From Mumbai to Lebanon . . . US Iraq War Fiasco Causes Endless Bloody Crisis

2,000 Arab-Jewish Protestors Slam War

‘Butt’ Heard ‘Round the World Exposes Racism at World Cup

PL’ers Spark Fight on War, Immigration ‘Reform’ at NEA Convention

UAW Leaders ‘Choice’ to Auto Workers: Unemployment Now, or Later

Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike and Miltant Class Struggle

Unite Against Guest Worker Slavery

Collective Clean-up — A Microcosm of Communism

Miami Arrests Signal Mass Racist Terror

Brooklynites Protest Ratner Housing Rip-off

Education ‘Reform’ Masks Aim for Schools to Serve Ruling Class Even More

LETTERS

India’s ‘Miracle’ Enslaves 6-year-olds

Workers Seeing Through Capitalism’s Illusions

Steel Bosses Fight Dog Eat Dog

Immigrant Airport Workers Study Red Ideas

Mexico Electoral Fraud: Millionaires Vs. Millionaires

UMW Reform Fight Fertile Ground for PLP

Non-Profits Build Fascism

REDEYE

• US torture is an old story to Latinos
• Imperialism gives marines grim mission
• That day seems a long way off….
• Liberals also want US to rule the world
• Neo-Nazis joining Army in race-war plan
• Need cheap labor? Just fill your prisons!
• Top brains’ miracle solution to poverty!
• Hey, how did Buffet get all that money?

Forward to Communism: In the 1930’s Soviet Union, Many Workers Organized for Communism Rather than Socialism

Liberal Bosses Showing Their True ( WAR ) Colors

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From Mumbai to Lebanon . . . US Iraq War Fiasco Causes Endless Bloody Crisis

Israel’s raids into Lebanon and Gaza have killed hundreds of non-combatants, as of July 14. Terrorists’ bombs killed 200 commuters in Mumbai, India, on July 11. North Korea had test-fired seven missiles in Japan’s direction the week before. While rooted in separate regional rivalries, these acts and threats of mass murder all reflect increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism’s supremacy.

Among the U.S.’s foes here, however, there are no good guys, just capitalists seeking a bigger piece of the profit pie for themselves. Hamas’s leaders, for example, despite being underdogs, are perfectly willing to lob rockets onto children to maintain control of the Palestinian Authority’s cheap labor racket, once run by Arafat.

Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s ties to Iran, not their seizure of Israeli soldiers, motivate Israel’s massive assault on Lebanese and Palestinian civilians. In the past, Israel settled such kidnappings through prisoner swaps, including the exchange of 436 Hezbollah supporters for a single Israeli intelligence agent in 2004. But now, with Iran’s ayatollahs threatening to wipe Israel off the map and developing the nuclear means that could threaten Israeli’s nuclear monopoly in the region (Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons), Israeli rulers have decided to strike pre-emptively. They deliberately provoked the hostage-taking to furnish phony grounds for crushing the Teheran-backed forces in their midst. Although Washington bankrolls Israel’s war machine with $3 billion a year, the Israeli brass moved apparently without U.S. approval. The gunslinger hired to patrol the heart of the U.S. oil empire is once again proving highly unreliable.

Iran’s newfound boldness towards Israel stems from Bush’s bungling in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal (7/14) reports, "The Iraq war has made Israel significantly less safe....Iran has used the conflict to project its influence across Iraq and the Persian Gulf region." The Iraq fiasco also underlies the "world’s sole superpower’s" relative powerlessness in the crisis. "With U.S. troops tied down in Iraq...the White House has little desire for a broader regional conflict that could bring a head-on clash with Iran right now." (WSJ, 7/14) Along with Iran, the big winners here are Russia, which is helping Iran build its nuke program, and China, Iran’s top oil and gas customer. For now, the U.S., though a pariah in world opinion, must counter Iran’s rise through diplomacy. Exploiting U.S. weakness, Russia and China recently killed "a U.S.-backed [UN] measure demanding that Iran stop enrichment activities and threatening sanctions and the use of armed force." (Bloomberg News, 7/12) Iran’s buddies succeeded in substituting "a package of incentives."

No matter who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre, it sets back U.S. plans to enlist India as a bulwark against Russia and China. As various sources blame Kashmir-based Islamists and Pakistani intelligence, tensions heighten between India and Pakistan, shifting India’s focus toward nuclear-armed Pakistan and away from its blossoming love-fest with the U.S. Bills that would bless "atomic trade" between the U.S. and India await passage on Capitol Hill. India-British-U.S. Mittal is concluding its takeover of Europe’s Arcelor, making Mittal the world’s largest producer of steel, crucial to both industry and war-making.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) focuses its July/August issue of Foreign Affairs on India with articles like "India and the Balance of Power" and "America’s New Strategic Partner?" But the Boston Globe editorialized (7/14) that the train bombers’ goal may have been "to punish India for entering into a strategic alliance with the United States." Along with its rosy forecasts for the subcontinent, Foreign Affairs warns, "the dispute over Kashmir could still spark a war between India and Pakistan." The CFR website highlights an article predicting nearly 3 million deaths at the outset of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

In return for $2 billion in aid since 2003, North Korea allies with China, just as U.S. rulers had hoped Israel would serve them, but both these "junior partners" also have their own interests as well. "With the U.S. preoccupied in Iraq, China embarked on a quiet policy of self-interest: to strengthen North Korea as a ‘buffer state’ between China and South Korea. China does not want the North to collapse, and for U.S. troops to fill the vacuum and appear on its northeast border." (Christian Science Monitor, 7/10)

China contributed generously to the creation of the long- and longer-range Korean missiles that help tie up over 100,000 U.S. ground troops in South Korea and Japan and make the entire U.S. Seventh Fleet unavailable for Mid-East action. China’s Korea strategy buttresses its ongoing plan to challenge the U.S. for control of Persian Gulf oil.

We should not conclude that the U.S., handcuffed militarily at present, will shy from war. Quite the opposite. Even before the recent escalation in killing in Iraq, the CFR boasted that the U.S. campaign was slaughtering "between fifty and a hundred a day." (CFR, 6/15/06) U.S. rulers know they have much more to do — seizing the entire Middle East and its oil and preparing to take on China and Russia. Their problem is mobilizing the nation to do it.

One tack they’re trying is anti-Arab racist militarism. (See page 5) But that appeals only to a segment of the population, like the gang of U.S. soldiers — the leader a born-again Christian — who raped an Iraqi girl and then killed her and her family. The rulers are also trying to promote Al Gore’s environmentalism to promote the government as savior and protector. [See article next issue.] But the Green Movement doesn’t produce the killers the bosses need. The Vietnam Syndrome, essentially mass opposition to profit-driven wars, continues to haunt them.

Organizing soldiers to join workers and students in the fight against U.S. imperialism is the main way to fight U.S. war-makers, not relying on U.S. capitalist rivals like Hezbollah or Iran or China. This latest Middle-East explosion has the potential to escalate at some point into a much wider war. This will accelerate the bosses’ need to militarize society and put more "boots on the ground." It is incumbent to raise, and oppose, this looming attack on the working class in unions, campus groups, churches, parent associations, and all other mass organizations.

As the world’s bosses create one crisis after another, the opportunity for us to mobilize millions in a revolutionary communist movement against the profit system’s endless wars lies open.

2,000 Arab-Jewish Protestors Slam War*

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in Israel supports the war-making rulers. On July 16, some 2,000 Arab and Jewish anti-war demonstrators rallied in Tel Aviv to protest the Israeli bosses’ military strikes in Southern Lebanon. Police arrested three protesters, claiming they were holding a demonstration without a permit. (NY Times, 7/17)

According to YNet, an Israeli web service, the protesters, who marched from Hen Boulevards toward King George Street, chanted slogans such as "Olmert agreed with Bush: War and occupation"; "Stop the war monstrosity"; and, "Say no to the brutal bombardments on Gaza." They also accused Defense Minister Amir Peretz (a Labor Party leader who joined the government) of murdering children in Gaza, and recited: "Peretz, don’t worry, we’ll be seeing you at The Hague." (Site of the war crimes tribunals)

Hours after the attack on Lebanon began, 200 demonstrators picketed Peretz’s Jerusalem office. Also on July 16, a smaller protest occurred in the Haifa Central Train Depot where a Hezbollah rocket had landed shortly before.

‘Butt’ Heard ‘Round the World Exposes Racism at World Cup

Just like in the U.S., racism is growing across Europe, especially against immigrants, and a major expression of it was seen by more than a billion people watching the recent World Cup of Football. The racist attack on France’s star football player Zinedine Zidane proves once again that whenever racists spew their filth they’re protected while when anti-racists fight back, they’re condemned by the rulers’ media.

In the Cup finals, Zidane, playing his last professional match, was ejected when he flattened the Italian player Marco Materazzi. Italy went on to win the Cup in penalty kicks and immediately the pundits denounced Zidane for a "classless act." But of course, as in many such incidents, there’s appearance and there’s essence.

Zidane was reacting to the most revolting racist attack by Materazzi. According to a transcript recorded by an employee of FIFA (Federation of International Football Association), Materazzi called Zidane a "big Algerian shit." The French anti-racist organization SOS-Racism said Materazzi also labeled Zidane a "dirty terrorist." And a Brazilian TV station that hired lip-readers to watch the video of the confrontation reported that Materazzi called Zidane’s sister "a prostitute."

Less noted was the grabbing, kicking and fouling of Zidane all game long by Italy’s defenders. Said French defender William Gallas, "The Italians did everything they could to provoke Zidane." (NY Post, 7/11) Obviously their racism was designed to get Zidane to explode, with the hope that it would get him ejected and give Italy a better chance to win the Cup — which is exactly what happened.

Lately it was reported that Zidane is saying the attack didn’t involve racism; rather it was "personal," against his "manhood." Whether this is because Zidane feels that labeling it a racist attack will reduce his corporate sponsorship earning power or because the French government is pressuring him to play down the racism for fear of sparking the kind of anti-racist rebellions that erupted last fall, the fact remains that there’s too much evidence to indicate racism is at the heart of it.

Racist insults by right-wing fans against non-white players are very common throughout Europe. Soccer in Italy itself "has a long history of racist behavior…. Materazzi’s father…managed Lazio, an infamously right-wing racist club…[whose] players openly have used the fascist stiff-arm salute at games." (NY Post) Materazzi will be playing for Lazio this year. Its "fan club, The Ultras, are notorious for their Fascist-friendly politics" and "have members in Italy’s extra-parliamentary far right…. The group has frequently used racist and anti-Semitic banners, one…50-foot banner [saying]…their opponents were a "team of n------." (Dave Zirin’s weekly column; available by e-mailing: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Now, "during post-game festivities, Roberto Calderoli, the former minister of reform and a member of the right-wing National Alliance Party,…[said] Italy had vanquished a French team made up of ‘Negroes, Communists and Muslims.’" (NY Times, 7/12)

In a recent match in Sicily, Messina’s star African player Marc Zoro picked up the ball and walked off the field, protesting the racist chants raining down on him. Many of his opponent players showed support for him, except one who yelled, "Stop that, Zoro, you’re just trying to make a name for yourself." It was none other than this same racist, Marco Materazzi.

Zidane himself, whose parents immigrated to France from Algeria, grew up poor in Marseille’s housing projects and was often taunted for his Algerian roots. It was this kind of racism that sparked last year’s youth rebellions in France. Zidane "has sparred verbally with Europe’s far-right political machine for more than a decade. He is an outspoken anti-racist on a team…[that] stands up against bigotry both inside and outside the sport." (Zirin) Zidane was ejected twice "for striking foes who had taunted his religion or ‘race.’"

Given all this, the "butt heard ’round the world" was only a token of what pro-fascist racists like Materazzi really deserve.

PL’ers Spark Fight on War, Immigration ‘Reform’ at NEA Convention

ORLANDO, FL., July 12 — Last week, almost 10,000 teachers and educational professionals met here at the Convention of the National Education Association (NEA). PLP members have raised — and won friends to — communist ideas at these meetings for many years.

This year the PL contingent’s key issues to discuss with teachers were imperialist war, immigration reform policy, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and support for the teachers’ strike in Oaxaca, Mexico. While we raised the need for that support, we lost control of the motion, and were unable to include language saying that the PRD candidate for President of Mexico, Lopez Obrador, would not solve the problems faced by teachers and students. But the convention did act in international solidarity by voting to send $10,000 to Section 22 of the teachers’ union in Oaxaca to help with the medical bills of teachers and their supporters attacked by the police.

Through distribution of more than 2,000 leaflets and 200 CHALLENGES, discussions and floor activity we argued that inter-imperialist rivalry — the main contradiction in the world today — must be seen as the primary reason for the fights over immigration and education reform. We explained that the U.S. ruling class is worried that its industrial base and troop levels here are dismally low for their future imperialist needs. (A colleague from the Peace and Justice Caucus told one comrade she would like to send her daughter to work with us to learn what communists do.)

We noted that war and fascism are the order of the day now; that both the McCain-Kennedy and Hagel-Martinez immigration reform acts are attempts to win immigrants to patriotism and, through the DREAM Act and similar language, compel immigrant students to enter the armed forces to obtain "legal" status. We addressed this on the floor and also in our state delegations and caucus meetings. Many teachers were totally unaware of how the DREAM Act pushes immigrant youth into the military, and were interested in PL’s ideas on the Act’s link to widening war and inter-imperialist rivalry.

We fought to include international solidarity with Iraqi teachers, students and parents in the motion calling for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, leaving no bases behind. The Convention didn’t consider this motion, although a voice vote clearly supported doing so. In both this vote and in the discussion of the DREAM Act, the NEA leadership used parliamentary maneuvers to ensure that the Convention would not discuss main issues putting the union in opposition to the Democrats and the liberal bosses.

We attacked the role of the Broad and Gates Foundations in preparing schools for war, as well as the broader implications of NCLB, saying that under capitalism all educational reform legislation, serves the ruling class’s need to train loyal soldiers and workers for imperialist war. Again, delegates thanked us for connecting the dots, and explaining the links between these issues.

Hundreds of delegates read leaflets with these positions, but we also discussed them with our close friends over dinner, at which delegates — both PL’ers and friends — reviewed our political ideas and convention strategy to implement them at the convention. This work here reflects years of activity in our union locals.

Our co-workers attend these conventions to fight attacks on their livelihood and on public education. Teachers nationwide, including from rural states in which we have very little contact, go to these conventions looking for leadership. Many are open to our point of view. The convention allows us to spend more time at social events and during boring floor speeches better acquainting ourselves with teachers from home and from around the country, and engaging in more political discussion with them. As the crisis of capitalism sharpens, more of these teachers can be won to join PLP in fighting for communist revolution as the only solution to this system of war, racism and exploitation.

UAW Leaders ‘Choice’ to Auto Workers: Unemployment Now, or Later

DETROIT, MI, June 27 — At the United Auto Workers convention in Las Vegas, June 11-16, the union leadership rewarded itself with pay hikes while giving auto bosses over $15 billion in wage and healthcare concessions from active and retired workers and agreeing to the possible elimination of more than 40 plants and 80,000 jobs. GM and Ford market share has dropped and UAW membership has sunk to one-third of its former peak. While GM and Ford close plants, Honda, Toyota and Mercedes are opening new non-union shops in the U.S.

While about 2,000 delegates and staff let the good times roll, 12,600 at Delphi and 35,000 at GM were abandoning ship, taking buyouts and early retirements negotiated by the union. Meanwhile, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved Delphi's plan that could eliminate nearly all 33,000 U.S. hourly workers within six months. At the convention, former UAW President Doug Fraser said that the "beauty" of the buyout agreement is that "it leaves it up to ‘personal choice.’ That way, it doesn’t look like the union is 100% on the side of the company."

"Personal choice" under capitalism means unemployment now or unemployment a little later.

More than one-third of all U.S. GM and Delphi hourly workers will be gone by the end of the year, allowing GM to beat its target of cutting 30,000 jobs in North America more than two years ahead of schedule and reducing its production capacity to reflect its shrinking U.S. market share. The job and health care cuts for retirees and other sweeping measures will save GM $8 billion annually after losing $10.6 billion last year.

In April, UAW Vice-President Bob King told a conference sponsored by the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank that the union "made a conscious choice to put aside the adversarial approach. We believe adversarial relationships drive manufacturing jobs out of the country." (Detroit News, 4/20) Next summer, he will "put aside the adversarial approach" and lead the contract bargaining at Ford. He also tried to stop a picket line at Ford World Headquarters over the firing of some black engineers. He said, "We don’t need that kind of publicity. We’re trying to sell cars." Union "leaders" turned car salesmen!

Replacing King as VP in charge of National Organizing, Terry Thurman is the former director of Region 3 in Indiana and Kentucky. It was in Indiana that Chrysler sold a parts plant to Metaldyne, and King and Thurman teamed up to force workers into accepting more than $10/hour pay cuts so that Metaldyne would "recognize" the union.

Black workers and youth in Detroit, Flint, Toledo and other cities have been devastated by the retreat of the U.S. auto bosses — driven by capitalism’s inherent competition for maximum profits — leaving behind crumbling schools, few if any public services, poverty and police terror. Racist unemployment for black workers is still double what it is for whites, and the income gap is growing.

Capitalism’s contradictions and inter-imperialist rivalry cannot be resolved at the bargaining table — ultimately only by imperialist war. The union leaders want us to follow the Democrats to bigger and deadlier wars. For the international working class, the only solution is communist revolution. We will prepare for the 2007 contract talks by expanding the base of CHALLENGE readers and distributors and adding layers of class struggle and personal ties.

Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike and Miltant Class Struggle

OAXACA, MEXICO, July 10 — The teachers and the workers here are writing one of the most militant pages in the history of class struggle in this Mexican state. The fight for better living conditions and against Governor Ulises Ruiz — signified y the mega march of 500,000 workers supporting the striking teachers — showed a desire for a minimum of dignity for the workers of Oaxaca. But our struggle must be for everything because we the workers create everything.

Oaxaca’s teachers face great obstacles. The federal government won’t grant teacher demands for higher wages despite reaping millions from rising oil prices. Oaxaca’s teachers’ movement has the potential to affect workers’ wages nationwide. A wage hike for Oaxaca teachers could spark similar demands from more than a million other teachers and from tens of millions of other workers. This would wreck the bosses’ and politicians’ plans to maintain current starvation wages. Capitalism and its government exist to exploit the working class.

That’s why mass support is needed from their fellow teachers and other workers across the country. Workers in the fields and the cities must stand in solidarity with this struggle. We’re all part of the same working class and affected by this struggle. There are no isolated problems or solutions. The attacks on the Oaxaca teachers are an assault on the entire international working class.

The workers in the area must understand that using the vote to "punish" the PRI and PAN parties for their dirty role in repressing the Oaxaca striking teachers only benefits another part of the entire capitalist election scam, the PRD. The root of our problems is this whole profit system in which the governments and its electoral parties faithfully represent and defend the bosses’ interests. They hardly care about the welfare of the working class.

As workers our main objective in these struggles must be exposure of these forces since their main function is to divide the working class and legitimize its exploitation. Our main job — be it teachers, miners, factory workers or farm workers — must be to organize the entire exploited class to destroy this capitalist system with communist revolution, led by the Progressive Labor Party.

Our participation in these class struggles is crucial to achieving this. We, the working class, don’t need anyone to rule over us, since we are the only ones who create wealth. We can change the world and establish workers’ power.

PLP members stand in solidarity with the Oaxaca teachers and with the rest of the struggles of the international working class.

Unite Against Guest Worker Slavery

July 12 — We live in a diabolical country in a diabolical time, and New Orleans has become a laboratory for crushing the working class in the U.S. The rulers are importing "guest workers" to do the jobs low-paid black workers had before Hurricane Katrina.

If they don’t substantially lower our wages, they won’t be able to compete worldwide. If they don’t win us to fight their wars, they won’t be able to stay top imperialist dog. We must help people understand that the working class needs to unite and fight racism against black and immigrants workers, and against imperialist wars. Eventually workers will have to take matters — and power — into our own hands by fighting for communism: a world with no exploitation, racism and endless wars.

The Democratic Party and some immigrant rights groups are promoting the H2B or Guest Worker program. What guest workers face in New Orleans is a window to the future they want for everyone.

XXXXX Hotels  recruits unemployed workers from Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic, workers who see an opportunity to work for maybe ten months at U.S. wages and send money home to their struggling families. They’re told that for an up-front investment of $5,000-$10,000, they will get the necessary papers and transportation. They sign long contracts written in English, agreeing to work for $6.39 per hour for 60-80 hour a week with time-and-one-half for overtime, totaling $25,000. They’re promised rooms in the hotels where they work, with swimming pools. They borrow the up-front money and plan to work very hard.

But upon arrival they’re charged $50 a week for a bunk bed in a room with four workers designed for two and no pool access. The rent plus $8 per meal (about four hour’s labor per day) and employee taxes are deducted directly from their paychecks. They pay into Medicare but have no healthcare coverage. They are moved frequently from hotel to hotel and have no phones to contact their families. They get 24-40 hours of work per week ($6,000-$10,000 for the contract). They work, eat and sleep under the eye of the boss. If they leave, they’re automatically "illegal" and can be deported. When they eventually return home, they’re still in debt for at least the original $5,000 -$10,000. This forced labor is slavery!

Other immigrants are working all sorts of jobs under similar conditions. Day laborers hang around building-supply stores and street corners, hoping for a day’s work. XXXXX Hotels rents these workers cots in their parking lot for $50 a week. Before Katrina this city was 70% black. Now, immigrants work on construction sites and on sanitation crews and do landscaping for less wages than black workers used to earn.

The bosses want black workers to blame immigrants for "stealing" their jobs. But many black workers understand that the same bosses who left them to die are now preventing them from coming home while bringing guest workers into the city.

There are many lessons to be learned from the fascist laboratory that is New Orleans. The main one is that this city can also be a place to build a mass integrated, international PLP. Our Summer Project here in this epicenter of racism is energizing our members and friends, winning new recruits and developing more leaders, especially among black and Latin youth.

Collective Clean-up — A Microcosm of Communism

The New Orleans government has warned that it will completely demolish all homes not gutted by August 29, the anniversary of Katrina. The city’s poorest areas, including the hardest-hit 9th Ward, ironically have the highest number per capita of completely paid-off homes of any area in the U.S. So, in order not to lose them completely to government bulldozers, the owners are highly motivated to gut their ruined houses of moldy walls and water-logged furniture, the only way they can be repaired and made habitable.

But a gutting crew costs $6,000, plus repairs. Residents will need to use their pensions (if any), savings (if any) and Social Security for rebuilding materials, which have doubled in cost since Katrina. Meanwhile, there’s nowhere to live, since homes are unsafe until gutted. The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) temporary trailer parks provided after Katrina are literally concentration camps — surrounded by police forces — and too far from people’s homes or jobs, whatever few jobs are available. Residents say the lack of FEMA funding and scarcity of trailers has made FEMA a "four letter word not to be used."

Not only are government bureaucracies like FEMA incompetent, but rebuilding projects have been deliberately designed to fail. Grossly inadequate one-foot-thick new levees built in working-class neighborhoods are in blatant contrast with levees half-a-football-field-thick built to protect commercial areas, the French Quarter and the Garden District’s rich mansions.

Volunteers, mostly young people, from all around the country, donate their vacation time from high school and college.Five to twelve in a crew perform this serious task. The work is truly "from each according to commitment" since both men and women wield sledgehammers; the heavy lifting requires teamwork. First, the appliances and flood-soaked beds and sofas are carried to the curb. The stench of maggot-infested food and refrigerant flow from refrigerators. Volunteers suffer nausea, often vomiting, and must bear the continuous smell of mold until the walls are demolished.

We wear heavy work boots, donated Teflon suits, masks, goggles, rubber gloves under work gloves, in 100-degree heat and virtually 100% humidity, producing instant sweat, immediate mold smell inside the mask and fogged goggles. Yet, we are in this as a unit. We work as one: carrying and pushing, the whole crew lifting sodden, plaster-filled carpets together. Then some break the sheet rock with sledgehammers, others with crowbars and others climb to the second floor to kick down the ceiling, the molding and the ventilating system and fans. Almost everything goes into wheelbarrows, pushed through sludge to the street. Insulation is lifted from between the frame. We remove the last of the clothing — still on hangers — the cookware from kitchen drawers and the soaked books and teddy bears.

Then hundreds of nails are tediously removed from the frame, sometimes taking two days. The floors are then swept clean.

One volunteer said this process of working together was a little like building communism: always listening when someone asks for help, taking breaks when needed for water and meals and working for as long as needed.

The way we share the sandwiches, the food at the volunteer shelter, cooking there and cleaning collectively, gives us a glimpse of a future society. The willingness and motivation to work hard for the common good, and completely without pay, shows us that many people are made of the "right stuff" for communism.

Mass Sale of CHALLENGE At Housing Complex

On a recent trip to New Orleans to participate in the fight against racism — to help Katrina victims move back home — a group of PLP’ers sold CHALLENGE at a local public housing complex. Residents received us warmly. They had made a militant struggle to re-enter their homes and now live under the threat of being forced out by capitalist shock troops — cops and the National Guard. We developed contacts among the residents, who wanted to know more about PLP. A local bodega agreed to take a bundle of CHALLENGES regularly.

We raised many aspects of our revolutionary communist ideas with volunteers as well as residents, but we need to achieve a more mass distribution of CHALLENGE. Some of us were working under conditions we were unaccustomed to, but this main task sometimes got lost in all our other activities.

This project is good training in trying to emphasize revolutionary ideas as opposed to liberal reform, especially as fascism grows throughout the U.S., helping us learn how to function in fascist-like conditions.

A Project Participant

Miami Arrests Signal Mass Racist Terror

The arrest of seven young black men in Miami for allegedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago is the latest stop on the U.S. rulers’ road to fascism. The U.S. Attorney for South Florida, R. Alexander Acosta, told the media that these confused young men had "developed a hatred of America." Yes, they probably did hate the racist and oppressive conditions experienced by millions of black workers and youth in ghettos nationwide. That’s now become a terrorist crime, punishable under the fascist Patriot Act.

Photographs of these black men, some Haitian immigrants, some in dreadlocks, were plastered on every major newspaper’s front page. Ten years ago, the headlines would have read, "Predators" or Wolf Pack." Today they’re branded as "terrorists" and charged with having planned an event as big as 9/11, all to inspire racist terror in the population.

The racist rulers need fascism to mobilize the population for bigger and deadlier wars, and to crush any potential resistance to their increasing attacks on workers. These arrests reflect the merger of the racist "war on crime/war on drugs," which imprisoned over one million black workers and youth, with the "war on terror."

Those arrested are from Miami’s Liberty City section, a ghetto of mostly black workers with high unemployment, plenty of racist police terror and the scene of numerous rebellions. Dozens of federal cops in fatigues with automatic weapons swarmed over the neighborhood. Bush’s Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims these young men swore an oath to Al Qaeda, and planned to wage "a full ground war against the United States." (Miami Herald, 6/23)

However, the Herald also says, "[A]fter sweeps of various locations in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons." And according to one defense attorney, an undercover FBI agent was the only person who ever claimed any connection to Al Qaeda. Those arrested didn’t have the money to buy cars, radios, uniforms, guns or boots. According to the indictment, they allegedly asked the FBI agent for $50,000 and gave him their shoe sizes.

The FBI has a long history of infiltration and cold-blooded murder. In the 1960’s, FBI informers inside the KKK, acting on orders from their FBI handlers, participated in the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls, and in the murders of Civil Rights workers, from Viola Liuzzo to Goodman, Cheney and Schwerner. In 1980, an FBI informant was in the lead car of a KKK caravan that killed and wounded about a dozen members of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, N.C.

In the 1970’s, FBI agents played a major role in the trial of the "Panther 21" in NYC. Like the Miami 7, the "Panther 21" were on trial for "planning" to blow up the NYC subway, the Bronx Zoo and other sites. At the trial, FBI infiltrators, some actually leaders of the Panther Party, testified that they in fact, had "planned" everything and couldn’t get the "21" to cooperate. The "21" were acquitted, but the exposure of the degree of infiltration quickened the Panthers’ downfall.

The FBI, Homeland Security, local "Red Squads" and other cops are all busy making plans to attack and undermine any threats to the ruling class, real or imagined. The main antidote to police infiltration and provocation is to have solid personal/political ties among many workers and youth. Having a mass base for PLP makes it harder for "strangers" to appear and suggest something crazy. And when they do, they will stand out like a sore thumb. Our response to this fascist attack should be to work harder to build a mass PLP.

Brooklynites Protest Ratner Housing Rip-off

BROOKLYN, NY, July 10 — My church’s Social Club hosted a panel discussion on a massive, controversial $3.4 billion development project called Atlantic Yards, to be built in the center of Brooklyn. All but one speaker opposed the project even though 40 proponents were invited. The opposing speakers presented a horror story of the destruction of the neighborhood at taxpayers’ expense, to benefit corporate developer Bruce Ratner. They exposed secrecy, lies and false promises of jobs and affordable housing. The way this project is being jammed through against popular will is one sign of growing fascism.

Atlantic Yards encompasses 22 acres for a New Jersey NETS basketball arena, seventeen 40-story luxury buildings and a showcase "Miss Brooklyn" building shaped like a 62-story wedding dress! The project will destroy a working-class neighborhood. Vehicular traffic would increase 50% while the main arteries are now at 100% of capacity. There are no plans to increase already overcrowded subway lines in the area.

For Ratner to seize thousands of existing households, the Supreme Court had to redefine "eminent domain" — "commercial gain" rather than public good "now rules over personal property." The proposal is in the State Legislature’s hands, by-passing city regulations.

There has been no popular input, only closed-door meetings. Other contractors were barred from offering bids. Ratner has bought off opposition groups like ACORN with large donations. They and others say they believe Ratner’s claim of "making progress" and "improving the lives of the needy," by his commitment to 3,800 permanent "minority" jobs and 1,800 affordable housing units. But Ratner won’t commit to numbers in writing, and his track record is the opposite. Because there is an affordable-housing component, the project gets heavy State subsidies and Ratner gets the billions.

