NEW YORK CITY, March 1—A surprised college administrator shifted in his seat and fidgeted with his pen, surrounded at a table by several angry workers. This was an emergency meeting, called by a group of multiracial, immigrant and native-born anti-sexist staff and faculty at a local college, in defense of their woman coworker who was being terminated. Prior to the meeting, the workers had concluded this administrator was primarily responsible for years of sexist attacks on their coworker. The workers called the meeting and, at long last, they confronted him. Now, they sat in judgment.
Facing the administrator, a male worker delivered the charges. He concluded with the verdict and the sentence: “You’re guilty of sexism, and everything that’s happened to our coworker. We demand your resignation!” The boss refused to resign, and threatened the department that if he were to lose his job, the future funding of the department’s programs and staff would be “uncertain.”
This woman worker had endured years of harassment and sexist attacks. The attacks included routinely dealing with sexist comments made by the administrators’ friends, feeling like the bosses encouraged an atmosphere of a “boys’ club,” and more. She witnessed and was intimidated into supporting administrative corruption and was terminated at the same time that this particular administrator received a promotion and increase in pay—despite being removed from actual responsibilities due to incompetence.
This struggle created an opening for wider fightback on campus, a fightback that can and must be linked to the growing “sanctuary” movement supporting undocumented students, and growing restlessness among campus workers against their racist and sexist working conditions.
To Fight or Not to Fight
The workers’ demands for their coworkers’ immediate reinstatement, and for the termination of this sexist administrator, split workers in the department. Some workers followed the passive line of “what can you do?”
In front of this woman worker, they argued that what’s done was done, and out of fear of losing funding, we need to “come together” and make each other look good so as not to hurt the department’s image. One worker cynically asserted that he’d rather have this administrator because “it could always be worse.”
Other workers argued that publicity (good or bad) does not determine the survival of a department; the needs of the college to save money do. One woman worker stated the whole concept of “justice” was that people who do bad things should face consequences. She was exasperated that, because of fears over their jobs, some were making a perceived choice to save themselves instead of taking a principled anti-sexist position and defending their coworker.
Ultimately, fear won out over militant anti-sexism. Despite passionate and loud opposition, a slight majority called to drop the demand for the administrator to resign. Agreement was eventually reached on drafting a letter of support on behalf of the department to the college president to save this workers’ job. This proposal was loudly endorsed by the more passive workers, who, as a group one week later, refused to sign it and apologized to their terminated woman coworker that the letter was “too extreme”—even though they helped write it!
Which Side Are You On?
The passive, cynical workers hide their fear of struggle behind anti- working class ideas like their “look out for no one but me” philosophy. In the dark night that has followed the collapse of the old communist movement, individualistic bosses’ ideas like these have saturated the international working class. In practice, these ideas amount to abandoning a woman worker they once considered a friend. In practice, these ideas destroy working class unity, and let sexist pigs like their administrator get off with a promotion and less work. As the struggle in this college department clarifies, individualism benefits no one but the capitalists.
On the other hand, international working-class unity is growing in this department. That the administrator was confronted at all, and “indicted” by the multiracial group of militant women and men workers, is a victory. This struggle has the potential to grow. The department was a different place after the meeting, with no more ambiguity about who stood where. In the weeks that followed, many casual work friendships began solidifying into bonds of solidarity.
Sharper Practice, Sharper Theory
Sharp political discussions have ensued since the termination, and the workers have all remained in close touch. One question of “what to do next” was followed by another question: “what result do we want to achieve?” If the workers pull off a great anti-sexist victory and won her reinstatement, and stopped there, they would still be left with the capitalist system that created the sexist working conditions in the first place. Not to mention they could still lose all of their jobs anyway. Some workers’ fears of budget cuts have a real material basis; the U.S. rulers are savagely attacking all public education programs across the country to pay for their imperialist war machine!
Communists want to achieve a different society altogether, where the working class runs the world under communism, free of borders, money, sexism, imperialism and racism. Most workers in the department would agree that a communist world is preferable to the current one. To get there, it will take building working-class consciousness, to see that an injury to one is an injury to all. Fighting against sexist and racist attacks on the job are more than just the best way to win jobs back, they are the “schools for communism” our class needs to break free from fear and passivity.
