PHOENIX, ARIZONA, June 23 — About 2,000 people attending the Unitarian convention boarded buses this evening for the 7-mile trip from the Phoenix Convention Center to “Tent City.” That’s the jail where fascist Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio houses people awaiting trial, including those he hands over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation.
The prisoners, swept up by the sheriff’s department that practices racial profiling, are tortured by brutal guards, exposed to extreme heat, insufficient and rotten food, and lack access to sinks, toilets and medical care. Women who go into labor are handcuffed.
The demonstrators, who came to Phoenix from 530 Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations in 50 U.S. states, were among the 3,700 participants in the 2012 UU General Assembly (GA). They stood in 100 °F (38 °C) heat for over two hours to show solidarity with the prisoners.
A 17-year-old member of the youth caucus said that, from her vantage point, she could see 20 or 30 hands reaching out from a narrow window in one of the jail tents. They waved constantly, she said, and we waved back. We could tell they heard us, because when we got louder, they waved faster.
The loudest chant of the evening was “Tear It Down,” in response to a speech by Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. At the jail and during a workshop at the GA, Alvarado called for UUs to fight against “the Arpaios in your communities.”
In particular, he urged UUs to organize their congregations (and ally with other churches and organizations) to oppose “immigration holds.” These are 48-hour periods during which local police keep people in custody who would otherwise be released, because they suspect them of being undocumented. During the hold, an ICE agent shows up to interview the prisoner. As of now, Homeland Security requests that police agencies do these holds, but they are not required to do so, nor do the feds pick up the tab.
Communists are participating in and helping lead these struggles, while we point out that ending racist attacks on immigrants requires a revolution to smash capitalism and the national borders its profit system requires. PLP members and friends, who are active in a number of UU congregations, distributed 940 copies of CHALLENGE at the GA. After receiving a copy of the paper, one delegate to the GA came back and took 20 additional copies to distribute at a workshop.
This “Justice GA” was held in Phoenix to protest Arizona’s racist, anti-immigrant law, SB 1070. The Unitarian church, self-described as “progressive” and “liberal,” has a long history of participating in movements against war and racism and for civil rights. Like unions, community organizations, and other religious denominations, its leadership is anti-communist, tied to the capitalist system by a thousand political, economic, and ideological threads.
For several decades the UU leadership has been pushing the idea that white people (most UUs are white) are responsible for racism (even though history shows that racism was created by capitalism.) Therefore, they say, in order to unite with blacks and Latinos against racism, white people must undergo training to understand and reject their “white skin privilege.”
Furthermore, they say, whites must accept a subservient role in the anti-racist struggle, basically doing what they are told to do by black and Latino leaders. (Of course, if the black and Latino leaders are communists or otherwise don’t agree with reformism and non-violence, the UU leaders says whites must NOT follow them.)
At this General Assembly, the UU leadership hired an organization called the Catalyst Project to conduct this training, in workshops “geared toward white people.” The workshop leaders deflected calls for multiracial unity against racism, and talked about “dismantling racism,” as if that could be accomplished without smashing capitalism with communist revolution. Communists and others, including a group called the Unitarian Universalist Multiracial Unity Action Caucus, pointed out that segregation is segregation; no matter how “progressive” it is made to look.
Most UUs at the GA support — at least for the moment — the “white skin privilege” theory. But, at the congregational level, when it comes to actually fighting against particular aspects of racism, most see that unity is the only way to go. Our job as communists is to involve more people in class struggle and help win them to multiracial unity against capitalism. We will fight alongside our fellow UUs, learning from them, teaching them, and winning them to join the fight for communism.
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Papal Bull on Slavery
A new wrinkle introduced by the leadership at this Unitarian General Assembly was a resolution to reject the “Doctrine of Discovery (DOD},” at the request of unspecified “partner organizations.” The DOD, also known as the “Doctrine of Christian Discovery,” was first promulgated by the Catholic Church via a Papal Bull in 1452. The DOD said that when Christian explorers “discovered” lands occupied by non-Christians, they could claim them for their countries, enslave the non-Christians, and seize their property. In 1823 the U.S. Supreme Court cited the DOD in support of seizing lands from Native Americans. Since then, U.S. court decisions have built upon that case.
The DOD is obviously a piece of racist crap, and the delegates voted overwhelmingly to support the resolution, although most had never heard of it prior to coming to the GA. That’s unusual in UU circles — more typically, things are studied for a year or more before being accepted or rejected.
