1. Immigration `Reform' Means: BOSSES WANT TO WIN WORKERS TO WAR AND FASCISM
2. Oaxaca, Mexico City THOUSANDS PROTEST SOCIAL SECURITY ROBBERY
3. Killer Wolfowitz Out, Deadlier Liberals Plan Wider Wars
4. IMPERIALISTS' DOGFIGHT
   OVER WAR TACTICS
5. `ANTI-WAR' DEMS ENLIST
   BLOODTHIRSTY GENERAL
6. Yes, the Rich Gets Richer and the Poor Much Poorer
7. PL'ers Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca May Day March
8. PLP Exposes Two-Faced LA Mayor over Cops' Fascist Attack
9. Picket College Lab for Its Fascist War on Youth
10. Racist KKKops Strike Again, Kill Immigrant Workers
11. May Day Dinners Dish Out Plenty of Food for Thought
12. May Day in Queens
13. Imperialism Source of Haitians' Drowning Deaths
14. May Day in Iran Caps Months of Mass Teachers' Struggles
15. Morocco's Delphi Workers Take to Streets Against Massive Job Cuts, Firings
16. LETTERS
    1. Austin Workers Greet May 1st Marchers
    2. Workers in Paraguay and New Orleans:
       Same Enemy, Same Fight!
    3. `More Repression, Means More Struggle'
    4. Need to Prepare for Cops' Attacks
    5. Obama War Talk Mimics Nazis at Nuremberg
    6. Bosses' Negligence Caused Subway Death
17. Competition, Not Cooperation, Marks U.S.-China Thirst for Oil
18. Chrysler's New Bosses, UAW Hacks Jointly Screw Workers
19. REDEYE
    1. Not Genocide if profit is the motive!
    2. Anti-worker deals get Dems' OK
    3. Pope can't take joke?
    4. US supplies guns for genocide
    5. No immigrants? Hire some prisoners!
    6. No sick leave for low-paid workers
20. PLP History: PL'ers in SDS Forged Campus
    Worker-Student Alliance
21. GI's and Vets Should: Turn Imperialist War Into Class War
    1. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
    2. Racism and Nationalism:
       Imperialism's Tools
    3. Active-Duty Soldiers:
       A Missed Opportunity
22. Imperialist Rivalry Behind Latest Lebanon War

---

Immigration `Reform' Means: BOSSES WANT TO WIN WORKERS TO WAR AND FASCISM

The U.S. ruling class is in sharp internal conflict on immigration reform. Years of bitter in-fighting and finally months of bi-partisan negotiations have finally produced what many in their ranks praise as a "breakthrough." Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, the lead Democratic negotiator, first said, "This plan isn't perfect, but it's a strong bill and...a worthy solution." The Los Angeles Times (5/18/07) criticized it for some objectionable provisions but laments that "...the single most objectionable aspect of the plan is that it probably won't pass." The Washington Post (5/19/07) derides it as "Trigger Happy -- On immigration, the cost of wishful thinking may be high," but thinks it should be improved. President Bush hailed it as an "historic moment."

The New York Times May 20 editorial begs to differ: "Many advocates for immigrants have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the House Representatives. We both share those hopes and think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved. If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad status quo."

As usual, the U.S. liberal imperialists cover their real reasons with humanitarian-sounding phrases. They "bemoan" the fact that "The deal erodes..... [the principle] that citizens and legal permanent residents have the right to sponsor family members," and that, "The agreement fails most dismally in its temporary worker program......[creating] an underclass that could work for two years at a time, six at most, but never put down roots... that will encourage exploitation..."

But humanitarian rhetoric aside, the real reasons concern war and fascism. "The good," according to the NY Times, is that it "..... is strikingly appealing....a plan to give most of the estimated 12 million immigrants here illegally the chance to..... become citizens eventually." But the Times, and the U.S. liberal bosses it speaks for, are against the deal because they know that as it stands it has too many serious obstacles to be useful in winning millions of immigrants and their children, many U.S.-born or -raised here, to fervent patriotism: to slave for low wages in their war industries and to kill and die for the greater glory of U.S. imperialism.

The deal's path to citizenship is a hard, tortuous, onerous and extremely long one. Immigrants here since 1/1/07 have six months to a year to apply for probationary legal status or be deported. At this step they are fingerprinted and undergo a background check. If they pass and have "good" employment histories, they're granted "Z visas." After four years they can renew their "Z visas" for another four years, provided they pass an English proficiency test. At the end of that period, they pay a fine of $5,000 and a $2,000 processing fee to apply for a green card. At present there is a backlog of four million green card applicants that will hopefully be cleared in eight years. "Z visa" applicants go to the end of the line.

The whole process can take some 12 to 15 years. During all this time, these applicants can't leave the country to see their loved ones or bring them here! But the bosses did include the "Dream Act": undocumented children raised here will be granted residency and citizenship if they graduate from college or serve in the military.

This is not what immigrants have been led to believe. The liberal ruling class understands that the disillusionment of millions of super-exploited immigrants could turn their already simmering anger into a furnace of class hatred. They know these workers are crucial to many of their vital industries and they desperately need to recruit more of their youth into the military. This immigration "reform" is too flawed. The liberal section of the ruling class needs to discipline those conservative bosses who are focused on immediate profits and opposed to a more comprehensive immigration reform. This is, in part, why the U.S. bosses need fascism.

But more importantly they need fascism to control the whole working class in order to wage their imperialist wars for profits and control of oil without workers' opposition. One big step toward fascism is the "reform's" National ID card. But no bosses' plan can ever solve our problems and no fascist oppression can ever stop us from organizing to overthrow them. Class hatred and revolutionary communist ideas will lead the road to workers' power.

Oaxaca, Mexico City THOUSANDS PROTEST SOCIAL SECURITY ROBBERY

OAXACA, MEXICO, May 16 -- A march of over 300,000 on March 8, International Women's Day, reactivated the struggle begun last year when the mass movement of striking teachers and their supporters here was suppressed by the fascist governor Ulises Ruíz Ortiz (URO), in cahoots with the federal government. The largest contingent, organized by APPO (the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), belonged to Section 22 of the SNTE (National Teachers Union).This renewed struggle ran contrary to the local and national rulers' thinking that the movement was under control and dying.

The marchers were demanding the ouster of governor URO, immediate freedom for 30 jailed activists and a new convention for Section 22 to elect a new leadership. The sellout union leader Enrique Rueda Pacheco quit after betraying the struggle.

During the march, PLP members, including young comrades, distributed 3,000 flyers about International Women's Day, explaining PLP's pro-communist politics. We emphasized that workers and their allies need a general staff to fight directly for communism, the only real liberation from capitalism and all its politicians.

Then, on May 15 (Teachers' Day), tens of thousands of angry teachers, including those from Oaxaca, marched in Mexico City protesting the new Social Security for State Workers (ISSSTE) law. The cops repelled their attempt to demolish a fence built around Los Pinos (the Presidential Palace). They also burned a giant figure of Elba Esther Gordillo, the teachers' union national leader and government ally.

The new ISSSTE law is the bosses' attempt to hand over workers' savings for management by local and imperialist banks and financial institutions, supposedly to cover social security. This will enable the big bosses to make billions in profits. They justify the change by claiming workers' pensions now covered by social security are a burden for that fund.

The new law also attacks health care and other public services covered by social security and would raise the retirement age from 60 to 65. If one is forced to retire early (because of health or other problems), you have to wait until age 65. All this affects more than 60% of those now belonging to the ISSSTE. The government claims social security has a billion-dollar deficit, which is basically due to the mis-administration of the system and the corruption of ISSSTE's top honchos. So now workers will have to pay for this plundering.

Imperialist companies will also get away with complete privatization of PEMEX (the state-owned oil company) and the CFE (the Federal Electricity Commission) since a majority of the bought-and-paid-for Deputies and Senators will vote for these so-called "reforms."

Some reformists say workers and their allies must get court orders stopping these plans, and should vote in the next elections for the lesser-evil political party (the opposition PRD) to punish the PAN (the ruling party) and their allies in the PRI (the former ruling party). But the PRD, just like the union hacks, are all part of the capitalist machinery, even though they might favor one group of bosses against another.

We in PLP support the struggle against the ISSSTE "reform" and call on workers to continue to fight with strikes and mass protests. The best lessons we can learn from this fight-back is the need to build a mass revolutionary communist party to eliminate all the bosses once and for all. Join the PLP!

Killer Wolfowitz Out, Deadlier Liberals Plan Wider Wars

Paul Wolfowitz, a top planner of the Iraq fiasco, has the blood of a million Iraqis and thousands of GI's on his hands. But workers have no stake in the outcome of this war criminal's recent ouster from the World Bank. Like Rumsfeld's resignation, it simply shows the liberal faction of U.S. imperialists, bent on enlisting allies for wider wars, asserting its power. The "Revenge of the Multilateralists," as the liberal Boston Globe (5/19) called the sacking, brings a massive U.S.-led coalition's intervention in the Middle East ever closer.

Popular wisdom says Europeans at the World Bank forced Wolfowitz from his perch, and they probably did play a big role, given their immediate and continuing opposition to the neo-con's unilateral invasion of Iraq. But it was a U.S. liberal, Eli Whitney Debevoise II, whose family has provided legal counsel to generations of Rockefellers, who pulled the trigger. The New York Times (5/17) hints heavy-handedly at just how Wolfowitz's job-for-girlfriend scandal came to light, "Mr. Debevoise, a Washington lawyer, arrived at his job at the bank in early April, the precise moment when the furor over Mr. Wolfowitz erupted." A subsequent (5/19) Times editorial, acknowledging that it's still Bush's choice, names Republicans Robert Zoellick and Robert Kimmitt as acceptable successors. Both belong to the CFR.

Wolfowitz's disgrace reflects an ongoing tactical dispute among U.S. imperialists dating back to the first Iraq war and the collapse of the Soviet empire. Two camps drew different lessons from these U.S. "victories." One, led by Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others, reasoned that U.S. forces' now unrivaled technological superiority would ensure rapid victory in any future regional conflict. Regarding the Mid-East, they pushed for unilateral action with "off-the-shelf" troops that would not disrupt the economy at home or entail sharing the oil loot with allies. This group became known as the neo-conservatives.

Policy-shapers in liberal think-tanks, however, saw greater threats and needs and reached conflicting conclusions. In their eyes, the U.S. drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, precisely because U.S. troop strength at the time stood at high, costly Cold War levels and was bolstered by significant contributions from allies. Finishing the job by taking over Iraq, the liberals thought, would require a far greater mobilization, both of U.S. and allied troops, than the 750,000-strong 1991 force. That's why Colin Powell and James Baker opposed marching on Baghdad. As for sharing the spoils, liberals could do that if it meant stability and steady profits. Japan and even France got decidedly junior-partner -- but still significant -- oil deals in Kuwait for aiding the U.S. in Gulf War I.

IMPERIALISTS' DOGFIGHT
OVER WAR TACTICS

In February 1992, Wolfowitz, then undersecretary at the Pentagon, authored the Defense Planning Guidance report, dubbed the Wolfowitz Doctrine. It downplayed the value of enduring alliances. Its original draft said, "[W]e should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished."

The liberals came out swinging. The New York Times published excerpts to encourage "debate," which came later that year in the form of "Changing Our Ways," a manifesto produced jointly by the main liberal think-tanks, the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment. It stood Wolfowitz's go-it-alone stance on its head, calling for coalitions as a first, not last, resort. "[W]e must act cooperatively with others while retaining the option of unilateral action....Toward this end, the system of global collective security designed by the founders of the United Nations should be strengthened...."

"Changing Our Ways" insisted that fuel-thirsty allies chip in militarily for U.S. oil wars. "[O]ther countries also have a major stake in an assured flow of Gulf oil at stable, predictable prices. Although we will remain the principal guarantor of security in the Gulf, we should pursue collective policies that involve Europe and Japan." Prefiguring the Hart-Rudman reports' more dire demands for the sacrifice of "blood and treasure, " the liberals' 1992 Anti-Wolfowitz Doctrine, seeks both "increases in taxes" and a readiness for military mobilization, "[W]e must preserve...a healthy industrial base, enabling us to reconstitute much larger forces if a major hostile power were to begin to emerge in Europe or Asia."

`ANTI-WAR' DEMS ENLIST
BLOODTHIRSTY GENERAL

Clinton heeded the liberals by hiking taxes and balancing the budget (largely by slashing Welfare and stealing the Social Security surplus, as had his predecessors). But, while bombing the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, he failed to win the nation to militarize. Bush, Jr. chose not to even try and followed "cheap-hawk" Wolfowitz, whom he had made deputy defense secretary. Now Wolfowitz is out on his ear, and liberal wolves in sheep's' clothing are having their say. Anti-war faker and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked retired General William Odom to give the Democratic radio response to Bush on April 28 concerning Iraq. He uttered a version of his 2005 call for retreat, regrouping allies and reinvading the entire region.

"For those who really worry about destabilizing the region, the sensible policy is not to stay the course in Iraq. It is rapid withdrawal, reestablishing strong relations with our allies in Europe, showing confidence in the UN Security Council, and trying to knit together a large coalition including the major states of Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and India to back a strategy for stabilizing the area from the eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until the United States withdraws from Iraq and admits its strategic error, no such coalition can be formed."

Wolfowitz is a murderous war criminal, but it would be a mistake to take any comfort in his demise. The imperialist slaughter being engineered by the liberal war-makers will be even worse. We must continue to expose and attack them as our deadlier class enemy.

Yes, the Rich Gets Richer and the Poor Much Poorer

Still another "study" has just been issued about the extreme poverty in the U.S., with proposals to alleviate (not eliminate) it. The "Center for American Progress" (CAP) reports that one of eight people -- 37 million -- live below the poverty line. That "line" is $19,971 per year for a family of four. But that's hardly an accurate measure of poverty. And racist wage differentials make it even worse for black and Latino workers. Actually, one-third of the population -- 90 million people -- are "struggling to make ends meet." (NY Times, 5/12) And all this assumes that the workers making this pitiful wage are employed 52 weeks a year, which is hardly the case.

CAP says that the poverty-stricken have risen by five million in the last six years. Poverty wages are so low that even someone working full-time the year-round doesn't earn enough to raise a family of four. One of the CAP's "remedies" is to raise the minimum wage to $8.40/hr, for a yearly wage of $17,472 (assuming 52 weeks of work) -- still $2,300 below the poverty line. Some solution!

All the "studies" and proposals in the world ignore that poverty is built into capitalism. To stay in business, bosses are driven to make maximum profits, which impels them to cut labor costs as much as possible, e.g. drive wages down, not up.

The anarchy of capitalism produces unemployment. In its 400-year history there has never been full employment because the more successful companies drive the less successful ones out of business, leading to mass layoffs. Today sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry adds to this joblessness and increased poverty. In 1955, Japan hardly produced any cars. But now, for example, Toyota has passed GM as the world's leading automaker, so GM's "solution" is to shatter the "American Dream" of tens of thousands of workers with massive job-cuts.

Many of the U.S. presidential candidates will again jab about "creating jobs" and "ending poverty" and "health care for all." Meanwhile both the Republicans and the Democrats do absolutely nothing to reduce poverty or about the U.S. being at the bottom of the imperialist countries in health care. They won't do a thing about the fact that 60% of the working class is not even eligible to collect unemployment insurance. Some churches decry the conditions of the poor, but all they offer is soup kitchens. The fundamentalists and "pro-lifers" (really anti-lifers) tell us God will take care of us, but meanwhile the U.S. has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the imperialist world.

The union "leaders"-- whose decades of sellouts have helped create poverty and mass job cuts -- will again tell us "elect Democrats" to get "pro-labor" legislation passed to help the unorganized and reduce poverty. But during Clinton's 8-year reign, union membership declined, while Clinton massacred welfare, further increasing poverty. Yet when workers force strikes to demand better wages and benefits, these labor fakers don't lift a finger to organize solidarity strikes among masses of workers. They whine about companies "using the law" to stifle unionizing. But capitalist laws are set up to do just that, and these union "leaders" refuse to organize workers to break these bosses' laws.

"Black leaders" protest the racism of Imus but Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama completely ignore the mass layoff of predominantly black healthcare workers in Chicago, not to mention the declining health services to the city's black and Latino patients, all of which add to the poverty figures (which will show another increase in the next "study").

And liberals among the politicians and the media decry the double rates of unemployment among black and Latino workers and triple among the youth, but, of course, never trace the source of that racism to the super-profits reaped from it by U.S. corporations who they serve.

Finally, some of these capitalist spokespersons lament the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in both lives and money. Then they all vote to fund the war while "apologizing" for doing so but say "we have to be patriotic and support the troops" and "can't leave Iraq in chaos," while tens of thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of GI's continue to march to their graves. They can't find the money to increase unemployment insurance and insure health care for millions of workers' children but they can spend a trillion dollars to protect Big Oil.

Racist super-exploitation has been part of capitalism since it started. Recently exhibits on slavery "discovered" that it laid the basis for the advances made by the U.S. economy over the past several centuries.

So what can workers do? We must fight the cause of poverty -- capitalism and its pro-war racism and patriotism. Workers must unite and attack all those trying to divide us -- racist demagogues and goons like the Minutemen, KKK, etc. "Communist revolution is the only solution" may sound like a cliché, but only a system that eliminates profits, wage slavery and the racism tied to both can enable the working class to reap the full benefits of the value we produce. This past May Day, PLP again showed the potential of building a mass revolutionary Party. Join us to turn that potential into a reality!

PL'ers Bring Red Ideas to Oaxaca May Day March

OAXACA, MEXICO -- On May 1st, international workers' day, over 80,000 workers and students marched here to commemorate the historic struggle of Chicago's workers for the 8-hour day and of the miners of Rio Blanco and Cananea (Mexico). They protested the fascist reforms of the Labor Law (ISSSTE) and demanded the firing of murderer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Governor of Oaxaca. The marchers also demanded the freedom of the political prisoners and whereabouts of those considered "missing," as well as punishment of those responsible for the repression against teachers of Section 22 of the SNTE (Teachers' Union) and others who participated in last year's mass uprising.

Reformist and fake left groups populated the march, but PLP members and friends brought forward their communist politics. Along with a group who formed a barricade during the rebellion, our contingent of 50 marchers held a banner reading, "FOR A COMMUNIST MAY DAY, FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MURDEROUS IMPERIALISTS AND CAPITALISTS, THE CAUSES OF UNEMPLOYMENT, WARS, AND TERROR." We also carried our revolutionary red flag and chanted "Fight, win; workers to power!" "The workers' struggles have no borders!" "Long live communism! Death to capitalism!" We distributed 2,000 leaflets and revolutionary communist chants.

Some marchers postered walls with the message "MAY DAY! ARISE YE PRISONERS OF STARVATION, FOR JUSTICE THUNDERS CONDEMNATION; IT'S THE END OF OPPRESSION.... COMMUNISM WILL BE THE FUTURE, TOGETHER WE'LL MAKE HISTORY."

Afterwards, PLP members and friends held a social-political event. We urged all to participate with us in coming activities, including June 14, the first anniversary of the cops' brutal attack repelled by the militant teachers, and which sparked the long mass Oaxaca rebellion. Our goal is to massively spread the need to build an international revolutionary communist Party (PLP) among the militant workers and youth involved in many reform struggles against capitalism, its cops and fascist politicians like Oaxaca's governor. The only way out of capitalism's hell, from Oaxaca to Baghdad to Los Angeles, is to win masses to build a party that fights directly for a communist society.

PLP Exposes Two-Faced LA Mayor over Cops' Fascist Attack

LOS ANGELES, May 17 -- This evening, several thousand workers demonstrated against the racist police attack on workers and their families who demonstrated in McArthur Park on May 1st. Workers came wanting to express their anger, but found instead a patriotic staged event controlled by State Assembly Speaker Nunez, with full press coverage, and religious and political leaders trying to calm the workers' anger. Mayor Villaraigosa spoke in English and Spanish, saying, "We all have the right to peacefully demonstrate -- it's the American way."

When PLP members distributed a leaflet titled "Fascist Cops and Villaraigosa Serve the Capitalists, Not Us," along with selling CHALLENGE, they got "high fives" and lots of agreement and encouragement from marchers. One worker said, "It's true --Villaraigosa is two faced." When radio announcer "Piolin" spoke, the crowd booed him because while last year he urged workers to march, this year he urged them not march but to write their Congressmen instead.

This orgy of patriotism in the face of the fascist police attack was due to the liberal leaders of the immigrants' rights groups like CHIRLA and MIWON, loyal agents of the liberal imperialists. PLP is building its forces in these movements and in the factories and schools to challenge them.

We plan to discuss with our friends in all the mass organizations and at our jobs and schools about how to respond to police attacks like the one launched at the end of the second march on May 1st in McArthur Park. Such discussions will lead to better, bolder plans the next time the police attack a march. As the worker's letter in CHALLENGE (5/23) correctly pointed out, the workers' response to such attacks can be schools in which the PLP can grow.

PLP and our friends must give leadership when these attacks occur. With more preparation and discussions beforehand, workers can give leadership to help each other confront and expose the cops, defend the march, fight back, and/or lead an organized, orderly retreat if necessary. Our Party has led such actions many times.

As the anger and understanding of workers deepen, more and more workers will see through the bosses' lying promises.With organization and planning more workers will stand up to the cops' attacks and to the lies of the liberals like Villaraigosa and Bratton who cover for the racist, imperialist system. In this process, more workers and youth will join the long-term fight for workers' power with communist revolution.

Picket College Lab for Its Fascist War on Youth

LOS ANGELES, CA, May 2007--Fifteen to twenty students, including several PLP members, protested against the grand opening ceremony of a criminology lab at a local university campus, linking it to imperialism and the police brutality at the May Day demonstration in MacArthur Park.

While local politicians including Gray Davis and Sheriff Lee Baca smiled at the ribbon cutting of this repression factory, students picketing outside chanted "L.A., MacArthur Park, New Orleans, stop the racist war machine!" and "L.A.P.D. you can't hide, we charge you with genocide!" As our signs noted, the racist violence of the police at MacArthur Park was not an aberration within the context of their role in maintaining the capitalist system. While figures like Cardinal Mahoney and Mayor Villaraigosa call for healing, we know that there can be no reconciliation between the working class and the ruling class or its lackeys, the cops.

Throughout the ceremony, protestors were relentless, loud and spirited in their chanting. When they were called a "bunch of thugs" for chanting during the national anthem, protestors pointed to the politicians and police saying "the real thugs are in there, ma'am."

Though the new criminology lab is being advertised to students as a beacon of pride, its pristine appearance and adjacent greenery mask its real implications. Situated in the heart of a campus with one of the lowest average incomes in the state, the criminology lab targets working-class youth, including many immigrants and black youth, to be the new troops for racist repression on the streets of L.A. and beyond.

This is part of a growing trend in the use of the universities to build up homeland security forces and prepare for wider wars. As inter-imperialist rivalry grows, the bosses must adjust their resources, finding new ways to gain from the exploitation of workers. On this campus, millions have been invested in the new lab, while many other sections of the schools fall apart and tuition is raised 10% for the fall. Several weeks before the grand opening, an enormous career fair brought a dazzling number of "opportunities" to the campus: police departments, the defense industry, the U.S. Army, Marine Corps and Homeland Security.

This situation has challenged students to fight back against these fascist attacks on their class. At the career fair a small but strong group marched back and forth, chanting and handing out flyers explaining that the university lines up with the interests of imperialism and its brutality against workers. Leaflets passed out leading up to the career fair and the grand opening called for a system that meets the needs of workers. During these on-going struggles, students held meetings and study groups which made these connections by discussing CHALLENGE.

In our classrooms and clubs, we will continue to expose the causal link between the needs of imperialism and the increasing tuition, criminology lab and military-packed job fairs. Through these struggles, however modest the results, PLP can build communist leadership among students, workers and soldiers, leading to a communist revolution and the end of the racist, brutal exploitation of capitalism.

Racist KKKops Strike Again, Kill Immigrant Workers

BRONX, NY, May 21 -- On May 18, an off-duty cop shot and killed an unarmed driver, a 41-year-old black Honduran immigrant maintenance worker and musician, Fermin Arzu. On a narrow street, Arzu's van had inadvertently hit a parked car which then bumped the cop's parked car. The cop, Raphael Lora, ran after Arzu's van and, without identifying himself as a cop, confronted him. Frightened, Arzu drove off at which point the killer cop shot him three times, even violating the police department's own rules of not shooting at a fleeing vehicle if a cop is not threatened.

Arzu's relatives said the cop could have fired at the van's tires, rather than shooting the driver. "He had a dream like everyone else here," said his brother-in-law Ignacio Zapata, 38. "They took his life too early." Relatives and friends held a vigil outside the murder scene demanding that cop Lora be punished for his crime.

This evening several PLP comrades went to the site of the murder to join with neighbors and friends of the Arzu family. We distributed CHALLENGE and a flyer about the need for all workers to unite to fight back against these fascist executions by the cops. Many people there took our literature and discussed police brutality and the cops' role in attacking workers, especially black and immigrant workers, to terrorize them from fighting back against the bosses' racist exploitation.

One of Arzu's friends described how Fermin, like most immigrants, had come to the U.S. seeking the "American dream,"of having a decent life for himself and his family and of how he worked hard trying to achieve that dream. But for all who loved and cared about him that dream became a nightmare as he was gunned down execution style by KKKop Lora.

Others spoke of the senselessness of this murder of an unarmed man and the necessity of acting to stop these killings. We said the only way to do this is to destroy a system run by rich people who care only for themselves, their profits and their possessions.

We then went to the home of Arzu's family to offer our condolences and support. His family is determined to fight for justice and the punishment of the Killer Kop. But there are those who want to convince them that this can be achieved only through lawyers and the courts. The fact is workers will never get justice through the bosses' legal system. We must bring this case to workers in shops, unions, churches and all mass organizations and build the movement to fight racism and its source, capitalism.

The corrupt and murderous nature of the cops has leaped forward in recent weeks, copying more and more the system they serve. Earlier in the month, an NYPD cop shot his younger girlfriend (both Guyana immigrants)in the face because she postponed their marriage. He first tried to blame the killing on a robbery. On May 19, two NYPD cops were arrested trying to rob a house in New Jersey. And when cops raided the wrong house in Brooklyn searching for drugs, they stole $2,000 from an Arab family.

These killings are occurring as the trial of the cops who shot Sean Bell last November is about to begin, after all the politicians, from Mayor Bloomberg to Al Sharpton, have yelled, "This won't be allowed again." As PLP always points out, cops, no matter the color of their skin, are paid and trained to be racist goons for the bosses.

May Day Dinners Dish Out Plenty of Food for Thought

SEATTLE, WA. May 5 -- A feeling of urgency to win workers to smash this racist capitalist system was very strong as dozens of Boeing and government workers; university, community college and H. S. teachers and staff; and families plus others gathered to celebrate May Day. After a delicious potluck, several spoke about the May Day marches in Los Angeles and Seattle that they had participated in earlier in the week. A L.A. march participant presented a slide show of pictures he had taken there. Both he and those that marched in Seattle spoke about the contradiction between waving the U.S. flag while, at the same time, suffering super-exploitation at the hands of the U.S. bosses. We tried to resolve this contradiction in the interests of our class by selling 300 CHALLENGEs and passing out 500 Party flyers at the local march of several thousand.

Next, two young students welcomed everyone and read a short composition they had written about what May Day means. They made us all laugh by ending with a warning about a grown-up who would next speak for "five hours."

Happily, the main speaker, a H.S. history teacher, did not go one for five hours. The comrade did, however, cover 500 years of capitalist development in scant minutes. Cleverly interweaving working-class struggle, the march of capitalism, racism and imperialism as well as the birth of our Party, he led to one inevitable conclusion. We workers had but one choice: to build for communist revolution.

He asked us all to struggle harder to sell our revolutionary paper. We must get our communist ideas out to workers, students and soldiers to counter the bosses' racism, nationalism and patriotism. He invited everyone to take off work or school to bring this multi-racial group (at the dinner) to next year's May Day march. Eventually we will destroy this sick system he described and work towards a truly international communist world.

Many lively conversations continued for hours. Some new Boeing workers took extra papers to sell for the first time. Everyone left with high spirits and plenty of CHALLENGES.

May Day in Queens

ASTORIA, NY, April 28-- Songs, speeches and dramatic readings celebrated May Day at a dinner in Astoria, Queens. The program was opened by greetings sent from soldiers who are involved in the mass movement against the war in Iraq. This greeting which celebrated the fight for communist revolution inside the ranks of the bosses' military held special relevance with two active National Guard soldiers, Iraq veterans themselves, and one recent vet, attending our dinner.

The entertainment highlights of the dinner were several songs including Rap and Regaton music with revolutionary lyrics, performed by a group of High School students and their teacher from Jackson Heights and a dramatic reading retelling the history of May Day.

Speeches by a high school parent about the world political situation, a Cuny Professor recounting the struggle to build the party in his union, and a young Party leader on being in this fight for the long haul, rounded out an inspiring evening.

Imperialism Source of Haitians' Drowning Deaths

CAP-HATIEN, HAITI, May 19 -- Dozens of Haitian immigrants whose boat sank near the Turks-Caicos islands were buried in a common grave here, angering their relatives who couldn't identify their remains. People cried as they showed pictures of their dead relatives when their body bags were unloaded in this port city two weeks after one of the worst sea disasters in recent years here. Their bodies were so decomposed they couldn't be identified. Some of the drowning victims were also bitten by sharks. Some say the boat sank while being tugged away from the Turks-Caicos islands.

Haitian workers are again victims of the racism of capitalism and imperialism. Conditions in Haiti are now even worse than before Bush sent the Marines to kidnap and topple President Jean Bertrand Aristide a few years ago, and help an uprising led by right-wing goons of the former military dictatorship. Haiti is now occupied by a UN military force headed by the Brazilian army which regularly battles drug gangs in the huge slums of Port-Au-Prince, shooting at random at houses, killing innocent children and adults.

The Haitian workers are also victims of the racist U.S. immigration laws, which pack them into concentration camps and deport them if they ever reach the U.S. If the new immigration "reform" bill passes, these laws will become even more racist.

May Day in Iran Caps Months of Mass Teachers' Struggles

TEHERAN, IRAN -- Angry workers confronted the rulers' agents and their goons on May Day. At one official event workers shouted down a government speaker, chanting, "Incompetent minister, resign, resign!" Security forces tried to stop independent marches by teachers, students, and Yahev bus workers (who waged a militant strike last year). Many militant leaders were arrested. The workers also denounced the imperialist plans to attack Iran, saying innocent civilians will be the ones to die, just like in Iraq.

The May Day actions were the culmination of mass protests and actions by teachers during March and April. The government responded with mass repression, arresting hundreds of teachers.

One protesting teacher who had been arrested and detained for a day asked, "How am I, my wife, and my two kids supposed to live on 220,000 Tomans [$240] per month when just our apartment rent is 180,000 Tomans [$200] per month? All over the world teachers are among the most respected members of society, but here we not only get paid much less than other employees of similar academic backgrounds but they [the government] also does not even tolerate our protests, and sends their agents to beat us -- we who still have chalk dust on our hands from educating their kids at school."

