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CHALLENGE, October 1, 2008

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01 October 2008 130 hits

Two Day Rebellion Leads To Boeing Strike WORKERS MUST FIGHT RACISM

SEATTLE, WA, September 14 — “Sellout!” shouted machinists as International Association of Machinists (IAM) aerospace negotiator Mark Blondin announced Boeing workers would be going to work the next day, September 4, despite an 87% strike vote. He said Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire had arranged for 48 hours of federal mediation. In response the workers threw chicken bones and water bottles (left over from the volunteer vote counters’ dinner). The union hall erupted. Blondin and IAM District President Tom Wroblewski fled the stage. They sent out the union P.R. person, hoping for better results. No dice!
Blondin and Wroblewski flew the next day to negotiate at the Disney resort in Florida to be joined by IAM International President Buffenbarger. Back on the shop floor, “No Contract, No Work” signs sprung up at abandoned workstations. One foolish manager tracked down a worker to do a “hot” job (one that would hold up the assembly line). “Why don’t you call the governor and get her to come down here and do it!” the worker replied angrily. By afternoon, the assembly line had stopped because they couldn’t get enough workers.
When management asked us what more can we possibly want, many replied, “All we want is our egg salad on white bread (the traditional fare for picketers).” Some half jokingly threatened to “picket the union hall with baseball bats.” By Friday night demonstrations moved towards the gates with “United We Stand” signs.
Small picket lines began forming outside the plants. The Party distributed flyers and signs in the plants and at the gates. Clearly the union leadership would have to let us strike after the initial 48 hours, no matter what deals they worked out. “I always thought the union had one leg in the bed with the company, but I didn’t realize they were way under the covers,” a facilities maintenance worker said. We were in no mood to accept any contract. We made plans to wildcat if they dared to extend the “no strike” negotiations.
Even as the Boeing strike enters its second week, the big story is still how we got here. Wroblewski has been going around to union meetings pleading, “I understand the memberships’ emotion. The pot was boiling.” Acknowledging that he’s taken licks on the picket line, he tries to justify the leadership’s 48 hour betrayal saying the company blinked. If this spin doesn’t work (and it isn’t), we’ll hear many more incredible excuses. His greatest fear is being boiled in the pot of rank-and-file insurrection he had to face during those 48 hours.
The Dictatorship Of The Bosses vs. The Dictatorship Of The Working Class
Since the strike vote was taken PLP members and friends have had discussions on the nature of the bosses’ dictatorship and general revolutionary history.
Many workers want to know what the communists are saying. Most are friendly; others are incensed at our influence on sections of the workforce. We pointed out that when the federal mediator and the governor stepped into the negotiations, they were not neutral parties. The federal mediator is in daily contact with the chief IAM negotiator.
As the Party’s flyer stated, the Governor and the mediator were “the political representatives of the ruling class.” Lest we forget, “this is the same federal government whose Pentagon says ‘outsourcing is the answer’ to the exorbitant expense of their high-tech weapons.” Outsourcing means shifting work to racist, low-wage subcontractors employing larger numbers of black, Latin and immigrant workers. This is the same government that wants a “southern aerospace corridor” in the low-wage, non-union Southeast. The legacy of racism has driven down the wages of these workers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. “Both rely on racist super-exploitation to fund the bosses’ imperialist ambitions and we will continue to fight these efforts to divide us,” our leaflet warned.
“That’s what the bosses’ dictatorship looks like,” our Party argued in numerous shop floor debates. “They’ll let you vote on anything until it threatens their power. Whether it’s a Democrat or Republican, it’s still the bosses’ racist dictatorship.”
When we refused to work during those 48 hours, overriding their contract and pro-capitalist union leaders, we showed the potential power of the dictatorship of the working class. Communist revolution relies on the might of a united international working class, smashing the bosses’ repressive government apparatus. “Let the bosses tremble at the power of the working class” our leaflet ended.
“I’m Not Driving That Truck
Under Any Flag”
In another discussion an anti-communist tried to portray the dictatorship of the working class as the dictatorship over the working class. He pointed to the reactionary, often pro-Nazi, people that fled the USSR after World War II, portraying them as heroes. Older CHALLENGE readers were having none of it. They remember the ex-Nazis that they were forced to work with years ago. “Those bastards would openly celebrate Hitler’s birthday at work, wearing Nazi uniforms, and the company allowed them to,” said an irate machine operator. Besides, they were the biggest kiss-asses in the shop.
This led to a discussion on how fascism relies on extreme racism and nationalism. This discussion inspired another reader to relate a small but significant struggle he had against flag waving. A small U.S. flag was placed on top of the delivery truck his area uses. Every time he saw it, he would throw it to the ground. Finally, he had enough. He gathered his shop-mates around and delivered an ultimatum. “I’m not driving that truck under any flag.” The flag hasn’t been seen since.
We ended with an old story from WWII. A PLP veteran was with the U.S. Army in a small town in Italy when the war ended. The locals got a ragtag band together to celebrate. He thought they would play the Italian national anthem. Instead they broke into The (communist) International. Red flags of revolution were everywhere --- Now there’s a flag you can drive a truck under!
Some of the participants of this last discussion will organize continued discussions in various cities to accommodate Boeing’s far-flung workforce while we are on strike. Either way, we are filling the [non] workday with intense struggles over revolutionary ideas.
We need your support! Send letters of solidarity and donations to help produce leaflets and CHALLENGES to Boeing Strikers C/O PLP Box 808, Brooklyn, 11202.

Job Security, Outsourcing Big Strike Issues

“They say you can’t have job security these days,” said IAM District President Wroblewski at recent union meetings, referring to one of the most contentious strike issues, “And I agree with them.” He then pleaded for a break from worrying about this during the next three years (the duration of any new contract signed after the strike). 
The union has confined the debate to facilities maintenance, parts delivery inside the plants, and bidding to undercut proposed manufacturing outsourcing. The latter will accelerate the racist trend to a low-wage union workforce within the Boeing plants: what has become known as the “Kick Your Kids to the Kurb (KKK)” contract.
The union is reportedly looking for language that is similar to that among GE unions. What a joke! GE is known as the Gone Elsewhere, having outsourced more jobs than anyone.
It’s true under capitalism workers have as much security as a pig at a BBQ. That’s why we can’t limit the debate to what’s possible under this system. Production for profit pits not only nation against nation and company against company, but also worker against worker. Communism, on the other hand, produces for the needs of our class. Under communism we welcome extra hands. We would use the help to increase production to support the revolutionary aspirations of our international brothers and sisters, dedicate more of our time to developing political leadership among our fellow workers or shorten the workday.
It’s no accident that it is only our Party that has produced letters of support from subcontractor workers. Uniting with these super-exploited workers will build the kind of anti-racist, international solidarity that can really advance the struggle and pave the path to revolution.

U.S. RULERS DEMAND NEXT PRESIDENT IMPOSE FASCIST SACRIFICE

A regimen of “discipline and sacrifice,” enforced by the next president, is the only cure for the U.S.’s deep economic problems, according to the New York Times’ Sept. 9 editorial. The Times, the leading mouthpiece of liberal U.S. rulers, decried the “vulnerabilities” that the emergency nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exposed, and worried cryptically that it would “divert resources from other needs.” Those “other needs” appear more clearly elsewhere in the news. The U.S. is expanding its Afghan war and raiding unstable nuclear-armed Pakistan. Russia, emboldened by its Georgia blitz, has emerged as a military rival. Moscow is sending bombers and a naval squadron to Venezuela to counter the revived U.S. Fourth Fleet which is responsible for naval operations in the Caribbean, Central and South America. Chinese shipyards are working overtime on a blue-water navy “China stands every chance of becoming the world’s largest shipbuilder by 2020” (Le Monde Diplomatique, Sept. 2008). Iraq seems destined for permanent occupation.
CAPITALISTS AND POLITICIANS MUST JUMP ON WAR WAGON
Despite serious government attempts at regulation, including jailings and billions of dollars in fines, U.S. financiers remain largely unfocused on this sharpening rivalry--unlike their counterparts in Russia and China. Putin now adds armed force to Gazprom’s and Lukoil’s energy blackmail of much of Europe. China’s central planners manage economic growth and militarization simultaneously. Wall Streeters, meanwhile, still serving their separate interests, have been selling each other worthless “securities, “ sparking crises, and undermining the U.S.’s overall global standing, especially its ability to finance wars. Re-nationalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (LBJ privatized Fannie to help pay for U.S. genocide in Indochina) and selling damaged firms like Bear, Stearns to bigger ones aim ultimately at creating a wartime economy. Consolidation of capital under tight state control is a hallmark of fascism. But U.S. rulers have far to go in putting their financial house in order. We can expect sharper crackdowns on financiers in the near term. Lehman Bros. may be one example as they’re forced into declaring bankruptcy with no bail-out. Ultimately, world war is the only way for U.S. bosses to maintain their status in the world.
In the same vein, the rulers strive to whip politicians into line. A commission led by James Baker (a major heir of both JP Morgan and Exxon Mobil) and Warren Christopher (whose law firm represents Exxon) proposes a new War Powers Act of 2009. By demanding Congress’s express approval within 30 days of any future U.S. military action, it means to stifle ruling class dissent. It also targets today’s war-impeding hypocrisy whereby Congress members tell constituents they oppose the Iraq war then vote for every nickel the Pentagon and White House ask for.
YOUR RETIREMENT OR YOUR LIFE
Workers should also prepare for more drastic attacks on the working class, which produces every penny of the wealth that capitalists steal as profit or--more and more--war expense. The dominant liberal, Rockefeller-led wing of U.S. rulers hopes that Obama or McCain, once elected, will drop campaign lies and rob Social Security and Medicare in order to bankroll the U.S. war machine. The liberals made this clear recently in a two-page New York Times ad sponsored by Peter Peterson, a Clinton cabinet member and David Rockefeller’s successor as head of the Council on Foreign Relations, the rulers’ top foreign policy think tank. The ad called upon the future president to address a $53-trillion financial hole with “meaningful reforms” (this means cuts) in Social Security and Medicare. Peterson & Co. made it more than clear that workers will pay for coming wars either with their lives or the retirement they have earned. “Americans have grown too used to hearing we can have everything, tax cuts, spending increases, and war funding--for free....When politicians tell us we can have it all without making any sacrifices, we must reject that siren call and hold them accountable.” Tellingly, the ad also bore the endorsement of Warren Rudman. He helped draft the Clinton-sponsored Hart-Rudman reports, a blueprint for wartime fascism designed at maintaining U.S. supremacy well into the 21st Century.
STRIKING BOEING WORKERS SHOW THE WAY
As this is written, tens of thousands of workers, many putting forth our Party’s views, are striking against a major U.S. war contractor, Boeing. Their militancy shows a more viable response, than backing Obama or McCain, to the rulers’ escalating war plans. It shows the potential when the working class, armed with communist ideas can seize power through communist revolution.

DRAFT: RULERS NEED IT, BUT CANDIDATES CAN’T SAY IT— YET

NEW YORK CITY, Sept. 11 — As the U.S. bosses expand their wars to Afghanistan-Pakistan and in the future to Iran, Georgia and more, their overextended military will need millions of troops. On the anniversary of 9/11, Barack Obama and John McCain made a visit to Columbia (Obama’s alma mater) to push national service as part of the “ServiceNation” kick-off event.
Both got loud boos when they told the audience that Ivy League colleges should re-institute officer training (ROTC). Both avoided the words “draft” and “mandatory” when they spoke, mainly focusing on volunteerism and charity work. Knowing that John Kerry’s push for obligatory service helped torpedo his 2004 campaign, the duo tread lightly around the issue—for now.
ServiceNation is a bipartisan “grassroots” organization made up of politicians from Caroline Kennedy to Neil Bush, many CEOs, and retired military brass. It is backed by imperialists like Goldman Sachs and the Rockefeller Fund. The group’s utimate goal is a universal national service act by, at the latest, 2020.
While a handful of students were admitted to see Obama and McCain speak in person, thousands gathered on the main campus to watch via Jumbotron.
Leading up to the event, many comrades were able to get out a wide variety of literature at the campus gates, despite heavy police presence. This included copies of leaflets and pamphlets exposing the elections and “national service,” as well as issues of CHALLENGE and THE COMMUNIST magazine. We made several contacts, and engaged in a number of generally positive discussions. Inside the gates was a different story. The awestruck atmosphere towards Obama at the rally inside the campus made it more difficult to distribute literature.
Although the students in attendance at the event are not representative of the majority of working-class students around the country, we were able to get out a fair amount of literature in spite of many obstacles.
We must join the bosses’ national service programs, to alert students to the gathering storm and win them to anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and — most importantly — the Party itself. In this sense, while the amassing of students in national service organizations is a great danger, it is also an opportunity for us.

Relying on Politicians Won’t
Stop Racist KKKops

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, Aug. 20—Hundreds of workers, mostly Latino, attended a vigil to protest the brutal killing of plumber Manuel Jesus de Espina by a Prince George’s County cop. Manuel and his son were drinking in the stairwell of his apartment building, celebrating his 40th birthday. The cop, known for his swaggering brutality, claimed he feared for his life because Espina grabbed for his gun (or was it his baton? The story kept changing), but working-class eyewitnesses reported that Espina did not resist arrest but was beaten, blinded with pepper spray and then shot. Who do you believe? PLPers brought the message of militancy, anti-racism, multi-racial unity and the need for communist revolution to this gathering.
Under communism, there won’t be cops protecting rich people’s property, because there won’t be any rich people or private property. The communist leadership of the new society will resolve conflicts in a comradely way, jail racists and build a unified working class. The role of cops under capitalism is to terrorize workers and protect the bosses and their system. As anti-immigrant racism grows, the cops will increasingly brutalize and murder immigrant workers to fulfill this mission.
Today we are still exploited by capitalism and murdered by racist cops. In Prince George’s County, 14 workers have been shot by the cops since January 2008, several fatally. Twenty years ago, cops beat Gregory Habib, a Ghanaian student, to death here after he failed to stop at a stop sign. The cops were exonerated. “Going through channels,” advocated by leaders of the vigil, has never worked to hold cops accountable, and never will end this racist, fascist intimidation.
We are already campaigning against the lynching of Ronnie White (almost certainly by cops or prison guards) in his jail cell two months ago (CD, 30 July). Then came the needlessly brutal SWAT attack on the home of a Mayor Calvo of Berwyn Heights, and now Espina is murdered in Langley Park. These blatant attacks are just the latest in our area’s long history of police violence, racial profiling and murder. The grassroots People’s Coalition for Police Accountability (PCPA), led mainly by black workers in the County, launched resistance to police brutality over ten years ago, and the 2005 PLP Summer Project in D.C. joined that struggle.
Local politicians and some community activists called for patient reliance on the very system that oppresses all workers. They urged attendees not to “take matters into their own hands.” The wife of State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey (charged with investigating and prosecuting the lynchers of Ronnie White) hugged family members, spoke of justice for Mayor Calvo, but did not mention Ronnie White. She gave Mayor Calvo’s dead dogs killed by the cops more play than a lynched young black man! Politician Victor Ramirez, Delegate to the Maryland House of Representatives, actually blamed Manuel for his own death, saying that he may not have led the most perfect life, and then quickly added that violence never solves anything, so rely on the “justice” system and don’t fight back.
In addition to politicians, representatives of several African American organizations spoke out in solidarity as well. PCPA leader Dorothy Elliott spoke eloquently both about Ronnie White, and her son Archie Elliott, who was murdered 15 years ago by the cops as he sat handcuffed in a police cruiser. The translator never translated her words about Ronnie White!
The lack of militancy did not sit well with the hundreds of angry workers, who rushed to our militant bilingual signs charging PG County cops with racist murders, and linking the attacks on African American Ronnie White and Latino Manuel de Espina with the slogan, “Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated.” Several new friends offered to help hold these signs, and hundreds more eagerly took CHALLENGE-DESAFIO as over 250 papers flew out of PLPers’ hands.
The organizers invited friends and coworkers of Manuel to speak after the politicians. In the beginning, they mostly spoke of what a great and loving father Manuel was. But then workers’ anger came out and stories of police brutality and intimidation rang out over the crowd. The organizers only let that go on for two or three speakers and then shut down the rally, fearing the growing militancy of the crowd.
PLPers spoke afterwards with workers. One man said, “It isn’t just here that this happens. It happens all over. As long as there is money in a system there will always be oppression and wars.” Another cited the importance of multi-racial and multi-gender unity in the common fight against our common exploiters. Several contacts were made and all were invited to our next events, including the annual PLP Crab Feast and the PCPA forum scheduled for September 9. Our fight against racism, police brutality and for the working class will continue until the exploitative system of capitalism is crushed by workers’ power.

Airport Workers Catch Thieving Bosses

A MIDWEST AIRPORT — “We were robbed! The bosses cheated us!” These are the only printable comments describing how airport janitors were cheated out of eight hours pay by racist ABM Industries bosses. ABM cleaners, mostly immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Africa, and Asia, were paid eight hours short on their July 17 paychecks. The bosses blamed it on the “new time keeping system.” The real reason is racism.
Anti-immigrant Nazi-like raids conducted by ICE and Homeland Security, racist movements like the Minutemen and a failing economy have produced a racist anti-immigrant climate in the U.S. ABM bosses thought they could take advantage of already super-exploited immigrant workers by stealing eight hours pay. Also, they paid some of the black workers full pay, trying to divide citizens from immigrants. But a black PLP member and union shop steward organized the workers to resist this fascist attack.
A meeting was held at the home of a co-worker and CHALLENGE reader, where we discussed what to do. We agreed to file a mass grievance and to try to get all the victimized workers to sign on. We also requested an emergency meeting with the union leadership.
An SEIU leader misled the most militant workers (and CHALLENGE readers) into thinking he was not coming to the airport, when in fact he actually did! He wanted no part of us because he was afraid of being called on to do something to get the workers’ the eight hours owed. So we called for a second union meeting. Some workers distributed a PLP flier that attacked the SEIU leadership for supporting the racist bosses.
At the next meeting, with everyone there, the workers put the misleader under pressure. Some workers got into a heated exchange with the SEIU misleader who shouted, “I’m not the enemy!” He hurried up and left! The workers won that round!
Later, the union leader reluctantly filed the grievance. ABM bosses were extremely upset that a few workers would defy them. They even called the shop steward into the office to attempt to intimidate him and find out how the workers were going to fight back. The shop steward kept his cool and the bosses learned nothing! It was a clumsy fascist attempt to stop the workers from resisting.
ABM workers scored a small victory and got the eight hours owed them! The bosses underestimated the anger and ability of workers to unite across nation, race and gender. Officially, we lost the grievance, but we’re still getting paid from the main corporate office. The airport bosses hate this!
Frederick Douglass, the great antislavery freedom fighter said, “Power concedes nothing without struggle.” Self-critically, we could have done more. But a few workers, mostly regular CHALLENGE readers, collectively contributed to this struggle, “from each according to ability.”
More fascist attacks are coming because the racist bosses are in a global crisis. If we are to survive and defeat fascism with communist revolution, we must learn how to organize under any and all circumstances, including the most extreme. Workers, soldiers, and students need PLP!

PLP Exposes Deadly Election Politics to
Iraq Veterans

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA, August 30th—At this year’s Veterans for Peace (VFP)/Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) convention the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) met and worked with old friends to distribute Challenge and our “GI Notes” newsletter and  make new contacts.
IVAW’s actions at the Democratic and Republican national conventions drew the most excitement among the young vets. At the DNC (Democratic National Convention), IVAW led over 3,000 in an anti-war march and claimed victory when Barack Obama’s top veterans affairs advisor accepted a message against the Iraq war from IVAW on behalf of the presidential candidate. However, when the vets asked Obama’s representative for an expected time of reply, Obama’s reps refused to give one. While IVAW is currently eager to negotiate a meeting with Obama, the lesson we in PLP saw was that Obama and the Democrats are willing to pretend to listen while they plan expanded wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan (see article on page 4).
Many in IVAW are not fooled by Obama’s supposed “anti-war” stance—some in IVAW even pushed to officially oppose the US war in Afghanistan—but few see alternatives to pressuring politicians. We in PLP said that working class, lower enlisted troops, and students can end imperialism through generations of class struggle and armed revolution, not lobbying and elections. Imperialist wars continued after the US bosses defeat in Vietnam because of capitalism’s constant drive  for profit and power, not “greedy” corporations and “corrupt” presidents. The openness by some vets to PLPs line at the convention left us energized and eager to aid in active-duty and vets struggles.
The role of police was also a hot discussion. Some wanted to trust and work more with the police because at the DNC, a handful of police in riot gear refused to point their weapons at the IVAW contingent, left their posts, and were moved to tears by a powerful speech given by an IVAW member. 
The police attacked the rest of the DNC anti-war marches. Also, the basis of IVAW’s appeal to police was individualist and patriotic, focusing on the psychological effects on the cops for attacking “American” veterans who were mostly white. Given racist police murders and anti-immigrant raids by ICE, law enforcement would probably treat black, latino, and immigrant troops differently. 
Similar tactics of vets appealing to cops did not work at the RNC. Uniformed cops openly tried to sit in IVAW’s closed workshops in the IVAW convention room, they photographed vets walking to hotels, and attacked protestors during IVAW’s attempt to bring McCain’s campaign a veterans rights message.
Many at the convention were motivated to stop more troops from experiencing the guilt of killing for oil and greed, and to stop the killing of civilians. Many really believe politicians will listen to them or that enough troops and public will rise up so the anti-war movement will stop the bosses war in the next few months or years. But vets need a long term struggle against the profit system behind the wars. Many of the young vets we met are motivated to do more around Veterans issues and racism against Iraqis. PLP plans on working with and giving them communist leadership to oppose capitalism and all it’s imperialist wars, not just Iraq.
Send letters and articles to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. subject GI Notes.

Will U.S. Invade Pakistan?

PAKISTAN –– On September 14, Pakistan troops fired shots into the air to stop U.S. troops crossing into the South Waziristan region of Pakistan. A couple of weeks before, twenty Pakistani villagers, including women and children, were killed when the U.S. troops crossed the border from Afghanistan to supposedly attack Taliban insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry immediately condemned it as “a grave provocation.” Seven days later Bush announced U.S intentions to continue the raids — with or without the approval of the Pakistani government — and to send additional troops to Afghanistan (Obama and McCain agree on expanding the war in this region.)
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 1,500-mile border, that 19th century British imperialists arbitrarily cut through mountainous land inhabited by Pashtuns. U.S. insistence that the Pakistan military crack down on the Taliban has caused a backlash against the army by Pakistani fundamentalists (often Pashtuns) and al Qaeda (foreign jihadists). The fierce confrontations have killed many civilians and left thousands homeless. In Afghanistan, the seven-year U.S.-NATO occupation has worsened conditions for the majority of Afghans. More than 1,000 civilians have been killed this year.
The U.S. and its ally, India, claim that Pakistan is the center and cause of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, accusing members of the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of helping the Taliban. This is the excuse for the recent U.S. invasion of Pakistani territory. The U.S. wants to replace its decades-long indirect domination of Pakistan with direct military control.
A 2005 report by the U.S. National Intelligence Council and the CIA, forecast a “Yugoslav-like fate.” for Pakistan. A former Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK predicted that, “The central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi, by 2015.” (Times of India 13 Feb 2005).
Breaking up Pakistan would facilitate U.S. exploitation of the vast energy reserves of the Caspian Sea region to the north. Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of Barak Obama’s foreign policy advisors wrote in 1990, “The Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.” U.S. oil companies plan to build pipelines to transport that oil and gas from the region through Afghanistan and Balochistan — a Pakistan province — to the Arabian Sea and so to markets in Europe and Asia. If the U.S. is unable to secure this pipeline, Russia — and China — may monopolize the Caspian oil fields. The survival of the U.S. as a leading imperialist power depends on the control of the world’s energy sources — a point emphasized this week as oil baron Cheney shuttled around the Caspian States meeting local rulers and representatives of Chevron and BP. As Brzezinski noted, “whoever controls Eurasia controls the world.”
The U. S. is now sponsoring India’s membership in NATO, which will add one more powerful U.S. ally to the growing circle around Russia. When the Indian army took part in NATO exercises in Arizona in August, Russia retaliated by announcing that its strategic bombers would patrol the Indian Ocean. The U.S. and India signed a nuclear arms agreement that, according to Administration officials, “seals a long-term strategic alliance between the two countries, which had tense relations during the Cold War.” With a rapidly expanding capitalist economy, seeking new markets, trading partners and oil, India also has interests in the Caspian Sea reserves and has its own plans for pipelines from Iran, through Balochistan to India.
Nationalism and religion are constantly being used by the ruling classes to divide workers and their allies. In Pakistan, India has joined with the U.S and Britain to covertly support and arm the separatist Balochistan Liberation Movement. In Indian-controlled Kashmir tension is growing between Muslim and Hindu, fundamentalists and secularists, and spreading to the border with Pakistan in the east.
The former Yugoslavia was broken up in part with the promotion of nationalism and the organization of separatist militias. For Yugoslavia’s working class the result was fascist/racist terror, bloody civil wars and atrocities. Revolutionary communists must show the Afghan, Pakistan, and Indian working class and its allies — Pashtuns, Balochis, Sindhis, Punjabis, Kashmiris, Hindus — that nationalism is not the answer to their problems. That is the goal of the PLP in the region. Join us!

France: Thousands Strike Against Job Cuts

UZES, FRANCE, Sept. 11—The summer holiday season is over and the first strikes and demonstrations against job cuts and worsening conditions are breaking out. A case in point: high school teachers struck the whole first week of classes in this small town in Southern France (pop. 7,800, 2004 unemployment rate: 19%, average weekly household income: 275 euros), occupying the principal’s office on Sept. 1. The strikers were mobilizing against obligatory overtime and over-crowded classes. The local board of education refused even to receive a parent-teacher delegation on Sept. 4.
The French banks have lost nearly 20 billion euros since the beginning of the subprime crisis, practically throwing the economy into recession. According to UNEDIC (the French unemployment agency), 35,000 workers lost their jobs in the second quarter of 2008. And the real income of the average French household fell over the past year, according to the National Consumption Institute. But workers are fighting back:
Hospital workers struck at the public hospital in Strasbourg yesterday to protest the administration policy of placing profits over patient lives and the resulting multi-tasking of hospital workers.
Over 2,000 auto workers struck Renault plants across France today against the planned axing of 4,000 jobs, which comes on top of 10,000 job losses over the past three years.
And thousands of teachers demonstrated today in over half of France’s 100 départements (the equivalent of a county), with strikes in five départements (Ardennes, Champagne, Essonne, Guadeloupe and Marne) to protest job cuts: 11,200 this year, 13,500 planned next year, and 40,000 over the next three years.
Five postal workers’ unions are calling for a 24-hour national strike and demonstrations throughout France on Sept. 23 to protest government plans to privatize the postal service.
Finally, six trade union federations are calling for a national protest on Oct. 7, the “world day for decent work” organized by the reformist International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
But all this indicates is that the reformist and reactionary trade union leaders, with the radical unions in tow, are pursuing their usual strategy of launching isolated local protests and 24-hour strikes in the hope of “building momentum” for a big national demonstration, and possibly a nation-wide 24-hour strike. This piecemeal strategy has failed to obtain any gains for workers since 1995.
As a result, Education Minister Xavier Darcos felt safe heaping scorn on the protesting teachers when he appeared on national television today, proclaiming “I love teachers” while denouncing teachers unions as promoting a “strike first, negotiate later culture,” and denying that job cuts are resulting in larger class sizes and poorer education.
Leftist trade unionists here are trying to overcome the piecemeal strategy by pushing for an unlimited general strike, like the one that shut down France for two months in 1968. But that experience shows that even an unlimited general strike, if it leaves the capitalist system intact, falls short of what the working class needs— particularly in this age of worldwide capitalist crisis, more racism and endless wars. Workers here need to turn these struggles into schools for communism, and build a revolutionary internationalist movement to fight for the only real solution to the bosses’ attacks: communism.

Bolivia: Gas-Oil Profits Behind Racism of Fascist Goons

LA PAZ, Bolivia, Sept. 15 — This Andean country is on the verge of a racist civil war as the governors of the “Half Moon” (in the eastern plains of the country) are in open rebellion against the central government of Evo Morales. There is a real threat of the country breaking apart. Right now, there are two governments: one led by Morales in the Andean region and the other led by the “autonomist” governors of the eastern plains. The gas and oil fields there are at stake, as well as the agricultural wealth of the “Half Moon.” The openly fascist governors — supported by the U.S. embassy — don’t want to share this wealth with the central government, particularly since Evo Morales is an ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador last week, accusing him of meeting with the “autonomists.” Ambassador Goldberg was a U.S. diplomat in the former Yugoslavia in the mid 1990s when it was ridden by imperialist-caused nationalist civil wars.
The “autonomists” are openly fascist and racist. When their attempted putsch began last week in the state of Pando, with open support from the local governor, neo-Nazi goons from the youth group Juventud Cruceñista targeted what they call the “damn Indian race.” They killed 30 indigenous workers and peasants. These thugs attacked central government offices, took over an airport, gas and oil fields, cutting off gas supplies to Brazil (which get 50% of their gas from Bolivia) and Argentina.
Evo Morales has mass support, winning 67% of the votes in an August referendum. Since then, the aim of the pro-U.S. fascists has been to provoke a military coup (Bolivia has a long history of putsches). But, Morales so far has the support of army since he put some of his loyal officers in control. Most soldiers are recruits and Indigenous (most upper and middle class white youth use their families’ economic power to avoid the draft.) Chávez threatened to send troops to Bolivia to help Morales, and even expelled the U.S. ambassador to Caracas in solidarity when he accused Venezuelan military officers of conspiring to kill him.
Given the growing instability in the region, the powerhouse of South America – the Brazilian ruling class — decided it doesn’t want the U.S. oil companies to control the gas and oil fields of Bolivia (because they will compete with Brazil’s Petrobras). So Brazil’s President Lula put his foot down and stated that Brazil will not tolerate the break-up of its neighbor, Bolivia. (El País, Madrid, 9/14). This led to a regional rulers meeting — excluding the U.S. — which came out in support of Morales.
But, the contradictions between the secessionists and Morales continue since the anti-Morales bosses don’t want the national government to cut into their share of the revenues (taxes) they get from the oil-gas profits. Also, the rivalry between the U.S. imperialists and Brazil and Venezuela is growing. And the inter-imperialist dogfight will sharpen as Russia’s Gazprom is in negotiation with YPFB (the state-owned Bolivian energy company) a $2 billion investment.
As far as workers and their allies are concerned, the solution doesn’t lie in the 21st Century socialism (state capitalism) of Chávez or its Morales’ version of Andean capitalism. Morales continues attempts to negotiate a deal with the open fascists, demoralizing workers and peasants who have illusions about his government. The only solution is to build an anti-imperialist and anti-racist movement to fight for a society without any form of capitalism: communism.