Communist Potential Grows
The workers in this department fight on. Current and former students have been contacted and are collectively editing a petition to be distributed demanding reinstatement. There are plans to propose a union resolution with the same demands, in addition to an official college investigation into departmental corruption.
Further connecting the fight against capitalism with the local struggles on campus, a plan was made to enlist friends in different campus groups to fight back as well, and struggling to involve this woman worker in a CHALLENGE study group. The struggle continues!
Florida, February 24—Hundreds of people of all ethnic groups came this evening to support the Islamic Society at New Tampa after an arson attack on the mosque today at 2 AM. Friends of Progressive Labor Party held a sign, saying “Racism Hurts All Working People.” Many came to hug us when they saw the sign.
Although U.S. capitalist war-makers have tried to pit Jewish workers against Muslim workers against Christian workers, tonight’s gathering demonstrated solidarity of our class. Everyone here was saying that racist attacks on Muslim and Jewish workers have increased after the Presidential election of Donald Trump.
We must fight racism everywhere, and point out that the ideology of communism is the best way to unite working people worldwide.
March 8 is International Working Women’s Day. It’s an international holiday that celebrates women and their revolutionary power, and it has strong roots in the communist movement. International Women’s Day first began in New York as “Women’s Day,” organized by the Socialist Party of America. It was celebrated in 1909 as a commemoration of the 1908 strike of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. In the 1910 meeting of communist and socialist leaders from around the world, known as the Second International, women members pushed to establish an International Women’s Day. By 1911, over a million workers around the world were celebrating it. In 1917, striking women workers commemorating this holiday sparked uprisings that led to the Bolshevik Revolution, and the first workers’ state, the Soviet Union. Anti-sexist struggle makes it a historic day for all workers, both women and men!
The Progressive Labor Party continues the revolutionary tradition of International Women’s Day by fighting for true liberation for women, and men: communism. We believe that all women and men of the international working class can do better than settle for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, and can get rid of this whole system and replace it with one where we, the working class, run the world.
Capitalist Response to Crises
Capitalism is based off of making profits, which is money stolen from workers. Bosses need to constantly expand their business and make more profits to stay alive. However, there are limits to how much they can expand. U.S. bosses are reaching those limits and facing competition from Russia and China. That is why they need to wage bigger wars and steal from workers even more. Those are the only two ways they can continue to grow business and make more profits.
Sexism is an important part of how bosses steal from workers, because it allows them to pay women less than men and fire women easily if they don’t fall in line. It also divides men and women workers by convincing them that they are enemies. This allows them to pay men less, too, because they don’t unite with their fellow workers to demand a better life. Sexism also means that working families, and especially mothers, have to worry about childcare and housework, not the bosses.
Women Workers At
Cutting Edge of Capitalist Horror
Trump has eagerly continued Barack Obama’s legacy of racist mass deportations by deporting hundreds of workers only a month into his presidency. He wants to hire 10,000 more immigration police and give them even more powers to target all undocumented workers. Unlike Obama, Trump is not pretending to play nice. He is the ugly, naked, violent face of fascism.
Women workers are one of his primary targets. The women who are deported to Latin America often face, in addition to the sexist exploitation that is key to profitmaking, gang, government physical and sexual violence.
Women workers from Syria face a similar fate. Those who stay in Syria face constant U.S. and Russian-sponsored bombings. They are twice as likely to die from shelling or air strikes as men. Whether they stay or flee, women are at risk of sexual assault or sex trafficking. In refugee camps in countries like Jordan, where women and children comprise more than 80 percent of the population, they are at a high risk of sexual assault. Often they lack basic reproductive and sexual health services, resulting in higher death rates.
The everyday lives of women workers are a nightmare. Women, and especially Black, Latin, and immigrant, are the first to lose their jobs when the bosses need to cut. Wages are falling all over the world and it’s getting harder and harder to pay for food, rent, and other necessities.
History As A Guide And A Weapon
The international working class has faced down dark nights before, and will do so again. The Soviet Union made great progress, where prostitution was eliminated, communal daycares and kitchens flourished, and education was equal for both women and men.
