CHALLENGE is tri-weekly during the end of December. We wish our readers a 2006 full of struggles for a world without bosses.

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Anti-Racist Movement Growing in the South:: Katrina Survivors Organizing Fight-Back

Student Protest Defies Hampton U. Bosses

a href="#Langston Hughes on Hampton’s Racism">"angston Hughes on Hampton’s Racism

Boeing Strikers Fighting for Future Workers

a href="#Garment Workers’ Unity Stops Bosses Cold">"arment Workers' Unity Stops Bosses Cold

a href="#Auto Workers Shouldn’t Pay For GM-Ford Decline">"uto Workers Shouldn’t Pay For GM-Ford Decline

The Struggle at CUNY: Building Solidarity Between Workers and Students

Cook County Rank-&-File Unite, Demand Strike vs. Give-backs

Lynne Stewart Case: Hundreds Take Stand vs. Police State Attack

Homecare Workers Tell Off Sellout Union Bosses

Toledo Cops Protect Nazis, Attack Anti-Fascists

Home Health Care Workers Strike Over Racist Poverty Pay

LETTERS

Anti-war Conference Spawns New Activists

France: Clear Rebels of Deadly Assault

Anti-Racist Holiday Excites Co-Workers

Soccer Players Score Against Racism

Back Anti-Minutemen Protesters

Language-Literature Profs Planning Counter-Attack vs. Fascist Control

a href="#‘Land of Dead’ Review">‘L"nd of Dead’ Review

REDEYEZ

• Profiteers rob poorest countries of trillions
• Nobelest Pinter roasts US lies and brutality
• Ruling class $ goes to Iraq, not New Orleans
• US capitalism up while most families down
• Bosses’ media hypnotize public with lies
• Unions shrink as bosses strongarm workers

Slavery Built New York

UNDER COMMUNISM: What will science be like?

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Anti-Racist Movement Growing in the South:

Katrina Survivors Organizing Fight-Back

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 10 — "I’ve been bumped around to four different places since Katrina. Now I’m in a hotel in downtown New Orleans with a whole bunch of other people. They say they’re going to put us out soon, and I don’t know where we’ll go." The speaker, a woman in her fifties, was standing in front of City Hall at the concluding rally of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) march today. "What we’ll probably do is walk in that door and camp on the floor till they find some housing for us," said another homeless resident. If the City doesn’t do something to help these people, they’ll have to arrest a whole bunch of people. They’ll have to build a whole bunch of jails."

About 1,200 hurricane survivors and their supporters from the Gulf Coast and around the country marched behind a big red banner reading, "From Outrage to Action; Justice after Katrina: the People Must Decide." A brass band energized the marchers, who felt stronger and more determined the farther they walked.

Spectators greeted the march enthusiastically, dancing, clapping, shouting or blowing car horns. Although few people were on the streets, many joined the march. One survivor who joined commented, "Something’s got to start. It might as well be now!"

Chants like "I’m Back, You’re Back, Tell [Mayor] Nagin We’re All Back," "Whose Streets? Our Streets," and "What Do We Want? Housing! When Do We Want It? Now!" rang out loud and clear. PLP members led chants like, "FEMA, You Liar, We’ll Set Your Ass On Fire," "The Workers, United, Will Never Be Defeated," and "The Only Solution Is Communist Revolution!"

Rally speakers condemned all levels of government for the racist terror against hurricane victims and tied their murderous actions to the war in Iraq. Survivors encouraged New Orleanians to reclaim their homes. This grassroots march barred any politicians or big-name speakers from its platform.

The day before the march, about 500 survivors and activists met in Jackson, Mississippi, to plan further action to fight for the rights of the mainly poor, black workers who were displaced by the ruling class since the hurricane. The energy and commitment of many young people in PHRF was inspiring. These multi-racial youth see the events surrounding Katrina as the beginning of a new anti-racist movement. They fought hard for the agenda and demands of the movement and the voices of the survivors came through in the events.

But nationalists and revisionists (pseudo-leftists) also fought hard to lead and control. Nationalism is the same worldwide: "Follow me because I look or talk like you. Hate those other folks and forget that they’re oppressed workers just like you. Follow me into battle so I can claim my piece of the capitalist pie." The U.S. ruling class uses this ideology to get workers to fight and die in their wars. It poisons any movement claiming to fight racism.

PLP members learned a lot and were very moved by seeing the devastation of New Orleans first-hand. The contents of people’s homes are on the street waiting for pick-up, trees are leaning on power lines, few people are on major streets. But the French Quarter looks like nothing ever happened, as middle-class people living there buy sushi at the corner grocery. A few streets away, black neighborhoods have no electricity, not even street lights or traffic signals. In the wealthier areas, the lights are on again.

We shared our communist ideas and literature with many people at the conference and the march. We exchanged phone numbers with survivors who are totally disgusted with the system and interested in revolutionary ideas. We pointed out to college and high school students who came to help Katrina victims that communism is the only solution to racism. We plan to continue to work with this movement.

The racist attack against black workers after Katrina may have changed the possibilities for class struggle in the U.S. Given the imperialist war in Iraq and the slashing of workers’ living standards to the bone, New Orleans can energize an anti-racist movement. All CHALLENGE readers should do what they can to join and support the struggles of Katrina victims.

Student Protest Defies Hampton U. Bosses

HAMPTON, VA., Dec. 9 — Twenty Hampton University (HU) students protested the war in Iraq, U.S. racism in New Orleans, the AIDS epidemic, and the war in Sudan by distributing flyers and holding discussions in the student cafeteria on November 2. HU administrators and police shut down the activities, detained and videotaped students, confiscated their ID’s, and charged seven students with putting up posters, distributing flyers, and holding a protest without obtaining prior permission — and threatened, in writing, to expel them! If anyone doubted that we’re on the road to fascism, both locally and nationally, lose those doubts. But the HU students have sharpened their activism, are preparing a new offensive against racism, war and repression, and some may be joining the PLP Winter Project in Washington, DC over semester break.

Bold Mass Approach Leads to Advance

The students at this historically black university responded to the administration attacks by reaching out boldly to fellow students and to local and national organizations in which they have been involved (including Amnesty International, United Students Against Sweatshops, and the Campus Antiwar Network). Their participation in these mass organizations provided many friends to call on. Soon hundreds of phone calls and e-mails were pouring into administration offices. The university was embarrassed by local media, and the story quickly spread widely via the wire services and the internet. Two of the seven students wrote an article entitled "Corporate Plantation," a sharp and detailed analysis of recent events and the long history of racist oppression at Hampton. The article has been posted on the internet:

http://blackcommentator.com/162/162_corporate_plantation.html

On the morning of the hearing, several dozen students and others were at the Student Center to support and defend the HU Seven, including supporters from Howard University, who brought petitions of support with 900 signatures, gathered in just two days; the parents of the accused; a faculty advisor; attorneys from both the ACLU and AFSCME; and the director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of Amnesty International. Members of predominantly white local anti-war organizations set up a support picket line just outside the University grounds.

Parents and attorneys put the HU administrators on the defensive and exposed the proceedings as a kangaroo court. The administrators rushed through the hearings and quickly announced that all were guilty; six received a "sentence" of 20 hours of community service and one (who had merely passed by the protest activity) was given a "warning." The administration’s clumsy attacks and the students’ bold response have changed the atmosphere on campus, paving the way for more intense struggle.(See article page 2)

Hampton University’s Racist Repression Serves Rulers’ Interests

Many outside supporters could scarcely believe that the Hampton University (HU) administration imposes such restrictive rules on its students (see front page article). Hampton’s near-fascist regime exists not only because its president for over 25 years, William Harvey, is a Republican who has enjoyed close ties to Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II but the school has been run this way ever since its founding in 1868, and plays an important role in sustaining the entire structure of racism in U.S. capitalist society (see box). Many of the over 100 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) similarly serve the ruling class.

Hampton University was founded by a Union general who believed that blacks and Indians were thousands of years behind whites in moral and social development and therefore must be denied civil and political rights. Hampton trained teachers to be sent throughout the South to try to make blacks accept their subordination as super-exploited agricultural workers in a Jim Crow (segregated) society. Its most famous student was Booker T. Washington, who cloned Hampton at Tuskegee and received a huge endowment from billionaire capitalist Andrew Carnegie. In 1895, in his famous Atlanta speech, Washington openly embraced racial segregation and rejected the struggle for political rights. As W.E.B. Du Bois pointed out, Carnegie and other big capitalists contributed money to Tuskegee and Hampton to foster the movement to maintain black workers as cheap labor to break strikes and unions and thus hold down all workers. One historian called his book about Hampton "Schooling for the New Slavery."

Today Hampton trains black professional, managerial and technical workers to help the ruling class maintain the super-exploitation of black workers in a period of imperialist wars and U.S. decline. That means training Hampton students as army officers in the rulers’ wars; as criminal justice officials in a racist system of mass incarceration of blacks; as professional workers in corporations whose profits depend upon super-exploitation of workers; and as doctors and lawyers in a system that denies black workers access to decent medical and legal services.

To accomplish this mission, Hampton indoctrinates its students to look down on black workers and look up to military, political and corporate leaders such as Colin Powell and Condolezza Rice. For example, Hampton’s president Harvey selected as graduation speaker this past year Alphonso Jackson, Bush’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Jackson has cut Section 8 subsidized housing for poor workers. More recently, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, Jackson told the Houston Chronicle that most of New Orleans’ black population should not be allowed to return, and that New Orleans should become a predominantly white city!

The HU administration can deliver its chosen product only by operating in a highly repressive way. But these lackey administrators will not succeed. Black students often choose to come to HBCUs to avoid the racism at predominantly white colleges and universities, and then discover the racism of a heavy-handed black administration. However, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s black students at HBCUs sparked the sit-in movement that spawned the militant Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Their militancy provided leadership and inspiration to the entire student movement in the U.S. and worldwide. Black student leadership today is crucial to the development of an anti-imperialist, anti-racist revolutionary movement, and Hampton’s bold fighters are moving in that direction.

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Langston Hughes, the black communist writer, penned an article in "The Crisis" in 1934 condemning the political conservatism of black colleges. He once was asked by Hampton students to speak to them about two vicious racist incidents — the death of Fisk University’s popular dean of women, caused by the refusal of white hospitals to admit her after a traffic accident, and the beating to death of a Hampton graduate by a white Alabama mob.

