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Haiti Teachers Blast Slave Wages, Rotten Schools, Cholera
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- 31 October 2012 79 hits
HAITI, October 28 — Sometimes all it takes is for someone to stand up and say no, for the whole system of exploitation and oppression to reveal itself. The rebels might get some crumbs from the bosses’ teeming table for his trouble. They might go back to being resigned to the bosses’ state power for ever. Or they might be radicalized by the experience and spend the rest of her life fighting for the working class.
But whatever the outcome of a reform struggle, once people stand up, and organize themselves, and then stand up stronger in numbers and conviction, and take the streets and march to the seat of power together, to the men with guns and money — then all bets are off, and it’s a teaching moment. It’s a moment when our action unmasks the power relationships that hold us in chains.
Such moments are when revolutionaries are born and it’s not about crumbs any more but the whole loaf. If a few communists are in the crowd, especially ones of different colors, genders, countries, and languages, it can be a prophetic moment. One in which we glimpse the guns and money abolished, the bosses thrown into the sea. Then it’s time to organize to make that revolution happen. If many more become communists, it does happen eventually.
Teachers in Haiti want a living wage and a decent public school system and an end to cholera. Just a few crumbs from the billions gambled away in one day on Wall Street. They are re-organizing themselves for a nation-wide two-day strike November 12-13, undeterred by Hurricane Sandy’s washing out their first strike date last week. They are standing up. And given the pressure-cooker of rage and political desire that is Haiti at the moment, and the presence of revolutionary communists in PLP, many can be won to revolution.
More specifically, in the open-air auditorium of a, run-down school, they were shouting: “Teachers are tired! Teachers are tired!”
Tired of a pittance that barely covers transportation, a leaky-roof lodging, a few sets of clothes, two meals a day, and our own kids’ school fees this month.
Tired of a hundred noisy, frustrated teenagers packed so tight into a room that only the first row can hear you try to teach. Tired of seeing the few full-time, half-secure teaching jobs in a country of 80% unemployment going, not to the qualified young coming full of hope out of the Teachers’ Colleges, but to cynical incompetents put there by politicians who see a teacher’s job simply as a paycheck to reward a client with.
So when a union speaker asked journalists not to interview her but the teachers themselves, what sprang from their hearts in a singing chant led by the sopranos was: “Teachers are tired! Teachers are tired!” Eighty teachers had come through the torn-up streets of this small port town to an organizing meeting called by their union.
The teachers’ meeting began. The left-wing national union and student leaders took the mike and speakers from far away told of their own desire to build the strike with international support. “You are not alone,” they heard from someone who worked in the Chicago strike. They heard of the campaign in the U.S. to end cholera, and the lift their union had given this campaign by making that a strike demand, by far the most significant action of the campaign so far. This town is seeing a spike in cholera deaths, predictable after heavy rain.
Then the witnesses from the teachers’ assembly came to the front and spoke their piece. There was a debate, to be resolved by the union exec meeting the next day, about which date to re-launch the strike.
It was a good meeting, a glimpse of the nation-wide structure of rank-and-file assemblies and a fifty-strong leaders’ group the union has spent a year building. Women took the lead at some points, gaining confidence by sitting together, leading the singing.
But after a wage increase, what? After the end of cholera, which new preventable illness will cut workers down? As long as capitalism remains, these struggles will go on endlessly.
Hurricane Sandy Can’t Wash Away Haiti Teachers’ Strike
Support the Nation-Wide Teachers’ Strike in Haiti and Internationally!
National march in many Haitian cities to launch the strike, Monday November12
Strike all the schools November 12-13, 2012
To see the strike demands, the union’s call for support, and where to write letters and send donations to the strike fund: http://psc-cuny.org/unnoh.
Write letters of support from unions, churches, student and community groups, professional asssociations
Organize forums on the strike in union halls, schools, campuses and churches
March and rally to support the strike at Haitian consulates, U.S. government offfices, the U.N. and the World Bank.
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Mexico’s Labor ‘Reform’ Chops Wages, Hours, Seniority
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- 31 October 2012 81 hits
The Labor Reform in Mexico is exposing the true nature of the capitalist system. The bosses, in their dogfight to control markets and maintain their rate of profits, have forced the Mexican government to reform labor laws, and take back many of the gains that the working class fought for and won through the years, many in bloody struggles, as in Chicago and Cananea in northern Mexico.
