CHICAGO, IL, October 1 — The occupation of the Whittier field house is in its third week. It appears that following one week of direct confrontation with the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) security (see CHALLENGE, 10-6-10), the city’s police, politicians, ruling class and their school board are waiting them out.

CPS, planning the demolition of the building, refused the mothers’ demand for a library and after-school facility, so they have begun transforming this place into the library and community center they want. Volunteer librarians and donations of hundreds of books have transformed the field house into a near-functioning library, proving we don’t need these politicians and the banks and businesses they serve to provide for our needs.

The predominantly Latina mothers are beginning to see this as more than a struggle for a school library because they now know it is simply 1 of 160 Chicago schools, mainly black and Latino, that don’t have libraries!

We are mobilizing the Party and our friends around this struggle:

• Chicago State University professors have circulated a petition supporting the mothers and brought black students to the field house.

• One student who previously had made several anti-immigrant comments in class changed when she went to show her support and met some of the mothers.

• A postal worker raised this struggle in his union, took up a collection and organized a BBQ at the field house.

• Comrades have done overnight guard duty.

• When some mothers were getting sick, the PLP County hospital club and friends helped organize a health fair for them. As one comrade took a mother’s blood pressure, she whispered, “I really like your paper. I’ve shown it to some of my co-workers.” She and others have met to discuss and write this article for CHALLENGE.

She then described the 7-year struggle for this library, saying her involvement initially was very minimal due to being driven by the many problems in her life pulling her away from it, “sometimes going to the local school council meetings, but mostly I just got information from one mother who went.”

At times very stoic and at other times very emotional and teary-eyed, she described the difficulties of being a single mother raising three children and her history of being terribly mis-treated by her ex-husband. She said her new boyfriend, who is black, treats her much better but it has increased a long-standing rift with her family due to their racism.

She noted the stress on her job and lack of respect by her boss who is always trying to put her down. Then she smiles when mentioning her discussions with co-workers about this school library fight.

The mothers now see a larger picture, how this potential demolition is part of a long-standing process of privatization of “public” property, tied to gentrification and the demolition of public housing ten years ago and the ongoing downsizing of public health care.

On the one hand, this struggle highlights the workers’ courage fighting back and the potential for widening class struggle. But it also highlights the necessity of PLP’s role within it to build the long-term personal ties and a sharp ideological exposé of how racist gentrification and privatization are not simply “bad decisions” but are necessary to capitalism.

During economic crises and imperialist wars, the bosses suck even more funds from all social services, from public schools and housing as well as squeeze profits from workers’ wages, pensions and health insurance.

However this struggle turns out, state power still belongs to the bosses. Their plan right now seems to be to wait the community out, but that too could change. One thing’s for sure: this struggle will change the parents and the community too.

Our Party must step up our efforts within our own mass organizations to support the Whittier rebels. This is especially important because within the struggles against these attacks we fight against the cancerous ideas of racism, private ownership and profits and the divisive nationalism that prevents our class from uniting to fight for a society that will destroy these evils — communism. 



A fierce tactical debate is heating up within the U.S. imperialist camp. Confronting Iran’s nuclear-arming ayatollahs is becoming increasingly urgent for those bosses Obama is struggling to serve. An Iranian A-bomb, closer by the day, could effectively erase 60 years of a major cornerstone of U.S. imperialism: its domination of the oil-rich Mid-East. The stakes are high. It boils down to: U.S. (or Israeli) air strikes right now or a major invasion (with more allies) as soon as possible.

Imperialists Split on Iran Tactics: Strike Alone Today or With Allies Tomorrow

The dominant imperialists had leaned towards the latter course until recently. Their top think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), published an article entitled “After Iran Gets the Bomb” in its Foreign Affairs journal (March-April 2010). It said Iran’s nuclearizing was unavoidable but would give the U.S. an excuse to spread its own nuclear umbrella over the region while it gathered allies for a massive invasion of Iran.  Now, however, the CFR, led by David Rockefeller who personifies its imperialist Exxon Mobil-JP Morgan Chase backing, entertains a shorter timetable.

On September 28, the CFR hosted Joseph Lieberman, a party-straddling, liberal Senate war-hawk at its New York mansion. Lieberman told the journalists and corporate decision-makers the CFR had assembled:

“It’s time to retire our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table. It’s time for our message to our friends and enemies in the region to become clearer: Namely, that we will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability period — by peaceful means if we possibly can, but with military force if we absolutely must. A military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities entails risks and costs — I know that — but I am convinced that the risks and costs of allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability are far greater.”