Hughes noted, "The students wanted to…protest the…brutality that brought about their deaths…. We began to lay plans for…a Sunday evening protest meeting, from which we would send wires to the press and formulate a memorial to these most recent victims of race hate….

"The faculty sent their… dean of men…to confer with the students. Major Brown [said]…that perhaps the reports we had received…had not been true. Had we verified those reports? I suggested wiring or telephoning immediately to Fisk and to Birmingham for verification. The Major….felt it was better to write. Furthermore,…Hampton did not like the word ‘protest.’ That was not Hampton’s way. He, and Hampton, believe in moving slowly and quietly, and with dignity….

"On and on he talked. When he had finished, the students knew quite clearly that they could not go ahead with their protest meeting…. They knew they would face expulsion and loss of credits if they did so…. Hampton students held no…protest over the mob-death of their own alumnus, nor the death on the road (in a Negro ambulance vainly trying to reach a black hospital) of one of [their]…finest young women. The brave…spirit of that little group of Hampton students who wanted to organize the protest was crushed by the official voice of Hampton…."

Boeing Strikers Fighting for Future Workers

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — About 1,600 workers in the International Association of Machinist (IAM) struck Boeing’s rocket business Nov. 3. The main issue mirrors the one that sparked the earlier September strike by 18,500 Machinists in the Seattle, Portland and Wichita commercial airplane plants: retiree health care for future hires. "We’re fighting for people who aren’t in the work force yet — people we don’t know," said Gary Quick, an 18-year veteran Boeing employee.

Since Lockheed workers overrode their leaders’ sellout on this issue in the spring, no IAM local leadership has dared to accept such a contract. The Party has helped put this class demand on the front burner, as rank-and-filers in several locals demanded solidarity around the fate of these future hires.

Nonetheless, the ideology of these pro-capitalist union leaders undermines this fight. Rather than hanging patriotic bunting over a small rally of a couple of hundred, we must mobilize the strength of our class. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains," said Karl Marx in concluding the "Communist Manifesto." These days those words are life and death for our class brothers and sisters.

As reported in the last CHALLENGE, 100,000 workers in Sidney, Australia marched on the Boeing headquarters in support of 25 striking Boeing workers in that country. One thing that infuriated Sidney workers was the sacking of two workers for calling another employee a "scab."

International class consciousness — that calls a scab a scab — stands in stark contrast to the union leaders’ flag-waving nationalism. Nationalism is the ideology of the bosses, an enemy within our ranks. "It’s national security or retirement security," said Peter Peterson, chairperson of the Council on Foreign Relations, the bosses’ premier foreign policy think-tank.

The attack on retiree medical benefits has shifted from the purely economic realm to the political. The bosses are calling for an all-out attack on retirement benefits throughout the country. Although backed up with actuary figures, the real reason behind this attack is the need to wage bigger and more costly wars to maintain control over primarily Mid-east oil. The inter-imperialist rivalry is sharpening and we’ve been added to its list of victims. Appeals to nationalism play right into the bosses’ imperialist plans.

Even as this battle unfolds, SPEEA, the Boeing engineers union, caved in on retiree medical care for future hires. In addition, the rocket workers’ medical care expired and scabs have become a real problem. Now more than ever, these strikers need the class-conscious, revolutionary ideas advocated in the pages of CHALLENGE.

a name="Garment Workers’ Unity Stops Bosses Cold">">"arment Workers’ Unity Stops Bosses Cold

"We should stop production," a garment worker declared when I said Joaquin had quit because he couldn’t stand any more yelling from the factory’s general supervisor. We agreed to discuss a strike with other workers after lunch.

In five minutes, two other workers approached another worker’s machine to relate what had happened. I proposed to them to stop working at noon. Angrily they said, "Why don’t we stop now? Why wait?" "Then we must talk to the others," I responded, realizing I had underestimated the workers’ anger.

In minutes the factory was paralyzed. This wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the help of a co-worker who had gone through similar struggles in another factory. While I talked to my closest friends at one end of the factory, she did the same at the other end. Class consciousness and previous experience were her guides. But what really convinced all the workers was one worker yelling, "An injury to one is an injury to all!"

The machines stopped. We met near the offices and agreed to demand to speak to the boss, who was at her other factory. The general supervisor and an office worker asked, "What’s happening? Why aren’t you working?" Their Spanish was hard to understand. "We want to talk to Maria [the boss]. We don’t want any more harassment. We’re not animals. We want Joaquin to come back, but we don’t want to talk with you," declared the workers angrily.

When the two returned to the office, one worker told everyone that strikes are good weapons against the bosses. He raised the recent rebellion in France — showing we’re part of the same working class — as well as the racist police murders and the immigrant deaths at the border. He said we need to fight back, both inside and outside the factories.

"This is a dictatorship," said another worker who doesn’t work on the sewing machines. "If you don’t fight back, you’ll continue to be exploited." Another said, "Personally they don’t mistreat me because I don’t let them, but they do pressure me to work faster. The machine I work on is dangerous; it has knives and I can get cut. Pressure causes accidents." Then he told how another worker had been injured because of speed-up.

The general supervisor returned with a secretary to translate into Spanish. He argued that since he didn’t speak Spanish well, the workers misunderstand him. "Those who don’t like me raise their hands," he said, expecting a positive response. No one did. The workers answered, "All of us don’t like you." "Then I’ll leave," he said, turning around. "Bye Mister," said one worker." Say goodbye to Mister."

He glared angrily at this worker’s sarcasm and returned to the office. Out came the person in charge of giving out the work, saying, "We spoke to Maria and she said to go back to work and she’ll be here in half an hour to resolve this problem." No one opposed this, but many workers didn’t want to go back until they had talked to the boss.

When the boss arrived she made an announcement on the loudspeaker. "He [the supervisor] has a strong accent and since he doesn’t speak Spanish well, he was misunderstood," the boss said. If you don’t like him, that’s no problem. We’ll find another, but it will always be the same because I like them to be strict." She offered us child care and financial aid for some of our children in school.

The worker who quit came back. I haven’t worked in this factory long but the solidarity of these workers shows that the next step is building closer ties and distributing CHALLENGE to more workers to be able to move this anger towards the long-term fight for communist revolution to end exploitation once and for all. All bosses are the same. We need workers’ power.µ

A Garment Worker

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In a 1997 survey of the world’s auto industry, the British magazine The Economist noted, "By 2000 overcapacity will have risen from 18 million to 22 million units (per year) — equivalent to 80 of the world’s 630 auto assembly plants standing idle." This was one of many indicators pointing to serious problems for world capitalism. Unemployment, idle machinery, loss of capital (plant closings), all loomed large in its immediate future.

While the survey was thorough, hindsight reveals an underestimation of the potential for capitalist growth and investment in China.

But when the next survey was published, Sept. 10, 2005, the Economist had changed its tune. "But globally the auto industry is set for a huge expansion with the motorization of China and India…Garel Rhys, the Director for the Center of Automotive Industry Research at Cardiff University in Britain, says…this growth will create the need for 180 new factories…Some experts predict that over the next 20 years more cars will be made than in the entire 110-year history of the industry." From the prospect of shutting down 80 plants to building 180 new ones in eight short years is quite a turn-around.

Then how is it that at this moment General Motors and Ford plan to lay off 30,000 workers each and close up to 18 plants in North America? For decades they were the poster boys for U.S. industrial supremacy. Today, however, the world’s auto industry is expanding while GM and Ford are contracting.

It’s a snapshot of the relative decline of U.S. industrial power. Domestically it shows up in over two million jailed; over 43 million without health insurance; wages falling; hours of full-time work increasing; Arab-Americans jailed without trial; the racist Katrina catastrophe and so on. Financially, it shows up as the world’s biggest debtor nation and being challenged by the euro as a world currency.

The world has changed drastically since World War II ended, when the bosses dreamed of an "American Century" and 80% of the worlds manufactured goods were U.S.-made. Today autos and steel are made everywhere and the challenges to U.S. imperialism are many. Every major industry, from auto and steel to textiles and aerospace, are undergoing dramatic and brutal restructurings as U.S. bosses try to maintain their status as the #1 imperialist in a shrinking world with many players. Europe is undergoing similar changes.

Despite all their layoffs, plant closings and attacks on pensions and health care, one of the U.S. bosses’ main trump cards is that they’re armed to the teeth and able to ensure that the world’s oil market still trades in dollars. The other is the defeat of the old communist movement, which allows them to get away with unlimited attacks on the working class while at the same time the old socialist countries like China have become a source of imperialist investment. However, China’s economic growth is enabling it to turn itself into an imperialist power and a rival of the U.S. and other bosses. This is partly true for India as well.

Even though Japanese and European bosses have a jump-start in the growing Chinese market, GM and Ford are also investing heavily there, building factories and hiring workers at 70 cents-an-hour. While a long strike at Delphi could eat up most of GM’s cash on hand, GM and the UAW appear to be working very hard to avoid that (see below).

All the auto bosses investing in China are dreaming of selling cars to a potential 250 million buyers. But this feeding frenzy will create still another glut of over-capacity, especially if there are serious economic downturns in China, leading to more boarded-up factories and long unemployment lines. Just as the rush to build auto factories in Mexico created more poverty on both sides of the border, now many of those Mexican plants are being shuttered and moved to China. It’s the nature of the beast.

GM and Ford highlight U.S. imperialism’s precarious plight. For decades now, control of the world’s oil has sustained its status as the world’s safest harbor for international capital. With a shrinking industrial base, it needs that capital more than ever. As CHALLENGE has pointed out, today’s war in Iraq is part of a larger plan to grab control of all Middle East oil. The strategic aim is to displace the euro as a rival world currency and open a door of influence in the Asian consumer markets by controlling the key raw material — oil.

All this challenges the working class. Can 60,000 GM and Ford workers (and thousands more in the supplier plants) be thrown out on the streets without a murmur of protest? Shouldn’t we fight for all our unions to send telegrams to the UAW urging support for any strike, including on mass picket lines and in sit-downs, and protest against this attack on our class?

This can be an opportunity for PLP members and friends on the shop floor to once again expose the U.S. bosses’ strategic plan for up to 30 years of oil war. It can also expose the central role of the union hacks who, in the face of preparations for sustained war, promote pro-war patriotism and passivity, as if the working class is merely a victim of history and not the actual agent of change.

Even if such a campaign doesn’t produce strikes or protests, it will help bring our revolutionary communist politics to masses of workers, strengthen our base and expand our revolutionary influence.

