to grow to a size much greater than our present state before a communist vision can become a mass phenomenon, although we can be engaged in class struggle at all times with an eye towards bringing our fellow workers, students, and strugglers into agreement with a communist strategy and vision. This is especially true in this day of complete confusion about whom to trust among government officials, political organizations, and candidates, and how to tell the truth from falsehood. 

What advice would you offer to today’s young workers as they seek to expand the PLP’s work in basic industries?

All of us must be willing and ready to question every aspect of our current thinking and strategy and, through study and practice, further develop our analysis of the world and the strategies needed to change it. Moving towards revolution requires that we build on each step we take, like the Mack Avenue sitdown strike action, to evaluate the extent to which we have succeeded (or failed!) in achieving both short-term improvements and long-term capacity for struggle.

I have confidence that with the process of learning, questioning, and changing, we can bring many more workers into our orbit, especially in today’s chaotic environment of escalating war, racism, and global warming.

Capitalist neglect in infrastructure has cost workers’ lives in the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse. Six out of eight workers on the bridge–all of them Latin-perished when a container ship lost power and steering, crashing into the bridge’s support pier. Their deaths were no accident, but rather the racist indifference of their non-union company, Brawner Builders. In a communist world Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting for, catastrophes may still happen, but much less frequently because our motivation will be for the working class, not profit, which drives Brawner Builders and every other scumbag capitalist enterprise.

Workers’ lives don’t matter to bosses

Brawner was previously investigated and cited four times for failing to protect its workers against falls at construction sites. For their workers on Key Bridge, they failed to provide a safety boat, required when employees are working over, or adjacent to water. Worst of all, Brawner had made no arrangement, in case of an emergency, for contacting their workers on the bridge. 

According to a local newspaper, “…One former construction worker said crew members likely could have hopped in a truck and sped off the 1.6-mile bridge if they’d been reached by phone or radio” (Baltimore Sun, 3-29-24). Failing that, if the required safety boat had been in place that night, it may have been possible to rescue them from the Patapsco River.

State bosses also to blame for deaths

Engineers have said the bridge had sparse protection for its main support pillars. About three minutes before impact, the ship’s pilot had issued an emergency mayday, tried to slow the ship by dropping anchor, and radioed for tugboats to assist. That quick mayday distress signal saved lives, providing enough warning time for others to stop oncoming traffic at both ends of the bridge. However, the eight construction workers on the bridge that night were repairing potholes. 

Before the Key Bridge was built, the original plan, in 1968, was for a tunnel. In fact, construction of approach ramps for that tunnel was started, but then calculations showed that a chunk of money could be saved, and more traffic carried, by building a bridge instead. “It was a terrible place to build a bridge – over a main shipping channel – at the harbor entrance... The Association [of Maryland ship pilots] raised as big a fuss as possible about the whole idea but, as usual, we were outvoted by the politics of the state.” (Captain Brian Hope, Bay Pilot: A History of the Association of Maryland Pilots). 

Another policy behind this tragedy was not using tug boats to help guide cargo ships as they approach the bridge, and go under it. “The 5,000-horsepower tugs, which only minutes earlier had helped guide the ship [Dali] out of its berth at the Port of Baltimore and peeled off, quickly turned back and raced toward the Dali. But it was too late… Maritime experts interviewed by The Associated Press say they could have made a difference if the tugs had stuck by the ship longer, in a position to see it drifting off course and potentially nudge or tow it back in line. Such extended tugboat escorts aren’t required or even customary in Baltimore or at many other U.S. ports, mostly because of the costs they would add for shippers.” (Associated Press 3-29-24). 

Racism

Every construction worker on the Key Bridge was an immigrant. They traveled here, years ago, from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Now, capitalism has stolen their lives. Construction, under capitalism, is a high-hazard industry with workers exposed to serious risks. Immigrants from Central and South America are over-represented in this industry, making up about a third of U.S. construction workers. Being pushed disproportionately into this dangerous work is a significant aspect of racism.