Imperialist Rivalry Spurs Mexican Rulers’ Oil Battle

The U.S. now faces a historic crisis and, desperate to stop their decline, they must control sources of energy. They are currently pushing for privatization of energy in Mexico through the government of Felipe Calderon and his allies in the Mexican Congress who promise the U.S. control over oil and gas, since Spain has stepped in and is already savoring part of the energy pie. 
The rivalry between the imperialists is sharpening all around the world and reflects weakening U.S. domination and the strengthening of rivals like Russia, China and India. Control of the world’s oil safeguards U.S bosses’ continuing worldwide supremacy. Without that control, this goal will be illusive. In the Caucasus, the U.S. wants to break Russia’s fuel monopoly and thus assure a third major source of energy on the planet. This intensifies the rivalry between the two imperialists. 
Some Mexican capitalists don’t want to share with the U.S. or Spanish capitalists. That’s why they push nationalism to win worker support for their own control of the oil profits. Lopez Obrador is the spokesman for the nationalist capitalists. He may be willing to fight a civil war to defend this wealth against mainly U.S. bosses, not for the well-being of Mexican workers, but for higher profits and stability for Mexican bosses. That’s why he’s formed the FAP (Broad Progressive Front) in which an estimated 3 million people participated in mobilizations for the “peaceful transformation of the public life of Mexico,” in reality to support Obrador against the privatization of PEMEX. 
The actions organized by FAP mean that they have too weak a presence in Congress to achieve their goals there. That’s why they threaten actions against privatization to be carried out by workers in the different states of Mexico. But the politicians trap workers into trying to win reforms from various profit-hungry capitalists who only want the best deal for themselves, keeping the workers chained to capitalist exploitation. 
Mexico is a strategic ally of the U.S. Most Mexican oil and food sales go to the U.S. That’s why they have designed Plan Puebla Panama as a supplier of the wealth of Latin America to North America. Many U.S. manufacturers gain great profit by paying skilled Mexican workers so little. The most profitable industry is auto and lately aerospace in the north, mainly Chihuahua. In coming wider wars, these industries will play an important role, since they make weapons. 
Behind Felipe Calderon’s “war against drug traffic” is the militarization of the country. The U.S. bosses and their lackeys in Mexico will fight to protect their wealth like oil, natural gas, water, biodiversity, uranium, etc. from their imperialist enemies. They could also try to control any popular uprising by unleashing police terror against workers. 
Through the Alliance for Security and Prosperity of North America (ASPAN, a treaty made with ex-President Fox), the Merida initiative with Calderon, and recently the proposal to integrate Mexico into NORAD (North American Aerospace Command), the U.S. has entered a financial, military and energy “alliance” with Mexico and Canada, which is basically a proposal to focus on the strategic security of the U.S. in the face of wider war. 
There’s no good or lesser evil capitalist or imperialist. They all seek to live off the wealth created by the working class. Siding with either block of capitalists is the worst error workers could make. We need to build an alliance with workers, students and soldiers around the PLP and fight internationally to destroy this system. Communist ideas must illuminate our staunch struggle to end the nightmare of capitalism. Only a communist revolution can establish a society that finally ends individualism, sexism, racism, nationalism and exploitation. That society is communism and for that we’ll fight to the win. JOIN US! FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! 

Pacifism Hindered Calif. Mass Farmworkers’ Strikes

My experiences of many decades of organizing among farmworkers have shown me that pacifism causes despair for workers engaged in struggles, and even for pacifists themselves when reality hits them in the face.
In general, pacifists are religious believers, they hate violence particularly when it comes to labor conflicts. According to their religious dogmas, humans shouldn’t be the ones to decide about their lives. This is up to a divine being. In this way, they look good in front of their god and with the bosses, but not in front of their fellow workers in struggle. They believe that through sacrifices and suffering, even with hunger strikes, the bosses will get a conscience and will stop exploiting workers. Cesar Chávez, who was the leader of the United Farmworkers’ Union (UFWU), became famous with his hunger strikes and urged others to do the same during the strikes in the California fields from 1965-70. These mass struggles were almost lost because of Chávez’s pacifist philosophy. His pacifism didn’t only put a break in the the advance of the struggle, but also castrated it, taking away all its strength that could lead to victory in a shorter time. Thanks to the militancy of many strikers who didn’t think like Chávez, the strike wasn’t lost.
Most pacifists are not enemies of workers, but because of their fear of god and the bosses they think it is better to be a pacifist in the the struggle. But, when honest pacifists participate in labor conflicts and reality hits them in the face, they begin to change their attitude and end up joining the non-pacifists.
It happened in 1973 when the Calif. growers refused to renew the UFWU labor contracts and another strike erupted. And this one was rather violent. Then those who opted for pacifism (even preachers and priests) joined the rest of the workers, forgetting about non-violent strategies and took part in the struggle as if they had never been pacifist.
I think it is important to wage ideological struggle with workers involved in class struggle. We must bring to them the workers’ philosophy to distinguish between who are our friends and our enemies. We mustn’t fall in the anti-working class trap put up by politicians, bosses and even the same leaders which trust in the “justice” of the corrupt capitalist system.
A Veteran of the Fight-backs in Calif.

LETTERS

INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL SPREADS
COMMUNIST IDEAS

As reported in CHALLENGE (9/17), a PLP international communist school was held on a recent weekend in Spain with comrades visiting from France, local citizens and immigrant workers from Colombia, El Salvador, Brazil, Perú and other countries discussing ideas, experiences and the politics of PLP.
A good discussion began when a worker said, “In Brazil they want us to think that there are only two classes: the upper class and the middle class.” After talking it over, we all agreed that class struggle between workers and bosses is the moving force of history and therefore these are the only two real classes in any capitalist system.
Another good aspect was that people came to the meeting willing to talk to workers, students and soldiers, to share the communist ideas of the Party. Our group continues to include more workers who understand that we must wage an armed revolutionary struggle against the class enemy to destroy capitalism and to install a new system: COMMUNISM.
“In France, one month the transportation workers go on strike, then the next month the doctors strike, and next the lawyers,” said a friend from France. We responded that while capitalism forces workers to strike to get some crumbs, the union leaders use these struggles to build illusions among workers about the system. Nowadays, with the growing international crisis of capitalism and endless wars, the bosses and the sellouts leading the unions make it harder to get even minor reforms. Our job is to bring our communist politics to workers involved in these struggles (and all workers and their allies) and to show them that the only real solution is to fight to destroy the capitalist system building a mass revolutionary party to fight for communism.
The participants in the 3-day communist school came out satisfied with PLP’s line and politically moved forward. They found real answers to the problems facing the world’s workers, contrary to the false promises of the electoral parties and their politicians.
Workers all over the world need these meetings, because the schools and other institutions of this system only give us lies about communism. We need all the cadre of PLP to spread the Party’s ideas and win more workers. We’re now distributing more CHALLENGE newspapers in France and Spain. Continue to advance, comrades. The march is slow but we keep marching. LONG LIVE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION and the PLP!
Comrades in Spain

CHILD VICTIMS OF IMF/WTO RACISM

At the Awet Secondary School in Mbulumbulu, Tanzania, a seventeen year old girl was beaten by her headmaster. She had simply responded to his question about some students who were late to do a chore, and he slapped her on the side of the head, damaging her eardrum. This kind of incident is common at Awet. Last year, the headmaster beat a boy and locked him up for more than eight hours in a tiny closet. After that, the poor boy left the school and committed suicide. After a discussion with their American sponsors, the girl’s sister who was also beaten by the headmaster, has compiled a list of names of students who have been abused. The sponsors are writing a letter to the higher authorities demanding that immediate action be taken, and the girls have agreed to circulate it among their friends.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund) and WTO (World Trade Organization) make the rules that perpetuate oppression. The IMF loans money to the Government and then limits the degree to which it can subsidize the people’s basic necessities of life. And, the members of Parliament, primarily committed to increasing their own wealth, administer these policies.
The IMF forbids free secondary school education. Even the public secondary schools charge tuition (about $200/year), adding a terrible burden to parents who can hardly find jobs or a market to sell their crops. Children are regularly kicked out of school for non-payment of fees. In addition, a severe teacher shortage is driving up class size, to often 100 children or more. In order for conditions to change here, workers and youth must begin to understand how imperialism generates the obscene inequality between the rich and poor countries of the world. Revolutionary communist consciousness will enable workers, farmers, and youth to stop blaming themselves, their family members, their tribe, or their luck and begin to seek a collective solution to poverty. Building a new communist movement is humanity’s only hope for escaping the hell that capitalism creates for most of the world’s population.
Internationalist Comrade

CAPITALISM CHOOSES PROFITS OVER HEALTH

No matter how well I understand capitalism’s capacity for screwing the working class, and no matter how many times I think they’ve reached the absolute depths, the US government continues to find new ways to amaze. It is not enough that scandalous under-funding of government safety inspections of our food supply leaves the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) only able to inspect 1% of the meat supply-they now want to make sure no one else inspects the other 99%!
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef in Kansas had begun advertising that they were inspecting 100% of their cows for mad cow disease, but the competing beef producers have taken them to court to prevent them from doing it. Not to prevent them from advertising it, but from actually carrying out the inspections. No longer content with simply withholding funding for inspectors and thereby rendering laws requiring food inspection toothless, the administration, through some of its court appointees, has actually ordered the USDA to PROHIBIT Creekstone from inspecting their own cows for mad cow disease. The court has decreed that Creekstone doesn’t have the right to inspect their cows.
The reason the beef producers have acted is obvious: they don’t want the expense of inspecting their own cows to cut into their profits. But the reason the courts have backed them may be less obvious to many people. Despite their claim to be neutral and “above the fray, the courts, as well as the entire government, are set up to protect the profits of the other producers rather than the health of the entire population, both here and abroad where such meat may be exported.
The government, as Marx pointed out 150 years ago, belongs not to the people, but to the ruling capitalist class. If this outrageous and shameless act of harm to the public interest doesn’t nakedly expose the courts and the rest of the government for what they are, it’s hard to imagine what would. If we want a government that acts in our interests, we will eventually have to overthrow the power of the capitalist class with an armed revolution and replace their government with one that belongs to our class, the working class.
Saguaro Rojo

OLYMPIC GAMES—WHERE IS
SPARTACUS?

Too much talk about the Olympiad. The international big bosses never take a break from bemoaning Tibet, human rights, air pollution — a sign of the Western capitalist countries’ uneasiness about China. Well, we know that’s how imperialist rivals talk about one another. As if European governments were not guilty of the same violations.
What about recent laws in Italy against immigrant and gypsy communities? Construction of concentration camps in North Africa to keep Europe “safe” from “unwelcome intruders”? The Spanish oil company Repsol’s human rights violations in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia? The spirit of Fascism — sorry, I mean the true spirit of capitalism! — is more alive in Europe than ever.
But what about the Olympics’ sportsmen and sportswomen? You saw them march proudly like soldiers behind the flag, the ideal representation of the nation-state. I remembered the German proletarians being deceived by their own party, the socialist SPD, which encouraged them to fight for “their nation” against other fellow proletarians during World War I. Today the U.S. soldier is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for “democracy, freedom” — the greatest nonsense of Western ideology. We all know the real meaning of these words: the democracy of money, the freedom of profit and exploitation, blood becoming oil.
All the fallacies of the capitalist state could be seen in the athletes fighting like soldiers for the pride of their nation. Look at the swimming competition. On the surface it’s U.S. versus German swimmers. But look a little closer: it’s the manufacturer Speedo, sponsor of the U.S. team, against Adidas, sponsor of the German team. Do we need to say that Speedo is the #1 swimwear brand and Adidas #2? You see the swimsuits but not the miserable conditions of the working poor in the underdeveloped countries who make them. But Adidas and Speedo sponsor “the Olympic spirit.” What a joke!
Look at the soccer pitch. Brazil against South Africa...or Nike against Puma? The Olympic spirit of capital, and athletes as its models, the proletarians of this big circus, exploited in the arena to please the bosses, as Bush shakes hands with a Speedo executive while another world record is broken. A job well done!
The athletes of today could be the gladiators of ancient times, the cheap entertainment, or “bread and circuses” as the poet Juvenal called them, foisted on the Roman poor to gain political power over them. It’s the same today. And today, too, sports need their modern Spartacus.
A friend in Europe

REDEYE REDEYE

India’s Muslims Brutally
Repressed - NYT 8/27

India is usually tagged as a “rising superpower” or “capitalist success story” - that India since 1997 has been “stable, peaceful and prosperous”. But four million Kashmiri Muslims suffer every day the misery and degradation of a full-fledged military occupation. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2006 described a steady pattern of arbitrary arrest, torture and extrajudicial execution by Indian security forces. A survey by Doctors Without Borders in 2005 found that Muslim women in Kashmir, prey to the Indian troops and paramilitaries, suffered some of the most pervasive sexual violence in the world. Thousands of Muslims have peacefully demonstarted over the last 30 years against these injustices, but a brutal suppression of nonviolent protests will continue to radicalize a new generation of Muslims.

FBI Poised To Be US Gestapo
- NYT - 8/21

New guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities”. The Justice Department is already expecting criticism over the F.B.I. guidelines.

Russian Invasion Echoes U.S. Acts
- LAT 8/14

Russia’s invasion fits perfectly into that most ancient of great-power traditions - asserting semi-sovereignty over its immediate neighbors. The United States even has a name for its right to intervene in its neighbors’ affairs: the Monroe Doctrine. And just as Russia moved to undermine a militantly pro-American government on its borders, so the United States moved to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs and depose the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, and green-lighted an attempted coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in 2002.

LA: Immigrants Fear Red Cross
- NYT - 9/7

When Hurricane Gustav bore down on New Orleans, many immigrant workers feared that immigration agents would arrest them at Red Cross shelters. Staff members at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice said they pleaded in vain for written assurances from the Red Cross that undocumented immigrants would be safe in its shelters. It asked the Red Cross to state in writing that its volunteers would be educated about the open-door policy, and that immigration agents would not be allowed to enter shelters for raids or investigations. With the storm rolling ever closer, and the authorities ordering people to flee, no letter came. More than a thousand people decided they could not take the chance of being picked up.

Voting Won’t End Nightmare for 20 Million Unemployed Workers

Voting for either set of warmakers — Obama-Biden or McCain-Palin — won’t end the nightmare suffered by over 20 million workers who are either unemployed, have given up seeking non-existent jobs or are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. Capitalism marches on!
While the “official” jobless rate rose to 6.1% (highest in five years), this excludes the other two categories above, so the real rate is 16.8%. And because of racist discrimination, unemployment rates among black workers are double that of white workers, and 60% higher among Latinos.
This is a full-fledged recession, although — as the saying goes — if your neighbor’s out of work, it’s a recession; if you’re out of work, it’s a depression.
Still worse, inflation has been outstripping wages, so the so-called Misery Index — unemployment + inflation — is at 11.7%, the worst in 17 years.
Of the 600,000 jobs wiped out in August, there are nearly as many college graduates as high school graduates; the jobless are up among adults, many over 45, not just teenagers, as unemployment rose for the 8th straight month, the most sustained increase in 25 years.
Combined with this picture is the home foreclosure rate, triple three years ago and the highest in nearly three decades. Unemployment feeds the foreclosures, leading to a downward spiral for millions of working-class families. In the next four months, the airlines will lay off 36,000. State and local governments will continue to cut back because of lower tax revenues. And the shakiness of the banks, credit and stock markets are heading towards a “financial tsunami,” predicts the manager of the world’s largest bond market — as it was shown by the virtual nationalization of the mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac. So the Treasury arranged a deal that throws Fannie and Freddie shareholders over the side, but promises to protect Wall Street and foreign creditors (from China, Japan, oil-rich Gulf emirate and even Russia). Without these big lenders, credit would dry up and the blow to the bosses’ economy could be historic. So, the feds couldn’t wait till after the elections. Neither Obama nor McCain opposed this huge robbery of workers’ tax money. Eventually it could cost $500 billion to save these mortgage giants.
With U.S. imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan and Iran looming?), trillions in workers’ and future workers’ income taxes are being sucked into the bottomless military pit the ruler’s system has created, while simultaneously slaughtering millions of workers internationally.
Meanwhile, Obama and McCain continue to spout “concerns” for the jobless and offer meaningless “programs” for stimulating the economy, even as the last “stimulus” of $160 billion this past spring failed miserably to ward off a deepening recession. And they still propose troop increases for Afghanistan and the Army in general, to funnel more billions down the drain to protect their oil empire against rival imperialists in Europe, Russia, Japan and China.
Not one U.S. president has ever ended unemployment because the profit system by definition cannot provide full employment. Capitalism operates on cutthroat competition. As one set of bosses wins the competition, another set loses and inevitably cuts costs to try to maintain profits by laying off thousands and millions of workers. With “globalization” permeating the capitalist world, Toyota wins and GM loses, cutting tens of thousands of jobs. Even the one GM department that was making money, GMAC (its financial arm) has just announced 5,000 layoffs.
We in PLP call on workers not to vote, instead to organize breaking with all these politicians and union hacks who are all serving the bosses. Instead of blaming immigrant or workers from other countries or even other areas for losing jobs, we must unite internationally. This unity is key to fighting for the only solution to joblessness and endless wars this racist profit system breeds: a workers-led communist society with no bosses, no profits, no wage slavery. That’s PLP’s goal. It’s a lifetime job. Join us.

The Decision of a Lifetime

“How do things change?” a comrade asked in the summer project study group.
“It takes power,” I answered.
The idea is to unite the working class and overthrow the bosses. So here I am, rushing between cars on the parking lot of Atomic Denim, a garment factory in South L.A, to sell Challenge/Desafio. “I need more Challenges!” I yell to my fellow comrades. Workers consistently take the paper while moving quickly past us to get to work.
The boss and the secretary come out and yell as they snatch the Challenges out of two workers’ hands and throw them on the ground. “TRASH IT!” the secretary yells. A worker then whispers to a comrade, “Maybe you guys can bring little pocket cards with your message and contact info, so the bosses can’t see.”
I am really excited to see the workers accepting the literature as I watch them walk into the factory with their eyes glued to the Challenges.
We left Atomic Denim with about 150 Challenges and leaflets in the workers’ hands. We left with two police cars called on us because we were trying to organize the workers. We left with the bosses angry and most of all, I left feeling accomplished in my goal of reaching out to the working class.
So I think to myself, how can I break these imaginary walls that are separating my commitment from the Progressive Labor Party. How can these walls be broken? I’m thinking over and over.
I am fighting for the working class. I am sick and tired of the bosses exploiting the working class. I am revolutionary. I am an advocate of equality. Am I in full agreement with the PLP’s beliefs about communism? Am I willing to dedicate my life to PLP at this moment? The question has not yet been answered. I often hear of party members joining and then dropping out. One thing for certain, when it’s time for my commitment, I’ll be here, and here for good!
Daddy’s Girl

Baltimore Youth Learn:
There’s No Such Thing As a Good Politician

Representatives of Peer to Peer Youth Enterprises (a coalition of youth organizations employed by the city of Baltimore) shouted “ZERO DOLLARS IS NOT A NEGOTIATION!” in disappointment after meeting with Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon to ask for more funding.
After a Peer to Peer Youth Enterprises (P2P) Extravaganza, and a Sleep-Out titled Operation Occupation in front of City Hall, Peer to Peer organized a 5 day hunger strike.
P2P employes youth to pass on knowledge to their peers, involving groups such as the Baltimore Algebra Project, Baltimore Urban Debate League, Hip Hop Congress Baltimore, Wide Angle Youth Media and Kids on the Hill.
When Mayor Dixon asked P2P to work with her and compromise, students decided to suspend the hunger strike until negotiations were complete but left the meeting with zero dollars. Mayor Dixon said she’ll work with P2P youth but did not schedule another meeting. Even after many emails, phone calls, and press conferences where P2P demanded another meeting with Mayor Dixon for true negotiations, Mayor Dixon still never met.
This campaign for $3 million from Baltimore City budget for youth jobs in the knowledge based economy helped me to sharpen my understanding of class struggle and the role some youth play as flunkies for the capitalists.
When P2P youth organizers met with Mayor Dixon during the hunger strike, present in the meeting were members of her Youth Commission, the so called youth voice of the city where each young person represents a district of the city. This youth Commission holds no power and works as a front for politicians to say that they work with youth. The role of the Youth Commissioners in the meeting with the Mayor was to try to convince P2P organizers that we shouldn’t ask the Mayor for funding for youth employment but raise the millions of dollars ourselves through fundraisers.
The P2P campaign demanding three million dollars from the city budget is only a small investment in Baltimore’s youth. Three million dollars can employ up to 1,000 young people who will teach up to 6,000 young people.
After trusting that Mayor Dixon would negotiate and compromise, and after the City Council gave false hopes in finding three million dollars in the city’s budget, P2P decided to use this summer to build a larger base of supporters and build fundraising strategies.
A couple of PLP comrades are tightly involved in the Peer to Peer Movement. There are students in P2P who are fed up with the poor and racist conditions of Baltimore City and its politicians. The special thing about Baltimore is that a good number of youth have been involved in political struggle and truly want change, they just need to be introduced to the Progressive Labor Party’s ideas.
Believing that politicians will negotiate and compromise with students to gain economic justice and provide employment and quality education is a false hope under capitalism. All politicians are puppets to the capitalist class and workers are not yet organized enough to hold them accountable to their lies. To end this madness of unemployment and mis-education we need communist revolution and less conversations with politicians at City Hall.
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Workers Vote To Strike; Fight Warmaker Boeing’s Attack On All Workers

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LETTERS

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Workers Vote To Strike

Fight Warmaker Boeing’s Attack On All Workers

Puget Sound, WA, August 30 —"Strike, Strike" reverberated down the Auburn plant aisles. Thousands or Boeing Workers marched outside negotiations near the airport chanting, "Out the Gate, in ’08." Seven thousand emptied the Everett complex for three days running taunting the company to "Paint the Lines," a reference to the green lines security traditionally paints around the factories to mark where picketers shouldn’t cross. These marches followed a month of Rolling Thunder: workers banging their tools making a deafening sound like thunder rolling through the plants, every hour on the hour. Boeing workers have taken matters into their own hands, forcing the union mis-leadership to recommend a strike Sept. 4.

This militancy did not arise spontaneously. For years, PLP helped lead mass rebellions in Boeing plants building Rolling Thunder, organizing mass marches and protest rallies as part of class struggle against the bosses and their imperialist plans for the aerospace industry. The union misleaders have tried to appropriate the tactics, but it got away from them. As IAM District President Tom Wroblewski lamented, "Once you get these guys up the mountain, it hard to get them back down again."

Workers should harbor no illusions that this militant activity alone can reverse the sharpening attacks on our class. Millions must be guided by communist, class-conscious ideas, organized by the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP), in order to truly change society.

Global capitalist competition causes the general trend to attack industrial workers, particularly younger, newer workers. The rising industrial and military prowess of Russia and China, the U.S. bosses’ main imperialist competitors, gives new urgency to the U.S. bosses’ need to retool and cut costs. In addition, the racist super-exploitation of subcontract workers, those working in a rapidly growing number of non-union, low-wage sweatshops, is changing the face of the aerospace industry.

Reject the "Kick Your Kids to the Kurb (KKK)" Contract! Strike!

Boeing is flush with cash at the moment, having made more that $13 billion in profit in recent years. The bosses, however, feel pressed to hold every penny as they look to the sharpening fight against their imperialist rivals. The union misleaders, meanwhile, are bickering over how much of this cash they can get to bribe older union workers to sell out the next generation.

Between 2006 and 2008, average Boeing wages have dropped $6/hour because of lower rates for new hires agreed to in prior contracts. This contract will lock in the trend of increasing exploitation, as nearly 50% of the Boeing workforce, those currently earning the highest wages, will retire in the next few years.

The tactics may differ, but in the end, aerospace workers will suffer the same fate as their class brothers and sisters in auto and other industries. More work will be subcontracted to the non-union shops; union workers will face lay-offs or lower pay in the current plants. We must not accept this contract. Workers must strike!

Workers Debate Dismal Future Under Capitalism

Progressive Labor Party called for a "United Aerospace Strike" in our well-received flyer at the airport demonstration. We included solidarity statements from Mississippi shipyard workers, Long Beach Boeing workers and L.A. subcontractor workers. Every statement warned of "losing higher-paid jobs to lower paid, non-union employees at an alarming rate."

The battle for the hearts and minds of the Boeing workers is as sharp as the sound of Rolling Thunder. The pro-capitalist union leaders offer ideas that will not challenge the bosses’ system. They blame the bad contract offer and the loss of union jobs on "this blatant example of corporate greed." That’s why they tried, and failed, to start the chant "Boeing’s offer is unfair, all we want is our fair share."

Workers debated the unions’ ideas for hours on the shop floor, with many rejecting the misleaders’ analysis. We built this factory with our labor, and our class, the working class, should control it!

As the bosses fled Rolling Thunder, we organized meetings of CHALLENGE readers in the plants. Riffing on the debates initiated during the Party’s July Summer Project, we discussed how bad ideas undermined the Chinese Revolution. We learned how Chinese revisionists –– misleaders who revised revolutionary ideas to take power back from the working class –– defeated the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, and consolidated capitalism’s hold on China. They busted up the communal farms, sending the equivalent of the U.S. population into the new Chinese factories at dirt-cheap wages. The imperialist rivalry has never been the same.

Kick Capitalism To The Curb

We also discussed how capitalism reinforces racism, sexism and imperialism. We discussed how the dog-eat-dog capitalist economic base makes it impossible to mitigate, let alone eliminate, these divisions in the working class. "How can communism succeed when we are so divided against each other?" asked our friend.

We examined the different economic base in a communist system, based on the collective strength of the international working class and the slogan "from each according to their commitment, to each according to their need." We debated whether a movement guided by communist politics that smashed the ruling class and revolutionized the economic base could indeed change how workers interact with each other. The road to workers’ power is built on fighting these evils of capitalism right now in this contract battle. But many agreed that the final defeat of racism, sexism and imperialism requires a communist revolution.

Everybody agreed this was a long, hard fight, made doubly difficult by the defeat of the old communist movement. One friend said, "A light bulb turned on" when PLP members explained how concessions to the wage system made by the old movement doomed it from the start.

In the end, the choice was made clear: we could kick our kids to the curb or kick capitalism to the curb. We left these discussions resolving to sell more CHALLENGES, distribute PLP basic documents Road to Revolution III and IV, organize two PLP study groups and build our revolutionary forces. As we go to print it looks like we’ll strike on Sept. 4. Either way, the future is ours if we build these revolutionary communist forces in our industry and throughout the working class.

a name="Democrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers">">"emocrats’ Lovefest Deadly for Workers

In a spectacle worthy of rock stars, with 84,000 screaming fans and July 4th-style fireworks, the Democratic Party named Barack Obama and Joe Biden to its party’s ticket for the November elections. As we go to press, the Republican Convention has begun and will name John McCain and Sarah Palin (another "fresh face") as their candidates. Despite being bombarded by frenzied and non-stop media coverage of the campaigns, workers should understand that neither ticket offers anything to us except capitalist exploitation marked by endless wars, attacks on our living standards, and divide-and-rule racism against African Americans and Latinos. The Obama campaign, with its mass outreach to youth, black and Latin, and labor, dangerously misleads millions into supporting the ruling class.

Obama has captured the imagination of millions who want to believe that he will bring change that would help them in these tough times. But Obama has the same backers as President Bush and Dick Cheney! (See PLP Elections Pamphlet). He will serve the same interests! The rulers believe that Obama’s appeal will make the working class more enthusiastic about following U.S. rulers into continuing and expanding wars and inevitable cutbacks in wages, services, and social programs. Like Kennedy, Carter and Clinton before him, Obama represents false hope for change and is simply a front man for the ruling class, "fresh face" notwithstanding.

The Context: War for Control over Energy Resources

U.S. imperialists lead a declining empire that defines the limits of any president’s initiatives. U.S. power, while strong and doing great damage worldwide, is weakening relative to other rising powers including the European Union, Russia, China, and even some secondary capitalist powers like Iran and Venezuela that gain leverage by allying with the rising powers competing with the U.S. At the core of these disputes is control over the world’s energy resources, centered in the Middle East.

The Acceptance Speech and the Issues

Obama’s speech was standard liberal fare. His rhetoric was indistinguishable from his Democratic Party predecessors including John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry, or Bill Clinton. Like them, he promised improvements in all aspects of life (see box). Yet his predecessors have never achieved these goals and cannot because they interfere with the needs of the capitalists for profits. In fact, Bill Clinton dismantled the welfare program so that now the poverty rate has increased dramatically while welfare rolls have fallen drastically!

Obama is tied to the ruling class by a hundred strings, as demonstrated by his selection of long-term Washington insider Joe Biden for Vice-President and his coterie of advisors who all belong to ruling-class think-tanks and policy institutes like the Council on Foreign Relations that ensure the continuity of U.S. imperialism regardless of who is president.

Dissent and Protest

At the convention, thousands rallied to attack the Democratic Party for its failure to champion working-class interests to end the wars and achieve social justice. However, it’s an illusion to think the Democrats, a ruling-class party, would ever truly represent workers’ interest.

The Iraq Veterans Against the War demanded to address the convention around the need to incorporate their goals — an immediate end to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, better care for returning veterans and reparations for the Iraqi people. Obama turned a deaf ear to these demands and others, relying on thousands of police armed with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and truncheons to threaten the demonstrators and move them far away from the convention, arresting over 130 and beating many. The cops did the same to protestors at the Republican Convention.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Democratic and Republican conventions are clown shows to entertain and distract us while the country’s actual rulers, the rich capitalists, make sure that their every need is met by their faithful political servants in both parties. They use the political process, including the conventions, to deceive us into thinking that voting can significantly affect our interests. The ruling class wants to recruit millions of us into supporting U.S. imperialism by blunting our class-consciousness about our exploitation by the rich capitalists, bankers, developers and government officials. The working class should instead attack these elections for the shell game they represent, and build a militant, internationalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist opposition to capitalism. This approach is not "on the ballot" in this election — revolution for workers’ power and communism can never be won through a ballot, but only through revolution and armed struggle.

What does Obama stand for?

• JOBS — Obama promises "more jobs," ending outsourcing of jobs overseas. But Obama cannot defy the laws of capitalism. They dictate that capitalists must drive for higher profits to survive and therefore seek out the lowest wage markets, whether they be in China, Mexico or Latin America, as the Japanese and European automakers do in seeking lower wages in the U.S.

• WAGES — Obama promises help for "hard-working Americans." But again, capitalism dictates that U.S. bosses must drive down wages to be able to compete with rival bosses worldwide. So they "outsource" jobs to subcontractor shops from across the southern U.S. to California, jobs which pay $10 an hour, less than half of what workers in unionized factories like Boeing earn, leading to mass layoffs and mass unemployment.

• UNEMPLOYMENT — Because of the above two factors, capitalism must create a "reserve army of unemployed." No president in history has ever ended unemployment because it’s built into capitalism’s drive for maximum profits which leads to "bubble-bursting" recessions and depressions.

• RACISM — Obama promises to "bring people together" while blaming victims, not racism, for their misery. But Obama won’t withdraw the 100,000 cops that Clinton put on the streets, cops who daily attack and murder black and Latino workers and youth. Again, Obama’s capitalism cannot function, and has never functioned, without the hundreds of billions in super-profits that the racist super-exploitation of black and Latino workers rakes in for the bosses.

• THE ENVIRONMENT — Obama promises to "be free of foreign oil in ten years." (!) But U.S. capitalism needs to control that foreign oil as a lever in its battle with imperialist rivals in Europe, Russia, China and Japan. Obama promises to put money into non-polluting energy sources, but he doesn’t tell us that no modern army or industry can exist without oil. You can’t drive a tank or fly a jet fighter on wind power.

• A DRAFT — Obama promises to "rebuild our military to meet future conflicts." How? With the current depleted and exhausted U.S. Army? It can only be done by drafting millions, which Obama aims to accomplish through the back door of "National Service." This would supposedly give youth a "choice" of "public service" or military service, and promise undocumented immigrant youth citizenship in exchange for becoming cannon fodder in his endless "future conflicts." Where else will he get the troops he wants to put into Afghanistan?

• FASCISM — Obama complains about the Bush assault on civil liberties, but meanwhile votes for the latest Bush bill to tap an untold number of phone calls in the name of "national security." And he hasn’t uttered a word about repealing the fascist Patriot Act. The rulers need such laws to put down potential rebellions by workers and youth fed up with all the attacks on their lives.

• WAR — Obama promises to gradually withdraw most (not all) troops from Iraq, but wants to enlarge the army by at least 92,000, sending more soldiers into Afghanistan to continue the killing of thousands of civilians in order to protect proposed oil pipelines in that area of Asia. And Obama’s pledge to handle "future conflicts" by definition must maintain and expand the hundreds of U.S. military bases throughout the world upon which U.S. capitalism depends to control the flow of oil. In defending his ability to be "commander-in-chief," Obama proudly cites all the past U.S. wars that have seen Democrats in charge.

And Obama’s opponent, John McCain, is just as much a loyal servant of capitalism on every one of the above issues.

a name="At LA Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders"></a>"t LA Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders

LOS ANGELES, CA. –– The working class is no stranger to racist killer cops, especially in the recent multiple murders involving the LAPD and LA County Sheriffs. PLP members attended a candlelight vigil for Christian Portillo, who was gunned down by the murderous cops in Lennox. Recalling PLP’s response to Sean Bell’s murder in New York, we decided to bring revolutionary politics to these events and received positive responses from the working class there.

As the vigil progressed, there was a call by community leaders for a march toward the Sherriff’s office that was to remain calm and collected. White flags were passed out along with signs calling for an end to police murder. Similar to the misleaders in New York, leaders of this march called for exposing the "bad" cops and respecting the "good" cops. These misleaders called for peace and increased participation in the system. Once Party members saw reformist politics leading the march, we mobilized to circulate more CHALLENGES and literature. One comrade began chanting "Policia cochina, racista y asesina!" (Police, pigs, racist and murderous!) that was warmly received and picked up by our working-class brothers and sisters.