The leadership clearly orchestrated things to get this resolution passed right away, for reasons yet to become evident. The resolution certainly came accompanied by language blaming ordinary white Christians for the actions of popes and capitalists, and it diverted people from what was supposed to be the main goal of the Justice GA — to engage more UUs in the struggle to oppose racist attacks on immigrants.
NEW YORK CITY, July 1 — Electricity provider ConEd has locked out over 8,000 workers as it tries to maximize its profits by freezing workers’ wages and “modernizing” pensions. As we go to press workers are picketing around the clock against the bosses’ use of 5,000 managers as scabs. One of them has already gotten burned.
UPDATE, July 3 — Oakland kkkops and school security officers invaded Lakeview Elementary School at 4 this morning, arresting two occupiers and ousting the rest (more next issue).
OAKLAND, July 1 — The occupation of Lakeview Elementary School has continued for 16 days (see CHALLENGE 7/4/12). Tonight, more than a hundred occupiers, parents, students and supporters held a “16 Candles” community potluck and a screening of The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.
Here are the demands the occupation has made on the Oakland Unified School District:
Superintendent Tony Smith must reopen all five closed schools or resign;
Keep all neighborhood schools open;
Stop union-busting attacks against the Oakland Education Association and other school worker unions;
Repudiate the crippling debt and interest payments imposed by the state of California on the Oakland school district after the district went into receivership;
Fully fund quality public education for all.
PLP in the Mix
Progressive Labor Party is participating in the occupation and organizing support for all actions. During extensive debates over the five demands, we are learning from others. Some parents and teachers are focused on short-term goals but agree with our broader analysis. For example, PLP members and others have argued that Superintendent Tony Smith is not our main target; whether he resigns or stays, attacks on public school students and teachers will continue.
The likeliest path for winning reform demands is not through sympathetic school board members, but by mobilizing workers and parents through the occupation. In any case, the only long-term solution to the perpetual crisis in education worldwide is a communist revolution. Only then will schools serve the needs of the working class.
Growing Militancy
A daily People’s School at the occupied Lakeview site offers classes for children on social justice, science and gardening, art (including posters), as well as exercise and free meals. There has been a lot of discussion and planning about how to organize the school, which is running well—despite threats by the Oakland School Police Department (OSPD) to evict the occupiers for trespassing.
Even as the occupation movement fights to reopen the five closed schools, many involved also want to inject a new style of education within these buildings. The teaching group is working hard to develop alternative curricula that help kids become critical thinkers about capitalist society. Their goal is education based on equality and the development of all students to their full potential, with a shared responsibility for the well-being of the collective.
While PL’ers understand that this goal cannot be fully realized under capitalism, we see glimmers of communist consciousness in working with teachers, parents and activists at Lakeview. We’ve learned that running a school is hard work, with many opportunities to learn, teach, and take action.
Children from the People’s School recently led a march and mobilization of more than 250 to the school site. (See photo.) The march was built by the continuing Lakeview occupation and resulting media coverage, along with activism by Occupy Oakland and mass leafleting at the school and in surrounding neighborhoods. PLP posters about capitalism and communism caught the attention of many, as did our chant: “For Education and Kids to Grow, Capitalism Has Got to Go.” The following week we joined a rally at the Oakland Board of Mis-Education.
We distributed many CHALLENGEs at these events, mostly through agitation but some to individuals we’ve met through the struggle. The headline “Wanted for Racist Murder” (7/4/12) struck a nerve in Oakland. One non-profit group mobilized the Board of Education meeting to protest the OSPD’s racist treatment of students, and in particular the school police murder last year of 20-year-old Raheim Brown, Jr. outside Skyline High School while he was attending a dance. In May, Skyline student Alan Blueford, 18, was gunned down by Oakland city police a month before he was set to graduate.
Students and organizers were interested in the CHALLENGE reports of other cop killings in New York. At the rally, an Oakland parent summed up one aspect of the education system: “Public schools are a farm team to prepare young adults for the prison system.”
A Lose-Lose Proposition
PLP sees capitalist education as part and parcel of the ruling-class effort to marginalize the working class of the future, especially students from the poorest neighborhoods. While we are fighting now for multi-racial unity and equality in the schools and curriculum, we need to create a revolutionary communist movement to destroy the capitalists’ institutions that control education, culture, media, and work.
