NEW YORK CITY, May 17 — Recently members and friends of our PLP club distributed 100 CHALLENGES over a three-hour period at a city hospital here at the Emergency Department entrance’s ambulance bay, and in the patient waiting area. We sold several copies to hospital workers changing shifts and taking breaks. Some of our best discussions occurred with the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Paramedics bringing patients into the hospital.

The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) staff here has been engaged in bitter struggles against both the hospital administration and the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) which runs the EMS. A few EMS workers had copies of leaflets they had written collectively following the suspensions of several of their coworkers on flimsy or fabricated grounds.

We learned a bit about the history of the EMS system, its working conditions, and, like the rest of the working class, the all-out racist attacks on the standards of living of both EMS workers and the patients they care for.

In New York, the fire suppression and EMS 9-1-1 systems are run by FDNY; FDNY’s EMS branch accounts for about 70% of the 9-1-1 ambulances in the city, with “voluntary” private hospitals comprising the remainder. They respond to an average of 3,300 calls per day throughout the five boroughs. St. Vincent’s hospital in Manhattan’s West Village, a Level One Trauma Center, recently shut down, costing the jobs of five 24-hour 9-1-1 ambulance units, employing 60 full- and part-time EMTs and Paramedics, along with the jobs of the rest of the hospital staff.

According to the EMS crews, since 9/11 the FDNY brass has turned FDNY into a “paramilitary” organization with a strict chain of command, and has set their sights on pushing the higher-paid hospital-based crews out of the system. The reason? EMS is an important source of profits.

Every ambulance ride, whether treatments are administered or not, is billed to either private insurance or Medicaid. They can easily net over $1,000 per patient if oxygen and basic diagnostics like vital signs are taken. For a hospital, Labor and Delivery and EMS are two of the most lucrative sources of revenue. EMTs and Paramedics see none of this.

Starting pay for municipal EMTs working for FDNY is around $33,000 a year; hospital-based EMTs make slightly more, with Paramedics in both systems making even slightly more than that. Most EMS workers, especially those with families, moonlight at other hospitals part-time, easily working 60-80 hours per week.

One of the EMTs told us that, to afford his mortgage, car payments, and provide for his children, he works overnight tours only to jump into his car, drive to another borough and work a morning-to-afternoon shift, sleeping “for a few hours” in the evening before getting into his car and working overnight again, Monday through Friday.

This worker’s routine was not unusual, as we discovered. Another EMS worker gave us one of their leaflets which attacked the racist FDNY brass and hospital administration and called on EMS workers to unite with all hospital workers and patients to demand better working conditions and healthcare.

Unfortunately, many EMS workers have been burnt out by this racist capitalist system’s years of attacks. Many who worked during the 1980s and 1990s saw their communities become literal war zones as the ruling class flooded the streets and homes of black workers with crack cocaine. The EMS workers we spoke with and who took CHALLENGE were mostly black, Caribbean, and Latino.

Some of the younger workers have avoided burnout, and are involved in local community organizations providing GED and health classes as well as classes for young mothers ages 12 to 22, along with basic literacy. Others have planned solidarity dinners with staff from St. Vincent’s hospital; we plan to assist these workers every step of the way with more CHALLENGE sales, helping distribute their literature, and linking their struggles with those of their international working-class brothers and sisters.

While we were warned that some of their
coworkers were openly racist and “basically Nazis,” and may obstruct our efforts to organize there, we reassured them that they are not struggling alone. Our PLP club will continue to make new contacts. We will use CHALLENGE to sharpen the struggle against the racist FDNY brass and swindling hospital bosses alike.

We have been discussing how the U.S. bosses’ war needs will dictate more racist hospital cutbacks and closures, among escalating attacks on the working class in every other country. We have pledged to step up our organizing efforts.

If there are any other comrades and friends who are EMS workers — or know any — in any country, we encourage them to write for CHALLENGE and share their struggles and experiences. 

The Times Square plot strangely resembles the “underwear” bomber attempt over Detroit last December 25. Both “masterminds” had upper-class backgrounds in their home countries. NYC terrorist Shahzad’s father was Vice Air Marshal in Pakistan, where the military rules. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, of Christmas infamy, is the son of Nigeria’s leading banker. Neither was seriously injured. Both sang like canaries when apprehended, fingering U.S. foes, the Pakistani Taliban and Yemen’s Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, respectively, as their backers. Both prompted U.S. military action and a media blitz. Thus, the possibility that Washington somehow aided their efforts arises.

A Century of U.S. Invasions

While PLP completely opposes terrorism as a working-class weapon, there are millions across the world who justifiably hate U.S. imperialism. Historically, the U.S. ruling class has fabricated numerous false attacks in order to justify its wars:

• In 1876, to break the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty giving the Black Hills (Dakotas) to the Sioux tribe, President Ulysses Grant demanded non-treaty tribes return to the reservation late in the year, before they would have time to hunt enough buffalo to survive the winter. This became an excuse to attack the Sioux and seize the Black Hills, massacring thousands.