The workers’ anger, especially that of Christian Portillo’s brother, grew. The march became a picket line and eventually PLP pushed to move down the block in front of the Sheriffs’ station. PL members’ chants got louder and more militant. Then, Portillo’s brother tacked a flier attacking these racist murderers on the station wall. One comrade took a bullhorn and gave a speech linking the murder of Christian Portillo to the capitalist system that would continue to flourish with reformist politics. This comrade called for workers to fight back and join our fight for communism. At the end of the march, the misleaders continued their call to work within the system. Another comrade jumped on the bullhorn and gave another speech in Spanish reminding the crowd of the 1992 rebellions in response to the Rodney King beating. He called for joining PLP and building for communist revolution on the job, in the schools, and in the streets.

The most important lesson we learned is that we should never underestimate our class. Our initial hesitation to be militant at a vigil based on the fear of being seen as "opportunist" (taking advantage of the situation) was wrong. The actions of the working class in Lennox and especially some of the Portillo family members reminded PL’ers of the responsibility they have to build the fight for communism. PLP made contacts here and will continue to build the relationships needed for the long-term fight for revolution! Only revolution will end these brutal police murders and the terror that is capitalalism! J

Protesters Charge Cops With Racist Killing of Latino Worker

Workers PLP met at the Lennox vigil (above) called and invited us to another rally which we attended in Compton the next week against the police killings. Family members of the several victims of racist police terror actively led chants, as they continue being under police surveillance and intimidation. The rally got support from cars passing by and honking.

PLP members led the chant "Black, Brown, Asian, White — to smash racism we must unite!" Later, when Christian Portillo’s sister spoke, she echoed these sentiments, saying that we all need to unite against racist cop terror. Portillo’s friends and family all took CHALLENGE and were interested in reading it along with our leaflet linking the racist police murders of Portillo and Kevin Wicks in Inglewood with the rulers’ drive to make the working class pay for their wars and economic crisis. One person we had met at the first rally asked us for the new CHALLENGE. She had read the previous one and liked it. She noted that this was the sort of thing that started the civil war in El Salvador. We agreed and could see why the Summer Project which just ended was so important.

By expanding CHALLENGE networks and organizing workers in the factories, in the military and in schools, PLP is laying the basis to lead the fight against racist police killings around revolutionary communist politics and to build the fight to end racist terror once and for all, not with dead-end reforms but through the long term fight for communist revolution.

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LAUREL, MISSISSIPPI, August 28 — The Gestapo-like raids carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cops struck again, arresting 595 workers employed by Howard Industries, world’s largest manufacturer of electrical transformers employing 3,000 workers in southeastern Mississippi. And the traitorous AFL-CIO applauded the raid! (See below)

In May, ICE carried out a similar raid, arresting hundreds of workers at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. These raids are terrorizing many small towns nation-wide. At the same time the Laurel raid was taking place, a rumor of an ICE raid in Perry, a small Iowa town 100 miles from Postville, was panicking the Latino community, 25% of Perry’s population.

Hundreds of heavily-armed ICE agents raided Howard Industries’ Laurel and nearby Ellisvile facilities. They arrived in unmarked cars and white vans, sealed the plants and rounded up "suspect" workers, questioning them in mobile trailers.

Just as the Nazis used yellow stars to identify Jews, Latino workers were segregated from other workers. U.S. citizens were given blue armbands to divide them from immigrants. Agents wearing flak vests stopped motorists driving near the plant and told them to leave the area.

The raid’s blatant fascist-like racism shocked many. An immigrant rights group in Jackson, the state capital, criticized the raid, saying families with children were involved. "It’s horrific what ICE is doing to these families and these communities," said Shuya Ohno, a spokesman for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance. "It’s just hard to imagine that this is the United States of America." (NY Times, 8/27)

A woman entering a local church with four small children said several of the youngsters’ parents had been detained. The woman, a translator for many of the families, said: "I don’t like this at all. I don’t understand it. They have come here to work. It’s very sad."

But this is exactly the U.S.A. today, a country led by a ruling class which needs more racism, more fascist terror. The raids’ aim is not really to deport all undocumented workers, or even to find those guilty of "identity theft" as ICE claims. The goal is to terrorize immigrant workers, and all workers, so they accept super-exploitation, rotten working conditions, more social service cutbacks and get used to the kind of mass terror that the bosses and their police agencies will use against ALL workers who refuse to swallow these conditions. These attacks will continue no matter who’s elected the next President.

Plants like this one here will become more important for the bosses’ war machine as it gears for wider wars, from Afghanistan to the Caucasus. The ruling class realizes that the U.S. population is changing. According to Census figures, in several decades most U.S. workers will be immigrants, Latinos or blacks. So racist super-exploitation will be needed more than ever to keep the bosses’ super-profits rolling in.

But this also becomes a contradiction for the bosses: they need those workers they’re terrorizing for their war plants and their military. So, while we might hear a lot of empty talk about "the end of racism" — "after all," they tell us, "look at Obama" — the opposite is happening.

This makes it primary for PLP to organize among these factory workers, and all workers and soldiers, to win them to fight racism, understanding that capitalism cannot live without racist exploitation. All workers must see these ICE raids as an attack against the entire working class. The AFL-CIO did the opposite here. Rather than unite the workers and organize them all, it pitted unionized workers against immigrant workers.

Robert Shaffer, regional AFL-CIO official, applauded the raid, saying he’s complained for a long time about how companies in southern Mississippi hire undocumented immigrants, disgustingly adding the racist comment that the region "looks like a little Mexico." The same union traitors who, because of their pro-boss sellout politics, have failed to organize millions of workers — citizens or immigrants — nationwide, are now blaming the victims for their own failures.

Workers who fall for this racist trap are cutting their own throat. We must defend our fellow immigrant workers when the bosses attack. Our motto should be, "All for one and one for all; same enemy same fight, workers of the world, unite!"

Bosses Turn Education into Schools for Imperialism

From metal detectors, cameras and police presence to eroding union protections for teachers, trends in education point to a tightening control that is part of a growing fascism in society. Workers and youth organizing in movements to oppose an accelerating cascade of budget-cut assaults will come up against these physical and coercive elements of the police state. Through sharp, vigorous and patient organizing inside such movements, communists can win masses of workers and youth to see growing fascism not only as cause for despair but as cause for revolution.

Capitalist education always serves to teach the big ideas needed so that the ruling class can pursue its aims with minimal resistance from the workers. The Cold War education of the 1950s produced a society that mostly accepted a vicious anti-communist war in Vietnam at considerable cost in lives and absorbed its costs for ten years. As the Cold War heated up again under Reagan in the 1980s, brutal wars in Central America and huge cuts in social spending ensued. A U.S. population won to anti-communism tolerated these attacks. The (unexpected) reward for U.S, imperialism was the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main competitor. During the Cold War U.S. schools taught young-people anti-communism so they would not protest the rulers’ war plans.

Today U.S. imperialism faces a situation that is both similar and different. New competitors are rising, and as CHALLENGE has emphasized, control of Mid-East oil is key to dominance in the coming period. What teachers are asked to teach about the Mid-East matters. The ruling class needs U.S. schools to win over future workers to U.S. imperialism.

In New York State all high school students must take Regents exams in several subjects to graduate. In Global History students have been asked to write about the "positives and negatives" or the "differing viewpoints" on imperialism. These topics do more than force thousands of students to argue for imperialism on test day. Because topics tend to be recycled, these questions also exercise enormous influence over teachers who care deeply about preparing their students for examination and graduation. Teachers frame their treatment of imperialism in similar terms. Teachers are pressured to avoid teaching imperialism as the racist and genocidal system that it is. Like slavery and the Holocaust, imperialism has no positive characteristics. This moral stance is impossible when teaching to the test.

This past June, question #41 reads:

"In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The United Nations response led to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. This response is an example of:

Détente
Empire building
Totalitarianism
Collective Security

In classrooms, where the struggle for literacy is desperate, teachers tempted to speak about U.S. imperialism are discouraged by such a question. The "correct" answer was choice #4. The test’s writers want Americans to understand Desert Storm not as an exercise in U.S. imperialism but "collective security." But even more alarming than the right answer is the wrong one, specifically choice #2. Teachers who focus on actual history are in trouble. The history is clear:

The U.S. developed relations with the Saudis after World War II, calling the oil reserves of the Mid-East "a stupendous source of strategic power and the greatest material prize in the history of the world" Carter proclaimed his doctrine of U.S. dominance in the Mid-East in 1980 and created a "rapid-reaction force" designed to invade the area. Reagan transformed this force into Centcom, which has grown under every president and directed three major wars in fifteen years.

This history points to choice #2, imperialism. Teachers who speak in terms of U.S. imperialism run the risk of "confusing" their students and maybe even costing them the one point they need in order to graduate. The prospect is terrifying enough, especially to new teachers, to dampen a real critique of U.S. imperialism. Additionally, the teacher-training taboo of never "sharing your view" finishes off many a good lesson about the true role of the U.S. in the world before it ever begins. No doubt the rulers have the good old-fashioned witch-hunt in their arsenal for teachers who refuse to toe the line of U.S. patriotism in class, and they will use it again as they have in the past. Next to these exams, however, the Cold War persecution of teachers was crude and perhaps even less effective in terms of the levels of conformity achieved.

Luckily, working class students can and do respond to real history teaching. Facts, a veteran PLP member used to say, are stubborn things. Several students informally surveyed on this question after the exam knew to stay away from choice number two even though they knew it was correct. In class, the teacher led discussions to ensure they understood the purpose of the test and what the testers were looking for. In fact deconstructing an exam this way actually makes test prep easier: "always pick the choice that makes America look good."

When the "positives-of-imperialism" question reas its ugly head, we have an opportunity to raise important ideas among teachers and students about growing fascism, the role of education and the needs of U.S. imperialism. This article was discussed with several teachers and students in the base of PLP at a school where we’re active for suggestions prior to publication. We must take every chance the rulers give us to build our movement for communist revolution.

Racist Gentrification Sweeping Workers Out of Harlem

HARLEM, NEW YORK CITY, August 19 — Several weeks ago, the Record Shack, a legendary 35-year-old music store on 125th St in Harlem, was suddenly evicted. The owner was not even allowed inside to get his personal possessions; his goods were brought to a Yonkers storage facility that’s asking $12,000 for their return. The landlord is a local church, The United House of Prayer, that has been selling off its ample property to the highest bidders, including banks and chain stores, that are invading the rapidly-gentrifying neighborhood. Last weekend, as on many past Sundays, local activists rallied outside the shuttered music store, demanding its re-opening and condemning the landlord church.

Harlem, home to many poor and working-class African-Americans and a major cultural center, has already been cut in half. That is, housing affordable at the average Harlem worker’s $20,000 wage and to small black-owned businesses are being displaced by luxury condos and upscale stores. What are being labeled "subsidized units" in the new buildings are pegged at incomes of $40,000-$60,000. Going, going, gone are affordable apartments and small businesses.

Resistance to gentrification has been constant, from students and residents uniting to oppose Columbia University’s takeover of West Harlem, to a militant Movimiento por Justicia in East Harlem, to several groups in Central Harlem. There have been demonstrations large and small and several actions, uniting all the groups. Unfortunately, severe weaknesses pervade the struggle.

All the groups suffer from a major focus on politicians. They rightly denounce the sellouts like ex-mayor Dinkins and Rep. Charles Rangel, and Harlem’s traitorous City Council representatives, but then hope to elect new politicians who say they will fight in the people’s interest. No few individuals can turn around the basic fact that the government’s role is — first and foremost — to protect the flow of profits, and also to control uprisings by the governed. But this obsession with elections means that debating the merits of individuals, or listening to politicians’ speeches occupy many meetings.

Much activity is focused on a few people attending meetings of political bodies and hoping to influence their outcome. Although protesting at politicians’ offices or events can be good focal points for mass actions, the major effort must be to build mass activity and expose the role of politics in a capitalist society. We need more mass actions such as gathering to stop evictions, or we could occupy renovation projects.

Nationalism is the other major stumbling block to building a mass campaign. At the August 3rd Record Shack demonstration, some people wanted to boycott other businesses owned by the Church, not a bad tactic, but on the basis that they were run by Jews or Koreans; they chanted "Buy Black." This slogan ignores the fact that the evil landlord is himself black, as are many other Harlem oppressors.

It was possible to have a discussion with a few demonstrators about how racism is used to super-oppress and divide people, but nationalism serves to maintain those divisions and hide the underlying class divisions. When we all mass in large numbers with militant actions, then we’ll really see which side people are on and allow us all — workers and students of all backgrounds — to fight together.

Some anti-gentrification movement fighters do see that capitalism, based on endless greed for profits, and built on racism, is the problem. By distributing CHALLENGE and having continuing discussions, we must try to win them to join the Party for the long struggle ahead and not become defeated by our current inability to turn around gentrification.

a name="Pakistan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks"></">Pa"istan’s Workers Fight Havoc Wreaked by U.S./Local Rulers’ Attacks

After only five months, Pakistan’s new coalition government has sunk into a seemingly unstoppable political and economic crisis: rapidly-rising inflation, increasing challenges from Islamic extremists and U.S.-India condemnation of Pakistan as a very serious threat to capitalist world security.

On August 18, the latest in a long line of U.S.-backed military strong men, President Pervez Musharraf, stepped down rather than face impeachment. While commentators predict his resignation heralds a new era, the chaos continues: a suicide bombing kills 30; another leaves 70 dead; one coalition partner resigns from government; thousands flee their homes during the biggest battle of the "war on terror" between the Pakistani army and the Taliban; president-to-be Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the Pakistani People’s Party (PPP), declares, "The world is losing the war on terror."

Meanwhile, working-class anger at the rising cost of living — wheat flour, a staple, increased 26% in one month and transportation 14%, following last year’s jump in consumer prices of almost 20% — government corruption and general insecurity led to nation-wide protests. In Karachi, Pakistan’s Telecommunication Company workers struck in May, taking over the company’s headquarters until July 28 when they won higher wages.

On-the-job actions erupt in textile factories, the cement industry, among teachers, hospital and other government departments as more workers demand wage increases to offset increased living costs. Critically affecting the government’s military plans, 3,000 Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (Defense Ministry) workers, paid on a daily basis, are demanding pay increases and permanent jobs, now given to relatives and friends of army officials.

The PPP-led government blames Musharraf’s nine-year dictatorship for worsening conditions, claiming he left a "mutilated" economy with a large trade deficit and a government budget deficit up 75%. But their "poor people’s budget" follows Musharraf’s policies that blatantly benefit Pakistan’s ruling class and the U.S., which is insisting on the deregulation of Pakistan’s economy. More privatization of public resources is planned, tax breaks on stock-market profits are extended two years and large tracts of land are reserved for foreign investors to develop agribusiness. Subsides for food, fuel oil, electricity and fertilizer are slashed over 25%.

With a nod to the painful poverty of its 168 million people — 70% exist on less than $2/day, 60 million are "food insecure" (according to a UN report) — the government trumpets its $507 million program to provide $15 per month, medical insurance and job training for 3.3 million desperately-poor families. This contrasts starkly with a military budget of $4.7 billion.

Since 2002 the army has also received $10 billion from the U.S. to fund Pakistan’s military participation in the "war on terror" against the Taliban in the tribal belt along the Afghan/Pakistani border. But despite these billions, the insurgency has grown and the U.S. believes that the funding — paid in cash — is going elsewhere. In Pakistan it’s no secret that it lines the pockets of top military officials, who use the war as a cash cow and want to keep it alive.

The root of Pakistan’s current problems is U.S. bosses’ need to use it as part of their goal of world domination. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, (now an Obama foreign policy advisor) devised the "Bear Trap," a plot to defeat the U.S.’s main imperialist rival, the then Soviet Union, by drawing it into a war between the Afghan pro-Moscow government in Kabul and the wealthy landowners and religious zealots opposing it. The plan (in Brzezinski’s words, "to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam"), involved the creation, funding and training of an Afghan mujahaddin army in Pakistan.

This led to a 12-year jihad that became the U.S.’s largest covert action, (estimated cost, $40 billion (The Nation, 2/15/99) the bulk coming from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia). It inflicted religious intolerance on the secular societies of Pakistan and Afghanistan, perpetrated some of the most brutal acts of terrorism and became the breeding ground for the Taliban and the al Qaeda terrorist networks now operating in 80 countries.

Today the U.S. claims factions in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence are aiding the Taliban’s resurgence. But the latter’s strength is also growing because the Pakistani army is weakening. Soldiers see the officers’ corruption and plunder and are demoralized. Desertions are rising. Many rank-and-file soldiers are reluctant to fight in a war overwhelmingly targeting civilians. Bloody confrontations, like the recent one killing many civilians and making 300,000 homeless, strengthen the Taliban’s position.

"Why is our government bombing us from the air," shouted one refugee. U.S. air strikes from over the border in Afghanistan or from secret CIA bases in Pakistan that kill more villagers than terrorists intensify the anger.

Caught between the army and the insurgents, people in the tribal areas are either coerced or voluntarily join with the Taliban. They do have an alternative: join with other workers in building PLP which is fighting the cause of all this misery, capitalism.

(Next, Part II: India, the U.S. and inter-imperialist rivalry over Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan and the projected "balkanization" of Pakistan.)

Afghanistan: Tables Turning on U.S. Aggressors

The "victory" claims of U.S. rulers when they invaded Afghanistan in 2001 have turned around. Not only is Osama bin Laden still at large, but the Taliban and its allies are now launching coordinated assaults on U.S. Army bases and an attack that killed ten elite French paratroopers. No wonder Obama and McCain are advocating troop increases in Afghanistan. At stake is a proposed oil pipeline running from Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.

The seven-year occupation has devastated Afghans. Thousands of civilians have died from U.S./NATO air attacks, bombs, missiles and police fire, intensifying hatred of the imperialists. Poppy cultivation and corruption have soared. Poverty, homelessness, skyrocketing food prices, 75% illiteracy — this and worse is the lot of the average Afghan, the result of U.S. "liberation." With over 80% of women affected by domestic violence, Afghanistan has become the most dangerous place in the world for women.

All this has become fertile ground for Taliban and al Qaeda recruitment.

In the face of this devastation, Afghans have protested. Hundreds demonstrated against rising food prices; at a teachers’ rally for wage hikes, students set 45 vehicles ablaze and attacked the cops. Angry street demonstrations protested the U.S.-puppet agreement to maintain permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan.

All this is linked to the instability in bordering Pakistan, a Taliban base.

LETTERS

Latest Victim of Racist Cops: The Mayor!

I attended a rally in Berwyn Heights, Maryland, near the University of Maryland in Prince George’s County. Over 100 people from the University and neighborhood gathered to protest this latest victim of the County’s police – the MAYOR!

On July 29th, the SWAT team of the Sheriff’s Office broke down his door, shot his dogs, cuffed him and his mother-in-law, and interrogated them for 90 minutes as they lay next to the bloody dead dogs on the floor of their living room. The cops claimed they were tracking a delivery of drugs (30 pounds of marijuana) to their home.

I arrived at the rally carrying CHALLENGES and a sign that read "Indict the Killers of Ronnie White - Stop Police Terror" to link this latest episode of police terror with the lynching of Ronnie White, a young man killed in his jail cell after his arrest on suspicion of killing a police officer (see Challenge July 30, p. 3).

I encountered ten students from the University who had organized an earlier rally against the Berwyn Heights attack. They were eager to read our communist newspaper and wanted to organize a bigger demonstration against police brutality at the County Executive’s office. Two of their leaders joined us and the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability a few days later to discuss the use of state terror to control workers, how to fight for a more equitable system, and next steps in the campaign against racist police brutality.

Many people at the rally commented on the sign and the connections between the two attacks. One elderly white man commented that he used to be a "law-and-order man," but after seeing a resident cuffed, tasered, and insulted with racist comments, he changed his attitude. Some residents appeared to have had more sympathy for the dogs than for the dozens of workers –– mostly black and Latino — who have been brutalized by this police force for decades.

The responses from black and white workers about these two attacks are paving the way for reviving significant multi-racial organizing against police brutality in the County. As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens, more police brutality is likely as the ruling class tries to intimidate and control workers who are increasingly angry over their deteriorating quality of life. Now is the time to fight back!

Red organizer

Worker Agrees: He Gets 5%, Boss Gets 95%

Early one morning, ten comrades went to distribute leaflets and CHALLENGES in an industrial area in Los Angeles. Afterwards we approached two workers eating breakfast and gave them a leaflet and a CHALLENGE. We described the key role workers play in industry, how the boss exploits us and how the workers are the basis of all production. One comrade explained why the bosses need unemployment, and always pay lower wages, comparing the minimum wage to those of Boeing workers.

One worker agreed, saying he gets paid the minimum while every day the bosses demand more production. The other worker said he had no complaints; he received a good wage producing parts for cars because he’s paid for his skills. I asked him, "How many pieces do you produce in a day?" He replied, "About 80 to 100." I asked, "How much does each piece cost?" He answered "$400."

I said take 80 pieces as a minimum, multiply that by five days a week, and then by four for a month of production and then by the $400 each piece costs. He was quiet for a while and then said it was a lot of money. I noted that his wages covered about 5% of his total production and that the other 95% went to the boss. Finally he said, "It’s true; they’re exploiting us when they just give us crumbs and the boss keeps most of the value of the production. And I thought I wasn’t exploited!"

I’m a student from Mexico who participated in the Summer Project to further PLP’s activities in the factories and to use these experiences to spread communist ideas to other workers.

A young comrade from Mexico

International PLP School in Spain

A three-day international PLP communist school was organized here in Spain, including friends from France, workers of Spain and immigrants from Brazil, Peru, Colombia and El Salvador living here and others.

A Brazilian said that back home people are told there are only two classes: the "high" and the middle class. This led to a good discussion about class struggle and how capitalism worldwide is trying to deny the contradictions of the only two classes in society: the working class which fights the exploitation by the capitalist class.

The school was a positive development for the international growth of the communist PLP. We will write more soon.

PLP’er in Spain

a name="Summer Of Communism: Teachers’ Role in Uniting Workers, Students">">"ummer Of Communism: Teachers’ Role in Uniting Workers, Students

I’m a NYC high school teacher who just spent two weeks in the Los Angeles Summer Project. I had a great time working with older and younger comrades and friends. We all learned from one another, figuring out how to get CHALLENGE/DESAFIO to thousands of workers and students, to get contacts and start the process of winning those workers to the Party.

We talked a lot about the worker-student-soldier alliance (WSSA), bringing different groups in the working class together to fight capitalism. The power of the WSSA is far greater than its parts — none of them alone can really stop capitalism in its tracks, but together we can.

Early in the Project a comrade presented the history of the Party’s work in the 1960s and ‘70s to build a WSSA, including in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). I met the party through this work, which seemed the most logical and strongest work we could do to stop the war in Vietnam. Students alone couldn’t shut the system down. But, I learned, united with workers we had a lot more power!

I began to think about the work teachers do. It seemed to me that there are two aspects of WSSA needed in that work. We should try to build an alliance between our students and local factory and military workers — that’s what we discussed in the Summer Project. We also should forge unity between our own students and their teacher, who are also workers.

Most Party teachers work to win our students. We all have friends on staff who know about this. The staff we are friendliest with and closest to are the most committed to our students. But because teachers are trained to think of themselves as professionals, they are mostly not struggling to organize these students and their parents as fellow workers. Changing this would build real working-class unity in the schools and make clear that the enemy of good education is not parents or teachers, but capitalism. This won’t happen by itself — we need to struggle as hard with our friends and colleagues as we try to do with students.

That’s a big fight, which would expose the main contradiction in the school system — between the capitalist school system and the working-class students and their families.

In struggle,

One of many red teachers.

Are Radical Solutions Essential?

Recently I spoke to a group of religious humanists on the topic, "Our Future: Are Radical Solutions Essential?" I outlined the dire threats and conditions most of the world’s working people and their friends face. I declared that the U.S. presidential campaign would never confront these issues.

I cited three authors whose work can be useful in these discussions. First, I summarized Jared Diamond’s "Collapse," which concludes with an analysis of how twelve inter-related ecological/economic factors could well make the earth largely uninhabitable if not corrected in a reasonable time. Two — global warming and deadly competition for energy and water — are already at the root at expanding imperialist conflict. Michael Klare’s "Resource Wars and Oil Wars" makes very clear the dominant role multi-national profit wars play in this growing carnage. The morning I spoke, the Georgia-Russia war had just begun and my sources easily proved that the U.S.-UK financed BTC pipeline was at the heart of this deadly conflict.

I also read much of an op-ed piece by Israeli historian Benny Morris (NY Times, 7/18) calling on Israel to bomb Iran extensively by the end of the year, saying if this attack didn’t end the Iranian nuclear program, Israel "would have no choice" but to launch nuclear strikes that would slaughter millions in the Middle East. I then quoted both Obama and McCain assuring Israel that they support "all options being left on the table" and that both want to widely expand the U.S. imperial war machine.

Finally I recommended reading Joel Kovel’s "Enemy of Nature" which brilliantly attacks capitalism as the root of exploitation, ecological collapse and wars.

The audience so appreciated this candor and clarity that they rose for a standing ovation. Most of those attending will probably vote for Obama as the "lesser evil," but the main lesson is that many liberals are open to intense criticism of capitalism and the electoral system that helps preserve it.

Aging but Active Red

The Relationship of Workers to the Party

In a Sept. 3 letter, Red Coal (RC) insists that workers should have the right to strike and protest "government" policies in a communist society. Rather than banning strikes, RC asks, "Shouldn’t we have more faith in the workers? Shouldn’t we have more confidence in the power of communist ideas?" RC further states that strikes are necessary especially to protect job safety.

Under capitalism a strike (for example against unsafe working conditions) is one of the workers’ weapons against racist, sexist capitalist exploiters. In a communist society safety would be the first consideration on any job while any risks in emergencies would be shared equally, unlike a capitalist system where profits and class privilege are primary.

If workers struck in a communist society, it would indicate that they thought the working-class leadership of the communist party had become class enemies like capitalists. Arguing that strikes may be necessary under communism indicates a lack of confidence in communist ideas by implying that the working class shouldn’t trust or need the Party.

Because of uneven economic and political development (the richest one-fifth of the world’s population accounts for 86% of private consumption while the poorest one-fifth accounts for only 1.3%), some minority sections of the working class may feel that they have needs that are contradictory to those of the majority. In such cases, PL’s commitment to egalitarianism and internationalism must prevail over more selfish, national, racist and sexist ideas.

Many small and large struggles, even wars, may take place because of this. If communism is to prevail, the Party must give strong, principled leadership to the working class. This doesn’t have to mean that the working class will be alienated from political power because working-class ideas and leadership will constantly be sought after and developed by the Party until eventually everyone will become communist organizers.

I hope that comrade RC will ask his Party comrade about the possibility of getting into a study group and discussing the relationship of workers to the Party.

A Comrade

a name="‘Lincoln’ Review Lacked Historical Context"></">‘L"ncoln’ Review Lacked Historical Context

The article on Lincoln (CHALLENGE, 9/3), while not untrue, lacks historical rigor. Lincoln was clearly a racist, anti-Indian (in fact, when mobilizing the Union troops he had to call many of them back from fighting Indians in the West) and would have permitted slavery to remain intact (though he was against expansion), if the Union would be preserved.

The article reveals things about Lincoln that appear personal. But more important, he was against the expansion of slavery because he supported the expansion of industrialization and wage labor. However, within the Republican Party he was in the center at best, maybe even tilted to the right. During the Civil War, the radical Republicans, who opposed all slavery, were beginning to flex their muscles and by the end of the war they were becoming a dominant force within the Republican Party.

Lincoln remained a moderate until he was assassinated. His plans for "reconstruction" would have left the Southern ruling class intact but without slavery. Lincoln’s plans for black people would have left them at the mercy of their former owners. Clearly, that was a racist position. While ultimately "radical reconstruction" failed to truly change black and white relations, its programs went much further in dealing with the questions of the Southern ruling elite and racism.

The article doesn’t give any historical background. Even the title is incorrect; Lincoln was not pro-slave. He was racist and his opposition to slavery was primarily against its expansion, and holding the Union together. Expanding industrial capitalism, especially out West, was his major goal.

CHALLENGE should be more careful in dealing with historical issues. The real story of U.S. rulers needs no exaggeration to be condemned and thrown into the racist trash-bin of history.

P.M., History Teacher

Russia-U.S. Rivalry Sharpens War Threat, Intensifies Fascism

Russia’s onslaught into Georgia, a major strategic setback for U.S. rulers, shifts the imperialist rivalry into a new, more dangerous phase. The U.S. war machine no longer holds a monopoly on invasion and must now contend with the restored might of Moscow’s 1,200,000-strong nuclear-armed forces. For example, Pentagon planners targeting Iran will have to raise their estimates of needed troops and figure out how to get them.

Eight years ago, the top-level, Clinton-appointed Hart-Rudman commission formulated far-reaching plans for maintaining U.S. global supremacy into the 21st Century, including militarization under a domestic police state. Its foreign policy chapter stated, "It is a critical national interest of the United States that no hostile… [predominant power] arise in any of the globe’s major regions, nor a hostile global peer rival or a hostile coalition comparable to a peer rival." On Russia, Hart-Rudman warned against political developments that Putin in fact later led, "A form of Russian national socialism [fascism — Ed.], emboldened by a revived form of pan-Slavism, could do enormous harm over all of Eurasia and beyond" ["harm" to U.S. ruling-class interests ––Ed].

Putin Institutes Wartime Fascism

Former KGB agent Putin’s success in reorganizing Russia into an imperialist power contrasts sharply with Bush’s failure to carry out Hart-Rudman’s recommendations. Putin has mercilessly disciplined pro-U.S. political dissenters and businessmen. Alexander Litvinenko, a KGB turncoat who criticized the Kremlin from London, died horribly in 2006 from a Russian-sourced radioactive poison. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ex-chief of the former oil giant Yukos — which he tried to sell to Exxon Mobil — rots in a Siberian jail, his latest parole bid summarily denied. Putin ended regional elections and effectively nationalized major industry, especially energy, which Russia wields as a weapon.

The soaring price of oil, partly due to the U.S.’s Iraq fiasco — which has been far from meeting predicted oil production goals — has helped immensely to strengthen oil-exporting Russia. But mostly, Putin & Co. have stirred up a nationalist fervor for resurrecting the old Russian empire. The Russians have a big head start in moving to an imperialist wartime footing, stemming from both good and bad periods of their past.

From World War II, they retain the collective memory of the red-led mass mobilization against their Nazi enemies — the greatest single undertaking in history. In the late 1980s, the now state-capitalist Soviet rulers opted for open capitalism, crushing all workers’ past gains, and the old Soviet Union imploded. U.S. capitalism chose this as an opportunity to install a "new world order" with only one superpower — the U.S. This worked for a while, but the U.S./NATO war against Russian ally Serbia became the turning point for Russia’s bosses. The latter needed justification to get back at the U.S. and the recent U.S./NATO-inspired independence for Kosovo — taking it away from Serbia — fit the bill. Following Georgia’s invasion of its two northern pro-Russian autonomous provinces, Moscow turned around and recognized their independence.

Russia’s bosses have used nationalistic patriotism to influence workers to accept worsening living conditions and tight government social control. Pensions are down, the former communist-led healthcare system is in shambles, wages go unpaid for months, and prostitution and Mafia-type crime are rife.

Bosses’ nationalist and profit drives, whether from Moscow or Washington, run counter to the interests of the international working class, including Russia’s workers.

U.S. Bosses Hope Obama-Biden Can Spur War Effort

U.S. rulers, on the other hand, thought they could counter Russian influence in the old Soviet bloc without committing U.S. ground troops. They banked on bribes instead, through election-fixing "revolutions" in Georgia and the Ukraine among others, financed by Rockefeller ally and billionaire George Soros, and massive arms shipments to two-bit pro-U.S. leaders like Georgia’s Saakashvili.

While the Bush gang tortures and murders "detainees" in its worldwide prison camps and terrorizes immigrants at home, it has failed to enact the society-transforming fascistic measures outlined in Hart-Rudman and other strategic proposals. These include a thorough revamping of education "in the national interest," a top-to-bottom centralization of law enforcement agencies, and a systematic indoctrination of elected officials to support the rulers’ military priorities.

