The U.S. ruling class needs a powerful military to carry out wars for maximum profit and control of resources and cheap labor. To that end it slaughters masses of workers and youth, from the Middle East to Bangladesh to Latin America. In particular, the military is essential to the bosses’ control of energy supplies, shipping routes, and pipelines. At stake is the rulers’ top-dog status over oil-hungry China, among others.
The Pentagon war machine must prepare for broader wars with its imperialist rivals even as it confronts the conflicts now erupting around the world. At the moment, the Middle East and South Asia are in disarray:
   • Civil war and growing Russian influence in Syria;
   • Warlords battling for control of Libya;
   • Military coup in Egypt;
   • Al Qaeda bases in Somalia, Mali, Yemen and Syria;
   • Sectarian warfare in Iraq that threatens civil war and endangers oil supplies;
   • Threat of Taliban control of Afghanistan after billions of dollars and thousands of troops were expended in a 12-year U.S. invasion;
   • Jihadists’ challenge in nuclear Pakistan, where U.S. drone bombings are alienating much of the population.
U.S. military efficiency is undermined by the disunity that paralyzes Congress, hinders Obama’s efforts for U.S. imperialism, and divides the core of its war machine. This is a reflection of the growing division between domestic capitalists like the Koch brothers who do not profit from imperialist spending and the finance capitalists on Wall Street who do. Right-wingers are battling Obama & Co. for the loyalty of rank-and-file troops.
Racism puts U.S. rulers in a bind. On the one hand, the Tea Party forces’ open racism weakens military unity — a big problem for the liberal rulers, who depend on broad and diverse enlistment in their armed forces. On the other hand, the liberals need to infect U.S. troops with racism to motivate them to fight the black and brown populations of the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Tea Party vs. the Pentagon
The anti-Obama Fox News indignantly reported,

Soldiers attending a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood say they were told that evangelical Christians and members of the Tea Party were a threat to the nation and that any soldier donating to those groups would be subjected to punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (10/23/13).

A similar briefing at Mississippi’s Camp Shelby prompted Tea Party caucus member Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Republican, to pen a protest letter to the Pentagon endorsed by three of his colleagues: “This most recent mislabeling of a Christian organization [the American Family Association] reflects what appears to be a troubling trend of religious intolerance in the military” (Fox, 10/24/13). (An open racist, Lamborn has directed racist slurs against president Obama.)
The liberal forces, wearied by the Republican-led government shutdown, backed off. On October 24, Fox trumpeted, “The Secretary of the Army has ordered military leaders to halt all briefings on extremist organizations that labeled evangelical Christian groups as domestic hate groups.”
Mainstream U.S. imperialists are keeping a wary eye on Lamborn and his conversion from arms industry flunky to tax- and budget-slasher. He once ranked as one of the House’s top two dealmakers for military contracts, serving prominent death merchants like Northrup Grumman. Now, however, Lamborn backs tax cuts that would hobble the arms dealers sorely needed by U.S. imperialism. This may reflect the fight between the imperialist main wing and the domestic-
oriented capitalists.
Lamborn and his allies embolden evangelical preachers like Rick Joyner, who urges white officers and troops to forcibly oust Obama. “Our only hope is military takeover,” Joyner said during the shutdown, the latest standoff between the two major capitalist parties (Huffington Post, 10/2/13).
But for the main wing of U.S. imperialism, the most worrisome threat of the Tea Party and evangelical forces is ideological, representing a more openly racist force. Lamborn’s district, one of the most militarized in the nation, houses the U.S. Northern Command, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, and the Army’s Fort Carson. Right-wing Christian forces reign from top to bottom at the Air Force Academy, also in Lamborn’s district. As the Huffington Post reported two years ago, a hundred Academy cadets “were actually pretending to be fundamentalist Christians” to “maintain good standing among their peers and superiors at the Academy” (10/12/11).
ROTC Won’t Overcome Bosses’ Racism
But the U.S. bosses’ empire requires troops of all colors. Obama is relocating Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs from the historically racist South to the big cities, hoping to attract black and Latino youth in need of jobs. “The Army chose to close ROTC programs at 13 universities, more than half of them in the South. Tennessee alone will lose ROTC offerings at three of its public universities, the most of any state. The Army Cadet Command, which oversees ROTC and its approximately 33,000 aspiring soldiers, said that by shuttering the 13 lagging programs, it will be able to shift resources to 56 other markets, including Los Angeles, New York and Chicago” (New York Times, 10/22/13).
The Times’ piece also hailed Obama’s integration of the high command: “In 2011, about 28 percent of active duty Army officers were minorities, up from 23 percent a decade earlier.” In the same period, however, more and more black and Latino enlisted personnel shunned “combat arms” duty.
In a similar vein, the liberal rulers are seeking to remilitarize blue-state universities on the East Coast, both elite and working-class, the same institutions that once produced an officer corps in ideological lockstep with U.S. imperialism. ROTC now operates at both Harvard and New York’s City University. Not coincidentally, war criminal General David Petraeus has joined both of their faculties. At Harvard he is a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the Kennedy School of Government. At City College he preaches seemingly harmless doctrines of infrastructure development and energy self-sufficiency. In fact, these are core components of the main U.S. rulers’ global war plans.
Streamlining U.S. domestic infrastructure will enable more rapid troop and arms movement across highways and rail lines nationwide, the main reason President Eisenhower developed the interstate highway system of the 1950s. Energy self-sufficiency is the bosses’ hedge against the threat of oil and gas cut-offs from Middle East sources.
Our Party’s militant actions at New York’s City College exposed Petraeus and his war pulpit. They are helping to mobilize masses of students who are outraged at the ex-general’s presence in the classroom.
Workers (both civilian and military) owe no group of bosses their allegiance, neither the racist Tea Party nor the war-bent Obama wing of U.S. capitalism. Our only loyalty is to our own class. Obama and the rulers he serves cannot hide the rampant racism that permeates the U.S. The stop-and-frisk policies of New York City’s cops, attacking innocent largely black and Latino youth, have spread nationwide. Cops are shooting indiscriminately at black and Latino workers and youth, from California to Florida to the shadow of the White House. And Obama’s agents continue to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers while thousands languish in detention jails.
Only Communism Can End Centuries of Racism
For 400 years, racism has been the foundation of U.S. capitalism. It creates the bosses’ super-profits through lower wages and health benefits, slum housing and under-financed, segregated schools. Racism drags down white workers’ conditions as well, threatening them with the mass unemployment that already afflicts their black and Latino working-class sisters and brothers.
The fight against racism is indivisible from the fight against U.S. imperialist war. Building a mass Progressive Labor Party is the key to this fight. Our goal of a communist society — of, by and for the working class — is the only alternative to the profit system’s war, racism, sexism, mass unemployment and poverty. Joining PLP to organize communist revolution is the order of the day!