Plainclothes agents arrested the head of Iran's Teachers Union, Ali Akbar Baghani, for the second time here while he was teaching. Other teachers were also arrested in the same incident, according to the ILNA news agency. Baghani had been detained in March and released after two weeks in jail. On March 14, after two weeks of continuous protest in front of the Iranian parliament in Tehran, riot police and security forces using batons violently dispersed thousands of teachers, arresting many.

On April 7, security forces in Hamedan arrested 45 teachers who were active in the Hamedan Teachers Association, including its entire governing board. Some of the detainees remain in detention. On April 16, teachers in Sanandaj, Eslamshahr and Kerman avoided attending classes to protest the arrests of their colleagues and "unfulfilled financial promises."

"Half of the high school teachers in town have refused to go to classes," a protesting teacher in Eslamshahr told ILNA. "Why should the maximum monthly wage of a teacher with an academic background be only 375,000 Tomans [$400]? Wasn't the government supposed to equally distribute the money from the oil trade?"

During the nearly two years of Ahmadinejad's presidency, what experts call a "mishandling of the economic administration" has led to a 17% inflation rate during the past year, causing an unprecedented price rise nationwide.

The worsening of the financial condition for most Iranians, especially workers, ordinary employees and the retired, have triggered numerous protests against unpaid and low salaries in many cities. (Interestingly, while Iran is on the front pages of the Western media, none of the massive class struggle has been reported.)

According to a new Parliamentary study, the Ahmadinejad government's current economic policies will hike the inflation rate 23.4% in the coming year.

These teachers and other militant workers are showing the potential for building a mass anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist war and non-religious movement in the Middle East. Workers are learning through their struggles that the religious holy rollers are as much their class enemies as the imperialist warmakers. It is up to us communists to forge a revolutionary movement throughout the region out of such mass struggles.

Morocco's Delphi Workers Take to Streets Against Massive Job Cuts, Firings

TANGIERS, MOROCCO, May 16 -- Delphi, the formerly GM-owned auto parts company, is on a worldwide rampage, cutting labor costs and eliminating jobs from Detroit to Cádiz, Spain to Tangiers. An April massive general strike led by Delphi workers facing a plant closing shut down Cádiz (see CHALLENGE, 5/9). (Delphi wants to move to cheaper labor Poland.) Across the Mediterranean, Delphi workers here are also fighting back.

In 1999, Delphi began producing electric cables for cars here, with 600 workers. As production increased, working conditions worsened for the now 4,000 workers, many highly educated (having college degrees but the lack of jobs forcing them to become proletarians). The bosses arbitrarily worked them 10-12 hours a day plus holidays without overtime pay. Delphi broke every code in the already weak labor laws here.

Delphi worker Mokhtar Khouchna (interviewed by LaHaine.org) said the workers joined the National Moroccan Labor Union, linked to an Islamist political party (PJD). But they soon realized that it resembled all other unions here and worldwide, sold out to the bosses. Union reps are even paid higher wages (about 1,100 Euros monthly -- $1,400)) to keep social peace.

But the workers continued fighting back, not only for economic demands but against being treated like slaves and to stop supervisors' sexual harassment of women workers. Last December, five months after the union was formed, Delphi fired 466 workers.

When Delphi refused to grant the workers' demands, they took to the streets. They also refused to work holidays and Sundays without extra pay, demanding two days notice for work on those days, and on a voluntary basis.

Delphi used court officers to make workers sign a document saying refusal to work holidays and Sundays broke the law, despite the Labor Code saying the opposite. Then Delphi began firing workers, initially the leadership. On December 8, workers inside the plant protested this union-busting attack but anti-riot and regular cops, plus military units, moved workers 500 meters away from the plant. Then Delphi met with the local Labor Department and listed 92 workers to be banned from working anywhere in Tangiers. Workers continued demonstrating daily, without any support from the local or national union leadership. These hacks fear losing their perks with Delphi, other companies and even the government.

Delphi then met with the Ministry of Labor in Rabat, the capital city, and added 374 more workers to the banned list. Meanwhile, the cops arrested 32 workers to force them to sign a document saying they'd stop protesting.

Then Delphi workers united with women garment workers from Dewherst, 400 of whom were fired for organizing a union. Both groups held joint demonstrations, and daily protests at the provincial governor's house, supported by other mass organizations and unions. A demonstration of some 1,200 at a Chamber of Commerce event forced the Economy Minister to enter through a back door. Cops constantly harassed the workers, but the entire city now knew about their struggle. "Our strength stemmed from being well organized," said one worker.

On February 28, at a protest outside Delphi, a well-armed cops' contingent arrested a workers' leader. Workers held firm, declaring they were fighting for their rights. The arrested leader was released but the cops threatened all workers if they persisted. Then armed cops brutally attacked, injuring 18 workers and arresting 250. One rank-and-file leader hid in a nearby plant and called his local union leadership when the cops surrounded the plant, but the hacks did nothing.

Now the union misleaders are trying to cut a deal in arbitration, allowing the company to fire the workers while granting severance pay. But the workers decided their best weapon was to continue protesting. In desperation some workers decided on a hunger strike (generally not a good tactic since bosses couldn't care less if workers starve to death).

Despite this lengthy struggle, the gang-up of Delphi, the government, the cops and the union hacks defeated the rank and file. But these militant workers proved that workers in a Muslim country will conduct class struggle and learned an important lesson about the anti-working class nature of the bosses and their state, a lesson Delphi workers in Cádiz and worldwide should learn.

In this era of endless wars and sharpening imperialist rivalry, the struggle against capitalism must be international. Industrial workers like Delphi play a crucial role, across all national and religious divides. Out of these struggles, communists can win workers to forge a revolutionary leadership to fight for a society without any bosses and their agents. That's PLP's goal. Join us!

LETTERS

Austin Workers Greet May 1st Marchers

Your worldwide May Day reports inspired me to tell you about the May Day immigrant rights march in Austin, Texas, where there were over 5,000 people (maybe 7,000). The city was under a tornado watch, but a speaker at the State Capitol said, "WE are the tornado!" The speeches were loud, the music was great, and the workers and families and university and high school students were filled with tremendous energy.

Workers from other countries know what May Day is! Speakers talked about "el día internacional de los trabajadores," and remembered "los mártires de Chicago."

As the march went through downtown, a thunderstorm drenched us, but it didn't dampen anyone's spirits. There was cheering, chanting and clenched fists throughout the march. The march kept getting bigger and bigger. Construction workers donned their hard hats. Restaurant workers came out on the sidewalk and applauded. When we got to City Hall for another rally, the crowd was much too big to fit in the Plaza. It spilled out into the surrounding streets and blocked Cesar Chavez Street (a major downtown thoroughfare) for a long time.

A downside for me is that there were very few Anglos and African Americans at this inspiring event. There were several of us from my union, but we do not begin to have the unity, internationalism, and working-class consciousness that we need. Thanks, PLP and CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, for working to change that!

An Old Friend in Austin, TX

Workers in Paraguay and New Orleans:
Same Enemy, Same Fight!

Following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina (read capitalism and racist neglect), the bosses' speculation and exploitation of workers has continued.  Over 900,000 hurricane-damaged vehicles were sold to used car dealers in the U.S. and abroad. Insurance companies were involved, but worse yet, selling used cars recovered from "natural" disasters is not a crime if the exact damage is listed. However, most "Autos Katrina" sent abroad do not come with this information. 

The Paraguayan newspaper "ABC Color" reports that 90% of the used cars entering this South American country are from Hurricane Katrina. These cars have damage histories marked "unknown," erased or covered up, to maximize profits.  This puts at risk the Paraguayan worker struggling to get by, who just wants a cheap yet safe vehicle to get to work every day. The drivers don't know about the vehicle's possible damage and therefore risk their lives.  Paraguay's capitalist rulers are well-known for their corruption, which is rampant throughout the government, so this type of scam is not unusual. 

Thus, the bosses take advantage of the workers' misery -- from New Orleans to Asunción (capital of Paraguay) -- to sacrifice their lives on the altar of the bosses' true god: the almighty buck. Racism is also evident in this scam since most Katrina victims subsequently ripped off were black and Latino. Again the slogan applies: "Same enemy, same fight; Workers of the world Unite!" 

Red Guaraní

`More Repression, Means More Struggle'

"Welcome to McArthur Park," said the cops over loud speakers -- the same cops who attacked the demonstration for immigration reform on May Day with rubber bullets, tear gas and batons. After the May 1 attacks, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief Bratton, Cardinal Mahoney and the "organizations to defend immigrants" planned a march for May 17 to "reconcile the community and the police."(!)

"This is a play, these hypocrites," said a youth in the march for "reconciliation." "I hate the police and I'm not afraid of them. I grew up amid the repression in El Salvador, when the police violently attacked marches and were answered with workers' violence as well. More repression means more struggle. The massacred will be revenged as the slogans say." These and other similar comments were part of the discussions during the march.

Participating in mass reform organizations gives us the opportunity to meet many honest workers who can be influenced by our communist ideas. At the same time, we can expose the essence of capitalism and the role of the police in terrorizing the working class. These will be the workers who will respond under our leadership, so that we won't be running away but put forward strong fists with the politics of the working class.

In my factory, I've had a lot of political discussions with my co-workers, especially with those who went with me to the May Day march where we witnessed part of the first incident that ended with the attack that dispersed the demonstration. At the time, we thought we were seeing only an isolated case when the march had already ended, not the beginning of a bigger attack that happened a whole hour later after we had marched to our homes.

Had we been present with the group during the attack, as we were on May 17, we would have tried to give political leadership as we have done in many other immigrant rights' marches and against the racist Minutemen and their earlier version, the VCT (Voices of Citizens Together).

A worker

Need to Prepare for Cops' Attacks

[Editor's Note: The May 23 CHALLENGE contained a mistake in the translation from Spanish to English of the letter entitled "Red Flag vs. Bosses' Flag." In the last paragraph, the response to the question of whether we will be ready to respond to a greater attack by police on all workers fighting back, should have read: "Only if we join and help PLP grow," not "Only if we join the only party capable of leading the workers in these struggles and eventually the seizure of power."]

The May 1 LAPD attack on immigrant workers and a letter in the May 23 CHALLENGE, "Red Flag vs. Bosses' Flag," provoked an important and broad discussion on how PLP should function at all marches and demonstrations we attend. The letter described a comrade's successful struggle to win fellow workers to participate in a May Day march carrying red flags and supporting revolutionary politics. It is possible, though, that the letter may also have inadvertently given the wrong impression of how we should respond to police (or KKK, Nazi, etc.) violence at such demonstrations.

It is difficult to know from the description given whether there were forces that could have been mobilized to counter the police attack on the youths, but certainly that would have been the preferred strategy. The quote from the next day that "it was a good decision to leave, but maybe we should have stayed and fought" puts the emphasis on the wrong option.

This attack by the police provides an important opportunity for all clubs to discuss the need to make plans for possible police attacks at all events we are a part of (which we have done in many such events in all areas where PLP has forces). Wherever we are part of working-class struggle, we should be prepared to defend workers under attack by the cops or their agents with whatever forces we have. In our own demonstrations we organize self-defense forces to protect those who have joined us in protest. When we join demonstrations organized by others who have illusions in the government and don't prepare any response to police violence, we should make our own plan in advance how to respond to the ruling-class violence that should never be a "surprise."

Working-class confidence in communist leadership will come from years of experiencing our ability and willingness to meet the bosses head-on in struggle after struggle. We must meet their violence with working-class violence whenever that is possible, while also showing that the bosses' violence can only be finally defeated by overthrowing the entire capitalist state. Let's learn this lesson because short of state power there are many struggles and fights we can lead to expose the capitalist system and show the need for a communist future. (And even then struggle against the restoration of capitalism will continue for a long time.)

NYC comrades

Obama War Talk Mimics Nazis at Nuremberg

In "Obama Update: More Imperialist Than Ever," CHALLENGE (5/23) notes that U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama swore loyalty to the war-making imperialists in his April 23 speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Obama's words indicate exactly how far he's willing to go.

When Obama said "no President should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary -- to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened" (my emphasis), he signed on to the June 1, 2002 Bush doctrine on pre-emptive or preventive war.

A pre-emptive war is a war of aggression, and the 1950 Nuremberg principles say that the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression" is a crime against peace punishable under international law. The Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 1946 judgment of the International Military Tribunal says that "to initiate a war of aggression...is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

When Obama said amen to the Bush doctrine, he lined up alongside the Nazis and Japanese militarists who were sentenced to hang for carrying out such a doctrine: Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hideki Tojo, Koki Hirota, Seishiro Itagaki....

A friend

Bosses' Negligence Caused Subway Death

Additional details have come out about the death of NYC subway track worker Marvin Franklin (CHALLENGE, 5/23) which make it even more horrible and pins the blame where it belongs -- on the bosses. Three workers -- Franklin, Jeffrey Hill (who was injured) and Michael Williams -- all had signed up for overtime that Sunday (April 29) for extra money to help support their families. Their job was to clear debris and equipment from a completed construction project. Their supervisor told them to cross the tracks to retrieve a four-wheel dolly. The foreman stood nearby with a flashlight, saying he'd watch for approaching trains.

"We...always look both ways," before stepping onto a set of tracks, Hill told a NY Daily News reporter (5/20).

When Hill saw a light above Franklin's head piercing the darkness of the Brooklyn subway tunnel, he thought it was the foreman's flashlight. "Then I...realized it was a train.... I couldn't do anything, the train was there."

There was no warning from the foreman that a train was approaching. But when it roared around a curve at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, Hill knew there would be no escape. "I knew I was dead," "I knew...this is how I'm going to go. This is it."

The side of the train pounded him into the platform's concrete wall, crushing his ribs and battering his spine as he wedged himself into the 8-inch gap between train and concrete. But it pulled Franklin behind Hill and down the tracks. "I saw the look on his face when the train was dragging him," said Hill. "He was just twisting between the platform and the train," and finally fell under it as it screeched to a halt.

"I saw a boot sitting on the platform," said Williams. "I look down and see Marvin [Franklin]. He's lying there under the train....eyes closed....not saying a word."

Franklin, 55, a married father and artist who sketched images of the homeless in the subways, died on those tracks, the second track worker killed in five days.

His co-worker Hill, a father of two and graduate of Pratt Institute where he studied painting, was happy to see Franklin on the crew. Both painters, they had been talking earlier about their different mediums, said Hill. "He was in good spirits."

The transit bosses immediately announced "safety re-training" classes, intimating that somehow the workers were not following the rules and that caused the accident. Both surviving co-workers are outraged at these suggestions that they took a shortcut which led to their friend's death. "We were doing exactly what we were told," said Hill.

As CHALLENGE reported last issue, the bosses' use of short-handed work crews and stinting on funds for safety is what murders these workers. The bosses' racism towards the lives of the overwhelmingly black and Latino work-force is a killer.

A Brooklyn comrade

Competition, Not Cooperation, Marks U.S.-China Thirst for Oil

Daniel Yergin, a leading expert on oil and author of "The Prize -- the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power," a book on Big Oil, wrote in the London Financial Times (5/21) how the U.S. and China should cooperate instead of compete for the world's oil resources when both countries meet at a Strategic Economic Dialogue.

First Yergin acknowledges the sharpening rivalry among the U.S. and China for world resources: "For some, it is too late. In their view, the rivalry risk is already here. They see a mercantilist China single-mindedly moving to pre-empt world oil supplies. Some Chinese, for their part, fear their country being denied access to supplies and worry about the vulnerability of its lengthening supply lines.... China's demand for oil, while less than 10% of the world total, is increasing quickly because of rapid economic growth. Its oil market is now the second largest in the world -- 40% larger than Japan's -- and it has gone in less than 15 years from self-sufficiency to importing half its total supply."

Yergin says it's good for the U.S. and Europe that China is seeking, buying and developing oil production worldwide, since that will bring more barrels to the market. Even though China's total production outside its borders is just a fraction of that controlled by any one of the Big Oil companies, the real risks are not from competition in the global marketplace but rather arise when oil and gas development gets caught up in "larger foreign policy issues, of which those involving Iran and Sudan are currently the most obvious. What the Dialogue can do is emphasize the very large common interests the two countries share as the world's two largest petroleum consumers. The U.S. imports 60% of its oil; China, 50%. Between them, they account for almost 35% of [total] world consumption. Both benefit from stable markets, open to trade and investment."

This may be true, but Yergin fails to see that politics are (as Lenin used to say) concentrated economics. A case in point is Sudan. The China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) is Sudan's largest foreign investor, with some $5 billion in oilfield development. Since 1999 China has invested at least $15 billion in Sudan. It owns 50% of an oil refinery near Khartoum jointly with the Sudanese government. The oil fields are concentrated in the south, site of a long-simmering civil war, partly financed covertly by U.S. bosses, to break the south from the Islamic Khartoum-centered north.

CNPC built an oil pipeline from its concession blocs 1, 2 and 4 in southern Sudan, to a new terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea where oil is loaded on tankers for China. Eight percent of China's oil now comes from southern Sudan. China takes up to 65% to 80% of Sudan's 500,000 barrels/day of oil production. Sudan last year was China's fourth largest foreign oil source. In 2006 China passed Japan to become the world's second largest importer of oil after the U.S., importing 6.5 million barrels a day of the black gold. With its oil demand growing by an estimated 30% a year, China will pass the U.S. in oil import demand in a few years. That reality is the motor driving Beijing foreign policy in Africa. (Source: U.S. AID)

China has just signed an oil deal linking it with Africa's two largest nations -- Nigeria and South Africa. China's CNOC will extract oil in Nigeria via a consortium that includes the South African Petroleum Co., giving China access to what could be 175,000 barrels a day by 2008. It's a $2.27 billion deal that provides state-controlled CNOC with a 45% stake in a large off-shore Nigerian oil field. Previously, Washington considered Nigeria to be an asset of the Anglo-American oil majors, ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron.

Such a scenario doesn't lead to cooperation, but rather to more turmoil among the imperialists and their allies in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. (Next: an analysis of the "humanitarian imperialism" of the "Free Darfur" movement.)

Chrysler's New Bosses, UAW Hacks Jointly Screw Workers

Chrysler's buyout by the private equity firm Cerberus represents a wholesale slaughter of North American auto workers. It will destroy jobs for tens of thousands of Chrysler workers and benefits for retirees, with Ford and GM next. It's a classic case of how capitalism chews up the working class and then spits it out with nothing left but skin and bones.

With this deal, Cerberus will immediately cut 13,000 jobs and $300 million in retirees' health benefits. But CNNMoney.com reported (5/14) that Cerberus will close five plants and cut another 30,000 jobs. And the Indianapolis Star reported (5/17) that, "Cerberus [will] ask the United Auto Workers for a 30% cut in wages and benefits." The last of the jobs black workers won in the 1960s' rebellions will be wiped out by this racist assault. Trillions for imperialist war, death for workers' living standards.

If Chrysler workers don't agree, Cerberus would take the company into bankruptcy, allowing it to legally cancel the union contract and wipe out health and pension benefits, a maneuver that already has victimized the steelworkers. UAW president Ron Gettelfinger praises this sale to Cerberus as "in the best interests of the workers"!

Cerberus is a private equity fund, meaning its stock is not publicly traded and therefore not subject to regulations. It pools huge amounts of private capital seeking the largest returns in the shortest time. Such funds net returns of 22.5% on investments, compared to the 6.6% average of most leading companies. It doesn't create profit through developing new products but plunders the assets of existing companies and then dumps them, along with their workers.

Cerberus bought Albertson Supermarkets and the Mervyn Department Store chain, eliminating 5,800 jobs. Such firms undermine the long-term viability of the outfits they buy in the chase for immediate super-profits.

Cerberus's chairman is John Snow, Bush's former Treasury Secretary who oversaw the massive tax cuts for the rich. Bush, Sr.'s former Vice-President Dan Quayle works on its international operations. And one of its biggest investors is W's former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, as anti-working class and a warmongering crew as one could gather under one roof.

The real kicker here is the swindle being engineered by the UAW hacks. In exchange for UAW approval, the company will off-load its retiree health benefit liabilities to a fund controlled by the UAW, which would make the union responsible for cutting the benefits of retired auto workers. Now Chrysler -- Ford and GM next.

The Wall Street Journal reported (5/15) that the Big Three automakers have "about $95 billion in combined future and current healthcare liabilities," to which the companies would contribute but the union would make "solvent" by cutting benefits left and right. The Journal says this "would make the UAW one of the largest private-sector providers of health care in the U.S." And the salaries of these union hacks would rise accordingly. Talk about "business unionism"!

These are the monsters that capitalism creates to oppress workers. The only immediate answer for autoworkers would be organizing international unity across all national boundaries to join with militant workers across Europe who are fighting such massive job cuts. But only a communist understanding of how the profit system intrinsically must screw the working class can provide any long-term solution: workers' revolution to seize state power and put all production in workers' hands. This can only happen by building the party committed to such a goal, the PLP.

REDEYE

Not Genocide if profit is the motive!

...A Dutch businessman, Frans van Anraat...[was]selling chemicals to Saddam Hussein. The chemicals were used in poison gas weapons in the 1980s and against Kurdish villagers. Prosecutors had demanded a conviction for complicity in genocide, but the appeal judges rejected that, saying Mr. van Anraat was driven not by genocidal intent but by greed. [NYT, 5/10]

Anti-worker deals get Dems' OK

To the Editor

Paul Krugman is right that dealing with the negative impact of trade on American workers requires universal health care and a wide variety of pro-worker policies ("Divided Over Trade," column, May14). The reason we do not have such policies is of course the opposition of American business and its Republican allies.

Yet for 20 years Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton to Charles B. Rangel have continued to collaborate with Republicans in....such deals... [NYT, 5/18]

Pope can't take joke?

Italy now knows the answer to... "How many comedians does it take to infuriate the Vatican?" The answer is one, and his name is Andrea Rivera....

...On state television, he trained his wit on the Vatican's stance on evolution and euthanasia. "The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the church has never evolved," he said. He launched into a routine about the church's denial of a funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a muscular dystrophy sufferer who opted to have his respirator switched off in December. "I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Weldy but they didn't for Pinochet or Franco,"....the Vatican indicated it was deeply unamused in a strongly worded article...(GW, 5/11)

US supplies guns for genocide

...The U.S...is the world's largest supplier of small arms. Last year we provided nearly half of the weapons sold to militaries in the developing world, many to unstable regions already engaged in conflict.

These low-tech weapons are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths over the last decade, including the genocide in Rwanda. But when the U.N. member states met in November to curb the trade of guns and other light weapons, the United States was the only country to vote against the historic measure. (Minutemanmedia.org)

No immigrants? Hire some prisoners!

Ever since the Colorado Legislature declared war on illegal immigrants last year, farmers in this neck of the woods have been worried that undocumented workers who make up at least half of the area's farm labor will be too scared to make a return migration.

...A pilot program with the Colorado Corrections Department...could supply them with 10-member crews of low-security female prisoners....

...But the fact that a group of Colorado framers has turned to prisoners to meet labor needs says a whole lot about why so many U.S. employers prefer illegal immigrant labor in the first place -- it's cheap, dependable yet impermanent, and, well, they have no rights either. (LAT, 5/2)

No sick leave for low-paid workers

...In the lowest quarter of U.S. wage earners, nearly 80 percent...get no paid sick days at all....

Food service workers are among those least likely to get paid sick days. Eighty-six percent get no sick days at all. They show up in the restaurants coughing and sneezing and feverish, and they start preparing and serving meals. You won't see many of them wearing masks....

As overwhelming majority of Americans favor paid sick days for full-time workers... (NYT, 5/15)

PLP History: PL'ers in SDS Forged Campus
Worker-Student Alliance

(Part V of PLP's history in the 1960s and 1970s in building the Students For A Democratic Society -- SDS -- was published in our April 25 issue. This series has covered PLP's forging of a Worker-Student Alliance -- WSA -- and our battle against right-wing nationalist forces until the latter was defeated in its attempt to win a majority to an anti-WSA position at the 1969 convention.)

SDS: Part VI

The right-wingers who split from SDS after the June 1969 convention had only anti-communist opposition to PLP as a basis of unity. Their unholy alliance quickly degenerated into faction fighting.

One gang joined the "Weather Underground," preaching a bizarre ideological gospel that blended liberal politics, drugs, petty terrorism and infantile individualism. A few eventually managed to blow themselves up by playing with explosives in a Greenwich Village, NY, town house. Their major action was a ludicrous rampage in the fall of 1969 through a wealthy Chicago neighborhood. They broke windows in stores and parked cars, giving the FBI a good excuse to put a few of the "Weather" leaders on the "most wanted" list and to discredit the millions of young people still sincerely searching for effective militant leadership against U.S. imperialism's ongoing Vietnam slaughter.

The other crowd organized sects based on the idolatry of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong and their own chairmen, respectively Mike Klonsky and Bob Avakian. The Klonsky crowd distinguished itself through gross personal corruption and the opportunistic justification of every right-wing move made by the Chinese leadership. The Avakian faction was built around a similar recipe of leader worship and opportunism. They disguised it in a simple-minded pre-hiphop aping of the slang Avakian's followers condescendingly attributed to urban youth.

PLP and its pro-working class base within SDS set out to build a worker-student alliance in fact as well as in name. The campus movement had many militant actions to its credit, including battles with police, mass anti-war mobilizations, and campus strikes. But as history and the 1968 general strike in France had proved many times, students may serve as an important catalyst, but they cannot change history or seize power without leadership from the working class.

To launch the alliance in flesh and blood, PLP proposed a program of unity with campus workers. The Party fully understood that workers in heavy industry (particularly war-related industry), transportation and communications occupied a strategically more crucial position than campus workers. However, campus workers were the ones with whom anti-war students came into daily contact -- in the dormitories, on the grounds, in the lecture halls, laboratories and libraries, and in the cafeterias and dining halls. Without them, the universities couldn't function. Furthermore, campus workers were -- and remain -- brutally exploited by university bosses. A large number were black and Latin, and many of the worst-paid were women. The campus was therefore an obvious place for SDS chapters to make the "Less Talk-More Action-Fight Racism" proposal a concrete reality.

In the fall of 1969, the remaining pro-PLP SDS chapters set about launching the Campus-Worker-Student Alliance (CWSA) on several dozen campuses. The climate appeared favorable in some respects. Although the campuses were quieter in October 1969 than they had been a year earlier, the fighting in Vietnam and mass outrage about it continued, along with the militancy of U.S. industrial workers emerging in a significant strike wave. Building unity between the strikers and the anti-war movement became an urgent task. The massive "peace" demonstration scheduled for November 15 in Washington, D.C., quickly symbolized this challenge.

(Next: The half-million anti-war demonstration, the GE strike and the worker-student alliance.)

GI's and Vets Should: Turn Imperialist War Into Class War

The Turning: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

, Andrew E. Hunt, New York University Press, 1999

"I got a Purple Heart [in Vietnam], and I hope to get another fighting these motherf-----s [pointing to the Capitol steps].

- Vietnam Vet Peter Branagan

"The Turning" follows the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) from it's inception as a small speakers bureau in 1967 to its virtual demise in the mid `70s. At its height in 1971-72, VVAW had 25,000 on its rolls -- including two thousand stationed in Vietnam. The Turning is filled with interesting historical details about this period. Nonetheless, Hunt's illusions about the bosses' media, identity politics, and capitalist reform limit his book's usefulness.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Hunt equates success with media exposure. Publicity, rather than political content, is his measuring stick. Operation Rapid American Withdrawal (RAW), "a four-day, simulated search-and-destroy mission between Morristown, New Jersey and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania," was a success because "the media provided extensive coverage."

On the other hand, VVAW leaders "were disappointed with [the Winter Soldier Investigation (WSI)], because of scant media coverage." The WSI panel of Vietnam veterans gave eyewitnesses accounts of U.S. imperialism's atrocities in Vietnam. On January 31, 1971, it convened in Detroit to reach blue collar workers like the vets themselves.

"Unlike the Winter Soldier Investigation, Dewey Canyon III (DC III) drew the attention of the American public [i.e. the press]." DC III began on April 18, 1971, with a march and lobbying Congressmen under the tutelage of (recent presidential candidate) John Kerry, but split with Kerry's Democratic Party politics (and their money) when thousands of militant veterans threw their Vietnam War medals on the Capitol steps. The Turning implies media coverage was the main way to recruit. Hunt uncritically reports on the "success" of Playboy ads.

Racism and Nationalism:
Imperialism's Tools

Hunt equates political progress in VVAW with nationalism and identity politics. Hunt concedes nationalist movements "absorbed the energy of countless young Chicanos [and young blacks], including many Vietnam veterans." Trying to have it both ways he then asserts, "Liberation [i.e. nationalist and feminist] struggles in the early seventies, particularly among Chicanos, African-Americans, and women, made VVAW a more diverse organization..." Nowhere does Hunt discuss how racism and sexism are used by bosses to amass greater profits off lower pay for black, Latin and women workers as well as to divide and drive down wages for all workers.  This class analysis could have led to a larger more multi-racial organization of men and women.

This omission is glaring as he does go to great lengths pointing out VVAW's working-class character. "Half of the veterans surveyed at Dewey Canyon III were raised in blue-collar households." Even as Kerry testified before Congress, working-class vets hung a sign in the national office saying "Free John Kerry's Maid."

Many of the black and Latin vets that did join gave invaluable leadership. The active-duty VVAW chapter our Party led in the Northwest was 50% black and Latin. It recruited some of the most militant leaders -- black, Latin and white. Class-based, anti-racist struggle helped the chapter grow and withstand ruling class attacks and prosecutions.

Active-Duty Soldiers:
A Missed Opportunity

VVAW came into its own at the same time as the active-duty GI movement. Nearly half of the Army's active-duty soldiers resisted or rebelled during VVAW's most successful years. These radicalized soldiers swelled VVAW's ranks as they were discharged.

Despite widespread sympathy for soldier rebellions within VVAW, the national office, with a few exceptions, did little to organize the troops. While a thousand troops in Vietnam signed a VVAW anti-war petition, VVAW could have done a lot more.

From its inception, there was a struggle within VVAW between "`bring our brothers home' and `prevent the next war.'" Even as many in VVAW began to use the word imperialism in an effort to understand the U.S. bosses' endless wars, the organization never developed a strategy that could attack its root cause: the capitalist system.

Communist revolution is the only way to smash imperialism. Masses of soldiers must be won to the workers' side if such a revolution is to succeed. Armed with this ideology, our Party led a significant active-duty VVAW chapter for nearly two years (see "Red-Led GIs Blast Racist Brass" in upcoming PL Magazine). Unfortunately, active-duty chapters were the exception.

Hunt never explores this weakness. He focuses on VVAW's moral and public relations contributions to the peace movement. Anti-imperialist rebellion among the troops is not high on his agenda.

The last hurrah for VVAW was aptly named The Last Patrol. Beset by government agents, prosecutions and political weaknesses, the organization decided to focus on the Republican convention in 1972. The Democratic Party liberals represented the main danger to the masses that were now lining up against U.S. imperialism. The Party led thousands at that convention to expose the hypocrisy of these liberal ruling-class servants. VVAW chose to concentrate on an easier target: Nixon. It was the last national effort they were able to mount. VVAW eventually drowned in a sea of phony leftist politics.

Today, Iraq veterans are examining this history. Iraq Veterans Against the War just staged a present-day version of Operation RAW in D.C. We have to weigh the weaknesses as well as the strengths of anti-war Vietnam veterans. The Turning's historical details will help us find those strengths and weaknesses, but we must be careful not to rely solely on the author's interpretations of those facts.