The Struggle at CUNY: Building Solidarity Between Workers and Students

(Third of a four-part series)

In 1912, Big Bill Haywood, leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), stood before thousands of striking textile workers in Lowell, Mass. He held up one hand with each finger extended separately. "This is how the AFL organizes," he said. Then, raising a clenched fist he exclaimed, "This is how the Wobblies organize!" In 1919, Haywood joined and became a leader of the then revolutionary Communist Party USA.

Today, the working class in NYC is on the defensive, lacking real solidarity. Although there’s a "NYC Central Labor Council," in practice union leaders cut their own deals and don’t support each other. All city workers and students face declining wages and deteriorating living conditions as the capitalist class forces them to pay for imperialist wars. The Professional Staff Congress’s (PSC) contract struggle at the City University of New York (CUNY) is one example. Solidarity with other workers and CUNY students would sharpen this struggle, making it more successful. Steeled by united participation in immediate battles, the working class could also begin to look beyond reform, to the need for revolution.

At a September 29 PSC mass meeting, the President of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the Treasurer of the Transit Workers Union (TWU) promised to support the PSC in our fight. Although informed about the PSC informational picket lines scheduled for Oct 19 and 20, they didn’t organize their membership to support us.

This typifies classic trade unionism: unions rarely look beyond their own ranks. Building solidarity with all workers is not optional or a "second stage," only to be considered after one’s own contract is settled. It’s a vital part of winning economic demands. Rank-and-filers shouldn’t wait for the leadership’s signal to do this. PL members in the PSC proved that even modest efforts can pay off. As a result, on a few campuses members of the UFT and AFSCME’s District Council 37 joined our lines. And sympathetic TWU shop stewards at three bus depots took flyers to distribute to their members.

These stewards agreed about the need to unite against the Taylor Law, which criminalizes public employee strikes, threatening severe penalties for doing so. Fearing this, many CUNY workers would rather settle for a give-back contract. But if the PSC united with other municipal workers, together we could bust this anti-labor law and solidify unity within our own ranks. This occurred in the 1966 transit strike, when tens of thousands of other workers backed TWU members and busted the old strike-breaking Condon-Wadlin Law; in fact, it was that action that led to passage of the Taylor Law. By fighting together we could also break the city’s strategy of enforcing bargaining patterns, in which one union settles low and sets a precedent for other contracts.

The weakness of fighting separately was clear in the current graduate students’ strike at New York University (UAW Local 2110). NYU refuses to negotiate a new contract with the graduate teaching assistants while cutting their health care benefits and threatening to void their next semester appointments if they don’t return to work. While some professors are holding classes off campus, the majority of faculty, staff, and students cross the picket lines as if there were no strike! Ironically, NYU’s adjunct professors are also organized by the UAW (Local 7902). Where is the solidarity even between UAW locals?

PLP says fight to win. To take on the full power of the bosses — be it CUNY or NYU — we must build working-class solidarity across union lines.

For the PSC, this also means developing ties with CUNY students. Some faculty believe that bringing students into union "politics" breaches professional conduct. This is strange coming from a public university with a long history of fierce united student-teacher battles here for open admissions and affirmative action programs — inspired by the anti-racist rebellions and anti-Vietnam war movement of the late 1960’s early ’70’s.

After some delay, the PSC leadership is now taking seriously the need to build a worker-student alliance. First, students were invited to attend the September 29 mass membership meeting. Next, at the informational picket line flyers distributed to students raised the need for solidarity and explained why students should be supportive of CUNY workers and a potential strike. Student reaction was overwhelmingly positive. At one campus, students from an anti-war group joined the picketing by distributing a solidarity flyer and collecting signatures on a petition supporting PSC workers. At other campuses, students led the picket lines with rousing chants like, "Students and Workers United, Will Never Be Defeated!"

Now there’s a strong feeling of worker-student solidarity among workers and students. PSC workers are responding by speaking out against planned tuition hikes. Many CUNY workers and students are won to the idea that give-backs and tuition hikes are related to austerity measures forced on workers by a system that prefers to cut taxes for the rich while funding wars and prisons.

A worker-student alliance is particularly important at CUNY whose student body is overwhelmingly black, Latino and Asian. Racism has been a divisive tool used by the ruling class for centuries. The fact that a majority white faculty can unite with a majority non-white student population sets an example for the whole working class. CUNY’s racist bosses have cut state funding by 70% since 1990. Given that CUNY students come from predominantly lower-income black and Latin families, faculty opposition to tuition hikes in this instance also becomes an anti-racist fight. CUNY’s attack on the faculty is also an attack on students.

To cover up these racist attacks, CUNY bosses try to pit one against the other — telling students that workers’ gains cause tuition hikes. In reality, wages at CUNY have dropped 47% since the early 1970’s while tuition has skyrocketed. (CUNY was tuition-FREE until the ’70’s when its student population switched from predominantly white to mainly black and Latin.) A worker-student alliance will beat this divide-and-conquer strategy and sharpen the fight against racist tuition hikes and give-backs.

These events at CUNY prove that students and workers understand the need to fight together. They demonstrate that the "separate fingers of the hand" are really connected and have a lot to offer each other. The ability to see and make these connections is something communists can offer workers who are artificially divided into unions, movements, "races" and teacher/student categories. As more and more workers are involved in united struggle, they’ll begin to think and act as a class, laying the groundwork for the collective fist of the working class to smash capitalism with communist revolution.

Cook County Rank-&-File Unite, Demand Strike vs. Give-backs

CHICAGO, IL Dec. 1 — "It’s Time For County to Pay! It’s Time For County To Pay!" "They Say Cutback, We Say Fight Back!" These chants and others cut through the freezing temperatures as more than 200 black, Latin, Asian and white men and women workers held a lunchtime picket line at Stroger Cook County Hospital. The SEIU and AFSCME locals that represent thousands of area healthcare workers called the protest. County workers have been bargaining for a new contract for more than a year. The workers in SEIU Local 20 had just voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike.

Some of the pickets work for Hektoen. Their jobs are funded by grants, mainly from the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Their near-unanimous vote rejected a tentative agreement between SEIU and Hektoen. Then they voted to authorize a strike despite the union organizer’s attempted sabotage. During the strike vote they put out a flier stating, "The bosses are Katrina, the union is FEMA, and Hektoen is our Superdome!"

Though a much smaller bargaining unit, Hektoen workers, with their militancy and solidarity, have helped set the tone for the much bigger showdown at County. The union is threatening to call out the Hektoen workers on their own while continuing talks at County. Many workers have adopted the slogan, "Two Contracts — One Struggle," and want to strike both contracts together.

Health care is the main issue. The bosses were telling the Hektoen workers to sign up for the new health care plan they had just rejected, while the union sat by silently. The County’s last proposal would see increases in worker payments of about $200 month for family coverage, meaning a big wage-cut for most workers. And even these concessions pale compared to the health care available to the patients we serve.

The mostly black, Latin and immigrant poor patients at County often wait days in the ER for a bed, and more than 24 hours in the pharmacy for a prescription. The $6 billion-per-month cost of the war in Iraq is eating up all social services. In health care it means big cuts in Medicare and Medicaid that affect the poor and the elderly. Even a Sunday bus line to County was cut out. These racist cutbacks are financing the imperialist oil war and the building of the Homeland Security police state.

County and Hektoen workers are way ahead of the union leaders, who are desperately seeking an accommodation with the bosses. Last September the workers organized a bus to the anti-war march in Washington, D.C.

As one Party leader, a black woman with over 25 years at County, said recently, "Most workers are caught in the here and now. We need to spend more time struggling with the workers politically. We get so caught up fighting the attacks, the firings, handling grievances, fighting around the contract and with the Executive Board, that we spend more time fighting for reforms than for communism."

To remedy this, we’re trying to increase the CHALLENGE readership to 100, based on winning a number of new network distributors. A mass base for CHALLENGE will become the political leadership of the workers; they’ll be the first to follow the Party into battle. The network distributors will be the next wave of recruits. We’re planning a meeting for all CHALLENGE readers to fight for a strike that can truly be a school for communism.

Lynne Stewart Case: Hundreds Take Stand vs. Police State Attack

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 8 — Tonight between 250 and 300 people attended a "speak-out" in support of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer facing a sentence of up to 30 years, for "conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism" and to "defraud the U.S. government." Her Arabic translator Mohamed Yousry and paralegal Ahmed Abdel Satter were also convicted. PL’ers distributed 90 CHALLENGES.

The event aimed to reach out to organizations and activists beyond Ms. Stewart’s normal base of supporters. The organizers hoped to merge the personal support for Lynne Stewart with the fight against developing fascistic trends facing working people in their schools, neighborhoods and unions. The event also featured politically-oriented entertainment by the "Raging Grannies," who sang, a spoken word poet, a comedian and a gospel singer.

Panelists included speakers from varied religious faiths, a union officer, a high school teacher and an anti-police brutality activist. Each gave impassioned reasons for supporting this fight. The clergy attempted to fuse their religious/moral outlook to activism needed to confront class, race and political oppression. The unionist questioned the failure of union "leaders" to openly oppose the war in Iraq and challenged their silence on the Stewart case. She called for rank-and-file power to change the direction of the unions.

The teacher related efforts to have Ms. Stewart speak at his school. His talk moved many in the audience to have confidence in youth to critically evaluate the world and act to fight racism, fascism and war. The speaker exposing police brutality demonstrated the need to fight this unjust system.

Afterwards, numerous people took the mic. One speaker explained how both Democrats and Republicans had joined together during the Clinton Administration — the Hart-Rudman Commission — to chart plans for wars abroad to control the world and fascism to prevent dissent at home. Another speaker questioned whether a system should exist that can’t and won’t house Katrina/Rita refugees, brutalizes youth, and won’t educate them.

A cheer arose for a speaker who — while detailing the attacks against auto and airline workers who face loss of pensions and health coverage — called for support of the NYC transit workers in their contract fight.

Probably the highlight of the speak-out portion were the teenagers from two Brooklyn high schools who detailed their activities in their schools to support this anti-racist struggle.

All in all, the general character of the evening was reflected in the statement by the anti-fascist German pastor Niemuller: "First they came for the communists and I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists and I still did nothing. Then they came for Jews and the Catholics and I did nothing. Finally they came for me, and there was no one left to defend me."

Homecare Workers Tell Off Sellout Union Bosses

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 11 — Last week eleven homecare workers and their ESL teacher paid a surprise visit to their union, 1199/SEIU. As we left the elevator, shocked faces peered around cubicles. "What are your names and what agencies are you from?" the officials asked.