To their dismay, only the Homeland Security Department proposal has been established, and that is pretty disorganized although able to carry out terroristic anti-immigrant raids. (See page 3) In addition, instead of ruling-class-imposed discipline, economic chaos reigns domestically. Bankers, bent on doing whatever they please, got rid of their nemesis Eliot Spitzer, the rulers’ supposed Sheriff of Wall Street. Financial crises mount. U.S. rulers are counting on "Change" candidate Barack Obama to initiate the mobilization they need. Their new situation regarding Russia explains why Obama chose arch-imperialist draft supporter Joe Biden as his running mate. [See adjoining box and article on Conventions, page 2]

Russia’s newfound militarism is already damages U.S. influence far beyond Georgia, Agence France Presse reported (8/17/08). "President Hugo Chavez said...that Russian President Dimitri Medvedev wants to send a Russian naval fleet to visit Venezuela." And Russia is increasing its arms sales to U.S. foe Syria. We don’t say that World War III will start tomorrow. We do, however, recognize that chances for a global flare-up have risen qualitatively, without counting either China’s inevitably destabilizing role or Europe’s ambiguous loyalties. The rulers’ power grabs constantly increase the risk of deadlier wars.

All this U.S. capitalist economic anarchy and faltering trillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have come down hard on the U.S. working class while killing millions of workers abroad. Wages are down, prices and unemployment are up, racist policy brutality and Nazi-like immigration raids are intensifying. The only road to reverse such assaults — in both the U.S. and Russia, as well as worldwide — it to build a mass international Progressive Labor Party that aims to establish a profit-free communist society without exploitation, unemployment, racism, sexism and capitalist borders.J

a name="Obama’s Veep Pick Biden Has Imperialist Pedigree">">"bama’s Veep Pick Biden Has Imperialist Pedigree

Joe Biden voted for the Iraq war and the fascist Patriot Act. He wants to send U.S. soldiers as "peacekeepers" to fight pro-China forces in Darfur. He now sponsors a bill that would send $15 billion in aid to Pakistan’s yet-to-be-named next dictator. Biden’s ruling-class mentor is Leslie Gelb, former NY Times editor and head of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations. Together they wrote a major policy paper on Iraq which proposed partitioning it into three autonomous regions, a plan that foundered on the inability to apportion its huge oil reserves.

In 2005, Biden told NBC News, "The United States will ‘have to face’ a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties result in persistent shortfalls in US army recruitment (Agence France Presse, 6/12/05). "It’s just a reality," Biden said.

Olympic Flame Foretells Imperialist Inferno: U.S., Russian, Chinese Rulers Battle In Beijing

Every four years the bosses get their chance to parade nationalism with the Olympics games. Gold medals for hypocrisy should go to the rulers of every country that sent athletes to Beijing, with the U.S., China, and Russia taking the lion’s share. This "peaceful gathering of nations" served as yet another battleground in an imperialist rivalry that has just escalated to a new level of armed conflict. Russia’s premier Putin actually took advantage of the opening ceremonies to tell Bush to his face "War has begun," in Georgia. By the time the games closed, Russia’s emboldened military was threatening pro-U.S. Ukraine and Moldova with the Georgia treatment.

U.S. pundits used the event to accuse the Chinese of hosting "totalitarian games...a showcase for a dictatorship" (Boston Globe, 8/24/08) and made comparisons with Hitler’s Nazi extravaganza in 1936. But U.S. bosses’ gripe with China has nothing to do with "human rights" (as they claim) and everything to do with its support for anti-U.S. forces in Darfur, Burma, Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere. In Beijing, Bush muttered about China’s "repression," while the U.S. war machine continued to commit crimes against humanity in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can expect more carnage before the rivals reconvene for the London games in 2012. Not only are Russian bosses feeling their imperialist oats, but the Pentagon has elevated Africa to a theater of war, like the Middle East, by setting up its new Africa Command. And the U.S. Navy has re-established its Fourth Fleet, charged with patrolling Latin America, just as Russian warships plan to visit Venezuela. World rulers may well have to take a wartime Olympic break, as they did in 1916 (during World War 1), in 1940 and 1944 (during World War II).

Parading Elitism, Olympics Despise Working Class

Another side of Olympic phoniness is elitism. The remarkable athletic feats witnessed at Beijing hardly reflect general physical fitness back home, especially in the U.S., with its sickening youth culture of junk food and video games. For every Michael Phelps, there are millions of U.S. children who never even learn how to swim. Competitive sports in the U.S. are open almost exclusively to affluent families that can afford to enroll in year-round leagues and hire private coaches. Parents dreaming of scholarships, endorsements or are selfishly living their lives through their children, push them to the brink and over. Olympians mainly represent a select few of these few, lucky survivors of this over-training, which causes participants, particularly girls, grave injuries like ligament tears and concussions at epidemic rates.

The Olympics were born of inter-imperialist rivalry. A French nobleman, Baron de Coubertin, started the modern Olympic movement to rouse French youth to fitness following his country’s humiliation in a war with Prussia in 1878. The Olympics were built as a playground for ruling classes to compete with each other, even implementing until the 1970s a no-professional rule that barred athletes who accepted pay for athletics. They used this rule to limit participation by working-class athletes. Anti-working class racism permeated the Olympics, especially during the reign of its pro-Nazi president, Avery Brundage (see box this page).

The amateur rule would be thrown out during the 1970s because many imperialist countries could not compete anymore with nations with state-sponsorship of athletes. The Soviet Union briefly ran a sports program that both served the majority of its youth and produced world-class athletes. But Soviet leaders went the all-elite route when they fully embraced capitalism in the post-Stalin era.

Sportsmanship Gets A Capitalist Kick In The Face

Finally, there is the seldom practiced ideal of "fairness" and "sportsmanship." Olympic organizers set the tone for cheating at the opening by hiding a talented seven-year-old singer backstage while a "prettier" girl lip-synched for the cameras. The U.S. media jumped all over this "outrage." But how much different was it from Hollywood’s exploitive starlet system or the viciousness of "American Idol"? Underage Chinese gymnasts and doped Ukrainian weightlifters were sure to follow. Kicking a biased referee square in the face, a Cuban takewondo competitor showed exactly how fair and sportsmanlike the games actually are. The prevailing ethic at Beijing wasn’t the fair play of friendly sport but the win-at-all-costs mentality of capitalist warmakers.

Sure there were some thrilling Olympic moments. But if they result only in patriotic chants for one country over another they are deadly for the international working class and lead straight into the plans of the rulers for wider wars and more capitalist exploitation. A better competition for workers to take sides in is Progressive Labor Party’s long-term struggle to eliminate the profit system, and the imperialist wars it generates, through communist revolution.

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(To our readers: This is a 3-week issue of CHALLENGE)

U.S.-RUSSIA FIGHT SHARPENS . . .OIL FUELS GEORGIA WAR

Russian and U.S.-backed Georgian forces have killed thousands of civilians as they battle for oil routes and political dominance in the republic of Georgia that was part of the southern region of the former Soviet Union. (Georgia broke away from Russia after 1991.) Fighting began on August 8 when Georgia launched an offensive to regain control of the South Ossetia region from pro-Russian separatists. Moscow responded by sending in troops and tanks and shelling cities.
“War started today,” Russian premier Putin boasted to George Bush at the Beijing Olympics (Bloomberg, 8/08/08). Bush, leader of “the world’s sole superpower,” could only mutter feebly about “supporting Georgia’s territorial integrity.” A day later, 4,000 Russian troops landed in Abkhazia, another breakaway Georgian province. Russia’s Black Sea fleet steamed to the Georgian coast threatening a blockade.
RUSSIA COULD GRAB MAJOR
U.S. PIPELINE
Putin’s moves in Georgia endanger the centerpiece of U.S. rulers’ efforts to counter Russia’s expanding energy-based imperialism. The new U.S.- and British-financed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, one of the world’s largest, runs through Georgia, skirting South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Opened in 2006, operated by British Petroleum, and owned partly by Chevron, it carries more than one million barrels of Caspian crude per day to Western Europe and the U.S. through the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterrean (see map).
Strategists in the Clinton administration chose the BTC route in order to bypass Russia and Iran. Its Ceyhan terminus sits conveniently close to the U.S. Air Force’s vast base at Incirlik, Turkey. But the U.S. has nevertheless proven supremely incapable of protecting its BTC lifeline. Russian troops reportedly fired on it in Georgia. And Kurdish rebels in Turkey had shut it down temporarily a week before by setting it on fire.
GEORGIA’S EMBATTLED PRESIDENT TOOL OF LIBERAL U.S. BOSSES
The fighting in Georgia is one for control of the world’s energy resources. U.S. rulers’ struggle to control Georgia is aimed at preventing their Russian rivals from replacing the U.S. as the world’s main energy controller. But oil and gas are only part — though a very big part — of an even larger conflict between U.S. and Russian rulers over political and military control of the former Soviet nations now outside Russia.
Expanding NATO throughout the former Soviet bloc and installing a shield of nuclear missiles there, aimed at Russia as well as at Iran, are vital U.S. goals. But ever since they boosted the anti-Soviet “Solidarity” movement in Poland in the 1980s, U.S. rulers, lacking a military home field advantage, have focused on buying elections in the region.
Billionaire swindler and Rockefeller ally George Soros has led the charge, bankrolling anti-Russian, pro-U.S. “color revolutions” in the old Soviet sphere. Its aim was to oust pro-Russian governments in Georgia (its banner was Rose) and in the Ukraine (Orange). Soros helped engineer Mikhail Saakashvili’s 2003 defeat of Georgian president and ex-Soviet Politburo member Eduard Shevardnadze. “It’s generally accepted public opinion here that Mr. Soros is the person who planned Shevardnadze’s overthrow,” the Toronto Globe and Mail said at the time (11/26/03). The Kremlin responded to these U.S. “victories” by curtailing gas supplies to Ukraine and Georgia, which hastened the present crisis.
The U.S. liberal establishment molded Saakashvili. He graduated from Columbia Law School and practiced at the prestigious Wall Street firm Patterson Belknap, which counts the Rockefeller Foundation as a top client. Soros personally presented Saakashvili with his Open Society Award. Consequently, Georgia under Saakashvili proved a staunch U.S. ally, until the Russian onslaught. Georgia just recalled 1,000 troops it had aiding the U.S. in Iraq back to its new home fronts.
NEXT PRESIDENT WILL HAVE TO
RESTORE DRAFT
U.S. rulers understand that two-bit proxies like Georgia can’t ultimately prevail in global conflicts with rising powers like Russia (or China). And with the shortcomings of their present “volunteer” military — who enlisted mostly because of economic hardship — U.S. rulers won’t be able to intervene to protect their interests. Therefore, they will need a draft, which will likely begin in the form of a “National Service,” part of which will lead especially working-class youth into the military.
A May 5 report issued jointly by the liberal Brookings Institution and the Army War College concluded that the “impact of fighting long wars using an all-volunteer force needs to be looked at more closely.” Both Obama and McCain will restore a “National Service” draft because, if they don’t, they will be as powerless against emerging imperialist rivals as is Bush.
Desperate for wider wars, U.S. rulers bombard the youth they will soon draft with dead-end, pro-capitalist patriotism. Russian bosses use Nazi-like nationalism, while Georgian misleaders count on meaningless racism and“ethnicity.” It’s all a trap. The only way out of the profit system’s endless wars is a mass communist-led revolution of the working class. This is Progressive Labor Party’s goal.

LA Summer Project Builds Communist Leadership for Future

Over 100 international workers, soldiers and students participated in our Summer Project here with the goal of strengthening our organizing efforts amongst industrial workers and soldiers. We have distributed over 8,000 CHALLENGES and over 15,000 leaflets in the past three weeks at factories, transit divisions, hospitals, schools and military bases. Our communist message was enthusiastically welcomed and over 50 people gave us their contact information to get involved.
The Project specifically focused on the opportunity that exists to organize workers in the concentration of subcontracted aerospace shops found in southern California. These non-union, mainly immigrant, workers play an important role in war production and for this reason must play an important role in the long-term struggle for workers’ state power. Industrial workers and soldiers are central both to capitalism and to the fight to destroy it and build communism, workers’ rule.
Summer Project volunteers met workers from a garment shop where the Party has maintained ties for many years. We asked about the conditions in the factory. The workers questioned the volunteers about the kinds of class struggle they organized back home in the places where they worked. The workers eagerly provided specific details about conditions in the plant including a recent work stoppage on the factory floor. The years of friendship, and the distribution of CHALLENGE, with these workers laid the basis for this vigorous discussion.
As a result a communist leaflet was produced and passed out at the factory. As the volunteers distributed the literature an angry boss came out to snatch it from us. One taller worker, who just received literature, held his CHALLENGE and leaflet high so his boss could not grab them. This young leader inspired us all to distribute more literature. In learning from the working class we are also having a concrete effect on our class brothers and sisters by influencing the class struggle, on a modest but significant level, with communist politics.
Another key aspect of the Project was to start building the worker-student-soldier alliance. At LA colleges and high schools we passed out a leaflet that linked police brutality to the nature of capitalist exploitation in the factories. At one high school, a parent approached and asked what we were distributing. The comrade gave the parent a leaflet and a CHALLENGE. They discussed the problems of elections, then the police, and how they are systematically used to terrorize black and Latino youth. The parent was enthusiastic about our presence and encouraged us to return. At the same high school, a student who got the paper then asked for five more to distribute to his friends and gave us his contact information.
Students Discuss Communist
Revolution with U.S. Marines
Our visit to a Marine base in California was preceded by political discussion within the Project about the true nature of the lives of soldiers in the bosses’ military. More experienced comrades shared their experiences in working on military bases in order for the younger comrades to feel confident when distributing CHALLENGE to soldiers and marines. Engaging marines in conversations about the role they can play in turning the guns around on the capitalist system, not workers of other nations, and fighting for working-class power instead of imperialism, was a valuable learning experience.
Project volunteers found that many marines do not agree with the U.S. imperialist agenda in the Middle East. The majority of these young marines come from the working class and joined the Marine Corps because they needed a job. Despite the bosses’ intense ideological effort throughout their military training to win these working-class youth to racist, fascist ideas, many soldiers we met were not only open but eager to discuss communist revolution. Five of them gave us their contact information and want to keep in touch. Many thanked us for being there. One young marine came to have lunch with us. We got a better response to CHALLENGE and to GI Notes than we’ve gotten here before. The response shows that we need to do this much more often.
Investing in a
Communist Future
Young comrades provided communist leadership in all aspects of this Summer Project. Bridging language barriers, students and workers discussed that students come from the working class and unity between students and workers is important to building the communist movement. A group of new comrades described their participation in a community organization that focuses on education. Collectively we discussed the contradiction between reform and revolution and how they can fight to strengthen the revolutionary communist side of that contradiction in the community organization.
The Summer Project has shown the potential and openness of workers to communist politics in the face of the bosses’ proclaiming it dead. Whether Obama or McCain is elected the intensifying rivalry between imperialists and widening wars means more attacks on workers in the form of an increase of police terror and exploitation at the workplace. These sharpening conditions make workers, students, and soldiers open to talking about alternatives to capitalism. The Project inspired all who participated to return home committed to increase their own organizing of class struggle on the job. Our goal is to turn our Summer Project experiences into a lifetime commitment to serving our class.

Veteran PL Farmworker’s Inspiring Stories of Battles in the Fields

LOS ANGELES, CA, August 9 –– After another day of CHALLENGE sales, house visits, and study groups, L.A. Summer Project volunteers took a trip through history when one of the main PL organizers of the migrant worker struggles, Epifanio Camacho, hosted a “carne asada” (BBQ). With the smell of collectively-prepared barbeque in the background and under a large shade tree, PLP volunteers squeezed into Camacho’s yard, many unsure of what to expect.
Camacho began speaking of the political work in Delano of organizing workers, comparing it to birds spreading seeds. In Delano, often workers from Mexico would learn communist politics and then return home where the lessons and politics they learned could one day bear fruit. This is one way that communism spreads around the world. Camacho fielded questions from PL youth and former Delano Project participants alike, opening up discussions that are still echoing through the Summer Project
Camacho spoke about his experiences working with Cesar Chavez, the misleader of the United Farm Workers Union. When asked if he thought Chavez, who would regularly turn workers over to immigration officers and make deals with bosses behind the workers backs, should be given a holiday, he instantly said, “Hell no!” He told stories of how Chavez went on a hunger strike to stop violence against scabs (the bosses canonized him in the media). Later Camacho told how he and the workers of his town organized a demonstration against the fascist police who were terrorizing and killing workers. The militant demonstration was held in the police station were the workers threatened to burn the station down if they did not stop the fascist attacks. This action chased out the cops –– almost 20 years ago –– and they never came back. His stories were inspirational to everyone.
Just like the work in Delano sent seeds of communist thought through Mexico, so will the L.A. and Seattle Summer Project participants spread the lessons we’re learning and the excitement we’re building through CHALLENGE sales, study groups, and collective living across the country when we return to our home cities.
(Camacho’s memoirs are on PLP.org)

Aerospace Workers Need
United Strike vs. Warmakers

WICHITA, KANSAS, Aug. 4 — Over 100 striking Machinists closed down the Hawker-Beechcraft plant here today with mass pickets. Earlier, 4,700 workers in IAM (International Association of Machinists) Local Lodge 733 (Wichita) and 500 in IAM Local Lodge 2328 (Salina, Ks.) voted 90% to reject the new contract and 89% to strike the same day — the first strike since 1984.
Everyone’s wondering how this relates to a possible strike early next month at Boeing because the issues are so similar. Even IAM International President Buffenbarger had to acknowledge the obvious: “It looks like workers are not going to take it anymore,” he admitted. The “rolling thunder” — the militant deafening banging every hour, on the hour — that has already started in the Boeing plants indicates he may have got it right.
Like Boeing, Hawker wants to separate new hires from veterans with cuts in earned time off, cuts in two job codes that will affect new hires and hidden costs in medical benefits for new hires. A veteran machinist Terri Holloway said: “If we don’t fight for the new people, they’re going to get the old people next.”
None of this should come as a surprise as Hawker was recently taken over — with the union’s blessing — by Onyx (in partnership with Wall Street Investment bankers Goldman Sacks). Onyx is the same outfit that grabbed Boeing’s Wichita plant and immediately cut wages.
To add insult to injury, Hawker leaked a secret plan to develop a final assembly plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. The threat (and fact) of moving more work to low-wage areas in the U.S. and Mexico has changed the face of aerospace. Narrow trade unionism has become a sick joke.
Aerospace is crucial to the bosses’ imperialist ambitions. As challenges to U.S. rulers’ dominance mount daily (witness Russia’s incursion into Georgia and China’s emergence during the Olympics), the bosses are determined to reindustrialize on our backs. War becomes the more likely option and we’re going to fund that war machine with our lives and livelihoods. In 2001, the Pentagon called for “competitive outsourcing” (Aerospace Daily, 2/3/2001). Now they want to build a “southern aerospace corridor” — taking advantage of low wages in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama caused by years of racist super-exploitation.
As expected the bosses’ servants in the union mis-leadership wave the American flag. We, on the other hand, wave the red flag of communist class-consciousness. Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite!

Angry Homecare Workers Must Sack Union Hacks, Bosses’ Politicians

NEW YORK, NY, Aug. 7th –– Eleven thousand members of Local 1199 Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Workers East attended a rally at Madison Square Garden to support 30,000 homecare worker members in their struggle for upgrading pay and against the growing threat to their medical benefits. Their contract expires December 31. As PL’ers distributed all the CHALLENGES newspapers we had to eager and angry workers, it was clear that the workers were ready to fight.
The reasons for their anger were clear. Many of the agencies that employ them are run for profit. They typically skim off half of their state- and city-funded budgets for “administrative expenses.” The average homecare worker, almost exclusively minority and immigrant women, gets about $8/hour while providing lifesaving services. (As CHALLENGE has pointed out before, these workers receive no extra pay for overtime hours and less than their hourly pay when they stay overnight.)
The system under which tens of thousands of the elderly and infirm are cared for in this city makes it clear why we must smash capitalism. The bosses’ system places little value on the lives of those who no longer produce profits for them and therefore spends as little as possible on their care.
Homecare workers have suffered racist exploitation from their bosses and less than full support from the SEIU 1199 leadership. The union leaders refuse to unify them and prepare for a massive strike. On the contrary, this rally was dominated by speech after speech from politicians like Governor Patterson who is planning a $1 billion cut in the state budget. Also featured were Senator Schumer and Congressman Weiner who are busy urging war on Iran. Each of these politicians promote cutting workers’ living standards to pay for U.S. imperialism’s economic and war needs. SEIU leaders are lulling healthcare workers into believing we have no power other than in our union’s political endorsements. In the face of capitalism’s growing economic crisis and war in the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian regions, this is deadly poison for the working class.
Progressive Labor Party and its paper, CHALLENGE, must organize the working class to make a communist revolution. How do we get there? By stepping up the struggle with bosses every day, not allying with them, by getting involved in the daily problems faced by our friends and co-workers, by reading and circulating CHALLENGE participating in discussion groups, and joining the PLP to make egalitarian communism the main issue of the day!

From California to Seattle:
Volunteers Help Connect Boeing Workers

LOS ANGELES — “I have the paper,” said a Boeing worker as he drove from the parking lot, “but I just wanted to stop and thank you for being here.”
During shift change at this plant that builds military planes, students and teachers from the PLP Summer Project here distributed 120 copies of CHALLENGE and 500 leaflets, a reprint of the CHALLENGE article, “Bosses’ Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage for Boeing Contract Fight.”
Men and women, younger and older, black, Latin, Asian and white workers took the literature. They were especially interested in the article since it was written by Boeing workers in Seattle.
Another worker exited his car to tell us that the bosses in his section had called a meeting earlier today “to get out misinformation about the contract fight.” He thought they were trying to use SoCal Boeing workers as pawns to pressure Boeing workers “up north” to settle on the bosses’ terms.
One guy took a bunch of leaflets to distribute in the plant — “I’m on the inside!” he said. Later he came out to say, “I’ve hooked you up!”
A Summer Project volunteer introduced CHALLENGE to another worker as “a communist paper” and he took it eagerly. This led to a long conversation about racism, exploitation and fighting back. The volunteer then asked, “Do you have a friend who thinks like you do, who might also like a paper?” When the worker said he had, the volunteer asked, “How many friends like that do you have?” The worker took five papers and gave her contact information to stay in touch with the Party.
Conversations were difficult because many workers were in cars and also because — as one volunteer noted — “these people looked more tired than anyone I’ve ever seen come out of work.” Almost nobody was hostile or even unfriendly. A student leafleting for the first time at such a plant, felt it was “good practice” but also said a discussion of the leaflet before-hand would have better prepared us for conversations.
This was a modest, very inspiring example of how PLP can unite workers around our newspaper and our Party. Through the leaflet and the work of the Summer Project, SoCal Boeing workers now have a connection to Boeing workers in Seattle.
We’ll try to strengthen this connection by continuing to come to Boeing, following up our contacts, making more contacts and building ties with the anti-capitalist workers who are reading our literature. We’ll try to win some to join PLP and build it “on the inside.”

Attack Hacks’ ‘Anti-War’ Hypocrisy at AFT Convention

CHICAGO, July 15 — A growing anti-war sentiment filled the ranks of the 3,000 delegates to the biennial American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Convention here. However, the union mis-leadership, which pretends to be “anti-war” and has backed anti-war resolutions, undermines any member attempts to organize against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, much less the capitalist system which causes them.
The AFT Executive Council presented a resolution to make the “spread of democracy and human rights in the world a major tenet of American foreign policy.” It urges the AFT to “increase funding for programs to assist pro-democracy organizations, political parties and workers organizations that are struggling in opposition to repressive regimes.”
A delegate countered that the U.S. has a sordid history of promoting U.S. corporate interests in the name of “democracy and human rights” while supporting repression of workers and student movements in countries allied to the U.S. A second delegate explained how the U.S. CIA had overthrown the Mossadegh government in Iran when it nationalized its oil, and in the 1980’s had encouraged and assisted Saddam Hussein to attack Iran resulting in a seven-year war where over one million died.
A major goal of outgoing AFT Pres. McElhenny and incoming Pres. Weingarten is continuing to lead union members into the arms of the Democratic Party.
Hillary Clinton was an invited speaker and Barack Obama spoke later via a satellite hook-up. PLP’ers distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and issued three Party leaflets. We explained that both the Democrats and Republicans represented parties of capitalism and imperialist war. Another leaflet analyzed the role of the public schools under capitalism and exposed the so-called school reform plans that various sections of the ruling class are advocating.
Our literature was well-received by the delegates. We had many productive discussions with members of our delegations as well as with new contacts from other locals. These kinds of ties are important and we’ll make a serious plan to follow them up.
One of the convention’s bright spots was the development of the AFT Peace and Justice Caucus. The Caucus broadened its discussions to include school-based issues as well as anti-war issues. In four programs rank-and-filers gave presentations about the problems in their schools and the fight-backs over them. Anti-racist and internationalist sentiments were strongly expressed.
The Caucus has good potential but contains major contradictions. At organizational meetings some felt the AFT leadership can be “worked with” and even “pushed to the left” by progressive rank-and-file forces. But opponents of that view, including PLP’ers, see AFT “leaders” like Weingarten as firmly in the bosses’ camp. These “leaders” are staunch anti-communists and supporters of U.S. imperialism. In fact, in her inaugural address Weingarten said that sometimes when she doesn’t know what to do, she thinks, “What would Al say,” referring to Albert Shanker, former long-time president of the UFT and AFT.
PLP’ers remember well Shanker’s support of the U.S. rulers’ imperialist invasion of Vietnam and his organizing racist boycotts against parent involvement in NYC public schools.
(Next issue: From Shanker to Weingarten — Supporting U.S. imperialism.)

In Opposing Imperialist War:
GI’s Must Fight Racism, Sexism

In late August, Veterans for Peace (VFP) and Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) will have their national conventions with military families participating. These groups’ leaders put their hopes on politicians to end the war in Iraq. But all politicians represent the interests of capitalism — profit wars, racism, and sexism. The Progressive Labor Party is organizing to fight the ruler’s agenda, not with false hopes of change from elections, but by building an international communist movement to smash imperialism and its racist, sexist warmakers.
While some activists honestly feel fighting racism is a distraction to the goal of ending the war, anti-racist unity helped anti-war troops contribute to the collapse of U.S. ground forces in Vietnam. A majority of Vietnam-era GI rebellions centered on fighting the racism against black and Latin soldiers along with fighting against the war. Fighting the military’s anti-Asian racism was also vital to building solidarity with “the enemy” which led to US troops fragging — killing — gung ho patriotic officers, rather than killing and dying for U.S. imperialism.
Today, fighting racism is still crucial to fighting imperialism. Limiting the argument to the Iraqi War being bad because U.S. troops are being killed supports U.S. rulers’ racist agenda of having troops see Asian, Arab, and Muslim workers as subhuman. The wars, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, are wrong because they’re killing our class brothers and sisters, not just U.S. troops. Liberal “anti-war” politicians, like the 13 congressional democrats who wrote a support statement to anti-Iraq war troops, condone the racist anti-Muslim lies and support the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Even though many in the U.S. military honestly believe in the ideas of national honor and pride in the US constitution, the history of US ruler’s racist terror — from slavery and the Indian wars to recent police murders, raids against immigrant workers, and the murder of millions in Iraq and many thousands in Afghanistan—contradicts these “patriotic” ideals and proves they are a lie. But instead of winning and developing anti-racist activists through education and action, some IVAW leaders want to appeal to a patriotism that makes unity with the ruler’s politicians more important than unity with workers worldwide.
Many anti-racists aren’t duped. Black youth are resisting enlistment and black troops are opting for support jobs in part because of the memory of Vietnam-era racism, which led to disproportionate higher casualties among black and Latin soldiers.
Within IVAW, members have raised and led fights against the racist nature of imperialism. But some IVAW leaders say they don’t want to alienate “middle America” by talking about racism. The leadership dropped a planned panel on “racism within the military” during the group’s Winter Soldier testimonies. IVAW’s active membership, like other military peace groups, remains mostly white. This poses no problems, however, if you want to capture the spotlight of the racist media and reach racist politicians, instead of building a multi-racial movement to fight imperialism.
Like racism, sexism aids imperialism. Capitalists win male troops to kill and die for profits using a sexist macho warrior role. The U.S. military’s tolerance of sexism within the ranks leads male troops to direct anger and lack of control over deployments into seeing female troops as “walking mattresses” or sexually attacking fellow troops instead of the bosses. Sexism within IVAW led, in part, to the formation of the Service Women’s Action Network, a liberal feminist veterans organization. Uniting working-class men and women to fight sexism is among PLP goals.
The unity of multi-racial male and female working-class troops against the military’s racism and sexism will lead to a stronger movement that can land a powerful blow to imperialism and recruit to PLP.
Caption to Picture:
NYC, August 8 — Relatives and friends of Juan Alcantara, a GI killed iin Iraq a year ago, marched in Upper Manhattan today. Alcantara was an Immigrant from Dominican Republic raised In Upper Manhattan. Like many immigrant and other working class youth, he joined the military to escape the "economic draft" (lack of decent jobs in civilian life). His mother and relatives blame the Bush gang and the oil war for his death..

All Workers Must Oppose Anti-Immigrant Racism

NEWARK, NJ, August 3 — A multi-racial and international group of 32 people met here today to discuss the fight against anti-immigrant racism. The unity of black and white citizens and immigrant workers (from Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador) is the best way to confront this growing form of racism which affects the entire working class.
An immigrant described the police harassment of day laborers waiting for jobs in an area of Orange, NJ, as “muy malo” (very bad). Elsewhere in New Jersey, homes have been raided and immigrants dropping off their children at school have been issued multiple traffic tickets up to $5,000! This summer two town councils proposed that landlords rent only to people with documentation.
One town, Bound Brook, has since dropped the resolution. The other, Middletown, has tabled it. But with hundreds arrested at factories lately and the racist murder of Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, PA, by six white youth, we felt the urgency to meet and decide on action.
We noted that criminal bosses aren’t arrested for paying dirt wages and physically abusing workers. Because capitalism is based on exploitation of workers, this kind of racist super-exploitation is “legal.” The racist media tries to divide us by blaming the victims — undocumented immigrants — for the bosses’ attacks through the subprime crisis, mass wage and service cuts, and endless wars. Immigrants have historically been the targets of this ruling-class strategy. One woman recalled that her Italian father, who had no documents, suffered similar racist attacks.
In the early stage of the bosses’ “War on Terror” in Dec. 2001, when Middletown teachers struck, the media labeled them “the enemy of children and parents” because “educators’ benefits must be sacrificed” for the bosses’ war efforts; 228 strikers were arrested.
A woman speaker asked us to picture a world without borders based on a society without social inequalities: communism. During the discussion, one man reading CHALLENGE commented, “This paper is very important.”
A social worker from a family-help center said we need to reach out to communities. Members from three churches spoke, too. One Unitarian related what she learned at her June General Assembly: that Boston and Connecticut churches have e-mail chains ready to respond to attacks.
If the tabled anti-immigrant proposal isn’t rejected in Middletown, we plan to go door to door to relate what long-time residents have in common with immigrants and look to demonstrate wherever a resolution is passed.

