MEXICO, February 12 —Workers living in the Lakes Xico-Tlahuac area, southeast of Mexico City, who are already threatened by flooding, now must fight the bosses’ plans for a grand-scale hydro project that will increase the danger. There are 120,000 families living in 12 residential colonies in the state of Mexico and the Federal District that could be affected.
Faced with the threat of flooding and later eviction from our homes, members and friends of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have begun to organize meetings with our neighbors to denounce these actions of bosses and politicians against workers. Over two years ago, we began discussing the problem of flooding that results from unrestrained over-extraction of underground water that is sinking the area.
Now the bosses want to start building their project, called Sierra Nevada, which they have already approved. They claim it will bring “Water for Everyone Forever,” by building a series of ponds to collect fresh water, mainly from the ice melting off the volcanoes Popocaltepetl and Iztacihuatl, as well as from rain sources. According to the plan, this water could supply the western zone of the Federal District.
With this project, the bosses are trying to placate the anger of residents who are almost permanently living without water — but it will be at the expense of other workers’ lives. But they are also planning an “eco-tourism” zone around the project showing that the true beneficiaries will be those bosses who own the land and resorts.
University Bosses Complicit
The National Autonomous University of  Mexico (UNAM) directed researchers to plan a project that in fact cannot guarantee workers’ safety. They failed to incorporate a back up plan to protect residents in case of flooding. And the threat is always present, as the researchers themselves have admitted, in case of strong rains or a malfunction of the system of drainage channels, given the decrepit and inadequate municipal infrastructure.
Through the use of CHALLENGE, we warned residents about the dangers and the need to organize ourselves to fight. We have distributed more than 6,000 flyers and newspapers in the two years of this struggle. These actions have given workers confidence in us, and the confidence that if the workers are organized, we could accomplish much.
The local government tried to derail the movement, arguing that it was a false alarm, but during the rainy season they chose to sacrifice the lives of workers of several other districts, such as Reyes, La Paz, Nezahualcoyotl y Ecatepec, flooding their homes with residual waters from the general drain.
Join the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party. Come to the meetings and to the political education circles.

Tunis, Tunisia, the springboard of the Arab Spring in January, 2011, recently witnessed the eruption of mass demonstrations and a general strike to protest the assassination of a leader of the opposition party challenging the Islamist government. However, two of the key factors that led to the 2011 uprising, mass unemployment and poverty, are as prevalent as ever, essentially because their cause, capitalism, still rules. These conditions have sparked violent protests, which is why the government’s state of emergency remains in force.
All this exposes the hollowness of liberals in the U.S. and elsewhere labeling the Arab Spring a “revolution.” Revolutions occur when an oppressed class overthrows the oppressor class.
The General Union of Tunisian Workers called a one-day general strike on February 8, although the country’s universities were shut down until the 11th. However, the ruling class was taking no chances. Soldiers were deployed outside the main government buildings in Zarsis, Gafsa and Sidi Bouzid where masses of workers and youth marched, chanting “Assassins,” accusing the Islamist governing party of being behind the assassination.
Following the funeral at which tens of thousands assembled, taking “on the air of a demonstration against” the government (El Wonton newspaper, 2/9), army helicopters began overflying Tunis and military trucks were deployed on the city’s main avenue. But all of this did not prevent young demonstrators from occupying the street, clashing with police using riot clubs and tear gas.
CHALLENGE pointed out in 2011 when uprisings spread across the Middle East that they were limited to challenging the region’s dictatorships by calling for “free elections.” They weren’t aimed at overthrowing capitalism so the system’s exploitation of the working class would continue. No elections will change this, as workers and youth are discovering in  Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere.
Capitalism’s ruling classes still hold state power and use it to clamp down on mass rebellions in Tunisia. Only the leadership of communist ideas aimed at completely destroying the profit system and its bosses can free the working class of the hell wrought by that system.

Fascism is the response of a ruling class in crisis. U.S. bosses are preparing for such a crisis, composed of a critically unstable financial system along with increased competition from imperialist rivals such as China. A dominant section of the ruling class recognizes that the future includes wider and deadlier wars, perhaps a world war. Their response is increased militarism and internal discipline necessary for the bosses to wage and win wars.
In addition to intensifying racist attacks, the rulers are remaking criminal law and processes on the grounds that the “war on terror” requires special laws, and then applying the new procedures to all workers.
During the recent U.S. presidential campaign, Obama and Romney competed with each other to see who could be tougher on terror. This posturing occurred even though the main threats to U. S. capitalism come from rising powers like China, not from small terrorists.