New York City, October 16 — Over 80 students and professors rallied in front of John Jay College, demanding that both David “Death Squad” Petraeus and ROTC be kicked out of CUNY, the city public university system. These students and professors are determined to not only throw the military off our campus, but to create an anti-imperialist movement within the CUNY system.
ROTC + Petraeus = War Preparations
Wanted posters of racist Petraeus were held up by PL’ers and friends. A PLP flyer was distributed explaining why ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) was being brought to CUNY: the military needs to expand and diversify in preparation for future wars in the Middle East and Asia, where the U.S. plans to challenge the growing power of its Chinese rival (see page 2). CHALLENGE featuring numerous articles about the struggles at CUNY was also distributed. Our literature explained that colleges exist to serve the labor and ideological needs of the bosses to build an imperialist empire — through war research, military recruitment, patriotism, and of course, ROTC, which provides 30 percent of the military’s officers.
The ruling class is seeking tighter control of their educational factories and is intensifying their recruitment tactics at universities. Youth are reluctant of joining the imperialist war machine, given what they’ve seen in the last twelve years:

• The slaughter and displacement of millions of our workers in Iraq and Afghanistan;
• One of every three female soldiers targeted of sexual assault;
• Nearly 8,000 U.S. soldiers killed and tens of thousands seriously wounded;
• Almost 500,000 soldiers — one of four — who served in those wars returning with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental injuries.

General Petraeus is also part of the imperialist chokehold on campus. This mass murderer was the keynote speaker at a gala, where the minimum price for entry was $500. (Some were willing to pay up to $50,000 for a plate.) “Drones” Petraeus is heralded as an example for students to follow. A “warrior-scholar,” he embodies the ideal soldier: ruthless in his commitment to imperialism. As a top-ranking general in the U.S. military, Petraeus installed death squads against Shi’a populations in Afghanistan, dropped white phosphorus in Iraq and unleashed drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and more. Now Petraeus is spreading patriotism at CUNY. The Administration, in cahoots with the bosses’ need to feed its military machine with student bodies, happily supplies him with all the resources he needs to preach the ruling class’s murderous ideology.
But things haven’t worked out quite as planned. Since the semester began, racist Petraeus was driven from location to location by masses of angry students. In September, a video was released of Petraeus surrounded by protesters demanding his resignation, chanting “murderer!” to his face. The following week, six students from CUNY were brutally assaulted and arrested by the
kkkops. They now face trial in the bosses’ courts, prosecuted by the system of capitalism for daring to speak out.
The bosses’ attacks only emboldened the students. Instead of just targeting Petraeus, protesters demanded an end to imperialist war and to the militarization of CUNY. One student declared, “Militarization is when a child grows up idolizing the army and the police. It’s when that same child goes to school to be harassed by the police in their own school, which is a jail. It’s when recruiters come on to their campus and try to make them join the other side.” CUNY intends to increase its tuition yet again while forcing students into the military to cover the costs of their education. This vicious trap is being employed in one of the few colleges that working-class black and Latino students can afford.
Up the Anti-Imperialist Ante
We are building for our college conference on November 8 and 9. We need to organize against ROTC and Petraeus on every campus:

• Forums with anti-war veterans who expose how soldiers are used as cannon fodder in wars;
• Movies like “Dirty Wars” that expose the terror the U.S. military has brought to workers;
• Organize students to demand that ROTC and war criminals like Petraeus be thrown off campus;
• Win students to join the Progressive Labor
• Party and build a movement to end the root cause of war — capitalism.

While the demonstration was overwhelmingly positive, there are missing aspects. Some spoke about revolution but avoided the word communism. PLP believes we need to be open in our struggle for communism.
The struggle for communism represents the hope for the working class to build a world free from exploitation, police terror and war! Communism means an end to the capitalist profit system, to all forms of class exploitation and inequality: racism, sexism, and nationalism.
Communism means giving birth to an egalitarian society, uniting mental and manual labor, where our books and education won’t be stamped with a price, our classroom will be the whole world and every worker a lifelong student, and every student furthers the development of our communist society. Come to the PLP College Conference to find out why we need, and how we can build, a communist revolution!
As communists, we are not pacifists. We do not argue against war. We wage war for our class. Our enemies — David Petraeus, the CUNY Administration, the bosses’ courts and police — are waging war for their class. It’s about time we fight back. We must build for revolution on every campus, workplace and military base. To build for revolution, we must attack our enemies, strengthen our base, and recruit people to PLP. Fight the bosses wherever they are!

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, October 22 — Today, 2,400 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train operators and station agents (Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555) and service workers (SEIU Local 1021), began returning to work, ending their four-day strike. This was the second walkout since June 30 when Governor Jerry Brown ordered a 60-day cooling-off period. The strike focused on wages, safety, seniority scheduling rights and preserving work rules. Union leaders ordered the strikers back to work before the rank-and-file knew what’s in the new contract.
Rather than bargain for a new contract and avoid a strike, the bosses used the “cooling off” period to cool off workers’ militancy and train managers to run scab trains. On the strike’s first full day, two workers who crossed the picket lines to inspect tracks were run over by a manager-operated train. The strikers were outraged that two workers were killed and they wanted to use the incident to spread the strike and made homemade signs, like “RIP Two Workers Murdered by Bosses’ Profits,” and “GM Grace Crunican Murdered Two Workers!” In the last analysis, the workers sympathized with the two dead workers even though they had scabbed on the strike.
Fearing the strikers would start picketing other area bus depots and train stations, the ATU leadership cancelled picketing for two days. They refused to strike at AC Transit, a sister local with an expired contract that serves the same area. On the third day they had their deal.
The economic crisis of 2008 and the drive to privatize mass transit have intensified the attacks on all transit workers. These are racist attacks, sharpest in the major cities where wages and benefits are better and the workforce and ridership are mainly black, Latino and women. The bankers, bosses and real estate developers make huge profits from mass transit and then want us to pay them via give-back contracts and fare hikes.
Over the last decade, tens of thousands of transit workers have suffered cuts in wages, pensions, health care and working conditions. Thousands more have lost their jobs. In 2010, Washington, DC METRO’s new hires lost retirement health insurance. In 2008, BART workers were forced to take a five-year wage freeze. Chicago Transit Authority workers were forced to substantially increase their contributions to the pension system. In San Francisco, a City Charter amendment cut pay and benefits and wiped out 40 years of vital work rules. In Alameda County, an “impartial” arbitrator imposed wage, benefit and schedule cuts in the 2010 contract. In New York City, transit workers have gone without a contract or pay increase for four years and ATU leaders abandoned striking school bus drivers and matrons last winter.
BART workers were on the cutting edge of the fightback and they’re not alone. ATU members in the Bay Area, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC have all distributed a national flyer, urging their locals to do more to support and spread the strike. This same week there were job actions by bus drivers in Detroit and NYC. Recently school bus drivers had a wildcat strike in Boston and last winter a very militant NYC school bus strike was squashed by the City, contractors and the ATU leadership that left drivers and matrons hanging.
The missing ingredient is an alternative center of leadership to enable workers to counter the pro-capitalist union mis-leaders who are wedded to a profit system that only offers growing wars, poverty and racist terror. Their job is to keep us bound by the bosses’ laws. We need anti-racist leadership that is anti-capitalist, with a revolutionary communist outlook and the goal of leading the working class to power through communist revolution. Militant class struggles must be turned into schools for communism.

