- Fighting Racism, Imperialism . . . Industrial Workers are the key
- Black and White Shipbuilders:
SHUT DOWN RACIST WARMAKER, - OBAMA & CO.: MASTERS OF DECEIT
- Class Struggle Rocking Europe
- Students, Teachers Beat Attack on New Orleans Volunteers
- Students Meet CIA Recruiters HEAD ON
- Black, Latino, White Workers,Youth March vs. Racist Police Terror
- U.S. Exploiters Can Always Top Themselves
- PL'ers to Anti-War Marchers: `It's Not Just Bush, It's Capitalism!'
D.C.:Vets-Workers Unity A Must - NYC: Youth Lead, Link
Racist Terror At Home, Abroad - L.A.: `Iraq, Oaxaca, New Orleans;
Smash Racist War Machine!' - Bosses' Crisis Leading to Cal Faculty Strike
- 30,000 Healthcare Workers Reject War Cuts
- Immigrant Workers Back Northrop, Airbus Strikers
- Russia, Romania: Strikers Challenge Ford, Renault
- Renault Workers Win in Romania
- Chiquita Banana Gets Slap on Wrist for Funding Death Squads
- `I was a racketeer for capitalism...'
- LETTERS
- Paraguay's Lugo Shows His True Colors. . . .
and They're Not Red - Colombia: Bush Visit Brings More Murders
and Arrests - Murder of Politicians A Fight Among
Drug Dealers - Hospital Workers Spread PL Flyer
- Film Raps Mali Capitalism-- But Offers No Solution
- How Will Communism Improve Workers' Lives?
- Ex-Sailor Backs Shipyard Strikers
- Paraguay's Lugo Shows His True Colors. . . .
- REDEYE
- PL Worker-Student Alliance Trumps SDS Right-wingers
SDS: PART V - MARK RUDD: FBI's Little Helper
- Speculators Profit, Workers Pay the Bill
- Mortgage Collapse Spreading. . .
- CAL Teachers Oppose Imperialist Wars, Build Unity of Workers and Soldiers
Fighting Racism, Imperialism . . . Industrial Workers are the key
"There is no black and white here, just brothers and sisters." So said the Northup Grumman shipyard strikers (see adjoining article) who welcomed young students to Pascagoula, Miss. This multi-racial class outlook is essential to answering the escalating racist attacks on the working class.
From the 7,000 striking shipbuilders in Pascagoula to the 40,000 European Airbus workers that have struck to save 10,000 jobs, these attacks stem from the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry that is leading to wider wars. No workers will be spared. From Germany to the Gulf, from Paris to Pascagoula, the international working class faces the same enemy, same fight. The only answer to imperialism's endless attacks and wars is communist revolution.
Today, fast-charging emerging imperialist competitors are building their war industries. The Chinese government plans to build large commercial jets by 2020. They're testing a regional jet (70-105 passengers). Airbus is building an assembly plant in Yanliang and the Chinese are partners in the European global positioning satellite (GPS) project, Galileo. In January, they completed development of their Jian-10 advanced fighter jet, aircraft engines and air-to-air missiles "soaring to the top levels of aerospace defense technology." (Associated Press, 1/05)
Russia consolidated its aerospace industry under state control last year, and made its own fighter-jet alliance with Italy and France. Airbus gave them a 5% stake in the new A350 passenger jet. Everybody is beating a path to the Russian aerospace engineering centers -- considered among the world's best. "The most influential man in global commercial-aviation said that Boeing and Airbus should expect serious competition to emerge from China and Russia [in the next decade]." (Seattle Times, 3/14)
On another front, China wants to build a blue-water Navy to defend their worldwide oil sources. Their commercial shipbuilding advances make their plans credible. China is now the number two or three commercial shipbuilder, depending on who's doing the counting, and may soon become number one. The U.S. isn't even in the running.
As the rising imperialists flex their muscles, all bosses must wring every last cent out of the working class to compete. U.S. bosses have launched a full assault, especially on the industrial working class, in their bid to remain top dog. These attacks spell fascism, and will finance bigger wars on the horizon.
Racism, the Imperialists' Tool
Racism is the cutting edge of all these attacks. Boeing sent 10,000 jobs to low-cost subcontractors employing mostly Latino immigrant workers in Southern California and Texas. Maine's Bath Works, Pascagoula shipyards' main competitor, pays near $30/hour. In Pascagoula, ravaged by racism, workers receive about $18. In New Orleans, shipyards have replaced the super-exploited black workers -- and white workers -- with Latino "guest workers" at $8/hour. A similar pattern must be developing as Airbus and VW cut tens of thousands of jobs across Europe.
No union leader on either side of the Atlantic will fight for anti-racist, anti-imperialist internationalism. Ultimately they all fight for their bosses. Witness the spectacle of the U.S. auto industry as the UAW arranges for the destruction of over 70,000 union jobs to save Ford and GM. As Lenin noted during World War I, when war approaches these "International" union bosses run to the tents of their masters.
No serious resistance can be mounted until workers consciously fight racism and begin to embrace communist ideas as their own. No matter how militant the struggle for economic gains, workers worldwide will remain chained to their exploiters unless we unite super-exploited black, Latin, Asian and white workers in the U.S., Arab, Turkish, African and white workers across Europe, to lead the whole industrial working class. This fight against racism applies to Asia, Africa and Latin America as well.
We must organize support for the Northrop Grumman and Airbus strikers among all workers, students and soldiers (see page 1). Raising money for food, letters, petitions, resolutions and demonstrations of strike support around our anti-racist, communist politics are the order of the day. The current anti-war movement is aimed at one or another presidential candidate in 2008. But PLP relies on the industrial working class to lead the struggle against racism and imperialist war. Stepping forward in this moment of class struggle can help build our revolutionary forces in key places to end this imperialist nightmare with communist revolution.
Black and White Shipbuilders:
SHUT DOWN RACIST WARMAKER,
PASCAGOULA, MS March 25 -- "We're on strike for the younger workers and their families," was how a few strikers at the Ingalls shipyard explained their fight against Northrop Grumman, which owns the giant yard. Almost 7,000 workers, black and white, men and women, have been on strike since March 8 against the largest employer in Mississippi.
This strike has been billed as the first "post-Katrina strike," in that housing and other costs have doubled in this area, which was devastated by the hurricane. A gallon of milk costs over $4.00. The wages at the shipyards in the Deep South are about half of those at the Bath shipyard in Maine, largely due to the intense racism in the South. This shows how racism is used to attack ALL workers. Workers on the picket line reject this racism saying, "Ain't no black and white on this line, just brothers and sisters!"
To underline the point, many displaced shipbuilders in New Orleans, black workers who were scattered around the country, have been replaced by Latino immigrant "guest workers" for as little as $8.00 an hour! These workers live in small trailers, 8 -10 workers to a trailer, in fenced-off trailer parks in the middle of nowhere. New workers are rotated in every several months as "old" workers are sent home. There have been several protests, especially after one worker was killed, and attempts at unity between guest workers and black workers.
This strike, like Airbus strikers in Europe who are fighting the layoffs of 10,000 aerospace workers, striking auto workers in Belgium, France, Russia and Romania (see page 2, 5) and the loss of 100,000 GM, Ford, Chrysler and Delphi jobs in the U.S., all reflect the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry as bosses in every country are forced to attack workers more and more to stay afloat. This life-and-death struggle between bosses leads to more and bigger wars for control of markets, cheap labor and resources, especially oil. The Northrop Grumman and Airbus workers are vital to the bosses' ability to wage war, and the key to stopping these imperialist warmakers dead in their tracks. Industrial workers around the world, armed with communist ideas and leading an international PLP, can lead the struggle for communist revolution.
Northrop Grumman is one of the largest defense contractors in the U.S., raking in billions in profits from the war in Iraq. They received almost $3 billion from the Navy and FEMA to rebuild the shipyard after Hurricane Katrina, yet some strikers are still living in FEMA trailers. Northrop Grumman received $101 an hour per worker to clean up the shipyard, but the workers only received the $18 an hour they normally make. The company kept the other $83 an hour.
There are 12 unions on strike, the largest being the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 733. The Pascagoula Metal Trades Council represents the other 11 unions, including from carpenters and pipe fitters to the IAM. In February, 90 percent of the workers rejected a company proposal for a four-year contract with no pay raises and increased health insurance costs, after stealing almost $100 million from the workers' health fund. In March the company proposed basically the same deal, and again 90 percent of the workers voted "NO!" This time, they walked out. On March 12, more than 2,000 strikers marched more than six miles from the shipyard to Pascagoula.
Three students from Chicago were received with open arms when they drove down to Pascagoula, bringing food and support to the strikers. After spending time with the workers, in their homes and on the picket lines, they left with a better understanding of how the bosses use racism to grease their war machine, and that multi-racial unity is the key to smashing racism.
While mostly white students were marching to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, a student told the strikers that even though they weren't striking against the war, shutting down one of the biggest warmakers, leaving an unfinished Navy destroyer and two freighters sitting silently, was the most significant anti-war action in the country. The workers hadn't thought about it like that, but most liked the idea. One guy started yelling that he was for the war, and other strikers, black and white, told him to go home. The vast majority of strikers they spoke with, including vets and those with family in the military, opposed the Iraq war.
The Northrop Grumman workers are striking for us all. They are showing the unity of black and white workers in a period of growing racism. They have shut down a warmaker in the midst of war. They are walking the line at a time when hundreds of thousands of union jobs in auto, steel, aerospace, the airlines and more are being wiped out with barely a whimper. They need our support.
Take up collections of food and money. Sign and circulate statements of solidarity. Send them to: IBEW Local 733, 2518 Market Street, Pascagoula, MS 39563.
[For information about the food bank, call Tweety at (228) 249-1600]
OBAMA & CO.: MASTERS OF DECEIT
Barack Obama's lifelong service to the biggest U.S. capitalists belies his "man-of-the-people" image and provides an important lesson on the dialectical category of appearance and essence. Examining Obama's career through the lens of class analysis shatters his charismatic false front and exposes a sworn enemy of workers. Despite his popular appeal, Obama has always worked for the main wing of U.S. rulers, helping them implement the police state and widening wars they need.
Fresh out of Columbia University in 1984, Obama landed a job as writer-researcher at Business International Corporation (BIC) in New York. At the time, BIC was helping Big Oil and Wall Street battle the Reagan White House over imperialist policy. For the benefit of Chiquita Banana, Dole and other U.S. agri-businesses, the Reagan gang was arming Nicaragua's anti-government Contras (and the fascist Salvadoran regime) and threatening an invasion of the region. U.S. banks and oil companies, however, needed to shift the focus to the Middle East. The construction of a Mid-East invasion fleet, set in motion by Democrat President Carter, was well under way. So with Obama's assistance, BIC churned out report after report warning that "what Reagan is doing [in Central America] is not good for business." ("Power and Profit," by Ronald Cox, University Press of Kentucky, 1994) In a small but significant way, Obama's scribbling contributed to the exposure of the Iran-Contra scandal, which turned the Pentagon's gun-sights toward the Persian Gulf.
NEXT, STINT AS COMMUNITY
MISLEADER
Having proved his class loyalty at BIC, Obama moved the next year to Chicago, where he launched the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a smoke-and-mirrors operation designed to stifle working-class rebellion by masking capitalism's brutality with liberal illusions of "progress." Funded by the Gameliel Foundation, which gets millions from the rulers' Ford Foundation, Obama's DCP offered "job training" and "college prep" on Chicago's South Side. This was part of the rulers' "carrot and stick approach," the "carrot" being Obama's role, to help hide the "stick," the soaring unemployment and imprisonment among the area's mostly black workers, who also faced torture and murder from city cops.(See CHALLENGE, 1/17/07)
Three years of rubbing elbows with the poor were enough for Obama. In 1988, he was off to Harvard Law School. But unlike most of his classmates, who went on to represent corporations directly, Obama decided he could be of more use to the ruling class by deceiving workers in the greatest charade in history, the U.S. electoral system.
After Harvard, Obama started Illinois Project Vote, which registered 150,000 new voters for the 1992 election. Voting gives workers the illusion that they have a say in a system which actually is a dictatorship of the capitalists. Obama threw his own hat into the ring in 1996, running successfully for state senator. He proved very adept at leading black workers -- whom the system oppresses most severely -- down the dead-end road to the ballot box. Eight years later, Obama won the U.S. Senate seat he hopes to use as a springboard to the White House.
In 1993, Obama had joined the Chicago Law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he remains "of counsel." Under the pretense of assisting workers, the firm specializes in voting rights. Its founder and chief partner, Judson H. Miner, was once corporation counsel for the City of Chicago, and, as such, defended rotten schools, hospitals and housing, as well as killer cops. Obama's own love affair with these murderers is blossoming. Obama's website boasts, "He supported the reauthorization of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program in the 109th Congress and supports efforts to increase COPS funding." Begun by Clinton in 1994, "COPS" has put an additional 118,000 armed, anti-working-class thugs on the street. Many perform "intelligence duties" like spying on war protestors.
JFK'S IMPERIALIST LIAR-IN-CHIEF SEES PROMISE IN OBAMA
For his skill in hoodwinking workers, Obama has earned the praise of a grandmaster of deceit, JFK advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen. After introducing Obama at a recent New York fund-raiser as the only candidate he believed could restore the nation's credibility around the world, Sorensen gushed, "`Obama, like JFK, is such a natural." (New York Times, 3/10/07) For the past four decades Sorensen has, with the liberal media's help, spread the lie (still useful to the liberals) that JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam early. This is the same Sorensen who wrote the imperialist manifesto JFK mouthed at his inauguration, "Let every nation know,...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." (For "liberty" read "U.S. imperialism.")
The modern descendant of the JFK-Vietnam falsehood says that Obama and fellow liberals oppose the Iraq war. Essence, in the form of voting records, once again trumps the mere appearance of campaign promises. [See box.] Obama is as phony as the House Democrats who vow to bring the troops home, while they vote the bloodthirsty Pentagon every penny it wants and more. Falling for what politicians say or how they look is a grave error. Getting past liberals' appearance and attacking their warmaking, capitalist essence, is an important step towards understanding the world in order to change it.
OBAMA'S REAL `WAR RECORD'
(Quoted directly from the Boston Globe, 3/20/07):
Campaigning for the Illinois Senate seat in 2003 and 2004, Obama scolded Bush for invading Iraq and vowed he would "unequivocally" vote against an additional $87 billion to pay for it. Yet since taking office in January 2005, he has voted for four separate war appropriations, totaling more than $300 billion. Last June, Obama voted no to Senator John F. Kerry's proposal to remove most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007, warning that an "arbitrary deadline" could "compound" the Bush administration's mistake. And now he's voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution that stated the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq.
Class Struggle Rocking Europe
TOULOUSE, FRANCE, March 22 -- On March 16, thousands of Airbus workers across Europe struck and demonstrated against layoffs of 10,000.
In Hamburg, 20,000 workers rallied. Seven thousand struck the Blagnac factory near Toulouse, and workers from Germany joined the protest. Others from various nationalities wore T-shirts proclaiming, "All for one, one for all -- solidarity against layoffs." In Méaulte, 4,000 struck the whole day, amid demonstrations in Paris, Saint Nazaire and Nantes. In Spain, 7,200 Airbus workers walked out for one hour. In Laupheim, Germany, 2,000 formed a human chain around the plant.
But one big demonstration planned for Brussels was abandoned amid rumors of rifts among the leaders of the European Metalworkers Federation. All the demonstrations were smaller than envisioned, exposing the union hacks' mis-leadership. In Hamburg, the IG Metall union invited right-wing Christian-Democrat politicians to spew nationalist poison. The prime minister of Baden-Württemberg (near the Laupheim plant) proclaimed that, "We're fighting for Airbus in Germany."
Similarly in France, a CFE-CGC union leaflet blamed German workers for production delays that spawned the Power 8 plan, and the FO union leader said more German workers should be axed. Only international solidarity can answer the Airbus bosses' mass layoffs in this age of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry (see page 1).
LABOR STRUGGLES SWEEPING FRANCE
The French presidential elections have stirred up workers' worries and hopes. The Peugeot Aulnay plant strike for higher wages has sparked wage battles at Peugeot factories in Melun, Mulhouse and Sochaux. In Melun, two shop stewards who persuaded some workers to down tools are being threatened with firing.
On March 14, 300 Aulnay workers protested at Peugeot's swank Paris offices, in a chic neighborhood. "We've come to make some noise," explained Brahim, 25. "I make 1,200 euros a month and [after four years in the plant] my health is already deteriorating. I have stomach problems because of the odors on the assembly line. It's recognized as a work-related illness, but management refuses to switch me to a different work station." One demonstrator shouted at the executives behind the glass doors, "The company's got money, but we don't see the color of it! In the factory, it's slavery!"
On March 17, 500 workers occupied the Metzeler gasket factory near Rouen to prevent the bosses from shipping machines to Tunisia. Peugeot and Renault are pressuring Metzeler to cut costs, and for two years have been planning moving production abroad. On March 19, management signed an agreement promising it won't, reacting to pressure from government politicians, who want labor peace until after the presidential elections.
On March 20, 40% of the nation's schoolteachers struck against education minister Gilles de Robien's plan to axe 5,000 jobs, make teachers work longer hours with no pay increase and force them to teach subjects they haven't studied. In Paris, 5,000 teachers demonstrated. That same day, Paris Transport Authority workers struck. Postal workers have been staging slowdowns.
On March 22, Marseilles dockers voted to continue their week-long strike over work at the future extension to the gas and oil terminal. Tankers are tied up, costing the bosses $250,000 a day.
At the Cabaret sauvage in Paris, where 1,000 people were partying on March 18, Peugeot-Aulnay strikers of Arab and Chinese origin were invited to speak. "It's not just us!" one shouted, "All of France has caught this `disease,' wage plague [demanding higher wages]." That sums up rank-and-file feelings.
All the top union leaders have met with the three leading presidential candidates, and all three candidates have announced -- not too loudly -- that, if elected, they'll push through labor "reforms." Secure career paths, "rigid" work contracts and unemployment insurance are all on the chopping block.
Given last year's anti-CPE movement (halting imposition of "flexible" working conditions) and the current labor agitation, the bosses and their politicians need the union hacks to push through these cutback "reforms." And the hacks are collaborating. While encouraging worker militancy right now, and sounding out rank-and-filers to determine what they'll swallow, they're fine-tuning their negotiating positions. But their reformist outlook will sell out the workers.
The conservative newspaper Le Figaro (3/21) warned that in "supporting" worker fight-backs, the union hacks are playing with fire. Indeed -- workers need to build a red-led leadership to turn this struggle into a school for communism.
Students, Teachers Beat Attack on New Orleans Volunteers
BROOKLYN, NY, March 23--"To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing." We learned this lesson again last week as a sharp struggle developed in our school over a volunteer trip we organized to New Orleans. While many staff members raised money and supported our anti-racist efforts to continue doing work there, the principal began a "witch-hunt," trying to intimidate and scare people who participated in an "unauthorized" trip. He called in a few staff members and students to attempt to frighten them.
However, his strategy backfired miserably when it became clear that students, parents and staff would fight back. It began when a staff member was called in, advised to have a union rep and threatened with a wider "investigation." The staff member, a member of PLP, refused to "name names" of others involved and, with the help of friends, put out a leaflet exposing the attack on the trip. In a heated staff meeting a few days later, she spoke out against the investigation and confronted the principal and his allies publicly.
Since then, teachers have come to her every day, congratulating her and thanking her for telling it like it us. One teacher said, "I know you're a communist. I guess we need more communists to shake things up!" Many teachers have said that they would do whatever is needed to support her. The administration has had to back down, close their phony investigation and retreat for now. The outpouring of both support and anger is the only reason for this.
But, teachers can see the handwriting on the wall at many of our schools as the conditions become more fascist. A climate of fear is developing so that more and more people are afraid of stepping out of line, getting written up and getting into "trouble." Ultimately, it is only the growth of our Party that can meet this head on, As school bosses become less tolerant of our activities and ideas, we need a few victories to show people that you can stand up to these principals and administrators.. The only reason we withstood this attack is the years of daily organizing and political work that has been done here: study groups, meetings, small struggles, getting to know people, socializing and selling CHALLENGE.
Even though a teacher seems to be the focus, the attack on the trip is mainly a direct attack on our students. There is much discussion about new Dept. of Education regulations and whether students have the right to do things outside of school with staff members. The principal is trying to push some bogus regulations that will make it illegal for students to go to rallies, demonstrations or meetings unless he approves! Students are writing a petition and will continue challenging this. They are seeing the school become more like a prison and realize that some of the most important learning to take place is outside of the classroom. PLP will continue growing and organizing at this and other schools, and we will not back down. We plan to bring many students, parents and teachers to our May Day activities. We will continue organizing relief work in New Orleans with teachers, students and parents, and we will stand up to any and all attacks from the administration!
Students Meet CIA Recruiters HEAD ON
NEW YORK, NY, Mar. 22 -- "I felt so empowered!" "Yeah, today the working class is on the offensive," said students after a multi-racial group "welcomed" the CIA's National Clandestine Service recruiters to Hunter College with angry protest. The recruiters sought students for the "global war on terror," with a special interest in speakers of Asian and Middle Eastern languages and in black students. Hunter students and teachers, including military veterans and anti-racists, organized to disrupt the event and expose the true role of the CIA, using a leaflet and discussion with friends, classmates and coworkers.
Many Hunter students said they felt nervous going up against the CIA, but one said "not doing anything would have meant we let the CIA off the hook for the murder of millions of working-class people." Others said they felt comforted because of our solid plan to disrupt the event, avoid arrests, and still effectively reach other students. More than a dozen went in to disrupt, while more leafleted and gathered students outside the room.
Inside, a senior CIA officer described the CIA's "unchanging mission of compiling intelligence from around the world." A protester immediately asked what role imperialism had in its mission and was told he should try the State Department! The officer informed us that President Bush and the National Security Council want to dramatically expand the National Clandestine Service by accepting all who are qualified. As he tried to continue, the student was joined by others who noted the CIA's endless list of crimes, stressing that they were racist terrorists who murdered millions to protect profit and that they couldn't just come to recruit our peers to help torture and commit genocide.
For several minutes, the CIA recruiter stopped his presentation completely while the protesting students and pro-CIA students argued. At least ten students who genuinely wanted to hear the speaker vigorously defended the recruiter's right to speak. A protestor called out, "This is very serious; we're talking about people's lives and we can't just let them speak." We were surprised that the pro-CIA students were more hostile than the school police and CIA recruiters. This argument among students illustrates that the real struggle is the one within our own class, to rid ourselves and each other of capitalist ideas.
School administrators lost patience after about ten minutes and warned that the disrupters would be kicked out if they continued. They persisted. Applause greeted the students outside as they were removed, one by one. As the last young protester was escorted out, students chanted: "Free speech!" She responded: "Not for the CIA!" and led students to chant, "Who is a terrorist? The CIA's a terrorist!" We continued chanting and leafleting passing students as the event continued. Afterwards, the school's dean of students defended allowing the CIA on the campus and said he could have shut down the protest instead of allowing it. One student said, "That's because you have state power and we don't!"
Our party needs more actions like this. We attack racists like the Minutemen and the Klan whenever we can, which is good, but how often do we get to actually attack the designers of imperialism, which has killed many more than those gutter racists? Also, workers get attacked more viciously every day, and we shouldn't hesitate to take the offensive. Students were inspired and consolidated to the Party and are planning a forum to inform more students about what happened. Pro-CIA students will be invited to talk about what they thought. We've got work to do.
Black, Latino, White Workers,Youth March vs. Racist Police Terror
LOS ANGELES, CA. --"The workers united will never be defeated," 100 people chanted and marched to the Hollenbeck police station where the workers, with communist leadership, defied the racist cops for murdering Mauricio Paris Cornejo. This action resulted from working and struggling in mass organizations and with friends, along with distributing 500 leaflets in the neighborhood. Cornejo's friends spoke in several high school classes about the case and invited the students to participate. They stressed that both black and Latino workers face racist police terror and need to unite against it.
When a march and protest was proposed to an immigration reform coalition, some of the members resisted, saying police terror had nothing to do with immigration, that it would "distract" the coalition from its main goal. But others said police terror has the same roots as immigration raids and deportations. Still others noted that both black and Latino workers face brutal racist police terror. Residents of Ramona Gardens (where Cornejo lived) attended the meeting and proposed action. After a sharp debate, the group decided to support the march from the projects to the police station.
We marched that route, some 2_ miles, beginning with a multi-racial group of mostly neighborhood men, women and youth. The anger and determination were visible on the signs and in the voices of all. We chanted, "Police, racist pigs and murderers!" as well as slogans against the immigration cops and the war. As we marched, people left their homes to listen. Hundreds of CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed.
When we arrived at the police station, about 30 cops formed a fence at the entrance. Speeches, signs and poems denounced the police as the real terrorists for having killed Cornejo in cold blood, for terrorizing the youth, especially blacks and Latinos, and for defending the interests of the capitalist rulers.
"The police are the biggest gang." "The only way to end their racist terror is to see that the root of the problem is the capitalist system and to organize a communist movement in the long run to finally destroy it." These were some of the many points resounding off the station's walls. All who participated were very glad they marched and promised to continue the fight.
Working in mass organizations can bring results. Although these exist to fight for reforms and build loyalty to capitalism, communists must introduce the problems affecting the working class, make the connections and to fight to win the organizations' members to question the very existence of the capitalist system. We must propose the kind of anti-racist actions that enable our Party, its ideas and our friends to sharpen the struggle; that is the way we can build a mass communist PLP.
U.S. Exploiters Can Always Top Themselves
Signal International recruited 300 "guest workers" from India to perform repairs in the Pascagoula shipyard (now on strike); charged them a $20,000 "fee" (!); paid them half the promised $18/hr; "housed" them in groups of 24 in 12X18-foot rooms at $35 a day! When the workers organized to protest these horrific conditions, Signal shipped some of them back to India and lowered the pay of the remainder.
One fired worker, having "sold his home [in India]" and with "no place to return to," slashed his wrists. "He was only able to earn a small part of the thousands paid to the recruiter and said "he couldn't go home like that." (New American Media)
PL'ers to Anti-War Marchers: `It's Not Just Bush, It's Capitalism!'
D.C.:Vets-Workers Unity A Must
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 19 -- Prior to the March 17th anti-war march here, 25 members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party gathered over breakfast to discuss the critical issues facing the anti-war movement, especially the need to bring an understanding to the marchers of imperialism, anti-racism and the need for a revolutionary party. Such an understanding will steel workers and students for the coming intensification of U.S. war actions in the Middle East.
Iraq is just a prelude! Democrat President Jimmy Carter's 1980 State of the Union address warned that an "attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." He created a Rapid Deployment Force to back that up. The likely Democratic Party candidates have already pledged allegiance to the Carter Doctrine by supporting policies that prepare for wider war in the region; they criticize the Bush administration's fiasco in Iraq because its tactics hamper U.S. rulers' ability to control the oil throughout the Middle East.
At the march itself, PLP'ers distributed 150 CHALLENGES and over 500 leaflets explaining the need for communist revolution to stop imperialist war and inviting them to march on May Day to build the PLP to lead this revolutionary struggle.
The best part of the march itself was the presence of several active-duty GIs and about 20 members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), some of whom spoke boldly about the need to move from symbolic demonstrations to active resistance. PLP believes this resistance should include mass GI refusals to fight the war (not just individual AWOLs and desertions), sharpening the fight against racism everywhere, closing down ROTC on campuses and in high schools, developing strikes against war producers, and winning people to revolution, not elections, as the only way to shut down imperialist war.
The next day IVAW conducted "Operative First Casualty" (dramatizing that "truth is the first casualty of war"). A dozen Iraq vets, dressed in their desert camouflage uniforms, simulated Baghdad-style raids at various sites around the city (including the Capitol!) by rounding up their civilian collaborators, restraining them with cuffs and black bags over their heads, and screaming at them, while others distributed flyers to passers-by explaining why they were "bringing Baghdad to D.C." This action was inspired by a 1970 Vietnam Veterans Against the War action called "Operation RAW" ("War" spelled backwards, and standing for "Rapid American Withdrawal") in which 200 Vietnam Vets conducted similar actions in New Jersey.
U.S. capitalists cannot withdraw from the Middle East. The bosses' need to keep control over oil pipelines, away from imperialist rivals, will force them to spill our blood to maintain their profits and dominant geo-political position. The U.S. bosses' continued vicious, racist rampage throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia may very well spark growth of the GI and veterans' movement in size and militancy. The danger is that the liberals will try to direct it into dead-end electoral politics ("elect a Democrat president in 2008"). Uniting the GI-veterans movement with the rest of the working-class movement under PLP leadership is the strategy for revolutionary advance.
NYC: Youth Lead, Link
Racist Terror At Home, Abroad
NEW YORK, NY, March 18 -- "Bush, Democrats, No Solution, We Need Communist Revolution" rang through the streets of Manhattan as a PLP-led youth contingent brought a revolutionary message to the tens of thousands of anti-war marchers.
The march, on the 4th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). It was yet another liberal call for U.S. bosses to bring the troops home. These liberals build illusions that the Democrats will end the war. But these same Democrats in Congress, while passing a resolution for a supposed timetable to get the troops out of Iraq, also gave Bush $100 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The multi-racial youth-led PLP contingent at the march countered the pacifist, anti-Bush politics by distributing 1,000 CHALLENGES and 1,500 leaflets and leading spirited chants the whole time. Many marchers took leadership from high school students and joined in the many chants they led. At one point a young comrade was giving a speech about the racist police-murder of Sean Bell, when a marcher came over and asked "What does Sean Bell have to do with this anti-war march?" Our comrade responded immediately and repeated the question for the crowd on the bullhorn. He then made the connection by explaining that the bosses use racist terror both at home and abroad to maintain their capitalist system. He described how this country was built on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African workers and today continues its imperialist murder of Iraqis to protect its system. Our group then chanted "Sean Bell here, Iraqis there, fascist terror everywhere!" We will continue to spread our communist message to our friends, family and neighborhoods with study groups and CHALLENGE sales every Saturday leading up to May Day, the international workers' holiday. As another youth explained today, "Imperialist war and racist oppression will continue for as long as capitalism continues." Only when workers around the world understand that our common fight is the one against this brutal system and for communism, will we have won. Let's gear up and make this May Day the biggest one yet.
L.A.: `Iraq, Oaxaca, New Orleans;
Smash Racist War Machine!'
LOS ANGELES, CA, March 17 -- Chanting "Iraq, Oaxaca, New Orleans, Smash the Racist War Machine!" in military cadence, our enthusiastic multi-racial group marched here holding a PLP banner proclaiming, "It's not just Bush -- It's Capitalism!" sharply contrasting with the liberals' thrust of "Get Bush." The 10,000 participants showed widespread discontent with the war in Iraq, providing an immense opportunity to direct this discontent toward its rightful source, the capitalist system.
A sizeable group of students and workers explained that replacing Bush with Obama or simply bringing the troops home temporarily won't end the death and suffering caused by imperialist wars; the only real alternative to this atrocity is communist revolution.
We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES, including to young vets, and about 2,500 leaflets, proving that the U.S. capitalists' drive for oil is nothing new. For 25 years, presidents from Carter to Clinton have goose-stepped to the needs of U.S. imperialism, killing millions of workers.
At a post-march rally, a military mother who, though heartfelt in recalling her son's death, offered anti-Bush sentiment and an echo of the march's dominant mantra: "Bring the Troops home now!" When Democrat politician Maxine Waters told the crowd to "write their representatives," a group in the audience had a different idea, with raised fists chanting, "Fight imperialism!"
The liberal rulers' attack on Bush reflects their preparations for wars against their imperialist rivals. They're building support for Barack Obama (see editorial, page 2) or Clinton, hoping to curb discontent, but also to win workers to a new imperialist politician as "a change for the better." U.S. bosses are counting on the 2008 election hype to win workers to support larger future wars.
The GI presence at this march highlights the necessity of bringing PLP's communist line to soldiers and vets at demonstrations, as well as those serving in the Mid-East and elsewhere.
This reinforces the need to spread communist ideas everywhere, both in a mass way and in smaller groups. PLP's uncompromising struggle against racism and for workers' revolution to take state power is a necessity for us, the working class.
Bosses' Crisis Leading to Cal Faculty Strike
LOS ANGELES, March 26 -- By a 94% vote, the unionized faculty of the California State University (CSU) voted to strike the 23-campus system, which serves 435,000 students, half of them black, Latino and Asian. The vote was over management's salary offer, but opposition to higher workloads and student fees are issues, too. Although management recently gave themselves big raises, faculty raises since 1997 are far behind inflation. Management's offer is less than 15% for four years, about 20% behind their list of "comparable institutions," Faculty workload has increased. The system has 29% more students than in 1995, but only a 21% increase in faculty, most of them part-timers. Class sizes are growing; at one large campus, it's up 13% and the number of classes dropped 11% in the last four years. With this growing workload, faculty are forced to cut corners, giving less time to each student. Meanwhile, in the last 10 years, student fees have increased 64%, with another 10% hike scheduled next fall.
The reduced funding that is gradually destroying the CSU system is a direct result of the growing crisis of U.S. capitalism, and particularly of its imperialist wars. Like most of the large industrial states, California bounces from one fiscal crisis to the next, mostly because the federal government sucks money out of the states so that they can pay for war plans.
For years, the feds have been transferring big-ticket programs like Medicaid, aid for low-income families, and medical care for poor children to the states. The feds give block grants for these programs which the states must match, but they cut the grants or fix them at too low a level, so the states must find the money somewhere to make up the difference or else eliminate the programs.
As war spending skyrockets, federal funds for the states are slashed further, including Medicaid last year, while an administration proposal would chop another $24.7 billion over the next five years. The feds are also taking away $12.7 billion for student financial aid over the next five years. Like the CSU tuition hikes, these cuts are racist, affecting black and Latino students most.
California's bosses have intensified the budget crunch for workers through a huge increase in legal repression, which they hope will contain anger against worsening conditions. The prison population has increased 73% since 1990, three times faster than the adult population. Prison funding has risen much faster than that for higher education. The "Three Strikes" law -- 25 years to life for any third conviction -- has meted out much longer sentences, costing at least a half billion dollars extra per year, equal to nearly one-fifth of state funding for the CSU.
The strike vote signifies that faculty intends to fight. However, the plan is only for two-day strikes at each campus. The union slogan -- "I don't want to strike, but I will" -- hardly expresses the determined struggle that will be needed to make any headway against the CSU cuts. Students should support these efforts and raise their own demands. PLP must show both faculty and students that capitalist imperialism and war lie behind the attack on CSU, and make the U.S. war budget a strike issue. These politics and PLP's participation in the struggle will enable the Party to grow and fight for the only long-range solution -- communism.
30,000 Healthcare Workers Reject War Cuts
NEW YORK CITY, March 15 -- Today, 30,000 angry healthcare workers demonstrated here in a freezing rain against Governor Spitzer's proposed $1.2 billion healthcare cuts in Medicaid funding to hospitals, nursing homes and home-care providers.
Workers of all nationalities -- black, Latino, Asian and white -- represented their hospitals and nursing homes, coming from NYC, Long Island, Buffalo, and other upstate areas.
Many CHALLENGES were sold and hundreds of leaflets distributed denouncing the bosses' for-profit healthcare system. Some PL'ers marched with contingents from their jobs. A group of home-care workers passed out a flyer about their struggle for overtime pay. Until now the 1199 leadership has ignored their demands, and has relied on a court case filed six years ago. According to government figures, the 60,000 mainly immigrant women workers lose $250 million per year in stolen overtime pay! Imagine the billions stolen over the past decades.
Since the invasion of Iraq, billions of dollars have been diverted from social programs to fund the war. Thus, millions of workers nationwide face huge budget cuts in the Medicaid and Medicare programs. These cuts will severely impact the lives of patients and healthcare workers.
NYC workers are predominantly black and Latino, making the cuts distinctly racist. Most are women. Already victims of a higher racist unemployment rate, still higher joblessness will spread more disease throughout their communities and the cuts will reduce health care there still further.
The Berger Commission recommendations are a direct attack on all aspects of healthcare workers' lives and patient care. They would close, merge and restructure 57 hospitals state-wide, eliminating 4,200 beds and thousands of jobs.
The 1199-SEIU union and the hospital bosses representing the Greater New York Association made an alliance to fight Spitzer's cuts. Full-page newspaper ads criticized the Governor. However, this alliance was short-lived, with the bosses soon pulling out of the campaign.
At a Brooklyn hospital, many workers felt betrayed by the union leadership that allied with the hospital bosses. Only a limited number of workers were allowed to attend the rally. One worker stated to a group at the hospital, "The 1199 SEIU union is always forming a coalition with hospitals bosses and politicians to stop healthcare cuts. The union is misleading many workers to rely on these capitalist forces that represent the system that creates conditions for layoffs and hospital closings" in the first place.
Another worker said, "Our union contributed funds towards Governor Spitzer's campaign for Attorney General. Now he turns his back on us."
At the rally many politicians and union leaders advocated reforming the healthcare industry. But in the past 15 years such reform programs did not prevent the closing of 34 hospitals in the State nor laying off thousands of workers. However, workers are constantly waging battles with the hospital bosses against short staffing, violations in patient care and to keep whatever benefits we have.
Under capitalism, the needs of workers and patients to improve health care through preventative measures and to assure health care for all in a non-racist healthcare system cannot be met. Only in a communist-run system, with no bosses, politicians and rich people, can the working class have a commitment to all our brothers and sisters.
Immigrant Workers Back Northrop, Airbus Strikers
"Those bastards do the same thing to all of us!" exclaimed a worker in our factory. We were discussing how all imperialist bosses trim costs on the backs of industrial workers because of their need to remain competitive against their rivals. We noted how the attacks on Airbus and Northrop workers stem from imperialist rivalry, just like the war in Iraq, immigration raids, racism and attacks on workers employed by these subcontractors.
These immigrant workers at several Southern California industrial shops showed a strong sense of class solidarity, anti-racism and internationalism. Despite the fascist conditions in these factories, they eagerly wrote, circulated and signed petitions supporting striking Airbus workers in Europe and Northrop workers in Mississippi (see pages 1, 2).
One worker, who gladly agreed to help write the petition, took it home for her neighbors to sign. One neighbor, also a factory worker, responded by taking it to work to share with some of his co-workers.
The petitions all clearly extended support and international solidarity and included links to the imperialist war in Iraq. One worker's petition read in part, "We support your struggle because we are exploited too. They suck every last bit of labor from us for a measly wage while cutting our health benefits every chance they get." Another petition called for "international solidarity, not the bosses' nationalism".
The extent of support and political struggle generated with these petitions was limited primarily by our size. This makes two things very clear to our PLP club: One is the need to recruit more comrades to working in these factories; the second is to put CHALLENGE into the hands of more and more industrial workers in order to expand our base and recruit these workers, inside and outside the factories, out of intensified class struggle.
These immigrant workers' response to the Airbus and Northrop strikes is a small example of exactly what the bosses fear most: workers' unity and communist leadership among the industrial working class. But the anti-racism and international solidarity demonstrated by industrial workers in Southern California would not have occurred without PLP'ers in these shops bringing these ideas to them.
There's great potential for building a mass base for PLP and international communism among these workers. The bosses are trying to win us to nationalism. Our job is to continue winning industrial workers to see that our interests lie with workers worldwide, in the fight for communist revolution, to destroy the world's bosses once and for all.
Russia, Romania: Strikers Challenge Ford, Renault
St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) is now "Russia's Detroit." The world's auto giants are erecting assembly plants there to get into the growing Russian market (1.8 million cars purchased in 2006). But workers are fighting for their own demands.