One panelist charged that the affordable housing would be built off-site, belying the dream of some workers receiving the same housing benefits as the rich by living next door. Another speaker declared there is no future here, just minimal jobs.

The room was filled with anger at the process allowing this project, and also great appreciation for those who are tirelessly trying to stop it. DDDB (Develop, Don’t Destroy Brooklyn) has 400 active volunteers. Local community papers, musicians and movie celebrities have voiced opposition.

But a friend asked, "What’s PLP’s view on this project?" We say this struggle rips the mask off the so-called democratic process, where billions of public monies are funneled to greedy capitalists, a clear example of fascist assault on working-class needs. As long as capitalism exists we can expect more such assaults.

Currently we probably don’t have the strength to halt this luxury housing scheme built at working-class expense, just as we can’t stop Halliburton profiteering from "cleaning up" New Orleans or Iraq. It may be that more powerful capitalists will stop Ratner because they can’t afford to give this petty contractor billions, needing to fortify their position while being chased from Iraq to China. The ruling class makes the decisions because they have State power. A victory in this struggle is winning our friends to understand that logic and debate will not stop capitalism. We need workers’ power and communist revolution to wrest state power from the bosses; therefore, we need to win our friends to see that they must join PLP to strive towards this goal.

Education ‘Reform’ Masks Aim for Schools to Serve Ruling Class Even More

Modern war, when unleashed on a world scale, is total war. It requires detailed preparation by the state or government. The current quest by the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class — the Rockefeller-led grouping - for domination of the world’s oil —reserves is not yet war on a world scale. They themselves say it could require 30 years of war. Since no major imperialist power besides Britain has signed on to it, it could unleash world war at any time — one launched by an imperialist power which, while dominating in military hardware, is rapidly losing its industrial or manufacturing prowess. In short, there’s a certain desperation in this quest.

"Meet Donald Fisher," says the San Francisco Weekly, "the private billionaire with unprecedented sway over ordinary San Franciscans’ lives." Fisher is the retired founder of GAP stores. According to Forbes magazine his family fortune places him among the world’s top 120 billionaires.

So far, he’s donated some $46 million to the 52 Charter schools organized by KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program). In addition, KIPP received some $7.9 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Joined by venture capitalist John Doerr, Netflix launcher, Reed Hastings and the California Teachers Association (CTA), Fisher also backed a California State ballot initiative that requires school districts to provide free facilities to charter schools.

According to Business Week (6/26), Education Secretary Margaret Spellings claims, "Business is becoming the voice of reform." The magazine lists the main contributors: the Gates Foundation is the largest (even before Warren Buffet’s "donation"), followed by the Eli Broad Foundation, the Milken Family Foundation, the G.E. Foundation and companies like IBM.

This effort contains a division of labor. The Walton Family Foundation concentrates on providing low-income families a choice among schools; the Milkens on training and retaining teachers; the Gates push small schools and technology; and the Broad Foundation trains District Superintendents, senior management, newly-elected school board members and even parent groups.

Co-ordination on this scale is not spontaneous. Yet where and when these decisions were made remains an unreported mystery. Therefore, it’s easy to underestimate these foundations’ grip on education. Take the Broad Foundation for example: it has trained Superintendents or senior executives in 38 school districts; placed senior management trainees in 15 major districts; and trained 109 new school-board members in 29 districts representing some 2.7 million students. In addition, they fund grass-root parent groups.

Much of this "reform" is aimed at winning and mobilizing working-class parents and students, especially black and Latino families in the big cities, to support "better education" with the sinister underlying plan being to win them to support the racist, imperialist U.S. bosses, the source of the very racism that continues to viciously attack these same families.

Advisors to the Broad Education Foundation include United Federation of Teachers union President Randi Weingarten and CTA President Barbara Kerr. They urgently tell us, "We are convinced that as a country we face a crisis of epic proportions, one that threatens our economy, our democracy and our very standard of living."

What emerges in this orchestrated rule of foundations is a strengthening of the direct dictatorship of capital. Communists have always pointed out that "democratic government" is primarily a mask hiding the actual class dictatorship of capital. It is a mask, though, that in normal times serves the real function of allowing the various factions of capital to argue out their differences, gaining or losing advantages through legislation. For them that’s "the rule of law."

But at other times — notably in war economies or severe economic crises — they choose varying degrees of a more direct and unified class dictatorship of capital. Today, foundations and grant-giving are the mechanisms for this direct control. Like its twin, immigration "reform," school reform represents a sharpening of class dictatorship in preparation for extended war, and sooner or later, world war.

(Next: How the bosses fight to change the world views of students and their parents and win their allegiance to U.S. imperialism.)

LETTERS

India’s ‘Miracle’ Enslaves 6-year-olds

Mumbai, India, made the news when terrorists attacked commuter trains recently, murdering over 200. Mumbai is touted as India’s financial center, representing the country’s supposed "capitalist miracle." But the fact is India remains one of the world’s most exploitative and poorest countries. Mumbai is no exception.

India’s weekly Frontline Magazine (3/25-4/07, 2006) reported on child bonded [slave] labor in Mumbai, stating:

"Maharashtra state is officially child labour-free but the exploitation of children continues in Mumbai, the state capital.

"Bits of fabric, gold threads, glitter beads and tiny fake pearls are some signs that invariably guide you to the dens of misery called ‘zari factories.’ Steep staircases lead to a trapdoor, which open into hovel-like rooms that house the zari units. Until recently, boys between the ages of six and 14 were found kneeling at low work-tables sewing beads and coloured threads on to vast lengths of fabric. There are thousands of these factories in Mumbai spread across not just Govandi but other slums such as Dharavi and Madanpura.

"The boys work 20-hour days, seven days a week, in dingy minute-sized rooms…. [with] hardly any ventilation and the floors are grimy. Each room has a small smelly bathroom located in one corner. Another corner serves as a basic cooking area. They sleep, bathe and eat in this same room. They are given two meals a day and, if lucky, two cups of tea. ‘It’s a life of wretchedness,’ says Satish Kasbe, a social worker with Pratham, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that works in rescue and rehabilitation of child labour.

"The boys are rarely allowed to leave the room. If they must, they do so with an older boy who is a karigar (craftsman). And if they are lucky, the owner takes them on an occasional Sunday outing. Sometimes the owner locks the trapdoor, to open it only the next morning. Some rooms have two trapdoors. So if there is a raid, the children are shunted down the other one, which is then covered with a workbench.

"‘When we return the kids, we ask the parents why they sent them,’ says Kasbe. Many say they cannot afford to look after them. Some believe that by sending the children they save them from a miserable life in the village."

Again, when the rulers talk about "capitalist revival," they mean more misery and super-exploitation of all workers.

An Internationalist

Workers Seeing Through Capitalism’s Illusions

Recently, when paying for a doctor visit, the clerk behind the counter expressed outrage at my being charged $60 for a two-minute follow-up consultation, where the doctor merely said, "Everything looks good." She said she thought the fee was ridiculous since I was a "cash-paying" customer and had already paid a large sum for the original visit.

Frustrated by the lack of medical insurance for herself and her young daughter — despite having a full-time job — she said she was struggling to pay for just food and shelter, let alone for the high cost of healthcare. She had been covered by Medi-cal but the government canceled it. Now to get any medical assistance she must qualify for welfare.

Feeling helpless with this lack of options, she told me that "the system certainly doesn’t work for us." A simple statement, but very revealing of the frustration and helplessness most workers feel struggling daily to survive under capitalism.

As imperialist rivalry sharpens abroad, the bosses’ fascism at home grows, too. Capitalism forces all workers and their families to pay — financially as well as with their lives — for the ruling class’s oil wars and profits. Examples of these abuses are visible in every aspect of capitalist daily life. That’s why it’s important to find the communist ideas behind every-day problems and constantly raise communist politics, wherever we might find ourselves.

I couldn’t help but relate this incident to a recent anti-Minuteman counter-demonstration I attended in the downtown garment district. A small group of anti-racist activists confronted a handful of Minuteklan racists yelling racist slurs and trying to intimidate a crowd of shoppers and workers. The workers’ anger was clear; some joined the activists.

After the protest, one worker approached us, asking for more leaflets for his co-workers. He was irate about the racists holding a march in downtown, where mostly immigrants work and shop. He couldn’t understand why some would scapegoat immigrant workers by saying things like, "they’re taking our jobs," when he sees the opposite in his daily life. Immigrants, he thought, are forced to "take" jobs paying poverty wages, in conditions sometimes three times as hard as citizen workers. Although not defining it, this worker saw the faulty logic in blaming fellow workers for the bosses’ racism and exploitation. Immigrant labor doesn’t "steal" jobs, but instead bosses use racism and nationalism to justify the super-exploitation of immigrant workers — as well as workers abroad — and to get citizens to blame their fellow working-class brothers and sisters.

He then told us about an Immigration Service (INS) raid at a nearby sweatshop. The INS (now under Homeland Security) tried to arrest several workers. Word spread quickly. By the time the agents tried to leave, workers from other factories had surrounded the building, ready to challenge the agents. Frightened by the large crowd and seeing the potential power of these workers, the agents released those they had detained and left.

The two events, although seemingly unrelated, indicate workers are frustrated with a system that claims to meet their needs but actually exploits, terrorizes and vilifies them! We must make these connections. The belief that by "doing your part," contributing to and complying with the bosses’ system, you will get rewarded is simply an illusion. Increasingly workers worldwide are running into the dead-ends of capitalism and imperialism. What isn’t an illusion is the potential power workers possess as a class to change society. We must fight to reveal the communist truths in every one of capitalism’s evils in order to build a movement and a Party that will make the power of workers an actuality.

A Comrade

Steel Bosses Fight Dog Eat Dog

The CHALLENGE editorial about "Sharpening Imperialist Dogfight" (6/21), clearly exposed the increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism, the growing threat of war and the urgent need to build a mass PLP. In part, it focused on the struggle between Mittal Steel and Russia’s Severstal steel giant to acquire Arcelor, the giant European steel company. At the time of the writing, Severstal and Arcelor had a deal and CHALLENGE correctly pointed out the growing isolation of U.S. imperialism and the growing ties between France, Germany and Russia.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the bank. It now appears that Mittal will get Arcelor for $33 billion, making it by far the biggest steel company in the world. The New York Times (6/26) reported, "The fight for Arcelor was closely watched around the world, as it evolved into a clash between two major forces shaping the world economy: the ascendancy of India and China as sources of new business models and ambitious new companies, and a rising tide of protectionism in the West, fueled by anxiety that new competition will erode a way of life.

"‘These are all tremors of the fact that the world system, which has been maintained by the United States and Europe, has suddenly got to adjust to the rise of China and India, and it ain’t going to be easy,’ said Kishore Mahbubani, a former Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations."

CHALLENGE implied that because Mittal is "backed by U.S. and British based investors," it is more an asset of U.S. imperialism while the Times views it more as part of the rise of Indian and Chinese imperialism. This further underlines the point that CHALLENGE made about the growing threats to U.S. imperialism, which will inevitably lead to World War and if we build a mass PLP, open the door to communist revolution.

A Reader

Immigrant Airport Workers Study Red Ideas

Airport workers are responding to revolutionary politics. We have been fighting racism and sexism on the job, and now we’ve begun a PLP study group among mostly immigrant workers from Africa. They’re really on the ball, with many questions for the Party.

Since these workers emigrated from Africa, amid so much poverty, war and AIDS, it’s only fitting we study imperialism first. We’ve been discussing why the U.S., with only 6% of the world’s population, uses about 50% of the world’s resources. This outright thievery by U.S. bosses is enforced either militarily, as in Iraq, or by pro-U.S. flunkies, as in Africa. The study group agreed that workers starve in places like Africa because local capitalists work hand in hand with the imperialists.

We’re studying from CHALLENGE, from the book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney, and even from the bosses’ newspapers. We also noted how the imperialists use racism against the world’s workers. The current sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is leading to World War III; only communist revolution by the international working class, led by a mass PLP, can destroy imperialism.

Over the coming period we’ll study dialectical materialism, the struggle against racism and sexism, and the fight for communism.

Red Airport Study Group

Mexico Electoral Fraud: Millionaires Vs. Millionaires

On July 16, 1.5 million people rallied in Mexico City to protest the fraud their candidate López Obrador suffered in the July 2 presidential elections. Millions of workers believe that López Obrador and his PRD party would reduce their poverty.

During and after the election, the big millionaires of the Business Coordinating Council said they would continue meeting in order to see the matter to its conclusion. The week before the election they paid for radio and TV spots telling people not to be fooled and to "keep what has been accomplished."

These bosses are at war with their counterparts who support López Obrador. He believes the reforms capitalism needs cannot be implemented without a tiny loosening of the noose they've tied around our necks.

The bosses supporting PAN candidate Calderón have fought to prevent López Obrador's millionaire supporters from winning the election. The dogfight continues as the PRD demands a recount before leaving the decision to the Electoral Tribune.

As PLP has said, the workers have nothing to gain from supporting one politician over another. However, the bosses continue to swindle millions of workers, who participate in politics only by choosing one oppressor over another.

Unfortunately, past revolutionaries opted for the "lesser evil" until finally abandoning the path of revolution altogether.

Now we must take the communist banners to all the exploited and oppressed who feel frustrated by the probable electoral defeat of the PRD.

The bosses who support López Obrador are not lesser evils. They merely have different tactics in their war against the working class. They want to use small reforms in order to win workers' loyalty to that sector of Mexican bosses who seek more independence from the U.S. imperialists. But no matter who the bosses are, their loyalty is to their profits - always at the expense of the working class.

In coming protests, we invite workers to march with PLP. The working class can only be truly conscious when it organizes itself as a party. PLP has that goal. Join us!

Comrades from Mexico

UMW Reform Fight Fertile Ground for PLP

The July 19 letter from "Red Industrial Fighter" (RIF) questions my view that miners would struggle for a United Mine Workers (UMW) local. RIF wants to know why I reached that conclusion, asking, concerning my claim, "Is it just because of the increased exploitation and oppression or have plans been made?"

But U.S. labor history demonstrates that miners, and workers in general, are more than willing to fight their oppressors. I don't think miners and other workers will continue taking this bosses' class war on their living and working conditions. If U.S. workers are unwilling to fight oppression and battle for a union, etc., then communists are up shit's creek without a paddle. In other words, we would be forced to re-evaluate our whole perspective which relies on the position that oppression and exploitation breeds working-class resistance. Without this resistance, we will have one helluva job winning this apparently defeated working class to communist revolution. If the miners and other workers fail to mount fight-backs, independent from the bourgeois state and parties, how and where will we intervene with red ideas?

Therefore, I support any miners' battle for a union since this would provide an opening for such intervention. Also, I still believe it's better for miners to have a union then not. Think about it: suppose the only job one could find was in an unsafe, non-union mine in backwoods Appalachia where you witnessed fellow miners lose their lives? Suppose you knew next to nothing about communism (and can't arrive at communist consciousness spontaneously; if that were possible, there would be no need for a revolutionary party)?

But suppose you did possess trade union consciousness and wanted to organize a UMW local, and were prepared to fight for it? If this was the only way you knew to fight your oppression and the exploitation, wouldn't this be a positive development and one that communists would support? If these miners are unwilling to become involved in a fight-back, then what hope is there to win them to revolution?

Consider: prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, Russian Orthodox priest Father Gapon organized his Assembly of Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg, a reformist working-class organization. Several thousand workers joined. Initially, the Bolsheviks denounced Gapon, but then Lenin fought to win the Bolsheviks to intervene aggressively in this movement. It only makes sense. If you want to win workers to a revolutionary position, you must meet them where they're at. In many ways, it was positive that the Gapon movement existed, since it opened the door to Bolshevik agitation.

Eventually, especially after Bloody Sunday when the Tsar's police slaughtered 1,000 workers, others began to listen closely to the Bolsheviks. Russian workers attempted to fight their oppression by joining a reform organization, and this involvement in Gapon's group led to the openness of workers to revolutionary Bolshevik ideas. As Lenin knew, there is a relationship between reform movements and revolution. That's why he wrote, "Left-wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder."

Take the immigrant rights movement. Its leadership is rotten to the core and is attempting to steer it in the wrong direction. Still, the emergence of this movement is a positive development since it made it possible for PLP communists to aggressively intervene.

RIF wants to destroy all reformist illusions. I would contend that if miners fail to rise against their oppressors and exploitation, even in a reformist fashion, then communist revolution might just be an illusion. From a study of miners' history and my own personal experience in the coalfields, I think they will fight back and I would welcome and support them.

Red Coal

Non-Profits Build Fascism

Today, non-profit organizations in the U.S. help build fascism by inhibiting working-class consciousness of the need to destroy the profit system with a communist revolution to build a society where everyone shares the hardships and the wealth. Instead, they push the Big Lie that you can improve capitalism if one makes a patriotic sacrifice through donations. They also hide continuing cuts in welfare, retirement plans, legal aid, migrant worker assistance and other programs. Even more important, now they’re administering the government’s new openly fascist projects.

For example, the Catholic Church is a major sub-contractor to the U.S. government, helping supervise many new concentration camps — "juvenile facilities" — in which undocumented youth are held before deportation. Many good people work in this youth program, believing that at least conditions are slightly better for the imprisoned youth because they’re no longer held in the adult lock-ups. But the number of such youth crossing the border and being arrested is skyrocketing. Meanwhile, the church and many decent social-worker types are enabling it to happen by helping run the jails. These people think they’re improving capitalism but instead they’re building 21st century fascism.

Another example: the government is hard at work imprisoning and deporting many undocumented workers while planning to import many more in slave-worker capacities — "guest worker" or "temporary worker" or "blue-card worker." Meanwhile, it has allocated millions of dollars to various non-profits to stop "trafficking in humans," women, young girls and youth brought into the U.S. for prostitution and slave labor. Yet, in six years these programs have helped less than 200 people escape. In reality, the program is a sham to deceive people into believing that at least the U.S. is protecting women and children even as it imports huge numbers of undocumented workers to face wage slavery.

Actually, non-profits are private versions of "national service," which U.S. capitalists talk about using to restore the military draft. They ask people to sacrifice to help do "good things" while really strengthening the U.S. war machine. Simultaneously, they conceal the worsening living standards which allows the rulers to divert profits and taxes to pay for the war effort. Even though people employed in the non-profits oppose exploitation and might be anti-war, big shots from the corporate and legal communities run these outfits. Liberals sitting on local non-profit boards of directors are very committed to the Democratic Party and electoral reform, another reason why the non-profits will always serve the interests of their capitalist masters.

However, volunteering and working in these organizations can be very important, since these are the remaining organizations — besides schools, unions and churches — which the rulers still permit to exist while creating a fascist war machine.

The clients of these non-profit organizations and the decent-hearted, pro-working-class people employed in them can be organized to fight back. Many are ready to do just that. But it is crucial to develop that desire into the need to join PLP and organize a revolution to destroy capitalism. It’s becoming easier to explain that fighting for reforms in a non-profit will soon see funds cut off and workers fired. But, if one fights back and builds PLP simultaneously, it will enhance the ability of workers to rise up and destroy capitalism. The goal of communism, a sharing society, where exploitation and bosses are banned, is what many people in non-profits already want.

REDEYE

US torture is an old story to Latinos

The recent United Nations report that the United States military is torturing detainees at the Guantánamo military base is profoundly troubling….

…U.S. government-sanctioned brutality [is]…not surprising to the people of Latin America. Since 1946, the United States has put its official seal of approval on torture by Latin American militaries at the Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). There, the United States has trained more than 60,000 members of Latin American militaries in torture, psychological warfare, interrogation, and counterinsurgency…..

SOA graduates are integral to the …suffering of thousands at the hands of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, the systemic torture under General Ríos Montt in Guatemala, or the atrocities that continue to be committed by the Colombia military. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Imperialism gives marines grim mission

"We go out and kill these people," said Captain Del Gaudio, the commander here.

"I define success as continuing to kill the enemy to allow the government to work and for the Iraqi Army to take over."

That day seems a long way off….

One of the "habits of mind" drilled into the marines from posters hung up inside: "Be polite, be professional and have a plan to kill everyone you meet." (NYT, 7/5)

Liberals also want US to rule the world

…America’s difficulties are tied to deeper forces than the acts of a single president. There is not much daylight, after all, between Bill Clinton’s "indispensable" nation and Bush’s insistence that "the only alternative to American leadership is a dramatically more dangerous and anxious world."

…The country’s military, economic and cultural sway is overwhelming. Neither Clinton nor Bush favored retreat, strategic or moral….

Any American president must now confront a central question: How should power unprecedented in its international scope be exercised so as to minimize the alienation it stirs…. (NYT, 7/16)

Neo-Nazis joining Army in race-war plan

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racial hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military….The numbers could run into the thousands….

"We’ve got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad…."

Neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance …sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war….

"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces….

An article in the National Alliance magazine Resistance urged skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units….

"…As trained infantrymen, you will join the ranks of the Aryan warrior brotherhood." (NYT, 7/7)

Need cheap labor? Just fill your prisons!

…In the…northeastern corner of Louisiana….the prison system converts a substantial segment of the population into a commodity that is in desperately short supply — cheap labor….

There is little in the state rules to limit potential for a sheriff to use his inmate flock to curry favor or to reap personal benefit.

"If you talk to people around here, it is jokingly referred to as rent-a-convict…."

Many here view the inmates essentially as commodities, who can be returned behind bars after the agricultural season is over, and the need for labor is reduced.

"Good thing about it, wintertime you can lock them up — put them in cold storage,"… (NYT, 7/5)

Top brains’ miracle solution to poverty!

It is a group drawn from the upper echelons of New York City’s business, nonprofit, academic and social services sectors….

For the last four months, the group has been focused on solving a perplexing riddle: the problem of rising poverty in a city as wealthy as New York. They analyzed data about who is poor in the city and why….

The thinking behind them has narrowed to a central notion: the solution to poverty is employment. (NYT, 7/17)

Hey, how did Buffet get all that money?

When the world’s second-richest man gives most of his money to the world’s richest man we do well to count our spoons. Warren Buffett has given $31bn to Bill Gates to add to his $29bn foundation. Gates replied with a quote from Adam Smith on the virtue of philanthropy. He omitted another quote from the great man, that merchants "seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public". (GW, 7/13)

Forward to Communism

In the 1930’s Soviet Union, Many Workers Organized for Communism Rather than Socialism

In the late 1920’s, following World War I and the failed attempt to destroy the first workers’ state, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) knew that Germany and the other imperialist powers were preparing a renewed attempt to destroy the revolutionary USSR, an attempt that became World War II. To defend workers’ power, the CPSU had to increase industrial development.

Until then, the so-called "New Economic Policy" had allowed private trade and given rural capitalists (kulaks) control over the food supply. To prevent the kulaks from starving the workers, collectivization put agriculture in the hands of the peasants.

As part of the first Five Year Plan, the CPSU mobilized millions of workers and peasants to build new factories from scratch. Many worker "shock brigades" committed themselves to high production targets.

Initially, the rapid expansion caused a sharp drop in workers’ standard of living1 — with food rationing and scarce housing — and production was often disrupted. In response, many workers pooled their wages in "communes" and "collectives." Communes distributed wages equally or by family size, while collectives paid skilled workers somewhat more, though even collectives limited the wage spread. Organized by the rank and file, rather than the CPSU leadership 2, they contained many CPSU members and recruited many from shock brigades.

Communes were often explicitly intended to develop a new communist form of labor 3. From 1929 to 1931, they expanded rapidly, reaching over 7% of the industrial workforce. Meanwhile Party publications criticized them for undermining the policy of "material incentives" — especially higher wages for skilled workers – saying they were inappropriate for the current level of industrial development.

At a Party Conference in June 1930, Kaganovich, a CPSU leader, attacked the "excesses" of those who wanted "complete collectivization of the shops," though some delegates defended the idea 4. Party publications said communes should only be formed if they advanced labor productivity 5, but available facts showed that workers in communes and collectives were very productive 6.

This conflict arose because, rather than constructing communism, the line of the communist movement then was to build socialism first — but now we see that socialism turned back into capitalism since it is a system that tries to combine workers’ political power with a capitalist wage system. They thought communist labor organization required a much higher level of industrialization and was something for the very far future.

Thus, the CPSU rejected rank-and-file initiatives for communes. Rather, they tried to solve production problems such as workers’ frequent job changes by increasing skilled workers’ pay, instead of winning people politically to communist policies, and fixing the shortages of housing and consumer goods.

In June 1931, Party leader Stalin, representing the majority of CPSU leaders, spoke against "the ‘Leftist’ practice of wage equalization," blaming it, rather than the low level of political understanding, for frequent job changes by workers 7. Still missing the point (which history has taught PLP was the main one), he admitted that, "In order to retain the workers in the factories we must still further improve the supply of goods and the housing conditions of the workers."

Believing that the only way to convince workers to acquire greater skills was to pay skilled workers more, Stalin said, "We cannot tolerate a situation where a locomotive driver earns only as much as a copying clerk." With this speech, the CPSU put an end to the communes and collectives in Soviet industry. Moreover, they were never re-introduced, even after industrialization. Worse yet, increasing wage inequality failed to prevent frequent job changes 8.

We have much to learn from the fierce commitment of Stalin and the other CPSU leaders to strengthen the worker’s state and defend it from the onslaught of World War II fascism looming within a decade. However, with hindsight, PLP can see that material incentives (like wage inequality), even when combined with political struggle and commitment, laid the basis for the later return of full-blown capitalism in the USSR.

Although the commune movement did not develop further after 1931, we in PLP have learned from those many Soviet workers who wanted communes — and from the Cultural Revolution in China when many workers and students advanced the idea of political rather than material incentives — that communist organization of society should not be put off for the future. Hindsight shows that, on this score, those CPSU rank-and-filers were right and the leadership was wrong.

FOOTNOTES:

(1) Lewis Siegelbaum, "Production Collectives and Communes and the ‘Imperatives’ of Soviet Industrialization, 1929-1931," Slavic Review, vol. 45, no. 1, 1986, p. 66; Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928-1932, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 228-235.

(2) I. Zaromskii, "Production collectives — new forms of the organization of labor," Labor Questions (in Russian), 1930, no. 4, pp. 18-29; Siegelbaum article cited above; Lewis Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the politics of productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 46-48.

(3) Zaromskii, p. 18; Siegelbaum article, p. 68.

(4) Siegelbaum article, p. 69.

(5) Zaromskii, p. 27.

(6) Siegelbaum article, Table 4, p. 78.

(7) J. V. Stalin, "New Conditions — New Tasks in Economic Construction. Speech Delivered at a Conference of Economic Executives, June 23, 1931," Problems of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1976, pp. 537-539.

(8) Vladimir Andrle, Workers in Stalin’s Russia: Industrialization and Social Change in a Planned Economy, New York: Harvester Press, pp. 126-176.

Liberal Bosses Showing Their True ( WAR ) Colors

U.S. rulers have a serious ideological problem. Intensifying international conflicts require them to rally the nation for ever widening wars. But recruiting shortfalls and growing opposition to the Iraq fiasco reveal a public insufficiently motivated by the Bush gang’s crude "Dead or Alive" rhetoric. The liberal wing of U.S. capitalists thinks it has the answer. As recent books show, it involves racism, Democrats and militarism.

Peter Beinart, a Brookings Institution protégé, has just written "The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again." First, says Beinart, the "war on terror" should become more specifically a war against "jihadist terrorism" or "salafist totalitarianism." While careful to mention that Islam has some good aspects, Beinart demonizes anti-U.S. Arabs and Muslims as backward and morally inferior.

Promoting the view that Muslims’ lives are essentially worthless, he excuses the U.S. for "killing [Afghan] civilians...in the process of installing a vastly more humane government." (p. 172) Beinart updates the racist contempt of the U.S. commander in Vietnam who declared, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." His take is, "America could not have built schools for Afghan girls had it not bombed the Taliban first" (p. 197). Beinart "forgets" to mention that the bombing killed hundreds of non-combatants, including schoolgirls.

Liberal Democrats, says Beinart, should embrace racism and reclaim their identity as the "Party of War." They should make jihadism what Soviet "communism" was during the Cold War—Public Enemy No. 1—the party’s prime focus. (U.S. rulers used the term "communism’ long after the Soviet Union had reverted to capitalism.) Beinart’s greatest heroes are Presidents Truman and Kennedy who convinced much of the public that invading Korea and Vietnam would safeguard "freedom."

Beinart assigns today’s Democrats the task of winning the nation to a crusade of genocidal ethno-religious cleansing, followed by military occupation, throughout the world’s main oil regions and shipping routes. "From the Middle East to Southeast Asia, from the Horn of Africa to the Sahel, the United States may need to enter stateless zones, capture or kill the jihadists...and stay long enough to begin rebuilding." (p. 196)

The key to renewing greatness, says Beinart, is for liberals to adopt a warrior culture that welcomes and even glorifies killing and dying in service to the U.S. empire. He decries "anti-imperialist liberals" who "have been tempted by the hope that humanitarian methods could fully substitute for violent ones." (p. 197) He lambastes as cowards some liberal Democratic donors who said they could not support the capture or killing of Bin Laden if it "would cost the lives of 500 to 5,000 U.S. troops." (p. 197)

Through its Progressive Policy Institute, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC — the party’s Clinton-Lieberman wing) has published "With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty." It puts more stock in humanitarian fig leaves for war than Beinart does but, like him, insists on militarizing society, and especially the Democratic Party itself. One chapter, "Reconciling Democrats and the Military" calls on liberal politicians to "appreciate...the warrior ethos." Democratic leaders, it said, should be veterans, or at least have veterans as top staff members. Until they implement a "national service" smokescreen for a draft, politicians should encourage youth, including their own children, to enlist.

"AWOL: The Unexcused Absence of America's Upper Classes from Military Service -- and How It Hurts Our Country" comes from Kathy Roth-Douquet, a DLC member and Clinton aide, and Frank Shaeffer, an ex-Marine novelist/artist discovered by Peggy Rockefeller. Its chief focus, which the other two books also emphasize, is fully restoring ROTC in Ivy League colleges. Larry Summers got fired for not getting this job done at Harvard. Presiding over a Harvard Yard ceremony in which nine graduates of a non-credit, off-campus ROTC program received commissions, Summers said "we still have some ways to go." Now that’s an understatement. Fifty years ago Harvard graduated hundreds of officers every June.