• On February 15, 1898, the battleship U.S.S. Maine blew up in Cuba’s Havana harbor, giving U.S. rulers an excuse to declare war on Spain and seize its colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. When a reporter sent to Cuba told his boss, Press lord William Randolph Hearst, that he could not manufacture a story painting Spain as the culprit, Hearst famously wired back, “You supply the story, I’ll supply the war!”

• In a 1933 speech, Major-General Smedley Butler, a 33-year Marine Corps veteran, declared: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business….I was a racketeer…for capitalism…

“I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street….I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912….I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

• In August 1964, looking for an excuse to escalate the war in Vietnam, the U.S. government reported “attacks” on two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. President Lyndon Johnson then labeled North Vietnam an “aggressor” and Congress passed the infamous “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,” giving Johnson a blank check to escalate the war. In reality, both U.S. ships were launching commando raids on North Vietnam. Years later, the government admitted the “attack” was complete fiction.

• On April 28, 1965, President Johnson invaded the Dominican Republic with 23,000 troops to crush an attempt by the constitutionally-elected Juan Bosch government to regain power. A U.S.-backed right-wing military junta had overthrown Bosch. Johnson claimed he was “protecting U.S. strategic and economic interests.”

• In October 1983, the Reagan Administration claimed Grenada, a small  Caribbean republic, was “building an airport” large enough for Soviet planes to use to attack the U.S. mainland, and that U.S. medical students at St. George’s Medical School in Grenada were “in danger.” The U.S. then invaded, overthrew and imprisoned the government, and seized the island. The claims were later exposed as completely false.

• On December 20, 1989, President George H. W. Bush sent 27,000 troops and over 300 military aircraft to invade Panama, supposedly to “safeguard U.S. lives, defend ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ and combat drug trafficking.” The troops shot into residential buildings, killing over 3,000 civilians, later buried in mass graves. Actually, for years Bush had been a friend of Panamanian dictator Noriega who once had been on the U.S. government payroll. The real reason for the invasion was the increasing influence of Japanese banks using Panama as a financial launching pad for investments in Latin America, long regarded as a U.S. domain.

• On July 25, 1990, U.S. ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie told Iraqi President Saddam Hussein that the U.S. had “no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.” With this “O.K.,” on August 2 Saddam invaded Kuwait. The U.S. quickly used this as an excuse to send over a half-million troops to the oil-rich Middle East, establishing huge permanent bases in the region.

• In March, 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq, claiming it had “weapons of mass destruction,” (WMDs) though United Nations inspectors had insisted this was untrue. In 2005, the British press published a document from the office of the British Prime Minister proving the U.S. was using the WMD allegations as an excuse to invade Iraq. No WMDs were ever found. 

U.S. rulers are seizing on the failed May 1st Times Square car bombing to widen their overseas energy wars and wield harsher police powers at home. On May 9, Obama ordered a drone missile strike that killed at least 10 “suspected militants” in Pakistan’s Waziristan region, where bungling bomber Faisal Shahzad said he had received training from the Pakistani Taliban. Just before the raid, Hillary Clinton warned Pakistan’s leaders of “severe consequences” if a successful terrorist attack on the U.S. should originate from their country (CBS 60 Minutes, 5/9/10).

Consequences would include U.S. occupation of Taliban-dominated provinces beyond Special Operations troops already there. “[The Times Square attempt] comes amid increasing debate within the administration about how to expand the American military’s influence — and even a boots-on-the-ground presence — on Pakistani soil.” (NY Times, 5/9/10) Back in Washington,  proposals from Senators McCain and Lieberman to strip all legal protection from anybody linked to U.S. rulers’ foes would enable liberals to push a “middle-ground” tough stance.

Terror A Sideshow; Oil Riches Grand Prize For U.S. and
Islamist Capitalists

Obama & Co.’s deadly reprisal forms part of a broader U.S. ruling-class effort to shore up its threatened dominance over world oil and gas supplies in the phony guise of “combating terrorists.” Shahzad’s crude contraption in fact injured no one. U.S. media and think-tanks, however, condemned the deed as an expanding global terrorist network:

     • “There is a growing danger of attacks on U.S. soil by groups affiliated with, but not formally part of, al-Qaeda.” (Brookings Institution, 5/6/10) These groups and their Al Qaeda beacon, under the pretext of Islamic holy war, aim at capturing key pieces of the U.S. oil and gas empire for the benefit of local capitalists.

     • Bin Laden’s original Al Qaeda seeks the vast profits reaped by Exxon Mobil and allies in Saudi Arabia.