"That doesn’t matter," a worker replied. "We’re from different agencies, we’re here as a group and we want to see the president."

"She’s not here, but I’ll see you. I guess the revolution is starting today," said an official as she led us into a conference room. "So, what’s this about?"

"We want overtime pay that we’ve never gotten and we don’t want to work 24 hours for 12 hours pay," said the workers’ spokesperson.

The union official began a long-winded talk which several workers tried to interrupt. "Just let me finish!" the official admonished. (Later a worker said she acted like we were children or people from another planet.) Then a union organizer entered and recognized one worker and the ESL teacher because two years ago we had circulated a petition outside his assigned homecare agency demanding overtime. At that time he told us overtime was not the union’s priority and that the workers "liked" working 24 hours. "Yes, they love working 12 hours for free," the ESL teacher had shot back. Hundreds of workers had applauded as they lined up to sign the petition. Humiliated, the union official had scurried inside to meet with the agency’s director.

Now this same organizer wagged his finger in the faces of the worker and the teacher. "I know you and you. I don’t know what your motive is. But the rest of you better do this in an orderly way and within, not outside the union," he threatened.

Anger boiled over as the worker yelled back at him. The tables turned. All the workers spoke up. We demanded a meeting with the union president and that the union set up a committee to carry on this struggle. As we expected, the union official "explained" that a legal case to change a 1974 federal law that exempts "domestic companions" from the overtime law is in court and in the meantime there’s nothing the union can do.

"Yes, you can," responded a worker. "You can take us to Washington to fight this law."

"But the agencies and the City have no money," the official whined.

"Are you blaming that on us?" another worker added. "That’s the government’s problem, not ours."

"Just give us your names and phone numbers," the union official demanded. Not a single worker signed. Finally we agreed to leave one name and phone number so they can tell us the time of the meeting with the president. As this meeting ended the officials became defensive, saying, "We’re not your enemy, we’re on your side."

Afterwards the workers gathered far from the union building to discuss what had been learned. "I had to leave because I couldn’t stomach how they treated us." "They showed they’re not on our side."

"Why did they single you out?" a worker asked the teacher. The teacher, a PLP member, said, "It was a victory for us. Almost all of the workers spoke up. The union leaders exposed their racist attitudes toward their members. It’s the first time in two years of organizing that we’ve gotten their attention. Now we must keep it. To organize inside the union is messy and tricky, but we have to do it. They attacked me because they remember our petitioning activity, but also because they know that I’m motivated to fight for the working class. I’m against capitalism and I’m a long-time member of a revolutionary communist party, for those of you who don’t know. This is our newspaper."

Three distributors took their CHALLENGES; one gave $40. Other workers received it for the first time. The Party has many opportunities with these workers to continue and expand our fight-back and to raise political consciousness. We have a world to win!

Toledo Cops Protect Nazis, Attack Anti-Fascists

TOLEDO, OHIO, Dec. 10 — Two months after an anti-racist rebellion ran the "master race" out of town, about 30 Neo-Nazis returned to the scene of their crime, this time under much heavier police protection.

PLP members also returned, to spread revolutionary communist ideas and to try to smash the gutter fascists and their police protectors. Our group was mainly college students from Chicago and Indiana. About half were new to PLP and had never attended such an event.

At the rally, about 150 anti-Nazi demonstrators had to pass through police checkpoints, remove everything from their pockets, go through metal detectors and then be photographed! These fascist measures, coupled with freezing temperatures and the presence of about 200 cops (about 50 on horseback), caused many local residents to stay away.

The 30 Nazis were separated from the protestors by a full city block and a combination of a line of riot police, a 200-yard area covered in a foot of snow and a line of wooden horses. The police tried to provoke the crowd by riding horses into and around the anti-racist demonstrators. Towards the end of the demonstration, the police rode their horses directly into the crowd and arrested two people after assaulting one of them with a stun gun. They repeated this stampede several minutes later.

This action made it crystal clear who the police serve and protect. It exposed the true nature of the capitalist state we live under as one which not only protects, but promotes hatred. It also inspires us to fight for communism and build a world where racism will not be tolerated and Nazis will not be protected.

Home Health Care Workers Strike Over Racist Poverty Pay

NEW YORK CITY, Dec. 12 — On the cold and windy morning of Dec. 8, 1,000 home health care workers in Local 1199-SEIU, employed by People Care, went on a four-day strike over wages and health benefits. The agency pays less than $7 an hour with no health benefits or sick time. The racist and sexist bosses figure they can get away with these poverty conditions because the workers are predominantly black and Latin women.

As one worker told NY1-TV, "We need to pay our rent; we don’t have sick days. We don’t have holidays. Even for vacation, they only pay half of one week and the salary is so low."

The 1199-SEIU leadership neglected to mobilize mass strike support from among the 70,000 hospital workers. Consequently, there was a very small turnout on the picket line. This is the same leadership that’s always crowing about "strength in numbers" and that they’re a powerful and effective union. However, the union leadership uses its members for political campaigns to elect bosses’ politicians who represent the capitalist system that’s always cutting back on these same workers’ benefits.

Last year, 1199-SEIU settled with other home care agencies to raise hourly wages to $10. People Care has refused to match this. Even at $10 an hour (before taxes), it’s almost impossible for these workers to feed, clothe and house their families.

The home health care workers provide compassionate home care for people discharged from hospitals. The hospital bosses encourage shorter stays for these patients, because it increases their profits.

The patients tend to have more ailments when they’re discharged and require extra assistance at home. The workers administer medication, monitor pulse and temperature, assisting with physical therapy exercise, bathe, feed and dress the patients, run errands and escort patients to doctor appointments. Some patients are bedridden and obese, making the work even more strenuous. This work is just as important as that of a health care worker in a hospital but pays a lot less.

The capitalist home health care system is two-tiered, based upon agencies that make enormous profits from low-paid workers and a lack of patient care. Medicaid and Medicare finance the system, with the funds coming from taxes and bosses’ profits extracted from the working class. Medicaid and Medicare monies are channeled through Certified Home Health Agencies (CHHA). They withhold a substantial amount to pay their own administrative cost and reap their profits. They employ mostly nurses and therapists. These CHHAs in turn subcontract to Licensed Home Care Service Agencies. The LHCSA’s use the money from the CHHA’s to pay their own administrative costs and take their profit cut, leaving only a tiny amount for those who do all the work, the home health care workers.

Since the invasion of Iraq, billions have been diverted from social programs to support that war. The bosses are striving to reduce the cost of health care and drive down the wages of the working class. The answer is to organize the working class to build the PLP around the revolutionary communist ideas in CHALLENGE.

LETTERS

Anti-war Conference Spawns New Activists

The Students and Educators to Stop the War Conference (CHALLENGE, 12/14) provided a broad political arena for students and teachers who had never attended such a mass, progressive event. Newcomers witnessed mass political activism and saw themselves as political agents. Students made presentations, chaired sessions, helped with logistics and attended Youth/Student Committee meetings combining political veterans and new activists. A significant group of teachers brought students and participated similarly. The numbers reflect years of strong base-building and political struggle by students and teachers active on many campuses.

The conference increased students' and teachers' commitment to fight against the war in Iraq and against racism. At one high school this inspired more students to join a student club and confront military recruiters. More actions are being planned and more people are reading CHALLENGE.

At one college, which produced about 60 people for the conference, some enthusiastic teachers want to organize a mini-conference at their school.

Over 30 students attended from another school. Their preparation for the workshops helped them understand much more about the war and its connection to racism and capitalism. In the workshops, the ideological struggle was sharp.

In one workshop, on immigrants and the bosses' military, there were four presenters. One high school student advocated the need to organize in the military. This contrasted with some of the presenters who said that youth in general, and immigrants in particular, should completely reject the military. The inter-imperialist rivalry for resources (oil) and world dominance was highlighted. Another speaker described the Russian and Chinese revolutions. When one mentioned defending "our people," a discussion ensued about the whole working class being "our people."

Another workshop was devoted to teaching about war and peace in elementary school. Creative lesson plans were presented to raise issues about war with younger students. When opposition arose to the pledge of allegiance, some participants had a nationalist response, but most responded positively to the idea that the working class must unite internationally, rejecting all bosses' divisions.

In a workshop on dismantling the war machine, one presenter reviewed moral and religious grounds against the war. Another described how the war machine was part of capitalism and its quest for empire. Yet another advanced the need for revolution and the role of soldiers and workers in making it. At the end, someone asked what the solution was. One presenter said "socialism." Another presenter said that every time socialism was heroically fought for and established, it returned to capitalism, that the answer was communism, which the working class can fight for directly.

Many teachers were excited at seeing young people who were politically sharp and motivated. Most people who went came away exhilarated, wanting to do more to fight back and to learn more about how to end the war machine. A lot can come from this conference, as we keep the action and political struggle in high gear.

West Coast Participant

France: Clear Rebels of Deadly Assault

The article "France: Youth Explode Against Racism" (CHALLENGE, 11/30) includes an inaccuracy which is not without political significance. The article says "the young rebels" were responsible for "a deadly assault on a retired auto worker."

It seemed that way initially. L’Humanité (11/8) reported that on Nov. 4, Jean-Charles Le Chenadec, 60, president of an apartment building tenants association in Stains, went to the foot of the building with the association vice-president to douse a fire in a garbage bin. The two men were talking when some youths threw stones at them. The men ignored this. Then a man approached them and asked what they were talking about. They answered, "Our cars." The man struck Le Chenadec, who fell to the ground in a coma.

A small group of youths ran to help the two officials and then dashed into the street and stopped a passing ambulance. Unfortunately, this was in vain and Le Chenadec died on Nov. 7.

However, on Dec. 1, Le Monde published an article indicating that Le Chenadec’s widow, Nicole, had stated she believed her husband’s murder was a revenge killing unrelated to the urban violence.

Apparently the young rebels are not guilty of murder, but rather did everything possible to save Le Chenadec’s life. Nevertheless, CHALLENGE is right in saying that the rebels did make serious mistakes.