Contrary to Ford's U.S. situation, production is growing at its 5-year-old Vsevoloysk plant (66,000 Focus models built last year). Ford expects a 10% increase in 2007. But on Feb. 14, workers threw a monkey wrench into the bosses' plans: 80% of its 11,000 unionized workers (of a workforce of 19,000) struck, rejecting Ford's offer of a 14% to 20% wage hike. The workers not only won the wage hike but also permanent jobs for temporary workers and job protection in case of job-related illness.
Ford's cries of losing money worldwide cut no ice with these militant workers. This strike sets an example internationally, showing workers in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere that autoworkers can fight back despite Ford's poverty cries. (On Jan. 25, Ford announced a historic loss of $12.7 billion in its U.S. operations).
Renault Workers Win in Romania
In 1979, Renault bought the Dacia auto plant in Romania, producing 100,000 cars a year with 28,000 workers. In 2006, 11,000 workers built 196,000 cars, an 80% increase in productivity.
The workers demanded a 25% wage hike to partially compensate for this super-exploitation; the company offered only 6%. On Feb. 15, a two-hour warning strike and the threat of a total strike the next day forced Renault to change its mind, fearing a long walkout by angry, determined workers. So the workers won a 20% wage hike for 2007 plus one hot meal daily and a 60% payment for the cost of workers' transportation to the plant.
French workers at the huge Renault Technocentre design plant outside Paris should emulate this fight-back against speed-up. In the last five months, the intense speed-up has caused five employees there to kill themselves. Renault is well-known for its racism and brutal treatment of workers.
Auto bosses are using the workers of the old Soviet bloc as a source of cheap labor, but these workers are beginning to stand up and fight. However, under capitalism, one way or another, the bosses will eventually take away gains made today. Thus, the main lesson drawn from these struggles should be workers' need to rebuild an internationalist communist movement, learning from the mistakes and achievements of the past. That's how the slogan, "Workers of the world, unite!" will become a reality.
Chiquita Banana Gets Slap on Wrist for Funding Death Squads
Chiquita Brands, one of the world's largest and most powerful food companies, has agreed to pay a $25-million fine to end a federal investigation accusing it of paying off Colombian death squads to protect their profits. Human rights groups have quickly called the settlement too lenient, charging that the Bush administration chose to file a "document of criminal information" against the company -- a less aggressive form of prosecution -- instead of forcing Justice Department indictments which could have quadrupled the fine. Some Democrats, fearing the growth of Chávez and other anti-U.S. capitalist and imperialist rivals in the region, are pushing for some cosmetic changes in the U.S. support for the fascist death squads. But this won't change the murderous essence of imperialism.
Chiquita has a long history of murdering workers in Latin America. On Dec. 6, 1928, over 3,000 strikers were massacred in the main square of Cienaga, Colombia, one of the largest such slaughters in Latin America. After 24 days of striking the United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands), the army attacked a rally in that plaza. The army gave demonstrators five minutes to disperse, but before the time was up workers declared, "Save yourself a minute; we're not moving."
The army opened fire, killing some 3,000. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous novel "100 Years of Solitude" claims even more were murdered since many were thrown into the sea. In 1953, United Fruit organized the CIA-led coup against Guatemala nationalist President Jacobo Arbenz, who had threatened to nationalize the banana plantations. Several decades of death-squad governments followed, killing hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan workers and peasants, many of them Indigenous.
Chiquita is not alone in supporting death squads to terrorize its workers and kill union leaders. Coca Cola and Drummond, which operate coal mines in Colombia, are being accused of such crimes.
Bush's failed "anti-Chávez tour" follows a long history of U.S. presidential claims of "helping" the people of Latin America. Roosevelt had his "good neighbor policy" in the 1930's while the U.S. supported dictators like the Dominican Republica's Trujillo and Nicargua's Somoza. In the early '50s, Eisenhower sent his brother Milton to the region. He returned to report that it needed economic aid. Instead, more military hardware was sent.
Nixon, then Eisenhower's Vice-President, toured the region and was almost killed by angry crowds in Caracas and Lima. Again, more military aid and support for military dictatorships. Later Nelson Rockefeller went, producing a similar U.S. response. Kennedy established his "Alliance for Progress" to counter the influence of the 1959 Cuban revolution with the same results: military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, among others. Under his administration, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba aimed at bringing the country back under U.S. imperialist control but failed miserably.
In 1965, after a right-wing junta in the Dominican Republic had deposed a liberal president, Lyndon Johnson invaded the country with 38,000 Marines to crush a mass uprising bent on bringing back the elected president. When Nixon was president, he and Kissinger engineered the 1973 fascist Pinochet coup in Chile, ousting the then-elected socialist president Allende. Carter and Reagan armed the death squads and Contras of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Clinton initiated "Plan Colombia," helping its drug-infested death-squad army. So Bush is just following his predecessors' footsteps.
(Next article: the need to build a red-led internationalist workers' movement to win the masses away from bourgeois nationalists like Chávez).
`I was a racketeer for capitalism...'
(From a 1933 speech by Marine Corps Major-General Smedley Butler)
War is just a racket....conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses....
I spent 33 years...as a member of the country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps....most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the Bankers....I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street....I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912....I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....
I feel I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
LETTERS
Paraguay's Lugo Shows His True Colors. . . .
and They're Not Red
Ex-Bishop and reformist Fernando Lugo has announced that he will be leading a Citizens' March on March 29 to push him to the top of the polls for Paraguay's 2008 presidential elections (see CHALLENGE, 1/17/07). To placate the ruling class's liberal wing, he has officially become a member of the Concertación (a united front opposing the Colorado Movement). The Colorado Party has ruled for more than 60 years, and this opposition is going to great lengths to derail it.
The Concertación includes the supposedly left-wing Lugo, social movements, farmer, worker and student groups, several socialist parties, the Liberal Party, UNACE and the Fatherland Party (Patria Querida). But many don't realize that Lugo is extremely dangerous for workers. The lesser-evil strategy is neither a temporary solution nor a long-lasting one. This parallels the 2006 U.S. election and the "anybody-but-Bush" strategy. It is doomed to fail; it does not serve the interests of the Paraguayan working class. Lugo & Co. might loosen the shackles a little, but they will not and cannot free the slave.
Recently Lugo announced that as president he would initiate policies similar to Bachelet's in Chile or Lula's in Brazil. Workers only need look at Chile to see the inequality of their free market-"socialist" model, or look to a Brazil full of criminal gangs, drug traffickers, poverty and high disease rates to see that such models, mixing state- and free market-capitalism, do not benefit the working class.
President Nicanor Duarte Frutos compared Lugo to Venezuela's Chávez and then proposed putting all of Paraguay's reserve money into Venezuelan banks, not in the U.S. This strategy clearly placates the so-called leftists, yet meanwhile the U.S. military presence in Paraguay has increased under Frutos. Lugo also raised the possibility that imprisoned General Lino Oviedo -- trained at the CIA-run death-squad School of the Americas -- become his running mate.
When we march on the 29th, we must strive to sharpen these contradictions, sell DESAFIO and distribute pamphlets demonstrating that Lugo, the Liberal Party, Patria Querida and others won't change the situation in Paraguay. We must do much more to build the communist PLP, to fight for a society sharing what we workers produce based on need.
Red Guarani
Colombia: Bush Visit Brings More Murders
and Arrests
Bogotá was militarized when Bush visited his buddy, fascist President Alvaro Uribe. There were over 5,000 raids and searches and 325 arrests. Thousands protested despite heavy repression. Many were injured.
PLP participated, sold DESAFIO-CHALLENGE and brought our politics to workers and students to try to turn the spontaneous anger of many into a school for our communist ideas as a way to counter the imperialist-capitalist terror.
This battle energized us to fight harder for our line in the middle of the sharpening capitalist-imperialist contradictions, and to raise the level of the growing consciousness of many workers and youth about the phony nature of the bosses' democracy. Many are understanding the sellouts of the union hacks and even "progressive" Bogotá Mayor, Luis Eduardo Garzón, who did not hesitate to use the cops to viciously attack protestors.
Red Worker in Colombia
Murder of Politicians A Fight Among
Drug Dealers
The Feb. 19 murder in Guatemala of three Salvadoran Congressmen from the ARENA party (also members of the Central American Parliament) along with their chauffer once again revealed the terror of narco politics. Although we may never know the whole truth because "respectable and powerful politicians" from Guatemala and El Salvador are involved, we do know that those who control the enormous profits from the murderous drug trade and who make the decisions are in the top hierarchies of the government. The gangs are only "soldiers" who carry out orders from above.
According to the NGO Washington Office for Latin American Affairs and the UN Truth Commission in Guatemala, there are clandestine groups acting from inside the Guatemalan government, controlled by retired and active military leaders. These groups are linked to the bosses' political parties, the police, the judiciary, the army and the public accounting office. This allows them to act with complete impunity in laundering money, selling weapons and other crimes.
The Minister of Public Security and Justice in El Salvador, Rene Figueroa, says the murdered politicians "were not linked to narco trafficking." But in what seemed like double-talk, National Civil Police Chief Rodrigo Avila said, "There's no doubt that this was related to drug trafficking."
One of the murdered politicians was Eduardo D'Aubisson, son of Major Roberto "Blowtorch" D'Aubisson, leader of El Salvador's death squads. These squads, created in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador with CIA training, murdered hundreds of thousands of workers, students and farmworkers. Today these creatures of capitalism and imperialism enrich themselves by killing and poisoning the population with the dirty drug trade.
The phony left in El Salvador (the FMLN) calls on the U.S. FBI to "investigate" the "roots" of the problem to obtain "justice. That's like Tony Soprano investigating the godfather Don Corleone!
The drug trade is a capitalist business, based on profits and murder. Only by destroying the cause can we end this plague. This will be achieved by fighting for communism.
Salvador PLP
Hospital Workers Spread PL Flyer
While riding the train to the 1199 rally, I met a group of workers crowded into my subway car having an animated discussion on Spitzer's cuts and resulting layoffs. They were tremendously angry and frustrated that the union wasn't doing more. One woman said her army son was in Iraq and was very bitter about there being plenty of money for war but not for health care.
Distributing some Party leaflets, I gave one to the military mom. Immediately hands were reaching for copies. It was headlined "a system unable to provide decent health care shouldn't exist"; it linked these cutbacks to the oil war in Iraq; and sharply attacked the Rivera leadership for its alliance with the hospital bosses. It called for communist revolution to build a system that produces for the needs of the working class, not for profits.
The workers readily agreed that today's rally was too little, too late and reflected the fact that Rivera had already agreed to the cuts. They echoed many of the flyer's anti-capitalist statements.
At the rally I walked among the workers distributing flyers while shouting its headline and some of its main points. Scores of workers took small stacks for their friends and co-workers. Others asked for copies to take back to their job sites. After the 800 flyers were gone, I distributed 30 CHALLENGES, using the front-page article from the Chicago hospital struggle to illustrate the similarity of workers' struggles elsewhere. All in all, a good day!
Retired Comrade
Film Raps Mali Capitalism-- But Offers No Solution
I saw the African movie Bamako with two other teachers from my school. We were all very impressed. The film, whose setting is Mali's capital Bamako, is a powerful and artistically interesting indictment of the policies of capitalist financial and trade organizations: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Set in a residential courtyard the film follows the personal lives of several Malians, while institutions of global capital [imperialism] are being tried outside. The prosecution calls witnesses (workers and farmers) who give heart-wrenching testimony about the devastating effects of huge debt; structural adjustment programs that drastically cut government social projects; the privatization of water and other basic needs; the charging of tuition for primary education; the replacement of food farming that sustains life with farming that produces crops for export; and unfair trade practices such as U.S. and European subsidizing agribusiness to the disadvantage of African producers.
The witnesses are eloquent and cite fact after fact of the social catastrophe befalling Mali and other African countries. The defense argues that the architects of globalization policies never intended to hurt the people of Africa. Rather, they "wanted to help" but were stymied by corrupt government officials.
The prosecution responds that corruption exists worldwide, and that global capital actually encourages and enables corrupt politicians. It also shows that the onerous debt African countries are paying has been repaid many times over, and that the amount paid for debt service is many times the amount spent on human services like education and health, ravaging the uneducated and the sick who can't get medical care.
The prosecution explains to the court and the sympathetic audience that Africa's enormous wealth -- its gold, diamonds, oil, uranium, cocoa, cotton and other raw materials -- as well as millions of slave laborers, have enriched the capitalist world, particularly multi-national corporations. Banks and capitalist outfits like the World Bank now loan money to corrupt local leaders, repaid on the backs of Africa's working class.
In the courtroom finale, the film unabashedly indicts capitalism, on behalf of which the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO function. But then the film has a dilemma: if the problem is capitalism, then the solution must be anti-capitalism and revolution. But then the director pulls back and calls for reform and the adoption of "humane" policies from organizations that the film has spent nearly two hours indicting.
It notes, for instance, that the World Bank is currently led by Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, money that could have been spent on schools and hospitals. The profit system is good at enriching a relatively few and instigating deadly wars for control of oil, and completely incapable of eradicating poverty, disease, and inequality. We can support reforms like canceling the debt, but we shouldn't spread illusions about capitalism becoming a "humane" system.
Nevertheless, Bamako is an amazing film, one that we should see with fellow workers, students, neighbors and people in organizations to which we belong.
Red Moviegoer
How Will Communism Improve Workers' Lives?
I think a letter in the March 14 issue correctly criticizes two CHALLENGE articles on the struggles at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for failing to describe how health care would be better for all workers in a world run by the international working class under a communist egalitarian system.
The letter points out that some possible health care improvements had been covered in the column entitled "Under Communism," later changed to "Forward to Communism." The column ran on the back page of every issue for over a year.
It would be better if such expected improvements were made part of articles about the struggles that PLP members are engaged in with fellow workers. Many articles about the Party's participation in struggles could benefit by referring to the way the particular focus of the struggle would be better for workers under communism.
That will take some thought on the part of the writers of each article, but this is one way we can keep communist politics as the most important focus of the article and of the struggle it describes.
Saguaro Rojo
Ex-Sailor Backs Shipyard Strikers
I was stationed at the Pascagoula shipyard in 1977. It was my first duty station where we met our ship, the USS Saipan, on which I spent the next three years. It was a very impressive yard then, 40,000 workers at shift change. Workers from four states worked there.
They build everything there -- aircraft carriers, submarines and destroyers. It's no exaggeration to say that these workers have shut one of the biggest warmakers. They, and CHALLENGE, have my complete support.
Former Red Sailor
REDEYE
Democracy fails the Stalin test
Riot police officers swarmed on a group of several dozen journalists and demonstrators on Saturday in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's third-largest city, cutting off a protest against the government of President Vladimir V. Putin....
A small group of elderly people yelling "Fascists! Fascists!" tried to hold back a second wave of police officers....But they fell to the ground under heavy police shields.
"Look, this is a democracy," said one woman there who refused to be identified. "Under Stalin we had free education and free health care. Now we are not free to say anything." (NYT, 3/15)
Lula enslaves migrants
...Drive to the outskirts of Palmares Paulista and a much bleaker picture emerges of what President Lula has dubbed Brazil's "energy revolution". On one side, thick green plantations of sugar cane stretch out as far as the eye can see....
...At the same time [,] inside prison-like construction are the cortadores de cana - sugar cane cutters - part of a destitute internal migrant workforce of about 200,000 men who help prop up the country's ethanol industry....
"They will do anything to get by."
That includes working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat and earning just over $1 per tonne of sugar cane. (GW, 3/29)
Latin America: Rage vs. US trade deals
...Protests have been fierce, with Mr. Bush being taunted by signs and grafitti calling him a "murderer" and a "fascist"....
Officials traveling with Mr. Bush acknowledged the sense among the region's poor that the benefits of trade deals with the United States have not trickled down to them....
"For close to 20 years of democratic processes and rhetoric about the benefits of democracy and free markets, the average person is waking up and saying, how's my life gotten better?" said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity. "This is a fair question..." (NYT, 3/14)
50% unemployment destroys black
communities
...The official unemployment numbers...understate the problem of joblessness for all groups....
Over the past few years, the percentage of black male high school graduates in their 20s who were jobless (including those who abandoned all efforts to find a job) has ranged from well over a third to roughly 50 percent. Those are the kinds of statistics you get during a depression.
For dropouts, the rates of joblessness are staggering. For black males who left high school without a diploma, the real jobless rate at various times over the past few years has ranged from 59 percent to a breathtaking 72 percent....
Jobless rates at such sky-high levels don't just destroy lives, they destroy entire communities. (NYT, 3/15)
Oil $$$ don't help Angola's workers
...Angola is finding itself at the crossroads of today's energy geopolitics. It has become the latest stage in a global rivalry playing out among Western, Russian and Chinese oil companies....
...Angola earned more than $30 billion last year from its petroleum exports. But according to a recent World Bank report, 70 percent of the population lives on the equivalent of less than $2 a day, the majority lack access to basic health care, and about one in four children die before their fifth birthday. (NYT, 3/20)
US military aims at Africa oil
The decision to establish Africom, as the command will be known, reflects the Bush administration's primary reliance on the use of force to pursue its strategic interests. Among the key goals for the new command, for example, is the assurance of oil imports from Africa which have assumed much greater importance given the hostility to the US presence in the Middle East. (GW, 3/22)
Russia to defy West, not terror
Russia is to replace its military doctrine with a more hawkish version that identifies Nato and the West as its greatest danger. In a statement posted on its website Russia's powerful security council says it no longer considered global terrorism as its biggest danger and was developing a new national strategy....
The chairman of Russia's academy of military science, Mahmoud Garayev, said Russia could no longer afford to ignore that threat from Nato. Drugs and terrorism were an irrelevance, he said. (GW, 3/22)
PL Worker-Student Alliance Trumps SDS Right-wingers
SDS: PART V
The 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention (June 18-22) in the Chicago Coliseum brought to a head the internal battle between left- and right-wings that had been seething within the organization for several years.
The left was represented by PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) Caucus. Invigorated by the practical experience gained in leading sharp on-campus struggles against racism and the bosses' Vietnam genocide, the PLP-WSA contingent arrived at the Convention with a proposal entitled "Less Talk-More Action-Fight Racism!"
The right-wing (which shortly spawned the terrorist Weathermen) was led by outgoing SDS National Secretary Mike Klonsky and Inter-organizational Secretary Bernadine Dohrn. It included Mark Rudd, a former Columbia SDS chapter chair, whom the rulers had turned into a media star after the 1968 Columbia strike. Throughout the period leading up to the strike, Rudd had consistently opposed the campaign over its main issues: Columbia's ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses and the university's racist expansion into Harlem.
The national SDS right-wing had named itself the "Revolutionary Youth Movement" (RYM). During the pre-Convention period, RYM leaders had focused on two goals: in-fighting for political control within SDS and uniting to "get" PL by smashing the growing Worker-Student Alliance Caucus. Expelling PLP from SDS had replaced the struggle against racism and imperialist war as RYM's priority.
The bait was two-pronged: first, the time-worn anti-communist cliché about PLP as "external cadre" bent on manipulating the SDS rank and file, and second, pseudo-revolutionary nationalism, backed by RYM's unprincipled alliance with the Black Panther Party. (See next issue for an analysis of this alliance.)
Two thousand people attended the Convention, by far the largest turnout in SDS history. The first major fight concerned workshops. PLP and the WSA supported them as the best vehicle for discussing the tactics and politics of struggle and the important ideological differences within the organization. Klonsky & Co. opposed such discussion, offering the lame excuse that there was "no room in the vast Coliseum." When that was exposed as a hoax, Klonsky offered the absurd argument that workshops were PLP's "hunting ground for young people." Another RYM leader called supporting workshops "anti-communist" because it showed the SDS rank and file didn't trust a few leaders to settle matters on the floor.
The membership voted down this nonsense in favor of the workshops, but the RYM "national collective" offered speakers and panels to replace slots of workshop time. This tactic was cleverer, the "national collective" using it to block the workshops.
Most people had come to the Convention expecting to discuss different political approaches to the practical task of building an anti-imperialist, anti-racist movement. PLP's anti-nationalist position, which by now had been published in PL Magazine ("Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism"), could be understood only in this context. But the opportunist RYM crowd avoided all discussion of practice, smearing PL as "racist" and "opposed to struggle."
The RYM leadership never showed how the WSA's supposedly "reactionary" ideas undermined its practice during militant campus fights from San Francisco State to Harvard, in which the PLP and WSA had played key roles. When the RYM leaders' own practice was criticized, as at Columbia and Berkeley, they had no response except more red-baiting.
The racism panel exposed the total bankruptcy of the "national collective." (Next: The minority "expels" the majority.)
MARK RUDD: FBI's Little Helper
(Excerpts from a Feb. 17 speech to the "Movement for A Democratic Society" by Mark Rudd, former leader of the SDS's right-wing, on "The Death of SDS," exposing the anti-communist lie that "PLP wrecked SDS." Actually PL'ers fought for a mass Worker-Student Alliance-based SDS while facing physical and ideological attacks from the terrorist Weathermen and other right-wingers.)
I [was]...one of the principal authors, almost forty years ago, of a totally failed strategy.... My little faction seized control of the SDS national office and several of the regional offices. We then made the tragic decision -- in 1969, at the height of the [Vietnam] war -- to kill off SDS because it wasn't revolutionary enough for us....
I remember a certain meeting with no more than ten people present -- out of a national membership of 12,000 and perhaps ten times that many chapter members -- at which we in the Weatherman clique running the NO [National Office -- Ed.] decided to scuttle SDS. I remember driving a VW van with Teddy Gold from the NY Regional Office...[in NYC -- Ed.] to the Sanitation Dept. pier at the end of W. 14th Street...and dumping the addressograph mailing stencils and other records from the Regional Office onto a barge. These...decisions...I and my comrades made unilaterally....
We could have... fought to keep SDS in existence...to unite as many people as possible against the war (which is what the Vietnamese had asked us to do) while at the same time educating around imperialism. I often wonder, had we done so, where we would have been a few months later, in May, 1970, when the biggest student protests in American history jumped off?....
The Weatherman faction, by killing off SDS, did the work of the FBI for them. Assuming we weren't in the pay of the FBI, we should have been.
Speculators Profit, Workers Pay the Bill
The recent subprime mortgage scandal shows that greed for profits under capitalism knows no limits. When profiteering causes a crisis, the pain is always passed on to the working class.
The booming real estate market in the early 2000s attracted speculators who wanted to get in on the scam of lending money to people with imperfect credit. Regulated financial institutions like banks could only give mortgages to those with adequate credit. Speculators rushed in to fill this void and set up new outfits that borrowed from banks in order to finance mortgages to subprimes (mostly low-wage workers who couldn't qualify for credit elsewhere) giving out mortgages pretty much to anyone who applied.
The media exclaimed how the "American dream" of home ownership now had been extended to all. The subprime mortgages were a fraud right from the beginning. They had seductive low-interest rates for the first few years but then the rates ballooned. To keep up the mortgage payments, workers could refinance (going further into debt) because housing prices were still rising. But now that the boom is over, and rising interest rates have made monthly mortgage payments much higher, millions of workers have fallen behind and are in default.
As the foreclosure sales (when workers are thrown out and the banks sell their houses), these workers will be saddled with the difference as a mountain of debt in many cases won't cover the amount of the bloated mortgages, (with capitalism's racism causing a disproportionate number of them to be black and Latin).
Workers woes will be compounded by new laws that largely prevent them from declaring bankruptcy -- at the same time corporate bankruptcy rights to abrogate union contracts and void worker pension guarantees were preserved. So much for the "promises" of capitalism!
Faced with the threat that the failure of the subprimes could cause a financial crisis, liberals are calling for regulating the mortgage speculators. This call for capitalism to "change its stripes" flies in the face of the bosses' constant drive for maximum profits. The "regulated" banks, after all, who weren't allowed to make the subprime loans, had little reservation about buying "bundles" of these mortgages from the speculators so that they could get a cut of the profits from workers' future misery. The only solution for workers will be getting rid of the speculators AND the "respectable" bosses who, with their usual greed, financed and profited from the subprime mortgages.
Mortgage Collapse Spreading. . .
Lost profits from the collapse of the subprime mortgage speculations are worrisome to U.S. bosses. The real fear is that this collapse will spread throughout the whole economy. The NY Times estimates that over $800 billion of highly vulnerable mortgages have been written in the last five years of the housing boom. Banks that have profited from those mortgages may now have to write off losses, as foreclosures are rising to record levels. These losses will depress housing prices, making it impossible for other homeowners to continue the refinancing that have enabled them to pay the higher mortgage payments caused by recent increases in interest rates.
This collapse promises to slow down or end the boom in new housing construction that has been the biggest plus for the bosses' economy in recent years. If the economy slows down sharply, the rulers will be harder pressed to pay for their war plans. Foreign capitalists who have financed the growing U.S. debt will want higher interest payments to "stay the course" and those higher rates would only make the housing crisis worse. US rulers will use tax increases, wage cuts and terror tactics to try to pass their losses onto the working class. Liberals will call for "shared sacrifice" which just means that workers get to pay the bill!
CAL Teachers Oppose Imperialist Wars, Build Unity of Workers and Soldiers
LOS ANGELES, CA, March 18 -- Delegates to the annual convention of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) voted with their feet and their ballots this weekend. Almost 100 delegates joined the mass anti-war march in Hollywood. Some carried signs calling for "US Out of Iraq Now, No War on Iran." Other signs linked the Iraq war to racism and class struggle at home, supporting Katrina survivors striking war profiteer Northrop Grumman in Mississippi (see page 1). Others demanded the U.S. government stop destroying Baghdad and start rebuilding New Orleans.
Convention delegates supported a resolution of solidarity with the Northrop Grumman strikers, identifying the company as a major military contractor and highlighting the resources fattening company profits by 39% in the last quarter of 2006, resources desperately needed by workers who survived Katrina. Several delegates agreed with a leaflet saying this strike shows "the power of the working class to throw a monkey wrench into the heart of the war machine." Some also agreed that European strikers against Airbus face the same attacks.
Delegates also enthusiastically supported the Oaxaca teachers, raising over $2,000 to send home with a guest speaker from their union. They approved resolutions opposing war on Iran and declaring solidarity with the faculty of the California State University system (who are not CFT members) in their current contract struggle. Nearly 400 delegates also voted to support Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused deployment to Iraq, but said he would go to Afghanistan, and to encourage CFT locals and members to "report our anti-war position to active-duty soldiers wherever possible." This indicated a growing awareness of the need for an anti-war movement inside the U.S. military. However, its cautious wording and lack of a plan show that much more work is needed to win anti-war teachers away from legalistic, patriotic pacifism, to a revolutionary anti-imperialist outlook.
The liberal CFT leadership didn't openly oppose these resolutions, but pushed its own political agenda with speeches from Democratic Party politicians and a boring presentation on healthcare "reform." State Senator Gil Cedillo promoted his "California Dream Act" which would allow undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition. The Act's name aims to confuse people into supporting the national "DREAM Act" which would draw immigrant youth into the military.
L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa begged teachers to support his plan to take over the city school system, for "reform" and "accountability." Few were impressed, but many still wrongly believe that liberal boss-sponsored "reforms" would benefit black and Latin working-class children. Little time was allowed for discussion. Sharper struggle is needed to expose the roots of the racism in the education system. These "reforms" aim to win students and teachers to patriotism. Some mistakenly try to "work with" or "around" these liberal reformers in the CFT leadership rather than confront their pro-imperialist politics.
The American Federation of Teachers Peace and Justice Caucus members gave leadership in advancing many of these resolutions and in organizing the march contingent. Now they must raise the issues in their schools and organize teachers and students for action.
CHALLENGE readers should get the paper to friends and invite them to PLP's May Day activities. This will prepare them to even more sharply challenge the leadership's liberal politics next time. Such a struggle can help PLP grow and is necessary to organize a communist revolution that would truly destroy the profit system and its wars.
Fight Racism: Bosses' Tool To Divide Workers
Anti-Racists Expose Obama Rally
Dems Pledge More Billions for Iraq Slaughter
Obeying Imperialist Masters, Democrat Attacks GI Mom
Democrats' 'Anti-War' Move Aids Deadly 'Surge'
Like It Or Not, Rulers Will Restore Draft
Students See Racist Capitalism at Work in New Orleans
Strike Against Katrina Profiteers
Campus Rally Links War, Racist Lab, Budget Cuts
Aerospace Workers Need Multi-Racial Internationalism
Airbus Walkout Faces Labor Fakers', Pols' Sellout
Strikers Must Fight Peugeot Racism
Capitalism's Poverty Killed Mali Immigrants in Bronx Fire
Fascist Storm Troopers Round Up Immigrant Women Factory Workers
Mexico: Abolition of Wage System Only Answer to Slave Labor
LETTERS
Letter from Spain: The ETA, Nationalism and Communism
It's the Bosses Who Dictate Censorship
PL'ers Leaflet London Anti-War March
Mailer's Book Clueless on Fascism
- Yes, US in Iraq for oil
- US funds create the terrorists
- China legalizes robbery by rich
- Bosses' laws enslave 'guests'
- Young workers can't find jobs
- Misuse troops then rob them
PLP HISTORY. 1969 PL-Led Strike Paralyzed Harvard
U.S. Rulers Throw Wounded GI's on Scrap Heap
Bush Trip In Latin America Reflects Sharpening Inter-Imperialist Struggle
Fight Racism: Bosses' Tool To Divide Workers
Racism has been, and continues to be the main contradiction in the working class. It divides and weakens the international working class, greases the imperialist war machine and allows the bosses to stay in power. It is the main fiber that holds the capitalist system of wage slavery together. What else can be expected from a system built on the labor of African slaves and the genocide of indigenous Native Americans?
Capitalism created racist terror. As the black historian Lerone Bennet, Jr. wrote in "The Road Not Taken," black and indigenous slaves and white indentured servants "had to be divided by rivers of blood." Segregation and racism did not come easy or naturally. It was never "human nature." Instead, many slaves and wage slaves of all colors lived together, struggled together, raised families together and rebelled together against every attempt to divide them.
From Nat Turner and countless slave rebellions, to John Brown and Harriet Tubman's planned raid on the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry to form an army of freed slaves (which helped spark the Civil War), to the ghetto rebellions that rocked the U.S. a century later, most massive and violent struggles of the U.S. working class have been in the struggle for equality, to smash racism. That struggle will never end until capitalism and wage slavery are destroyed with communist revolution!
Racist terror, segregation and lies against black workers are meant to punish militancy and divide the working class. The bosses try to get native born-workers to blame immigrants for lower pay and worsening conditions. They want us to see Arab immigrants as "terrorists" to dehumanize them and win us to fight for ExxonMobil's oil. While the police use black and Latin gangs to violently divide us, they use Illinois Senator Barack Obama and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to lead us to the Democratic Party and wider wars.
Hitler's Germany, South Africa's apartheid system and Israel's brutal racist oppression of the Palestinians all took their lead from U.S. racism. And in every measurable sense, racism is on the rise, the cutting edge of fascism as U.S. rulers prepare for a future of endless wars and genocide. The lower family income of black and Latin workers compared to white family income adds up to an extra $250 billion in super-profits for the bosses. From life expectancy to infant mortality, from a widening wage gap to blacks suffering twice the unemployment of whites, from increased poverty to increased drop-out rates, black and Latino workers and youth are being hit first and hardest.
Every day over 30 million people go to bed hungry in the U.S., including 46% of all black children, 40% of Latino children and 16% of white children. To enforce these attacks, the bosses rely on racist police terror and mass incarceration. While blacks and Latinos comprise only 25% of the U.S. population, there are more than twice as many in prisons compared to white inmates.
It was Clinton, the liberal "first black president" who ended welfare, put 100,000 more racist killer cops on the streets, doubled the border patrol leading to hundreds of deaths of immigrants trying to cross the border, deported more people than any president in U.S. history, and doubled the prison population to over two million, the highest in the world! About 70% of the prison population is black and Latino. The brutal racist incarceration of black youth (the "War on Drugs") preceded and laid the basis for, Bush's "War on Terror," mass round-ups of Muslim and Arab immigrants, secret prisons and torture.
Racism Hurts All Workers
With the union leaders' help, the auto, steel, airlines and aerospace giants have sub-contracted tens of thousands of jobs to low-paid mainly black and Latino citizen and immigrant workers. While Boeing eliminated 50,000 jobs in Washington, subcontractors in southern California boomed, paying mainly immigrant labor less than half of Boeing wages. With the addition of over 15,000 auto-related factories - many Asian and European-owned - auto production has shifted to lower-paid workers across the South, leaving cities like Detroit, Flint, and Toledo in ruins. While black, Latino and immigrant workers are shouldering the main burden of U.S. imperialism in decline, all workers' jobs, wages, pensions and healthcare are being devastated. This shows how the bosses use racism to divide and weaken the whole working class.
U.S. imperialism has killed over 650,000 Iraqis in the last four years, well over 1.2 million since 1992. More than 850 million people live on less than one dollar a day - the World Bank's international poverty line - and half the world lives on less than $2-a-day! Over 250,000 children die every week of hunger and malnutrition. The vast majority are black, Latin and Asian.
Attacks on African and Arab immigrants sweep across Europe while over one-third of the African population is malnourished, AIDS is rampant and life expectancy is under 41 years. In Latin America there are 98 million homeless people.
From the Serb-Muslim "ethnic cleansings" in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the Tutsi-Hutu genocide in Rwanda, to the current U.S.-sponsored Sunni-Shia bloodbath in Iraq, to the slaughter of four million Congolese in a war for diamonds, coltan and gold, to mass murder in Darfur, racist genocide has become a growing trend, the cost of doing business in a world still suffering the loss of a once powerful world communist movement. Can the U.S. be far behind?
From the chilling sight of 100,000 black workers being left behind to die when Katrina struck New Orleans, to the closing of half the health clinics in Chicago with a patient population over 80% black and Latino, to AIDS being the #1 killer of black women between 20 and 40, the answer starts to become clearer.
Black and Latino nationalism helps the racist bosses by dividing the working class and simultaneously weakens the fight against racism, the rulers' main divisive tool. We are one international working class with the same enemy and the same fight. Only the working class, which creates all value, can unite to destroy capitalism and run society without wars, racism, bosses, or wages.
U.S. bosses are drowning in a quagmire in Iraq and are facing increasing challenges from rival imperialists worldwide. But they still have a lot of life left in them. The one contradiction they can't escape is that they must rely on those they oppress the most to save their racist empire. That's why the morale of their army is lousy, and why soldiers will eventually be won to rebel against the brass and fight for communist revolution. Black and Latino workers and youth can bring their vast experience in fighting racist terror to lead the revolutionary movement and PLP.
When the Party leads fights against racism while exposing nationalism and patriotism, and puts forward communist ideas, then the fight against racism becomes not just another reform but leads to building PLP and is a major step on the road to revolution. We need to bring the fight against racism into all mass organizations, expose the bosses' ideas and win angry workers and youth away from the leadership's racism, nationalism and patriotic loyalty to the bosses' system. We need to make communist politics primary. The fight against racism is the key to building the mass PLP that unites the working class for a communist revolution.
Anti-Racists Expose Obama Rally
CHICAGO, IL March 3 - Today, PLP members unfurled a banner calling presidential hopeful Barack Obama, "The next Iran WAR President!" at a rally hosted by the AFL-CIO and its pro-war president John Sweeney. We shouted at Obama to come clean about his plans for widening imperialist oil war in the Middle-East. As security roughly escorted us from the Hyatt hotel, Obama said, "Someone tell that sister that I'm against the war," even though the day before he had addressed a group of Israeli businessmen and talked about dealing with the "Iranian threat." One anti-war activist left with us.
Calling the event a rally for "workers rights," hundreds of nurses and laundry staff from the Resurrection Catholic Hospital system were brought by AFSCME, which is trying to organize them. Sweeney, Obama and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin were all in attendance, to support the organizing drive and new proposed federal legislation to support union organizing.
These are the same pack of union leaders and politicians who did nothing to oppose the racist budget cuts in the County health system that are being carried out by fellow racist Democrats Todd Stroger and the Daley machine. The County will close half of its 26 clinics that serve hundreds of thousands of uninsured workers and children, more than 80 percent black and Latin. The cuts were made to fill a $100- million cut in federal funding due to the $2-TRILLION war in Iraq. These cuts will kill thousands of mostly black and Latin patients.
Still, workers were ecstatic when Obama walked into the room. Minutes after he began speaking, an integrated group, including health care workers and students involved in the County struggle, unfurled the banner and began walking toward the center aisle. We want Obama to know that he can't speak in Chicago without being exposed as a war mongering agent of the racist ruling class. We distributed PLP leaflets titled, "Where Was Obama When the Clinics Closed," and sold CHALLENGE.
Taking on Obama, especially on his home turf, is not easy or popular right now. This is similar to when Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago about 25 years ago, and no one on the "left" opposed him but PLP. But we are not in a popularity contest. We are out to challenge the misleaders and fight for the political leadership of the working class. In order to do this we will have to take this battle into the unions and churches, and the Obama and Hillary campaigns directly.
A woman who heard about the action later in the day told one of our comrades that she is active in Obama's campaign, and that the next time she has people over to her house, she will invite her along to discuss her ideas. That is the kind of ties and struggle it will take to turn the tide and expose the rulers' latest shooting star. There should be no place Obama can speak unchallenged! Join the PLP and march with us on May Day.
Dems Pledge More Billions for Iraq Slaughter
Phony "anti-war" Democrats in Congress want to give the Bush administration $20 billion more than the $100 billion it seeks in emergency funding for U.S. imperialism's increasingly deadly efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Disguised as demanding a 2008 Iraq withdrawal timetable, while "supporting our troops," liberals are, in fact, trying to make the U.S. war machine more lethal and more effective in stabilizing the Mid-East, and securing its oil.
The liberal NY Times (3/10) blessed the move: "House Democrats now want to add funds to speed the production and delivery of badly-needed protective armor, provide better medical care for wounded troops and veterans, and shore up the Army's eroding combat readiness....We hope they succeed." AP reports (3/8): "Democrats also intend to add $1.2 billion to Bush's request for military operations in Afghanistan." As they hand the bloodthirsty generals all the cash they want, and more, the liberal lawmakers reveal their unswerving loyalty to U.S. imperialism.
Obeying Imperialist Masters, Democrat Attacks GI Mom
Wisconsin Democratic congressman David Obey showed his true colors in a particularly disgusting incident. When Tina Richards, an Iraq war protester and mother of a Marine, demanding that Congress bring the troops home, asked Obey why he would vote for a war spending bill, Obey lost it. Labeling war opponents "idiots," he shouted in his constituent's face, "If that [the war bill] isn't good enough for you, you're smoking something illegal. You've got your facts screwed up." (Washington Post, 2/10)
The House Democrats' proposal (Obama and Clinton back similar Senate measures) gives a green light to at least one more year of carnage in Iraq and opens wide loopholes for future U.S. troop presence there. The liberals call for "withdrawal" in 2008, except for "targeted counterterrorism operations, embassy protection and efforts to train Iraqis." Counter-terrorism includes stifling sabotage against the Iraqi oil industry. The U.S.'s puppet government has offered Exxon Mobil and Chevron open access to Iraq's crude, but increasing violence keeps the firms out. "Since 2003, there have been more than 380 attacks on Iraq's oil assets: pipelines blown up, terminals set on fire and key personnel killed. Although some of the oil majors have privately identified areas in the country where they would like to explore, especially in the south, none have so far taken the plunge." (London Telegraph, 3/11) U.S. rulers' need to control Iraq's oil infrastructure is one of the more compelling "facts" Obey alluded to.