Liberal Lackey Lieberman Pushes Immediate Attack on Iran

Lieberman pointedly swatted down the CFR’s previous more gradual (but just as lethal) approach:

“Some have suggested that we should simply learn to live with a nuclear Iran and pledge to contain it. In my judgment, that would be a grave mistake. As one Arab leader I recently spoke with pointed out, how could anyone count on the United States to go to war to defend them against a nuclear-armed Iran, if we were unwilling to go to war to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran in the first place?”(CFR website, 9/29)

Lieberman’s nameless “Arab leader” probably hails from Saudi Arabia’s royal family but could be any of the pro-U.S. Gulf state regimes who received Washington’s recent record-setting $137-billion arms sales. The oil-soaked potentates want assurance that the weapons deals mean “the U.S. is with you” rather than “you’re on your own.”

Liberal Bosses, Unable to Get Workers or Elites to Fight, Must Rely on Potentially Disloyal Rightist Troops and Officer Corps

Either form of wider Mid-East war requires increased forces. Thus it presents serious problems for U.S. rulers locked in the Vietnam Syndrome puzzle which provoked mass working-class opposition to a draft, limiting the rulers’ source of military recruits. Their blatantly imperialist, racist genocide in Vietnam forced an end to both the draft and to officer training programs (ROTC) on many elite campuses.

Today the Pentagon gets its ground troops mainly from among desperately poor workers, with black and Latino recruits opting out of combat as much as possible. In a September 28 speech at Duke University, Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained that officers and foot soldiers come increasingly from red states: “Currently, the percentage of the force from the Northeast, the West Coast and major cities continues to decline.”

Gates said that the military’s own decisions on where to locate bases have reinforced the trend, with a significant percentage of Army posts moved in recent years to just five states: Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. This trend, Gates said, also affects the recruiting and educating of new officers.

“The state of Alabama, with a population of less than five million, has 10 Army ROTC host programs,” he lamented. “The Los Angeles metro area, population over 12 million, hosts four ROTC programs. And the Chicago metro area, population nine million, has three.” There is a risk, over time, Gates declared, of developing a cadre of military leaders that — politically, culturally and geographically — have less and less in common with the people they have sworn to defend.

War-Making Rulers Need Anti-Worker Draft which PLP Helped Bury

Any Election Day success for Tea Party anti-tax candidates is another near-term crisis looming over the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists. Tea Partiers are funded by the likes of the billionaire Koch brothers and media mogul Murdoch whose fortunes gain little profit from the spending on imperialist wars (which require higher taxes).

War-bent U.S. imperialists, with Obama as commander-in-chief, dread  anti-Washington, anti-tax Tea Partiers running and manning their military, given their strong influence among the very regions where the Pentagon has concentrated its bases. The rulers’ liberal wing’s only hope in avoiding that nightmare lies in bringing ROTC back to Ivy League colleges and restoring the draft of working-class GIs.

They have made modest progress on ROTC, with a handful of recent commissionings in Harvard Yard. But our class can draw on the anti-draft sentiment engendered by the militant, anti-imperialist struggle of millions in the 1960s and 1970s — a struggle in which our Party played a leading role, in factories and neighborhoods, on campuses and in the military itself. The rulers have not yet won working-class parents to willingly allow a draft that would send their children to fight and die in imperialist wars.

However, the ruling class holds state power. It can and must seek to reverse its predicament by restoring the worker-destroying draft. Taking on relatively puny Iran may or may not require full mobilization. Inevitable clashes with burgeoning U.S. rivals China and Russia surely will.

Our Party must lead our class in regaining the war footing we had decades ago. We need to militantly expose and attack the imperialists’ assaults on us where we work, live and go to school. Walkouts, strikes, mass demonstrations, accompanied by leaflets, forums and widespread distribution of CHALLENGE — and, most importantly, building solid PLP ties in, and recruiting from, the working class — can serve as training for the communist revolution that will eventually obliterate the war-making billionaires. J



PARIS, October 2 — Today nearly 3,000,000 people across France turned out for union-sponsored demonstrations against the government’s retirement “reform,” the third giant protest in a month. With opinion polls showing 70% of the population opposed to raising the retirement age, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s prediction that the movement “would run out of steam” has been proven wrong.