A Reader in France

Anti-Racist Holiday Excites Co-Workers

At my new job, soon after the Thanks for Fighting Racism Feast (TFFRF; see CHALLENGE, 12/14), I was eating lunch while chatting with a young black coworker around my age. He was fasting, even though he loves meat and barbecue and a lot of other great food. He said the aroma of the cooking was giving him hunger pangs. When I asked this buddy of mine why he was doing this, he replied he was protesting Thanksgiving. After all, he told me, Thanksgiving is really about conquest, not about friendship and community, and any assertions to the contrary are essentially a propaganda spin to make racist pigs look like wallflowers. So he fasts to show his opposition to all that.

I immediately thought about the TFFRF, and how amazing and inspiring to have had such a group of people in Washington D.C. that past weekend to recap a year of fighting racism, and yet also have the REAL food and community that most people associate with the racist Thanksgiving holiday. So I said, "There’s this great event that happens the weekend before Thanksgiving; it’s an anti-racist version of that day..."

As I revealed my friend’s protest already existed as an organized dinner, including food, absolutely everybody else in the room — maybe fifteen others — stopped their own conversations and started listening to me outline the TFFRF. They stared with a mixture of amazement, happiness and mock anger that I hadn’t told them sooner! Then everyone, including my friend, starting dropping stuff like, "Why didn't you say anything?" and, "Invite me next year!"

I was embarrassed, not because of their attention to me, but because I realized my error in not having considered that they all might have wanted to attend the Feast together! I assured them I’d invite them next year, and they responded, "Yeah, you better!"

This taught me that even in a new situation — although it might take time before people could come closer to the Party and to communist thought — it doesn’t automatically mean it takes just as much time to introduce them to an anti-racist event. Many people are anti-racist and already understand the need for people everywhere to fight racism. The fact that I didn't invite them shows not only that I simply "didn't think of it" because I’m new on the job, but also that I don’t have the confidence I should have in people who are active in reform movements but really, in their hearts, also want serious change.

I’ve learned that lesson now and all these co-workers will receive a full, open, and well-in-advance invitation to next year’s Thanks For Fighting Racism Feast!

Young (new) worker

Soccer Players Score Against Racism

Imagine my surprise when I turned on the soccer channel Sunday morning (12/4) to watch Lazio vs. Siena in the Italian league. The teams lined up side by side, reached down, picked up a big banner and unfurled it across the whole line-up: "No al Razzismo!" (No to Racism!)

The players were protesting racist heckling of black players in European matches, where the teams field players from all over the world. I had heard of these types of racist actions in Spain but not in Italy. This protest was an act of multi-racial, international solidarity among the players, and I wonder who organized it. Professional players make high salaries, far more than workers, but it was great they did this. It went beyond the individual political protests U.S. athletes sometimes make.

The match went to Lazio 3-2, but today both teams scored against racism.

Calcio Rosso (Red Football)

a name="‘Amazing Grace’ Won’t Beat Transit Bosses"></a>"Amazing Grace’ Won’t Beat Transit Bosses

On December 10th an overflow crowd of transit workers squeezed into NYC's Jacob Javits Center as thousands more stood outside. The mass membership meeting began with bagpipers circling the hall playing 'Amazing Grace,' which was written by the captain of a slave ship. Then came the pledge of allegiance to a system that practices genocide against Katrina victims and millions worldwide. This was followed by prayers by those who condone the slaughter by insisting that only god and not workers' power can stop it. Finally some flag-waving "justified" a steady supply of soldiers from our ranks for bosses' profit wars, financed by driving us into poverty.

The meeting consisted mostly of a discussion of Metropolitan Transit Authority demands for give-backs, speed-up, second class status for new workers and dangerous service cuts. The absence of any worker demands seemed to suggest the union would settle for a small raise and the stopping of most, but not all, of the give-backs. The lack of any real strike preparation or any rank-and-file input into the strike decision leads me to believe the Toussaint leadership will announce another, 12th-hour sellout "deal."

The hard reality is that the TWU is led by high-paid bureaucrats who use workers' dues to pay lawyers and politicians to negotiate with the bosses. It took bloody rank-and-file struggles led by communists to win the right to form the Transport Workers Union and establish collective leadership from the bottom up, with leaders like Mike Quill receiving an average worker's wage. When the U.S. government tried to force workers to pay for the Vietnam War, (like Bush with Iraq today), Quill led the workers in defying the war and anti-strike laws in a successful strike against cuts that would "force our workers into poverty."

Transit workers cannot continue to let these sellouts mentioned above conduct our struggles against corporate oppression. We must face the reality of a fight to the death against the bosses and their cops, courts and military. We need to unite with communists again, not just to win good contracts but to build a system dedicated to workers' needs — communism

Retired transit worker

Back Anti-Minutemen Protesters

ORANGE COUNTY, CA, Dec. 12 — Two anti-racists who were arrested May 25 for demonstrating against the Minutemen had their preliminary hearing today. The Judge refused to drop or lower any charges against one of them and dropped only two charges against the other. They face serious charges based on the lies of the Garden Grove and Orange County police who attacked the demonstration.

We ask those who support the fight against racism and the system it thrives on to contribute money to help with a vigorous legal and political defense against this attack. The defendants and their supporters are organizing a speaking tour about the Minutemen, the rise of racism and fascism and the need to organize against them. They spoke at the "Students and Educators to Stop the War" conference where they received donations and support. This fight, part of the long-term fight to destroy racism at its roots, will continue.

Language-Literature Profs Planning Counter-Attack vs. Fascist Control

Most people don’t think of academic conferences as political battlegrounds, but the Radical Caucus of the Modern Language Association (MLA) knows that winning the hearts and minds of the Association’s faculty and graduate students is an important part of the struggle to put people ahead of corporate profits. The MLA is the nation’s largest association of college language and literature professors. It meets each year from Dec. 27-30.

This year, the Caucus is aiming to battle the conservative groups that are trying to control what’s taught or discussed on campus. The Caucus is organizing two academic sessions on "Academic Work and the New McCarthyism." As part of its counter-attack, it’s proposing a resolution and a motion to the Delegate Assembly. They directly link the right-wing attacks to the economic de-funding and restructuring of higher education. The latter has replaced tenure/tenure-track faculty with vulnerable graduate teaching assistants or adjunct and non-tenure track ("contingent") faculty. These groups teach up to 65-75% of all higher education courses, at much lower salaries.

Government cuts in student financial aid, university administrative attacks on graduate student unions and exorbitant increases in tuition exemplify how economic attacks on higher education have freed up tax dollars for war and corporate tax cuts, making political activism more difficult just when it’s most needed. Communist faculty and students in the Progressive Labor Party have been active supporters of Radical Caucus resolutions and other efforts to popularize Marxist perspectives. We’re fighting for anti-capitalist demands that expose the inabilities of capitalism to meet our needs and to argue that more radical change is needed — and possible — over time.

The Radical Caucus resolution calls on the MLA to "oppose the Academic and Student Bills of Rights (A/SBOR) and all related legislation" which give government agencies power over course content and faculty expression. Distorting the rhetoric of the "Bill of Rights," these groups — including David Horowitz’s Center for Popular Culture, Students for Academic Freedom, Campus Watch and the David Project — want to enforce the teaching of reactionary ideas that cannot win support on their own merit while violating the rights of both students and faculty.

The Caucus motion demands that the MLA leadership allot financial and human resources to urge the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to modify its policies to "assert the freedom of each faculty member, tenured or untenured, part-time or full-time, to determine…what is relevant to the subject matter he or she teaches, and to teach accordingly." The motion argues that the current AAUP statement "provides humanities teachers with insufficient protection, since it is widely acknowledged that our ‘subject’ has porous boundaries, and the determination of ‘controversiality’ is politicized."

Within the MLA, the Radical Caucus has been the primary leader of anti-capitalist struggles for more than a decade, successfully proposing resolutions that link the growing international competition over resources, the "war on terrorism" and the U.S. invasion of Iraq to growing political repression and economic attacks at home. Many of these resolutions — advocating academic labor justice and opposing racism, fascism and imperialist war — have passed the Delegate Assembly by large margins. This indicates that MLA members recognize how capitalist economic goals have led to massive reallocations of tax dollars to fund the war and to provide, through tax cuts, unprecedented profits for corporations and banks.

Since 9/11, and especially through the USA Patriot Act and the propaganda campaign around the "war on terrorism," faculty nationwide have been intimidated, and in some cases even fired, when their teaching "questions" U.S. foreign policy or the war. One recent example is the campaign to fire Warren County Community College English Professor John Peter Daly when his e-mail protesting an on-campus event by the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom was fed to the media. Such attacks, just like the torture in Abu Ghraib and the CIA’s secret prisons abroad, reflect the hardball being played by the U.S. government and economic elite, using intimidation and force, to enforce their policies as their lies get exposed and public support wanes for their imperialist motives.

At past conventions, PLP members have played a critical role in advancing Marxist class analyses of literary/cultural issues, of the Iraq war and of the growing ruling-class use of fascist tactics. As the economic and human costs of war increase the stakes at home and abroad, it’s more important than ever to help build a movement for communist ideas in the MLA.

a name="‘Land of Dead’ Review"></">‘L"nd of Dead’ Review

George Romero’s fourth zombie saga, "Land of the Dead," was recently released on dvd. Along with outlandish gore, it offers serious class politics—in fact, according to both Romero and those who know him, he made the film with politics in mind. Not that this is anything new. Romero is known for his populist take on the horror genre as well as his collective method of directing movies, in which actors and other staff share multiple jobs and have a say in the shooting of the films. "Night of the Living Dead," his first zombie film released in 1968, was, according to both critics and Romero (in a recent interview), a commentary on the violence of the Vietnam War as well as a critique of rural racism. 1979’s "Dawn of the Dead," filmed in one of the country’s first shopping malls, is a classic satire on consumerism. The 1985 sequel "Day of the Dead" (as well as Romero’s 1975 film "The Crazies," about military quarantine of a town with an outbreak of a psychosis-inducing virus), was a blunt attack on the racism, sexism, and "leaderism" of the military, with a healthy poke at the idealism of modern science. Romero’s zombie movies are also implicitly antiracist: "Night" features a strong, confident black man as its star, and both "Dawn" and "Day" end with a black man and white woman as the film’s only survivors.

This brings us to "Land of the Dead," which features a black male gas station attendant (humorously named Big Daddy) in the "lead zombie" role. The county’s few remaining human survivors live barricaded inside a city, with the outskirts (and everywhere else) populated by flesh-eating zombies. But the real problem is that a class system still remains, and with a vengeance. Dennis Hopper plays Kaufman, the self-appointed leader, a power-hungry ruling-class type who lives in an exclusive high-rise shopping mall called Fiddler’s Green. Only the rich, through an exclusive application process, are allowed to inhabit this place, which, it is soon pointed out, Kaufman simply took over. The rest are left to live in a slum. Kaufman maintains control not only with a personal security force dressed in nazi-like gray uniforms, but by providing the people with "vices and games"for example, a casino includes a grotesque game in which bets are placed on which caged zombie would be the first to kill a prostitute (perhaps meant as a satire on wrestling and other sports).