Democrats' 'Anti-War' Move Aids Deadly 'Surge'
Boosting the war effort now, while effectively delaying any de-escalation for a year or more, helps U.S. imperialists make the best of the remainder of the Bush presidency. The liberal imperialists, with the NY Times and the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations in the forefront, had called for a massive invasion of Iraq. But Bush, to please his donor and voter base, has refused to raise the taxes required, or to mobilize the nation. Lately, however, the liberal imperialists have asserted greater, but not full, control over Bush's war policy.
Rumsfeld is out and Chaney chastened. And the "surge," brainchild of imperialist James Baker, is growing by the day. Imperialist strategists decry it as "too little, too late," but it represents the best they could manage under Bush. Liberals in Congress are enabling the surge and thus stand as guilty as the Bush gang - amid a host of other war crimes - of the recent murder of a non-combatant and his two young daughters in Sadr City.
The Democrats' actions mesh with the recommendations of the liberal imperialist Brookings Institution: "Rather than force a showdown with Mr. Bush this winter and spring, Congress should give his surge strategy a chance ....There are good reasons to give the war effort...another six to nine months....[T]he new surge strategy being implemented by Gen. David Petraeus, while still insufficiently resourced, is much more consonant with classic counter-insurgency doctrine than anything the coalition has tried to date." (Brookings' Michael O'Hanlon, Wall Street Journal, 3/1)
The surge buys the liberals time until the 2008 elections, when they hope to replace Bush with one of their own. They need a president with the will and skill to militarize the U.S., for an imminent clash with Iran and a superpower conflict down the road. They need someone who can sell the draft, or as Democrats label it, "national service." [See box.]
Nobody should fall for Obama's or Clinton's or any other politician's empty promises to bring the troops home. Rep. Obey's open hostility is more honest. Backing liberal candidates advances the imperialists' war agenda. The only viable alternative lies beyond the voting booth, in relying on our own working class and recruiting masses into a revolutionary communist party, PLP.
Students See Racist Capitalism at Work in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, LA., Feb. 28 -- Over winter break, a multi-racial group of twenty high school students helped New Orleans workers fight the bosses' attacks, originally thinking their purpose was to "help the people down there because there is a lot to be done." Many had not understood the use of the words racism and fascism or the residents' anger at the government. That quickly changed in New Orleans.
The first day, residents of the CJ Peete (aka Magnolia) housing projects moving back into the houses asked for the student volunteers to help clean them out. These apartments, constructed during the 1940s, were not affected by the flood and were ready to live in right after the hurricane. The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), however, locked them up and wouldn't let the residents move back, even with "legal" leases. This is part of a plan to get rid of the public housing and replace it with mixed income housing, driving black workers away. According to Bill Quigley, law professor at New Orleans' Loyola University, "CJ Peete will go from 723 units to 410; of the 410 units, 154 will be public-housing eligible, with 133 mixed-income and 123 market-rate." In other words, the workers depending on these houses are being kicked out to make do with trailers if they can find nothing else.
As the students spoke to the residents, many of them began to learn about the daily lives of workers. These interactions motivated them to work harder to help, building a sense of working-class solidarity and willingness to serve the working class. But we sometimes allow the anger to fade or become cynical if we work on reformist projects without examining the bigger picture. We must understand the workings of capitalism to smash it and build a more egalitarian society.
While they cleaned houses, HANO police noticed more residents moving back in, so they acted to protect the bosses, telling students that they could be charged with trespassing and vandalism because the residents did not have "the right papers." The students left, some saying "I would have gotten arrested, we should have fought back." This proved the essence of state power: those willing to fight for the working class will be punished, jailed, tortured, or even killed. As the week went on, students began to make connections, saying that, "They can spend billions of dollars on a war for oil, but they can't give the people down here money to move back into their homes."
Deeply moved by what they saw of the racism intrinsic in the history of this tragedy, the students were politicized by their experience. Black students who were less surprised by evidence of racism felt a new obligation to organize more where they live. But this anger is not enough if directed at particular politicians rather than the system that produces racist inequalities. We must work closely with these students to develop a more revolutionary perspective. It is very easy to get caught up with reformist issues (getting people back into their homes is not something to be taken lightly), but if we make this primary, we lead the working class into the wrong direction.
We have distributed CHALLENGE to some of the students and teachers on the trip, one student and two teachers are attending a study group and many more will be asked to organize for May Day. This trip, along with communist leadership, creates the potential for a strong base in our school.
Strike Against Katrina Profiteers
PASCAGOULA, MISSISSIPPI, March 14 - The rulers' profit-driven reaction to Katrina's devastation has sparked a strike over wages and benefits by nearly 7,000 black and white workers here, shutting down Ingalls Shipyard (the state's largest employer), owned by Northrop-Grumman. The workers walked out on March 8 after a company wage "offer" would be wiped out merely by a $50 monthly increase in health premiums. This from a Navy contractor making huge profits from the $2 billion a week the ruling class spends on its oil war in Iraq.
"They left their houses to get this company up and running," declared fork-lift driver Willie Hammond, father of three, "and this is how they show their appreciation." (NY Times, 3/13)
After workers lost homes, cars and a way of life, they now see a doubling of rents and house prices, a gallon of milk now costs $4.19 (up from $2.59) and payday loans are needed to just buy gas to get to work.
Current projects on a giant Navy destroyer and several transport ships are at a standstill. The bosses' divisive weapon of racism was invisible as this united multi-racial group of strikers were determined to "hold out indefinitely." Their picket-line spirits are high; blues music echoes in the background while they set up barbeque grills to feed themselves.
They have received considerable support from townspeople after a solidarity march through the city. As electrician John Reed told the NY Times, "We're living…paycheck to paycheck, and we're tired of it. If we can survive Katrina, we can survive this."
All workers should raise support for these strikers.
Campus Rally Links War, Racist Lab, Budget Cuts
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - "One, two, three, four! We won't fight your oil war!" was the chant opening an anti-war rally on our campus. Some students wore orange suits and covered their heads with black hoods, depicting Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisoners. This caught passer-bys' attention, mirroring how U.S. imperialism has treated so-called "terrorists" and continues to build fascism and racism by portraying Middle-Eastern people as "terrorists" to justify torturing and terrorizing them.
We distributed over 50 CHALLENGES, while speakers shed light on the role of racism and the need to spread anti-racist struggles on our campuses. Speeches linked the war to growing fascism in the U.S.: Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama recently announced support for construction of the anti-immigrant wall on the Mexico-U.S. border. Like L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Obama also supports more cops in the neighborhoods to terrorize youth and workers.
Students made it clear that the Iraq war, possibly followed by war with Iran, comprises a U.S. ruling-class plan not only to ensure oil for Exxon-Mobil, but also to keep other imperialist powers like Russia and China away from this vital source of profit. Afterwards, many more students came outside for a fire drill, enabling us to continue distributing CHALLENGE and to put forward our politics.
One CHALLENGE seller talked with a soldier who was part of the group around Abu Ghraib when that scandal erupted. He agreed that the war profited the rich, but said that regardless of what the mission was, he only cared for his "brothers" fighting alongside him, showing soldiers' loyalty with each other. But this solidarity must be transformed and deepened into a class-conscious, internationalist solidarity rather than a nationalist one. Although he wouldn't take CHALLENGE, he stayed to listen to all the speeches. Hopefully, the conversation and the event itself exposed some of the lies soldiers like him are told.
Experiences like these show the greater need to reach out to soldiers, both inside the military and by distributing literature from the outside. We must also support rebellions in the military, as PLP did during the Vietnam War.
By themselves, counter-recruitment activities won't end the war. Eventually the rulers will need a draft, which Democrats like Charles Rangel have been pushing, as well as the current backdoor economic draft that has maintained troop numbers for this war. Ultimately, to stop this war and all wars for profit, soldiers and workers will need to rebel against the brass and the rulers to destroy the capitalist system that creates these wars.
Active students on this campus plan more action. They've been campaigning against the racist criminology building and in support of teachers fighting benefit cuts. The budget cuts, the war and the racist criminology lab (site of joint research with the LAPD) all have the same source: racist capitalism. We will mobilize students against these attacks and that root cause.
Aerospace Workers Need Multi-Racial Internationalism
SEATTLE, WA., March 8 - "Boeing says Airbus is the enemy, but the Airbus workers are in the same pickle we are," concluded a Machinist at the last Boeing union meeting (see article below). "We've heard tonight about [IAM International president] Buffenbarger's national industrial policy, but to answer the horrors of subcontracting we need international solidarity!" This call for the world's workers to unite stood in stark contrast to the phony interim IAM District 751 presidential election, where the candidates argue this month over experience (in collaborating with the bosses) and vague calls for change.
While a business agent and the current vice-president duke it out over nothing but their careers, 10,000 of our aerospace brothers and sisters at Airbus will lose their jobs. The candidates have studiously avoided mentioning the European strikes.
(Racist and Nationalist) Birds of a Feather
Unfortunately, the leadership of these Airbus strikes mirrors the lies of our own union misleaders during the "We Can Do It!" campaign held a few years ago. Airbus's Power8 downsizing is a carbon copy of the Boeing Dreamliner subcontracting plan. When Boeing initiated its plan, our leadership mobilized union members to screw mostly Latino farmworkers out of unemployment insurance, gut workers' compensation and give the company huge tax breaks to keep the Dreamliner assembly in Everett, WA. We ended up losing jobs anyway as the company sold whole fabrication and subassembly plants. The Airbus strikes may be more militant, but these pro-capitalist misleaders - on both sides of the Atlantic - are "united" in dividing workers along national and racial lines.
The Dreamliner manufacturing plan is racist. Indeed, the whole reorganization of U.S. industry is racist. Subcontractors pay slave wages to hundreds of thousands of mostly Latino workers churning out Boeing parts in Southern California and Texas. Mercedes-Benz's Alabama assembly plant is staffed by a largely white workforce. Down the street, 3,000 mostly black workers toil in a lower-paid, sped-up subcontracted shop. No doubt Euopean Union bosses will - if they haven't already - export this kind of highly profitable racist division of labor back to the European continent.
Bosses' or Workers' Values
At this same union meeting, the District legislative officer quoted Buffenbarger's warning that countries that don't share "our values" would control the nation's destiny if we didn't beef up our industrial [read: war manufacturing] capacity.
The implications are clear. As inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens, the EU's formidable war industry may not be an ally of the U.S. ruling class. Russia and China have each made huge production deals with EADS (a British-French-German-Spanish conglomerate). Buffenbarger places loyalty to the needs of U.S. imperialism over our need for international working-class solidarity against all bosses.
The union leadership wants us to "race to the bottom" against Airbus workers to help finance the bosses' war plans. Our answer is to rely on the super-exploited black and Latin workers in the subcontracting plants to embrace communist class-consciousness and lead the whole working class. Multi-racial internationalism is what PLP can bring to the class struggle.
We saw a taste of this when reporting on the union meeting back in the shop. Workers requested reprints of old CHALLENGE articles to learn how the bosses violently built nationalist and religious divisions between Jews and Palestinians. They wanted historical examples of how communists united workers in the Middle East. Next step: study-action meetings on this question to build rank-and-file leadership and morale.
Airbus Walkout Faces Labor Fakers', Pols' Sellout
TOULOUSE, FRANCE, March 8 - In their first mobilization since 1993, tens of thousands of France's Airbus workers struck on March 6 protesting the company's downsizing plan for 10,000 layoffs. At the Toulouse, Saint Nazaire and Méaulte plants, up to 90% of the workers downed tools. Nearly 15,000 marched in Toulouse, 3,000 in Saint Nazaire and 2,000 in Méaulte. The Power8 downsizing would sell the latter two plants and lay off 1,600 in Britain and 400 in Spain. Airbus employs 57,000 workers at 16 European sites.
Immediately after the plan was announced, Germany's Airbus workers in Varel, Nordenham and Laupheim also walked out for a short time, as did nearly 14,000 workers at four French sites. Eurocopter workers in Marignane and La Courneuve also struck in sympathy with the Airbus workers. Both Eurocopter and Airbus are EADS (EU conglomerate) subsidiaries.
The co-president of the Airbus workers' council, Jean-François Knepper of the FO trade union, declared that "if we are not heard today, we will have to strike harder. The struggle is only just beginning." But his radical-sounding rhetoric was accompanied by nationalist complaints that there are too many layoffs in France (4,300) and not enough in Germany (3,700).
The leaders of the five big union confederations, and three pseudo-leftist presidential candidates also marched, but all these fake leftist leaders accept the bosses' line - "there is no alternative" to capitalism. They're falling over each other suggesting ways for the capitalists to "solve" their crisis, mainly by pouring capital into Airbus.
On March 5, the five union confederations' leaders said they were "reassured" by their meeting with right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and centrist candidate François Bayrou. "Both…were concrete and…gave us their firm support," said CGT leader Xavier Pétrachi. "Although they think that restructuring is necessary to meet this crisis, both agreed that this…plan is not the right one….That's…what we believe, too."
This supposedly "left-wing" union leader supports axing workers' jobs so long as the axed jobs are "the right ones."
His rival in the FO trade union, Julien Talavant, gushed with gratitude because the politicos agreed to meet him. "We gave them our main demands, they listened to us, they noted them down, and they confirmed many of them…. They won't be able to let us down now." Talavant must believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, too!
"Socialist" party presidential candidate Ségolène Royal proposes "authorizing the [French] regions entering [Airbus's] capital ... and that the government commit itself to providing grants for research and development." Since the regions have no money to invest and the government is up to its neck in debt, Royal's proposal is an empty one.
"Communist" party candidate Marie-George-Buffet proposes "a low-interest European Bank loan to recapitalize Airbus and get it through this rough patch, so as to preserve the technological know-how." She's appealing to the capitalists' self-interest, telling them that tomorrow they'll need the skilled workers they're axing today. She "forgot" that the iron law of capitalism is dictated by the bottom line.
Trotskyist candidate Olivier Besancenot wants a "European consortium" to nationalize both EADS and its subsidiary, Airbus. As if a capitalist government could change the workings of the capitalist market or would hesitate to lay off workers any more than a private sector boss!
The European aircraft unions are calling for united demonstrations throughout Europe on March 16 to pressure the European Commission.
These fake leftists and their labor faker friends can't solve this crisis because there isn't a solution under capitalism! The only real solution to job cuts and all bosses' attacks is, in the long run, a communist revolution, when workers can run the economy in our class interest.
Meanwhile, one capitalist is laughing all the way to the bank. Arnaud Lagardère, holding 15% of the voting shares in EADS, sold half of his shares last April, before Airbus's problems became public. The sale fetched two billion euros - not bad, considering his late father paid only 120 million euros for his total investment in EADS in 1999. (Arnaud inherited his father's stake in March, 2003.)
Lagardère refuses to risk reinvesting in EADS or Airbus, but he's enchanted that all the politicians are making cheap promises about pouring in taxpayers' money to bail out the company. [Source: "Le Canard enchaîné," 3/7/07]J
(Next Issue: The European Military-Industrial Complex
Strikers Must Fight Peugeot Racism
AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE, March 6-The strike launched on Feb. 28 by 460 Peugeot autoworkers continued in this Paris suburb today. One assembly line has been shut down and the other is running at a snail's pace. The workers are holding strike rallies twice a day. On March 2, 150 Aulnay strikers went to Survilliers to support striking drivers at Gefco, Peugeot's haulage company.
The Aulnay strikers are demanding a 300-euro-a-month pay hike, permanent jobs for the plant's 700 temporary workers (Peugeot usually denies permanent jobs to these mostly immigrant workers), and the right to retire at 55. Six hundred workers are over 55; their retirement could create jobs for younger workers, particularly Northern and Sub-Saharan Africans from the nearby housing projects, scene of the November 2005 anti-racist rebellions. In 1982 and since, immigrant workers have led nationally-historic struggles at the Aulnay plant.
The workers' average take-home pay is 1,100 euros a month. The plant employs 5,000 workers, 3,200 in production. Peugeot, which netted 176 million euros in profits last year, is sticking to the 25-euro-a-month wage increase stipulated in the 2007 contract signed Feb. 28 with five unions. The strike is backed by two other unions, and one that initially signed the contract.
The Peugeot workers are inspired by the successful strike of workers at Magnetto, a Peugeot division that was spun off and is now a subcontractor. The Magnetto workers won a pay hike and bonuses amounting to 100 euros a month, an extra five days vacation and permanent jobs for the temporary workers.
On March 1, 50,000 marched in Cádiz, Spain, opposing the closing of the Delphi plant in Puerto Real, where 2,800 workers were dumped, 1,600 at Delphi plus 1,200 at plants supplying Delphi. Airbus, Eastman Chemical and other area workers also affected by job losses joined the march. Delphi workers in Barcelona stopped work for an hour in solidarity with the march. The workers are doubly angry, knowing that Delphi had broken a promise to remain open till 2010 after receiving a 62-million euro subsidy from Cádiz's local government.
All across Europe, autoworkers are becoming more militant. But a revolutionary communist leadership is needed to internationalize their struggles and build a powerful red-led workers' movement to get off the reformist treadmills since the bosses take away any short-terms gains at the first opportunity.
Capitalism's Poverty Killed Mali Immigrants in Bronx Fire
BRONX, NY, March 12 - The city's ruling class and its media are using the horrific fire that took the lives of ten members of two immigrant families on March 8 to: (1) make their whole sorry lot look like the ultimate example of compassion - including School Chancellor Klein, Governor Spitzer, Senator Hillary Clinton, Mayor Bloomberg (who changed his tune after being forced to return from Florida after actually blaming the victims for having space heaters) and, of all people, Yankee boss George Steinbrenner; and, (2) burying the news about the probable grand jury cover-up of the cops who murdered Sean Bell.
Soon after one of my West African students at a Family Literacy program called to tell me that another student's best friend from Mali had died in the Bronx fire, (nine children died altogether), we visited our classmates and with them the stricken families. Our program is collecting donations for the families.
The working class has shown again its solidarity and generosity, accompanied by an outpouring of grief and love for the families. Neighbors have erected shrines, established donation centers and collected food. Teachers and children at the local public school which three of the dead children attended are mourning their loss.
The tragedy was no accident. It grew out of the poverty and desperation that imprisons millions of our working-class brothers and sisters, living lives so fragile that they become a tragedy waiting to happen. Capitalism, by its nature a system of exploitation, repression, racism, brutality and profit wars, creates the underpinnings for such calamities.
In the High Bridge neighborhood where the house burned, 41% of the population lives below poverty line; 35% are under 17. Meanwhile, here in NYC the rich have multiple dwellings worth billions. Condos sell for millions. Landlords divide family-sized apartments into small units and charge $2,000 rent each. Working-class families can't find affordable, safe housing. Workers' homes like this one that burned here are often dilapidated fire hazards needing thousands of dollars in repairs.
The banks and the City hold hands: the banks enrich themselves financing dangerously shabby houses for low-income, unsuspecting buyers in search of the "American dream of home ownership"; the City co-operates, having no regulations and zero responsibility for such structures. The cost of heating fuel has skyrocketed, leading low-income dwellers to use dangerous space heaters and ovens for warmth.
Oil giants like Exxon-Mobil made a record $39 billion net profit last year while the U.S. government spends trillions on imperialist military operations. Workers labor long hours on two and three jobs to support their families. Large numbers of undocumented immigrants are caught in this trap, fighting poverty while sending generous parts of their meager earnings to their families ravaged by imperialism back home.
Racist profiling and persecution run rampant. Their effects pervade our communities and jobs and have surfaced in our classroom. But the potential for unity among working-class immigrant students from Mali, Gambia and other West African countries, from Mexico and the Dominican Republic have surfaced as well. We talk, we learn and we struggle, and many stand up to injustice and fight for our needs.
Only under communism, where workers hold power, will the system serve our class's fundamental interests. Such a society, free of racism and capitalist borders, built on production for need, will eliminate the extreme vulnerability in which so many of our working-class brothers and sisters, especially children, currently live. Those of us now building the international communist movement and the Progressive Labor Party must re-dedicate our lives to this struggle.
Fascist Storm Troopers Round Up Immigrant Women Factory Workers
NEW BEDFORD, MA., March 6 - Early this morning over 300 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, backed up by local cops and two Coast Guard helicopters, descended on the small Michael Bianco Inc. (MBI) factory. The raid's target was 500 or more workers - mostly undocumented Latina women - sewing armored military vests.
This notorious sweatshop started as a small leather goods producer, but multiplied in size after 9/11 when it got military contracts to make backpacks and bulletproof vests. MBI makes its profits by paying workers $7 an hour, without benefits or overtime pay, and by enforcing a system of massive fines for tiny infractions like lateness or talking on the floor. They get away with this by threatening arrest and deportation.
ICE raid tactics came right out of a Gestapo handbook: exits guarded, and eight hours of interrogation about each worker's immigration status. (Some workers were questioned as many as three times.) By the end of this ordeal, 361 workers were detained with 45 released because of pregnancy and other medical issues, subject to later questioning. The remaining detainees were then handcuffed and bussed to a military base. After a night in unheated facilities, most were flown to remote cities in the South, the rest being sent to Massachusetts jails. No arrangements were made for the detainees' children, leaving as many as 200 missing a parent, and stranding many at day care or with babysitters.
The factory owner and two managers were arrested and immediately charged with conspiring to import and hire "illegal aliens" without government authorization and then released. MBI will apparently keep at least some of its military contracts. Significantly, the court gave the owner permission to travel to Puerto Rico, perhaps to hire more workers for his sweatshop.
While the media and the governor "deplored" the abandonment of the detainees' children, they will not address the impossible dilemma undocumented workers pose for U.S. bosses. On the one hand, these 12 million workers represent an invaluable source of cheap labor and higher profits for the bosses, and the military sees them as a partial solution to its manpower problems. On the other hand, the Homeland Security bosses pose these workers as a serious "security problem" that might interfere with the bosses' plans for a "secure" U.S. Congress is still working on legislation that will somehow harmonize these two sets of interests, but the end result is already clear: entering the U.S. without documents will no longer be a civil offense, handled administratively. It will be a criminal offense involving jail time and/or heavy fines. Hiring an undocumented worker will be a crime with heavy penalties. Non-citizens will be permitted to work only under strict controls. But the key force in imposing this new element of fascism will be the terror raids on immigrants (documented and undocumented) carried out by the ICE storm troopers.
The New Bedford round-up is not the first such raid, and it won't be the last, because capitalism depends on this kind of repression to maintain control of workers and maximize profits, especially in the current crisis. It won't be restricted to immigrant workers but will be used against all workers who fight back. We must join the battle against fascism to turn it into the revolutionary struggle that will build a communist future.
Mexico: Abolition of Wage System Only Answer to Slave Labor
MEXICO CITY, March 8 - On this International Women's Day, thousands of workers and their allies, organized by the Electrical Workers' Union, marched in the Zócolo (city center) demanding a pay raise in the face of rising inflation; to repudiate the Calderon government's economic policies; and to protest Bush's visit. The justified workers' anger against the rulers' attacks finds no real solution in the union leaders and other organizations. They only push "Obradorism" (support for Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador - the opposition presidential candidate). The workers don't need "reformed" capitalism; we need to fight for communism.
This year the hourly minimum wage was raised for millions of workers from 3.60 pesos (US 35¢) to 5.50 pesos (US 54¢). The "better-paid" industrial workers earn an average of US $2 an hour. Meanwhile, multi-billionaire Carlos Slim rakes in $2.2 million per hour, 24 hours a day! His fortune exceeds US $49 billion, making him the world's third richest man. Slim, Televisa, TV Azteca, the banks and the financial groups who own the mines all exploit and repress the workers, reap billions from exploiting workers, millions of whom go hungry.
Even worse, prices of tortillas, eggs, meat, milk and other basic products have all risen, while the current minimum wage doesn't cover basic nutritional needs - only enough to buy 8 of the 100 products needed to survive. At least five times the daily minimum wage (238 pesos) is needed to provide a family's basic nutrition, without even considering housing, health, education, clothing, shoes, etc. A family would need a 435.7% wage hike to cover the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing.
The worldwide war over markets forces the bosses to drive workers into this misery. This super-exploitation is generating massive immigration. The International Organization on Migration reported that during ex-President Fox's 6-year term more than 4.3 million young workers, 40% of them women, emigrated to the U.S., joining more than 10 million already there.
In Michoacán alone, 40,000 children are forced to work under extreme conditions up to 13 hours a day in the fields. The same or worse occurs in more rural areas like Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.
Those with jobs live under threat of joblessness or underemployment. Capitalism uses the reserve army of unemployed to force poverty wages and long hours on those who hold jobs. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography reports that 10,480,299 people are self-employed and 26,453,462 are wage-earners. This excludes labor performed in jails or reformatories, where people are forced to work to "repay society" while the profits from their slave labor fill the pockets of a few bosses.
The massive, brave struggles in Pasta de Conchos, Atenco and Oaxaca demonstrate that the working class is looking for an alternative to this capitalist inequality. It's up to revolutionary communists to show that supporting Obrador's brand of capitalism is no alternative. The solution is a society without capitalists, where the workers produce to meet their own needs, not to increase the megamillions of Slim or any other exploiter. This struggle is international, against a capitalist system that only offers wars, fascist terror, drug cartels and racism. CHALLENGE must increasingly become the beacon that guides these struggles towards building a mass PLP in the fight for communist revolution.
LETTERS LETTERS LETTERS
Letter from Spain: The ETA, Nationalism and Communism
After nine months of a "peace process," last December's ETA [Basque nationalist group] bombing of Madrid's Barajas airport surprised many. One should not underestimate its symbolism and psychological impact.
First, it's a clear message from the ETA that the "peace dialogue" does not mean surrender of Basque political aims it's been pursuing since long before the end of Franco's fascist dictatorship.
Second, in the last few decades Madrid has profited from investments coming from the European Union fund for regional development. The airport's brand-new terminal is a good example of the economic privileging of Madrid while Spain's other regions suffer economic constraints. The bombing is a symbolic response to these economic inequalities.
The Spanish media, political parties and government were unanimous: the peace process was broken and the ETA was responsible. This is politically motivated to feed public anger towards the ETA and the Basque nationalist movement, to show the power of bourgeois democracy against the "assassins." Spain's prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said optimism about peace prospects was a mistake. But this is all maneuvering in the political circus transpiring between the Spanish government and the ETA. Nobody knows what's really happening inside those negotiations; the bombing could only be understood in the context of that process.
In any case, these explanations of the airport bombing exclude a communist analysis of the situation in the Basque Country and in Spain. As Lenin once said, communists oppose any form of oppression, and therefore have always supported nationalist struggles, insofar as they are carried on by a specially oppressed regional or ethnic section of the working class against the dominant national capitalists. But the cultural, regional and linguistic differences which are part of human diversity, and should not be oppressed, should also not be used to divide the working class.
That's the problem of many nationalist workers' movements today, including the left Basque national movement. Originally the ETA had a somewhat clear communist perspective, and focused its struggle against Spanish and French capitalism as part of a more general workers' struggle. The ETA thought its fight could awaken the Spanish and French working class on the road to communist revolution.
In recent years, however, a less leftist tendency emerged in the ETA. A more nationalist language replaced a communist one. Spain as a whole, not Spanish and international capitalism, became the enemy. That is important ideologically. As clear statements against Spanish, French, and Basque capitalism lost ground, nationalist claims became central, and the joint struggle of the working class (Spanish, French and Basque) became marginal.
Today the Basque Country is one of Europe's richest regions. Unemployment is virtually non-existent. Therefore, many people in Spain see Basque nationalism as a kind of economic egoism, and Spain's rulers use these feelings to stress the unfairness of nationalist claims.
The left Basque nationalist movement, unlike many nationalisms, has always supported migrants and victims of sexual abuse and racist attacks. But such solidarity is meaningless without communist struggle. Revisionism and petty-bourgeois ideology have won the minds of many Basque leftists. That's why their struggle has degenerated into a competitive struggle between different groups of capitalists for the prize of the rich Basque Country.
The "peace process," therefore, is not an issue for the communist movement. The real problem is not whether one is for or against the ETA, or for or against the linguistic and cultural rights of the Basque people, but rather that in the Basque Country the working class has lost its battle against capitalism. It was defeated on the battlefield of ideology. Nationalist ideology is always keen to accept leftist tendencies, petty-bourgeois ideology, and egoistic claims. That's its great danger. Only a communist vision can clear the battlefield. Capitalism is the source of all inequalities and communism is its worst enemy. All kinds of oppression can only find their answers inside the communist movement.
Love and Struggle, a Reader
CHALLENGE Comment: Thanks for your letter. We would add that individual acts of terrorism in any form don't help the cause of workers' liberation. History has already proven that. And workers ultimately pay with their lives. The recent ETA bombing killed two immigrant Ecuadorian workers, just like the Jihadists' March 11, 2005 terrorist bombing of train commuters killed hundreds, mostly workers, including immigrants. Indeed, nowhere have nationalist movements led to the liberation of the workers they claim to represent. They have merely exchanged one form of capitalism for another. Only a united working class led by revolutionary communists can end the national and racial oppression which were born with capitalism.
It's the Bosses Who Dictate Censorship
A recent article about censorship appeared in the Hollywood Reporter as a response to "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isiah Washington's homophobic remark in the Golden Globes press-room. Shortly afterwards Washington apologized and entered rehab. The article said that censorship is no cure for the way people think; that words are simply words. The mainstream press has avoided using these words, and the writer feels this is a retreat and cop-out.
The debate over the media enforcing "political correctness" comes up on my job; one co-worker even labeled it fascist. My co-worker said black rappers use the "N-word" all the time, so why shouldn't white people be allowed to say it? The argument goes: words aren't the problem, only the "bad thoughts" behind them are. Meanwhile, the other side argues that censorship is necessary so people aren't exposed to offensive language that could insult a minority, ethnic, or religious group.
However, this debate lacks any class analysis or bearing on how workers are treated every day. At my job, for example, everyone is talked down to and yelled at to work faster so the company can reap maximum profits. While no one openly directs racist slurs at me, I'm certainly treated in an inferior manner. Women, black and Latino workers are paid less. Still many of us push the racist and sexist music that justifies super-exploitation to the rest of the working class.
Banning slurs from the media doesn't mean that the capitalists aren't sexist or racist in exploiting workers. The rappers and comedians who don't use slurs, often still advocate black nationalism or reformism. They're even more dangerous because they disguise pro-capitalist programs and music. Political media is heavily censored to keep working people ignorant and their senses dulled in favor of pro-capitalist ideas.
Censorship as handled under capitalism is a reformist issue that sweeps class consciousness and revolutionary politics under the rug. Saying offensive words to get a rise and reaction, then shrugging them off as just "expressions," is useless without a revolutionary solution for the audience that listens.
Ultimately, workers can never have free speech while there's a bosses' dictatorship. Bourgeois democracy can never fix the situation. The working class shouldn't fight for the freedom of the entertainment industry to keep us in the dark about revolutionary politics. Our voices can only be free under communism.
Red Student
CHALLENGE Comments: Justifying use of offensive words also ignores the historic roles that slurs play in dehumanizing and spreading racism/sexism
PL'ers Leaflet London Anti-War March
On Saturday, February 24th a large demonstration against the War in Iraq, and the Trident nuclear weapon system was held in London. Anti-war activists assembled for the march beneath Hyde Park's Speakers Corner. This area in London has historically been a place for free speech and political argument since the 1830's. The spot was originally Tyburn, the place of execution where for centuries the public watched while people were hung. Later, during the days of the Chartists who fought for the vote for the working class, it became a place for mass demonstrations and speeches.
When we heard about this demonstration, we printed 200 copies of a leaflet about the victory of students and teachers who got NYC's teachers' union to pass a resolution against military recruiters in the high schools. We spent a lot of time talking about this struggle. Many people told us that the army comes to the schools to recruit in the UK as well, and they were excited to hear what New Yorkers had done.
Here are some of the comments: " We're trying to do the same as you over here. Get the recruiters out of the schools." "We also oppose racism." "We do have some victories every now and again. One day we'll have the big victory, when the workers take over." "It's a start, it's a start." "It's great that you're here." People also eagerly questioned us about events in the U.S. We had been a bit unsure of ourselves at first, but each positive comment encouraged us.
It was an exciting afternoon -- amongst people opposed to the war. The police said there were 3,000 demonstrators. The march organizers said there were 60,000. Someone heard there were 100,000 who attended the march. The next day all of the Sunday newspapers were strangely silent.
Two New Yorkers
Mailer's Book Clueless on Fascism
I just read Norman Mailer's latest novel, "The Castle in the Forest," and if I didn't already know about fascism, I wouldn't have learned a thing about it from this book. Perhaps Mailer (who I think is Jewish) will make the case that the devil was behind the Nazis and Hitler. That seems to be his point.
The only time there is even a hint of what fascism was all about is when Mailer mentions briefly that Hitler was able to "con" wealthy tycoons into supporting him.
Red Coal
CHALLENGE COMMENT: Actually it was the "tycoons" that used the Nazis to invade, and exploit, all of Europe and North Africa, and eventually attack the communist-led Soviet Union.
Back to New Orleans
When I was invited to visit New Orleans during winter break, I had mixed feelings and was full of expectations. I expected to see more people, more built homes, and at least 70% of the garbage cleaned up. To my disappointment, things have remained the same. In fact, there are fewer people living there and helping out. I felt sad because of the destruction, but I was also angry and speechless because I couldn't comprehend the government's slow response in rebuilding the city. A year and six months and the same shit! I was even angrier to see how the government-built levees in the Lower Ninth Ward compared to those in the French Quarter. It amazed and angered me that the French Quarter levees look like docks while in the Lower Ninth Ward they looked like the wall in a handball court. This proved to me the inequality between the rich and the working class. It showed me that the government's main concern is not the people, but the war.
On my second day, I needed to gain strength from somewhere, and that's one of the things that made me happy about New Orleans. The people who live and work there are amazing. It's empowering to see that after devastation people come together and help out. On this trip I met wonderful and interesting people like our group tour guide, John. I was really touched by what he taught us about the history of New Orleans, especially St. Bernard's Parish. I felt sad when he told us how the tragedy affected him mentally and how he wanted to commit suicide because of the devastation. At that moment, I wished I had all the power in the world to help him and others who felt that way. After this, I was eager to start working, because I was desperate to clean up and let my frustrations out. When I began gutting a green house in the Lower Ninth Ward, all the emotions I had experienced from two days of seeing destruction came out. I felt good bringing things down.
I'm really looking forward to going back to New Orleans in the summer. I realized through this experience that it is our duty to understand that the system has no good intentions for the working class and to educate others about this reality. New Orleans is proof of the capitalist agenda. It is a struggle to help people learn that this was not some act of God, but that officials knew what was coming and still disregarded what was needed to reinforce the levees. If one sits down and starts contemplating what is going on now, one can see that the capitalist system is only about the rich.
We really need to help more in NO. I figured if the government won't do anything, it is our duty as caring people and workers to help the people of New Orleans. I advise everyone to experience what I experienced.
Bronx student
Paul Sporn 1921 - 2007
Paul Sporn, one of the founding members of the Progressive Labor Movement - forerunner of the Progressive Labor Party - died on February 27 in New York at 85.
Comrade Paul hated capitalism, which he saw as a system that bred poverty and racism. These views led him to join the Communist Party (CP) in the 1940's. During World War II he joined the Air Force to fight fascism, serving in North Africa and Europe.
When the war ended, he was one of a group of CP members who moved to Buffalo as part of that party's industrial concentration policy. There he worked in an auto plant for five years and later became an instructor at the University of Buffalo. This circle of party members in Buffalo became the core of a group that felt the CP had degenerated into an organization that had accommodated itself to capitalism. It was committed to reforming capitalism and gaining Socialism by a constitutional amendment abolishing private property, rather than seeing the necessity for the working class to have to violently overthrow the ruling capitalist class. In 1961, members of this group left the CP and formed the PLM the following year.
In 1964, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as part of a nation-wide witch-hunt to root out communists, especially in the working class, descended on Buffalo (then a major industrial city). They subpoenaed workers and teachers, many of them, by then, members of the PLM. We organized a counter-offensive against these budding fascist anti-communists, massing nearly 1,000 pickets in front of the building where the hearings were being held. Comrade Paul was one of the first to be called.
Heretofore, the CP had told members subpoenaed by such committees "not to get the inquisitors mad," to "be nice" and, if necessary, "take the 5th" - refuse to answer questions on 5th Amendment grounds that it could "incriminate" them. But PL had a different line.
Our idea was to take the offensive and challenge the red-baiters. When Paul took the stand, the first question asked him was, "Where were you born." Rather than refuse to answer, he drove the Congressmen crazy for the next three hours, as they tried to get him to answer that one question. They finally gave up and didn't ask anything else.
The following day, the Buffalo Evening News (the city's main newspaper) ran a front-page banner headline: "Univ. of Buffalo Instructor Defies HUAC." This set the tone for the entire hearings, which ended in a flop for the Committee. They hadn't run into such opposition in all their previous hearings.
Soon afterwards Paul was fired under a NY State law banning teachers who were members of organizations the government labeled "subversive." He moved to Detroit where he taught at Wayne State University and helped lead the PLP group there for a number of years as well as helped organize the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR). In later years, Paul was no longer active in PLP but still held to the view of the necessity for working-class revolution. In 1995, he published a book entitled, "Against Itself: The Federal Theater and Writers' Project in the Midwest."
PLP sends its condolences to his family and will remember Paul for his contributions as one of the earliest founding members of our Party.
REDEYE
Yes, US in Iraq for oil
If you suspected that oil lay at the bottom of it all, you guessed correctly.
In February 2001, White House officials consulted with outsiders on possible replacements for Saddam and means to exploit his oil fields. In a memo titled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq," troop requirements, war crimes tribunals and "apportioning Iraq's oil wealth" are discussed.
A month later, the Pentagon circulated a document titled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts, listing 30 countries with interests in Iraq's oil fields . . .
Since there was no legal reason for a preemptive invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz's said, "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction." (Pythian Press, 2/20)
US funds create the terrorists
In the 1980s, the Central intelligence Agency shipped about $3 billion worth of weapons to Afghan commanders fighting the Soviet occupation, a struggle that left perhaps one million Afghans dead and perhaps three million in exile in Pakistan.
A disproportionately large share of the CIA.'s weapons went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…a Pashtun commander who was the murderous leader of the Islamic Party. Mr. Hekmatyar stockpiled many of the weapons. After a brief stint as prime minister in Kabul…He became a strong ally of the Taliban….
His forces have been killing American and NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan… (NYT, 3/11)
China legalizes robbery by rich
China was set to take another giant stride away from Maoism this week with the passage of a controversial bill to protect private property….
Critics of the new bill say it will legitimise what they see as a mass theft from the people. "The property law basically takes all the illegally gotten income and legalises it . . ."
…In a survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences half of the respondents believed that the rich had acquired their wealth through illegal means. (GW, 3/15)
Bosses' laws enslave 'guests'
The report is titled "Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States."…
Workers recruited grom Mexico, South America, Asian and elsewhere to work in American hotels and in… labor-intensive industries….are routinely cheated out of their wages, which are low to begin with . . . .And they are virtual hostages of the American companies that employ them.
The law does not allow these "guests" to change jobs while they're here. If a particular employer is unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has little or no recourse….
A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is the seizure of guest workers' identity documents, such as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the workers incredibly vulnerable….
Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of encountering the authorities, who will treat them as "illegals." They are completely at the mercy of the employers….