At its height, 60 percent of the Soviet Union’s engineers were women. Women held power across one-sixth of the earth’s surface, and armed women workers played lead roles during World War II, both in the Red Army, and the partisan movement that devastated the Nazi war machine behind enemy lines.
The Soviet Union gives us a glimmer of what life can look like when women and men unite to build a better world.
Working Class Response to Crises
The world situation is intensifying. The bosses may respond to crises by attacking and exploiting women more and stirring up racism. The bosses will also try to lead the working class astray through feminist and liberal politics that mark working-class men—not ruling-class women and men—as the enemy.
But our class has much to be hopeful for. Millions of people around the world are refusing to fall into the trap of racism and sexism (see page 1,3,5).
When Trump announced his Muslim ban, thousands of workers in cities all over the United States rushed to the airports to demand its downfall. Workers chanted, “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”
The day after the inauguration, millions of workers around the world went to women’s marches to show that they would not accept the attacks on women.
PLP marched and will continue to march and organize on the campus and on the job with the millions of workers who dare to dream a better world. This International Working Women’s Day, we must mobilize to destroy the whole sexist capitalist system and replace it with communism. Only then will the working class, both men and women, truly be liberated. The night may be dark, but our revolutionary future is bright!
EAST AFRICA, March 8—In Kenya, a doctor’s strike resulted from the government’s failure to implement a deal signed in 2013 which called for a 300 percent salary increase, a lower patient doctor ratio (which is currently 1 doctor to 16,000 people) and improved medical equipment.
The doctors formed a social media hashtag (#lipa kama tenda), which means the state should pay them as much as they pay people who have government tenders (contracts).
These conditions have negatively impacted life for working people in Kenya. These same conditions led to doctors leaving the country to work in Malawi, Ethiopia, and Zambia. That and striking were the only ways to fight back against the government’s greed and strangle-hold on the doctors’ salaries.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) in East Africa supports the strike as the main weapon that could dismantle the political machinery and create the potential for revolution. PLP is asking for workers throughout the world to support the strike in solidarity, as similar conditions exist everywhere. While the strike is purely “reformist,” PLP is also calling to change the whole system to one that is ruled by the working class, communism.
Unemployment in East Africa
Over the last few years, the Tanzanian government has employed fewer professionals in the service sector causing the ratio between teachers and students, doctors and patients to worsen. While the government has been complaining about the shortage of science and math teachers, within the same period, the colleges and universities have graduated many teachers and doctors but the government has failed to hire them.
In other fields, like Human Resource Management, Sociology, Law, and IT, graduates also have not been hired since 2007. The government leaders hire their relatives, some of whom are unqualified, as well as the relatives of former government officials. The root of the problem is capitalism, causing mass unemployment and all these horrible services for workers and their families. Our call is for the worldwide working class to fight back against capitalism through waging a PLP led revolution.
Mushrooming Fascism Across Africa
Since the early 1960s, some rulers have refused to step down. For example, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Yuweri Kagat Museveni of Uganda, Joseph Kabila of Congo, and Pierre Nkurusinza of Burundi, whose term was supposed to end according to the constitution, are a few famous examples.
Gambian president Yahya Jammeh outright rejected the election results of the victory of Adam Barrow, who represented seven opposition parties.
Magafuli, the fifth and newest president in Tanzania, is from the same party that’s been ruling since independence in 1961—the CCM, or Chama Cha Mazindupi, meaning “Party of the Revolution.” The new government is ruling with a “zero tolerance” policy and is ignoring the constitution. He and his subordinates, the regional and district commissioners, and those in charge of the criminal justice system, rule with total impunity.
Magafuli does not observe or exercise the “rule of law” he claims to uphold. All decisions are now made by the executive branch of government, disempowering the legislative and judicial branches that are supposed to keep the executive in check. The police and intelligence and service (TISS) are increasingly used to silence all opposition by deporting, jailing, and assassinating anyone who openly opposes the government.
On December 27, 2016, Alfan Lihuni, ITV journalist, was arrested because of a report he published about a food and water crisis in Meruland. Lema, a Member of Parliament from the northern region of Arusha, is in prison for the second month for interfering with the court proceedings of the Arusha Regional Commissioner, Mrisho Gambo. This was done as a way to silence all opposition in Arusha, which is home to an important regional city, also named Arusha.
