PLENTY OF FOOD . . . BOSSES PROFIT WHILE WORKERS STARVE

‘Barracks’ Obama Lays Out Grand War Plans

Eyeing Future Global Conflict, U.S. Warmakers Torpedo Irish EU Vote

LA Students, Parents, Teachers Unite vs. School Cuts

NEA Convention: Voting for Democrats Won't Bring the Real Changes Teachers and Students Need

Sean Bell Forum: H.S. Students Debate Racism, Capitalism, Communism

Bosses Cut Jobs, Wreck Pensions; Stock Market Won’t Save Them

Workers, Students Build Alliance Against Racist Wage Cuts and Tuition Hikes

France: Immigrant Workers Strike vs. Racist Attacks

Italy: Anti-Immigrant Pogroms Echo Nazi-Mussolini Era

Masses Fight Bolivian Bosses’ Slavery, Gov’t Sellout

Letters

Likes ‘Hard-Hitting Truth Coverage’

Anti-Racism, Not Morality Is Workers’ Weapon

Civil War: Northern Capitalist vs. Southern Slaveowners

Is An ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Believable?

• Body Size Surveys — Practice to Accompany the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Theory
• Why Obesity Data Is Believable

Two Years Later, Oaxaca Workers Need to Break with All Bosses

REDEYE

• NAFTA pushed globe to food crisis
• Boss pressure distorts TV news
• Need bigger weapon than lawsuit
• Bubble no trouble — for the rich
• Marx, Malthus explain hunger
• SUMMER OF COMMUNISM!
• Lessons From the Past
• Our Fight....

International Unity A Must in Upcoming Boeing Contract Fight

PLENTY OF FOOD . . .
BOSSES PROFIT WHILE WORKERS STARVE

The litany of horrors faced by workers of the world is staggering: Ten million children under the age of 5 die each year from hunger (The Lancet, a British medical journal). Half of the world’s population faces premature death due to lack of nutrition or potable water (Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); 2.4 billion people have to cook with wood or other biological products (instead of natural gas) and 1.6 billion have no access to electricity.

None of these things need to be true. In a world full of technological wonders, no one should be hungry or have to live in the dark. According to the FAO, there is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone—at least 1.5 times current demand. In fact, over the last 20 years, food production has risen steadily at over 2.0% a year, while the rate of population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year. Furthermore, it is now common and easy to transport food over great distances. This is the essence of capitalism: millions die from starvation every year because it is not profitable to keep them fed.

In fact, the top agriculture firms’ profits are increasing BECAUSE of the starvation. Cargill and Monsanto, two of the world’s largest agriculture corporations saw their third quarter 2007 profits increase by 86 and 45 percent, respectively. Billionaire Jim Rogers is on TV constantly advising people to “buy agriculture!” The investment blog “Energy and Capital” describes in detail the starvation and misery and ends with the statement: “...enough of the doom and gloom. How can I profit from this? Well, I’m gonna tell you...” Starvation is good for business!

Higher food prices mean greater profits.The contradiction between the ability to feed all of the world’s workers and the greed of the bosses has become even starker as the price of food has increased astronomically. From March 2007 to March 2008 average world prices for wheat increased 130%, soy prices were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74%, and maize was up 31%. (BBC News, 4/8/2008).

There are a number of factors that have led to the increase in food prices including droughts in 2005 and 2006 affecting major wheat-producing countries and high oil prices (According to the World Bank, transportation costs for food are up 80% since 2006 and fertilizer prices have risen 150%).

The call by some capitalists for higher biofuel usage has also caused prices to increase dramatically. Not surprisingly, these bosses are heavily invested in technology and factories needed to turn food into fuel. Currently, about 5% of the world’s grains are being used to make biofuels, and the percentage is increasing. If the trend continues, half of the U.S. corn harvest will be diverted to ethanol production by the end of 2008.

This has two primary effects:

First, as more corn is planted it displaces wheat and soybeans, causing their price to rise. (This process is similar to what has happened in the developing world under pressure from the IMF and World Bank. In order to increase the profitability of the land in these countries, the IMF and World Bank demanded that local farmers grow only export crops like coffee and cotton instead of food. This caused countries to have to import food and ended up increasing poverty and hunger.)

Secondly, the U.S. corn industry produces around 40% of the world total, meaning the increased diversion to agrofuels in the U.S. impacts global markets for all food grains. (Earth Policy Institute) In places like Haiti, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mexico, Italy, Indonesia and Egypt food prices have skyrocketed, revealing the racist face of the food crisis. Any attack is felt even more so by black, Latin and Asian workers of the world, including in the U.S. where food prices have also risen. There have been many rebellions against this racist genocidal capitalist attack.

On April 3 in Les Cayes, the third largest city in Haiti, five thousand people set up barricades made of burning tires and cars and seized trucks carrying rice. Hungry workers and students tried to storm the presidential palace in Port-Au-Prince. The army was sent to smash a mass strike and rebellion led by workers in Egypt against the food price hikes. In the Ivory Coast, 1,500 demonstrated, chanting “We are hungry,” and “Life is too expensive.” Jean Ziegler, a Swiss professor who studied food issues for the U.N. has made comparisons to the French Revolution, saying “one day starving people could rise up against their persecutors.”But, even though it is good that angry workers respond with armed opposition to the brutality of capitalism, a revolution to end this living hell will require that communists internationally get immersed in these struggles.

Communist leadership must turn these struggles into schools for communism: showing that the food crisis, endless imperialist wars, racist and fascist terror can only be ended by building a red-led movement uniting workers internationally to fight for a society without the profit-hungry bosses.The fight for a communist world will be long and hard, and there will be periods of scarcity for the workers of the world, but the main cause of starvation will be wiped out. Drought and floods, crop-killing diseases, or other unforeseen calamities are always possible.

Based on scientific planning, decisions on where people should live, how infrastructure should be built, how food should be supplied, etc., will be made collectively. Under communism, times of scarcity and plenty will be dealt with collectively, with every member of society involved. No matter the situation, no one will eat caviar while others starve to death.

‘Barracks’ Obama Lays Out Grand War Plans

Barack Obama’s June 4 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) shatters his already shaky credibility as a peace candidate. In it, he vowed to do “everything—and I mean everything—to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon....I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”

In Obama’s view, the talks with Teheran he proposes would actually strengthen a subsequent U.S. military strike:“Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. But that only makes diplomacy more important. If we must use military force, we are more likely to succeed, and will have far greater support at home and abroad, if we have exhausted our diplomatic efforts.”Obama made it clear to AIPAC that “change” (his favorite slogan) includes rebuilding the U.S. war machine, to which he would immediately add 92,000 troops. “That is the change we need in our foreign policy. Change that restores American power and influence.”

OBAMA AIDE: GIs IN IRAQ TO STAY

Amid cheers from their U.S. boosters, he also promised Israel’s fascist rulers $30 billion in military aid over the next decade. Obama is pursuing the age-old U.S. strategy of arming racist anti-Arab Israel to the teeth to police the U.S.’s Mid-East oil empire. An Obama administration may even persuade well paid ally Israel to do the U.S.’s dirty work in taking out Iran’s nuclear installations and setting the stage for regime change there.

Obama has grand war plans for Iraq, too. U.S. rulers invaded Iraq hoping to raise its oil production — under the control of Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Britain’s BP and Shell — to six million barrels a day (mbd), which would trail only Saudi Arabia’s in the region. But with output stagnating near 2,000,000 mbd due to Bush’s bungling, Obama’s “phased withdrawal” platform has become permanent colonial occupation. His top Iraq adviser Colin Kahl just wrote a report for the Center for a New American Security stating that “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010.” (New York Sun, 6/4/08)

OBAMA FAKES ANTI-WALL STREET STANCE

Having clinched the Democratic nomination, Obama now openly embraces liberal Establishment forces on Wall Street as much as he does U.S. imperialism. The recent resignation of Wall Street/Beltway broker James Johnson as head of Obama’s vice-presidential search team represents a feigned attempt to distance the candidate from the big money he has always served.Right-wing pundits had assailed Johnson’s ties to Establishment banker Goldman Sachs and the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission. But Johnson’s chief liabilities for Obama were loans he received from upstart banker Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial.

The liberals seek to scapegoat Mozilo as the prime mover of the subprime mortgage crisis and its broader economic fallout.As soon as Johnson left Obama’s side, Establishment protégé Jason Furman joined it as chief economic adviser. Furman, who holds three Harvard degrees, toiled in the Clinton White House with Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers to dismantle Welfare and secure “free trade” treaties, with disastrous results for U.S. workers. Until Obama tapped him, Furman ran the Hamilton Project that Rubin had started at the liberal Brookings Institution. In addition to selling “free trade” pacts, it studies ways of centralizing control of finance into the Establishment’s hands. Furman praised JP Morgan’s predatory takeover of subprime-tainted Bear Stearns as a “necessary stop-gap.”

Furman also touts anti-union Wal-Mart, which depresses workers’ wages.Obama masquerades, and appeals to many people, as an anti-racist agent of change. But the main principle motivating his campaign (like McCain’s) is capitalism’s relentless search for maximum profit rates. If that means shipping further U.S. workers’ jobs to low-wage hellholes globally, Obama & Co. approve. If it means using armed force to secure cheap Iraqi oil at the cost of a million or more Iraqi and GI lives, they say, “so be it.” If maximizing profit entails sacrificing masses of working-class lives in wars with Iran or China over energy and influence, Team Obama welcomes the task.

For the working class and its friends, backing “Barracks” Obama is a grave political error. The solution to the endless misery and war the profit system generates lies beyond its phony electoral process. Helping build the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the capitalists’ deadly dictatorship is the only viable answer.

Eyeing Future Global Conflict, U.S. Warmakers Torpedo Irish EU Vote

U.S. liberals are hailing the recent vote in Ireland against the European Union’s Lisbon treaty as ordinary Irish people’s thumb-in-the-eye of the elite bureaucrats in Brussels it would have further empowered. The Boston Globe called it “Getting Their Irish Up.” But Libertas, the Irish anti-EU movement that steered the vote with massive publicity, counts two major U.S. war contractors, Declan Ganley and Ulick McEvaddy, as leaders. The former’s firm sells communication services to the Pentagon; the latter runs an outfit that refuels CIA planes on “rendition” torture missions.

Ireland holds tremendous geostrategic significance for U.S. rulers. In World War II, the U.S. significantly protected its Atlantic supply routes to Britain and then-ally Russia by prevailing upon Ireland’s pro-Nazi nationalist rulers to stay neutral. A pro-European stance by Ireland in a future conflict on the continent would present Washington with a major obstacle. That’s why, in addition to fanning anti-Europe feeling in the Republic of Ireland, the U.S. foments sectarian strife in British-ruled Northern Ireland, even as it boasts of “peace accords.”

In 2001, for instance, FBI agent David Rupert offered to supply weapons to the violent Real IRA. Such threats justify perpetual British military presence in Ireland, preventing the island’s full unification with Europe. A less than half-hearted member of the EU, Britain sides with the U.S., by and large, militarily, politically and economically.

LA Students, Parents, Teachers Unite vs. School Cuts

Los Angeles, CA, June 6, –– “The teachers, parents and students united will never be divided,” “money for schools, not for war” and “no cuts, no more, the cuts are for the war” chanted hundreds of teachers, parents and students protesting in front of local high schools. At one, over one hundred teachers, close to 60 students and a dozen parents marched around the school with placards that read “Budget cuts hurt the kids.” Students carried banners reading “Money for school not for war” and “Black and Brown Unity.”

The students were the loudest and most energetic. At many LA schools there was a struggle about whether students should be on the picket line. Some teachers said this was an issue that affected teachers only, but others argued successfully that the budget cuts affect the students the most and they were key in the fight against these attacks. Students did picket at these schools and gave important political and tactical leadership, raising connections between the cuts, the war and racism.

The day before the picket, CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets were distributed at several schools.The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) organized this job action in which teachers were to protest for one hour at the start of the school day against the budget crisis. About 75% of the union’s 48,000 members took part in the citywide protest. The budget crisis threatens to cut 6,500 probationary teachers, educational programs, transportation, counseling services and teachers’ pay.

The press is trying to pacify anger at the cuts by saying that administrators are being cut, but the administrators will replace other teachers in the class room. The union’s purpose was to “send a message to Sacramento” to stop the cuts, not to build working-class unity among masses of teachers, students and parents to fight the cuts and the system that makes war for oil profits and prisons its top priorities.

For now, the LA School Board has decided to cut 507 jobs, make all teachers take 4 furlough days (a wage cut) but also promised that school cops would be protected from the cuts!! These school budget cuts are part of capitalism’s crisis nation-wide. As the U.S. bosses are facing growing threats from rising imperialist nations such as Russia and China, the U.S. bosses will be forced to make further cutbacks to pay for needed wars. They will depend more on their reformed schools to meet their needs for workers and soldiers who believe in patriotic ideas and have the technological skills needed for serving the army or factories. (see box for more on education, the war machine and fascism)

The bosses will continue to use police terror and mass incarceration to try to hold back the revolutionary potential of the working class. One thousand new cops will be patrolling the streets of Los Angeles by next year. A brand new youth detention center is being built just a few blocks away from a high school. The UTLA leaders blame the governor, but the blame lies with the system he serves.

To confront this attack, students, teachers and parents must see ourselves as part of the international working class. We are the ones that labor in the factories, and teach the future workers and soldiers. We make everything possible! The bosses have a dictatorship over the working class, but teachers, workers, soldiers and students united can build a mass communist movement and become an unstoppable force against capitalism. Meeting the cultural, political and economic needs of the working class and a committed struggle to end racism and exploitation will be the goal.

NEA Convention: Voting for Democrats Won't Bring the Real Changes Teachers and Students Need

Thousands of teachers and school workers are expected to gather in Washington D.C. at the annual convention of the National Education Association (NEA). The leadership of the union will call on its members to celebrate and lend their votes to the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, placing their faith in the electoral system to make “a change we can believe in.”But teachers, parents and students who are counting on this “change” to make the schools work for them will be disappointed. Obama, like any other politician, serves the needs of the ruling class, which is why he says “we should take no options, including the military option, off the table,” in spite of being perceived as the anti-war candidate. Keeping the military option on the table means that the U.S. ruling class is facing threats to its world domination which it cannot stave off without massive oppression and cutbacks at home. The rulers also need the hearts, minds and skills of the working class to have any hope of competing in the current world situation. They are desperately attempting to reform the educational system so that they can teach working-class youth to love and defend the U.S. against its rivals. Capitalists like Bill Gates pour money into the schools in an attempt to make them more useful to the system, even as budgets are cut in major cities. All politicians have the same agenda: use the schools to keep young people serving the needs of the system for soldiers and workers.Teachers need to ignore the union leadership’s call to vote and instead unite with students and parents, as some Los Angeles teachers did during recent protests (see above.) When we have enough workers, students and above soldiers won to communist ideas and prepared for revolution, only then can we hope to build schools that truly serve our needs rather than imperialism’s.

Sean Bell Forum: H.S. Students Debate Racism, Capitalism, Communism

BROOKLYN, NY –– It was standing room only as over a hundred students from high schools met to debate whether the racist murder of Sean Bell last November was systemic or an exception to the rule. PLP members and friends who are involved in various debate leagues organized this forum to make the point that while it’s great to debate, we must also organize and fight back! These students, who often compete against each other in tournaments, came together to exchange ideas and experiences.

After the panel, members presented their ideas about the Sean Bell case, the history of police brutality in NYC, the impact of the NYPD takeover of school security, the criminalization of students and the impact of racism and profiling in various communities. Questions were raised to the panelists: Were we all Sean Bell? What is the link between the Sean Bell case and the racist treatment of our students in the NYC public schools? Why are many students facing this criminalization? Is there fascism growing in the U.S.? Why is more money spent on security instead of academics? Why is there racial profiling? When an audience member raised the idea that to speak of fighting inequality usually leads to being “labeled” a communist or socialist, the forum shifted to a real debate over which system is better.

Some students argued that communism would be better since workers would have a better life and we would be equal. Other students argued that there will always be competition and that people who work hard should be rewarded. This was answered by a student who stood up and said, “What about workers in Africa, Latin America or Asia? They work hard and will never be paid what they’re worth!”

When the point was made that under capitalism, doctors study hard and sacrifice, a panel member answered-in a communist society, we would all help that person to become a doctor.Complex issues about capitalism and communism were debated, at times heated, but respectful between the students. It was inspiring to see how thoughtful the students were and how, despite it being close to exams, proms and closing school activities, many students want to organize and fight back.

The closing speaker called on the students to continue organizing and to make sure that we not allow police murders to continue! This forum showed us many things, but mainly that there is great hope for the youth to move forward, take political leadership and fight for communist politics in a mass way!

Bosses Cut Jobs, Wreck Pensions; Stock Market Won’t Save Them

PHILADELPHIA, PA –– In whirlwind negotiation sessions, 1199 hospital union leaders rammed through contracts at two major hospitals in Philadelphia. Usually, negotiations run for months and in the past union militants organized job actions and marches against the bosses. This year however, the union itself called in a federal negotiator and a tentative contract was reached in only one session. Ratification meetings were then quickly arranged with little time for discussion. At one hospital, less than half of the union membership attended. Nonetheless, the workers present overwhelmingly approved the contracts.

The union leaders hailed the new contract as a victory for resolving the main issue to most union members: securing money for the pension fund. However the real issue is whether union negotiations can truly resolve the problems capitalism causes for workers. PLP calls for class struggle and organizes for communist revolution to destroy capitalism. Hospital bosses may have agreed to extend their pension obligations another four years because they priced their penalty for leaving the pension fund at $6 million and they didn’t want their many construction projects interrupted by a strike. But whatever their reasons, we can expect them to come at us hard when this contract ends.

At one meeting a speaker from the audience argued against the union members’ passivity and their faith that contract negotiations could help us in today’s world. He urged workers to grasp the intensifying contradictions among the rival capitalist bosses. “What are we looking at next?” he asked. “A shooting war with Iran? Increasing trade wars with China and Russia? Do any of you really think the bosses will ever stop attacking our jobs and benefits?”The night before, at a city-wide meeting of the union delegates, the union president had just finished his monthly litany of how bad things are when a union delegate known to many as a PLP member rose to speak. Addressing the union president he said, “At one of the last ratification meetings you tried to mock me for ‘believing in the revolution no one else does.’ After all the bad news in your report, now tell me we don’t need that revolution more than ever!”

Some saw the rushed negotiations and ratification as a travesty against “union democracy”. Others believe that union leaders and the bosses feared the militants organizing the union members to the highest level yet. With the presidential election coming, the union leaders certainly didn’t want some “nasty” strike spoiling their plan to channel worker’s anger at capitalism into voting for the boss’s politicians. To the majority of union members, however, this contract appeared to answer their prayers: the pension crisis was resolved for the time being and they didn’t have to think about a strike for another four years.

But the world’s bosses are marching toward wider wars, deepening racism and fascism, and further attacks on workers’ living and working conditions. Communism remains the only path for workers to build a society that serves our needs because the root of the pension funding crisis is capitalism, a system based on wage slavery, profits and money. For example, the Federal “Pension Reform Act” of 2006 demands that every pension meet certain funding levels supposedly to protect worker’s pensions. Sounds good, right?But the bosses won’t continue to fork over more of their profits. Ultimately this law establishes legal avenues for driving workers to pay more into pension plans by encouraging bosses to reduce or leave the plans. Because the capitalists control the state, the government, they can pass ‘legal’ attacks that will protect profits and literally take food out of the mouths of older workers.

Over the years Democratic and Republican administrations dramatically reduced government spending for health care—closing hospitals and nursing homes, cutting hundreds of jobs, and draining the amount workers and bosses fed into the plans. Billions of government dollars funded the bosses’ imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Pension fund money is also invested in the stock market and the current decline of stocks means that workers are worrying a lot! But whether the market goes up or down, investing pension fund money in the market only helps corporations exploit workers labor and pension fund managers further their own financial schemes.

Sooner rather than later however, the bosses will make such philosophical concerns irrelevant. With increased global competition and wider wars to pay for, the bosses must eliminate the few remaining pension plans. Every day it becomes clearer that the only security workers have is communist revolution.

Workers, Students Build Alliance Against Racist Wage Cuts and Tuition Hikes

CALIFORNIA, June 6 — “Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers and Students Must Unite!” chanted over fifty campus workers and students at a rally against budget cuts, tuition hikes and especially in support of the University of California (UC) workers’ contract fight for higher wages and safeguarded benefits and pensions. Everyone received CHALLENGE/DESAFIO and a leaflet explaining the importance of turning labor actions and strikes into schools for communism. Many were excited by these ideas. One worker asked, “Where have you guys been!” and took extra leaflets to give to other workers. Another, who helped lead the chant “Workers United Will Never Be Defeated!” also took extra leaflets. Students were inspired by the militancy and energy of the workers and were open to PLP’s communist ideas.

The rally occurred a week after 20,000 workers from the ten UC campuses and five hospitals voted overwhelmingly to strike if administrators refused their contract demands. The workers demand a modest wage increase of 9% for the first year of the contract and 6.5% for each of the next two years. Taking inflation into account the raise comes to 10% or even less. And, if the university once again increases workers’ fees for parking and health insurance, the “raise” turns into a wage cut. One demand is to prohibit these fee increases. A strike seems likely in the coming weeks, which will give PLP and friends even more opportunity to build support for the workers and to fight for communist politics among these workers and students.

The successful action grew from over three years of struggle on campus to build worker-student solidarity against racist labor-outsourcing practices, cutbacks and fee hikes, and anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism being used to create support for U.S. imperialism. The continuing effort to build a CHALLENGE readership and networks, modest in size, has helped spread PLP’s revolutionary ideas among campus workers and students and show students that workers are open to communism. We have struggled to win students to see a worker-student alliance as vital to any revolutionary movement, for only the working class, organized around communist politics and multiracial internationalism, can destroy the racist profit system and its imperialist wars.Some of the workers and students involved have been won to anti-racist, anti-capitalist solidarity. At the rally, they enthusiastically chanted “Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras” (Workers’ Struggles Have No Borders) and “Working People Have No Nations, Smash Racist Exploitation!” 20 students and 3 workers from this campus had attended this year’s May Day march in Los Angeles and were impressed and inspired by PLP’s red flags and shirts.

These students and campus workers see the connection between the U.S.’s imperialist oil-profit wars and the racist attacks on workers’ wages and benefits. They see that student registration fees continue to go up while workers’ poverty-level wages keep getting further slashed. They see the links between the racist budget cuts and the growing permanent war budget supported by both Democratic and Republican politicians.

Only a communist society, where all contribute according to commitment and receive according to need, will put an end to the racism, exploitation, poverty and genocidal wars created by capitalism. This is the indispensable lesson that our friends can learn from the growing fight against the bosses’ cutbacks and from the fight to build a worker-student alliance. Only communism will eliminate profits, wage-slavery, borders, nationalism, sexism, racism and imperialist wars. By fighting for worker-soldier-student alliances and for more workers and students to join PLP and to help distribute CHALLENGE, we’ll politically prepare our class for the long-term struggle for communist revolution. We are urging students and workers to participate in the Summer Projects to strengthen this crucial alliance.

France: Immigrant Workers Strike vs. Racist Attacks

PARIS, June 13 — Some 700 undocumented workers have been on strike at about 40 locations in the Paris area for the past two months. Their political strike to obtain legalization has inspired workers across France.

The action has now entered its third phase, in which anti-racist working-class support for the mostly black African strikers will be critical. Such support needs to be based on revolutionary class consciousness, highlighting the limits of a purely trade union perspective.

The unprecedented strike is rooted in three previous successful walkouts at a laundry and two restaurants which won undocumented workers 45 legalizations. Those strikes encouraged undocumented workers, but the workers were also spurred by increased firings — due to a July 1, 2007 decree saying bosses must have the prefectures (an administration of the Ministry of Interior) check foreign workers’ documents before hiring them — and increased immigration police raids and deportations. Meanwhile, French unions and immigrant rights associations were organizing among the undocumented workers, notably with a flyer detailing workers’ rights.

This led to the strike’s first phase when hundreds of undocumented workers walked out on April 15. They won 85 legalizations but Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux was clearly playing for time, hoping that weariness and vague promises would end the action. On May 20, additional hundreds of strikers joined the first wave. Some 350 workers have now been legalized, but still only one-third of those who’ve filed applications.

Moreover, although racism is always the bosses’ number one tool to divide and rule, the Sarkozy government clearly needs to whip up anti-immigrant racism now to regain popularity with right-wing voters. The French government is one trillion euros in debt ($1.6 trillion). Interest payments on the debt are the second-biggest budget item. The European Union, fearing inflation, is pressuring the French government to balance the budget and reduce debt. But the government is applying Reaganite trickle-down economics and has given the wealthy fat tax cuts. Consequently, only an austerity program — cutting services and laying off public workers — can balance the budget.

Some of those cuts, like closing many county courthouses, are alienating sections of Sarkozy’s electorate. Therefore, the government is trying to make the cuts on the sly so as not to arouse public protest. The result is a wavering policy of government advances and retreats. Some sections of the ruling class worry that the image of a disunited government is weakening French imperialism.

So Sarkozy and Hortefeux are counting on anti-immigrant racism to strengthen right-wing support for the government. The result is a case like that of “Mr. G.” In January he went to the prefecture in Melun to file for legalization. The clerk handed him a form to fill out and within five minutes the cops put him in a detention center on a just-issued deportation order! Another case is that of Baba Traore from Mali, who leaped into the Marne River on April 4 to escape the immigration police. He died of immersion in the 43°F water causing cardiac arrest. Clearly, smashing the undocumented workers’ strike is a top priority for this government.

Now comes the third phase of the strike, broadening the struggle to the whole working class in the Paris region and beyond. Solidarity committees are being established at each striking location. They organize picket lines, protest marches, the leaflet distributions and the collection of funds. But mobilizing the necessary solidarity implies winning workers to an understanding of how the capitalists and their government use racism against “foreigners” to maintain their system of exploitation. That understanding involves the need for communist revolution.