Another facet of racism, regarding the bridge collapse, has flooded social media. Racists are blaming Black workers. They make an asinine argument – because Baltimore is a predominantly Black city with a Black mayor and a majority Black city council, and because Maryland’s governor is also Black – that the fall of the bridge is rooted in incompetence by Black officials. They call Brandon Scott a “DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) mayor.” On the other hand, it must be pointed out that all politicians – no matter what their racial background – are loyal to the capitalist system for which the profit motive is valued more than life itself. Capitalism is the real root of the Key Bridge disaster. 
It must also be pointed out that Francis Scott Key, for whom the bridge is named, was an enslaver. In fact, he was born to massive slaveholding wealth. As a District Attorney in Washington DC, he prosecuted abolitionists. 

Working class love

There has been massive support for the families of the six workers who plummeted to their deaths from the Key Bridge. Latino Racial Justice Circle quickly raised $98,000, and a City Office of Immigrant Affairs has been given many donations – totaling $418,000 at this time – for the families. 

The love for our class will become a victorious force when millions of working class fighters join the PLP. We can and must defeat the capitalist system. We desperately need a world in which egalitarian communism liberates our class. Yes, some disasters may still occur, but far fewer. For those that do occur, we will handle them with love for our class, not love of money.

We will remember Claude

This letter marks the one-year angelversary of 17-year-old Claude, a former student killed in these capitalist Brooklyn streets. It also marks our year-long fight to keep his memory alive in the face of multiple memorial tear-downs by the school administration. The Black administration has time and time again proven to fear mainly-Black students’ class-consciousness. This time, they stayed surprisingly quiet. 
Claude’s cohort graduated, and with them, much of his memory. A school with a high staff turnaround also means only about six teachers remember him. (See the 2023 CHALLENGEs 4/12,  4/26, and 11/29 for the full backstory.) So it was important to the young student organizers—who didn’t know Claude personally but through the struggle have grown to befriend him in death—keep Claude’s memory alive. They wanted to make it clear that Claude’s life mattered. Borrowing from our comrades fighting for justice for Alex Flores in Los Angeles, we decided to mark the day as Claude’s “angel-versary.” 

The student organizers used their lunch period to spread Claude’s story. They asked a friend to bring in her special markers, so they can draw hand and arm tattoos of Claude’s name. They also distributed hundreds of stickers that read, “we will remember Claude” and “I am Claude.” It had me teary-eyed seeing so many 9th graders in the hallway with the stickers on their chest, arms, socks, and even faces. Many staff members also wore the stickers. 

Many of the new and younger students know Claude as “the kid on the teacher’s desk” and from the poem Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” (Communist magazine Liberator in 1919) posted in the class. Last year, we teachers organized to have a personal memorial of Claude in our classrooms. Four rooms have kept this tradition. It was an opportunity to share stories of Claude as well as to have conversations about how remembering can be an act of defiance in a society where erasure is a tool of capitalist oppression. If we forget and become passive, the more power the rulers have. Memory brings with it working-class rage, and if organized, working-class rebellion. 

You know, how the ruling-class tried to bury Claude is similar to how that same ruling class tried to bury the memory of 14,500 Palestinian children murdered by U.S.-Israel warmongers. By fighting to remember, we are also fighting to never let the rulers forget what they did. To borrow from the Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos and the 2014 Ayotzinapa struggle, “they tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.” From Gaza to Brooklyn, we hope to plant seeds of fightback.

While we don’t know why the administration ignored this student action, we do know that actions such as these help build confidence in our class. The next step is to show these courageous students that they are not alone in their search for a just world. What better way than May Day? 
*The pseudonym Claude is inspired by the Black communist fighter-writer, Claude Mckay.
*****

555th West Struggle: Yes to optimism, no to one-sidedness

The CHALLENGE article about West Wednesday #555 is excellent! The only criticism I’d make is that - in this comrade’s judgment - it somewhat exaggerates the strength of revolutionary politics within the West Coalition. For example, though the article does, to some extent, point out the opposite side later on, one of the introductory sentences says, “This makes 555 Wednesdays where the coalition has tirelessly dedicated to calling out the fake liberal bosses and their politrickans…”

True. However, for example, there is still a soft spot - among organizersin West Wednesday - for Baltimore City Council member Ryan Dorsey who, at first, seemed to support our vigorous push to stop Worley from becoming Baltimore’s new police commissioner. Worthless Worley is the former head of Northeast District, and an enabler of the killer cops under his command who stole Tyrone West’s life, brutalized others, and who have since been promoted.