PL Youths’ Red Ideas Greeted
At International Festival

ATHENS, GREECE, July 30 — Seven PLP youth representing our international party participated in the Resistance 2008 Festival, a worldwide gathering of thousands of young students and workers, hosted by the fake leftist Communist Organization of Greece (KOE). Our young comrades gained much experience in fighting for PL’s revolutionary communist politics internationally — helping develop new political leadership for PLP. We also fulfilled our aim of making many contacts among workers locally and from elsewhere, all seriously interested in our Party. These comrades come from different areas and work backgrounds. Some have been in PLP for a long time while others joined the Party within the last few years.
We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES and several thousand special supplements, as well as hundreds of PLP’s document “Road to Revolution 4” and recent issues of the Communist Magazine. While there were many fake leftist groups present, most of the participants were young Greek students and workers. While unable to speak Greek, we managed to advance our ideas among many of them.
We hit the ground running to spread our ideas. Our tables displaying all our literature and banners was one of the most popular. We worked nonstop talking to new people and always had a group of people hanging out and chatting!
We fought for international working-class unity against nationalism, explaining that nationalism builds false loyalties to capitalists instead of being loyal to the working class across all borders. It is another tool, like racism, to divide the world’s workers. We were also the only group to advocate the dictatorship of the proletariat. This put us at odds with the festival, which supported the Maoists in Nepal and their leader “Prachanda” who is fighting for unity with local capitalists. Almost everyone we spoke with was interested in our ideas, even if they disagreed.
At our scheduled panel discussion on the final day, the seats were full; chairs were added three times for the overflow audience. After a KOE member spent 20 minutes criticizing our ideas on nationalism, a comrade drew applause with a powerful response that used the history of what nationalism produced in Africa and elsewhere, saying Nepal is currently following that path. We also explained why we fight directly for communism since socialism retained too many remnants of capitalism (like the wage system) and led to the return of open capitalism in the former Soviet bloc and China.
We adapted to the fact that most people didn’t speak English and that parts of the festival were dedicated to non-political events like rock concerts. So each night we distributed our literature to the concert-goers. At one point, the hundreds gathered were all reading CHALLENGE, not even paying attention to the band!
We were also fortunate in meeting a young Greek airport worker moments after landing. She took a day off to accompany us to the festival, translated our literature and banners into Greek and helped explain our ideas to those Greeks who didn’t speak English. She is very supportive of the Party and is being struggled with to join us and help build PLP in Greece.
Racism was much more prevalent in Greece and Western Europe than we expected. Our nonwhite comrades were constantly ID’d while whites weren’t. One comrade was ID’d three times by three different cops within about three minutes, while they searched for “illegal” immigrants. On the trains the police challenged the comrade’s passport for “authenticity.”
In one southern Italian city, swastikas and Nazi propaganda were plastered all over the walls. In Paris, we encountered and supported a strike of immigrant workers who were demonstrating right across from the Champs-Elysees, the main tourist drag. We tried speaking for a while in our broken French and bought them all lunch.
Our trip has built confidence in ourselves and in each other, trusting the collective and carrying out decisions in a disciplined way (both personally and politically) as well for each comrade to make decisions consistent with our goals when they were on their own and under various pressures. We internationalized our perspective of the working class. Almost all of us made separate groups of friends with whom we plan to stay in touch and collectively recruit to the Party
While the U.S. ruling class is making long-term investments in Obama and building new weapons of war, we made a long-term investment in our movement, by solidifying young comrades and laying the groundwork for the growth of PLP.

South Africa General Strike
Shows Power of Workers

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA, Aug. 6 — A massive general strike shut down this country’s economy today as tens of thousands of workers marched against rising fuel and food prices. Today’s nationwide strike, which followed several regional ones, was called by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), under pressure from nearly two million members.
The Mail and Guardian (8/7) said, “The South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union...reported that 93% of its members had not gone to work....Gold mining operations...were affected substantially, with AngloGold Ashanti saying no shafts were operating while Harmony and Gold Fields said its operations were limited. Volkswagen’s...factory in Uitenhage...halted production, and Toyota South Africa closed its Durban plant for the day, as did Mercedes-Benz...in East London. Many...schools had been closed...”
Masses marched in many cities. In Pretoria, thousands marched to the Union Buildings, giving a memorandum of grievance against soaring electricity prices to Labor Minister Membathisi Mdladlana. Some 6,000 workers marched in East London, while about 5,000 took to the streets in Mthatha. The closure of Mercedes-Benz’s East London plant and other automotive factories in the province had the most obvious impact on the Eastern Cape economy.
This massive strike again showed the power workers have to shut down any modern economy. It is the road workers and their allies worldwide must follow to fight the bosses’ growing attacks in this age of economic meltdown and wars. Such an action is also one way to counter the recent racist pogrom fueled by lies blaming immigrant workers from Zimbawe, Mozambique, and elsewhere for the rise in prices and lack of jobs for all.
But much more is needed. The plight of workers won’t be solved by changing one politician or union misleader for another. For many years the COSATU leadership supported the African National Congress (ANC) government led by Mbeki and whose IMF-imposed austerity measures worsened workers’ lives here. COSATU, along with its allies in the “Communist” Party, which also supported Mbeki, are now backing the presidency of Jacob Zuma, who until 2005 was one of Mbeki’s deputy vice-presidents.
Zuma supported the privatization of Eskom, the government-owned electric utility. The recent electricity price rises are supposed to help Eskom, whose failing system has caused blackouts affecting capitalist operations like the gold mines. Privatization didn’t go through because investors realized that Eskom’s current sad state won’t be profitable.
The power struggle between different factions of the ruling ANC for control of state power, and the fruits of their being the main servants of local and international capitalists, again show that workers’ fight-back cannot limit itself to backing one set of bosses (such as African nationalists like the ANC) as the past militant anti-apartheid struggle did.
Many workers and youth in South Africa consider themselves pro-communist and revolutionary, but they must realize that the ANC-“C”P-COSATU leaders are far from that. The best lesson to draw from general strikes like today’s is to turn them into schools for communism, and rebuild a red-led workers movement. But this time it must break with all capitalists and fight for the only society capable of freeing workers from capitalism and its racism — communism.

LETTERS

More Letters from LA Summer Project

We’ve participated as students and teachers in the Los Angeles Summer Project, leafleting factories where many workers ask us, “Why are you communists? Why fight for this if you are students?” We answer them by talking about the power they have as a working class to stop the means of production. That sparks workers’ interest in our ideas. They say, “Yes, the bosses steal from them, and that we have to eliminate this system of exploitation.”
We’ve also participated in anti-racist demonstrations and others protesting exploitation of workers. Many workers came up to us asking for literature, then read it, triggering conversations.
In study groups we’ve learned to relate dialectical materialism to our lives, about how to build CHALLENGE networks, and how to win people so that together we can fight for communism. In discussing political economy we’ve heard comrades’ stories about bosses’ repression existing in many countries.
I’ve recognized the importance of working in factories and building an alliance among workers, students and soldiers. This Project has motivated me even more to continue fighting for communism together with the international working class.
A youth from El Salvador
 
I’m an industrial student volunteering for the Summer Project. After job searching that took about a week I got my first job as an assistant forger, which is pressing and heating metal. On my second day of work, I had my first chance to have a political conversation with a co-worker, that went something like this:
“So, how do you feel about making weapons for war?” I asked a young co-worker.
He said, “I don’t care, as long as we make some money off of it...Why? Were you in the army?”
“No,” I responded, “I just hate the war; we’re helping the government kill poor people like us, and for what, oil?”
“Well I’m not for the war either!” he said. “But what can we do?”
“Exactly, what could we do?”
He stayed quiet and we went back to work.
Although he didn’t respond to this question, this conversation shows my attempt at figuring out the internal contradictions of my co-workers.
This was just the first conversation of many where I will attempt to figure out how to reveal to my fellow workers the true nature of this racist imperialist system and how to build an urgent and long-term fight against it.
Industrial student
 
What a great morning! It was our first time –– for the six volunteers from my city –– at an aerospace factory.
The first worker I spoke with was somewhat hesistant. He refused CHALLENGE and the flyer. He said he likes equality and the goals of communism but feels that it’s too risky to stand up against the bosses, that it puts a worker’s family into too much danger, and that things didn’t turn out well in the Soviet Union. He didn’t want anyone to see him with the paper.
Shortly, a bolder worker approached. I offered CHALLENGE, saying that our communist newspaper explains how Obama is no better than McCain, that both really support ongoing war in the Middle East to benefit the oil companies. He agreed and explained that they’re just like Bush and Cheney. Then he pointed to the factory, saying, “yeah, just like the bosses here, just out for themselves.” After taking CHALLENGE, he said, “Good luck.”
When I introduced the paper to a group of three workers, one asked, “Why are you here in particular?” I explained that we want to organize and fight against the low wages in the non-union aerospace factories where work is contracted out from the major companies like Boeing. At some point, the aerospace workers have to be prepared to stop work and refuse to make parts for the bosses’ wars. I compared the situation in aerospace to something similar during the Civil War.
Prior to the Civil War, cotton from the South was being sent to England to be made into cloth. But many of the English textile workers hated slavery and refused to process cotton from the U.S. They wanted to help weaken the Confederacy and support the fight against slavery, even though some of them would probably end up losing their jobs.
One of the three workers said “Excellent!” He told me that he agrees with communism, and gets mailings from another (supposedly) Marxist organization. With warm comradely enthusiasm, we exchanged phone numbers, so we can get together and talk more about Progressive Labor Party.
At another moment, a boss from the factory came out and shouted, “Stay off the property!” I told him that I had just stepped across the grass for a few workers who wanted the flyer. He responded arrogantly, “No one wants the flyer!” and I shot back, “You can’t speak for everyone!” Obviously unable to stop us, and unable to stop workers from understanding reality, he just repeated, “Well, stay off the property,” and he walked back in.
All in all, at this one small factory, 70 workers took CHALLENGE this morning.
Facts are stubborn things. The bosses will try their best to keep us ignorant, but millions of workers will master political theory, communist philosophy and revolutionary strategy. Today was a small, but important step in that process. What a great Summer Project!
Original R

Rising Struggle Among Young Workers

I was recently reprimanded at work for using my cell phone next to the vending machine during a break. The head boss, who spends most of his time in an air-conditioned office while us workers sweat away on the job, was the one who screamed at me. Though several of my co-workers assured me that it was nothing to worry about, the words of another worker stuck in my head.
That morning during the carpool to work, when I asked this coworker how he thought we’d be affected by the other layoffs in our industry he reasoned, “Well that’s why they’re trying to fire people over bullshit and they are using the early buyout program on older workers at the top of the wage-scale.” The new workers they’re bringing in are supposedly “temporary” and receive no benefits or wage increases like us other workers.
I told another worker that I felt like I had a target on my back ever since I was called into the head boss’s office a short time ago for attending an anti-racist demonstration before work. Going to such a rally in uniform was a “fire-able offence [sic]” he said and, “he didn’t know what was going to happen to me.” While the head boss told me to keep the incident to myself I decided that if I was going to get fired for fighting racism, as many of my coworkers ought to know about it as possible. Lots of workers took my side and several seemed impressed that I, a white worker, would attend a rally against police brutality. One worker felt it was a clear expression of the racism often present on the job.
I discussed with my coworker who I’d told about the target on my back the possibility of a union making conditions better. He, also a young worker, was quick to point out the corruption and profiteering present in many unions and cited a previous job where the union did nothing to defend low seniority workers. The failures of the reformist trade union movement and the past communist movement make the path ahead a difficult one, but this same worker helped provide some direction.
At the end of our shift we were assigned extra work. This worker went to the main office, complained and sat down refusing to work. Several minutes later he rejoined me and another worker who were carrying out the task, since he felt bad for leaving us to do the work alone. As we walked back to the car afterwards he explained what he had done and I told him that the next time he had better include me in any plans to stop work. “I’m down!” We questioned if any boss could not play favorites and I reasoned, “it’s just good cop, bad cop; the whole system is rotten.”
I believe firmly in the PLP’s objective of organizing industrial workers. We make this society run and we can shut it down. I look forward to expanding my CHALLENGE distribution on this job and the next and struggling towards a new, communist society.
A Young Worker

Strikes Under Communism?

In a discussion with a long-time Party comrade about toleration or repression of dissent in a genuine communist society, the question arose: what is dissent? I would emphasize that fascists, racists, pro-capitalist elements, etc. would not be considered as dissidents and the workers’ state would have to act accordingly. But what about a group of workers protesting a certain government policy and want to present a position paper on the question? Assuming that all of the workers are devoted communists and may have a good point, I think they should be allowed to voice their opinion and have the right to publish their views, even if it disagrees with the majority.
What about strikes? Should workers have the right to strike in a communist society? The comrade said strikes would not be legal in this society, and though I can see where he’s coming from, I’m not sure that I agree with that position.
If communism is really based upon workers’ power, then workers should have the right to voice their views on this question. Otherwise it would seem that this would be imposed from above and would only alienate segments of the workers.
Of course, my view on this stems from the fact that I grew up in the coal fields and that some of my family worked in the mines. The right to strike was and is very important to coal miners. I cannot see them giving up the right to strike when they feel that it is necessary, especially around job safety.
The fact that strikes are illegal won’t prevent workers from striking if they feel the need to do so. Of course, not all strikes are the same; some might be clearly reactionary and would have to be dealt with. But some strikes might be progressive so the workers’ state would have to investigate the workers’ reasons for striking and make the necessary changes.
A person might argue that in a communist society there will be no need for strikes, but if this is true, then why have laws against them?
I think there should be an attempt by the workers’ state to explain to workers why it’s not a good idea to strike. The question of communist consciousness will need to be resolved. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to pass a law banning strikes — this would be an admission that everything is not going well.
Again, I don’t like the idea of imposing this position on the workers, as if they were unruly children and would strike every chance they got.
Shouldn’t we have more faith in the workers? Shouldn’t we have more confidence in the power of our communist ideas?
Red Coal

Red Eye on the News

Plenty of big-biz $ backs Obama

In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less....But records show that one-third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more: a total of $112 million, more than Senator John McCain....
Many...come from industries with critical interests in Washington. (NYT, 8/6)

Russia war is payback to US

Even as American and European leaders were demanding, begging and pleading with Russia to halt its advance into Georgia....Many experts in foreign policy say that one reason Russia responded so forcefully to Georgia’s attempt to take back South Ossetia is that the United States and Europe had been asserting themselves in Russia’s backyard, alienating Moscow by supporting Kosovo’s bid for independence.
Beyond that, Russia has also been angry about American plans to put a missile defense system in Poland, and by American moves to encourage Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO....
“It’s difficult for them not to see us as hostile....” (NYT, 8/12)

Nuke-free area (except Israel)

The security council’s offer to Iran claimed...to bring about a “Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.” But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn’t yet possess are demanding that Israel destroy the weapons it has....
If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened. (GW, 8/1)

Obama wants you to serve US

....While McCain has made only vague pledges to support AmeriCorps, Obama last week used a speech in Colorado Springs to highlight his pledge to spend $3.5 billion to bolster AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, the Foreign Service, and launch an Energy Corps....
“I’m not going to tell you what your role should be....But I am going to ask you to play your part, ask you to stand up; ask you to put your foot firmly into the current of history”. (NYT)

Desperate Haitians eating dirt

Haitian women mould clay and water into hundreds of little platters and lay them out to harden in the sun....These platters are not to hold food. They are food....
....The cakes have become a staple for entire families. It is not for the taste and nutrition –– salt and margarine do not disguise what is essentially dirt....They are the cheapest and increasingly only way to fill bellies.
“It stops the hunger,” said Marie-Carmelle Baptiste, 35, a producer....She did not embroider their appeal. “You eat them when you have to. (GW, 8/8)

Anti-Latino hate crimes up

FBI figures show a 35% rise in hate crime against Latinos over the past three years....“Post 9/11 we immediately launched into a nativist attitude. Then as the economy began to falter, attitudes have hardened.”
The federal government is doing its bit....
The message being propagated by Congress, the White House, local legislators and the more rabid elements of the media seems to be getting through: “illegal” immigrants are of little value, and should be treated accordingly. (GW, 8/8)

‘Honest Abe’ Lincoln Was Viciously Pro-Slavery

Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s book, “Forced Into Glory” (1999), convincingly documents how most historical accounts have wrongly described Abraham Lincoln as a fighter against slavery. His work also shows that Lincoln was intensely reactionary, making decisions which, contrary to legend, returned many blacks to slavery.
Bennett insists that Lincoln had a life-long commitment to racism. In 1853, as one of 11 managers of the Illinois State Colonization Society, he advocated colonization of all blacks to Central or South America. In 1857 he urged the Illinois legislature to appropriate money for colonization. Three months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, he sent 450 blacks to an island off the coast of Haiti where 100 died within a year. In April 1865, Lincoln summoned General Benjamin Butler to the White House about the “possibility of sending the Blacks away.”
Bennett documents consistency, from Lincoln’s 1836 vote against black suffrage to his 1865 support of the Louisiana constitution which gave the vote to Confederate veterans but not to black veterans of the U.S. Army.
In 1847, as an attorney representing a slave-owner, he asked two judges to send a black mother and her four children back into slavery. The white judges rejected Lincoln’s plea and freed the family. Lincoln’s law partner, William Herendon, took cases of slaves, but Lincoln never did.
Bennett challenges those who excuse Lincoln’s attitude, saying the few exceptions in the racist climate of the 19th century are out-spoken abolitionists like Wendell Phillips or the militant John Brown. But men like Lyman Trumbull, a known opponent of the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act, were elected to the Senate over Lincoln. In 1853, 22 Illinois legislators stood against the Negro Exclusion Law, but not Lincoln. Members of Lincoln’s cabinet spoke out for Negro suffrage. Politicians from Mid-West states led the fight against Negro exclusion and black laws. Other politicians took stands for instant emancipation, confiscation of rebels’ land and for use of black soldiers.
Bennett critiques the Gettysburg Address for avoiding pressing issues of the day. The lynchings and burnings of blacks in NYC that very year weren’t mentioned. Lincoln never uttered the words Confederate, South or slave.
Bennett describes how each of three drafts of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation reacted to a more progressive Congress. Congressman Daniel Gott called for a ban on the slave trade in the nation’s capital. Lincoln then wrote his first draft, a bill for gradual and compensated emancipation in D.C., stating that all persons now within said District lawfully held as slaves should remain such.
In September 1861, Lincoln revoked General Fremont’s blanket emancipation of all the slaves in Missouri. Intense criticism caused him to write his second “emancipation” draft, proposing gradual emancipation but total compensation for slave-owners in Delaware, with two timetables for ending slavery: 1893 and 1914!
In 1862, when General Hunter decreed that all slaves in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida should be freed, Lincoln revoked it, re-enslaving one million people! Criticism was again levied at Lincoln, so Congress urgently signed the Second Confiscation Act saying that all rebel property, including slaves even 1,000 miles from a battlefield, could be seized. Lincoln countered on July 22, allowing 60 days warning for the South, and only for gradual, compensated confiscation.
That July, Congress also authorized the use of black soldiers. Lincoln told a delegation of Midwesterners in August that he would rather resign than use black soldiers to kill white men.
Ultimately, the Proclamation “enslaved and/or continued to enslave over half a million slaves, more than it ever freed,” because there was no power to effectively free slaves in rebel states. The border states, with an additional 556,540 slaves, were excluded because they weren’t in rebellion. Also excluded were large sections of Tennessee, Louisiana and Virginia controlled by federal troops — 396,863 slaves — some already wage workers. In January, 1863, slaves totaled four million. By February 1865, two months before the war ended, 3,800,000 blacks were still enslaved.
What did Lincoln do on race issues? He volunteered three times for the war to ethnically cleanse Illinois of Indians. He maintained the brutal treatment of black soldiers and their unequal pay. When William Walker, a black soldier, protested, Lincoln condemned him to the firing squad. He made sure 38 Indians hung for rebelling against his administration’s genocidal strategy. But when Confederates massacred hundreds of blacks, women and children at Fort Pillow, Lincoln did nothing.
Bennett’s work is well-researched and relentlessly exposes Lincoln’s reactionary policies. He also directs sharp criticism at modern biographers for perpetuating the racist hypocrisy of Lincoln’s heroic image as “the freer of slaves.”

SUMMER OF COMMUNISM
LETTERS FROM LOS ANGELES

For several days I’ve been immersed in the Los Angeles Summer Project, part of multi-racial teams rising early to distribute thousands of CHALLENGES and leaflets at aerospace plants, garment factories, bus barns, high schools and a trade school. The response has been terrific. We debrief daily on workers’ responses to our ideas and our conversations with them. Many contacts have been collected, and follow-up visits are held regularly.
I discussed with one young student at a trade school (which feeds into the aerospace industry) how communism would be completely different from the way things are set up under capitalism. Everyone would work out of commitment to the welfare of the working class, and people would receive according to need. He asked what about someone who wouldn’t want to work. I said this wouldn’t be much of a problem. Most people want to contribute to society and get the good feeling from helping others (which has motivated about a million people to go to New Orleans as volunteers, helping with reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina). He said he would read CHALLENGE carefully.
This is one of many worthy experiences I’ve had in building the Party this week. Long live PLP and the fight for communism!
A Comrade
 
“What you are talking about, communism, I think it sounds good but do you really think it can happen, I mean what makes you think it’s possible?” asked a young white Marine after him and his partner were presented with a GI Notes military newsletter and a CHALLENGE.
“I’ll tell you what makes me think it’s possible,” responded one of the volunteers. “It’s because of the tremendous potential power that we have. You and military folks just like yourself run things, the brass and other top military officials don’t do shit. They can’t do anything without us. You are on the ground and you make things happen. Same thing in the factories, the workers run them and make all the production. This is where our tremendous power lies. Imagine soldiers and workers fighting together for a world in which we make revolution against the war-makers and the whole bosses’ system.
“This has happened in the past.There was a worldwide crisis of capitalism that eventually led to World War I. During this time period millions of soldiers rebelled, mutinied and organized resistance while workers struck, led mass protests and organized general fight-backs. With Lenin’s and other Bolsheviks’ communist leadership...in Russia a revolution took place and for the first time in history the working class was running things. The same took place in China, with Mao and other communist leaders during and after World War II.
We think that with the situation in Iraq and the growing imperialist rivalry going on with Russia, China and the U.S. could very well develop into a global conflict that will ultimately start a World War III. This is one more reason why individuals like yourself are very important because once we understand the tremendous power that soldiers and workers have we can once again challenge the world’s rulers and finish the job that these great revolutionaries started.
The young Marine had an intent look on his face and with CHALLENGE in his hand said, “Wow, I had never really thought about it that way, I really can see what you are saying, but I think that since we have been children we have been taught different ideas of things. I think it’s going to be very difficult,” he said. “Difficult yes, but not impossible,” I responded. “Yeah, I agree,” he said. As we said goodbye, the Marine gave us his contact information and said, in an encouraging and heartfelt manner, “good luck, keep it up and I wish you the best.”
Summer Project Volunteer
 
“You should go across the street and distribute the papers to the workers at that factory too because they are really exploited there,” said a worker we talked to today. This took place at one of the many CHALLENGE sales outside of factories as part of the PLP Summer Project. This particular worker is a machinist at a small subcontracted factory of Boeing/ Northrop Grumman. Part of his job is making the skeleton for military planes.
This worker had trouble making the connection to his own exploitation because he felt that he was skilled and that he was making enough money. However, he clearly saw how the planes he makes are sold for millions and how these companies profit from his labor. He had heard that the factory across the street was notorious for pushing their workers hard for very low wages. He advised us on the best times to reach the workers during their shift, he was aware of the multitude of workers who have to struggle everyday to survive.
He considers himself lucky to be making $100,000 a year, but as we continued to talk with him, we were able to show how he was exploited too. He works 65 hours a week, 6 days a week and is constantly under pressure to work faster. In fact, recently his boss held a meeting in which he told the workers that if they didn’t produce faster, the bosses would have to let people go. We related this speed up and fear tactics to police brutality, the war and cut backs in healthcare.
We told him about an unarmed Latino man named Christian Portillo who was shot recently by the police, as well as Kevin Wicks who was also killed by them. The worker then told us about how he is constantly profiled. He was even pulled out of his car at gun point while wearing his work uniform. This reveals the racism that many Latino and black workers face. He has gotten used to being pulled over and considers it just a part of life. As we talked more about police brutality it became clearer and clearer to the worker that these scare tactics are not only used by the police but also by his factory bosses as well.
Then we talked about the cutbacks in health care, and he told us a story about his wife.
She was so sick that he had take off from work to take care of her around the clock for a year. This resulted in their losing their home and getting into debt.
He understood on a very personal level that workers are only a few paychecks away from ending up homeless and in debt. This was helpful in revealing the myth that a middle class exists, because there are workers who live more comfortably but they do not own the means of production. They are exploited. We hope to go back to this factory and find this worker and ask what he thought of Challenge.
A project volunteer
 
Besides the daily political work at the Los Angeles Summer Project, we also laugh, love and even cry. Here is what the international communist PLP family produces.
After a day of political activities, I gave a presentation to a group of local and international volunteers about how I joined PLP and described the Party’s work in my area of Mexico. I didn’t know many of the volunteers I was speaking to, but I know that despite our different backgrounds we have much more in common. So once we were all together as a communist family, in spite of our superficial differences, my heart was beating faster. “Was this because I was nervous, or happy?”
Happiness is something you want and need. I feel proud and that is happiness.
I feel I love my comrades — but why? Because my heart beats faster for my class, my life and my communist Party. I am PLP, I am a communist.
A Communist Youth from Mexico
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Coin Toss Between Obama, McCain Yields: WAR, WAR, WAR

Barack Obama’s recent Mideast-Europe saber-rattling road show exposes his earlier opportunistic masquerade as a "peace" candidate. Obama won the nomination by selling masses of mainly working-class voters the lie that he would withdraw from Iraq. Now, jetsetting from Baghdad to Berlin on his own version of Air Force One, Obama is trying to show his capitalist masters his fitness to command their ever-deadlier war machine. Wherever he goes, he lays the groundwork for the broader wars U.S. rulers need to maintain their precarious worldwide dominance.

In Iraq, Obama showed that "withdrawal" actually means permanent occupation by "residual" forces to be determined by generals like the butcher Petraeus, who he consulted. Obama advocated more troops in Afghanistan, which, along with parts of Pakistan, he would make the near-term focus of the anti-Islamic U.S. "war against terror." Now McCain is adopting this phony "withdrawal" scheme. Obama reassured Israel’s fascist rulers that he "will take no options off the table in dealing with this potential Iranian threat." In Berlin, he demanded that Europe supply more combat soldiers for U.S.-led military efforts in Afghanistan and beyond.

Obama Denounces Communists, Gives Nazis A Free Pass

Obama’s July 24 speech at Berlin’s Victory Column (a favorite of Hitler’s) showed his stark allegiance to the capitalist class. "Friend-of-the-Workers" Obama said not a single word in Germany’s capital about Nazis, who killed tens of millions. Instead he attacked the very force that defeated the Nazis in World War II, the working-class Soviet Red Army, by condemning communism by name three times.

Obama couldn’t and wouldn’t criticize Nazi Germany because its brutal program of territorial reconquest, expansion, and confrontation of major rivals closely resembles today’s U.S. rulers’ own agenda. They are hell-bent on retaking the Mid-East and its oil, making U.S. protectorates of former Soviet vassals in Eastern Europe, and militarily besting potential super-powers like China, Russia, India, and the European Union.

On July 24, the Obama campaign’s top think-tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), led by Clintonites like Madeleine Albright, published a report — "Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy" — that mimics Hitler’s racist "Mein Kampf." It says "America must have the will and the capabilities not only to ensure U.S. security but also to enhance the security of allies and friends. The American military must have the appropriate structure and technological capacity, weaponry, troop strength and morale, information and intelligence capacity, and other support to meet 21st-century threats. It must remain the strongest fighting force on earth." Pretty "peaceful…"

Obama’s liberal CNAS backers criticize Bush’s Iraq fiasco but bless imperialist war in general: "Although Iraq was the wrong war, some wars will nevertheless have to be fought. Force should never be used as a first choice, but in some cases it may need to be used sooner rather than later . . . . [S]trategic leadership requires being prepared to act swiftly and surely whenever required."

The CNAS paper pinpoints a coming clash with China: "Mutual misunderstandings and flashpoints like Taiwan could, in the worst-case scenario, actually lead to military conflict, with potentially devastating consequences." In such a case, Obama’s call for 92,000 new soldiers and Marines would prove a drop in the bucket. "Peace candidate"-turned-president Obama would restore the draft just as fast as Nazi goose-stepping militarist McCain would.

On the home front, Obama favors a police state. He just cast a Senate vote to protect the Feds’ wiretapping operations. Obama also seeks to revive Clinton’s community policing initiative, which put over 100,000 racist cops on the street. And in his home base of Chicago, vote-hungry Obama has sold himself lock, stock, and barrel to the Rockefeller-influenced Democratic Party machine of Mayor Richard Daley, which endorsed his election to the Illinois State and U.S. Senates. One of his biggest backers is William Daley, the Mayor’s brother and Clinton cabinet member, who is Midwest chairman of J.P. Morgan Chase. As Chicago mayors over decades, Daley’s father and brother have run a police department that has systematically tortured and murdered thousands of black and Latino workers.

CHALLENGE has often said that voting for either Obama or McCain would be equally bad. They both represent the same capitalist system, as do all presidents. Obama, however, with his phony anti-racist appeal, holds the danger of luring greater numbers to the rulers’ war agenda. But he inadvertently highlights the solution as he rails at communism. The wars Obama supports will end only when the working class holds state power in the wake of communist revolution. This is our Party’s long-term goal.

a name="CHALLENGE’S Ideas Make Summer Project A Winner at LA Factories">">"HALLENGE’S Ideas Make Summer Project A Winner at LA Factories

The start of the LA Summer Project has been very productive. We’ve had CHALLENGE sales at factories, a demonstration against racist police murders, and schools to study the capitalist system in today’s world, which destroys the lives of workers throughout the world. We’ve talked about the key role of industrial workers and soldiers in building a communist movement to destroy capitalism and imperialism, as well as planning CHALLENGE networks, building a worker-student alliance, and about the coming election in the shadow of imperialist war. Volunteers are tirelessly bringing CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets to industrial workers, as well as to the residents of Inglewood and Lennox where the racist cops killed two workers (see articles p. 3).

The response to our CHALLENGE sales at the factories has been great. In one subcontractor factory in Southern California, after we sold CHALLENGE outside the factory, the papers were on work tables for 2 days. Both the morning and the evening shift were reading and talking about them. One worker said communists and fascists were the same. But another worker, a CHALLENGE reader, told him, "Don’t you know that it was the communists who beat Hitler? If it weren’t for the communists, you might not be alive because the Nazi’s wanted to kill people like us and control the world."

Other workers in one department were especially interested in the Boeing article, since they also make parts for Boeing. One worker asked, "Why doesn’t this paper have names on the articles like other papers?" Another regular CHALLENGE reader answered that this was the workers’ paper, and that the articles aren’t signed because they are written by workers collectively and not to build up or promote individuals. Another worker thought that under communism he would lose what he has, but his friend, a regular CHALLENGE reader, told him, "You don’t have anything. The bank owns your house and we’re facing rising prices for everything, but our wages aren’t rising. We really have nothing to lose and we have a world to win." Another worker asked, "But do you think workers are open to communism?" "Yes, it’s the only solution we workers have," said the second CHALLENGE reader.

A worker from a different area who reads CHALLENGE said, "I was very happy to see the CHALLENGE sellers in front of the factory. It shows me this is a serious project. Keep it up!" Some of these workers had recently written a letter of support to the Boeing workers in their coming battle. (See box below)

Workers in other factories are discussing the terror tactics used in the subcontractor factories to make workers use every minute to produce parts. In most of these factories, workers have to document and account for every minute of work, and every part that they make. If they don’t meet exact goals hour by hour, they are written up and threatened with firing. Going to the bathroom "too many" times (like 3 or 4) during a shift can be cause for a write-up. Many machines in the factories don’t have safety guards, causing many serious injuries. At the same time, the companies tell the workers they are producing parts for the company and the "nation;" that they should be proud and motivated by their great duty to work diligently, and that if there are any problems with the parts, the workers will be held responsible and punished. Many workers aren’t buying it. The Migra immigration raids and the rain of racist police killings outside the factories are part of the same bosses’ terror campaign.

Capitalism, based on exploitation and competition for maximum profit, is cheapening the lives of workers everywhere — from India to China to the U.S., as U.S. imperialists prepare for wider war to defend their declining position, on the backs of the working class. The U.S. bosses may have given up producing washing machines (leaving that to their Chinese competitors) but they are producing more and more weapons to seize a key imperialist resource: oil. Communists have to be in the factories so we can bring this world view to our class and turn these attacks into the growth of CHALLENGE and PLP — to fight for communist revolution and workers’ power.

Our experiences organizing workers here makes it clear that we can expand our CHALLENGE networks. So far, its been a great project thanks to the commitment of all those involved!J

a name="‘The workers are all talking about striking…’"></a>"The workers are all talking about striking…’

"When my team and I distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets about exploitation in garment shops in a busy area in front of a factory, less than half an hour later a boss stormed out demanding, ‘Why are you guys here? What are you doing? They’re [the workers] inside, talking about your paper, talking about striking.’ Hopefully we were influencing the workers to take action." Two weeks before, the workers in this shop had organized a strike; no wonder the bosses were scared.