Italy: Anti-Immigrant Pogroms Echo Nazi-Mussolini Era

ROME, ITALY, June 11 — “Fascist aggression against immigrant and young leftists is taking place with increasing frequency,” says a leaflet issued by PLP friends in Italy. “This racist system (whether the government is center-left or center-right) will produce more and more racist aggressions. The new Berlusconi government has enacted two laws, one shifting the status of ‘illegal’ to the ‘criminal’ code, and another transforming the CPT (Temporary Detention Centers or ‘lagers’ as they’ve been called) into centers to identify and expel undocumented immigrants. Immigrant and citizen workers need to unite and form anti-racist self-defense committees.”

As in other European countries and in the U.S., anti-immigrant racism has turned more violent, given the increase in the bosses’ economic turmoil and endless wars. On June 8, thousands of Roma people (commonly known by the despective name Gypsies) marched in the heart of Rome protesting this racist violence instigated by the new government. The pogrom against Roma people resembles a medieval horror story. A false rumor spread in Naples — ravaged by a garbage crisis with rats the size of cats — that "a Gypsy woman had stolen a local baby." On May 10, a mob surrounded a Roma people camp and burnt everything. Fortunately most residents had gone, but the mob beat those few who remained. Carlo Mosca, Rome’s new police chief, did not need to appeal to that medieval anti-Gypsy racist lie going right to the point: “We need a hard line because one can only answer the beast [his label for undocumented immigrants, particularly Roma people] with maximum severity.”

Rome’s mayor Alemmano, a “former” fascist, showed he still follows Il Duce Mussolini’s racism. He ordered a police raid on Roma people camps, arresting hundreds. In another sign of the old Nazi-Mussolini era, a “special police commissar” has been named in several cities to be responsible for immigrants (particularly Roma people).

Humberto Bossi, chief of the Lega Nord (the Northern League party), and a member of Berlusconi’s new coalition government, went further: “We are not afraid of taking on the streets [referring to leftists and anti-racists]....We are ready if they want a fight and I have 300,000 men ready...The guns are always hot.

”In the Veneto region, a Lega Nord representative told the Treviso city council even more precisely: “We must use against immigrants the same system used by the [Nazi] SS: punish ten for each one of our citizens they hurt.” This is the same Lega Nord Berlusconi has put in charge of the Ministry of Interior (Italy’s Homeland Security).

But how did the Cavaliere (Berlusconi) come to power after his previous government was hated so intensely and kicked out by the masses of workers? The fault lies with the so-called center-left government of Romano Prodi and his unconditional supporters among the fake left (particularly the PRC or Refounded CP).

The Prodi government expanded the same kind of free market, anti-working-class politics as previous right-wing governments. While workers fought back with militant strikes, including general strikes, their sellout union and the PRC supported all government measures. Despite massive protests against Italy’s troops in Afghanistan, the Prodi-PRC government refused to recall them. The economic crisis is so bad that many workers can’t even afford their daily pasta (the national staple).

The open fascists took advantage of this sellout by blaming the “criminal” immigrants for everything. (The Prodi government has also attacked immigrants.)  For the first time since World War II, no party calling itself communist will have representatives in Parliament. So the Lega Nord won the support of a good number of workers in the April elections, moving its leader Humberto Bossi to boast, “We are the new party of the working class.”

But the Berlusconi-Lega Nord party coalition won’t just attack immigrants. Berlusconi has already said that’s only the beginning of his new “Conservative Revolution.” Italian capitalism is the sick man of the European Union. Its economic crisis is even more profound than on the rest of the continent. It needs to super-exploit citizen and immigrant workers even more to make them pay for the crisis.

Berlusconi will also accelerate the Italian bosses’ role in the endless imperialist wars. On June 12, he told Bush on his visit to Italy that Italian troops in Afghanistan will be sent to the area where heavy fighting is taking place.

The only solution, as the leaflet issued by PLP’s friends says, is for immigrant and citizen workers to unite and rebuild a new revolutionary communist movement based on fighting racism and all the bosses. Join the PLP!

Masses Fight Bolivian Bosses’ Slavery, Gov’t Sellout

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA, June 15 — Racism has become the main tool of the Eastern Plains capitalists in their dogfight against the government of Evo Morales, the first indigenous President here, who’s aiming to build “Andean capitalism.” The OAS’s (Organization of American States) Inter-American Human Rights Commission just reported that in the country’s Chaco region a cow has more rights than a “Guarani farmworker.

”The Buenos Aires daily “Pagina12” reported (6/15): “Thousands of indigenous families are locked up in farms where — night after night and for more than a century — they are subjected to ‘servitude similar to slavery.’ In dozens of farms in Santa Cruz, Tarija and Chuquisaca the norm is to get up at 3 AM and work till 10 PM basically for free.”

The farm bosses refuse to let the workers leave the farms, keeping them in permanent debt by charging them outrageous prices at company stores. When a father of a family in servitude dies, the children inherit the debt.Almost simultaneously, the People’s Ombudsman reported that 800,000 children between 7 and 18 work 8 to 12 hours a day under severe exploitation in sugar fields, mines and elsewhere.

Bolivia’s urban and rural workers and their allies have been fighting this racist super-exploitation since the Spanish colonialists’ days. On June 9, tens of thousands demonstrated at the U.S. embassy here chanting “U.S. gives asylum to murderers.” They were protesting that Sanchez Berzain, the former President Lozada’s main advisor, was responsible for ordering the army and police to repress a mass rebellion in 2003 against the privatization of the country’s rich gas deposits, killing 80 people.

The protestors demanded that the U.S. ambassador explain why this killer got asylum. Instead, they were attacked by the cops. One of Sanchez Berzain’s lawyers was an adviser to Barack Obama.

This protest occurred several days after a racist mob forced some 30 Quechua farmworkers to march naked on their knees in the city of Sucre.

This is the racist, murderous nature of the old capitalist gang and their henchmen who basically have divided the country with a dual power situation. This open right-wing neo-fascist opposition — led by descendants of Croatian Nazi collaborators — now controls the gas- and oil-rich Eastern region. Meanwhile, “socialist” President Morales constantly compromises with these fascists. Many think an August referendum will simply consolidate this dual power situation.

Some rank-and-file workers in the unions and mass organizations are beginning to fight back against the fascists and the sellout by the Morales government and the agents of his party (“Movement Towards Socialism”). Teachers and miners have been striking for higher wages and against the right-wing’s racist offensive. The COB’s (Labor Federation) call for mass strikes and protests is mainly for angry workers to let off steam. But workers and their allies cannot rely on any politicians to fight our battles, whether they are indigenous or call themselves “socialist.” Evo Morales came to power on the back of the 2003-05 mass uprisings. But essentially he hasn’t changed the racist nature of capitalism here. He’s enabled the openly fascist pro-imperialist forces to reorganize after having retreated because of the masses’ fight-back before Morales assumed power.

The open fascists know they can get a better deal for themselves by negotiating directly with Brazil’s Petrobras, BP, Spain’s and Argentina’s Repsol and other energy giants. Workers and their allies must also reorganize and build on their struggles to turn them into schools for communism: to eliminate all forms of capitalism and its fascist-racist goons.

Letters

Likes ‘Hard-Hitting Truth Coverage’

Thanks for my first issue of Challenge. I appreciate your hard-hitting, truth-telling coverage. Out here in bliss-ninny California in the State of Anti-Intellectualism, it’s hard to raise consciousness in any kind of revolutionary way. A certain segment of the bourgeoisie is in total control and their program is to obliterate consciousness, not to raise it. When everyone’s mind is mush, THEY control society. Currently a member of the Green Party, how can I join the Progressive Labor Party without moving to Brooklyn? Otherwise, I WILL move to Brooklyn! I can’t stand it out here!! 

Sincerely,
P----- G------, PhD

Anti-Racism, Not Morality Is Workers’ Weapon

The poem on the front page of the June 18^th CD article is on my wall in a church-based immigration clinic, and I use it in political discussions with co-workers. But neither the poem nor the article about the raid at an Iowa meatpacking plant explain how RACISM actually works. Racism — in this case the super-exploitation of undocumented workers in Iowa — is the rulers’ main tool to REDUCE the wages and living conditions of citizen and documented workers, as well as the undocumented workers who got arrested and deported. We must understand that racism ALWAYS injures ALL workers. This communist message goes beyond the poem’s liberal call for the “majority” to defend the “minority” out of morality and so they might have allies in the future. The Iowa meatpacking industry is a product of the bosses’ racist divide-and-conquer tactics.

Until the 1980s, the center of US meatpacking was in Chicago and Omaha, where unionized workers, many of them black, earned decent wages. Then when an agricultural crisis created massive unemployment among white rural workers, meatpackers opened new plants in Iowa and other rural areas. (Agriprocessors, site of the recent raid, moved from Brooklyn to Iowa in 1987.) Wages and benefits were lower than in older unionized plants, but in the face of unemployment any job looked good in Iowa. As production in the low-wage rural plants soared, urban plants with the largest numbers of black and militant workers were shut down completely.

The bosses manipulated the isolation, anti-unionism, and racism of rural white workers to speed up and lower the wages of both black and white workers, in both cities and rural areas. When white workers in Iowa threatened strikes, the bosses recruited Asian refugees, then Latinos from LA, and now Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants. Racism and nationalism (“Jobs for Americans”) injured ALL workers, even before these recent fascist raids began. White, black, Latin, Asian, citizen and non-citizen now work at lower wages, with fewer benefits, and under more intensely dangerous conditions than ever before, and the new fascist wave of mass arrests and deportations will drive wages down even further.

A construction worker friend admits that if immigrant workers had not been kept out of the unions for the last 30 years, there might still be unions around here and average construction wages wouldn’t have fallen to a third of what they were in the 1960s. But sometimes he still argues that if immigrants had been kept out of the country altogether, wages wouldn’t have fallen.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! If there hadn’t been immigrants from Mexico the bosses would have found a different group to super-exploit. In fact, a friend who works with refugees predicts a new wave of “legal” refugees from places like Burma will replace the deported “illegal” Mexican workers in the near future. If “legal” workers and citizens are convinced that undocumented workers should not be allowed to work, the meatpacker bosses and the immigration police (ICE) guarantee a brighter future for capitalists and more misery for the entire working class.

When the working class understands that the fight against racism is central to the needs and interests of all workers, we will be on the road to overthrowing capitalism, the source of racism and exploitation itself.

Red Advocate

Civil War: Northern Capitalist vs. Southern Slaveowners

Although it is always inspiring to learn more about the history of working class struggle, the article in the June 4^th issue, “Civil War’s Hidden History: Women Workers Battled Gov’t, Bosses” makes a fundamental mistake in its description of the main contradiction during the U.S. Civil War. The article states “that class struggle – the consolidation of finance capital vs. the response of working folks – comprises the source of the conflict.”

The source of the conflict was the irreconcilable differences between the two U.S. ruling classes of that time. The Northern ruling class was increasingly dominated by industrialists and bankers and the Southern ruling class was completely controlled by the slave-owning plantation class.

The Marxist analysis of the Civil War is that Northern capitalists opposed the extension of slavery to the Western states because, as capitalists, they wanted more wage labor, to produce surplus value, which was not produced by slaves. The main contradiction was between the capitalists’ need for wage labor to expand industrialism and the slave-owners’ fight to maintain and expand slave labor.

The contradictions between these two classes had been sharpening for a long time. The federal government had been dominated by the Southern class, and its Northern allies, since the writing of the Constitution. By the time of the Civil War, however, that grip by Southern rulers was weakening. Armed conflict was inevitable. Workers were convinced to fight an intra-capitalist war, then, just as they are convinced to fight in the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq today. The rulers spread lies, myths, patriotic emotions and other weapons to confuse workers about what is in their own class interest.The struggles described in the article reflect examples of workers who were not accepting the ruling class lies. This, however, does not mean that class struggle against the bosses was the main contradiction of the period. Red teacher

Is An ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Believable?

(Part 1 of this series reviewed the statistics about obesity in the U.S. and worldwide.)

According to the statistics in Part 1, there’s certainly lots of body fatness out there and it’s increasing. It’s hitting kids. And it’s worldwide, even where people still suffer from starvation! Can we believe these statistics? Or did the drug companies dream up the obesity “epidemic” to push diet pills and did the book publishers do so to sell their latest diet book?

We need solid information, meaning going out and engaging the world. A correct “theory” about how much obesity depends on “practice.”

Body Size Surveys — Practice to Accompany the ‘Obesity Epidemic’ Theory

Practice here means coming in contact with — even measuring — real people. And a true picture means more than observing and measuring a few people, like your friends, family and co-workers who might be in better (or maybe worse) shape than the population as a whole. One must consider whole populations in different areas and from many walks of life to determine this “big picture.” In the U.S., as well as other countries, the World Health Organization and government and university researchers use certain statistical techniques to select a large group of people (known as a “random sample”) who somewhat represent this “big picture” — the population as a whole.

In the U.S. Natural Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, thousands of people from all 50 states are interviewed and measured every year, producing the data indicating what proportion of the population is overweight or obese. Overweight and obesity is a big and increasing problem (see plp.org). Furthermore, a connection between social class and fatness emerges: on average, workers tend to be more overweight than professionals and business people. But although these figures are based on practice, on engaging with and measuring real human beings, can we be sure the data is really true? After all, it’s possible to lie with statistics. (Remember the “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify the war in Iraq? And the misinformation and distortions about “intelligence testing” to justify claims about the “innate” inferiority of ethnic groups and workers?) Are the bosses’ governments making things up?

Why Obesity Data Is Believable

Chances are pretty good that the statistics cited above about the body-size characteristics of people here and worldwide are true. Why? First, there are many public health scientists personally and professionally committed to doing a decent job and telling the truth. It would not be easy (though not impossible!) for governments to ignore their scientific findings and bamboozle the public. Second, and perhaps more important, governments worldwide have a stake in measuring the health of workers and other social groups. Health (including fatness) relates to productivity of the working class, healthcare costs, and even the military readiness of potential soldiers. Bosses do want to know if there are particular health problems affecting workers (both blue- and white-collar) that might eat into profits and undermine future war efforts.

Bottom line: there’s no good reason to doubt the truth of the worldwide obesity epidemic. There’s a lot of obesity out there and it’s rising.

(Part 3 will discuss the health consequences of overweight and obesity; Part 4, the causes of the obesity problem; and Part 5, what can be done about it, and it’s relation to politics.)

Two Years Later, Oaxaca Workers Need to Break with All Bosses

OAXACA, MEXICO, June 14 — Hundreds of thousands of teachers, workers and students from section 22 of the Mexican Teachers’ Union (SNTE) and APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca) marched militantly in the city of Oaxaca to commemorate the great battles of 2006. The marchers also attacked Governor Ulises Ruiz and the bosses’ plans to privatize the social security system ISSTE (Institute of Social Security and Social Services for Public Workers). PLP members and friends passed out thousands of leaflets showing that the only real way to destroy the racist oppressive system of capitalism is to fight for workers’ power and communist revolution.

Since May 9th, Section 22 of Oaxaca and the local teachers’ unions in several other states, together with other unions and organizations, have been carrying out work stoppages, marches, blockades, and occupations to force the hated bosses’ government of President Felipe Calderon to rescind the fascist new social security “reform” law that affects more than 2 million workers.

The capitalist Calderón government, obeying its imperialist backers, continues with its plan to privatize everything. They claim they want to “modernize” the social security system, but it is just another way of robbing what workers have saved over the last 50 years. These billions saved will be given to the imperialists in the U.S. and other countries and to local capitalists and their banks and financial institutions. This is just another way the local and imperialist bosses squeeze maximum profits from the working class to pay for their economic crisis and fascist plans for more imperialist wars. This deadly mass robbery is made possible thanks to the collaboration of all the capitalist parties and politicians, the bosses’ legal system and the sellout union leaders. It is not just Elba Esther Gordillo, the fascist top honcho in the SNTE (national teachers’ union), who has direct responsibility for murdering many rank-and-file militant teachers in Oaxaca and other areas. Reformists in the unions and mass organizations are also to be blamed for building the illusions that capitalism can be made to work for workers and their allies if we replace bad politicians with “lesser evil” capitalist ones who only represent another group of bosses.

The privatization of social security is just the beginning for the bosses and their government. The electrical utility (CFE) and PEMEX (the state-owned oil monopoly) are also on the privatization block. The debates among the senators and deputies of different parties are basically over strategies of how to best fool and rob the workers.Workers here are also being attacked by rising prices of gas and basic necessities. The major supermarket chains (Soriana, Sam’s, Chedraui, etc.,) speculate storing large quantities of food in their warehouses to raise prices and their capital even more, meanwhile the Calderón government tell workers “there’s no food.” At the same time they push this lie, they open the borders to big transnational agribusiness to sell beans, rice and corn from Mexico, increasing these companies’ profits at the expense of the consumers and thousands of farm workers who are sunk into deeper misery.PLP must increase its efforts to organize the international working class to build a new society that will respond to our needs and interests. Workers produce everything. We don’t need parasitic bosses who rob the product of our labor.

In a communist society we won’t have sellout unions and hacks who today serve the murderous bosses. Join the PLP to fight for a communist world!

REDEYE

NAFTA pushed globe to food crisis

During this food crisis, poor countries have had an already difficult situation made worse because they previously followed bad prescriptions given to them by policy experts from Washington. Tortilla-eating Mexico used to be a homeland of corn, but thanks to policies promoted by the IMF, the World Bank and the US government (especially through the Nafta free-trade agreement) it has become a corn importer. The old orthodoxy was.... “The idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on US agricultural products... available in most cases at a lower cost.” How wrong both that assumption and conclusion look today. GW, 6/6

Boss pressure distorts TV news

In his new memoir, “What Happened,” Scott McClellan... called reporters “complicit enablers” of the Bush administration’s push for war.Surprisingly, some prominent journalists have agreed.... that they had felt pressure from government officials and corporate executives to cast the war in a positive light.[Katie] Couric said she sensed pressure from “the corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it.” At the time, Ms. Couric was a host of “Today” on NBC.Another broadcast journalist.... said that journalists had been “under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with patriotic fever in the nation.” NYT, 5/30

Need bigger weapon than lawsuit

Recent high-profile events demonstrate the biased result of malevolent government actions. The response to New Orleans plainly shows racial preference, as does the sub-prime mortgage collapse. Minorities were, and still are, steered to the most vicious loans. And we already know that drug law enactment, enforcement and incarceration are aimed at minorities, as are second-rate medical care and voter identification laws. Further, the average wealth for whites in Connecticut today is $179,000; for minorities, only $7,000.There’s got to be another lawsuit in there somewhere. But.... lawsuits have shown that they simply can’t do the job.... It’s time to try something stronger. MinutemanMedia.org

Bubble no trouble — for the rich

Poring through
Bernanke’s pitch;
It all seems geared,
To aid the rich.Take the ongoing housing bubble collapse. Non-profit economists have been warning about it for years. And do you think it was kept secret from Mr. Bernanke that Bear Stearns and other avaricious investment bankers were gathering up fishy mortgages and sugar-coating them as high-yield investments? Who’s kidding whom? The whole administration knew what was going on. It’s just that no one wanted to spoil the fun.Unfortunately... individual citizens.... are simply the bottom of the food chain and should be prepared to sacrifice our financial lives for the welfare of banks, credit card issuers, investment houses and hedge funds. They’re the ones who make our country great, providing us with jobs and loans that allow us to buy and lose our homes. MinutemanMedia.org 5/1

Marx, Malthus explain hunger

American [scholars] like Malthus because he takes the blame off us. Malthus says the problem is too many poor people.Or, to put it in the terms in which the current crisis is usually explained: too many hard-working Chinese and Indians think they should be able to eat pizza, meat and coffee....Dr. Friedman argues that...the way big agriculture is practiced...degrades...the environment so much that it will eventually reach a tipping point and hunger will spread.Others vigorously disagree. In their view, the world is almost endlessly bountiful.... But they see the underlying problems in terms more Marxian than Malthusian: the rich grab too much of everything... NYT 6/15

SUMMER OF COMMUNISM!

Wars in the Middle East and growing conflicts worldwide that threaten the U.S. Empire are planting the seeds for World War III. The question isn’t whether a world war is coming, but when.

The U.S. ruling class understands that in order to remain the top imperialist amongst its competitors it must rebuild and expand its industrial sector and win workers and youth to racism and patriotism so it can to wage wars around the globe.Currently, the ruling class is attempting to rebuild its industry with low-wage, subcontracted labor — mainly immigrant and black workers — using racism to attack all workers by abolishing higher-paying unionized jobs. Besides racism, the bosses are bleeding workers in the factories through sexism, nationalism, speed-up, overtime, massive temporary jobs, eliminating benefits and pensions and cutting and freezing wages. Only by robbing more of the value workers produce can the bosses attract the investment necessary to rebuild and expand their industry. Without more war production capacity, the U.S. bosses won’t attain the military might necessary to maintain their empire and defeat their rivals.

But to build such capability, the bosses need us — the working class — to build the factories, run the machines, drive the trucks and shoot the guns in battle. They can’t make war without winning us ideologically. They are fighting hard to do this with Obama’s “vote-for-change” campaign, with Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the lie that U.S. imperialism can be “inclusive” and “humanitarian.”

Lessons From the Past

In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt “arsenal-for-democracy” speech laid the groundwork to transform the U.S. economy to war production. The Roosevelt-led capitalist class mounted an all-out mobilization by: (1) drafting 14 million workers and youth into the armed forces (in a population barely one-third of the present 300 million); (2) instituted gas and food rationing (each family had to present coupons at the store to buy meat — limited to 4 oz. per person daily — sugar, butter, etc.; (3) decreed a government-imposed wage-freeze and price controls; and (4) banned all strikes. Not one new car, washing machine or radio was manufactured in the U.S. for four years — all the factories were producing tanks, bombers and weapons of war. Tax rates topped out at 94%! (It’s 35% now.)

The ruling class knew their German and Japanese imperialist rivals had to be defeated in order to maintain their own dominance and they used the workers’ anti-fascist sentiment to further their class interests. When men were drafted, women were recruited into the factories and quickly became machinists, welders and assemblers of tanks, guns, bombs and planes. The number of women employed in industry jumped by over 460% between pre-war years and 1944. Black workers, who had been shut out of war industry, increased their numbers in skilled trades by 750,000 during this period. This huge transition was accomplished almost overnight. But the war took an enormous toll on workers in the factories. In fact, injuries and deaths on the “home front” were 11 times the casualties for soldiers at the battlefront!

This was truly a capitalist war on the working class. The U.S. Communist Party mobilized masses of workers to support the Soviet Union — the first workers’ state — against the fascist Nazis, but it made a significant error in not supporting workers’ struggles against U.S. bosses (for instance, the strike of 600,000 miners). This disarmed an essential aspect of the struggle for revolution. In supporting the “good bosses,” like FDR, against Hitler, the CPUSA obscured the struggle against capitalism, diverting it from a workers’ dictatorship and communism.

Our Fight....

We are slowly rooting ourselves in the industrial working class and among soldiers to build a base for revolution. This means becoming involved in, and leading, class struggle and learning those lessons to be gained through fighting the bosses. However, it also means struggling with the workers to free our class from the bosses’ ideology of racism, nationalism, sexism and anti-communism,Workers in the shops are slowly taking our communist analysis as their own. We invite students, teachers and workers to join PLP’s Summer Projects to help in this crucial fight to build PLP among industrial workers and soldiers.

International Unity A Must in Upcoming Boeing Contract Fight

SEATTLE, WA—“We can’t afford not to care about the international working class,” argued a Boeing machinist with a shop steward as they rehashed over the union meeting the night before at work. A third worker had just walked up to ask what had happened at the meeting. The shop steward thought the most important thing was information about the slave–like conditions of Indian immigrants in the Gulf Coast shipyards. He complained, however, that too many of his fellow workers (who he had informed about the outrage) just didn’t care.International class-consciousness stands in stark contrast to the union misleaders slogan “It’s our time, this time” about the upcoming contract battle. But even this honest shop steward inadvertently defended the narrow trade union perspective these hacks were pushing. “Sure you can say all this super-exploitation is eroding the wage ‘market,’ but if we raise our wages we will pull everybody up,” he countered. This excuse flies in the face of reality.

Twenty years ago, millions were unionized in basic industry. All the key plants had unions. Today, despite a similar number of industrial workers far fewer are unionized and key plants are now non-union, relying on racist super-exploitation. Narrow trade unionism, never a good substitute for anti-racist, communist class-consciousness, is ridiculous in the present climate.Members met at lunch later that day to plan our campaign around this issue and follow our progress in the pages of this paper. Our victory will be measured in the number of Boeing workers we win to raise the slogan “Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite!” during this contract battle as we build the Progressive Labor Party.

The Progressive Labor Party is organizing summer projects in Seattle and Los Angeles this summer to both learn from workers’ experiences and revolutionary ideas and to bring revolutionary ideas to industrial workers. We urge you to join us in going to the factories, visiting with workers, and studying the science of revolution as well as hearing from the experience of revolutionary workers themselves. Volunteers will learn first hand from the workers and share experiences, leading to a lifetime of serving the working class and building for a communist revolution.

We will also talk to soldiers about the war and the system that puts them in harm’s way for oil profits. Please join us for a great revolutionary experience! Make a donation and support a Summer Project volunteer.

SEND DONATIONS TO:
--------------------------------
CHALLENGE
PERIODICALS
P.O. 808
BROOKLYN, NY 11202

Fascist Anti-Immigrant Raids Attack All Workers

Liberal Bosses Use McClellan to Bushwhack McCain

Prison Slave Labor: Fascism U.S.-Style

• History of U.S. Prison Labor
• U.S. Prisons and Black Workers

Baltimore Youth Fighting for Job Funds

a href="#Teachers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services">Teac"ers Oppose Bosses’ ‘Reform’ to End Pensions, Cut Vital Services

a href="#Chile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools">"hile’s Students Hit Privatized Education, Seize Schools

a href="#‘Market Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half">‘M"rket Reality’ Fascism Hits Axle Strikers Jobs, Wages Cut in Half

Urges El Salvador Guerrilla Vets to Join PLP

a href="#‘War on AIDS’ Needs War on Capitalism">‘W"r on AIDS’ Needs War on Capitalism

a href="#French Rulers Put Squeeze on Workers’ Fight-Back">"rench Rulers Put Squeeze on Workers’ Fight-Back

French Government Boxes in Undocumented Immigrants

Mexican Bosses Battle Over Oil While Workers Starve

a href="#PLP Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan">PL" Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan

LETTERS

a href="#PLP’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day">PL"’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day

a href="#‘Democratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants">‘Dem"cratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants

Construction Deaths Are Murders

NYC Youth Maintain May Day Momentum

The U.S.-Death-Squad Empire Strikes Back

RED EYE

• Insider praises China’s Red era
• Socialism’s fall = quake deaths
• Black capitalism no improvement
• Boss poisons you? Not a crime!