Imperialist Rivalry Behind Latest Lebanon War

The Lebanese army siege of Nahr el-Barred, one of many Palestinian camps in Lebanon, and home for 30,000 people, has turned into a bloody mini-war. The army, which didn't fire a shot to defend Lebanon when Israel warred on Hezbollah in 2006, is now using heavy artillery and tanks against a small Jihadist group inside the camp, supposedly allied with al Qaeda, while the people in the camp suffer the consequences. Thousands have already fled.

Life in the camps is miserable. The Christian Science Monitor (5/22) reports: "The camps were set up generally on the outskirts of towns and cities and initially consisted of little more than canvas tents. Over the years and as their population...swelled, the refugees built simple homes from cinder blocks and cement, turning the encampments into small villages that often lacked proper sanitation, electricity, and water. While more than 200,000 Palestinians are believed to live in the camps, the United Nations reports that 424,650 Palestinians live throughout the country."

The sharpening imperialist rivalry in the oil-rich Mid-East is behind the region's turmoil. The Lebanese government is blaming Syria for supporting the Jihadist group, saying Damascus is trying to reassert its control over Lebanon. But the Syrian government actually had arrested the Jihadist group's leader since it considers Political Islam-Jihadism an enemy. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia were actually courting several Sunni Jihadist groups in Lebanon as a counterweight to the pro-Iranian Shiite Hezbollah which defeated the 2006 Israeli invasion. (Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, Feb. 2007) The Jihadists have flourished because of the traditional Al Fatah Palestinian leadership's sellouts in the camps, the West Bank and Gaza.

Lebanon's "Communist" Party "alternative" is to support one faction (Hezbollah) in this inter-capitalist-imperialist rivalry. The difficult task ahead for any revolutionary-minded workers and youth in the region is to build a new communist movement, breaking with Political Islam, Zionism, nationalism and all bosses and imperialists. That's the only way out of the Mid-East's misery and endless wars.

Workers March Worldwide

Los Angeles

• KKKops Riot, Again

PLP Youth Lead on May Day

• Revolutionary Dinners

a href="#Iraq ‘Withdrawal’ Sham: Liberals Push for More Troops">Ir"q ‘Withdrawal’ Sham: Liberals Push for More Troops

Hundreds Of Thousands Needed For Coming Wars

Obama Update: More Imperialist Than Ever

Defend New Orleans Project:

a href="#Colombia May Day Marchers Condemn Bush-Uribe Axis of ‘Profit’">Co"ombia May Day Marchers Condemn Bush-Uribe Axis of ‘Profit’

Chicago May Day Led by Youth, Cheer Shipbuilder Striker

Red Flags Fly On May 1st

a href="#PL’ers Lead Disruption of CIA on Campus">"L’ers Lead Disruption of CIA on Campus

a href="#NYC Transit Bosses, Bankers Profit Over Workers’ Dead Bodies">"YC Transit Bosses, Bankers Profit Over Workers’ Dead Bodies

LA May Day Dinner Inspires Youth to Join PLP

May Day in Latin America

• El Salvador
• Paraguay
• Mexico City

LETTERS

a href="#Red Flag vs. Bosses’ Flag">"ed Flag vs. Bosses’ Flag

Anti-Racist Anger Trumps Fear

Communist Students in Capitalist Schools

a href="#Yeltsin Gave Away Workers’ Benefits to Profiteers">"eltsin Gave Away Workers’ Benefits to Profiteers

Airbus Strikers Reject Sellouts

Dock Strike on May Day in China

May Day in Europe

• Germany: Anti-Fascists Pelt Neo-Nazis Across Germany
• Paris

REDEYE

• Democrats back imperialist war
• ‘Using troops to grab Iraq oil’
• Going up, they desert black workers
• Easier than Iraq, US to leave by 2017
• Millions of cancers begin at work
• No end, no aim; troops lash out
• Focus on Virginia: racist, imperialist

Students Lead Protests Against Fascist Surveillance Cameras

Class Struggle Only Answer to Sarkozy Racist Anti-Worker Plan

---

WORKERS MARCH WORLDWIDE

LOS ANGELES, CA May 1st — In a sea of U.S. and Mexican bosses’ flags, the PLP rose up like a red flame among the tens of thousands of workers participating in the immigrants’ rights march in downtown. Over 100 participated with red flags and shirts that said, "Same enemy same fight, workers of the world unite! Fight for Communism."

Led by PLP youth, including some who just joined the Party, we marched and chanted for almost four hours. In all, we distributed 4,500 CHALLENGES and 7,500 leaflets that exposed the bosses’ plans to win immigrant workers and their children to loyally fight and labor for the U.S. It also explained the real history of May Day and the need for an international movement of the working class to fight for workers’ power.

At the end of the march, PLP youth gave speeches calling for unity between black, Latin, white, Arab and Asian workers to destroy racist capitalism with communist revolution. Many applauded and some raised their fists in support, as the marchers chanted, "Este puño si se ve — los obreros al poder,"(this fist that you can see, workers to power) and "Que viva, que viva, que viva el comunismo!"

May Day was also celebrated in shops and factories, where some workers gave speeches about the significance of May Day, inviting their co-workers to march with them, which some did. Others invited friends individually.

KKKops Riot, Again

A smaller group later went to MacArthur Park, with leaflets and CHALLENGES, where several different marches had converged. In some contingents, chants were heard of "No workers’ blood for oil profits" and "The workers, united, will never be defeated."

In one march, a racist cop ran into the crowd with his motorcycle to push workers back onto the sidewalk. But the workers refused. Workers defied police harassment in several instances. When reinforcements arrived 600 cops began attacking the crowd. They shot rubber bullets, forcing the workers and youth into a park where the union and the Catholic Church led a rally and many people had come with babies in strollers. The cops shot 240 rounds of rubber bullets, forcing demonstrators out of the park and out of the area. They viciously beat demonstrators along with reporters and cameramen, exposing the true nature of capitalism. Even as they ran from the cops’ bullets, many stopped to take PLP leaflets.

Chief Bratton, Mayor Villaraigosa and the FBI are calling for "investigations" of the police and have demoted and transferred two police commanders and put 60 cops on administrative duty. Villaraigosa had just hastily returned from Mexico and El Salvador where he signed deals to have the brutal LAPD train those country’s cops.

Many in the ruling class are angry about the public mass racist police attack, which hurts their plans of selling the lie of the "American Dream" that the liberal imperialists need immigrants and all workers to buy into. The rally they attacked was led by the very forces — the Church, unions, and immigrant rights leaders — that the liberals are counting on to win masses of workers to support imperialism. Villaraigosa, loyal agent of capitalism and a liberal fascist, has called for renewal of Bratton’s contract. The "leaders" of Chirla and Miwon (immigrant advocacy groups) left during the attack without using their sound system to help lead the workers in an orderly retreat. Now a leader of Chirla said that Bratton has "made a good start" in disciplining the cops. The imperialists need these misleaders to try to get angry workers to buy into police "reform." But capitalism needs racist police terror to enforce racist super exploitation.

The racist cops harass black and Latino workers every day. No investigations run by liberals Villaraigosa and Bratton will change the racist nature of the police whose job is to terrorize workers to not fight back against a system hell- bent on super-exploitation, war and fascism. Bratton also promises a witch-hunt to search for "instigators." The instigators reside in the LAPD headquarters and all its police stations. The media will hype an investigation to try to show that the system will clean itself up as well as attack those who raised politics at the march challenging "For a Secure America, Comprehensive Immigration Reform Now" (one of the official signs). This reform "will mean more exploitation and use immigrant youth as cannon fodder.

We should have better prepared for the possibility of this attack which happened at the end of the second march. We can never underestimate the racist brutality of the LAPD!

It’s up to communists to dig in to struggle over the long term in industry, the military and the schools to show workers that the way to end the racist terror inherent in capitalism is with communist revolution. Building the Party in key concentrations, in struggles small and large is the order of the day. Then, when the police attack a march and masses of workers are present led by Progressive Labor Party, we’ll answer their attack with the might of the working class!J

PLP Youth Lead on May Day

NEW YORK CITY, April 28 — Over 150 PLP’ers and friends, with soldiers, industrial workers and students in the ranks, rallied and marched through Brooklyn, kicking off the celebration of May Day 2007 and calling for an end to capitalism with communist revolution. We marched through the mainly black working-class neighborhood with our T-shirts and red flags and a multi-racial group chanting "Power to the Working Class, Kick the Bosses in the Ass," and "The only Solution is Communist Revolution."

Workers took over 2,000 CHALLENGE-DESAFIOS, honked their horns in support, joined us and enthusiastically cheered as we marched by. "NYPD, WE CHARGE YOU WITH GENOCIDE" was the chant workers militantly shouted as the police were doing their racist job of arresting young black workers. This kick-off to our May Day celebrations was only the start of a memorable day of working-class solidarity as we celebrated this international working-class holiday.

Revolutionary Dinners

Three dinners throughout the city saw over 700 in attendance. Participants ranged from active-duty soldiers and veterans, industrial and transit workers, high school and college students and teachers, all joining together in working-class solidarity and showing their discontent with the capitalist system. Each dinner was planned collectively both politically and organizationally by the emerging younger working class leaders — black, white, Latino and Asian — along with veteran members.

We brought people to the dinners from several areas where we’ve been involved in class struggles, showing a modest improvement in our efforts in mass organizations. Slowly but surely we’re learning in practice how to turn these reform struggles into schools for communism, consolidating new leadership and winning even more to our communist politics and Party.

A speech was given at all dinners from soldiers involved in building the Party within the military on the importance of the worker-soldier-student alliance and the need for soldiers and youth to join the Party. An excerpt declared:

"As we celebrate May Day and the struggle of our class around the world to ultimately destroy the bosses’ class and run the world based on our interest, need and according to our abilities and skills, we send a solidarity statement.....

"The Appeal for Redress [an appeal by over 1,000 GI’s to Congress to end the war] has its internal contradictions. First, its reliance on patriotism and liberalism, two ruling-class ideologies, gives soldiers the false impression that politicians within their own country can end the war. Only a mass movement of workers, students and soldiers can end the war. Only when this movement consolidates itself within the Progressive Labor Party, smashes the bosses and takes state power can we end Imperialist war."

The rest of the programs honored the history of May Day. One group did a re-enactment with crowd participation to the events that led to the establishment of May Day. Militant speeches that were forged through the fire of collective struggle analyzed the current world situation, fascism, imperialism and the need for communist revolution.

A slide show illustrated the Party’s on-going service to our class in New Orleans and exposed the true racist nature of capitalism and the testing ground for U.S. fascism while showing the power of workers joining together. Students spoke about a fight within their school where a racist principal is attacking the students and teachers for traveling to New Orleans to serve their class. (See page 3) Comrades in a transit union emphasized the importance of the industrial working class and the importance of youth joining the industrial sector as one of the keys to communist revolution. Many saw the results of decades of organizing in this union in the group of mainly black transit workers who attended.

Students from several high schools worked together during the weeks preceding May Day to write and act in a humorous and moving skit about the need for a militant revolutionary communist outlook within the national debate on immigration. The skit concluded with two young women singing a PLP classic, "March on May Day" with the call for audience members to join PLP and march with us on May 1. Music and poetry punctuated the events, with comrades performing revolutionary lyrics in many genres, from rap and reggaeton to the more traditional folk music. Many of the songs and dramatic performances sparked audience participation.

These dinners had special meaning to many. Several students who attended last year’s May Day became organizers this year, bringing family and friends with them. Young friends coming to their first Party activity came away with a sense of the PLP as a fighting organization with a revolutionary analysis of the world and plans for struggle. More experienced comrades with many May Days under their belts came away with a renewed dedication to a party whose growth was clearly evident in the new leadership involved in all the events. One young comrade summed up the experience: "This was awesome! I’m definitely coming back again next year!"

a name="Iraq ‘Withdrawal’ Sham: Liberals Push for More Troops"></">Ir"q ‘Withdrawal’ Sham: Liberals Push for More Troops

As U.S. liberal rulers plan broader wars to defend their embattled empire, they talk out of both sides of their mouths. Striking an anti-war pose, they feed the public the lie that pressuring Congressional Democrats will stop the carnage in Iraq. To the lawmakers themselves, however, the rulers send a more forthright message: prepare for escalating military action. By demanding unenforceable "withdrawal timetables," ruling-class-led groups like MoveOn (founded with Larry Rockefeller’s help) are, in fact, winning mass support for Pentagon funding. As the NY Times reported (5/6/07), "Tom Matzzie, of MoveOn...emphasized that the next emergency spending bill must be one ‘to end the war.’" But "The Case for Larger Ground Forces," a new report, produced by a group of ruling-class think-tanks and aimed at policy-makers, lacks even phony pacifism.

The report written jointly by Michael O’Hanlon, of the liberal Brookings Institution, and Frederick Kagan, of the supposedly conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), "Larger Ground Forces" foresees a potential vast expansion of U.S. warfare. The Stanley Foundation, a liberal, imperialist group, financed by a family-run engineering firm with operations in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, commissioned the study. It gets right to the point: "[O]ver the next few years and decades, the world is going to be a very unsettled and quite dangerous place, with Al Qaeda and its associated groups as a subset of a much larger set of worries. The only serious response to this international environment is to develop armed forces capable of protecting America’s vital interests...." O’Hanlon consequently calls for an additional 100,000 soldiers and marines.

Not to be outdone, Kagan (formerly of the neo-con Bush gang), demands 250,000 more foot soldiers and increasing military spending by $130 billion. (Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond muscled his way onto AEI’s board shortly after 9/11 and is now vice-chairman.) After their dire preamble, the authors debunk the politicians’ myth of a U.S. pullout. "Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely to require the continued deployment of well over a hundred thousand soldiers for several years to come."

Hundreds Of Thousands Needed For Coming Wars

Postponing a discussion of "great power conflict" with China or Russia down the road, O’Hanlon and Kagan treat scenarios for possible near-term U.S. invasions. First comes Pakistan, with a population six times that of Iraq. "Stabilizing a country of this size could easily require several times as many troops as the Iraq mission — a figure of up to one million is easy to imagine. The United States’ share of this total would probably be over half."

Next is Saudi Arabia, the crown jewel of the U.S.’s economic empire. "If a fundamentalist regime came to power and became interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States might have to consider carrying out forcible regime change. If, by contrast, the regime was more intent on disrupting the oil economy, more limited measures (such as seizing the oil fields) might be adequate.... The resulting total force strength might be 100,000 to 150,000 personnel."

Right now U.S. rulers’ seem to be more worried about a Saudi takeover by an anti-royal Al Qaeda-type than about the royals’ deals with China or Russia. Current Saudi deals with these countries are either under the U.S.’s thumb (like Exxon Mobil’s plan to refine Saudi crude in China’s Fujian province), or relatively insignificant (like Russia’s new $200-million share of Saudi Arabia’s trillion-dollar gas project. And "Iran, a country of nearly 70 million people, could well demand an American commitment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers in worst-case scenarios of regime collapse or regime change."

The rulers’ scribes, while insisting they don’t want to restore the draft, concede that a need for it may come quite soon. "The most likely cause would be an overuse of the all-volunteer force, particularly in the Army and Marine Corps, that led to an exodus of volunteers and a general perception among would-be recruits that service had become far less appealing. Clearly, a sustained period of high casualties in Iraq or another place would exacerbate any such problem as well." In addition to conscription, the desperate rulers envision a U.S. version of the French Foreign Legion. "A serious idea worthy of consideration...is to promise American citizenship to worthy foreigners who first agree to serve in the US armed forces."

Supporting liberal politicians, like Barack Obama [see box] or Hillary Clinton, who promise peace but prepare for war, is a deadly political error. The only viable alternative lies well outside the voting system, in organizing a working-class party with the outlook of communist revolution.

Defend New Orleans Project:

H.S. Students, Teachers Fight Racist Attack

BROOKLYN, NY, May 7 — When the principal at our Brooklyn school launched a witch-hunt to punish a teacher and those students who had gone to New Orleans during the winter break to help the workers in that hurricane-ravaged city get back on their feet, hundreds of students and then some teachers answered back by wearing stickers saying, "I went to New Orleans." In some classes, everyone is wearing the sticker, whether they went or not, making it impossible for the principal to single out those who did go.

Teachers have been sending letters to the union demanding that the leadership come to the school and address the attack. As reported in CHALLENGE (4/11), the teacher who went to New Orleans, a PLP member, was called in and given a disciplinary letter for "an unauthorized trip." Students are circulating petitions declaring, "We are not the property of the Department of Education." (DOE) All this adds up to a strong show of solidarity for the anti-racist movement here.

There has been great support for the work in New Orleans, including teachers overcoming their fears to step forward. Some classes have invited the teacher who was attacked to speak. On the first day when students began wearing the stickers, teachers hesitated but by the end of that day all the members of the PLP teacher’s department were wearing them. Teachers wrote letters in a newsletter openly attacking the administration and signing their names. They have pressured the head of the union to agree to come to the school to defend the PL’er. Many people have come up to the PL’er, hugged her, while saying, "I’m with you," and "I’m on your side."

But the principal, along with the DOE and other administrators, are part of the fascist trend to silence opposition. NYC public schools have become more about security and following orders and less about any kind of real education. Both teachers and students face more rules, regulations and punishments than ever before. Racism has intensified as more of these overwhelmingly black and Latino schools resemble jails. The administration is trying to build a climate of fear where, complicit with the union, teachers will not speak up or "step out of line" for fear of reprisals, letters in their files, etc., all part of the growing fascism in the schools.

In discussions with teachers and students, we have stressed that it’s imperative to stand up to these attacks, to show some backbone. We’ve tried to take the offensive as much as possible and worry less about repercussions, asking people to get involved on many levels and sometimes openly confront the administration.

Secondly, we’ve indicated that we’re living in a different period, that the DOE is trying to maintain a tighter grip on teachers than it did in the past, given the war in Iraq and the students who will serve as the source of the troops that the U.S. ruling class needs to fight their imperialist oil wars. Such a period has many dangers but also offers increasing opportunities to win workers and youth against these attacks.

The fact that both students and teachers have defended — and shown great respect for — a communist who is at the center of this struggle indicates that the administration’s anti-communism has been unable to smash this anti-racist effort. And the fact that a dozen students and several teachers involved in this fight attended PLP’s May Day event shows the potential to win masses of people to the communist PLP.

Finally, we should try to point out the futility of reforming capitalist education to serve students and teachers. Some of the staff involved in this struggle have been in the school system a long time and have fought hard in various reform campaigns. Twenty years ago, we fought for smaller classes, yet now many of us still have over-sized classes. From such struggles, we must learn that capitalism offers us only a series of attacks, that joining the communist PLP is the best step to fight for a society where education won’t be based on racist prison-like conditions and will serve all workers and their children.

a name="Colombia May Day Marchers Condemn Bush-Uribe Axis of ‘Profit’"></">Co"ombia May Day Marchers Condemn Bush-Uribe Axis of ‘Profit’

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, May 1 — Over 200,000 marched here on May Day, while similar mass marches occurred nation-wide. Workers, students, Indigenous people, housewives, unemployed, pensioners and many mass organizations protested the Free Trade Agreement President Uribe is signing with the U.S.; the narcopolitics of the government; and all the murderous policies of the capitalist rulers. In the last few days, mass graves have been found with hundreds of victims — shot and dismembered — of the pro-government paramilitary death squads. There was also mass repudiation of the U.S. war in Iraq. Groups poked fun at Bush and his buddy Uribe (who was visiting the White House that week). Students marched against the bosses’ plan to end public education with massive budget cuts helped by the rampant corruption of school administrators.

The PLP contingent of men and women workers and students was very well received. We carried a big banner reading, "DESAFIO, Revolutionary Communist Paper." Our marchers also held colorful red flags and 16 placards with slogans reflecting our communist politics: "Smash the bosses’ dictatorship with communist revolution"; "Paramilitary squads and racism sustain capitalism"; and "Capitalism is the problem, communism is the solution."

Many throughout the entire march took up our chants. DESAFIO-CHALLENGE was distributed and 3,000 leaflets were handed out stressing that communist politics must become primary in all struggles. "DESAFIO, what a good paper!" said a farmworker. "It tells the entire truth. Give me one."

Our anti-capitalist and pro-communist chants were heard loud and clear until the march ended at Bolívar Square. We then sang the Internationale, along with many other marchers with their fists raised high.

Our politics were the opposite of the "Alternative Democratic Pole," and opportunist left groups, which promote their electoral candidates, building illusions that this way the system can be reformed to help workers and youth.

The cops viciously attacked young demonstrators from an Anti-Imperialist Brigade with pepper spray, rubber bullets and water canyons, injuring many children and elderly workers. Workers and youth responded with rocks, sticks and even their fists. Ten cops were injured and 80 protestors were arrested. Several local businesses were also affected. The bosses and the media are blaming these youths for the attack, even offering rewards for the capture of the young rebels and their leaders. But the bosses and their mouthpieces don’t understand that millions in Colombia hate imperialism and capitalism and have the potential of becoming revolutionary leaders. We in PLP will try our best to make this into a reality. J

Chicago May Day Led by Youth, Cheer Shipbuilder Striker

CHICAGO, IL, May 5 — "We might have got a penny a day for every day we were on strike. But it was all worth it because we were all together as one, black and white. We have a different outlook now."

Those were the words of a Northrop Grumman worker just hours before addressing almost 150 workers and youth at the PLP May Day dinner here tonight. The 18-year veteran shipbuilder and over 7,000 of her co-workers shut down the war-making, strike-breaking Navy contractor for 28 days in March, both showing and learning the potential power of industrial workers. After her talk we passed the hat, raising over $500 for the workers’ food bank, still needed by workers even though they’re now back to work.

Tonight featured our building a fighting party out of class struggle, and how a mass, revolutionary PLP can emerge from advancing communist ideas within the pro-capitalist reform movement. It was a night of anti-racist struggle and culture.

In addition to the striking shipbuilder, a Cook County hospital worker detailed the struggle against racist health care cuts and clinic closings. A Ford worker described his growing up as a teenager in Detroit, participating in the 1967 rebellion against racist police terror. This July marks the 40th anniversary of that heroic struggle.

A young Party leader noted the response of masses of workers and youth to our contingent in the May Day immigration march and how our dinner showed that from striking workers in Mississippi to the Cook County fight to the mass immigration march, workers and youth are open to revolutionary communism.

Young poets, black and white, a young woman performing modern dance, and a group of young workers and students doing a comedy skit all contributed to the building of an anti-racist, revolutionary culture.

Just a few days earlier, PLP participated in the May 1 immigration march. Our "Long Live Communism" banner, red T-shirts and red flags were a revolutionary beacon to the more than 150,000 workers and youth who participated. In just minutes, marchers snatched up the 200 Spanish and English picket signs that said, "Workers Struggles Have No Borders — Progressive Labor Party." Next year we will make 1,000!

This directly opposed the thousands of American flags passed out by the union leaders, community organizers and Democratic Party hacks who led the march. This sellout crew has a tiger by the tail and seriously underestimated the mood of the masses. Just a week earlier, a coalition of Latino union leaders estimated that 5,000 to 10,000 marchers would be good! Then an outrageous immigration raid by hundreds of ICE (immigration cops) and FBI agents in full battle gear at a strip mall in the Little Village neighborhood was met by mass demonstrations and growing anger. While this certainly added to the march, it didn’t make it grow from 10,000 to 150,000. Clearly many more workers and youth were ready to march against the growing anti-immigrant racism than the "leaders" anticipated.

Racist Mayor Daley was the main speaker on the stage. But in the street, the PLP contingent set a different tone. Our speeches and chants, picked up by thousands of marchers, helped us to distribute 3,000 DESAFIOS, 2,500 CHALLENGES, and thousands of PLP fliers. Still other comrades marched with their unions, churches and immigrant rights groups.

Both the May 1 march and the PLP May Day dinner were led by young comrades, black, Latin and white, women and men. A young leadership is emerging. This is a significant development for the future. But we have many obstacles to overcome and many weaknesses to correct while the bosses move to wider wars and more fascist terror. We have a long way to go, but this May Day week we took another step down the road to communist revolution.

Red Flags Fly On May 1st

PLP’ers Expose Liberals’ ‘Reform’ Scam At Immigrant Marches

NEW YORK CITY, May 1 — Red flags with "Workers of the World, Unite!" printed in English, Spanish and French, flew out of PL’ers’ hands as thousands of workers marched past us in the liberal/politician-organized immigrants’ rights demonstration. Despite the many U.S. and other national flags, workers were hungry for our message of international working-class unity and were proud to wave the flag of workers’ power.

As we chanted, "Los obreros, unidos, jamás serán vencidos;" "The workers, united, will never be defeated!" marchers all around us joined in enthusiastically. More than 2,000 CHALLENGE/DESAFIOS circulated throughout the crowd.

Multi-racial PLP groups of students and teachers took turns leading chants and giving speeches on the bullhorn as we marched from Union Square to Federal Plaza. PLP’s revolutionary communist message of anti-racist workers’ unity was the opposite of the one pushed by the various liberal reform groups that led the march. They have been squabbling over which new immigration bill to support, all of them enabling the bosses to increase exploitation of immigrant workers and send their youth into imperialist wars.

Racism is nothing new in Morristown

Morristown, NJ, May 1— PLP distributed over 50 CHALLENGES to local workers during a rally called by immigrants’ rights groups to oppose the Democratic Mayor, Donald Cresitello’s plan to deputize 10 local police to become Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. This would allow police officers to take anyone in that they think is an "illegal immigrant." While the rally’s speakers called for the workers to put their faith into religion and politicians, PLP discussed with many of the workers the nature of capitalism and the need for communist revolution.

In 2000 and 2001, neo-Nazi Richard Barrett picked Morristown to espouse his racist filth against immigrants. PLP was able to disrupt both of his speeches, eventually forcing him out of the town. At the same time the Party made a lot of good connections in the town. We hope that we can once again win many of the residents of Morristown to fight back against these racist attacks, and May 1 was a good starting point for that.

DC

Washington, D.C. May 1 – Twenty comrades and friends of PLP participated in the May 1 Immigrants Rights March here in Malcolm X Park. We offered an alternative to the liberal patriotic politics of the events with red flags flying from a table filled with PLP communist literature, May Day stickers, buttons, and T-shirts with the traditional communist slogan, "Workers of the World Unite, We Have Nothing to Lose but our Chains." Over 200 DESAFIOS, 100 CHALLENGES and 100 buttons and stickers were distributed to the 500 marchers, along with a PLP leaflet calling for revolution, not reform. Workers eagerly bought the 20 T-shirts we had — we should have had more!

The Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association had endorsed the Immigrants Rights march due to our leadership and several of our friends from our HIV/AIDS project helped in all aspects of our communist work as well as providing free "condoms for the people." The day was a great follow-up to the Party’s May Day march in New York the previous Saturday.

D.C. Comrade

a name="PL’ers Lead Disruption of CIA on Campus">">"L’ers Lead Disruption of CIA on Campus

New York City, NY, April 19 – Several PLP members and friends confronted a CIA recruiter with signs exposing the CIA’s true racist, torture history. The CIA was here to try to recruit working-class youth and mis-inform them. "The CIA helped justify 600,000 Iraqi deaths" and "No Free Speech for Racists" read the signs held up by students. Protestors were confronted by the fascist NYPD and Campus Police. These students stood their ground and did not back down to threats made by the cops. After the presentation, protestors chanted slogans about the war and the fascist nature of the cops. The recruiter was quickly rushed out of a back door after the chants became louder and students were looking to rush past the police. There always seems to be a back door to sneak imperialists in and out of CCNY.

The CIA is targeting working-class Latino, Arab and black students. After students interrupted their session at Hunter College, the CIA tried to add legitimacy at CCNY by having the Career Center contact different student groups on campus. Presidents and officers of clubs who admitted there might be students in their clubs interested in joining the CIA instantly had their clubs’ names put on the event’s flier. This included the numerous engineering clubs as well as the Student Association for International Studies (SAIS).

A PLP member who is part of SAIS responded quickly to the e-mail announcement of the CIA event, with a call for the club to withdraw its sponsorship of the CIA coming to the college and instead called on the club to try to organize opposition to the session. Many in the club responded with the liberal idea that the recruiters had to be given the right to speak and that it was up to individuals to decide if they wanted a career in the CIA. This argument ignores the fact that the CIA historically helped to deny millions of workers the right to speak, organize, and live. In fact, a week earlier, the SAIS had a speaker from Indonesia who told the club of how the CIA helped to establish a government that murdered over a million communists. The hypocrisy was ripe in the air when most members of SAIS didn’t attend the event, while a few attended to "hear him [the recruiter] out."

In the end, PLP members were able to organize several friends from our classes to attend the event to protest the CIA. Still, if not for the PLP’s presence on campus the CIA would likely have had no disruption at all and the SAIS would not even have questioned the event.

Students are lied to all the time by military and government recruiters. It is the job of the PLP to expose the lies and also the history of the role of these government organizations. The CIA promises thousands of dollars in salary to protect U.S. imperialism worldwide, but we say no to imperialism, workers of the world unite, fight for communist revolution!

a name="NYC Transit Bosses, Bankers Profit Over Workers’ Dead Bodies">">"YC Transit Bosses, Bankers Profit Over Workers’ Dead Bodies

NEW YORK CITY, May 3 — Two more city subway workers have been needlessly killed because of the refusal of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) bosses to make safety a high priority, symptomatic of capitalism’s nature: profits first, workers’ lives last. The two track workers were killed in separate incidents, a week apart.

The first victim, Daniel Boggs, 42, was fatally struck by an oncoming train when tower personnel did not divert that train away from the track on which he was working. The second fatality involved Marvin Franklin, 55, who was hit while attempting to lift a dolly onto a platform. There was no signal protection to warn the motorman of his presence on the track.

Transit workers charged that the two deaths exposed the chronic lack of safety for those working on the tracks. Many have demanded the MTA give them radios to communicate with the tower and with moving trains. Such devices might have prevented these fatalities.

"This is basically all we have…when we go out there — a helmet, gloves and a vest," transit worker Robert Yates told the media. Workers have constantly complained about supervisors who push for more work with less manpower, pressuring workers to take shortcuts.

The main threat to safety is too many jobs to do with too few workers. The signal, lighting, structural track and station departments each get dozens of calls daily to correct some emergency from fires, smoke, flooding, ice and snow in the winter, debris on tracks, as well as animals and also homeless people, and breakdowns of track equipment and trains.

Maintenance crews of from five to ten workers in this hellhole are often divided into groups of one or two (when it takes at least three workers to do the job), proceeding from one emergency to the next and without flagmen to warn of approaching trains. Many are working alone on all these problems, all day long. Workers say it’s a miracle there aren’t more accidents.

Tower personnel are often lax in notifying road workers and train operators the required week in advance about changes in train schedules and routings. The MTA has hired private contractors to do some of this track work (at triple the pay of MTA employees) but they operate with flagmen as well as with the power turned off, whereas transit workers must perform their duties with the power on.

The racism of the MTA bosses plays a big role in the life-threatening working conditions suffered by the 6,000 track workers, most of them black and Latino.

The MTA bosses are constantly crying about "deficits" and use that as an excuse to stint on safety measures. But they never cry about feeding the big banks hundreds of millions of dollars annually in interest from the bonds that pay for subway debt. This interest is the profit reaped from the labor of the 32,000 transit workers, including the 27 killed at work since 1980. That money might be better spent to promote workers’ safety.