One of the movie’s best political scenes occurs when a Scottish man encourages several slum-dwellers to rise up against Kaufman, so they can collectively improve their lives. The film’s main plot line centers on John Leguizamo’s character, Cholo, a young Puerto Rican man whom Kaufman has hired to make dangerous trips outside to collect food and other supplies that can’t be produced in the walled-in city. However, Cholo’s real goal is to save up enough money in order to live in Fiddler’s Green. When Kaufman turns him down, due to his own racism and classism, Cholo takes drastic measures, which could also harm the city’s non-ruling class residents. Kaufman then sends the film’s hero, played by Simon Baker, to stop Cholo, but he has his own individualistic goal of moving to Canada, where there are neither people nor zombies.

However, "Land"s secondary plot is much more interesting. More and more zombies are seen trying to use tools, presumably as a way to imitate their former human existence. A trick that the humans use to distract the zombies begins to lose its effectiveness. The zombies, although technically dead, seem to be learning (a theme hinted at in Romero’s earlier films). This is all happening under the leadership of Big Daddy, who seems to be aware of how his fellow dead are being slaughtered by the humans on their missions. With the zombies as a parallel for the underclass, Romero hits us with an exciting subplot with revolutionary implications.

"Land" is not without flaws. Some of the acting is uninspired, the ending is a bit anticlimactic, and it was mostly filmed at night, making the gory scenes that had occurred in broad daylight in "Dawn" and "Day" seem less bizarre. The over-the-top gore and violence is not for everyone. And Romero apparently intended Kaufman’s character to be more of a jab at the Bush administration than against the ruling class in general (there’s a funny scene where Kaufman inadvertently quotes Bush). However, it’s great to see a film that is both fun and sides with the underdog, while trying to wake people up to the class oppression we live under.

REDEYEZ

Profiteers rob poorest countries of trillions

Five trillion dollars has been corruptly removed from the world’s poorest countries and lodged permanently in the world’s richest countries….

Multinational corporations, wealthy individuals and unscrupulous governments….use the world’s tax havens and banking systems to hide sums of money that could address almost all of the continent’s financial needs.

…Some 30% of the GDP of sub-Saharan African nations disappeared offshore in the second half of the 1990s. The situation in the Middle East and north Africa is even worse….

…Greedy individuals and companies and compliant banking systems and governments are far more responsible than corrupt dictators for the state of the poorest countries. (GW, 12/15)

Maybe Bush’s emergency abilities flu away

I’m not saying that President Bush is a dud in responding to national emergencies but when he announced his plan to fight the next flu pandemic, Las Vegas odds makers immediately installed flu as a 3-1 favorite….(MinutemanMedia.org, 11/15)

Nobelest Pinter roasts US lies and brutality

London, Dec.7 — The playwright Harold Pinter turned his Nobel Prize acceptance speech…into a furious howl of outrage against American foreign policy, saying that the United States had not only lied to justify waging war against Iraq but had also "supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship" in the last 50 years….

Mr. Pinter said: "You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good….

"Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don’t need to think. Just lie back on the cushion…" (NYT, 12/8)

Ruling class $ goes to Iraq, not New Orleans

Young middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come….

"You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day" said Myrna Guity, 43, …."You get no answers to your questions. They’re evasive. You’re constantly ‘pending.’ What are you going to be doing, ‘pending’ for the rest of your life? I’ve lost everything.…"

Three months after the storm, political figures here talk often of the progress that has been made….But hidden behind these sometimes rosy declarations are tens of thousands of their constituents, living at the edge of their dwindling resources….

"We’ve got food stamps, and that’s pretty much it." (NYT, 12/3)

US capitalism up while most families down

Over the last few years G.D.P growth has been reasonably good, and corporate profits have soared. But that growth has failed to trickle down to most Americans.

Back in August the Census bureau released family income data for 2004. The report, which was overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, showed a remarkable disconnect between overall economic growth and economic fortunes of most American families.

It should have been a good year for American families: the economy grew 4.2 percent, its best performance since 1999. Yet most families actually lost economic ground….

And one key source of economic insecurity got worse, as the number of Americans without health insurance continued to rise.

We don’t have comparable data for 2005 yet, but it’s pretty clear that the results will be similar…. (NYT, 12/5)

Bosses’ media hypnotize public with lies

The power of these lies was considerable. In a CBS News/New York Times poll released on Sept. 25, 2001, 60 percent of Americans thought Osama bin Laden had been the culprit in the attacks of two weeks earlier, either alone or in league with unnamed "others" or with the Taliban; only 6 percent thought bin Laden had collaborated with Saddam; and only 2 percent thought Saddam had been the sole instigator. By the time we invaded Iraq in 2003, however, CBS News found that 53 percent believed Saddam had been "personally involved" in 9/11; other polls showed…a similar percentage of Americans…convinced…that the hijackers were Iraqis. (NYT,11/12)

Unions shrink as bosses strongarm workers

…The percentage of American private sector workers in unions has fallen to 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in a century and down from 35 percent in the 1950’s….

…Surveys showed that more than half of American workers say they would vote to join a union if they could.…Nearly one-third of companies facing unionization campaigns fire union supporters and…one-half threaten to close work sites. (NYT, 12/9)

Slavery Built New York

Capitalism was born dripping blood from its pores. As Karl Marx pointed out, the original accumulation of capital — essential to the development of the profit system — was created by robbery and mass murder. The trans-Atlantic slave trade and enslavement of 12 million black Africans remains one of the greatest examples of this robbery. A current exhibit at the New York Historical Society on slavery in New York City bears this out. (Quotations are from this exhibit.) Teachers should definitely take their classes to see it. It closes March 5.

The slave trade "was the largest forced migration in world history," in which millions died from the brutal conditions on the slave ships. The racism directed first against Native Americans and soon afterwards against black people (later extended to Latino, Asian and other immigrants) was the foundation stone of U.S. capitalism. Without the continuance of this racist exploitation, it could not survive.

Originally, slavery of black people existed alongside "unfree white labor" — indentured servitude, forced military service (impressement), apprenticeship and convict labor. But "only in the late 17th century did North American [slave owners] tie lifelong and hereditary slavery to skin color." Soon the rulers used the division between black and white as a club over white workers’ heads to force down their wages. This rulers’ racism has been used to weaken the working class ever since.

"The trans-Atlantic [slave] trade yielded fabulous profits and transformed the world…. Profits from this trade fueled the world’s first industrial revolution in 18th century England."

"The trading of slaves along the African coast was tied to the rise of plantation agriculture in the Americas and the enormous expansion of European waterborne commerce."

The schools teach about slavery in the Southern U.S., in South America and in the Caribbean, but rarely mention slavery in the northern colonies of New York and New England. Yet from 1613 to 1633, Dutch ships provided the slaves who literally "built New York." The Dutch West India Company told Peter Stuyvesant, its Director-General in New York, that, "The importation of Negroes would greatly benefit the cultivation of the soil….The welfare of the country depends on it."

Stuyvesant supplied slaves to Portuguese, British and French sugar plantations in Brazil, Barbados…and throughout the Caribbean" as well as "to New England, Chesapeake" and "to farmers on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley." When the British took over New York from the Dutch in 1664, slaves "provided the labor that made New York boom."

"Trading in slaves was big business and enriched merchants, farmers, professionals and craftsmen." In 1703, "42% of New Yorkers had slaves….Among cities, only Charleston, South Carolina, had more."

"Slavery was the lifeline of hundreds of New York businesses…. Slave ads helped keep newspapers in business" because of regular advertisements for the buying and selling of slaves as shiploads arrived in New York, and through ads for the capture of runaways.

State law proclaimed, "All children born of slave mothers shall be slaves as well…. Living conditions were harsh, work constant." The "work-day" began before dawn and lasted until late at night. Revolts were met with death. Organized religion justified the oppression.

But, "For 400 years slaves rebelled, during the Middle Passage, on plantations, escaping to mountains, swamps and jungles…. Resistance never stopped." The first mass rebellion in New York occurred in 1712.

When slaves were promised freedom during the War for Independence, many joined Washington’s army. One-fourth of the troops at the final British surrender were black. However, when the war ended, Washington demanded the return of his slaves. (The British promised freedom to slaves who joined their army.)

The burgeoning need of Northern capitalists for wage labor impelled them to push for elimination of slave labor. Wage labor cheapened the cost to the capitalists, who imported a flood of white immigrants from Europe to compete with the freed slaves for jobs, driving costs even lower and profits higher. This led to the outlawing of slavery in New York in 1827, though not in New Jersey until the 1860’s and led directly to the U.S. Civil War, to prevent the spread of slave labor as the U.S. expanded westward. However, after the North won the war, the Northern capitalists helped the former slave owners keep freed slaves terrorized and a source of cheap labor there as well.

The Society’s exhibit did not cover the brutality and conditions on Southern cotton plantations, where thousands of slave rebellions occurred. But despite this, the exhibit does reveal much about how slavery was central to the economic growth of U.S. capitalism. The major capitalists sponsoring this exhibit hope to imply "progress" since slavery. But the horrors of Katrina visited on the black people of New Orleans; the 70% of the two million in U.S. prisons who are black and Latino; the prison-like schools in the inner cities; the mass unemployment among black and Latino youth; the racist police and many other racist horrors— all this can be traced to the brutal conditions of slavery suffered by black people for centuries. No exhibit implying "progress" can hide these continuing racist crimes by the capitalist ruling class based on endless wars and racist super-exploitation.

Capitalism and racism were born together. Only the struggle to build a society based on the abolition of wage slavery and racism can free the entire working class from the yoke of oppression. That society is communism.

UNDER COMMUNISM: What will science be like?

Science, far from being purely objective, is largely influenced by the prevailing social and economic system. For example, Darwin’s theory that evolution occurs through natural selection, has influenced the field of biology for the last 150 years. Few scientists have disagreed with the fact that evolution has taken place, but Darwin and other scientists showed that natural selection was one of the key mechanisms making it happen. Currently the anti-science religious right-wing is trying to roll back this scientific progress.