Is There An Obesity Pandemic?

• a href="#How Do You Define ‘Fat’?">Ho" Do You Define ‘Fat’?
• How Fat Are People in the United States?
• How Fat Are People Around the World?

NY Civil War Draft Riots Were Racist Attacks on Black People

---

Fascist Anti-Immigrant Raids Attack All Workers

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

POSTVILLE, IOWA, May 29 — The above statement by anti-Nazi Pastor Martin Niemöller is clearly related to the U.S.-Homeland Security Agency’s immigration police (ICE) attack on undocumented immigrants. The Des Moines Register reported (5/12): "Months in planning, Monday’s raid involved 16 local, state and federal agencies, led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)." The largest single workplace raid in U.S. history saw 389 workers — mostly from Guatemala and Mexico — arrested in minutes at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant. They were herded onto buses and interned at the National Cattle Congress Fairgrounds, some 80 miles away in Waterloo. There they were kept in a makeshift camp, behind a chain-link fence, watched by armed immigration officers for three days until processed and sent to jails state-wide.

Nearly 300 have pleaded guilty to reduced charges of document fraud and will serve short prison sentences before being deported, while others await immediate deportation or have been placed on temporary release for compassionate reasons.

The appearance of dozens of buses, helicopters and heavily-armed ICE, state and local cops resembled a scene from a Nazi-era film. And the aim is the same: to terrorize workers.

Rosa, a 40-year-old mother of two, was working on the kill floor that morning when she heard the cries of "la migra" — a warning about ICE cops — ringing through the plant and saw her friends drop their tools and run. She slipped into a freezer and hid among the dead chickens, sitting alone in the cold for several minutes, thinking that everything was over. She would be caught, sent back to Mexico with nothing. The better life she had planned for her children was not to be.

The plant, which produces kosher and non-kosher products, was already a hell for workers, paid less than Iowa’s $7.25-an-hour minimum. The ICE investigation revealed abuses like a supervisor covering a worker’s eyes with duct tape and beating him with a meat hook.

But that wasn’t the main aim of the raid. The company has not been charged with anything, even though accused for years with many health violations. Not much has changed since Upton Sinclair wrote his novel "The Jungle," exposing horrendous conditions in the meatpacking industry in Chicago and across the Midwest.

The aim of the raid, and many others occurring nation-wide, is not really to arrest those "guilty" of "identity theft." Its real aim is to terrorize undocumented workers, and all workers, into working for less and less, thereby reaping increasing super-profits for a capitalist system desperate to pay for its wars and economic crisis.

The lie spread by the bosses’ media — and by many of their lapdogs among the union "leaders" — that immigrants are "stealing jobs" from citizen workers is exposed by the fact that, according to a report in the NY Times (5/31), Iowa bosses can’t get enough workers. The state has the second lowest unemployment rate in the country, 50% less than the national rate. Iowa employers are desperately seeking employees. Why? "Companies want to be in Iowa because wages are lower than elsewhere in the nation or region," says the Times. While the bosses in general approve the idea of terrorizing workers into accepting lower wages, there’s a section that doesn’t want the fascist attackers to go "too far," to scare off workers from filling these low-wage jobs and limiting their profits.

This fascist attack occurs alongside the growing imprisonment of undocumented workers (see page 2 on the growing U.S. prison population). El Nuevo Herald (Miami Herald Spanish edition), reports (5/28) that the jail in Del Verde, Texas, is filled with arrested undocumented immigrants, even though this hasn’t stopped the flow of these immigrants. This and other jails throughout the Southwest are big money-makers for private prison companies that run many of them. The border is also militarized as U.S. and Mexican rulers put their Plan Mexico into operation, under the guise of "fighting the drug cartels," thereby militarizing the entire region.

The essence of Pastor Niemöller’s 60-year-old declaration is that all workers and their allies must oppose these growing fascist attacks. We in PLP are organizing exactly that, and across all borders. Join us!

Liberal Bosses Use McClellan to Bushwhack McCain

The liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists had two main motives in publishing former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan’s book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception." Firstly, in "revealing" that the administration based its Iraq invasion on lies — no weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s), no links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden/9-11 and no Iraqi greeting the U.S. as "liberators" — the former Bush press secretary damages Bush clone McCain’s election prospects. The NY Times (6/1/08) calls it "McCain’s McClellan nightmare." The British liberal Independent (5/30) gleefully wonders, "Has McClellan handed victory to Obama?"

Secondly, by further discrediting the Bushites for hyping Hussein’s non-existent WMD’s, it helps prevent them from launching a unilateral attack on Iran before they leave office (although that still might be possible). The U.S. rulers’ liberal faction knows that tackling Iran will require far greater military force than the missiles and bombs the Bush gang once seemed tempted to use. Recalling the 750,000-strong multi-national force they were able to muster for their 1991 Iraq invasion, the liberals are forcing Bush & Co. to work through the United Nations.

The NY Times editorialized (6/1), "Having long taken a back seat to the Bush administration in publicly challenging Iran’s nuclear program, [UN] inspectors last week moved into the driver’s seat, demanding that Tehran come clean on any progress it has made toward building a bomb....The Americans have handed over the wheel on the confrontation with Iran. After challenging Iran’s atomic efforts with everything from diplomatic crusades to shows of military force, the Americans backed off late last year, based on a new intelligence finding that Tehran had suspended work in late 2003 on the design of nuclear arms. Now, in the waning days of President Bush’s second term, it would be difficult — politically, diplomatically and militarily — for them to try to press for a new confrontation."

Aiding Liberal Imperialists Seeking Larger Forces for Wider Wars

Turncoat McClellan helped sell Bush’s on-the-cheap warmaking, Rumsfeld’s hi-tech "shock and awe" invasion which failed to win a war but managed to kill one million Iraqis. But McClellan now serves the more powerful multilateral camp of U.S. bosses. His bestseller resulted from a year of close collaboration with Peter Osnos, publisher of PublicAffairs press and a senior fellow at the Century Fund, a liberal, ruling-class think-tank. A recent Century Fund study, "America’s Slide From Leadership to Isolation," blames the current Iraq fiasco on "too few U.S. boots on the ground" and "U.S. abandonment of collective security for a unilaterally driven agenda." It concludes, "In coming years, U.S. political leaders will almost certainly have to adapt their styles and aspirations to global leadership to the international rules of the game that the United Nations embodies" — although, again, that depends on what U.S. rulers think they can get away with on their own.

U.S. global leadership — that is, imperialist domination, with junior partner allies — is also the goal of another of McClellan’s newfound backers, billionaire currency swindler, election fixer, Rockefeller ally and liberal "philanthropist" George Soros. Osnos got his big start as an officer in Soros’s Human Rights Watch and has published six Soros books through PublicAffairs. After buying votes in various pro-U.S., anti-Russian electoral "revolutions" in Eastern Europe, Soros now calls for U.S.-led multi-national military action against Chinese influence in Darfur.

Another liberal McClellan enabler is life-long war criminal Richard Holbrooke, vice-chairman of Perseus investors, the firm that owns PublicAffairs. Holbrooke was an aide to ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in the U.S. genocide in Vietnam in the 1960s and advised Bill Clinton’s bombing of Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. A nominal supporter of Hillary Clinton, Holbrooke recently jumped on the Obama bandwagon by conceding his nomination at a May 26 debate in Toronto.

McClellan didn’t jump ship alone. His older brother Mark, also a former GOP stalwart, joined the liberals last year. As Bush’s head of Medicare/Medicaid until 2006, he made those agencies blank-check factories for giant drug companies. Today, Mark McClellan heads a program at the liberal Brookings Institution that studies ways of federalizing health care and subordinating Big Pharma’s profits to the rulers’ larger war agenda. McClellans’ opportunistic fence-jumping reflects a major, ongoing effort by the imperialists to win as broad a base as possible to their cause. The coming elections are, of course, their main focus.

Book Benefitting Obama

Scott McClellan’s Iraq "exposé" chiefly aids Barack Obama. Hypocritically feeding on widespread anti-war sentiment, Obama proposes an Iraq exit strategy. But his platform demands 92,000 new soldiers towards "making the finest military in the world...best-prepared to meet 21st-century threats." (Obama 2008 website) Voting for Obama as an anti-war candidate would thus be a grave political error. Voting for anyone, in fact, can’t help at all.

The solution to the capitalists’ endless wars and their ceaseless attempts to trick us into supporting them lies outside their fruitless electoral process. It lies in building a communist party dedicated to the long-term struggle of overthrowing the deadly profit system.

Prison Slave Labor: Fascism U.S.-Style

Slavery is being practiced by the system under the color of law. Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today, it’s the same thing, but with a new name. They’re making millions and millions of dollars enslaving blacks, poor whites, and others — people who don’t even know they’re being railroaded.
-- Political Prisoner Ruchel Magee.

This "land of opportunity" now boasts a prison population of nearly 2.4 million, higher than any other nation, ¾ of a million more than China, which has four times the population of the U.S. California alone has over 160,000 inmates — more than France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the Netherlands COMBINED. These five countries have a total population eleven times that of California. They are no less racist than the U.S. but have a different policy in treating non-violent offenders.

According to a U.S. Justice Department Report, as of this year, 7 million people are in prison, on probation or on parole. That means 1 in every 32 Americans is in the system. (http://www.usdoj.gov/) Seventy percent of all prisoners in the U.S. are black or Latino.

This massive imprisonment of millions is part of U.S. rulers’ efforts to control the working class and especially the potential rebellion of the most oppressed, the black and Latino workers. It occurs in the context of the virtual elimination of welfare under Clinton — when the big leap in the prison population took place — and the slashing of wages and jobs of all workers. Facing sharp economic crises and heightening inter-imperialist rivalry over energy supplies, U.S. rulers must exercise tight control over U.S. workers and try to win them to support — or at least not fight against — the rulers’ increased exploitation, even more intense racism and preparations for wider wars. As brother Ruchel Magee says (above), slavery today — of which this mass imprisonment in U.S.-style concentration camps (and the threat of it to millions more) is a part — has a new name. That name is fascism.

History of U.S. Prison Labor

Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue slave labor. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else’s land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery — which were almost never proven — and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, mining and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910, 88% of "hired-out" convicts in Georgia were black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.

Capitalist Rehab….Exploitation

Prison labor is a pot of gold for the bosses: no strikes, unions, health benefits, unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation. This is one of the main reasons for such high incarceration rates in the U.S. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting out of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons.

These companies contain the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores and many more. All of these businesses reap extraordinary profits from the economic boom generated by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, such profits rose from $392 million to $1.31 billion.

Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but in Colorado, they’re paid about $2 per hour, well below the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17¢/hr for a maximum of six hours a day, or about $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) in Tennessee — prisoners receive 50¢/hr for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it’s no surprise that inmates find federal prison pay "very generous" — possibly $1.25/hr, eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime.

Private Prisons

The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under Reagan and Bush, Sr., but reached its height in the 1990s under Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton’s cuts in the federal workforce led to the Justice Department contracting with private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison-industrial complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are CCA and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed payment for each prisoner, independent of the cost to maintain each one.

In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, 30 days are added, increasing profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.

The rulers find themselves in another risky situation: these same workers they oppress so viciously are among the ones the rulers need to arm to serve U.S. imperialism. They can be won to become part of the future red working-class army. One reason the rulers need someone like Obama is exactly to win black workers and youth (now reluctant to join the military) to fight in the many imperialist wars needed to stop U.S. rivals in the Middle East and elsewhere. A key role of our Party is to build internationalist and revolutionary consciousness among black, Latino and all workers so that imperialist war can be turned into class war for communism and an end to racism.

U.S. Prisons and Black Workers

In the U.S, black people comprise 13% of the population, but constitute half of the country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; black workers are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate.

The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era.

The number of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic bubble of the late 1990s. In 2000, 65% of black male high school dropouts in their 20’s were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72%, compared with 34% of white dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20’s were jobless in 2004, up from 46% in 2000. Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990s and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16% of black men in their 20’s who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21% were incarcerated. By their mid-30’s, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

Most of the states with a majority of black prisoners are in the South where cheap prison labor helps keep wages down for the growing auto, steel and other basic industries in that are becoming key for the U.S. war machine. However, Maryland, not generally viewed as a "southern state," has the largest percentage of black prisoners — 77%. Wisconsin, with a tiny black population of 6%, has a black prison population of 48%. And Mississippi, the state with the largest black population, 36%, has a black prison population of 75%.

Baltimore Youth Fighting for Job Funds

BALTIMORE, MD, June 2 — On May 30th, students, teachers and education advocates gathered at the Inner Harbor amphitheater to protest Mayor Sheila Dixon’s refusal to appropriate $3 million toward knowledge-based jobs for 750-1,000 young people through the Peer 2 Peer (P2P) network. P2P Youth Enterprises, a coalition of approximately 20 local youth groups, organized the demonstration. They then marched to the Legg Mason plaza and announced a hunger strike, commencing that evening. The protestors chanted and gave speeches on education, followed by an open mic session featuring socially conscious hip hop and spoken word poetry.

P2P has been engaging in activities from workshops to overnight camp-outs in front of City Hall to demand these funds. "It’s outrageous that the City is not giving $3 million to young people to do positive work," said a public school teacher. "When the City schools were predominantly white, about 20% to 40% of the city budget went to education. Now that the City’s student population is 90% African-American, the portion of the City budget devoted to education is just 11%, a severe, racist cutback that hurts all students, no matter what their racial background."

The Baltimore City Council voted 11 to 3 against the P2P funding. Many speculate that pressure from Mayor Dixon forced that negative vote.

Two weeks ago, when the coalition began a four-day, overnight campout in front of City Hall, Dixon appeared and told the young people they ought to just get jobs at Target. But P2P seeks funding for programs like tutoring and mentorships, so young people can be paid to teach other youth important skills, like algebra, debate and video production.

"Target is not a comparison to Peer 2 Peer," said one P2P organizer, nor is P2P an after-school or summer program, as misrepresented by the bosses’ media. It’s a year-long program designed to create jobs and prepare youth for careers in a knowledge-based economy.

The $3 million figure would come from the annual interest earned on the City’s $88 million rainy-day surplus emergency fund, not from the fund itself, as inaccurately portrayed by the capitalist media. "The state of youth in Baltimore City is definitely an emergency," declared a P2P youth leader.

One excuse offered to refuse funding is "a sluggish economy," yet City funds are going into the build-up of tourist areas like the Harbor.

As the event concluded, committed hunger strikers were transported to a church where nightly shelter is being provided.

The young people view the hunger strike as necessary to attain their goal, with no plans to end it until the mayor and the City Council grant their demands.

Progressive Labor Party applauds the selfless commitment of the hunger strikers and all their many supporters. But we recognize its limitations. In general, hunger strikes seek to embarrass the rulers, but the rulers really have no shame. After all, capitalism starves millions of workers worldwide.

P2P activists stepped up the level of struggle by bringing many supporters to the Mayor’s Night-In, which she had promoted as an opportunity for youth and adults to talk about solving problems in various neighborhoods. The vast majority of participants were P2P supporters, who spoke out very forcefully, essentially taking leadership of the event away from the politicians. At one point the mayor physically grabbed the microphone to defend herself and to accuse adult P2P supporters of misleading P2P youth. However, she received meager applause, compared to the overwhelming repeated applause for P2P speakers, a vigorous standing ovation for the hunger strikers, and powerful applause supporting the $3 million for P2P youth jobs.

In a broader sense, political awareness is growing, learning how politicians and the government, though claiming to represent all people, are really puppets for the ruling class of big business owners. Some of the young activists recently attended PLP’s May Day march in New York City.

It’s becoming clearer that the government is not neutral but really a dictatorship of the capitalist class. The government is theirs, not ours.

Even if a reform victory is achieved — winning $3 million — the rulers, having state power, can always take it away later, as they’re doing in cutting wages for millions of workers. This is especially true, given the bosses’ need to direct resources toward carrying out imperialist oil wars in Iraq and elsewhere.

Capitalism cannot be reformed, nor can it solve the problems it creates for the working class. We need a future in which the working class shares the fruit of all the value our labor produces. Only communist revolution can achieve this.

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MEXICO CITY, May 29 — Thousands of teachers from many parts of Mexico, including Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Tlaxcala and Mexico City, participated in a massive march here to protest the reform of the law of the Institute of the Social Security in Service of the State Workers (ISSSTE), which plans to reduce pension benefits and increase retirement age. Members and friends of PLP distributed thousands of leaflets exposing capitalism and calling on teachers to fight for communism.

In their fascist offensive, the bosses and their imperialist backers have dealt a new blow to workers by reforming this law, thereby giving workers’ savings to the banks and financial institutions. These "reforms" mean the end of pensions for the retired, removal of the right to housing credits, slashing child-care services and a severe cut in medical services.

In the short term, this will affect the workers of the Federal Commission of Electricity (CFE), of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company) and of public companies. Even though the more pro-U.S. imperialist bosses support the "reform" all the other Mexican bosses represented by different capitalist political parties, including the opposition López Obrador and the PRD are behind it. (This situation is facing workers worldwide — see page 5 on France’s workers facing a similar attack.)

Currently more than 20 million Mexicans eke out their existence on wages equal to barely twice the minimum and many even less than that. These hungry masses lack a revolutionary organization. PL’ers must continue exposing the bosses and their neoliberal and state capitalist policies and keep organizing the workers to build a communist system where exploitation, poverty and unemployment will not exist. We must have confidence in the great potential of the working class to make a revolution and run society.

During the march there were many insults and anger directed against President Felipe Calderon and Elba Esther Gordillo, "leader" of the teachers’ union, but the problem isn’t only these puppets and the Social Security Reform. The whole capitalist system is rotten and must be destroyed.

Some teachers said that the positive reforms to Social Security were won with over a century of struggle and now the bosses are taking them away with one stroke. This is the essence of capitalist "reforms": they give workers only crumbs and can take them back at any moment. We need to fight, not for reforms but for a communist world, where workers in Mexico and globally will control society for the benefit of the international working class. Long Live Communism!

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SANTIAGO, CHILE, May 28 — For the third successive week, high school and college students have militantly protested a new law which could privatize public education. Students demonstrated on May Day and then again on May 16 (Day of the Fighting Youth) when students took over several colleges and high schools immediately after "socialist" President Michelle Bachelet gave a national speech on education. In one school students hung a banner reading, "If education is a merchandise, students must be rebels."

Today, the "carabineros" (riot cops) brutally repressed a planned student march, attacking several thousand gathered in Santiago preparing to march to the Ministry of Education. The cops said they "had no march permit." Some 337 students were arrested battling the vicious police attack. Over 600 were arrested nationwide during this day of protest. The cops beat students viciously as they were being loaded into police vans.

The government’s proposed General Education Law offers some crumbs like computers and a few scholarships, but each municipality would control education, opening the door to privatization. Students say they want free public education like their parents received, not a few computers or scholarships.

Chilean youth, like youth worldwide today, had a reputation of being non-political, but the reality of a local and international capitalist system bent on making workers and youth pay for its crises and wars, is impelling young people to realize they must fight for their interests.

Education under capitalism, whether free or privatized, is based on promoting bourgeois ideology and building the next generation of exploited workers the bosses need. The best education these youth can acquire is in the class struggle against capitalism and its stooges.

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DETROIT, June 1 — The recent sellout contract signed between American Axle and the UAW is a perfect example of how capitalism works and where its priorities lie: destroying the lives of thousands of workers and turning U.S. industry into a low-wage haven. The immigration raids spreading throughout the Midwest and Southwest are no accident. They’re aimed at terrorizing ALL industrial workers, immigrants, undocumented or citizens, into accepting even lower wages. A worker who falls for any kind of racism is betraying his/her own class interests.

Axle workers are the latest victims of this fascist attack. The Axle bosses say the new contract "addresses market reality." (NY Times, 5/29/08, and all following quotes) After their 87-day strike, this is how that "reality" hits the workers:

• Within a year, 2,000 of 3,650 union jobs will be eliminated.

• "Wages and benefits would be cut at least in half."

• "Most new work will be going outside the United States."

And this is how "reality" meets the company’s bottom line:

• "It expected to save about $300 million a year under its new contract."

• "American Axle…lined up $1.4 billion in new…business for the next five years and…85 percent of it would be sourced abroad." ("Operations in Mexico and overseas helped the company earn $37 million in 2007.")

• Wages in Axle’s new plant in Guanajato, Mexico will be barely $1.50 AN HOUR.

What about the union? The bosses say the UAW "jointly addressed" this market reality "in this new set of agreements." Yes, it "addressed" more than half the workers onto the street and cut the wages and benefits of the remainder more than half. To say the company has the union leadership in its hip pocket is putting it mildly.

This swindle follows the pattern set by the Big Three automakers and the union. GM just announced that one-fourth of its workers, 19,000 (adding to the 34,410 who left in 2006), are taking the company-offered buyout. Of these 19,000, JPMorgan auto analyst Himanushu Patel "predicted GM won’t replace 15,000…and will hire 4,000 [at half the pay] for total annual savings of $2.1 billion." (Associated Press, 5/31)

Forty years ago, UAW President Walter Reuther was acclaimed for signing a contract with a "guaranteed annual wage." Hundreds of thousands of laid-off U.S. autoworkers can now testify that the only "guarantee" under capitalism is job- and wage-cuts for workers and maximum profits for the bosses. And the racism of the bosses and UAW hacks has hit black autoworkers even harder, devastating cities like Detroit and Flint. Since 1999, Michigan has lost 143,000 auto jobs — 45 percent of the total lost nationwide.

No matter what gains workers make through bitter struggle, when capitalism’s market asserts itself — through global competition, the drive for maximum profits, economic crisis and the needs of imperialist wars — the workers wind up at the bottom of the heap. After all, the bosses control the government and this state power is used to enforce the laws of the capitalist market. That’s why PLP says this system can’t be reformed. "Market reality" won’t permit it.

The only lasting victory that can be won from the Axle workers’ three-month battle is for the workers who bought and read CHALLENGE and came to PLP’s May Day events to join the Party in building a movement that aims to eliminate this system and its profit-driven markets so workers can hold state power and use it on behalf of the working class. Our goal is to establish a communist society in which workers come first and there is no "second" — profits, bosses and their labor lieutenants will be buried six feet under.

Urges El Salvador Guerrilla Vets to Join PLP

El Salvador — At the end of the 1970’s there were nine people in my family including seven brothers and sisters. The government army came into my settlement, killing children, youth, old people, and women; in my family four brothers were killed because they were suspected of helping the guerrilas.

In 1979, when I was 24 years old, I was pursued by the National Guard because of my revolutionary ideas. I joined a military detachment of the ERP (Revolutionary Peoples’ Army). We had massive confrontations with the government’s army at the same time that they bombed us. When we were invaded by the enemy in a combat zone, we sometimes spent up to eight days without food. After battle, we went to an area that was under the control of the guerrilas where we got our political and military training.

In 1989 we carried out a military campaign where I fought in the city of San Miguel, in the eastern part of the country. I spent nine days in a trench, seeing many of my comrades fall from the enemy’s weapons, and seeing the suffering of the civilian population from the bombings. But we also attacked and showed our political resolve and military strength, as we forced the army to flee and struck mortal blows. Hundreds of soldiers and police fell, brought down by the revolutionary shrapnel of the armed people. Here we were true to our slogan of struggle: victory or death.

At one moment when we were ambushed by the enemy army, a soldier in the bosses’ army (who today is my friend) warned us about this ambush, from which I escaped unharmed. This helped me understand that solders in the government’s army were winnable since most aren’t won ideologically to the bosses’ side.

Since the end of the armed struggle, as a disabled veteran of the war, I’m a member of ALGES — Association of the Disabled from the War in El Salvador. The ideas of a revolution to change society had me frustrated for a time, as I feel that I had been fooled by the high leaders of the guerrilas. After the war, many of them became brazen servants of the capitalists, while my conviction and that of my fellow disabled and dead fighters was to fight and win for the working class.

I then met a club of PLP and when I heard the strength of their political ideology, it didn’t seem foreign to me. Here I see true revolutionary ideology, which is the fight for communism. I hope that this story helps many fellow veterans of the war to join the Progressive Labor Party since the commitment to fight for the working class must continue.

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WASHINGTON, D.C., April 15 — Over 120 public health workers and students met at the annual meeting of the MWPHA (Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association) with the goal of launching a more intense HIV/AIDS advocacy. Speakers and workshop participants attacked the "social determinants of disease" — lack of housing, jobs, and youth development programs, and widespread substance abuse. Most attendees wanted to break out of their small boxes and form a strong unified movement to demand more resources from the federal and local government.

Scrambling for small grants for NGOs and trying to help resolve complicated individual problems of AIDS sufferers is not enough! Most participants felt that the war on AIDS should be joined with a war on capitalist institutions. Reflecting higher levels of awareness, a speaker attacked the "war on drugs" as a war on people. Others noted that the phony "war on terror" drained resources from public health programs. Attendees agreed to testify at city council budget hearings and did so the next week.

This MWPHA conference moved from the traditional public health education to pushing for aggressive political pressure on the system to beat the factors that sharpen the devastation of AIDS. A virus may cause HIV/AIDS, but capitalism and its racist impoverishment of millions transform it into an epidemic by increasing peoples’ vulnerability.

Stable affordable housing is at the forefront of this battle; without it, consistent treatment is almost impossible. But pressure on the system, however bold and militant, is not enough. Capitalism must be overthrown to get at the root of the problem. Too many activists in the HIV/AIDS movement are still far from embracing this goal. But, step by step, some progress is being made.