Most recent acts of “terrorism in the U.S” — which Obama claims is the main threat facing America — are usually orchestrated by the FBI or the New York Police Department using informants to entrap a person or group to launch an attack, something they would have been incapable or unwilling to do without the informant.
These traps have been set against the Arab/Muslim community to build fear of, and racism against, this group among other workers. The “war on terror” remains central to the plans of the U.S. ruling class. This lie is part of the plan to lull workers into accepting a future of wider war and increased racist attacks.
Secret Courts Maintain Bosses’ Dictatorship
The laws about “terror” have been written so broadly that 92 percent of those charged are convicted. For example, the “Material Support” Law, which existed before 9/11 but was significantly broadened when the USA Patriot Act was passed in 2001, makes it a crime to provide anything, including humanitarian aid, to any group that the State Department has designated as “terrorist.” The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of lawyers providing advice about why to give up violence, as well as groups trying to provide aid to tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and human rights monitoring in Turkey. The government has turned this law into a tool against any group not supporting the overall plans of U.S. imperialism.
Although this law sounds like it’s aimed at groups outside the U.S., it’s also been used to convict people and groups inside the country. This includes the defense attorney Lynne Stewart as well as Sami Omar Al Huassayn, an Idaho student accused of running a website where radical Islamists posted materials. This trend will continue. All the Feds have to do is classify dissidents and communists as “terrorists” — who advocate violence — and it becomes a crime to give support of any kind.
The main fear of the ruling class is that workers will follow the communist ideas of workers overthrowing capitalism and running society in their own class interests. That’s the only thing the ruling class can’t survive. And that’s why workers must be won to understand that attacks on communists are attacks on their own class interests.
The “material support”  law has been the cutting edge for expanding the use of laws once used primarily in criminal cases: “conspiracy” laws which allow conviction for the “crime” of cooperating with people who talked about doing bad things, and “false statement” laws which make it a crime to tell cops anything which is not completely true. This is particularly vicious when the cops ask, “Is that all you know?” If you say “yes” then they can arrest you if you forgot the slightest detail.
After the 1970s’ scandals about warrantless snooping in the name of “national security,” Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), allegedly to prevent illegal spying on U.S. citizens. However the Act created a secret court that could issue warrants for covert spying against foreign enemies including activities within the U.S. The law was also expanded by the Patriot Act in 2001.
The “war on terror” has been used to justify issuance of FISA secret warrants against anybody accused of “terrorism.” This is a very broad category, enabling thousands of warrants to be issued each year.
Not satisfied with having to go to court — even a secret one which approves more than 99 percent of all requested search warrants — the USA Patriot Act gave the FBI authority to issue “national security letters.” They ordered banks, phone companies and other institutions to hand over records without telling the person whose records were being seized. When five small phone companies refused to comply with such letters, the Justice Department pounced, suing them for interfering with national security.
By 2011, there were 16,511 national security letters, plus tens of thousands of more informal requests from the Feds for information from phone companies and banks.
These “anti-terror” rules have defined the new norm. Judges have long been able to “seal” (keep secret) search warrants, but that used to be very unusual. However, one outraged judge revealed that in 2008 in Houston, 99.8 percent of all electronic surveillance orders were sealed. He estimated that 30,000 sealed surveillance orders are issued each year nationwide by Federal courts alone (state and local courts issue more).
The cops increasingly dispense with court orders, just writing phone companies. Cell phone carriers report that in 2011 they received requests for information about 1.3 million subscribers. What started out as a special authority to be used in special circumstances (first against “spies,” then against “terrorists”) has now become a normal practice by every police department.
Return of the Red Squads
In the 1960s and ‘70s, special police units called Red Squads were used to harass and attack communists. After 1970s scandals in which the FBI had been openly investigating protestors (strikers, opponents of U.S. imperialism, anti-Vietnam war demonstrators, anti-racists), the ruling class switched course and instructed the FBI to concentrate on crimes rather than protests. Meanwhile, it created FISA to quietly proceed with domestic spying.
This two-pronged approach has been scrapped given the “war on terror.” Now the 2011 FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide explicitly allows the FBI to use all its intelligence-gathering techniques against people not suspected of any crime. Agents are allowed to open an “assessment” “proactively” (without any indication a crime is being planned), and, as part of that assessment, to follow people, search their trash, send in informants, and troll the internet — all in the name of capturing terrorists. The Feds have had to admit using “community outreach” meetings with the Muslim community to recruit informants and identify those whom they will prosecute.