The government wants to increase the minimum age for retirement on a partial pension from 60 to 62, and the age for retirement on a full pension from 65 to 67. This attack on pensions is part of a general Europe-wide bosses’ assault on past social welfare gains in order to maintain and increase profits, forcing the workers to pay for the bosses’ general financial crisis.

Rank-and-file militancy is on the rise here. Hollow phrases from the government and unions negotiating give-backs are a far cry from what workers want.  Signs and banners call for winning back what was lost in 2003: retirement after 37½ years of paying into a retirement fund, whatever a worker’s age.

Broad Strike Spreading in Marseilles; Port Workers Block Oil Shipments

Since October 1, striking dock workers have blocked the port of Marseilles, strangling oil supplies, with 40 ships, mostly crude oil tankers, sitting in the harbor, unable to move. The port feeds all the oil refineries in eastern France and if the strike continues it will affect the entire country.

Now, walkouts are occurring or planned involving chemical refineries, bus lines, school cafeterias and nurseries. Petrochemical workers were slated to strike before October 12, which could block oil refineries.

Workers in Paris subways, on buses and suburban trains have filed a pre-strike notification for an unlimited strike beginning October 12. Although the union leaders have refused to call unlimited strikes. Rank-and-file workers are pressing for longer walkouts, beginning on a 24-hour strike day.

Also in Marseilles, Monoprix department store workers have been striking for higher wages since September 17. Christine, a young single mother fighting her first strike, declared: “We had to go on strike because we’re sick and tired of being stepped on. Demanding a 50-euro-a-month pay hike was really the minimum!”

Workers in the shipyard town of Saint-Nazaire stoned police during the September 23 demonstration.

Rank-and-file workers’ militancy and organization will win or lose this pension struggle. It began with strikes and protests on March 23, May Day, May 27 and June 24, and resumed after the summer holidays. Another day of strikes and demonstrations is scheduled for October 12.

Today’s protests were broader, with more families with small children, and more private-sector workers who feel vulnerable to retaliation from the boss if they strike. The atmosphere was friendly and laid-back, the kind of protest that suited the leaders of the right-wing unions.

Racist, Anti-Worker ‘Reform’

The retirement “reform” is an anti-working class measure. A business executive who retires today gets an average pension of almost 3,000 euros ($3,750) a month and can expect to live for another 23 years. A factory worker gets an average pension of slightly over half that and can expect to live only another 17 years. Do the math: overall, executives get triple the average worker’s pension from the retirement system. Raising the minimum retirement age two years will worsen this inequality.

The retirement reform is also racist. Workers subjected to the most exhausting jobs — in the construction, retail and hotel-restaurant trades (Observatoire des inégalités, 9/6/10) — are precisely the occupations where black and Arab workers are concentrated. Raising the retirement age means more years of the wear and tear of these jobs for these workers.

The ruling UMP party has been hinting that the calendar for increasing the minimum age for a full retirement pension from 65 to 67 might be pushed back, and that something might be done to raise the pensions of women who stop work to raise children. These crumbs will supposedly allow CGT and CFDT union leaders to cry “victory” and end the movement.

The Socialist Party (PS) is also joining the protest demonstrations. The PS’s goal is to win workers’ votes in the 2012 presidential elections. But no worker should be fooled: on January 17, PS first secretary Martine Aubry declared: “We’ll move to [a minimum retirement age of] 61 or 62” and promised to help the Sarkozy government achieve that goal.

On October 1, Ségolène Royal, the PS’s 2007 presidential candidate, proposed a referendum to “solve” the retirement issue instead of forcing the government to annul the law, threatening a loss via referendum what might be won with strikes and demonstrations.

In late August, President Sarkozy’s special negotiator, Raymond Soubie, told the union misleaders he was “worried about an uncontrollable degeneration of the labor climate that would go far beyond the retirement issue.” On September 23, Sarkozy noted with satisfaction that “the [main] unions have excluded the idea of a general strike or a strike that lasts more than 24 hours. That’s the main thing.” Now, according to the publication “Le Canard enchaîné” (9/29), “the big bosses of the union confederations” are worried about a possible “increase in the number of local hard-fought strikes.”