(Outside a subcontractor factory) "The workers’ reactions were very positive. It was surprising how many took the leaflet and the paper, even though they were in their cars. They tended to take the paper into the factory with them."

"Among hundreds of young workers entering a garment factory, almost every one took CHALLENGE. One worker came out, handed us a dollar and told us how important it was that we were there with CHALLENGE. He described the abuses in the factory."

"Garment workers were joyful as they passed and read CHALLENGE. When two read some of the articles, they asked for a handful of CHALLENGES so they could spread the word and the paper to their co-workers."

Another volunteer wrote that we want, "the workers to use the strike to build communist ideas…The warm reception to these ideas is not only helping the LA workers extend their CHALLENGE networks, but is strengthening new comrades of all ages to see how eager oppressed workers are to fight back and read the paper."

Support Boeing Workers

To our fellow workers at Boeing,

We send you warm and militant greetings. We’re a group of workers in a subcontractor factory in Los Angeles. We make some parts for Boeing. At the same time, when the bosses can’t finish an order on time here, they send the work to other subcontractors who pay less than here and who have no benefits. You all will decide whether or not to strike to get a new "less bad" contract. The strike is an important political weapon for a united group of workers acting as a bloc to confront the bosses and their state.

Forward friends! Prepare for a militant strike and we and other workers will be with you. The attacks you face and the attacks we face come from the same source: the racist bosses’ thirst for profits.

Some workers from Los Angeles

Serving The Working Class

Seattle, WA, July 16th —Summer Project volunteers, joined by local Party members, distributed 2,500 four-page communist flyers and 350 CHALLENGEs to Boeing workers attending the strike sanction vote for the upcoming Sept. 3rd contract. They caught the union, who had no literature of their own, off guard and provided the Boeing workers with a communist analysis to counter the anger most felt after listening to union hacks drone on about how "It’s Our Time." In opposition to this narrow trade unionism, our leaflets proclaimed, "We Must Fight For Our Class, The Working Class."

Prior to the strike sanction vote, participants in the Summer Project sold CHALLENGE to Boeing workers in the early morning and afternoon, catching the first and second shifts. They negotiated finicky traffic lights and dodged cars to get the paper out to as many as possible. Veteran sellers joined new Party members who had never sold the paper publicly before. Both young and old derived strength from one another, each saying at different times, "Well if they can do it so can I!"

Before our first trip to the plants, many expressed anxiety about the reception they would receive. They were afraid of the anti-communism they might encounter while distributing CHALLENGE. There were a few anti-communist remarks, but they were by far the exception, not the rule. More than once, co-workers of those expressing "hostility" apologized to our comrades — encouraging our members to continue. Most workers were interested; many asked for extra copies to give to friends and family, and to co-workers inside the plants Boeing workers were talking with each other about CHALLENGE and communism. The consensus throughout the Summer Project was that most workers were receptive to our communist politics.

Volunteers also visited Ft. Lewis twice, distributing 100 CHALLENGEs and 200 GI Notes to soldiers going out for lunch and later at their homes (see letter Page 6). The sales at the army base provided Party members with a chance to talk with the soldiers, something they had missed out on while running through traffic earlier in the week. They found that soldiers were ready and eager to discuss not only the need to end imperialist war, but also the need to build worker-soldier-student alliances and fight for communism. A number took extra literature to take back to their friends still on base after giving us information so we could stay in contact with them.

Paving The Way To Revolution One Visit At A Time

Seattle PLP’ers and volunteers also visited over 20 Boeing workers at their homes (some more than once) for a few moments to several hours. The most successful were prearranged dinners and lunches at homes, pubs and restaurants. These visits provided an opportunity for the participants to learn about the work at Boeing and most workers’ negative sentiments toward the union.

The project was also a positive experience for the workers who were excited to see so many young people who understood the value and importance of industrial work. Word of these visits spread as those Boeing workers who had been visited told dozens of their coworkers and spread the excitement in the plant.

For many Party members these visits and sales at the Boeing plants and army base were concrete examples of workers’ ability and willingness to discuss and embrace communism. One of the most important aspects of the Summer Project was the elimination of some of the anti-working class notions that hinder our political work.

The public presence created by the Summer Project was a big boost for our work, inspiring and reinvigorating workers friendly to us and Party members alike. We learned that public sales did not have to be in contradiction with base building, but could be used to create a public presence that would help in creating and consolidating friends of the Party.

The Project also inspired teachers and students to build their lives around serving the working class. Building a base in the industrial working class and military can only aid our communist work in the schools. It will give our base everywhere the confidence that our Party is pursuing a realistic long-range path to revolution.

Through sales, visits, and study groups participants learned that this meant involving themselves in the lives of their co-workers and struggling to make building Party-led groups on the job primary. Participants and local Party members alike came to understand that building our lives around the working class is not a tactic, but a political strategy necessary to the success of PLP and communism.

In a week and a half, Seattle hosted over 20 Party members from around the country. We distributed 5,000 leaflets, 2,000 CHALLENGEs, and 200 GI Notes. We visited 22 workers and hosted three barbeques for locals and volunteers. More than fifty Boeing workers signed our open letter in solidarity with industrial workers victimized by racist super-exploitation, calling for international working-class unity. Those of us remaining in Seattle will be seeing the positive repercussions of this Project for months to follow, and it is now our duty to see that the work done in the past weeks is continued and the struggle intensified.

LA Summer Project Volunteers Oppose Racist Terror!

LOS ANGELES, July 26 — "I’m really glad you guys are here! We have to do something about these cops — they are gangbangers in uniform!" So declared a resident of the Inglewood area to members of the PLP Worker/Student Alliance Project when they hit the streets yesterday with signs, banners and a bullhorn protesting the cops’ murder of a 38-year-old black postal worker, Kevin Wicks. We took over the four corners in the neighborhood where the murder occurred. Our banner read: "End Police Terror with Communist Revolution!"

The rally was called as an immediate response to a series of cop murders here. Two months ago, Michael Byoune, a 19-year-old black youth was shot at a neighborhood burger restaurant by the same cop who killed Kevin Wicks. Last week, the LAPD once again gunned down another unarmed Latino man, Christian Portillo, in his own driveway. The Summer Project volunteers responded to these racist murders in a big way, rallying in the Inglewood community, and heading for the shops and factories to denounce these murders.

The militant Inglewood rally attracted hundreds of people in the area, including many getting off buses or driving in cars. Area residents were really angry.

After a series of speeches, many by youth, calling for revolution as the only solution to the murders of unarmed workers — most of whom are black and Latin — we asked workers driving by to honk their horns in solidarity with us. The response was deafening!

We also took to the street, leafleting on buses and to passing cars. We concluded with a picket line that was well-received by the community. Over 400 CHALLENGES were sold and hundreds of leaflets were distributed. Many people told us, "I’m so glad to see you guys here!"

The Summer Project is linking the racist super-exploitation of workers to racist police terror. Black, Latino, Asian and white workers are the backbone of Southern California’s industrial workforce. Thousands of factories employ millions of these workers in subcontracting, non-unionized and labor intensive, low-wage workplaces engaged in war production. Workers there are subjected to brutal conditions and intimidation. We can clearly see these same terror tactics by the racist police and immigration cops (ICE) who get away scot-free.

Our PLP leaflet exposed the politicians’ and LA Times’ call for a civilian review board in Inglewood (a small city near LA). Cities like New York which have civilian review boards run by the bosses’ politicians see rising racist murder rates by the cops similar to Inglewood and LA.

The Inglewood community’s welcome with open arms to the PLP Summer Project volunteers shows the potential our Party has to grow and the willingness of workers to accept communist ideas!

Los Angeles, July 25 — Two days ago, Christian Portillo was murdered by the fascist LA Sheriffs. PLP Summer Project volunteers responded to this racist killing by leafleting and selling CHALLENGE door-to-door in the neighborhood where this fascist attack took place. It is no coincidence that this same area houses workers who produce the machines and weapons for the bosses’ war. Many work in industrial factories as low-wage, subcontracted, super-exploited labor.

This murder was just one incident, but there have been two other racist police killings in the area within the last week, including the murder of Kevin Wicks in Inglewood. Add that to the amount of murders in the country, around the world, and we could see the quantitative development of the fascist regimes that capitalism breeds.

The leaflet we wrote called for the working class to unite and fight back against ever-increasing police terror, connecting it to the imperialist oil wars and exposing it as a systemic problem. Liberals and phoney "leftists" in Los Angeles are organizing around police reforms and civilian control boards. This is not the solution. These boards will only rubber stamp, not stop, police terror. Only by organizing students, workers, and soldiers around communist politics will the real enemy be exposed: capitalism.

Some of the volunteers met young people who had organized walkouts two years ago. They acknowledged that these attacks affect all workers. We collected the youths’ contact information and agreed to meet up to discuss and organize future events. We also talked to families in the local park who expressed their anger over the system that keeps them unemployed through the use of sexism and racism. In contrast, two comrades approached a family that had anti-communist ideas and forced the comrades off their property. It is important to recognize that the working class is fed on a daily basis with anti-communist ideas and it is up to us to struggle against these anti-communist ideas within our base and within ourselves.

We are taking this struggle against racist police into the industrial factories to show workers the power they have to end this racist oppression and crush the capitalist system by shutting it down at the point of production and organizing a revolution. The solution comes by arming the working class with communist politics with an emphasis on industrial workers. Workers who are at the point of production are key in smashing the capitalist system and building for communist revolution.

Learning, Teaching Red Ideas at NEA Convention

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 3 — At a hotel near the convention center where the National Education Association (NEA) annual meeting was taking place, a young working-class student struggled with questions of reform and revolution. She was sharing her dream of one day operating a hotel where unemployed workers would have a place to stay while seeking work. Before going to her own job later that morning, she had come with her teacher and a classmate to bring the message of revolution to the NEA delegates. These students, their teacher and two other PL comrades were passing out a PLP flyer and selling CHALLENGE outside a caucus meeting of about 1,000 delegates.

Respecting this young worker’s understandable desire to assist her class brothers and sisters, PL members explained how capitalism must exploit workers in order to maximize the bosses’ profits, not to help them to find jobs, shelter or food. Yet while struggling with the common illusion that the capitalist system can be reformed to improve workers’ lives, this future comrade was doing exactly what is necessary to bring the message of revolution for communism to the NEA teachers. With PLP leadership, a communist society would be organized to meet the needs of workers, such as work, shelter, food and education, not to exploit workers.

Like this young worker, most teachers want to help the young workers in their classrooms to survive this system. They attend these conventions to consider how to reform this system. Their leaders tell them to vote for the right politician. The leaflet distributed at this year’s convention explains how neither John McCain nor Barack Obama provide any hope for teachers, students or their parents but that what is needed is a revolutionary alliance of teachers and workers to fight for communism.

Obama addressed the convention, bringing his message of false hope. He makes his home in one of the most segregated cities on the planet, but does not make that an issue. He’s a product of a racist, Democratic Party machine which has ruled Chicago for generations (see editorial, front page). With his approval of increasing U.S. troop strength and keeping all military options on the table, Obama is as much of a warmonger as McCain.

With help from comrades and friends in the D.C. area, more than 300 CHALLENGES and 1,300 flyers were distributed to convention delegates. The flyer pointed out that NEA leaders have no real solution to the problems in education. Unions are reform organizations which never question the capitalist system itself. They condone the racist cuts in education and the increasing control that corporations exert over public schools through No Child Left Behind.( See parts 1 nd 2 in previous CHALLENGE Issues.)

In addition to passing out flyers and selling CHALLENGE, comrades participated in an NEA reform caucus, discussing the Iraq war and other issues. Everyone in the caucus received a flyer. When giving CHALLENGE to one reform activist, they discovered that he was already buying it regularly at a mass sale in his city. While reserving certain criticisms, he praised the writing in the paper and said he drew a lot of good ideas from reading it. He agreed to receive a subscription.

These examples of revolutionary work in a mass organization like the NEA can help build the Party and its base and advance the cause of communism.

BBQ Serves Up Communist Food for Thought

LOS ANGELES, CA—"Look friend, we’ve known each other for a long time, you’ve been reading CHALLENGE for a long time, you’re a respected militant worker, you’ve participated in our May Day dinners, and you know that the working class needs communist leadership. We in the party want to invite you to become a member of the Party so you can help us bring communist ideas to the workers."

"This question takes me by surprise, and even though you all know that I’m with you, to say that I’m a member, ‘I want you to let me think about it, because I understand that it means commitment and danger, but independent of my answer, I want to keep participating and to help a little more." This discussion took place during a Bar-B-Q organized by PLP with 20 friends from work and also to sharpen the political struggle.

These workers are CHALLENGE readers in the same company and same union, among them black, white, Latino, Iranian and Russian workers. Next year the contract for these workers expires and PLP is already preparing to take advantage of this reform struggle to inject communist ideas and expose the system of exploitation, imperialist wars, and the role that the union leaders play at this time of increasing attacks on workers. In the past the PLP has played a key role in these struggles and hundreds respect and know our Party and CHALLENGE.

The mood was upbeat politically. We discussed the billions of dollars that the government is spending on the war, the high cost of living, the upcoming contract battle and how workers are always the ones who have to pay.

The Bar-B-Q ended with three small speeches: the first about the need to organize the working class and maintain an attitude of class struggle against the bosses; the second about multiracial unity and workers’ internationalism, emphasizing that the attack on immigrant workers is an attack on the whole working class; the third was about the unity of workers from different industries. It concluded that the fight for communism is the only one that will guarantee the real liberation of the international working class.

Everyone was happy with the Bar-B-Q since the food was very tasty and the speeches were enthusiastic and clear. This is one more step in the consolidation of a base to recruit to the Party, and this gave us the impetus PLP needs so that in the coming period we’ll be visiting these and other workers and asking them to help distribute CHALLENGE, help participate and lead class struggle and join the Party.

Students, Teachers Pass the Real Test: Fighting for Our Class Interests

(In parts 1 and 2, teachers and students rebelled against a new pilot test being used in their high school. After a teacher found out that the test could be used to track students and rank teachers for merit pay, he began speaking to CHALLENGE readers in the school about what to do. PL students in several classes refused to take the test or disrupted its administration. Although some teachers were upset about this, others allowed resistance in their classrooms.)

After leading this struggle, the backlash against PLP students and teachers was minor. The teacher in the room where the students protested the test was angry at the PLP. She accused us of encouraging "disciples" to disrupt the test with "conspiracy theories." There were some other members of the English department that were upset with what had happened and placed the blame on communist politics. It was difficult dealing with workers who had always been friendly now showing animosity toward PLP.

However, the overall climate of the school and the fact that so many staff and students opposed the test limited the principal’s ability to attack those who had directly opposed the test. Neither the principal, nor the department assistant principal confronted the PL teacher. The strong friendships and political alliances we have been building in this school over several years helped protect us from the administration this time.

A week and a half after the struggle, the teacher, two student members and a friend were having lunch in a diner near the school. The young PL’er who had disrupted the test reported that she had been talking to her classmates, and that many of them had refused to take the test as well. They had taken her communist leadership and had silently refused taking a test that they recognized as being against their own interest.

These tests are produced, graded, and determined by the education bosses. Many teachers in the school continually voiced the idea that the test disregarded them, making their assessment of the students’ needs and progress irrelevant since all meaningful decisions about students are made by administrators based on test scores. This intensification of alienation (which is when workers have no power over their work and cannot find it meaningful) is a major component of rising fascism. As the tests take away the planning and assessment of learning from the teachers, the State is in more direct control of the students through the curriculum that is forced on the teachers.

One victory from this struggle is the increased multi-racial unity that developed among students as they challenged the test. The school has a student body that comes from the Americas, Africa, Eurasia, and Pacifica. The communist leadership provided during this struggle helped the students to work more collectively. They learned that they are many and that they are stronger when they unite.

To consolidate the Party’s gains in this struggle, more CHALLENGES were distributed, and those who hadn’t read the paper in a while began receiving it again. Several students want to write for CHALLENGE, joined study groups and deepened their commitment to the Party. With many battles looming for next year, the students have already cut their teeth on a mass struggle led by the communist PLP.

Shipyard and Tire Strikers Battle Cops in Greece and Iran

ATHENS, Greece, July 28 — Cops violently attacked workers protesting the death of eight co-workers after an explosion at a ship being repaired at the nearby state-owned Perama shipyard. The explosion was caused by a lack of safety measures in the use of blowtorches.

The workers were demonstrating in front of the Ministry of the Merchant Navy, demanding safer working conditions. The workers also declared a 3-day strike. In July 2007, two other workers died in a similar explosion.

There’s no secret behind these murders of workers. It’s called maximum profits. Because of low wages paid to shipyard workers and merchant marine sailors, Greece has the world’s largest merchant fleet. Local companies control one-fifth of the world’s merchant transport.

Tire Workers Strike in Iran

IRAN — While the Iranian ruling class is involved in a dogfight with the U.S. and its local lackeys over control of Middle-East oil profits, it’s also doing the same thing all bosses do: attacking militant workers.

A strike by 1,200 workers at Kian Tire in Chahardangeh, near Tehran, is in its third week. The workers are demanding three months’ back pay. When a special police unit used bulldozers to break through plant walls and arrested 1,000 workers, strikers set tires on fire. The cops ordered firefighters to put out the fire and shoot boiling water at the strikers. Six firefighters refused to attack their fellow workers and were arrested. The 1,000 strikers have almost all been released after being forced to sign a "no-protest" agreement.

Capitalists, whether holy rollers like Iran’s Islamic rulers or "good Christians" like Dubya, Obama or McCain, have one thing in common: exploit and repress workers.

Students Back Striking Teachers in Honduras

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, July 28 — The 60,000 teachers members of the Federation of Teachers Organization have been on strike for over two weeks demanding six months back pay owed to 3,000 teachers, public transport financial aid for poor students, and other demands. The teachers are also demanding the creation of thousands of new teaching jobs.

The strike, supported by thousands of students, have extended to the 18 provinces of the country. Last week, thousands of students held a militant protest through the streets of this city demanding a raise in the government bus fare aid for 150,000 of the poorer students here.

Marlon Brevé, the minister of Education, has said the strike is unjustified because only 1.2 to 2% of the teachers are owed back day. Teachers earn an average of $350 a month, in a country where the cost of food and everything else keeps on going up and up just as in the rest of the world.
Teachers here have a history of fighting back, with many strikes in recent years for their just demands. The working class of Honduras, like the rest of the region, is sick and tired of having to pay more and more for the economic turmoil of capitalism while a few bosses, imperialist companies, politicians and military officers in cahoots with drug gangs, make out like bandits. We in PLP support these militant teachers and students. We have to bring them our revolutionary politics so they can join with us in building an international red-led movement and turn their struggles into schools for communism.

a name="Can’t Stop PL Youth from ‘Reddening’ Mexico’s May Day"></a>Ca"’t Stop PL Youth from ‘Reddening’ Mexico’s May Day

"Come on! There’s no one in the building"….It was night when we brought the copier downstairs covered with a cloth to keep the neighbors from discovering it. We were three young comrades who were moving the machine from one house to another, with four days to make 15,000 fliers (two-sided, really 30,000 copies) and 250 international CHALLENGES for a mass May Day march in Mexico City.

Earlier, a comrade had made 3,500 copies but the machine heated up quickly; after making 100 leaflets the machine began messing up. He was unable to finish the 15,000 leaflets and couldn’t convince his parents to keep the copier in his house any longer.

To continue making copies in each other’s homes, we raised the volume of the music so the neighbors couldn’t hear the loud machine, risking their anger since we were working late at night, but they were very tolerant.

After 2,000 copies, the ink ran out. With only a few days left, we had to do something else. Two comrades sought copy centers in a nearby city. The budget tripled and again we had to rely on all the comrades in our area to cover the cost of 5,000 more copies.

There was only one day left before May Day. One comrade’s friend works in a photocopy store near us and allowed us to make 3,000 leaflets and 200 CHALLENGES on overtime at his job. Comrades continued making leaflets and newspapers at home. Though tired and sick, one comrade prepared food for us and helped us collate and staple the CHALLENGES.

The next morning, May Day, 25 pairs of arms took charge of spreading communist ideas among hundreds of thousands of people who marched in the center of the world’s biggest metropolis. The leaflet exposed and denounced the inter-imperialist rivalry for oil worldwide, and specifically in Mexico, and advocated the need to build an international communist movement, the PLP, to fight for communism. We also commemorated International Workers’ Day and the struggles of workers worldwide. Job completed, comrades of the world.

Young Comrades

Brazil: Lula, Bosses, Ethanol: Killing Workers for Profits

Brazil is becoming one of the four strongest emerging capitalist countries (known as BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China). Under the government of former "socialist" union leader President Lula, the Brazilian ruling class has become a growing imperialist power. Petrobras, the state oil giant which has surpassed Microsoft as the third largest corporation in the Americas, is now as hated by the working masses of South America as Exxon-Mobil, Shell or any other big oil giant. Equally hated in Haiti is the Brazilian army which leads the UN occupation force there. And domestically, the Brazilian bosses are as racist and as brutal as they are overseas.

Brazil has become the world’s leading producer of ethanol, using sugar cane instead of the corn used in the U.S. "It is work unfit for humans," said 38-year-old Caio Ribeiro. At his age he is considered a "survivor" among the sugar-cane cutters in Sertaozinho, one of the many cities in the Ribeirao Preto region, Sao Paulo’s biggest sugar producer. Three years ago, Caio fainted while cutting sugar cane because of back and circulatory problems, and had to quit. "Machines should be used to cut the cane," declared Caio, "otherwise many more people will die."

According to local union activists, 20 sugar cane cutters have died since 2004 because of the sped-up drive to supply more and more ethanol. They charge that working conditions are subhuman, bordering on slavery. Hundreds of workers were rescued from slave labor in the last year from plantations in Sao Paulo and in northern Brazil.

According to a study by the Methodist University of Piracicaba, Sao Paulo, each sugar-cane cutter works as hard in a day as it takes to run a 26-mile marathon, overburdening his/her cardio-respiratory system. Young workers, particularly from the poorer northern area of Brazil — whose population is mostly black — labor as migrant workers during the sugar harvest season. They live under generally unhealthy conditions in some of the 37 towns that surround the sugar region of Ribeirao Preto.

The bosses say that in several years they expect to mechanize the whole operation of cutting sugar cane, but will still need workers to process the sugar cane into ethanol, so the exploitation won’t end.

Whatever capitalism produces turns into death and super-exploitation for workers, whether it be ethanol or plain old crude oil. Many workers thought Lula — who had a reputation as a militant metalworker union leader in the auto-steel belt of Sao Paulo — would be good for the workers. But he turned out to be a blessing for the Brazilian bosses, creating illusions in many workers about "having their man in the presidency," thus derailing their struggles. Instead of voting for some hacks or any other politician who claims to be a "friend of the workers," we must organize to build a revolutionary communist movement to fight all the bosses. That’s the goal of PLP. Join us!

LETTERS

a name="GI’s, Families Bare Capitalism’s Horrors"></">GI"s, Families Bare Capitalism’s Horrors

On July 14, we went door-to-door at a local military base and realized that the housing situation here is worse, by far, than in any other part of the city. Soldiers and veterans are not being taken care of and their families are suffering from the consequences of imperialist wars both emotionally and financially.

We spoke with a daughter of a vet and a struggling mother who is recovering from a stroke. The mother emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1978 and only reads at a fourth-grade level. She is on Section Eight housing and trying to get food stamps and social security. As a worker living in poverty and barely able to make ends meet, she clearly sees how the system is corrupt and said that it "took away people’s dignity" — capitalism degrades as it exploits.

We also talked to a Gulf War vet who became motivated to learn more about communism after talking with us. He retired after 21 years in the Army and, though he believes that a soldier cannot question his orders, he also believes that resistance can exist within the military if there is mass unity among the ranks. He is living in and struggling with the atmosphere of sexism, racism, and aggressive behavior promoted by the military that resulted in the woman he is living with being raped and trying to commit suicide with his weapon last month. We asked him to join us in a struggle for a world where oppressive situations such as these would not develop and where workers would be treated as important members of society. He said we "got him thinking" and that he would read Challenge "front to back."

The youngest person we talked to is the sister of a soldier who died in Iraq while serving his third tour of duty. Her brother’s widow, who had four children when she lost her husband, was told she would receive free housing, but didn’t realize it would only be for three months. She was kicked out of her home and ended up living with her mother-in-law because she couldn’t afford to live on her own with the four kids while the government wouldn’t help her. Because of these experiences, the sister we talked to was strongly against the war and was very interested in the paper and learning more about PLP.

By visiting these places, we saw the conditions that we must fight against and the people who see clearly the problems of this system. As more and more working-class soldiers, students, and workers experience day in and day out just how degrading and heartbreaking capitalist policies have made their lives, they will join with PLP in mobilizing fight-backs against our oppression. If we are there to bring communist politics to them, they can realize that it is through the unity of our class and the fight for communism that the horrors of capitalism will be destroyed –– and they can play a leading role in that struggle.

A Few Summer Project Volunteers

a name="Myth of Elections Can’t Hide U.S. Fascism">">"yth of Elections Can’t Hide U.S. Fascism

The ACLU recently revealed that a Homeland Security directive signed by President Bush in December 2003 established the Terrorist Screening Center which contains a so-called Terrorist Screening Database of over one million names — citizens of the U.S. and other countries. The list has been used to detain thousands of people during airport security checks or to bar them from flying. Local law enforcement agencies have also accessed the database during routine traffic stops. The Nazi Gestapo had nothing on these fascists.

Actually, the Nazis learned a lot from U.S. rulers. The rally protesting the lynching of a young black man in a Prince Georges County jail cell (CHALLENGE. 7/30) is a case in point. Portuguese writer Miguel Urbano Rodrigues reported that the Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, as a young merchant marine, witnessed a lynching in the southern U.S. He was so shocked by this brutal racist act tolerated by the local authorities that he wrote a 1924 article in the French version of the "Comintern" (Communist International) that the KKK had assumed all "the brutality and rites of fascism." (http://www.lahaine.org/skins/basic/lhart_imp.php?p=31752)

The Nazis’ racist Nuremberg laws justifying the Aryan "master race" were based on the U.S. Eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nazi ideologue Rosenberg called the U.S. "a splendid country of the future" which had the merit of formulating "the new idea of a racial state."

The Third Reich portrayed the genocide against the Native population of North America as "a civilizing epic." The Nazis saw their plans to "Aryanize" Eastern Europe (slaying most of the population but leaving 50 million Slavs alive as slaves of the "master race") as a follow-up to what the U.S. army and rulers did in the Far West. In 1939, just prior to World War II, Hitler hailed the "incredible inner strength of the U.S. model of civilization."

Henry Ford was hailed by the Führer himself for spreading worldwide anti-Semitism with his mass publication of the forgery Protocols of Zion. The racist book "The Menace of the Under Man" by Lothrop Stoddard, a U.S. writer, was so well-received in Nazi Germany that Stoddard was invited to Berlin to be seen by Hitler himself. Two U.S. Presidents, Harding and Hoover, also hailed this racist trash.

The Italian Marxist philosopher, Domenico Losurdo, wrote in 2003 how President Theodore Roosevelt favored the "master races."

Ford, GM, IBM and other U.S. companies continued to operate in Nazi Germany during the war. IBM machines were used to keep count of the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, and Ford and GM built trucks for the Werhmacht. Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush made millions doing banking business with the Nazis.

The Patriot Act, the racist immigration pogroms, the mass jailing of black and Latin workers, the mass cutbacks on social programs to sustain the war budget, are all aspects of growing U.S. fascism. Some people are fooled because this fascism is covered with the myth of elections (Obama and McCain are for more and more wars but simply differ on the tactics of how to carry them out); and "freedom of speech" (a few U.S. monopolies own the mass media).

The fact remains that fascism is a product of capitalism. The U.S. has a long history of pro-fascist activities. As the decline of the U.S. bosses continues and major wars loom ahead (leading to another world war), fascism will be covered with the Red-White-and-Blue instead of the Swastika.

An Anti-Fascist Red

a name="‘Stalin was a great leader…’"></a>"Stalin was a great leader…’

Recently my wife and I were in New York City on vacation. We visited Brighton Beach, a large area of Brooklyn which has thousands of immigrants from Russia.

We went into a small store which was selling souvenirs from Russia. I began looking through some World War II posters inspiring workers and soldiers to fight. I found one with Stalin looking at a map of Europe.

I asked the storeowner, a man from the Ukraine, way up in his eighties, about the poster.

He said, "World War II was a terrible war! When you fight the Nazis, you win or become slaves. We had to win! Stalin was a great leader."

California comrade

Summer Project Visits Pay Dividends on the Job

During the recent Seattle summer project, participants broke up into groups of three to four to visit workers. On the last visitation day I took a group of young Party members to meet some of my co-workers. One co-worker, an ex-Marine, discussed life in the military and the prospects of reaching soldiers. This worker has received several issues of CHALLENGE, but seemed hesitant to have Party members over. By the end of the conversation, however, he said that he was glad to have us over and that if the project participants were staying longer they should come back. Party members left feeling confident in our ability to bring communist politics to those in the military, but most importantly we put a human face on the Party for this worker that has already drawn him closer to our communist ideas.

We visited another co-worker who had experienced union sell-outs first hand while working in a factory for several years and has been trying to get by in the increasingly volatile non-union construction field. He told Party members how his union negotiator fell asleep during their open contract negotiations and then later drew up a contract with company reps behind closed doors. The contract was loaded with concessions for the company, but managed to get shoved through thanks to a $2,000 signing bribe. Party members were shocked to see the amount of union dues and fees that were taken out of every paycheck, and even more shocked to hear how every time the dues went up the services workers received went down.

Regarding his work in the non-union construction field we had a long discussion about how racism, particularly toward Latin workers, is used to isolate workers in order to attack them in the form of wage cuts and increased disregard for safety on the job. The conversation involved a lot of back and forth between my co-worker and Party members. Afterwards we gave him his first CHALLENGE. The next day on the job he told me how much he enjoyed having the Party members over and we got into a discussion regarding the editorial on the front page of the paper. He talked about how he liked what the Party had to say and now we have another CHALLENGE reader/base member.

These visits helped to remind us of what Lenin said: workers will accept the Party if we are honest about our line and our intentions to serve the working class. If we bring our communist ideas to workers we will not just be "blaming Bush" or breeding cynicism, but offering a solution to the hell that is capitalism. As Party members we left this project with renewed faith in our ability to win workers to communism. Our base members came away with a renewed faith in the Party’s ability to provide leadership in the struggle against capitalism. Now it is on to LA in the fight to build communism!

Summer Project Participants

U.S. on TV Masks U.S. in Real Life

At the airport where I work, many immigrant airport workers read CHALLENGE regularly because our Party’s newspaper makes the most sense out of an otherwise confusing capitalist world. PLP is working to help these workers understand that communist revolution is the only way out of the bosses’ racist imperialist hell.

A young co-worker from Ethiopia asked: "Why are there so many problems in America? Many Ethiopian immigrants come here and see the U.S. is nothing like it’s portrayed on television!"

I explained to my friend that, "Yes, the U.S. has many economic and political problems — high food and gas prices and home foreclosures. There’s a chance the national economy could collapse if the bosses’ two biggest mortgage outfits, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, go under. This is all part of the bosses international capitalist crisis, with the U.S. getting the worst of it because it has the most to lose.

"Yes, U.S. society is nothing like on TV because the media bosses like CNN or Fox paint such a distorted picture of places like Africa. That’s why it’s so important for CHALLENGE and its message of communism to spread globally!"

My friend exclaimed, "We need a revolution now! So when would this happen?"

I said it could happen during a bosses’ world war if PLP grows worldwide. Understanding the ideas in CHALLENGE is a step in the right direction for working-class liberation!

Airport Red

Garment Workers Need More Than Patches, Will Fight for the Whole Coat

"We need a bit more than patches
We need the whole coat itself.
We need a bit more than slices
We need the whole loaf itself.
We don’t just need a mere job to do
We now need the whole factory.
And the coalmines and the ore
And power in the state."

–– Bertolt Brecht, The Mother

At a recent party where we raised over $600 to send volunteers to the Los Angeles Summer Project, we watched the documentary Made in L.A., which is about the struggle of L.A. garment workers. Through the film we come to know three remarkable women: Maria, who grew up on a ranch in Mexico, works 10 to 12 hours a day making clothes for a contractor, and then goes home to take care of her three children; Lupe, a young garment worker who is articulate and decides to become a full-time organizer; and Maura, who was forced by poverty to leave her three children in El Salvador and come to L.A. to work in the garment district.