"This is not a situation where there are just a few bad-apple employers," (NYT,12/3/06)
Young workers can't find jobs
The strongest job market New York City has had in decades has not helped the city's youngest workers find jobs, leaving them at risk of becoming permanently unemployable…
The report…citied sharp decreases in employment among residents ages 16 to 24 from 2000 to 2006, a period in which employment rose for most other groups….
…The share of people actively looking for work and unable to find it - among those aged 16 to 19 was 28.4 percent….
Young men who get locked up for drugs offenses "are basically unemployable" after they leave prison . . . .
Even for those dropouts who stay out of legal trouble, there is an economic isolation… "You have no real connection to the world of work." (NYT, 2/27)
Misuse troops then rob them
…The administration uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend that it has been generous to veterans, but the historical data contained in its own budget for fiscal 2008 tell the true story. The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans' medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.
To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services…
More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care…Two months before the invasion of Iraq the V.H.A., which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system. As the agency's Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack "special eligibilities such as a compensable service connected condition or recent combat service," will be turned away. . . .
…The parallels between what happened at Walter Reed and what happened to New Orleans - not to mention parallels with the mother of all scandals, the failed reconstruction of Iraq - tell us that the roots of the scandal run far deeper than the actions of a few bad men. (NYT, 3/5)
PLP HISTORY
1969 PL-Led Strike Paralyzed Harvard
(Students for A Democratic Society, Part IV)
The ideological struggle within SDS over nationalism peaked during the San Francisco State strike. It sharpened further over the negotiations U.S. imperialism was conducting with North Vietnamese government representatives.
From the start PL had opposed U.S. imperialism's "right" to negotiate anything in Vietnam, upholding this position once the negotiations began in 1968. It was a difficult, unpopular principle to defend, because the mass heroism of the Vietnamese struggle had justly captured the admiration of hundreds of millions of anti-imperialist workers and students, and because SDS's right-wing leadership pandered to nationalism. But despite threats and intimidation, PLP continued to maintain that negotiating with U.S. bosses would inevitably lead to betraying everything Vietnamese workers and peasants were fighting and dying to win - most notably, a life free from imperialist oppression. Events were to prove the Party correct.
As at SF State, PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) caucus of SDS organized militant action as well as principled debate. The action followed the logic of PLP's anti-nationalist, pro-working class line. The April 1969 Harvard strike soon provided a stunning affirmation of this marriage between theory and practice.
By 1969, liberal U.S. university presidents were falling over each other to mislead the anti-war movement. They sponsored pacifist teach-ins, day-long "moratoriums" and other diversions from militancy. Many had backed the 1968 presidential candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, a Wisconsin Democratic senator, who had entered the campaign with the explicit purpose of channeling student dissent into a pro-boss electoral dead-end.
PLP argued that capitalist universities were an inseparable part of U.S. imperialism's Vietnam butchery and that the student movement should take clear action against this relationship rather than promote illusions about it. Harvard provided a leading example. For several years, PLP'ers within the Harvard SDS chapter had led militant struggle against Harvard's collaboration with the war. In 1967, Harvard students confronted Defense Secretary McNamara. Later that year, a militant sit-in temporarily blocked recruiters for Dow Chemical - which produced the horrific weapon napalm - demonstrating inside the chemistry building when the Harvard professor who had invented napalm was in his office there. PLP and its base within SDS consistently exposed Harvard fascists like Samuel Huntington, who had helped develop the infamous "strategic hamlet" plan to turn Vietnamese villages into concentration camps.
Throughout 1968-69, PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance Caucus had campaigned against the presence of ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) on the Harvard campus. Other demands included ending Harvard's plans for expansion in a Cambridge working-class neighborhood. The pro-nationalist right-wing within SDS opposed ROTC with lip-service but always found ways to resist taking militant action against it.
After losing a close vote to seize University Hall, a key administration building in Harvard Yard, nonetheless PLP and the WSA estimated that enough students were prepared to take this bold action and that it should proceed regardless of the vote. This decision was crucial in exposing the limitation of "parliamentary democracy" as an obstacle to revolutionary anti-imperialist action.
On April 9, scores of PLP-led SDS'ers seized University Hall, ejecting the administrators in the building. Crowds gathered outside to support or debate the sit-in. By nightfall, 500 protesters were occupying University Hall. The next day at 3 AM, Harvard President Pusey called in 400 state and city cops, who maced and beat the protestors, arresting more than 100.
The cops' brutality boomeranged. Thousands protested by boycotting classes. More than 10,000 attended a four-hour meeting in Harvard Stadium to discuss the demands and tactics of an action that had become a strike. The country's most prestigious university, a crucial resource for imperialism and the war effort, was essentially paralyzed for the remainder of the academic year.
PLP had compellingly demonstrated that far from watering down class struggle against imperialist genocide, an anti-nationalist line sharpens it. On the other hand, the all-class unity of nationalism inevitably leads to collaboration with the enemy and turns even the most militant struggle into its opposite.
As the annual convention of SDS approached, the '69 Harvard Strike swelled the ranks of the Worker-Student Alliance caucus and brought many new recruits into PLP.
(Next: The 1969 Convention: the right-wing minority "expels" the majority.)
U.S. Rulers Throw Wounded GI's on Scrap Heap
The exposé of horrific conditions in Walter Reed Hospital shows how once again soldiers have been chewed up and spit out by the military. The hypocrisy of the slogan support the troops is again exposed as only a PR slogan to get people to support a war they don't believe in.
How is it that no one knew what was happening at Walter Reed? Is it really possible that all this is just being discovered now? Four years ago Mark Benjamin, writing for UPI at the time, revealed similarly fetid conditions for wounded soldiers in Fort Stewart Georgia. Not only was nothing done, but he received hundreds of death threats.
Now the Washington Post writes the same story and two generals, the Secretary of the Army and the Surgeon General of the Army are fired. The Democrats who have pushed the Walter Reed hearings cynically ignored the problems of wounded soldiers for all these years because they wanted to see how the war was going to play out. Now with the war going down the tubes, they are piling all the blame on, and further embarrassing "lame duck" Bush.
It is particularly sickening that we have been fed story after story about how great the wounded have been treated, and all the medical advances that have been made by the military. Amputees jogging and playing basketball has become standard fair on the news networks. Did none of those reporters or politicians touring the hospital notice the hundreds of severely wounded soldiers living in squalor?
Using young working-class soldiers as cannon fodder and then tossing them away is nothing new. In 1932, at the height of the depression, poor veterans of WWI camped out in Washington, D.C. to demand benefits. These former soldiers, known as the Bonus Marchers, were brutally attacked by infantry, cavalry and tanks on the orders of Herbert Hoover and under the direct command of Douglass Macarthur, assisted by George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower.
While ten times as many Iraqi's have been killed and wounded, the number of wounded U.S. soldiers is still huge. The official military count is at about 25,000, many with extremely severe injuries, but there have been over 32,000 who have been air medavacked out of Iraq. Many wounded are never even counted because they are treated in their units and then go on to civilian care facilities.
In addition the military admits that the number of mental health cases is already at least 65,000. All these numbers will only go up. The first Gulf War is still counting the wounded, with over 200,000 U.S. soldiers, nearly half the total force, suffering from some form of Gulf War syndrome. There is no doubt that for many years to come poor young people will be paying the price for this war for oil, and the ruler's politicians will be crying crocodile tears to exploit their pain.
Bush Trip In Latin America Reflects Sharpening Inter-Imperialist Struggle
The U.S. ruling-class strategy for its continued domination of Latin America is in disarray. This is not only the result of inept and shortsighted leaders (even though the U.S. rulers have plenty of them), but as a declining world power, they just don't have many alternatives. Bush's recent tour of five Latin American countries exposes this clearly.
His goal was to shore up U.S. imperialism's image and influence in the region, while undermining that of its imperialist rivals and of Hugo Chavez who are taking advantage of the U.S.'s precarious situation in Iraq to encroach on its backyard. In trying to stem this trend, U.S. bosses have a big problem: they're bankrupt both politically and economically. On both counts, they have little or nothing with which to bribe the Latin America elites or the region's 570 million impoverished workers.
Brazil - Latin America's biggest, most populous country, with the ninth largest economy in the world - was the big prize. To split Mercosur (a four-country trade group) and counter Chavez' proposed integrationist Gaseoducto del Sur - a giant gas pipeline that will link Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, costing some $20 billion - Bush proposed "… a partnership with Brazil and other ethanol producers ….designed to wean countries from Venezuela's cheap oil." (LA Times editorial, 3/8) But U.S. ethanol producers are protected with a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff against the cheaper Brazilian ethanol. Therefore, the same Times' editorial continued, "The 'OPEC for ethanol' that the president is expected to create…won't actually open the U.S. market…and as a result will accomplish little."
"What Bush has offered instead," says the LA Times, "is a variety of small anti-poverty programs that are dwarfed by Chavez' initiatives in the region," referring to Bush's promise of $385 million to help workers buy houses; $75 million in three years for education; sending the hospital ship Comfort to visit Latin America's ports to attend patients; and $1.6 billion a year in aid to the region. A Brazilian newspaper mocked this, saying that's what the U.S. spends in less than five days in Iraq.
Mass anti-U.S. demonstrations also expressed the hatred that workers and others on the continent have for the U.S.-backed neo-liberal program and genocidal wars. Discredited politically and economically, eventually the U.S. rulers' only possible alternative to the challenges in the region of nationalist forces like Chavez and its Chinese, Russian and EU imperialist rivals will be to resort to war. That's why the U.S., under the guise of "fighting drug trafficking and terrorism," is expanding and upgrading its existing military bases in the region, while building new ones.
But as CHALLENGE has reported, the anti-U.S. forces in the region (backed by the other imperialists) are also arming themselves and building massive nationalist-patriotic movements to win workers to fight on their side. Chavez is spending billions more on arms than any other Latin American country. And both Brazil and Argentina have nuclear aspirations.
A NY Times Op-Ed article (3/11) poses the question: "Is the battle for Latin America already over?" We can answer this with a resounding "No!" - not without a bloodbath. Latin American workers and their allies need to reject false "revolutionaries" like Chavez, Morales, Lula, Ortega, Correa and Obrador and build the PLP and a truly revolutionary communist movement to bury all the capitalists/imperialists and their lackeys forever.
- SCRATCH A LIBERAL FIND AN IMPERIALIST
- Where is Obama While:
Workers, Patients Battle Racist Cut - HOLLYWOOD HOPS ON OBAMA'S WAR WAGON
- U.S., Chinese Bosses on Collision Course Over Oil
- ANTI-RACISTS GREET PL'ERS AT MARCH VS. KILLER KKKOPS
- Bosses Push Racism and Nationalism but
WORKERS AND YOUTH WANT MULTI-RACIAL UNITY - High School Students Lead PLP Volunteers Aiding Katrina Victims
- Global Rivalry Up, Auto Jobs, Wages Down
- VW Bosses Reap Billions, Workers `Reap' Layoffs
- Racist UFT Hacks Attack Militant PLP Youth
- Anti-Racism, Internationalism Big Victors_ in Airport Struggle
- Oppression and Struggle Still Mark International Women's Day
- Inhuman Capitalism Fosters Myth of `Human Nature'
- FBI Organized Nazi March
- Kids, Parents Back Day-Laborers, _Oppose Anti-Immigrant Racists
- LETTERS
- REDEYEONTHENEWS
- Global Warning: Capitalism Destroying Our Planet
- Denounce Blair's Troop Scam
- PLP HISTORY
PLP Defied Bosses' Nationalism in `68 SF Student Strike
SCRATCH A LIBERAL FIND AN IMPERIALIST
Millions of people who justifiably hate warmaker George Bush mistakenly think Barack Obama (above) can right Bush's wrongs. Obama, in fact, elected or not, may help lead wars vaster and deadlier than anything the Bush gang could imagine. A look at Obama's backers and background reveals a loyal servant of the U.S.'s biggest capitalists, who are bent on using all violence necessary to maintain their worldwide empire in the face of mounting challenges.
The main wing of U.S. rulers immediately needs to reassert control, forcibly, over the Middle East and its oil, against Iran in particular. In the longer term, they must prepare to confront a rival superpower -- China, Russia, Europe or any combination thereof. They hope Obama's broad appeal, based mainly on his anti-Bush stance, will aid mobilization for the wider wars they require. As bad as Bush is, Obama and the other liberals pose the greater danger.
`MAN OF THE PEOPLE' HAS FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Early support for Obama came from billionaire liberal imperialist George Soros, a Rockefeller ally. His main goal in life (other than raking in billions by impoverishing workers through international currency scams) is to prevent Russia's re-emergence as a superpower threat to the U.S. Throughout the old Soviet bloc, Soros's Open Society Institute has bought anti-Russian candidates and pushed U.S.-led NATO's expansion. When Moscow tried to grab pipeline routes through the former Yugoslavia, Soros led the cheer for Clinton's murderous 1999 bombardment of Kosovo. "Kosovo required outside intervention," wrote Soros at the time.
Like that of most liberal leaders, Soros's criticism of Bush's Iraq policy centers on the U.S. shortage of boots on the ground. In 2004, he said, "We should have had more troops available for the occupation." Soros hopes Obama can boost troop availability by creating public enthusiasm for the rulers' agenda. "Senator Obama brings a new energy to the political system and has the potential to be a transformational leader," said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Soros. (NY Times, 1/21/07)
The Times (2/24/07) identifies four Wall Street-based dyed-in-the wool imperialists as Obama's top fundraisers. Jeh Johnson, as general counsel for Clinton's Air Force secretary, approved orders that killed and maimed thousands of non-combatants in the former Yugoslavia and in Iraq. He has also worked for Soros's Human Rights Watch and the Rockefeller Foundation. James Rubin runs J.P. Morgan Chase's private equity fund. His father Robert, Treasury secretary under Clinton, led the racist dismantling of Welfare that freed up funds for the Pentagon. Chief of staff in Clinton's Treasury, Joshua L. Steiner, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), U.S. imperialism's leading think-tank, where he serves on the board of advisors of Foreign Affairs.
Another Clinton Treasury appointee, Michael Froman, now chief of a Citigroup unit, directed a CFR task force, "Promoting Sustainable Economies in the Balkans" in 2000 that studied ways the U.S. could profit from Clinton's butchery there. He belongs to both the CFR and the Rockefeller-organized Trilateral Commission. Froman's ties to Obama date back to their days as classmates at Harvard Law School.
CAPITALIST WARMAKERS, RACIST KILLER COPS LOVE OBAMA
With friends like these, it's no accident that Obama espouses mobilizing for broader U.S. military action. Last November, referring to Iraq, he told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, "it is time to refocus America's efforts on the wider struggle yet to be won." Obama used readily deciphered code words for maintaining permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, citing a need "to manage our exit in a responsible way -- with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future." He was pushing an open door at that gathering. The Council, an offshoot of the CFR, has representatives of JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Boeing and Goldman Sachs, as directors. Obama's wife Michelle also sits on the Council's board.
Having received the ruling class's blessing for it, Obama repeated the "wider struggle" line twice on the Senate floor in January. Obama may oppose Bush, but he in no way opposes imperialist war. He recently campaigned for the re-election of Joe Lieberman, an openly pro-war Senator.
Obama understands that a crackdown at home must accompany any military build-up. An advocate of "more cops on the street," Obama won the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police in his Senate race. These are the same thugs that systematically terrorize, torture, and murder Chicago's black workers. (See CHALLENGE, 1/17) Obama also seeks tighter immigration controls. In the Senate last May, he lamented that, "the number of workplace arrests of illegal immigrants fell from 17,552 in 1997 to 451 in 2002, even as illegal immigration grew." Obama wants a return to Clinton-era massive workplace raids that target immigrants at the point of profit, not just at the border. "The only way to effectively deter overstays is to reduce access to employment," he said.
Obama is not the answer to Bush. Every politician represents one faction or another of exploiters. Backing Obama lends support to the major U.S. capitalists' pursuit of wider wars. The real alternative, thus, lies outside the electoral system in building a party -- PLP -- that serves only the working class and has a revolutionary communist outlook.
(Next: Obama's Early Years: A Ruling-Class Apprenticeship) J
Where is Obama While:
Workers, Patients Battle Racist Cut
CHICAGO, Feb. 24 -- At a "Town Hall Meeting" to divert workers' anger at proposed cutbacks and mass layoffs, militant workers attacked every lie, and every liar, and chased the mis-leadership from the stage. It was symptomatic of workers' militancy over months of fight-back. But despite such actions, two days ago the Cook County Commissioners voted to endorse the racist war budget of County Board President Todd Stroger and his Health Bureau chief, Nazi "Dr." Robert Simon. Thirteen of the County's 26 health clinics will close, eliminating 2,000 county jobs, 1,200 through layoffs. About 800 will come from public health.
Thousands of uninsured and unemployed workers, children and the elderly will die. The vast majority will be black and Latino, who comprise 82% of the County patient population. Cook County has over one million uninsured, 70% percent of whom are employed.
Given these much larger numbers, tonight 40 workers crowded into a church basement to talk about the next battle. "The capitalist system requires this kind of attack," said a black woman from one union who had become friendly with PL'ers at Stroger Hospital. "What we need to figure out now is where and how to make our next attack." "This is class war," said another health worker.
Many lessons can be learned from this struggle. First, PLP must grow in numbers and influence in this mass movement. We were unable to win enough workers to take matters into their own hands and defy the union misleaders, despite having made some advances.
On February 14, SEIU Local 20 called a special union meeting at Stroger Hospital. The leadership had given $800,000 to boss Stroger's election campaign, and undermined every mass action against the cuts with "Town Hall Meetings" for the politicians. This meeting was to divert workers' anger over the cutbacks with promises of back pay and bonuses "won" in the new contract. That's when the workers' anger boiled over and drove the leadership from the building. Those workers who are CHALLENGE readers need to become distributors. Those who already distribute the paper need to join PLP!
We couldn't win enough doctors to play a leading role in demanding the firing of Dr. Simon, or in mobilizing their patients and families into the battle. But again, we made some progress. Some patients were mobilized for mass rallies from the clinics they attend, and we participated in an action at Simon's office, led by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, along with medical and nursing staff.
"Save The County's Bottom Line -- Robert Simon Must Resign," echoed up and down the wide stairways and corridors of the old administration building. The only one arrested was a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times, who kept yelling, "I'm not with them, I'm a reporter!" The action's main weakness was not including many homeless people, who Simon has viciously attacked for years. Our political organizing among public health workers and professionals must be geared much more towards the uninsured and unemployed workers we serve.
These cuts reveal how racism is the cutting edge of fascism. The attacks are being used to fill a $100-million budget deficit, caused by a $100-million cut in federal funding to finance the imperialist bloodbath in Iraq. Racist cutbacks and mass murder are greasing the U.S. war machine.
This struggle also exposed the bosses' class dictatorship. All the rallies and the thousands of nurses, doctors and patients who packed the public hearings, meant nothing to the bosses and their politicians. Every political hack, from Barack Obama to Mayor Daley to Jesse Jackson (Sr. and Jr.) stood silent as this attack was unleashed.
The bosses were so fearful of the mass opposition to the cuts that they did not even put it on the ballot. That's why we need a mass PLP to overthrow the war-makers and budget-cutters and establish a communist society, whose sole purpose is to meet the needs of the international working class. Then everyone will have health care based on need.
This fight helped build some confidence and skill in tactical planning, but showed us we have a long way to go. The importance of boldness, of surprising the enemy, and having confidence in the workers are the recurring themes of these weeks of action. But all this depends entirely on our political base. We must grow, and we can. We had many more and deeper conversations with friends, old and new. This modest increase in political friendships and respect for PLP, though not flashy, are the biggest gains out of the current fight. On to May Day!
HOLLYWOOD HOPS ON OBAMA'S WAR WAGON
The media play a key role in shaping the militaristic ideology U.S. rulers now require. That's why Hollywood mogul David Geffen's funding shift from Hillary Clinton to Obama made front pages. Geffen's Dreamworks specializes in pictures that glorify the "Greatest Generation's" sacrifice in World War II. Its flag wavers include "Saving Private Ryan" and "Flags of Our Fathers" and on TV, "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific War." Geffen's latest project is "Lincoln," a movie due out in mid-2008 and designed to influence the presidential election. It, of course, depicts one of U.S. capitalism's most effective wartime leaders.
U.S., Chinese Bosses on Collision Course Over Oil
U.S. and Chinese imperialists are engaged in a worldwide dogfight. In January, Chinese President Hu Jintao toured Africa to solidify deals for energy, trade and resources. Immediately the U.S. rulers' New York Times mouthpiece scolded China for heartlessly exploiting Africa's worst-off workers:
"If you run an African country and have some natural resources...you've got a friend in Beijing ready to write big checks with no embarrassing questions. That's nice for governments, but not so nice for their misgoverned people." The Times' editorial (2/19) admitted that "the West" had behaved badly in the past but concluded that China "should not be proud of following the West's sorry historical example."
Behind the Times' supposed "concern" for workers is the U.S. imperialist struggle to continue exploiting the largest possible share of the world's workers and resources while confronting Chinese imperialists' rising challenge. Workers can only win by uniting to build a worldwide communist movement and overthrowing all bosses. No matter which imperialist wins, workers lose.
Escalating Imperialist Rivalry in Africa
Some honest people in the U.S. are echoing U.S. imperialists by calling for sending troops to Darfur and increasing the existing U.S. sanctions on the Sudan. But U.S. bosses are concerned with being frozen out of recently-discovered oil fields, not stopping any genocide.
U.S. oil company Chevron left the Sudan in 1992 and Washington cut off ties to Sudan in 1997. Abda Yahia el-Mahdi, a former Sudanese finance minister, said, "The only people...being hurt by the [U.S.] sanctions are the Americans who are missing out on the [oil] boom." (NY Times 10/24/06)
China National Petroleum Corporation is the biggest player in Sudan's national oil consortium and a band of Chinese companies are building a 930-mile oil pipeline to the Red Sea. (AsiaTimes, 9/6/06) Four thousand Chinese troops are deployed in southern Sudan guarding an oil pipeline to protect China's investments and Chinese bosses "are supposed to be building an armaments factory" in the Sudan. (Financial Times, 12/16/06); Time Magazine, 1/11/07; The Economist, 10/28/06)
This January China invested $2 billion in oil-rich Nigeria -- the largest supplier of African oil to the U.S. -- and Chinese companies secured rights to another four oilfields. (The Economist, 10/28/06; Sacramento Bee, 9/18/06)
Nigeria has curbed oil production due to fighting over oil profits in the Niger Delta. China -- not the U.S. or France who have the largest outside military presence in Africa -- is supplying the government with patrol boats used to combat local rebels. U.S. commitment for securing Nigerian oil has been slow and low.
U.S. bosses may be slow but they're not out. Calls to "Save Darfur" by George Clooney, Mia Farrow and Barack Obama coincide with the creation of a U.S. African Command.
Defense & Foreign Affairs' Strategic Policy Magazine (9/06) reports that the White House is pushing this African Command for "strategic reasons... Nigeria alone provides almost as much oil to the U.S....as does Saudi Arabia, and by 2015 will provide more than 25% of U.S. energy supplies" -- adding that the U.S. sees African Energy and sea lanes as "vital" to the U.S.
China's Africa strategy is "aid-for-oil." Chinese bosses are pouring millions into constructing refineries, dams, roads, hospitals, railways, bridges, telecommunication networks and shopping malls -- not to benefit workers but for oil deals and commercial ties.
Presently the U.S.-China rivalry remains a war of commercial exploitation but imperialism's trade wars inevitably lead to shooting wars.
U.S.-China War?
On Feb. 9, U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. needs more troops with an infantry capable of fighting regular armies because, "We don't know what changes can take place in such countries" [China, Russia, North Korea, Iran] "and others." (Pravda, 2/9/07)
U.S. bosses count on naval control of the sea lanes on which China depends to export goods and import raw materials (including oil). But in January Chinese bosses successfully tested an anti-satellite missile, signaling their capability of targeting U.S. Navy communication and navigation satellites.
The Ultimate Imperialist Prize
Ultimately, the greatest potential for U.S.-Chinese armed rivalry lies in the Mid-East. U.S. bosses are bogged down in Iraq while Iran's oil supplies still remain a coveted imperialist treasure. Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq control 65% of the world's cheap-to-pump oil reserves and the U.S. and China will soon be the world's two largest oil importers.
To secure its interests, China recently signed oil deals with Iran worth billions and China is the leading supplier of conventional arms to Iran. The U.S. Army War College's 2006 Strategic Challenges document moans that China's intervention in Iran "destabilizes the region and actually threatens the continued supply of cheap oil."
In the dogfight between the U.S. and China, stakes are high and neither country's rulers will hesitate to shed workers' blood to protect and expand their profits worldwide. PLP learned from the revolutionary communist workers and youth who fought the "Red bourgeoisie" in China during the mid-1960s' Cultural Revolution. Today PLP is building an international movement to turn the imperialist war into a mass revolutionary struggle for communism, for a world without any bosses.
ANTI-RACISTS GREET PL'ERS AT MARCH VS. KILLER KKKOPS
LOS ANGELES, CA, Feb 17 -- Two weeks ago the police savagely beat 31-year-old Mauricio Cornejo, while handcuffed, at the public housing community Ramona Gardens. He died 45 minutes later in his cell. The police's racist "explanation" for beating him to death was that he was a gang member. Our plan was to visit Ramona Gardens and distribute flyers and CHALLENGES while making contacts.
We went door to door and had great conversations. We noticed a posted flyer announcing a "March for Peace" -- "against violence and against police brutality" -- to the Hollenbeck Police Station. We walked eagerly to the march assembly point and were greeted with open arms. (We'd been there before for protests against police terror).
Leadership was needed. "I have some posters; what should I write on them?" asked a young man. "Cops are the real terrorists," one of us suggested and then added, "Stop racist police brutality." Youth there wrote both on the posters. A "community representative," seemingly on the payroll of City Councilman Jose Huizar, appeared and tried to convince everybody to go straight to the police station, not march through the community, because the "television cameras would be there."
We helped transport many of the angry residents to a nearby corner where the marchers congregated, discussing how the politician was only here to advance himself and Jose Huizar. Once there we helped organize the march to the police station. Residents made three paper banners: "LAPD ASESINOS A SUELDO"; "CORRUPT COPS"; and "QUEREMOS JUSTICIA Y PAZ." We pulled out a red flag from our car. A group of Aztec dancers led the march, but we led the chants, without a bullhorn, saying: "Policía, cochina, racista y asesina"; "Qué queremos..."; and "Policía, corrupta, estamos en la lucha." We failed to win the marchers to chant "Obreros, unidos, jamas seran vencidos." We led chants linking police terror to the war, and also "LAPD you can't hide -- we charge you with genocide."
The march was very energetic as it moved through the streets to the police station. Throughout the march our only red flag was waved proudly. We distributed all our flyers plus nearly 200 CHALLENGES. Those who marched as well as those watching from their cars and houses eagerly asked for the leaflets and the paper.
Upon arriving at the police station, we formed a picket line directly in front. The sellout politician who tried to call off the march asked a youth to fold up the "F@# the police" sign he was carrying. But when the same person asked us to put away our red flag, many defended it. He didn't get his way and the flag was carried throughout the protest.
The marchers, while not won to our ideas, saw that the politician was only out for himself while we were there to work with them over the long pull. On the way back we discussed the significance of the red flag with the community members and explained why the working class needed a long-term strategy relying on the workers to fight racism and destroy it with revolution and communism.
This march was a great experience, demonstrating that when we organize the work we need to do, opportunities arise; that we must always be prepared. The experience became even better when five of the marchers went to an immigrants' rights coalition meeting to discuss the struggle against police terror in Ramona Gardens and to ask for support to organize more action. When a phony "leftist" leader claimed the fight for better immigration bills was not related to police terror, his position was attacked and defeated.
These five women marchers were bold at the meeting and plan to continue coming to the coalition to fight for more action against police terror. All took CHALLENGES. One woman took five to distribute.
We're also trying to aid their plans for a future action. As part of the struggle to build multi-racial unity and ally students with workers, we'll bring more friends to upcoming protests against the racist murder of Mauricio Cornejo and police terror in Ramona Gardens.
LAPD Racist `Surge' Hits LA Workers
The ruling class is using its racist cops to terrorize working-class communities in the U.S. as they use their imperialist army to wage a racist war in Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of GI's. A month ago, Connie Rice, liberal police reformer and director of the "Advancement Project" here, produced a plan designed to address gangs in LA, gangs the police have helped build. The plan identified 12 "hot zones" throughout the city, proposing gang intervention and job programs, as well as community oversight groups. But she also compared the situation in LA to the war in Iraq. "The LAPD knows how to surge and purge," Rice said. "But after the LAPD clears out a neighborhood, we don't know how to hold and build."(LA Times, 2/11) Rice sees our working-class communities as a war zone and our black and Latino youth as the enemy, having no problem with regular beatings, tortures and killings suffered at the hands of the racist cops, as long as they fall in line with the ruling class' racist war plans.
Bosses Push Racism and Nationalism but
WORKERS AND YOUTH WANT MULTI-RACIAL UNITY
INGLEWOOD, CA, Feb. 10 -- "Ethnic and racial tension comes to Los Angeles as regularly as the Santa Ana winds," proclaimed the New York Times (1/17/07). But racism is not a "force of nature." It is the bosses' deliberate policy, trying to use segregation, super-exploitation, and racist ideology to divide and exploit the working class.
Racist Police Chief Bratton seizes on every black-Latin incident as a "gang-related crime" and therefore as another excuse to escalate police terror against black AND Latin workers and youth. The rulers' media help him along by building fear in workers and youth of "other races" and promoting trust in the killer kkkops.
But workers are not so easily fooled. In a recent episode, three Latina high school students were attacked by black youths shouting racist insults. Rejecting the bosses' racism, they agreed to lead a "Unity Walk Against Racial Violence" together with a black woman whose son was killed by Latino gang-bangers. The Unity Walk was promoted by two DJs (one black, one Latin) and several black and Latino community groups.
About fifty people took part, a mix of black and Latino workers and youth, though only a few white people (not counting the media). Spirits were high as the marchers took their message to the streets of Inglewood, a working-class city near LA's airport with a median household income of only $34,000, fairly evenly divided between black and Latin residents. Many were disappointed that the march was so short. They stayed around talking long after the organizers declared the event over. We distributed 30 CHALLENGES and engaged in serious conversations with many, including the crime victims' relatives who led the march.
The "community leaders" involved in this Walk organize based on nationalism, so they can only build "unity" through short-term, top-down coalitions. They offered only vague prayers and calls for "peace." In contrast, PLP came to the Walk as a multi-racial organization with a sharp working-class line on fighting racism. At times we were able to change the leaders' chant, "The People United Will Never Be Divided" to "The Workers United Will Never Be Defeated." However, we should have brought more friends to the event and taken more leadership "on the spot."
If workers and youth are not won to understand that fighting racism means fighting capitalism, they'll believe the bosses' lie that fighting racism means fighting for capitalism under nationalist and/or patriotic banners. In situations like this one, we have both a tremendous responsibility and opportunity to advance the fight for communism.
High School Students Lead PLP Volunteers Aiding Katrina Victims
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 25 -- This past week twenty students and teachers from New York came here to help gut houses, build homes and witness first-hand the racist nature of capitalism in this city. Many students had never been here and were shocked by the miles of destruction. Volunteers who had come last summer were sickened by the minimal level of reconstruction that has happened since then and in the year and a half since the storm. The same rulers who spend hundreds of billions in their oil war in Iraq neglect the mostly black workers of New Orleans.
This was probably the first time CHALLENGE ever appeared at a Mardi Gras. The paper was very warmly received, as well as in the Lower 9th Ward and at several local shopping centers. All told several hundred papers were sold. One worker told us, "We need revolution now, not tomorrow!"
High school students led the evening meetings, analyzing events in New Orleans and sharing their feelings about their experiences. They worked collectively in both gutting homes and construction. Both young men and women learned new skills and were persistent in getting things right, even if they had to be done a few times. A tour with a local historian helped us learn more about the region's history.
One of the most moving parts of the trip was a tour of the devastated St. Bernard's parish outside the city. Here, hundreds of workers who fished for a living saw their lives wrecked by hurricane Katrina. Since capitalists had depleted the nearby wetlands and left workers on the lowest lying land in inadequate housing, there was no protection from the storm surge that swept this area like a tsunami. A tour guide told students that many of his friends who had survived the storm had committed suicide when they lost everything. One older volunteer responded to the destruction of the mostly white working-class community by noting how "important it was to see that the whole working class is suffering."
Still, the worst devastation was in the mostly black Lower 9th Ward where the industrial canal levee broke, releasing a tidal wave that leveled blocks. In this neighborhood, the city government has repeatedly announced plans to confiscate land from homeowners unable to return. One group of volunteers helped a resident gut a home that was still standing closest to the levee breech. Although the house was structurally sound and ready to be gutted and rebuilt, the resident explained how the Army Corps of Engineers claimed the house should be bulldozed. The militancy of residents and volunteers, however, has beaten back such racist attacks.
Residents of the various public housing projects took similarly militant stances by forcefully moving back into their homes regardless of government plans to close all the city's units. On February 22, politicians testifying at a Congressional housing committee were repeatedly booed and heckled by the crowd for continuing to oppose public housing.
It's not surprising that much of the rebuilding is mandated to fall within what the ruling class of New Orleans and the U.S. deems acceptable. Habitat For Humanity's requirements -- that residents pay $75,000 and contribute 300 hours of unpaid labor in order to buy homes in the Upper 9th Ward -- will be impossible for most residents who already lived there. The volunteers from this group (and others that are even far more geared towards removing obstacles inhibiting workers from moving back) have only scratched the surface of the reconstruction needed. Capitalism will never meet the needs of the entire working class, since it profits from driving down workers' living conditions wherever possible.
Volunteers received a positive response from workers who know from personal experience the desperate need to fight capitalism. Our group wants very much to return this summer and bring even more teachers and students. We agreed that New Orleans is an experiment in fascism and it's our duty to be on such front lines. Though we were unable to involve all the students and teachers in every activity, everyone has returned with a greater understanding of capitalism's failings, and our friends are more open to the idea of communism as an alternative.
Global Rivalry Up, Auto Jobs, Wages Down
DETROIT, MI, February 14 -- Three million factory jobs have been lost in the U.S. since the end of 2000, with a big chunk in the auto industry. DaimlerChrysler will now cut 13,000 more jobs in North America, 16% of its work force, and shut all or part of four plants by 2009. Daimler is also seeking potential buyers for the struggling Chrysler Group they bought nine years ago, though at the time it was called "a merger."
Ford is cutting 38,000 jobs, GM another 35,000 and Delphi 10,000 more. Delphi, which is under U.S. bankruptcy protection, may still go to court and void their union contract and gut workers' pensions. The UAW and Delphi are on a collision course for a September strike when the major auto contracts expire. The loss of almost 100,000 production jobs is staggering for the UAW.
Chrysler lost $1.48 billion last year and Ford lost $12.7 billion, the most in more than a century, while Toyota reported record profits and sales.
Contrary to UAW leaders' story, U.S. factories are not being gutted by foreign competition, just U.S-owned factories. Fierce global competition (inter-imperialist rivalry), has U.S. auto bosses retreating. But the U.S. manufacturing base remains relatively strong despite dozens of U.S. plant closings. According to the United Nations, the U.S. has maintained more than 21% of world manufacturing between 2000 and 2005, when U.S. factories produced a record $1.5 trillion in goods.
In large part, this is because foreign-owned companies have invested billions in building U.S. factories. According to the Democratic Party research organization, the Progressive Policy Institute, foreign manufacturers invest billions more in the U.S. than U.S. manufacturers invest abroad. There are currently over 29,000 Toyota production jobs in the U.S. By the end of the current GM and Ford buyouts and plant closings, there will be more Toyota workers in the U.S. than either Ford or GM workers.
According to the UAW, more than 15,000 auto-related factories have sprouted up across the south since 2000. These include major assembly plants for Mercedes SUV's and Toyota trucks in Alabama and Texas that pay over $20/hour, and mostly small-parts suppliers from Kentucky to South Carolina that pay far less. The new Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama pays about $25/hour, while a small supplier plant just down the road pays about $6/hour. While cities like Detroit, Flint and Toledo have been battered, eliminating jobs for many black workers, these southern-supplier plants also employ thousands of low-wage black workers. Every investment, "foreign" or "domestic," means more robots and computers that allow the bosses to get more production than ever out of far fewer workers.
These industrial workers' wages are becoming comparable with rates paid in Mexico, as the vast majority make between $6 and $12-an-hour with few benefits, if any. High productivity and plummeting wages spells industrial fascism. The auto and steel unions have become so much an arm of the domestic bosses that they must share their fate. The UAW has failed to organize one foreign-owned auto plant or parts supplier. How could they? What Toyota or Honda worker is going to join a union that is giving away 100,000 jobs and billions in wages and benefits to bail out their bosses?
The anarchy of capitalism (mergers in the 1990's and dismantling them a decade later), plus the massive displacement and attacks caused by global restructuring, create many opportunities to build a mass, international PLP among auto workers. They are learning the hard lesson that union-won "reforms" which leave the bosses in power are only temporary under this system. Through the coming contract battles we must bring PLP to more workers, and win them to fight for communism.
VW Bosses Reap Billions, Workers `Reap' Layoffs
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, Feb. 27 --Thousands of Volkswagen workers struck for one day yesterday to protest a management ultimatum threatening to dump all 5,300 workers at the Forest plant near here unless the union agreed to a layoff of 1,800 and the remaining 3,500 work three more hours with no pay addition. Today, 76% voted for the only choice: "Do you agree or disagree?" The ultimatum was to produce Audis with longer hours and less pay or lose their jobs.
The company has taken the classic capitalist road. It has cut some 20,000 jobs overall (AP, 2/21) and introduced longer shifts in its German plants, all of which has produced a doubling of its profits in 2006. VW raked in $3.6 billion last year, compared to $1.45 billion in 2005. No wonder its stock rose 8%, to $123 a share.
Amid fierce international competition in the auto industry, every company is fighting to maintain profits on the workers' backs. Worldwide worker unity is needed to meet these attacks.
Racist UFT Hacks Attack Militant PLP Youth
NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 22 -- At the February United Federation of Teachers' (UFT) Delegate Assembly, PLP youth led a group of students with signs and a communist leaflet to address and influence a thousand teachers to overwhelmingly vote in opposition to military recruiters in high schools. In the aftermath of this groundbreaking action, a bit of confusion reigns among anti-war teachers as to whether President Weingarten, who invited the youth to address the crowd, is on the side of anti-war teachers. Recent events should clear up any illusions.
We expect to be harassed by management when we engage in this kind of struggle alongside students, and at least one principal began investigating the "unauthorized trip" with the help of a snitch delegate. But years of struggle at that school set the stage for teachers to fight back. The chapter chair, influenced by the fighting spirit of teachers and students there, stood up to the principal, declaring that what happens at the Delegate Assembly is "union business."
If we buy the union leadership's line, we might expect them to be on the side of the teachers and students against such principals. However, Weingarten and her cronies are conducting an investigation into whether the students who attended the trip had parent permission. Union leaders are calling local chapter chairs asking who invited the students and what their contact with PL is. One union representative insisted that the black and Latin students couldn't have known "what imperialism is" without PL's influence, a disgustingly racist assumption, especially considering that imperialism is discussed in the history curriculum.
One comrade filling in for a delegate at his school was contacted by his district representative, who asked why he voted. At that school the chapter chair commented that the union leadership should be as attentive when the staff has a complaint against the administration. Instead of defending teachers and students against management attacks, the union leadership is acting to enforce management's regulations for them. The fact that these attacks against our forces are being made across district and borough lines indicates that this fascist "investigation" is being directed from the highest levels of the union bureaucracy.