PLP members’ active in this struggle have led regular public outreach in Ward 8, the lowest income area in D.C. These actions began only with condom distribution and education, and have progressed to community speak-outs and rallies. The stage is set for more intense struggle — confronting politicians and city agencies in their offices around demands for housing and drug treatment. PLP must win more people to its politics to turn struggles like this into schools for communism.

The building of a revolutionary party amid public health struggles is hard work but is the only way forward. We have launched study-action groups that explain how communism can destroy capitalism and its epidemics, but political theory among our friends remains weak. This opens the door to the Obama/Democratic Party deception, taking grants from the archenemies of public health like Pfizer and other drug companies, and a belief that building NGOs will show the way forward.

At this vital time, during growing racism and fascism in the U.S., a financial crisis and endless imperialist wars abroad, we must intensify our struggle to win our friends to step forward and join the communist PLP for the long-term struggle to destroy the racist root cause of AIDS/HIV.

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PARIS, June 1 — Due to sharpening imperialist competition, French President Sarkozy is now ignoring most of France’s union "leaders" leaving them virtually paralyzed. While these misleaders plead with the government to negotiate, and organize symbolic 24-hour protest strikes, Sarkozy steamrolls right past them with plans to dismantle both the welfare state and the unions.

To pursue its imperialist agenda, the French government needs a docile workforce and ready cash. For example, while visiting Iraqi officials today, foreign minister Kouchner offered them French military instructors to train the Iraqi army. In return, the Iraqi prime minister offered to buy state-of-the-art military technology from France, one of the world’s leading exporters of arms and aircraft.

Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said "there is an urgent need for French companies to be more present here in Iraq." Sarkozy wants European Union imperialism to penetrate Iraq in the next six months. Therefore, the government is playing hardball with the unions here.

On May 22, thousands struck and over 450,000 demonstrated in 153 cities protesting government "reforms" to force workers to work longer for smaller retirement pensions. But Sarkozy intends to push his reform through, consulting the unions only on precise points and without trying to get approval from even the most sellout unions (Le Figaro, 5/23).

The main teachers’ unions called for another 24-hour strike on May 24 against government plans to axe 11,200 jobs next school year, but while 15,000 demonstrated in Nantes, the action was only partly successful elsewhere. The following day Education Minister Darcos announced the cuts would be maintained and "protest marches won’t change a thing."

That hard-line position was enough to bust up the union coalition. On May 27, three teachers unions said they were "suspending" the protest movement.

The government then busted up union unity around another 24-hour strike against retirement "reform" planned for June 17. When the smaller unions split with the bigger ones (CGT and CFDL) over the latter’s back-door agreement with the bosses’ organization MEDEF, the government then double-crossed the whole business with a measure undermining the 35-hour work-week.

With the union misleaders at loggerheads, Sarkozy is attacking on yet another front — introducing a bill to make it easier to shift public workers from one ministry to another, and even to shift them out of the public sector altogether.

The government has been able to play off these union misleaders against each other because they’re all competing to become the government’s "preferred negotiating partner." The big losers are the workers.

Only communist leadership, dedicated not to negotiating with the government to "improve" capitalism, but to overthrowing the government and the capitalist system, offers a way forward for the working class here.J

French Government Boxes in Undocumented Immigrants

PARIS, June 1 — A January 7 government circular which legalizes undocumented workers in dribs and drabs is keeping them at the mercy of the bosses and their government. The circular provides for the legalization of workers who can produce a job contract, proof they’ve been working for three months and a promise from their boss to pay the costs of legalization. But each prefecture is allowed to apply the law as it sees fit.

The result is a feudal system in which legalization depends on a worker’s relationship with his boss, and the boss’s relationship with the prefect. Another aim is to smash the strike movement for legalization launched by undocumented workers in April.

Mexican Bosses Battle Over Oil While Workers Starve

MEXICO CITY, June 2 — The fight amongst the capitalists of the world for control of oil has motivated the latest wars in which hundreds of thousands of workers have died for the different greedy bosses’ profits. In this period, this dispute among the imperialists is leading to World War III.

For the Mexican ruling class, the big fight amongst different sections is over PEMEX, the state-owned oil monopoly. President Calderón, with the support of the U.S. imperialists, wants to privatize it all, while other local bosses (like former presidential candidate López Obrador) oppose this, preferring it to remain as a state-owned company, favoring more investments from local capitalists instead of U.S. oil companies.

Oil is the bloodline of modern capitalist industry and war machines. Control of the oil flow and profits is the reason the U.S. bosses and their military are geared to make wars from Baghdad to Kabul. It is now more profitable than ever with the continuous rise of the price of a barrel of crude. For example, PEMEX had profits of about $100 billion in the last four years.

This oil wealth does not belong to the "Mexican people" as the politicians tell us. If it did, its megaprofits would be used to end the poverty of 70 million people in Mexico, 50% of whom live in extreme poverty. These profits benefit the politicians who administer PEMEX and the companies’ bosses who have direct business with PEMEX.

The center of the dispute between the group led by Calderón, the ruling PAN party and the majority of the PRI (which ruled for 60 years before PAN) against López Obrador, the FAP (Broad Progressive Front) and some of the PRI is over which group of national or foreign bosses will control the billions of dollars of profits of PEMEX.

The competing bosses are trying to convince us to support the "privatizers" or the "nationalists." This is a fatal trap. We workers are the ones who produce all the wealth including the oil and we must take it into our own hands. Capitalism in any form (free market or with nationalized industries) is based on the exploitation of the working class. Choosing sides in this dogfight as far as workers are concerned is like siding with either the drug cartels or the bosses’ government in their mini-civil war over drug profits. Workers have only one choice: to build a massive international communist movement to fight for the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class over all bosses and establish a society in which oil, and everything else, will serve the needs of the world’s working class. That is what PLP fights for. Join us!

a name="PLP Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan"></">PL" Exposing Fake Leftists, Union ‘Leaders’ in Pakistan

This May Day gives us an audacity to fight against exploitation with full devotion, honesty, enthusiasm and bravery. The working class all over the world is very eager to get rid of capitalism but, for example in Pakistan, we’ve got to deal with the brutal living conditions that this system breeds, with union leaders who are in cahoots with the bosses and with fake-left leadership who lead us down the dead-end of state capitalism. None of these leaders want to change the world of capitalist oppression because they are puppets dancing in the hands of bosses by getting money and other personal advantages. They are created by the capitalists to keep poor workers away from their revolutionary struggle against exploitation, poverty, illiteracy and profit. We, as PL’ers, fight against all of these anti-working-class forces and struggle to bring true communist ideas to the masses of Pakistani workers.

Capitalist bosses have recruited gangsters and called them union leaders. Almost every so-called union leader is enjoying a luxurious life style: homes in posh areas, dinners at best restaurants, costly car, etc. Many ruling class parties have their own union bosses to protect their political interests and to keep the workers quiet against their policies. Trade unions in Pakistan Railways, Steel mill, PIA, Wapda, PTCL, Pakistan Hydro Electrical Board and many others are led by the bosses’ lieutenants.

While the union bosses get fat, the Pakistani working class faces miserable circumstances: high prices, low wages, poor working conditions, no job security, and many other social problems. This situation creates the conditions where workers are ready to get rid of this rotten system but they can’t find a way out because of puppet leadership!

The super-exploitation of Christians, women and children illustrates the genocidal situation that has been created for workers in Pakistan. Christians are common as sanitary workers who face some of the worst working and living conditions. Women workers are subject to rape by local bosses or landlords. Resistance means that the women can be accused of having an illicit relationship and subject to the barbaric sentence of stoning. The children of the working class face particularly terrible conditions. Most families cannot afford to send them to school so many send them to madrassas (free religious education providers) to get religious education, food and shelter. In many schools, the clerics feed the children the anti-working-class ideology of political Islam and convince them to protect local bosses’ interests by becoming "terrorists." Child labor is also very common. Many children work in restaurants, hotels and factories where they face low wages, sexual abuse and torture.

In response to these horrible conditions, fake-leftist parties, chanting the slogan of state capitalism (socialism), are working to maintain capitalist oppression. No party is functioning for the working class — they prefer to get sympathies of "intellectuals" from upper class and hold conferences in five-star hotels with capitalist guests. They are encouraged to keep good relations with bosses in the better interest of their families; "after all it is due to these bosses they are getting something to keep their families alive."

You cannot find people from the working class in their meetings — they don’t like to meet workers with torn clothes or dirty hands. They argue for national and people’s democratic revolution, socialism, international socialism, Trotskyism, nationalism, but not for communism! Nobody can hear a single world about communism from these fake leaders because they are afraid of it.

It exposes their purpose to work for capitalism by these fake -isms. But we understand their intention: to keep the working class away from any real revolutionary movement. They are here to spread the illusion that communism is dead and to protect the interests of bosses. Workers are fed up with these fake -isms that all lead back to capitalism. They need communist ideas to change their lives.

PLP’s voice is very loud and clear, its line is based on truth, honesty and experiences of great revolutionaries. It has strong power to attract sincere people and it gives courage to workers for changing the world of exploitation into equality, justice and prosperity. Communism is a truth that penetrates the hearts of the working class.

It is alive and still bringing workers under one red flag of PLP to make international communist revolution. When we greet workers with the line of our Party they are happy to join us and get rid of the fake-leftist trade unionists. We believe we will win millions of workers, students, soldiers and other oppressed and exploited people to get rid of imperialist wars, terrorism and exploitation.

LETTERS

a name="PLP’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day"></">PL"’s Politics Shine on Colombia’s May Day

As previously reported in CHALLENGE, May Day was a modest success for PLP’s revolutionary communist forces in Colombia. Many new friends joined our contingent during the mass May Day march in Bogotá. Marching with our red flags and red PLP T-shirts, our contingent was led by a huge banner proclaiming, "DESAFIO, revolutionary communist newspaper."

Our "fight-for-communism" chant echoed throughout the day on the lips of many other marchers. We also chanted, "Fascism and terrorism sustain capitalism; Don’t vote — organize for revolution; No more sexism; Long live communism! End imperialist war with communist revolution!"

DESAFIO and a PLP communist leaflet were distributed during the march. Comments of people in our 100-strong contingent (our largest ever here) included:

"As a party, you are showing strength, interaction and an outstanding unity," said one friend. Another said, "During the march, when I heard a strong blast nearby, I thought people would run away, but your organizational strength and serenity calmed me almost completely." A close friend of PL told us, "We needed more belligerence in our chants, but I felt very good most of the time. If you had invited me earlier I would have brought my daughters. I will do that next year."

A young militant comrade, while proudly waving the red flag, told her friend, "The red flags gave us a lot of inspiration and attracted the eyes of hundreds of May Day marchers. Our fist and star mean the rebelliousness of revolutionary students, workers, peasants and soldiers on five continents united by our Party’s communist program."

May Day itself was held under fascist conditions here. The paramilitary death squads have killed 24 trade unionists so far this year, and several others are missing. This, plus the sellout and opportunist policies of the trade union leadership, led to a smaller participation by organized workers, but there were plenty of other marchers. Many, including the social-democratic electoral opposition "Democratic Alternative Pole," concentrated on demanding President Uribe’s resignation, as if fascist violence would end by eliminating one bosses’ goon.

When the march ended at Plaza Bolivar, fake leftists sang the national anthem so we responded singing The Internationale. Many workers sang with us and chanted, "Long Live Communism!"

As the day’s events were concluding, the cops viciously assaulted anyone hanging around (including senior citizens and children) with tear gas, beating up and arresting 115 people. Youth responded by attacking some banks and local businesses.

More and more youth are realizing that the system has nothing to offer them, and are becoming increasingly militant.

May Day was a day of struggle here, a day in which our communist politics shone brightly.

Comrades in Colombia

a name="‘Democratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants"></a>"Democratic’ Law Robs Peru’s peasants

The ruling APRA party here in Peru is a loyal imperialist lapdog serving the local bosses as well. Its ideology and practice are fascist, using social demagoguery resembling Hitler and Mussolini. Now it’s trying to impose a new law (DL 1015) to enable capitalists to take over peasant community-owned land very cheaply. This follows the Spanish colonialists’ robbery of communal land two centuries ago.

But today, the robbery is "democratic." The bosses use their laws and even allow some opposition from useless organizations like the People’s Advocate which is suing to oppose the law. But this is just a waste of time. It will be a lengthy trip through the Constitutional Court, which eventually will approve it.

Last year, President Alán García wrote articles in El Comercio (the bosses’ main paper here) saying he no longer thinks like his old leader, Raúl Haya de la Torre, the social-demagogue who founded APRA in the 1920s. Alán García now proclaims himself a "center-leftist" believer in the free market.

Haya de la Torre was also a loyal servant of the imperialists and local bosses while demagogically saying he represented blue collar workers and intellectuals. He did all this to present his party as a counterweight to the old international communist movement.

Haya de la Torre wrote his famous "Anti-imperialism and APRA," claiming to oppose imperialism while being anti-communist. He said APRA was an anti-imperialist front like Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang in China (meaning a nationalist front which included workers, poor and rich peasants and the national bourgeoisie).

Julio Antonio Mella, the great young Cuban communist who helped found the Communist Parties of Cuba and Mexico, and became a leading ideologue in the international communist movement in Latin America, wrote an essay entitled, "What is APRA?" exposing de la Torre’s lies. While in the past, APRA hid its pro-capitalist ideology, today it’s an open loyal servant of U.S. imperialism and all those who daily exploit millions of workers in Peru and worldwide.

Protests are being organized against the legal robbery of the communal land. But this is just a reaction against this capitalist offensive, unfortunately lacking communist leadership. Several of us here are trying to change that situation.

Friends in Peru
P.S. We’ve been receiving DESAFIO regularly.

Construction Deaths Are Murders

The city "building boom" has netted tens of billions in profits for contractors, real estate moguls and bankers providing interest-bearing loans. Yet construction workers are dying like flies: 30 workers in the last year due to building collapses, faulty cranes, lack of inspection and generally hazardous conditions erecting scores of high-rises city-wide. Still the profiteers refuse to insure safe working conditions.

These are not "accidents." They’re murders.

In March, a crane collapse killed seven. In late May two more died in the crash of a crane that should have been removed from service after an earlier discovery of a faulty turntable repair. The contractor had been cited for 35 violations and paid a lousy $104,675 in fines. On June 2 still another worker died in a fall when no licensed rigger was on site.

Many construction workers are undocumented immigrants, hired because the bosses can pay them poverty-level wages, rushing them onto jobs with little or no training. Racism causes this murder for profit.

Brooklyn Reader

NYC Youth Maintain May Day Momentum

BROOKLYN, NY, May 24 — A multi-racial crowd of nearly one hundred teachers, students and their families gathered in a local park to share food, fun and politics as we try to build on the excitement of May Day in preparation for summer activities. This weekend barbeque is a tradition in our area, and was the largest in several years.

After the food ran out due to the bigger-than-expected attendance, speeches highlighted the key role of industrial workers in the revolutionary process. We called on guests to join this year’s Summer Projects in Seattle and Los Angeles. One college graduate explained his decision to work in the transportation industry. Two high school seniors, both valedictorians at their respective schools, described how the Party helped guide them along a path of struggle in school, rather than passivity.

Our multi-racial and inter-generational crowd once again made an impression, this time on several parents at the cookout. They’re now considering sending their teenagers to the West Coast this summer.

Young people who had led walkouts in their schools and marched on May Day together used their recently-honed organizing skills to bring friends and family to kick back and enjoy this day of food and sports.

PL’ers in the NY Urban Debate League are planning a city-wide forum on the Sean Bell case and on criminalization of youth in schools. This will help us stick to our plans of keeping our red ball rolling from May Day right into the summer and the next school year.

The winning of youth into our Party and its anti-racist activities demonstrates the important role young students and workers play in our movement. It also shows youth that instead of fighting and shooting each other (a rash of which has erupted in the city), we should be fighting for a society that eliminates the racist warmaking bosses who cause the social problems workers and youth suffer.

The U.S.-Death-Squad Empire Strikes Back

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, June 1 — The heart-attack death of Manuel Marulanda (aka Tirofijo or Sureshot), founder and leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest and oldest Latin-American guerrilla group, follows several recent events favoring the U.S.-Colombian government’s war policies in the region. Early in March, Raúl Reyes, FARC’s second-in-command, was killed by an air-command raid while asleep in a camp inside Ecuador. Then Iván Ríos, another top FARC commander, was killed by his own security chief to collect a huge government reward. This was followed by the surrendering of Commander Karina, the top FARC woman leader. (Apparently, the Colombian secret police threatened her daughters’ lives, a common government tactic against guerrilla leaders).

The FARC has suffered major setbacks, losing many areas it once controlled, reducing its ranks to some 9,000 fighters.

All of this has induced the Uribe government, the Colombian generals and the White House to seek a military solution to eliminate the FARC altogether.

However, the FARC might be down but it’s not out. Recent reports show its urban base increasing. Yet the government now has the upper hand. Uribe and U.S. rulers are using this to intensify attacks against its two main enemies in the region: Venezuela’s Chavez and Ecuador’s Correa (both oil-producing OPEC members).

These two are partly to blame for this. After the Colombian military’s air-command raid that killed Raúl Reyes and others inside Ecuador (with open U.S. intelligence help), Uribe and the U.S. were on the defensive since this raid was to sabotage Chávez’s plan, supported by France, to exchange Ingrid Betancourt (a French citizen and former Presidential candidate in FARC custody) and others for FARC members held in government prisons. This exchange was making Chávez and FARC look good. But amid worldwide condemnation of the Colombian government for the raid, Chávez and Correa shook hands with Uribe at a Latin-American presidential meeting in the Dominican Republic. Uribe later responded to this favor by increasing attacks on FARC and linking it to Chávez and Correa.

The Uribe government was also discredited internally because of its connection to "parapolitics" (death squad-drug dealer groups). Sixty-four politicians (51 of them congressmen or 20% of Parliament) have been linked to parapolitics; 32 are already in jail. Most are linked to Uribe.

Semana, a newsweekly magazine, commented (5/4), "In the ’80s, Pablo Escobar and his gang reached Congress, but only 5% of all parliament members were linked to him. In the ’90s, when the Cali cartel decided to subtly bribe politicians under what was known as Process 8000, only 26 congressmen ended up in jail (10%). Today, the alliance between the mafia and paramilitaries has…seen 51 congressmen under investigation (19%)."

In mid-May, 14 jailed leaders of the AUC (death squads) were suddenly sent to the U.S. for drug trials. This had a dual purpose: firstly, to clean the image of President Uribe and force the Democrats in the U.S. Congress to pass a free-trade deal with Colombia. Secondly, the death-squad leaders will only be tried for drug-dealing, not for the thousands they’ve killed (mostly innocents) in the last few years. Thus, the links of Uribe and U.S. companies (Chiquita Brands, Del Monte, Coca-Cola, Drummond Mining) to these killings won’t be exposed.

Most of the thousands murdered in Colombia in past decades are victims of the Army and its allies in the paramilitaries (trained and financed by Plan Colombia, signed by Clinton with Colombia in the 1990s). Although the FARC is labeled "Marxist," it’s far from that. Its main goal has been to negotiate a deal with some section of Colombia’s ruling class (and possibly with some imperialist rivals of the U.S.) to preserve capitalist exploitation. Colombia’s working class and its allies don’t need more capitalism. They need to fight for a communist society without any bosses. That was the idea advanced by the small but growing PLP group here on May Day.

RED EYE

Insider praises China’s Red era

To the Editor:

I am writing to counter the one-sided and distorted picture of the Chinese revolution, particularly the Cultural Revolution... in your May 4 issue. I grew up and worked on a collective farm during the Cultural Revolution. I have been doing research in China for the last 20 years.

Today more and more Chinese working-class people look back at the Cultural Revolution years with fond memories. Despite some shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution, China was a socialist society that was overcoming inequality with full employment, free medical care and free education for its citizens. It was a country that had largely eradicated deeply rooted problems of homelessness, prostitution, bandits and drug abuse.

Since China abandoned socialism, it has been faced with the spread of drug abuse and prostitution, worsening environmental degradation, official corruption and other crimes. It is time that we recognize the positive lessons of Chinese revolution, particularly the Cultural Revolution.

Donping Han, Swannanoa, N.C.

The writer teaches history and political science at Warren Wilson College (NYT, 5/25)

Socialism’s fall = quake deaths

Earthquakes don’t destroy strong, well-built buildings; they destroy weak ones. In China, public anger is mounting. A third of the confirmed dead were children trapped in the 6,900 classrooms...

This is not just corner-cutting in the quest for fast growth. It is the consequence of systematic non-enforcement of regulations in return for bribes, and everyone in China knows it.

...Officials have unchecked power and no compunction, given the loss of the belief they are building a communist utopia, in helping themselves to cash on an even grander scale. (GW, 5/23)

Black capitalism no improvement

The scale and suddenness of attacks on thousands of African foreigners has surprised authorities. It should not have. Xenophobic attacks on Zimbabweans, Malawians, Mozambicans and Somalis have raised awkward questions about the depth of reconciliation in the "rainbow" nation. When six white police officers were caught on film setting dogs on three black men, little attention was paid to the defenceless victims, three Mozambicans. That was nearly eight years ago, and research by the South African Migration Project has shown high levels of intolerance to South Africa’s 5 million immigrants since then. The influx of 3 million refugees from Zimbabwe appears to have brought xenophobia that was latent to the surface.

The speed with which the fire has spread through the squatter camps shows how dry the tinder was.

...The real problem: Africa’s richest and fastest-growing nation is also its most unequal. The violence has shown, once again, how little the fading presidency of Thabo Mbeki has delivered to the unemployed, unskilled and dispossessed. (GW, 5/30)

Boss poisons you? Not a crime!

Mr. Elias wanted his workers to clean out a 25,000-gallon tank that contained cyanide waste... When the workers complained of sore throats and difficulty breathing, Mr. Elias told them to finish the job or find work somewhere else.

Mr. Dominguez, a 20-year-old high school graduate, wanted to keep his job... Two hours later, covered in sludge and barely breathing, he was removed from the tank, a victim of cyanide poisoning at the hands of a ruthless employer...

He now has the rigid body movement and stammering speech found in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

My colleagues and I were shocked to learn that an employer who breaks the nation’s worker-safety laws can be charged with a crime only if a worker dies. Even then, the crime is a lowly Class B misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in prison. (About 6,000 workers are killed on the job each year, many in cases where the deaths could have been prevented if their employers followed the law.) Less than two per year have been prosecuted. (NYT, 5/27)

Is There An Obesity Pandemic?

This is Part 1 of a five-part series. Part 2 will discuss whether these statistics about the "obesity epidemic" are believable — a specific example of how we decide what’s true and what’s not. Part 3 talks about the health consequences of overweight and obesity. Part 4: the causes of the obesity problem. Part 5: what can be done about the obesity problem — and how this relates to politics.

You can hardly pick up a magazine or newspaper these days and not read something about being fat and losing weight. Headlines trumpet that we’re in the midst of an obesity "epidemic" — not only in the rich countries but even in poorer countries around the world. But is this epidemic real?

Then there’s the debate about the health effects of being "overweight" — not really fat (that is, "obese"), but just a few pounds above what’s considered normal. Some scientists argue that being even a little overweight increases the risk of dying early or getting heart disease, diabetes, or cancer. Other researchers claim that being a little heavy isn’t bad for you and, in fact, may even be good for you if you’re middle-aged or older.

Finally, there’s tremendous controversy about the causes of obesity as well as the best way to lose weight and keep the pounds off. Do you have to eat less or just change what you eat? What about low fat and low carbs. Soda and fruit juice? Where does exercise fit in?

All of which brings up a basic question for all of us: when it comes to important — and maybe even controversial — questions, how do we know what’s really true? That’s a question that matters not only for health, but for everything we do in our personal lives, our work, and our political activities.

Let’s look at some facts — in this case, statistics collected by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (You can get information on this issue from the website www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity).

a name="How Do You Define ‘Fat’?"></">Ho" Do You Define ‘Fat’?

"Overweight" and "obese" are both terms for ranges of weight that are greater than what is generally considered healthy for a given height. For adults, overweight and obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the "body mass index" (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it goes along with their amount of body fat. BMI is calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by height in meters squared:

BMI = weight (kg)/height (m2)

To figure out BMI using pounds and inches, multiply weight in pounds by 700, divide the result by height in inches, and then divide that result by height in inches a second time. You can find a BMI calculator at www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi).

BMI is used to classify people as "overweight" or "obese" as follows:

* An adult with a BMI between 25 and 29.9 is considered overweight.

* An adult with a BMI of 30 or higher is considered obese.

How Fat Are People in the United States?

What do the statistics based on BMI show? In the U.S., the amount of overweight and obesity in the population has increased sharply since the 1970’s for both adults and children. Two national surveys (NHANES — the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys) show that among adults aged 20-74 years, the amount of obesity increased from 15.0% (in the 1976-1980 survey) to 33% (in the 2003-2004 survey). These two surveys also show increases in overweight among children and teens. For children aged 2-5 years, the amount of overweight increased 5% to 14%; for those aged 6-11 years, from 6.5% to 19%; and for those aged 12-19 years, from 5% to 17%. See included graphs for another view of the trends in overweight and obesity in the U.S.

How Fat Are People Around the World?

This is indeed a world-wide problem, reflecting capitalist development trends in many countries (more high-calorie food available and more sedentary lifestyles as people move from agricultural work to office and factory jobs). (Data here from World Cancer Research Fund: Diet, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Cancer, 2007.) Most recent estimates suggest that in 2002 there were 1 billion overweight or obese people worldwide. In China, where capitalism has returned with a vengeance, the amount of underweight adults has decreased and the numbers of people who are either overweight or obese has risen substantially. In 2002 there were 184 million overweight and 31 million obese people in China, out of a population of 1.3 billion.

The World Health Organization has found that over a 10-year period in the 1980s and ‘90s, the average BMI increased in most populations. Historically, starvation, underweight, and infection were the main nutrition-related public health problems in middle- and low-income countries. This is no longer the case. Surveys have shown that overweight exceeds underweight in most model- and low-income countries, including those in North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and Latin America. The rise of overweight and obesity since the mid-1970s has been two to four times faster in lower-income than higher-income countries. In some poorer countries, scientists now speak of a "dual burden": obesity alongside starvation.J

NY Civil War Draft Riots Were Racist Attacks on Black People

Although the review of "A People’s History of the Civil War," it erred in suggesting that the draft riots in New York City (and women’s role in them) constituted an "inspiring story." In fact, the New York draft riots were vicious racist attacks on black people, comparable to the 1919 race riots in which white mobs murderously attacked black communities in many cities after World War I.