Summers’ and the rulers’ unfinished business is our opportunity. Among the millions not supporting U.S. imperialism’s wars, we can spread the idea — inside and outside the military — that there is a far better fight to be waged: the lifelong struggle to build a working-class party with a revolutionary, communist outlook, the PLP.

1. ISRAELI RULERS APE NAZIS' COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT
   1. Israeli Offensive Helps U.S. Rivals
2. ISRAELI FASCISTS TOP THEM ALL
3. FIGHT RACISM
   Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers
4. Mexico's Election Only Serves Bosses, Not Workers
5. Buffet-Gates `Charity': Another Rulers' Tool to Suck Workers' Blood
   1. And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
      Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery
6. Angry Workers Don't Buy Los Angeles Mayor's War Contract
7. Cops Tell Bosses' Court Anti-Racism Is Illegal!
8. International Solidarity:
   CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers
9. AFT Convention: Leadership's Liberalism Masks Pro-Boss Stance
10. Anti-Racist Legal Workers Expose Anti-Immigrant Lawyers
11. Spreading Red Ideas Inside and Outside the Factories
12. GI's Must Reject Politics of Passivism, Patriotism and Nationalism
13. Debunk Democrats As War Party At Church Conference
    1. MINISTER O.K.'S Lenin
14. LETTERS
    1. Bosses Use Racism to Divide Katrina Victims
    2. `Welcome to the United States of Slavery!'
    3. Reform Won't Build GI Movement
    4. Colombia Vote A Sham
    5. War Criminal Murtha Spurs Anti-Arab Racism
    6. CHALLENGE Comment:
    7. Pro-War Union Hacks Won't Make Mines Safe
15. Bosses' Profit Drive Murders Young Worker
16. REDEYE
    1. Suicides triple amid New Orleans debris
    2. Workers may have to consider revolution
    3. Supreme Court says money = free speech
    4. Non-red revolution leaves S.Africans jobless
17. Rulers Use Non-Profit Groups vs. Workers' Class Consiousness
    1. How It Works on the Ground
18. Peru: Bosses' Dogfight Sharpens; Crook Back in Power
19. Note to Readers:

---

ISRAELI RULERS APE NAZIS' COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

On May 29, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia -- seized by Germany in 1939 -- was gunned down by two resistance fighters. Heydrich-- who only four months before had organized the Wannsee Conference that planned the Holocaust-- was the third highest ranking Nazi after Hitler and Himmler. Hitler then ordered a massive retaliation.

The Nazis surrounded the village of Lidice (in what is now the Czech Republic) and eventually killed 340 men, women and children, who were sent to death camps. Lidice was wiped off the map. Another small village, Lezhaky, was also destroyed two weeks later. Both men and women were shot, and children were sent to concentration camps. The Nazis murdered 1,300 civilians to avenge Heydrich's death.

Now Israeli rulers are following the Nazi model of collective punishment. Recently the Israeli "Defense" Force (IDF) began a massive attack on Palestinian Gaza, with tanks, helicopters, fighter planes and artillery. They bombarded a university and destroyed bridges and a power station supplying electricity to 700,000 Palestinians. This was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's response to a Palestinian guerrilla attack on a border post and the kidnapping of a 19-year-old Israel soldier while killing two others.

However, as some elements of the Israeli media have admitted, this massive assault and the arrest of Palestinian leaders were organized well in advance. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz (6/25) said that Shin Bet, the Israeli intelligence service, had warned that gunmen were planning to attack a border post. The IDF did nothing to combat it. And the Israeli government has several times in the past negotiated prisoner exchanges, notably in 1985, when the Israelis freed 1,150 Palestinian prisoners to recover three soldiers, and again in 2004, when they swapped 400 Palestinians for one Israeli colonel and the corpses of three Israeli soldiers (Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2006).

London's Financial Times notes that Fatah's "Mahmoud Abbas, the nationalist [Palestinian] president.... [and] Hamas...reached a national unity pact that, by accepting a two-state solution, meant the Islamists implicitly recognized Israel...." So the Israeli attack is really an attempt "to sabotage the Hamas-Fatah agreement."

The Israeli government is forcing over one million Gaza Palestinians to suffer for the border attack. The destruction of the power station halts running water, electricity, and cooling ventilation during the summer heat for hundreds of thousands. The IDF has closed access roads bringing basic supplies to Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is trying to execute a plan concocted in 1998 by his predecessor, mass butcher Ariel Sharon. Their idea is to build a "Greater Israel," by herding the Palestinian population into four walled-off concentration camp enclaves in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank, giving Israel all the rest -- 80% of the area's territory. The provocation by a Hamas Military Wing group was just the excuse needed. (One should note that early on Israeli rulers built Hamas as a bulwark against the first Intifada.)

Although Bush press spokesman Tony Snow and Secy. of State Condi Rice have said Israel has the right of "self-defense," this IDF fascist military offensive won't help the already shaky U.S. position in the Middle East. Increasingly Arabs and Moslems will see the U.S. hand behind this. (All the tanks, aircraft and other weapons are U.S.-supplied.)

Israeli Offensive Helps U.S. Rivals

The Russian government, while having normal relations with Israel, invited a Hamas delegation to Moscow soon after their election. Russia, just like China, is strengthening relations with Iran. And in early June, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Moscow's decision to establish naval bases in the Syrian ports of Tartus and Latakia. According to http://www.pinr.com:

"As part of the plan, the port of Tartus would be transformed into a naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet when it is away from the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. The Russian plan involves the installation of an air defense system with S-300PMU-2 Favorit ballistic missiles. The missiles have a range of 200 kilometers (124 miles), allow a larger warhead and are equipped with a better guidance system than the previous version. The air defense system would be operated by Russia for the defense of the Tartus base and would provide potential protection for a large part of Syria. Through these initiatives, it is clear that Russia wants to strengthen its position in the Middle East."

Workers in the Middle East are being sacrificed on the altar of imperialist and local dogfights for the control of the region's oil wealth. The multi-ethnic workers of the Middle East -- from Syria to Iran to Iraq to what is now Palestine-Israel -- have a long history of supporting communists. Unfortunately, the opportunist and nationalist errors of the old international communist movement led to its own destruction. It's time to build a new international movement based on fighting all the bosses, local and imperialist, including fundamentalists from all religions, and uniting all workers to fight for communism.

ISRAELI FASCISTS TOP THEM ALL

"Consider, for a moment, what would have happened if, in reaction to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) [long considered a terrorist group by the British ruling class] seizing a British soldier, the British government had: invaded Northern Ireland; punished its people by destroying its electricity supply, transport links and government offices; shelled Belfast and Derry from land, sea and air; cratered the Falls Road; used the Royal Air Force to buzz the offices of the Taoiseach in Dublin; and arrested every IRA Republican it could lay its hands on.

"There would rightly have been an international outcry -- and so there should be in this case." (London Financial Times, July 1)

FIGHT RACISM
Bosses' Tool Used Against All Workers

New debates about racism are raging in today's news. The front pages are full of reports on Arab detainees unfairly held in the Guantanamo Bay torture camp, the genocidal devastation to black workers in New Orleans and multiple plans to redefine the status of "illegal" immigrants. The ruling class -- the class of land and factory owners who exploit workers for profits --works mightily to control workers' thoughts on these issues. They hammer us, the working class, with capitalist ideology through the schools, advertising and the media we watch, listen to and read. The most dangerous messages come from the ruling class's liberal wing. They seek to turn our best instincts of anti-racism and unity into nationalist loyalty towards them.

The ruling class has spent centuries pushing individualism and passivity in the working class. They needed these ideas to defuse the anger that led to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. But they face growing competition from imperialist rivals like China and have difficulty maintaining control of Mid-East oil. They cannot hope to win their wars without winning workers to nationalist unity and a willingness to fight for U.S. imperialism.

One attempt to build this ideological commitment is revealed in a recent N.Y. Times' column (6/7) by liberal Thomas Friedman. He adds an insidious twist to the body of ideology about immigration. Friedman acknowledges that "[t]here is a lot to be worried about in America today," referring to the war in Iraq and to the many problems workers have at home, like failing schools. However, his answer is not the openly fascist Minuteman type -- if we just kept "America for Americans" we'd be stronger. Instead, Friedman celebrates the "stunning diversity" and "freedom" in the U.S.

So far this sounds like the same old melting-pot story taught in school. But Friedman goes a step further, directly addressing the rulers' needs in their struggle for imperialist supremacy: "Our Chinese will still beat their Chinese." [!]

Friedman stresses that the U.S. needs immigrant minds and bodies to fight its wars and to serve as a cheap labor pool at home. He calls for a "free flow of legal immigration" to ensure the "influx of brainy and brawny immigrants." He compares this to an "oil well -- one that never runs dry." These points are buried in the deceptive liberal platitudes about "diversity" and "democracy."

Friedman acknowledges the workers' right to be angry at the system. But then he proposes ideas to divert us from recognizing the injustice of capitalism. He calls on workers to be loyal to the U.S. in its competition with rivals like the afore-mentioned Chinese and the "enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan" he calls "totalitarians." He tries to use the anti-racist sentiments and anger that once moved workers to create mass reform movements in an attempt to build nationalism and support for imperialism.

We must not be duped by such slick packaging of rotten ideas. We must analyze what the liberal politicians and media say about the world to ferret out the real core of fascism under the nice words about "diversity" and "aspiration." In New Orleans black and immigrant workers are being held in separate guarded camps, and on Long Island anti-racists are put on trial for defending immigrant day-laborers. When liberals talk about immigrants joining forces with "native" citizens to fight our enemies, we must be clear that the "enemies" they're talking about are other workers just like us, with our same class interests.

We must fight for the true unity of internationalism, the only kind of "diversity" that will allow us to defeat the real enemy, the capitalist system with its borders and wars which serve only to oppress workers.

Mexico's Election Only Serves Bosses, Not Workers

As we go to press, the Mexican election results are in dispute. Calderón, candidate of PAN, the right-wing party of current President Fox, is leading López Obrador, the nationalist-populist candidate, by 1%. His supporters insist there was wide-spread fraud. The biggest fraud, however, is the one all the bosses promote against the working class -- the dangerous illusion that capitalist elections can end mass unemployment and poverty. The only real alternative for workers is organizing a mass revolutionary communist party to smash all the capitalists and their wage-slavery system.

López Obrador might offer workers some more crumbs than Calderón, but what's really at stake are the interests of various factions of the Mexican and imperialist bosses. Calderón and PAN represent those Mexican bosses who support the U.S. neo-liberal economic model, NAFTA and the privatization of the energy sector. López Obrador, with a social-democratic program á la Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, represents Mexican bosses NAFTA screwed, and who want tighter government control over the oil industry. They want to retain import restrictions on crops like rice and beans which NAFTA will lift in 2008.

Many militant workers and their allies have illusions that electing López Obrador will help them. López Obrador and his PRD party won the most votes in areas of recent sharp class struggle -- in Oaxaca, where striking teachers are occupying the city's center; and in Michoacán where striking miners and steel workers beat back a massive police attack in April.

Workers must break with the deadly illusion that there are "lesser-evil" bosses. The PRD wants to tie the working class to the supposedly "progressive" sector of the ruling class, those Mexican bosses who want a bigger share of the profits for themselves. The PRD controls Zacatecas where the cops attacked striking miners. It was also under a PRD mayor that the cops viciously attacked striking National University students in 2000.

Serving U.S. imperialism, Calderón said the government-owned "Pemex should be given the freedom to buy the technology or put together the contracts necessary to be able to increase reserves and production." However, Lopez Obrador defends the ban on foreign investments in Pemex, and pledges to build three gasoline refineries and boost Mexico's petrochemical production.

Lopez Obrador claimed he would limit the rate of oil exploitation; stop the country's annual imports of $14.5 billion worth of gasoline and petrochemicals, create desperately needed jobs and get additional revenues to finance his "poor first" programs. But his real aim is social "peace" and to save Mexican bosses' profits. They know their oil supply is declining and that working-class militancy is rising.

Workers should take no side in the current bosses' dogfight. We should understand that capitalist "democracy" is a huge fraud, under which bosses fight over the "right" to exploit workers for their particular interests. The main lesson for workers and their allies is that capitalism in any form will never serve our interests. This opens more opportunities for PLP to spread our politics of fighting for workers' power -- communism. (More next issue.)

Buffet-Gates `Charity': Another Rulers' Tool to Suck Workers' Blood

Warren Buffet's $31-billion pledge to Bill Gates' $30-billion foundation has nothing to do with charity. Philanthropy's most insidious purpose is to legitimize atrocities inherent in the profit system. The rulers want us to think that Buffet's, Gates' and Rockefeller's missionary crumb-tossing will somehow alleviate extreme poverty and the plagues it causes. They would have us believe that supporting billionaire George Soros's Human Rights Watch can curb the U.S. military's torture and massacres. Above all, the "philanthropic" rulers seek to turn us away from the one road to the working class's betterment, communist revolution.

These foundations have become a major part of the state apparatus, functioning in many ways to perpetuate the capitalists' class dictatorship, with all its miseries for workers. (See article page 8) Ultra-rich families establish foundations to pass their stolen billions from one generation to the next tax-free.

Through foundations, leading capitalists wield tremendous influence in setting policy. Foundations funnel smaller bosses' money into serving the big boys' purposes. At times, the rulers employ foundations to seize the fortunes of renegade capitalists. Finally, foundations put a humanitarian fig leaf over outrages ranging from racist exploitation to imperialist war.

Buffet and Gates trail the Rockefellers in using philanthropy to shelter their wealth and steer society. A century ago, the latter established the General Education Board, which effectively bought control of Harvard University and other important ideology foundries. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission aimed at eradicating debilitating diseases like hookworm in the South. Prefiguring Gates' campaign against AIDS and malaria in Africa, its ulterior motive was to create a low-wage workforce healthy enough to toil in the region's new industries. The Rockefeller Foundation continues to bankroll the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, which, respectively, lead in planning domestic police-state measures and overseas military adventures.

Although the media like to describe Buffet, of Omaha, and Gates, of Seattle, as "self-made" billionaires, their foundation deal actually represents a consolidation of Eastern Establishment power. The big shots forced Gates into his charitable pursuits, many of which operate jointly with the Rockefeller Foundation. Gates started his foundation in 2000 under the gun of liberal Clinton's anti-trust prosecution of Microsoft. Gates' Microsoft was running afoul of U.S. imperialism by indiscriminately peddling strategic technology to -- and boosting the economic and military capacity of -- potential foes like China. Battered by the courts (another instrument of the state), Gates finally heeded his masters, investing millions, for example, into the shipyard that builds Navy aircraft carriers.

In 2001, Gates' father joined George Soros, Buffet, and two Rockefellers in a full-page New York Times ad protesting a Republican proposal to repeal the estate tax. The tax, the ad read, "exerts a powerful and positive effect on charitable giving." Inheritance levies running to 55% compel the moderately rich to donate to tax-free ruling-class philanthropies. The conservative editors of the Wall Street Journal whined that Buffet favors "death taxes only for those whose estates are too small to hide in foundation tax shelters." (6/28/06)

Gates' forcible conversion to "charity" recalls earlier confiscations by foundations. Henry Ford, a vicious anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer, opposed U.S. entry into World War II. Upon his son Edsel's death in 1943, the family began shifting Ford Motor stock to the Ford Foundation rather than cough up the 77% wartime estate tax. When Henry himself died in 1947, Wall Street-based trustees took over the foundation, the nation's richest at the time, devoting it to a host of liberal causes, pointedly including "international affairs."

When Time-Warner bought out Turner Broadcasting in 1995, the rulers attached a slight hitch to loose cannon Ted Turner's $1-billion personal payout: he couldn't keep it. Turner immediately pledged the same sum to an offshoot of the Establishment United Nations Association, which advances U.S. goals at the UN.

And how did Buffet acquire his billions?
Buffett Bilked Billions from Workers' Misery

The wealth amassed by the world's three richest capitalists -- two of whom are Warren Buffett and Bill Gates -- exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 48 poorest countries. In 1983, Buffet's net worth was a "mere" $620 million. With the ruling class's downsizing, wage-cutting and mass layoff assault on the working class in the 1980's, Buffett upped his riches to $3.8 billion in six years. Since then it has multiplied 1,000%, to $38 billion! How?

First he bought Dempster, a windmill manufacturing company, cut costs and laid off workers, generating enough cash to buy the textile firm Berkshire Hathaway, which became his springboard to empire. In 1985, he shut down its New Bedford, Mass. Plant, dumping 425 workers on the street. Buffett continued along these lines, buying one outfit, reaping profits, selling it to generate more profits. That same year he engineered a deal to buy ABC-TV. Rounds of budget-cutting and layoffs followed.

Five years later he purchased U.S. Gypsum which, facing asbestos suits from workers, sought bankruptcy protection against the misery and disease it had brought to thousands of workers.

In August 2004, the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Fruit of the Loom moved its Cameron County, Texas production to Honduras, eliminating 800 workers' jobs, in a county that had double-digit unemployment and a 33% poverty rate. This was followed by shutting its Rabun Gap, Georgia yarn facility, dumping another 930 workers.

Then last year Buffet, being Gillette's largest stockholder, merged it with Proctor & Gamble, netting Buffett another $645 million, all of which sparked a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions that led to P&G cutting 6,000 jobs.

Buffett's drive to increase Berkshire Hathaway's per-share value at any cost left a trail of closed plants and ruined communities behind him. These mechanisms which created his billion-dollar wealth contributed greatly to the poverty which he now says his stolen billions will "solve."

Such is the fraud that media like the N.Y. Times peddles as "magnanimous philanthropy" by the "captains of industry."

Angry Workers Don't Buy Los Angeles Mayor's War Contract

LOS ANGELES, CA. June 29 -- "There are a lot of workers here whose disappointment has turned to anger," a transit worker calmly told a meeting of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) local discussing the latest sellout contract offer brought back by Business Agent Neil Silver.

"That's why there's so much yelling," he continued. "This company has shorted us money contract after contract and we`re tired of it. Now this war that will never end is bleeding us and everyone else and we're tired of that too. The mayor and the rest of the Democrats have no answers except a larger, bloodier, more expensive war. And you come with a contract that won't even pay our bill at the gas pump. We say no to this contract, no to MTA and no to the war you want us to take a hit for."

This impassioned speech produced a burst of applause.

As workers entered the hall to vote, one mechanic took a PLP leaflet and jabbed at the headline reading, "REJECT THE CONTRACT," exclaiming, "This is how I'm voting!"

The leaflet labeled it a war contract and called on workers to build the long-term fight for workers' power, explaining that the union leaders have no answer to wage- and benefit-cuts and the widening Mid-East oil war.

Four months ago Business Agent Neil Silver told the workers he would fight for a "significant wage increase." Then he came up against the growing needs of wartime U.S. capitalism for cheap labor. While his friend, liberal Democrat Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, heads the Transit Authority's Board of Directors, this offer was only half of what Silver had promised.

Many workers had the illusion that Villaraigosa was a "mayor of all the people." This ATU local had launched his political career over a decade ago with a very large political donation and the press built him up, so some workers were taken in.

But as one rank-and-filer said, Villaraigosa brokered a lousy contract the last time and repeated it now. "He's not our friend, he's our enemy, said one worker. "His friends are the big businessmen who run L.A." Villaraigosa's biggest backer, billionaire liberal Eli Broad, is helping to concentrate L.A.'s political power in the office of the mayor.

Their tight grip on the city uses pro-Democratic party labor leaders to saddle workers with war contracts. All three transit unions simultaneously announced "good responsible" tentative agreements, but none cover inflation.

These capitalists don't need an efficient transit system and a more co-operative world. They DO urgently need: (1) a public transit with loyal, experienced workers paid cheaply without strikes; and, (2) tens of thousands of even lower- paid workers to swell the ranks of industry and seek to maintain U.S. imperialism's supremacy.

Their most cost-effective aim is a large, flexible, part-time workforce (United Transportation Union drivers), putting in longer, more intense hours and paying more of our own medical plans and pensions (all three unions).

The ratification meeting was rowdy and angry throughout. It was after Silver announced the offer would use money slated for our medical plan and to pay us a _ of 1% wage "increase." The worker who gave the afore-mentioned impassioned speech challenged Silver to square an expected 20% wage package with this meager result and with no explanation why.

Silver sidestepped the war issue: "This package is equal to what everyone [else] in transit is getting." Instead of the vote passing by the 10 to 1 margin of the last lousy contract, this one got by at 243 to 146 -- almost two votes against for every three in favor. It is becoming clearer to groups of workers that this system has nothing to offer except exploitation and war. PLP's answer -- to fight for power for the working class -- is ringing true to more workers.

The 2009 contract will undoubtedly be worse as the U.S. is forced to up the ante of wider imperialist wars against their Chinese, Russian and European rivals. In this period of widening war, building now for that contract fight means a greater commitment for our Party's forces among these transit unions. We aim to build the PLP and win workers to understand that the answer to all these attacks is to organize for communist revolution to destroy the system of exploitation and imperialism for good.

Cops Tell Bosses' Court Anti-Racism Is Illegal!

FARMINGVILLE, NY, July 3 -- Three anti-racists are on trial in Suffolk County criminal court for defending workers from racists one year ago.

In a militant demonstration, a local racist, David Drutarovsky, was surrounded and chanted down by demonstrators and 30 day laborers who joined this action. This demonstration, in solidarity with day-laborers, was organized by anti-racist teachers and students from New York City. These workers face daily harassment and even assault. The bosses use them to drive down wages and divide the working class, using racism to attack them.

Drutarovsky picketed on a regular basis at the corner where day laborers have gathered to wait for work six days a week for at least six years. He tapes and photographs the workers and their prospective employers to intimidate them. Once he even showed up in a gas mask "to protect himself from the germs" he says Mexican immigrants carry.

Drutarovsky got far less than he deserved that day. The cops, seeing the unity of workers opposing this racist, started arresting demonstrators who they saw as the "leaders": those who spoke Spanish, gave speeches and chanted the loudest.

On that same day, July 16, 2005, two racist thugs posing as employers called a day laborer over to their truck and smashed a bottle into the worker's face, sending him to the hospital. In October, the district attorney offered those two scumbags non-criminal deals. The courts clearly serve the capitalist class; the racists got off with a slap on the wrist.

We have fought to maintain the offensive in all our legal proceedings. Our motions to dismiss all charges generated 15 court appearances before trial even began. We have organized to pack the courtroom to capacity. Police testimony given at earlier hearings is coming back to bite the prosecutor in the ass. It is clear that the cops are racists and liars. They have proven this on the witness stand when the sergeant, their key witness, testified that yelling the word "racists" is a crime! He contradicted himself several times.

In the bosses' eyes, the real "crime" we committed that day was traveling to support Suffolk County's most super-exploited workers with militant anti-racist and communist leadership. These workers responded by joining our demonstration. Even if only for a few minutes, they rocked the local racists and their cops back on their heels.

The bosses are using their courts to deter us from future actions. Their schemes will fail. Every friend and member who shows up at our trial turns the bosses' attack into its opposite.

International Solidarity:
CUNY Teachers Back Oaxaca Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, June 28 -- Today 70 teachers and students picketed the Mexican consulate to support striking teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico. Militant chants rang out in Spanish and English: "When the police attack, Teachers fight back!"; "Teachers' struggles have no borders."

Local 2334, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) comprising the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) at the City University of NY (CUNY) organized the rally, joined by a dozen rank-and-filers from AFT Local 2 and some CUNY students. The Labor Council for Latin-American Advancement, a Latino labor group, co-sponsored it.

The PSC Delegate Assembly unanimously passed an Oaxaca support resolution -- calling for a halt to police attacks on the strikers -- which was delivered to the Mexican consul. He said he would convey the resolution to Mexican government officials but claimed the federal police in Oaxaca were there to "keep the peace" during the elections.

He understood that unionized teachers here wouldn't let this issue drop, and would react to any more police assaults. Of course, the consul simply represents the Mexican capitalist state and can't influence policy. Bosses everywhere use state violence against strikers, but the Oaxaca teachers had asked for this form of pressure to put the government on the defensive.

Outside, the rally roared on. The delegation reported this meeting. PSC members in Oaxaca have also been meeting with the teachers there, establishing direct ties and sending reports back to the New York local.

One speaker noted that the strikers' demands were essentially the same as those here, and that with the same enemy, "Mexican and U.S. teachers must unite." Another said that just as capitalists in Mexico and the U.S. are increasingly linked to each other, so too must Mexican and U.S. workers stand together.

PSC leaders are committed to international labor solidarity, but the union movement is dominated by the bosses' patriotic imperialism. The leadership New Caucus won a recent election with 55% of the vote, embracing worker solidarity in the teeth of right-wing attacks. The PSC local brought about 100 members to the transit workers' picket lines last winter. But many more PSC members must be won to this position.

The AFT national leadership and the National Education Association have done little to back the strikers. Only one other AFT local has taken action, Local 2121 at the City College of San Francisco. International teacher solidarity will have to grow from the ground up, combating pro-boss union leaders, here and in Mexico, where the national union (SNTE) leader Gordillo distanced herself from the strike and red-baited its leadership.

Ultimately teachers and all workers must not merely defend strikes and fight the capitalist educational system, but fight to turn strikes into schools for communism. As the PLP leaflet in Oaxaca declared: "PLP, faced with the failure of Socialism, today fights directly for Communism, in order to bury once and for all this unjust and murderous system."

PLP invites militant teachers and "all conscious and determined workers" in New York, and Oaxaca to join our ranks. All reforms are eventually reversed by capitalism. Teachers need to fight for a communist society that meets workers' needs.

AFT Convention: Leadership's Liberalism Masks Pro-Boss Stance

NEW YORK CITY, July 3 -- At thecomng July 19-23 AFT Convention in Boston, the war in Iraq, the genocide in New Orleans and immigration reform are some key issues that delegates will be discussing, only because of long struggle by rank-and-file delegates to get them on the table. The AFT leadership is more interested in big words about education reform, endorsing electoral candidates and lining up education workers behind the bosses' foreign policy. Many teachers think of the AFT leadership as "good guys" on many issues, but in reality the leaders are members of the ruling class's Council on Foreign Relations and other think-tanks committed to running and saving this system. The AFT has always been a pro-boss, anti-communist union, helping the CIA build just such "unions" in many other countries. And it's not changing now.

What it will do is attempt to mislead teachers by passing a mild resolution that seems to oppose the U.S. rulers' plans. In reality, though, it lines the AFT up with the forces in the ruling class who don't like how Bush is conducting this war. The leadership wants to stop a majority of the delegates who actually oppose the war from supporting an anti-imperialist resolution. None of the AFT leadership opposes U.S. imperialism.

PLP members, along with many other rank-and-filers, have been involved in struggles against the war, at conventions and in our locals. We know too well that the ruling class liberals use education "reform" to mask the fascist nature of the schools: the metal detectors, the military recruiting in the schools, the prison-like atmosphere, the complete racist neglect of working-class students, especially black and Latino students, and the use of No Child Left Behind garbage to do just that -- leave our class's children way behind, set for unemployment, poverty-level jobs and cannon fodder in the bosses' wars. The AFT leadership does nothing to oppose this rising fascism in the schools.

PL'ers have called for support for workers in New Orleans and helped expose most "education reform" as part of the bosses' agenda. The AFT leaders rely on speakers like Teddy Kennedy to try to deceive us on this. But PL'ers have advanced an outlook which attacks these liberal pro-capitalists because there is no way under a profit system to end the misery of the working class. We call for the fight for communism.

At the convention and afterwards, we will fight for that idea -- among the emerging anti-war forces within the AFT, in our locals and with the parents, students and co-workers in our schools. The working class with communist leadership, not the liberals of AFT, has the answer to the crises we face today.

Anti-Racist Legal Workers Expose Anti-Immigrant Lawyers

PLP has often said that fascism is growing here and elsewhere. How? As members of organizations like unions, we see capitalist political control and fascist ideology being promoted by leaders of those groups. One of the bosses' current goals is to use these leaders to convince workers, professionals and others to support the legalization of a Homeland Security police state.

These ruling class plans -- especially among its liberal proponents -- as related to immigration "reform" became clearer for several people who recently attended the annual national conference of the American Immigration Lawyers' Association (AILA), an organization of 10,000 lawyers and paralegals. Interestingly, 7,000 represent the immigration interests of business. Many of the remainder deal with undocumented workers, asylum seekers, detainees and people facing deportation.

AILA employs lobbyists who are working overtime these days to ensure that the liberal Senate version of immigration "reform" is enacted. But it's clear that AILA, like the majority of its members, sees this issue only in terms of its benefit to business people. AILA is urging its members to tell their business clients to push their elected officials to support immigration "reform" because it's "good for business."

AILA lobbyists are not concerned that the "guest worker" proposal would relegate those "guests" to virtual slave labor, because any worker who becomes unemployed and can't find another job within 60 days will be deported. With that threat hanging over their head, many workers will be reluctant to organize on the job against exploitation and terror. One workshop speaker praised capitalism's ability to create a "dynamic and flexible" labor pool. No concern was paid to the working conditions, benefits or job security of that "labor pool."

At the same workshop, billed as a "pro-immigrant" response to right-wing propaganda, an immigration lawyer, an Army Lt. Colonel teaching at West Point, proudly stated that she doesn't use the term "undocumented worker," but calls "them" illegal immigrants. She joked: "They're not `undocumented.' They have plenty of documents, all of them fake." One person in that workshop exposed this speaker's racist use of language and sick sense of humor.

The Army officer also said the military fully supports immigration "reform," and is actively recruiting amongst the immigrant population. The Army, she said, believes that immigrants "adapt better" to the military environment and are more compliant with military rules. The anti-racist person in the workshop then warned that the so-called "Dream Act," which many immigrants and legal workers naively support, is really just another ruling-class tool to force immigrants into joining the military to fight for the bosses' profits.