     • The group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia eyes Iraq’s oilfields — currently under U.S. occupation —  that could rival Saudi Arabia’s.

     • Afghan and Pakistani Taliban franchises want control of gas shipments from Turkmenistan to energy-starved India and China.

Meanwhile, the U.S. war machine is gearing up for a major June offensive to take Kandahar,  Afghanistan’s second city, which lies along the U.S.-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline route.

Short of Military Draft, Neo-Nazi Drones Are Obama’s Weapon of Choice in Pakistan

U.S. rulers need to restore the military draft in order to mount a force capable of invading the entire war zone, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Until then, they will continue to rely heavily on Obama’s favorite terror weapon, the Predator drone. It kills about one civilian for every two militants (over 700 slain non-combatants so far), sowing hatred of the U.S. among survivors.

The liberal, imperialist New America Foundation, bankrolled by the Rockefeller Foundation, released a study in February blessing Obama’s “murder-from-the-skies” program:

“Despite the controversy, drone strikes are likely to remain a critical tool for the United States to disrupt al Qaeda and Taliban operations and leadership structures. Though these strikes consistently kill Pakistani civilians, which angers the population, and prompt revenge attacks from the militants, Pakistani and U.S. strategic interests have never been more closely aligned against the militants than they are today....The drone attacks in the tribal regions seem to remain the only viable option for the United States....”

Indiscriminate drones resemble the V-2 rockets Hitler used in his terror raids against Britain in World War II.

However, many Pakistani bosses have their own class interests — controlling Afghanistan and fighting rival India’s control of Kashmir. Key Pakistani intelligence (ISI) and military officials have bankrolled Islamic “jihadist” movements (with CIA money) to expand Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and Kashmir. This was fine by U.S. bosses as long as these religious fanatics were attacking the Soviets. Now, the tables have turned. Jihadist forces today represent aspiring bosses in many areas of the Middle East and South Asia. Kicking the U.S. out of those areas would secure all the oil and gas wealth for these wannabe rulers.

Obama, Liberals Use Fear to
Dismantle Vaunted U.S. Civil
‘Rights,’ Expand Racist Profiling
on the Home Front

The fascist “Terrorist Expatriation Act,” introduced by Senators Joe Lieberman (CT.) and Scott Brown (MA.), and supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and a number of other Democrats (NY Times 5/7/10), would allow the U.S. State Department to strip citizenship from U.S. citizens suspected of providing support to terrorist groups. This would retroactively make them non-citizens at the time they allegedly committed their crimes, allowing them to be tried by a military commission. This is the latest development in a seamless web of legal fascism, from Clinton to Bush to Obama: secret evidence, secret courts, state secrets, massive wiretapping and surveillance, Guantanamo, indefinite detention.

Following the Times Square event, the Senate’s most popular conservatives, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, introduced a bill to relegate terrorism suspects, citizen and non-citizen, to indefinite imprisonment at the whim of military kangaroo courts, which act as judge, jury and executioner. Liberals complained but agreed to dump Miranda “rights” (to remain silent and have  legal representation).

Look out for a surge in jailings of Arabs in the U.S. With few exceptions, U.S. press coverage of the Times Square bombing ranges from tabloid speculation about the “degeneration of a suburban father” to racist hysteria about “Islamic bombers.” The hypocrisy of the liberal press knows no bounds: they pose as “protectors” of civil rights while saying absolutely nothing about the racist anti-Muslim garbage that saturates “letters to the editor” of major newspapers and internet comment sections. This racism will justify more repressive measures by the rulers.

The liberal establishment’s leading policy foundry, Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations, said (5/7/10), in the case of “terrorists,” authorities should “postpone the reading of Miranda rights under what’s termed the ‘public safety exception,’ as a rule.” This move follows the Obama regime’s abolition of lawyer-client confidentiality by reaffirming the conviction of attorney Lynne Stewart for communication with a terror suspect she represented in court.

Communists Fight for International Working-Class Unity

Racism, fascism and imperialist war are all products of capitalism. Racism is both profitable and divisive. Anti-Muslim racism is used to create fear of Muslim workers amongst the rest of the population, and to spread terror in Muslim communities. Expanding U.S. fascism will be used to intimidate workers from fighting back against the unemployment and financial disaster that is all capitalism has to offer us and to mobilize our class for wars that are fought only for the bosses’ interests.

Supporting either the liberals’ or conservatives’ racist response to the hyped-up scare would be a grave political error. Our class must identify and combat our main class enemy, U.S. imperialists. They have killed more than a million Iraqis and maimed and made homeless millions more, all for oil.

Communists fight for the international unity of all workers, because workers have really only one class interest worldwide. Racism, fascism and bosses’ wars secure the class interests of the capitalists. Only a movement which unites all workers and fights for communist revolution can rid our class of these ills of the profit system.