Nevertheless, as powerful and confirmed as Darwin’s theory has been, it also partly reflects the capitalist social relationships of Victorian England — a highly individualistic society, marked by workers competing for jobs subservient to capitalist exploiters competing for profits. Thus, Darwin’s formulation is about "survival of the fittest" rather than merely "survival of the fit." Not all relationships among members of a species or between members of different species are competitive. Many species cooperate to help those members with disabilities, such as parents do with children, so that even many of the less fit members will be able to survive and produce their own children.

In today’s capitalist society, similar false ideas are passed off as "objective science." For example, to justify racist and sexist discrimination, genetic theories of "race" and gender differences claim that white people are born "more intelligent" than black people or that men are born "more intelligent" than women.

Recently two scientists from Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in NYC posed that violent behavior among black youth is inherited. They proposed giving drugs to innocent children to curb "possible future criminality." In the 1980’s, a racist British scientist, Cyril Burt, claimed intelligence was inherited — based on his "studies" of twins. His data was exposed as completely falsified to produce this racist result. Emphasizing environment instead of genetics, Ivy Leaguers Banfield and Jencks concluded that impoverished workers were so used to the "culture" of slums that they actually "preferred" to live in slums!

Or consider the claim that the HIV virus causes AIDS. While HIV contributes, this simplistic approach omits the factors of widespread poverty, ignorance, racism, lack of medical care, global profit-seeking and sexism that contribute to full-blown AIDS.

So if society influences science, what will it be like under communism? Firstly, an understanding of science won’t be restricted to just a few select scientists. All workers will come to understand it.

Communists will fight for more widespread knowledge of the social sciences which will occur prior to a revolution. Many workers will need first to grasp the ideas of communist scientific philosophy — dialectical materialism. "Dialectical" refers to the struggle between two opposites. "Materialism" refers to the position that objective reality — not "design" or idealistic "freedom" of will — determines how people think and act. Dialectical materialism is, first and foremost, the science of revolution, including the interpretation of history that the working class is the dynamic force for social change.

In biology, for example, worker-scientists will develop an understanding of the extraordinary complexity defining the relationship between genetics and environment, how they simultaneously act on one another. We will learn the many ways in which the social environment affects the individual and vice versa.

Under communism we will struggle for every worker to be trained in the science of dialectical materialism. At every workplace and in every classroom, we will learn, and be guided by, the dynamic laws of change present in everyday life. Capitalism, on the other hand, through its schools, seeks to create an unquestioning, robot-like working class in its factories and in its armies. Communist society will need every individual worker to actively question and think about effective ways to improve the conditions of all: from the prevention of deadly diseases, to protection against natural disasters like Katrina, tsunamis or devastating earthquakes. We will study how to improve personal relationships, health and the environment. Science under communism, above all, will liberate the working class from misery and want.

(A future column will show what the science of dialectical materialism reveals about capitalism.)

1. Hundreds At West Coast Conference:
   Vow Fight Against Racist Imperialist War
2. `A lot of people...are really mad...They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of.'
   GM Declares War on Its Workers
3. Anti-Bush Democrats' Goal: Larger, Deadlier War Machine
4. Pentagon Carpet Bombs Iraq
5. New Orleans: New Style Death Camp
6. Apartheid Comes to New Orleans
7. FEMA Foiled Rescuers
8. A Transit Strike Could Set Pace for Fight-Back vs. Bosses' Attacks on All Workers
9. Rail Strikers in France Needed Unity with Anti-Racist Rebels
10. Guatemala: CIA-Trained Racist Killer Army Becomes Drug Cartel
11. 100,000 Aussie Workers Back Boeing Strike
12. Military Recruiters, `Democracy' and Public Health
13. Red Teacher Organizes School To Oppose Sellout Contract
14. Workers in Latin America Should Not Support Any Capitalist-Imperialist Side in Free Trade Dispute
    1. THE CHINA FACTOR
    2. BOSSES WIN, WORKERS LOSE!
15. UNDER COMMUNISM:
    1. How Women Fought to Gain Equality
16. LETTERS
    1. Angry Militant Moms Oppose Iraq War
    2. `Stop the War' versus Anti-imperialism
    3. Racism/Nationalism Help Build Profit Wars
    4. Fighting Military Recruiters on Campus Is Not Enough
    5. Picketed Rep. Murtha When He Was Openly pro-War
    6. Fighting for Honoring Picket Lines at SF Schools
    7. Laborers Must Not Ignore Racist Minutemen
    8. Criticism Appreciated
    9. Last Half-Decent UFT Contract Was in 1972
17. Anti-Racist Celebrations Raise Money for Fighters Against Minutemen
18. Red Eye On the News
    1. US, like Saddam Hussein, uses chemical arms
    2. China health-care now profit-driven and corrupt
    3. Liberal media silent on oil motive in Iraq war
    4. US bigotry exposed by venerated black Prof.
    5. US workers slipping down; Dems won't fix

---

Hundreds At West Coast Conference:
Vow Fight Against Racist Imperialist War

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 19 -- "If it takes a revolution to end this war and all the wars for profit and empire, then I say let's bring on the revolution." That's how one young person summed up a workshop discussion about the nature of the war in Iraq and how to end it, at an exciting day-long conference called "Students and Educators to Stop the War."

It was sponsored by teachers' unions at the K-12 level, community colleges and the California Faculty Association, representing faculty in the California State College System, as well as high school and college student organizations, and drew 550 students, teachers and those with ties to people in the military. The conference was inspired by last spring's East Coast "Educators to Stop the War" gathering.

Many people donated time and money, helped with logistics, food and workshops, and the signing of petitions to prevent the LA Unified School District from withdrawing its permission.

PLP helped build the conference and participated in its workshops. CHALLENGE and PLP's call for communism was well-received in some workshops. Most people were open to discuss building a movement to fight imperialism. There was lots of friendly struggle over political ideas. Recent events like Katrina and the mounting death toll in Iraq have had an effect, as did concerted work within unions, student and anti-war groups and at workplaces.

Many agreed the Democrats were as pro-war as the Bush gang. In one workshop, when students noted their membership in PLP, one teacher thought it was bad that some students in a popular student club were also in PLP. Another teacher thought that was great. "Many people see the source of this war in the system of exploitation and profit," said this CHALLENGE reader. "They see the solution in a system that meets the needs of the workers of the world. I call that system communism."

There were debates about the best way to stop the war: encourage students not to join the military, or reach out to soldiers and expose this war as imperialist. This led some activists to re-think their upcoming campaigns. When someone related the excellent response from soldiers to leaflets linking the nature of this war to the capitalist system, people asked for copies to show their friends. There was friendly debate about a draft, whether anti-imperialists should join the military.

In one workshop, some young presenters said the U.S. was becoming a fascist country. They praised actions against open fascists like the Minutemen and exposed the Democrats as supporters of increased "Homeland Security." Another presenter who opposed organizing against the open fascists -- and advocated supporting the Democrats -- was criticized for passivity in the face of fascism. Others called for a mass revolutionary movement to defeat the source of fascism: capitalism.

In a workshop on fighting against the war budget, some participants explained the Council on Foreign Relation's proposal to cut all programs except those funding wars for decades to come, adding that we shouldn't let union leaders divorce the budget cuts from imperialism. There were discussions of the need for a worker-student-soldier alliance to fight imperialism, and the link between the current war for profits, past and future wars and the capitalist system. In a workshop on fighting the university's ties to the military, many suggested plans to fight back on their campuses. Workshops on Katrina connected the racist treatment of black workers in New Orleans and the war for oil profits in Iraq.

At the end of the conference, there was a call to support the anti-racist rebellion of black and Arab youth in France. Another speaker championed strikes and work actions against the war and its racist effects at every campus and work place. Both received enthusiastic applause.

The openness of the people to many aspects of PLP's line, and many families' growing anger at losing loved ones in an imperialist war, all make us more committed to struggle to up the ante against imperialism, and to show more of our friends that we must be in this struggle for the long haul.

Ultimately, imperialism can only be defeated by revolution to destroy capitalism. We need communism to end exploitation and wars for profit once and for all. For that, we need a mass PLP.

The excitement generated by this conference will help many sharpen the struggle and gain more confidence in the working class through the fight against imperialist war and the racist system that causes it.

`A lot of people...are really mad...They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of.'
GM Declares War on Its Workers

DETROIT, MI, November 21 -- Just ten days after ratifying $15 billion in current and future health care concessions -- mainly from retirees who were not allowed to vote -- the other shoe dropped on GM's 173,000 North American workers when CEO Richard Wagoner announced 30,000 job cuts along with closing and cutting back 12 plants in the U.S. and Canada. The "American Dream" is becoming a nightmare for GM workers like it has become for millions of others. This is especially true for black and Latin workers, who, because of racism were the last hired in auto and now form a disproportiately large section of those laid-off in the last few years.

"A lot of people...are really mad," said hourly worker Robert Paulk, employed at GM's Tech Center. "They think this is the thing that revolutions are made of." (Detroit Free Press, 11/22)

Workers who labored all their lives to produce tens of billions in profits for GM -- and struck many times to win gains that supposedly would produce this "dream" -- are now being robbed of their pensions, their health care and their very jobs. The politicians and media constantly refer to such workers as being "members of the middle class." But workers who are forced to sell their labor power to exist are constantly subject to the insoluble contradictions of capitalism. They're the first ones to suffer so the bosses -- the owners of the means of production -- can maintain their profits. Those who work for wages comprise the working class, no matter how much money they've managed to wrench from the bosses. All of this can disappear in the blinking of an eye -- or in the latest cutback to shore up their exploiters.

By 2008, GM will have cut its North American production capacity to 4.2 million vehicles, down 2 million from 2002, as its market share drops to about 25%. The cutbacks will save GM about $7 billion a year by 2006.

The Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., will close an assembly line. Saturn was set up as a separate GM division with a labor contract not part of the national agreement. The Saturn contract was supposed to be a "model" of labor-management cooperation, which workers resisted and ultimately trashed. Two plants that will close, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, are among GM's highest quality and most productive ones.

Once again we learn the hard way that concessions don't save jobs, nor does labor-management cooperation or producing quality cars. As long as the bosses hold power, no worker is secure, no job or benefit is guaranteed.

What is guaranteed is a future of war and fascism, poverty and terror. The UAW has served the auto bosses for more than 50 years, and seventy years of reform victories are rapidly disappearing. We must make sure that worker' illusions, their faith in the system and in the UAW leadership, disappear as well.