In June 1863, the pro-slavery Democratic Party in New York whipped up racist sentiment among Irish and German immigrant workers, declaring that the Civil War was a "n_____ war" and that the Emancipation Proclamation issued in January of that year would lead to a flood of freed blacks moving to New York, driving down wages of white workers and depriving them of jobs altogether.

During the five days of the draft riot in New York City, white mobs lynched eleven (11) black men and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets to the ground, terrifying the newly-homeless 233 black children who had been living there. Thousands of black people fled the city, never to return. For more on this, see Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. A relevant excerpt can be read at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.htm.

We must never forget the severity of U.S. racism, both historically and today. It’s central to every aspect of U.S. capitalist history, and remains today the most significant tool that helps the capitalists stay in power.

Anti-racist Red

1. Angry Axle Strikers Slam Pro-Boss Union Sellouts
2. MURDER BY UNEMPLOYMENT
3. Latinos Among Hardest Hit
4. From Burma to China to Katrina: Capitalism, Imperialism Are Unnatural Disasters
   1. Burmese Workers' Lives
      Worthless to Bosses with
      Energy Profits at Stake
   2. U.S. Imperialists Hope High Burma Death Toll will Justify Military Strike
   3. A Sad Reversal of Red
      `Serve-the-People' Politics
5. Campus Sit-in Growing into Mass Fight Against Cuts, War
6. Rally Raps Budget Cuts, Immigration Raids, Iraq War
7. Red Chants Resound in Downtown Bogotá on May Day
8. Hospital Workers Blast Racist KKKop Killers of Sean Bell
9. Brooklyn Walkout Correction
10. Racist Anti-Immigrant Gangs Betray Anti-Apartheid Fight
11. Texas May Day Shows Workers Need Unity, Not Borders
12. Protest Fascist Minutemen at DePaul U
13. More May Day Reports from Around the World
14. PAKISTAN
15. Coal Barons, Gov't Guilty of Murdering Miners
16. FRANCE: Teachers' Strike in 130 Cities Against Gov't Cuts
17. Anti-War Solidarity Actions Sweep CUNY Campuses
18. LETTERS
    1. Lauds May Day Youth
    2. `Thumbs up for Workers' State'
    3. Working Class Has Only
       One Color -- RED
    4. Peru: Aim Workers' Anger At Class Enemy
    5. Bosses' Pawns Can't Stop
       Students From Marching
    6. CHALLENGE Carries the Day
    7. Reflections on May Day
    8. Solidarity on May Day
19. FASCIST PARTY OUT IN PARAGUAY, BUT CAPITALISM REMAINS WITH A LIBERAL FACE
20. REDEYE
    1. Israel hero sees why Arabs fight
    2. Liberals front for warmakers
    3. Drug arrests: blatantly racist
    4. U.S. runs killers in Afghanistan
    5. India: U.S. polluter won't clean up
    6. Generation has no American dream
21. Civil War's Hidden History: Women Workers Battled Gov't, Bosses
22. U.S. OIl War Sends Vets Back Jobless, Homeless, Suicidal and Dead
23. U.S. WAR CASUALTIES: 655,000 AND RISING

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Angry Axle Strikers Slam Pro-Boss Union Sellouts

DETROIT, May 18 -- "Good morning brothers and sisters. First, let me say..." "No! First let ME say, this is BULLSHIT!" is the way a woman worker interrupted a UAW International rep at a standing-room-only meeting of American Axle (AAM) strikers. Over 1,000 black, Latin and white strikers packed the King H.S. auditorium to hear the UAW explain the tentative settlement to the 12-week-old strike, and to give them a piece of their mind.

"Bullshit," "Liar," "Sellout," and "Who do you work for, them or us?" peppered the two-hour meeting as UAW leaders read a 19-page summary of a four-year contract that will slash wages and benefits for current workers, eliminate 1,000 jobs and close two forges. Many of these workers are the higher earners in extended families that have been devastated by racist cutbacks and plant closings. They have fought not just for their own immediate families, but for the many others who depend on their wages.

A few workers tore up the summary and tossed it over the balcony. Workers cheered as the contract fell like confetti. One worker repeatedly warned those around him, "You better vote this down. I'm going to make more [when I'm] retired than you will working every day." A woman shouted, "Bullshit, bullshit," at UAW President Gettlefinger. When he demanded respect, another worker told her, "Go ahead. He ain't nobody!" When the UAW International VP handling American Axle rose to speak, a striker yelled, "Sit your fat ass down before I bust out the windows on your Cadillac!" He and those around him weren't playing.

Production workers' wages will be cut from about $24/hr to $18/hr. Some reclassified jobs will drop to $10/hr! Fork-lift and tug drivers drop to $12/hr. Health insurance payments will rocket to over $100-a-month with deductibles as high as $2,500 for family coverage, with less coverage overall. Pensions will be frozen, replaced by a 401(k). New hires will start at $11.50/hr, with a minimum of three years to reach "top pay" of $14.04.

For those retiring after January 1, 2009, healthcare benefits will be capped at $10,000 annually if one is pre-Medicare and $7,500 annually if receiving Medicare. For family coverage, retirees will have more than $100-a-month deducted from their pension checks and face annual deductibles as high as $1,500.

GM, the big winner in this struggle, is underwriting more than $220 million for AAM in buyouts and other expenses. The major auto bosses have been outsourcing production for decades to drive down labor and production costs. This process was greatly accelerated when Japanese and German automakers began expanding production here and grabbing big chunks of the U.S. auto market. It has accelerated even more with the shifting of auto production to China and India, driving down wages still further. This international imperialist rivalry among the bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor is bringing fascism and war to the world's workers.

The bosses are offering workers the "choice" of a $140,000 "buyout," to leave the company for good, or a $90,000 "buy-down" over four years, to accept the wage-cut. They will also get a $5,000 "signing bonus" ratification bribe.

Despite the overwhelming anger and disgust with the union leadership (or maybe because of it), the contract has a good chance of passing. Firstly, workers know that the UAW leadership won't bring back anything better. Even if they reject it, the workers are not organized to challenge the leadership for control of the strike. Without a company-wide organized opposition in the union, ready to break the laws, stop scabs, spread the strike here and in Mexico, and reach out to the rest of the working class, workers would be hard-pressed to take on AAM, GM and the UAW.

For that new leadership to emerge, workers must develop a revolutionary consciousness that rejects the choices of buyouts or buy-downs; an anti-racist international outlook that unites workers across all borders and rejects sacrificing for the bosses' profits.

During the strike, PLP renewed old friendships and made new ones. We visited workers in their homes, walked the picket lines and distributed CHALLENGE and PLP leaflets. A small number of Axle strikers attended May Day in Detroit and Chicago. Out of this bitter defeat for the workers, revolutionary communist leadership can take root. Communist ideas are the science of revolution, and class is in session

MURDER BY UNEMPLOYMENT

Capitalism kills in many ways -- imperialist wars, racist cops, inadequate healthcare. But there is a killer it generates which is somewhat hidden but nevertheless sends hundreds of thousands of workers to an early grave (millions over centuries) -- joblessness.

Unemployment is a fact of life under the profit system. In its 400-year existence, there NEVER has been a time when the working class has been fully employed. There is always a "business cycle," boom and bust, recession after recession, and periodic depressions. Capitalists by their very nature must seek maximum profits to stay ahead of their competitors. One primary tool is cutting costs. And one of the main "cost-cutters" is laying off workers, both during "downturns" and "prosperity."

Neither Obama nor Clinton nor McCain can reverse this fact of capitalism. Rather, these multi-millionaires' role is to defend and enforce that system, ensuring that the bosses firmly control the government in order to pursue maximum profits, whether at home or abroad. Unemployment cannot be "reformed" away. The bosses depend on it, for use as a club over the head of those still employed, threatening to "close the plant" and move to lower-wage areas, or simply lay them off and hire "replacements" (scabs) if they don't accede to the bosses' demands.

A 1976 Congressional study attempted to "estimate the cost in human suffering of people being out of work." (NY Times, 10/31/76) From 40 years of statistics (1933 to 1973), that study concluded that every 1.4% rise in unemployment in 1970 led directly to the death of 30,000 workers over the following five years: strokes, heart and kidney ailments, 26,440; suicides, 1,540; homicides, 1,740; cirrhosis of the liver, 870. And that's from every 1.4% rise. The true rate of unemployment now is at least 13% or more, which could mean that the 1.4%/30,000-death figure would climb nearly ten-fold, to nearly 300,000, over a five-year period!

Moreover, the study found that infant mortality rates show dramatic increases within one to two years of a recession. Johns Hopkins University professor Harvey Brenner testified that, "The national rate of suicide...can be viewed as...an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths.

So while economists and pundits debate whether the U.S. is or isn't in a recession, tens of thousands of workers are dying from the disease of joblessness. This is doubly
true for black and Latino workers who, because of racism, suffer twice the unemployment rate of white workers.

So when GM, Ford and Chrysler lay off hundreds of thousands of auto workers, leading to thousands of deaths from the above causes, no murder indictments are brought against those bosses. "That's just capitalism."

Mass unemployment, and especially its racist component, is thus one of the biggest killers capitalism has created. One more reason to destroy it with communist revolution and erect a system without bosses and profits, in which everyone works to the best of their ability and commitment, a society that eliminates the word and concept of "unemployment."

Latinos Among Hardest Hit

Nazi-type raids by ICE (Immigration police) blame immigrant workers for capitalism's current crisis and terrorizes them to accept second-class wages and working conditions to pay for the bosses' crisis and endless profit wars. This two-pronged attack is aimed at ALL workers, since the entire working class is suffering rising unemployment (see adjoining article), the housing crisis and gasoline and food price-hikes.

Latino workers are among the hardest hit by capitalism's economic crisis, both in jobs and earnings, "imposing a particularly punishing toll on Hispanics....and...has given way to growing joblessness, diminishing paychecks and lost homes." (NY Times, 5/13, and all following quotes) Racism forced Latinos into the hardest and lowest-paying jobs, being among the first to be dumped by the profit system.

"The boom in American housing generated...jobs for those....doing much of the unpleasant work shunned by those with better prospects. But now significant portions of this work are disappearing." Latinos "are concentrated in an industry [construction] that is leading the downturn," slashing already meager earnings and leading to home foreclosures.

From April 2007 to this past April, "The unemployment rate among Hispanics spiked...to 6.9 percent," while "the overall jobless rate rose...to 5 percent." Of course, as the accompanying editorial reveals, these fraudulent rates are at least half the true rate. Latino joblessness probably exceeds 14%.

"For...nearly 19 million Latino immigrants...the downturn has cut significantly into earnings, dropping the share of those sending money home to families in Latin America from nearly three-fourths...to about half." So "one in 12 of the mortgages made to Latino households in 2005 and 2006 is likely to fail. Why? Because, "By 2006, 47 percent of the loans issued... [to] Hispanics were subprime, nearly the double the rate for non-Hispanic whites....Only African-Americans leaned harder on subprimes."

Such is life in these racist, profit-driven United States.

From Burma to China to Katrina: Capitalism, Imperialism Are Unnatural Disasters

The hypocrisy of U.S. rulers knows no bounds. To capitalize on the sympathies of workers everywhere concerned about the millions affected by Cyclone Nargis in Burma (also called Myanmar), the bosses are playing their "humanitarian" card in order to fend off Chinese imperialists' influence in that country in their fight over energy resources. The Clinton administration played that same card under cover of stopping "ethnic cleansing" in Yugoslavia to secure oil and gas pipelines from central Asia. That "humanitarian" effort ended with the establishment of a massive U.S. base in Kosovo encompassing 7,000 military personnel. Now it is attempting the same ploy in Burma.

Yet somehow U.S. bosses' "humanitarianism" never extended to the victims of Hurricane Katrina right here in their backyard. In covering the Burma disaster (as well as China's quake), the media downplay obvious parallels to Katrina. The same capitalist forces, unwilling to sacrifice almighty profit for public safety and with utter disregard for workers' lives, were at work in New Orleans. And there, racism, U.S rulers' favorite weapon, multiplied the death and destruction still further.

Burmese Workers' Lives
Worthless to Bosses with
Energy Profits at Stake

In Burma, of western energy companies, only Chevron and France's Total have big operations. They help run the Yadanas gas project, the Burmese ruling-class junta's largest source of income, with yearly sales topping $2 billion. When the storm struck, Chevron and Total each donated $2 million to the Red Cross, one of the very few outside groups working with the Burmese government. Such "aid" helps to ensure their continuing participation in the Yadanas deal. Chevron has a 28% share in it; Total has 31%.

Besides the 128,000 killed by the cyclone, over two million survivors risk starvation and deadly diseases like cholera and malaria. Citing "sovereignty," Burma's military dictatorship, allied with China, is blocking relief workers and supplies from other countries. By barring foreigners, even during a disaster, the ruling generals seek to limit outsiders (other than Chinese) from cashing in on the country's vast natural gas fields.

U.S. Imperialists Hope High Burma Death Toll will Justify Military Strike

While Chevron's bosses may be content with their Burma racket, the broader class of major U.S capitalists wants dominance, not junior partnership with two-bit Burmese dictators or French oil barons. U.S. rulers (along with their British allies) and their strategists seek to exploit Burma's gas and oil fields directly and drive out the growing presence of rival Chinese firms Sinopec and PetroChina. They cynically hope that the carnage in Burma will justify military intervention and lead to eventual regime change.

Britain's influential Economist magazine (5/15/08) coldly calculated that "if, say, a third of the 2m[illion] now struggling to survive in Myanmar were to die in the coming week from hunger and disease because their government refused outside" help a "crime against humanity" would result, grounds for U.S. Navy helicopters to breach Burma's borders and drop relief supplies. Warning that "the aircraft doing the dropping might be fired on unless they had military escorts, and that might lead to more fighting than anyone should want to see in a disaster zone," the Economist concludes, "the attempt is worth making."

The Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the leading U.S. imperialist think-tank agrees: "Sovereignty provides no license for inexcusable behavior. The time has come to act." (CFR website, 3/15/08) Of course, the savage 2_-year non-response to the plight of hundreds of thousands of mostly black residents of New Orleans is somehow "excusable."

U.S rulers' response to the Burma crisis reveals a trend towards cloaking armed intervention in liberal, humanitarian garb. Faced with drastic ground-force shortfalls and future conflicts bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan, they need to enlist more troops and broader public support for their war machine. Harvard professor Samantha Powers, Barack Obama's chief foreign policy advisor ("officially" fired for leaking his plan for permanently occupying Iraq, but still working behind the scenes) plots U.S. military "humanitarian" deployments in places like Darfur and Burma.

Ruling-class-led groups such as billionaire George Soro's Human Rights Watch, which backed Bill Clinton's bombing of Serbia and decries Burma's dictatorship, help win well-meaning people to the U.S. war agenda. The liberal interventionist invokes a noble-sounding U.N. principle, "the responsibility to protect." But invasions, in fact, kill workers to protect capitalists' bottom lines.

A Sad Reversal of Red
`Serve-the-People' Politics

Unlike Burma's isolationists, Chinese leaders have been very open about the recent earthquakes in Sichuan province. For now, until they build up capital and armed forces sufficient to challenge the U.S. head-on, China's bosses welcome foreign investment and thus media attention. To attract dollars and euros, they have created history's largest low-wage paradise. While reporters gush over how helpful Chinese authorities have been, profit reigns supreme and workers' needs go neglected.

Cheap construction that saved the bosses a few bucks murdered thousands of children. The NY Times reported (5/15/08), "Six schoolhouses collapsed in the city [of Juyan], even as other government buildings remain standing." A half-century ago China's leaders, striving to put communist theory into practice, made the well-being of the people the highest priority. In the 1950's Red China mobilized virtually its entire population in digging up the snails that spread the debilitating schistosomiasis epidemic. And they won millions of workers and peasants to participate in a massive construction project, mostly working by hand, which diverted the Yangtze River from centuries-old flooding.

Storms, floods and earthquakes are part of nature. But, capitalism, which, time and again fails to do what readily can be done to protect workers from these disasters while using them to justify imperialist war, must be destroyed. Building the international PLP is the one sure road to eliminating the unnatural disaster of the profit system.

Campus Sit-in Growing into Mass Fight Against Cuts, War

LOS ANGELES, CA May 8th -- May While the ruling class is trying to slam the working class with huge racist cuts in education, healthcare, and social services, the students at our university have been part of a mass fight-back against these attacks. A few weeks ago, a group of over 120 students walked out of their classes and occupied the University President's office for five hours. Students discussed the nature of the budget cuts and linked these attacks to a system that has nothing good to offer the working class. This may seem like a spontaneous action, but the anger among students has certainly been building up for a while. The Party has leafleted against the cuts, the war and the capitalist system, calling for action and the long-term struggle for revolution, and sold CHALLENGE on the campus.

Clearly, the attacks on the working class are intensifying class anger; students here have not only been angry about budget cuts but also about its links to the war in Iraq, the building of prisons as well as the massive healthcare cutbacks affecting their families, "We aren't having a real conversation about the budget cuts if we're not linking it to the war," said one student. "Politicians don't understand our suffering like we do," said another making it clear that this isn't going to be a movement for students looking to build careers as politicians, much less pander to elected officials' lies.

Over the course of a few weeks, what started out as a sit-in organized by students from a few social science classes has slowly been turning into a mass movement involving students, professors, and staff from different organizations and different departments across campus. In the course of the struggle, the administration of the university has exposed its true nature and its undeniable allegiance to the capitalist class. They have been trying to pacify us by telling us that we are "preaching to the choir" and that it's a matter of pressuring elected representatives. Meanwhile, the administration has been targeting students involved in the struggle, threatening to suspend them from school. The students' response has been to denounce this move, saying that an attack against one student is an attack on everyone involved, whether student, professor or staff.

The energetic and committed involvement of many people on our campus shows the potential for building a movement that targets the core of these attacks: the capitalist system. The Party has been active in this struggle; although we have been a bit timid about openly raising the need for communism we have been raising this with our friends and making strides to correct our timidity. Many involved in this struggle came to the May Day march and were impressed with all the red flags.

Our next goals are to increase hand-to-hand as well as mass distribution of CHALLENGE, coupled with study groups to guide our practice on campus. One of the next steps is to get the students on our campus to form alliances with the rest of the working class, who must turn these difficult times into opportunities to build for a revolution that will get rid of a system reliant on war, budget cuts, and the exploitation of all workers.

Rally Raps Budget Cuts, Immigration Raids, Iraq War

LOS ANGELES, MAY 19 - Around 250 students came to a rally against budget cuts despite the intense heat. Some speakers wanted to pressure the administration with demands, others discussed fascist attacks and ICE terror raids. Yet another speaker connected the budget cuts to the war budget, saying that the war in Iraq is against the interests of students and workers everywhere and that we should all unite against the racist cuts.

Many students are disillusioned with electoral politics and understand that wider connections must be made, not only to the prison budget, but also to the war budget. Many students chanted "No Cuts, No More, The Cuts are for the war," reflecting this sentiment. We distributed about 150 CHALLENGES and 400 PL leaflets to students. This struggle will continue.

Red Chants Resound in Downtown Bogotá on May Day

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- As reported in CHALLENGE (5/21), PLP was modestly successful in mobilizing for the union-led May Day march here of 75,000 workers and youth. Our 100-strong PLP-led group, mainly comprising young workers and students, distributed thousands of communist leaflets and hundreds of DESAFIOS. Our chants were heard throughout downtown Bogotá, promoting pro-communist internationalism and attacking capitalism, imperialism and the paramilitary death-squad fascist Uribe government here (U.S. imperialism's most loyal ally in the region). Over 20 people joined our contingent during the march.

Contrary to the unions and fake-leftists, rather than merely "celebrating" the holiday, PLP advances May Day as a day of fighting back for the international interests of the working class, not to beg crumbs from the ruling class. We don't ask the "international community" (read, the UN, human rights groups, etc.) to end the murder of workers and youth, the oppression of our class or the vicious war waged by the paramilitary death squads led by the government and its army. They have killed over 2,400 union activists in the last 20 years, some of them paid by imperialist corporations like Coca-Cola, Chiquita Brands, Dole, Del Monte and Drummond Mining.

Workers and youth are mad as hell. During the march, they attacked the internal war and the war in Iraq, the Free Trade Agreement Uribe and Bush aim to sign to exploit the working class even more. But what's lacking is a revolutionary alternative to this capitalist-imperialist hell. The trade union hacks, fake leftists and guerrillas don't offer that alternative.

We in PLP have a long way to go to provide that alternative, but we're on the right road. As Lenin said in 1905 in Russia, the cataclysm of war doesn't create revolution out of nothing. Revolutionary communists here and internationally, as well as the working class, have a lot of obstacles to overcome, but we won't get anywhere following the old recycled line of workers' management of capitalism, "people's democracy" or "national liberation." The only road for real liberation for workers and their allies is communist revolution. Join PLP and make that long road shorter!

Hospital Workers Blast Racist KKKop Killers of Sean Bell

BROOKLYN, NY, April 25 -- Hospital workers protested this morning's not guilty verdict for three plainclothes cops who fired 50 bullets into an unarmed black man, Sean Bell, leaving his bachelor party. One comrade circulated an e-mail to friends to protest outside the hospital at noon. Word of mouth spread the message.

Within an hour a dozen stood to protest. They held hand-made signs with strong messages: "Killer Cops' Innocence Means the System is Racist"; and, "Sean Bell's Murder Here, Imperialist War There, the Same Racism."

The group comprised white, black and Latino, young and old. A bystander on the street stood with us. When the hospital's Chief of Police came out to intimidate us, we stood firm. Workers unable to leave at noon sent us solidarity messages.

This action was built from a larger one called earlier in the year to support the Jena, Louisiana students, victimized by racism.

Today was the first day of demonstrating for some. Such protests must spread to every job site. Mass mobilizations of workers at the point of production and then taken to the streets have the power to spark anti-racist rebellions which, with red leadership, can build communist class consciousness and help lead to a revolution that will banish racist murders and the cops along with them.

Brooklyn Walkout Correction

(Due to our error, the following paragraphs from the page-3 article in the May 21st CHALLENGE on Brooklyn H.S. walkouts protesting the racist education budget cuts and the acquittal of the kkkops who assassinated Sean Bell were either omitted or appeared incorrectly).

One student overheard a dean calling students "idiots and stupid" for planning a walkout, and ordered "safety agents"/cops to lock them in. But student pressure forced the agents to unlock the doors.

FASCISM 101

At another school, an announcement heard repeatedly on May 1 morning warned that, "Any student who walks out of the school will be suspended for a Level III infraction." Some students were told they would get three-month suspensions while others were threatened with ouster from special programs. Teachers were ordered to report any students who walked out. Hundreds still tried to walk out, but security guards were assigned to block all exits and cops were called.

Despite all this, some students did walk. Rather than being discouraged, some students want to continue organizing. Some teachers refused to "name names." One teacher submitted a list that included famous revolutionaries and leaders of slave revolts. Another just wrote, "I refuse" on his sheet. Teachers and students plant to intensify activities with regular agitation and meetings around the Sean Bell murder and the cutbacks.

Racist Anti-Immigrant Gangs Betray Anti-Apartheid Fight

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, May 19 -- "Shock" is the expression being used after the eruption of violence on a scale not seen since the end of apartheid. "Anger at substantial immigrant populations -- fellow blacks mainly from Zimbabwe and Mozambique -- has seen at least 22 people killed in the past week since the first incidents in the northern Johannesburg township of Alexandra. The killing has now spread through the country like wild-fire..." (London Times online, 5/19)

The violent anti-immigrant pogrom has been fueled by the same lies directed against immigrants in Europe and the U.S. -- they "steal jobs, cause crime," etc. Racist gangs have employed the weapons used against traitors during the anti-Apartheid era, like "neck-lacing" (burning tires around victims' necks).

This racist violence is not "shocking" if we understand the real cause. Racism and inequality are universal aspects of capitalism, from Paris to London to New York to Johannesburg.

Since the African National Congress (ANC) took power following the dismantlement of the old apartheid regime, the lives of some black politicians and petit-bourgeois elements have improved, but life is harder for the majority of black workers. Last year, mass workers' strikes reflected this situation. "People are having to find scapegoats, this is about competition for diminishing resources.... President Mbeki has tried to de-racialise the economy but only a very small number at the top have really benefited," said Sipho Seephe, President of the South Africa Institute of Race Relations. (London Times) "Some 40 percent of the population -- 80 percent of which is black -- is little better off than at the end of apartheid in 1994."

Another important lesson is that there is no half-way solution to the evils of a worldwide capitalist system involved in endless wars, continuing economic crises and the need to divide and super-exploit more and more workers to reap super-profits. Once the imperialists and capitalists realized the old apartheid regime couldn't control South Africa's angry workers and youth, the ANC came to power. Nelson Mandela, Mbeki and Jacob Zuma (the next President) -- supported by the "Communist" Party of South Africa (with a substantial base among its most militant workers and youth because of the "C"P's role in fighting apartheid) -- became capitalism's managers. They provided some cosmetic changes but without changing the essence of racist exploitation.

Zwelinzima Vavi , leader of the COSATU union federation, spoke at a protest organized by the ANC-CP-led federation outside parliament. He said it's not the Zimbawean exiles causing the problems for poor South Africans, even blaming capitalism. But only 100 people protested, showing the lack of credibility of COSATU, which since 1994 has supported the ANC governments and its free-market capitalist policies, and now backs the new ANC President Zuma.

The racist gangs are murdering immigrant workers in the same townships where heroic battles against apartheid were waged in the past, a direct product of these sellouts' pro-capitalist policies. Now the struggle to build a society without racism and capitalism is now more difficult than ever. But it's the only struggle which will eventually extricate workers here and worldwide, out of this capitalist-created hell.