For years PLP has observed that Weingarten is a leading character in a nationwide and long-standing trend where well-paid union bosses cooperate with management to set conditions for ever-intensifying exploitation of labor. We say the unions and the bosses are on the same side. This episode, where militant and educated youth were slurred in the most racist way possible, where the union hacks are more eager to crack down on students than even principals and deans are, reveals the truth of our analysis on union hacks perfectly. When we sharpen struggle, we force the liberals to reveal the fascist essence of their program. Now the task remains to spread news of Weingarten's treachery broadly and deeply across the union as we build for May Day 2007, the place to be for all UFT anti-war teachers.
Anti-Racism, Internationalism Big Victors_ in Airport Struggle
More than 2,000 metro area janitors, from downtown office buildings and a major Mid-West international airport, all members of SEIU, won some important gains in our new contract struggle, but our biggest victory was the anti-racist, internationalist nature of the struggle.
Ever since our contract expired December 31, workers have been preparing for a strike. Mass meetings and rallies culminated with more than 2,000 workers marching downtown on January 29.
The airport has the largest cleaning contract, making it a center of the struggle. The bosses pulled out all the stops to try to head off a strike there, including scare tactics against a largely immigrant workforce. They made sure we knew we could be fired and replaced if we struck. It is an international workforce, with workers from El Salvador, Ethiopia, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Somalia and the U.S.
CHALLENGE readers and distributors led the way, having many struggles with our co-workers, favoring striking and opposing all scabs. We struggled for the need to fight the racist bosses. At an emergency union meeting, workers discussed an intimidating letter from the bosses. One worker said that if we don't take on these racist bosses they will only oppress us even more. He said we are part of a long tradition of anti-racist fighters, from the civil rights movement in the U.S. to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. This struggle is not mainly about money, but mainly an anti-racist fight. CHALLENGE readers and distributors were able to link our struggle to similar fights of immigrant workers in France, and at DeGaulle Airport in Paris.
One of the biggest struggles occurred with a pocket of African workers who, fearful of losing their jobs, were threatening to cross the picket lines. African workers have been restricted to part-time status. The new contract will make them all full-time workers, the culmination of a three year multi-racial, international struggle for full-time status.
More than 300 full-time jobs will be created and family coverage health care payments by workers will drop from $500-$1,800 a month to $140 this July and to $75-a-month in January 2009. Only 14 workers had family coverage under the old contract.
As it became clear the janitors were ready to strike, the Teamsters voted to honor our picket lines. The Teamsters and SEIU are partners in the new Change to Win coalition that left the AFL-CIO. Both unions have targeted the lowest-paid, mostly immigrant workers for organizing drives, boosting their numbers and dues check-offs without raising the living standards of their new members. A similar struggle had been "won" among janitors in Houston a few months ago.
Once the big downtown landlords and the airport commissioners started having visions of picket lines and no cleaning supplies, they pressured the cleaning contractors to settle.
However, one thing we know for sure. As long as the bosses hold power, they will take back every advance we make and we will never get off the treadmill of reform. We see the nearby Ford plant being boarded up and all those workers losing everything it took more than 70 years to win. We need to turn every anti-racist struggle into a school for communism around the revolutionary ideas of PLP, to abolish wage slavery. This fight has made this more possible. If we don't solidify the internationalism and consolidate some of the political advances we made, by recruiting to PLP, they will be reduced to "thin economic gruel" and fade away.
Oppression and Struggle Still Mark International Women's Day
EL SALVADOR -- March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD), a day to mark the oppression, exploitation and struggles of women worldwide. But since the Triangle Shirt factory fire that killed 146 women garment workers in NYC on March 5, 1911 -- which gave birth to IWD -- capitalism and imperialism are still hellish for billions of women from Baghdad to Kabul to Central America. In El Salvador, women workers are not only victims of murder by criminal gangs and men won over by the bosses' anti-women culture, but they're also super-exploited at the maquilas (garment shops), the main source of jobs for women here.
According to an investigation ten years ago by Rosa Virginia Hernández of the Committee of Salvadoran Working Women, the Labor Ministry counted 57,000 women working in the maquilas, 65% of whom had no social insurance benefits, even though the companies deducted the payments from their wages. Things haven't changed much since.
The maquilas were first created in the 1970's in the free trade zone of San Bartolo, but only grew in the '90s after the end of the civil war here. Basically they offer no real chance for a decent life for their workers.
Despite many attempts by human rights and women's groups and some trade unions to improve conditions in the maquilas, not much has been accomplished. Now maquilas are actually hiring more male workers, raising unemployment among women even more. Today only 60-70% of all maquila workers are women compared to 80-90% a decade ago. Women working many years in a plant don't get skilled training; the bosses prefer men, alleging "they take less days off."
Some plants have closed, with workers denied severance pay. In 2006, there was a reduction of 11-12% among textile maquilas, reducing jobs for women.
The ARENA government (virulently pro-U.S., the only Latin American government with troops in Iraq and one of the few remaining members of the "Coalition of the Willing") is resisting any pressure to alleviate this problem, saying it's the employers' responsibility. Meanwhile, a discussion in the National Assembly to change the Labor and Social Security laws (dating from 1971) is going nowhere.
The end of the civil war has brought no social peace to workers here; violent criminal gangs are rampant (many formed in the U.S.). Conditions for workers in general are horrendous. Meanwhile the FMLN (the former guerrilla group now turned into the second largest electoral party) talks and talks, just offering a "reformed-capitalism" "solution" -- actually no solution at all.
We in PLP must redouble our efforts here to build a mass base among women and all workers, offering them the only way out of this capitalist inferno: communism. DESAFIO-CHALLENGE must become our ideological weapon in this battle.
Inhuman Capitalism Fosters Myth of `Human Nature'
New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks (2/18) praises the false wing of biological science that claims humans are naturally and innately ready to "slit each other's throats." Only current "conventions and institutions," says Brooks, stop us. Of course, current "conventions and institutions" are capitalist, even though Brooks doesn't name them. He claims that attempts to rid the world of what is really capitalism will only worsen it, or, as he puts it, it's only to be "altered at great peril."
The pseudo-scientific writers whom Brooks praises include economist Thomas Sowell, linguist/psychologist Steven Pinker and insect biologist E. O. Wilson of Sociobiology infamy. They all contend -- contrary to the claim by 18th century Swiss philosopher Rousseau that humans are born naturally good - that humans have evolved biologically, through natural selection, into naturally bad animals who need social rules to keep us from killing each other.
Both ideas are idealist and wrong. A materialist approach holds that humans are not naturally good or bad, but rather are shaped by our societies and by our specific roles in society. In particular, class-divided societies like capitalism shape us mainly by our social class. The capitalist class needs wars, genocide, racism, sexism, patriotism and religion to maintain its power and profits. It's not that capitalists are born naturally bad. It's that their class position forces them to be vicious thieves and killers.
Nor is it that the working class is naturally good. It's that our class position as victims of capitalist exploitation forces us to struggle to survive and in general to cooperate with each other in order to achieve that end -- men and women, black, white, Latin, Native American, Arab and workers of all nations. Our subordinate class position also makes it both possible and necessary for us to struggle for a new social order -- communism -- to end all forms of capitalist oppression. But that end doesn't come naturally; it requires a revolutionary communist leadership to carry it out.
Brooks claims that science disproved Rousseau's assumption of innate human goodness. But he falsely raises to honorary scientific status researchers who never question the genetic basis of complex human behavior, even though scientifically provable alternative explanations are all around us. (See coming Summer 2007 issue of PLP's THE COMMUNIST MAGAZINE for related book reviews.)
When Brooks fears that attempts to change capitalist institutions would put us all "in great peril," he really fears that it would put the capitalist ruling class and its supporters, like Brooks and his phony scientists, at great peril. He calls instead for a "strong order-imposing state." So did Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and all fascists of the past and present, including the Democrats and Republicans of today.
Indeed, the very concept of an unchangeable human nature justifies the resort to fascism, the most open and violent form of capitalist oppression of the working class. For if workers' struggles to change the "conventions and institutions" of capitalism are certain to make everyone's life worse, then those who engage in struggles for liberation from these life-destroying "conventions and institutions" are the enemy of all humanity, justifying any and all methods used to prevent such struggles. The Bush administration uses a similar hideous excuse to justify the horrendous torture of Muslim captives, namely "to protect all of us from terrorism."
Brooks says that most people today agree with Sowell, Pinker and Wilson, but unfortunately for Brooks and his ilk, the international working class has the potential power to change the world, and to change our natures in the process.
FBI Organized Nazi March
ORLANDO, FLORIDA, Feb. 15 -- If there were any doubts that U.S. bosses are sponsoring blatant fascists, look no further than a march in February 2006 of 22 neo-Nazis through the black community here organized by an FBI informant, David Gletty. It triggered a major police mobilization to ward off 500 counter-protesters. The FBI has paid Gletty $20,000 the past two years as he helped guide the Nazi group.
The Orlando Sentinel reported (2/15) that Gletty obtained the police parade permit on which he was listed as the "on-scene manager" and addressed the marchers while wearing the hated Hitlerite swastika armband. He later hosted a "victory party."
On a Nazi website, Gletty boasted that, "I got the permits and started the ball rolling....My crew and I got it done." He said, "I...had over-all authority for the event."
Bill White, head of another Nazi group, said in an e-mail that Gletty "did a lot for the cause....If he was being sponsored by the FBI, then [we]...have a lot to thank the FBI for."
Gletty's FBI status was inadvertently exposed in a federal court hearing involving two white supremacists charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine.
The episode raises the question of how many other KKK and Nazi rallies have been organized and led by FBI or other police agents. The fact that 300 cops were ordered out to protect the Nazis marching through a black community gives substances to the description of the police as the "Klan in blue."
While the main aspect of growing fascism exists in the bosses' assault on workers at the workplace, including the fascist Minutemen's anti-immigrant forays, the rulers use these tinhorn fascists to spread racism and disunity in the working class to act as a brake on workers' fight-back against the bosses' attacks. That's why PLP mobilizes multi-racial forces against these fascist scum wherever they rear their heads.
Kids, Parents Back Day-Laborers, _Oppose Anti-Immigrant Racists
Bergenfield, NJ, February 17 -- Unitarian/Universalist Church members and their children demonstrated in the bitter cold in support of 35 day-workers. These workers have been facing the United Patriots who, like the Minutemen, try to stop hiring of immigrants, harassing bosses not to give them jobs. The enthusiasm of the Church members followed a Sunday School lesson on the terror the U.S. government is raining on immigrants from, Cactus, Texas to Freehold, NJ.
The children learned that at the Texas Swift & Co. slaughterhouses, 250 workers from Guatemala were recently deported. Families and thousands of others fled the town out of fear. Swift packaging plant has a history of firings and deportations, first against local workers, then Vietnamese, next Mexican and finally those from Guatemala. The children also learned that 80% of the renting families in Freehold will be forced onto the street, based on a new law that says renting to undocumented workers is illegal.
The bosses and their racist goons use the term "illegal" at their convenience. First they super-exploit these workers, making super-profits while using their youth as cannon fodder in their imperialist wars -- just as they use racism against black workers. Second, they blame immigrant workers for the rotten conditions caused by the bosses themselves, in order to divide the entire working class and weaken our ability to fight for a better system. And thirdly, the bosses practice their fascist tactics (raids, terror) to be used eventually against any worker who dares to fight back.
To spread this communist analysis, we distributed CHALLENGE to the workers, one of whom asked, "How can I get more of these?"
We explained to them how the Minutemen in Long Island struck day-laborers in the face with bottles after pretending to offer work, while the assailants were protected by the police. We described how the cops attacked our protests which led to several PLP friends being arrested, beginning a year-long court battle. We won that fight, demonstrating our determination in our efforts to fight racism and fascism.
We plan more visits to Bergenfield and/or Freehold to show solidarity and support for these workers against the racist attacks by the United Patriots and the Minutemen.
LETTERS
Deserters Can Be _Organized
"Deserter's Book Exposes Brutal Racist U.S. War Makers But Misleads Anti-War Soldiers" (CHALLENGE, 1/17/07) was an excellent book review that presented PLP's analysis of some very important issues. However, I think the review misses another aspect of this deserter question in expecting the deserter, Joshua Key, to have spontaneously acquired PL's political understanding of the root cause of the war and to have stayed in the army to organize rebellions.
The review later paints Joshua as a conscious enemy of the working class for making the wrong decision and letting the ruling class use his story to mislead soldiers and the working class in general.
The review correctly indicates that desertion has never stopped imperialist wars. Yet, desertion can become a mass phenomenon when the political understanding of soldiers and the working-class movement is low. Russia's communists faced this situation during World War I. They sent organizers inside the Czar's army to get soldiers to rebel but couldn't stop all the soldiers who wanted to desert.
Thus, what started as a trickle in early 1915 soon became an enormous river as hundreds of thousands of soldiers abandoned the front and flooded the cities. The Bolsheviks organized them into the Soviet of Soldiers and inspired them to play an important role in the 1917 revolution. However, the crucial role was played by active-duty soldiers and sailors who turned their guns against the bosses, having been won over by the Bolsheviks' organizers.
We shouldn't gratuitously make enemies of all deserters. We should correctly explain that deserting is not the solution and that the bosses' media will always use their stories to support the position of one set of capitalists or another. We should also make it clear that the revolutionary movement is always open for deserters, who, once struggled with, can accept some aspects of the Party's more advanced political ideas and become willing to contribute, according to their understanding and commitment, to the working-class struggle for communism.
But, if we want to harvest what the Bolsheviks did, we need to send organizers into the bosses' military. Only if soldiers have received PLP's full political analysis and have been struggled with and still consciously decide to oppose us and side with the ruling class -- only then can they be considered enemies of the working class.
A Comrade
Bosses Re-use Stressed GIs to Fight Their Wars
The lack of workers' willingness to fight for the bosses forces the Army to send mentally ill GIs back into battle. The majority of soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from some type of illness, ranging from anger management issues to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) to alcoholism. They're caused by what they did or saw while being in Iraq. Many fellow soldiers have told me stories about this.
One said what he remembers most is seeing Iraqi people tossing dead body parts into dump trucks. He recalls seeing dogs tearing at human flesh off dead bodies. He says that every night when he goes to sleep, he sees these scenes vividly, repeatedly. Only passing out after heavy drinking blots out these images. So now he drinks every night to fall asleep. And he just returned to Iraq for another tour!
Another soldier told me that once on a convoy his unit heard a popping sound and so began spraying the corner they were passing with gunfire until they saw a body fall dead. When they stopped they realized they'd killed a kid; their commander ordered them to leave immediately. He said on another convoy, they missed a turn so had to do a U-turn on a busy street. As they turned, a machine gunner sprayed rounds at civilian vehicles that were not moving fast enough to get out of their way.
Still another soldier told me that his commander was "sick and tired of arresting people" and taking them to the F.O.B. (Forward Operating Base) for processing, so he ordered the troops to just kill them instead.
Soldiers continue to return with such experiences, mentally messed up. Then a year later they're back in Iraq.
Most soldiers who enlist for four years have two or three rotations. When they re-enter civilian society, they usually end up homeless or in jail. Additionally, soldiers returning home are increasingly involved in marital and child abuse.
The majority of soldiers I know hate the Army life. When they're in garrison they start drinking as soon as they're off until P.T. (physical training) formation the next morning. Alcoholism is the way of life here. Then when they're called back on tour, they don't really want to go (except some of the new soldiers).
However so far, the second-timers see it as something they must do and that soon they'll finish serving their time. They either see no alternative to this, or are too patriotic, racist and anti-communist to see that the real solution is to rebel against the commanders and smash the bosses.
Right now they try to get chaptered out of the Army for being mentally ill but the therapists are in the Army's pockets and so deny their requests, give them pills and send them back to Iraq. It's a vicious cycle that will continue so long as the soldiers continue to fight the bosses' wars. The only true alternative is for rank-and-file PLP'ers to join and organize in the Army to show GIs that there is an alternative to the bosses' imperialist bloodbath -- communist revolution.
Red Soldier
Colombia Workers _March Against Fascism
Hundreds of thousands of workers marched in Bogotá, Colombia against the massive attacks by the narco-death squad capitalist government of President Alvaro Uribe (Bush's most loyal ally in South America). Pensioners, unemployed and social security (ISS) workers chanted "Down with Uribe, Up with the ISS," denouncing the plan to restructure social security and basically do away with its health plan and pensions, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers and their families essentially homeless and helpless. The privatization plan will make some bosses rich.
Meanwhile, the union leaders have not fought these attacks. In fact, they've helped the bosses by refusing to fight for new contracts for three years, accepting layoffs of 2,500 ISS workers. They've gone along with the rulers' plans under the guise of making the ISS "more viable," when exactly the opposite is taking place.
PLP'ers distributed a leaflet titled, "Capitalism is Harmful to Your Health," also exposing the opportunist union hacks. We sold DESAFIO-CHALLENGE while explaining to marchers that no matter if Uribe or some other goon is president, workers' interests will never be satisfied under the profit system. Capitalism means war, corruption, death squads and massive attacks against workers. Joining PLP leads to a way out of this hellhole.
Red Worker, Colombia
GI `Appeal' Signing _Stirs Political Discussion
Recently Anthony, an Army National Guard soldier in my anti-war organization, and six other soldiers signed the Appeal for Redress from the war in Iraq.
Anthony had been asking people in his unit to sign the Appeal online, but he never got to talk about it at length and had little success. Then I gave him paper copies of the Appeal and Anthony talked to Jason, a mutual friend of ours and a fellow soldier in his unit.
At first Jason protested that appealing to Congress won't work and that the statement was too patriotic. Anthony called me up during drill and asked what I thought. Later that night I told him I agreed with Jason but still thought they should sign it and get their friends to sign it also.
I explained that the Appeal can be used to raise the idea of class solidarity with the troops who already signed it and we'd see who would stick their necks out and do something about the war instead of just talking. I also said they could struggle over the Appeal's reformism and nationalism.
Anthony agreed, but thought relying on military law to protect the signers wouldn't work. He thought he and the other signers should form a defense committee to back each other if the command harassed them.
The next day Anthony and Jason talked it over and Jason agreed that making the issue class solidarity -- not pressuring Congress -- was a good idea. Jason also insisted they needed to form a defense committee before Anthony even brought it up.
One soldier glanced at the Appeal and said flatly, "This isn't gonna work." Anthony and Jason said everybody else pretty much felt the same but they added, "We need to show that troops did something about the war and were part of a bigger movement, not that we expect the government to listen to us." Two different groups signed the Appeal together, all soldiers Anthony or Jason had known for years.
In one group the Appeal sparked a conversation about class interests and the draft. Most, but not all, believed that the Democrats wouldn't change anything. But one soldier felt that if Bush and Congress had children serving or had been in combat themselves, they wouldn't have started the Iraq war. Most in the group like Charles Rangel's idea of a draft because everyone would have to serve, even the politicians and upper-class kids.
"I said that even though some upper-class people would be in harm's way, most would be drafted as officers, not enlisted," Anthony recalls. He noted that some in the Bush administration have served in combat and that it wouldn't make any difference if the upper class served or not -- workers would still be fighting for the bosses' benefit.
Jason said some agreed, some didn't, but all gave it serious thought. The conversation turned to whether hard work or exploitation actually brought success, but political debate was temporarily interrupted when they had to get back to work
Anthony says the Appeal helped bring the signers closer to each other. "Each of us knows we can look to each other if the command decides to harass us," he told me. Raising the issue of the Appeal also led us to put anti-imperialist and class politics up front. The next step is to show CHALLENGE to more soldiers, build stronger social ties in between drills, and bring the signers to PLP events.
Red National Guard Soldier
COUNTY STRUGGLE NEEDS VISION OF _THE FUTURE
The recent struggle against clinic cutbacks at Cook County Hospital in Chicago -- a testament to the many years of hard work and dedication on the part of communist and anti-racist fighters there -- is a tremendous opportunity for building the Party.
But the recent CHALLENGE articles (1/31 and 2/14) don't fully reflect this opportunity. They're very clear on how racism and imperialism are really responsible for these deadly attacks, and contain a call to build PLP and for communist revolution.
But there's virtually nothing in these articles about our communist politics on health care. For example, in a communist world:
* Health care will be free, not in any sense a part of wages. No nonsense about co-pays and deductibles. No workers turned away or discouraged from going to the doctor because they don't have insurance or can't pay.
* The Party will guarantee that the fruits of workers' labor are directed -- as one of the highest priorities -- to providing effective, safe health care for all workers and their children. No health care cutbacks to line the bosses' pockets or finance imperialist wars.
* Many millions of health workers will be trained to provide (at no cost!) information on, and care for, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, AIDS prevention and so on. The barefoot doctors in China are an early example of what can be done.
* Mass prevention campaigns, based in schools, workplaces and neighborhoods will be mounted against AIDS, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and substance abuse. Again, the Chinese communist successful mass campaign against schistosomaisis is something to learn from.
* Older workers and those with chronic illnesses, as well as alcohol and drug abuse problems, will receive the care they need and deserve. They won't be left to die by the likes of racist "Dr." Robert Simon.
These are just a few examples, a broad outline, of what health care will be like in a communist society. We should not lose sight of the many years of struggle that will be necessary to achieve communism. The exact form of communist health care, born out of the crucible of these many years of struggle, is yet to be determined.
Meanwhile, when we're locked in battle with the bosses over even the most basic health care, as at Cook County, these ideas could be directly linked with the struggle -- in leaflets, speeches, conversations and CHALLENGE articles (which could include website links to earlier articles about health care in China or from other articles in CHALLENGE or the COMMUNIST magazine).
Hopefully, this is of some value to our Cook County comrades engaged in the difficult but all-important task of resolving the contradiction between reform and revolution.
Red Doc
Youth Angered By New Orleans Oppression
Going to New Orleans was a bittersweet experience. It is full of grandeur and culture but this ended abruptly. Seeing the Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard's Parish neighborhoods was heart-wrenching and bone-chilling. You realized that the government acts in a very inhumane manner. The levees in the Lower 9th are so frail and close to the houses that logically they cannot hold up against a hurricane. It was also amazing to see the oil refineries so close to the homes. The workers are constantly exposed to fumes and pollution. To see that after a year and a half, nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done was infuriating. The streets of New Orleans seem like a ghost town. To think that many families lost everything and to put oneself in the family's shoes is very emotional. No first-hand account can compare to actually experiencing the destruction.
Nevertheless, New Orleans rebuilds little by little. The Mardi Gras Zulu Parade was fun. The people have been through so much and yet still have hope. As you drive down certain streets you can see some re-building and feel the optimism.
Visiting New Orleans was an eye-opening experience. Not only did I learn about another state of the union, but also the reality of things and the certain discrimination in this "free" and "equal" country.
Student Volunteer 1
Eighteen months ago the people of New Orleans were victims of a hurricane that only the rich survived. Is that the way it's supposed to be?
I had the chance recently to go see what was going on in New Orleans. It was depressing and raised a lot of questions in my mind about the capitalist system we are living in. I realized that the government is not afraid to do whatever it takes to keep themselves rich and powerful while forgetting about those who are trying to live their lives with the little they have left.
It's even clearer to me that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. It has to stop because we live under one sun. Therefore, there should be equality for all.
Student Volunteer 2
Active-Duty GIs Support Anti-War Soldiers
It's no secret that a great many U.S. military personnel -- especially enlisted people -- want the U.S. out of Iraq now. Increasingly, the anti-war movement here is organizing to support war resisters. This includes pacifists who, not long ago, shuddered at the thought of talking to active-duty GIs.
However, pacifist politics celebrate individual soldiers who declare themselves "conscientious objectors" (COs), and use those grounds to "opt out" of the war.
Instead of encouraging effective collective struggle against imperialism, pacifism fosters personal self-righteousness, which does not impede the warmakers. If workers follow pacifism, it leaves them defenseless in the face of capitalism's incessant attacks, and completely contradicts the working class's eventual need for armed insurrection through which it can take power to run society in their own class interest.
This contradiction is evident in the support campaign for Agustin Aguayo, who joined the Army as a medic shortly before the U.S. invaded Iraq. A year later, he changed; he is now a CO. He was sent to Iraq anyway. After talking with GIs in his company, Aguayo and his best buddy refused to load their weapons. Their whole unit knew they opposed the war. At the end of their tour, everyone in the unit got a medal, except Aguayo and his buddy.
But strikingly, the other guys gave their medals to these two anti-war soldiers! Clearly they respected the pair's stand. The main lesson of the Aguayo case is the potential for organizing active-duty military people to rebel collectively.
Last September, with the unit about to redeploy from Germany to Iraq, Aguayo's CO application was under federal appeal. He went AWOL, then turned himself in to face court-martial. Instead, he was told he'd be sent to Iraq in chains! Aguayo went AWOL again, held a press conference in Los Angeles, and then went with a caravan of supporters to turn himself in again. He is now in pre-trial confinement in Germany, where the German pacifist movement is planning demonstrations outside his court-martial in March.
Instead of focusing on the potential for collective anti-war resistance and rebellion inside the military, the pacifists are building up Aguayo as an individual hero because he wants out. They have seized hold of his legal defense to make a test case about official CO status. They're silent about what might have happened if Aguayo had returned to Iraq with his unit and tried to organize them into a collective protest (although we don't know exactly what Aguayo's relation was with his fellow GIs).
PLP's communist strategy stands in sharp contrast. Whether we're fighting ROTC or supporting resisters, we can't simply echo the liberal idea that "recruiters lie, you might die" or the pacifist view that people of faith must "say no to war and violence." We need to inform our friends that GI revolts played a large part in defeating U.S. imperialism in Vietnam, and that these revolts often involved violent acts of sabotage and "fragging." Further we need to talk about the important role of soldiers in the 1917 Russian revolution. (What might Aguayo have done had he been presented with these ideas?)
We need to encourage reliance on working-class youth, especially the many young black and Latin soldiers who've been victims of racism inside and outside the military, even while the bosses indoctrinate them with anti-Arab racism. Whether or not PLP's ideas are popular -- and our experiences both among soldiers and within pacifist organizations suggest that they may be more popular than we think -- we must explain that building an anti-imperialist, revolutionary movement inside the military is a crucial step, not only toward ending the U.S. occupation of Iraq, but toward ending the bloody capitalist system and its wars forever.
A Comrade
REDEYEONTHENEWS
74 little wars now -- big ones due
Some say that "little" brushfire wars -- there are 74 in progress around the world -- are the only wars there will be in future -- and that the age of great wars has passed. I am not one of those people. There is too much tinder lying around and there are far too many firebrands, Competition between states...is not deminishing, it is increasing.... (GW, 3/1)
US aims guns at Africa's oil
This week's US decision to create a new Pentagon command covering Africa, known as Africom has a certain unlovely military logic...
With Gulf of Guinea countries, including Nigeria and Angola, projected to provide a quarter of US oil imports within a decade, with Islamist terrorism worries in the Sahel and Horn of Africa, and with China prowling for resources and markets, the US plainly feels a second wind of change is blowing, necessitating increased leverage....
The U.S. is becoming, de facto, the self-appointed global policeman it said it never wanted to be . . . .
Africom marks the official arrival of America's "global war on terror" on the African continent. It is a wonder it took so long. (GW, 2/22)
US plans a weak, obedient Iraq
The Iraqi Air Force once boasted more that 500 combat aircraft. Now it has around 20 helicopters and planes and has barely figured in discussions on rebuilding the Iraqi security forces.
There are no fighter planes in the current fleet and none are expected in the next few years at least, indicating that the United States will be responsible for air defenses here for some time to come.
"In that part of the world, what you call a territory without a couple hundred fighter planes is a protectorate".... (NYT, 2/5)
War profiteers don't fear Dems
...The Iraq attack has been awfully good for one group: Pentagon contractors. For the makers of weapons, profits are up, stock prices are soaring, taxpayer dollars are gushing their way, and there is no end in sight for the "good times" that they are enjoying....
But what about those pesky Democrats...threatening to investigate war profiteering? No problem--corporate lobbyists note that Democrats, like Republicans, take campaign funds from these same contractors.... As one industry analyst smugly puts it: "I think Democrats will be on good behavior as long as the war continues." (Jim Hightower, 2/8)
Plan for Iran is a wormy can...
So here's the score: if we bomb Iran, the world will be a more dangerous place. If Iran gets the bomb, the world will be a more dangerous place. Conclusion: the world is likely to be a more dangerous place. (GW, 2/22)
Dems beat Bush to big-Army plan
President Bush...endorsed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' recommendation that 92,000 troops be added to the Army and the Marine Corps.
Some Democratic leaders have expressed support for the idea. Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said he was glad the president "has realized the need for increasing the size of the armed forces...but this is where the Democrats have been for two years." (LA Times, 1/27)
Human rights: a lower-half view
We tend to think of human rights in terms of a right to vote, a right to free speech, a right to assembly. But a child should also have a right not to suffer agony because of a worm that is easily preventable, as well as a right not to go blind because of lack of medication that costs a dollar or two, even a right not to die for a lack of a $5 mosquito net. (NYT, 2/28)
Pacifism won't help the oppressed
Violence is immoral, the argument goes, so by not defending themselves pacifists can claim a moral victory, shaming their opponents into submission. The flaw in this is that it assumes the opponent is capable of experiencing shame at his actions. Often the only dilemma pacifists pose to aggressors is how to dispose of so many corpses. (GW, 3/1)
Global Warning: Capitalism Destroying Our Planet
Many of us were concerned about this past December's abnormal weather--amazingly warm in the northeast and snow in Mexico. Many grumbled about global warming. Some began to worry the Earth was changing and life wouldn't be so good for their grandchildren. What is the truth?
First, let's get it straight that it's not our fault.. Capitalism and capitalist scientists are quick to argue that if we recycle, drive more energy-efficient cars, use mass transit, appeal to our governments to do the "right thing" then all of our environmental problems will be solved. What a lie! A system which is based on the profits of the few has the nerve to blame the billions of struggling workers! We don't decide what to produce, how to generate energy, whether to produce cars or build mass transit, nor do we create all the waste that capitalism produces.
The Earth is warming--an increase of 1deg.F during the twentieth century. One degree doesn't seem like much, but chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island have broken off ice fields in Antarctica and large chunks of ice are melting in the Arctic. Glaciers present on mountains longer than anyone can remember are starting to melt, and it is projected that they will disappear within the next century. Birds' migration patterns change, flowers bloom sooner than usual, causing problems in agriculture.
Some people claim that we don't know if there is actually a change. They argue that there have always been cycles of hotter climates and then ice ages; mild hurricane seasons and then really bad hurricane seasons. Exxon-Mobil is spending billions "proving" that climate change isn't happening. However, thousands of scientists, working together on the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argue that no honest debate exists: global warming is a fact, the Earth's climate is in danger, and something has to be done. There have been many variations in the earth's temperature in the past, but the temperature range has been relatively narrow (~5c/10f) even when comparing ice ages with periods of warming. The problem is that capitalism's recklessness now threatens to produce a greater climatic disruption than ever before.
The Earth is the only planet in our solar system which can support life. There are two primary reasons: water is present in three forms, liquid, solid and gas all the time, and we have what we call "the greenhouse effect." The greenhouse effect is positive: as radiation (energy) from the sun strikes the Earth's surface, warming the Earth, some of the radiation bounces off the Earth's surface and heads back into space. If it continued into space the Earth would be a lot cooler (averaging about 0[[ring]]F) but because it is stopped by greenhouse gas molecules it is returned to Earth, warming it enough to support life (the average temperature on Earth is 59[[ring]]F).
The problem is the increased amount of the "greenhouse gases", carbon dioxide and methane, in the atmosphere. This unnatural increase in the greenhouse gases is causing more radiation to be held near the Earth, warming it even more. Since pre-industrial times, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 31 percent. The amount of methane in the atmosphere has increased 151% in the same period. The increased carbon dioxide comes from increased use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) due to industrialization. The methane comes from rice paddies and from cattle.
The increase in temperature causes a number of serious problems. The ice in the poles and glaciers melts into the oceans, causing the sea levels to rise and flood low lying areas. Most human populations live on the coasts or along rivers; therefore many, many millions of people are threatened. Increasing the temperature on the planet changes the weather. Already we're seeing more serious storms, with flooding, in southern Asia, droughts in many places, Australia is facing a water shortage now, and of course, the changes this winter already mentioned.
Many of the arguments about global warming represent different groups of capitalists. While some companies look to profit from alternative energy sources, most capitalists are unwilling to accept the costs of reducing emissions and production of greenhouse gases. Ever sharpening imperialist competition and capitalism's drive for maximum profits means that we can only end global warming and other environmental problems by replacing the anarchy of capitalism with social planning organized by the working class--communism--that puts people's needs first.
References:
Union of Concerned Scientists [http://ucsusa.org]
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/climchng.hml
Denounce Blair's Troop Scam
_LONDON, February 24 -- Tens of thousands protested here and in Glasgow, Scotland demanding withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq and the scrapping of the planned [[sterling]]76 billion replacement program for Trident nuclear missiles. The marchers viewed Blair's announcement of a British pullout from Basra, Iraq as a ploy, since more UK troops will be sent to the other imperialist war in Afghanistan, where U.S.-UK-NATO forces are also being bogged down.
Two NYC PL'ers visiting relatives in London distributed a leaflet with the CHALLENGE story (2/28) describing the action of students at the NYC teachers Delegate Assembly where the youth won teachers to oppose military recruiters in high schools. Our comrades had great discussions with the marchers (more next issue).
PLP HISTORY
PLP Defied Bosses' Nationalism in `68 SF Student Strike
(Part III on PLP's activities within SDS)
The ideological struggle within SDS sharpened after PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance Caucus had defeated the right-wing's attempt to expel PL at the June 1968 national convention.
The debate over the identity and role of the working class became an argument over the issue of nationalism. The right-wing followed the old communist movement's line that nationalism could be progressive or reactionary, depending on the identity of the nationalist. This view says the nationalism of the oppressor (U.S. imperialism, French colonialism, etc.) was obviously reactionary; however, the nationalism of the oppressed (the Vietnamese people, or victims of racism in the U.S.) could serve the cause of revolution.
Until the mid-Sixties, PLP had endorsed this position. However, an analysis of international class struggle and a self-critical examination of our own practice (including the 1966 NYC transit strike and other union struggles) led us to conclude that even the most militant anti-imperialist nationalism was a thin disguise for all-class unity behind a boss, and that revolutionaries must therefore reject it.
The struggle was far from purely theoretical. In November 1968, students at San Francisco State University (SFSU) launched a strike that was to last five months, the longest in the history of the U.S. student movement. Thousands participated. In purely tactical terms, it involved some of the most violent struggle of the period, often pitting the strikers in pitched battles against the fascistic San Francisco Police Department. PLP members were among the courageous strikers and strike leaders during these confrontations.
However, the political content of the strike was fatally flawed. Rather than organize around a program of anti-racist, anti-imperialist demands, which could have clarified the class content of the university and moved the strike leftward, the SFSU Third World Liberation Front and Black Students Union called for an "Ethnic Studies Department."
In a different form, this was the same anti-working class content that the right-wing had pushed in demanding "liberation classes" at Columbia in the spring of 1968. SFSU was and remains a capitalist institution; with or without an ethnic studies department, it would continue to serve the bosses. In fact, such a department could only hurt the movement by promoting illusions about the system's ability to reform itself.
At first, the PLP club at SFSU endorsed the strike's bad demands. The Party's new line on nationalism hadn't yet been fully discussed and understood, and in the heat of battle, the comrades on the front lines thought that they were acting correctly in merely giving bold tactical leadership.
PLP's chairperson in New York, recovering from major surgery, heard about the SFSU struggle and talked to the PLP student organizer, telling him: "This Party's not going to capitulate to nationalism. Go to San Francisco and try to win the club and leadership to a better line." The student organizer did so, and, in the heat of the strike, carried out a successful political struggle within the club.
The SFSU PLP club demonstrated great determination and courage in the face of attempted intimidation, threats and physical violence, some of it from cops and some from ruling-class agents within the strike. The bosses recognized that even the most militant struggle could be tamed and brought under control if it was led by nationalist politics. The only real danger was PLP's line. When the Party began opposing both the ethnic studies demand and nationalism in general, the right-wingers and ruling class forces within the movement intensified the anti-PL red-baiting and intimidation.
Nonetheless, the Party stuck to its guns. We didn't win on the issue; the strike ended in March 1969, after the SFSU administration had agreed to create an Ethnic Studies Department, which exists to this day. Two of PLP's main leaders received prison sentences of several months for their strike activity.
But the Worker-Student Alliance and the Party grew both numerically and qualitatively in the wake of this struggle. Student strikers joined PLP. Most importantly, the Party had moved to the left on the crucial question of nationalism and learned to advance under attack. The ideological struggle within SDS was about to sharpen still further, and this political baptism of fire had toughened the Party and would serve it well in the year ahead.
(Future articles: PLP publicly criticizes revisionism in Vietnam; the 1969 Harvard strike; the Chicago "split" convention; the Campus Worker-Student Alliance; and key lessons of the SDS period.
Black, Latino, Immigrant Workers First To Face: Fascist Crackdown
Worker-Student Alliance Opposes Military Recruiters
a href="#Don’t Dream of Being a Boss, Become a Communist">"on’t Dream of Being a Boss, Become a Communist
Hospital Workers Show Doctors How to Talk Back to Fascist Chief
a href="#Rivera Defends ‘1199’ Sellout: ‘We’re all capitalists’!">Rivera D"fends ‘1199’ Sellout: ‘We’re all capitalists’!
Workers, Students Unite to Confront Racist Minutemen
Anger Grows Over Another LAPD Racist Murder
a href="#VW Sellout —The Other Shoe Drops">"W Sellout —The Other Shoe Drops
a href="#Obrador, Hacks No Answer to Workers’ Anger">"brador, Hacks No Answer to Workers’ Anger
French Pols, Union Hacks Divert General Strike to Ballot Box
Thousands March While NATO Splits Over Afghanistan
LETTERS
Anti-War GIs Need Anti-Imperialist Strategy
a href="#Working Class — The Bosses’ Cannon Fodder">Wo"king Class — The Bosses’ Cannon Fodder
a href="#Distorting Obama’s Message?">"istorting Obama’s Message?
- a href="#Editor’s reply:">"ditor’s reply
Growing Multi-Racial, Interfaith Unity
Multi-Racial Fight Key to Defeat Nationalism
a href="#Individual GI ResistanceWon’t Cut It">"ndividual GI ResistanceWon’t Cut It
a href="#Can’t Rely on Bosses’ Courts, In France or U.S.">Ca"’t Rely on Bosses’ Courts, In France or U.S.
Dutch General Strike Under Nazis Fought Persecution of Jews
PL History: PLP, SDS and the 1968 Columbia U. Strike
New Orleans: Tenants Take Back Their Homes
- U.S. pull-back won’t be pull-out
- One-third doubt official 9/11 story
- Big Africa investment hurts villagers
- Upper-class grab city after flood
- Desperate Iraqis blame US oil greed
- Capitalist $ won’t go to our needs
Black, Latino, Immigrant Workers First To Face Fascist Crackdown
As U.S. rulers’ butchery in Iraq threatens to spill over into Iran, and a clash with China, Russia or Europe looms, the rulers must impose wartime discipline on the home front. With the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capital leading the effort, results so far have proved mixed. For black, Latino and immigrant workers and those of Arab background, a full-blown police state exists. But, while the bosses terrorize large segments, they haven’t managed to militarize the general population, and thus will resort to more drastic measures to do so. As for the economy, the past decade has seen a vast increase in centralized government control and consolidation of capital. Capitalists, however, remain divided in purpose. Many still favor their individual profit margins over the strategic aims of U.S. imperialism. As their military needs mount, the rulers will employ more severe tactics to enforce sacrifice. Jailing Enron and Tyco execs was only the opening act. Fascism is indeed on the rise — unevenly but unquestionably — in the U.S.