Meanwhile, the TWU Local 100 union leaders — who sold out the militant anti-racist December 2005 strike that shut down NYC for several days — just limit themselves to "working together" with the MTA. But the only thing the bosses will listen to is a strike against these murderers, something the workers and riders will never hear from the union leadership.

Some say about an hour’s spending on the war in Iraq could take care of all the safety expenses for NYC transit workers. But wars for profits are the bosses’ priority, not workers’ lives, be they in Baghdad or in NYC and Washington, D.C. (where several workers have being killed recently in similar conditions).

In a communist system, without profits to put ahead of safety, workers’ lives will be the top priority. Join and build PLP towards this goal.

LA May Day Dinner Inspires Youth to Join PLP

LOS ANGELES April 28 – Tonight hundreds attended PLP’s annual May Day Dinners. The events helped us prepare to bring our communist politics to the immigration rights’ marches on May 1st. The highlight of the dinners was the response of many who participated. As a result, 9 youth joined PLP, committing to building the revolutionary communist movement. Others committed to receive CHALLENGE and distribute it to friends and co-workers. Youth also joined committees to guarantee the militancy, discipline and enthusiasm of our contingent in the immigration rights march.

Speeches were given about the history of May Day, explaining that the red flag represents the international unity of the working class in struggle against capitalist oppression, for a communist world. One speaker pointed out that in the face of the dangers workers face today of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, widening imperialist war, increasing racism and developing fascism, there are many opportunities to build a mass communist party by reaching out to angry youth, soldiers, immigrant and black workers.

Industrial workers pointed out the openness of workers to communist politics when workers work and struggle together as well as share food and ideas. Another speaker expressed the anger of soldiers in Iraq and the need to build the Party among them. Several youth shared stirring poems of anti-racist resistance and uniting the working class in struggle.

A comrade showed how the liberal imperialists are using the Gutierrez-Flake immigration bill to build their green card army to fool more people. By calling for undocumented youth to join the military or get a college degree (due to racism and poverty, they will be forced into the military), this bill is an attempt by the liberals to get national service (the draft) adopted and calls for a national ID card for all workers and an electronic work verification system — both steps to escalate fascism in the U.S. against all workers.

"Many of our parents tell us ‘son, daughter you have to do something with your life,’" said the final speaker. "Well, I’m here to tell you that the best thing you can do with your life is to be a communist. A lifetime commitment of serving the working class is the best life you can have…"

May Day in Latin America

SAN SALVADOR, May 1 — More than 100,000 workers marched through the main streets here to celebrate International Workers’ Day and protest against the capitalist system. Slogans that marchers read, painted and chanted during the 3½-mile march included: "Long Live the International Working Class"; "Students, what is our duty? To Take Power!" One marcher shouted emotionally, "Wave the hammer and sickle! Communism is Invincible." A group of youth organized the distribution of 4,000 PLP leaflets and 400 CHALLENGES.

PLP succeeded in mobilizing over 100 members and readers from across the country. Farmworkers, students (high school and university), teachers, factory workers and doctors all made their presence felt at the march. Slogans like "Workers struggles have no borders" were heard in the march as well as on community radio. For the first time the Internationale was sung in several languages. Workers are now taking up red flags with the hammer and sickle. A few years ago PLP members were the only ones who raised the red flag of communism. This year thousands of workers followed the example, representing the fight for workers’ revolution, by raising and waving the red flag with pride.

A capitalist news reporter asked a police chief, "Why didn’t you arrest any demonstrators for causing such disorder?" He replied, "They shield themselves. There are so many, and if we answer their provocations, they’ll come at us. There’s too many of them. It would be chaos."

The police had 7,000 agents in the capital and hundreds more on the roads to "protect" the march. This time the cops didn’t attack marchers, but we should have no illusions. They’ve attacked many past protests and cops did attack May 1 protests in L.A., Bogotá, Turkey and Iran, among others. Workers and students must always be prepared to answer police brutality since the main job of all cops is to protect the bosses and their system.

A new contingent of enthusiastic comrades was mobilized to march for the first time. A communist school was planned with them. Also, clubs of new comrades have been strengthening their communist ideas. This May Day they saw their work flourish. Returning to their workplaces, young students, teachers and workers made plans to continue their communist political work. Among these activities is a Bar-B-Que to celebrate our struggle to strengthen the Progressive Labor Party in this region of the world.

PARAGUAY, May 1

"Today, the PLP will not ask for your vote. The PLP will never ask for your vote or tell you who to vote for. We are a revolutionary party, not a party of politicians!"

These words resonated with the15 workers and students gathered for the first PLP May Day in Paraguay. The participants included a mechanic, a former union leader, and a doctor as well as high school and college students. They were greeted with a table full of the latest DESAFIO newspaper as well as PLP articles about Paraguay, the fake left of Evo Morales and Chavez, and Fidel’s phony communism. The afternoon started with a presentation on the history of May Day by a member of PMAS (Movement towards Socialism, a pro-Chavez movement) who is friendly to the PLP. Many of the participants at the lunch had no knowledge about the history of May Day or the lives sacrificed and blood shed in order to receive an 8-hour work day. A PLP’er talked about What is Communism and What We Fight For. This speech included the need to destroy two pillars of capitalism — racism against the indigenous community in Paraguay, and sexism that keeps women in chains.

Only four of the participants had previously heard of the PLP, so the fresh idea of a long revolutionary struggle for equality without relying on electoral politics was welcome news to everyone there. We called for building a mass PLP here in Paraguay, and showed that since 2004 PLP has been engaged with Paraguayan workers’ struggles. Attendees were also impressed with the fact that the PLP was an international party, operating in several countries in Latin America and elsewhere. In this period of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry, it is even more important to build a worldwide communist movement under the banner of "the working class has no borders!"

Like Chávez and Evo Morales, Paraguay politician Fernando Lugo is flirting with other imperialists against U.S. imperialism. He recently met with representatives from the European Union searching for investments from this imperialist bloc.

This first PLP May Day in Paraguay was a modest step forward. We must continue to struggle with these workers and students, sharpen contradictions and to show through struggle, facts, figures and current events, that the communist vision of the PLP and not the state capitalism of Hugo Chavez is the real solution for workers.J

MEXICO CITY, MAY 1 — This May Day was one of struggle against capitalism. In commemorating International Workers’ Day, many recalled the heroism of the martyrs of Chicago and of the Mexican copper miners killed at White River (Rio Blanco) in Cananea in 1906. Others demonstrated their anger at the pension reform law as well as completely rejecting the whole capitalist system as the cause of all the evils workers suffer — unemployment, poverty, racism and exploitation. In all this, the bosses are served by their politicians and the sellout union leaders.

The PLP contingent showed the road to follow for the oppressed, participating with many members and friends who enthusiastically distributed more than 9,500 communist leaflets and chanted slogans like, "One Class, One Party, Workers of the World, Unite!"; "Long Live Communism! Death to Capitalism!"; and "The Working Class Has No Borders!" We advocated the communist alternative, giving a revolutionary feeling to the march, calling on the workers to join PLP.

Later we met in a park to socialize and then analyze our participation, concluding that our literature was well accepted by the workers at the march. This makes us more committed to continue organizing and writing to bring our politics to more workers and recruit them to PLP.

The road to revolution is long, and therefore we must redouble our efforts to deepen relations with the workers, our main task.

The current capitalist crisis of overproduction, unemployment, poverty and imperialist wars means that millions of workers will be searching for solutions to these problems. We will be there, from the factories to the classrooms, with our communist ideas and will bury the bosses, to build the system that we need so much, communism!

Letters

a name="Red Flag vs. Bosses’ Flag">">"ed Flag vs. Bosses’ Flag

"Invite them all," a group of co-workers told me, referring to asking the whole shop to the May Day march, after I had explained the history of the international working-class struggle for the 8-hour day. For the last year I’ve discussed exploitation, inter-imperialist rivalry and our communist ideas with this group. Together we planned to attend the march, not only to support immigrant rights but also to spread the real meaning of May Day.

In addressing the whole shop, I sought the group’s participation, asking them to stand by me. One did, so I began, "Today is May Day, the international working-class holiday." All those present in the lunchroom (except two supervisors) seemed pleased and to agree with my talk. Even though its main thrust was the history of May Day, I also said that if we wanted changes we had to fight not only for immigrant rights but also for a different society, a society without exploitation.

Consequently, three of us went together to the march. Others went on their own with their families. For a while we all felt bad; we had expected more workers would have left work with us. However, I explained that initially most people don’t usually participate in the revolutionary process, that movements are born small and must be built. Nevertheless, the march inspired my co-workers and, along with many marchers, they carried our red flag in one hand and the U.S. flag in the other (even though I had told them it represented the murderous U.S. bosses).

At the end, we enjoyed having participated. Then suddenly, without provocation, the cops attacked some youths who were in the middle of the blocked-off street. "I can’t believe what I’m seeing," said one of my co-workers with great surprise, "The police are beating people up! If I hadn’t seen it, I would not believe it!" Dozens of riot cops began to arrive. We decided to leave. Later we saw on television the cops’ brutal racist attack.

The next day we shared our experience with co-workers who hadn’t gone. Those who went had contradictory views of what occurred. "It was a good decision to leave, but maybe we should have stayed and fought," said one. "I asked myself," said another, "don’t people have guns to respond to these attacks?"

I told them that street demonstrations were "schools" where workers learn to fight and understand the role of the cops in defending the bosses’ capitalist state. I described how in El Salvador the police began using tear gas and clubs and finally shot real bullets. But workers also developed their own methods and eventually picked up arms not only against the police but also against the U.S.-trained fascist army.

"This is just the beginning," I said. "The police here will eventually take off their masks and will attack all workers fighting to better their lot, not only immigrants. Will we be prepared to respond accordingly? Only if we join the only Party capable of leading the workers in these struggles and eventually to the seizure of power. Joining and building the PLP is our most urgent task!" I concluded.

Red Garment Worker

Anti-Racist Anger Trumps Fear

I asked a friend of mine if she was taking her kids to the Cinco de Mayo festival in Flushing Park, Queens, NY as she has done previously. She said she wasn’t going because she feared an attack by the NYPD or the ICE (Immigration) cops similar to May 1 in L.A. (She’s from Puebla, where the battle against French Emperor Napoleon III’s invading army gave birth to this holiday. Interestingly enough, this May 5, 1862 battle reduced French supplies to the pro-slavery Confederacy, helping the U.S. Union Army defeat the southern slave-holders.)

In many U.S. cities, these festivities have been cancelled because of such fears. Recently, an immigrant laborers’ job center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was burned down. Racist thugs subject these laborers to daily harassment nationwide.

But, most importantly, my friend’s fear was trumped by anti-racism. She said she now understands the anger of many black workers and youth towards the system, remarking that many Latino youth are already showing that anti-racist anger.

So the bosses, their politicians and their fascist goons’ (LAPD, Minutemen, etc.) gutter racism are radicalizing a whole new generation of youth, the same youth they need as a future cheap-labor workforce and as soldiers in their imperialist wars. This combination radicalized me and many other Latino youth — as well as black and white youths — in the ’60s. A combination of gutter racism, the war in Vietnam, police terror and racist unemployment helped spark massive anti-racist rebellions from Harlem to Watts, from El Barrio (East Harlem, NY) to Detroit.

It’s up to us to channel that anti-racist anger into an anti-capitalist revolutionary movement.

An older but not tired anti-racist

Communist Students in Capitalist Schools

The PLP document "Road to Revolution 4.5" states: "Reform and Revolution are united because they are both part of the workers’ struggle against capitalism, but reforms are to improve capitalism; revolution to destroy it."

Last February in a reform struggle in the Intercultural University of the State of Mexico, students demanded the rehiring of a teacher in good standing in the pro-indigenous field. After two days of talks, the professor was rehired even though the administration said her dismissal was not unjust because it has the right not to hire teachers who don’t meet university criteria.

The school bosses said they were not authoritarians while also saying students could not limit the administration’s authority. It also said it respects freedom of speech but then set limits on what signs, banners or newspapers students can have which support social movements that discredit the University. The administration said the school’s internal problems should not be exposed to the outside world, but should remain "inside the university family."

Meanwhile, poor conditions make education very difficult, including video cameras, threats against students and teachers, no real freedom of expression or thought, and so on.

Some students said they were neutral in this struggle because they’re waiting for crumbs from the administrators. Others even spied for the school, betraying their "friends." But many students did fight for the teacher’s job, and felt good about their victory. However, it was a reform victory which only improved a capitalist school, implying that one can win something under capitalism without fighting for real changes and without exposing the real racist, exploitative nature of the system.

Communist students live the contradiction of being dedicated to the destruction of capitalism while studying ideas that help keep the system afloat. Workers face this contradiction, producing surplus value for the bosses to be able to get a wage to survive. But even though we understand this contradiction, how do we solve it? We must build the Party in our schools and jobs to help destroy the capitalist ideas.

A good beginning is to recognize that there’s a contradiction between reform and revolution. As red students, we must be involved in struggles in our schools, not to feed reformism among fellow students but to expose how reforms will never really end the exploitation of capitalism. Our goal is to unite students with workers to build the communist PLP and fight directly for communism.

Red Students, Mexico

a name="Yeltsin Gave Away Workers’ Benefits to Profiteers">">"eltsin Gave Away Workers’ Benefits to Profiteers

An addition to the article on Yeltsin’s death (CHALLENGE, 5/9):

In the 1980’s, the USSR was an authoritarian welfare capitalist state, with many guarantees for workers: jobs or unemployment insurance and retraining; free education, medical care, vacations; subsidies on housing, transportation, basic food commodities; free childcare and a nationwide system of youth facilities, camps, etc.

Gorbachev and Yeltsin:

• GAVE AWAY the collectively-produced industrial and agricultural wealth of the USSR, created by generations of Soviet workers, so these economic institutions could no longer use their profits to fund the above benefits;

• ABOLISHED these social welfare benefits, causing a huge drop in the standard of living, and life expectancy, of Soviet workers, massively increasing crime and prostitution and lowering the birth rate to a negative population growth;

• Created a new class of wealthy and "middle-class" people who profit from this system and exploit the labor of the working class;

• Promoted racism-nationalism to divide and conquer, hugely increasing racism everywhere and promoting Nazi-type fascists to head many of the former Soviet states.

Basically, the USSR was capitalist before this, and unstable. All these social welfare benefits cost huge sums. So it was in evolution. Something had to give, sometime — given that it was capitalism. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were the ones who brought it to its logical conclusion: screw the workers. Their policies were far to the right of Ronald Reagan’s, or those of any U.S. president, even Bush.

They justify all this by DEMONIZING COMMUNISM. "It was all the communists’ fault." These guys, with the help of their propagandists, spread anti-communist lies — fabrications, falsehoods, forged documents, etc. This is the Gorbachev-Yeltsin legacy!

A Soviet history buff

Airbus Strikers Reject Sellouts

SAINT NAZAIRE, FRANCE, May 5 — When the biggest unions at Airbus plants here and in Nantes told strikers to return to work, the rank and file voted to continue the walkout. The union hacks tried to trick the workers with a surprise end-the-strike vote. The Saint Nazaire hacks have punished the strikers by withdrawing official union support for the strike. The workers are demanding a bonus of 3,000-4,000 euros similar to 2006, an end to the Power 8 downsizing plan, no layoffs and permanent job contracts for temporary workers.

Solidarity Actions with Opel Strike

Meanwhile, on May 3 Opel-GM workers held solidarity actions and strikes in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, the UK, Hungary and Sweden in support of Opel strikers in Antwerp, Belgium. (GM Opel employs 60,000 workers throughout Europe).

Whereas some factories limited themselves to leafleting or to holding informational meetings, many factories stopped working for one to three hours. In Germany, the group’s four factories — mainly Opel —stopped work for three hours and demonstrated.

Industrial workers in Europe, as in North America, are losing their jobs as the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry forces bosses to move their plants to cheaper labor areas in Eastern Europe, China and India. These strikes and solidarity actions are good, but more than that is needed. These workers must forge a real international class-struggle leadership and turn their fight-backs into schools for communism. J

Dock Strike on May Day in China

HONG KONG, May 1 — May Day usually lacks any class content or militance in capitalist China, but hundreds of dockworkers changed that, striking for overtime pay at one of the world’s busiest ports. According to Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper, over 400 crane operators and truck drivers at the Chiwan Container Terminal in the boomtown of Shenzhen in southern China stopped working at midnight May 1, delaying thousands of shipping containers.

The strikers staged a sit-in outside the container terminal’s headquarters on May 1. The cops were called but no there was no violence.

Hong Kong South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed worker who said they took industrial action on International Labor Day to express their anger. "Many of us have sacrificed our health and spare time to work for the company," he said. "We only have one or two days of rest each month. The company should treat us better."

Although these dockers’ wages are higher than most workers (averaging $519/month), this is nothing compared to the profits of the bosses of Chiwan Container Terminal, one of the world’s busiest.

The key task is to build a real revolutionary communist party with the leadership of the angry urban and rural workers, enduring hell because of the return of full-blown capitalism to China.

May Day in Europe

Anti-Fascists Pelt Neo-Nazis Across Germany

BERLIN, May 1 — Thousands of May Day demonstrators using rocks, bottles, barricades, fires and Molotov cocktails violently disrupted neo-Nazi marches in several German cities today. The biggest protests were in Nuremberg, Bavaria, site of Adolf Hitler’s mass rallies.

Every year since 1998, the fascist National-Democratic Party and other fascist groups have organized a national neo-Nazi march in Leipzig. But in 2006, 3,000 demonstrators broke up the neo-Nazi demonstration using rocks, bottles and their fists. As a result, this year the neo-Nazis organized several regional marches under the slogan, "Jobs for millions instead of profits for millionaires!" Hitler also began by claiming he was "pro-worker," and ended up slaughtering millions for German capitalism until his killing machine was smashed by the Soviet Red Army.

Today, even though neo-Nazis were able to march in six cities, in many others they were unsuccessful despite police protection. In Nuremberg, about 3,000 people at a "revolutionary May Day" demonstration showered rocks and bottles on a kick-off rally of 200 neo-Nazis. The fascists ran instead of marching to their closing rally, and then were evacuated under police protection.

Thousands of these anti-Nazi demonstrators then joined the 5,000-strong Nuremberg May Day rally called by the DGB trade union confederation. When Bavarian interior minister Günther Beckstein, a member of the right-wing Christian-Social Union party and infamous for his racist anti-immigrant policies, tried to address the crowd, the anti-Nazis pelted him with bottles.

In Dortmund in the industrial Ruhr region, 2,500 anti-fascists broke up a march by 600 neo-Nazis and chased small groups of Nazis through the streets. Cops trying to protect the neo-Nazis were met with rocks and Molotov cocktails. Barricades and fires were built in the streets and on commuter train tracks to prevent the neo-Nazis from entering the city center.

At a street corner In Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia in central Germany, about 1,000 youth halted a march by 1,300 neo-Nazis. About 2,500 people had lined the streets to form a "dishonor guard" and jeer at the neo-Nazis.

In Tübingen, a university town in southwest Germany, 800 demonstrators prevented the right-wing student organization "Burschenschaften" from holding their May songfest.

Paris

PARIS, May 1 — Even though 200,000 marched throughout France on May Day (compared to 90,000 last year), it was mainly for "lesser-evil" politics. There were nearly 250 rallies and marches nation-wide — the biggest ones in Paris (60,000) and Marseille (20,000) — in which traditional demands for jobs, higher wages and better pensions alternated with "Anybody but Sarkozy!" Voting for the "Socialist" Party candidate S. Royal was the name of the game.

Years of reformist politics and business unionism have taken their toll. The union hacks won’t fight the massive capitalist attacks on workers, against racism and imperialist preparations for endless wars. Only dedicated revolutionary work to strengthen class consciousness can rebuild the unity and combativeness the working class needs. This is a necessary step toward communist revolution, the only real solution to capitalism’s ills, no matter which politician rules their state.

REDEYE

Democrats back imperialist war

The most likely next target for the Pentagon is Iran. So what do the leading Democrats have to say about that crucial matter?

"Their positions on Iran’s nuclear program, a subject that is almost certain to bedevil whoever becomes president in 2009…most strongly suggest that the foreign-policy difference between Democratic and Republican policy elites have been vastly overblown," David Reiff noted in the New York Times Magazine on March 25.

•Sen. Clinton said "no option can be taken off the table."

•Sen. Obama said that the Iranian government is "a threat to all of us" and "we should take no option, including military action, off the table."

•Former Sen. Edwards said, "Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons.…We need to keep all options on the table."

…If words mean anything, in this case the candidates are conveying that they’d be willing to consider using nuclear weapons to strike Iranian targets. (Norman Solomon, Creators Syndicate, 4/4)

‘Using troops to grab Iraq oil’

A bumper sticker about the Iraq War asks: "What’s our oil doing under their sand?"….

A cabal…including the…major oil corporations - has drafted a new oil law requiring Iraq to open up its fields to control by Western corporations….

The law would transform Iraq’s huge oil reserve from a nationally owned resource to a privatization model, opening two-thirds of the known oil fields to foreign control….

This scheme is nothing but license for Big Oil to plunder a nation and its people. So much for Bush & Company’s rhetoric about "bringing democracy to Iraq." They’re using our troops to give away Iraq’s oil…. (Jim Hightower, Minutemanmedia.org., 4/5)

Going up, they desert black workers

A 14-year-old black girl from tiny Paris, Texas, was sent to a youth prison for up to seven years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school.

The same judge sentenced a 14-year-old white girl to probation for burning down her family’s house….

Last Saturday (March 30), the black teen, Shaquanda Cotton, walked out of prison, released early.…Why was this child allowed to sit in prison for almost a year before media-generated heat from outsiders led to her rescue?

The evidence suggest that Shaquanda was forgotten not only by the white establishment, but also by much of the black middle class and black political establishment that the civil rights revolution helped to create….Economic class has become even more pernicious, opening up a new gap between those who are moving up economically and those who are stuck on the bottom in black America. (Tribune media, 4/5)

Easier than Iraq, US to leave by 2017

American military officials say a principal element of any Western exit strategy from Afghanistan will be to create competent national security forces. Such forces are regarded as necessary to contain, and eventually defeat, the Taliban insurgency….

…Officials say it will take at least a few years before most of the Afghan forces become more ready and reliable, and perhaps a decade before they are capable of independent operations. (NYT, 5/2)

Millions of cancers begin at work

At least 200,000 people die every year from cancers related to their workplace, according to the World Health Organisation in Geneva. It says that every 10th Lung cancer death is related to occupational hazards, and about 125 million people worldwide are exposed to asbestos at work, leading to at least 90,000 deaths each year. (GW, 5/10)

The detailed mental health survey of troops in Iraq released by the Pentagon on Friday….suggested that extended tours and multiple deployments, among other policy decisions, could escalate anger and increase the likelihood that soldiers or marines lash out at civilians….

…More that a third of troops endorsed torture in certain situations; and…most would not turn in fellow service members for mistreating a civilian….

"You can endure a lot of physical and mental exhaustion as long as you feel…your’re accomplishing something and that you have some control over your situation….If you don’t feel you have any of that, you quickly get to a point where the only thing that’s important is keeping yourself and your buddies alive. Nothing else much matters." (NYT, 5/6)

Focus on Virginia: racist, imperialist

To the editor:

The amount of shocked, over the-top press coverage given to the Virginia campus massacre in Australia — and no doubt other predominantly white, rightwing, imperialist Christian nations — will give comfort and reinforcement to those who still smugly believe that an American life, or a Jewish life, a British or Australian, is so much more valuable and important than that of someone of Middle Eastern or other origin.

It will give no such comfort to the vast majority of human beings… (GW, 5/3)

Students Lead Protests Against Fascist Surveillance Cameras

NEW YORK, April 27 — Students at a high school here have organized a militant anti-racist, anti-fascist campaign over the installation of surveillance cameras, challenging the racist administration to a standstill. Their activities included a petition campaign and a mass meeting; and when that was ignored, a sit-out, a walkout and the linking of the Holocaust and Nazism to the rulers’ intentions to spend $120 million of U.S. "Justice" Department grant money to place these cameras in every school in the city, surely a nationwide plan on the road to fascism. A group of these students recently attended and spoke at our May Day dinner.

Building class consciousness and unity among students, teachers, and parents spurred the February petition drive in which students and teachers gathered 500 signatures demanding a campus-wide meeting to discuss the cameras, which then led to the other above actions.

Students Link Cameras to Fascism

Simultaneously, two freshman classes studying the Holocaust connected the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany to present U.S. society. They devised a "yellow star" project — students would distribute yellow Stars of David stickers with "No Cameras!" written in the middle to symbolize the administration’s racist targeting of Latino and black youth. They also wrote statements explaining the history of the Star of David, expressing solidarity with Jewish workers and others who suffered under the Nazis, with titles like, "Don’t Let History Repeat Itself," "WE MUST FIGHT!!!" and "Cameras: For Our Security or Theirs?"

The administration quickly labeled the students racist (!) for making connections with the Holocaust, pretending they couldn’t see any. In a dramatic meeting with the principal, assistant principals and deans, students stood up for their principles in the face of lies and condemnation. Two weeks later, these same students organized a modified sticker campaign that electrified the building, distributing 750 stickers and 700 copies of varied statements reaffirming the connection between cameras and fascism.

In the meeting with the school bosses, one particularly vicious dean revealed how fascism works, berating students: "Don’t you see? These people [the administration] are doing what they have to do because their jobs are at stake."

With student protests growing, the administration has engaged in lies and slander, attempting to discredit students and scare them and teachers alike into silence. A school newspaper’s racist article falsely linked student protests to "gang activity" and violence, claiming they were based on "rumors" and "misinformation," while hypocritically repeating the principal’s blatant lies.

This anti-camera campaign has exposed the depth of teachers’ fears. Many honest teachers opposed to the cameras declined to wear the stickers. Several were openly hostile to students, saying they need to learn how to demonstrate "the right way." These teachers need to take a stand, to see that the students’ struggle is their struggle and that their enemy is not just Republican or Democratic politicians or the Department of Education, but the capitalist system itself.

In the last parents’ association meeting, the principal — pressured by student protests — addressed parents, convincing many to support camera installation. But then a teacher spoke and parents’ minds changed. The teacher placed the cameras in the context of growing fascism: the explosion in the prison population, increased racist police terror, arrests of 6-year-old black children, the Minutemen and attacks on immigrants, the war economy — in short, many more security forces, and much less security for workers. Parents were a sea of nodding heads. Later, parents approached the teacher with comments like, "You really convinced me" and "I agree with you."

Combat Bosses’ Fear-Mongering and Anti-Communism

Schools have always been factories for capitalist ideology, teaching workers and youth to fear communism while simultaneously spreading fear of challenging their supposed democracy. Amid growing fascism and war, the bosses need a more obedient population to support their attacks against their imperialist rivals.

As in Nazi Germany, anti-communism is the bosses’ secret weapon. The bosses want to convince teachers and students that the only acceptable protest is one that follows the rules of capitalism, the very system attacking them. PLP’ers must express pride and confidence in our communist heritage and expose the bankruptcy of reformism, which — similar to Germany in the 1920’s — represents the bosses’ attempts to convince workers to support a fatally flawed system.

Most students here remain unafraid. Many have seen how "free speech" only serves the capitalists. The bosses have free speech because they have state power. These qualitative breakthroughs have laid the basis for an increased quantity of work: more student organizers, more students, teachers and parents reading CHALLENGE. We must now win some of these student leaders into PLP study groups on the road to the next qualitative breakthrough: students wearing the "red star" by joining PLP.

Class Struggle Only Answer to Sarkozy Racist Anti-Worker Plan

PARIS, May 6 — Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President today. But the real news is that there was no significant difference in the programs of Sarkozy and "socialist" Ségolène Royal. But millions believed that voting for her was a meaningful political act, which strengthened the chains binding them to the capitalist system.

Royal and centrist candidate François Bayrou (who was eliminated in the first round) hinted that Sarkozy will install a fascist regime. "Leftist" newspapers like "Charlie Hebdo" and "Le Canard enchaîné" said the same. The Green Party, the "Communist" Party, the two main Trotskyist parties, and the Hoxhaists all urged a vote for Royal in the second round "to avert the fascist danger."

And Lillian Thuram, a black player on the 1998 French World Cup champion team, correctly denounced Sarkozy’s racism: "He wants to create a ministry of immigration and national identity, and that is dangerous. When you begin to divide people, to see one group here, the Muslims, over here, the blacks elsewhere, you teach people to consider other people as different," he said. (El Mundo, Madrid, May 5)

Nevertheless, the transition from bourgeois democracy to fascism is not fundamentally a question of personalities. It concerns the needs of the capitalist class — and Royal is every bit as willing a servant of that class as Sarkozy. The working class cannot avert fascism by voting for bourgeois democracy. Class struggle is the only way forward.

Now, despite French capitalists’ whining, France remains an attractive investment for capital. According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2005 workers in France churned out the most gross domestic product per hour worked in any industrialized country. But the name of the game is not simply profits, but maximum profits, so French capitalists need to cut wages and squeeze more profit out of the working class. Sarkozy will do his utmost to help French bosses do just that.

On Aug. 31, 2006, Sarkozy promised the bosses’ association he would abolish the 35-hour work week ("Libération," 9/1/06). His program entitled, "Together, everything is possible," indicates the thin end of the wedge: public hospitals will be "liberated" from the 35-hour week. (Royal told "l’Express" (4/3/07) in an interview that she was willing to compromise on the 35-hour week.)

Sarkozy also plans to make overtime more profitable by eliminating employers’ taxes and social security contributions on overtime hours.

Sarkozy’s program also includes several ways to drive wages down: (1) A new "flexible" job contract, making it easier for bosses to lay off workers who squawk; (2) Lowering welfare benefits and forcing welfare recipients to do general interest work. Companies will "have to" cut wages to compete.

Royal’s program was not to be outdone. Her plans also included pushing unemployed people to take low-paying jobs by having the government bump up their wages with an "active solidarity income"; and State job training for the inevitable victims of increased flexibility. ("L’Expansion," 4/27/07)

To help bosses impose lower wages and longer hours, Sarkozy will attack the right to strike. "If I am elected president, I will have a law passed," so that "after a one-week strike in the public services, at a private company or at a university, there will be an obligatory secret-ballot vote so that the dictatorship of violent minorities will no longer be able to impose its will on the majority who want to work." ("Nouvel Obs," 12/10/06)

Sarkozy will also impose a guaranteed minimum service in public services, which will gut the effectiveness of any strike. Historically, private sector workers in France have seen strikes by public workers — who cannot be laid off — as defending the interests of all workers.

The working class here faces a period of sharpening struggle. Reformist illusions — including those peddled by the so-called extreme left — are becoming an unaffordable luxury. Communists need to persuade the millions who voted that the only solution is revolution.