Texas May Day Shows Workers Need Unity, Not Borders

TEXAS -- May Day was a modest success for our group in this state. Our May Day dinner was organized by young teachers, workers and students with a program of speeches and music, good food and lively discussion that focused heavily on the role of education under capitalism. Later, many of us attended our city's Immigrants Rights march, where we had an opportunity to show how communist ideas and action make possible a true education in working-class politics.

At the rally we distributed over 300 flyers exposing the liberal rulers' tactics of using promises of citizenship to recruit immigrants as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism. Our leaflet became the leading source of information for all participants and onlookers at this reformist march for immigrant rights. More importantly, as we marched with our friends, we discussed the need to smash capitalism's borders worldwide and struggle for communist revolution.

I was joined at the march by one of my students and her sister. We talked about the capitalist purpose of borders and the need for workers to unite across them. The heavy police presence also sparked discussion of police brutality and why cops were enemies of the working class; they ultimately act in the interests of the bosses, killing thousands of workers worldwide in order to instill fear and hopelessness in working people.

Afterwards we went to dinner where we sharpened our understanding of the history of the U.S./Mexico border. During dinner someone mentioned the ruling-class propaganda that, without borders, millions of Mexicans would flood "our" streets and steal "our" jobs. I explained how the existing border had been created out of the southern U.S. slaveholders' effort to push slavery further west during an historical period when Mexico had outlawed slavery. We finally concluded that what was labeled independence by the ruling class was also the enslavement of the Mexican and black workers in the South.

During the march we had received a flyer announcing a protest at a prison in another city that jails immigrant families and many U.S.-born children. My student wanted to join the protest and is currently organizing others within the school to join us. These students are writing a leaflet calling for the need to unite workers and smash the bosses' borders. It will be really exciting to travel alongside my students in support of immigrant rights and ultimately communist revolution!

Protest Fascist Minutemen at DePaul U

CHICAGO, May 19 -- PLP brought several dozen workers and students to the rally against the racist Minutemen founder Chris Simcox at DePaul University here. Simcox was invited by the right-wing DePaul Conservative Alliance. Liberal pro-immigrant students organized students to protest his appearance. But only PLP tied the Minutemen's racist ant-immigrant attacks to the bigger picture of U.S. capitalism in crisis.

The rally's high point came when a new younger friend of the Party led the crowd to denounce a sign-carrying racist who stood near us, leading the cops to whisk him away to save his skin.

Our contingent distributed almost 200 CHALLENGES and 500 leaflets, as well as making six contacts.

CORRECTION

The May 7 issue on the California Teachers Convention (page 5) said, "Delegates were urged to get 1% of their local membership to walk precincts for the November 2008 elections." Due to a typographical error, the next sentence said, "We should aim to win 100% to become CHALLENGE readers!" The original article said, "1% to become CHALLENGE readers!"

More May Day Reports from Around the World

OAXACA, MéXICO

A PLP group participated in the annual May Day march held in downtown Oaxaca. Thousands marched, particularly teachers and farmworkers, showing their disgust with the government and the capitalist system it represents.

Our group distributed 600 flyers with our communist analysis of capitalist exploitation, and we put up 100 posters walls around the march reading "A system that creates inequality, wars, racism and exploitation must be destroyed." We also distributed 50 copies of DESAFIO.

Our participation was modest, but we are already making plans to increase our efforts in future activities, including May Day 2009. The working class and its allies here, and worldwide, need a revolutionary alternative to a system which only breeds hunger, wars among drug cartels and a dim future for humanity.

PAKISTAN

Greetings from revolutionary communists in Pakistan. Our PLP group had a great May Day here, with comrades involved in many activities. Our communist ideas were well-received. We made new friends as more and more workers and their allies are becoming disillusioned with the fakers on the "left" who offer no solutions to a capitalist-imperialist system breeding endless wars for profits under the cover of religion, "democracy," etc.

Coal Barons, Gov't Guilty of Murdering Miners

When six miners died in the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah last August 6, it was no "accident" -- it was deliberate murder for profit. Ten days later three more workers died from a tunnel collapse while trying to rescue those six. All nine deaths were completely avoidable.

The mine owner, Robert Murray, claimed it was due to an "earthquake." This lie was exposed in a recent Congressional report, but don't hold your breath expecting anything will be done by the bosses' politicians to prevent future murders.

Murray's operation practices "retreat mining." This method involves removing the massive coal pillars that support the mine's roof. As miners move backwards towards the entrance, this allows sections of the mine to collapse, "the technique of doubling back to carve final profits from the coal pillars that brace the mine." (NY Times, 5/9) With coal prices soaring, the mine owners find it extremely profitable to extract every last bit of coal, over the dead bodies of the miners who dig out the coal.

In March 2007, a similar collapse occurred in the same mine, but the pillars and mine roof didn't fall on any miners. However, the Crandall bosses played down that incident, which should have led to the banning of retreat mining.

In fact, before the August disaster, miners -- including one of the six who died -- reported that sections of the mine floor had been buckling up from the intense pressure placed upon it. They said the mine bosses knew about the problem but continued operations anyway.

Then, on August 6, a series of pillars burst apart, causing a mine cave-in so powerful it registered 3.9 on the Richter scale. It killed the six miners, entombing them in the mine. Their bodies were never recovered. Three were immigrants from Mexico, forced by the bosses' racism to work on the more dangerous, unsafe jobs, a condition which then spreads to all workers. Ten days later, three more miners, working to reach the six who were trapped, were killed as well when a 1,500-foot section of the tunnel collapsed on them.

If the company had stopped this "retreat mining" after the March 2007 collapse, all these miners would be alive today. But the owners concealed the extent of that incident, leading to the August murders.

Now a big hue and cry is rising, from the Congressional report to NY Times' editorials, calling for a "criminal inquiry" and new safety laws. But the report itself upholds the legitimacy of "retreat mining." And the Mine Safety and Health Administration is notorious for being run by pro-industry appointees, who have done next to nothing about enforcing current laws. The "worst" that happens is a slap on the wrist for mine owners' violations.

Some coal bosses say domestic coal could become an "alternative" fuel to the U.S. rulers' dependence on imported oil from war-torn regions and anti-U.S. governments. Daydreaming! Modern industry and armies can't run without oil. Besides, the biggest U.S. bosses, like Exxon-Mobil, make multi-billion-dollar profits from oil; the Pentagon itself is geared to preventing U.S. imperialist rivals from grabbing control of the flow of oil. But -- oil or coal -- capitalist industries' main goal is reaping maximum profits. Killing workers, including ignoring their safety, is part of that process. Only a communist society, where workers' lives are the first priority and the fruit of their labors will be shared by the whole working class, not a few profiteers, will end this carnage.

FRANCE: Teachers' Strike in 130 Cities Against Gov't Cuts

PARIS, May 16 -- Yesterday, according to the government's understated figures, 860,000 public workers struck against job cuts and government policies dismantling public services, demonstrating in over 130 cities. It was particularly strong in education, with over half of junior and senior high school teachers and nearly two-thirds of primary school teachers on strike. Large contingents of high school students livened up the protests.

In Marseilles and five other cities, teachers' general assemblies voted to renew their strike on May 19, in some cases over the opposition of the union leaders. They hope to spark a break with the ritual 24-hour protest strike.

Longer and more intense strikes are needed to force the government to back down from the 22,900 education job losses programmed in the 2008 budget. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy's reaction to yesterday's walkout was to propose new strike-breaking laws to "protect" the "right to work."

The government's onslaught on public workers -- which includes last year's elimination of special retirement plans for mainly rail workers performing particularly hard jobs -- is not driven solely by budget-balancing needs, after giving the rich tax breaks of 222 million euros ($350 million) in 2007 (to increase this year). Privatizing public services is also part of the bosses' strategy to cut wages and benefits for ALL workers.

France's 5,000,000 public workers cannot be laid off or fired for union activity as easily as private-sector workers. They form the core of the French trade union movement. About 15% of public workers belong to unions, as against 5% of private-sector workers.

Given that French bosses are competing with rivals worldwide, they need to smash the French labor movement in order to maximize profits. For instance, while from 1996 to 2007, labor costs in Germany fell 5%, they rose 20% in France. (Charlie Hebdo, 5/7/2008) Nevertheless, with inflation, real wages in France have fallen 4.2% in the private sector and 7.0% in the public sector since 1994. (Council on Employment, Income and Social Cohesion)

Furthermore, French bosses are participating in on-going wars to re-divide the world. The French expeditionary force in Afghanistan now numbers 3,200 soldiers, and France is suspected of having tried to overthrow Sudan's government (Le Canard Enchaîné, 5/14/08). The bosses need a docile workforce on the home front.

Successful extension of the teachers' strike movement would build the May 22nd national strike called by all the major unions to protest government plans to increase the number of work-years needed for a full retirement pension. Previous pension "reform" laws have already led to a 30% relative fall in pensions as against wages. Air France and rail-worker unions have joined the strike call.

While it's necessary to fight against job cuts and for decent pensions, as long as capitalism exists so will the bosses' drive to increase exploitation and launch imperialist wars. That's why workers here and worldwide must go beyond struggles to "reform" capitalism and organize for communist revolution to destroy capitalism. J

BULLETIN May 19 -- About 40,000 teachers and their supporters demonstrated in Paris yesterday. An inter-trade union federation meeting today proposed no action except to renew the call, initially launched by the French PTA, for a demonstration on May 24. It also ignores the high school students' protest movement. In short, most of the union "leaders" are doing everything they can to alienate the teachers' potential allies and keep the movement "manageable."

In such a situation, communists put forward organizing the widest possible support for striking teachers, forging the links necessary to help develop the revolutionary potential of the working class.

Anti-War Solidarity Actions Sweep CUNY Campuses

NEW YORK CITY, May 19 -- On May Day, PLP members participated in events upholding workers' solidarity at multiple CUNY campuses. One of the campus unions, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), held rallies to celebrate the West Coast longshoreman's (ILWU) plan to organize an eight-hour work stoppage against the war. We were excited by this opportunity to show how class-conscious industrial workers can fight for more political demands (for a critical analysis of the ILWU May Day work-stoppage see report on the May Day activities in the Bay Area, CHALLENGE, May 21, 2008).
At the events, we participated in various anti-war activities -- bullhorn rallies, teach-ins, film showings and literature tables -- and distributed CHALLENGE, which linked the war with the CUNY budget cuts. On one campus a dozen union members unfurled a 15-foot-long banner, "US Out of Iraq...No Attack on Iran!" in front of the cafeteria. As speakers explained the real reasons for the war on Iraq along with conditions here at home, a student called out, "What about the war in Palestine?" We invited him to join our discussion.

During another rally, a letter received early that May Day morning from the General Union of Port Workers of Iraq was read aloud (see box). Inspired by ILWU's actions in the U.S., the Iraqi unionists were planning to stop work in Umm Qasr and Al Zubair.

On a third campus, the administration refused to grant a sound permit. When speakers began to use a handheld bullhorn, campus security backed up by city cops swarmed in, threatening to arrest the chapter chair and the speaker. So much for free speech on campus.
After these city-wide campus events, many students and union members went together to the Immigrants' Rights Rally in Union Square.

From these successful May Day actions the potential exists for building a strong worker-student alliance and to recruit new members to PLP. We will continue to be involved in struggles on our campuses to make this happen.

(Excerpts from the May Day message from the Port Workers in Iraq to West Coast U.S. dock workers.)

In solidarity with the ILWU, the General Union of Port Workers in Iraq will stop work for one hour on May Day in the ports of Umm Qasr and Khor Al Zubair.

Dear Brothers and Sisters of ILWU in California:

The courageous decision you made to carry out a strike on May Day to protest against the war and occupation of Iraq advances our struggle against occupation to bring a better future for us and the rest of the world as well....[which] will only be created by the workers.... We in Iraq are looking up to, and support you until the victory over the U.S. administration's barbarism is achieved.

Over the past five years the sectarian gangs who are the product of the occupation have been trying to transfer their conflicts into our ranks. Targeting workers, including their residential and shopping areas, indiscriminately using all sorts of explosive devices, mortar shells, and random shooting, were part of a bigger scheme that was aiming to tear up the society.... We are struggling to defeat BOTH the occupation and the sectarian militias' agenda....

Long live the port workers in California! Long live May Day! Long live International solidarity!"

LETTERS

Lauds May Day Youth

I have to first start by saying it was a very good experience for my family and me. I presently work at Rikers Island. I was very moved by the kids of all ages who were in attendance. I was blessed to be in their company. Kids who don't stand for anything will fall for everything. These multi-talented kids have a view of what is going on today which they showed in their performances. It is very important they realize how this world is going to be. I have never been moved by such a young and powerful group of kids. Kids need these events to express themselves.

My family and I would like to give special thanks to the PLP teacher and his wife that invited us to the powerful May Day event. Here's to the young and powerful kids of the future!

A Bronx Worker

`Thumbs up for Workers' State'

At the PLP May Day rally in NY, people were eager to take copies of CHALLENGE as we rallied. I distributed over 25 papers to observers. Many had never heard of May Day, but they responded positively to the idea of a workers' state.  One man from Haiti talked about the starvation his family faced living there, and was looking for big changes!

At the dinner, a D.C. community organizer who attended her first PLP May Day praised the commitment and sincerity of the youth leading the program. She said, "You can tell they really own these ideas -- they are not just repeating ideas heard from others!"  Another first-time May Day marcher promised to come back next year and tell his friends about it.

D.C. Red

Working Class Has Only
One Color -- RED

We in NYC had many May Day activities. On May 1, we assembled at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, and later went to Union Square to march against the raids suffered by undocumented immigrants. On May 3, we participated in the PLP political dinner honoring May Day.

In Brooklyn and Union Square we chanted and agitated intensely, countering the conservative political tone given by many organizations in those events for immigrant rights. Before 200 demonstrators in Cadman Plaza, one Latino immigrant spoke militantly, saying: "We must stop those SS-like raids carried out by the immigration cops in the streets and workplaces."

He also opposed the racist verdict freeing three cops who killed Sean Bell and injured his two friends with 50 shots. He also attacked the racist education cuts affecting our youth, the future of our class. He declared that the soldiers in Iraq are killing and dying for the sake of imperialism.

He concluded with a bang: "The working class only has one color: the red of the blood spilled by the Martyrs of Chicago executed for demanding their just rights. We speak one language, the one of struggle against exploitation and discrimination. Workers of the world, unite!"

This was the opposite of what others push: that voting for the Democrats gives immigrant workers "better possibilities." Some also said praying was the solution. But the bosses only listen to the "prayers" of the big corporations like Exxon-Mobil and Halliburton.

The PLP May Day political dinner was in sharp contrast, with speeches, poems and music full of communist solutions to capitalism's racism, war and exploitation. And the best part of this great evening of good food and better politics was the leadership provided by Red youth. The future of our movement is in great hands.

An immigrant worker

Peru: Aim Workers' Anger At Class Enemy

Some of us participated in the "People's Summit Linking Alternatives" carried out to coincide with the ruling-class summit meeting held here in Lima, Peru, between Latin America's rulers and the European Union's imperialists. Some 6,000 people attended the alternative summit on the campus of the Univ. of Peru at Rimac. On May 16, a mass rally was held at Lima's May 2 Plaza.

Some of us exposed the conditions of the working class. This contrasted with the main positions at the meeting, plagued by nationalist and patriotic organizations. Some even wanted to return to the ancient "collective living of Tawantinsuyo (Inca empire)." There were also relatively small pseudo-leftist organizations who still believe Peru must go through the experiences which Hugo Chávez is bringing to Venezuela or Evo Morales to Bolivia. They think Cuba is following the road of "socialist construction."

What's evident is the lack of channeling workers' discontent against their class enemy. This is the challenge facing those of us trying to build a vanguard organization of the working class. We must go beyond our enormous limitations.

Friends in Lima

Bosses' Pawns Can't Stop
Students From Marching

On May 1st 2008, a group of South Central LA high school students boarded a rented bus at a nearby college campus. But there, waiting to intercept us, were a dozen cop cars led by some administrators and the fascist District President. "You need our approval before boarding the bus." "You all don't know what you're getting into and don't know any better." "My children should be in school. That's more important." Words of obvious fascism from the administrator were shared by the District President. So, after being harassed by the bosses' pawns, we all packed into the cars of our comrades and met up with the bus at a rendevous point. There, comrades from other locations joined us as we left for the immigrant rights march as a group. We overcame the circumstances and did not let the cops or the District President stop us.

A student May Day marcher

CHALLENGE Carries the Day

On May 1st, about 22 people from our school and people from another school boarded a bus. When everyone boarded the bus we were given a red shirt and a chant sheet. On the way, we started chanting to get some practice. A block away from the march we departed from the bus and people brought carts, empty backpacks and purses just to put CHALLENGE in. When we started chanting, people looked at us. Then many of us scattered and started to distribute CHALLENGE to everyone who was interested in it. The highlight of this story is the CHALLENGE committee to get out the paper to different people. We talked about the paper. We did a good job getting out the paper, and I'm proud of us for doing this successfully without any fight or threats from any of the people we offered the paper to.

A high school CHALLENGE seller

Reflections on May Day

"This is a result of our work," my brother said, referring to workers and students with red flags meeting in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate May Day.

My brother was happy, even tearful. "This cost our Party beatings, jail, deportations, and separating families, but here's the result -- communist May Day lives -- no matter how much the bosses want to destroy it." My brother was right. If not for PLP celebrating May Day in the U.S. since the 1970s as a revolutionary holiday in the long-term struggle for communism, it would have been forgotten here.

It's gratifying to know that when there's such a celebration, the first thing workers who were members of PLP -- but are no longer active -- do is look for PLP.

My 16-year-old daughter came to the dinner and wanted to participate in the Immigrant Rights march, but she also wanted to go to school. I'm sorry I didn't struggle hard enough with her because our part of the march was the best, most militant and the reddest, qualitatively better because of PLP's presence -- those with the clearest, most profound and most political ideas, combating all nationalist, racist and anti-communist ideas.

Many in the march followed our leadership. While there were flags carried from every capitalist nation, the only flag that waved high during the whole march was the Red Flag of the Progressive Labor Party.

The street resonated with our chants -- "See this fist! Workers to Power!" and "Workers' struggles have no borders." These slogans belong not only to PLP but to the working class. They were heard during the whole march, along with "Long live communism, death to capitalism."

We were together with millions and millions of workers who celebrate our day. With thousands, and potentially millions, who follow our Party, although our numbers are modest, we represent the interests of the majority. I'm not alone. Here's my party, my class and this is my family, my people.

A Proud Communist

Solidarity on May Day

My family and I, along with a close friend, attended a May Day dinner in our community on April 26. A political skit based on communist analysis of the U.S. presidential race introduced an evening of personal stories about organizing for revolution and the history of the communist movement since Haymarket. We listened to a dramatic poetry reading and a call to expand the distribution of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO. Our voices rang through the neighborhood as we joined in singing the "Internationale" and "Bella Ciao."

We had the chance to renew old contacts and meet new comrades and friends. A Latina woman attending a PLP event for the first time said, "I never knew a white person could be so revolutionary".

The next day, my African-American friend called to tell me how impressed she was with the celebration. Commenting on the stories told by a Latina immigrant of the horrors faced in coming to the U.S. without papers, she said, "We are starting from a small group, but with the multi-racial unity we saw last night we can organize much bigger displays of solidarity with all workers, black, Latin, and white. We can defeat the [capitalist] media campaign to keep us divided!"

ON TO MAY DAY 2009
ALL POWER TO THE WORKING CLASS

West Coast comrade

FASCIST PARTY OUT IN PARAGUAY, BUT CAPITALISM REMAINS WITH A LIBERAL FACE

Ex-Bishop Fernando Lugo won the presidential elections in Paraguay, ending the 61-year reign of the fascist Colorado Party. Lugo won with the help of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, including the center-right Liberal Party, center-left parties, as well as several socialist parties including PMAS (Party of the Movement Towards Socialism, Hugo Chavez' allies) and several social movements of farmers and indigenous groups (including Tekojoja).

Many workers and activists believe that the working class will benefit from this ouster of Colorado. Not true! Lugo's win signals a change in the style of the oppressor, nothing more. His politics resemble those of Chavez in Venezuela and Lula in Brazil, who have the image of being pro-working class, but are really just another face of the ruling class. Lugo owes a debt to many capitalist elements among his allies in the Patriotic Alliance for Change and is not likely to be able to even accomplish modest reforms. Face it -- capitalism is bigger than any one candidate, no matter how sincere he or she may be about social change. It's the same in the U.S. with Obama, Clinton and McCain. Rather than build illusions in the system, workers and activists should follow the policy of "Don't Vote! Revolt!"

The big issue that Lugo will take on is renegotiating contracts involving two hydroelectric plants -- Itaipu (with Brazil) and Yacyreta (with Argentina). The Paraguayan government receives less than the typical world price for the electricity they sell and Lugo has promised that the revenue received from better deals with Brazil and Argentina will help fund social programs, including health care. (Dengue and yellow fever are now common in Paraguay). We have seen, however, time after time, that such reform promises rapidly go out the window after a "reformer" is elected, as the ruling capitalist class asserts its needs over those of the masses.

Immediately after winning the election, Lugo spoke with Hugo Chavez and said that he intends to join UNASUR, an economic bloc formed by Chavez. Then he declared his desire to meet with China, signaling an opening to Chinese imperialism to play off against U.S. imperialism and curry favor with his socialist backers in the Patriotic Union for Change. But trading one imperialist for another is not progress!

Paraguay is a geopolitically strategic country finding itself between Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia, while at the same time sitting on top of one of the world's largest supplies of fresh water -- the Guarani Aquifer. Many large and small imperialists, including Brazil, the U.S., Venezuela, China and the European Union, want a piece of Paraguay's resources and labor! Instead of playing ball with imperialists, revolutionary workers should break with all politicians and build the PLP, an independent revolutionary communist party that calls for the complete destruction of capitalism. No deals -- Lugo is just another puppet of the capitalists and their elites -- Workers must build the PLP and make revolution if the future is going to be bright!

REDEYE

Israel hero sees why Arabs fight

Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. "Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?" he asked. "There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country." (NYT, 5/4)

Liberals front for warmakers

...Left-liberals such as Michael Ignatieff and Paul Berman are not much more than camp followers of the Bush administration. "America's liberal armchair warriors... are the `useful idiots' of the war on terror." "...In today's America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig-leaf. There really is no other difference between them." (GW, 5/9)

Drug arrests: blatantly racist

Between 1980 and 2003, drug arrests for African-Americans in the nation's largest cities rose at three times the rate for whites, a disparity "not explained by corresponding changes in rates of drug use..."

Black men are nearly 12 times as likely to be imprisioned for drug convictions as adult white men.

Underscoring law enforcement's misguided priorities, fully 4 in 10 of all drug arrests were for marijuana possesion. Those who favor continuing these policies have not met their burden of proving their efficacy in fighting crime. (NYT, 5/10)

U.S. runs killers in Afghanistan

A special investigator for the United Nations on Thursday accused foreign intelligence agencies of conducting nighttime raids and killing civilians in Afghanistan with impunity.

...He was accusing the Central Intelligence Agency or American unconventional-warfare units of operating without accountability to the Afghan government or the foreign military command in the country.

"It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily armed internationals accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them," he said in his report. (NYT, 5/16)

India: U.S. polluter won't clean up

Hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects as a result of the world's worst industrial disaster 23 years ago in the central Indian town fo Bhopal.

...Children's growth had been stunted, said campaigners, because there has been no clean-up of the Bhopal plant...

The disused Union Carbide factory contains about 8,000 tonnes of carcinogenic chemicals that continue to leach out and contaminate water supplies used by 30,000 people.

Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide in 2001, says that because the plant is on government land it is up to the state to clean it up. (GW, 5/9)

Generation has no American dream

This is a generation that is in danger of being left out of the American dream -- the first American generation to do less well economically than their parents. And that economic uncertainty appears to have played a big role in shaping their views of government and politics.

...Americans in this age group are faced with a variety of challenges that are tougher than those faced by young adults over the past few decades. Among the challenges are worsening job prospects... The top five occupations in terms of anticipated job growth: registered nurses, retail sales, customer service reps, food preparers and office clerks.

It's not hard to understand why surveys show that overwhelming percentages of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The American dream is on life support. (NYT, 5/13)

Civil War's Hidden History: Women Workers Battled Gov't, Bosses

A People's History of The Civil War, by David Williams (published by The New Press, 2005), reveals that the U.S. Civil War was shaped, at least in part, by the resistance of the soldiers, the anti-war sentiments of the general population and the militancy of women workers, blacks, whites and native Americans. Williams' thesis is that class struggle -- the consolidation of finance capital vs. the response of working folks -- comprises the source of the conflict.

At the height of the war, women organized for higher wages with strikes and rose up against stores and government warehouses with armed struggle. Women of both the north and south began by raising their demands with petitions and delegations to Presidents Davis and Lincoln. Seamstresses from Montgomery, Alabama, wrote that as government workers, they needed more for their labors or they would perish on the $12-a-week allotment. Representatives of 10,000 seamstresses in Philadelphia called on Lincoln at the White House. All Lincoln did was ask the Quartermaster Dept. to make sure they got "the wages ordinarily paid," but the wages women got hardly provided a living.

Lacking help from either government, Confederate or Union, women began taking action for better pay and working conditions. In October 1863 a union of 1,000 female umbrella sewers in NYC and Brooklyn went on strike. They were working 18 hours a day for 6-8 cents per umbrella. In munitions factories women worked under murderous conditions: 19 killed at the Washington Arsenal; 15 in Jackson, Mississippi; 32 in a Virginia cartridge factory; and in a Richmond ordnance factory explosion 50 women died. In Augusta's gunpowder works, women walked out in Oct. `64; at Richmond's govt. arsenal, 300 women went on strike.

With Southern plantations growing profitable tobacco and cotton instead of food, small farm families were taxed to supply the army. Upon losing their husbands, brothers and sons in the army, poor southern women in particular became desperate to feed their children. In Greenville, Alabama, twenty women shouting "salt or blood" raided the depot and took what they needed. High prices were driven even higher by speculation. In Richmond, over a thousand women smashed shop doors and looted until President Davis himself came to the scene and threatened to have them shot. In Mobile, dozens of women bearing axes, hatchets and hammers ransacked grocery stores, carrying banners, "Bread or Blood." In Lafayette, women armed with guns, pistols and knives marched on a grist mill and took what they wanted.