The three women describe conditions in the factories for over 100,000 garment workers (mostly Latino and Asian women): low wages –– the average annual income is $14,000; forced overtime with no overtime pay –– two out of three garment factories violate minimum wage and overtime laws, according to the Department of Labor; and dangerous and unhealthy work conditions –– three out of four factories violate federal health and safety regulations.

In L.A. thousands of small factory owners compete to see who can produce clothes most cheaply for the big retailers, and to do that each owner fights to get as much production out of each employee as he can, paying as little as he can. There exists a pyramid of profit, in which the many workers at the bottom produce all the profit, some of which goes to the contractor, but much of which is taken by the big retailers like Gap, Wal-Mart, J. Crew, Abercrombie and Fitch, and so on.

Unfortunately, the film never explains how profit (surplus value) is collectively produced by workers, starting with those who pick the cotton and including those who work the sewing machines, and how that surplus value is stolen by a collective class of owners. This failure to explain exploitation is the result of the film being made on behalf of the reformist Garment Worker Center (GWC), a non-profit organization founded in 2001 that waged a three-year boycott and lawsuit against the big clothing chain Forever 21, for which many of the workers produce clothes. Maria, Lupe and Maura take part in this campaign: we see them picketing stores, demonstrating in other cities, and speaking on college campuses to win support for the boycott. As time progresses, we see these three workers develop as public speakers and become more self-assured.

As the lawsuit is lost in district court and as the boycott drags on without success, frustration develops and some of the workers become disillusioned and drop out of the campaign. This isn’t surprising. Communists believe that boycotts and lawsuits are, at best, secondary tactics, and that on-the-job struggles (work actions, strikes) should be primary. Yet the film completely avoids struggles on the job. At the end of the film, we learn that the wealthy CEO of Forever 21 signs an agreement with the 19 workers who sued, pledging that its contractors will abide by "lawful conditions." Though presented as a big victory, this pledge is virtually meaningless. The exploitation of workers is legal under capitalism, and even when the owners violate the few wage and safety regulations that exist, there is little enforcement.

One of the positive features of the film is how it shows sexism damaging the lives of women workers and weakening their struggle. Maria’s husband spends his wages on alcohol, has her do all the housework and complains about her going to meetings with other workers. Eventually, Maria finds the confidence to stand up for herself and separates from her abusive husband. The struggle against the sexist practices of the owners, as well as sexist attitudes and behavior within the working class, is an important battle that needs to be fought and won.

There is a powerful scene in the film where the workers travel to NYC and visit Ellis Island. They look at pictures of Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. more than a hundred years ago and worked in the garment factories in NYC. One of the pictures shows workers standing behind a banner that reads "Unity Is Strength, Organize." Lupe stares at the photo and realizes that her struggle against the garment bosses is part of a century-old struggle against exploitation. But the reformists are keeping Lupe, Maria, Maura and hundreds of thousands of others from realizing that the owners will never be nice, will never pay us what we deserve, will never give us job security, health care and adequate pensions, and will never end the hated national borders that keeps Maura from seeing her children in El Salvador. Workers need not just a few reforms (the patches, in Brecht’s song) but the whole coat (control of the factories and the government and the end of bosses).?

REDEYE On the News

US in Iraq: Winning = staying

The elected leader of Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is demanding a timetable for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country….

So why is the White House balking at a chance to leave Iraq and claim victory?

Well, one of the administration’s primary goals in invading Iraq — in fact, probably its single most important objective — was to establish Iraq as a friendly, long-term host of American military bases. From those bases in the heart of the Arab world, they hoped to dominate the oil-rich Middle East for decades to come. And if that was your goal from the beginning, the calculus of victory gets pretty simple:

Winning means staying; leaving means losing. (NYT, 7/17)

Tobacco biz aims to hook young

A new Harvard study claims that the tobacco industry in recent years has manipulated menthol levels in cigarettes to hook youngsters….

Young people, the study said, tolerate menthol cigarettes better than harsher nonmenthol cigarettes. In low-level menthols cigarettes, the menthol primarily masks harshness, making it easier to begin smoking. (NYT, 7/17)

‘It was always about the oil’

That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished — for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that’s why "we" invaded Iraq — only "we" aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are….

We the people and they the oil companies are not one and the same. (Creators Syndicate, 7/3)

Religious bosses are just as bad

….An undercover informant…saw "a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees." Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards….

Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant. They have told investigators that they were routinely put to work without safety training and were forced to work long shifts without overtime or rest time. Under-age workers said their bosses knew how young they were. (NYT, 7/27)

Guantanamo cases full of holes

"After reviewing 517 of the Guantanamo detainees’ cases in depth," [Ms. Meyer] said, "they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority — all but 5 percent — had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters." (NYT, 7/22)

Capitalism not always rational

The Fed….kept cutting interest rates, but nobody wanted to borrow….The Onion, as usual, hit the nail on the head with its recent headline: "Recession-plagued nation demands new bubble to invest in." (NYT, 7/18)

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Part II:

Under slavery and Jim Crow, there were always African-Americans willing to advance themselves at the expense of the masses of black workers. This elite group put themselves at the service of their masters, allowing themselves to be used as object lessons for other members of the oppressed group. They helped to justify racism and the class nature of capitalism, claiming that progress only came through "hard work" and "following the rules." Their willingness to sell themselves was only matched by their contempt for those who couldn’t or wouldn’t emulate them.

Today, capitalism still needs these sellouts. In Ivy League colleges, one of the key purposes of minority student programs is to turn out black and Latino businessmen and administrators for capitalism. The bosses can then say, "See, there is no more racism. If you can’t make it, it’s your own fault." They also need politicians and stars who can promote ideas that white orators would not be allowed to get away with. Enter comedian and multi-millionaire TV star Bill Cosby. Cosby gave a now-infamous speech at the 2004 NAACP awards ceremony in which he attacked activists who charged the criminal justice system with racism. He disparaged "lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people" for "not holding their end in this deal" and attacked young black people for their dress, the names they carry, and because "all of them are in jail" (‘This Is How We Lost to the White Man’, Ta-Nehisi Coates TheAtlantic.Com).

Cosby’s line was initially ignored by the liberal media and rejected by the hacks who pose as "leaders" of the black community. Since then, he has co-written, with Harvard Medical School professor Alvin Poussaint, "Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors." This book promotes the idea that black workers who continue to question the existence of worse conditions in their communities have only to look at their own failings for answers. It also promotes a new separatism:
"(F)or all the woes of segregation there were some good things to come out of it" (Coates). No, not mass multi-racial struggle against racism and for working-class unity; like the Nation of Islam, Cosby and Poussaint laud separate black businesses serving black people. Cosby regularly preaches a doctrine of "personal responsibility" and "self-reliance" to black, mostly male audiences at churches and colleges in major urban areas.

Cosby’s rhetoric dovetails with Barack Obama’s attempt to downplay the endemic nature of racism by pushing hard work, patriotism and national service. But Obama’s politics are just a cover for sharper attacks on the working class, in particular black, Latino, and immigrant workers. The rulers have to repackage "blame-the-victim" ideology in order to justify these rotten conditions. So when Obama recently spoke at one of Chicago’s largest black churches, he resurrected Moynihan’s culture- of-poverty theories when he assailed black fathers for sitting "in the house watching Sports Center" and claimed that they "have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men" (NY Times 6/16/08).

One may wonder why a candidate who claims to want to "bring people together" did not mention in his speech that marriage rates among all young males, as well as young black males "are strongly correlated with the annual earnings of these young men" (Bob Herbert, NY Times 6/21/08 quoting from Andrew Sum, Center for Labor Market Studies). Or the fact that "mean annual earnings of young men without four-year college degrees have plummeted substantially over the past 30 years" (Herbert, quoting Sum).

Or finally that in 2006, 50.4% of all births to women under 30 were "out of wedlock," reflecting both cultural and economic changes (were all of these women part of the "underclass," too?)(Herbert)

Both Obama and Cosby ignore extensive research done in the 1970s and 1980s highlighting the development of "resilient kinship ties" in black families as a historical response to "persistent racial oppression" ("The Black Family" and US Social Policy: Moynihan’s Unintended Legacy?" Dean E. Robinson, 2003). Anti-racist sociologists also attacked Moynihan’s idea that black family structure was "in crisis" by studying the history of that structure over a century, and proving that differences between black and white families developed over long periods, and didn’t affect the family unit’s fundamental strength (Hill 1972; Stack 1974; Gutman 1976; Jones 1985).

Despite its proclaimed demise, the racist beast always reappears in new forms. That is because the rulers cannot rule without it. With communist leadership, workers will see through these tricks. Racism cannot be reformed away under capitalism. The only way to stomp it to death is to violently overthrow the tiny group of exploiters who profit from it. Communism’s principle "from each according to commitment, to each according to need" will abolish the material basis for the bosses’ wage slavery and racism, which will lead to the elimination of this plague on humanity.

Dark Knight Becomes a Nazi Crusader?

The movie, ‘The Dark Knight,’ set a record of $155 million in its first weekend. In times of recession, the box office booms: providing workers a temporary escape from the problems created by capitalism. As one commentator wrote, "If you’re worried about mortgage payments and gas prices, when you’re sitting in The Dark Knight for two and a half hours, you’re not thinking about any of that stuff."

However, The Dark Knight, instead of pushing a clear message of "hope" in believing individuals with special powers can save society like many superhero films, attempts to win workers to passively accept a bleak future of fascism.

In this latest Batman flick, Batman fights the Joker who threatens to terrorize Gotham unless Batman reveals his true identity. To prove he is serious, the Joker sets out on a rampage of bombings and assassinations. He is clearly a symbol of the "terrorist threat" the bosses use to justify the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the racist attacks on immigrants and Arabs.

In the face of the Joker’s violent rampage, Batman must resort to fascist surveillance by tapping all cell phones in Gotham. Further, he pushes himself to the limit interrogating the Joker in a torture scene right out of Abu Graib. The message is clear: the bosses’ government must be allowed to do whatever is necessary in order to fight "terrorism."

Batman, however, realizes that Gotham’s real future of fighting terrorism is not in him but in Mayoral hopeful Harvey Dent. In one of his speeches addressing the chaos that has descended upon Gotham, Dent states: "The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming!" His slogan echoes the campaign slogan of the Barack Obama campaign, "Change we can believe in."

In the Batman stories, Bruce Wayne is the hero who disguises himself to rid the world of bad guys but he’s also the boss of a large corporation Men like Bruce Wayne become rich by exploiting men and women to protect their profits (sometimes killing them). These stories try to win workers to the idea that there are some good bosses.

The film also embraces the anti-Chinese racism pushed by the U.S. ruling class in their efforts to win workers to fight this rival imperialist. Following suit with Obama’s recent endorsement of anti-China trade legislation, Dent proclaims, "I suggest you buy American" when it comes to an item "made in China."

Despite the fact that Dent becomes a killer, Batman says that Dent must be cleared of his crimes and his image preserved as that of an honorable politician. Batman takes the rap for the murders, arguing that people need a Harvey Dent (aka Obama) to believe in. In the end, the film pushes the idea that while the fascist tactics of Batman are necessary to bring order to a chaotic system, men like Dent are necessary to provide a "democratic" façade to the fascism.

"The Dark Knight" leaves the audience with no real hope and no belief in their own power to change things. Workers are told to accept the fact of a bleak future with the necessity of fascism to make sure that the terrorists do not win.

While going to the movies may provide workers with a temporary escape from their worries about soaring energy prices and foreclosures, we should be organizing to fight back against the bleak future of fascism that the film promotes as inevitable. It is true that we are living in a "Dark Night," but by organizing against the bosses’ fascist attacks with PLP’s communist politics, we can have a bright future to look forward to.

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CHALLENGE, July 30, 2008

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JOIN THE FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM:
BOSSES’ PROFITS VS. WORKERS’ LIVES

From rising gas prices to foreclosures, lower wages and benefits, workers know things are getting worse. Will voting for Obama help? Is communist revolution really the viable alternative? These questions pose a tremendous challenge and opportunity for the PLP. Industrial workers and soldiers are at the center of the contradiction that all workers face: between the bosses’ need to squeeze maximum profits out of workers, while at the same time winning them to patriotic sacrifice for the bosses’ nation, versus the workers’ need to survive. It comes down to their profits or our lives.

An urgent battle is taking place for the allegiance of the working class. Through the election campaign the bosses are trying to mobilize workers’ loyalty to U.S. imperialism. The PLP Summer Projects are struggling to win workers to act in their own class interests against the racist, sexist exploiters, and to join the fight for the liberation of our whole class. The stakes are high.

The more war there is, the more crucial manufacturing workers become, because they’re the ones running the machines, building the parts and assembling the weapons. An army officer recently went to an aerospace shop to tell the managers that the parts being made were being shipped directly to Iraq and were essential to the success of the U.S. war effort. He said that if the managers couldn’t get the workers to produce the parts faster, the army would send someone to guarantee it!

This shows industrial workers’ central role in the war effort. These workers barely earn the minimum wage. Some have gladly taken communist leaflets and CHALLENGE. In the past, when faced with growing war and exploitation, Russian and Chinese workers, with communist leadership, took up the fight against their oppressors and led the fight for revolution and workers’ rule. Workers here today have great potential to join the fight for workers’ power.

Southern California has nearly one million manufacturing workers — many working for subcontractors in the defense industry. The Southeast forms the backbone of the new auto workforce and the soon-to-be-built “southern aerospace” corridor. Most of these jobs are in non-union, low-wage factories run by subcontractors. Like previous industrial areas, the basis of these subcontractors is the super-exploitation of immigrant and black workers. Conditions in these factories are unsafe — speed-up and machines that don’t have the needed safety guards make cut fingers and back injuries common. Workers get little or no health care. The bosses are relying on the most exploited workers to produce their weapons and fight their wars.

Due to the decline of the U.S. relative to its competitors in the world (see Editorial p. 2) there’s mounting evidence of growing fascism — from unemployment, police terror and immigration raids to unsafe racist and sexist conditions and speed-up in factories. The U.S. rulers are re-organizing their vital industrial sector on the backs of immigrant, black and other low-paid workers to be prepared for current and larger-scale military conflicts. These workers can become the backbone of a movement to take on the bosses’ attacks and lead the fight to turn the bosses’ imperialist wars into revolutionary class war.

The bosses’ crisis is increasing, and with it the inability of this system to provide workers with even the most basic necessities. Just this week the federal government rescued another bank, Indymac, and pledged billions to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest holders of mortgages in the nation. No boss — not Obama, McCain or local politicians like L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa represents our interests. The only way to secure our interests is to forge unity and confidence among the workers with the clear goal of building a mass revolutionary communist party that can survive and grow under all conditions. Workers forced to work 9- to 12-hour days for low wages in unsafe conditions, while their families are harassed by the immigration police and the cops, are not in the hip pocket of the rulers. In fact, these workers will be won, over time, to the revolutionary alternative of fighting to build a movement that can take on the entire profit system.

Fight for Communism

Communists are committed to building strong ties with our fellow workers and organizing class and ideological struggle. We participate in day-to-day discussions and struggles to build unity and confidence among the workers for the long-term fight for communist revolution. The basis of the capitalist system is production for maximum profit. Through the bosses’ control of the means of production, they exploit workers and super-exploit black, Latino and women workers. They also exploit markets and resources.

Political discussions about these principles, combined with solid friendships and class struggle, can lead to more workers joining the Progressive Labor Party as it becomes clearer that capitalism only has more misery to offer workers. In its place we need a communist society where workers will control and organize production, not to make profits for a boss but to meet the needs of the international working class.

Through a fighting communist leadership committed to the working class, workers can come to see that we can rely on our class. We must expand CHALLENGE’s readership among industrial workers, soldiers and students. We must win the allegiance of our class to fight for its own futurenot for U.S. imperialism.

Looming Global War Spawns Rotting Economy

As the U.S. economy brings workers new miseries daily, Obama and McCain are proposing divergent, but equally unworkable pie-in-the sky “solutions.” Skyrocketing prices, job destruction and credit crises result inescapably from capitalism itself and its profit drive (which neither candidate attacks). They are worsened by the U.S.’s sharpening rivalry with imperialist and capitalist rivals.

For example, the free-for-all over control of Mid-East oil among the U.S., China, Russian-backed Iran, India, al Qaeda and the Taliban drives gas costs sky high. [See CHALLENGE, 7/16] Furthermore, to stay top dog, U.S. rulers must spend a large chunk of their capital on making war, which wastes funds that could otherwise go to rebuilding factories and infrastructure.

CURRENT DOWNTURN DATES TO U.S. VIETNAM GENOCIDE

The current wave of manufacturing layoffs reflects a permanent war-caused trend going back to the Vietnam era. At that time, European and Japanese manufacturers — having had their factories destroyed in World War II — invested heavily in the most modern technology, while U.S. bosses stood pat, having to pour huge sums into their imperialist war in Vietnam. Thus, these U.S. rivals leaped ahead in market share.

Meanwhile, U.S. workers’ real income then began an uninterrupted downslide, with rampant inflation sapping their purchasing power. Since Vietnam, with the U.S. unable to gain a military foothold on the Asian mainland, Chinese manufacturers have increasingly dominated the labor market there and undercut U.S. firms with rock-bottom wages.

Obama and McCain tout various schemes to boost industry, finance and employment, but a beleaguered imperialist power like today’s U.S. must ultimately “solve” its economic woes through world war. It will someday have to unleash its full military might and move in the direction of destroying much of its rivals’ productive capacity and labor force and then try to seize what’s left. This would require occupying vast conquered territories to regain markets and sources of raw materials, which it is attempting to do now, with very limited success, on a local scale in Iraq.

Communist leader V. I. Lenin detailed this unrelenting process in his 1917 “Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism”: “Imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists.”

In the 20th century’s two world wars, competing imperialists, seeking to win or maintain world dominance, managed to mobilize entire populations to kill hundreds of millions all over the world.

GOOSE-STEPPING McCAIN STILL DOESN’T ‘GET’ MOBILIZATION

McCain, though an ardent militarist, appears unable to grasp the economic aspects of the rulers’ approaching war needs. He would continue Bush’s tax-cuts-for-the-rich, enabling them to pocket the billions that the main section of the ruling class knows are necessary to preserve the long-range interests of their system.

Establishment mouthpiece, The New York Times (7/12), chastised McCain’s shortsightedness, “Following in those footsteps does not, however, make a good case for his candidacy. Americans face hardship in the years to come. The tanking of the economy, coming on top of years of unmet needs — for health care, infrastructure repair and alternative energy [not to mention rebuilding the military — Ed.] will require the next president to spend more and to raise taxes to support that spending.” So the Times wants all of us to “pull our weight.”

McCain would reverse the job slide with tax breaks for “entrepreneurs...at the heart of American innovation, growth and prosperity. They create the ultimate job security –– a new, better opportunity if your current job goes away.” (McCain website) In other words, “open up a small business.” Such fairy-tale promises will never provide a decent income for millions of jobless auto, aerospace, airline and steel workers, nor reduce the racist double unemployment rate for black and Latino workers. (GM has gone from the world’s top automaker to the verge of bankruptcy, shedding tens of thousands of jobs from Detroit to Oshawa, Ontario to Toluca, Mexico.)

LIBERAL OBAMA’S ‘HIGH-WAGE’ MILITARISTIC REBUILDING LACKS CASH

Obama better understands the rulers’ agenda and hopes his own version of the New Deal will mimic Roosevelt’s success in rallying a Depression-ridden nation for World War II. Obama’s campaign calls for jacking up taxes on corporations and the rich to fund “five million new jobs” at good wages in a centralized technology and infrastructure rebuilding effort. But U.S. bosses, beset by foreign competition, simply don’t have the cash to willingly forgo short-term profits for such a program. Unlike Roosevelt, who entered office when federal outlays, including military, made up only 7% of U.S. gross domestic product, the next president will inherit a state apparatus that eats up more than 20%.

A more likely scenario for “economic recovery” than Obama’s phony high-wage, voluntary-mobilization proposal involves restoring the draft and forcing workers into poorly-paid industries. Obama buried his call for mandatory national service, reaching into high schools, in a July 4 press release: “Obama will make it a presidential imperative to restore...public service to the agenda of today’s youth, whether it be serving their local communities...as teachers or first responders, or serving in the military and reserve forces or diplomatic corps that keep our nation free and safe.” (Obama website)

Soon after winning nomination, Obama picked Jason Furman, a champion of anti-union Wal-Mart as his top economic advisor. Furman is a protégé of Robert Rubin, CEO of Rockefeller’s Citibank and was Clinton’s Treasury-Secretary who led the racist dismantling of welfare.

The rulers have their work cut out for them in this period of economic decline and intensifying war. So do we. More than 400,000 U.S. workers have lost their jobs since December. Many of those still employed are spending one-fifth of their pay just on gas. But organized working-class fight-back is at a low level. PLP must expose the connection between these economic assaults and the rulers’ broader war agenda, initiate class struggle and build a party that can ultimately overthrow their deadly profit system.

PLP’s Ideas Spread at International Youth Conference

ATHENS, GREECE, July11-13 –– Seven young PLP comrades from New York City are attending Resistance 2008, a youth conference here. We are bringing our line of communist revolution to establish the dictatorship of the working class— where workers, through their revolutionary mass party, lead society—to a thousand young workers from all over Europe who are attending the Conference.

PLP’ers are the most vocal group here and so far PL’s literature has been well-received. These young comrades met some young workers who are already translating our literature into Greek. They’ve invited us to visit them on the job and talk to their fellow workers. On Sunday afternoon the group spoke at the Conference and their speeches were applauded, especially PL’s ideas on the need to fight nationalism and destroy racism and sexism. A complete report next issue.

Seattle Summer Project GI’s, Boeing Workers Debate Communist Politics

SEATTLE, WA, July 13 — “Man, this leaflet is an eye-opener,” exclaimed a Boeing machinist after reading the PLP’s flyer. “It’s a reality check.”

Two thousand of those leaflets entitled, “Boeing’s Imperialist Dogfight Sets Stage For Boeing Contract Fight” based on the CHALLENGE editorial were distributed by young volunteers at three Boeing plants during the first week of the Seattle Summer Project. Workers grabbed 900 CHALLENGES. Troops at nearby Ft. Lewis took an additional 100 plus 200 “GI Notes,” the Party’s soldier’s newsletter, with a supplement by an Iraq veteran (see page 4). Communist politics were debated in the factories and the barracks throughout the week.

The implications of this “reality check” took shape when a multi-racial group of young volunteers was invited to dinner with two older white Boeing workers in mid-week. One veteran machinist, a friend of the Party, willingly acknowledged the increased oppression, racism and sexism brought on by the sharpening imperialist dogfight. He feared, however, that we didn’t have the “fortitude” to answer these attacks that workers had in the 1930s and ’40s. We then examined what led to that fortitude, how did we lose it and how can we get it back. We had been trying to answer this question all week.

Boeing Union Workers Chime In

A toolmaker made a point of how much better was our leaflet’s slogan — “This Time, This Contract: We Must Fight For Our Class, The Working Class” — than the union’s “It’s Our Time, This Time.” Class-consciousness is a must he said. Narrow trade unionism won’t work when the capitalists outsource work to low-wage, non-union subcontractors. Long discussions followed about how — and if it was possible — to build international unity between, black, Latin and white workers.

The toolmaker didn’t just talk. He helped circulate throughout the plant an open letter written by Boeing machinists for workers to sign that answered the bosses’ claim that our wages were “above the market rate.” It explained how the bosses used racist super-exploitation to lower the “market rate” for all workers and called for international solidarity.

Another machine operator commented how pleased he was that the young volunteers visited him. He hoped they felt welcome. He did, however, note they talked a lot about the plight of workers, but not too much about the evils of capitalism and the virtues of communism.

The vision of communism was one of the reasons workers in the 1930s had fortitude. They saw the Soviet Union as a beacon. Unfortunately, the old communist movement had the strategy of building socialism, which maintained the capitalist wage system. They thought socialism would be a halfway house to communism. Just the opposite happened. Socialism, with all its concessions to capitalism, eventually undermined the revolution, leading back to capitalism. This demoralized the left and, in good part, led us to lose that fortitude.

Non-Union Subcontractor Workers Say Build A Life Around Your Co-Workers

We continued this discussion in study groups (see page 4) and meetings with young industrial workers, mostly non-union, who came here from around the country. These newer, young comrades set themselves the long, hard task of rebuilding this communist vision among their co-workers. The first job was to increase their CHALLENGE sales and networks. But how do we answer our friend’s fears and doubts?

An auto subcontractor worker related his difficulty in getting a religious CHALLENGE reader to Party events. He realized that to win his friend to act on CHALLENGE’S ideas he would have to reciprocate. So he read a little of the Bible and with his wife went to their friend’s baby shower. His friend hasn’t joined the Party yet, but she did say that our comrade was a model she wanted her children to emulate.

A new recruit from a California aerospace subcontractor told an amusing story at a BBQ about how she came around. Her friend, who had read a CHALLENGE, invited her to a social event. “These people are communists,” our new recruit told her friend. “Oh, no,” her friend assured her. Then they attended another meeting where revolution was openly discussed. “You see, I told you so!” she said to her friend. Her friend got scared, but stuck around, joined and now sells CHALLENGE in a key plant. So it pays to know not only your co-worker, but their friends and family too!

Other stories described how these new comrades were trying to center their lives around those of their co-workers. We vowed to double and triple our efforts. It is these kinds of personal/political relationships that will expand the limits of class struggle and revolutionary potential. The first Boeing worker we ever met, now 82, said he thought this strategy was “an excellent idea.”

Rally vs. Lynching in Prince George’s County Jail

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD., July 4 — Today 30 residents of this Washington, D.C. suburb rallied under the leadership of the People’s Coalition for Police Accountability at the jail where Ronnie White, a 19-year-old African American youth, was strangled to death in his cell by either a cop or a prison guard. White was accused of killing a police officer by running him over with a car during an arrest. Apparently some cops and/or guards decided to be cop, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner!

Dorothy Elliott, whose son was murdered by County cops over a decade ago, decried the murder and called for justice. A second speaker linked this murder to others by County police as well as to the killing and torture by the U.S. government at Abu Ghraib. A third speaker charged that this murder was a lynching, which showed the need to unite working people and students in a mass movement to fight racism. The speaker linked the present struggle to the fight against slavery by reading part of the famous July 4, 1852 speech of Frederick Douglass (see box).

The rally had three demands: suspend all guards who had access to White’s cell until the murderers are caught; install video cameras on all isolation cells; and establish full and timely communication with the public about the investigation. These demands, even if met, cannot solve the problem of police terror against the working class.

The state (the government) has demonstrated its determination to use racist police brutality and now lynchings to terrorize workers, deepen racism and maintain its power at all costs, both at home and abroad. No reform of capitalism will change that basic need of the bosses’ state.

That’s why PLP’ers, deeply involved in this struggle, are building a revolutionary Party to destroy the bosses’ state and replace it with a workers’ state that will have no interest in promoting racism and terrorism against the working class. The latter will eliminate the bosses and their profit system, the source of racism which divides our class and drags down the lives of all workers.

Abolitionist’s 1852 Independence Day Remarks By Frederick Douglass
What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

[To defeat slavery] . . . it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Strikers Fight U. of Cal’s Poverty Wages

LOS ANGELES, July 14 — Over 8,500 service workers at the state-wide University of California (UC) Medical System struck today, supported by many of the 11,500 university healthcare workers also represented by AFSCME Local 3299. Their wages are so low that 96% are financially eligible for some kind of public assistance!

One worker on the picket line told us, “We’re striking for dignity. Without us [the workers], the empire wouldn’t exist. We’re the cement that the empire is based on.”

He and many other workers eagerly took a PLP leaflet and CHALLENGES and gave them to their friends. He said he liked communism and that real communism was different from the socialism of the past. We agreed and said workers could run society without wages — to produce and share what we need. He and his friends asked that CHALLENGE write about their struggle.

These workers struck after 11 months of negotiations in which the UC bosses refused to grant any real wage increase. While food and gas prices are skyrocketing, their latest “offer” would raise the starting minimum hourly wage from $9.67 to $11.50, in a three-year contract but would not increase wages for workers making more than the new minimum.

The strikers and those honoring the picket lines are Latino, black, Asian and white. The marjority are Latino immigrants facing poverty wages and fighting back against this attack on our class.

The UC bosses are trying to break the strike with an injunction. We advised the workers not to rely on the bosses’ legal system but rather to build unity to defy any injunction.

We are calling on workers and students to come to the picket lines and build support for the walkout. However, we’re also raising the need with these angry strikers for the long-term struggle for communism and workers’ rule. We intend to continue joining the picket lines and to spread the defiant attitude of these strikers to other workers being attacked by the same bosses’ crisis.

Study and Practice Forge A School for Communism

SEATTLE, WA, July 10 –– Throughout the 2008 Summer Project here, we had intense struggles in study groups about the Party’s ideas on “race,” the military and industrial work, and dialectics. This was my first summer project. I was very excited about immersing myself in such schools for communism and in selling CHALLENGE. Some comrades were veterans and lifelong fighters against racism and imperialism, while some were very new to the Party and for the first time met with Party members outside their local collective. We came from across the U.S., united in our fight for a PLP-led working-class struggle against imperialism and capitalism.

Military Work Study Group

Led by a comrade who is an Iraq war veteran and current reservist, we engaged in role-playing exercises of possible scenarios we would encounter while leafleting on the Ft. Lewis base. Everyone had some anxiety about this. We discussed topics to be highlighted in discussions with soldiers: their role in ending the war; the history of soldier resistance in Seattle during the Vietnam Era; and their own anger at U.S. imperialism’s drive for profits at the cost of international working-class lives. The veteran said we should be careful in raising perceived accusations of soldiers being murderers and active supporters of imperialism by their participation in the war. We distinguished between being “anti-war” and being for class war against the bosses. (See article below on selling CHALLENGE to GI’s.)

The study group successfully emphasized the importance of continuing and expanding involvement with our working-class brothers and sisters in the military. Rebelling against the brass and uniting with the international working class is a big step towards communist revolution.

Industrial Work Study Group

Industrial work was the other focus of the Summer Project. We leafleted the Boeing plant several times and visited some current workers and retirees who had a good relationship with Party members working in the plant. (See page 3) We stressed how invaluable it was to win industrial workers — who make the bosses’ weapons of war — to building PLP and fighting for a communist revolution. Many workers are painfully aware of the exploitation they face on a daily basis under capitalism. Many know that the union hacks are in bed with the bosses, have sold them out and will again to save their own skin. They’re aware of the bosses’ insatiable pursuit of profit and that they’re only cogs in the machine, disposable and replaceable at the whim of the capitalists.

We must increase PLP’s presence in factories. As a veteran Boeing worker lamented, much of the solidarity the working class had in the 1930s and ’40s — like swift, militant reaction to scabbing, and allegiance to each other — is sorely missing from the ranks of younger workers who have a more individualistic attitude. We need to lead these workers in class struggle, consistently distribute CHALLENGE and form study groups in winning these workers to join the Party. –– A Project Participant

(Next issue: Study groups on Racism, Immigration and Class, and Dialectics.)

Soldiers Welcome PLP’s Politics

As a PLP Seattle Summer Project volunteer approached a soldier in uniform, the soldier quickly asked, “Are you anti-war?” “No I’m not anti war,” responded the volunteer, “I’m pro-war, I’m for class war, and I’m not a pacifist. I’m for a war to overthrow capitalism”. These remarks threw the soldier off guard and he asked, “What do you mean by “class”? This started an extended conversation and at the end the soldier took all the literature the volunteer handed to him. Finally the soldier asked, “What do you want me to do?” “We want you to read and discuss these ideas with your buddies”.

This and many other positive conversations occurred when 15 or so PLP volunteers descended on the military town near Fort Lewis where hundreds of soldiers from the base go for lunch. As they approached soldiers, the volunteers were armed with G.I Notes, the military newsletter of the PLP, “Soldiers Unite Against Imperialist War,” a leaflet written by an Iraqi veteran participating in the Summer Project, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, and “Red-Led GIs Blast Racist Brass,” a pamphlet documenting soldiers rebelling during the Vietnam era. Over 100 G.I.s received one of these pieces of literature and at times all four items.