It's clear to those of us who attended this conference that there is no "reform" of immigration law which will serve workers' interests. As another workshop speaker pointed out, U.S. rulers have historically used fascist immigration laws and policies in order to attack all workers. Only a communist system, which abolishes borders, nations and wages, will truly liberate ourselves and our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Spreading Red Ideas Inside and Outside the Factories

Almost ten years ago, a worker at my high school gave me a leaflet from the racist Voices of Citizens Together (VCT) presenting their thoughts on immigrants and what they planned for July 4, 1996. He said we should fight these guys, but I couldn't; I was headed for a MEChA ( a Chicano student organization) conference. When I returned, I discovered that the VCT rally was practically destroyed, with some of their membership bloodied from the confrontation.

The worker brought me to a PL forum about the action and gave me a CHALLENGE and soon took me to PL study groups.

Later I participated in a Summer Project in a city with a U.S. Army base and a huge network of Boeing plants employing over 40,000 workers, members of the local machinists' union.

We were students and teachers conducting mass CHALLENGE-DESAFIO sales at the plants and the Army Base; holding discussions about political economy, dialectical materialism, and the importance of organizing industrial workers and soldiers; and having barbeques along with visits at the workers' and soldiers' homes.

I remember then CHALLENGE pointing to the inevitability of imperialist war in the Middle East, saying that in order to launch that war for oil, the U.S. ruling class needed to squeeze vast resources out of its own workers. The main segment that produces everything -- the industrial workers -- were some of the first targets. At that time the U.S. military was using Boeing-made aircraft to bomb the Balkans because U.S. rulers wanted control over the areas where pipelines brought the oil out of the Mid-East. Simultaneously, they were demanding greater concessions from the Boeing workers.

CHALLENGE and the 1999 Summer Project taught me how important the allegiance of industrial workers and rank-and-file soldiers is for the U.S. imperialists. Secondly, the direct experience in agitation among these two groups showed me they were both definitely open to communism and to joining PLP.

The oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the industrial working class increasingly important to U.S. imperialism. This has become even clearer with the latest growth in hiring of manufacturing workers. But to fund the war, U.S. bosses must maximize profit and slash conditions for workers, using racism and state terror and cutting benefits like healthcare, pensions and education.

As a student I thought agitating from the outside was important. Now dialectical materialism has taught me that the internal is primary, that without struggle inside to develop the ideas, agitation is limited. I realized that to really change things I had to be inside the factory, because the politics of the industrial working class is crucial. I decided to become a machinist in order to be an active organizer for the Party inside the factory.

Once inside, I understood that I underestimated the significance of the mass CHALLENGE sales. Class struggle within the working class is a daily and constant ideological struggle. It's like war. To recruit, to gather the most strength, consolidate and spread beyond my immediate circle, I must make broader contacts within my factory.

Our goal is to change the common fight over grievances into one for the seizure of state power led by our working-class party. This has been the main aspect of class struggle in which CHALLENGE engages. I'm slowly building a base around the ideas of anti-capitalism, anti-racism and communism. Challenge is key in this struggle, but must coincide with my first building trust and friendship among a close circle of workers. This takes patience and a long-term perspective.

Recently a worker told me that when he was younger he believed the president, that communism was the enemy -- it was bad. When the communists fell, everyone clapped. "But now, when I talk with you guys, I think communism is good."

Without CHALLENGE, a permanent revolutionary organization of the working class will never advance.

Agitation through distributing the paper and leaflets means that a network of workers can develop within the factory which can maintain contact with one another. They can follow political events carefully, tracing their effect on the working class, and help us develop ways for our Party to influence those events. This will sharpen the general class struggle, leading towards the seizure of state power in a communist revolution.

It's very important that youth and others participate in the 2006 Summer Project to bring communist ideas to the industrial working class. This will help intensify the struggle inside the factories and also should lead to more youth working in these plants.

GI's Must Reject Politics of Passivism, Patriotism and Nationalism

SEATTLE, WA.,June 25 -- Over 200 people attended the speech of U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to return to Iraq for a second tour of duty, when his Stryker brigade received orders to redeploy. Lt. Watada is stationed at Ft. Lewis, Washington. He spoke publicly around the Seattle-Tacoma area before he was required to report to duty.

In his statement, Watada said that he wasn't opposed to all wars, just the Iraq war because it was illegal and based on lies. Since killing Iraqis went against international treaties and conventions, his moral and legal obligation to defend the U.S. constitution prevented him from fighting. The case of Lt. Watada has caused sharp struggle within Military Families Speak Out and other Veteran groups.

Watada's opinions echo ruling class strategists that say the fiasco in Iraq is hurting U.S. imperialism's ability to wage bigger wars in the future. He is highly supported by peace and psuedo-left groups, such as the Seattle Draft and Military Counseling Center (SDMCC), who openly back the bosses' message of passivism, patriotism, and nationalism. They build the illusion that if we fight for the "right reform" or vote in "progressive candidates" the war will end.

The liberal Watada movement is a dead end for all workers and will not spontaneously develop into a rank-and-file rebellion against the system. It will take an understanding of the nature of the bosses' legal system to convince workers, students and soldiers that laws are there to keep us down. The ruling class makes the law and they break the law. They control the cops and the legal system. And even if they are forced to withdraw from Iraq, they will continue to send troops to other hot spots in the Middle East and Asia or South America, because they need to control the oil flow to keep their system going.

Masses of workers, students and soldiers need to reject the politics surrounding Watada's case. The young people that are attracted to these groups need a communist perspective in order to intensify revolutionary class consciousness, defeat the empty promises of reform and put an end to all imperialist wars. We need to become more active in these organizations so that we can win people to join the PLP and lay the ground-work for future generations to get rid of capitalism for good.

Debunk Democrats As War Party At Church Conference

The CHALLENGE editorial "All Warmakers" (7/5) -- which exposed the Democrats as just as much a war party as the Republicans -- was right on time. I read it just before attending a national church conference. I was in a group planning a resolution for the church to endorse an interfaith "Out of Iraq timetable" campaign, with escalating non-violent protests if the pullout hasn't begun by September.

After reading the CHALLENGE editorial, and a Time Magazine article describing the Democrats' infighting and horse-trading, I began to feel this "timetable" campaign -- and me with it -- were being used to strengthen the Kerry-Feingold faction.

To deal with this contradiction, I had to find a way to attack the ruling-class liberals while participating in this reform "timetable" program.

So, while circulating the petition I warned signers to beware of Democrats who want withdrawal from Iraq to move forces into Iran, and who want a tactical retreat in order to strengthen the military for an eventual war with China. I had similar conversations with about 100 in our group.

While distributing copies of our resolution, I also gave out hundreds of leaflets explaining that the Democratic Party has no anti-war faction. The leaflet called for discussion of imperialism and for building an anti-war movement independent of the Democrats, among civilians and people in the military.

Some folks agreed when I said, "The Democrats are a war party, not a peace party." Others didn't. "Not my Senator Feingold," someone said. So I quoted Feingold: "I am only referring to a time frame for the military mission in Iraq, not for our broader political and other missions" and bemoaning "our failure to prioritize military spending." The leaflet also quoted Kerry, Hart and Murtha (who said on "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation," "Let's reduce our presence in Iraq; let's start to rebuild the Army.")

Several dozen of us worked on petitions and speeches supporting the resolution. We joined forces with some veterans, adding to our resolution their proposal that the church work for better benefits for vets, active-duty and military families. A delegate -- a GI -- helped distribute leaflets but didn't want to speak publicly. So, on his behalf, I read a short speech that he wrote. "We are pre-positioning troops in Iran right now and plans are being made to send more military personnel into the region despite what you may hear in the media about troop reductions," he warned. Then I met a Vietnam vet who'd been active in the GI anti-war movement. Both took extra literature and want to stay in touch.

Several dozen people in my church have read CHALLENGE, though none attended this out-of-town conference. As follow-up, I plan to show this issue to all of them and to several others who were delegates, plus some old friends I saw there. I will also work in my church to build anti-war activity around this "peace" campaign.

The resolution passed almost unanimously. In the airport, on my way home, CNN was interviewing a U.S. general in Iraq who said he already has a "timetable" for troop withdrawal, and I thought about what the rank-and-file soldier had written.

The Kerry-Feingold crowd masquerades as a "peace" movement but this "near enemy" (see box) is truly a greater danger than the "far enemy" of the Bush-Clinton "stay-the-course" crowd. Exposing their attempts to win mass organizations (like our church) to a disguised war program was a small step toward building our Party, inside and outside the military. We cannot keep saying each war "was a mistake." We need to understand that we're dealing with a war system, imperialism that capitalism makes inevitable. Workers and soldiers fighting against this bloody system with communist revolution is the only way to end it.

MINISTER O.K.'S Lenin

I had lunch with two ministers who were chatting about the Buddhist concept of "near enemy" and "far enemy." The "far enemy" is something's opposite - for example, Buddhists say the "far enemy" of compassion is cruelty. The "near enemy" is a quality that masquerades as the original, but is not the original: the "near enemy" of compassion is pity.

A speaker had argued that the "near enemy" was more dangerous and needed more attention. "So was Lenin studying Buddhism?" I joked. "He didn't polemicize against the Czar; he wrote pamphlets against enemies within the workers' movement." One minister thought for a moment, then laughed. "That's about right," she said.

LETTERS

Bosses Use Racism to Divide Katrina Victims

Nine months after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still a city of ruin, racism and destructive divisions among workers. As part of a group of college students in the PLP Summer Project there, we found black working-class communities still destroyed. We also discovered local residents imprisoned by capitalist ideology, pitting them against people who actually share their class interests: immigrant workers, mainly from South America and Mexico, brought there to clean up this gigantic mess.

On our first day, we talked to a black woman who was working with the student volunteers. When asked about the arrival of Latino workers, she replied that they would never "take over New Orleans like they have in the rest of the country," and that Spanish would never be the main language in Louisiana.

This woman's outlook was shared by a number of working-class black residents. Thus, the bosses first use immigrants as cheap labor under the worst conditions, and then use the scarcity of jobs to divide workers.

The bosses brought these newcomers here for the dirtiest work -- such as cleaning mold toxins from streets and houses -- while promising them high wages and housing. Soon the wages were cut. In some cases contractors didn't pay them at all. After the immigrants' safety equipment broke or was used up it wasn't replaced. Eventually they lost their housing and their jobs, and were stuck in New Orleans with no support. Meanwhile, local black workers, also victims of the city's high unemployment rate, were misled into thinking that the few immigrant workers who still had jobs had stolen their means of a livelihood. But workers never create unemployment; it's capitalism that requires a vast army of unemployed and racist divisions to gain its maximum profit.

As communists, we understand that black and immigrant workers are part of one class. Their true enemies are the bosses of the capitalist system, from the politicians who are content to see black neighborhoods washed away to the corporate profiteers making a fast buck from the federal disaster relief bonanza.

Our experience in New Orleans reinforced the idea that the working class must not allow racism or capitalist borders to separate us. Because the woman we met was confused by the classic capitalist set-up -- inducing different groups of workers to fight for crumbs -- she failed to see the essence of how all workers are exploited. Even though we didn't convince this particular woman, we gave her a lot to think about.

This Summer Project will continue to give us opportunities to build a base for communism among the whole working class of New Orleans.

Two Volunteers

`Welcome to the United States of Slavery!'

I'm in New Orleans participating in the PLP Summer Project, and getting some education just being here. Fascism is running New Orleans, an occupied city like Baghdad.

When I went out for a hamburger late one night, Hummers with tinted windows were slowly prowling the neighborhood. One gas station was crowded with Blackwater mercenaries [contracted security]. The next one was crawling with cops, who were ordering people to move their cars here or there. National Guard vehicles were driving around downtown.

On Canal Street, one of the main downtown thoroughfares, the median strip was filled with a long line of parked state trooper cars. At one intersection near the French Quarter, cops had two black people out of their vehicle and were searching it. This is an everyday occurrence.

It's evident that the bosses here are trying hard to pit black and immigrant workers against each other. They've managed to get 80% of the black workers out of the city, and now are replacing them with "guest workers" -- immigrants recruited mostly from Central and South America. The hotels have replaced black staffs with "guest workers" at $6 an hour. On a morning walk I saw immigrant workers operating the Waste Management garbage trucks and cleaning the grounds outside a high school. There was barely any Latino community here before Katrina.

Some Central American workers told about being brought to New Orleans to work, and on their first night were taken to a hotel. A black man was behind the reception counter, also a recent immigrant, not from New Orleans. When they entered, he stood up and said, in Spanish, "Welcome to the United States of Slavery!" At the time, they didn't understand what he meant, but now, three months later, they do.

The ruling class is replacing the previous wage-slaves--who had a history of militancy-- with new, even lower-paid ones.

I encourage whoever is dedicated to learning about and fighting racism and fascism to come here for a while, and then return to teach what you've learned -- and organize!

A Project Participant

Reform Won't Build GI Movement

It's good to see several articles on PLP's political activity among GI's. PLP has long been aware that this is essential in building for revolution, as the Bolsheviks and Chinese communists have shown. We have much to learn from our present-day military comrades. It's heartening to read about soldiers building a base for communism among GI's by making it clear to them that capitalism is the enemy, not Iraqis or immigrant workers. It helps combat the cynicism of the bosses' media, both about the soldiers and about the possibility for change.

We know it's important for communists to work in reform organizations in order to expose the hypocrisy of capitalism and win workers to revolution. It's essential to show the contradiction between revolution and reform, so that workers, students or soldiers we're working with will understand that the reform movement can never win for them. Unless we show this irreconcilable contradiction, we may build reform movements rather than our revolutionary Party. I don't think the article "GI Movement Stirs from its Slumber" (6/21) makes this contradiction clear.

The PLP'er is quoted as saying many true and important things. It's great that 50% of the meeting took CHALLENGE. However, the article quotes Cortright on the need for "reform and revolution," but doesn't explain that they are in direct contradiction with each other. Our Party's value to soldiers is that we fight to make revolutionary communism primary in our political activity and the networks we build -- one example, CHALLENGE networks.

More than half of the "GI Movement" article describes the reform organization. It's very important to know the history of GI resistance. But when the author writes about Cortright's answer to GI repression (substantial groups, lawyers and publicity), he leaves the impression that these tactics deserve equal billing to our revolutionary goal. This is not our idea about work among GI's, nor do we agree with Cortright's outlook on elections. Do we really want to urge more people to apply for conscientious objector status? (Not surprisingly, Cortright's book gives short shrift to PL's military work during the Vietnam era.) If Cortright really is a friend, then we must vigorously struggle with him around these ideas; if he's an enemy, then we should attack him.

The article would be more useful if it limited the description of Cortright and his ideas to one paragraph and devoted the remainder to how we advanced our ideas, the GI's response, how/if we plan to work in the organization, etc. To help our membership and friends worldwide, we must be consistently clear that while reforms may look good and seem worth fighting for, ultimately they will lead to more betrayal, destruction and death as capitalism tries to deceive workers into believing it can meet their needs. Patience and persistence in presenting PL's ideas and struggling every day with our friends/co-workers/fellow GI's/ students for communist revolution is what will win workers and ultimately what will win for our class.

A Comrade

Colombia Vote A Sham

Elections are over. The president spent over 700 million pesos in his dirty campaign. For the ruling class, voting is one way to legitimize "democracy." Sixty percent of the potential voters didn't show up.

Fascist Uribe changed the constitution so he could be re-elected. He received 23% of the potential electoral vote. None of the other parties could beat that -- the conservatives, the weakened liberal party, nor the democrats and their lackeys who ALL manipulate workers.

The majority of workers have no faith in the government, despite the propaganda spread by the churches and media, who serve the murderous ruling class.

Politicians have deceived us with false promises for many years. Lying is the government's art. Politicians have institutionalized the lie that they represent us. It is the bosses' philosophy. They impose these lies upon us with violence, and the perverse culture of the wage system.

Over 16 million people in Colombia didn't vote. We need to organize these workers into a truly revolutionary communist party of the working class to defend the real truth of dialectical materialism.

We workers need to channel our anger and discontent from long years of famine, war, unemployment and repression and direct it against the capitalists and their politicians who disarm our struggles and try to convert us into their followers.

Comrades in Colombia

War Criminal Murtha Spurs Anti-Arab Racism

I've always believed the war in Iraq -- the first Gulf War, the economic sanctions, Clinton's bombings, the current war and occupation -- was laced with anti-Arab racism. It's obvious that the Iraqi people are not viewed as human, and this explains the torture at Abu Ghraib, the execution of Iraqi men, women and children by Marines at Haditha and the widespread bombing.

Even those who call for withdrawal of U.S. troops do so to get "our" troops out of harm's way. Rep. John Murtha barely mentions the deaths of Iraqis when he argues for troop withdrawal. Concerning the massacre by Marines in Haditha, Murtha attempted to provide an excuse for the racially-motivated killers, stating, "Marines over-reacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Well, Mr. Murtha, U.S. imperialism has been killing workers in cold blood for years. And yes, Mr. Murtha, you won your medals in the criminal war on the Vietnamese workers and peasants, who heroically resisted the imperialist intervention there. And finally, Mr. Murtha, it was you who closed your eyes to the murderous death-squad regime in El Salvador in the 1980's.

Personally, I do not consider U.S. imperialist troops to be my troops and I don't give a damn for this "support our troops" nationalistic campaign. If they get their ass kicked in Iraq, so be it.

Red Coal

CHALLENGE Comment:

Generally we heartily agree with the writer, although we would add that most U.S. GI's are working-class brothers and sisters who can be won to PLP's ideas and are a necessary part of our goals.

Pro-War Union Hacks Won't Make Mines Safe

"Red Coal's" letter (7/5) got me thinking. Red Coal wants "to win miners to communist ideas and struggle for workers' power, only possible when the bosses and their state are smashed." Great!

"However." the comrade continues, "a communist revolution is not around the corner and miners are dying right now." All true!

Red Coal "think[s] there will be a renewed struggle for unionization" and that "most of those interviewed stated that maintaining job safety lies in organizing a union."

Why does the comrade think there will be "a renewed struggle for unionization"? Is it just because of the increased exploitation and oppression or have particular plans been made?

As to union "maintaining job safety," my experience over the years with this in another industrial union has seen the union and the company set up an extensive joint "institute" supposedly to address safety. The contract provides that the company give this institute many million$. Scores, if not hundreds, of well-paid full-time and part-time positions have been created. The union misleaders reward their political operatives with these cushy jobs -- funded by the company! In fact, a number of rank-and-filers have sued, claiming this set-up gives the company direct control over the union.

Nationally, my union is financing and organizing with the bosses and the ruling-class think-tanks to push for a war economy. The union misleaders' plans for fascist collusion fit in nicely with the bosses' need for a dedicated workforce for expanded imperialist wars. How can one talk about safety for the working class when big capitalist wars are on the agenda? Could a similar motivation be involved in the United Mine Workers union leadership?

I think all workers, including rank-and-file miners, should discuss questions like these. I don't think reform and revolution travel along parallel paths. Presently, the reform agenda of the union misleaders is being molded to serve the bosses' imperialist aims. "Support for the miner's battle," like support for the workers' battle, objectively requires winning our class to reject reformist illusions.

Red Industrial Fighter

Bosses' Profit Drive Murders Young Worker

PHILADELPHIA, PA., June 18 -- The May 30th murder of 18-year-old William Palmer shocked Hahnemann hospital workers. A recent graduate of Roman Catholic High School, William was shot and killed while working at the hospital parking lot during a failed robbery attempt.

The same petty criminals committed another robbery only two weeks before at the same parking lot. The parking attendant who had been robbed then quit on the spot. William replaced him and began working extra hours to save money for college. The two criminals returned and, seeing the same lax security, attempted another robbery. William refused to give them the money. The bosses had told him he was safe behind bullet-proof glass -- a deadly lie and the bosses knew it. One of the thieves shot William through the glass. He died in the operating room barely an hour later.

According to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, William Palmer "was killed by someone who wanted to take a short-cut -- to get money without working for it." This hypocritical cop hit the nail on the head. William Palmer was killed both by the little criminals who shot him AND by the big criminals, Tenet Health Care and U.S. Security Associates, who left him unprotected. They are all guilty of murder!

Little Criminals, Big Criminals

Our bosses take the wealth created by us workers and keep it as their profit. They "get money without working for it." Communist founder Karl Marx discovered that the whole capitalist system is based on stealing. Workers receive only a small portion of the value they create in the course of production. The bosses keep the rest and re-invest some of it to make still more profit. To compete, each capitalist must bleed the workers to maximize profits in order to stay in business. Internationally, such a system breeds endless wars. This class of big criminals has created enormous suffering and death for the working class worldwide.

Capitalist culture glorifies individual success, but under capitalism only a tiny minority can achieve this "success." For one boss to succeed, he must steal from many workers. When some workers realize they have no "legal" way to steal, they turn to crime to "get money without working for it." These little criminals are only imitating on a small scale the really huge criminal actions of the big capitalists.

William Palmer would be alive today if the bosses had beefed up security in that parking lot. But this would have cut into their lousy profits. The capitalists have always sacrificed workers' lives to increase profits. A recent example: the wave of murdered coal miners because of the bosses' neglect of safety.

To William's family and friends we say: we will build our revolutionary Party to destroy the system that murdered him. Only then will he have not died in vain.

REDEYE

Suicides triple amid New Orleans debris

Last Tuesday in the French Quarter, Sergeant Glaudi's small staff was challenged by a man who strode straight into the roaring currents of the Mississippi River, hoping to drown. As the water threatened to suck him under, the man used the last of his strength to fight the rescuers, refusing to be saved....

New Orleans is experiencing...a suicide rate that state and local officials describe as close to triple what it was before Hurricane Katrina struck and the levees broke 10 months ago.

Many people who are not at serious risk of suicide are nonetheless seeing their lives eroded by lowgrade but persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness and stress-related illnesses, doctors and researchers say. All this goes beyond the effects of 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombing, Mr. Curie said. Beyond those of Hurricanes Andrew, Hugo and Ivan....

"You ride around and all you see is debris, debris, debris," he said.

And that is a major part of the problem, experts agree: the people of New Orleans are traumatized again every time they look around.

"This is a trauma that didn't last 24 hours, then go away," said Dr. Crapanzano, the Louisiana mental health official. "It goes on and on." (NYT, 6/21)

Workers may have to consider revolution

...The president of the United Auto Workers, Ron Gettelfinger, issued a...somber report to his union....

"The kind of challenges we face aren't the kind that can be ridden out," said Gettlelfinger, who has seen his union's membership drop from 1.5 million in 1979 to 600,000 last year. "They...require new and farsighted solutions."

...The June 10 issue of National Journal...argues that "the global economy's job machine may be breaking down, again."

...Alan Blinder, a Princeton economist and former vice chairman at the Federal Reserve, was right to warn us about how many jobs are in danger....In an article in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, he wrote that "we have so far barely seen the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which may be staggering." (Washington. Post, 6/13)

Supreme Court says money = free speech

To the Editor:

Re "Justices Reject Campaign Limits in Vermont Case" (Front page, June 27):

In its decision on Vermont's campaign finance restriction, the Supreme Court has again equated "money" with "free speech,"....

The larger your wallet, the larger your voice; the smaller your wallet, the smaller your voice....the court's decision says that you have less free speech when you have less money. (NYT, 7/3)

Non-red revolution leaves S.Africans jobless

Three decades later South Africa has been celebrating the [Soweto] uprising as the turning point at which black people seized the initiative. Ceremonies Last Week honored the students as heroes who laid the foundations for freedom....

The rethoric and pomp, however, masked a new struggle that is dividing former classmates in a way few imagined all those years ago when they stood shoulder to shoulder against dogs, bullets and teargas.

Some emerged from the tumult wealthy and successful...Others emerged impoverished and bitter, members of an underclass that feels abandoned.

South Africa is one of the world's most unequal societies...millions remain mired in unemployment and appalling living conditions....

Unemployment, which stands officially at 26.7% is really closer to 40%, one of the highest rates in the world...Not enough jobs have been created for those who reached working age in the past 20 years, forcing millions into an "informal" economy of activities not far removed from begging....

"My boy might benefit from the freedom we won, but I'm not. I have not eaten today. Visitors to this place think black people are free now -- they don't understand the economic struggle goes on." (GW, 6/29)

Rulers Use Non-Profit Groups vs. Workers' Class Consiousness

(Part I)

Today, "non-profit" foundations and organizations help capitalism's rulers hide wealth stolen from cuts in benefits and living standards which working people won through fierce battles against their bosses for over a century. "Non-profits" also delude many young and liberal-minded people into believing that capitalism can be reformed and improved.

From the Salvation Army to the NAACP, from the Green Party in Europe to the World Social Forum in Pakistan, the world's capitalist rulers build organizations that appear to help people but actually do the opposite, pushing nationalist divisions, pacifism and belief in reform instead of revolution. Because these "NPOs" and "NGOs" (non-governmental organizations) are all controlled by each country's rulers, their real goal is to destroy the working-class consciousness which induces workers to unite and fight capitalism directly.

In the U.S., big non-profits like the Salvation Army and Red Cross organized assistance for Katrina victims. Although millions of workers and students contributed time and money, what happened? New Orleans is still wrecked, except for construction to build a playground for the rich. Clearly the U.S. government wanted the racist elimination of New Orleans' poor population. But the non-profits helped do it. They moved and trapped people far from Louisiana and then provided no assistance to enable the city's workers to return and rebuild their neighborhoods.

The Catholic Church has food and housing assistance programs everywhere, and Immigration Clinics to help non-citizens in many cities. Decent people work and volunteer in these programs. But the bosses running these facilities guarantee that very few people receive real help. At the Immigration Clinics, often foreign workers' lives are wrecked because the bosses won't allow enough time for clinic workers to learn the law. In other poverty legal clinics, federal law forbids serious organizing and outlaws certain kinds of law suits, like class actions.

Most problems in non-profits appear to come from under-staffing and lack of funding. But that's only a cover story. The "non-profit" administrators measure success by meeting "grant requirements." Often they force poor workers to pay for their help, but then send the money "up the chain" to pay for "other services" which nobody ever sees.

These bosses pay themselves enormous salaries and get promoted if their "grant numbers" look good. Often these numbers are falsified. Also, the "grant" money comes from rulers' organizations like the Ford or Rockefeller Foundations or the government. These funding sources are "class conscious" -- they understand and work for the rulers' goals to subjugate people and prevent class struggle. They "succeed" if people believe the non-profits are "helping the poor" even when they're not.

Because of these non-profits' volunteers' and workers' efforts, some people are helped. But mostly the non-profits are doing their job for the rulers by pretending help is available when it isn't, and inducing honest liberal people to believe the rough edges can be taken off capitalism. Actually, these programs prompt workers to tolerate developing fascism while maintaining some faith in the capitalists' profit system.

How It Works on the Ground

The writer of this article just lost his job in a church-sponsored legal clinic after organizing co-workers to attend marches for immigrants' rights. His clinic charges every client $25 before deciding whether to help them. Since the boss wants large numbers of clients to pay the $25, there is little time left to really help anyone. The boss kept the writer in his office to take in the $25 fees rather than go to court with clients who were being evicted.

The boss threatened to fire the writer so he resigned before being sacked. His three co-workers suggested he "stay and make them fire you." One newly-hired co-worker had offered to work on a protest letter or force a meeting with the bosses. The writer should have done that, but everyone knew that an earlier group of workers had been fired for protesting before, many others had since quit and only three were left. The writer and his friends have lunch every week and still plan to protest and expose the problems. Other friends are demanding the writer be re-hired. Three people attended the immigration protest march. One co-worker will be a CHALLENGE reader soon.

Peru: Bosses' Dogfight Sharpens; Crook Back in Power

On June 4, the Social Democrat candidate Alan Garcia defeated Ollanta Humala of the Peru Union Party in a runoff election that Humala labeled "everyone against Humala." All the right-wing parties backed Garcia. Both candidates have hands bloody from killing peasants and workers during the dirty war against the Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path") Maoist guerillas. This election reflected the sharpening rivalry among Peruvian capitalists and between imperialists over control of the resources and the value produced by the workers of South America. All these vultures are mortal enemies of the working class.

Garcia, when president from 1985-1990, was vocally anti-U.S.; prohibited foreign companies from off-shoring their profits; opposed the International Monetary Fund; and voiced support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Nationally his policies, benefiting only a handful of bosses, tripled poverty, destroyed over a million jobs, and increased inflation 7,000%. He ordered the murder of hundreds of political prisoners. When his term expired, he fled the country under accusations of rampant corruption. The U.S. bosses' current acceptance of Garcia only shows their economic and political weakness. They and some Peruvian bosses "preferred" him over Humala, fearing that the latter would become anti-U.S. like Venezuela's Chavez or Bolivia's Morales. Rightist Lourdes Flores was the Peruvian and U.S. bosses' candidate.

Morales and Chavez are nationalist reformers; both support Fidel Castro and spout vague "socialist slogans" and try to appear as a revolutionary alternative in order to deceive the oppressed masses. Both represent a section of Latin-American bosses who want to break with the U.S., hoping for a better deal with the European Union (EU), China and even Russia. The latter is selling weapons to Chavez and is investing heavily in Bolivia's gas industry.

Humala was an army officer who killed many peasants in the war against the Maoist Sendero guerrillas. He is supported by Chavez and projects himself as another Morales or Chavez, meaning nationalizing the energy sector, raising taxes on foreign corporations, renegotiating their contracts and using some of the proceeds to fund social programs.

Fearing this, the U.S. and Spain supported Garcia; Brazil withdrew its support for Humala. The U.S. and Spain are big investors in Peru's energy and mineral sectors. Brazil has huge investments in Bolivia where Morales just seized the gas industry. Since Brazil wants to be the over-riding power in the South America bloc that's trying to break U.S. domination, it fears the popularity, influence and wealth that Chavez is wielding. Brazilian bosses fear Peru under Humala would join Chavez, helping to consolidate his influence.

Meanwhile, the EU bosses, like all bosses, are constantly driving for maximum profits and would like more subservient South American bosses. Thus, though they have significantly increased their trade and investment in the region at U.S. imperialism's expense, they don't want tax increases on their profits. Therefore, they supported Garcia.