Though Ryan Dorsey stabbed us in the back at the last minute, during that effort to stop Worley’s confirmation, there are nevertheless some ongoing expectations - within the West Coalition - that Dorsey’s liberalism will be helpful down the road.

Additionally, a leading voice - at the weekly West Wednesday rallies and livestreams - has expressed some mixed feelings: on the one hand criticizing Maryland’s legislative process for never stopping brutality against Black workers for 400 years but, on the other hand, sometimes voicing an expectation that the legislature is where we will one day get significant justice.

There is also a certain level of commitment to pacifism, among West Wednesday organizers, even though, as history has shown us, the defeat of slavery necessitated the Civil War. Similarly today, it’s unrealistic to expect that the flower of egalitarian communism can burst from the manure of capitalism without revolution.

Someone in another city reading the article might get the impression that organizersin the West Coalition embrace the Party’s ideas, and that nothing’s holding them back from joining Progressive Labor Party. That’s not the situation.
Yes, in CHALLENGE we need to uphold revolutionary optimism (which the article does excellently!) but we also need to always be objective, not one-sided. We need to always give people a full understanding of the real situation.
*****

The Old Oak movie a condemnation to capitalist inequality 

My  wife and I and two comrades went to see the latest Ken Loach film, The Old Oak. It’s set a few years ago in a small town in northern England, the de-industrialized, impoverished region of the country where children are malnourished and where wealthy outside investors buy up property at bargain prices, depreciating the value of the homes of local residents. Into this cauldron of social misery come a few families of Syrian refugees fleeing the oppressive regime of Bashar al-Assad. Some of the locals resent the newcomers and are unwelcoming, while others offer assistance and the tension between the two groups mounts.

The film is well-acted and beautifully shot. The director offers a politics of “solidarity, not charity,” in which working class folks with little means but with a memory of the days of fierce class struggle, when miners went on strike and stood shoulder to shoulder for months against Prime Minister Thatcher and the police, extend assistance to people who are coming from the Syrian war zone.

The two main characters are Tommy Joe Ballantyne (who owns the local pub and whose deceased father was a leftist miner) and Yara, a Syrian refugee who learned English while working for two years in refugee camps. The two of them bond and stand up to the local racists who want the refugees to leave. Though Loach clearly disapproves of their nativist views, he provides a materialist explanation for them: the refugees provide a scapegoat for the raw deal that capitalism has handed them. Rather than understand and blame the class system, they foolishly blame workers from other countries who are in worse shape. Sound familiar?

Embracing the old miner’s adage of “those who eat together stick together”, Tommy, Yara and dozens of others plan a dinner that will bring together the Syrian and local families in the back room of the pub. Yara uses her camera to take pictures depicting the dignity and humanity of the townspeople. Loach is realistic enough to know that not everyone will be won over; the racists hit back. Nevertheless, The Old Oak remains optimistic that working class solidarity will ultimately win out over division.

Although the terms “capitalism” and “revolution” are never used, which is a weakness, the film is a powerful condemnation of the inequality and immiseration of capitalism, both in Britain and in Syria. It promotes solidarity based on common life experiences and interests, and we should organize many of our friends and co-workers to see The Old Oak and then march on May Day.
*****

Poem:

“IF I MUST DIE” 
BY REFAAT ALAREER

If I must die, 
you must live 
to tell my story 
to sell my things 
to buy a piece of cloth 
and some strings, 
(make it white with a long tail) 
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza 
while looking heaven in the eye 
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— 
and bid no one farewell 
not even to his flesh 
not even to himself— 
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above 
and thinks for a moment an angel is there 
bringing back love
If I must die 
let it bring hope 
let it be a tale