1. MAY DAY 2007: FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM
2. WAVE THE RED FLAG OF WORKERS' POWER
3. LATEST MASS KILLER NOT `NATURAL BORN' BUT BRED BY PROFIT SYSTEM
   1. RULERS' RACISM HELPED PULL TRIGGER
   2. KILLER'S COLLEGE A LIBERAL INCUBATOR OF DEADLIER MASS MURDERERS
4. Unemployment -- The Hidden Massacre
5. PL'ers Force Racist Minutemen Founder to Flee
6. Black-Latino Students' `Unity Walk' Fights Racism, Nationalism
7. Storm Through Rutgers Campus, Attacking Imus' Racism, Sexism
8. Vets Denounce U.S. War Machine
9. Mounting Problems Taxing Reliability of Rulers' Military
10. El Salvador PLP: `Will have May Day bus for every state...'
11. Spain's Delphi Workers Lead General Strike
12. Skoda Workers Strike in Czech Republic
13. Russia's Profiteers Murder 108 Miners
14. Workers Shed No Tears for Yeltsin
15. `Reform' Exploits Immigrant Workers with Poverty Jobs, Youth to War
16. THE BLOODY FLAG OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
17. Women-led General Strike Helped Spark Russian Revolution
18. The Racist Rip-off of Subprime Loans
19. U.S. Rulers Free Mass Murderer (`What Terrorist'?)
20. French Elections: No `Left' or Right; Only Wrong for Workers
21. LETTERS
    1. When is Terrorism Not Terrorism?
    2. Turns Job Site into Political Battleground
    3. Racism Kills Babies from Chiapas to Mississippi
    4. Black Mayor Backs Troops vs. Urban Rebels
    5. U.S. Gov't Killers at Home and Abroad
22. REDEYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Dublin writer looks to Marx
    2. TV + movies demonize Islamics
    3. GIs: Deaths are tip of iceberg
    4. It's more than Imus, Muslims say
    5. Africans go sour on `democracies'
    6. Labor market is also slavery
    7. Liberals pave road to fascism

---

MAY DAY 2007: FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM

From the imperialist bloodbath in Iraq to the growing fascism of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and "renditions," (secret CIA torture jails), workers need communist revolution. From the crushing racist poverty, the rising infant mortality rate killing black babies in the U.S. deep South due to healthcare cuts, to civil wars and the AIDS plague in Africa to the 98 million homeless in Latin America, workers need communist revolution. From the destruction of 100,000 GM, Delphi and Ford jobs in the U.S. to the closing of hospitals and health clinics to finance the slaughter in Iraq, workers need communist revolution. To smash the mass racist terror that was exposed with Hurricane Katrina and the fascist terror aimed at millions of immigrant workers and youth, workers need communist revolution.

 This May 1st, millions around the world will march to commemorate May Day, the holiday of the international working class. Many will be marching in the midst of struggle, like thousands of Airbus workers across Europe striking against the elimination of 10,000 jobs. May Day marches throughout Latin America will see nationalist leaders like Chavez and others try to break the grip of U.S. imperialism, only to make deals with other imperialists. In the United States, various immigrants' rights organizations, and their Democratic Party backers, want to funnel the anger of May Day marchers coming to the demonstrations into nationalist citizenship campaigns and dead-end elections. PLP will be everywhere we can to spread our communist message and reclaim May Day for the workers of the world.

May Day, after all, is the workers' day. It was born in the heroic struggle for the 8-hour day when 350,000 Chicago workers went out on a general strike on May 1, 1886 and shut down the city. On May 3, 1886 the cops murdered six strikers and the next day thousands marched in protest into Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by a police agent. Four workers were killed, seven cops died and 200 workers were wounded in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre. Nine demonstration leaders were framed for "instigating a riot." Four were hung. A mass protest movement forced the Governor to free those still alive when the government admitted the frame-up.

At the 1889 meeting of the Second International -- a working-class organization patterned after the First International led by Karl Marx, -- the world's workers decided to honor the Chicago strikers and martyrs by mobilizing as "one army, with one flag." May Day had begun. Ever since, with communist leadership, it has symbolized workers' demands and class interests, united in the fight against capitalism.

The defeat of the communist revolutions in Russia and China decades ago gave world capitalism a new lease on life. While past revolutionaries certainly made reformist mistakes (such as believing in a gradual transition to communism through socialism and lacking confidence in workers ability to grasp communist ideas), capitalism has not changed and remains deadly for all workers.

We live in a capitalist world where workers and youth, infants and the elderly, are dying in unprecedented numbers from hunger, poverty, curable disease, war, death squads, police terror and a poisoned environment. At the same time, the ruling class makes record profits and the head of ExxonMobil makes $145,000 a day! What's more, this is all just a warm-up, the opening acts leading to greater wars on the horizon.

If poverty, racism and war spontaneously led to communist revolution, the red flag would fly over most of the world. But communist revolution can only come about when millions of workers are politically conscious of how the world works and how to change it. The future is in our hands. This can only be accomplished by the tireless efforts of a mass, international, and revolutionary communist party.

This May Day, PLP is marching in NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, El Salvador, Karachi, Bogota and other cities to win workers, soldiers and youth to realize our great potential to overthrow the war makers and build a communist world based on serving the needs of the international working class! JOIN PLP!

WAVE THE RED FLAG OF WORKERS' POWER

The PLP will wave the red flag this May Day, and try to provide as many workers as possible with the flag that belongs to our class. The red flag flew high in Russia and China when workers seized power for themselves and flew over the Reichstag in Germany when the Red Army crushed the Nazis. It is a flag that stands for the elimination of exploitation and the ability of workers to make decisions over our lives. The red flag calls for the unity of the working class as well as defeating the racism and sexism that divide us. It is the flag that belongs to the workers of the world, and stands for communist revolution to smash all the bosses' borders.

LATEST MASS KILLER NOT `NATURAL BORN' BUT BRED BY PROFIT SYSTEM

As the bosses' media struggle to psychoanalyze Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech mass murderer, they deliberately avoid identifying the main source of his anger, capitalism itself. With its relentless competition, the profit system fosters an outlook of individualism. To the individual, others appear as rivals who must be defeated or wiped out. This process plays out constantly, from dog-eat-dog business dealings to genocidal imperialist turf wars. Cho's horrifying video rant shows a "me-against-the-world" attitude, entirely consistent with the prevailing social system.

RULERS' RACISM HELPED PULL TRIGGER

Other aspects of capitalism helped mold the killer. One was the bosses' absolute disregard for workers' human needs. Cho no doubt suffered a certain emotional deficit because he seldom saw his overworked parents. When Cho lived in South Korea, his father toiled in the oilfields of Saudi Arabia. After moving to Virginia, Cho's parents worked from 8 AM to 10 PM at a dry-cleaning shop.

Another force pulling the trigger was racism, the capitalists' strongest weapon against working-class unity. At school in the U.S., laughing classmates would taunt Cho with dollar bills to get him to utter his Korean-accented English. Racism turned fellow students into bitter foes for Cho.

A third factor was anti-communism. Cho's parents mistakenly equated communism with the dictatorial North Korean regime his mother's family had fled. The parents, though workers themselves, pushed service to U.S. rulers instead of service to their own class. Cho's mother used to boast of her "successful" daughter, a Princeton grad, who now works for the State Department on projects in Iraq.

The Blacksburg massacre exposes capitalism's tendency to create Frankenstein-type monsters. U.S. imperialism needs killers for its wars. So it peddles increasingly anti-women, violent "entertainment," in the form of movies and video games -- Cho was a fan of both -- to boys and young men. But rampant individualism spawns lone gunmen like Cho. The rulers want death-dealing soldiers, not disruptions on the campuses where they formulate and spread their deadly ideas.

KILLER'S COLLEGE A LIBERAL INCUBATOR OF DEADLIER MASS MURDERERS

Located in a Bible Belt "red state," Virginia Tech is an outpost of liberal U.S. imperialism. Its corps of military cadets, second largest only to Texas A&M's (besides the service academies), accepted women as early as 1973. It took the rulers more than two decades after that to compel nearby colleges VMI and the Citadel to get with their agenda.

Virginia Tech president Charles Steger has led university collaborations with the liberal imperialist Carnegie Corporation and World Bank. In addition to its ROTC, which churns out officers in all three service branches, VaTech does research and trains engineers for the Pentagon's Space and Naval Warfare weapons project. The college website flaunts a list of alumni generals and admirals as long as your arm. It also shows VaTech grad Army officers in Iraq chalking "Go Hokies" (VaTech's sports nickname) on artillery shells. Hokie ROTC alums who match Cho's death toll in Iraq or Afghanistan receive promotions.

No doubt the rulers will use this incident, much the same way they used 9/11, to increase fascist oppression in the U.S. In the name of "security," they will increasingly create a prison-like atmosphere on campuses and in public schools.

Before killing himself, Seung-Hui Cho slew 32 people in all. But the system that produced him has cut short hundreds of millions of lives worldwide through imperialist wars and its wretched oppression of workers. The U.S. "surge" in Iraq, for example, a desperate grab for oil wealth and a brainchild of the liberal Baker faction, is killing Iraqis by the hundreds per day. Blacksburg is simply another Monday in Baghdad. This bloodshed -- senseless to us but immensely profitable to capitalists -- will end only when our class destroys the profit system.

Unemployment -- The Hidden Massacre

Massacres are endemic to the capitalist system which puts profits first over people's dead bodies. From one million Iraqis dying in 12 years since Gulf War I, plus over 10,000 GI deaths from U.S. depleted uranium weapons used in that war, to 650,000 Iraqis dead in the current U.S. invasion of Iraq (British medical journal Lancet) and now 32 Virginia Tech students (see editorial, above for the real cause). Some are stark, some accumulate over time.

One massacre, well hidden, but a massacre nevertheless, is the continuous deaths resulting from unemployment. Does losing a job mean losing one's life? Absolutely.

A study published on Oct. 30, 1976 by the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee, based on 40 years of statistics from the Great Depression until 1973, concluded that every 1.4% rise in unemployment led directly to the death of 30,590 workers in the following five years. Over decades, millions of workers become jobless due to the bosses' drive for maximum profits. Taking each 1.4% increase in unemployment during those decades, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, may very well have been sent to an early grave because of the effects of losing a job. And most laid-off workers who obtain other jobs usually suffer a lower wage and a loss in benefits, contributing to the deteriorating condition of the working class.

Those 30,590 unemployment-caused deaths are composed of: strokes, heart and kidney ailments (26,440); suicides (1,540); homicides (1,740) and cirrhosis of the liver (870). Heart disease peaks three to five years after the start of a recession. The study reported that infant mortality rates show dramatic increases within one to two years after an economic recession. Johns Hopkins professor Harvey Brenner testified to the Committee that, "The national rate of suicide in the U.S. can be viewed as an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths. Since black and Latino workers in the U.S. suffer double the average jobless rates, a disproportionate number die as victims of racist unemployment.

The millions of workers who have died "before their time" since the Great Depression as a direct result of being laid off could rival any mass killing anywhere on earth. When Circuit City laid off 3,400 sales clerks recently, denying them relatively decent-paying jobs, health insurance and pensions -- in order to hire replacements at much lower wages -- they were not only wiping out their "American Dream" but also contributing to the unemployment that leads to workers' deaths. Every time auto workers, aerospace workers or healthcare workers are thrown on the street, the basis is laid for "unemployment massacre." This is a worldwide phenomenon because capitalist-created unemployment is worldwide.

There has never been full employment under this profit system. Unemployment is built into capitalism. Laying off workers is the first option for bosses looking to reduce costs and increase profits. Coincidentally, when tens of millions of workers were walking the streets during world capitalism's Great Depression, only the communist-led Soviet Union had full employment. While the USSR later reverted back to the full-scale capitalism that exists in Russia today, true communism -- abolishing the wage system, eliminating bosses and the profit motive -- is the only solution to the mass death and poverty visited on the world's working class by this degenerate system.

PL'ers Force Racist Minutemen Founder to Flee

SOUTHWEST, April 19 -- A conservative student group recently brought Chris Simcox, founder of the anti-immigrant Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, to a university in the Southwest. Many students were outraged and planned to protest. PL members transformed what would have been an unplanned outburst into a militant expression of multi-racial unity and working-class solidarity. Through PL's leadership, the demonstration turned out to be the largest in university history, and we forced Simcox to cut his speech short and flee surrounded by police officers.

The cops tried to arrest at least five people and left one PL member covered in bruises. However, every arrest attempt failed, as the crowd immediately descended on the officer chanting, "Let him go!" or physically removing the cop. Eventually the police gave up, realizing they were vastly outnumbered and their harassment was only increasing the militancy of the protestors.

Before the protest, PL members had a discussion with friends which contrasted the philosophy of Lenin with that of pacifist historian Howard Zinn. We emphasized that fascism must be faced down by the organized resistance of the working class rather than the peaceful protest advocated by pseudo-leftists. As a result, those close to the Party came, ready to face down not only Simcox, but also the police and university officials who protected him.

Minutes before Simcox went on stage, one university official tried to shut our action down. Many were prepared to give up and move to another area when a PL'er confronted the official, insisting, "We are not going anywhere!" The other students then refused to be cowed into moving.

Simcox denounced protestors as a "vigilante lynch mob" -- a label that much more accurately applies to his own group. We passed out leaflets documenting ties between the Minutemen and white power groups like the National Alliance and showing that they are merely a continuation of the Klan Border Watch of the 1970s. We raised signs with slogans like "Smash the Minuteklan!"

Our leaflets explained that the multi-racial worker unity demonstrated recently by the shipbuilder strikers in Pascagoula, Mississippi represents the future, as opposed to the dead-end ideas of the Minutemen. Students were supporting their working-class brothers and sisters in Mississippi by buying our homemade buttons reading "Smash the Minuteklan" and "Workers Unite Against Racism." We will send these donations with letters of support to the workers in Pascagoula.

Some students tried to turn the protest into a celebration of Chicano nationalism. One of these students illustrated the absurdity of such identity politics when he said, "I support the KKK. They're about whites having pride in their racial identity." We responded to the nationalist chants of "Viva la Raza" with "Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras" (workers' struggles have no borders). In the end, multi-racial, working-class unity dominated the protest.

We were surprised that some of the most vicious hostility was not from the Minutemen or the conservatives, but from liberals and Democrats in the audience who shouted, "Let him speak!" and leveled insults at us. It was clear proof that alliances with liberals are a dead end.

Our militant politics fired the passions of the protesters. Typically reserved students found themselves in direct confrontation with the police. One conservative student insisted that our style of protest will not win anyone, but a student immediately told him, "They convinced me!" High school students, invited by a PL teacher, skipped class to attend the protest. Some are currently in training programs to become police officers, but after witnessing the treatment of the protestors by the police, were shocked into realizing that the true role of the police under capitalism is to protect the ruling class.

When Simcox cut his speech short and was escorted out by the police, our crowd chanted triumphantly, feeling that we had accomplished our goal. The effects of the event have since reverberated throughout the entire city and have given us many opportunities to talk with students and workers about the need to fight against racism and capitalism. We plan to hold meetings with those who were at the protest to further develop these points and to continue to advance PL's politics on the campus and around the city.

Black-Latino Students' `Unity Walk' Fights Racism, Nationalism

Los Angeles, CA, Thursday, April 19 -- Today students held a Unity/Peace Walk in front of the whole population of their high school. Black and Latino students read poems in English and Spanish about the need for working-class unity against the bosses' racism. Posters promoted unity between black and Latino students. This was a victory in an ongoing struggle against racism and nationalism, for class-conscious, anti-racist, multi-racial unity.

On a school field trip, some teachers had told Spanish-speaking students, "This is America. Speak English on this bus." Suspensions and discipline have been applied disproportionately against Latino students. Even though the school has about 45% Latino students and 55% African American students, at many functions, Latino students have been underrepresented. Also, a small group of gang members harass some Latino students, especially more recent immigrants.

As a result, a small group of Latino teachers began meeting to address these issues. One of the teachers invited asked, "Why weren't other teachers invited?" and was told, "We want to discuss the matter among ourselves first." The teacher replied, "I think the way to respond to prejudice, racism or any form of discrimination is by building unity with the entire staff." One teacher responded to the call for an integrated discussion with nationalism: "The problem is that you have acculturated yourself and don't understand."

While the group was responding to legitimate concerns, some of their proposed solutions, like asking for more Latino administrators and security guards, won't fix anything. Building a united force to take on the racism of the administration is the way to go. Terms like "acculturation" and "assimilation" are pushed in the universities to divert us from looking at things from the point of view of working-class unity against racism and the capitalist system that produces it. It also became clear that in an attempt to fight against racism, often the victims of racism respond in a narrow, isolationist, nationalist way that can become racist itself.

At a faculty meeting after a student stabbing in the school (see CHALLENGE, April 25), a teacher called on colleagues to "not fall for the perceptions being pushed by the media about violence between blacks and Latinos. These stories are not the reality, but they could become the reality and destroy the unity and understanding that a lot of us here have worked so hard to achieve." Most people listened. The comments dissuaded some teachers from calling for more Latino administrators and security guards. While a School Board member applauded the call for unity, she only wants students, teachers and parents to back up the bosses' School Board. We need the unity of students, parents and teachers AGAINST the bosses' racist plans!

Afterwards, teachers and students discussed an Op-Ed piece in the L.A. Times that said that of 236 homicides last year in the "highest murder districts" in L.A., only 22 crossed racial lines. It's terrible that so many youth die at the hands of other youth due to the bosses' gang culture. However, the fact that so few were between different groups shows that the "race war" the media is claiming is a myth.

The Unity Walk shows that this struggle is producing results. The PLP May Day contingent at the immigrants' rights march will be an important step forward in calling on the youth and workers of the world to unite as one class to destroy the bosses and their capitalist system of racism, exploitation and war with communist revolution. Let the bosses tremble at the specter of a united working class with communist ideas. The working class has a world to win!

Storm Through Rutgers Campus, Attacking Imus' Racism, Sexism

NEWARK, NJ, April 11 -- "IMUS MUST GO -- NOW!" rang through the halls of Rutgers University's campus here as students, professors and community residents streamed into campus buildings, blocked traffic and confronted the campus provost. They were demanding that the university administration call for firing "shock jock" Don Imus -- not simply express "regret" -- over his racist and sexist verbal attack on the Rutgers Women's basketball team. (Imus was later fired by MSNBC-TV and CBS radio).

The multi-racial group of protestors, ages 16 to 60 and beyond, represented a number of different organizations as well as Rutgers students and faculty, students from local high schools and PLP.

The demonstrators were protesting Imus's extremely racist, sexist and homophobic language degrading the Rutgers' women athletes. Imus is paid $10 million a year for spewing forth his garbage "humor." His "Imus in the Morning" radio-TV show has reached millions of listeners every day and been supported by the many prominent politicians and authors whom he has hosted, as well as by corporate sponsors, from Staples to General Electric. He has helped build the fascistic culture permeating U.S. society.

Although his bosses fired him after corporate sponsors, reacting to the mass outcry, dumped him, Imus can either retire on his millions or go onto satellite radio and TV. But he is just the tip of the reactionary media iceberg.

A spirited rally preceded the campus protest march of about 100 people and contrasted dramatically with a much larger "press conference" called earlier by the Rutgers administration and the Newark political establishment which specialized in hot air. They "deplored" Imus's words which tapped into the deep racism and sexism in U.S. society. But they didn't explain how his show has been part of the ideological apparatus of class rule in the U.S. Instead, they exclaimed racism and sexism are "still" with us! No kidding.

Newark Democratic Party Mayor Corey Booker kept repeating that "America is better than this" -- as if Imus violated the "real" principles "the nation" stands for.

But speaker after speaker at the smaller rally afterwards made very different points. An SDS representative expressed her disgust with the Rutgers administration's inaction, saying Imus's words are part and parcel of U.S. society, not "an exception to the rule." A professor stressed that Imus's description of black people helps rationalize the U.S. government's racist handling of Hurricane Katrina. A community organizer linked the racism Imus fomented with the xenophobia needed to fuel the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he especially urged students to follow the lead of SDS of the 1960's and 1970's, which organized against the Vietnam War.

The head of NOW-NJ exposed the persistent -- and profitable -- dehumanization of African-American women in U.S. mass culture since slavery. Two young Rutgers women described how African-American women are continually made to question their self-worth and persuaded to spend billions of dollars a year on hair and skin products designed to change their natural appearance.

Several speakers pointed out that capitalism is the root cause of the "Imus phenomenon," and that only its abolition will free the airwaves of his poison. Two high school students sharply analyzed the mass media and class rule. Applause and cheers greeted their call for the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class. An adjunct professor's speech urging the students to build a mass campus movement to reject "business as usual" inspired the group to march through the campus and confront the administration.

This was an important day for Rutgers. From this acorn may a great oak grow. Wherever we are, we need to continue to organize struggles against racism and sexism and all other anti-working class ideas fueled by capitalism.

Vets Denounce U.S. War Machine

SOUTHERN CAL., April 16 -- "I got thrown into a war I didn't want to fight...Now I get to choose to fight against it." A young vet back from Iraq related his experiences with courage and anger. He said he and some buddies had consistently refused to carry out racist orders to mistreat Iraqi civilians, and that others refused to run over Iraqi civilians with military vehicles and refused orders to "step on their faces" during apprehension and interrogation.

His comments exhilarated a near-capacity crowd of 250 students, staff, teachers and community members on a college campus.

Having lived with racism in the U.S., one veteran identified with the plight of Iraqi civilians who suffered the terror of U.S. military assaults. Having seen an Iraqi family killed, he declared, "I had nothing to do with the killing, but felt responsible because I belong to the U.S. Army. That's why I feel [I must]... speak out against the war."

The forum on the war featured five veterans recently returned from Iraq. Other veterans came to listen and asked to speak. One declared, "Seventy percent of the soldiers in Iraq don't want to be there and are against the war." Another said angrily that his unit risked their lives to clear a road of IED's, "And you know what they used that road for? To bring white vans full of lobsters for the officers."

Another vet denounced as naïve any well-intentioned but misguided plan to send more money so the troops could have better body armor. "That money will just go to Halliburton, not to me and my buddies in the field." He further emphasized that the war was not about more money "to protect the troops" or to stay the course to "protect Iraqi civilians."

Still another vet urged the audience not to listen to the U.S. government's claim to be in Iraq to "help the Iraqi people." He condemned the Clinton Administration for bombing Iraq three times per week when Iraq had no air force. He stressed that supposedly six months of diplomacy preceded the war. However, on March 20, 2003, when the U.S. unleashed its genocidal "shock and awe, a lot of us felt betrayed," feeling that war had been the plan all along, that "diplomacy" had been a ruse.

He outlined the horrors for the Iraqi people: 50% of families have lost sons; gas lines in this oil-rich country are a half a day long; the occupation has killed 655,000 Iraqis, with no end in sight; and the one trillion war dollars spent will short-change schools, roads and other essential civilian services.

Several vets described friends' medical conditions with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and denounced the mistreatment at the VA health facilities.

Afterwards, about 75 people formed separate discussion groups, staying late into the afternoon to discuss the war. Group leaders described the history of imperialism and petroleum economics. They emphasized the critical role active-duty soldiers can play, and have played, in stopping wars and opposing imperialism and racism. The veterans' understanding, anger and commitment inspired many to think more deeply about this war. Debates ensued between those who favored continuing the war, some who thought the Democratic Party and the electoral system can stop it, others who were unsure, and those who said that soldiers' actions were crucial to ending this and all wars. Vets and students alike were interested in the history of soldiers' rebellions' against the war in Vietnam. The understanding that capitalism is the problem and that soldiers, workers and students fighting for communism is the solution, all were received, along with CHALLENGE, and great interest in several workshops.

Mounting Problems Taxing Reliability of Rulers' Military

Political problems are undercutting the world's largest military from within and without. Failure to win quickly in Iraq has exposed fundamental problems in the U.S. ruling class's effort to maintain a reliable military.

Weakening domestic support for the war has severely hurt the military. Foremost is recruitment. After missing its recruiting goals for several years, the Army has resorted to short-term fixes: raising the enlistment age to 42, lowering recruiting standards and increasing bonuses for enlistment, re-enlistment and combat.

Therefore, the military is inducting more alienated soldiers -- those with drug and health problems, high school drop-outs and gang members. Historically the Army avoided such soldiers because they tended to be less committed to the military, with more discipline problems. Newly-recruited older soldiers are dropping out of basic training at twice the rate of those under 35, the previous age limit.

Recruitment problems go beyond the enlisted ranks. West Point failed to meet its officer graduation goal last year. Re-enlistment rates among West Pointers are 25% lower than the other service academies.

The ruling class's inability to get and keep soldiers is a big problem because their plans for confronting their biggest rivals (China, Iran, Russia, etc.) require several hundred thousand additional troops.

Lack of support for the war also involves the unwillingness of sections of the bosses to sacrifice for the overall good of U.S. capitalism. The profiteering, extravagance and corruption -- from Washington to Wall Street to Halliburton -- make it difficult for the rulers to demand sacrifice from the working class. This forces them to try to maintain "normality" at home, thus limiting their ability to finance wars.

Soldiers' morale is also suffering. Although from 2003-2006 re-enlistment rates were higher than normal among soldiers who served in Iraq, this is changing. In the last year, even with increased bonuses, re-enlistment rates have dropped. Through personal accounts and in polls, troop dissatisfaction appears to be growing.

Morale problems also reflect internal political weakness. Soldiers supported the war based (at least partially) on the Army-fed assumption of low casualty rates, reinforced by comforts in the field -- bonuses, video game arcades, field posts resembling home bases with gyms and PX's, and U.S.-style concessions popping up in the middle of the desert. Essentially they've been building a mercenary-type army. But politically such an Army is not equal to the hardships and casualty rates of sustained guerrilla-type warfare. It's now difficult for the rulers to change soldiers' motivation mid-stream without it appearing as the bait-and-switch that it is.

There is a definite growing anti-war sentiment within the military, along with indications of increased low-level resistance: not following routine orders, desertions and others, even more significant. Two soldiers in Germany have been jailed for refusing to load weapons being shipped to Iraq. The jailing occurred after soldiers in the unit supported the two in the face of administrative punishment.

The ruling class is trying to get out in front of this resistance by promoting its own ideology within the GI anti-war movement. Groups like Iraq Vets Against The War, the Redress Movement and Military Families Speak Out reflect both growing resistance but also ruling-class attempts to limit GI resistance to the current formulation of the Iraq war, rather than an attack on U.S. imperialism.

Morale problems, plus fundamental structural problems, are driving up war costs. Even excluding bonuses, the per-soldier expense of maintaining troops in the field is skyrocketing. The need for armor on humvees and increased personal protection to try to prevent GI rebellion is a new development. The cost of personal equipment per soldier in World War II was $175 in today's dollars; in Iraq it's $17,000.

Even more than costs, the demand for safety has limited mission capabilities. When a war is not worth dying for, soldiers are reluctant to leave their base without adequate protection.

Division within the ruling class exacerbates many of the military's internal problems. The daily attacks on Bush and the war by the NY Times, CNN and the bulk of the ruling-class media reflect dissatisfaction with Bush's handling of the war. In many ways, ruling-class unity was also a victim of the failed quick-win strategy.

The liberal media's increased focus on Darfur, Iran, North Korea and China seems to reflect a desire to re-group and redeploy some of the military, perhaps to Africa, or to develop a military strategy for attacking Iran. These liberal imperialists realize that currently the U.S. is hard put to counter its biggest rivals. This was evident when U.S. forces sat on their hands while the Iranians seized those British sailors.

There also appears to be a growing realization among some ruling-class sections that as a political strategy to win working-class support for imperialism, Iraq is dead in the water. Building the Darfur movement on college campuses and in religious groups seems like an attempt to re-cast oil-grabbing in Africa as a "humanitarian" war against genocide. This time they want to build political support among the troops and the working class before the next invasion.

To "fix" their military, the bosses will have to change drastically. They will try to create a pro-war patriotism that the majority of workers and students will buy into. They must increase the size of their military and convince those soldiers to die in their oil wars. And they must curb their own corruption and profiteering, and win their own class to sacrifice for the overall good of U.S. imperialism.

Will they succeed? It seems questionable, but past failure hasn't stopped them. Their efforts will surely wreak havoc on the lives of millions of workers in the U.S. and worldwide. But a future full of dangers is also full of opportunities to win the world's workers to the only politics capable of confronting and smashing the imperialist butchers: the communist politics of PLP.

El Salvador PLP: `Will have May Day bus for every state...'

SAN SALVADOR -- "These kinds of meetings have made me feel alive again," said a veteran of the war in El Salvador. "Of course, it's urgent to march on May Day. The capitalists say it's `only' a workers' day, but it's much more."

"It's the main day for us workers," said another. "We know that the electoral `left' is not interested in these activities. They're only thinking of elections."

"We in the PLP must keep advancing the need to fight for communist revolution worldwide," said a new Party comrade, concluding the discussion.

For months we've been mobilizing workers throughout the country to march on May 1st, in meetings, lunches, dinners and movie showings. The effort is bearing fruit. Hundreds of workers in various zones are now ready to participate in the march in the capital.

"At 2:00 AM we must be ready to leave," said a comrade. Workers will walk long distances to get to the bus site."

"While looking for numbers, we should also look for workers interested in our revolutionary politics. That's what PLP needs to help win the rest," said an older PLP member.

Since the signing of the "peace accords" between the FMLN and the Salvadoran government, enthusiasm has waned about coming to a May Day March. At a meeting of representatives of the country's biggest unions, someone said, "We need to urgently organize the unity of the working class as a guarantee of a better future for the workers and not continue believing in politicians who only serve to defend and reform the capitalist system. Only the working class can and must be the guarantee for this future. People should not continue believing that the 2009 elections are the solution to poverty and exploitation. The struggle for revolution doesn't end in some elections. The struggle is life-long." After this, many of the workers present agreed that the bosses' elections don't change anything, only serving to change the hangman. "We're going to have a bus for every state," said one representative emotionally. "We can't continue to follow passively in the face of the system's attacks," said another worker angrily.

PLP comrades' efforts here and in other parts of the world are beginning to yield fruits, which, while modest, are of the greatest importance; pushing to destroy the capitalist system and the fight to build an international party representing those who have been oppressed by the bosses' system.

The struggle for communist revolution is a challenge for the international working class. PLP is the vanguard party that has never backed away from the fight to build a workers' system. Communism is the only solution to resolve the workers' problems worldwide. PLP mirrors the unity of the working class. Organize in CHALLENGE readers' groups and be part of the revolutionary communist struggle.

Spain's Delphi Workers Lead General Strike

CADIZ, SPAIN, April 18 -- Delphi workers led a 100%-solid general strike of 200,000 workers shutting down all industries, including shipyards, petrochemical plants, hospitals, public transportation, construction and garbage collection in the 14 municipalities of the Bay of Cadiz region. The Delphi workers were protesting the closing of their Puerto Real plant; over 4,000 jobs will be lost in the province. It was Spain's first general strike in many years against the rash of mass job losses affecting workers, an example the world's workers must follow. Barcelona Delphi workers also struck for several hours and several joined a march outside the plant in solidarity.

On February 22, Delphi announced it will move its Puerto Real plant to Poland where labor costs are lower and workers have fewer rights -- these are the fruits of anti-communism. Immediately workers took action, organizing weekly work stoppages, including mass protests along with Airbus workers. On March 1, 50,000 workers marched chanting, "Delphi won't be closed."

Last week, tens of thousands again marched. Two days before the general strike, a general meeting in the plant called for sharpening the struggle, so over 1,000 marched out and shut the bridge connecting the area to the plant for an hour.

Before Delphi announced the closing, the three unions representing the workers told them to remain calm, that there was nothing to rumors of the plant closing. They're still pushing the regional and national governments of Social-Democrat Prime Minister Zapatero to do something against Delphi. Workers should have no illusions that this will happen.