The recently-approved Labor Reform is an insult to the struggles and dignity of the international working class. The bosses argue that the reform will generate jobs in Mexico, but it will almost certainly cause unemployment in another part of the world. This shows that the international working class has only one option: to become organized around an international party like PLP to fight for communism.
The ruling class and the government are trying to convince us that the reform will benefit workers because, they claim, it will create jobs. The reality is that the capitalist system is in the midst of a profound crisis and the bosses are less willing to honor benefits such as seventh day payments, paid vacations, utilities, and bonuses.
Under their new system, workers won’t earn seniority. Even more importantly, it allows bosses to hire workers by the hour instead of by a work-day of 8 hours. This will only mean more poverty and misery for the working class. It’s hard enough to live on 8-hour wages much less trying to survive working only 2 or 3 hours.
Labor reform is the product of inter-imperialist struggles. By approving the Labor Reform, the Mexican government creates the conditions to increase production at the price of increased misery for the working class. Currently, U.S. Imperialism is declining and facing a threat by the Chinese imperialists, who super-exploit workers and pay even lower wages. Imperialists, to maximize profits, need to decrease their labor cost, and control a docile labor force.
That’s the reason the Mexican state, which serves the interests of the imperialist ruling class, is creating these conditions, similar to those enacted elsewhere.
According to the September 2012 issue of the Mexican journal Proceso, similar New Labor Principles are being pushed in the U.S. and Peru (2009), in Panama (beginning next month), South Korea (last March) and Colombia (since last May).
Labor Reform for Bosses, Revolution and Communism for Workers
Under capitalism and class society, workers have struggled and lost their lives to secure some labor benefits. The profit nature of this system demonstrates now, once again, that any gains made by the workers can be taken away at any moment, using capitalist institutions such as the state, the courts, the police and the army. Workers must continue fighting to benefit our class, not just to reform capitalism but to destroy it with a working-class revolution.
We must fight for our class interests, fight for communism; our party, Progressive Labor Party, has that objective. The bosses are our enemies and none of their initiatives could ever benefit the working class.
We invite you to organize our class brothers and sisters in the factories, schools, communities and armies all around the world to smash capitalism with a communist revolution. We invite you to join PLP.
Los Angeles, October 25 — The big problems facing public education are not necessarily a lack of funds or bad policy, but in fact the system itself which operates on the basis of maximizing profit. That was the message from panelists at a local community college forum titled “Beyond Elections,” attended by close to 150 students. The forum was in the context of the recent push by faculty and teacher unions to pass Proposition 30 which would raise taxes in California to pay for public education.
But the panelists pointed out that the problems originate in the political economy of capitalism; unless public colleges and universities can be turned into profitable enterprises, they will always be depending on a system that prioritizes the building of a racist police state and imperialist war.
This forum reflects the efforts of a group of college professors and students, disappointed with unions’ lack of fight-back, who have been meeting regularly to figure out how to put forward an anti-capitalist analysis in the struggle over budget cuts. PL members are actively helping organize this group, creating opportunities to discuss moving beyond a reformist outlook and how students and workers can work together to build a revolutionary communist movement.
The message was clear: elections are not enough; in fact, they are a trap. No matter the promise, they cannot move workers and students beyond capitalism, which is based on the exploitation of the working class. In his concluding remarks the last panelist pointed out that students and faculty need to recognize that workers have tremendous social power and do not need to depend on ruling-class politicians.
PL students and professors will continue to help organize more forums and actions, especially in public universities and community colleges throughout LA and Southern California. Also, they are already connecting these students to the fighting Walmart workers.
A few days after the forum, several students visited a local Walmart where they met the workers who have organized walkouts. In their discussions, they raised the need for building a worker-student alliance on the basis of class-consciousness and the need for a revolutionary communist outlook.
Oakland, October 27 — A loud and enthusiastic crowd picketed and rallied at Mi Pueblo Market today to popularize a community boycott here in Oakland (see CHALLENGE 10/17). The most organized and noticeable group were young people in 67 Suenos who took over the parking lot chanting, “If you’re E-Verifying, We Ain’t Buying!”. (a redo of E-40’s rap song, “We out here trying to function”). One manager got so frustrated that he threw raw eggs at the crowd!
PLP members and friends participated. We had signs and leaflets in Spanish and English about uniting the working class across all borders. (see photo). Our leaflet explained that the capitalist class worldwide causes migration around the globe and unemployment as a “labor policy,” as a race to the bottom for cheaper labor and maximization of profits. This hurts every worker, citizen or immigrant. We called to abolish racism, sexism, and nationalism with international working-class unity. When you look around, it’s only communists that say class trumps nationalism in all its forms.