But there is a flaw in both imperialists' plans: Chinese imperialism. China has become the second trading partner of Peru and is investing heavily in its energy and mineral sectors. Even more important, China is forging closer ties with Venezuela. China now imports 160,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela. This is expected to double by year's end and increase to 1.6 million barrels a day by 2007. To help Venezuela produce and transport it, China has sold Chavez 18 oil rigs and 18 oil tankers (costing $1.3 billion). Chavez has also granted China National Petroleum Corporation development rights in the Zumano oil fields and its 400 million barrels of light oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Therefore, "The significance of Peru's presidential election....is not Garcia's victory, but the politicization of Peru's social divide and especially the rise of Humala and the U.P.P. [his party]." (www.pinr.com, 6/9/06) Humala increased his 30% support from the first election round to 47%, winning 14 of Peru's 24 departments and capturing 45 seats, the largest bloc in Peru's legislature. Garcia has 36.

In the southern highlands, where the poor and indigenous population is concentrated, he received 80% percent of the vote. PINR says that the latter groups have, "for the first time, been organized electorally and are poised to become a permanent force in Peru's politics, just as....in Bolivia and Ecuador." Evo Morales, like Humala, lost his first presidential bid but gained a foothold in parliament and used that to successfully run a second time. Humala could do the same.

The struggle between the regional bosses, and between the world's imperialists, is sharpening. Reformers like Humala, Chavez and Morales, are only fronting for one or another set of local bosses and imperialists. They will lead the working class into the jaws of fascism and genocidal wars. That's the nature of the profit system. The only way to end exploitation is to build a mass-based communist party -- including a big presence in the armed forces -- to overthrow this exploitative system.

The potential for the growth of a real revolutionary communist party, capable of leading the Latin-American working class to state power and the building of a communist society, exists throughout Latin America, and the rulers know it. That's why they need these reformists, sellouts who promise the masses, "We can do it for you under a new socialism of the 21st century!" But workers don't need reformism or socialism. We need communism. We need PLP. We must build it in Latin America and the world.

Note to Readers:

The "Forward To Communism" column has been temporarily suspended to take into account critical letters received by

CHALLENGE.

 

No Real Debate Among Demopublicans: All Warmakers

U.S. Not Leaving Iraq Soon; Building $1.7 Billion Air Base, Embassy

‘From one into ten…’ Building A Mass Party

Bloody Battle in Mexico: 70,000 Striking Teachers Whip Fascist Troops

Racist Minutemen Get Taste Of Workers’ Anger

PL’ers Offer Revolutionary Ideas in D.C. Transit Contract Fight

Europe-Wide Auto Solidarity Backs Portugal’s GM Workers

Communist Politics Are Answer to Union’s War Plans

Imperialists’ Problem: How to Build a Big, Low-Wage, yet Motivated, Domestic Manufacturing Base

NEA Convention: Teachers, Students, Parents Must Unite Vs. Rulers’ Education For War

‘Reformers’ Pit World’s Working-Class Children Against Each Other

We Don’t Need Big Shots: WE Can Run the World!

Forum Hears New Orleans’ Plight; Raise Money to Aid Workers

ESL’ers Fight Gov’t Anti-Immigrant Racism

Letters

Rumsfeld and Vietnam Now Military Buddies

Narco Paramilitaries and Fascism Rampaging in Colombia

Internationalism and Anti-Racism Win Out

Halt Miners’ Murders Under Capitalism?

Protest Racist Killer KKKop’s Murder of Black Worker

Chicago Hospital Workers Fight Sellout Union, Gestapo Bosses

REDEYE

• Mandela made secret deal with big biz
• Iraq poll: "Americans, go home!"
• Courts take another step toward fascism
• Demos bring working-class students out
• Union retreating; workers need revolution
• Modern capitalism has slave auctions
• Racist Raids Attacked 400 Thousand Immigrants in 1930s

‘The Road to Guantanamo’ - U.S. Army Apes Nazi Death Camps

Fatal Errors in Soviet Union’s Early Years

---

No Real Debate Among Demopublicans: All Warmakers

Don’t think for a second that the Democrats’ "raging" Iraq debate offers a choice between war and peace. Both the Lieberman-Clinton "stay-the-course" camp and the Kerry-Murtha withdrawal time-liners back military force to preserve U.S. imperialism’s chokehold on the Middle East and its oil. "Staying the course" means continuing the Bush gang’s deadly quagmire, despite the shortage of troops and allies.

The Lieberman-Clinton-Bush goal is to establish permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq (see box, page 2) that can threaten Iran and Saudi Arabia. Kerry, however, proposes a tactical retreat from Iraq followed by a massive redeployment in the region of vastly expanded U.S. and allied forces. Both Democrat factions agree that the U.S. needs wartime mobilization, including some form of compulsory national service or the draft.

One exit strategist, Gary Hart, a top architect of U.S. rulers’ war and police-state agenda, calls for a U.S.-led international coalition of armies defending Mid-East oilfields from Chinese inroads. Hart sees making foreign bosses junior partners as the key to the plan. At a June 12 Democratic rally in Washington, Hart said, "We ought to declare the Persian Gulf a zone of international interest and take the lead in making it a commitment of the...international states that America will not be the sole guarantor of oil supplies in the world. We can organize...the consuming nations...that they have a job to protect those oil supplies."

Hart implies that if foreign rulers want access to Mid-East energy, they will have to send soldiers to fight under U.S. command. [The U.S. cut such a deal during the first Gulf War: France got minor Persian Gulf oil stakes in return for troops.] Likewise, liberal Kerry demands a tactical retreat from Iraq that will free U.S. forces to attack anywhere in the region. At the same D.C. rally, Kerry insisted on "the over-horizon capacity to deal with al Qaeda" and "the over-horizon capacity to be able to respond to Iran or other threats to our country."

Other signs point to broadening the oil war theatre beyond Iraq to Iran, the Indian sub-continent, and places farther east. The U.S. Navy has begun building the first of 55 planned "littoral combat ships" (LCS). Half the size of destroyers, but faster, these vessels can operate close to shore in water as shallow as ten feet. When the Navy says the LCSs will have minesweeping, anti-piracy and anti-submarine duties, it assures the rulers that they will fight to secure the world’s main oil shipping routes and chokepoints.

"Minesweeping" refers to Iran’s threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, which bottlenecks the bulk of Persian Gulf crude exports. The U.S. was caught short of minesweeping capability here in both the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980’s and Gulf War I.

"Anti-piracy" means asserting control over the pirate-plagued Strait of Malacca and Horn of Africa, the main chokepoints for Persian Gulf oil bound for ports in the East (including China) and West (Europe and the Americas), respectively.

"Anti-submarine" targets the super-quiet Russian-built Chinese submarines menacing the U.S. carrier groups that patrol the supremely strategic Indian Ocean-South China Sea route. Pentagon procurement meshes with liberals’ calls for regrouping.

Arms programs provide rulers the material means for executing their strategy. [By the mid-1990s, our Party was able to say that a second Iraq invasion was indeed in the works, in part because we noted that the Navy was building a huge fleet of supply ships destined for the Persian Gulf.]

But the primary factor is politics. U.S. rulers appear capable, for now, of producing the hardware they require for war but they have not yet forged adequate political will either among workers or among their own capitalist class. That’s why the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, just published a rally-round-the-flag, pro-war book called "With All Our Might." Showing that Lieberman-Clinton are really on the same page as Kerry & Co., chapter titles include "Create a Grand Strategy for the Middle East," "Shape the Global Battlefield," "Reconcile Democrats and the Military," and "Put the Economy on a Wartime Footing."

As Democrats and Republicans position themselves for the November and 2008 elections, we must recognize that there is no anti-war party here, nor even a Democratic anti-war faction. There is no lesser evil, only the greater danger that the Kerryites can win workers to an "Out-of-Iraq" program that masks a larger invasion. The alternative to the politicians’ war plans, both open and disguised, lies outside the electoral system in building a party that ultimately can put an end to imperialism through communist revolution.

PLP has always said "what you do counts." Every recruit, every group of workers and youth in every mass organization the Party influences to oppose the racist U.S. bosses, every new CHALLENGE network, all combine to bring that revolution that much closer.

(Next issue: the liberals’ ideological war efforts.)

U.S. Not Leaving Iraq Soon; Building $1.7 Billion Air Base, Embassy

While the Bush crowd keeps talking about "possibilities" of withdrawing from Iraq "at some point" in the future and the Democrats rant about sending more troops to be able to withdraw by the end of 2007, U.S. plans "on the ground" belie this. According to the French publication Le Canard Enchainé (5/24), "The construction of an immense U.S. embassy and a gigantic air base show indeed that the White House is looking far into the future. The new embassy has about 20 buildings, will be able to resist any attack, has an independent energy and water supply, and occupies an area equivalent to the Vatican. The cost…is $592 million."

The air base, being built 42 miles from Baghdad to be close to the embassy and the U.S. general staff, is slated to "accommodate 27,500 landings and take-offs per month, a record….The estimated cost is $1.1 billion," twice the amount for U.S. air bases already set up in Kuwait, the Emirates and Qater."

If U.S. rulers are spending nearly $1.7 billion on this project, it doesn’t appear they’re thinking of leaving Iraq any time soon. This follows U.S. policy in previous imperialist wars. For example, after bombing the former Yugoslavia, ostensibly to "stop ethnic cleansing," the U.S. then built one of the largest bases in Europe in Kosovo, containing 7,000 military personnel and all the "accessories" needed for them, including schools, stores, theatres, etc., plus the largest hospital on the continent, not to mention the military hardware. Wherever the U.S. military has entered a region, it has always built bases for long-range use, except in Vietnam where it was defeated. But even there, it may very well be pursuing the same policy, only through the back door (see letter, page 6).

‘From one into ten…’ Building A Mass Party

It seemed to happen so fast when, in just a few weeks, 10 people around our club joined the Party. But, as usual, the truth lies deeper. These new members, almost all youth, joined because of painstaking base-building and sharp ideological struggle occurring over a year’s time. In particular, the work of one high school teacher demonstrates how our Party can recruit groups of people.

This teacher has opened her house to young people, conducting sprawling study groups of ten to fifteen students or more in her living room, gatherings that last hours on topics ranging from racist police terror to the need to abolish wages to influencing soldiers to the brutality of sexism and racism.

The floor is open to students’ comments and questions. Often one topic flows into another as students engage in hot debates. Everyone is required to express themselves. They read and report on articles from CHALLENGE, various PLP documents, articles from the bosses’ newspapers and watch and evaluate movies together. The teacher even covered an apartment wall with blackboard paint so students can write major themes right on that wall!

It’s no small thing that these study groups always include a meal collectively prepared beforehand by virtually the entire group, during which all types of discussion occur — about relationships, drugs and the need for a completely new society. It’s this kind of personal, communist collectivity that has built a solid core of committed Party members.

In addition, this group of mostly young people has staged a series of open mics to display their creativity. They compose poems that reflect aspects of PLP’s ideas and perform them in front of their peers. They read poetry written by famous poets like Langston Hughes who were deeply influenced by communism. These open mics are held in a Party member’s home or in a neighborhood community room. They help bond the group and also explore each member’s personal perspective on the Party’s ideas. It’s exciting to be in this club!

Finally, when asked to join the Party en masse, for most the decision was easy. Since then, they’ve increasingly taken leadership, particularly around May Day, where they led chants on the immigrant marches, publicly sold CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, and acted as MC’s at our May Day dinner.

Recently our club discussed the PLP document Road to Revolution IV. (Of course, there was food — we had a cookout!) Several youth invited friends. It was striking to see these young people, all new Party members, embrace and express PLP’s ideas so confidently. They reviewed the international scope of capitalist exploitation, the need for a violent revolution to establish a workers’ dictatorship, the need for a Red Army of working-class soldiers to defend the revolution, and the need to abolish the wage system as the workers’ state directly institutes communism.

These new leaders also urged the Party to further explore sexism, for example, and want the Party to focus more on explaining its practice so they can learn to better function as communists on a day-to-day basis. They also want to learn more about what the dictatorship of the proletariat means and how to overcome the strong pull of religion among workers.

The club’s next step is to have these new members struggle with their friends to win them to the Party. As these new members become convinced that communism is the only way to resolve the contradictions of capitalism, they will realize that their friends can also overcome their own contradictions and join. The future is bright.

Bloody Battle in Mexico: 70,000 Striking Teachers Whip Fascist Troops

OAXACA, MEXICO, June 17 — The strike of 70,000 teachers in Oaxaca State, which began May 22, erupted into an all-out battle with the fascist police at 4:00 AM on June 14 when the state’s governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz ordered 1,500 Federal cops, waiting on the city’s outskirts, to attack a massive encampment in the city’s center. The workers fought back with stones, clubs and whatever they could lay their hands on in confronting the helmeted cops armed with clubs and using shields, aided by a helicopter spraying tear gas at the encamped strikers and their supporters. Despite all that force, the cops were defeated, sent running like whipped dogs.

However, this criminal government action killed two women teachers and two children. One pregnant teacher lost her baby, another teacher lost an eye, many were wounded and other arrested. Although the encampment was destroyed, many police were beaten and several taken hostage. Then the workers, armed with clubs and using school buses as battering rams against the cops, retook the plaza and reconstructed their encampment. Two days later a "mega-march" brought out 300,000 teachers and their supporters, demanding the Governor’s resignation.

The strikers have also blockaded the city’s airport, destroyed political campaign posters, and delivered the "remains" of the city’s new parking meters to the doorstep of the state capitol building.

Many workers, unions, mass organizations and students from four schools have united in solidarity with the striking teachers, expanding the fight into a virtual social movement. The murder of teachers and their children shows that capitalism, whether neo-liberal — as the brutal Governor has been described — or state capitalist is the mortal enemy of the working class. It cannot be reformed to meet workers’ class needs.

PLP members have been participating in the struggle and bringing in communist politics through CHALLENGE-DESAFIO and massive distributions of Party leaflets, openly calling for communism amid this mass and violent battle.

One leaflet brought PLP’s "strong support and solidarity" with the strikers who "find themselves in…the struggle for a decent life and better education" for their children, "marginalized by the capitalist class." It accused the Governor of "orchestrating a campaign of lies…and disinformation," using "the bosses’ organizations [and] their servile…agents in the press, radio and TV" to help break the strike."

The leaflets, distributed in the thousands, exposed the government as "the faithful…defender of the…bosses’ interests," not caring "at all about the welfare of the teachers or about the real education of the working class" but "only the profits they can make from the merciless and criminal exploitation" of the workers and youth.

It pointed out that the ruling class views "the schools as centers of production of future workers, of the cheap labor they need to increase their political and economic power" while stripping students of working-class consciousness and knowledge of wage slavery," meanwhile "preparing young workers to be…soldiers…who defend and die for the bosses’…riches."

It also took note of the fate of workers "fleeing from poverty and unemployment, choosing not to die of hunger,…not caring about the bosses’ artificial borders," for which "they are called criminals and killed like animals" as "immigrants in the United States."

The leaflet closed by exposing the ruling class as "flaunting its power" with "electoral political parties, their laws, their prisons, the police and the army" and citing the working class’s "historical necessity to build a new society…a communist system where production will…satisfy" workers’ needs, with "no exploitation, no oppression, no racism and no borders." It further added , "The Progressive Labor Party, a revolutionary, international and multiracial organization, faced with the failure of Socialism today fights directly for Communism in order to bury once and for all this unjust and murderous system, invites all conscious and determined workers and students to join our ranks."

The best victory for the working class from this struggle would be to win the strikers and their supporters to take the offensive, not to reform the schools but to build a mass PLP that will lead the fight for communist revolution. PLP urges workers and students worldwide to support the Oaxaca teachers struggle.

Racist Minutemen Get Taste Of Workers’ Anger

LOS ANGELES, June 17 — Anti-racists set back the racist Minutemen and SOS ("Save Our State") when they staged a motorcycle and car caravan downtown today. They and their racist signs were protected by swarms of cops.

When some of the racists who decided to risk walking on the sidewalk began taking pictures of anti-racists, including PLP’ers, who were demonstrating against them, one racist must have tripped because his camera hit the ground. As he yelled for police to arrest demonstrators, bystanders shopping in the downtown area attacked him. He told cops to arrest a demonstrator on a bus but they found no such person.

In a separate incident, another racist tried to assault a PL’er addressing the crowd in Spanish, exposing who these racists represented. The racist pushed her, yelling, "Speak English. This is America." A worker standing nearby stopped the racist cold, forcing him away. At the racist’s insistence, the police arrested this worker who was defending the speaker. People chanted "let him go" and "Minutemen y la policia, la misma porqueria!" ("Minutemen and cops — same garbage").

A group of anti-racist youth demonstrating against the racists and the system that builds them were very inspired by these actions and by bystanders who demanded the release of the jailed worker and who distributed PLP leaflets to other workers. Many youth took leadership.

Some anti-racists, including PLP’ers, then went to a conference about immigration reform at the teachers’ union office. Some explained that cops had just arrested a worker for standing up to the racist Minutemen. A teacher — a member of the coalition organizing the conference — rose to back the call for bail money, saying that these fighters have been in the forefront of the struggle against racist attacks on all workers and must be supported. The conference participants contributed about $340 bail money on the spot for the jailed anti-racist worker.

One nationalist leader of the coalition grabbed the box of donations and gave it to the person raising the money, telling her collecting money was not allowed! This didn’t stop many from continuing to give money, both during and after the conference. But it did help expose this "leader" who wants to build a "safe" immigrant rights movement that doesn’t challenge racist capitalism.

At conference workshops, PLP members and friends raised many topics, including the need for multi-racial unity and to destroy imperialism with communist revolution. CHALLENGE and communist leaflets were distributed.

Many came to the conference seeking ways to fight racism and an alternative to the patriotism of the liberal imperialists. But some conference leaders want this group to be the loyal opposition inside this immigrant rights movement, opposing the open racists and demanding amnesty but not attacking the whole capitalist system.

We must be active in these movements, exposing the bosses’ promise of reforms being used to hook workers into loyally working and fighting for U.S. imperialism. Only working-class power can end the growing attacks from the open racists and liberal imperialists. More angry youth need to join PLP to help bring this fight to the streets, schools, factories and barracks.

Teachers’ Locals Support Oaxaca Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, June 19 — In an important expression of international working-class solidarity, the faculty-staff union at the City University of New York, AFT Local 2334, joined CUNY students and others to picket Mexico’s consulate here, supporting the 70,000 striking teachers in the Mexican state of Oaxaca (see front page) who fought 1,500 Federal Police and suffered four deaths. The local’s Delegate Assembly unanimously passed a resolution condemning the brutal attack on their brothers and sisters in Oaxaca and fully supporting their demands.

On the same day, AFT Local 2121 at the City College of San Francisco also picketed the Mexican consulate in that city. (Full story next issue.)

PL’ers Offer Revolutionary Ideas in D.C. Transit Contract Fight

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 17 — The real story of the recent contract struggle between the 9,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 and the Metro transit system is not the reduction in racist pay differentials for new workers. It is not the 3% annual wage increase, the pay equity for station managers, the improved pensions or the increased health care costs. The real story is that PLP waged a struggle to build revolutionary communist consciousness among many transit workers.

Trying to fight the bosses’ attacks while concentrating on building the revolutionary movement, the contradiction between reform and revolution, is very complicated and difficult. Despite our weaknesses, in the course of this struggle some workers joined PLP, participated in May Day and more began distributing CHALLENGE.

PLP Metro workers, including the local president, told workers the honest truth — that U.S. capitalism is facing stiffer challenges internationally, from Iraq to China, and will increase its attacks on workers. This drive to world war and fascism cannot be resolved by unions or at the bargaining table, but can only be answered by building a mass PLP for communist revolution. The workers appreciated this honesty, in contrast to the opportunism of our enemies in the union, who promise the workers everything and then can’t deliver.

During the NYC transit strike, interest surged among Metro workers about the possibility of a strike here. This led to many meetings and countless discussions about how a strike led by PLP would be viewed as a political rebellion of thousands of black and white workers, and how the bosses would call us terrorists for shutting down the center of power of U.S. imperialism. We said such a strike would be met with severe repression, and that sharpening the struggle requires much more mass revolutionary consciousness.

When transit workers were attacked inside Iran and the AFL-CIO called a rally to use the incident to advance the bosses’ war plans, METRO workers went to the rally and pointed out that transit workers in Iran and NYC were facing similar attacks and chanted, "Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World, Unite!"

When two Metro workers, one black and one Asian, were killed by the bosses’ negligence within six months, we picketed Metro headquarters. Fighting racism, marching on May Day, the NYC transit strike, Iranian bus strikers, the Iraq war, health and safety, immigration and more all provided the backdrop for the political education of the workers during this contract struggle.

Now workers understand capitalism a little better and are more aware of the limits of unions and reform struggles. Many understand their crucial role in society and are thinking more critically abut the world. More workers have confidence in PLP, are studying our revolutionary outlook and more will join. This is the lasting victory that matters most.

Europe-Wide Auto Solidarity Backs Portugal’s GM Workers

While the UAW hacks were stepping up their sellout of GM workers and sucking up even more so to the big bosses’ future of endless imperialist wars, on June 16, 1,100 GM workers in Azambuja, Portugal, marched, chanting and carrying signs, 1.5 miles from city hall to the Opel GM-owned auto plant protesting a threatened December plant closing. VW workers at Autoeuropa, Portugal’s biggest auto producer showed solidarity with Opel workers.

In a signal example of international auto workers’ solidarity, workers at most of GM’s European factories have agreed to support the Azambuja workers with work actions. GM’s European workers fear that GM will move some of their own jobs to other plants in eastern Europe and Asia. This is the kind of unity workers at the Big Three plants in the U.S. need to organize over the heads of their sellout leadership in the UAW.

Since the Azambuja workers produce parts for other GM plants in Germany and Spain, their short walkouts have forced the company to use helicopters to transport emergency supplies to keep the other plants operating. One major obstacle facing autoworkers globally is their union leaders. IGMetall, Germany’s biggest union, is in complete cahoots with Opel, VW and auto bosses there, just as the UAW is in the U.S.

As long as workers continue relying on these bosses’ agents, and don’t break with all forms of capitalist reformism, we’ll have our hands tied while the world’s auto bosses gear for an era of intensifying competition and endless wars. The fight must be one for a new red leadership of auto workers worldwide,

Red Internationalist

Communist Politics Are Answer to Union’s War Plans

UPPER MARLBORO, MD., May 3 — International Association of Machinists (IAM) president Tom Buffenbarger hosted a "surge roundtable" today, inviting executives from key war-machine producers to the IAM national headquarters. They and a gang of union vice-presidents were joined by representatives of ruling class think-tanks, like the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and regular contributors to Foreign Affairs, the public mouthpiece of the Council of Foreign Relations. Deputy "Defense" Secretary England opened the conference.

In 2004, the IAM Journal published an article entitled "North America’s Might," bemoaning attacks on industrial workers and the demise of manufacturing. The Journal mentioned a general strike, but concluded "such a massive work stoppage cannot and will not occur, at least not by the unilateral decision" of the IAM. This class collaborationist "surge roundtable" is the union misleaders’ answer to the prospect of class struggle.

The conference concluded that the U.S. doesn’t have the industrial base needed for "surge production" to wage war against a serious imperialist competitor like China or some other combination of foes. They plan to continue hammering out a war industrial policy over the next 30 months, coinciding with the next U.S. presidential election. We will likely see 2008 presidential candidates campaigning for this program of imperialist bloodshed camouflaged under a slogan like "save American jobs." No matter who’s elected, the roundtable plans to build political momentum around its imperialist agenda going into the next presidential term.

Meanwhile, every IAM local and district is publicizing this recipe for fascist collaboration in defense of the bosses’ empire.

Imperialists’ Problem: How to Build a Big, Low-Wage, yet Motivated, Domestic Manufacturing Base

Leaving no stone unturned in preparation for war, Buffenbarger endorsed the Senate’s latest immigration bill. Unlike the House’s more obviously racist proposal, the Senate’s version aims to assure low-wage labor for the arms plants and subcontractors — with 11 years of virtual indentured servitude — by holding out the hope for eventual citizenship, more than a decade from now. A few honest low-level local officials thought Buffenbarger’s position better than outright xenophobia.

Even so, they smelled a rat. "Like the brother said at our last meeting," one said publicly, echoing some who fought for our anti-racist May Day resolution (see CHALLENGE 5/10), "these immigrants are all workers and it’s our job to make sure no worker is exploited."

Hacks’ Plan: Anything but CHALLENGE

The top international and local union officials want to limit the debate to the two capitalist bills before the House and the Senate, which after all only represent tactical differences about how best to support U.S. imperialism.

What they can’t stand is internationalist communist class-conscious politics embodied in CHALLENGE. In fact, a business agent tried to rip up the May Day issue, but workers stopped him. Immediately, more began to circulate the paper, expanding our network of readers and sellers.

The horrors of imperialist war and exploitation can only be ended with communist revolution. The expansion of these CHALLENGE networks will put these communist politics into play. Workers have come from — and will continue to emerge out of — these networks to challenge the hacks, and their capitalist masters. These workers have more on their minds than a change in tactical leadership. Years of reading, selling and struggling over the communist politics of our paper will continue to prepare them to change the political landscape.

Help distribute CHALLENGE, the workers’ beacon. Not a minute to lose!

NEA Convention: Teachers, Students, Parents Must Unite Vs. Rulers’ Education For War

As we go to press, 9,000 teachers are headed to the annual Representative Assembly of the U.S. National Education Association (NEA), in Orlando, Florida. This assembly is important in U.S. bosses’ plans for preparing the schools’ response to the sharpening international capitalist crisis which will lead to widening wars and eventually world war. The rulers want teachers to carry out the "reforms" that will prepare students to be the future technicians, workers and patriotic soldiers for the wars to maintain U.S. domination.

But teachers teach future workers and soldiers, and have a huge impact on this future. They can unite with their colleagues, their students and their parents to fight these attacks and to help turn the bosses’ coming world war into a revolutionary war for workers’ power. That’s what the Progressive Labor Party fights for.

As other articles in this issue point out (see article right), school reform reflects the move towards widening war. Construction of new schools, turning older, larger ones into "small schools," and the barrage of standardized tests are mostly an attempt to increase the technical ability of working-class children.

The ideological function of the standardized curricula and tests includes (1) the meritocracy argument — "this is a fair system; if you aren’t making it, it’s your own fault"; and (2) indoctrination — teaching patriotism, especially to immigrant youth, to prepare them, all youth, and the whole society for war.

To enforce the rulers’ plans, there’s been a series of initiatives, pre-dating Bush’s "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) program. It began with NEA Pres. Bob Chase’s 1997 speech advocating a "new unionism" tied to school reform and calling for "teacher accountability," enforced by union-sanctioned peer review, verified by the tests and tied to explicit standards. They have transformed the previously anarchic "local school board" educational system into a tightly-controlled system, requiring student and teacher accountability to standardized tests in systems increasingly controlled by big city mayors.

"No Child Left Behind" and its sanctions are used as a stick to get teachers in line. Everything must be tied to the tests — no more "frills" like art and elementary school science! Teachers who question authority are threatened. In middle-class schools, and surely in the elite academies, student achievement was already at or above the level of the tests. But in working-class schools, particularly with immigrant and black students — because of generations of racist oppression and education — the failure rate has been unacceptably high and the pressure is on.

However, school reforms are being instituted simultaneously with money being diverted from social services to war. The result: more students being denied high school diplomas because they can’t pass the tests, rather than having smaller classes and more materials.

There should be no illusions about the bosses’ interests in our students; they see the working class as wage slaves and cannon fodder. In a racist society that leaves thousands to die in New Orleans while sending thousands to kill and die for oil profits in Iraq, the schools are organized to serve the profit system. Schools can only meet the needs of the working class in a society of share-and-share-alike communism. To end imperialist war, racist exploitation and racist education, society’s goal must be human need, not profits, where communist relationships of cooperation and solidarity are primary. Then, schools will develop the skills all students require to collectively meet the needs of the working class.

So teachers have a crucial role — to teach the history of the fight against racism and imperialism. The students most under attack by NCLB historically have struggled against racist mis-education, imperialist war, police terror and racist attacks on their community. Far from being passive victims, young people in these schools are the future of the working class, the workers and soldiers who will lead the fight for its emancipation from the racist system of wage slavery. No reform can solve the problems of racist education. Teachers uniting with students and their parents in the long-term fight for a communist system run by the working class can then provide education that serves the needs of the working class.

‘Reformers’ Pit World’s Working-Class Children Against Each Other

Like the invasion of Iraq, education reform is being driven by the needs of a sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry — especially (but not limited to) an emerging imperialist China. The gauntlet is thrown down.

The capitalists are not playing. As Kevin Philips points out in his book American Theocracy, "...China is already responsible for the bulk of the rapidly growing U.S. deficit in what Washington calls ATP — advanced technology products. Here we are talking about major categories such as biotechnology, weapons, opto-electronics and nuclear technology."

Teachers, parents and students are immediately challenged. Are we educating our youth to compete against Indian, Chinese and European youth for life-giving jobs? The Eli Broad Foundation, one of the major players in education reform, says, "We are convinced that as a country, we face a crisis of epic proportions, one that threatens ‘our’ economy, ‘our’ democracy and ‘our’ very standard of living."

Do we really want an intellectual climate that raises a Broad-like slogan,

"(Sons and daughters of) Workers of the World, compete."? Or would we prefer, (Sons and daughters of) Workers of the world, unite."?  It is in this sense, not the sense of barricades and a revolution tomorrow, that the call for "fight for communism" is urgent. We must fight tooth and nail to put a communist analysis and vision into the bosses’ movement for education reform.

The strains on U.S. imperialism can be seen in all its institutions. K-12 education, for example, finds itself over-run by this new situation. In the late 1970’s the world began to adjust to what seemed like a growing and intractable crisis of overproduction. Trade wars were looming, most major markets were nearing saturation and the prospect of capital investing profitably in manufacturing looked dim. Consequently, capitalists increasingly turned to speculation in money and bond markets, junk bonds, hedge funds and all sorts of financial wizardry. The stock market went through the roof.