Delphi is on an international rampage attacking workers' wages and jobs. Recently it fired 600 workers at its Tangiers, Morocco plant. Workers were protesting company violations of the already pro-boss Labor Code in that North African country. A 36-year-old, recently-fired worker with four years working at the Tangier plant said: "The company did not obey a single one of the 598 articles of the Moroccan Labor Code."

Meanwhile, on April 18 night-shift workers struck the Opel-GM plant in Antwerp, Belgium, after GM announced it won't produce its Astra model there. The work stoppage was led by temporary workers who know they'll be the first to laid off. Over 4,000 jobs will be lost, 1,400 blue and white collar GM workers along with 2,800 jobs at 60 subcontractors.

Obviously, the struggle of workers like those at Delphi, GM, VW, Ford, ChryslerDaimler, Peugeot, Renault and Airbus is international. It requires a leadership based on the red May Day slogan, "Workers of the world, unite!" Such a leadership must turn these struggles into schools for communism, showing these industrial workers in these war-making, imperialist companies that capitalism must be destroyed, from Tangiers to Warsaw to Cadiz to Detroit.

Skoda Workers Strike in Czech Republic

Workers in the Czech Republic at Skoda -- bought by VW in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet bloc -- walked out for several hours on April 17, cutting the daily production of 2,500 cars by about one-third. A threatened April 19 strike was averted when VW agreed to a contract ending in 2008 giving workers an immediate 10% wage increase, plus benefits.

Such strikes are worrying auto companies which have shifted production from France, Germany, Belgium and Spain to former Soviet-bloc countries to take advantage of their cheaper labor costs. Already, VW-Skoda bosses are saying that big pay hikes could risk further investments. Again, we can see how the anti-communist regimes of the former Soviet bloc, united with Nazi-collaborators like VW, GM and Ford, have been a disaster for the international working class.

Russia's Profiteers Murder 108 Miners

West Virginia or Novokuznetsk, Russia or Pasta de Conchos, Mexico -- capitalism is always ready to sacrifice miners' lives on the altar of private profit.

The murder last year of nearly 100 coal miners in West Virginia and Northern Mexico because of the utter disregard of safety rules was mirrored in what amounts to the murder of 108 Russian miners on March 19 in the country's deadliest disaster in ten years. A methane gas explosion occurred in an area where, "Automatic equipment showing the methane levels in the mine were deliberately deactivated so that the indicators displayed a lower methane level, but did not switch off the mine's electricity," according to Konstantin Pulikovsky, head of Russia's technical standards watchdog. (RIA Novosti, 4/16)

Functioning monitors would have warned the miners of an accumulation of the deadly gas and probably saved their lives. But to show the true methane gas build-up might have forced the temporary closing of the mine. This would have cost money, costs that eat into profits. Pulikovsky said managers at all levels were involved in the crime.

Associated Press reported (3/20), "The hazardous state of Russia's mining industry fell into disrepair when government subsidies dried up after the Soviet collapse." This situation stands in stark contrast to the high regard accorded to coal miners shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution when their work-day was immediately reduced to six hours, safety was given top priority and the miners themselves enjoyed 6-week vacations.

But now international capitalism is reaping huge profits from the newly-privatized industries in the former Soviet Union, and miners' lives are completely subservient to their bosses' profits. The rate of mining industry deaths in Russia is second only to the other former communist-led country where capitalism now rules the roost: China.

A regional prosecutor told the Interfax news agency that the cause of the "accident" may very well have been "violations of mining work rules." The miners work under a quota system that drives them to work faster for increased productivity on which their wage system is based. It has disaster built into it. Their monthly take-home pay of $575 comes largely (70%) from such productivity bonuses. "It is well understood," the head of the Miners Union told Reuters, "that if a person...is put in such conditions and adheres to all the rules of technical safety, he won't earn anything." Such conditions of speed-up, netting huge profits, lead to catastrophes.

The same disregard for safety is also killing Russia's elderly and disabled. A fire on March 20 in a nursing home in the village of Kamyshavatskaya killed at least 62 people, caused by "a series of violations, including insufficient fire-fighting equipment....to protect against smoke....an incomplete alarm system....[and] bedrooms' wooden panels...not made flame resistant." (NY Times, 3/21) Last year the building recorded 36 fire-safety violations, for which the owners were fined the grand sum of $770. "In 2006, 17,065 people died in fires, an average of nearly 47 a day." (NYT)

Under a truly communist system in which the wage system has been abolished, workers' safety would be the first consideration, especially since it is the workers themselves who will control the society and will be determining their working conditions, not some profit-hungry bosses.

Workers Shed No Tears for Yeltsin

Very few workers are mourning the death of Boris Yeltsin. Even in Moscow, where conditions for some are a bit better than in the rest of Russia, workers shed no tears for Boris. Yeltsin, Gorbachev and now Putin returned full-blown capitalism to the former Soviet Union.

Today, while Moscow boasts as many billionaires as New York, workers' standard of living tells a different story. They're not enjoying the oil and gas bonanza a few CEOs and yuppies are reaping as the Russian bosses try again to become a big player in the sharpening international inter-imperialist rivalry. Racism is rampant in Russia, particularly against workers from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

But Yeltsin & Co. were not solely responsible for bringing back capitalism to the former communist-led Soviet Union. For decades, state capitalism ruled the country. Finally, a section of the old state capitalist ruling class decided to go into full-blown market capitalism, and cut out any concessions workers still retained from the past, plunging millions into misery. But the working class will rise again, learning from the achievements and errors of the past.

`Reform' Exploits Immigrant Workers with Poverty Jobs, Youth to War

"If you don't like my proposed bill, look at the White House proposal," threatened Congressman Luis Gutierrez. He said if his law wasn't accepted, immigration raids will be more massive than ever. Both the Gutierrez-Flake bill and Bush's bill demand thousands of dollars in fines and up to 15 years to get residency (for which one must leave the U.S. to apply). It also includes "securing the border" and a bracero program. That's the "good" part. It requires undocumented youth to either get a college degree or serve in the military. It establishes a National ID card for all workers and a new Electronic Employment Verification System.

Immigration "reform" for millions of undocumented workers has become a national debate, from churches to factories, in the streets and in Congress. The issue is coming to the fore because one sector of the U.S. ruling class needs to win these immigrants and their native-born children to patriotism, nationalist loyalty to U.S. bosses. They need millions more soldiers in the army, and in factories producing weapons and ships at low cost for their widening wars in the Mid-East and against rivals like Russia and China. The bosses are offering immigration "reform" in exchange for our sweat and blood.

The immigrant rights organizations' and church leaders, along with capitalist politicians, are presenting this patriotic pro-reform movement as the "American Dream." In reality it will become a nightmare. Millions of angry workers, who've been victims of racist immigration laws and raids, are being mobilized to march under the flag of U.S. imperialism, sign petitions to Congress and participate in the capitalist political arena. Of course the politicians don't mention that these same imperialist bosses created poverty and brutal repression, from Mexico and Central America to Haiti, Colombia and Argentina, forcing us to immigrate for a low-wage job.

As one worker said, "The imperialists with their flag (red, white and blue), and the help of the local bosses, took all the value of the mines, rivers and mountains, burned our homes, killed our brothers, sisters and parents, took our land and forced us to go to the big U.S. cities to work in their factories and fields. Now they want us and our children to fight for their bloody profits, to die and kill millions of other workers in their imperialist wars. But we workers will say, "that's ENOUGH -- NO MORE!"

Many workers see immigration reform bringing them drivers' licenses, social security, legal exit from and re-entry to the country, plus better jobs or a university education. But the bosses want "reform" to create a controlled group of super-exploited workers and soldiers.

Immigrant workers play a key economic, military and political role, not just for the bosses but for our class as well, for the international working class. That's why our future lies in uniting with -- and building -- a revolutionary movement of workers, students and soldiers, black, Latin, white, Arab, Asian, citizen and immigrant who are all exploited by the capitalists. It doesn't lie in voting or in relying on bosses' politicians, whether Gutierrez, Villaraigosa, Kennedy or Bush.

United, we have the potential to paralyze the bosses' war industries and organize rebellions against their imperialist wars. Together we can forge the long-term commitment to fight for communism, producing to meet our needs and using to the maximum the creative power of all workers. In a world without borders, every worker will always be welcome in any part of the world. For this, we need the communist ideas in CHALLENGE and to join the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.

THE BLOODY FLAG OF U.S. IMPERIALISM

The U.S. bosses hope immigrant workers will buy into nationalism by waving the American flag on May 1st and proclaiming that they are "part of America". However, no worker has a stake in the capitalist system that the U.S. and its bloody flag represents.

The American flag has flown over Iraq and countless other countries throughout the world, where millions have died because of imperialism. It is the same flag worn by the racist immigration gestapo and police who terrorize workers every day. It is a flag that represents a country built on slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. Like any other nationalist flag, it represents the bosses' attempt to win workers to siding with the rich, instead of their working-class brothers and sisters in other countries.

Women-led General Strike Helped Spark Russian Revolution

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution which liberated one-sixth of the world's surface from the yoke of capitalism. The revolution began on Feb. 23 (on the old Russian calendar, now March 8) on International Women's Day. Thousands of women, wives of soldiers at the front in World War I and workers, took to the streets, ignoring the pleas of union leaders to "remain calm."

As one worker at Petrograd's Nobel machine plant recalled: "We could hear the voices of women in the streets from the windows in our department: `Down with hunger and scarcity! Bread for workers!' Several comrades and I ran to the windows...The gates of mill No. 1 at the Bolshaia Sampsonievskaia had been opened. Masses of women workers in a militant formation filled the streets. Those who saw us began to move their arms and yell `come down! Stop working!' They threw snowballs at the windows. We decided to join the march."

The next day, 200,000 workers struck in Petrograd (later named Leningrad, now "St. Petersburg). On Feb. 25, armies of marchers fought the troops. The revolution had begun. Feb. 27 was climactic when entire regiments of the Petrograd military garrison deserted and joined the insurgency. A few days later, Tsar Nicholas II, "the butcher," abdicated the throne.

Russia was free from the Tsar but not from capitalism. The bourgeoisie had plans to remain in power. But the workers and soldiers, led by the Bolsheviks, had other plans. While the opportunist Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary parties emphasized calling for "peace" instead of ending the war, confusing workers and soldiers, the Bolsheviks, particularly after Lenin's April return from exile, were firm in their call to turn the imperialist war into a revolution against the capitalist rulers. The revolutionary process accelerated. In October, workers and soldiers stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew Kerensky (who had replaced the Tsar as the leader of Russian capitalism).

The women-led general strike that initiated the process was not an easy one. When WWI began in 1914, patriotism reigned over workers and soldiers. But as it dragged on and Russia was losing, the Bolseheviks' firm politics opposing the imperialist war and Russia's own ruling class gained ground among the masses.

By February 1917, strikes had spread. Many women had joined the working class, replacing men sent to the battlefront. By then, 47% of Petrograd's workers were women. They were a majority in textile, leather, rubber and many other jobs which in the past had been limited to men: including streetcar drivers, printing and metal industries; 20,000 were women.

Before heading for work, many had to wait in long lines to buy bread and other food for their children. Sometimes they had to camp overnight in the cold Russian winter, learning then to "curse god and the Tsar, but curse the Tsar much more." The lack of bread made them doubt the government's politics. As a police report said: "They are an inflammable material just waiting for a match."

The double exploitation suffered by these women made them see the limitations of economic demands and they began to think more in political terms.

The Racist Rip-off of Subprime Loans

Lately the bosses' press has had lots of whining about the bankruptcy of mortgage companies specializing in "subprime" home loans, but a big aspect of the story is the racist rip-off of workers buying homes. Subprime loans are supposed to be designed for borrowers with low credit scores, and carry a much higher interest rate -- as much as 3% -- than conventional loans, and cost tens of thousands of dollars more over the life of the loan. Although smaller lenders specializing in these loans are now going under, the biggest banks also peddle them, and particularly target black and Latin workers.

A recent study by Chicago's Woodstock Institute showed that the seven biggest lenders -- Citigroup, Countrywide, GMAC, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo -- made subprime loans to black and Latin borrowers at much higher rates than to whites, even when their credit scores would have qualified them for lower-cost loans. The study, covering six large urban areas, showed that black borrowers were 3.8 times as likely to receive a high-cost loan than whites, and Latin borrowers were 3.6 times as likely.

Racist differentials were largest in New York City, where black borrowers were 12 times as likely to get high-cost loans than whites, and Latin borrowers were eight times as likely. Washington Mutual has separate divisions to handle subprime loans, and 76% of their loans to blacks and 65% to Latins were in the subprime division, while 80% of their loans to whites were in the low-cost loan division.

Whatever their origins, many subprime borrowers get ripped off by variable interest rates, which make the payments skyrocket when interest rates rise. Now that housing prices have fallen in many areas, many subprime borrowers can't refinance into a better loan, so they lose their homes and a lot of money, too.

This is the way capitalism always works: all workers are exploited but some groups (in the U.S., black and Latino workers) are targeted for especially intense exploitation. Another racist aspect of the subprime crisis is that immigrant workers, the last to be hired in the housing construction industry and other related industries, are also the first to be fired. (Wall Street Journal, 4/23) This also creates economic problems in Mexico and Central America. Remittances to Mexico are already down $600 million.

Communism is the only way for workers to get out from under this racist system.

U.S. Rulers Free Mass Murderer (`What Terrorist'?)

Relatives in Cuba of those murdered when 79-year-old old terrorist Luis Posada Carriles organized the 1976 blowing up of a Cubana Airlines plane after it left Barbados Airport protested his freeing by a Texas judge. Carriles and fellow CIA-operative Orlando Bosch (both rabid anti-communist Cuban exiles) plotted this terrorist act which killed 73 passengers, including the entire young Cuban Olympic fencing team. It was the worst terrorist act involving a plane in the Western Hemisphere before 9/11.

Why was Posada freed from prison and allowed to go to Miami to join his fellow right-wing Cubans? Why was he charged merely with violating immigration laws instead of with terrorism under the Patriot Act? Why isn't he sent to Cuba or Venezuela (where he then operated for the CIA) and is wanted for mass murder? Because he was "a U.S. terrorist," operating under an international anti-communist death-squad ring organized when Bush, Sr. headed the CIA.

If tried for terrorism he might spill the beans on his handlers during his long history of plotting for U.S. imperialism, including planting bombs in Havana hotels in the 1990's, participation in the murder of Chile's former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington after the 1973 fascist Chilean coup, and more.

Next time U.S. bosses preach about the "fight against terror," we know they mean the fight FOR terror.

French Elections: No `Left' or Right; Only Wrong for Workers

Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and "Socialist" Ségolène Royal won the first round of France's presidential elections on April 22, eliminating centrist François Bayrou, and fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen. A run-off vote on May 6 will choose between Sarkozy and Royal -- but there's no real choice at all!

Sarkozy uses much more openly fascistic language. In 2005, he said kindergarten teachers should turn in three-year-olds who "show signs of delinquent behavior." In the March 2007 issue of "Philosophie Magazine," he said people are genetically programmed to become child molesters or to commit suicide.

Given such Nazi ideas, it would be no surprise if a Sarkozy election led to an alliance with the fascist Front National in 2012 in order to remain in power permanently. ("Le Canard enchaîné," 4/11)

But all the French media view the political scene here as moving to the right (as if political ideas dropped from the sky!). All the major candidates -- both those still in the running and those who've been eliminated -- spout the same proto-fascist ideas. Capitalist elections offer no real choice to the working class. This becomes obvious in examining "obligatory civic service."

As noted previously (CHALLENGE, 4/25), French bosses need a fascist ideology, both to motivate people to make sacrifices in a war and to reintroduce the draft. France began switching to a professional all-volunteer army in 1997. The draft was suspended (not abolished) in January 2001. Many people see obligatory civic service the first step in renewing the draft (as U.S. liberal rulers view "national service").

Front-runner Sarkozy makes the link to military service the clearest. In "Le Monde" (3/4/07), he proposes six-month obligatory civic service as an operational reserve to ease the strain on the French army, already heavily committed abroad. Sarkozy wants a civil defense agency to stimulate the "defensive" (i.e., military) spirit in French society. This agency would not only fight natural or technological catastrophes, but also "terrorism." Sarkozy wants to enable young men and women aged 18 to 30 (!) to choose military service instead of civil defense service. ("Liberation," 3/1/07)

"Socialist" presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has been most weasel-like on this issue. Her party's program includes obligatory civic service for all young men and women. But high school and university student union leaders told Royal that youth felt making the service obligatory destroyed the service's "idealistic content," saying young people are extremely wary of re-establishing obligatory conscription.

So she announced a provision for a six-month voluntary service, with 350,000 youth going through the program every six months. This reverses her May, 2006 speech when Royal (daughter of a career officer) said she regretted the abolition of the draft, adding that "at the first sign of juvenile delinquency," young people should be incorporated in "a system that has a military dimension and which will take them in charge."

But former minister Bernard Kouchner's February report sneaks obligatory civic service back into Royal's program, eventually involving 500,000 youth annually, two-thirds of the young people born in a given year. The two losing candidates were no better.

Centrist François Bayrou developed the idea of national renewal most. He said, "Young people really need to get out of their ghettos, whether [those]...of poor youths or rich kids. They need to meet young people from other social classes...to get away from a society...wholly focused on consumption, and to give something of themselves to the community."

This condemnation of the rotten morality of the bourgeoisie, of middle-class consumerism and egotism, echoes fascist ideology. It says rich kids in their gilded "ghettos" suffer as much as working-class youth in rat-infested slums, that the rich and the poor "have something in common."

Bayrou's program stressed police work: "The gift of themselves is needed in public transport security in the big cities, watching for forest fires in the heat of the summer, helping the elderly and the handicapped, and helping and protecting fragile people in train stations and airports." Also, Bayrou wanted to require immigrants do civic service before applying for French citizenship.

Only openly fascist candidate Le Pen rejected obligatory civic service, calling it an "economic, social and military aberration" that would reinstate unpaid "corvee" labor (as serfs had to perform for feudal lords).

Le Pen wanted to attract young voters, but his main goal was racist ethnic cleansing of the military. He said conscription wouldn't furnish the military with "quality human material." He proposed voluntary six-month military service and increased military pay to attract more white youth and reduce the proportion of the army's Muslim-origin youth.

Inspired by fascist conspiracy theories, he also played to militarists by denouncing both "socialist" president Francois Mitterrand and conservative Chirac for crippling the French military. He wanted to increase the military budget and the number of soldiers and upgrade their weapons. Le Pen also proposed a racist cradle-to-grave government assistance policy that excluded immigrants until the needs of all "native French people" are met. That means permanent exclusion of immigrants.

French bosses, seeing war on the horizon, are taking measured steps towards building fascist ideology and reintroducing the draft. Both Sarkozy and Royal want some form of obligatory civic service. Communists must denounce this preparation for war and fascism both inside and outside the civic service program, and organize real working-class solidarity to prepare the way for a communist revolution that will destroy capitalism, the real source of workers' and youths' misery.

LETTERS

When is Terrorism Not Terrorism?

Have you ever tried to figure out what exactly the media demand of mass killing in order to call it "terrorism"? In one 2-page spread of the Arizona Daily Star on April 20, there are six articles: five on the recent killings at Virginia Tech -- one of which compares it to Columbine (the high school in Colorado where 2 students killed 13 people in 1999) -- and one article on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. As it turns out, the anniversaries of these three events are all in the same week -- VT on April 16, Oklahoma on April 19, and Columbine on April 20.

In all that newsprint the word "terrorist" occurs only once, and that is in a reference to the World Trade Center attack in 2001. In other words, the U.S. media only use the word "terrorism/terrorist" in relation to Muslims. Aside from the inherent racism in that restriction of the terminology, if the word were generalized to all mass murder it would lose the misleading political punch that the government and media squeeze into it to provide an excuse to invade and occupy the oil-rich lands of the earth. And it goes without saying that the word "terrorism" is never applied by the media to the mass killings by the U.S. military of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

But not everyone is so reluctant to use the word correctly. I have a poster on my wall that is a picture of Geronimo (the great Apache fighter against U.S. genocide), his son and two other comrades in arms, all standing there holding rifles, with the caption: "HOMELAND SECURITY -- Fighting Terrorism Since 1492."

Saguaro Rojo

Turns Job Site into Political Battleground

Recently, I participated in the PL-led protest against Minuteman Chris Simcox on a southwest campus (see article, p.3).

Because of the short notice of the event, my co-worker and I struggled to get the day off, and our employment was jeopardized. After multiple phone calls with the boss, we stated our final compromise: we would work half the day of the protest, and my wife would volunteer four hours of unpaid labor. On the one hand we didn't want to make our mainly undocumented Latino co-workers bear the burden of the work in our absence. On the other hand, we would be upholding an anti-racist position at our university that would sharpen our communist politics. The boss's final remedy to the situation was that only one of us could go, with serious repercussions if we both left work. After much contemplation and discussion with our fellow workers, we decided together that although the workload would be unevenly shifted onto the backs of our friends, the long-term struggle against racism would be in all of our best interests.

The day after the protest, our co-workers received us with smiles of encouragement. Because of the event's publicity, we could share our political views on immigration, in and outside of the workplace. Co-workers asked, "Do you think this protest will make us all citizens?" My response was that our intention is not to make citizens, but to empower ourselves against the ever-growing racist ideology that is promoted by groups like the Minutemen. That evening we were questioned by a right-wing student who resorted to bullshit arguments about how "alien immigrants" break the law by trespassing on private property. After intense discussion, he was won to the idea that we should fight for the working class, on either side of the border. This struggle went on throughout the week.

Eventually, our boss confronted us about the event, saying, "Because I could not reason with your minds, I am going to bite you in the ass!" He threatened to dock the pay that we earned the day of the protest. We reminded him of our extra-hard work the day before and that our co-workers had reassured us that everything was okay while we were gone. We also brought up our low wages and my wife's four hours of volunteer work. Our boss's reply was, "I admire your political views, but if I didn't show the other workers that there are punishments for what you both did, the workplace would be complete anarchy." This has reconfirmed for us all that the boss will always be forced to retain an illusion of power.

We took what used to be an apolitical workplace and turned it into a political battlefield of bosses vs. the workers. Through this event, my wife and I have been won to PL's line. The effects of the event will continue to help build PLP and crush racism, within the workplace and around the world.

New Reds

Racism Kills Babies from Chiapas to Mississippi

Recent articles in mainstream publication about health illustrate how racism is a universal aspect of capitalism. A front page New York Times (April 22) article reported how health care cuts have raised the death rate among black babies in the Deep South of the U.S. Also on April 22, the Mexican daily La Jornada reported a similar situation in the southernmost state of Mexico: "In Chiapas, extreme poverty has meant that easily curable diseases become epidemics killing the population. Seventy percent of the state's 4.293 million people are indigenous or peasants that live in extreme misery."

More than a million Chiapas residents, mostly indigenous and peasants, have no access to health centers, causing the multiplication of easy-to-cure diseases like tuberculosis, infant malnutrition, diarrhea, trachoma, etc. In the areas where 70% of the population is indigenous, there is only one doctor per 25,000 people.

Some blame immigrants from Central America that daily cross the border for the problem, because they lack even basic vaccinations and spread diseases. But this is only a symptom. The real reason that Chiapas has the highest rate of curable diseases and infant mortality in Mexico is capitalism and its racism. This system only serves the interests of billionaires like Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the world, and the imperialist and local bosses who pay wages so low that they compete with those of China.

The bosses' racism kills workers and their babies from Chiapas to Mississippi. For the sake of our children, let's get rid of this epidemic.

An Anti-Racist Worker

Black Mayor Backs Troops vs. Urban Rebels

Former Virginia Governor and now Richmond mayor, L. Douglas Wilder just released a statement supporting joint Marine Corps/FBI urban training exercises in Richmond. The exercise simulates urban combat using low-flying helicopters and artillery fire using blank ammunition. Wilder stated, "We are pleased to support the Marine Corps in its efforts to better prepare our soldiers for potential combat in urban areas abroad as well as right here on home soil, if needed."

Better prepare for potential urban combat abroad and on home soil? Wilder, the grandson of former slaves and Civil Rights leader is in support of the continued occupation and slaughter of the working class in Iraq/Afghanistan and future imperialist wars of aggression throughout the Middle East in accordance with the Carter doctrine.

His statement supports the military being used on "home soil" in the tradition of the military force against the Bonus Army in the 1930's, the riot control used in the anti-racist urban rebellions in the 1960's and the use of the military to squelch the uprisings in Los Angeles and Cincinnati in the aftermath of police shootings and brutality.

We should not be surprised by Wilder's embrace of fascism. During Labor Day's Greekfest in 1989 in Virginia Beach, police rioted against black students on the holiday, beating and arresting over 500 students. Students at Howard University were organizing a protest when emissaries from the NAACP (who were engaged in Wilder's election team) disrupted the planning meeting, demanded that no action be taken against the police brutality to avoid tarnishing Wilder's electoral chances. (The students threw out the NAACP disrupters, and went on to stage demonstrations during the trials of their fellow students).

Millions of black workers put their faith in politicians such as Wilder to fight for their interests from within the system to fight racism. This example demonstrates that no politician can be trusted to fight for the interest of the working class against their imperialist bosses. Smash the politicians and the bosses' system. The solution is communist revolution! We have a world of workers to win, and exposing misleaders like Wilder can help do this

Virginia Red

U.S. Gov't Killers at Home and Abroad

A Southwestern newspaper recently had two articles that together exposed the disregard the U.S. ruling class has for working-class soldiers. One article was about the use of commercial airlines to transport the bodies of dead soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than private military jets and a military honor guard. The other article was on the tremendous increase in cases of childhood (and now, adult) leukemia in a small rural town, Sierra Vista, Arizona. Air force jets fly practice runs over the town and shower the town below with fuel exhaust.

The commercial airline scandal only came to light because the father of one dead soldier, himself a military careerist, objected to his son's being shipped home in that humiliating way. The cluster of leukemia cases in Sierra Vista has been known about in the area for almost a decade. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta has investigated but refuses to acknowledge that the number of cases per population size is different from that of any other place. One father had been battling the CDC's lying cover-up for years until he was diagnosed and shortly thereafter died. His two daughters have leukemia also. He was known to call the CDC: the Cluster Denial Coalition.

How much longer will it take us to realize who our real enemies are? Not the Iraqi people, who the U.S. government and military orders to kill in the hundreds of thousands. The U.S. claims they are protecting us from terrorism at home. They don't even care to cover their tracks when they use U.S. soldiers to fight their wars and treat them like garbage when they are no use to them anymore.

All terrorists are the enemy of the working class in the U.S. and all over the world, but who are the biggest terrorists? Those murderers who set off bombs in crowded market places and kill tens of innocent people, or those bosses and politicians who send hundreds of thousands of working-class soldiers to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, thereby creating massive terrorism all in the name of fighting terrorism?

Southwestern Red

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Dublin writer looks to Marx

...Do you plan to go on book tour in the U.S.? No. As I get older, I find my visits to the States get shorter because I can't take the general culture very much. I know I am back in the States because at the hotel breakfast they are all talking about money....

...Where do you advise us to look for fulfillment? There's a famous phrase from Karl Marx, in which he says that he wants s society in which the full development of each is the condition of the full development of all. What would it be like to find our fulfillment through each other rather than against each other? (Terry Eagleton, NYT, 4/22)

TV + movies demonize Islamics

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia....

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, which exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. (Z. Brzezinski, LAT, 3/24)

GIs: Deaths are tip of iceberg

...Hundreds of thousands...-- at least 30% of the troops who have engaged in active combat for four months or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and mortars, all without suffering a scratch....

...Sudden and extreme differences in pressures -- routinely 1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure -- lead to significant neurological injury. Blast waves....can leave a 19-year-old private who could easily run a six-minute mile unable to stand or even to think....

"Someone should have told us that with these closed-head injuries, things would not really get all that much better.

The Iraq conflict is not a war of death for US troops nearly so much as it is a war of disabilities. The symbol of this battle is not the cemetery but the orthopaedic ward and the neurosurgical unit. The...medical profession and the US are left to play a terrible game of catch-up. (GW, 4/26)

It's more than Imus, Muslims say

To the Editor:

....Muslim Americans are chagrined by the dubious and selective moral fervor demonstrated by the detractors of Don Imus's sexist-racist comments.... When Ann Coulter, speaking about Muslims, opined after 9/11 that America should "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity," the silence was deafening.

Ms. Coulter is not alone. Certain...commentators use gutter language with complete impunity in their TV and radio programs or newspaper columns to denounce Muslims Americans for the crime of being Muslims. (NYT, 4/17)

Africans go sour on `democracies'

Analysts said the Nigerian vote was the starkest example of a worrying trend -- even as African countries hold more elections, many of their citizens are steadily losing confidence in their democracies....

Satisfaction with democracy dipped to 45 percent from 58 percent in 2001....in Nigeria according to the Afrobarometer survey....

By 2005 that number had plummeted to 25 percent.... Almost 70 percent of Nigerians did not believe elections would allow them to remove objectionable leaders.... (NYT, 4/23)

Labor market is also slavery

To the editor:

Indeed, we should not forget ("Domestic slavery is back," March 30). And....Work, any work, cannot be for sale without the worker being for sale. They are inseparable, like the Merchant of Venice's pound of flesh from the blood....

Two hundred years after the abolition of the slave trade, it's high time for the abolition of its successor, the labor market. (GW, 4/19)

Liberals pave road to fascism

WASHINGTON, April 13 -- The administration proposed a bill on Friday to relax certain legal restrictions on the government's ability to intercept telephone calls and other communications in the United States....

Democratic leaders and Congressional aides reacted cautiously to the White House plan....

Representative Silvestre Reyes, the Texas Democrat who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he supported giving intelligence professionals "strong, modern tools to track terrorist communications." (NYT, 4/14)

 

Nationalism Deadly for Workers

• Smash ALL Borders
• Can’t Share Power with Bosses
• Nationalism Only Preserves Capitalism

Union Hacks Torpedo Shipyard Strike

Imus Racism, Sexism Mirrors Bosses’ Rotten Culture

Growing Saudi Unrest Threatens Deadlier Oil Wars

Forced Out, Pentagon Surrounds Saudi Gold Mine for Possible Invasion

• Liberals to Next President: Prepare for Saudi ‘Catastrophe’

Mid-East Monsters Created By U.S. Imperialism

Fight Racist LA Rulers’ Attempt to Break Multi-Racial Unity

From Washington to LA, PLP Backs Striking Shipbuilders

D.C. Bus Drivers Rally vs. Racist Bosses’ Attacks

Los Angeles PLP Preparing for May Day

FBI the New Librarians?

Military Families Need to Expose Democrats, Back Rebel GI’s

National Teachers Strike in Argentina

Reds Must Win Workers Away from Chávez’s pro-Capitalist Socialism

PLP Helped Blast Fascist Minutemen

Black-Latino Unity Can Thwart Racist Immigration Reformers

Church Forum Stresses United Immigrant-Citizen Struggle

LETTERS

PL’er Carries Red Politics Job to Job

Seek Multi-Racial Unity Over Stabbing

‘Fair Wage’ Impossible Under Profit System

Mexico Vies With China For Lowest Wages

Boss ‘Abuse" Cry Over ‘Sick-out’ Spurs Repeat

Mali Worker Pans ‘Bamako’

Johnstown, PA Protests the War

French Bosses Answer to Youth Rebellion: ‘Draft ‘em!’