When Clinton’s air strikes and embargo in the 1990’s were softening up Iraq for invasion, he vowed to put 100,000 more cops on U.S. streets. Today, police forces beefed up by liberals are on a racist rampage. Sean Bell’s cold-blooded, unpunished murder by the NYPD signals a rapidly intensifying ruling-class crackdown on black and Latin workers. New York cops stopped and frisked 508,540 people, 81% of them black or Hispanic, last year, compared with 97,296 in 2002. (NY Times, 2/3/07). Arrests and summonses nearly quadrupled. Liberals like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama back the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which funds the "hiring and training [of] law enforcement officers."
As a result, 2.2 million people are imprisoned nationwide, 70% of them black or Hispanic. Every twelfth black male between the ages of 25 and 29 languishes behind bars; the figure for whites is one in a hundred. (Bureau of Justice Statistics) Managing the flow of cheap immigrant labor is crucial to U.S. rulers’ worldwide competitiveness. When jobs dry up, their new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency ruthlessly tracks down and deports foreign-born workers, over 1.2 million annually. Massive raids like the recent Operation Return to Sender in California have created a "reign of terror" in Latino communities that deters workers from leaving their houses and sending their children to school. (KCBS, 2/7/02)
Such Gestapo-style round-ups are also a liberal initiative. The Democratic Leadership Council says "lawmakers should shift the focus of the debate away from the border and to the workplace." (Website, 5/25/06) ICE even has a prison camp for detaining immigrant families in Texas. Arab workers suffer particularly harsh treatment there. A pregnant Palestinian woman with four children was separated from her husband and held for three months simply for overstaying a visa.
But, apart from the cops and federal agents themselves, the rulers have not won large numbers of people to the storm-trooper militarism their widening wars require. Current recruitment can barely sustain their undermanned Iraq adventure. Mass revulsion at the imperialists’ Vietnam slaughter wiped out the culture of military service in all but a very few pockets. Texas A & M and the Citadel still churn out officers. Fifty years ago, however, virtually every major college had a thriving ROTC program. The sharpening global rivalry will force U.S. bosses to restore the draft, or as Democrats prefer to call it, "universal national service."
A similar lack of loyalty hampers U.S. imperialists on the business side. Despite recent merger mania, the U.S. economy appears more fragmented than united. The number of banks may have shrunk from 10,000 to 7,500 over the last ten years, but that’s still 7,000 separate money centers with distinct interests. The Bush administration reflects this disjointedness. On one hand it launched two invasions for the imperialists’ benefit; on the other, it panders to bottom-liners and refuses to impose war taxes.
New York’s new governor, Eliot Spitzer, who helped tighten the rulers’ grip by enforcing regulations on Wall Street, just suffered a setback in Albany. The lobbyist-ridden legislature rejected his choice for comptroller, the state’s chief financial post. This disarray has parallels with Italy in the build-up for World War II. British historian Mac-Gregor Knox noted "a crippling parochialism of outlook" and a regime "without the conviction or power to force upon Italian society the financial sacrifices demanded [by war]." ("Hitler’s Italian Allies," Cambridge, 2000)
But there are important differences. U.S. bosses have a far larger empire at stake and will fight all the more viciously to keep it. We should not expect "fascism lite." The sharpening attacks on black, Latino and immigrant workers show the true shape of things to come. The bosses may lack a broad military culture, but they have deep-seated, pervasive racism at their disposal.
Another, deadlier 9/11 followed by anti-Arab propaganda, military mobilization, and a crackdown on dissidents seems to be what the rulers now require and may be coming. Don’t put it past them. They had warnings of the original attack and did nothing. Clinton’s Hart-Rudman Commission rhapsodized about the possibility of such a "galvanizing" event two years before it happened. The main capitalists desperately need to put the nation on a wartime footing. Consequently, we must continue to improve our efforts for the survival of the revolutionary communist movement under a police state. This mainly means building a Progressive Labor Party with deeper and deeper roots in the working class.
Is Iran Next?
The war drums are beating louder, now against Iran. The White House is using the same tactics as those which led up to the invasion of Iraq. "Iranian bombs are killing our soldiers in Iraq" is the latest.
Ironically, the bombs that the U.S. government claims Iran is sending to Iraq would be used by Shiite militias, which are supported by the U.S. puppet government in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is not accusing its allies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan of supporting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the force that is probably killing more U.S. troops than all others combined. The Bushites are using these governments in their current campaign against Iran.
Simultaneously, a huge U.S. naval fleet is in place in the Persian Gulf for any potential attack on Iran. This would lead to an even bloodier and wider war than the one in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, while expressing skepticism at the latest White House war plans, will surely fall into place as soon as any shock and awe bombing might begin against Iran, just as they did in Iraq.
Communists since World War I have said imperialism makes war inevitable no matter which set of politicians is running the government. The only way out is for workers and soldiers from Teheran to Baghdad to Washington unite and fight to destroy the system that causes war. That’s what PLP fights for!
Youth Rock NYC Teachers’ Union
Worker-Student Alliance Opposes Military Recruiters
NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 7 — A resolution opposing military recruiters in the high schools, fought for by teachers and students together, passed overwhelmingly tonight at the United Federation of Teachers Delegate Assembly (DA). The delegates were delighted at the presence of 15-20 militant, black and Latin sign-carrying high school students, members and friends of PLP. They helped their teacher comrades distribute 900 leaflets and 200 CHALLENGES (we ran out of papers).
The students came to the meeting with signs opposing recruiters in schools and demanding that delegates vote for the resolution. Many years of teachers working collectively set the stage for the success of the resolution, but the real victory for the Party is the new, growing worker-student alliance seen here tonight.
In fact, the presence of the students won the battle to ensure that the resolution got discussed. We struggled with the union hacks to admit the students into the meeting. Finally union president Randi Weingarten agreed they could come in while the resolution was being debated and voted on.
Then one student addressed the Assembly and called for opposition to imperialist war, saying the so-called educational benefits promised by recruiters mean nothing if you’re dead. She described the students’ concerns that the delegates often vote on issues affecting students, without their knowledge or input. She called on the assembly to pass the resolution, describing the issue of recruiters in the schools one of the most important for high school students.
As expected, the description of the war as imperialist was removed. But the final version didn’t limit the opposition to recruiters to the current war in Iraq, broadening its scope. Although most of the delegates are bound to vote with the leadership caucus, 90% voted for the resolution. This represents recognition on the part of the union leadership that they cannot afford to deny the growing opposition to the war, despite Weingarten’s need to try to control the anti-war anger among the members.
The passage of the resolution doesn’t mean Weingarten is a friend of the working class. Not only is she a buddy of the mayor who is attacking students and teachers, but she is diverting workers’ anger into the arms of the other imperialist war party, the Democrats. The "victories" that she describes are nothing more than legal battles helping to define our exploitation. The union does not fight harassment of teachers or for lower class size. But Weingarten wants to be seen as a "friend" of the working class, so she supported anti-war resolutions at the last two meetings. We have developed a marked influence at these assemblies.
While we’re always recognized as fighters for our students and our class, we used to struggle to distribute just 25 CHALLENGES. Now we routinely distribute 300 or more. In the end, we’re winning a struggle against anti-communism and broadening our base. The union leadership knows this and they work hard to maintain the delegates’ allegiance to the Democratic Party, rather than to the Progressive Labor Party.
The strengths of this struggle are our collectivity and patient work over the years, and our building of an anti-racist worker-student alliance at our schools in a continuous fight against racist attacks . Other delegates were excited to see the students, congratulating them and us.
The struggle will sharpen as we bring a demand for union support for May Day to the March meeting, alongside the students who are eager to continue this fight. The debate around May Day will show our friends which side Weingarten and her buddies are on, one small step in our winning them to understand that only a communist revolution can provide the future we want for our students and the working class.
a name="Don’t Dream of Being a Boss, Become a Communist">">"on’t Dream of Being a Boss, Become a Communist
Hey you! Put down this CHALLENGE because you too can be rich if you only try hard enough. That’s a big fat lie that fuels capitalism and the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness."
In the early 1980’s in San Francisco, Chris Gardner is a bone-density scanner salesman, and his girlfriend Linda works double shifts at a laundry.
Three months behind in rent, Gardner decides he wants to be happy like rich people and applies for free stockbroker training. Linda mocks Gardner’s new plan and soon leaves for a job in New York. Gardner now must raise his son alone, find a place to stay because they’re homeless, pay bills, and still sell the bone scanners while training for the stock brokerage. In the end Gardner succeeds and gets a high-paying job that puts him on the path to being a CEO.
The movie is based on Chris Gardner’s real-life rags-to-riches memoir.
The message is that in the U.S. the homeless can become multi-millionaires. But under capitalism, the happiness of a few millionaires and billionaires depends on the misery of billions of workers. The world’s richest 2% control 40% of global wealth, and the bottom half of the world’s population — about 3 billion people —own barely 1%. (United Nations University Report, 5 December 2006) All profits, whether inherited or "self-made," are stolen from workers labor. Only by fighting for communism can workers around the world wipe out capitalism’s mass misery.
Millionaires make up about one-tenth of one percent of people in the world while billionaires make up only .00001% (one millionth of one percent). Gardner and other rich people the capitalist media focus on, like Oprah, Bill Clinton, Condeleeza Rice or Dikembe Matombo, are rare exceptions. The bosses just want each of us to work hard, not complain, and focus on the exceptions like Gardner.
The filmmakers changed major parts of Gardner’s real-life story to mislead workers. In the movie Gardner and Linda are struggling to pay bills, Gardner’s stockbroker training has no stipend and Linda leaves Gardner alone to look after Chris, Jr. The film Gardner says he had to do in six hours what his competitors in class did in nine because he had to take care of Chris, Jr. No one in the whole movie ever helps him do anything.
In real life, Gardner doubled his income by becoming a salesman. He received a stipend for his training and Linda leaves with Chris, Jr. Gardner was actually the first one to come in the office and the last one to leave. Months later when Linda returns to leave Jr. with Gardner, a reverend allows Gardner and his son to stay in a shelter that’s only for woman with children. With the reverend’s help, Gardner saves money for a rental house. The reverend also introduced him to local bosses in San Francisco (sfgate.com 10 Oct 2005 and chrisgardnermedia.com).
The film adds impossible hardships to Gardner’s real-life experiences to distract viewers from their own personal struggle and to reinforce the false idea that if you didn’t make it it’s because you didn’t try. We’re encouraged to pursue happiness by becoming a boss after all Gardner had no help and he made it!
The very few workers who do become rich make it by exploiting other workers. Once Gardner started working he grew rich by investing money from workers’ pensions. U.S. bosses want to demonstrate that racism is over and anyone can make it, with no rebellions necessary. In one scene a racist instructor asks Gardner to move the instructor’s car instead of going to a meeting with a CEO. Gardner chooses to move the car before going to his meeting but ends up getting a ticket and missing the CEO. Later, Gardner finds his way to meet with the CEO on his own time and pays the parking ticket out of his own pocket.
The message is: don’t challenge racism, work harder. But the reality is that capitalism still super-exploits and under-employs black workers while a few are promoted to help exploit other workers. Capitalism, not laziness or weak will, keeps workers — especially black, Latino and women workers impoverished and in misery.
If all homeless or impoverished people suddenly decided to do everything they could to be stockbrokers and CEOs, would there be jobs for them? Who would actually work for them? The CEOs? In some ways Gardner is a sympathetic person who endures hardship in part to make a better life for his child. But the movie doesn’t praise workers for compassion it blames them for not exploiting each other to the top.
When communist led the USSR and China, workers did away with unemployment and drastically reduced homelessness by violently rising against the capitalist rulers and building a workers’ state. But the bosses want us to compete for jobs, housing, and resources and they release films like "The Pursuit of Happyness" to fool us into individually pursuing dreams of getting rich instead of uniting together to end poverty.
Really pursuing happiness for all workers means working hard with our class over many generations to build communism and end capitalism’s miserable conditions — not adopting a "mefirst" attitude with dreams of exploiting and creating miserable conditions.
Hospital Workers Show Doctors How to Talk Back to Fascist Chief
CHICAGO—"How many of our patients will die because they can’t get to the other Clinic after you close Woodlawn?" When that nurse’s angry question was raised, it was time for the Chief of the Cook County Health Bureau to end the meeting before things could start to get out of hand.
Even while being surrounded by 500 angry medical center staff in a standing-room only crowd in County’s Hektoen auditorium, Dr. Robert Simon had kept the lid on it all too well up to that point. A few minutes earlier an internal medicine doctor observed that some staff might refuse to fill out the billing sheets to protect their low income patients from getting threatening letters from collection agencies. "After all, we are the safety net for people who can’t afford medical care." "Then those doctors will be fired. And I haven’t lost a hearing in eighteen years."
The cold voice of fascism. And he was getting away with it – not challenged by the hundreds of doctors in the room – until a clerk and then the nurse from Woodlawn raised their voices to "make it real."
In the four weeks since Dr. Simon held his first meetings with staff in Hektoen auditorium, the murderous cuts have continued to grind forward through the budget process. The fight back has been inspiring and huge at times. Normally quiet and boring budget hearings have attracted thousands of angry patients and workers and the county commissioners have appeared to distance themselves from Simon and the County President Todd Stroger who together had demanded 17% across-the-board cuts.
But no serious plan has been advanced by any politician, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, that would prevent most of the planned destruction of the public health system of Cook County, the second largest in the country.
No politician has made the obvious charge of racism against Stroger’s plan, even though over 80% of the people who will die from the cuts are black or Latin. Is it because Stroger is black? And of course no politician or news outlet has drawn the obvious link between the loss of federal money for public hospitals and the war budget. The entire $500 million deficit in the County budget could be paid with the money spent in Iraq in 42 hours!
Resistance continues to grow. Comrades in PLP along with dozens of readers of the Challenge have been very active in the struggle through our unions and professional associations. Comrades fight shoulder to shoulder with other workers who teach us by their example of energy and courage. Every day sees new petitions, letters, demonstrations and meetings at the three hospitals and numerous clinics.
One comrade was collecting signatures on a petition calling for firing Dr. Simon and a worker asked angrily, "Why isn’t Todd Stroger’s name on there? We need to fire him first!" Comments like that one, coming from a black ward clerk, make it clear that the bosses’ cynical attempt to hide their racist attack behind a black face can be defeated. Workers learn and teach in the midst of class struggle, the best "schools for communism."
The struggle has had a good effect on the comrades involved, too, but we need to do much more. We have met dozens of new people who are open to a communist critique of the system, but our distribution of the paper has only increased modestly. This crisis is rich in lessons. Capitalism is killing people both by the war and the impact of the war budget. Thousands – potentially millions – of people can see the connection in situations like this one if we act boldly and tirelessly.
a name="Rivera Defends ‘1199’ Sellout: ‘We’re all capitalists’!"></a>Rive"a Defends ‘1199’ Sellout: ‘We’re all capitalists’!
NEW YORK CITY, NY Feb. 12 — The Dennis Rivera leadership of SEIU Local 1199 jammed through an early contract renewal for 100,000 hospital and nursing home workers that allows 25% of its members to be laid off at any institution without any protection and limits wage "increases" to 3% annually (a wage cut, given inflation).
Hailing this as a "great step forward for job security," Rivera used the recent closings of several hospitals, with more threatened, as a club over the heads of the delegates and membership to win contract approval. "We are all capitalists," he declared! Speak for yourself, Dennis. Local 1199 members, overwhelmingly black and Latino, as are many of their patients, are victims of the racist capitalist system defended by Rivera, (a big shot in the state Democratic Party machine).
Rivera insisted we had to reopen the contract a year early before disastrous Medicaid cuts are enacted. Many delegates pointed out that the cost of living was running significantly higher than the meager wage demands put on the table. New York’s health care industry is in dire straits due to federal and state funding cutbacks of both Medicaid and Medicare.
These cuts are dwarfed by the huge expenditures for the imperialist oil grab in Iraq, running at $2 billion a week. What looms ahead is the downsizing and merger of more institutions with mass layoffs and significantly reduced access to healthcare for working-class families. It’s imperative that members and friends of Progressive Labor Party step up the process of bringing communist ideas to Local 1199 members. We must build a strong nucleus of revolutionary leadership among the delegates and rank and file. A decent life and guaranteed healthcare won’t come out of electoral politics, but as a result of organizing for working-class communist politics.
Increased CHALLENGE circulation is a major step in this process.
Workers, Students Unite to Confront Racist Minutemen
HOLLYWOOD, CA, Feb. 10 — Chanting "La luchas obreras no tiene fronteras" ("The workers’ struggles has no borders"), a group of about 70 students, activists, workers, and PLP’ers confronted the gutter-racist Minutemen and Save Our State scum here today. The racists were out in full force (nearly 100) to support two Texas border patrol agents convicted for firing 14 rounds at an unarmed "suspect" that was running away, wounding him and then covering up the incident. Counter-protesters held up signs exposing the murderous racism of the MinuteKlan and calling for solidarity among all workers, citizen and immigrant. The majority of the anti-racist protesters eagerly grabbed CHALLENGES.
The cops openly encouraged the Minutemen to attack the anti-racists, as well as attacking us themselves. They stayed back as the Minutemen rushed and tried to provoke the anti-racists. But when we fought back, the cops rushed the crowd several times, picking off at least four protesters for arrest. At other demonstrations, when the anti-racists vastly outnumber the racists, the cops stand between the two groups.
Trying to put a multi-cultural face on their openly racist and murderous activities, the Minutemen paraded a number of Latino and black speakers calling for patriotism, "defense of the homeland" and the securing of "our" borders. Not completely unlike the liberals who wave the flag and call for a "comprehensive immigration reform" (that is, a neo-Bracero program for the factories, fields and military), these gutter racists try to use patriotism and nationalism to divide workers and students and win them to imperialism and fascism.
In fact, the Minuteklan and the liberals are only two ends of the same racist spectrum — both using patriotic rhetoric to disguise their racist attacks on the working class as a whole. We must expose this fascist patriotism and anti-immigrant, anti-Arab and anti-black racism that props up the bosses’ imperialist war machine.
At one point, Ted Hayes — an African-American Minuteman — rushed the crowd of counterprotesters and challenged an activist leading chants. Immediately, he was confronted physically by a group of protesters, but was saved by the cops. Over-riding chants of "down with the Minutemen" and "Minutemen go home," the demonstrators began chanting, "Death, death, death to the Minuteklan — Power, power, power to the workers!" and "Black, brown, Asian, white, workers of the world unite!"
With fists in the air, the crowd of workers and students showed the potential unity and power that will help build and spread PLP’s multi-racial communist fight to smash racism and the capitalist system that breeds it. Although we heard about this demonstration late in the week, we should have fought for more anti-racists to protest against what appears to be a growing fascist movement. Next time, we’ll be bigger and better prepared.
Anger Grows Over Another LAPD Racist Murder
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8 — Mauricio Cornejo, 31, was pronounced dead Saturday evening, Feb. 3, only 45 minutes after the cops stopped him for a broken taillight near Ramona Gardens, an East LA housing project. When he left the car, he tried to run away. The cops chased and beat him, then arrested him.
Witnesses saw the cops beating Cornejo in the head with batons even after he was handcuffed. "They hit him in the parking lot…and then they took him to a bridge where they all started hitting him when he was already on the floor. He was crying ‘Help!’" said Norma Picasso.
Another witness said she saw the cops kick Cornejo in the head and ribs and hit him with their batons. Still another witness saw the cops kick Cornejo in his jail cell. The cops had stopped him at 6:45 pm. (LA Times, 2/8) He died in his jail cell at 7:30 pm, murdered by the racist LAPD.
The following Tuesday evening, about 40 people gathered with Cornejo’s family at the housing project’s community center for a car wash to raise money for Cornejo’s funeral. As police helicopters circled overhead, 40 LA cops in riot gear came to try to intimidate Cornejo’s angry family and friends. Despite being ordered to disperse by the cops with shot guns, the crowd stood their ground, protesting Cornejo’s racist murder and the continuing racist police harassment of project residents.
In the face of growing community anger at the racist cops, Police Chief Bratton’s assistants have said "the officers acted appropriately" — meaning they were doing their job, terrorizing workers, especially Latino and black workers, trying to whip workers into line while the bosses lower wages and cut benefits for all.
They justified their racist murder by saying Cornejo was allegedly a gang member. This is part of their master plan to "take and hold" entire neighborhoods. Such police terror is needed to enforce racist superexploitation necessary for a profit system hellbent on wider wars.
PLP calls on workers and youth to protest and avenge this murder. It is part of a growing nationwide attack on the working class, including the racist police murders of black workers like Sean Bell in NYC, and the recent deportations of immigrant workers from LA, including LA jails. All this terror is aimed at intimidating and dividing our class. But it could be turned into its opposite — a united working class determined to destroy the racist system.
The best way to avenge these attacks is by joining and building the PLP to fight over the long term for communist revolution. A system based on racist terror, division and imperialist war must be destroyed by a united working class which knows that all workers have the same enemy, capitalism, and the same interests, to fight for a communist world where racism and exploitation will be buried in the garbage heap of history.
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Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 10 — The other shoe has dropped at the VW factory here. After forcing the workers to accept restructuring, 3,100 layoffs and early retirements, management is demanding they work three more hours a week at the same pay.
"Thirty-eight hours or nothing!" Günter Koch, Audi-VW’s human resources boss told the works council, blatantly threatening to lay off the remaining 2,200 workers. VW wants to cut labor costs 20% and have a final restructuring agreement by mid-February. VW’s carrot? A "vast training program" to "upgrade workers’ skills."
The unions are ready to cave in to company demands. FGTB metalworkers leader Jan Vanderpoorten told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir they have little choice, although they will suggest "alternative ways" of cutting labor costs — doing the bosses’ work for them!
This attack follows union acceptance of 7,800 layoffs and longer hours in VW’s German factories — 34 hours a week instead of 28.8. Who’s next? VW has 44 production plants in Europe and beyond. The profit system inevitably means VW will continue the cycle of ratcheting down wages and working conditions, playing off workers in different countries against each other.
All this is part of fierce worldwide competition among automakers in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the U.S., each fighting for a bigger piece of the profit pie, with Ford and GM losing out to Japan and others. Now they’re shipping production to low-wage Eastern Europe and China.
VW also says it will close the Brussels factory if nearby subcontractors do not "optimize the whole supply chain and ensure competitive employment opportunities." The logic is for the remaining VW workers to save their own jobs by pressuring subcontractors’ workers to accept lower wages and worse conditions.
International solidarity is the only answer to this self-defeating strategy. Workers must organize this solidarity themselves, not rely on union misleaders. Auto workers need to reach out to workers in other countries to fight the attacks resulting from the bosses’ international auto wars or submit to continual sellouts and worsening conditions. Ultimately, PLP must re-build the international communist movement to turn these workers’ fight-backs into a school for revolution.
Relying on the union bureaucrats led to Brussels’ VW workers ending their seven-week strike against the restructuring on Jan. 5. The vote was a set-up: (1) workers who accepted voluntary separation were excluded from voting; (2) A two-thirds majority was required to maintain the strike, meaning a minority of workers could end it; and (3) management and the bosses’ media browbeat the workers, warning that VW would close the plant if the strike continued.
Despite all this, 45.4% of the workers voted to stay out. And Pascal Van Cauwenberge, leader of the CSC (Christian) trade union, dared to say he was "disappointed that there is not a bigger difference between the number of people who want to go back to work and those who don’t."
The "lesser-evil" union, the FTGB, organized a three-day strike beginning Jan. 24. After 15 hours of negotiations and Belgian government mediation, the FGTB’s magazine "Syndicats" crowed that the FGTB had obtained written guarantees on "a long-term industrial project for the 2,300 workers at VW and for all the workers employed by the subcontractors."
But the ink wasn’t even dry when VW bosses tore the "written guarantees" to shreds, threatening to scrap the "project" if they don’t get their 20% cut in labor costs. It’s obvious that only an internationalist working-class leadership has the power to fight the world’s auto bosses even in these immediate struggles — and strengthen our class in its battle for communism.
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MEXICO CITY, Feb. 1 — Some 75,000 people marched yesterday demanding the government grant a "new social pact," modify its economic policy, guarantee jobs and food, ban privatization of state-owned enterprises and end repression. The protest united 150 unions representing, among others, electrical, telephone, social security and transit workers and airline pilots, along with organizations of peasants and others, as well as the opposition PRD (Party of Democratic Revolution) and the Labor Party. The angry demonstrators vowed to no longer tolerate the government’s sacrificing generations of people, characterizing the rulers’ only response to their demands as "repression."
Amid this anger of the workers, peasants and youth, the march organizers have no real answer to the problems caused not only by the new President Felipe Calderón and his ruling party (PAN), but also by capitalism and imperialism.
López Obrador, the PRD candidate who claims he was a victim of a PAN’s fraud in the July presidential election, was present in force with his supporters. He represents a section of Mexico’s bourgeoisie which don’t want to sell all the publicly-owned enterprises (mainly the oil monopoly PEMEX) to imperialist companies, mainly from the U.S. He’s not opposed to privatizing parts of PEMEX and other state-owned enterprises, but mainly to local capitalists like zillionaire Carlos Slim.
The rulers have been increasingly claiming that PEMEX change to compete internationally. La Jornada (2/8) reported that Jesús Reyes Heroles, PEMEX director, said private participation will have to follow current laws. He complained that the $79 billion PEMEX sales contributed to the government — some 40% of the state budget income — is "too much," not allowing for investment in modernization. Various sections of the ruling class are fighting over PEMEX’s profits.
Meanwhile, workers here are very angry over the price increase for tortillas, a staple here, and for corn flour, jumping from 40% to 100%. This, plus the rising cost of milk and other basic food, has affected most of the population. The increasing use in the U.S. of ethanol fuel, drawn from corn, and speculation by international agribusiness like Archer Daniels Midland, Corn Products International, Cargill and local partners like Maseca and Minsa, are behind the hike in corn and flour prices.
Since NAFTA opened Mexico’s market to multi-national enterprises, corn prices have skyrocketed 738%. Two million farm jobs were wiped out, leading many to emigrate from the poorest states with big indigenous populations (Oaxaca, Chiapas and Puebla) to the U.S. In the late 1980’s, one kilo of tortilla cost 1% of most workers’ wages; now it’s 20%, in a country where 20 million people earn $2 a day and use $1 to eat plain tortillas.
Meanwhile, President Calderón is using the "war against the narco cartels" to militarize the country. But rather than ending the drug problem, this militarization will attack any mass fight-backs by workers.
Workers and their allies need more than a "social pact" or the "reformed capitalism" proposed by union hacks and López Obrador, who wants to use workers’ anger to revive his sagging movement. They must fight for a new society without any bosses: communism. We in PLP must do much more to bring that message to these angry workers and youth.
French Pols, Union Hacks Divert General Strike to Ballot Box
PARIS, Feb. 8 — "The tail is wagging the dog!" remarked one striker as the politicians and trade unions tried to make political hay out of the one-day strike for jobs and wages by almost 500,000 state workers. Some 80,000 state and railroad workers demonstrated here, and thousands more did so in large provincial cities like Marseilles, Bordeaux and Lyons.
Even before the strike, Eric Fritsch of the CFDT trade union admitted that its main purpose was to "give notice to the future government." And today the CGT trade union emphasized that "many of the demands that were put forward, both by the strikers and by the marchers, echo a certain number of themes in the electoral campaign."
Those statements reveal the strike’s real purpose as viewed by labor bureaucrats and fake leftist politicians. These hacks mobilized the workers to increase their own bargaining power. "Communist" Party leader Marie-George Buffet and Green Party leader Cécile Duflot backed the strike and joined the Paris march to persuade workers to vote for their respective parties in the first round of the presidential elections on April 22. They’re preparing for some horse-trading: they’ll throw their electorate behind the Socialist Party (SP) in the second round on May 6, in exchange for "safe" legislative seats in the June 10 National Assembly elections. The more votes they get on April 22, the more seats they can wangle for May 6.
SP Senator Jean-Luc Mélenchon and SP national secretary Christian Martin also marched "in solidarity," but only to get workers to vote Socialist. A Feb. 4 poll shows right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy enjoying a 6% lead over SP candidate Ségolène Royal, who has blurted out one stupid statement after another (praising the speed with which the bosses’ judicial system in China executes sentences, for example).
Royal stated she would give state workers "respect" to butter them up for reforms in public services, and she shed crocodile tears over the 20% fall in real wages since 1981. But she carefully avoided promising higher wages if she’s elected, or spelling out her reforms.
What’s her idea of reforms? A videotape that was later leaked shows her telling SP activists behind closed doors on Jan. 21, 2006 that "We’re going to have to be rather revolutionary in our proposals. I’m not going to shout it from the rooftops because I don’t want to take flak from the teachers’ unions…. One of the revolutions is to have them working 35 hours a week in junior high."
Most teachers teach 18 class hours a week, but many studies have shown that when class preparation and grading are included, they work over 40 hours a week. Royal wants to double their teaching hours and work them over 80 hours a week!
The tail truly is wagging the dog when workers allow their just demands for higher wages and more jobs to be high-jacked by these self-serving politicians and union bureaucrats. Our class produces all the wealth and could exercise all power. But for that to happen, workers need to realize that, as Lenin said, the bosses’ "promises are cheap. Promises cost nothing." We need to stop listening to "lesser-evil" politicians’ promises, and organize for communist revolution so that we run society in the interest of our class.
Heard On The Streets Of Paris
(from Le Monde, 2/9)
Sanitation worker Olivier Asdrubal, 39, doesn’t believe the promises any longer: "The ones who’ve got the bucks are the bosses, not the government. No candidate is worth anything."
Teaching assistant Laure Varrey, not yet 30, proclaims her choice: "Abstention!" In her Paris junior high school, "It’s hell: a temporary one-year contract at 560 euros a month for a job from 7:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., with a 20-minute break, mealtime included, and no right to leave the school [during the work day]."
(From Le Figaro, 2/8)
Michel Tauvry: "I’m a skilled worker…in charge of the maintenance of a high school. From…heating to…plumbing… [to] roofing — I’m always being asked to do more different jobs…. I’ve worked for the ministry of education for 27 years and I’m still making 1200 euros a month."
Marie Karaquillo: "We want to maintain quality teaching…. [But] axing nationally 27,000 jobs, they’re moving in the opposite direction. They keep saying…we have to help the children who have problems, but they won’t give us the means."
Francis Dukan (junior high school teacher): "I’m 28…[and] protesting against the fall in our purchasing power…. I was looking for an apartment, and on five different occasions I was asked if I had a second job, because my wages were felt to be insufficient [to cover the rent and security deposit]."
Thousands March While NATO Splits Over Afghanistan
SEVILLE, SPAIN — On Feb. 4, 10,000 people marched against the war policies of the NATO defense ministers meeting here, demanding the closing of NATO bases in Spain.
At the NATO meeting itself, the growing contradictions among the imperialist powers again emerged. The London Financial Times reported (2/8): "NATO ministers clashed over Afghanistan on Thursday when continental European governments refused to follow the US and the UK and send troops to battle the Taliban."
"I do not think it is right to talk about more and more military means," said Franz-Josef Jung, German defense minister. "When the Russians were in Afghanistan they had 100,000 and didn’t win. We are liberators, not occupiers." Since August, NATO has taken responsibility for the entire country, including the conflict zones with the Taliban, and has expanded its troop force from 8,500 to 35,000, but most of the additional soldiers are U.S. and British.
Robert Gates, U.S. defense secretary encouraged the meeting’s "allies to do as much as soon as [they] can." But Germany, France, Italy and Spain argue that Washington is still placing too much emphasis on combat with the Taliban rather than reconstruction.
The fact is the war in Afghanistan is becoming as much a failure as the war in Iraq, and European bosses refuse to sink along with the Bush-Blair duo.
At the anti-NATO march itself, the opportunism of union hacks and the phony "left" was revealed again. While the IU (Left Unity coalition) led by the "Communist" Party and its youth front marched, it had voted in parliament to send Spanish troops to Lebanon, basically supporting Israeli/U.S./Turkish interests and their access to new oil resources. And while the CCOO union federation also marched, its hacks refused to support a call for a general strike against the occupation of Iraq when Spanish troops were there.
The struggle against imperialist war needs a revolutionary leadership that breaks with all imperialists and the opportunists who build illusions about lesser-evil warmakers.
LETTERS
Anti-War GIs Need Anti-Imperialist Strategy
Dear Challenge,
I proudly marched with the active duty and Iraq veteran contingent at the anti-war march in Washington, D.C., January 27. The active duty GIs marched behind the anti-war banner "Appeal for Redress." After the march, I joined these GIs and some civilian supporters for a meal and made sure all of the GIs had a copy of CHALLENGE.
We discussed strategic issues including the case of Lt. Watada, how to deal with harassment and repression, how to relate to the soldiervoices.net website which is operated by a GI in Iraq, how to relate to the (bourgeois) press, what to do about the phony congressional debate on the war. GIs thinking through methods to organize grass-roots, enlisted, active-duty groups at bases where many GIs had signed the Appeal for Redress made a bold statement. Without a more substantial base of organized forces, they realized they might then end up relying on liberal politicians, the media, and lawyers, a losing strategy.
I was impressed with the seriousness and openness of the GIs.These GIs do not suffer greatly from the disease of patriotism! In fact, several were quite interested in the revolutionary communist ideas in our paper. One GI, on returning to her base, was locked out of her job site by her commander for her open opposition to the war (she was quoted in AP and the New York Times saying that the war had been based on lies and should be ended immediately).
Even though her JAG (military) lawyer has proved that her actions were legal according to military regulations, she is still barred from her job site two weeks after the demonstration. Her commander has apparently passed the case up to a general for his decision, which amounts to even more harassment. Many of her fellow GIs have rallied to her side, including two GIs who said they disagreed with her viewpoint but were furious with the brass for treating her badly. The PLP also supports her all the way!
We will surely see increasing numbers of cases like this as opposition to the war grows inside the military and an organized GI movement develops. Our job is to show this emerging GI movement that the logic of imperialism means that only a multi-racial workers’ revolution against the entire system of racism and capitalism will halt the bosses’ wars for profit, resources, and geopolitical power, an even bigger battle than ending today’s U.S. aggression in the Middle East.
Red vet
a name="Working Class — The Bosses’ Cannon Fodder"></">Wo"king Class — The Bosses’ Cannon Fodder
Recently there were three KIA (Killed In Action) and a few casualties in my unit, killed and maimed by an IED (improvised explosive device), along with scores of Iraqi workers.
This was not merely a case of a convoy rolling over an IED. These soldiers were ordered on a suicide mission by the commander! He told this particular group of soldiers to dismount their armored vehicle and proceeds on foot ahead of the convoy to find the IED and call it in.
They dismounted, traveled on foot wearing just the normal battle rattle consisting of their rifles, a first-aid kit, their Kevlar helmet and an ATVC vest with plates to stop some shrapnel,. There was nothing to protect them from the initial percussion of a blast. As they found the IED, it exploded, killing some soldiers instantly while also killing and maiming the Iraqi workers.
These soldiers and Iraqi workers were killed to protect the bosses’ profits and vehicles. As long as soldiers continue to obey the commanders (who never fight themselves) and fight for the bosses, countless soldiers and working-class people will die and be the cannon fodder in imperialist wars.
Red Soldier
Could Obama Be Racist?
I thought the picture of Barack Obama in a Klan suit a few issues ago was wrong. I understand that Obama is in line to lead people to support the capitalist system and willingly fight for it in current and future wars. I know that even before he got elected senator, he started softening his anti-war position and now is justifying (along with most other Democratic senators and representatives) authorization of $150,000,000 more for the war by claiming he doesn’t want to hurt the troops on the ground.
I know that there is a reason that the ruling-class press has done so much to promote Obama, and that the Democratic Party gave him a national presence as their keynote speaker in 2004. In a day when people are cynical about politicians and the political process, for good reason, Obama deceptively presents himself as different from the rest, as having more integrity, as having the interests of the people at heart.
Putting Obama in a Klan suit does not expose any of this. The accompanying article did nothing to explain why we had chosen that picture. Most people will look at that picture and, at best, think we are trying to be provocative for the sake of being provocative. At worst, they will think we are racist.
The Klan has a particularly brutal history of terrorizing blacks and anti-racists. While Obama may turn out to be someone who gets many black people and others killed in wars fighting for capitalism, so far he is just talk. I think it minimizes the horrors of the Klan to put their suit on a picture of Obama. Further, it does not help anyone understand the dangers posed by Obama, and it probably turns some people off to our Party unnecessarily.
I know that in the past CHALLENGE has used the swastika effectively in pictures to make the point that a particular leader is a fascist. This was appropriate and supported by evidence in accompanying articles in the case of Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister who led fascist attacks against Palestinians and Pope Benedict, who was a Nazi Party member as a youth. I know that those usages were controversial, but I do not believe the case of Obama is parallel. That picture was an error.
Sincerely,
Long-time Reader
CHALLENGE COMMENT:
Could Obama be a Racist? This is the question we wanted to provoke when we printed the picture of Barak Obama in a KKK robe. It is true that we should have explained the relevance of the picture in the article we printed, however the question is important to ask in light of the dangerous role of liberal politicians in this growing crisis for the rulers. We must not be guided by the idea that there are some good politicians and some bad (Bush for instance).
Obama has been trained since his Harvard Law School days to appear to be a "man of the people" while really maintaining all the horrors of the capitalism. That is what makes him so deadly. Just last year he united with Republican senators (and other Democrats) around a Senate Immigration Reform Bill that would build a 700-mile wall across the border to stop Mexican workers from crossing the border.
In a letter to justify his sponsorship of the bill, Obama says: "The legislation is not perfect, but it will secure our borders by providing border control agencies with more resources and improved technologies, reduce the incentive to enter the country illegally by increasing fines for employers who hire illegal aliens, and bring people out of the shadows by providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers who pass a background check, pay fines and back taxes, and agree to learn English."[!]
In their increasing state of crisis, the bosses are blaming immigrant workers for the problems caused by capitalism affecting the entire working class with the goal of pitting black and immigrant workers against one another. The bosses cannot afford for workers to unite against the system, so they use politicians like Obama to win workers to nationalism and patriotism – and to fight and die for the system in wars for profit. Obama, Bush, Hillary, Biden, McCain, and all politicians have sent more workers to die than the KKK murdered, using equally racist ideology, all the while trying to convince workers that they are the good guys.
Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, approves the Bush Doctrine of endless illegal preemptive wars and calls for boosting US military spending to support the big bosses geo-political interests against their rivals. He also support "humanitarian imperialism" in Africa, as the recent U.S.-backed invasion of Somalia by Ethiopian troops. Communists cannot afford to be deceived by wolves in sheep’s clothing like Barak Obama, but must expose his lethal plans for our class.
a name="Distorting Obama’s Message?">">"istorting Obama’s Message?
In the front-page editorial (CHALLENGE, 1/31) Obama is quoted as saying, "You’re going to need one hundred thousand more, one hundred and fifty thousand more." In the context of the headline and the article it seems to imply that Obama is calling for more troops. But the full quote is, "I don’t know any military expert who says that a modest increase in troop levels is going to make a big difference.
Even if you pursue the logic of increased troop levels, you’re going to need one hundred thousand more, one hundred and fifty thousand more, orders of magnitude that we don’t possess." The last phrase seems to imply he’s not advocating increased troop levels. This quote seems to reverse what Obama intended. It’s clear that Obama is an enemy of the working class. But we shouldn’t distort his scummy duplicity to attack him. We just have to be more careful in our attacks on our enemies. This helps to win our friends and build confidence in our Party.