Whereas a few years ago the Economist magazine said the world’s auto industry had 60 plants too many, today it reports that the next ten years will see the need to complete 180 more plants to meet growing world demand, especially in China and India.

According to some analysts, the heart of capitalism — the exploitation of an industrial working class — is on the brink of the biggest expansion in its history. Whatever its exact dimensions, the U.S. finds itself in a comparatively weak position to benefit fully from this potential expansion. If real life plays out these predictions, U.S. imperialism will no longer be top dog in the world.

The Eli Broad Foundation — whose Board of Trustees includes politicians like Henry Cisneros, union leaders like Andrew Stern and board members from AIG (insurance) and Northrop Grumman — is interested in urgent education reform for three reasons. First, although the U.S. spends $455 billion a year on K-12 education, it fails to graduate 30% of its students. Secondly, U.S. 12th graders perform below the international average among 21 rival industrial capitalist countries. Thirdly, in 2004 Chinese universities graduated 600,000 engineers, India graduated more than 350,000, while the U.S. graduated only 70,000.

"With children in India and China," they continue, "hungry for the jobs that historically belonged to ‘our’ children, we must improve our education system in this country to graduate students who are equipped to compete in the global workforce."

It’s not an easy fight to combat the rulers’ goal to pit U.S. workers’ children against workers’ children among the rulers’ imperialist rivals. In the recent contract struggle in Oakland, Ca., there were many honest forces won to battling issues such as privatization, getting rid of a State-appointed Superintendent, Randy Ward, or relying on Mayoral elections. Too few voices pointed out that the real nature of capitalism — whether Chinese or U.S. — is to set one group of workers against the other, all for the profits of the bosses.  (Next: Fascism, U.S. style and education reform.)

We Don’t Need Big Shots: WE Can Run the World!

NEW ORLEANS, June 5 — On the weekend of June 3 and 4, things happened here that might seem small and local, but a closer look reveals the seed of something huge.

Last August, when Katrina hit, the racist city fathers figured it would be a good idea to leave black people in New Orleans to die in the flood. These were the workers who kept the city and the tourist business in the money, but the businessmen decided they didn’t want them any more. This story is about us deciding to take things into our own hands. And that’s just what happened on that June 3-4 weekend.

On the 3rd, the New Orleans Survivors’ Council organized 60 people to open up and clean out the Florida Projects. The government had refused to do it — they just want workers to stay away. But residents from Florida Projects asked the Council for help moving back in. The longer we stayed cleaning out apartments, the more residents asked us to clean out their place, too.

Meanwhile, people from a trailer park in Baker were gutting out their first home back in New Orleans. The week before that they had met and decided that if they wanted to return home, they’d have to help each other fix up their places. They made a list of homes and volunteers to gut them. Then they collected their tools and fixed one house on Saturday and another one on Sunday.

Why is this such a big deal? Because previously we’ve depended on the government or some big shot. We were waiting for them to fix our homes, even though we knew they wouldn’t do it. Until now, we didn’t come together to take care of ourselves; we thought we were alone and helpless.

The racist system wants us to think we’re weak and stupid. That’s because the system is run by rich folks who live off sucking our blood — working us for little or nothing and reaping the profits for themselves. That system is called capitalism. If they want to stay in power, they need to convince us we’re helpless. But we’re not — we’re the ones who know how to do all the work, not them!

Once we see reality, we know we have the power to move ourselves back into New Orleans. We just have to organize ourselves! As a matter of fact, we have the power to run New Orleans — and the country, and the world! Working people have the experience. When we get together and flex our own muscles, we can and will run everything. To put that idea into one word, it’s called communism.

And that’s why what happened on that weekend was so earth-shaking.

To find out more about communism and workers’ power, read some of the

other articles in this paper and talk to the person you got it from. This paper can help us reach and organize ourselves in cities all throughout the country and the world.

Forum Hears New Orleans’ Plight; Raise Money to Aid Workers

BROOKLYN, NY, June 1 — At a forum organized by a local church, a young woman from New Orleans — speaking with deep emotion — brought an audience of nearly 100 to its feet upon hearing her story of the city’s destruction. She’s now in college in Washington, D.C. and the nightmare haunts her constantly. Her father is black and her mother is white, and somehow the politicians’ crass racism arranged for her parents to vote in separate electoral districts despite living in the same house! She, who "looks white," was sent to vote with her mother.

The event’s main purpose was to collect money to finance volunteers from the church and elsewhere to go to New Orleans to help rebuild the infrastructure as well as hope. This led to discussing the racist nature of the Katrina disaster.

Speakers from other churches and community organizations described the rebuilding problems while exposing the city’s election as a farce. One 30-year New Orleans resident had seen a friend on TV — a grandmother long involved in working-class struggles there — begging for help with her grandchildren outside the Convention Center. She was shocked into action when she heard another person watching the telecast — in referring to this community organizer — make an obviously racist comment about "those people" always asking for help and "what can you expect from them?"

Two members of the Progressive Labor Party, a student and a teacher, described how teachers and students went to New Orleans not only to help the rebuilding of homes but to rebuild spirit as well. We also went to organize to change the system that allows such disasters to happen. The teacher said we must learn from the people of New Orleans how to organize and build the community’s infrastructure and camaraderie under such devastating conditions. The student indicted the basic racist nature of capitalism, calling on people to organize to end it.

The forum’s moderator said that although individuals can do a lot, only the government can function at a level that meets this crisis. The moderator urged a "hurricane of activity" to match the hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, and Wilma) that were allowed to destroy poor working-class, mostly black, neighborhoods while the government stood by and did not help.

Individual speakers detailed their own activities, from helping hurricane victims in New York City to get proper housing, to involvement in rebuilding in Mississippi to bringing food and other necessities to New Orleans. A positive but measured spirit of purpose permeated the entire evening, at which two collections helped defray costs of volunteers going to New Orleans. All agreed the multi-racial event was a huge success.

ESL’ers Fight Gov’t Anti-Immigrant Racism

I work in a Family Literacy program, teaching English as a Second Language to young immigrant mothers, more than 60% undocumented. In April I attended a large immigrant rally with some of my students and their families. We made signs saying "Workers Struggles Have No Borders," later displaying them in our classroom with pictures of the protest.

The day after Bush’s speech on suggestions for Congressional legislation, students came to class very angry. One after another spoke: "It has nothing to do with terrorists, but with terrorizing us." "The guest worker program is servitude." "No worker is going to turn himself in at the border." "It’s not worth it to risk your life in Iraq to get U.S. citizenship!"

This led to a thorough discussion, in English, about why workers migrate, the proposed Congressional legislation and the purpose of borders. In the students’ words: "Workers are the same. We all need jobs to support our families." "We should never be divided."

We discussed a cartoon showing workers uniting to fight the boss. And finally, "Borders have to do with controlling and exploiting workers," said a Mexican immigrant woman. Everyone agreed. "Capitalism is a system that can’t serve the working class," I added. 1 gave all students the pamphlet supporting anti-racists who fought the fascist Minutemen. Later I introduced CHALLENGE to five students and another teacher in our program.

The following week an immigration lawyer from a church group presented a workshop to the classes. Through all this activity we’re building relationships of support and trust that will serve us well as we face day-to-day racist incidents, more widespread attacks and the struggle to build multi-racial, internationalist unity of the working class.

Recently, four staff members and I from our program were summoned to a meeting with the assistant principal and the guidance counselor of the elementary school where we work. These administrators wanted information about a 3-year old son of West African immigrants in our program who had applied for Pre-K in the school. The assistant principal said the school can use its "discretion" to accept or not, or "exit" kids it doesn’t want. "We don’t want problem kids," he said. He and the guidance counselor then let loose a series of vile racist remarks: "Families of these children are being evicted [from their apartments] because the kids are in the hallways singing from the banisters." "In the African culture, they beat the kids and we have to call ACS [Administration for Children’s Service]." "Just how religious is this [Muslim] family?" "Does dad have more than one wife? He’s probably never home." They glowed when explaining how they’re becoming "behavioralists" at a special administrators’ workshop.

To protest their "behavior" at the meeting I took notes to document every racist remark. I answered questions with "yes" or "no," declining any evaluation of the mother. who is my ESL student. Later, when I asked my students what they thought about the school’s "discretionary Pre K program," they said it’s "discrimination." "Right," I said. "Keep your eyes open and fight it if this happens to you or anyone you know." Then I learned that the administration accepted the boy to Pre-K because they feared being accused of discrimination on the basis of "race," nationality or religion.

During this period I attended a workshop by a literacy center. Officials from the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs and the head of the corporation overseeing public health clinics and hospitals attended. The purpose was to build collaboration between literacy and health providers, specifically to win literacy teachers to deliver and explain a letter to their classes from the hospital corporation saying immigrants shouldn’t fear visiting city hospitals and clinics; their immigration information would be kept "private."

Sounds OK; no doubt many sincere healthcare workers don’t want to give an immigrant’s status to Immigration Service. But beware. Teachers and healthcare workers can’t rely on City officials. We must do much more to protect our students and patients. The government can order access to records at any moment and City officials may shrug, maybe even whine. We need to organize working-class unity, strength in numbers, rank-and-file leadership, and especially leadership of committed communists.

Letters

Rumsfeld and Vietnam Now Military Buddies

Funny how the worm turns. Nearly 40 years ago when PLP criticized the Vietnamese leadership for abandoning the fight for workers' power as a goal of their struggle against the U.S. imperialist invasion of that country, we were roundly criticized by many pseudo-leftists for "attacking" the heroic practitioners of Peoples War. We said fighting for something less than the dictatorship of the proletariat would end up with some form of capitalism and would be betraying Peoples War.

Actually, PLP organized the first anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in 1963 and was the first to put forward the slogan, "U.S. imperialism get out of Vietnam." Eventually millions adopted this slogan, rather than the liberal "Stop the bombing" one which let imperialism off the hook. Eventually the heroism of the Vietnamese workers and peasants - which PLP supported, inside and outside the military - drove out the U.S. invaders.

Unfortunately PLP's warnings proved all too true. Soon the nationalist/state capitalist Vietnamese leadership allowed BP Amoco, Ford, Nike and their ilk to build factories there to exploit Vietnamese workers on $2-a-day wages. Now it appears the situation has come full circle.

On June 5, U.S. war hawk and "Defense" Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with Vietnamese government officials and enthusiastically greeted the resurgence of capitalism there. The N.Y. Times reported (6/6) that, "The United States and Vietnam agreed…to increase their military contacts and to…broaden their defense cooperation." Rumsfeld declared "with evident satisfaction" that the two nations had decided to step up "exchanges at all levels of the military." While criticizing Iran, Russia and China, Rumsfeld "heaped praise on his [Vietnamese] hosts….laud[ing] Vietnam's economic development." They agreed on sending Vietnamese officers to a Pentagon military language school in San Antonio and expanded medical training for other officers.

The more disgusting side of this visit was the fact that, "The Vietnamese greeted their guest with a resplendent military honor guard, which played the Star Spangled Banner" - this for a butcher who negotiated military agreements with Saddam Hussein in 1984 and then launched the latest war in Iraq which has killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, murdering them in their homes. Greeting such a killer and "deepening military cooperation" (the Times headline) is not what Vietnamese workers died for.

Soon after Rumsfeld's visit, who shows up but arch reactionary and Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, in "trade talks" with "his Vietnamese counterpart [which] turned into a lovefest…choreographed by the hosts to show their affection for America." (NY Times, 6/19)

All this reflects a battle between the U.S. and Chinese ruling classes "for the allegiance of Vietnam, a growing capitalist power," says the Times.

As PLP has always rightly maintained, nationalists are part of capitalism and will always betray the working class.

Old-time PL’er who remembers

Narco Paramilitaries and Fascism Rampaging in Colombia

The rural and indigenous population of Colombia is under siege. Narco paramilitaries are seizing their land and raping women while the government either turns a blind eye or supports it. Over four million people in rural areas are now refugees in their own country, with no job prospects and many turning to begging and prostitution to survive. Workers in the cities also face mass unemployment while cops and military officers are in the pockets of the drug mafias. Meanwhile, fascist President Alvaro Uribe, Bush’s favorite ally in the region, was re-elected with money and support from the drug cartels.

However, many are also fighting back. A recent protest blocked roads; police repression killed six and gravely wounded 30. The protestors defended themselves with sticks and rocks, injuring a dozen anti-riot cops.

Many had illusions that the mayors of Bogota and Cali — leaders of the so-called Democratic Pole opposing Uribe, and led by union hacks and fake-leftist politicians — would bring changes. But they, too, have ordered attacks on protesting workers and students. Again, workers and their allies are paying dearly for illusions about lesser-evil politicians.

The road to follow is hard for workers and sometimes seems impossible, but there’s no other path but class struggle, as the history of the working class here and worldwide has demonstrated.

The political work of the PLP group here is slowly growing, Using DESAFIO, we’re showing workers and youth that the only road out of this capitalist hellhole is by fighting for a new world without bosses — for communism.

A Worker in Colombia

Internationalism and Anti-Racism Win Out

Recently an internal medicine resident who is returning to South Korea was signing out when he stopped and looked at the photo of me and my family holding a poster: "From The Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf: RACISM KILLS." Quite confused until he confirmed that this was indeed my family, he then said, "I never thought of you that way, I know you care about the poor patients we treat but I didn’t realize that you were so political. I didn’t think Americans thought like this."

I was encouraged and asked him if he was a U.S. government supporter since he’s from South Korea. He replied, "Things have become much more liberal there. No one wants another war with the North — too many people died last time. We are afraid the U.S. is moving its base to the south, away from Seoul and artillery fire from the North, so they will be able to attack North Korea more easily. I believe I understand why Iran and North Korea should not give up their nuclear weapons."

We talked more about internationalism and anti-racism and left each other rather amazed at how wrong our stereotypes were.

The U.S. imperialists have fewer and fewer friends. We must be confident in reaching out to immigrants from throughout the world.

Red Doc

Halt Miners’ Murders Under Capitalism?

The CHALLENGE article (6/7), "Profit System Murders Five More Miners," about the deaths in Harlan County, Kentucky, makes clear that in a communist society every conceivable thing would be done to ensure "the safety of those workers who descend into the bowels of the earth." It also said that the U.S. government — of, by and for the bosses — has allowed coal bosses to get away with murder. Indeed, miners cannot rely upon the capitalist state and its political parties to solve the problem of safety on the job, a life-and-death question for miners in the here and now.

Historically, miners have relied on their own power, fighting shooting wars against company gun thugs and capitalist state armies and cops trying to control working conditions. The state exists to defend the interests of a particular class, so the miners must wage their battles for rights and unionization independent of the state. And they will!

The CHALLENGE article also says, "The only way to prevent such murders is to destroy the system that perpetuates such atrocities." However, a communist revolution is not around the corner and miners are dying right now.

I’ve lived most of my life in the coal fields of Western Pennsylvania and come from a family of miners. The miners fought courageously to build the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA); I think there will be a renewed struggle for unionization. In fact, most of those interviewed stated that maintaining job safety lies in organizing a union.

Today, none of Harlan County’s mines are unionized, though miners there have a long history of struggle and will no doubt fight again to halt this murder. As the film "Harlan County, USA" documents, miners stood up to gun-toting company goons and scabs in fighting for a union. When miners rely on their own power, they can win. So I don’t totally agree with the idea in CHALLENGE that only a communist revolution can halt the murder in the mines.

Certainly, as a communist, I will support miners’ struggles for a UMWA unionization campaign, which will happen and should have the support of all labor. Miners can and will fight to gain more control over job safety. With a union they can shut down unsafe mines. Essentially, mine safety should rest with those who mine the coal. So it’s still possible for miners — among the most combative in the working class — to do something now about safety, even if it means armed struggle.

At the same time, it’s necessary to win miners to communist ideas and the struggle for real workers’ power, only possible when the bosses and their state are smashed. So I give all-out support to miners struggling for a union, while battling to win them to PLP’s revolutionary communist ideas.

Meanwhile, in "Red" China 57 trapped miners drowned in a flood in the northern Shanxi province. Nearly 6,000 miners died in China’s coal mines last year, many of them privately-owned.

Thus the problem is really international — U.S. and Chinese coal miners have a common enemy, a profit-hungry capitalist system. While U.S. miners wage their struggle, so will those in China. A revolutionary communist leadership is needed in both cases.

For those on the U.S. "left" who claim China is "a workers’ state," does China’s government represent workers’ interests? With 6,000 miners dead, the answer is obvious.

The miners’ fight for unionization is not a liberal-reformist struggle; it’s one for basic survival, a struggle that can become a school for communism. I give my total support to the miners’ battle.

Red Coal

Protest Racist Killer KKKop’s Murder of Black Worker

BRONX, NY, June 14 — On April 27, officer Rob Morero handcuffed Jamale Roberts, beat him to death and then dragged his body under a fire escape. Jamale’s mother said that many neighbors in the Bronx project looked on in horror. Then Morero beat on doors threatening the same treatment to anyone who revealed what they had seen.

This rabid murderer has been terrorizing working people in the 48th precinct for years. He would attack gentle and vulnerable people just to set an example. In fact, he recently told Jamale, "I’ll be BACK for you!"

This 23-year-old worker had been laid off from his construction job for some time, and was trying hard to turn his life around. Respectful and caring, he was greatly loved in the neighborhood, and was striving to be a responsible father to his three-year-old son.

With unemployment at 50% for young black and Latino men in the Bronx, racist cops like Morero are on a loose leash to instill fear of fascist repression in workers and students who want to fight for jobs, education, health care and housing. But workers and students don’t aim to take the likes of murderer Morero any more. Already there has been a militant march and demonstration at the precinct demanding an indictment and conviction. Politicians are already moving to betray the struggle; the district’s city councilwoman was trying to be friendly with the demonstrators, but later was seen laughing with the cops. Sellout FBI informer Al Sharpton promised to come but didn’t. Good! Workers don’t need the bosses’ politicians.

What we do need is the mass militancy of working people. Jamale’s mother — a nurse’s aide who usually has worked two jobs to support six children — understands this need. She’s working with her pastor and a community coalition to organize another march on the precinct.

One of Jamale’s friends is in a Sunday School class taught by a PLP member and they’ve begun to reach out to a network of congregations and to a Bronx PL teacher to mobilize students and parents as well. Numbers are vital to begin to put the fascist police and the politicians who control them on the defensive and to increasingly sharpen resistance to their racist terror.

Even more vital is the political perspective the Party brings to this struggle. The slogan "No Justice, No Peace" is, in fact, a reformist lie under capitalism. Seldom can "justice" be won from capitalist courts, even with the sharpest protracted struggles. And there will never be "peace" until long after communist revolution has not only swept away capitalism, but also defeated all capitalist ideology in the centuries-long process of building a world communist society. Recruiting new PL members will be the primary victory in the period ahead.

Chicago Hospital Workers Fight Sellout Union, Gestapo Bosses

CHICAGO, IL June 17 — "Who’s gonna listen to you?" That’s what SEIU Local 20 Financial Secretary Greg Kelly told a Stroger Hospital ward clerk with more than 25 years on the job when she disagreed with him during contract negotiations. As this militant black woman told Kelly that she had deep ties to the workers and he was an arrogant, isolated racist and sexist, local President Byron Hobbs walked over and asked Kelly, "Do you need any help?" (The two of them together couldn’t handle her.) Hobbs and Kelly think it’s easier to attack the workers than fight the bosses. They’re about to learn a very profound lesson. Masses of SEIU health care workers will soon be asking them, "Who’s gonna listen to you?"

For the past 17 months Hobbs & Co. have been begging for crumbs from County bosses while the latter have been attacking the workers and patients harder than ever. The union gave $800,000 to re-elect County boss John Stroger, trying to buy a new contract, only to have Stroger suffer a crippling stroke.

Meanwhile, workers are being fired, suspended and disciplined in unprecedented numbers with few if any arbitration hearings. After Stroger workers voted to strike, the union — rather than preparing for one — issued a flyer trying to scare workers about how they could be fired for striking!

They want to sell us a contract where increased health care costs will more than wipe out any small wage increase. They also want to increase union dues, as they just did at Northwestern Hospital.

Now the bosses are using mass racist Gestapo tactics to break us down. Recently groups of workers were fired in housekeeping and food service. Another woman was picking up her check while on vacation. Her 10-year-old son was waiting in the car. Stroger security dragged her off the elevator, through the main lobby and down to their office because they didn’t like the way she showed her ID! She now faces being fired. The County CEO’s use terror to keep control of the workers, sending the message, "This will happen to you if you don’t stay in your place."

Greg Kelly is also the lead negotiator at Hektoen, where workers unanimously voted down the last agreement and staged a one-day strike which the leadership tried to sabotage. Hektoen bosses imposed the contract that had been defeated, costing each worker hundreds of dollars in increased healthcare costs. It’s taken the union months to try to restart negotiations. At his first session, Kelly told the bargaining team that he and the union want to be partners with the bosses.

Workers won’t follow a cowardly union leadership that insults their intelligence and works with the bosses. They will not follow "leadership" that wants to be partners with our racist oppressors and exploiters. Working conditions are stressing workers beyond all limits, making them sick, while the bosses refuse to allow us to use our own sick-time and medical leaves. They threaten workers who are out sick — "if you don’t return you’ll lose your job."

Shame on the weak leadership of Local 20! They should be tarred and feathered for continuing a slave mentality and keeping the shackles around our necks, making workers more cynical and demoralized instead of mobilized and organized. The answer is to build a mass PLP and prepare healthcare workers for mass struggle and communist revolution. This is the only way to open a dialogue among workers to determine our future, and to tear down the walls of wage slavery.

REDEYE

Mandela made secret deal with big biz

What about the "authorized version" of reality in South Africa since the end of apartheid? Pilger notes that while average household income has risen by 15%, average black household income has fallen by19%. "The unspoken deal" Pilger writes, "was that whites would retain economic control in exchange for black majority rule." Thus secret meetings were held in Britain before 1994 between the current president, Thabo Mbeki, members of the Afrikaner elite and companies with big commercial stakes in the country. Mandela told Pilger: "We do not want to challenge big business that can take fright and take away their money.…privatization is the fundamental policy." (GW, 6/22)

Iraq poll: "Americans, go home!"

Brookings Institution Iraq Index cites a poll showing that 87 percent of Iraqis want a timeline for American withdrawal, and 47 percent approve of attacks on American troops. (NYT, 6/18)

Courts take another step toward fascism

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation.

The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11….

Lawyers in the suit, who vowed to appeal yesterday’s decision, said parts of the ruling could potentially be used far more broadly, to detain any noncitizen in the United States for any reason.

"This decision is a green light to racial profiling and prolonged detention of noncitizens at the whim of the president." (NYT)

Demos bring working-class students out

The next morning [March 30] the school television channel showed a news clip of school walkouts in Los Angeles, Austin and Dallas. "The students went wild," says Sotelo, who is now under investigation for disrupting school activities for urging her students to leave school. "The administration quickly got on the intercom, instructing the teachers to turn off the television. But by then it was too late."

About 700 El Paso students walked out that day. In predominantly Hispanic schools throughout the country the story was the same. An estimated 70,000 walked out in San Diego county; in Los Angeles county 35,000 students left school over the course of the protests; in Dallas about 3,500 demonstrated….

The past few weeks have seen more than 600,000 schools students skip classes in Chile….

The people involved in the demonstrations today are in general younger, poorer and darker than those of 40 years ago. Young women are more likely to take a leadership role; their parents are more likely to support them. These are not middle-class students seeking an alliance with the workers; they are working-class students… (GW, 6/22)

Union retreating; workers need revolution

Las Vegas, June 11 — The president of the United Automobile Workers union told his members in a strikingly blunt report released Sunday that they cannot ride out the automobile industry crisis and should be prepared to make tradition-breaking decisions to help rescue the industry….

"Usually you rally them for the fight that’s ahead; he’s rallying them for the hard times that are ahead," said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worchester, Mass. (NYT, 6/12)

Pope protects pervert

To the editor:

Pope lets priest off the hook would have been a more appropriate headline to your article Pope gets tough on sex abuse (May 26). Father Marcial Maciel, founder of the congregation of the Legionaries of Christ, has been accused by nine men (who were novices at the time) of sexual molestation. But according to the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Maciel has declared his innocence and, "following the example of Jesus Christ, [has] decided not to defend himself in anyway."

To cap all this tragic nonsense, the Pope, after years of vacillation, has finally decided not to investigate those allegations of paedophilia any further. Rather, according to a Vatican statement, the Holy see has decided to "invite [Fr Maciel] to a reserved life of prayer and penance …" Apparently he has accepted the invitation. Being sent out to grass is doubtless a better option than the chance of spending the rest of his life in the slammer.

But to cut through all this mumbo-jumbo and get directly to the point, your subeditor could also have considered simply; Pope protects pervert. (GW, 6/15)

Modern capitalism has slave auctions

Women are being sold off in so-called slave auctions in the arrivals lounges of British airports, according to authorities desperate to crack down on the burgeoning trade in human trafficking. The Crown Prosecution Service says foreign women are being sold as sex workers as soon as they arrive… (GW, 6/15)

Brazil landless march against government

Almost 500 landless protesters were being questioned in Brazil’s capital last week after a violent protest in the country’s parliament left at least 23 people injured and one man in intensive care. Organisers said the protest which lasted about two hours, was intended to draw attention to the lack of progress in their fight for land reform.

Television images showed confrontations between activists, with windows being smashed and an attempt to roll a car into the congress building. Police rounded up about 490 suspects…organised by the MLST — the Movement for Liberation of the Landless. (GW, 6/22

Racist Raids Attacked 400 Thousand Immigrants in 1930s

"They came in with guns and told us to get out," recalled Ignacio Pina, 81, a retired railroad worker in Bakersfield, California. "They didn’t let us take anything," not even a trunk with birth certificates proving that he and his five siblings were born in the U.S. The family was jailed for 10 days before being deported to Mexico. This is not from today’s racist anti-immigrant attacks, but from the 1930’s anti-immigrant campaign known as "The Repatriation."

Possibly more than 400,000 Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans were either deported or coerced into leaving the U.S. through racist immigration raids and a campaign to deny them jobs. Many, mostly children, were U.S. citizens.

Anti-immigrant racism exists to justify the racist economic super-exploitation of immigrant labor, and to divide citizen and immigrant workers so they cannot unite to overthrow the bosses. Anti-immigrant racism and mass deportations have accompanied periods of economic crises. In the late 1870’s, an economic slump led to a wave of anti-Chinese racism. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, there was the "Repatriation" against Mexican immigrants. The political crisis brought on by World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution led to the Palmer Raids of 1919 against European immigrants. The bosses saw them as "carriers" of the Russian revolution and engineered mass deportations and the infamous frame-up and execution of Sacco and Venzetti.

The same government and gutter racists who attack immigrants launch racist terror against black workers too, one reason why it’s important for all workers to fight racism.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union of the 1930’s, Josef Stalin’s revolutionary leadership waged a campaign against all forms of racism. The famous 1936 USSR Constitution (the "Stalin Constitution") made racism a political crime against the Soviet state and the working class. The Bolshevik leadership elevated the cultural, political, economic and material progress of Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Tartars, Uzebeks and other "minorities" who had been persecuted in Czarist Russia.

These ethnic groups became artists, scientists, skilled workers and political leaders. Dark-skinned workers became mayors of many Soviet cities when many black and Mexican workers were being attacked and lynched in the U.S.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s, U.S. imperialism was acquiring a strong hold on the Mexican economy. U.S. mine operators and other industrial bosses paid poverty wages in Mexico, forcing many workers to look for work in the U.S. Sound familiar? Once here they were further victimized. Many Mexican workers joined and followed the lead of the old Communist Party in the U.S., which is one reason the bosses turned on them so viciously in the 1930s.

Understanding what happened during the racist "Repatriation" is important because it is a part of our history that has been all but erased. The more we know about our history, the better we can fight our oppressors. Workers need to reclaim our history from the bosses and expose the racist murders, from killing union organizers to the Rosewood massacre of black workers in Florida. As we fight for a communist world, not only will we understand history to change the world, but we will — to paraphrase Marx and Engels — "finally see the real start of human history."

‘The Road to Guantanamo’ - U.S. Army Apes Nazi Death Camps

(The following review was sent us by a friend in France where this film has already opened.)

The Road to Guantanamo. Docudrama directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross.

This film is based on the Tipton Three, three Pakistani youths in the U.K. who return to the old country for a wedding. Then they go to Afghanistan for adventure and are captured by the Northern Alliance — what Bush and Rumsfeld call the "tribals." And then they’re sent as "suspected Taliban fighters" to Guantanamo.

These are real people, with family and friends — one is on parole and another works in a restaurant — but they never come alive in this film. The directors only hint at this stuff, maybe because they think it’ll turn off the audience. So you get these sanitized heroes. The film-makers pull their punches. They don’t trust the viewers enough to put the naked truth up on the screen?

However, this is the first time somebody has recreated exactly what’s going down in Guantanamo. The government has been working overtime to sweep this dirt under the rug and this film pulls up a corner to show what’s there. Any article you’ve read or picture you’ve seen on TV is nothing compared to the way this film sits you down in a cell at Camp X-Ray.

There’s a row of dirt-floored chicken wire cages and you’re in one. You have one white plastic bucket with water and another one to defecate in; that’s all the "furniture." Burning tropical sun all day and football stadium floodlights all night. Armed guards walking up and down shouting "don’t talk!" and "don’t move!" and "don’t exercise!" Try disobeying — a special helmeted white-uniformed squad of five soldiers enters your cell and beats the living daylights out of you.

Just when you think you’ll go crazy with boredom, they haul you off for interrogation. They have a million techniques and you never know what to expect. A smiling hypocrite trying to get on your good side? Or the guy who, with a flick of his eyelids, has the guards hit you upside the head every time you give a "wrong" answer?

And then there’s the torture. They chain your wrists and ankles to an eye-bolt in the floor. You can’t stand, sit, or lie down. Just squat hunkered down. You can’t put your hands over your ears, understand? Then they turn on the music — full volume — ear-splitting heavy metal. The movie audience is squirming in their seats after 30 seconds. The prisoners are tortured like this for 4, 5, 6 hours at a stretch.