REDEYE REDEYE

• Army double-crosses Iraq vets
• Cops do big snoop on activists
• Afghan Taliban back, and worse
• U.S. pullout? Over CEO dead bodies
• Desertions up: Troops ‘worn out’
• Young Black and Latin men ‘pipeline to prison’
• Did US provoke Iran on Brits?

PL’ers Helped Defeat Nationalist Splitters in SDS

The ABC’s of Wages, Poverty and Class Consciousness

‘300’ Movie Uses Ancient Past to Promote Future Wars

---

Nationalism Deadly for Workers

No Unity with ANY Boss: Workers of the World, Unite!

Inter-imperialist rivalry is growing. U.S rulers are still massacring thousands in Iraq as the war enters its fifth year, while many in the U.S. anti-war movement still appeal to their elected rulers to end it. In Iraq the workers "choices" are either the U.S. puppet regime or nationalist bosses (Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish) who each want a bigger share of the oil profits. For the world’s workers these are capitalism’s alternatives: bow to the imperialist or to "our" local capitalists. Either way we lose.

Nationalism, like racism, was born with capitalism, initially in France, Britain and the U.S., and is used as another tool to divide the working class internationally. Nationalism means pledging allegiance to the ruling capitalists, based on living in an area they stole and in which they created their state apparatus to legitimize their rule. They push the concept of patriotism, essentially loyalty to "our" particular ruling class within the borders of "our country."

Another form of nationalism stems from a reaction to racism: super-exploited victims of the bosses’ racism — black and Latin workers in the U.S. — are appealed to by black and Latin demagogues (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) to push capitalism: more black and Latin bosses, more black and Latin cops, foremen, etc. as the "solution" to racism, rather than exposing the super-profits that capitalism reaps from racism. This divides the working class from seeing it has one exploiting class enemy, capitalists, no matter their skin color or language.

Nationalism creates false unity between bosses and workers, between the Rockefellers and Farrakhans on the one hand and the working class, black and white, on the other. There’s only one international working class with the same class interests, directly contradictory to the interests of all capitalists.

Smash ALL Borders

Capitalist-created borders have disastrous effects. For 60 years, Israeli and Palestinian workers have been marching behind their rulers to their deaths. "Undocumented workers" moving from North Sub-Saharan Africa to Europe and from Mexico, Central-South America, the Caribbean and Asia to the U.S. face massive repression because they’re from "different countries." These bosses’ borders divide workers and induce them to pledge allegiance to their local ruling class, maintaining the latter’s class rule.

Historically, all countries were born from the slaughter and coercion of workers by ruling classes fighting to gain new territory for exploitation and profit. The workers’ role was to fight and die and kill other workers for "their" bosses.

The bosses also created the concept of "race" (see CHALLENGE. 4/11)) to divide us. Scientifically there are no "different races," only the human race. Within that there’s only one division: those who own the means of production and those who don’t, bosses and workers, exploiters and exploited. While our oppression may differ in kind, we have the same enemy, and the same class interest to destroy that enemy.

Can’t Share Power with Bosses

The final outcome of all forms of nationalism, of the working class fighting under nationalist banners "for our liberation," is dead revolutionaries and a ticket back to capitalism. PLP concluded this from seeing communists uniting with nationalists and the failures of national liberation movements.

In Indonesia communists allied with nationalist forces to expel the Dutch. The Communist Party, with almost two million members, controlled the labor movement and elected representatives to the government. Their leader, Aidit, became its number two official. Abandoning the correct strategy of armed revolution for communist-led workers’ power, they took the parliamentary road to "share" power with the nation’s bosses. In fact, in a 1961 article, Aidit declared: "[Our] basic principle…is that the class struggle is placed below the national struggle."

But their "legal" status didn’t protect them. Controlling the military, Indonesia’s ruling class assassinated Aidit and, with CIA assistance, using Islamic fundamentalists, slaughtered well over a million communists and trade unionists in a few weeks. Indonesia’s workers still suffer mass poverty and the "joys" of capitalism.

Currently, Maoists in Nepal have repeated the same deadly mistake. On March 31, agreement was reached allowing five Maoist ministers to join the new national capitalist government. These are the same Maoists who led a massive armed rebellion that toppled the monarchy there.

Nationalism Only Preserves Capitalism

In the post-World War II years, communists in the Soviet Union and China abandoned internationalism for nationalist politics, which helped lay the basis for reverting back to full-scale capitalism. This period also witnessed nationalists and victims of racism in many oppressed countries gaining "independence" from the yoke of colonialism. While some paid lip-service to socialism, today all these countries maintain capitalist exploitation, including every country in Africa. The masses are still destitute and lack political power. Unity with the "lesser-evil" bosses dooms liberation from the start. Even the more militant fighters ended up negotiating for a bigger piece of the pie from the former rulers.

For instance, when Mandela’s forces took power in South Africa, and the workers, now assuming they were liberated, struck for their demands, Mandela told them they couldn’t strike because this would damage the rulers’ chances of getting foreign capital. So now South Africa is ruled by a combination of black and (much richer) white capitalists and poverty is even worse than before "liberation."

Nationalist leaders are profit-making bosses! They use the masses’ anti-imperialist and anti-racist sentiment to enlist them in a drive for bigger local capitalism. Given the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry world-wide, nationalist forces try to build themselves by playing one imperialist against another. Similarly, the imperialist powers make deals with nationalists to better exploit the latter’s country. Whoever wins a bigger piece of the economic pie, the nationalists still intensify the exploitation of their own workers.

All bosses represent their own class interests. They will kill and kill some more to maintain their profits. Cast off illusions about these bosses; instead organize against their dictatorship to wipe them out with workers’ power. Unity with the enemy has never led to victory. Only communism, not nationalism, can lead to workers’ revolution. Uniting around working-class internationalism is our road to communist revolution. One Class, One Flag, One Party.

Union Hacks Torpedo Shipyard Strike

PASCAGOULA, MS, April 4 — "It’s clear and obvious they don’t even care about us," said one striking ship-fitter in summing up the new three-year agreement with Northrop Grumman (NG). Almost 7,000 black and white workers had shut the racist war-maker and strike-breaker for 28 days, leaving a Navy destroyer and two freighters sitting like unfinished junk. While the workers were not striking against the bloodbath in Iraq, they gave all of us, and themselves, a lesson in the power of industrial workers to bring the imperialist war-makers to a halt.

Dow Jones News reported that the U.S. Navy is pushing shipbuilders to rein in soaring construction costs and adopt commercial practices without hurting military capability. Allison Stiller, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for shipbuilding said, "If the Navy, shipbuilding industry and ship-repair industry do not change our behaviors, the country will be unable to afford the needed re-capitalization of our fleet." They are trying to keep pace with China, the rising imperialist power which is the number two shipbuilder in the world, and aiming for number one in the next ten years.

The contract was rushed through by the Pascagoula Metal Trades Council, representing 11 of 14 unions, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). Less than half, about 3,300 of the 7,000 strikers, were able to vote — and 40% voted "NO!" Many workers were away job-hunting and others couldn’t afford the gas money on short notice after being on strike for a month. All these workers were nearly wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and despite NG getting over $3 billion from the Navy and FEMA for post-Katrina clean-up, many strikers still live in FEMA trailers.

Northrop Grumman had cut off the workers’ health insurance on April 1, and the union leaders spread the rumor that if the contract wasn’t ratified the Ingalls yard here would close and the work moved to Newport News, Virginia. The workers that did vote hardly knew what they were voting on since the union passed out contract "highlights" and quickly called the vote. All these factors, plus 500 strikers crossing the picket lines and scabbing on their co-workers, and a lack of anti-racist, anti-imperialist leadership among the workers to counter the union leadership, let NG off the hook.

The workers won a 15% wage hike over three years, $1.68 an hour now, and two 55¢-an-hour raises later. The first-year raise is the largest ever won in a NG contract. Meanwhile, the $144-a-month in health insurance premiums will increase to almost $200 and still will not cover dental or vision care. In Katrina’s aftermath, housing costs have soared and milk is above $4.00 a gallon.

Many workers voiced their anger at the union and the company. Some felt that with support for the strike being organized locally and internationally, they could have held out longer. Some of that support was organized by PLP, from union and non-union aerospace workers on the West Coast to transit workers in Washington, D.C. and more (see left) A friend in France won his local to send solidarity greetings of support as well.

This strike did not sit well with the racist war-makers. It also gave PLP the opportunity to build the revolutionary communist movement. It inspired us to organize strike support by explaining to our co-workers, on the campuses and high schools, and in the barracks, that this fight — like the Airbus and auto strikes across Europe, and the destructions) of 100,000 auto jobs in the U.S. — is the result of the sharpening battle among the world’s bosses. These racist attacks on the world’s workers are paving the way to bigger wars. And the only way to smash imperialism is with communist revolution. Now we can have these discussions with the Ingalls strikers as well. J

Imus Racism, Sexism Mirrors Bosses’ Rotten Culture

Don Imus’s racist and sexist remarks insulting the Rutgers University women’s basketball team have caused a big stir. He’s been suspended for two weeks from his radio program which simulcasts on TV by MSNBC). But Imus’s insults are no surprise. That’s been his trademark for years. Racism and sexism, after all, rot the entire capitalist society.

Imus is not just another shock jock like many who fill the media. His program has been used by top liberal and conservative politicians and media stars. GOP candidates McCain and Romney, and former Democrat candidates John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have been on his show. Liberal and conservative writers use him to promote their books and have "intelligent" discussions. Tim Russert, NBC-TV "Meet the Press" host is an Imus regular. The list goes on. They know his racism and sexism well.

He’s also a big money-maker for GE-owned MSNBC and CBS which owns his show. This is "freedom of speech" under capitalism: pro-war racist and sexist crap fills the air waves, and not only from right-wingers like Imus and Bill O’Reilly. Imus, after all, took the sexist insult from Hip Hop culture, much of which constantly degrades black women.

Yes, Imus should be fired, but this won’t change the nature of the bosses’ media. There’s no "free speech" under this profit system. No real pro-working-class ideas blaming capitalism for racism, war, sexism and so on will be aired because the corporations which own and run the media won’t go against their own class interests. Only CHALLENGE will give you those ideas.J

Growing Saudi Unrest Threatens Deadlier Oil Wars

At a recent Arab League meeting, Saudi Arabia’s king Abdullah labeled the U.S. occupation of Iraq "illegal." But he was hardly signaling a break with his U.S. masters, to whom his oil-soaked dynasty owes its very existence. Abdullah’s remarks reflect instead his family’s faltering grip on the economic cornerstone of U.S. imperialism. By pretending that Saudi Arabia was no longer accepting Washington’s dictates, the king tried to allay mounting opposition — from Saudi workers and capitalists alike — to his clan’s corrupt, oppressive rule.

The royal family controls Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. Its long-standing arrangement to provide Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Shell cut-rate crude has brought the House of Saud fabulous riches, while Saudi workers have become poor and hostile. And Aramco’s excluding non-royals antagonized capitalist "commoners" like Osama bin Laden, who demand their slice of the profit pie.

U.S. rulers (along with their British junior partners) can’t afford to lose the Saudi oil racket, either to local bosses like bin Laden or imperialist rivals like China and Russia which are making deals with the Saudi rulers. Saudi oil represents the most lucrative and strategically crucial business deal in the history of imperialism, helping the U.S. exert political and economic pressure throughout the world. Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson boasted, "We’re the largest purchaser of Saudi crude oil exports...making Saudi Arabia the largest single supplier of raw materials to Exxon Mobil’s worldwide refinery system." (Speech, 4/27/04) U.S. rulers have killed over a million Iraqis and 3,300 GIs for an oil treasure half the size of Saudi Arabia’s. Should the U.S. decide to prop up or replace a tottering Abdullah by force, even greater bloodshed could follow.

Saudi Arabia has one-fourth of the world’s oil reserves. But it also has a demographic time bomb. The Saudi population has quadrupled since 1974, from 7 million to nearly 28 million. It may hit 43 million by 2025. As oil production and other economic growth have failed to keep pace, gross domestic product per person has plummeted, from $16,006 in 1980 to $8,974 in 2004. Real wages have declined 24% over the last decade. While Saudi princes indulge in obscene luxury, unemployment hovers around 25%. Many angry young Saudis correctly identify the love match between the royal family and the U.S. as the source of their troubles. But, without a communist outlook, they fall into the trap of allying with capitalists who oppose the royals and the U.S. under the guise of religion. Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that committed the 9/11 attacks, attracts many disaffected Saudis. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, is a onetime billionaire Saudi contractor, who turned against the king and his U.S. backers when they excluded him from sharing in the spoils of the first Iraq war. [See box.] Saudis comprise a significant portion of foreign anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.

Forced Out, Pentagon Surrounds Saudi Gold Mine for Possible Invasion

Back at home, the Saudi oil infrastructure stands vulnerable. A year ago, al Qaeda launched a suicide truck bomb assault on the world’s largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq. The Sunni-Shiite split further destabilizes Sunni Abdullah’s realm, which has a local Shiite majority in its main oil-producing eastern region. But, to counter Persian Gulf domination by Iranian Shiites, Saudi rulers have vowed to side with Sunni insurgents in Iraq, if the U.S. withdraws. Such a move would threaten uprisings in Saudi oilfields.

The military situation reveals Saudi weakness on many other fronts. The Saudis deliberately keep their army small, 73,000, compared to Iran’s 350,000. The reason, says London-based journalist Said K. Aburish, is that "the House of Saud wants to maintain itself, but it does not want a strong army capable of overthrowing it." ("The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud"; St. Martin’s Press, 1996). A Saudi National Guard exists, but its mission is "to protect the royal family from internal rebellion and the other Saudi army." (Globalsecurity) The Saudi Air Force trusts only princes to pilot its jet fighters.

Despite record-setting arms purchases (mainly from the U.S.), undermanned Saudi forces are ill-equipped to repel an invader. The U.S. put thousands of troops on Saudi soil during the first Iraq war. But today, vehement anti-U.S. sentiment makes the stationing of large numbers of GI’s there politically impossible. Only 500 remain. So a major part of the Pentagon’s "wider wars" strategy in Gulf Slaughter II has been to create — or beef up — bases that encircle the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. naval facilities in Bahrain and the air base in Qatar have undergone a massive build-up. The U.S. installation in Djibouti will soon expand from 88 to 500 acres. The Pentagon’s permanent bases in Iraq, including the colossal Green Zone fortress, play a role in securing Saudi crude. And the U.S. Navy’s carrier battle groups menacing Iran are actually closer to Saudi oil fields than to Teheran.

Liberals to Next President: Prepare for Saudi ‘Catastrophe’

U.S. rulers understand that the House of Saud is as "solid as a house of cards" and that the strategic stakes are even higher than in Iraq. The liberal Brookings Institution advised "the next president" to prepare for an all-out oil war embroiling the entire Middle East,

"More strife in Iraq will further suppress oil production there and could spark conflicts in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, where a globally catastrophic loss of oil production could result. And, strife in Iraq could adversely affect Iranian oil production and transit." (Brookings, "Independent Ideas for Our Next President")

Capitalism is inherently unstable. Bosses must continually compete; self-interest and the need to pursue maximum profit make all their alliances temporary. As the Mid-East’s current plight shows, war after war results. But capitalism also suffers from another kind of instability. A handful of bosses must try to control millions of workers through killing and oppression. Ultimately, this situation is as untenable as the U.S.-Saudi operation.

As May Day 2007 approaches, the key task of revolutionary-minded workers and their allies in the Middle East and worldwide is organizing for communist revolution as the only way out of the inter-imperialist rivalry driving the inferno of endless profit wars.

Fight Racist LA Rulers’ Attempt to Break Multi-Racial Unity

LOS ANGELES, CA, April 9 -— Students, teachers and staff at a high school here have done much to build multi-racial unity. Teachers have organized clubs around this unity. A slide presentation to staff members provided historical background on how many Mexican and African people share ancestors, and gave critical support to the other, such as for Mexican Independence, the Mexican Revolution and the abolition of slavery among others.

Then a week before Spring break a tragedy occurred. A black student stabbed a Latino student on school grounds. He died on the way to the hospital. The stabbing occurred during a fight between different gangs. Immediately, the bosses’ media propagandized that violence between blacks and Latinos caused the death.

The next day school board and union officials descended on school grounds en masse (most hadn’t set foot there before). All spoke of "securing the campus." They feared escalating racial violence and retaliation. Cops flooded the campus. The following day a power outage darkened the entire school and all of those school officials scattered like quail!

After the death, Progressive Labor Party responded with a flyer at the school entitled, "Blacks and Latinos unite; Don’t fight each other, fight the system!" which was eagerly and enthusiastically received. Many students passed them out hand to hand inside the school. Black and Latino parents, teachers and students thanked those distributing it outside and asked for extras.

The flyer outlined how the cops and FBI created the gangs in order to provoke violence and disunity in the two communities. It also exposed how the same government fears the unity of the most oppressed sections of the working class because of the potential to organize, make revolution and overthrow the racist capitalist system. The flyer emphasized that the bosses use racism to divide the working class at the time we most need to unite against their wars abroad and racist attacks here.

Workers from Latin America have long experience waging armed struggle against U.S. imperialism. Black workers in the U.S. have led militant rebellions against racism in major cities and massive rebellions of black, white and Latino soldiers in the military during the Vietnam War. United with white, Asian workers and soldiers, black and Latino workers can be invincible!

We said, "Let’s make the bosses’ worst nightmare a reality fighting for multi-racial and international unity of the entire working class." This message was eagerly received by black and Latino students and parents.

The bosses are using this death to emphasize racial and gang violence, to promote increasing the LAPD to 10,000 cops. Racist incidents make big news; multi-racial unity does not. One writer pointed out that last year in LA’s "highest murder districts" of 236 homicides 22 crossed racial lines. (LA Times, 3/25) .

The same paper also reported (3/30), "Los Angeles — the nation’s second-largest city — has [an]… officer-to-resident ratios of …one officer for every 436 residents. New York has one for every 228 residents." . The bosses are callously taking advantage of this tragedy to push the ratio closer to New York’s.

More cops mean more racist terror, especially against both black and Latino workers. Mayor Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bratton are also aiming for more surveillance and control programs for the youth. But they also worry about winning these same youth to a patriotic and nationalist outlook, to get them to join the military and die and kill in defending U.S. imperialism.

U.S. rulers have a big dilemma: they need thousands upon thousands of new soldiers to defend their empire while they simultaneously build racist police terror to keep these potential soldiers in line. The bosses’ existence depends on their own gravediggers. Let’s accelerate the grave-digging by uniting against racism and building a massive Progressive Labor Party. We have nothing to lose but our chains!

From Washington to LA, PLP Backs Striking Shipbuilders

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 29 — A group of PLP’ers and friends rallied near Northrop Grumman’s corporate headquarters in Arlington, Virginia to gain support for striking shipyard workers in Mississippi. We distributed over 600 flyers about the strike and 40 CHALLENGES, while collecting donations for the strikers. Our speeches about racism, war and the power of the industrial workers to shut down the capitalist war machine reached thousands of workers.

Several workers we talked to worked for Northrop Grumman. Many more knew the company as part of the war machine. But almost no one had heard of the Mississippi strike until our rally, which made us more enthusiastic about spreading the word about the strike and the need for solidarity between workers at Northrop Grumman and other workers and GIs. One young soldier brought up the military-industrial complex and the need to fight it.

After this rally, we took the issue to our unions and the D.C. Central Labor Council to gain further support through fund-raising and letter-writing campaigns for the battle in Mississippi.

We are proud of our Party’s ability to quickly mobilize internationally to support for such critical struggles. It demonstrates even more why friends of PLP must join us to multiply our revolutionary impact on the class struggle worldwide.J

EL SEGUNDO, CA, April 4 — Today PLP organized a group of youth and others to support the strike of Northrop Grumman workers in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Europe’s Airbus strikers. We went to a large Northrop Grumman facility here with leaflets, CHALLENGES and signs to back the strikes. We carried posters with pictures of the multi-racial march of strikers and their families in Mississippi.

Despite security guards and cops trying to kick us out, and limit our access to the workers, we distributed many leaflets and CHALLENGES. Security guards directed traffic away from us, fearing workers would read about the strikers’ unity. Most workers knew nothing about the strike and were glad to hear about it, thanking us for the literature, which emphasized multi-racial, international workers’ solidarity against the war-makers. Leaflets about the strike also received a good reception on several campuses where students discussed the potential power of the working class to oppose imperialist wars.J

D.C. Bus Drivers Rally vs. Racist Bosses’ Attacks

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 30 — Over 40 bus drivers rallied today outside the Northern Garage to protest Metro transit management’s unsafe workplace practices. The bosses and their media have waged a vicious campaign against the drivers, blaming them for three recent fatal pedestrian accidents. But it is the bosses’ unrealistic scheduling of routes and inadequate recovery time between routes that creates the conditions for tragic accidents. This racist scapegoating of the predominantly black workforce is an attempt to deflect the public’s anger away from management.

Meanwhile, no manager has been held accountable for the deaths of three track workers, all killed in recent months because management refused to adopt the safety measures workers have long advocated. While the management is planning a memorial for them, Metro’s utter disregard for workers’ safety will kill more workers.

The newly-elected union leaders showed their true boss-loving colors by skipping the safety rally and, instead, calling for more cooperation with management. Drivers from Northern Garage are now working to rule (following the rules to slow things down) with management scrambling to enforce their insane schedule. Northern has been one of the strongest and longest supporters of PLP and has a core of CHALLENGE readers.

Management has promised many changes to create a safer and less stressful work environment, but with a $100 million budget deficit any changes will be limited to window dressing. This situation is the trickle-down effect of the war budget and the skyrocketing price of oil-based fuels. One day’s cost of the war budget for Iraq would probably cover the cost of solving most of the safety problems. But the bosses’ priority is imperialism, not safety for workers and riders.

The next step is to spread the work-to-rule campaign to other garages. Meanwhile, we’re trying to recruit more drivers to PLP, win more to read and distribute CHALLENGE, and participate in our upcoming May Day activities. Stay tuned for future developments! J

Los Angeles PLP Preparing for May Day

LOS ANGELES, April 8 — "This dinner is to prepare us for the upcoming May Day March," one speaker announced as everyone enjoyed a delicious dinner that they themselves had brought to share. Everyone emphasized that May Day represents an opportunity to be upfront with its real history, to show that this capitalist system based on racism, widening war and exploitation must be smashed. PLP offers a communist alternative for the international working class.

Last year liberals and phony leftists alike organized and led huge marches demanding a "comprehensive immigration reform" bill, a bosses’ plan to guarantee war production and more soldiers to defend their declining empire. Still without "reform," new marches are scheduled for this May 1. PLP will participate with a multi-racial contingent of youth and workers emphasizing multi-racial unity, internationalism and a communist movement to not only answer the bosses’ attacks but also end their racist, exploitative system once and for all.

After presenting the history of May Day we discussed the bosses’ great fear of the potentially explosive unity of the most exploited — African-American and immigrant workers— against the same bosses’ system which is now pushing more racist divisions here (see page 3, and letter page 6).

Women from the Ramona Gardens community denounced the racist police for murdering Mauricio París Cornejo. They committed themselves to helping organize for the May Day March. Latino and black students presented anti-racist, pro-working class and revolutionary poems in Spanish and English.

Committees were established — banners, flags, posters, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO sales, chants and security — to guarantee a successful march. We closed the dinner by enthusiastically singing the Internationale and Bella Ciao. We urge all those who attended to join PLP to fight for a communist world without racism, borders or imperialist war.

FBI the New Librarians?

NYC, NY, March 30—Be careful about borrowing The Communist Manifesto from your local public library. A recent forum at Pratt Institute School of Library and Information Science exposed the fascist nature of the Democrat/Republican-endorsed Patriot Act.

The forum explained how three Connecticut librarians ("the John Does") were issued a National Security Letter (NSL). It demanded the library hand over its records of subscriber and billing information, and access logs of any person that had used a library computer, all in the name of "national security and fighting terrorism." The FBI uses this information to collect all e-mails, browsed websites, books borrowed and users’ identification, storing it in databases for federal and state agencies’ harassment of people opposing the government.

The librarians refused to give the FBI the information because they believe users of libraries have "privacy rights and are protected under freedom of information laws." This refusal placed the librarians under investigation for "withholding information," proving that we only have those "rights" the capitalists decide to give us.

Such letters are even more fascist because people who receive them cannot tell anyone, including their spouses (!), that they even received a letter. Informing anyone could mean jail time. The FBI now issues about "30,000 national security letters a year." (Washington Post. 11/6/05). The letters don’t even require issuance by a judge (like that would matter) but can be submitted by an FBI field supervisor.

The librarians filed a suit in court against the FBI to fight the demand for information. The individual librarians could not even contact their union to defend themselves. The agency threatened arrest if they went public. Their lawyers found a way of notifying the union which alerted the public about this attack. They fought until the FBI backed down and withdrew the case because a judge decided many of the demands were vague.

During the forum many students questioned whether the librarians should have just revealed themselves and tested the government’s willingness to arrest them. One refused, saying they really feared being arrested. The librarians’ union, the Connecticut Library Association (CLA), backed down also because they didn’t think fighting would accomplish much.

"But haven’t people in the past fought for their beliefs and went to jail?" asked one student. The CLA representative who led the meeting said they didn’t want to push it that far. After the case was dismissed, the FBI fought for a mandatory 5-year prison sentence if one reveals receiving a letter. So much for not fighting.

With PLP’s communist leadership, workers need to fight hard against fascism. We cannot take pleas and dismissals just because it suits us not to face attacks, including jail. The bosses know that complacency and fear hold many workers back from fighting fascist outrages. We need to work with all workers to fight facism step by step, to expose the nature of the bosses’ dictatorship.

Military Families Need to Expose Democrats, Back Rebel GI’s

Amid the current U.S. troop "surge" in Baghdad, members of an anti-war military family’s organization are considering what action to organize. Although they’ve been involved in mass demonstrations and picket lines, before the November 2006 election more time was spent attacking the Republican candidates, and encouraging people to vote Democratic. Since then it’s been mostly lobbying Democratic Party politicians to bring all troops home immediately.

Congressional Democrats have refused to vote to de-fund the war to force a withdrawal. At least one attacked anti-war protestors as "idiots." They won’t even vote for a symbolic de-funding. MoveOn.org, a key pro-Democrat group funded by George Soros and others, is advocating a different kind of "moving on." They’re pushing "clean energy," national health care and "restoration of democracy" as their national agenda, excluding the war completely. The latest Democratic Party scheme attaches the minimum-wage bill onto Bush’s request for more war money. As one politician said recently, "If we’re going to vote to fund the war, he’s going to give us something in return." The Democrats use "pro-worker" rhetoric to hide their actual support for U.S. imperialism in the oil-rich Mid-East.

The Military Commissions Act was passed before the 2006 election. This fascist law gives the President the right to designate any non-citizen an "unlawful enemy combatant," and lock that person up until their trial by a panel of commissioned officers. It abolishes the right to challenge that detention. Many Democratic Senators, including two from our area, voted for it.

Leading up to the election, we took the offensive, linking these laws and the rulers’ need to mobilize the U.S. population to support wars for control of resources under the guise of the "war on terror." Several military family group members, and friends in anti-war groups, responded favorably to these politics. Now a statement advocating these points is being circulated. Our first step will be to call on military family chapters to endorse it.

Meanwhile, the collusion of the Democrats with Bush & Co. has upped the ante within anti-war groups. The national "Occupation Project" has undertaken sit-ins against key Congressional Democrats who have voted to fund the war. Thirteen sit-in’ers were arrested protesting the vote. Demonstrations in support of those arrested also demanded hands off Iran. The cops have invented the novel charge of "failing to disperse from a riot" against the protestors, many of whom are pacifists.

PLP is calling on friends in our military families group and others to expose the imperialist politicians, and back soldiers who resist and rebel. This call has drawn some favorable response. More in-depth discussion with our friends is needed about the key role of soldiers in the fight to overthrow the bosses and their profit wars.

An alliance of workers, students, soldiers and sailors who are revolutionary and class-conscious can defeat the bosses. Our small steps to develop this unity today can lay the basis for bigger advances as larger wars to control oil erupt. Day by day, in these small fights, we’re learning how to create those more significant changes.

National Teachers Strike in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, April 9 — Workers and students participated in strikes and marches nationwide protesting the murder of professor Carlos Fuentealba. A cop hit him in the face with a tear gas canister during a striking teachers’ road-blocking march demanding higher wages in Neuquén province.

In today’s action, bus and subway workers here are stopping work for several hours while teachers strike nationally for higher wages and against police brutality. They’re demanding the resignation of the province’s governor, Sobisch, political opponent of Peronist President Kichner.

Police brutality is not unique to Neuquén. Since "democracy" returned to Argentina, following the brutal military dictatorship of the mid-1970’s and early 1980’s, the number of victims of police murder has been sky-high. Under Kichner’s Presidency, from May 2003, the cops have killed 662 people.

Teachers are paid a miserable wage, particularly insulting in gas- and-oil rich areas like Neuquén, Salta and Santa Cruz, where teachers have struck. In Santa Cruz, Kichner ordered the militarization of the schools.

Capitalist politicians, be they Peronists like Kichner — a friend of Chávez and union hacks — or open right-wingers like Sosbich, are all enemies of the working class. J

Reds Must Win Workers Away from Chávez’s pro-Capitalist Socialism

While Bush toured Latin America, heavily protected and isolated from mass angry protests throughout, Hugo Chávez also toured the region, warmly welcomed by masses of workers and youth. In Buenos Aires, Chavez was cheered by 30,000 people at the Ferro soccer stadium, organized by Argentina’s President Kichner, union hacks and some fake-leftist groups. Millions saw him on TV there. Chávez has become the "anti-Bush," the most admired leader in Latin America since Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara.

But Chávez is not even as radical as Fidel and Ché were during the early stages of the Cuban revolution. While in the early 1960’s the Cuban workers pressured the government to seize imperialist companies like Esso, Shell and IT&T without any compensation, recently Chávez "nationalized" Verizon and a U.S.-owned electrical utility company, paying them the market price of $1.5 billion. These companies and Wall Street welcomed these "nationalizations." Chávez "21st Century Socialism" is not even close to the bourgeois nationalists of the last century like Mexico’s President Cárdenas, who in 1938 nationalized Standard Oil and Shell with minimum compensation.

Chávez’s plan for the oil industry is mixed ownership with such as Shell, Chevron-Texaco and Exxon. These imperialist oil companies now will own 49% of the oil and installations of the fields and wells they were already operating under deals with PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned company. Even though Exxon is not happy with the new deal, "Chevron is expected to accept Mr. Chávez’s terms, since it is also negotiating access to a large natural gas project …" (NY Times, 4/10). Sean Rooney, Shell’s Venezuelan manager, showed his approval of this deal, saying: "Being a partner is very different from just providing services."And of course, this deal will dole out a few crumbs to Venezuela’s working class.

While capitalists’ profits are booming from the rising price of oil, 40% of Venezuelans still live under the poverty line, as does the rest of Latin America. Unemployment is 10.5% (23% among youth). While in 2002, workers’ wages were 33% of the national income, by 2005 they had sunk to 25%. So in spite of some crumbs to workers, under Chávez the gap between workers and bosses has risen.