We need to build a mass communist party that will ultimately destroy the billionaires’ profit system and the wars it endlessly generates. J

Obama Embraces Clinton-Bush Repressive Policies

Starting with the “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,” enacted in 1996 by a Republican Congress and Bill Clinton, U.S. rulers have been moving away from their façade of “individual freedoms.” This law allowed the government to deport immigrants using secret evidence. This push towards fascist methods of rule accelerated after 9/11 with the USA Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress.

That law vastly increased spying (much of it approved by courts meeting secretly) and allowed criminal and intelligence agencies to share information. When the Bush-led government jailed U.S. citizen Jose Padilla (after falsely charging him with a “dirty-bomb” plot) and threw away the key, it took another step along this road. Obama’s promises to “restore the rights of Americans” lost during the Bush era has become an open embrace of all of the repressive policies of that administration.



          NEWARK, NJ, April 27 — “When Christie says Cut Back, We Say Fight Back,” chanted a multi-racial group of over 2,500 Newark high school students as they walked out of school today and marched to the Board of Education building protesting Gov. Chris Christie’s latest education cuts. Christie is slashing $820 million in school funding — to municipalities, colleges and universities, student financial aid and from the state pension fund. The protest here was part of a state-wide anti-cut demonstration of 9,000.

Plans were for students to leave their schools at 1:00 PM but that quickly changed. Students at Weequahic H.S. left at 9:00 AM and rallied outside University H.S. to win those students to come out. Moments later the two schools took over Clinton Ave., marching in unison to the Board of Education building.

At East Side H.S., students pulled the fire alarm, sparking a first wave of over 300 students to walk. Then at 11:00 AM another 600-700 left. Students arriving at Board of Ed offices met a Technology H.S. contingent that had already taken over part of Broad Street. Within minutes cop cars, unprepared for the early morning walkouts, raced into the area trying to contain the students.

Workers across the street were watching. One said, “Look at these cops trying to barricade all these students in.” Another commented, “That’s because they’re afraid of students fighting back.” A third responded even more specifically, “They’re afraid of black and Latino students fighting back.”

How We Organized

A college student’s entry on Facebook opposing the cuts spread like wildfire, attracting about 18,000 students through texts, calls and especially face-to-face at group meetings.

PL’ers were involved since March 4, holding study groups with students, teachers and parents to discuss the significance of these cuts and struggling to organize more fight-back. Our influence is growing, evident in signs like “Cut-backs mean we gotta fight back,” held by students from other schools we didn’t know.

Nearly a week before the walkout, a PLP May Day fundraiser enabled students, teachers and parents to discuss plans. Additionally, they were introduced, and invited, to the May Day celebration. The fundraiser drew them — and most importantly, workers — to participate in the May 1 March and dinner. It laid the groundwork both for May Day and for the walkout itself.

This PLP gathering helped ensure that the walkout would occur, including its success in Newark. Many students who attended it carried the message to other schools as well as got students in their own schools on board.

The day before the walkout, representatives from five schools met to coordinate it, involving them in the planning — suggesting time and locations and ensuring contact with one another the following day. Students encouraged and inspired each other to proceed with the action.

At that meeting some parents tried to turn it into a campaign against Newark Mayor Corey Booker. Others pointed to Christie and his administration as the enemy.

PL Politicizes The Fight

However, PL members’ systemic analysis said these cuts resulted from a ruling class, led by the banks, trying to cut spending for the working class overall. They also want to better fit the school system into their agenda: creating a working class willing to fight and die in the rulers’ imperialist wars instead of battling for better living standards here.

We also stressed the cuts’ racist nature, hurting black and Latino youth much more than white suburban students.

Despite the public’s opposition to the cuts, Christie will push ahead. Not a surprise — like other politicians, Christie serves the capitalist class, showing no concern for the cuts’ destructive force, destroying the aspirations, ambitions and futures of thousands of students and teachers, especially in the urban areas.

This walkout was by far the largest student demonstration in Newark in over 40 years. Its success represented students’ dedication and commitment against the upcoming budget cuts and their anger towards the government and the Board of Education. But also, most significantly, it shed light on the perpetrator of these racist cuts and attack on the working class: capitalism.

More Work To Do

Two hundred PLP leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed during the walkout. Most welcomed the paper; some gave it back saying, “I’m not a communist.” This shows that PLP members still have work to do: to educate more students about capitalism’s evils and the need for communist revolution.

Overall the event demonstrated PLP’ers’ advance. We held many more discussions with the students about the direction of the struggle and the need to organize for May Day. While working closer with the students, we must strive more with teachers and parents to support the fight. Moving forward, we’re making this much more of a priority, as it’s necessary in recruiting more workers to PLP and ensuring the Party’s growth in our fight for a communist world.