In the North, women took to the streets as well, but to fight the draft. Poor men could not afford the wealthy men's way out of the war: $10,000 to hire a substitute. In Port Washington, LI, women led 1,000 protesters with a banner NO DRAFT, attacked the draft commissioner and broke up the draft box. In NYC, women took part in draft rebellions, grabbed stones and used their stockings as sling-shots.

These inspiring stories of our history comprise a small part of Williams' research on how the onset of the war and starvation of soldiers and their families was deliberate by Lincoln and his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton. Part two of this review will reveal that Williams himself did not give up on peaceful change through the ballot box. Yet he documents well how votes for Lincoln's second term were manipulated and that legislation passed during Lincoln's watch fed only the hunger of the growing wealthy class for land and centralized banking

U.S. OIl War Sends Vets Back Jobless, Homeless, Suicidal and Dead

Politicians in both parties are constantly waving the flag over the dead and wounded bodies of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, boasting about the "outstanding job" they're doing, after having been put "in harm's way" by the ruling class's vicious imperialist war for control of Mid-East oil.

These vets are workers, so the "harm's way" doesn't stop when they return -- IF they return -- to be attacked by a capitalist class which forces workers to pay even more for their economic meltdown and wars.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ, 3/25) and the Boston Globe report surging joblessness, low wages, inadequate and denial of medical treatment and huge homelessness.

The military paper "Stars and Stripes" cited a U.S. Veterans Affairs Dept. study reporting 18% of veterans being jobless.

One quarter of all vets are earning less than $21,840 per year.

The WSJ wrote, "The [above] report found that most of the returning veterans were unable to find civilian jobs that matched their previous military occupations." So much for the recruiters' promises of joining the army and "learning a skill."

The Military.com website released a survey showing 81% of discharged vets did not "feel fully prepared... [to] enter the job market." According to Black Veterans for Social Justice, "Typically...young adults who go into the military at 17 or 18, when they return home, the same kind of economic conditions that forced them [to enlist] ...still exist or have gotten worse." (OneWorld News service, Nov. 2007) And that's what the still-to-be-passed DREAM Act (supported by the liberals and the Pentagon) has in store for immigrant youth who join the military if they come home alive -- an economy of rising unemployment, sinking wages and racism on all fronts especially affecting black, Latino and immigrant youth. Talk about "harm's way"!

To make job matters worse, the percentage of amputees is the highest since the U.S. Civil War. Up to 36% of the 1.5 million veterans of the current wars are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder -- an astounding half a million patients! Outstanding claims by vets rose from 254,000 to 378,000 between 2003 and 2006. Average waiting time for treatment is 183 days.

Is it any wonder that 1,784 returning vets committed suicide in 2005 alone?

Finally, "194,254... [are] homeless...on any given night." (Boston Globe, quoting The Alliance to End Homelessness)

These are the fruits of imperialist war. The bosses send youth off to oil-rich lands to kill other youth, and workers -- over a million in Iraq -- only to send 4,000 back (plus 500 from the Afghan war) in body bags and tens of thousands suffering amputated arms and legs, brains shattered by explosions and post-traumatic stress, racist police terror, jobless or earning poverty wages and living on the streets.

However, working-class youth will continue to join the military, and eventually millions will be forced into the armed forces when the rulers bring back some form of the draft to wage their wider wars against their imperialist rivals

So organizing for revolution among soldiers and vets, not voting for these bosses' hypocritical, disgusting politicians, is the road to follow.

U.S. WAR CASUALTIES: 655,000 AND RISING

An April 17 RAND Corporation study as detailed in "CounterPunch Diary" (5/2) by Alexander Cockburn, reports that, "The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have thus far produced 300,000 psychological casualties, 320,000 brain injury casualties, plus 35,000 (probably understated) officially reported `normal' casualties. This adds up to 655,000 US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and average of just under 101,000 Americans killed or wounded every year since the wars began." This excludes the million Iraqi; dead from U.S. imperialism's invasion. Talk about blood for oil!

 

Killer Kops, Kourts Wanted For Murder

Chicago May Day Dinner Unites Axle Strikers, Miss. Shipbuilders

Big Bosses, Obama Pull Plug on Wright

• Wright’s Religious Dissent Once Aided Rulers

Pushing Police State, Obama O.K.S Cops Who Gunned Down Sean Bell

Racist Profiling Sky-High

NYC Students Walk Out Over Killer Kops, Racist Budget Cuts

a href="#Howard U. Students Invade Pol’s Office, Back Katrina Victims">"oward U. Students Invade Pol’s Office, Back Katrina Victims

a href="#May Day Sees PL’s Ideas Growing in Spain">"ay Day Sees PL’s Ideas Growing in Spain

a href="#PLP’ers Make Mark At Colombia May Day">"LP’ers Make Mark At Colombia May Day

Celebrating May Day Coast to Coast

a href="#The State of the World….">"he State of the World….

a href="#Life Teaches the Reason for — and History of — PLP">Li"e Teaches the Reason for — and History of — PLP

Stay Tuned for Communist Revolution!

Los Angeles; Detroit

S.F. Bay Area: PLP’s May Day Activities Cover the Waterfront

Mexico May Day Inspires Re-commitment to PLP

May Day Spirit Spurs Seattle Summer Project

a href="#PL-led Action Hits Mexico University’s Oppressive Rules">"L-led Action Hits Mexico University’s Oppressive Rules

LETTERS

Ira Gollobin Advised Draftees Too

a href="#Don’t Let The Fascists Tell Us Who The Heroes Are">"on’t Let The Fascists Tell Us Who The Heroes Are

a href="#Shed Illusions About Imperialism’s Allies">"hed Illusions About Imperialism’s Allies

Striking Immigrant Workers Head Up Paris May Day

Anti-Fascists Battle German Neo-Nazis, Cops on May Day

REDEYE

• US racism has Obama on leash
• Gitmo liars: Brass, not inmates
• Elections: The fix is always in
• Zimbabwe, Tibet: Imperialist guilt

Marching On May Day!!

Los Angeles; El Salvador; Washington D.C.; Chicago

---

Killer Kops, Kourts Wanted For Murder

On the morning of April 26, the racist court system fired the final shot in the execution of Sean Bell, acquitting the three cops who murdered him on his wedding day. The killer cops walk free to kill again, after firing 50 rounds at three unarmed young black men. These events, plus the $2 billion-a-week bloodbath in Iraq, reflect what the bosses have in store for us, and why we need a revolutionary movement to smash them.

The racist judge disliked the "demeanor" of the two witnesses — the other two shooting victims, who survived the assassination — who testified against the kkkiller cops. He also didn’t like the fact that the two witnesses had prior criminal records! Yet the courts use people with records as witnesses every day. But more to the point, in this racist society, with the world’s highest prison population, overwhelmingly black and Latino, it’s becoming much more common for a young black male to be in the criminal justice system than in college.

From the time the shooting occurred, racist mayor Bloomberg and the police department were orchestrating a plan to prepare the other klansmen in blue to be ready for mass outrage. The racist mayor met with black and Latino "community leaders" and criticized the police conduct. Meanwhile, the misleaders of NYC’s workers bought into his garbage, conveniently forgetting this is the same mayor who slashed the school budget by over $100 million in one night, affecting mainly black and Latino students.

One of the main henchmen in this plot is the "former" FBI informer Al Sharpton, who told people immediately after the verdict they should respond with "non-violence." He went so far as moving any demonstration away from the Queens site of the murder and the surrounding angry community. The aim of Sharpton and other politicians is to divert people into demanding an "independent investigation" of the NYPD. Mayor Bloomberg called the original killing "deplorable," taking the liberal road, in contrast to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s more Nazi-like tactics. This is the same Bloomberg who says he can’t pay municipal workers enough to keep food on their table (30% must resort to food pantries and food stamps).

But history shows that essentially nothing will be done to punish the killers. "It is extraordinarily hard to criminally prosecute officers who were on duty," said CUNY Professor of Police Science Eugene O’Donnell (NY Daily News, 11/29/2006).

Cops will continue to be racist goons because that’s the role they serve for the bosses. The entire judicial system is racist to the core. Over two million people are imprisoned in the U.S., 70% of them black and Latino workers, two-thirds for non-violent crimes. Ironically, the black and Latino youth who are victims of these murders are the very same people who the racist rulers want to recruit to fight and die in Iraq, killing other workers who the oil bosses exploit for billions in profits.

On the day of the verdict there were two protests, one in the morning where PLP’ers organized a picket line and led chants of "Racist cops you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!" Another rally in the afternoon sparked a spontaneous march through Queens’ streets to the murder site and the surrounding housing projects. As the marchers passed by, workers on buses, at their windows and in shops came out and chanted, in solidarity and anger over the verdict.

PLP played a small but important role in the events leading up to and following the Sean Bell verdict. We brought the message that workers can never get justice in the bosses’ racist court system and that a communist revolution is needed to destroy this capitalist system.

Chicago May Day Dinner Unites Axle Strikers, Miss. Shipbuilders

CHICAGO, IL, May 3 –– "And now I’m going to do for you what these people [PLP] did for us last year," said a returning black worker from Mississippi and one of the 7,000 strikers against Northrop Grumman and U.S. navy last year. We passed the hat and this worker returned to the stage and presented the 2 striking American Axle workers with over $1,000 we had just collected. It was a stirring show of communist-led working class solidarity and brought many to their feet. This was one of the many high points of our May Day dinner.

Our dinner tonight was attended by more than 150 workers and youth –– with a lot of new young faces. The crowd reflected the revolutionary movement we are building across all the bosses’ artificial borders. There were auto and transit workers, battle tested health care workers and professionals, college and high school teachers and students, immigrant and community activists, black, Latin and white, women and men, young and old. The program was planned and carried out by newer and younger cadre who are beginning to take the reins of leadership.

There were many other high points as well.

• A taped interview was played from two PLP Iraqi war veterans who could not be here.

• A veteran Party leader told how a PLP summer project among farm workers had changed her life and urged everyone to either attend or support the upcoming summer projects in Los Angeles and Seattle around aerospace workers and the military.

• A worker who has been through a two-year struggle against racist health cuts spoke about the need for communist revolution. "This system can’t be fixed. It must be torn down," she said.

• A teacher told how an 18-year old Chicago State University student was murdered by these racist cutbacks, when she was sent home from the ER instead of being properly examined. Instead of a "keynote address," another comrade stirred the crowd with an original revolutionary poem.

• A comedy skit skewered Clinton, Obama and McCain, and the evening ended with everyone on their feet, fists raised, singing the Internationale.

This May Day showed that despite overwhelming odds, we can build the revolutionary communist PLP. In the face of massive attacks on all fronts, from war, racist terror and mass poverty, workers and youth are seeking answers and can be won to PLP. The road to revolution will be long and difficult, but like the song says, "a better world’s in birth."

Big Bosses, Obama Pull Plug on Wright

Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a creature of the ruling class, bankrolled by the bosses with deep pockets. He began his religious career as a Rockefeller Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School. From 1970 to 1975, the Rockefeller family paid Wright’s way through the Fund for Theological Education they had established in the 1950s. Elite universities like Duke, Yale and Princeton have invited Wright to preach. The Rockefellers’ own Riverside Church in New York opened its pulpit to him in 1997.

With his broad popular base, Wright helped Barack Obama enter the U.S. Senate. But the White House hopeful had to dump his old mentor last month. Wright’s black liberation theology, long useful to the rulers in misdirecting working-class anger, now clashes with their imperialist war agenda. While Wright offers twisted critiques of U.S. foreign policy, Obama seeks to muster support and troops for U.S. rulers’ widening wars. He vows to add 92,000 soldiers once in office. Meanwhile, Obama minimizes racism — "We’re 90% there [equality]," he tells black voters — and calls Wright:

"Divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems — two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all."

Thus, Obama not only lumps workers and bosses into one group ("us all") rather than defining them as opposing classes; he also, in effect, denies the racism directed against black, Latino and Asian workers by equalizing the "problems that confront all of us," ignoring the double unemployment rates, lower incomes and second-class schools and housing afflicting these groups brought on by the rulers’ racism.

At odds only over tactics, however, Obama and Wright serve the same war-making capitalist class. While Obama may have slipped slightly in the polls, he is feeding quite well at the contributions trough. "Through the first three months of the year, employees [that is, executives, who can afford big payoffs, Ed.] of nine major industries — from communications and defense to transportation and Wall Street — gave the majority of their donations to the Illinois senator over rival Hillary Clinton." (Wall Street Journal, 5/3/08)

Wright’s Religious Dissent Once Aided Rulers

Wright’s nationalist religious movement served U.S. rulers well near the end of, and after, the Vietnam War. By pushing electoral politics, it provided a safety valve to black workers disgusted with genocide, subjected disproportionately to casualties in the war and to imprisonment at home, and hardest hit by a permanent slide in manufacturing jobs and wages. Wright helped lead spirited rallies and demonstrations decrying racism but demanding the election of black politicians as the solution. Scores of black mayors, who, in fact, helped perpetuate the rulers’ racism, won office in major cities aided by activists like Wright.

The first official act of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, backed by Wright, was to lay off 3,000 city workers, the majority black. New York’s David Dinkins, also that city’s first black mayor, cut the budget of all vital services, especially affecting black and Latino workers while increasing only one department — the cops, the very ones responsible for a series of racist murders.

Obama, however, had higher ambitions than Wright. Though an outsider fresh from Harvard Law School and the New York business world, he gained a ready-made, mobilized base by joining Wright’s 12,000-strong Trinity congregation in Chicago before he started running for the Illinois state senate in 1996. At the time, Obama’s Project Vote effort to register black youth dovetailed with Wright’s phony militancy.

Pushing Police State, Obama O.K.S Cops Who Gunned Down Sean Bell

But, as their Iraq oil war threatens to spread to Iran and go global with China, U.S. rulers’ needs have changed. Until they can bring back the draft (and even after) they require willing recruits for their armed forces of every so-called "race." Furthermore, organized opposition, however harmless to imperialism and racist atrocities, no longer suits U.S. capitalists, who want a domestic police state. So Rockefeller protégé Wright’s usefulness has dwindled.

Freed of Wright’s baggage, Obama waves the bosses’ war-and-fascism banner openly. His immediate racist, pro-cop, pro-capitalist, anti-militant response to the clearing of the NYPD cops who murdered Sean Bell with a 50-bullet onslaught tells all. "We’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down," says Obama, later adding, "Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive." Obama stood even to the right of outright warmonger Hillary Clinton, who suggested the feds "look into" the Bell case.

Obama faces racist criticism from presidential opponents hoping to make Jeremiah Wright the next Willie Horton. [In 1988, Bush, Sr.’s campaign ran ceaseless TV ads depicting Horton, a black Massachusetts man convicted of raping a white woman (a charge he denied) of being put back on the streets by Democratic candidate Dukakis after being paroled in a Dukakis-sponsored program.] Obama also is being warned by backers like the New York Times, who say the "loony" pastor hurts Obama’s election chances.

But Obama’s plight deserves no sympathy from the working class. He, just as much as Clinton and McCain, and perhaps more effectively, serves capitalists who need to expand their war-making and crack down severely on domestic dissent. Voting for any of the candidates won’t change a thing. Neither will praying or demonstrating with pampered frauds like Wright.

The profit system that ceaselessly creates war needs to be destroyed and replaced with workers’ rule. That is the ultimate goal of our revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party.

Racist Profiling Sky-High

The number of people subject to police stop-and-frisk actions in the first quarter of 2008 rose by more than 35,000 compared to the previous quarter, to a total of 145,098, the largest ever seen in one 3-month period. In both quarters 82% were black or Latino. And the number of bullets fired by the cops increased between 2001 and 2006.

Police stopped releasing data on the "race," gender or age of shooting human victims around the same time they begun reporting on the breed of dogs shot by cops each year. (Information from NY Sun, 5/6.)

NYC Students Walk Out Over Killer Kops, Racist Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, May 3 — Students at several high schools walked out on May 1 to protest the acquittal of the kkkops who assassinated Sean Bell and against the racist budget cuts hitting NYC schools. Scores of students joined the rally at Union Square to show solidarity with the immigrant-rights May Day rallies.

A city-wide walkout was called for at a budget-cuts conference weeks earlier where scores of students gathered to plan upping the ante against Mayor Bloomberg’s recent racist attacks on NYC students. Those who’ve been meeting with PLP became the walkout’s leadership. They met with others from different schools to organize a plan; struggled with their classmates over the importance of fighting back as a class; distributed leaflets this morning at train stations most students use; and led students out school doors.

Despite intimidation by the administration and the dozen police cars and fire truck stationed at the school, most students overcame their fears and walked out.

Students displayed real solidarity and leadership, belying the stereotype that youth care only about themselves. When one assistant principal ordered teachers to lock students inside classrooms, students avoided classes the period they were planning to walk out, and instead spread the word to go to classrooms of teachers who supported the walkout.

One student overheard a dean calling students "idiots and stupid" for planning a walkout and ordering safety agents to lock them in. That student and her friends struggled with safety agents to refuse, leading most of the safety agents to support the students, even encouraging them to leave.

When the students finally reached Union Square, they heroically marched behind a banner proclaiming, "Asian, Latin, black and white, smash police terror with communist revolution," chanting, "The workers, united, will never be defeated!" They then chanted in solidarity with marching workers and gave speeches on why they walked out and why the budget cuts were racist. PLP students who led the walkout and demonstration explained the need for a communist revolution to smash capitalism. All the students cheered and helped distribute our literature.

Earlier, most students spent the entire day with the Party contingent preparing for the immigrant-rights march. During that time, the students encountered a black party who tried to tell the predominantly black group of students they needed to think about "themselves" as black people first, before anyone else. After a heated debate the discussion ended with the students chanting in their faces, "Asian, Latin, black and white, workers of the world unite!"

When the march began, many more students had joined our growing contingent and were eager to spread our communist message through city streets. As the marchers passed by, we gave out the last of 10,000 leaflets and 900 CHALLENGES and then joined them, chanting along the way.

The following day (Friday) PL students invited all those who had attended the Union Square rally to our Saturday May Day march and dinner. Now we must maintain the momentum in the school and recruit those students who have grown close to the Party. We also must organize the other students who understood the importance of taking action against racism and spreading communist ideas at the Union Square rally to read CHALLENGE regularly, join a study group and eventually join the Party.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. –– Twenty students from Howard University marched from campus to the office of Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) who has been complicit in the gentrification process of New Orleans by blocking a moderate bill that would have supposedly guaranteed one-for-one replacement of demolished affordable housing. Vitter was "unavailable," so the students sat-in, demanding action. A dozen cops were called to intimidate the students, to no avail. The students presented a petition signed by 400 students to Vitter’s aide demanding that Vitter stop blocking the bill, and the students vowed to return to his office in solidarity with public housing residents in New Orleans, while several students will also return this summer to continue the struggle in New Orleans itself. Several of these bold students joined the May Day march in New York City and brought their message of struggle against fascism to the May Day dinner.

These actions were a result of Howard University Political Education and Action Committee spending spring break in New Orleans working with "C3/Hands Off Iberville," a coalition of New Orleans activists and public housing residents fighting against the demolition of their public housing homes. Major real estate developers, with support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the New Orleans City Council, are using the lie that Hurricane Katrina made public housing uninhabitable to demolish affordable housing and replace it with high-end condos. They already did this—before the storm!—by demolishing St. Thomas public housing and creating River Garden, with only 200 affordable of the 700 that had been promised to the community.

New Orleans gives us an early look at fascism USA. Bulldozers and police brutalize people and their homes, while the ruling class tests out strategies of social control while letting their buddies make huge profits from the "recovery." All the more reason to fight for revolution!

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Spain, May 1st — "I knew the PLP in the United States," said a Spanish youth when he got a PLP leaflet. He was happy to find out that communist political work is a lot bigger throughout the world than he thought. "Long Live May Day! Long live the working class!," we chanted today. Here and in all parts of the world, the work of the Progressive Labor Party is clear: spread the true ideas of communism far and wide.

The Workers’ Commissions unions Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and the General Union of Workers (UGI in Spanish) in Spain organized a May Day march for workers from all over, but in reality workers know that these reformists and revisionists are part of the capitalist system and that the only thing they’re good for is to try to pacify the masses. We won’t rest. We’ll keep working hard to bring the workers the real revolutionary struggle, not like these sellouts.

It was a real celebration. There were workers from all parts of the world, and we passed out many communist leaflets in the march. I believe that with a lot of concentration, our work will grow a lot. We have made ties with workers and have vowed to bring them CHALLENGE and other material to be able to build the fight to destroy this capitalist system that kills the working class and finally to implant the only solution for the international working class: THE COMMUNIST SYSTEM!J

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BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, May 1 — A 100-strong contingent led by PLP participated in the May Day march here. Amid pro-capitalist reformist ideas pushed by union hacks and fake leftists as the "solution" to the pro-war policies of President Uribe’s death-squad government, U.S. rulers’ most loyal ally in the region, PLP’s internationalist communist politics stood out. Our revolutionary chants, distribution of 3,000 communist leaflets and hundreds of DESAFIOS brought many workers and youth around our contingent and joined our chants. (More next issue.)

Celebrating May Day Coast to Coast

NEW YORK CITY, May 3 — Over 800 workers, students and soldiers from the East Coast kicked off PLP May Day here with a bang. Activities spread across the city.

"The Workers, United, Will Never be Defeated" chanted nearly 200 members and friends of PLP marching through Brooklyn streets carrying red flags and banners calling for unity of the international working class and the need to smash police terror with a communist revolution. Anger over the acquittal of Sean Bell’s NYPD execution squad and billionaire Mayor Bloomberg’s racist budget cuts spurred several high schools walkouts on May 1 (see page 3) and lent an extra urgency to this year’s May Day. Passing cars responded enthusiastically to our signs, "Honk if you hate racist police murder." Over 2,600 CHALLENGES were distributed.

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All the events heard state-of-the-world talks, one showing why capitalism only offers a future of more war and fascism regardless of who wins the 2008 election and inspired renewed optimism by connecting the growth represented on May Day with the necessity and ability of the working class to create a communist future, without minimizing the hard reality of the difficulties in building such a movement.

At another dinner the two keynote speeches were written and delivered by young female comrades who showed polished political analysis, poise and righteous anger over the capitalist system that wages war against the working class for bosses’ profit. The speeches emphasized class struggle and the unity of female and male workers worldwide, as well as a call to combat a capitalist society mired in crisis and marked by endless wars.

And a third dinner’s speech stressed that despite what cynics say, workers can be won to fight capitalism. But these ideas don’t fall from the sky. Workers need communist leadership and need to become communist leaders themselves.

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A highlight at one celebration was hearing why comrades from three generations joined the Party: One who met a PL’er in his church was physically confronted by cops on horseback at an anti-war march, sparking the realization that democracy does not work. Everything learned over time from the PL’er then clicked; he now knew the real solution was to fight for communism.

Another joined after several hard experiences in community organizations led to the conclusion that reform doesn’t work. Although initially disagreeing with some things, after years of struggle he realized that they were necessary. Being in PLP and building a base in the working class simply became the right thing to do.

The third joined at age 12 to "be part of a group," but after two years of study groups, club meetings, summer projects and ideological struggle, fighting for communism and being a member of PLP took on a whole new meaning.

A brief history of PLP was viewed through the lens of one member’s life experience as a teacher. When NYC parents fought for more control of their children’s schools in the 1960’s, thousands of teachers followed their racist union leadership to strike against a mostly black and Latino community. This member was part of a PLP-led fight to physically open the schools as well as launch "freedom schools." One member recalled being called a racist epithet at five years old for crossing the racist picket line.

Stay Tuned for Communist Revolution!

Young people were front and center throughout the evening, from the planning to the speeches to the cultural performances, showing the Party’s growing vitality and attention to developing new leadership. A poignant skit created by a group of twenty young people highlighted youth leadership as it exposed military recruitment as a scam to win youth to fight and die in imperialist wars to defend the profit system. The skits and an open mic showcased the drive and enthusiasm youth have to grasp revolutionary ideas and make them their own.

Several veterans of PLP’s military work emphasized the importance of youth enlisting to build PLP. Many ideas were also presented on how to win veterans who return home disillusioned from receiving nothing of what they were promised and scarred by U.S. imperialist atrocities. A young female industrial worker did a great job explaining to the young people present just how powerful the workers can be when won to communist ideas.

The crowd was inspired by an outpouring of original communist music, poetry and visual art by three generations of comrades and friends of the Party. Individual comrades took the floor to give detailed answers to key questions, such as, "How will communism fight to destroy racism, sexism, and nationalism?" and "How can joining the Party change the world?"

All in all, these workers, soldiers and students assembled on a highly-charged day that both celebrated past achievements and pointed toward a challenging but ultimately victorious future on the road to a communist society. "Stay tuned!"

Los Angeles

April 26 — "The bosses can’t carry on their wars without workers producing for these wars," declared a woman industrial worker at a May Day Dinner. "We are those industrial workers! The factories are the heart of the society and they need to be the heart of the revolution. That’s why it’s so important that we organize in the factories using CHALLENGE networks….I’m an industrial worker and CHALLENGE opened my eyes to the reality of capitalism, oppression and discrimination at work….It’s very important to expand the readership of CHALLENGE so that our fellow workers can understand the racism, sexism and exploitation which we are forced to live with and can join with us in the PLP. Long live Communism!"

Another comrade explained that "Revolutions only happen if there’s a communist party with the correct ideas and a political base among workers and others, especially industrial workers." The speaker cited "the Bolsheviks [who] didn’t retreat….under fascist repression, concentrating in the factories and the armed forces…. [With] unbreakable confidence in the working class and in turn the workers’ great confidence in them, they achieved the ‘impossible’ in 1917 when the workers took power."

One speaker reported on the struggles in the colleges against cutbacks and on the Summer Project to bring communist politics to workers. Speakers highlighted the key role of soldiers in fighting to end imperialist war with revolution. At one event a high school student presented the historic importance of May Day, followed by a comrade who linked the legacy of May Day to the 1968 worker-student uprising in France, citing the decisive role of workers, the need for the worker-student alliance and the political leadership of a truly communist party like PLP. A moving poem captured outrage at the effects of capitalism as well as the desire to fight for communism.