Organizing the kind of unified militancy displayed in Marseilles and in the mass demonstrations, workers here could move to dump the union misleaders and organize a general strike. This could lead beyond defeating the government attack on pensions. It could be a step toward developing the communist leadership needed to win the war against capitalist exploitation through communist revolution. J

Mexico: Seeds of Emerging Struggle Fertile Ground for Revolution

PLP must go where the workers are, get our newspaper around and motivate the class struggle. Reforms are not the workers´ way to victory but can be used as a way of learning to fight, since what we really need is to destroy this murderous system. The workers of the Mexican electricity company have been on strike since March, and they need solidarity as much from the outside as the inside. We need to make our presence known there. We will also motivate the workers from Volkswagen with our solidarity.

Our class ties will grow as well as our feelings of brotherhood. We will grow and learn from the class struggle there. That´s what we communists do. We learn a lot from strikes such as the one from Stella d’ Oro in New York, and they elevate our level, encourage our revolutionary spirit and our commitment to fight until we accomplish our objective. We contribute collectively and win new comrades to communism in the struggle, and we expand the distribution of our newspaper.

While we learn and teach, we prepare for the destruction of the capitalist system and building a new society in the service of workers, where everyone will have what they need and where collectivism, not individualism, will determine our actions.         

There are 10 billionaires in Mexico, includng Carlos Slim, the second biggest billionaire in the world. Meanwhile, 70% of the population is poor, the tenth part of the poorest population earns 1.1% in income, 53% are malnourished, 24% are extremely poor and 18% of indigenous children don´t attend school. The capitalist system is unable to meet the most basic needs of workers, but if we build the PLP, we can make our own communist history which will solve these problems.  

Mexico is the second largest oil provider for the United States, with oil reserves of 47 trillion barrels which cost about $102 trillion. Oil represents about 40% of Mexico’s internal production, with 4 million barrels a day. Mexico is the world´s 5th largest oil producer; 75% of this oil ends up in the United States. The petrochemical industry provides Mexico with a profit of more than $45 million, but 140,000 of its workers get dirt-poor wages as a result of the deals made by the union to serve the greed of the oil bosses.

Places such as Chiapas and Tabasco are towns in misery, with killings and drug trafficking everyday happenings, and the workers don’t understand where the profit they create as part of the industry goes to the bosses’ pockets. The supposed achievement of the union, putting five of its representatives on the board of directors of the company, hasn´t benefited the workers. It has helped the oil companies to exploit and oppress the working class even more.

There are more than 5,000 assembly plants along the border of the United States, the second most important area in the economy, employing about two million workers. Because of the NAFTA treaty, the bosses can get the most work out of them and maintain their profit even in a crisis. The NAFTA agreement has generated more poverty and allowed international companies to exploit Mexican workers even more, as the profits of these companies show earnings of thousands of dollars even in the time of crisis.  

Drug-trafficking generates about $40 billion dollars annually and is the third generator of profits in Mexico according to Seminario. The bourgeoisie profits, even if they hypocritically say they are fighting drugs. They need the violence, killings and kidnappings to intimidate the workers and keep them passive.

The supposed fight against drug-trafficking also works as a screen to disappear and kill union leaders, human rights activists, reporters and politicians that step out of line. Curfews have been imposed like those that were used in dictatorships like Pinochet’s Chile. The police raid homes for supposed drug traffickers, when they really know their names and where they are hiding. There are cases such as the 72 immigrants to the United States who were killed in August and found after some of the workers that escaped filed a report. They still don’t want to say in whose house the others were killed and are scared to tell the truth, because they know the the power of the owner. In reality the ruling class is knee-deep in this, and that is why the investigators have never found an answer.          

Neither the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), nor the PAN (National Action Party), PDR (Party of the Democratic Revolution) can solve the problems of the workers, because they all represent the billionaires and drug traffickers. All the things they represent are products of the capitalist system: poverty, exploitation, oppression and corruption.  

The union leaders aren´t happy because the workers haven´t been passive. According to the informative bulletin from IMMEX this year, there have been 918 strikes and demonstrations approved, but only five have been carried out. Volkswagen preferred to set up in Guanajuato and not Puebla, because the average wage in Puebla is higher. Also, in Puebla there is an old tradition of struggle, and the bosses don´t want to deal with it.

 But now the Volkswagen workers approved a strike for Wednesday the 29th, mainly fighting for a wage increase. We will be with the workers, just as we were with them in the teachers’ strike in Oaxaca and the strike from UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and will bring our communist ideas, because wage movements alone do not fix the lives of workers.  