In eastern Tanzania, seven people were found dead around the Wami River, with their bodies found with wounds caused by sharp objects. After the national election of 2015, the dead body of Alphonce Mawazo, Regional Chairman of the opposition Chadema Party, was found around the bushes near the main road. It’s widely believed that these murders intentionally caused by government officials. Police and gangs are known in the area for executing such attacks in an effort to terrorize people.
PLP in East Africa calls on working people to join in solidarity to fight back against fascism and fight for communism! It is the only solution for restoring human integrity, dignity, equality and a happy life in East Africa and worldwide.
- Information
Hidden Figures Hides Mass Fightback, Embraces Individual Gains
- Information
- 11 March 2017 62 hits
Hidden Figures is being hailed as an anti-racist, anti-sexist film. While it presents some of this, it is inevitably a capitalist movie that does not truly challenge the systemic racism and sexism faced by the main characters or by workers today. Hidden Figures follows the struggles of a group of Black women mathematicians working for NASA during the U.S.’s race to beat the Soviet Union in space travel.
Hidden Figures is mainly a story of celebrating exceptional individuals. This individualism is typical of the ruling class’ culture—a feel-good movie meant to have the working-class feel like things have gotten better. It’s supposed to show that though there was racism in the U.S.’s history, through struggle by carefully selected icons, it’s a better place now. Celebration of mass fightback against systemic racism and sexism is too dangerous because they are crucial to the survival of capitalism! So instead we are given individuals to celebrate, and are convinced that a few people “making it” means racism and sexism are conquerable under this system.
The women of the film are themselves not concerned with joining the antiracist Civil Rights movement or “bringing others up with them.” Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) criticizes her husband for letting their children watch news coverage and steers her kids away from a street corner demonstration. The husband’s ideology of being active and directly fighting racism wasn’t embraced by the film—it was painted as one of the dangers the protagonists fought against. But in reality it was mass struggle of hundreds of thousands of anti-racist workers of all races fighting together that led to the end of legal segregation.
The women complain about their unequal treatment on the job and in education, but they don’t organize against this, they fight to get something for themselves. Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) fights to get into an all-white course so she can apply for a promotion, but it is an exception just for her. Despite this aversion to struggling as a group, she later steals a library book on computer programming that is only available to whites and uses it to teach herself and the other black women how to program so that they can use the new computers NASA is bringing in.
Overall, the film accurately depicts the racism of the white workers and bosses at NASA. One boss, Al Harrison (Kevin Costner), does have a “white savior” moment when he tears down a “colored only” bathroom sign but he makes it clear that desegregating the bathrooms is strictly for productivity purposes. Until then, the Black women had to go across campus to get to the bathroom—their boss only acts in the name of extracting as much work out of these women as possible.
This also reflects the nationalism pushed in the drive to “beat” the USSR. The USSR, though at that time returning to capitalism, still inspired mass struggle around the world against racism and imperialism. Anticommunism and nationalism are the only things in this movie that lead to any of the characters acting antiracist. One of the opening scenes has the three main characters stranded on the side of the road. Dorothy is trying to get their car running, when a cop pulls up and they frantically get themselves together in hopes that the cop won’t harass or arrest them. The women convince him that they work for NASA by showing their official IDs. The cop gets patriotic, saying “we have to get a man up there before the Commies do.”
Once the car is repaired, he gives them a high-speed escort to work. Anti-communism and nationalism wins over even racist cops in the Jim Crow South.
Hidden Figures shows these small wins for individuals as though they are victories for all—a sign of the end of racist and sexist oppression, and yet schools are more segregated now than they’ve ever been, police murder working-class Black and Latin youth with impunity, and the U.S. President is an open racist organizing the state apparatus to hunt down our undocumented working class brothers and sisters.
There’s still a lot to like about Hidden Figures and it provides a basis for discussion of racism and sexism, and how workers can fight back. The fact that women, particularly Black working class women, were able to accomplish what they did is a statement of what the working class is capable of, though in the film there is no class analysis. Under communism we would tell the stories of collective struggle against sexism and racism and not hold up exceptional individuals as the answers to our problems.