The bosses use schools to impose social control to make capitalism as natural as the air we breathe. Institutional racism takes the form of segregated schools and revolving-door buildings and teachers. After the capitalists have guaranteed that these schools will fail, they move to close them, leaving black, Latino, and immigrant children with long bus rides to a new school.
In a period of capitalist economic crisis, students are channeled into an economy with little opportunity for upward mobility. A few might make it to professional or tech jobs, but most end up in non-union, low-wage jobs, the informal economy, prison, the military, or on the unemployment line. Racist education policies further stratify the future working class into competing subgroups while blaming dropouts for their failure to succeed in the capitalist economy. For the working class, the bosses’ schools are a lose-lose proposition.
WASHINGTON, DC, June 28 — Over 60 protestors including bus drivers, transit riders, workers from other unions, and Occupy activists rallied and picketed outside the board meeting of the DC Metro transit system. The rally demanded cancellation of the planned fare hike for riders and the racist pay freeze and benefit cuts for the predominantly black workforce. Chanting, “lower fares, higher wages, make the bosses pay”, demonstrators condemned the bosses for putting the cost of the system on the backs of the working class.
The transit system makes billions of dollars for the businesses (like the Verizon Center, the Nationals’ baseball stadium, and dozens more law firms and big office buildings) located near subway stops. It makes economic activity possible in the city as a whole. So why shouldn’t the real estate developers, big businessmen, and banks pay for something that makes profits for them? Because they run the government and will do everything they can to maximize their profits at our expense.
Metro is trying to play off riders against the union, blaming the wages, pensions and benefits of workers for the fare hikes, and then turning around and telling Metro workers that they should support the fare increase so they can be paid. But even under capitalism, most transit systems don’t rely on the farebox for their operating costs. In D.C., 70% of the operating costs of the system come from fares, a national record!
At the rally today, several Metro workers took their first step in getting involved in conscious class struggle. All of the Metro workers as well as most of the other demonstrators received copies of CHALLENGE, learning more about the long-term struggle for revolution that will take from the bosses everything that the bosses have stolen from the labor of our class. All of the demonstrators were pleased to see the unity in life shown by the rally, and pledged to continue the struggle together.
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Pakistan: Enraged Workers Strike, Burn Government Buildings
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- 03 July 2012 78 hits
PAKISTAN, June 28 — Prolonged daily power outages in almost every big city and small town have provoked widespread violent protests and strikes by angry workers. They have set fire to government-owned buildings, property, vehicles and offices belonging to the Water and Power Development Authority.
Almost every day the protestors are besieging grid stations, blocking trains, closing roads, pelting the police with stones and fearlessly facing attacks from cops wielding batons and hurling tear gas. They have destroyed traffic signals and attacked shops which do not close down.
When angry workers burned a few homes of ministers and ruling-class-elected representatives, the latter’s personal guards and police shot four demonstrators to death and injured dozens of others.
Workers staged a sit-down outside the Guddu Thermal Power House in Sindh province, chanting against the bosses for their negligence, lousy working conditions, lack of necessary tools and corruption, all of which caused the death of a co-worker. The security commander — a politically influential person affiliated with the ruling party — demanded the workers end their protest and chanting. After trading hot words with the workers, he left for his office. Later, his brother, accompanied by some gunmen, arrived and killed five workers on the spot, severely injuring 14 others.
Responding to this brutal act, workers shut down the plant and organized a huge march, demanding the arrest of all the culprits, including the security commander and the managing director of the power house. Workers are fuming and are organizing a city-wide strike in Guddu and its surroundings.
The energy crisis, caused by the bosses’ corruption, incompetence and lack of planning, is forcing layoffs, as well as riding roughshod over workers’ daily lives. Workers are angry over the poverty, unemployment, exploitation and oppression. Recognizing their enemies, they believe these bosses are responsible for all their miseries; and want to get rid of the bosses. But they do not yet have the leadership which can organize their anger and militancy towards an international communist revolution.
Comrades and friends of PLP are trying to expose the bosses and explaining that voting for one bosses’ party or another won’t change their lives but will continue their misery.
At the Guddu Power House demonstration, our comrade and some friends delivered revolutionary speeches and asked the workers to organize against the viciousness of the capitalist system and the brutal bosses, and for a communist revolution. They condemned the puppet union leadership, explaining that PLP is the true party of the working class, fighting for a society run by our class, for a world without exploitation, poverty, inequality, injustice and torture — a communist world!