Here we have a former “illegal” immigrant, Juvenal Chavez, who now owns 21 stores, pays substandard wages and uses Immigration Customs Enforcement to scare workers from fighting back. Nationalism doesn’t get in his way when he screws these workers! At the same time, his stores always have the red, white and green of the Mexican flag all over the place. “Patron” or “Boss — don’t be fooled — this is CLASS WAR. Capitalists of every nationality and every country are our enemies!
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, October 20 — With the U.S. presidential elections around the corner, college students here held a study-action group to address some questions our friends may be having, mainly, “Can you vote away the ills of capitalism?”
One young woman voted for Barack Obama in 2008 with great zeal. Today she is a PL’er and believes that “when it comes to war and foreign policy, Republicans and Democrats are the same.” Even so, she fears that Republicans will cut funds for family planning and preventative health services for poor and uninsured workers. Actually, Democrat Clinton made the biggest cuts in welfare.
In reality, racist unemployment and sexist healthcare cuts are a daily reality for workers under Obama. Nearly one in three teens is unemployed. The expansion of minimum-wage jobs has lowered wages overall. More than $60 million in cuts have been made to Planned Parenthood. Brooklyn’s Downstate Medical Center is being shut down, a huge blow to the borough’s majority black and Latino residents and to the hospital’s mainly female workforce. As the Obama administration has demonstrated, these attacks will continue no matter who is president.
The State and Class Dictatorship
The Progressive Labor Party rejects bourgeois democracy, the capitalists’ form of government. As Karl Marx noted, all governments are absolute dictatorships of the class that holds state power. Under bourgeois democracy, the bosses use elections to confuse and distract workers from organizing in their own interests.
Presidential campaigns are one of the rulers’ main tools to hide their brutal control over every aspect of capitalist society, regardless of which party or candidate comes out ahead at the polls. Despite the candidates’ tactical disagreements, a vote for Democrat Barack Obama is essentially no different than a vote for Republican Mitt Romney. Both serve the bosses’ class interests.
In our study group, we considered how elections are both a con game for workers and a method to settle differences for the ruling class. As our friend from Haiti said, “Voting is to keep us in check. They have voting so we don’t revolt.”
Voting is Futile
Nothing frightens capitalists more than workers’ anger. To prevent armed revolt, the bosses channel reform movements into the electoral process, where that anger is neutralized. Whatever gains workers have made are the result of mass organizing against the bosses led by communists, not because of voting. The eight-hour day was enacted after years of strikes in basic industries and the threat of a national railway strike. Communists organized the fight for unemployment insurance and the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37 which led to the unionization of autoworkers, the basis for decent pay and health care. While reform victories are short-lived, they demonstrate that change — and ultimately communist revolution — can be achieved only through long-term mass struggle.
We asked our friends who have mobilized for Shantel Davis, the 23-year-old black woman executed in June by a Brooklyn kkkop, if we could vote away racist police shootings. They unanimously replied that we could not. They understand that capitalism rules through state-sanctioned, systematic violence to suppress and intimidate workers.
The bosses run our schools, hospitals, and workplaces to squeeze out maximum profit while indoctrinating workers with capitalist ideology. Under their dictatorship, the capitalists own everything — including their puppet politicians, rigged court system, and racist and murderous cops. As the competition between national groups of capitalists sharpens, the bosses need more intensive and massive terror — fascism — to fight broader wars for even more profit.
Elections are like being asked, “Would you prefer to be decapitated or shot in the head?” Communists refuse to choose which politician will be in charge of the next round of layoffs, cuts, wars, and police violence. Our goal is a society where working people run everything for the working class.
Under communism, everyone will be entrusted with the power and responsibility to think, speak out, and act in their class interest. Goods will be produced and distributed according to need. In contrast to bosses’ democracy, communist government demands full and open discussion and criticism. Once a decision is made, collective struggle will put it into practice.
What To Do?
Some of our friends think capitalism can never end: “It’s been around so long. Change is difficult.” Indeed, change is difficult. But mountains turn into soil, your childhood enemy comes to be your best friend, and passive workers become fierce revolutionaries. The question now is how.
The Progressive Labor Party says communist revolution is truly the only solution, and what’s rotten must be destroyed at the root. For that we need millions of workers to unite under the banner of the communist PLP. Every time a worker joins PL, a cop trembles in fear and a capitalist is that much closer to a bullet to the head. Yes, revolution will be violent. What did our friends think of that? They agreed to another study group for further discussion!