A Mid-West Comrade
a name="Editor’s reply:">">">"ditor’s reply: The comrade has a point. We should have used the entire quotation. It shows Obama lamenting "the orders of magnitude we don’t possess."
He indeed calls for more troops, perhaps not for Bush’s Iraq mess, but surely for wider imperialist wars.
Was Marx Wrong?
The recent CHALLENGE article (2/14) on Black History Month (BHM) reinforces many ideas I was sharing with my shipmates after the BHM program the Navy presented on-board. I told them I can't support "black history" because it’s not about racist oppression but supports fascism and imperialism. The USS Mason was given an all-black crew during World War II but served the racist interests of the U.S. rulers I joked with one shipmate about Dorie Miller, the black sailor who was a cook but manned a machine gun during the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. I commented he could have shot a few of the officers on the ship while he was at it!
The quote from Marx ("labor in the white skin can never be free while labor in the black skin is in chains") is unbalanced, giving preference to European workers in our struggle. Marx is clearly speaking to "white labor" in the U.S., not "all labor." If his message to white labor is they cannot be free as long as blacks are in chains, then what is his message to black labor? That they cannot be free as long as white workers are not fighting for their freedom?
Marx’s line runs counter to the history of resistance among enslaved blacks during that time. They were not simply in chains waiting on benevolent whites to emancipate them.
Harriet Tubman escaped slavery at an early age and risked her life numerous times to lead enslaved blacks to freedom via the Underground Railroad. The most notable among them was General Nat Turner who led the most vicious slave revolt recorded in U.S history, killing hundreds of slave-owners and their families in Southampton County, VA in 1831. This line also runs counter to the history of other back insurrectionists such as Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vessey. It certainly runs counter to the history of John Brown. Blacks in Brown’ posse, Harriet Tubman being one of the principal leaders, were not in chains waiting on Brown to arrive. They worked side by side, thus providing a model for our struggle today.
Ultimately, to smash capitalism and all forms of oppression, all workers must work together to achieve the goal without any hierarchical preference being given to any segment of the working class.
Red soldier
CHALLENGE Comment 2: Marx’s exact quote was, "Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded." This was a very profound concept for that period. It argued that racism was not the product of prejudice by white workers (a blow against the current White Skin Privilege theory).
Racism and the racial division of society were born with capitalism. Before that there was really no concept of "race," no oppression because of skin color nor of one group being superior to another because of it. Slavery in pre-capitalist societies (Rome, Greece, Egypt) was not based on skin color (see PL Magazine article, "The Roots of Racism"). Marx’s statement was basically saying that modern racism is an attack against all workers and oppressed people and that racism will only be ended when all workers are emancipated from capitalism.
Furthermore, Marx was not "talking to white labor" nor telling black workers they will have to "wait for ‘white labor’ to liberate them. On the contrary, Marx was saying that white workers can’t free themselves of capitalist exploitation except as part of a united working class, black and white together.
Marx’s understanding of the role of black workers was clearly revealed in his writings on the U.S. Civil War when he said — during the war — that the North could not defeat the slaveocracy unless black slaves were brought into the Union Army, and that is precisely what happened: 180,000 ex-slaves entered the war and, as the most ferocious fighters, spearheaded Sherman’s march through Georgia that split the South and basically won that war.
Thus, Marx saw black workers as the key to emancipation, not waiting for "benevolent" whites to free them.
Growing Multi-Racial, Interfaith Unity
Their voices filled the large church, echoing off the walls. The woman cantor led the interfaith, inter-racial children’s choir as the harmonies rose. School children from the ages of 6 to15 – black, brown, Asian and white, Christian, Jewish and Moslem honored the memory of what Martin Luther King fought for. They sang to the piano accompaniment of a young woman from the audience who answered the call for a volunteer. The song proclaimed the unity of all peoples. The audience was an ethnic, racial, and religious echo of the choir.
This moment set the tone for a program that spoke, not of Dr. King as an icon, but of the masses of people who fought against the Vietnam War, and for the rights of working people. The many speakers, mostly clergy, gave hard talks about today’s war in the Middle East and working-class oppression. This event was a gathering of forces against the war, a call for the federal monies that have been removed from our area to be returned, and for the unity of people in that struggle.
The program was organized by a new and growing multi-racial, interfaith group training working people to fight back. Fourteen different faith groups participated. The interfaith group is reaching out to bring in even more churches, synagogues, Islamic organizations into the movement. Their very active leadership is becoming steeled and trained in the organization.
Currently increasing amounts of our money are used to slaughter people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere. Less and less is used to alleviate poverty and suffering at home and to reverse the criminal neglect of New Orleans. The growing organization is a microcosm of how the world should look: helping one another, moving forward to defend labor, marching against the war, exposing racist murders by the police and how the rulers are removing services from poor and inner-city neighborhoods.
This growing fight-back allows Party members to raise ideas among people who want to fight back, and teaches others that fight-back is necessary and possible. Capitalism is antagonistic to human growth. It’s a burden upon the masses. It separates and isolates us, making us feel weak and powerless.
This unity movement is the opposite, and wishes to unchain itself from the bankers, businessmen and dominant political interests. Though reformist, it opens the door so that our political role turns many of its members into part of a wave towards a bright future for the working class, and helps teach us how strong we can be when we work together. We must always participate in such forums and struggle within them to define the future.
One of the "meek" who is getting ready….
Multi-Racial Fight Key to Defeat Nationalism
The weekend before Martin Luther King Day our Southwest city held several "multi-cultural" events that were open to the public. Our student/teacher PLP club decided to participate and contribute to the discussion on politics, "race," and eventually on class and revolution. Two of us went to an event at a local college dealing with how to break into and succeed in the rap industry. While a seemingly innocuous event with possibly little potential for serious politics, we figured it would still be worth some attention.
Our club could not have been more wrong. The Nation of Islam (NOI), having seen the event’s potential, arrived in force. They sent their National Youth Minister to speak, and were able to co-opt the event from the relatively inept staff holding it.
The event’s basic premise, as designed by the misleaders heading it, was to portray the rap industry as the "savior" for poor black youth everywhere. The imagery put forward by mainstream rap artists that promotes violence, drug use and sexism was exalted. There was no aim to discuss why the bosses love promoting such garbage rather than something that might empower people. Without a strong PL contingent to help steer the discussion, the NOI forces were able to effectively push their pro-capitalist, anti-Semitic line.
The crowd was responsive to such a political conversation once one was offered to them. It was just unfortunate that due to our lack of strength and preparedness (understanding the NOI’s line and how to counter it) we were unable to give leadership to this debate.
All this enabled us to understand another limitation in our group: a lack of black youth who would have been instrumental in helping to win people away from the NOI’s line. As the only two white youth there, we had a serious problem trying to compete with the NOI members in a discussion on racism against black people in the U.S. While our club had long acknowledged this weakness, this event really hammered it home and gives us reason to redouble our efforts to recruit more black youth.
Not to say that this encounter was all bad. Two of us now have new experience in dealing with the NOI to use in improving our recruiting efforts. We also gained important information about their recruiting tactics on our campus and made some good contacts to follow up.
While it’s impossible to know about, and be prepared for, all events, it’s essential to be self-critical so that one can draw lessons from a tactical defeat. While seemingly a failure, this experience has actually helped our club prepare for a stronger recruiting effort in the future. It’s important that all misleaders be exposed, especially those like the NOI who use a radical facade to sell people capitalist values, and a truly revolutionary viewpoint be advocated — communism.
Red Students
a name="Individual GI ResistanceWon’t Cut It">">"ndividual GI ResistanceWon’t Cut It
In your February 14 issue, you wrote in reference to the GI protest that, "One Marine declared that he had opposed the war from the day it began, but nevertheless served in Iraq with his unit. This contradiction must be resolved by bolder GI actions against U.S. imperialism..."
This seems to imply that he should not have gone to Iraq with his unit. In fact, GIs should not individually refuse orders to go to Iraq but should go with their units and sharpen the fight against U.S. imperialism in Iraq by building ties with their fellow GIs, ties to Iraqi workers on the basis of workers’ internationalism, struggle within their unit against conducting aggression, and generally build a base for resistance and revolution.
Of course, a refusal by a military unit to deploy would also be a powerful part of the anti-war movement. But individual resistance, however brave, generally won’t build the movement we need to defeat U.S. imperialism.
Red GI
a name="Can’t Rely on Bosses’ Courts, In France or U.S."></">Ca"’t Rely on Bosses’ Courts, In France or U.S.
On New Year’s Eve, 2002, Yücel (30) was on his way from a party to his home in a working-class housing project in Goussainville, a Paris suburb. He saw young people "running in every direction" and started running himself. He was tackled, handcuffed and beaten black and blue by a half-dozen cops, bursting an ear-drum. An ordinary story of racist police brutality, something common not just in France, but in the U.S., Russia, China, or any other capitalist country.
Ah, but France is a "democratic" country governed by the rule of law! Thanks to a piece of investigative reporting by the "Canard enchaîné," a French weekly newspaper (1-17-07), we know the outcome of Yücel’s battle for justice. The Pontoisy criminal court sentenced each of the six cops to a four months’ suspended sentence and to paying Yücel 11,800 euros in damages.
Happy ending? Not quite. The Interior Ministry ordered the police administration to order the cops to pay. Nothing happened. Yücel can’t get a writ served on the cops, because they’ve all been transferred elsewhere and he can’t get their new addresses. Yücel tried to force the Interior Ministry to dock the cops’ wages by going through the Paris district court, but the court ruled that it does not have jurisdiction. End of story.
CHALLENGE hardly needs to point out to its readers that the bosses’ courts don’t deliver justice in France, or the U.S., Russia, China, or elsewhere. Our class will only obtain justice when we have replaced capitalism with communism.
A Friend in France
Dutch General Strike Under Nazis Fought Persecution of Jews
February 25 marks the 66th anniversary of what was probably the only general strike specifically against racism in Nazi-occupied Europe. On May 9, 1940, German troops invaded the Netherlands. Following the barbaric bombing of Rotterdam, and fearing a similar fate for other Dutch cities, its army capitulated five days later, as did most European armies attacked by the Nazis, except for the Soviet Red army.
With the help of local fascists, the occupiers began instituting a series of restrictions on Jews, culminating in November 1940 in the removal of all Jews from public functions, including universities, leading directly to student protests in Leiden and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, unrest was spreading among workers in Amsterdam, especially those at the Amsterdam-Noord shipyards, who were threatened with forced labor in Germany. On February 19, the Nazi police stormed into a Jewish-owned small business. In the ensuing fight, several cops were wounded. The Nazis took their revenge. On the weekend of Feb. 22-23, 425 Jewish men, ages 20-35, were arrested and eventually sent to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps, where most of them died within ten months.
Responding to these arrests, an open air meeting was held on the Noordermarkt on February 24 to organize a strike protesting the arrests as well as the forced labor threat. The underground Communist Party of the Netherlands mass distributed a leaflet calling for a mass strike.
"Strike, strike, strike!" became workers’ motto. The huge general strike began when the city's tram drivers struck. Despite Nazi attempts to suppress it, the walkout grew as workers in other city services and schools, along with steel and shipyard workers, followed the tram drivers, as did workers elsewhere, including Zaanstad, Kennemerland and Utrecht.
Nazi cops attacked the strikers, killing several and arresting many. Though the strike ended on Feb. 27, it was enormously significant: it was the first direct action against the Nazis’ persecution of Jews. It proved that general strikes can be organized under the most repressive conditions, even under fascist rule.
Over the next few years, the Nazis rounded up 110,000 of Holland’s 140,000 Jews. Only 5,000 survived the holocaust. Dutch Nazis aided this mass murder, along with the "efficient" bureaucratic officials left behind by the exiled Dutch government in London, as well as the local Judenrat (Jewish Councils), an organization of traitorous Jews, either created or manipulated by the Nazis.
Today, racism is rampant in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. Muslims and immigrants from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe suffer the brunt of racism, from Amsterdam to London to Paris to Madrid to Berlin. The yearly celebration of the 1941 anti-Nazi strike can become a rallying point to build a massive anti-racist movement, learning from the achievements and errors of the past. The main lesson is that Nazi anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, is a product of capitalism; the only way to end racism is to destroy its cause.
PL History:
PLP, SDS and the 1968 Columbia U. Strike
(Part I reviewed PLP’s early participation in SDS [Students for a Democratic Society], its advocacy of a Worker-Student Alliance; how this led it to refuse student deferments, to enter and organize against the Vietnam War inside the army and to support industrial strikes and inner-city rebellions; and organize militant action that reflected this pro-working-class position.)
A key example of this activity was the 1968 Columbia University strike. PLP had argued consistently throughout 1967 and the fall of 1968 for fighting Columbia’s racist plan to build a gymnasium in Harlem while ignoring the community’s needs, particularly since Columbia owned hundreds of apartments that it preferred to leave vacant rather than rent to Harlem residents. A second key element of PLP’s Columbia organizing was the campaign against the university’s collaboration with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a partnership that flagrantly exposed the university’s concrete contribution to U.S. imperialist genocide in Vietnam.
On both fronts, PLP faced an uphill battle. The right-wing leadership of the Columbia SDS chapter found repeated excuses to oppose this militant activity. PLP continued to fight, frequently organizing small, sharp demonstrations, believing the moment for mass upsurge would eventually arrive. This estimate proved correct. In April 1968, several hundred Columbia students launched a sit-in. The administration summoned New York cops, who cracked scores of heads and made hundreds of arrests. The bosses’ brutality engendered mass outrage. Thousands of Columbia students and faculty went on strike. The university ground to a halt.
A crucial political debate ensued. The advocates of the "New Working Class" took a strike-breaking "shut-it-down-to-open-it-up" position, arguing that the strike was an opportunity to hold "liberation classes" and reinvent Columbia as a progressive institution. PLP stuck to its class position, arguing that under capitalism, universities could serve only the rulers, who, after all, owned them and controlled state power.
Instead of the dead-end "liberation" illusion proposed by the SDS leadership and others, PLP called for maintaining picket lines at Columbia, stopping scabs and spreading the strike. We didn’t win tactically but our principled position and insistence on militant struggle won many students at Columbia and elsewhere to join the PLP-led Worker-Student Alliance Caucus of SDS and, eventually, the PLP.
The ideological battle between PLP’s communist view of the working class versus the reactionary politics of Marcuse’s groupies — that industrial workers were "obsolete" — came to a head in June 1968 at the SDS national convention in East Lansing, Michigan. Three international developments set the tone for the looming internal struggle.
First, the Vietnam War — and the rebelliousness of U.S. GIs and sailors — had reached fever pitch. Second, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was raging in China and forcing the question of "revisionism" (capitalist ideas and politics within the communist movement) to the forefront of every honest communist’s agenda. Third, in May 1968, the vicious suppression of a protest by university students outside Paris quickly led to uprisings and strikes throughout France. Within days, a general strike had shut down the country.
Students had set the spark, but the real fire bore the unmistakable signature of the working class. In one bold stroke, France’s working class had demonstrated the bankruptcy of Marcuse and his ilk. But his disciples within SDS were far from convinced, and at the 1968 convention, they mounted a challenge to PLP’s continued existence within the organization.
(Next: The struggle sharpens within SDS while the old international communist movement enters its death throes.)
Tenants Take Back Their Homes
NEW ORLEANS — The residents of the C. J. Pete housing development re-took their homes after the city’s Housing Authority had initially destroyed the contents and barred the residents from returning. These victims of the government’s attacks now need support and contributions to maintain their survival.
RED EYE ON THE NEWS
Below are excerpts from mainstream newspapers that may be of use for our readers.
Abbreviations: NYT=New York Times, GW=Guardian Weekly, FT=Finacial Times
U.S. pull-back won’t be pull-out
The bottom line is that the president, the study group and most Washington policy-makers want to get as many American combat troops as they can out of Iraq by the US presidential elections in 2008. But that doesn’t mean pulling out….
Even the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group….wants some 10,000 to 20,000 US troops, mostly officers, to stay, embedded in the Iraqi units down to company level. US forces would also: assist Iraqi-deployed brigades with intelligence, transportation, air support, as well as providing some key equipment," in other words just about everything that makes up a modern army.
As if that weren’t enough, the US should leave behind "rapid-reaction and special operations teams." These, presumably, could include covert operations such as assassinations and bombings, thwarting or encouraging coups and squaring up to the Iranians on the border. So much for Iraqi sovereignty….
Iraq is much too important to American interests to be trusted entirely to Iraqis….(GW, 2/15)
One-third doubt official 9/11 story
The movement of 9/11 skeptics has had an astonishing success in sowing doubt across the US. Recent polls suggest more than a third of Americans believe that either the official version of events never happened, or that US officials knew the attacks were imminent, but did nothing to stop them. (GW, 2/15)
Big Africa investment hurts villagers
M. is tearful: "We used to have clean water, but since the oil pipeline was built all we have is pollution . "….Now we all have skin rashes, stomach pains and unknown ailments," says another villager.
The source of the villagers’ hardship is the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project, the single largest investment in Africa. The multi-billion dollar project came about as a public-private partnership between the World Bank and a consortium led by ExxonMobil….
NGOs have documented what they say are hundreds of cases of poor, rural households becoming more impoverished as a result of the project….
Officials acknowledge that the project has so far taken twice the amount of land initially planned and that the number of families who no longer have sufficient land to ensure their survival has dropped. (GW, 2/8)
Upper-class grab city after flood
…"I’m told they don’t want us poor folk back, that they’re making it a city for the well-to-do. That’s what I’m hearing."
Sixteen months have passed since the apocalyptic flood that followed Hurricane Katrina. More than 13,000 residents who were displaced are still living in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Another 100,000 to 200,000 evacuees — most of whom want to return home — are scattered throughout the United States.
The undeniable neglect of this population fuels the suspicion among the poor and the black, who constitute a majority of the evacuees, that the city is being handed over to the well-to-do and the white. (NYT)
Desperate Iraqis blame US oil greed
The scene was thick with anger directed at the Iraqi government and American military for letting the people down and allowing such a devastating attack…. Mr. Abdul Jabbar said he rushed to collapsed buildings trying to help the wounded, but found mainly hands, skulls and other body parts….
"I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all," he added, "so we will rest and anybody who wants the oil — which is the core of the problem — can come and get it. We cannot live this way anymore…." (NYT, 2/5)
Capitalist $ won’t go to our needs
…Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said the days when Mr. Bush could expect a blank check for the wars were over but she also insisted the Democrats would not deny troops the money they needed….
The Iraq war has so far cost $500 bn. [billion] The New York Times noted that the cost of the war would have paid for universal health care in the US, nursery education for all three- and four-year-olds in the US, immunization for children round the world against a host of diseases, and still leave about half of the money left over. (GW, 2/15)
- STATE OF DISUNION: DEMS WANT LARGER OIL WAR
- WORKERS, PATIENTS BLAST CHICAGO BOSSES' RACIST CUTS
- Black Rebellions, Workers' Unity Belie Bosses' History
- Communists Bring Revolutionary Alternative to Anti-War Marches
- Racist Rulers Fear Unity of Black and Latino Youth
- Pfizer's Rx for Saving $4 Billion: CUT 10,000 Jobs
- GIs Protest Iraq War at the U.S. Capitol
- Iraq Vets Expose Brass's Racism, Refuse Suicide Mission
- Anti-Racist Iraq Vet Is Highlight of Anti-War Panel
- Swapping Rulers Won't Help Guinea General Strikers
- Teachers' Strike in France Could Spark Walkout of 5 Million
- Military Tribunals Legalize Fascism
- LETTERS
- REDEYE
- Ex-Slaves, Seminoles United to Defeat Racist U.S. Invaders
- PL History: How PLP Fought for Pro-Worker Anti-Racism in SDS
STATE OF DISUNION: DEMS WANT LARGER OIL WAR
In his State of the Union address, Bush spewed a series of lies and half-truths meant to obscure reality, appease opposing factions of capitalists and hoodwink workers. Rebuttals from liberals were just as dishonest. They urged an end to the Iraq fiasco but simultaneously moved for "larger wars." The politicians' tortured, phony rhetoric masks the true state of the bosses' so-called Union. In the face of mounting threats to U.S. rulers' worldwide empire, particularly to its strategic cornerstone, control of the Middle East and its oil, disunity and disarray prevail.
CAPITALISTS' SELF-INTEREST HAMPERS RULERS' CALL FOR WARTIME UNITY
The liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists, including the likes of J.P. Morgan Chase and Exxon Mobil, ultimately requires a full-scale military mobilization of the nation, complete with tax hikes and tighter government regulation of businesses. But many capitalists in Bush's base are unwilling to sacrifice their freedom or bottom lines to the greater good of U.S. imperialism. His address threw bones to both camps, mainly favoring his base. Bush vowed to "balance the federal budget...without raising taxes." The liberal New York Times' January 28th editorial pointed out the absurdity of such a proposal in wartime. He pandered to the anti-regulationists by saying economic growth depends on "more enterprise," not "more government."
Most importantly, Bush said he could achieve "victory" in Iraq with 21,500 already-enlisted troops. Liberals had earlier denounced Bush's "surge" scheme as "too little, too late." Sen. Jay Rockefeller commented, "I don't think he understands the world." (NY Times, 1/19) Bush, however, paid lip service to the main imperialist wing by promising to add 92,000 soldiers and marines "in the next five years" and suggesting a "volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps" to assist the military overseas. But he failed to explain where the new troops would come from, given current recruiting shortfalls. And the Reserve Corps, "like other calls to national service by Bush...lacks an actual plan." (Boston Globe, 1/26)
For U.S. rulers, the picture is far bleaker than the one Bush painted. Their enemies are fast gaining strength. Iran, aided by China and Russia, is on the road to acquiring nuclear weapons and becoming the dominant Mid-East power. Al Qaeda, which represents non-royal Saudi capitalists shut out of the oil bonanza, "is a more dangerous enemy today than it was before 9/11," according to the liberal Brookings Institution (report, 1/18/07). "It has retained its base of operations in the badlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and it has created a new base in western Iraq. It has spread like a virus elsewhere, developing cadre throughout the Muslim world and...in Europe." China's blue water navy project directly challenges U.S. supremacy over oil shipping routes. Its recent missile test puts U.S. military satellites at risk.
LIBERALS' REPLY TO BUNGLER BUSH: MOBILIZE FOR BROADER CONFLICTS
In this dire context, the Democrats chose racist, arch-militarist Sen. James Webb to deliver their response to Bush. (Webb actually wrote a book, "Born Fighting," claiming that U.S. greatness derives largely from an inherited Scots-Irish "warrior culture.") Webb criticized Bush's Iraq debacle mainly because it hinders a broader invasion of the entire region. Webb said he long ago knew that it "would take our energy and attention away from the larger war against terrorism and...leave us strategically vulnerable in the most violent and turbulent corner of the world."
Webb echoes Gen. William Odom, a leading advocate of "redeployment," who recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "Any military proposals today that do not account for both larger wars, as well as the Iranian threat to the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, must be judged wholly inadequate if not counterproductive." Hinting at the massive force build-up needed, Odom says, "two or three million troops" would be insufficient to subdue Iraq alone. Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards keeps up the liberals' war cry, "To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table." (NYT, 1/28)
Playing on the popular myth that Mid-East wars stem from U.S. dependence on imported oil, Bush proposed developing alternative fuels. U.S. rulers may indeed find ways to reduce oil consumption at home, but they will continue to use every means they have, including war, to maintain mastery of the world's oil trade. Along with their British junior partners, U.S. bosses wield tremendous power over other countries by dictating the terms of their energy supplies. Putin's Russian oil and gas blackmail of various European nations pales beside the global strong-arming by Exxon Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, Shell and BP.
NEW ORLEANS RACIST ATROCITY NO CONCERN OF POLITICIANS
Bush's speech tried to win over workers with an income tax deduction for health care, a ploy that, in fact, serves the ruling class. Workers' health, after all, is a genuine concern both for capitalists seeking maximum profits in their factories and those needing fit manpower for their war machine. Health care would still remain beyond the reach of millions of minimum-wage workers, immigrants and the unemployed.
But the true level of Bush's "compassion" for the working class emerged in an obscene omission. He said not one word about New Orleans. The cold-blooded murder, both by neglect and cops' bullets, and ongoing misery suffered mainly by the city's black residents constitutes one of the worst racist atrocities on U.S. soil since slavery. Democrat Webb spoke only of "restoring the vitality [meaning profitability] of New Orleans." Webb failed to blame Democratic mayor Ray Nagin, who stands just as guilty as the Bush gang.
LIBERALS ALREADY WIDENING WAR, CRACKING DOWN AT HOME
Amid the divisions highlighted in the speeches, strong signs appear that the imperialists' main wing is gaining the upper hand. The new head of the Pentagon's Central Command, which stretches from Central Asia through the Mid-East to East Africa is an admiral rather than a general. This shift indicates a broadening of focus from Iraq to the entire Persian Gulf's vast seaborne crude oil exports and to China's coming naval threat. A second U.S. aircraft carrier group is steaming to the Gulf. The U.S. has begun air strikes in Somalia, which commands chokepoints along the world's busiest oil routes. At home, the imperialists are tightening their grip on industry, at workers' expense. Pfizer's announced layoff of 10,000 follows drastically stepped-up regulation of "blockbuster" drugs that siphon capital from the war effort.
While the liberal warmakers battle to get their own capitalist house in order, their bigger problem remains widespread popular opposition to imperialist war, a Vietnam era legacy. The rulers' predicament affords PLP and the working class an opportunity to build for the only viable alternative to the bosses' profit wars, communist revolution.á
WORKERS, PATIENTS BLAST CHICAGO BOSSES' RACIST CUTS
CHICAGO, Jan. 29 -- Despite frigid 10 degree temperatures, more than 500 workers, patients and youth picketed the Cook County Building while about 2,000 more, mostly users of threatened services, packed the budget hearing inside. The target of their anger was County Board President Todd Stroger and the County Commissioners (mostly black Democrats) who are balancing a $500 million deficit with racist budget cuts against the poorest, sickest and most vulnerable victims.
The public health deficit matches exactly the $100 million cut in federal funding, mainly due to the escalating $2 billion-a-week bloodbath for oil in Iraq. The clinic closings and service cuts are concentrated on the overwhelmingly black South and West sides. Thus racism becomes the cutting edge of the fascist attacks needed to finance the rulers' imperialist wars. In some ways, this action of black, Latin and white workers was a more significant anti-war rally than the much larger one held in Washington, D.C. two days earlier.
The AFL-CIO hacks of the Chicago Federation of Labor hijacked today's demonstration, taking it from the nurses who had originally called it, and kept the organized workers on the outside, away from those on the inside.
PLP participated on many levels. We organized workers and patients through various mass organizations, distributed CHALLENGE and PLP literature to many friendly marchers, met new friends and struggled with those closest to us to get more involved in building the revolutionary communist movement to overthrow the racist warmakers and budget-slashers.
Of the total deficit, $100 million is in public health. Stroger and racist Dr. ("I didn't come here for the homeless") Simon, plan to close two-thirds of the public clinics (18), cut services at Stroger, Provident and Oak Forest Hospitals, and eliminate 6,500 jobs. Cook County has more than one million people without health insurance. Over 80% of the County patient population is black and Latino and 70% are employed but uninsured.
Even though there won't be a final budget until February 28, school-based clinics are closing. Four doctors were fired from the Cermak Clinic inside the Cook County Jail. The Surgical unit has been closed at Oak Forest Hospital. The Pediatric ER is closing at Stroger. One doctor said a cut in hours at the Fantus Clinic means 100 fewer patients are seen every day. They are marched over to the Stroger ER when the clinic closes and many spend the night, unseen, only to return to the clinic early next morning. Like Katrina in slow motion, public health is our Superdome. Stroger is our Mayor Nagin.
Today's action was the culmination of two weeks of growing activity. On January 18, about 200 workers picketed Stroger Hospital. On January 23, over 1,500 people packed and surrounded the Markham Courthouse for the first of four public budget hearings. The following day 200 workers and patients picketed Provident Hospital and the next day almost 1,000 packed the second budget hearing in the northern suburb of Skokie. Mostly black women nurses have spearheaded much of this activity.
But the day ended with a thud at an SEIU-sponsored "town hall meeting," where about 350 workers and professionals were subjected to a sleazy panel of preachers and politicians. They told us that Jesus would save us, and if we wanted to help we should tell them which of our co-workers are unnecessary so they can make the "right" cuts! This meeting was organized as a diversion from this morning's rally because SEIU wanted to steer people away from recalling that it gave the Stroger campaign $800,000 in the last election.
We must organize bolder and sharper actions that will expose the union leaders and politicians in a mass way and help lead more workers and youth, especially black and Latino, to join and build the PLP for communist revolution.
Black Rebellions, Workers' Unity Belie Bosses' History
After three centuries of racist brutality and exploitation, the rulers' media offer us Black History Month (BHM), extolling a few black men and women of fame and fortune. Oprah Winfrey, presidential candidate Barack Obama and black Super Bowl coaches will be trotted out to convince us that the system works, allowing individuals to overcome racism. In reality, the system means black workers suffer double unemployment rates, one-third less family income and infant-mortality rates rivaling those of the world's poorest countries. BHM is part of the rulers' body of ideology intended to convince black workers to ignore the super-exploitation millions suffer from all bosses and give their loyalty to bosses of their own "race," rather than uniting with all workers, Latino, Asian and white in loyalty to their class. Loyalty to their "own" bosses, who are part of the capitalist system creating all this exploitation, then misleads them into patriotically supporting the big bosses' wars.
During BHM, the bosses cannot afford to teach the real history of mass struggles against slavery, united black and white working-class struggles against racism and capitalist exploitation, or how communists participated in and led many of these heroic actions. Extraordinary singer and actor Paul Robeson may be mentioned, but not his lifetime dedication to the working class and communism. No one will quote his statement that visiting the then-socialist Soviet Union was the first time in his life he felt free of racism.
There will be no allusion to communist historian Herbert Apthecker debunking over 100 years of ruling-class racist academic lies about slaves happy to be exploited by their "benevolent" plantation masters. Apthecker documented over 400 organized slave revolts, several supported by white workers, north and south. Lincoln will be said to have "freed" the slaves without discussion of Harriet Tubman and John Brown organizing an integrated armed band to raid Harper's Ferry to inspire slave revolts. While the raid caused frightened southern slave-holders to secede, 180,000 runaway slaves joined the Union army to fight for freedom for all slaves.
BHM will not notice the 25,000 black and white workers in 1892 New Orleans who overcame segregated local unions and united in an eleven-day general strike. Bosses counter-attacked with racist propaganda, ruling-class led racist riots and a U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing segregation (Homer Plessy of Plessy vs. Ferguson was fighting to desegregate New Orleans streetcars). Nevertheless, in 1907, white workers overcame lifetime racist indoctrination to follow the lead of black workers in a mass strike, shutting down the entire New Orleans port and winning many of their reform demands.
In the 1930s, black workers played a crucial role in the communist-led organization of mass, integrated industrial unions (in opposition to the racist, segregated craft unions). Communists provided most of the leadership for many other anti-racist activities such as the world-wide protests against the phony rape frame-up of black youths in Scottsboro, Alabama, that exposed the racist Jim Crow system.
In the 1960s and `70s, the newly formed PLP continued this tradition by supporting and participating in black rebellions in Detroit, Newark and New York City where the PLP poster "Wanted for Murder, Gilligan the Cop" became the symbol of angry protests against racist police brutality. In 1975 PLP defeated the racist anti-busing movement in Boston. Since the 1960s PLP has frustrated the growth of racist KKK and Nazi groups (supported by cops and the courts all over the U.S.) by taking to the streets in demonstrations and physical attacks. In this past month, PLP has joined protests against killer kops in Chicago and NYC, bringing communist analysis and militance as an alternative to the silent pacifism of ruling-class agents like Al Sharpton.
From as far back as Karl Marx's statement during the U.S. Civil War that "labor in the white skin can never be free while labor in the black skin is in chains," communists have seen that capitalism cannot survive without the profits from the super-exploitation of black workers. Even though many militant reform struggles have made dents in racist institutions like segregation, the bosses have always been able to use state power to reverse those advances. For instance, the Jim Crow prison chain gangs of the 1930s have merely been replaced by today's largest prison population in world history, incarcerating more black youth than are attending college. Lehman Bros. banking empire began in 1850 as a cotton brokerage house profiting from slavery's exploitation. Today Lehman Bros. finances the Corrections Corporation of America that profits from the frame-ups and non-violent drug convictions that produce over 500,000 present day slaves -- prison laborers earning as little as 23 cents an hour, who are over 70% black and Latin.
Communists must counter the omissions and distortions of BHM with the militant history of integrated working-class struggles against racism. More importantly, we must expose that capitalism and racism always have and always will go hand-in-hand. The working class needs the multi-racial unity that can only be forged in anti-racist struggles. To defeat racist exploitation we have to use that unity to build a communist movement to overthrow capitalism and its racist outrages.
Communists Bring Revolutionary Alternative to Anti-War Marches
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 27 -- PLP brought revolutionary communist politics today to over 100,000 demonstrators marching against the war in Iraq. Led by a group of high school students, we marched through the streets chanting, "The only solution is communist revolution." Sparked by the energy of NYC high school students and others we distributed over 3,500 CHALLENGES and 5,000 leaflets, presenting an anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist alternative to the march's pro-Democrat liberal leaders' line of "Bush is the problem--impeach him and everything will be okay."
As we rolled by the corner of First and Independence, one comrade spoke loudly and forcefully that no Democrats or Republicans, no liberal politicians or elections can fix capitalism and that there will be no end to wars under this murderous system. The marchers' response was positive overall, with some openly applauding our analysis. Though we experienced some anti-communist reactions, the majority were interested and supportive.
Workers and students are open to revolutionary ideas. PLP's responsibility is to bring communist politics to all anti-war activities. This demonstration proved that even a small group, but with new young people alongside veterans of our movement, can reach tens of thousands with our ideas. The continued practice and the commitment of our young people will enrich the march towards a communist revolution.
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 27--"One, two, three, four, We don't want your racist war!?" "Same enemy! Same fight! Workers of the world, unite!" These were some of the slogans taken up by a group of Iraqi Vets in the anti-war march here of over 3,000. One marcher in uniform yelled "chant louder!" One of these vets asked a PL'er, "What kind of revolution are you talking about?" When he told him, the vet said, "You're preaching to the choir." Another vet hugged a PL'er and told him that he definitely wanted more info about organizing against racism and imperialism in the military. Overall, PLP led militant chants against racism and imperialism in a multi-racial contingent of students and teachers while we distributed thousands of leaflets and hundreds of CHALLENGES.
Racist Rulers Fear Unity of Black and Latino Youth
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 28 -- After the racist killing of a young black teenager, Cheryl Green, by Latino gang members, the press says the situation has "gotten out of hand" and more cops are needed. The same ruling class that has been pushing racist divide-and-conquer politics between black and Latino gangs now says they have to clamp down on the gangs to end the violence. This is the same ruling class whose system has fostered mass racist unemployment, racist health care, poverty-stricken schools and housing, police brutality and super-exploitation against black and Latino working people. But, of course, to the rulers that situation hasn't "gotten out of hand."
The school board member representing south LA has sponsored a series of youth leadership meetings about "unity," bringing Cesar Chávez' granddaughter to speak at schools about the contribution of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement to the farmworkers' movement. We know something about this -- and the struggle against pacifism, sellouts and pro-imperialist politics, and for militant, revolutionary class-conscious struggle in both movements. We fight for the understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all.
The ruling class fears the militant, multi-racial working-class unity demonstrated during the 1992 Rodney King rebellion. They know that the anger and potential unity of black and Latino youth represents one of the biggest threats to their plans for wider imperialist war and increasing racism at home. Their biggest fear is that black and Latino youth will unite with white youth as well to fight the racist bosses -- in the neighborhoods, the factories and the army. They've been promoting racist division for a long time. Now they say they're "shocked" and are hoping for unity around pacifism and U.S. patriotism.
PLP has been organizing multi-racial youth communist collectives for more than twenty years. We've fought in the schools where we work for unity against racism, against the bosses' imperialist wars and against racist school cops, racist teachers and against nationalist and racist ideas that divide students and teachers. Lately we've been bringing black and Latino students under the Party's leadership to anti-war marches, to anti-Minutemen demonstrations, to the New Orleans Summer Project and to May Day marches for communist revolution to smash racist capitalism.
At our schools we've responded to the current racist tensions both in brainstorming with colleagues about how to build unity and in the student clubs we work with. In one class, the students wrote poems in tribute to 14-year-old Cheryl Green. One student club is fighting for multi-racial unity during black history month; planning to recite anti-racist poems in Spanish and English about unity, written by the Afro-Cuban communist poet Nicolas Guillen. In another school we're helping to sponsor an art contest: "Striving for Unity." These activities can help build for May Day to expose the bosses and their ideas as the source of racist terror, division and imperialist war. They will call on all youth to join the fight to eliminate racism once and for all with communist revolution.
More PLP members will mean more fighters against the bosses' racism. As a multi-racial group led by PLP loudly chanted at the Minuteman rally in downtown LA: "Racism is the bosses' tool -- We won't be divided and we won't be fooled!"
School clubs must organize to go out to other high schools, including the Harbor Gateway area, site of this murder. Having rallies and leafleting with a multi-racial group of youth can help build the working-class unity our class needs for the long-term fight to bury the racist bosses.
Pfizer's Rx for Saving $4 Billion: CUT 10,000 Jobs
BROOKLYN, NY, Jan. 24 -- Not content with robbing billions of dollars from workers through charging exorbitant prices for medicines, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the country's largest drug company, will try to maintain its exploitative profit margins by robbing 600 workers here of jobs many have held all their lives. It's part of a worldwide elimination of 10,000 jobs.
The company says it must compensate for lost sales when its patents expire on drugs like Lipitor (and they can be produced generically at much lower prices). The plant has been here for over 60 years, but Pfizer's CEO, Jeffrey Kindler, says "there is little room for nostalgia.... There are no sacred cows." (NY Daily News, 1/23)
No sacred cows except one -- profits. And these worldwide cuts are expected to save Pfizer $4 billion.
The company's announcement follows the shutdown of another long-time Williamsburg factory, Domino Sugar, in 2004, after 150 years of operation. Together, these closings symbolize the borough's vanishing manufacturing base. They are eliminating relatively decent-paying jobs for a large percentage of black and Latino as well as white workers, another step in reducing the wage rates of all workers. Most of these older workers will be unable to find new jobs at the same pay scale, if they can find any job at all.
"I'm just praying...that I can find work," said Roberto Nieves, with 28 years at Pfizer, which also will be laying off his twin brother, uncles and nieces. "We have a mortgage to pay. I have a kid in college and one in high school," Nieves told the NY Post (1/24), as he saw his "American dream" going up in smoke.
Such mass layoffs are symptomatic of how capitalists "solve" their problems, at the expense of workers' lives. When profits are threatened, workers are first to go. That's why we need a worker-controlled communist society, not based on profits, only on workers sharing the value of everything we produce.
GIs Protest Iraq War at the U.S. Capitol
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 16 -- Today three active-duty military personnel, flanked by members of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out and other supporters presented over 1,000 "appeals for redress" to Congressman Dennis Kucinich demanding an end to the war in Iraq. At this media event, presidential candidate Kucinich and three other members of Congress cynically used these bold GIs to build their own future campaigns, given that the vast majority of voters are now anti-war.