So why do workers and youth consider Chávez a hero? Partly because of his anti-imperialist rhetoric (mainly against Bush and U.S. bosses; U.S. imperialists also hate his deals with China and other U.S. rivals); and partly because of illusions many have in his "21st Century Socialism" plan, basically the fantasy of "capitalism with a human face."

So how can revolutionary communists show workers that following Chávez and others like him (Bolivia’s Morales and Ecuador’s Correa) won’t liberate them from all forms of capitalism? It’s not easy, but it can be done. In the 1940’s and ’50s, millions of workers in Argentina thought General Juan Perón was their savior. The leading wing of the Argentine bourgeoisie did not like the crumbs he gave to workers and U.S. imperialism also disliked him because he flirted with the Nazis during World War II. After a 1955 military coup overthrew Peron, ‘union leaders’ main demand was for his return to power. But rank-and-file workers fought for their own class interests. Mass uprising erupted nation-wide, particularly in industrial cities like Cordoba, center of Argentina’s auto industry. So in 1973, the bosses brought him back to try to cool down the class struggle.

Perón immediately attacked the workers who had fought for his return. When he died, his widow Isabel became President and formed the AAA (Argentinian Anti-Communist Alliance) which organized death squads against militant workers and youth. This opened the doors for the 1975 military coup, which led to the "dirty war," slaughtering 30,000 workers and youth.

Communists must be involved in the workers’ mass movement, even those supporting Chávez and others like him. But our involvement is not to cheer his fake anti-capitalism, but to expose him, while participating in the workers’ daily struggles against their bosses (as is happening in Venezuela and elsewhere). That’s how we can forge real red leadership to fight for a worker-led society with no bosses: communism.J

PLP Helped Blast Fascist Minutemen

NEW YORK, NY, April 9 — Over a hundred people protested the racist Chris Simcox, co-founder and leader of the anti-immigrant Minutemen, today in front of NYU’s Kimmel Center. While the demonstration was originally contained by police barricades off to the side of the building, things changed when the PLP contingent arrived. Chanting "Smash racist deportations, working people have no nation!" we began to picket in front of the main entrance. The police were unprepared for this level of militancy and we were able to partially block the entrance for over an hour. This meant that the Minutemen’s event started over half-an-hour late. Inside, students from NYU booed and heckled Simcox, inhibiting him from starting his speech for over 15 minutes. J

Black-Latino Unity Can Thwart Racist Immigration Reformers

LOS ANGELES, April 7 — A multi-racial group from PLP joined the immigrants’ rights march here today putting forward our communist ideas in this large coalition event. While March leaders said immigrants "should love the U.S.," marchers eagerly took 300 CHALLENGES and 2,000 leaflets calling for unity of black, Latino and all workers against the bosses’ racist attacks and widening imperialist war. Some people joined our contingent with its red flags and class-conscious chants like, "La clase obrera no tiene fronteras" ("The working class has no borders").

This event followed a March 25 pro-immigration reform activity at the Sports Arena by a coalition of various churches and the Democratic Party. A group of workers chanting "Workers’ Struggles have no borders!" while marching to the Arena were greeted at the entrance, along with hundreds of other workers and students, by PLP members distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES exposing the racist, patriotic and pro-war nature of the bosses’ immigration "reform." That same day PLP leaflets, CHALLENGES and chants for multi-racial unity flooded an immigrants’ rights demonstration at the Federal Building and a demonstration against the Minutemen who were trying to spread their racist filth on Broadway.

The Arena meeting was opened with prayers and religious songs led by rabbis, pastors, imams and Catholic priests. Then came the "heavy artillery" of politicians like U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez, co-author of the Gutierrez-Flake proposition; LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Fabian Nuñez, majority leader of the California Assembly; and countless other state senators (black, white, Latin and Asian) who, after congratulating one another, put forward "patriotism and American values" as the "American dream" of millions of immigrant workers.

They ignored the war in Iraq and the U.S. bosses’ need to control Middle-Eastern oil and the stiff competition these bosses face from their imperialist rivals in China, Russia and the European Union. All this will require millions of workers slaving in the bosses’ war industries and millions of soldiers fighting and dying in ever-widening wars.

All their hypocritical embracing of immigrants aimed to make them feel grateful and patriotic, to be willing to fill the bosses’ imperialist needs. Grateful? The bosses’ capitalist system created the horrific conditions of hunger, oppression and death that forced them to leave their families in order to survive.

As desperate immigrants flooded the U.S., the bosses closed factories, cut union jobs for many black and white workers and then hired immigrant workers in low-paying jobs in the economy’s industrial and service sectors. They then pushed racist lies, telling black workers immigrants "stole their jobs," while telling immigrant workers that black workers are "too lazy" to work, pitting slave against slave.

The rulers also flooded black neighborhoods with drugs and the gangs and violence the drug traffic requires, giving the rulers the excuse to imprison masses of black workers and youth. The bosses push this poison because they fear the explosive unity of two of the most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class.

Although the forces leading the immigration "reform" movement serve U.S. imperialists’ needs, PLP’ers enter these organizations to advocate anti-racism, internationalism and communist ideas as the basis of unity of workers, students and soldiers of all ethnic groups. This will enable PLP to lead millions in a communist revolution that will forever smash capitalism, its wars, borders, racism and wage slavery.J

Church Forum Stresses United Immigrant-Citizen Struggle

BROOKLYN, NY — "The U.S. is a country of immigrants." How many times have we all heard that phrase? The bosses’ need for immigrants and why immigrants have always been under attack was the topic at a recent forum sponsored by a social action group of a local church here.

The chapel was full. Members and friends of PL in this church are spreading pro-working class, anti-racist and communist ideas.

The first speaker laid out some of the history of immigration in the U.S. and how immigrants have always been used as cheap labor and as soldiers to fight in their wars. He discussed the struggles of immigrants and "citizens" in the 1870’s and 1880’s, and how they built unions and fights against the attacks by the industrial barons. Although these labor struggles had a limited focus and did not call for revolution, there were always socialists and revolutionaries fighting for anti-racist ideas and a better world run by the working class.

Another speaker described how people are fighting back all over the U.S. against the attacks on undocumented immigrants and how even churches were beginning to understand the need for struggle. She also talked of a growing call within churches for a sanctuary movement for undocumented immigrants, and the idea that people from the U.S. and Mexico should have a demonstration across the border to embrace and shake hands because the working class of both sides are the same.

After the speakers, one teacher wanted to know if there are any actions or events he could invite his students to attend. A number of people talked about the campaigns to create even more racism against immigrants. One case in point: a talk radio station in New Jersey has a host who calls undocumented immigrants cockroaches and pushes the idea of people turning in their neighbors. Several people suggested holding a picket line outside this station and boycotting the sponsors of the programs.

To communists, organizing a mass fight-back against these racist attacks is vital. More importantly, we must fight to win workers to communism. Some people in the hall wore a button that read "workers have no borders". We need to smash the borders created by the bosses. It’s important that we point out how much the wealth and power of the rulers of the U.S. (or any industrialized nation) is based on constant sources of cheap labor and how they try to keep up the illusion that workers across borders should be divided. Only a working class armed with communist ideas can end the plight of immigrants and all workers around the world.J

LETTERS

PL’er Carries Red Politics Job to Job

I’m an industrial worker who has participated in many class struggles, including two very militant strikes at the Croydon plant here in Colombia. The reformist hacks betrayed our struggles, enabling the bosses to shut the plant without paying workers any severance.

Alter two years being unemployed, I started working at Empacor, a paper processing export company with 400 workers. The plant operates seven days a week, eight to twelve hours a day. Workers are totally alienated and oppressed by the bosses.

Making friends with whom I had ideological struggles, I made communist politics primary in explaining our exploitation. Workers listened and began reading DESAFIO. Some bosses’ stooges saw me as a bit different from other workers and squealed. I was fired.

Now I’m a watchman of machinery used to pave and open highways. We work outdoors without any protection from the weather and no place to take care of physical needs. It’s very dangerous since any thief can shoot or kill us. There are more and more people like me, working without any real social benefits. Thousands of workers earning miserable wages clean these highways of stuff drivers throw away. But now the government wants to take away even these miserable jobs and contract them out to multi-national cleaning companies.

These experiences have just strengthened my desire to fight for a world without bosses, to fight for PLP’s communist politics. It won’t be easy, but with patience and perseverance we are building our international party to fight for political power and defeat the bosses’ fascist dictatorship with the dictatorship of the working class.

A PLP’er, Colombia

Seek Multi-Racial Unity Over Stabbing

It’s a big challenge to teach at our school, but the students’ political potential is great. Little by little we’re winning some students to the left.

Almost one year ago to the day, our students had to face riot police at school after walking out against HR 4437 (an anti-immigrant bill). From that struggle, two ex-students are now taking a more active role in the Party. They haven’t joined yet, but they’ve attended every study group since and have stood up for communist ideas in their classes. Another student and some of his friends are now leading a school club that began last year. Some are interested in joining the study group.

Although there’s progress, winning these students to communism means engaging in struggles against the fascist nature of capitalism. For example, recently a student was stabbed to death on our school campus. Needless to say, this was a very tragic incident; students and teachers were horrified. But as usual, the bosses used the tragedy to bring even more fascism down on our heads. The media portrayed it as a "racially motivated" killing. The truth is the two students were from rival gangs (many different gangs exist around this school). Soon afterwards we realized why the bosses’ media pushed that idea: the mayor wants more cops on the streets, for a 10,000 total.

Within our school, they want metal detectors, uniforms, more security guards and school police. The administration pushed aside students who wished to create a memorial for the slain student. These bosses’ agents feared "violent repercussions." Unfortunately the students then went to some very nationalist teachers who viewed it as a "Latino struggle" as opposed to a multi-racial one against fascism. Others have stood up for multi-racial unity. The school club wants to confront these nationalist ideas in the continuing struggle to show we are all one working class.

Red Teacher

‘Fair Wage’ Impossible Under Profit System

A recent conversation with a fellow worker revolved around society and particularly our salary being very unfavorable to the workers, as well as the horrible conditions faced under capitalism. I explained the need for workers to be organized and to fight for communist revolution.

I told him up front that we must eliminate wages but I failed to note that in a capitalist economy workers’ labor is a commodity, like all other products. We workers sell our labor for far less than it’s worth. In a society based on profit, there’s a price on all commodities. Bosses profit off our labor while paying us a pittance. But we need to get past the idea of fighting for a "fair wage" (what the unions say they want) to get to the point of fighting for a system without money and wages.

It’s difficult for many workers to conceive of a society based on distribution according to need, and without money, and it’s tough to explain, especially because it’s never been put into practice and we can’t describe exactly how it would work.

However, it’s an important first step to explain Marx’s analysis of surplus value, that workers work only part of the day to produce enough to pay for their subsistence and the rest goes to the boss. That explains why workers can never make a fair wage under the profit system.

It’s essential to have such discussions, to win workers away from illusions about capitalism, on the road to winning them to the necessity of fighting for communist revolution and to abolish the wage system once and for all.

Red Ironworker

Mexico Vies With China For Lowest Wages

Mexico’s rulers have found an "answer" to competition from China in the cheap labor-cost field: still lower wages. A report by Huberto Juárez, of the School of Economics of the Autonomous Univ. of Puebla (reported in La Jornada, 4/7) shows auto parts, electronics and home appliances maquiladoras (assembly plants for exports) have returned to Mexico, but away from the traditional border states to even lower-wage areas in Southern Mexico. Huge international corporations like Delphi and Yazaki are profiting from this.

Boss-controlled union hacks, along with cooperative local governments have helped keep wages down. The companies have not only moved south from Ciudad Juárez (across from El Paso) — the center of the maquiladoras — but also from big cities to small towns and rural areas to get cheaper labor. Since 2002, wages have declined in these industries and are now below the already low national minimum wage.

This again emphasizes the importance of building an international red-led workers’ movement. With such a massive movement, workers could fight multi-national companies from Detroit to Cadiz, Spain (Delphi is closing operations in both areas) to anywhere in the world where they move searching for cheaper labor. In the heat of these struggles, we can win workers worldwide to the communist idea of smashing wage slavery, which means fighting for a communist society where production serves the needs of our class instead of a few bosses.

An Internationalist Worker

Boss ‘Abuse" Cry Over ‘Sick-out’ Spurs Repeat

Recently, at a public institution where I work, the cleaners have been overworked due to severe short-staffing. While the workers complained, this didn’t stop management from heaping on the work. Needing a concrete plan to fight the bosses, we decided to collectively call in sick one day. Naturally, the head boss didn’t take kindly to this job action and screamed about our "abuse" of sick leave, so we did it again.

The action was truly one of class struggle, but no amount of job actions will change the nature of capitalism! The bosses worldwide are in such fierce competition that they must cut budgets everywhere and stick the burden on the working class, either through increased unemployment or intense speed-up. Our long-term strategy should be to fight for communism, even as we wage daily war on the bosses. While we haven’t won yet, we know the future looks red!

A Red Worker

Mali Worker Pans ‘Bamako’

[Here are some quick comments on the Bamako movie from a friend from Mali.]

Yeah, I saw the movie in Bamako. My objection at the time was that the theme was too abstract. I was expecting to see evidence exposing the IMF/World Bank and other donor countries woven into daily live stories of the actors. For example, how does an ordinary person feel the effect of the structural adjustment policy? [privatization and drastic cuts in social projects] Did it result in family dislocation (immigration for example) or poorer nutrition for the kids?

A Washington, D.C. Comrade

Johnstown, PA Protests the War

JOHNSTOWN, PA., March 18 — This city is widely known for the 1889 flood, caused by a dam bursting on hunting and fishing club property owned by robber baron Andrew Carnegie, drowning over 2,000 people. But in the last several years it has been the site of a series of anti-war demonstrations by local residents.

On this 4th anniversary of the start of the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq, people held a spirited protest near a Wal-Mart store, carrying signs reading: "Out of Iraq!"; "Stop the War on All Workers!"; "This War Is Wrong!"; "Impeach Bush" and other anti-war sentiments.

The Citizens for Social Responsibility (CSR) organized the action. It has been holding weekly protests against the war since January 2003, two of them at the office of Rep. John Murtha, who "represents" the district.

The initial activities of the CSR, formed in 1987, protested U.S. aid to the terrorist Contras who were waging war against the nationalist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua; then against the first Gulf War in 1991, as well as demonstrating against Bush and Cheney campaign stops here in 2004 (at which CHALLENGE was distributed).

Professor Jim Scofield, a CSR founder, said the group will continue its weekly protests until U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq. Forty residents had demonstrated last year on the war’s third anniversary. He said the group had been receiving more support than occurred during Gulf War I. Although the CSR is a reform organization, some of its members are regular CHALLENGE readers and the paper was distributed at today’s event.

While the real solution to this imperialist war is to destroy its source, capitalism, through communist revolution, it’s a positive development that people in Johnstown — once a thriving steel town, but now an economically depressed area — are out on the streets publicly voicing their opposition to this imperialist war. This opens the door to spreading anti-imperialist and communist ideas by local PLP members.

French Bosses Answer to Youth Rebellion: ‘Draft ‘em!’

PARIS, FRANCE, March 16 — Just like some U.S. liberal politicians want to impose "national service" to sneak in a military draft, French bosses are planning to prepare for the wider wars growing from sharpening imperialist rivalry. Both U.S. and French bosses face a big problem — motivating people to make the sacrifices war requires. That’s what’s behind the "obligatory civic service" issue in the presidential election campaign here.

The Catholic weekly magazine "La Vie" launched this idea in late 2005 in an appeal signed by 500 parliament members, many "personalities" and 30 associations. This initiative’s leaders are Max Armanet, former "La Vie" editorial director, and Pierre Morel, former French ambassador to China, and later to the Vatican.

(It should be noted that during the 2005 uprising in the working-class housing projects, French president Jacques Chirac promised voluntary civic service with places for 50,000 young people. However, by December 2006 there were only 6,000 places, and only 2,500 youth had volunteered. The "defense second chance" program, supposedly to "straighten out" errant youth through military service, had only enrolled 1,000. Armanet and Morel have just revived a moribund idea.)

Armanet and Morel defended their idea in "Le Monde" (3/15). Political and social crises, they say, have marked the past five years, including the Nov. 2005, uprising and the mass protests against the worsening of working conditions for youth in the proposed "CPE" contract (voiding job protection).

They propose to "solve" this "lack of civic spirit" with obligatory civic service, responding to the widespread feeling that French society is split by a "social fracture" that needs to be healed, as Chirac promised to do during the 2002 presidential election campaign.

Yes, society is divided into two antagonistic classes, the bosses who own and control the means of production, and the workers who own only their labor power. To maintain itself in power, the ruling class nurtures racism and sexism to divide the working class.

But many don’t yet see this. They vaguely feel something’s rotten in French society, and bosses’ servants like Armanet and Morel have a miraculous snake oil to sell — a mixture of nationalism and mysticism, a call for a "moral revolution." These are exactly the ingredients of fascism in the first half of the 20th century.

In "Le Monde," Armanet and Morel say civic service "is the collective realization of solidarity in a society that is threatening to break up, it is a work of integration that draws not only upon youth but also upon the whole of society in a moral renewal,…taking up the transmission of values that is the duty of each generation."

They cite a March 2006 poll showing that 90% of France generally, and 86% of young people, favor some form of civic service. It’s not surprising that people generally, particularly young people, want to help capitalism’s outcasts — "the elderly, the isolated, the illiterate, the marginalized, and the handicapped." It’s also not surprising that, with a 22% youth unemployment rate (not counting two-thirds of those aged 15-24, who are students), young people want to do something constructive with their lives.

Communists certainly favor working-class solidarity — mutual aid among all workers, who form society’s overwhelming majority and produce all value. But Armanet and Morel want to channel this desire into a fascist system to keep the bosses in power.

In a March Internet forum, Armanet offered "carrots" to win youth to obligatory civic service: a driver’s license, job skills and state payments into a retirement scheme. Government jobs would require previous civic service. Youth would get 350 euros a month pocket money.

When one young person complained this was far below the poverty level, Armanet answered that young people shouldn’t demand any pay, that self-sacrifice is necessary to create a spirit of brotherhood and to provide a "rite of passage" to adulthood.

Armanet’s and Morel’s ideas are dangerous because all the major presidential candidates are committed to implementing civic service. (Next: the candidates’ fascist programs.)

REDEYE On The News

Army double-crosses Iraq vets

The individual stories are hard to bear. Soldiers denied disability pay because Army doctors say they’re not wounded, they’re retarded; soldiers denied benefits because their heart attacks are ruled "pre-existing conditions"; soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder being assessed as merely neurotic.

"They started asking me questions about my mom and my dad getting divorced," one soldier told Salon. "That was the last thing on my mind when I’m thinking about people getting fragged and burned bodies being pulled out of vehicles. They asked me if I missed my wife. Well, (bleep) yeah, I miss my wife. That is not the (beeping) problem here. Did you ever put your foot through a 5-year-old’s skull?"

Every last one of these soldiers, remember, volunteered . . .(Arkansas Demorcrat-Gazette, 3/11)

Cops do big snoop on activists

Undercover New York police officers spent more than a year spying on would-be protesters ahead of the 2004 Republican national convention, monitoring church groups and street theatre troupes that had no intention of breaking the law, it was reported last week.

The scope of the inquiry, long suspected by activists, saw officers infiltrating groups opposed to George Bush, or monitoring their activities in web chatrooms, and filing daily reports on their activities, the New York Times reported.

….[T]he investigation quickly spiraled into surveillance of enviromentalists, anti-war groups and even three local elected officials.(GW, 4/5)

Afghan Taliban back, and worse

"Nowadays in Helmand Province the Taliban is winning," said Haji Mir Wali, a member of [the Afghan] Parliament from the southern province of Helmand. "Ninety percent of the area is under the control of the Taliban, and they are imposing their strict rule again."

Outside of the provincial capital, he said, shops in Helmand don’t dare sell music, men who trim their beards are threatened with death, and schools have closed for boys as well as girls. "It’s worse now than it was in the Taliban’s time." he said. (NYT, 4/1)

U.S. pullout? Over CEO dead bodies

What would happen in Iraq if American troops suddenly withdrew tomorrow . . .?

The real chaos would break out in America. Stocks in Haliburton, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon, and other defense firms would plummet, with layoffs in the millions.

Silicon Valley would panic . . . .

If an Iraqi pullout occurred tomorrow, you’d have to dodge CEOs leaping off tall buildings. . . .

And then there’s the oil, you know. (Pythian Press, 3/21)

Desertions up: Troops ‘worn out’

Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years, resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time . . . Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, military lawyers and mental health experts said.

"They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out . . ." (NYT, 4/9)

Young Black and Latin men ‘pipeline to prison’

"[For] young men of color, American society has created a "pipeline" to prison.

"We expel them from school now at the droop of a hat through zero tolerance programs . . . When they have substance abuse problems or other types of challenges, from the standpoint of behavior and mental health, they go to jail instead of treatment. We’re warehousing our young people in jails where they learn to be criminals."

Minorities’ high school graduation and college-going levels are abysmally low. Imprisonment of blacks and Hispanics is a major factor in America’s shift from 204,000 prison inmates in 1973 to a world-leading 2.2 million in 2003. (Washington Post, 3/18)

Did US provoke Iran on Brits?

In January President George Bush sent a second carrier battle group to the Gulf region; over the past few weeks this has been [sic] conducting exercises close to Iranian territorial waters. US Patriot missiles are now also in place close to Iran. Also in January, US-Iraqi forces seized six Iranians, described by Iran as diplomats but by the US as member of the Revolutionary Guards Quds brigade. They still have not been freed….

The capture of the 15 British naval personnel has to be seen in this context. In Britain the capture is widely seen as a provocation. But when it is placed side by side with the US actions against Iran this year, the question is: who is provoking whom? (GW 4/12)

Is that a threat or a promise?

….The Iraqis are being warned that American patience may run out. They should be so lucky. (NYT, 3/22)

PL’ers Helped Defeat Nationalist Splitters in SDS

SDS — Part V

The PLP and WSA (Worker-Student Alliance) contingent had come to the Convention proposing a multi-pronged fight against racism. Entitled "Less Talk-More Action-Fight Racism!" it called for intensifying the fight against university complicity with the Vietnam War and broadening it to include campaigns against racist courses and racist university expansion into working class-communities. The proposal also called for allying with campus workers.

Key to its practical program was the political analysis that racism is a class question. PLP vigorously argued that workers of all backgrounds and nationalities have common interests and enemies, and that therefore the all-class unity promoted by nationalism undermines anti-racist struggle. These were the principles PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance hoped to debate during workshop time at the 1969 SDS Convention.

As noted previously, the SDS "national collective" had managed to block workshops. The debate about the fight against racism would now move to a plenary session. Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) speakers offered no program, defended no practice, proposed no self-criticism. Their main approach, represented by Mike Klonsky, was to bait PLP for "not believing in the self-determination of oppressed peoples." PLP countered with examples of PLP-WSA practice and struggle in anti-racist campaigns on many campuses and by offering points from the "Less Talk-More Action" proposal as suggestions for moving forward.

Many had come to the Convention with no particular ideological commitment, either to RYM or the WSA. They wanted leadership that would advance the fight against the war and racism. By the end of the racism panel, it had become clear that the "national collective" at best provided no leadership at all or, worse yet, acted against workers’ interests, as it had at Columbia, by blocking the anti-expansion fight in favor of reactionary "student power" demands.

By the Convention’s second day, the "national collective" was getting wobbly; its leaders began squabbling among themselves.

In an ultimate act of racist opportunism, they used the Black Panther Party (BPP) to bail them out. The BPP was a complex phenomenon. PLP supported its militancy and courage. PLP also unequivocally opposed the racist attacks, including murder, which the bosses, the cops and the FBI had launched against Panthers. But the BPP made two deadly errors, which had to be criticized. They supported nationalism, which had proved deadly to working-class movements. They also engaged in suicidal adventurism, rejecting a base-building approach to mass organizing. PLP made its position clear on these questions, adding that the best way to oppose racist attacks on the Panthers was to organize growing, militant struggles against racism, outlined in its "Less Talk-More Action" proposal.

RYM leaders wanted no frank, honest debate. Instead, they called on Panther officials, who then addressed the Convention again, with an "urgent message." It lasted nearly an hour and attacked PLP, including threats. It also included a disgusting pro-capitalist reference to women, that "their position in the movement is prone," which appalled the Convention. Essentially, Klonsky, Dohrn, & Co. were using the BPP as a shield for their own opportunism and political bankruptcy.

Backed by a well-prepared — and necessary — security squad, the PLP student organizer took the mike to explain PL’s position on issues, including "community control" of police, nationalism, imperialism and, most importantly, the way forward for struggle against the rulers. He attacked RYM leaders’ gross opportunism, asserting that their politics had been defeated.

Someone suggested resuming the discussion about how to fight racism. Bernadine Dohrn took the podium. Refusing to answer PLP’s arguments or discuss the fight against racism, she declared: "It’s clear we can’t work in the same group as an organization that hates the Black Panthers and opposes self-determination." Amidst a thunderous chant of "NO SPLIT, NO SPLIT" from most of the room, Dohrn, Klonsky, & Co. led about one-third of the plenary into an adjoining room.

While RYM met in closed session, whipping up support for the idea of ousting PLP, the Convention continued, finally holding workshops and discussing "Less Talk-More Action," as well as the war and the fight against male chauvinism.

Finally, RYM returned. Dohrn launched into a lengthy, incoherent diatribe culminating with the announcement that PLP and its supporters were "expelled" from SDS. The absurdity of this performance turned initial intimidation into its opposite. People began laughing at her. No more than one-third of the room walked out with her. RYM’s ploy had fallen flat.

The next day, the Convention continued in the Coliseum, passing resolutions about fighting racism and male chauvinism, as well as a statement on the walkout and a pledge to continue sharpening on-campus struggle. RYM, meeting in a church under tightly-controlled security, passed no on-campus programs at all. Its first major post-walkout achievement was a faction fight that quickly turned the SDS split into yet another split, this time between one group that allied with the Chinese "Communist" Party that was then hopping into bed with racist murderer Nixon, and another, that would soon become the petty terrorist "Weathermen."

Objectively, the splitting of SDS sabotaged the movement against imperialist war and racism. Consciously or otherwise, the RYM factionalists were helping the U.S. ruling class. But the struggle against the war and racism had to continue. The fall term of the 1969-70 school year would challenge PLP, the WSA and the remainder of SDS to advance under increasing political hardship.

(Next: The November 1969 anti-war demonstration in Washington and the Campus Worker-Student Alliance.)

The ABC’s of Wages, Poverty and Class Consciousness

The battle to keep an understanding of class society fresh in our minds is constant. Ideas that hide it continually bombard us, with name tags like sexism, racism, nationalism and so on. I teach Economics in an inner-city high school. My students are mainly black; a couple have parents who are Mexican immigrants. There is some shared experience among them, but the trend is to say, "Your Blues ain’t like mine." The danger lies in taking the next step: "My Blues are caused by you!"

Recently we looked at the wage system, showing how our idea of a "good" or "bad" wage centered on what it takes to feed, house and clothe a family of four. The Living Wage movement provides us with lots of stats. We also compared the connection between the average factory wage and the official poverty line.

Discovering that most wages (and salaries too) showed a real connection to the poverty line enabled us to show how the wage system actually creates a common interest among wage and salary workers. We are all connected to the official poverty line. We relate our "comfort" or "security" in economic terms to how far above that poverty line our wage or salary places us. In short the poverty line is the benchmark. The wage system unites us as dependent on our wages to survive and simultaneously divides us by making some kinds of work "more worthy" of higher pay. It makes us a class and dulls our awareness of "class."

Next we discussed the U.S. ruling class’s decisions in the 1980’s to lower the working class’s standard of living. If we were running a capitalist state, we asked, how best could we lower the wages of most workers?

Lowering the wage of the lowest-paid worker, it turns out, sets off a chain reaction throughout the whole wage system. We created a model. Imagine a group of workers so desperate for any type of work they would work for less than $7.50 per hour. Over time they would replace the $7.50-per-hour group who would now find themselves jobless and desperate. Over time they would replace the $10-an-hour group since (having worked for $7.50/hr) they would be willing to work for less than $10/hour,and so on. (Of course, there are counter-vailing forces, like skill level, but in general the chain reaction works.)

Having established how lowering the lowest wage becomes an extremely efficient way of lowering the whole working class’s standard of living, we began to catalogue the different policies introduced. "End Welfare as we know it" attacked all workers, white, black and Latino. "Retire retirement," the weakening of pensions and benefits forces more and more retirees to supplement their incomes by flipping burgers. "Mass incarceration" ousts mainly black and Latino young men/fathers from being wage-earners, forcing single mothers into a desperate search for family survival. Prison labor itself directly robs communities of jobs. Finally, mass immigration, workers fleeing imperialist-caused starvation and death squads, adds more desperate workers to the mix.

Then we stood back and again took the ruling class’s view. De-valuing the whole wage/salary system is a risky business. It can build class consciousness, an angry one at that. What would they do? Play the race card, we concluded, play the sexist card, play the nationalist card. Citizen against immigrant; black against white; anything to tear down the growth of class consciousness. "We will not be divided by class," George Bush, Sr. said when President and Clinton followed him by "Ending Welfare as we know it."

"They are playing us," one student summed it up when the class ended.

‘300’ Movie Uses Ancient Past to Promote Future Wars

The distinction between movie fiction and the ugly reality of the War in Iraq blurs in the box-office hit film 300. While the film may be set in the ancient past, Hollywood has released the film in the year 2007 on purpose. The action scenes have drawn millions to the theaters by employing the latest in computer-generated special effects. Yet the political effects of the film are the ones CHALLENGE readers must be on the lookout for. The ideas that the ruling class hopes the film will teach workers are:

• Loyalty, bravery and honor are best fostered in a fully militarized society.
• White soldiers fighting for the rule of law, order and democracy ought to be proud to slaughter thousands of Middle Eastern fighters.
• War is impossible for a society to win when only a fraction of its citizens support the effort.
• The role of women is to support men in times of war (both men and women are sexually objectified by the film).
• When you are defeated with a smaller number of troops the solution is to send more the next time (this point is particularly useful for the Democrats’ war plans).

The main racist theme of the movie is that the evil "Persians"(now Iran) are the enemies of the Greek good guys. With U.S. rulers weighing plans for future wars, it is no wonder the release of 300 was met with protests in Iran. The main Iranian national newspaper ran the headline "300 versus 70 million" in a reference to the population of Iran today.

While the Iranian newspapers ultimately serve Iranian bosses, U.S. workers could learn from the awareness of Iranian workers in this particular case. We ought to express outrage whenever the bosses produce such racist pro-war culture. Even if the next invasion is five years off, box-office hits like 300 leave a lasting impression as they are recycled through cable TV and on DVD.

It is important to be aware of this film, but this reviewer is hard pressed to suggest that any reader of CHALLENGE actually pay money and sit through it in a theater. The sex is weird, the violence is overdone and that is on top of the horrible politics we can expect from any contemporary Hollywood film on the Middle East.

Readers interested in seeing a heroic battle from the Greco-Roman world would do much better to rent or buy a copy of the classic film Spartacus, which tells the story of a massive slave uprising that shook the Roman Empire to its foundations in 100 AD. Ultimately however, the only solution is to create our own movies and culture through workers’ powerJ