This is totally twisted inhuman stuff. Nazi stuff? You’re 100% right. The U.S. Army has been studying Nazi techniques. The prisoners are not allowed to look the guards in the eyes — just like in the Nazi death camps — or the segregated South in the 1950’s.

Why is this happening? This film won’t answer that question. It’s strictly apolitical. A simple denunciation of the barbarism at Guantanamo. Nothing about the organized brutality of the U.S. ruling class, whether Bush & Co. or the liberal war hawks calling for more troops and more blood in Iraq.

This is an experiment. This is having the concentration camp machinery tuned up and ready to take off, to be used against anyone who opposes U.S. imperialism at home or abroad. (And has been used in U.S. prisons forever, especially in the Jim Crow South.)

The film never traces any of this to the system these modern-day Nazis represent — capitalism on the loose in the 21st century.

See the film. Think about what we must do to fight fascism. For starters, joining PLP and building a movement to destroy this barbarous system.

Fatal Errors in Soviet Union’s Early Years

(The following was mistakenly omitted from last issue’s "Forward to Communism" column on the Soviet Union, Part 3)

In the early 1920’s, the Soviet Communist Party had made a major retreat, adopting a "New Economic Policy" that promoted private business.

Their main and fatal error lay in not believing that masses of workers and peasants could be motivated to work for political incentives rather than for narrow material ones like wages, and to meet the needs of the whole working class in building communism. If they had believed in the workers, they would have made the solution to the problems of production the property of the entire working class, based on the urgent need to build new relationships among workers in the process of production.

The point of communism is not that the government and Party should feed or produce goods for the workers, but rather that they should organize the entire working class to carry out these tasks. PLP would handle such problems, not by telling people to fend for themselves and build small businesses, but by launching a massive struggle/campaign to increase food production in as collective a manner as possible, guided by a political struggle over the importance of building communist relationships in the process of production.

1. Sharpening Imperialist Dogfight Means WAR, WAR, WAR
   1. `AN OPEC WITH BOMBS'
   2. U.S. Rulers Furious At Bush & Co.'s Incompetence
2. New Orleans: Workers Fight Bosses' Racism in Rebuilding Their Lives
3. Trailer `Parks' or Concentration Camps?
4. Bush and Liberals Both Guilty of Imperialist Atrocities
5. Red Ideas Reach Gitmo
6. Teachers Reject Anti-Communism, Elect PLP'er to Union Post
7. GI's Learning Bosses' Oil War Is Not In Their Class Interest
8. Joint Worker-Student Struggle Reveals Importance of Red Politics
9. Boot Racism Out of Football's World Cup
10. Working-Class Internationalism BBQ's Nationalism at PLP Cook-out
11. NSA SQUABBLE EXPOSES BOSSES' CLASS DICTATORSHIP
12. GI Movement Stirs from Its Slumber
13. LETTERS
    1. U.S. War on Mexico Caused Emigration
    2. Airport Workers Fight Sexist, Racist Attacks
    3. Today's Navy Mirrors Old Jim Crow Racism!
    4. Won't Learn History From U.S. Rulers
    5. Racism Runs Riot on French TV
    6. Vision of Future Key to Overcoming Obstacles
    7. Baghdad Comes to New Orleans
14. College Students, Faculty Confront Racist Minutemen
15. Redeye on the News
    1. New Orleans is again `designed to fail'
    2. US job security is now a fairytale
    3. Kids define a sentence: 5 to 10 years
    4. Still widespread, trafficking = slavery
    5. Afghanistan `success' looks a lot like Iraq
    6. Imperialist US was never `beloved'
16. Imperialism, Not `Human Nature' Makes War Inevitable
17. Capitalism is the REAL `Inconvenient Truth'
18. Forward to communism
    1. Fatal Errors in Soviet Union's Early Years -- Part 3

---

Sharpening Imperialist Dogfight Means WAR, WAR, WAR

"It shocked me that the country was not mobilized for war." -- U.S. Army General John Batiste, on the period between 9/11 and the Iraq invasion (NY Times, 6/4/06)

Challenges to U.S. imperialism are mounting. U.S. rulers will ultimately have to answer them with violence unseen since World War II. China is modernizing its military forces and plans to project them far beyond its borders. A new alliance, reaching from China through Central Asia to Russia, is about to embrace Iran. And in deals hostile to U.S. interests, Russia and Europe are consolidating their strategic industries.

U.S. rulers understand that maintaining their top-dog status will some day require them to fully mobilize society for war against major enemies. Under Bush, however, they've made little progress. They can't even field enough troops today to secure Iraq or wipe out al Qaeda. But we shouldn't let the Bush team's incompetence mask the rulers' objective needs. They will respond ruthlessly to threats to their survival. As the rivalry intensifies, we should expect, expose and combat the bosses' efforts to militarize the nation.

Until recently, Pentagon planners thought they had decades to prepare for a clash with China's vast forces. But a May 23 Department Of Defense (DOD) report to Congress warns, "Several aspects of China's military development have surprised U.S. analysts, including the pace and scope of its strategic forces modernization." Consequently, the DOD presses for a more urgent focus on China, which "has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States." The report notes that China's growing oil thirst is hastening prospects of war in many places:

"Beijing has pursued stronger relations with Angola, Central Asia, Indonesia, states in the Middle East (including Iran), Russia, Sudan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe to secure long-term resource supply agreements. Some of these countries are also recipients of Chinese military technology. China has also strengthened ties to countries located astride key maritime transit routes (e.g., the Strait of Malacca). Evidence suggests that China is investing in maritime surface and sub-surface weapons systems that could serve as the basis for a force capable of power projection to secure vital sea lines of communication and/or key geo-strategic terrain."

`AN OPEC WITH BOMBS'

China's rulers are rapidly building an anti-U.S. coalition. "Bringing together Russia, China and a number of Central Asian states, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] is evolving into a security and political bloc that could become a key global player with the clout to challenge NATO." (Toronto Star, 6/2/06) "Last year, more than 10,000 troops from SCO member countries participated in the group's first joint military exercises and another set of war games are planned for next year." Iran wants to join the club. President Ahmadiejad is expected to attend the June 13 SCO summit in Shanghai. According to David Wall, a professor at Cambridge University's East Asia Institute, "An expanded SCO would control a large part of the world's oil and gas reserves and nuclear arsenal. It would essentially be an OPEC with bombs." (Toronto Star)

Meanwhile, European bosses are exercising an anti-U.S. economic strategy. They seek to hand over a huge chunk of their steel industry -- essential in war -- to a company with close ties to the Kremlin. Mittal Steel, backed by U.S.- and British-based investors, had hoped to gobble up Europe's Arcelor and thereby become the world's biggest producer. But Arcelor is trying to derail the merger by selling a controlling share of itself to Russia's Severstal, which is run by "friends of Putin."

Arcelor CEO Guy Dolle emphasized the tilt away from Washington towards Moscow: "The links between Russia and Europe are very strong from an economic point of view, and there is no political problem." (Market Watch, 5/28/06). The links are strong indeed. Earlier this year, Germany's ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder became a top executive of Russian energy giant Gazprom.

U.S. Rulers Furious At Bush & Co.'s Incompetence

But the actions of the Bush White House have failed to match the scope and pace of the sharpening rivalry. The U.S. ruling class is furious at Bush for not militarizing the masses or demanding wartime economic sacrifice. As a sign of their concern, the rulers have appointed one of their own, Henry Paulson, as Treasury Secretary to baby-sit the Bush gang for the rest of its tenure. Liberal Business Week magazine (6/13/06) hopes Paulson can curb Bush's penchant for debt and deficits and forestall a "financial meltdown" before a new president can whip the U.S. into imperialist shape. The conservative Wall Street Journal (6/1/06) insists that Paulson focus on "hardening the wartime dollar."

Facts are stubborn things. Even though Bush & Co. seem to ignore the inevitability of global conflict among the world's imperialists, we must not. Amid world war's horrors, history shows, lie the conditions for the working class's seizure of power. Building PLP is the most important weapon our class will have in achieving that goal.

New Orleans: Workers Fight Bosses' Racism in Rebuilding Their Lives

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- A group of PLP college students kicked off our extended Summer Project here (see CHALLENGE, 6/7). We went to serve our class in the Gulf Region, where the crisis-ridden U.S. capitalist system -- and its pillar of racism -- is again exposed as one that cannot fulfill the needs of the working class. Ten months after Hurricane Katrina, residents, especially black workers, are still struggling to move back home and/or to get the vital help they need to survive.

We began by touring the levees near the French Quarter. They are supposed to protect the city during hurricanes or floods. The French Quarter, the business and garden districts and some other wealthy neighborhoods were all relatively vibrant, with no sign of hurricane damage.

The levees protecting these neighborhoods were well-built with primary and secondary levees to protect the French Quarter and the business district. Hotels and shopping centers are built atop these levees. Many working-class people who survived went to the nearby Convention Center, only to find no drinkable water there. But in the wealthier residential neighborhoods, life has returned to normal.

The racism built into the levee system hits you when you enter the working-class neighborhoods, where houses are no longer on foundations or where Katrina had moved them blocks away from their original sites. Every working-class neighborhood we saw had severe damage. The levees in these neighborhoods are merely walls compared to the system in the business and wealthy neighborhoods. There's no back-up system should the initial levees fail. Most workers' houses are right next to these "levees" that are supposed to protect them. During the early mornings, people who used to live there are working on the houses in these neighborhoods, but in the evenings they're ghost towns.

We attended a Memorial service and walk for residents who lost their lives in the predominately black 9th ward. The newly constructed levee, about three feet higher than the previous one, will still only withstand a Level Three hurricane. (Katrina was a Level Four.) This memorial was quite somber as they read the names of people who died. Rarely was there a family with only one name on the list.

Each morning during the week we shared our experiences and thoughts of the previous day and then analyzed how to do better in the coming day. Decisions were based on discussion, not on voting. Everyone was given equal time and encouraged to share their views on our activities.

Our grass roots organizing involved going door-to-door and/or telephoning survivors, listening and talking to them about their struggles and encouraging them to get active in rebuilding or helping out in their neighborhoods. Many survivors invited us into their homes and were very appreciative of us being there. One aim of the group we worked with was to build Survivor Councils. Everyone participated in the discussion but only survivors could make decisions on the course of action.

One Council proposal was to move residents back into a housing project. This was the focus of our organizing. Previously there were protests against bulldozing peoples' property without their knowledge. In these actions, residents were prepared to conduct citizen's arrests of the bulldozer drivers, and succeeded in stopping the bulldozing. The Council has already organized the taking back of an elementary school. They are planning to open it in August, without government help. Most of the Council's activities involve militant reform.

Our task, as always, is to fight alongside workers and help them learn that only communism will solve their problems. We joined survivors and volunteers to clean up the housing projects, enabling residents to move back home. As the day progressed, many other survivors came to help and wanted to get involved in fighting to rebuild their communities. We began developing ties with these volunteers with whom we shared CHALLENGE and discussed the need for workers to run society.

Our modest activity in organizing among our class and building a base for communist revolution caused some volunteers to look to us for political leadership. This helped provoke a discussion in the mass organization around the racism directed against immigrant workers coming here and the need to unite all workers against all forms of racism. (See front-page CHALLENGE editorial, 6/7.)

Many illusions held by workers in New Orleans were shredded by the racist nature of capitalism, but they still hold on to many others. Some workers still believe that the government will help them, while others lack faith that it will and instead are being won to the nationalist outlook that only black people united can win reforms from the system. In addition, the good work done by relief organizations is simultaneously building illusions that capitalism is fine; " it's just Bush and his cronies who are the problem." For the limited time we were in New Orleans, we strengthened our commitment to the fight for communism and started to lay the foundation for future struggles in winning workers to our Party, both survivors and volunteers. We all plan to return in greater numbers, to further our service to our class, train ourselves, learn from the workers in New Orleans and win more to our movement.

Trailer `Parks' or Concentration Camps?

In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, many residents from New Orleans were displaced around the country; some were moved to trailer parks along the Gulf Coast. On our recent trip there we visited some of these communities which resembled concentration camps rather than homes.

These "parks" are fenced in with armed guards constantly patrolling the grounds. Everyone entering must show ID and give the name and address of the person whom they wish to see. The people living there are the same victims who were left on their roofs for days, experienced the racist horror at the Convention Center, and had cops shoot at them or prevent them from crossing into other neighborhoods to seek safety. As one person said, these are the people left to die but since that didn't succeed, now there's no plan for them.

A survivor inside such a camp and who is pregnant with twins told us that people haven't received one bit of help from anywhere, aside from other workers. She described rapes, police brutality and blatant disrespect from the guards. When these workers meet to discuss the problems inside the camp and the lack of government help in moving them back home, the armed guards are always present.

The racism these workers faced before, during and after the storm mirrors the nature of capitalism. Fighting for these workers to return home isn't enough. We must also struggle against the racism that filled their lives before the hurricane and continues today.

Bush and Liberals Both Guilty of Imperialist Atrocities

Once again, the words "atrocity" and "war crimes" are becoming lead stories in the bosses' media coverage of the Iraq war. The murderous rulers and their flunkies in the liberal press are pretending to be scandalized over the brutal slaying of two dozen Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines last November in Haditha and the U.S. military's more recent slaughter of two women, one pregnant.

CHALLENGE doesn't doubt that these atrocities happened. Everyone involved deserves the severest punishment: the Marines who pulled the trigger, the officers who ordered them or allowed them to do it, the commanders who gave these officers the green light, and, most of all, the politicians and their imperialist bosses, whose foul profit system makes war and the atrocities that accompany it inevitable.

The most conspicuous hand-wringing and the loudest cries of hypocritical outrage come from the same rulers who continue to plan for a future of endless, widening war to prevent Chinese, European, or Russian bosses from gaining a choke-hold on Persian Gulf oil. True, Bush has a lot of blood on his hands. But the liberals who are using Haditha to discredit him make him look like a novice in the murder department.

Facts, as the great communist revolutionary Lenin said nearly 100 years ago, are stubborn things. In Iraq alone, the liberal Clinton presidency's shameful record in piling up corpses far surpasses the current Bush administration's accomplishments. True, Bush, Sr. set the scene in the 1991 Gulf War. The bombing in that war "...devastated Iraq's civilian infrastructure, destroying 18 of 20 electricity-generating plants and disabling vital water-pumping and sanitation systems. Untreated sewage flowed into rivers used for drinking water, resulting in a rapid spread of infectious disease." (The Nation, 12/3/01) Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians died then. But the U.S. murder machine was just warming up. Under Clinton, eight years of economic "sanctions" added "new horrors of hunger and malnutrition" (Nation) and led to hundreds of thousands of additional civilian deaths, the majority of them children.

When an interviewer pointed out to Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that the 500,000 Iraqi children dead because of U.S. sanctions far exceeded the number of people killed by the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, Albright replied: "...this is a very hard choice. But the price, we think, is worth it."

Albright's cynical but honest answer reflects the rulers' true attitude. To keep U.S. imperialism on top, they will pay any price in workers' blood. They've proved this time and again. Usually, it is the liberals who achieve the highest body counts. Clinton didn't stop in Iraq. He also bombed the former Yugoslavia back to the Stone Age, polluting the rivers and destroying the infrastructure there, with the same terrible consequences for civilians as in Iraq. The liberal Kennedy and Johnson administrations killed at least three million Vietnamese and another two million Laotians and Cambodians, in their ruthless drive to smash anti-U.S. forces in Southeast Asia. The liberal Democrat Truman ordered the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Between civilians, workers and soldiers whom U.S. imperialism has murdered outright in its wars; workers and others worldwide who've been killed, jailed, or otherwise terrorized by pro-U.S. dictatorships; and people who've succumbed to starvation or preventable disease because of the immense, global poverty that imperialism generates -- for all these horrors the U.S. ruling class deserves first prize in the mass murderers' hall of shame, far outstripping even Hitler & Co.

Haditha should outrage us and stimulate us to organize militant action. But we should identify and attack the real enemy. One atrocity should not prevent us from seeing the forest from the trees. Haditha is not an exception, or an "aberration," as the bosses would love us to think. Atrocity and imperialism go hand in hand. In fact, imperialism is the real atrocity.

The liberal media are trying to manipulate mass anger at Haditha into a move to discredit Bush. Sure, Bush is a racist killer. But his real crime, in the liberals' eyes, is a failure to plan for an effective invasion of Iraq and his colossal inability to mobilize the U.S. population for this and future wars. (See editorial, front page)

These wars will make Bush's current crimes in Iraq look like misdemeanors. In part, the liberals are using Haditha to tell us: "Get used to it." But we must pursue the exact opposite of what their class wants, building the Progressive Labor Party and spreading its outlook that the only war worth fighting is class war to destroy imperialism.

That's why it's crucial to win soldiers to that outlook -- away from being used as perpetrators of the ruling class's atrocities against our brother and sister workers worldwide. Clearly the only road to accomplish that goal is winning GI's to fight for communist revolution, the road that truly represents the interests of the international working class.

Red Ideas Reach Gitmo

I hope the following account can help show that a communist analysis of the world can be spread even under the most difficult circumstances.

A friend of PLP was in Kabul, Afghanistan, when the U.S. Army captured it. He's a small businessman who regularly travels between Kabul and Pakistan to trade commodities. He also wears a full beard and mustache (he thinks they make him look like Frederich Engels). He regularly attends the mosque because he thinks that if we communists aren't there, those who have faith in religious practices cannot be reached with true communist ideas.

Imperialism uses the term "atheist" to isolate revolutionary people from those dominated by religious mullahs. Our friend is a skillful communicator of communist ideas among religious people and has made many good friends.

Because, like many in the Taliban, he wears a beard he was seized by U.S. imperialist forces in Kabul and sent to the U.S.-run prison at Mazar Sharif and then to Guantanamo Bay. While in both camps, our friend discussed communist politics with the other prisoners. He explained how imperialism created the Taliban and served to protect it in the region. He pointed out that Osama bin Laden, Umar, Zawari and others were not engaged in a "sacred mission" but had followed CIA instructions when they acted against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He also said that Afghanistan's pro-Soviet government had not been truly communist but was run by nationalist opportunists. To eliminate imperialism, he argued, one must join a party that is really struggling against oppression, exploitation, war, illiteracy, poverty, nationalism, fundamentalism and racism.

In his time in Mazar Sharif and Guantanamo, he found that some of his fellow prisoners were totally brainwashed and eager to die for religion, as taught to them by Osama & Co. They hated our friend's ideas because they were unable to think with their own minds. Others, however, were open to communist ideas. By pointing out that those who were now denouncing the U.S. had originally taken pay-offs from the CIA, he was able to expose the true essence of capitalism to sympathetic fellow prisoners.

After a year in Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. government decided that our friend was not a Taliban but merely a trader who regularly traveled to Kabul for business purposes. They transferred him but he suffered two more months of detention, interrogation, torture and sickness, before finally being released. Despite all this, he told us that his detention had been a good experience because of his discussions of communist ideas with other prisoners. He made some good friends who sympathize with his ideas and is still in contact with them.

International Red

Teachers Reject Anti-Communism, Elect PLP'er to Union Post

BROOKLYN, NY, May 31 -- "My hope is not that you vote for me despite the fact that I'm a communist but, in some small way because I'm a communist," declared a PLP teacher running for union delegate at a central Brooklyn high school. The red-baiting incumbant then asked the teachers to, "Vote for a democratic process not a communist." Defying the incumbent's last-minute and openly anti-communist campaign, the rank and file gave the PL'er 60% of the votes, 38 to 25.

PLP has a long tradition of bringing anti-imperialist, pro-student and anti-fascist resolutions to the floor of the United Federation of Teachers monthly Delegate Assembly (DA) meetings. Adding new forces to the DA and making students a more regular presence there will inject new life into this important work.

Most crucially, a strong teacher collective is being built at this mainly black high school. Students are under increasing attack and teachers want to defend them. Each day students show up and "assume the position" for scanning and body searches. Every day most teachers show up with a smile and a solid lesson plan. But frustration sets in as each teacher fights his or her individual battles against illiteracy and arbitrary administrative intrusions on valuable time.

Teachers must see through the thick haze of racism and the sometime misplaced anger of young people who suffer a life where words like "future" and "opportunity" amount to little more than cruel jokes. We must unite with these students, their parents and teachers who will join us in being angry at such conditions.

Yet no union or reform will save us. Struggle will. The sooner we win more teachers and students to conclude that these racist conditions are an integral feature of capitalism, the closer our world will be to ending these conditions under communism.

GI's Learning Bosses' Oil War Is Not In Their Class Interest

For soldiers, struggles in the U.S. are initiated across military bases and armories. When imperialists send us soldiers to war, the struggle is intensified. From this I gained invaluable political experience in Iraq.

My first reaction to being deployed to an unjustified war was anger and devastation because it meant saying good-bye to family and friends, exactly what every soldier was feeling. Therefore, it wasn't difficult to find friends who thought like me. I discovered that soldiers' anger existed prior to being deployed, just as my hatred of imperialism seemed to have existed since first learning how capitalism worked. Our "job" as soldiers was to "defend democracy," a notion spread by the media. Fortunately, many disagreed with it.

Serious conversations with soldiers occurred, involving important issues about this war. The word imperialism was commonly discussed among my friends. One buddy completely agreed that this war was for oil. He even surprised me when speaking about the goal of "democracy" in Iraq. When I explained that democracy doesn't even work in the U.S., he interrupted me with the question, "Phil, you know what the ideal system is?" I paused, since I had only known this guy for a couple of weeks. "Communism!" he declared.

I was astonished, thinking perhaps I wasn't too far from home. This same thing happened with another person as well. This motivated me to develop more buddies among these soldiers.

When I settled into my unit, I made new friends. Early on, most soldiers truly believed this deployment was a humanitarian effort. By the end, this attitude changed drastically. Soldiers experienced two elections in Iraq that exposed democracy as a farce. Clearly what was being established in Iraq wouldn't change the wretched living conditions of Iraqi workers.

For example, a 15-year-old Iraqi the Army employed inside a base to dispose of waste was only "paid" with a hot lunch and a take-home dinner. His two Iraqi supervisors earned a mere $8 a day. I told my buddies this "democracy" can't improve the well-being of the average Iraqi worker. When we cruised around the city playing cop, targets for IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices), it was apparent that this war and its justification was a complete sham.

As we prepared to return home, the Army tried to scare us before we got back, lecturing us on "political etiquette." We were told that demonstrating against the U.S. government, either verbally or physically, can get soldiers in trouble. They showed us pictures of anti-war demonstrators, labeling them "unpatriotic." A friend of mine, who had read CHALLENGE, told those around him that by all means he was guilty of being unpatriotic. Afterwards a soldier told me he was planning to join the Veterans Against the War organization.

These experiences teach many lessons that soldiers and workers worldwide can grasp. The bottom line is that imperialist wars are against the interest of the working class. Developments in Iraq reveal the empty promises of capitalism and its "democracy." Soldiers return home hating the war, just as Iraqi and U.S. workers are becoming disenchanted with capitalism, our common enemy. And we have a common goal to rid us of this enemy -- communism.

Bush's announcement that the National Guard will patrol the U.S.-Mexico border provoked some pretty interesting and angry discussions in my unit. Most people thought they wouldn't dare send our unit or others there. One friend said, "If they send me to patrol the border, they'll have a million more immigrants marching because that's how many I'll help to come in."u

Red Soldier

Joint Worker-Student Struggle Reveals Importance of Red Politics

"Management and politicians don't care about us... they only help themselves when they pretend to help us," a worker told a recent meeting of campus groundskeepers, students and union organizers. The meeting was called by a coalition of workers and students organized earlier in the year to end subcontracting on campus. A discussion over tactics erupted into sharp political struggle, which helped expose many shortcomings of reformism in -- and the importance of communist politics to -- the class struggle.

Union leaders claimed they had made closed-door deals with certain legislators to add money for the workers to next year's budget. Yet, the precondition was that workers and students would cancel their scheduled actions on campus and patiently wait for a final decision.

Many workers argued against waiting on these politicians. One worker warned that, "Politicians are hypocrites, and only look out for themselves. If it wasn't an election year, and if we weren't embarrassing the Chancellor, they wouldn't even address us at all."

A student added, "We can't put our fate in the hands of politicians -- our strength is in our own hands." Other students pointed out that the movement's success so far stemmed from the unity between workers and students, not from pleading with politicians and administrators. Although it was finally decided to postpone actions for the week, the sharp debate and struggle helped strengthen the political consciousness and confidence of many workers and students. It became clear to some that workers need to organize to put power in their own hands, not count on the bosses and politicians to give them a few more crumbs from the capitalist table.

The year-long fight to end subcontracting on campus has been an intense and immensely difficult struggle. Rallying students to stand by workers in fighting exploitation proved challenging at first. Yet, in using the slogans "The workers' struggle is the students' struggle," and "An injury to one is an injury to all," many students began making the connections.

Facing higher tuition fees, cuts in services and financial aid, and military recruitment on campus, students realized that the workers' slave wages, lack of healthcare and pensions, and the terrible working conditions of subcontracted labor stem from the same root as the attacks on them: the profit system and imperialist wars to dominate capitalist competitors.

Among the students, much struggle emerged throughout the year on reformist vs. revolutionary politics. Some argued that being "practical" and "focused" on the issue at hand was important. They suggested that the coalition's message should omit political points not immediately apparent. But others emphasized the importance of exposing the racism against immigrant (mostly Latino) and black workers used to justify outsourcing and of linking the so-called "budget crisis" to U.S. imperialist wars for profit and domination. They stressed the importance of viewing this particular struggle as one front in the larger fight between workers and bosses worldwide.

Leaflets were distributed linking the campus struggle to the disaster in New Orleans and the brutal and racist nature of capitalism that Katrina so clearly revealed, as well as to the racist attacks on immigrant workers. Teach-ins and actions exposed many students to the racist and oppressive realities of capitalist exploitation and imperialist war.

Hopefully the summer will provide the time to strengthen many of the political relationships begun throughout the year, among both students and workers. Several students are now reading CHALLENGE and will be invited to participate in PLP's Summer Projects. We will continue to build communist politics on an individual level, while expanding CHALLENGE networks and recruiting to the Party. Out of this struggle, which has exposed the racist, anti-worker nature of capitalism, more students and workers need to join PLP and commit to the long-term fight to end this system of racism and imperialism with communist revolution.

Boot Racism Out of Football's World Cup

On June 9, the World Cup of Soccer began in Germany. It is the world's largest sporting event, watched by billions around the globe. Ideologically, it promotes nationalism by rooting for the team from your "home" country, although ironically the European professional teams recruit black and Latino players from some of the world's poorest regions. Inevitably racism rears its ugly head in countries like the Netherlands and England where neo-Nazis organize racist acts.

During this World Cup, fascist organizations are upping the ante. The New York Times reported (6/4) a recent influx of African and Latin American players -- now signed by European teams -- have become the target of racist attacks. On March 25, in Hamburg, Germany, Adebowale Ogungbure, a native of Nigeria, was verbally assaulted with "racial remarks and mocked with monkey noises." Ogungbure responded by signaling to those fans that they really are Nazis.

In a February 25th game in Zaragoza, Spain, choruses of racist chants attacked Barcelona's Samuel Eto, one of the most vocal opponents of racism, provoking Eto to threaten to walk off the field. Similar attacks have been aimed at other players throughout Europe. FIFA, the World Cup's governing body, says it wants to minimize such incidents at this year's event. (Of course, the Times is quick to point out such racism abroad while downplaying the racism permeating U.S. society, using terms like "biased, bigoted, or prejudice" to describe blatant racism here.)

Racism has been rising in Europe where the bosses have been using immigrant workers from around the world as cheap labor. In the same Times' article, Piara Powar, an anti-racist activist, said the underlying reasons for these racist attacks are "poverty [and] unemployment.... Often newcomers bear the brunt of the blame" for these problems.

Workers worldwide should shoot down the bosses' nationalism with internationalism -- the idea that workers everywhere have the same class interest in opposing the world's bosses, no matter what their origin. Capitalism causes the poverty and unemployment from which the bosses reap maximum profits and control global markets to exploit workers internationally. Ultimately, workers face the most murderous expression of capitalism when the ruling classes use workers and youth to fight their imperialist wars. The workers' real goal worth shooting for is communism.

Working-Class Internationalism BBQ's Nationalism at PLP Cook-out

BROOKLYN, NY, May 29 -- There's a long communist tradition in Brooklyn of reversing the bosses Memorial Day orgy of patriotism with our big May Day cookout in Prospect Park. This year's event exceeded expectations with groups of teenagers materializing throughout the day. New friends manned the grill, organized sports and volunteered to travel out to Suffolk County, Long Island in late June for an important trial of PLP members arrested last summer while confronting anti-immigrant scum in Farmingville.

The day's highlight was a pick-up soccer game involving our group and a neighboring Mexican family. We shared DESAFIO with these workers. They immediately agreed to mix the teams -- "no discrimination, we don't like that crap" was the talk around the grill afterwards.

The "natural" thing would have been for our group to play their group, for black to play Mexican. History's most racist ruling class shapes mass consciousness in the U.S. today. Communist ideas bucked that nationalism. Just as the bosses seem to have an infinite number of ways to attack us, we have an equally infinite number of ways to fight back.

Several comrades were leaving for New Orleans the following day to open a summer of political organizing there. This is the same New Orleans where the minimum wage has been suspended and Latino immigrants working on reconstruction "jobs" are kept in what amounts to concentration camps on the heels of what honest observers can only call an attempted genocide against that city's black population. Our experience in Prospect Park should remind them, and us all, that working-class internationalism lies just beneath the surface in our neighbors and remains the unspoken aspiration of the world's toiling masses.

NSA SQUABBLE EXPOSES BOSSES' CLASS DICTATORSHIP

Three phone companies have given tens of millions of customer phone records to the National Security Administration (NSA). So what else is new, you ask? It's absolutely true that fascism is growing in the U.S. But there's more to these media exposés than meets the eye.

In the 1970's, the Nixon Administration spied on anti-war activists and other political opponents, including the Democrats. When Nixon was dumped, the FBI was temporarily put on a leash, partly to ensure it wasn't used against ruling-class agents again. A modified surveillance system, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), was established under President Carter. FISA set up a secret court, initially to be used mainly to investigate Soviet and other spies stationed in the U.S. After the Soviet Union's collapse, the bosses changed the focus of their spying.