NEW YORK CITY, October 30 — The Morales-Shakur Center at City College of New York (CCNY) was where students hung out, studied, and organized. Its door was painted red with a black fist. Above the couches, the words “this space was won thru struggle” was painted in red. On Sunday Oct. 20, the week of midterms, students came to school to find this center closed. Hundreds of students and community members rallied that Monday, followed by another protest on Thursday, leading to the sudden suspension of two student leaders on Oct. 28. PLP and friends participated in this struggle, and are building ties with these protesters.
While PLP forces continue to participate in this struggle at CCNY, we are stepping up our anti-war efforts at other CUNY campuses as well. Today, PLP students and friends occupied the lobby at Hunter college in solidarity with the struggle to seize the Morales-Shakur center. Wanted posters of Petraeus were hung and many were invited to our upcoming college conference. But we must step up our fight.
Students vs. Campus KKKops
The center was a result of student protests and building occupation over the first rounds of tuition increases in 1989. It is named after the Armed Forces of National Liberation member Guillermo Morales, and Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur. For over two decades, the Morales-Shakur center has been a space for women and gay-lesbian fighters, and community and student organizing.
The administration, under the guise of “expansion,” shut down the center, its building, and the library. The campus kkkops also locked down $1,000 worth of student belongings. At the first protest, Oct. 21, hundreds of students, faculty and the community denounced the administration’s fascistic seizure of their center. The fire alarm was pulled. Hundreds more students joined.
We then marched to the building entrance. Although the campus police tried to keep us out, we marched through the corridors, chanting loudly, to a second-floor rotunda, where students confronted campus cops and administrators, militantly demanding the return of the Morales-Shakur center.
Three days later, Oct. 24, 200 protested at the Administration building. Despite the lineup of cops, students linked arms and sat down, blocking the entrance. We surged onto Convent Ave, attempting to enter the large North Academic Center (NAC) building. Holding our college ID, we went from door-to-door attempting to get in. Campus security scrambled to keep the doors closed. Students were arrested, including an alumnus, and one was pepper sprayed. The cops shut down the entire building, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving.
On Monday morning, Oct. 28, two of the main student leaders were stopped by security. Their IDs were confiscated; they were given letters of suspension and were immediately kicked off campus. Despite this attack, 60 people rallied at noon and then marched off campus to meet their banned student leaders.
Velvet Glove of Democracy Comes Off
What we’re seeing at CUNY is the removal of the velvet glove of “democracy” to reveal an iron fist of fascism. The administration is retaliating for protests against the ROTC and appointment of CIA and military general David Petraeus as a warrior professor. The bosses are trying to build a base among working-class youth for their future wars in the Middle East.
While many students expressed anti-imperialist sentiments, pushing out ROTC at CCNY was not mentioned. PLP urged students to fight ROTC in connection with the Morales-Shakur fight. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military slaughtered three million workers. The majority of the U.S. officers in charge of this genocide were graduates of ROTC training centers.
The anti-Petraeus demonstrations are an embarrassment to the university, which has reacted in fury. Campus and NYPD cops beat and arrested six students at an anti-Petraeus protest on September 17. Now they stole the Morales-Shakur center. On Nov. 25, the Board of Trustees will vote to implement a new policy to restrict campus protests. Anyone who doesn’t follow the new restrictions will be punished. Surely, the past few months of protests have scared the CUNY bosses. This counterattack is a sign that we must be hitting them where it hurts. The ruling class understands the potential power of a worker-student alliance very well, perhaps more than the current student and faculty body realizes.
We live in a period in which the U.S. ruling class is fighting to maintain itself as the world’s dominant imperialist power. According to the NY Times, the U.S. plans 100 military missions in Africa in the next 12 months. Troops and naval battalions are moving into Asia to confront China. To do so, the rulers need a tight discipline over their institutions. To solve its deep economic crisis, it must implement more laws attacking workers’ wages, healthcare, and education. It is preparing the population for permanent war and sacrifice for their imperialist needs. And that is what we are experiencing at CUNY — the fascistization of the university. But workers and students are fed up. We will demonstrate at the November 25 Board of Trustees meeting, continuing our protests at CCNY and building an anti-imperialist movement on college campuses.  
Our most immediate task is inviting our new friends to the PLP International College Conference on November 8 and 9 to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our campus struggles, and to build for a communist revolution. The only way to purge war criminals like Petraeus, the racist police who murder our black youth like Ramarley Graham, Shantel Davis, and Kyam Livingston, and the daily exploitation under capitalism, is to fight for a workers’ world: communism.