Although most soldiers welcomed us, some were clearly threatened by our ideas and wondered how receptive soldiers could be to PLP literature. At the local Taco Bell, the GIs streaming in for lunch were accepting our literature. All of a sudden the restaurant’s manager came out to the parking lot after a sergeant complained about the literature distribution. Volunteers continued with the distribution and again the manager came out to ask them to leave. At this point, the same sergeant came out and yelled, “Hey, stop doing that” to the volunteers. One of the volunteers yelled back “Hey, is this freedom of speech”? The sergeant had no response, quickly got in his truck, slammed his door and left. “Listen I know that guy over there does not want you to read this but here is G.I. Notes, written by soldiers for soldiers.” “Don’t worry about it, give it here,” said a young G.I. walking across the parking lot who heard the yelling.

Volunteers also went door to door in the housing around the base. “I’m not in the military but my husband is,” said a young woman as she came to the door. She called for her husband to join her. A long time was spent with this couple who listened to us describe the nature of imperialist war. Even though the soldier did not say much he was listening intently and in the end he took all of the literature. A different conversation led another volunteer into saying to a different soldier “in some cases it will become necessary to frag some officers, every single soldier knows of a sergeant they want to frag.” The soldier nodded in agreement. Another soldier told us, “I am going to photocopy this stuff.”

It was an inspiring day for the volunteers who engaged in important conversations with so many soldiers about revolutionary ideas. Continuing these visits is a significant part of the plan for this Summer Project since we recognize that soldiers are indispensible for the revolution.

Test Boycott Teaches Real Lesson

(In part 1, a PL teacher learned that a new standardized test was being tried out in his school which would allow administration to further oppress students and track them and their teachers. After discussions with CHALLENGE-reading staff and students, young members and friends of the Party planned to boycott the test.)

NEW YORK, NY –– On the day of the test the students said that they were not going to take it, even though their PL teacher was forced to administer it to keep his job. The students understood this contradiction and although they respected their teacher they also recognized the test was against their interests.  

The speech they were expected to take notes on and write about in the test was an apology for the rise in oil prices and blamed the working class and winter for the rise in heating oil prices. Many students disrupted the speech, wrote notes about oil and imperialism on their answer sheets and exclaimed that this test was trying to justify the price of oil and shift blame away from the oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

A student then said, “I’ve had enough. Let’s go!”  After a moment of silence half the class rose up and followed her. When told to return to their desks, the students raised their fists, shouting “Hell no!  We won’t go!”  The security guard shrugged his shoulders and walked off. The PL teacher returned to his room. 

During the PL teacher’s prep period, several student comrades discussed politics and the test. They decided to disrupt the test. One had a class with five other CHALLENGE readers. She was charged with the more militant act of defiance. The other was in a less supportive situation. She chose to use a silent resistance against the test by refusing to take it. This showed PL’s ability to adapt tactics based upon available forces, and maintain struggle and advance under fire.

One of the members described how her 5th-grade cousin had led a walk-out against the test in her elementary school. Her cousin was sent home from school and her mother had told her that she was proud of her for standing up for what she believed in. The brave act of a 5th-grader inspired her cousin to provide militant communist leadership against the test.

Two other teachers resisted the test. One has met with PLP, reads and distributes CHALLENGE and is a close friend of the PL teacher. The other acted out of conscience after a conversation with the PL teacher about the necessity for resistance. He told all of his students that they could take the test as homework, invalidating the test.

The student PL’er loudly declared that the test would be used for a future draft because students who fail out of school have less options and many join the military (more to come in part 3), and that resistance was necessary. When the teacher tried to silence her in front of the supervisor, another five students stood up and declared that they would not take the test.  That teacher became quite angry and took the political attack personally. 

It turned out that a fourth English teacher, acting independently, told his students the test was garbage. His classes also refused to take the test. All in all, over half a dozen classes in two grades refused to take the test, over half of which occurred through direct PL leadership.

The testing coordinator told the PL teacher not to worry because the test was a joke and supported the struggle as well!

Acts such as this illustrate that every little thing we do counts as patient, slow work can pave the way to direct resistance.  These acts alone will not stop capitalism, let alone the “test craze,” but they do help teach students how to fight, deepen the commitment of PL members and help spread CHALLENGE. This struggle won 10 new CHALLENGE readers. The future for revolution looks bright –– bright red!

Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca Workers’ Mass March

OAXACA, MEXICO — Thousands marched in Oaxaca City on June 14 during the second anniversary of the failed attempt by fascist governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, local authorities and the cops to bust the 2006 teachers’ strike. The strike led to the mass occupation of Oaxaca for several weeks by teachers and other workers and students. The march today included teachers from Section 22 of the SNTE (National Teachers’ Union), farmworkers, members of neighborhood associations, students and activists in APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca).

This march came at the end of over 27 days of intense activities to pressure Elba Esther Gordillo Morales, the government agent who runs the national leadership of the SNTE, to meet many section 22 demands. Because of these actions to pressure the government, the movement advocated recalling the leadership of Section 22 and to get compensation through a trust of 5 million pesos (US$ 500,000) for the immediate family members of the 14 activists of APPO who were assassinated in the social-political conflict, among them U.S. Indy media cameraman Bradley Roland Will. The government rejected demands to free four APPO members and return control of the schools to the original strikers.

During the march, members of PLP passed out 4,000 leaflets denouncing the reforms to the Social Security Law (ISSSTE) which reduce social security and weaken the right to a pension upon retirement, sickness and other services. We attacked the great robbery where the banks and other financial institutions will consume the workers’ savings, the food crisis which will affect the farm workers and the whole population of the poor and also the privatization of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company, the electricity company) etc. which will generate greater poverty for the working class and enormous wealth for the capitalist class.

We also put up posters on the walls which applauded the victory of the teachers against the bosses’ fascist police on June 14, 2006 and called for the fight for communism (see poster attached). Our leaflets were well-received, encouraging us to continue our work to expand the fight for communism and invite activists of these movements to join the Progressive Labor Party to achieve this vital goal.

From the Streets to the Houses — The Ideological Struggle

That night we saw and discussed the PLP movie “Road to Revolution.” The discussions afterward on how maintaining the wage system, along with other concessions to capitalist ideas, caused the historical failure of socialism encouraged many to decide to work closer with our organization which fights directly for communism. We will continue our work inside APPO to build the Party and the international revolutionary communist movement.

But we also understand that APPO is a reformist movement with opportunist, fake leftist leaders from groups and organizations like the Communist Party of Mexico, Marxist Leninist and its branch, the Popular Revolutionary Front. Their main leader, Zenén Bravo, joined the leadership of APPO in the movement of 2006, and negotiated to become a delegate with the bourgeois party Convergence and with the assassin Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. Now cynically, and without caring that the people have rejected him, he has dubbed himself “representative deputy of APPO in the Congress, defender of the people and firm fighter for socialism.”

We concluded that our newspaper CHALLENGE plays an important role helping workers understand that while the struggles over the reform demands of Section 22 help unite workers and advance our struggle, only the fight for communism holds the promise of freeing our class from capitalist economic and political dictatorship. CHALLENGE must be our indispensable and permanent tool.

Pentagon Behind Colombian ‘Rescue’ Circus

BOGOTA, July 13 — The Colombian army’s “rescue” of Ingrid Betancourt, the former Presidential candidate, along with three U.S. mercenaries working as contractors for the Pentagon, and several Colombian soldiers held prisoner by the FARC was praised by the bosses’ media as “perfect.” (The FARC is the largest and oldest guerrilla group here and in Latin America.)

But more and more reports have revealed what really happened, including a $20 million payoff to free the hostages. A FARC communiqué accused the two guerrilla leaders guarding the hostages of selling out to the government to free their prisoners (El Tiempo, Bogotá, 7/11). The whole episode looks increasingly like a Jessica Lynch-type media-Hollywood invention. (Lynch’s “heroic rescue” from her Iraqi captors turned out to be a complete Pentagon fabrication.)

While initial reports said it was a strictly Colombian operation, the NY Times (7/13) revealed that, “The U.S. played [an] elaborate role...including the deployment of more than 900 American military personnel...earlier this year...to locate the hostages.” This also included “Hundreds of American support personnel...on the ground in Colombia,...a frenzied intelligence-gathering operation located in the U.S. Embassy here....intercepts of the rebel group’s radio systems, human intelligence, satellite imaging” and piloted surveillance aircraft. U.S. “military and intelligence personnel [were] alongside Colombian officials planning the operation” — all part of the $600 million per year “aid” U.S. rulers give to Colombia.

Mrs. Betancourt, the three Pentagon mercenaries and the Colombian soldiers looked pretty healthy and in good shape after these many years of captivity in the jungle. Some time ago, the media said Mrs. Betancourt was on the verge of death because of mistreatment. Mrs. Betancourt herself, supposedly a “humanitarian” liberal, went on to embrace the two death-squad heads here: President Uribe and General Montayano (army chief), and racist anti-working class Presidents Sarkozy and Bush in France.

Compare this treatment Betancourt and the others got to the thousands of workers and youth brutally killed by the Colombian army and its paramilitary death-squad thugs. Or to the thousands held captive and tortured by the CIA and the Pentagon in Gitmo and other “secret jails” worldwide.

While the evil Empire (the U.S. bosses and their allies) is striking back in South America, the so-called “Bolivarian socialist” movement led by Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales is compromising more and more with the forces led by U.S. imperialism. Chávez has even attacked the movement in Venezuela for protesting today’s visit here of Colombia President Uribe.

Chávez has called on the FARC to give up its weapons because its guerrilla war gives U.S. imperialism “an excuse” to act in a pro-war manner. Even Fidel Castro has criticized the FARC, telling it to free all the war prisoners it holds. FARC is being pressured to join the “political” struggle, meaning become an electoral party. But when it tried that a decade or so ago, forming the Patriotic Union and participating in the electoral process, the Army and the death squads murdered thousands of its supporters.

Chávez has toned down his rhetoric, even asking Venezuelan capitalists opposed to his “Bolivarian socialism” to join with his government to increase production. Chávez wants to look “moderate” to gain a better deal from an Obama-led White House. After all, Chávez, despite all his anti-imperialist rhetoric, has not stopped selling oil to the U.S. while seeking deals with other imperialists like China, India and Russia.

Republican candidate McCain was actually in Colombia during the “rescue” operation, probably tipped off beforehand, and tried to use it to score political points.

While Chávez and Fidel opportunistically criticize the FARC, FARC’s politics are not that great either. Long ago FARC gave up any claim to Marxism. Its aim is to make a deal with a section of the Colombian bourgeoisie.

Meanwhile, Colombia’s working class and its allies lack any real revolutionary alternative. The liberal-social democratic “Democratic Pole” opposition to Uribe is just another face of capitalism. The small PLP group here has a hard and long task ahead: to build the kind of leadership workers need to free themselves from this hellhole. That means fighting for our communist politics harder than ever.

General Strikers Battle Peru’s Cops in Anti-Gov’t Protests

LIMA, PERU July 12 — Militant marches and violent protests erupted during and after a July 9th general strike opposing the economic and political policies of President Alán García, a loyal ally of U.S. imperialism in the region.

Today in Pataz province, 300 miles north of Lima, hundreds of cops protecting the mines shot at miners, on strike since June 30, killing one and injuring five.

In the Amazon city of Puerto Maldonado, angry indigenous people burnt government buildings and hurled stones and arrows at 200 cops sent from Lima to attack them after government officials refused to meet with them.

The miners have been striking the Marsa gold mine company, owned by Peruvian capitalists. They’re demanding bonus payments for 2007 from Marsa’s contractors, given that the high world market price of gold has netted the bosses huge profits.

While the economy is growing 9% annually, benefiting mainly local and imperialist bosses, over 50% of the population still lives below the poverty line. Life is much harder for most city workers, as higher prices decrease their buying power on meager wages. Strikers are also opposing the government’s heavy repression against a growing number of nation-wide protests.

While the strike in Lima was not as successful as elsewhere, still 20,000 marched, including construction workers, teachers and students. The strike made Wednesday, July 9, resemble a Sunday in this huge city.

In Puerto Maldonado, the local population opposes the plans to privatize extensive chunks of land in the area which would benefit local and international companies. This is part of Garcia’s scheme to sign a Free Trade deal with Washington.

In Cuzco, over 20,000 workers and students marched, not only opposing the government’s pro-business economic policies but also demanding departure of a U.S. military contingent in the area. The Pentagon is eyeing Peru as a possible replacement for the air base it now operates in Mantas, Ecuador, given that the government there won’t renew the base’s lease when it expires next year.

But while workers and youth are very angry, their mis-leadership — the CGTP (Labor Federation of Peruvian Workers) and SUTEP (national teachers’ union) which helped lead the strike — is controlled by fake leftists. Some of them are promoting Ollanta Humala, a nationalist-populist politician and former military officer, as the alternative to García. These same fake leftists and union leaders initially backed Fujimori and then Alejadro Toledo as “lesser-evil” politicians, both of whom turned out to be anti-working class agents of U.S. imperialism.

The key ingredient lacking in Peru’s working class, as in the rest of the world, is a revolutionary communist leadership. The aim of revolutionary-minded workers is to convert these mass struggles into schools for communism and build that kind of leadership. It won’t be an easy task, but it’s the only way forward for workers and their allies.

LETTERS

Communist Paper Acts to Unify A Party

Last week seven LA students and a teacher spent an evening meeting with workers and their families to help prepare for the Summer Project.

Our team of three spent a very enjoyable hour visiting the family of a worker who is a long-time CHALLENGE reader. Many of the family members have joined us for May Day for over ten years. We were there mainly to talk to the young-adult son about joining the Summer Project. At first he was reluctant because he works days. But then we started talking about CHALLENGE and he got more interested. He said that he often reads the paper and feels that he’s already working toward the same goals. When we suggested that it was good to be part of a collective, he said that he talks politics with a circle of friends who share similar views. So we told him a little about Lenin and how he saw the communist newspaper as a way of pulling isolated revolutionary circles into a unified party that would eventually be able to lead a revolution. This idea was new to him and he thought it made sense. He took extra papers to show his friends, and agreed to talk with them about meeting with Summer Project volunteers. He also agreed to try to help find more places for volunteers to stay.

This conversation never really got around to whatever disagreements family members have with the Party. The next time we meet with them, or with the son’s friends, we’ll try to draw these out. But our visit showed, in a small but exciting way, the potential of the Summer Project to develop more young-adult leaders for the working-class and it’s Progressive Labor Party.

Project Volunteer

Nationalism, Racism Splits Caribbean Workers

Racism and capitalism’s worldwide crisis affect every corner of the world. The plan by the 15 rulers of CARICOM — the English-speaking Caribbean nations community — to build a single regional economy involving the free movement of skills, labor, goods and services, is now in danger of not meeting its 2015 deadline. For example, leaders agreed last year to grant an automatic six-month stay to nationals entering a member country, provided there are no security concerns. But only a handful of countries have bothered to comply with their own rule.

The Miami Herald (7/12) reported that earlier this year, Guyana requested an investigation after immigration officers in oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago refused to allow 15 Guyanese to enter the twin-island nation. In the Bahamas, where tensions against Haitian migrants have constantly run high, government officials decided against joining the free-movement arrangement, citing a concern that Haitians will “flood the archipelago” seeking to improve their lives.

The situation has reached such ridiculous levels that in Barbados, female immigration officials have been accused of turning back Guyanese women out of concern that they will “lure away” the men on the island.

We hear the usual racist anti-immigrant slanders rampant in the U.S. and Europe, like blaming Guyanese and Jamaicans for a spike in crime “caused by” Guyanese and Jamaicans in some of the better-off islands. “They blast ‘foreigners’ flooding their schools and hospitals.” (Miami Herald).

Again, racism — born with capitalism — is an international attack against all workers, exacerbated nowadays by the climate of endless wars and capitalism’s crises. “Pan-Caribbean” unity cannot be achieved under capitalism.

A Caribbean comrade

Media Used Floods to Fill
Agribusiness Pockets

The devastation and human suffering caused by the flooding of the Mississippi River was accurately described in the article, “Mid-West Floods: Another Disaster Created by Capitalism” (CD, July 16). In addition to the neglect of the levees by the government described in the article, the story is an example of how cynically the bosses manipulate the suffering of workers to advance their own interests.

While the country was watching 24-hour news coverage of crops destroyed and fields flooded along the Mississippi, Congress was finally pushing through a $307 billion Farm Bill that it has been trying to pass since May. Congress is made up of politicians who represent different groups of capitalists. They sometimes argue over how to spend taxpayers’ money. This Farm Bill stirred up one such conflict. So it was stalled. Then the floods began.

It looked like Congress was responding to the plight of the small farmer. That’s exactly how it was meant to look!In fact, there are very few small farms left in this country. The main “farmers” in the U.S. are giant agribusiness corporations like Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, which made $44 billion in 2007. The Farm “aid” is nothing but corporate welfare. Meanwhile, not one town in Iowa along the path of the flooding has a population over 1,000 people. These are very small communities. Yes, there were suffering workers but the Farm Bill will do nothing for them while the media exploitation of their images assured it’s passage.

This maneuver particularly helped Senator Obama who represents the state of Illinois and is closely tied to big agribusiness. He was able to make his vote appear to be part of his concern for suffering Americans while doing his buddies at Archer Daniels Midland a big favor. Part of the bill provides $10 billion to subsidize “biofuels” which means using corn to make ethanol rather than to feed people. Switching from gasoline to biofuel is a major part of Obama’s energy program.

So once again, the media shows us the suffering that directs voter sentiment in their favor while ignoring coverage of suffering like the thousands of Iraqi civilians murdered by the ongoing U.S. imperialist war for oil.

Brooklyn Red

Rulers Want to Turn Our Minds to Mush

In the recent issue of CHALLENGE, there was a letter from a person who claimed that anti-intellectualism existed in California and stated that he\she wanted to join the PLP. I think that anti-intellectualism exists all across this country, and it exists for a reason. The ruling class wants our minds to turn to mush, and the pop culture works overtime to make sure this happens.

Recently, I read a newspaper article that pointed out that many school students did not know when the U.S. Civil War took place, and also pointed out that many people were ignorant about the history of this country. Certainly it is the duty of communists to work to enlighten the workers about the real history of U.S. capitalism. I think that the newspaper does a good job, and I especially like the recent debate in CHALLENGE about the U.S. Civil War and the class forces involved in this war. Keep up the good work.

Red Coal

U.S. Civil War Shows Profits
Drive Starvation

The article on the front page of the July 2 issue shows that there are diametrically opposed interests between gigantic agricultural businesses versus consumers, i.e., mainly the working class. The profits to be made in converting corn from food to fuel, in the face of climbing oil prices, lead many agricultural businesses to convert their food production into fuel production. This is causing food prices to skyrocket along with oil prices, and the working class world-wide is finding it more difficult not only to fuel our cars but to buy food. Starvation is resulting for many of the world’s workers and our families. The free market system, with the drive of profits for the few, leads directly to starvation for the many.

Two related historical events come to mind. First, the capitalists hypocritically blame the Soviet government for a famine that took place in the early 1930s and that killed, according to them, ten million Soviet citizens — a figure they exaggerate to fool the working class. [The July 2 article showed that ten million children die each year in the world from capitalism.] In the same breath they condemn the Soviets for their attempt to stem the results of the famine by expropriating the kulaks, the rich farmers, who were holding the working class for ransom by withholding food if their exorbitant prices weren’t met. The only way to feed the working class was to take away the land from the kulaks and guarantee adequate food production by and for the workers.

Second, the Southern slave-owning planters did the same thing during the U.S. Civil War from 1861-1865. A book reviewed in the June 4 issue of CHALLENGE, “A People’s History of the Civil War” by David Williams, shows how planters abandoned production of food for the families of Confederate soldiers, starving them out by replanting their land with higher profit-making crops, such as tobacco and cotton. This drove food prices out of sight for most working-class families. Ironically while slaves were fed the bare minimum necessary to keep them able to work these crops, working-class white Southerners and free black men and women suffered from starvation.

The slave-owners’ government forced working-class Southerners into the Confederate army and wouldn’t let them resign, but planter-class officers were free to leave any time they wished, and they left the army in droves. Huge numbers of enlisted Confederate soldiers also deserted. This desertion rate as against deeper commitment on the Union side was part of what eventually forced the Confederate government to surrender — a situation echoed 100 years later when troop rebellion was part of the U.S.’s forced exodus from Vietnam.

Indeed, this book is full of stories about how the class interests of the slave-owners (the 25% of the population of the South who began the war with their decision to secede from the Union in order to protect and spread slavery) clashed with the interests of all non-slave-owning Southerners (75%). There was tremendous opposition to the slavocracy from both slave and non-slave-owning Southerners, but the slave-owners controlled the state through their occupation of political offices and their control over generally fraudulent and violent elections.

We face a similar problem today with the rich agricultural business owners protected by the capitalist state against the interests of starving workers. Communism is the only system where the world’s workers can be defended against the twin capitalist atrocities of war and starvation.

Saguaro Rojo

Film Builds Wave of Anti-Communism

The much-publicized movie “Indiana Jones” premiered in San Salvador. We communist youth decided to see it.

We found the film painted a miserable caricature of the Soviets, lying that they did not know what they were doing and were insecure and idolized Americans. The main thing this movie does is make fun of the glorious Red Army.

In 1957 (the year when this film supposedly takes place), the Soviets did not send terrorists to the U.S., which they try to show in the movie. In fact, they launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, which inspired admiration worldwide.

We feel the goal of this film is to muddy the image of communists, and to continue creating a wave of anti-communism. Youth have another conception of what the USSR really was. We, the youth and adults of Progressive Labor Party denounce such decadent films that constitute the daily attacks capitalism launches anytime it can. Youth must work with their friends in the universities and schools to counter these attacks against our proletarian ideology, and let it be known that communism is the only salvation for the international working class.

Salvadoran comrade

Applying Historical Materialism to the
US Civil War (1861-1865)

Recent articles in CHALLENGE have given new information on the dynamics of the Civil War, which once and for all ended feudalism as a form of political economy. We must be careful, though, not to mechanically evaluate the political movements of the 1860s outside of their historical context.

Marx and Engels and the communist movement they represented at the time correctly saw the Civil War battle of the industrial bourgeoisie against the slave labor bourgeoisie as a progressive one. The Draft Riots were neither left wing nor progressive. These racist riots were in opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation and the movement of African Freedmen and women in New York for more freedom (see the movie “The Gangs of New York”). At the same time New York capitalists forced black and Irish workers to compete for the same low-paying jobs. The Draft Riots were an attempt at an anti-abolitionist counter-revolution, in which many racist Irish workers were involved in mass assaults on black people.

By 1864 the Union Army was being filled up with more and more “draftees,” now motivated in most instances, thanks to abolitionist organizing, in a fight for Union and black freedom. Motivated by an egalitarian ideal (even if it was in service to a very anti-egalitarian capitalist system) many workers carried out heroic, mass battles at Petersburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Savannah, Charleston, etc.

In a well written and well-reasoned essay on Lincoln, which appeared in an issue of “The Communist” magazine, his ruthless dedication to smashing the slavocracy is likened to Stalin’s resolve in crushing the White Counterrevolution. Relative to the slave labor capitalist system, the industrial wage labor capitalist system (with the finance capitalist in a subordinate role) was a progressive one. The struggle against the slavocracy had committed, mass support by thousands of black, white, brown, Asian and Native American workers, students, soldiers, men and women, who participated in the fight for what Engels called the democratic republic, symbolized in Lincoln’s call for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Armed with another 150 years of knowledge gained through class struggle, the working class can now advance beyond the “democratic republic” and set our goal to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat; a government of the workers, by the workers, and for the workers. Many of the ancient contradictions between bosses and workers will be eliminated by the destruction of capitalism in all its forms; reactionary, reformist, anti-feudal. The abolition of wage-slavery will lead to the egalitarian society that brave workers fought for in the Civil War. The information uncovered by our comrades about the Civil War is definitely helpful when put in the larger context of the historical progression of our march toward communism.

A Red Historian

REDEYE

Obama: ‘withdraw’ to
Afghanistan

Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan....

He said in a news conference here, “It’s very hard for us to bolster our forces in Afghanistan when we have such a heavy presence in Iraq....

“We need a timetable for withdrawal, not only to relieve pressure on our military, but also to deal with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.” (NYT, 7/14)

Obama and key Dems
back wiretaps

...in the end Mr. Bush won...almost all the major elements the White House wanted. The measure gives the executive branch broader latitude in eavesdropping....

Support from key Democrats ensured passage of the measure....

Senator Barack Obama...had long opposed giving legal immunity to the phone companies’...wiretapping.... But on Wednesday, he ended up voting for what he called “an improved but imperfect bill.” (NYT, 7/10)

Drug co. $ to docs hurts kids

An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs are not approved for most uses in children, who appear to be especially susceptible to the side effects, including rapid weight gain. (NYT, 7/12)

US let 9/11 go on as jolt for war

Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.’s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was “all preventable.” By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.’s inspector general, “50 or 60 individuals” in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, “I don’t want to hear about that anymore!”....

Nonexistent links between Iraq and Al Qaeda were cited by President Bush in his fateful Oct. 7, 2002, Cincinnati speech ginning up the war and by Mr. Powell in his subsequent United Nations presentation. (NYT, 7/13)

General reports US war crimes

When a distinguished American military commander accuses the United States of committing war crimes in its handling of detainees, you know that we need a new way forward.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report... (NYT, 7/6)

In ex-colonies, childbirth grim

Pregnancy is now usually a cause for celebration, not an occasion to write a will....

But not so in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in every 16 women dies in childbirth.... Maternal mortality is the most dramatic health inequality on the planet — more stark even than child mortality.

It is the incontrovertible evidence of how little women’s lives are valued or their voices heard in many parts of the world. (GW, 7/4)

Bosses Use Black Pols to Promote Capitalism, Racism

The history of racism and racist ideology in the U.S. is replete with ruling-class efforts to invent new forms when the old ones are no longer useful. Slavery gave way to Jim Crow; theories of “cultural inferiority” became favored over eugenics. But the rulers’ ability to fool workers into accepting, and in some cases embracing, these new plans for division have historically been deadly to our class. Their latest plans to use black superstars to resurrect “culture-of-poverty” arguments in order to justify more racism against black workers are no exception. As will be seen below, only a communist revolution that destroys capitalism can abolish the super-exploitation of black, Latino and immigrant workers, and the bosses’ need to divide the working class.

In 1965, former NY senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote “The Negro American Family: The Case for National Action.” Moynihan was then assistant Secretary of Labor in the Johnson administration. While admitting that rising black unemployment was even then at “disaster” levels, Moynihan linked poverty not to joblessness, but to higher rates of children born “out of wedlock.” He blamed single-parent, female-headed families, not racism, for educational differences, higher welfare rolls, urban “isolation,” and crime. And he attacked the black family as a “tangle of pathology” caused by centuries–long history of slavery and Jim Crow.

Moynihan’s report was released during the growing anti-racist upsurge against capitalist-inspired exploitation and oppression of the 1960s. Thus, the rulers were forced to temporarily shelve its more brazen conclusions. Moynihan’s arguments introduced the term “benign neglect” which became the ideological basis for attitudes toward low-income workers that shaped Nixon administration welfare policies of the late 1960s. They also helped spawn an academic industry, which invented the concept of “culture of poverty” to explain racist unemployment and poverty, while covering up continuing discrimination and segregation.

In the 1980s, as urban industrial jobs increasingly vanished and unemployment increased sharply, this push to the right accelerated. Racist ideologue Charles Murray, who later co-wrote “The Bell Curve,” produced “Losing Ground,” which blamed social welfare programs for unwed mothers, unemployment, and crime. Murray and others promoted the racist and sexist imagery of female-headed black and Latino families as symbolic of the urban “underclass”. These Nazi–like myths helped provide the rationale for the increasing welfare cuts of the Reagan years, which in turn laid the groundwork for the Clinton-led bipartisan “welfare reform” of the 1990s.

Today, “culture-of-poverty” ideas, correctly seen by anti-racists in the 1960s as the other side of “genetic inferiority” garbage, have become “mainstream.” Obama, Clinton, and McCain all embrace some aspect of “getting tough with the ‘underclass.’” Politicians of all stripes trumpet the success of “welfare reform,” even as unemployment shoots up and more workers fall deeper into economic misery. The bosses and their political mouthpieces remain nervous, however, about the possibility of working-class rebellion against layoffs, soaring food and gas prices, more hospital closings, and bigger wars. At the same time that the media is promoting the idea that racism in the U.S. has been overcome, the rulers feel the need to sharpen their racist knives for more vicious attacks on our class.

(Part two will discuss how Bill Cosby and Barack Obama are using the bosses “culture of poverty” against the working class to build U.S. imperialism.)

U.S. A-Bombed Japan As Political, Act of Mass Murder

When the U.S. pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima died last year a spate of letters and articles appeared reporting that he felt no remorse or guilt about killing 140,000 innocent civilians because “it was necessary to end the war without a land invasion of Japan and therefore actually saved the lives of far more Japanese and Americans.”

This is a monstrous lie that outdoes even the whoppers told by Hitler. The fact is U.S. president Harry Truman ordered the dropping of the bomb on August 6, 1945 — and a second one three days later on Nagasaki killing another 110,000 civilians — not as “the last act of World War II” but rather as the opening shot of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Truman’s Secretary of State, James Byrnes, told A-bomb scientist Leo Szilard that “demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.” (Leo Szilard, “A Personal History of the Atomic Bomb”)

This not only killed 140,000 residents of Hiroshima instantly but, “The number of people killed directly and after exposure to radiation...now reached 231,920,” as of Aug. 6, 2003. (British journalist John Pilger)

Actually in August, 1945, Japan was on its knees, suing for peace, and facing a million Soviet troops sweeping through the Chinese mainland, preparing to invade Japan itself (after having defeated the Nazis in Europe). Truman himself wrote in his diary on July 17, 1945 that when the Soviets entered the Far East war — as they had promised to do by August — “Fini Japs when that comes about.” (Truman, “Off the Record”) Truman already had been given decoded Japanese cables which his diary referred to as the “Jap Emperor asking for peace.”

Dropping the bomb was militarily unnecessary. On March 9, 1945, “100,000 to 200,000 men, women and children died when the U.S. Air Force doused Tokyo with jellied gasoline; all told, in the month before Hiroshima, [conventional] bombs killed up to 500,000 in Japanese cities and left 13 million homeless.” (U.S. News & World Report, 7/13/95) That’s why Air Force General Curtis LeMay complained that there was nothing left to bomb in Japanese cities except “garbage can targets.”

Then General (later President) Dwight Eisenhower told Secretary of State Stimson that, “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary....[It was] no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” (Eisenhower, “Mandate for Change”)

So why the rush to use the Bomb? Clearly the liberal Democratic Truman administration didn’t want Japan to surrender before it was used. On June 6, 1945, Stimson told Truman that he was “fearful” that before the Bomb was delivered, the U.S. Air Force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the A-Bomb “would not have a fair background to show its strength.” To whom? Certainly not to Japan which was frantically trying to surrender, itself fearful of facing the Soviets.

If U.S. rulers were so intent on demonstrating the Bomb’s power to the Japanese, why didn’t they pause long enough for Japanese officials to travel to Hiroshima to assess the extent of the damage before dropping a second Bomb on Nagasaki just three days later, killing another 110,000 civilians?

This decision to commit mass murder in the name of anti-communism was clearly political. As Churchill said about the A-Bomb, “We now had something in our hands that would redress the balance with the Russians.”

The U.S. ruling class’s indiscriminate destruction of Iraq is part of a long history of such butchery; Japanese men, women and children are still dying from the inherited genetic effects of the A-Bomb slaughter. It’s ironic that U.S. rulers now “worry” about nuclear weapons getting into the hands of al Qaeda in countries like Pakistan — whose bomb the U.S. helped build (see “Deception” by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark); and they “warn” Iran not to build a nuclear bomb (or face U.S. nukes). Yet the U.S. ruling class is the only one to have ever used the A-Bomb, killing more than one-third of a million innocent people. Surely U.S. rulers are the most horrific terrorists in world history.

  1. CHALLENGE, July 15, 2008
  2. CHALLENGE, July 2, 2008
  3. CHALLENGE, June 18, 2008
  4. CHALLENGE, June 4, 2008

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