These liberal politicians have no intention of abandoning U.S. imperialists' oil interests in the Middle East. In fact, they will seize on the assertion by the anti-war GIs that, even though they oppose the war, they are "patriotic American[s] proud to serve the nation in uniform." They will use this patriotism (a vile notion that workers and bosses have the same interests when in fact they are diametrically opposed) to build allegiance to the bosses' "national interest." This means supporting capitalist interests including their long-term determination to control the Middle East for their profit! PLPers must constantly expose patriotism as serving only the bosses' interest and win GIs to an internationalist, pro-working class, anti-racist outlook.
The three GI presenters spoke boldly and forcefully about the need to end the war. One Marine declared he had opposed the war from the day it began, but nevertheless served in Iraq with his unit. This contradiction must be resolved by bolder GI actions against U.S. imperialism, however difficult this may be.
This media event was the culmination of six months of agitation at U.S. military installations by active-duty GIs worldwide, and demonstrated the depth of the troops' anti-Iraq war feeling.
The day before in Norfolk, Virginia, a similar news conference drew approximately 100 serious anti-war activists to support these anti-war GIs. The GI speeches stressed the need for solidarity between civilian workers and military personnel in the anti-war movement. One GI cited Martin Luther King's 1967 "Breaking the Silence" speech that publicly attacked the U.S. war in Vietnam, linking the fight against the war to the fight against racism in the U.S.
King's pacifist strategy was wrong since it allowed the rulers to maintain their power and mis-led workers away from militant struggle. Nevertheless, a militant struggle against racism within the U.S. is an integral part of the fight against imperialist war, and must be central to the emerging GI movement.
These actions may well be the first explicit anti-war protests organized by active-duty military personnel during the current Iraq war. Besides many individual acts of defiance (including desertions, refusals to deploy, and small-scale mutinies), they demonstrate GI anger at being used and abused by U.S. imperialism. As one sailor noted, when you're floating off the coast of Iraq and Kuwait and see nothing but oil derricks dotting the horizon, it's not hard to convince your shipmates that the war is about control of Middle-East oil resources and has nothing to do with "democracy" or "national security."
The emergence of a publicly-organized GI anti-war movement offers a great opportunity to escalate the fight against U.S. imperialism and for communism and workers' power. However, the movement's current strategy is largely misdirected towards working within the system. Appealing to members of Congress, while a clever publicity tactic, has the danger of sucking this new movement into supporting the ruling class through the liberal politicians the rulers control, like those who "supported" these GIs.
Currently, the main forces in the ruling class, represented by these liberal politicians, are desperately casting about for ways to control Mid-East oil. Bush's strategy is failing to meet ruling-class needs. The latter may very well sweep away the Bushites through scandals and/or elections, and install politicians who will try to effectively secure U.S. oil and geopolitical interests in the region.
These liberal politicians, like those pretending to support the anti-war GIs, will launch wider wars in the coming period as the battle sharpens between U.S. imperialism and its rivals, from the European Union to China. GI activism could be misled into focusing on legislative or electoral politics. "Winning" (for example, by electing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as president) would just swap the Bushites for the equally (or even more) dangerous liberal politicians. This would work against GIs' short- and long-term interests. They would be cutting their own throats. All politicians are enemies of the working class.
During the 1968 election, the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) discovered the hard way that an electoral strategy is bogus. VVAW sent 400 veterans into the supposedly anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy-for-President campaign. Then McCarthy quit (although if he had won the nomination it would have only compounded a losing strategy); the vets were beaten by Chicago's police -- along with thousands of other anti-war activists -- at the Democratic Convention, and VVAW fell apart, demoralized by the failure of the system to respond to its efforts. It revived later when it embraced more of a class-struggle, confrontational approach in its Winter Soldier action (an event to publicize war crimes and atrocities by the U.S. military in Vietnam); in its Dewey Canyon II action (in which vets threw their medals over the fence at Congress) and in its embrace of militancy by active-duty GIs.
The alternative strategy for today's GI movement begins with understanding how the Iraq war is created by the needs of the whole imperialist system, administered by all politicians (liberal and conservative) to benefit the major corporations and banks -- the ruling class. With this analysis, the GI movement can reject patriotism, build ties to U.S. workers and students and to workers worldwide on the basis of multi-racial, international working-class unity. These workers include most soldiers wearing the uniform of the "enemy"!
The GI movement can organize rank-and-file groups (no officers!) to fight the military's racism and imperialism, and oppose orders to fight for the oil interests of U.S. rulers. To secure their own interests as part of the working class, GIs should join the communist PLP and prepare to oppose their commanders. They need to join in a workers' revolution against the entire capitalist system, a system that deems them as expendable tools in the bosses' battle for profits and power.
Iraq Vets Expose Brass's Racism, Refuse Suicide Mission
TACOMA, WA, Jan. 21 -- "Racial dehumanizing doesn't originate with the grunts," concluded an Iraq veteran at "A Citizen's Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Action in Iraq," organized by various anti-war groups near the Ft. Lewis army base. The Iraq veterans' testimonies eclipsed the speeches of the "big stars," like Daniel Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame. These soldiers brought the questions of racism and class consciousness into an otherwise bleak discussion on legalities and U.S. "democracy" (see box).
Billed as a war tribunal, the Citizen's Hearing was based on the Nuremberg Principals, which, following World War II, said soldiers should not carry out "unlawful" orders that could lead to war crimes. Only a hand-picked panel could ask questions of those testifying, freezing out the 300-plus in the audience. The aim was to gather information on the "illegality" of the Iraq war for use at Lt. Ehren Watada's courts-martial February 5.
Watada refused to deploy to Iraq. He maintains the war is illegal and unconstitutional, violating his oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. If the war was "legal," would he willingly go and order soldiers to kill other workers on behalf of U.S. imperialism? Apparently so. He volunteered to deploy in Afghanistan instead. Anyway, the question of the war's legality is moot because the judge has already ruled the defense team cannot introduce evidence or opinion bearing on the war's legal status.
The young vets in Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) broke through this boring "legality" debate. They spoke freely and passionately about their combat experiences. Just about everyone had stories about the racist dehumanization of Iraqis that came from the brass, down the chain of command to the enlistees. In fact, racism was raised many times in the two days of soldiers' testimony. One in particular emphasized that racist indoctrination was meant to blunt class consciousness. He told an inspiring story how he and others led his unit to refuse to go on a suicide mission. This is what PLP members and their friends in Military Families Speak out (MFSO) came to hear.
The panel head tried to use these vets' anger to warn young people not to join the military. We met with these vets away from the cameras and panels. All were excited to hear we knew soldiers who purposely joined the military to organize against racism and imperialist war. They recognized that this was a different strategic outlook than just passively warning people to "stay out." They also agreed it would take mass rebellion among rank-and-file soldiers on the ground to end the war. They took our literature enthusiastically and contact information was exchanged to continue the struggle.
Obviously there's tremendous opportunity here to bring revolutionary politics to these soldiers and their supporters. We intend to go to the gates at Ft. Lewis to talk with them further, and hopefully meet more active-duty soldiers and their families in the surrounding communities. Everyone reading this article should plan, as soon as possible, to reach out to friends and family in -- or thinking about joining -- the military. There's a lot of renewed anger about the war out there now. Seize the day.
Anti-Racist Iraq Vet Is Highlight of Anti-War Panel
At the "Citizen's war tribunal," an Iraq vet told of his orientation in Kuwait by the brass before "going in country." The officer in charge asked the assembled grunts what they would do if their convoy saw an Iraqi kid in the middle of the road. "We'd stop," answered one soldier.
"You never stop for a fucking hajji kid," the office yelled back.
"We'd go down another road," offered another troop.
"You never veer from your path for a fucking hajji kid. You run the fucking hajji kid over!"
"Racial dehumanizing," the Iraq vet emphasized, "doesn't originate with the grunts." It is the conscious strategy of the officer corps, meant to justify U.S. imperialism's brutal atrocities.
To make sure we got the point, he talked about a division briefing in front of the commanding general. Divisional briefings, he noted, were the second highest briefings in Iraq.
The day before, an 18-year-old, only in the army a few months, panicked. He shot at a car rapidly approaching a check-point. These check-points were randomly established throughout the city. You never knew where one would pop up. He then saw the results of his work. An Iraqi mother and her children were dead.
A full-bird colonel, kissing-up in hopes of getting his General star, turned to face the room. "None of this would happen if these fucking hajjis learn to drive," he said, dismissing the atrocity.
After the colonel's testimony, the panel head asked the vet two final (leading) questions. Do you think the U.S. is committing war crimes in Iraq?
The vet had no trouble answering, "Yes!"
The last question showed where the panel organizers were heading. "Would you advise somebody thinking of going into the Armed Forces not to join because they could become part of the war crimes?"
Afterwards, the Iraq vet talked with a Vietnam-era Ft. Lewis VVAW organizer. The Vietnam vet told the young soldier how he had joined the army to organize against racism and the war. Soldiers could do more than just individually disobey "illegal" orders and warn others not to join. They could organize their fellow "grunts" to lead the anti-imperialist movement. He clearly emphasized that his was a different strategic outlook than just passively warning young people to "stay out."
This excited the Iraq veteran, despite having been backed into the limited strategy advocated by the panel head a few moments earlier. He had just begun to read about the GI movement during Vietnam. He asked for more information about it. The anger among these GI's is real. They are potential revolutionary leaders
Swapping Rulers Won't Help Guinea General Strikers
CONAKRY, GUINEA, Jan. 28 -- A general strike -- the third in the past 12 months --shut down this country of nine million for 18 days. January 22 became the bloodiest day in the history of the second republic. A human tidal wave marched across the city, met by police tear gas, riot sticks, grenades and bullets yielding a heavy death toll and wounding thousands. Hired gunmen even shot up the hospitals.
The strike was sparked when 72-year-old president Lansana Conté sprang his embezzler buddies from jail -- Mamadou Sylla, Guinea's richest man, and Fodé Soumah, former vice-governor of the country's central bank.
Echoing Louis XIV, the French absolute monarch, Conté proclaimed, "La Justice, c'est moi." ["I am justice."]
But the causes of the general strike go much deeper. A first general strike in February 2006 won a 30% pay hike for public workers and the adoption of a minimum wage. But devaluation of the franc in March and the end of subsidized gasoline prices in May wiped out these gains, so the trade union battle started up again. In June 2006, the bloody repression of student demonstrations killed about 20 and triggered a second, unsuccessful general strike. In the third strike the unions demanded price-cuts for gas and staple foods, reimbursement of 2,000,000 euros in embezzled public funds, and imprisonment of the accused embezzlers.
Capitalism has caused widespread misery here. The average family spends an estimated 90% of its income on food. Most public workers take home 35 to 50 euros a month, while their families eat 150 kilograms of rice monthly, costing 54 euros. Life expectancy is just 54 years and 70% of adults are illiterate.
Yet Guinea has immense mineral wealth: one-third of the world's bauxite reserves, plus gold, diamonds, iron, manganese, zinc, cobalt, nickel and uranium. But the money winds up in the pockets of domestic and foreign capitalists.
Guinea lies in the French imperialist zone. Seventy French companies operate here in banking, insurance, maritime services, sales of gasoline and automobiles, air transport, pharmaceuticals, hotels, public works and telecoms. French capitalists enjoy a 13.7% share of Guinea's imports, far ahead of China (9.6%) and the U.S. (5.9%).
Over-dependent on bauxite, which accounts for 90% of Guinea's export revenues, and with foreign debt equaling gross domestic product, the national economy is on the brink of collapse. But the world's imperialists only care about looting the country's natural resources. In June, 2005, Canadian Global Alumina, heading a consortium of French and other European companies, signed a $1.5-billion contract to build an aluminum smelting plant. Not to be outdone, the U.S. companies Alcan and Alcoa also plan to build a $1-billion plant.
U.S. bosses want a bigger slice of the pie. Concerned with the political transition when Conté dies (he has leukemia and diabetes) or is forced from power, U.S. diplomats began biennial visits here in March, 2006. Three army generals and Conté's son Ousmane are jockeying to replace the ailing dictator. The unions began negotiating on Jan. 25 over the powers of a "consensus prime minister," supposedly to ease Conté into retirement and defuse the present crisis. (On Jan. 27, the unions agreed to end the strike, reaching a tentative deal after Conté offered to cede some powers to a still unnamed prime minister and to lower rice and fuel prices.)
That strategy is a sure loser. The French daily paper Le Monde (1/28) described the future prime minister as a "strong man" whose job will be "favoring development" -- evidently, in the interests of the imperialist powers. Workers here will gain nothing by replacing one corrupt, blood-soaked politician with another. The only solution for Guinea's workers -- and for workers worldwide -- is to dump all the bourgeois politicians and the capitalist system they serve.
Teachers' Strike in France Could Spark Walkout of 5 Million
PARIS, Jan. 26 -- Longer hours for lower pay! That's the French government's plan for middle- and senior-high teachers for the next school year. Fifteen trade unions representing 99% of the country's 419,000 teachers are calling for a national strike on February 8. Five trade union federations are calling on all 5,000,000 public workers to strike that same day for higher wages and against the planned elimination of 15,000 jobs in 2007.
Teachers' real wages fell by 20% on average between 1981 and 2004 according to a recent study. It says that because the teachers' unions have won smaller class sizes and paid hours off for special teaching tasks, teachers have put up with falling wages "without, in the final analysis, protesting too much."
But teachers' attitudes may be changing. When the government announced its draft decree to take back the class hour reductions, on Dec. 18 half the country's teachers walked out, and 25,000 to 30,000 demonstrated in Paris the following day.
The government is also floating trial balloons on privatizing education. A general inspector of education, Philippe Barret, has written a book -- with the tacit support of education minister Gilles de Robien -- calling for physical education, art, music and drawing teachers to be replaced by private gym instructors and art "professionals."
Worldwide, the capitalists are taking back workers' gains of the past 50 years. This is sparking reform struggles providing an opportunity for revolutionaries to spread the word that there's only way for workers to win gains that can't be taken away -- by overthrowing capitalism and establishing communism.
Military Tribunals Legalize Fascism
Last October 17, war criminal Bush signed into law sweeping new powers for the government's "military tribunals." Several "anti-war" Democratic Senators voted for it. Trials for accused "terrorists" will begin soon.
The bosses' dictatorship is absolute: they decide whether to make it more or less open. Many liberals and phony "leftists" advocate "restoring our civil liberties," but this won't change a capitalist system that installs fascism during crises. The recent Military Commissions Act (MCA) is one more example of this fascist beast, created by the profit system.
The MCA legalizes the round-up and jailing of any non-citizen the President designates an "unlawful enemy combatant." A detained "terrorist" with no right to habeas corpus (no chance of challenging the detention in court) -- will be jailed until trial. The military tribunal can accept secret evidence and impose the death penalty based on that evidence. Although torture is supposedly banned, the President determines what "enhanced interrogation techniques" are legal.
Many people are still convinced that the "war on terror" is based on real and legitimate concerns. They must understand the bosses "terrorism" hysteria for what it really is -- lies to justify a homeland security police state in preparation to crush opposition to endless wars.
U.S. imperialism created the Al Qaeda terrorists and other Islamic fundamentalists to use in their "cold war" battle against the former Soviet bosses. Bin Laden and others had extensive CIA connections. Before 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies, at the very least, were well aware that Bin Laden & Co. were planning to attack a major U.S. target. U.S. rulers are long-time experts at creating pretexts for large-scale military actions. In 1898, they manufactured the Spanish-American War, blaming Spain for sinking the battleship Maine (caused by a boiler explosion) in order to start a U.S. war of conquest. They concocted an attack on U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf to rationalize the criminal escalation of Vietnam War.
But 9/11 was nothing compared to the deaths U.S. imperialism perpetrated between Gulf Wars I and II. These two wars and sanctions killed 1.5 to 2 million Iraqis. Two million have left the country. Another 1.5 million are refugees inside Iraq itself -- altogether totaling over 20% of the pre-Gulf War I Iraqi population.
U.S. rulers' care nothing about U.S. workers' or soldiers' safety. They will fight to the last drop of our blood in order to secure their profits and control Mid-East oil. They're furious at Bush & Co. because the Iraq fiasco has squandered the momentum and popular support they had post-9/11. But, they are preparing for "The Long War" (see Army Times, 10/23/06), as they call it -- war to crush rival imperialists.
As this rivalry sharpens, opposition to endless wars will grow. The expanding police state will use the MCA to jail and "legally" murder workers, and especially communists ("enemy sympathizers") who strike against massive attacks on pensions, health benefits and wages and rally against imperialist oil wars. PLP will fight fascism daily, and prepare for our own "long war," using mass working-class violence to meet the bosses' violence and overthrow this exploitative and oppressive system. The future of the working class depends on it.
LETTERS
Anti-War March Lacks Working Class Focus
The January 27th Washington, D.C anti-war march reflected the political line of the organizers and main speakers, which influenced many of the participants. There were far fewer "No Blood for Oil" signs and far more signs like "Escalation: The Wrong Way." The Democratic Party and its supporters, like SEIU's president Andy Stern, are shifting the focus away from immediate or even rapid withdrawal to opposing "the surge." Many signs and speakers attacked Bush for this. The tremendous Bush-bashing ignores the ruling-class consensus that U.S. soldiers should be fighting and dying to maintain control over Mid-East oil for many years to come.
The role of politicians like Kucinich -- who say what many anti-war demonstrators want to hear -- is to convince people that reform is still possible, and that the Democratic Party (no matter how evil) is the vehicle for that reform movement. People like Waters, Conyers, Woolsey and Kucinich play the worst role because they tie people to one of the two wings of the capitalist Democratic Party, keeping them hoping that an inherently violent and exploitative system can change its spots and become peaceful and humane.
Most of the pseudo-left groups spread the delusion that the Democrats can be swayed to defund the war and bring all the troops home. The "Communist" Party and the Committees for Correspondence appear to control the march organizers; they invited Conyers, Waters, Woolsey, Kucinich and other Democratic Party representatives. But equally bad are groups like the "Revolutionary Communist" Party. Their "Drive Out the Bush Regime" rhetoric says the neocons are the problem, rather than a declining imperialist empire desperately seeking to maintain hegemony through military means.
In many good conversations on our union buses, people were torn between an understanding that the war in Iraq stems from the profit system and a government that enforces that system, versus a liberal hope that elections can produce people who won't begin wars and will better people's lives rather than destroy them. So the main contradiction in the anti-war movement is between liberalism/pacificism and Marxism-Leninism and revolution.
Finally, once again the march was mostly white. Since the single issue is the war, racism and class exploitation are rarely, if ever, mentioned. When meat-packing plants are being raided and hundreds of immigrants deported; when affirmative action programs are being demolished and black enrollment in California public universities and elsewhere have plummeted; when hundreds of thousands of workers are laid off by companies like Ford and Pfizer (millions downsized in the past 25 years, three-fourths of whom will never work again or get jobs at lower pay); when workers' health and pension benefits are being slashed, the anti-war movement ignores it.
The organizers' outlook is not to build a class-struggle movement focused on the working class, one centered on anti-racism. Rather, these opportunistic pacifists champion "peace" and "reform." Capitalism, however, isn't playing along, offering only endless wars and "reform" -- of social security, pensions, healthcare, education -- all of which are designed to lower the social wage, and condition workers into accepting less.
A Red Marcher
Future GIs Show Red Potential
Just the word "potential" alone doesn't quite communicate our Party's opportunity to build a communist base in the U.S. bosses' military. The possibilities that now exist, and which will grow as the bosses face more obstacles and crises in Iraq and elsewhere, are undeniable. The U.S. ruling class does not have a Nazi army. But in order to ensure that they never have one, and that we have our Red Army, it is absolutely important that we join the military in order to fight racism, nationalism/patriotism and other capitalist ideas while organizing working-class soldiers.
The bosses are definitely in trouble when it comes to the political and ideological dedication of future soldiers. In my interaction with the youth in the middle of military processing, I found patriotism and anti-Arab racism are scarce.
For instance, I was bunked with one young Asian recruit at a hotel as we both awaited processing. During dinner we became comfortable with each other. When we finished I asked, "So, are you the patriotic type?" Without even a blink, he responded a solid "NO!" When we noted the certainty that we would both be deployed to Iraq, he told me he didn't want to go because he had enlisted for economic reasons, and that he'd rather just find ways not to fight, even in battle.
Another time I nearly broke out laughing on a bus to the processing station. The young recruits -- white, Latino and black -- were discussing possibly winding up in Iraq. One young white recruit asked the only lifer (a career military soldier) on the bus if he'd go to Iraq. He responded in a fervently patriotic fashion. The recruit just blinked and attempted to hide his sarcastic response with a half-smile sneer. It was tense but I could see similar smirks on many of the recruits' faces.
On another day, I was profoundly reminded that we must have trust in our class and about the need to be with the soldiers through thick and thin. While waiting for a doctor, many young recruits were discussing Iraq again. To my astonishment, one remarked, "This war isn't worth one dead American soldier." I quickly and quietly added, "And not a single dead Iraqi one either." All these mainly young white working-class recruits there didn't stare at me and react in a racist and patriotic manner; rather, they all sternly nodded in agreement!
It breaks my heart that I was rejected because I didn't meet military standards, that I won't be there with them in the long run. But even from my modest interactions with these future soldiers, it's evident that the word "potential" is an understatement. Sure, it will still take a lot of intense and lengthy struggle for us to make serious headway, but it can happen.
Political work in the military can be scary, but it's more rewarding than frightening. It isn't a sacrifice; it's a necessity. Knowing this eventually enabled me to overcome my own internal contradictions in order to try. Surely, if I could, many others can too and carry this work further forward.
To fulfill this task more seriously and effectively, we must win more to do it! This work is vital and empowering for our class. Our Party should host a series of study groups and PLP schools for young people on this subject.
It's central to winning a working-class revolution and finally eliminating racism, sexism and our class's exploitation and oppression. Our brothers and sisters in uniform need us.
Red Youth
Boston Campus Open to Anti-War Action
Since fall, military recruiters have been showing up in the Student Center at the predominantly black Roxbury Community College (RCC). They approach students who are playing pool in the Game Room or hanging out in the Cafeteria, offering free ipod downloads as bait. Until recently, the student body was pretty passive and unaware, but now a group of students and faculty are exposing the recruiters as agents of U.S. imperialism. Next week, for the first time, students and faculty will be confronting Marine recruiters on campus. An anti-war movement is taking shape here.
During the last few months a few students and faculty, including PLP'ers, refused to let the campus forget that wars were raging in the Middle East. The faculty union sponsored a conference about how we educate students about military recruiters on campus. The union pledged to be present with literature about the war whenever recruiters set up a table at RCC. The student Pizza and Politics Club held discussions in which a former Marine, recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, brought home the reality and consequences of the war.
Now, the development of student leadership is the order of the day. As long as youth stay focused on their own individual problems, the rulers have a free hand to turn them into passive wage-slaves, cannon fodder and killing machines. The RCC student organizers must teach their fellow students class consciousness, the understanding that their problems stem from capitalism's inevitable oppression of the working class. Above all, students must learn that it is possible for our class to grasp world events and change society and that their friends who do decide to join the military can play a vital role in leading such change. They can demonstrate that collective action is possible, and that young people can be motivated by more than materialism and selfishness. Reading CHALLENGE will help them to develop a deeper understanding of how capitalism works and confidence in our class's ability to destroy it. However, ultimately, it is only by leading struggles, such as the impending confrontation with military recruiters, that they will learn how to lead future fights against the bosses in the barracks or on the job. Guiding this process is the profound responsibility of the PL'ers on campus.
Boston Red
UN `Peacekeepers' War On Haiti's Workers
Wherever the U.S.-led United Nations "Peacekeeping" forces go, you can be sure there's money to be made, even in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country. The highly-organized gang of rulers, going back to Papa "Doc" Duvalier and Baby Doc -- both supported by U.S. rulers -- caused Haiti's dire poverty. During that time, the island's resources were stripped of mahogany, the farmlands were devastated by erosion and many workers were forced into slave labor on sugar cane plantations under Dominican Republic bosses. Tens of thousands have also become cheap labor in France, the U.S., Canada and Martinique.
When former president, Jean Aristide came to power for the second time in 2000, the Zinglindo gangs developed. They terrorized working-class people in the capital, Port au Prince, breaking into houses, robbing, raping and even killing women. Aristide was unable to control these gangs and his power diminished. The Bush administration organized a "rebellion" by the former Tontons Macoute (fascist thugs) and then sent the Marines to kidnap Aristide and remove him from power.
Then a 3,000-strong UN "peace-keeping" force replaced the U.S., French and Canadian imperialist troops, supposedly to avoid a civil war among rival criminal gangs. A puppet government was created, led by Gerard Latortue. But as we discovered, neither the UN nor the Latortue government were ever concerned about the Haitian workers.
In the past 18 months, the gangs' tactics have changed to kidnapping many tourists, who are forced to pay thousands of U.S. dollars for their release or be killed. People now fear traveling to Haiti. Last December, the new government of Rene Garcia Preval was forced to close schools very early, before Christmas, because students were being kidnapped from schoolyards.
So then, before Christmas, hundreds of UN troops, led by the Brazilian army of the "socialist" Lula government marched into Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas (where many of these gangs operate), and using heavy weapons randomly fired into people's houses, killing many women and children.
Money is literally being squeezed from the blood of workers and their children -- all in the presence of UN troops and 5,000 Haitian police. Nothing changes; the situation only worsens! We need to dump their "peace-keepers" and their governments and go for communist revolution. Only under workers' power will we productively live in peace.
Haitian comrade
Farmworkers Receptive to PLP's Ideas
We are continuing to work here in California's San Joaquin Valley, passing out leaflets and distributing CHALLENGES to the farmworkers. Recently we've had very good discussions with a family from Oaxaca, one of whom is a teacher. Here he's working in the fields.
The repression suffered here leads to passivity. The supervisors and contractors are a rope around workers' necks, constantly threatening layoffs or punishments, to make them work faster and extract more profits for the bosses. Many workers live in real poverty.
In a recent discussion I explained that the bosses need to make maximum profits from our labor to finance their oil wars, and that, like us, the world's workers are dying of hunger, because of this profit drive.
I explained that's why we need to organize a mass revolutionary communist party, like Progressive Labor Party, to fight for our own class interests, for the seizure of power. Little by little our work is taking root, and, with persistence, we'll reap the fruits.
Comrade Red Grasshopper
Bosses Use GI `Appeal' to Derail Their Anger
We were members of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society -- a mass organization that opposed the Vietnam War) in the late 1960's and early 1970's. [Ed. Note: See PL History, page 8) We joined the Party as a result of its principled fight in SDS, and its leadership on the campuses for militant anti-imperialism, anti-racism, the worker-student alliance, for its fight against nationalism and most important, its advocacy of revolution to destroy imperialist war at its capitalist source. CHALLENGE didn't call the "Port Huron Statement" (by the social-democratic founders) a "blow to the solar plexus" of the imperialists as CHALLENGE (11/15/06) mistakenly said about the Appeal for Redress.
In fighting for its ideas, PLP'ers criticized the liberal, anti-communist, pro-democracy line of the Social Democrats who started SDS, and the phony leftists and nationalists who later fought the Party for leadership. This kind of leadership by the Party was a guide to many who then decided to join PLP, learning to "struggle with, struggle against."
In SDS, the Party organized the worker-student alliance caucus, which sharpened the ideological struggle, and fought for and led strikes and building takeovers on the campuses against the war and racism, as opposed to liberals' pacifist proposals to "study peace." Tactics matter; they flow from politics.
Currently the soldiers and sailors Appeal for Redress has over 1,000 signers to an internet appeal, including 100 officers, according to the bosses' media. Good people are involved in this Appeal. But the liberal rulers are using it as part of their fight to win the working class to support wider war. We must expose these liberal imperialists (like Brzezinski) who say the U.S. should temporarily reduce troops in Iraq in order to prepare for wider war.
The bosses' media is publicizing the Appeal as part of the attempt to derail soldiers' anger against the ruling class into the arms of the patriotic liberal imperialists. The Washington Post actually carried its report on the Appeal as part of an article on the Congressional Democrats' opposition to Bush's plans.
But anger against the war has the potential to become the basis of building workers' internationalism and the fight for communism. If the Appeals petition becomes a mass movement like SDS, then PLP needs to better play our role of leading the fight against racism, patriotism and imperialism within this movement.
CHALLENGE should lead and reflect the fight for internationalism among youth, including a fight to change the Appeal petition to be anti-racist, internationalist and non patriotic. Working in mass movements is complicated, but it shouldn't weaken our fight to expose liberal imperialism, fight racism, including anti-Arab racism, and for workers' internationalism and communist revolution.
There's great potential to fight for the left and recruit in many mass organizations. A letter in CHALLENGE (1/31) said we should concentrate forces on the Appeals Movement. But there are many rank-and-file, anti-war efforts being organized by groups of people in existing mass organizations which, while not "purely" our line, nonetheless involve aspects of anti-racism and internationalism, growing from struggle in the mass movement. Political battles over patriotism vs. internationalism can lead to building the Party.
Some Comrades
REDEYE
Guantanámo not the only horror show
According to the Red Cross, the regime at Guantánamo causes psychological suffering that has driven inmates mad, with scores of suicide attempts and three inmates killing themselves last year....
...Amnesty International has declared "the gulag of our time." Guantánamo is not the only US torture camp. Bagram in Afghanistan has been dogged by stories of abuse, and there are secret US prisons around the world where it is widely feared new horrors are occurring....
Adorned on the walls of the Guantánmo camp is its mission statement: "Honour-bound to defend freedom".... (GW, 1/25)
Gates affirms: US Is in Gulf to stay
Mr. Gates said the build-up of US forces in the Gulf region, involving the dispatch of an aircraft carrier and Patriot missile defence batteries as well as the deployment of more than 20,000 US reinforcements to Iraq, was intended as a signal that Washington would not be intimidated. "We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf Region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that one area for a long time into the future," he said.... (GW, 1/25)
Scratch a Democrat, find an imperialist
...There is a continuing debate about whether military action may some day be necessary to set back Iran's nuclear activities....
Democrats...are positioning themselves to sound tough.
"To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table," former Senator John Edwards recently told an Israeli security conference. "Let me reiterate -- all options." (NYT, 1/28)
Wishful thinking won't stop fascist drift
Of the 80,000 Arabs and Muslim nationals who were required to register after 9/11, the 8,000 brought in for FBI interviews, and the 5,000 locked up in "preventive detention," none have been convicted of a terrorist crime.....
Yet, like "Good Germans," we watch in the hope that the country couldn't possibly get any worse.
...The Democratic Party has been...futile and even worse, complicit, in the face of these war crimes and tyranny....
The Bush White House represents...[an] imperialist empire. The clamping down on the borders, the militarizing of the police and the creation of a spy state, the public-order policies that criminalize the mere presence of groups of youth, minorities, and immigrants, and the repression of legitimate forms of political protest are not designed to prevent terrorism. This rapidly evolving police state is designed primarily to both repress and coerce domestic and international populations who would challenge this American Empire. (MinutemanMedia.org, 1/4)
Wounded vets get government runaround
...Wounded veterans trying to obtain disability checks are being tied up in a bureaucratic nightmare. The Veterans Benefits Adminstration has a backlog of 400,000 pending claims -- and rising. Veterans must wait for six months to two years to begin receiving the money....In the interim, thousands of veterans with disabilities are left to fend for themselves.
Thousands...have crippling disabilities such as brain or spinal injuries....
The VA system has a reputation for high quality care, but waiting lists to see a doctor at some facilities now run as long as several months... (LA Times)
Society is sick in more ways than one
...Health care providers are more aggressively seeking upfront collection of co-pays and deductibles. A component of this strategy is to encourage patients to use third-part lenders such as credit cards to pay for medical expenses they cannot afford....
A society is seriously out of whack when legalized loan sharks are encouraged to close in on those who are broke and desperately ill. (NYT, 1/22)
Poverty, `race' make human guinea pigs
The most notorious medical experiment in American history is surely the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which 400 black men with syphilis were left untreated for 40 years....
Blacks have been forced to undergo painful, risky experimental surgery, dosed with radiation. They have been falsely assumed to feel pain less than whites and to require higher X-ray doses for a readable film...
Reprehensible behavior continued into the 20th century....
"In the South," Ms. Washington writes, "rendering black women infertile without their knowledge during other surgery was so common that the procedure was called a `Mississippi appendectomy.'" But the same was true in the North, as recently as the 1970s, when unnecessary hysterectomies were often done on poor black and Puerto Rican women to give doctors in training a chance to practice their skills. (NYT, 1/23)
Ex-Slaves, Seminoles United to Defeat Racist U.S. Invaders
One of the more well-hidden parts of U.S. history involves the first foreign invasion by the U.S. military: from 1816 to 1836 the U.S. government invaded Florida -- then a Spanish colony -- in an attempt to wipe out the largest station on the Underground Railroad. Since 1728, slaves had been escaping from Southern plantations into Florida. They were among its earliest explorers and pioneer settlers and had welcomed Seminole Indians as fellow escapees from persecution. Together the two groups pooled their wide range of knowledge and agricultural skills and established united, free, self-governing communities that ultimately defeated the attacks of the largest army in the Western Hemisphere. It is still another shining example of anti-racist, multi-racial unity in the fight against the U.S. ruling class.
The slave-owners saw this settlement of escaped slaves as an immediate danger to their slave plantation system -- men and women who did not live under white masters, carried arms, were allied with Native Americans and welcomed runaways to their villages. The South's rulers were determined to wipe them out.
By 1812, President James Madison and General Andrew Jackson, commander of the U.S. Southern District -- both prominent slaveholders themselves -- supported a private force, the "Patriots," later joined by the Tennessee militia and federal troops, that crossed into Florida on slave-hunting forays to seize free people for enslavement, but the ex-slaves and Seminoles united to repel this combined force.
Then, in 1816, Jackson resolved to take Florida and close down "this perpetual harbor for our slaves." He provoked an attack on "Fort Negro" on the Apalachicola River, where an explosion destroyed the fort and killed 270 people. Jackson's army executed its commander and marched the 63 survivors back into slavery.
Hundreds of Africans and Seminoles then retreated to the Suwannee River and built villages extending down the seacoast to Tampa Bay. They reorganized their army, preparing for future attacks.
Jackson, under incoming president James Monroe launched "a campaign of terror, devastation and intimidation" that included burning "sources of food in a calculated effort" to starve the populace into submission. According to historian William Weeks, this "exhibition of murder and plunder known as the First Seminole War" was part of Jackson's goal of "removing or eliminating Native Americans from the Southeast."
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (later to succeed Monroe as President) believed in "Indian removal, slavery and the use of military force," says Weeks, and defended the invasion, "consciously distorted...and lied about the goals....reminding historians not to search for truth in official explanations of events."
In 1819, the U.S. bought Florida from Spain for $5 million and it entered the Union as a slave state. But Washington found itself bogged down in a quagmire that was later to tie up half its army in Florida's swamplands.
The Second Seminole War began full scale in 1836. The then commander of U.S. operations, General Sidney Jesup, warned that the black and Seminole peoples were "identical in interests and feelings" and would "form a rallying point" for runaway slaves from adjacent states.
U.S. troops attacked peaceful villages, destroyed crops, seized women and children as hostages and tried mightily to pit black against Seminole but all divisive attempts failed. U.S. military victory remained elusive. The defenders used classic guerilla tactics, running circles around the Hemisphere's most modern army. On Christmas Eve, 1837, about 400 red and black Seminoles, outnumbered two to one, inflicted the most stunning loss suffered by the U.S. Army in decades of Indian warfare.
In this Second Seminole War, 1,500 U.S. soldiers were killed and thousands were wounded or died of disease. Civilian losses were undoubtedly higher. Congress had spent $40 million (pre-Civil War dollars!) but could not defeat the united black-Seminole forces.
Finally thousands of Seminoles and ex-slaves won assurances they could remain free and united if they agreed to migrate to the Oklahoma Indian Territory. Others neither surrendered nor left Florida. These united people had emerged undefeated with their community intact, after nearly 50 years of siege, an accomplishment without equal in domestic U.S. history.
(Sources: "Counterpunch," 12/23/06; William Weeks: "John Quincy Adams and the American Global Empire"; Kenneth Porter: "The Negro on the American Frontier" and also "The Black Seminoles: History of a Freedom-Seeking People"; and the General Jesup papers, 25th Congress)
PL History: How PLP Fought for Pro-Worker Anti-Racism in SDS
(Last issue chronicled PLP's decision to work within Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the escalation of U.S. imperialism's Vietnam genocide in order to move the mushrooming anti-war movement leftward and to build the Party.)
By the fall of 1967, SDS chapters had sprung up on hundreds of U.S. college campuses. Vigorous debate ensued on the tactics of anti-war activity. PLP members advocated the principle that tactics flowed from politics, and that class allegiance held the key to politics.
From the very beginning, PLP stood alone in fighting for a "Worker-Student Alliance." This position had several practical consequences:
* U.S. bosses got their cannon fodder for the Vietnam War through a military draft. However, college students could enjoy a "2-S" student deferment. PLP argued that a principled anti-war position required refusing this class privilege. PLP'ers rejected it individually and as a mass position. As a result, numbers of PLP members were drafted. The military brass deemed some unfit for military service for "political reasons." Others entered the military and organized against the war on the inside. PLP's principled position against the 2-S deferment won widespread respect throughout the movement, including the grudging admiration of the Party's rightwing opponents within SDS.
* From the start, PLP also vigorously opposed the position of the "official" leadership of the anti-war movement, that "Stop the bombing and negotiate" was the only mass line that could mobilize large numbers of people within the U.S. PLP argued that as an imperialist invader, the U.S. ruling class had no right to negotiate a blade of grass in Vietnam; that the only viable demand was "U.S. out NOW!" This struggle around this principle -- correct as far as it went -- was to have significant consequences several years later, when the Vietnamese "communist" leadership began negotiations with the Nixon administration.
* During the late 1960's, spontaneous working-class militancy was mushrooming, with industrial strikes, inner-city uprisings, and rebellion within the imperialist military. PLP took the lead in arguing that students should support these struggles, particularly with concrete action.
* PLP organized summer "Work-in" projects in 1967, '68 and '69, with two main goals: first to educate anti-war students about the true nature of the working class and the need to unite with workers; second, to bring anti-war, anti-imperialist politics to the working class. In a limited way, the "Work-ins" were quite successful. The student participants shed many reactionary illusions about workers, not the least of which was the boss-promoted slander that workers were racist, reactionary "oafs" incapable of understanding their class interests. Workers who met Work-in participants saw the potential for uniting with anti-war students and communists. The bosses went nuts, releasing several official documents revealing their panic at the prospect of workers and students uniting massively to oppose the war. PLP argued that this panic alone indicated we were on the right track.
* Within SDS, increasingly sharp debate began to emerge around this issue. PLP argued for unity with workers in industry, transportation and communications, and to concretize this unity by supporting strikes in auto, other heavy industries, telephone (the computer was still two decades away as a mass item), hospitals, etc. SDS's "right wing" (as we called it) opposed this position, arguing that the "traditional" working class had become obsolete, that it was hopelessly reactionary, and that "the real hope for revolution" lay in the "new working class" of alienated intellectuals and professionals. The main spokesperson for this nonsense was Herbert Marcuse, a former German social-democrat who had emigrated to the U.S. and become a professor in California. The bosses happily anointed him the ideologue of the "New Left." They promoted his ideas and his book "One-Dimensional Man," even featuring him on the cover of Time Magazine. PLP continued to fight for the Worker-Student Alliance and to organize militant action that reflected this class position.
(Next: the 1968 Columbia University strike.)