The history of the working class is full of triumphs against the bosses. These are the real stories that capitalists fear and these are the struggles that today continue to inspire workers around the world. The strike of thousands of French workers against their bosses for their pensions, the demonstration of thousands in India against unemployment and for their pensions; these tell the capitalists that we have potential.

A spark lights a flame, but we need to improve the revolutionary consciousness of the working class. We can´t look only at the immediate demands, because we limit our real possibilities.  However, the struggles that are happening in the world help us learn that the working class can become class conscious and break away from these imaginary limits, erasing all capitalists with an international communist revolution. J



WASHINGTON, D.C., October 3 — This past weekend the liberal wing of the ruling class tried their best to motivate its base to elect Democrats on November 2. The PLP joined thousands of other workers at the Lincoln Memorial to expose the dead-end politics of voting and to spread the revolutionary communist ideas crucial to fighting the endless attacks workers have been facing. On the buses going to and from the rally and at the rally itself, PL members distributed over 7000 issues of CHALLENGE while making many new friends.

The event, entitled, “One Nation Working Together,” was an attempt by the liberal rulers to rally their base. Through various unions — the UAW, CWA, AFSCME and SEIU 1199 — they had hoped, for a number of different reasons, to bring hundreds of thousands to Washington.

In the long term, the bosses are working to convince millions of workers to fight and die in their imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. As their situation deteriorates, the capitalists here know they’ll need a much more disciplined work-force than they’ve got now.

In the short term, this liberal ruling-class wing hopes to win workers to support the Democrats in the November 2 elections. With the recent Republican primary victories of Tea Party candidates in Delaware, New York and Kentucky as well as the “Restoring Honor Rally” led by right-wing commentator Glenn Beck, the liberals are worried that the energy from the 2008 Presidential election has temporarily run out of steam.

In a NY Times article (9/17) titled “Unions Find Members Slow to Rally Behind Democrats,” labor columnist Steve Greenhouse warns about the Democrats’ inability to energize rank-and-file workers to support their local politicians: “Union leaders themselves say that their efforts may not be enough because union members, like other important parts of the Democratic base, are not feeling particularly enthusiastic about the party.”

Who can really blame them? Unemployment and underemployment has passed 30 million; 21% are either jobless or can’t find full-time jobs. The rates are double for black workers and 40% to 50% for youth, depending on the region. Meanwhile, wages, pensions and benefits are being slashed, causing many workers to feel betrayed by the same politicians they campaigned for door-to-door just two years ago.

This was evident in the weeks leading up to the October 2 rally. Unions, in trying to win rank-and-file members to go to D.C., were literally bribing them with free bus rides, clothing and lunch. PLP members on those buses were working to seize an opportunity to win workers towards a communist revolutionary line.

On the bus rides heading to the rally, many PL’ers detailed the attacks workers are experiencing. Contrary to the “alternatives” advocated by the rally’s organizers, PL speakers advanced international working-class unity, fighting back militantly against the bosses and the importance of revolutionary communist ideas. They inspired many riders, who also bought copies of CHALLENGE.

At the Lincoln Memorial, PL’ers led marches and chants through the crowd, with many high school students leading the way, receiving a warm reception from those in attendance. One worker, a CWA member, said, “You know, I’m not a communist. I always voted for the Democrats. But as I see more and more taken from me and the Democrats not doing much about it….Hell, the union isn’t even doing much about it, [so] your idea doesn’t seem that crazy.” He then gave $5 for a copy of CHALLENGE.

Ultimately, the event revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of the liberal section of the ruling class. While there are still signs that the Democrats are unable to energize the workers to support them, they definitely control the organizations that can mobilize many workers and students.

There might not be a lot of workers organizing for them, but there is still only a small section of the working class ready to fight back against the bosses. The bosses’ lieutenants in the unions and community groups have done their job in keeping the working class passive in times of incredible attacks.

But if this rally revealed anything, it’s that workers with pro-worker leadership, are willing to fight back and are upset with their current conditions. It’s PLP’s responsibility to give leadership to these workers, not only through the distribution of CHALLENGE, but also by fighting side-by-side with them. Over time, many workers will see that communist revolution is the only solution.

However, as we’ve always said about the class struggle, “You gotta be in it to win it.”