About 300 people participated in these activities, enjoying songs and delicious international food and camaraderie. They reflected intense political struggle throughout the year to bring communist politics to workplaces, schools and friends. We concluded with enthusiastic preparations for the distribution of CHALLENGE, leaflets and flags for the May Day immigrant-rights march. J

Detroit

April 26 — Today PLP re-established its May Day tradition in Detroit with a dinner of over two dozen workers, teachers and youth, including special guests from the American Axle picket lines.

A young community college teacher gave a brief history of May Day, how the PLP re-established May Day in the U.S., and how he looks forward to marching each year to advance international communist revolution. A couple from American Axle spoke about the difficulties of the strike and how the UAW leadership was in bed with the AAM bosses and GM to cut their wages.

A third speaker talked about the acquittal of the killer cops who murdered an unarmed black man Sean Bell in NYC on his wedding day. He said that the bosses need racist police terror to enforce a future of wage cuts, poverty and war, and that the Sean bell case and the American Axle strike were two very good reasons to join PLP and build a revolutionary movement to smash the racist rulers.

This may be a small step in the big picture, but it can be an important event for the future of PLP and the class struggle in Detroit. J

S.F. Bay Area: PLP’s May Day Activities Cover the Waterfront

BAY AREA, Calif. — PLP members and friends celebrated May Day in activities throughout Northern California, providing many opportunities to advance our communist politics. Despite the limitations of liberal-led marches and rallies, workers were open to our revolutionary message. The ongoing struggle to develop newer Party members and recruit new ones remains the main limitation of our potential. Despite this we spread our communist ideas throughout all the May Day events.

In the inland port city of Stockton, Party members made contacts with longshoremen who had struck for eight hours to protest the war in Iraq. In San Francisco, by selling CHALLENGE and distributing leaflets to the dockers, significantly we brought a communist revolutionary analysis to this otherwise liberal-led march and rally. Previously, the International Longshoremen’s and Warehouseman’s Union (ILWU) had struck against the World Trade Organization in Seattle; for the framed Mumia Abu Jamal; and an "unofficial" one-day protest of an on-the-job death of one of their comrades.

These actions refute the lie that workers won’t fight around "political issues." But they’re all framed to appeal to the capitalist electoral system. This ties into those capitalists who trace the Iraq war to the Bush administration attempt to run the Iraq war "on the cheap," while undermining the overall U.S. world position. This is a far cry from the workers taking the bosses’ war head on. (See box.) Our challenge is to push beyond these limits and bring revolutionary politics to the forefront.

We also attended a rally and March in Dolores Park where a PL teacher met with former students who helped distribute our literature there.

In Oakland, PLP members joined the immigrant rights march. Those around us picked up our chants, focused on internationalism, working-class unity and revolutionary ideas. The march grew larger as it progressed and was the most multi-racial in recent years. Four student friends of the Party from a local university marched with us. Several Party members have already followed up contacts made there.

Elsewhere in the inland Bay Area, a young teacher comrade participated in a march organized by teachers against the budget cuts at their school. We hope to continue to develop this class struggle.

Transit workers, teachers and college students attended a May Day dinner this weekend. Old friends enjoyed good food, great speeches, and an afternoon of communist celebration. A conversation with an old friend revealed how the reality of life can be used to show workers that capitalism is the root of our problems. Our challenge is to present communist revolution as the answer. Overall, this May Day helped build the influence of the Bay Area Party.

Mexico May Day Inspires Re-commitment to PLP

Mexico CITY, May 1st— A group of members and friends of PLP participated in the mass May Day March in Mexico City where hundreds of thousands of workers come to show their anger against the capitalist system and its government. We distributed 15,000 leaflets and 300 CHALLENGES in which we exposed the capitalist system including the privatization of oil and the need for a communist revolution in order to build a society that meets the needs of the working class.

Our contingent marched with banners and chanted slogans like , "LONG LIVE COMMUNISM! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!’’ AND "ONE CLASS ONE PARTY, WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!" We also sang songs like "Bandera Roja" and "Bella Chao" and of course the INTERNATIONAL. We were a small militant group but we captured the attention of many marchers.

After the march we had a gathering where we talked about the day’s activities. One of the things that inspired many comrades was that many new youth participated with us who hadn’t before. One of them said that he’d participated in other organizations and that none of them had convinced him as PLP had. That’s why he asked that we keep inviting him to future meetings. We decided to have a meeting this same week to plan some activities and to maintain constant communication.

Another thing that inspired many was the participation of someone who had been inactive in the last few years. At the end of the march, this friend gave a small speech in which he talked about why it’s important to celebrate May Day and the need to continue organizing the working class, thus announcing his recommitment to the Party. Some suggested that he help organize a cadre school about political economy and help in continuing to deepen the political understanding of more comrades.

We hope that next year we’ll have a bigger contingent with more political leadership.J

May Day Spirit Spurs Seattle Summer Project

SEATTLE, WA., May 3 — "The world needs communist politics now more than ever," declared a young Party worker, our keynote speaker, at tonight’s May Day Dinner. He followed an Iraq veteran who urged all to continue fighting U.S. imperialism’s Mid-East occupation at the upcoming "Winter Soldier" events. Finally, a student leader invited the multi-racial group of students, educators, campus workers, military veterans, active-duty soldiers, Boeing workers and families to join our July Summer Project.

The keynote speaker outlined the brutal attacks from U.S. bosses preparing for wider wars, eventually World War III, how they need to attack workers at home in order to attack workers abroad. Fascist intimidations cited included 2.4 million now languishing in prisons, neglected Katrina survivors, the assassination of Sean Bell, the brutal exploitation of Latino immigrants in war factories and government immigration raids.

"Ultimately," our speaker said, "this racism is used to divide us and hide the fact that wage slavery is the curse of all workers regardless of ‘race’ and gender." Just ask the striking American Axel workers how the wage system "serves" them!

Many volunteered for our July Summer Project as we fight for "the hearts and minds" of Boeing workers whose contract expires this fall, and of soldiers at nearby Ft. Lewis (one in attendance) and McChord Air Force base.

One friend brought her husband, who "loves to talk politics." He was not disappointed. Between mouthfuls of food, we discussed how communist society could and should function, how to make communist politics primary, and how to have confidence that our Party and the working class can lead society.

Between the dinner and Thursday’s May Day immigration march we distributed EVERY CHALLENGE in the city to readers and sellers. A thousand leaflets about the communist international spirit of May Day and another about Sean Bell circulated among marchers, in Boeing shops and other workplaces, homes and classes. Friends gave generously as we passed the hat to help pay for all the literature.

A Boeing retiree we’ve known for over 30 years made a special contribution and then took extra literature for a mosque and a mostly black church. "I’m glad to see you passing the hat," he said. "This good stuff costs plenty."

On weekends prior to May Day, a team visited Boeing readers and sellers at their homes to discuss the ideas our friends were already reading in CHALLENGE over coffee (a Seattle obsession!). This helped make our dinner a modest success.

Class struggle and agitation are crucial, but without these personal ties, we will remain stuck in neutral.

We’ll expand these team visits between now and the Summer Project to bring the communist class-consciousness expressed by our young keynote speaker to many more in the area.

"Today on May Day," he concluded, "we remember that it’s the working class who built this world; we planted every field and laid every brick. All the wealth of the world was created through the labor of the working class. This world is not for us to slave in, but to master and to own. We have nothing to lose but our chains and a world to win."

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MEXICO, April 16 — PLP organized a protest at a school in UNAM (Autonomous University of Mexico) against the Rules of Inscription reproduced on April 7th, in an edition of the "Rights and Obligations of the Universities" by the Administration’s Committee in " Defense of the University Students."

These rules require that only students who have finished their Bachelor’s degree in three years and with an average grade of nine (barely 10% of the students achieve this) are allowed to choose a major and their preferred school. This same rule excludes from UNAM those who finish their bachelor’s degree in more than 4 years. And for the faculty, to achieve permanent status, a professor would have to work 5 times longer (505% more) than the current plan.

The UNAM student strike of 1999-2000 demanded the repeal of this same rule. In the face of the mass and prolonged protest against the police intervention to smash the strike, the Rector declared that this rule would be suspended until it was discussed in the University Congress (that they could never organize). However, since the protests got smaller, now the government in using the Administration’s Committee in the Defense "of the university students" to remind us of their regulation. The majority of students are against this.

The PLP quickly called for a protest inside one of the schools where we demanded that the Director take the message of our anger against this ruling to his superiors. We also demanded a cafeteria for the students, improvements in the showers in the sports area, and permanent status for the "interim" professors, some of whom have been in this interim situation for 10 years, and other demands.

About 60 students came to the protest and hundreds watched it, including teachers and workers who’ve shown their support and agreement. We brought red banners of PLP and we talked abut the need to build a new type of proletarian party that fights directly for Communism.

We recognize that even though we’ve been timid in putting forward the ideas of the liberation of the working class, we’ve taken steps that have also led to the math professors demanding the same things of the school administration. We’ve also carried out a campaign to distribute copies of PLP’s Road to Revolution IV. Several professors have shown us their support and encouragement to continue fighting actively for revolution.

Greetings to all the comrades!

LETTERS

Ira Gollobin Advised Draftees Too

I was saddened to learn of the death of Ira Gollobin, a long-time fighter for the legal, political and ideological interests of the working class [see CHALLENGE, 5/7]. A personal incident can give some idea of the service he rendered to working people.

In the 1950’s, immediately after the cease-fire in the Korean War, I received a draft notice. (Military conscription still existed.) Being a member then of the old Communist Party (CP), I took the notice to my CP section organizer (local leader) and asked her what to do. She said that, as of that moment, I was dropped from membership and that no one would talk to me.

This was a period of intense government attacks on communist activists, and understandably, I felt somewhat confused at this news. I spoke to some leaders in the old movement, and, indeed, no one would talk to me. Finally, after approaching numerous people about my predicament, a friend told me of a lawyer who operated out of a storefront office on the Lower East Side, and advised political activists who were being drafted. This lawyer turned out to be Ira Gollobin.

He gave me extremely sound advice which, after entering the Army, enabled me to fend off pressures by military intelligence and other officers to become a political informer. In fact, Ira’s advice permitted me to participate in a legal and political struggle that ultimately ended the Army’s practice of giving bad discharges based on a draftee’s political activity prior to military service.

Incidentally, the section organizer who told me I was dropped from membership gave up on the working class and became a Democratic Party state committee-person. So much for the commitment of that "leadership."

Experiences like these eventually led me to help organize in Progressive Labor, an organization that has never turned its back on the working class.

An Old Red

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Recently, the liberal media and people like political comedian Bill Maher on his HBO show, were telling us constantly that Valerie Plame was a hero we should all admire. She was the CIA agent outed by a right-wing politician-newsman —there’s absolutely no loyalty among these thieves.

On the Maher show, she was cheered, and when Maher asked if she had been involved in killing operations, she said yes. After all, that’s what these bloody hired killers do for a "living." They strongly front for U.S. aggression and murders worldwide, back since the end of World War II, when the CIA was formed.

Anti-communist CIA-trained mercenaries invaded Cuba at Playa Girón (the Bay of Pigs) to try to topple the Castro regime and resurrect a pro-U.S. regime similar to former dictator Batista who had enslaved the population for decades. But the invaders’ dream of local support turned into its opposite, and the population helped the Castro army defeat them quickly. (Interestingly, Havana traded the captured mercenaries for badly-needed medical supplies, and the Kennedy administration sent diet products! That’s about how far you can trust these fascists to keep their word.)

Currently there’s a growing opposition worldwide. You should examine these people who the press extols as the latest hero or spokesperson, for example the documentary film-maker Michael Moore and Barack "Archer-Daniels-Midland-Ethanol" Obama.

And the Progressive Labor Party should continue exposing these vermin.

Up-North Reader

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I was confused by the CHALLENGE article (4/9) about the 20th anniversary of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, celebrated on March 25th in Cuba.

It described Angola’s MPLA government backed by Soviet imperialism and its satellite Cuba pitted against the U.S./South African-backed UNITA "rebels." Both were rotten, pro-capitalist nationalist organizations.

Raul Castro and the government representatives from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa have good reason to celebrate — this victory enabled them to rule over and exploit the working class for a long time.

The article said the battle marked the beginning of the end of the hated South African apartheid regime and the myth of its army’s invincibility. But the Cuban army was not a red army like the Soviet Red Army that drove the Nazis from Stalingrad all the way to Berlin. During the 1970’s, Castro sent 13,000 Cuban soldiers to Ethiopia to support the fascist military Junta (Dergue), a Soviet puppet, helping it maintain power and murder workers.

The current rulers of South Africa, Angola and Namibia, who were the leaders of those "liberation" movements, were in bed with the imperialists then and still are. Now Cuba (where Fidel replaced U.S.-style capitalism with Soviet-type state capitalism) is turning to China because its former imperialist master, the Soviet Union, is gone.

It was South Africa’s heroic students and workers, not the Russian imperialists or their puppets, who fought apartheid with the goal of liberating the working class. But the African National Congress (ANC) reformist leadership and the revisionist (phony leftist) South African Communist Party dashed their aspirations. Capitalism and racism are alive and well in South Africa today. Under the current ANC leaders, the country’s workers are still oppressed and exploited.

The following editorial is from CHALLENGE 4/6/1988:

"Angola and Namibia are other scenes of capitalist carnage. In Angola, over 215,000 have died since 1975. The Cuban/Soviet-backed Angolan government is fighting the U.S./South African-backed UNITA ‘rebels.’ Each side is rotten to the core. The Angolan people will be oppressed no matter who ‘wins.’ In Namibia, over 5,000 have been killed in a war between the South Africans and the Namibian nationalists. This war is closely linked to the war in Angola….The record of imperialism is clear!.... Capitalism, imperialism, or nationalism breeds death and destruction. To…end these evils…you must destroy capitalism."

We can’t have illusions in any nationalist/ capitalist allies of imperialism, whether U.S., Russian or Chinese. We must win the world’s workers to fight for our own class interests: communism.

An African immigrant

Striking Immigrant Workers Head Up Paris May Day

PARIS, May 1 — It’s in the street that it happens / When something happens / A ballot in a ballot box / Doesn’t change much!

Sound trucks in May Day demonstrations across France blasted out the new song by the radical Jolie Môme theater company. Over 200,000 marched in 150 cities, demanding more buying power and condemning the government "reform" requiring 41 years’ work (instead of 40) for a full retirement pension. The demands reflected the reformism of the trade unions that organize May Day here.

Nevertheless, in Paris (30,000 marchers), pride of place was given to undocumented immigrants who’ve been striking since April 15, demanding legalization. In Marseilles, 30,000 marched behind a banner reading "May ’68, May 2008: the struggle continues." In Nantes, a student union contingent chanted their banner’s slogan: "The struggle is ... class against class!"

Today’s demonstrations kick off a month of struggle, including a coming teachers’ and government workers’ strike and nation-wide protests opposing retirement "reform." The government is cutting 11,200 education jobs.

But without revolutionary communist leadership, the May actions will likely be sold out. An April 10 agreement with the bosses on union representation will prevent small unions from blocking sweetheart contracts, making the CGT the key union player. It will use this position to sell out workers the way it sold out last November’s rail strike (see CHALLENGE 12/12/07). The right-wing French parliament will certainly ratify the agreement.

A recent poll shows unfortunately that 64% of the workers here still trust the union hacks to defend their interests. It’s up to communists to turn the disappointment that these labor fakers will inevitably generate into revolutionary anger and organizing.

Anti-Fascists Battle German Neo-Nazis, Cops on May Day

HAMBURG, GERMANY, May 1 — Large anti-fascist May Day demonstrations opposed neo-Nazi marches here and in Nuremberg. Over 4,000 people attended the kick-off rally here, and 10,000 marched. Burning barricades were erected on commuter train tracks and in streets to stop the 1,100 neo-Nazis from marching around Barmbek, the Hamburg neighborhood that was the center of the 1923 communist uprising.

The cops used water cannon to protect the neo-Nazis, whose buses were nevertheless stoned. Some were punched when the anti-fascists were able to get near them. A police car was overturned.

In Nuremberg, 4,000 protestors marched north from the city center towards the planned neo-Nazi demonstration. Some 3,000 helmeted, club-swinging cops cracked heads in trying to protect the neo-Nazis from the anti-fascist demonstrators. The cops also attacked the anti-fascists with pepper spray and water cannons. The Nuremberg mayor exhorted people to ignore the neo-Nazis.

Only 200 anti-capitalist demonstrators attended a May Day rally in Hanover, most having gone to the protests in nearby Hamburg. The Hanover rally speaker said: "It is right to demand better working conditions and higher wages, but it is wrong not to make demands that go further. We are so bold as to ask: Wherefore work? Wherefore wages? And we demand the abolition of wage labor!"

On April 30, a dozen neo-Nazi thugs attacked five immigrants in Dortmund. German anti-fascists who happened to be nearby rushed up and together with the immigrant and native-born workers routed the neo-Nazis.

In Tübingen, 600 people marched on May Day.

Heribert Prantl, writing in the conservative Sueddeutsche Zeitung, said German unions’ failure to protect workers from the consequences of the Harz IV "reforms," which notably ended benefits for the long-term unemployed, has made workers here realize they must fight, which has breathed new life into May Day.

REDEYE

US racism has Obama on leash

To the Editor:

Bob Herbert complains that the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is harming Barack Obama’s campaign by "roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr Obama has tried to avoid: race."

How can anyone — Mr. Wright or anyone else — be faulted for forcing a black candidate to address the issue of race? It’s absurd. If America will elect a black man as president only if he avoids the issue of race, then the fault lies with… American racism…(NYT, 5/1)

Gitmo liars: Brass, not inmates

A… powerful new book about Guantánamo, by an American lawyer named Steven Wax, is summed up by its title: "Kafka Comes to America."

The new material suggests two essential truths about Guantánamo:

First, most of the inmates were probably innocent all along, but Pakistanis or Afghans turned them over to America in exchange for large cash awards. The moment we offered $25,000 rewards for Al Qaeda supporters, any Arab in the region risked being kidnapped and turned over as a terrorism suspect.

Second, torture was routine, especially early on. That’s why more than 100 prisoners have died in American custody in Afghanistan, Irag and Guantánamo….

When I started writing about Guantánamo several years ago, I thought the inmates might be lying and the Pentagon telling the truth…. But over time — and it’s painful to write this — I’ve found the inmates to be more credible than American officials.(NYT, 5/4)

Elections: The fix is always in

Serious presidential candidates:….what makes them "serious" is their understanding that American politics is settled, a done deal. The deal is this: While real Republicans can drift, unchecked, to the dark side of empire and neofascism, Democrats are supposed to campaign and govern as moderate, "responsible" Republicans.

We live, in other words, in a corporate state, the basic terms of which are no longer open to debate….

All hail the (invisible) corporate state and its sacred fetishes: God, guns, flag. All hail the McWorkers of the new economy, who roll up their sleeves and vote for one smiling liar or another on their way to their second job. All hail the dearth of health care, the children left behind, the endless billions for war and most of all the fact that these matters are not — I repeat, NOT — open for discussion in this presidential election year or… the next one or the next.(Robert Koehler)(GW, 4/25)

Zimbabwe, Tibet: Imperialist guilt

Zimbabwe… was not just a British colony, but where Britain refused to act against a white racist coup, triggering a bloody 15-year liberation war, and then imposed racial parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independance. The subsequent failure by Britain and the US to finance land buyouts as expected, along with the impact of IMF programmes, aided the current impasse.

As for Tibet… the CIA… bankrolled the Dalai Lama’s operations for many years. Such arrangements have in recent years passed to other US agencies and western NGOs…. For a US administration that has designated China as the main threat to its global dominance its minorities are still a stick that can be used to poke the dragon.(GW, 4/25)

Marching On May Day!!

Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, May 1 — The red banners of communism waved high on Broadway in downtown LA, while PLP’ers distributed 8,000 communist leaflets and 3,600 CHALLENGES during the immigrant-rights march here. Our literature exposed the hypocrisy of the bosses and their politicians — both the liberal and conservative racists — their plans for wider imperialist war and the role of the pro-immigrant "leaders" who support deadly patriotic loyalty to the ruling class and the Democratic Party.

Fascism emerged early. Police and School District agents stopped some students from boarding a bus to go to the march, claiming "parental permission is not enough — you need permission from the District." Nonetheless, many of these students came, even more determined. Our multi-racial contingent had a strong, visible impact with our red shirts and flags, but most importantly with our chants calling for working-class unity and communist revolution.

The police, business leaders, march organizers and LAPD are congratulating themselves for their "good job." This march was smaller than last year’s, partly because the leaders are pushing voting over marching, and partly from fear instilled in workers by last year’s racist police attack in MacArthur Park and the constant propaganda about the police preparing to "handle provocateurs." In response we chanted, "Sean Bell’s killer cops mean…FIGHT BACK!"; and, "LAPD you can’t hide… We charge you with genocide!"

Street speeches, followed by slogans celebrating May Day as International Workers’ Day resonated throughout the march like: "The magic of our hands, that from nothing make everything. From the clothes, to the buildings to the cars to the airplanes. And even then, the bosses call us ignorant. We workers make everything of value in this society, that’s why we raise our fist and chant, "See this fist; Workers to Power!"

"Today millions of workers around the world march as one class against this rotten capitalist system, source of hunger, murders and wars…"

Some workers asked for and contributed money for our red flags. Others bought red shirts that call for workers’ unity and communism. The red flags contrasted sharply with the U.S. bosses’ flag march organizers imposed on workers. From the few years we’ve had contingents in the "immigrant-rights" marches, we have a presence many workers and youth now expect.

From these May Day activities, several people joined PLP. Others have become CHALLENGE distributors. The Party was strengthened and is preparing for our coming Summer Project. We will be bolder in taking CHALLENGE to our friends to help build the Project. These activities will provide communist political leadership to the working class which needs it more than ever, facing growing fascism and imperialist war. J

El Salvador

A PLP leaflet provoked anger of leaders of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the May Day march of more than 75,000 workers through San Salvador, the capital. Workers demanded rice, beans, and some proclaimed support for the FMLN Presidential candidate, Mauricio Funes. A group of high school and university students painted on the walls "Proletarians of the World, Unite!" and chanted the slogan "Capitalists watch out—here come the communists!"

As usual CHALLENGE is anticipated by the working class every May Day. The PLP distributed 530 CHALLENGES and 3,800 communist leaflets. The moment the leaflets and CHALLENGES began to be distributed, many workers came to get them. This caused a big impact because it attacked the electoral parties.

FMLN leaders in the sound trucks read a part of our leaflet and alerted workers to destroy the leaflets. This made people read the leaflet on the spot. The FMLN security said they wouldn’t allow any propaganda that was not from them, following the same repressive practices as the right-wing ruling party, pro-U.S., Arena government.

Carlos Ruiz, Mayor of Soyapango and former leader of the extinct Salvadoran Communist Party and now the FMLN, stopped a comrade and questioned him about the leadership of PLP in El Salvador. A worker responded to him "Now, we don’t only have the oppressors of the government but we also have you." An ex-combatant of the FMLN reacted angrily and told him, "I fought so that these things would no longer happen and now you are the police."

Confronted by this reaction, those from the FMLN retreated and the distribution of the paper and the leaflets continued. However, the comrades were followed and at one point a small part of their material (200 leaflets and 20 CHALLENGES) were taken. "This has to be shown to the leader of the FMLN," said a servile follower of the electoral front.

Funes stated in the closing speech "Those who have damaged private property [referring to the graffiti] are social movements." They have nothing to do with the FMLN as a political party." He, along with other FMLN leaders, also expressed his gratitude for the presence of more than 600 uniformed police during the march and promised to raise their wages.

"Today ends the romance of some comrades who held some illusions about the FMLN," said a comrade. Once more it’s been shown that the working class can’t trust these electoral parties, which are part of the capitalist system. The PLP’ers and friends activities felt stronger and with more confidence in the working class. Now our goal is to consolidate and recruit more comrades to PLP, as a step toward the communist revolution that will end the murderous capitalist system.J

Washington D.C.

May 1 — PLP members here distributed over 100 CHALLENGES and hundreds of leaflets to the 200 people that attended this year’s immigration justice rally. The rally was smaller than last year, but more than half the marchers took home a copy of our communist newspaper! Many wore t-shirts and carried banners emphasizing unity among workers regardless of country or race.

Other organizations participating in the rally focused on reforming the system with new immigration laws, better housing policies, statehood for DC, and electoral politics in El Salvador. We spoke to rally-goers instead about the working class taking power through a revolutionary struggle.

One man from Central America agreed with our analysis that elections in the US or Latin America would not serve the working class. He was thrilled to learn that there was a party that rejected nationalism and organized one party for all workers everywhere, and intends to work with us.J

Chicago, Il

May 1st – Our PLP contingent, an integrated and international group of around 50 people, raised the red flag and marched behind the banner, "Long Live Communism." We led militant chants, distributed 1,000 CHALLENGES and DESAFIOS and 2,000 PLP May Day leaflets. We handed out 500 posters that read, "Smash All Borders/Destruir Todos Fronteras," with the Party’s name and logo. A small but spirited health care contingent marched from Stroger (County) Hospital. Other Party members marched with their community and student organizations and an Iraq veterans group.

In just two years, the May Day March for Immigrant Rights has gone from over 500,000 in 2006 to maybe 15,000 in 2008. Unlike the previous two years, the bosses were not united behind the march, factories were not closed and workers were not given the day off to march. This shows that when you march under the bosses’ leadership, without a mass communist movement to challenge them, they can turn the movement off and on at will.

Other reasons for the poor turnout were increased fear and intimidation due to continuous immigration raids and deportations. Organizers warned marchers that the police attacks in L.A. last year were due to "other groups with different agendas." Mayor Daley, whose cops are murdering young black and Latino men in record numbers, shared the stage with nationalists and revisionists, rappers and folk singers.

This march underlined the need to build the Party in the bosses’ mass organizations in this period of war and developing fascism. As the Presidential electoral circus moves millions to the ballot box, we must be patiently struggling to break them away from the racist rulers. J