(Conclusion next issue: New technology made exempt from privacy rules.)

Thousands of multiracial moviegoers across the U.S. lined up for hours to see Quentin Tarantino’s Christmas blockbuster Django Unchained. Django is a slave-narrative revenge flick done in a style that combines spaghetti westerns and 1970s Blaxploitation. With so few Hollywood films about slavery and fighting back, how this story is told matters to the working class.
Some have called Django a “liberation” narrative. But to what extent is the capitalist Hollywood industry able to tell a story of true anti-racist liberation? Hollywood has historically been the main manufacturer of racist and sexist ideas. Films that are truly anti-racist or anti-sexist rarely make it to the silver screen. So is Django an exception to the rule? And what are the consequences to the working class of Tarantino’s take on racism and slavery?
The reviews for the film have been overwhelmingly positive, and in the film there is much to root for. In the opening scene a white, German bounty hunter, Dr. Shultz kills the slavers who own Django and offers Django and his wife freedom in exchange for helping him hunt slave masters. They set off, leaving dozens of dead slave masters in their wake! This multi-racial duo echoes the legacy of John Brown, the white preacher who fought slavery with violence.
In one of the most memorable scenes of the film, the head slave master, Calvin Candie, insists that Dr. Shultz shake his hand to complete the buying back of Django’s wife. In a true show of uncompromising multi-racial unity, Shultz extends his hand but pulls a gun and blows Candie away. Shultz is killed and Django battles the slave masters’ minions for his and his wife’s freedom. He blows them away one by one. As Django rides away with his wife into the sunset it is hard not to applaud this anti-racist hero.
But the question remains, what is the image that the audience will take away from this film: is it of Django as an anti-racist fighter or of a gangster who must prove his manhood with his gat?
Tarantino’s use of the Blaxploitation genre is problematic and does more to promote racist stereotypes rather than undermine them. Following the civil rights movement, Blaxploitation films replaced images of black unity with racial stereotypes. In the same vein, Django’s character is “chained” to racial stereotypes that cast black men as hyper masculine, prone to violence and out to “get theirs.”
Aside from the excessive violence, Tarantino attempts to shock the audience with his excessive use of the N-word (110 times in the film!). Tarantino claimed he wanted to present an accurate portrayal of the racism in the South. But the problem was with how the word was used. It was used not to evoke the horror and inhumanity of slavery, but to evoke cheap laughs. By keeping the N-word alive through comedy, it makes everyday racism more palatable to people because they can perceive it as “just a joke.” Racial slurs produce racial stereotypes and allow workers to dehumanize one another rather than organize together.
Throughout the film, Django is described as unique and by the head slave master as “one in ten-thousand” because of the way he stands up for himself. The phrase suggests that those who stood up to white supremacy and slavery were the exception and not the rule. From the Haitian slave rebellion to the hundreds of slave rebellions that shook the U.S. South and the Caribbean  before 1860, slave rebellion was an everyday fact of life. It involved masses of slaves, men and women, not an elite few. To present Django as exceptional and rebellion as individualistic, undermines the true history of anti-slavery fight-back.
None of the female characters in the movie, including his wife, are portrayed as fighters. Women instead, are shown to be victims that must rely on men to liberate them from slavery. Throughout history women, such as “Nanny” of the Jamaican Maroons and Harriet Tubman, have been paramount in the struggle for freedom from oppression.
Django lured audiences with the promise of racist “liberation,” but in the end sold them individualism, racism and sexism in a new package. The audience roots for Django because he is fighting slavery. But his battle with slavery is driven not by anti-racist solidarity, but by hypermasculine individualism that plays on the stereotypes of Blaxploitation films and gangster rap. These racist stereotypes served the bosses following the civil rights era as they sought to rob the gains won by a militant black working class. And these stereotypes continue to serve their needs today as they seek to justify racist unemployment, racist mass incarceration, and racist police killings.
The mass appeal of Django shows that working-class people possess anti-racist ideas and want to fight back. In fact, the true heroes are not Django and Shultz, but the multiracial groups of workers and students who saw the film hoping to be inspired by a story of anti-racist fight back. Ultimately Django does not deliver on its promise of “liberation” just like the bosses and Obama do not and cannot deliver on their promises for “change.” The working class cannot rely on the capitalist Hollywood industry to tell our stories. We must tell our own stories about fight-back, learning from past struggles as an inspiration toward building a truly anti-racist communist future.