U.S. rulers had already decided they couldn't allow other imperialists to control Mid-East oil. Meanwhile, al Qaeda and others openly declared their intentions to drive the U.S. out. Clinton & Co. used the 1993 World Trade Center bombing to justify more spying on Muslim immigrants. A 1996 law signed by Clinton allowed the FBI to apply to the FISA court for authorization to spy on those supposedly connected to "Foreign Terrorist Organizations."

Government applications for warrants soared. The secret court almost never turned down an application. But the FBI and their cohorts were just warming up. After 9/11, the USA Patriot Act gave the bosses' government new powers to spy on immigrants and citizens, even if little was related to "foreign terrorism." The FISA secret court tried to limit this power, but its ruling was overturned by FISA's secret appeals court.

This still was not enough for Bush & Co. They wanted to have their own surveillance, independent of the secret court. This is a no-no for liberal rulers, who remember what happened under Nixon, and who want no "loose-cannon" operations. These liberal bosses want everything to go through their FISA. The rulers want to ensure there's enough support amongst the population for spying programs, before they "reluctantly" permit "necessary measures to protect the public."

Even the "exposure" of the NSA program by USA Today has two sides. While everyone now knows about the surveillance -- and the Democrats have criticized "infringements on our civil liberties" -- still, many Senators, including key Democrats, had had knowledge of, and approved, the spying. While they attack the NSA's national database, they hypocritically support a national data-base of all workers as part of the immigration bills now being debated. Unfortunately, there's been little protest by workers and others. The connection between attacks on immigrants and citizens should be made clearer to more workers.

Members and friends of PLP should see these latest developments as a new challenge. We must organize our friends and co-workers, with a greater sense of urgency. The process of defeating passive acceptance of fascism will be slow. However, the bosses' in-fighting gives us more ammunition.

Lenin said the state machinery is a tool in the hands of the exploiters. As the fog of U.S. bourgeois democracy lifts, its system is more exposed as a dictatorship of the capitalist class. We must mobilize working-class anger wherever it exists. Small rivers of class struggle can become streams of communist-led working class resistance.

GI Movement Stirs from Its Slumber

Sixty people organized by a local Amnesty International Chapter and Veterans for Peace, including almost a dozen active-duty military personnel, met to discuss the lessons of the Vietnam-era GI movement and to plan strategy for the current emerging GI movement. David Cortright, author of "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War" (recently republished by Haymarket Books), and himself a GI activist in the late 1960's, gave the keynote address. Vietnam-era GI newspapers were displayed, along with current GI and veterans' literature. Approximately 30 attendees took CHALLENGE.

Cortright presented a compelling case for a vigorous, outspoken movement of active-duty soldiers, sailors and marines. He told numerous stories about resistance during the Vietnam War, ranging from anti-war petitions to "fraggings" (killing by a fragmentation grenade) of officers by their "own" men in Nam. He also described the militant anti-racist uprisings back then, concluding by calling on civilians and soldiers to join together to fight against U.S. imperialism.

The audience vigorously applauded Cortright, and questioned him from many perspectives. One participant noted that racism towards the Vietnamese then (and towards Iraqis now) strengthens the racism within the armed forces against African Americans and Latinos. Another called on active-duty personnel and veterans to join with anti-war public health workers next year in Boston in fighting the do-nothing leadership of the American Public Health Association, noting that Iraq Veterans against the War led the heckling of war criminal John Kerry at last year's convention.

Several audience members worried that GI's would face severe repression for speaking out, wondering what could be done. Cortright argued that only a substantial group, built over an extended period, should "go public" opposing the brass and the government, and even then should be prepared with lawyers and a civilian publicity base to make the biggest splash possible to limit the repression.

A member of Iraq Veterans against the War cautioned that it was critical for GI activists to build a clandestine network within the military in preparation for future struggles, as well as have certain open actions, since the government would try to crush any activism, just as it did in Vietnam.

Another questioner earnestly asked Cortright for his strategic views on how the broader anti-war and GI movement could actually change things, like stopping the war, instead of just "taking a stand." He said the Congressional election in November, which the Republicans might well lose, would help, as well as the presidential election in 2008, although he quickly noted that Democrats hadn't been much better than Republicans. He did feel, however, that the declining popularity of the war and of Bush provides an opening for more vigorous activity by people in and out of the service in opposing the war.

At this point, a PLP'er who had been part of the GI movement during the Vietnam War rose to speak about imperialism as not simply a Bush or neocon policy, but a necessity for the entire U.S. ruling class. The Iraq war, he continued, was just the beginning of many and larger wars which inevitably grow out of sharpening rivalry among imperialists like China, the European Union and the U.S. for control of the world's oil reserves and for overall economic and political dominance. The PL'er said that the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a leading force in the Democratic Party (including Hilary Clinton), had just published a book calling for an imperial strategy in the Middle East more thoroughgoing than the Bush neo-conservatives had advocated. He concluded that the best road for the GI movement was building towards revolution through political education and daily struggle against the brass at whatever level could be achieved, and rejecting the electoral strategy.

An active-duty soldier then asked if the many reforms that Cortright had argued for in his book, such as a formal ombudsman for grievances, had done any good, since he hadn't seen any evidence of them, and that perhaps a revolutionary approach might make sense. Cortright responded that, in fact, almost none of the reforms temporarily won during the Vietnam GI movement had really stuck. He said that both reform and revolution were necessary to end imperialism.

While the meeting ended on that note, the "meeting after the meeting" then began, with the active duty personnel, Cortright, veterans, and a PLP'er. They discussed what could be done at their base to launch a GI movement. Many ideas were floated, including launching a clandestine newsletter, holding study groups on revolution, and urging more people to apply for conscientious objector status. The PLP'er noted that it had been over 30 years since he had seen this kind of active-duty gathering, including African American, Latino and white soldiers united in figuring out how to rebuild the GI movement, and that this group had great potential power to confront U.S. imperialism. So stay tuned for the re-birth of the GI movement!

LETTERS

U.S. War on Mexico Caused Emigration

A May 10 CHALLENGE article sharply criticized patriotic Los Angeles radio announcers for urging immigrant workers to be grateful to the "great country that has given you everything." The article correctly pointed out that the bosses never give; they just take.

It reminded me of a "taking" rarely noted in the bosses' media or history classes: in 1846, the U.S. Army under President James Polk, a slave-holder from Tennessee, invaded Mexico on a flimsy pretext, murdering tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians on the way to Mexico City. They looted and destroyed the countryside as they went.

After Mexico's surrender, the U.S. imperialists annexed (stole) from the Mexicans all of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah, and parts of Colorado, Oregon, Wyoming and Idaho -- 1.2 million square miles in all!

Apologists for this conquest have always liked to call it "Manifest Destiny," the idea that the U.S. was "entitled" to rule as much of the continent as it could acquire by stealing it. In fact, it was an early example of vicious U.S. imperialism.

Much of the impoverishment of Mexico's people can be traced to this bloody theft. And after all, poverty has always been one of the leading causes of emigration.

A Reader

Airport Workers Fight Sexist, Racist Attacks

There's been a sharp fight by airport workers in our SEIU local against sexual harassment of immigrant workers. It started when eight women workers from Mexico and Central America filed a class action suit against ABM, a major contractor for Northwest Airlines. Now more than 20 workers have come forward to say that, to keep their jobs, they were harassed, touched or coerced into having sex with their supervisors. The union was not involved before the suit and has done little since.

Workers also distributed union fliers condemning sexual harassment and calling for a meeting to discuss this racist and sexist attack. CHALLENGE readers and distributors circulated a PLP leaflet. The bosses have failed to intimidate workers from fighting back.

At a meeting before work, which included U.S.-born and immigrant workers from Central America and Africa, one worker explained that sexism is a political weapon the bosses use to super-exploit women workers and attack us all. We discussed how these were racist attacks, singling out women from Latin America. A PLP member pointed out that the union is also a bosses' tool and that communist revolution is needed to destroy capitalism, the source of racism and sexism.

Red Airport Worker

Today's Navy Mirrors Old Jim Crow Racism!

My parents were both born in the South before 1950. Segregation was everywhere. Blacks had to ride the back of the bus and sit in the "colored only" section of eateries. In certain parts of South Carolina, blacks couldn't even smile in public. The racist system had an instrument known as "laughing barrels" for blacks to put their head in to laugh so that when they came up in the face of whites, they wouldn't be smiling. This was the apartheid south from the end of Reconstruction all the way up to the 1960's and beyond.

I was born in the South in the post-Civil Rights era and never experienced much of this culture, partly because I was raised in a 70% black city. But the Navy is a time machine -- I'm experiencing what my parents did.

There are enlisted barbershops and officer barbershops, ladder wells for officers and ladder wells for enlisted. Even more extreme, the ship's captain and executive officer (#2 in command) each has his own personal separate ladder well! There's a mess hall for enlisted and a wardroom (eatery) for officers. They even have a mess hall for first class Petty Officers (E6) to separate them from the E1-E5 enlisted personnel and separate sleeping facilities for lower enlisted, crammed into small bunks, middle enlisted getting a bigger bunk and officers getting their own rooms.

I recently had the duty of cleaning senior officers' rooms, making their beds, vacuuming their floors and taking their dirty uniforms to the laundry. Our boss, a first class (E6), would allow us to eat the officers' food, but only in a small room off to the side, while acting invisible.

I finally can feel first-hand what my grandparents in South Carolina and Georgia endured before the Civil Rights movement. I refused the officers' food and preferred eating with the enlisted. I won some of my shipmates to join me rather than be treated as second-class sailors.

The segregation on the ship mirrors the segregation in U.S. capitalist society, still segregated today by class and, in practice, by skin color as well. Class, one's relationship to the means of production, determines housing, education and a person's way of life. This segregation will continue until we can organize workers to develop the same mass anger towards class segregation as the generation before had towards Jim Crow/racial segregation.

Build the Party. We have a world to win!

Navy Red

Won't Learn History From U.S. Rulers

According to news reports, immigrant workers will be required to learn U.S. history. Actually, many in the U.S. need to learn about capitalism's real history here. Capitalist culture works overtime to keep people ignorant of history, as well as of most things.

The PLP pamphlet "Jailbreak" explains that capitalism teaches us to think in a superficial fashion or not at all. It's frightening that our consciousness is somewhat shaped by TV commercials, which bombard us daily with mindless consumerism. No doubt the PL pamphlet should be read by as many workers as possible, as a first step in learning how to combat the ignorance the ruling class shoves down our throats.

Certainly immigrants, as well as all workers, should learn history -- the history of oppressed people fighting back against capitalism, that is. Such history can help us understand what's needed in the fight to overthrow the profit system and to learn real critical thinking skills.

That's not what the bosses' politicians have in mind when they say immigrants should study U.S. history. Their idea is aimed at turning immigrants into "good citizens" who will be "thankful" to be living and working in U.S. capitalist society, one that does, in fact, foster ignorance of not only history as a process but also of everything else.

I can only shake my head in disgust at this call by the oppressors for immigrants to study history. In reality, it's up to communists to bring our real history to workers, as we struggle to make history. So perhaps CHALLENGE could have some articles on U.S. history, such as ones on the lives of Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglas or on labor struggles.

There's definitely a need right now for the red leadership that PL is battling to provide in the immigrants rights movement.

Red Coal

CHALLENGE Comment: Your points are well taken. Thanks for the suggestion. We might add that we have printed several articles on major strikes and labor rebellions as well as short biographies on figures like Paul Robeson and other working-class heroes. We will try to publish more.

Racism Runs Riot on French TV

On May 29, the state-run French TV network A2 depicted rioting in Kabul, Afghanistan, as having been caused by "a run-of-the-mill traffic accident" involving U.S. troops in a Humvee. Obviously, there's nothing "run-of-the-mill" about a heavy, armored Humvee racing at high speed, squashing cars and causing numerous deaths and injuries. So how come French TV misrepresented these events?

It's probably because of the racism -- conscious or unconscious -- of French TV news reporters who have a stereotype in their heads of Muslims as being "excitable" and "emotional." This racist garbage gets broadcast on TV and pollutes millions of minds. It makes Afghans seem "unreasonable" and tends to let the U.S. military off the hook -- another case of blaming the victim.

This is just one small example of what runs rampant in the world every day. It shows that racism is a worldwide phenomenon because capitalism produces racist ideas. The only way to get rid of racism is to get rid of capitalism.

A friend in France

Vision of Future Key to Overcoming Obstacles

I like the name change of the "Under Communism" column to "Forward to Communism." I assume it's a response to the critique in the April 26 issue.

I agreed with much of the critique, although I felt it didn't give enough weight to the importance of having a vision to fight for. That is, while it's very relevant that there are tremendous obstacles to achieving the type of society we aspire to, it's more relevant that it's worth aspiring to a communist egalitarian society in the first place. It seems poor motivation to fight simply to endure decades of death and destruction (regardless of the fact that it is inevitable). It is clear that predicting bliss in "less than 20 years" (my childhood memory) was wrong and counter-productive. But the opposite prediction, that conditions will inevitably be miserable for decades after the event, seems equally unproductive.

The reality is that history only provides an educated guess as to what the future holds. We have only a general idea of what it holds and should be prepared to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.

In our analysis, one of the biggest mistakes in the past was that communist parties in Russia and China were overly pessimistic about the ability of the masses to fight directly for communism without the intermediate step of socialism. They held back advances because of this pessimistic estimate. Why set ourselves up again to fail?

To me, keeping one's eye on the ball is the only way to hit a home run. The ball, of course, is the kind of society we want to build, not the obstacles to doing it. If, as is predicted, there are decades of misery and pain to endure, only a vision will hold us to the task of maintaining the struggle. I don't foresee everyone suddenly saying, "Oh man, this is jive. You told me it would be easy. I quit."

Still, I think the name change is good, and there's nothing wrong with including a balanced discussion of how the struggle might proceed, including some more optimistic scenarios.

A Comrade

Baghdad Comes to New Orleans

On a recent trip to New Orleans I drove through the 9th ward. At 5 PM the neighborhood is deserted. Nine months after hurricane Katrina devastated the city's primarily black working-class neighborhoods, the 9th ward looks more like a war zone than a place where people could live. (Indeed, someone had scrawled "Baghdad" on the side of an abandoned home.)

Many houses were blown off their foundations when the flood hit; some were flung hundreds of feet. Those homes near the levee when it broke were wiped out entirely. When standing next to the new levee and looking out across the surrounding area, one sees miles of devastation.

Two days later a hurricane survivor took me and several other volunteers to where her parents' home once stood. Though the house was nowhere to be seen, her memories described a vibrant working-class community. Being exposed to the human effect of the levee breech made clear to me the genocidal nature of this disaster. Whether the New Orleans ruling class dynamited the levee or simply built it so poorly that it was destined to break, they intentionally wiped out the 9th ward and killed thousands. Many who escaped death now live in concentration camp-style trailer "parks." (See box, page 3.)

The survivor, several other volunteers and I talked with other residents about how the working class can fight these racist attacks. For now, survivors are struggling to reclaim their communities. It's up to PLP to show that ultimately only armed struggle against capitalism can prevent further genocides like this one.

Red Volunteer

College Students, Faculty Confront Racist Minutemen

A multi-racial group of 60 college students and faculty confronted eleven Minutemen -- protected by campus cops -- as they attempted to disrupt an outdoor teach-in on this campus. The anti-racists chanted "Smash racists, Smash all borders!" and "Down, down with the MinuteKlan... Up, up with the workers!"

Many students passing by joined the chanting crowd, visibly upset by the presence of open racists on their campus, while others verbally challenged the Minutemen. One speaker called for physically stopping the racists. While this didn't happen, it led many students to discuss how best to deal with them.

The teach-in was organized to support the struggle against racism. Unable to intimidate students with their racist signs and flag-waving, the Minutemen resorted to yelling at speakers and distributing leaflets, which passers-by immediately crumpled and threw away. They were clearly unwelcome. However, the crowd eagerly accepted the anti-racist students' leaflets which exposed the fascism of the Minutemen/gutter racists backing the Sensenbrenner bill, as well as the liberal racist McCain-Kennedy phony "alternative." The Minutemen and their cop protectors finally gave up and left while the students continued their meeting.

The anti-racist leaflets advocated citizen-immigrant unity against the attacks on all workers. They explained how the ruling class uses racism and nationalism to try to divide and weaken workers' struggles, enabling them to exploit us in factories and sweatshops while urging us to fight and die for their imperialist profit wars.

A black student who took the leaflet compared the racist Minutemen to the Klan in the Jim Crow South, linking anti-immigrant racism to anti-black racism. This connection is important; it's no accident the bosses are spreading racism against immigrants to divide the potentially most militant and revolutionary sections of the U.S. working class: super-exploited black and Latino workers. Racism is the lifeblood of capitalism, but also its main weakness. All workers and students must oppose racism against immigrant and black workers in order to strengthen the unity and power of the entire working class.

Several of the student speakers emphasized that the only way to fight racism and imperialism is by building a multi-racial, international fighting movement of workers, students and soldiers. A Latino student tied the bosses' cops and courts to the fascist Minutemen they protect. He said anti-immigrant racism is an attack on all workers, used to lower wages and cut pensions in all industries. An Asian-American student noted how racist police terror affected all working-class communities, including his. A Muslim student exposed the hypocrisy of labeling immigrant workers "illegal" given the global criminal actions perpetrated by U.S. imperialism. Another student attacked the liberal McCain-Kennedy bill and the bosses' plan to use immigrant "guest workers" as slave labor in the fields and factories and immigrant youth as cannon fodder. She called the Minutemen's U.S. flags a symbol of racism, imperialism and exploitation, and argued that workers and students should fight to smash all borders.

Afterward, many students discussed how best to fight racism and growing fascism. While many mentioned pacifism and non-violent tactics, others advanced the idea of physically preventing the fascists from marching and speaking on our streets, communities and campuses. It's up to workers and students to stop these racists from spewing their hate-mongering lies and terror.

Several students received CHALLENGE for the first time and were open to its communist politics. Hopefully, these continuing campus struggles will help move them and others to read CHALLENGE regularly, and to fight alongside PLP for communist revolution to destroy the source of racism -- the profit system.

Redeye on the News

New Orleans is again `designed to fail'

...The Army Corps of Engineers has all but completed its repairs to this city's ruined levee system....

But even though all sides agree that the corps has largely achieved its goal, independent engineers say it is the goal that is the real problem. New Orleans is still very much at risk, they say, because the level of protection the corps has reached is still not as strong as the city needs....

"Some of these things were poorly designed and were almost pre-ordained to fail,"....

Professor Seed and other experts who have studied the crazy quilt of levees, flood walls, pumps and gates that have been in the process of being built for more than 40 years now say that they were never adequate to protect hundreds of thousands of people in an urban setting and that the levees themselves are now known to be fundamentally flawed....

Maj. Gen. Don T. Riley, the director of civil works for the corps, said he could not guarantee that the system would not fail again....

Gen. Robert Crear, the head of the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, said "We know Katrina was not the worst possible case." (NYT, 4/25)

US job security is now a fairytale

For an unnecessarily large number of Americans, the workplace has become a hub of anxiety and fear...in which you might be shown the door at any moment....

Since 1984, when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics started monitoring "worker displacement," at least 30 million full-time workers have been "permanently separated from their jobs and their paychecks against their wishes."

At the heart of the layoff phenomenon is the myth, endlessly repeated by corporate leaders and politicians of both parties, that workers who are thrown out of their jobs can save themselves, can latch onto spiffy new jobs by becoming better educated and acquiring new skills....

That is just not so....The reality is that there are not enough good jobs currently available.... (NYT, 5/25)

Kids define a sentence: 5 to 10 years

Go to schools and ask youngsters for a show of hands if they have a father, mother, brother, uncle or anyone close to them in prison. In many cities and suburbs, most kids' hands go up. And small wonder: more than 2 million Americans are behind bars, the most -- in absolute numbers, and share of the population -- of any nation on earth.

Or ask kids: "What's a sentence?" Ideally, they'd reply it's a group of words with a subject and predicate. But no, in many schools the reply is quite different: "Five to Ten years. (Washington Post, 5/21)

Still widespread, trafficking = slavery

...The demand for prostitutes (here in New York and elsewhere) is much greater than the supply of women who want to be prostitutes. So trafficking, the coercion of women and young girls into the sex trade, is a flourishing industry.

The toll that trafficking takes is often horrific. In addition to the forced prostitution, the women and children who are the victims of trafficking become part of a landscape in which drug addiction, disease, mental health problems, beatings and violent death are commonplace....

...Trafficking...is really about humans being bought and sold as commodities -- not just in the commercial sex trade, but also in exploitative labor situations on farms and in factories and sweatshops.

Trafficking is much more widespread than most people realize. As the advocacy group Sanctuary for Families has pointed out, "In our backyards and communities, a slave trade is flourishing that makes a mockery our belief in civil and human rights." (NYT, 6/1)

Afghanistan `success' looks a lot like Iraq

Something has gone alarmingly wrong in Afghanistan, previously touted as the Bush administration's one quasi-successful venture in nation building....

The warning signs go well beyond last week's deadly outbreak of anti-American rioting in Kabul -- the worst violence there since the Taliban were evicted from Afghanistan's capital in 2001. And Kabul is widely acknowledged to be the most secure place in Afghanistan.

The past few months have also seen a stronger than expected Taliban military revival (with open help from supporters in Pakistan)....

Armed militia commanders still rule many areas. Some provincial cities and villages are back under the control of the same corrupt officials the Taliban won cheers for chasing out a decade ago. Farmers have fallen victim to a poppy eradication program accompanied by no realistic plans for alternative economic development...

What Washington needs to do is fight a lot smarter.... (NYT, 6/1)

Imperialist US was never `beloved'

To the editor:

While I thought the article on Helen Thomas was good...I do have one question. She said: "We are despised when we were once beloved." I would like to know when in the history of the United States that was, exactly. In her own experience it was not during the 60s and 70s because of Vietnam. It wasn't during the 80s because the US did business with South Africa during apartheid. Nor was it during the 50s with South American countries and notably Cuba. As for the 40s, the US took its time in entering the war, and how many of us are going to remember that? Especially if one reads John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath where men were executed as Commies merely for seeking five cents extra for harvesting oranges.

If anyone can tell me when the US was beloved rather than despised, I look forward to the debate. (GW, 6/1)

Imperialism, Not `Human Nature' Makes War Inevitable

"The Human Potential for Peace," by Douglas P. Fry; Oxford University Press, New York, 2006.

This is an anthropological tour through hundreds of different societies, past and present, showing the many ways conflicts are resolved. Fry is a researcher and professor of developmental psychology, as well as anthropology. His book shows that, contrary to the generally accepted belief, war -- as one of many means of conflict resolution -- is an exception among human societies.

Fry grants that conflict among and between humans, as well as other animals, is present in all societies. But the key issue is how people deal with conflict.

Fry describes the evolution of societies from simple nomadic hunter/gatherer bands, to tribes that have leaders who command respect but are not permitted to command people, to chiefdoms in which leaders are permitted to command people, to states in which classes have conflicting relationships to the means of production and to each other and in which governments routinely command people. These four types of social formations range in size, complexity and in basic economic activity from hunting/gathering to agriculture and breeding animals to manufacture.

Fry draws on mountains of evidence from archeologists, who investigate past societies through their artifacts, and from other anthropologists, who live for years with the peoples in present-day societies and write ethnographies to describe their customs and relationships. He and many other anthropologists find that throughout 99% of the million years of existence of hominids (humans and our human-like predecessors), people have been organized into nomadic hunter/gatherer bands. War, although not conflict, is absent from these societies, both in the past and currently.

It's only in the last several thousand years, less than 1% of hominid existence, that more complex societies have arisen. Along with them war has often -- though not always -- been used to resolve conflicts.

The main lesson is that, while conflict may be part of all animal life (including human), war is not. Conflict resolution that does not resort to war, or even necessarily to violence, is the rule throughout human existence. War is the more recent exception, though in today's world that may be hard to believe.

The main weakness of Fry's book is his failure to examine the causes of war in modern capitalist society, namely imperialist competition for theft of resources, for command over the labor of others and for control of markets. So while he correctly concludes that it's possible to abolish war, he fails to show how capitalism prevents that abolition.

It's easy to see why capitalists pay handsomely for academics to corrupt their research and write millions of pages claiming that "war is inevitable" wherever there are people, regardless of social system. Those who toe this line get job security, promotions, research grants, publishing outlets and widespread publicity for their books and articles. Meanwhile those who oppose it are used to "prove" that there's "free speech" under capitalism. There is no winning in this arena, as long as a ruthless capitalist ruling class determines the prevailing ideology, defining what is conventional wisdom and painting everything else as delusional wishful thinking.

Despite its weaknesses, however, Fry's book is very useful to help counter the big "war-is-human-nature" lie. It helps show that humans can indeed abolish war but, contrary to Fry, can do so only a lengthy period after capitalism is abolished and replaced by communism. And, as CHALLENGE always notes, that transition will require revolutionary means -- a war of a particular sort, in which the world's working class eliminates the world's capitalists and their mercenaries.

Capitalism is the REAL `Inconvenient Truth'

"An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's film presents a frightening scenario about the effects of global warming - the process of the sun's rays and heat trapped within earth's atmosphere, thereby raising the temperature of the earth, melting the polar ice caps and raising the sea levels around the world. The science is clearly explained and the graphics are well done. No matter how much you think you already know, the shots of large ice masses melting in 35-day periods and depictions of the consequences of rising sea levels are startling.

As an interesting note: A positive aspect of the movie is that it clearly points to the science presented for the future of the earth's enviroment, debunking religious rationalizations that are put forward when catastrophes occur (ie, the result of an angry god.)

The movie also makes clear that the science predicting global warming has been around for decades, but has been suppressed. Also documented is the major contribution of the U.S. to the problem and its resistance to change.

But nowhere does Gore address the causes of this inaction. Neither industry nor profits nor greed nor capitalism is ever mentioned. We get no clue why the Kyoto treaty, designed to decrease global warming, was signed by every country except the U.S. and Australia. There is no discussion of why cars still run on gasoline when they could use ethanol made from corn. There's no mention of why industry has not cleaned up its act. Gore says only that legislators are "slow to change their minds."

It's clear this is a film to promote Al Gore and the liberal bosses. He is on camera the whole time, does not interview others and spends about 30 minutes on personal stories taken straight from his campaign ads. The movie opportunistically uses the examples of Hurricane Katrina as an example of disaster to gain support among black workers.

The Democrats have a big problem. Although the Republicans are in deep trouble, the Dems either don't disagree with them or want to do worse -- build a bigger army to prepare for wider war with China (see editorial, page 1); preserve U.S. control of world energy resources; increase police powers and control of the civilian population. Both parties voted for the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. But the environment, there's an issue where they can at least appear to differ from the Republicans. Moreover, the party is desperate to find a candidate other than Hillary. Maybe a rehabilitated Gore will do.

Some facts in this movie are good to know and discuss. In the end, "An Inconvenient Truth" suggests that we are all culprits causing global warming. Individuals are told to plant trees, write letters, pray and engage in other personal activities.

But as long as capitalism exists and is bound to maximize profits, there's no hope for any effective long-range planning to save the environment. U.S. imperialism poses the greatest danger to the world, both by its contamination of the environment and its commitment to controlling the world's resources for profit. Al Gore's election won't change this.

Forward to communism

Fatal Errors in Soviet Union's Early Years -- Part 3

Contradictions sharpened in the Moscow of 1922, where U.S. communist Anna Louise Strong returned to resume her journalism. In her book, "I Change Worlds," she explains, "The Moscow to which I returned as Hearst correspondent in the late spring seemed to have changed in my three months' absence, from a city of comrades living on rations to a city of profiteers charging fantastic prices. The latter world was by far more conspicuous; the earlier world of comrades creating [amidst] chaos had to be looked for and was hard to find. The surface of life was ruthless competition and limitless profit-grabbing."

How could this happen? At that time, the Soviet Communist Party leadership believed that the struggle toward communism meant developing first a socialist society. They believed that money, profits and incentive wage scales would maximize production and eventually lead to a surplus. They thought communism could not be built without the production of this surplus. The problem was that this approach was characteristic of capitalism, the very system they were trying to escape.

One of Strong's first interviews was with Krasnoschekoff, a leader of guerilla forces during the war of capitalist intervention (1918-1921). He later became Assistant Commissar of Finance in Moscow. "Tell me," she asked, "how am I supposed to regard all these shops that are opening? To me each seems a step of defeat...must one be glad of this?"

He explained, "When by extreme revolutionary spirit, workers managed to produce without first being fed, in the hope of giving goods to the peasant and getting bread, their goods went not to the peasant but to the war. If, under interest or compulsion the peasants gave us food and trusted to later returns, that food went not into production but into the army. Then we had two years of drought ending in famine."

Neither Krasnoschekoff nor Strong advanced the political understanding that should have been developed during these years of extreme scarcity: Instead of explaining how the workers in the fields (peasants) and the workers in the factories had the same interests, the Party appealed on one basis to the factory workers (bread and money), and on another to the farm workers ("Peace, Land and Bread").

Krasnoschekoff continued, "We must say frankly to the people, `Your government cannot feed all and produce goods for all. We shall run the most necessary industries and feed the workers in those industries. The rest of you must feed yourselves in any way you can.' This means we must allow private trade and private workshops; it is well if they succeed enough to feed those people who work in them, since no one else can feed them. Later, as state industries produce a surplus, these will expand and drive out private trade."

Strong says, "In fact, state industries as were able to do so profiteered even more shamelessly than the private capitalists, since they had less to fear. Were such state trusts, I wondered, really socialistic?"

She was also disturbed by "American businessmen [who] came to negotiate for concessions. They were chiefly of a flashy type, adventuring into the wild lands of Russia in hope of quick gain." These greed-driven profit-seekers were in extreme contrast to the U.S. workers she met, many of them communists, who came to the USSR not to profit but to help build the new society.

(Next: the dedication of these U.S. workers and some of the monumental obstacles to building the kind of society they desired.)