Just as hundreds of thousands are being sacrificed in the oil war in Iraq, millions of retired, current and future workers are being sacrificed as U.S. imperialism restructures its auto, steel, textile, aerospace and airline industries for a permanent war economy. The ripple effect will mean more poverty and racist terror for all workers.

GM workers are not happy with these latest attacks, and Ford workers will be next up. Also, Delphi workers are threatening job actions and a possible strike in response to the company's demands for more than a 50% cut in pay and an end to pensions and retiree health care. Internationally, autoworkers from Germany to Russia, from China to Brazil, face similar attacks as the imperialists and their nationalist union leaders all fight to beat the "foreign" competition.

For communists, there are no foreign workers. We are all one class, in one world, and we need a mass international PLP to defeat imperialism and build a communist world. The current period offers more opportunities to build a mass base for communism among industrial workers, not to win a flurry of reforms, but to abolish wage slavery with communist revolution.

Anti-Bush Democrats' Goal: Larger, Deadlier War Machine

When dozens of Democratic politicians who voted to approve Bush's Iraq war suddenly begin hollering for U.S. military withdrawal, something's rotten. These imperialist diehards aren't turning their backs on the profit system. They aren't abandoning the idea that U.S. rulers need to dominate the world by controlling its oil supply. And they certainly aren't planning a generation of peace.

Representative John Murtha touched off a firestorm last month by calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Tears and insults filled the House chamber as lawmakers debated the Democrat's statement condemning the war as Bush's "flawed policy wrapped in illusion." A 70-member "Out-of-Iraq" Democratic congressional caucus was soon handing out "War Isn't Worth It" bumper stickers. But don't count on politicians to bring the troops home.

What the Democrats lambasting Bush really want is a war machine much larger and deadlier than the ineffective force he sent to Iraq. Murtha's "anti-war" manifesto observes, "stabilization in Iraq...cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U.S. troops."

Murtha & Co. understand that present and future challenges to U.S. imperialism demand an all-out militarization of society. They criticize Bush for not creating the necessary spirit of sacrifice. Murtha complains, "This is the first prolonged war we have fought with three years of tax cuts, without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft."

A 37-year veteran of the Marines, Murtha has close ties to top Pentagon brass. His outburst at Bush followed discussions "with longtime advisers, including two retired generals and a former secretary of the Army." (New York Times, 11/22) Military planners responsible for defending U.S. imperialism over the long term decry Bush's "off-the-shelf," "on-the-cheap" policies.

One severe critic (and probably a Murtha mentor) is retired general William Odom, who once headed the National Security Agency. Odom has a broader view of threats to the U.S. than the Bush gang. He specifically identifies Russia, China and India. He realizes that controlling Mid-East oil, key to the U.S.'s current supremacy, entails not just Iraq but militarily "stabilizing the region from the Eastern Mediterranean to Afghanistan," a task requiring massive U.S. and allied forces. He thinks Bush's decision to invade Iraq with insufficient ground troops and virtually no allies may be the "greatest strategic disaster in United States history." (Commentary, 11/11) Odom says the U.S. should pull out of the quagmire to prepare for a far bigger bloodbath: "U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is the precondition to winning the support of our allies and a few others for a joint approach to the region."

To Odom, having U.S. soldiers bogged down in Iraq, when they could be battling al Qaeda in Pakistan or preparing to invade Iran, is a gross waste of manpower. Tellingly, Odom identifies with World War II Nazi generals who told Hitler "that `staying the course' at Stalingrad in 1942 was a strategic mistake, that he should allow the Sixth Army to be withdrawn, saving it to fight defensive actions on reduced frontage against the growing Red Army."

Nazi-lover Odom appreciates the value of phony propaganda in motivating a nation for war. In August he chided "leading Democrats," who "have failed so miserably to challenge the U.S. occupation of Iraq." With greater carnage in mind, Odom urged liberal politicians "to establish as conventional wisdom the fact that the war was never in the U.S. interest and has not become so."

Murtha has heeded the rulers' voice. So have the liberal media. But whether the liberals can use the "withdrawal" lie to galvanize either capitalists or workers in support of their wider war agenda remains to be seen.

The recent turmoil on Capitol Hill shows serious disarray among the bosses. As for the working class, the rulers hope to replay the trick they learned near the end of the Vietnam War when they portrayed tactical withdrawal as "peace" and lured millions of militant war opponents to the dead-end electoral system. It's no accident that the "Out-of-Iraq" caucus includes representatives from the districts most rebellious in the 1960's and 1970's. John Conyers of Detroit is there, and with him the entire congressional delegation of Massachusetts, which has the nation's highest concentration of college students.

Billions of people worldwide and, by now, scores of millions in the U.S. recognize and hate Bush as a racist war criminal. This has become obvious even without communist leadership to expose him. However, our job isn't to belabor the obvious. Of course, we should mobilize against Bush and his gangsters. But they represent only one faction of a dogfight within their class. The other side, which masquerades as "peacemakers," is trying to lay the groundwork for the greatest mass slaughters in history.

Murtha, Odom and the rulers for whom they front have no intention of renouncing war for Iraqi oil. We mustn't fall for their phony peace moves. Imperialism always leads to war. Elections can't change its deadly nature. The answer isn't to line up behind the lying liberal politicians but to build the Progressive Labor Party.

Pentagon Carpet Bombs Iraq

(The following appeared in an article entitled, "UP IN THE AIR; Where is the Iraq war headed next?" by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, issue of 12/5/05)

The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant -- and underreported -- aspect of the fight against the insurgency....One insight into the scope of the bombing...was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004....A Marine press release said, "Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target...." Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone [our emphasis -- Ed.] had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordinance. "This number is likely to be much higher by the end of the operations," Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports...told of women and children killed in the bombardments.

In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased....

*Rep. John Murtha....reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from 150 a week to more than 700 a week in the past year. He said that an estimated 50,000 American soldiers will suffer "from what I call battle fatigue...." The Americans were seen as "the common enemy" in Iraq.

*A retired senior CIA officer... [said] that...in a congressional tour there....legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers and generals that "things were

f----d up."

*[A] former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported...to Bush in the White House: "I said to the President, `We're not winning the war.' And he asked, `Are we losing?' I said, `Not yet.'" The President "appeared displeased" with that answer.

New Orleans: New Style Death Camp

On December 8 and 9 there'll be a National Gulf Coast Survivors Assembly in Jackson, Mississippi, followed by a March for Human Rights and Right of Return in New Orleans the next day. The People's Hurricane Relief Fund, a coalition of community organizations, labor unions, youth and cultural groups, is demanding the right to return to their homes; that the government reunite families separated by the Katrina disaster; a Victim's Compensation Fund like the one for 9/11 victims; that reconstruction jobs go mainly to the displaced residents at union wages; and more.

PLP will march alongside these anti-racist fighters and share our vision of communism -- an egalitarian society controlled by the working class in which the people's needs are top priority, not the greed of bosses. We need a revolutionary movement. This system cannot be reformed. Whenever workers manage to squeeze gains from the bosses, they're taken away once the bosses must save their system from inevitable periodic crises. (see GM article, see page 1)

History may reveal the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina to be a turning point in the escalation of U.S. fascism. The rulers' actions reveal their plans for our class.

New Orleans sits where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. It's a major trading port of strategic military importance, and a critical center for domestic oil. The government has known for decades that the levee system was weak. In 2001, a major analysis in Scientific American predicted disaster if the levees weren't improved. In 2002, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, National Public Radio and PBS followed with reports based on in-depth studies made at Louisiana State University and the National Hurricane Center. All said that a direct hit from a major hurricane would demolish the city and kill 25,000 to 100,000 people. But U.S. imperialism was caught in international competition and its need to control Mid-East oil, and didn't have the resources to reinforce the levees. The loss of New Orleans exposes the rulers' weakness.

As CHALLENGE noted, "The ruling class has turned a hurricane into genocide of black and poor workers in New Orleans." Two days before the hurricane, National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield told all levels of government that no one would survive a direct hit and that public officials ought to do everything in their power to get people out of the way. But local, state and federal officials, Democratic and Republican, did NOT evacuate workers without cars, a death sentence for thousands.

However, New Orleans was sideswiped, not suffering a direct hit. If it had, the storm surge and winds would have wiped the city off the map. The roofs people were clinging to wouldn't have been there. The people caught by the floods would have been killed. Most of those stranded were black and poor. This represents a big step in the development of fascism. Leaving 100,000 people to die is a new day.

The day after the flood, Blackwater Security mercenaries were on the ground protecting ruling-class property. Nearby Army bases with tens of thousands of soldiers and plenty of helicopters and trucks sat idle. It was five or six days before they began to evacuate the city. They stocked the shelters with only enough food and water for one day, with no portable bathrooms, and forced people to stay in the shelters at gunpoint. FEMA turned back nearly all civilian attempts to help rescue people. (See box right.) The ruling class used the flood to ramp up militarization of society. Instead of being rescued, trapped residents were chased around by cops, shot at by the National Guard and deprived of food and water for days until they concluded their captors wanted them to die. This adds up to a policy of racist genocide and fascist control.

The racist nature of the press has been exposed by its portrayal of black victims as violent predators. Typical was a Sept. 4 news report that "roared across cable television" nationwide about "five or six marauders" shot to death on the Danziger bridge. Now it turns out the cops killed two brothers, one a 40-year-old retarded man, and the other a 49-year-old career Federal Express employee. Neither owned or had guns. "The police just went berserk," said eyewitness Jose Holmes, Sr. whose son was hospitalized in the shooting. (All quotes from Los Angeles Times, 11/24)

Now, with over 4,000 people unaccounted for, survivors scattered across the country threatened with homelessness, and the entire Ninth Ward condemned and awaiting the bulldozers, we have a news blackout that parallels the tightly-controlled reporting on the Iraq war.

PLP has been reaching out to displaced workers in Texas and other areas, and has linked their plight to our daily battles on our jobs and in our mass organizations. We will fight to build a mass PLP and create a revolutionary hurricane to blow away all the bosses who are raining down terror from Baghdad to New Orleans.

Apartheid Comes to New Orleans

After Katrina, Ivor van Heerden, the deputy director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center, described the government's response: "It was unbelievable, especially because we'd done the Hurricane Pam exercise and I had even briefed White House officials....The biggest failing in all of this was we should have warned everybody [about the levee breaks]....We could have got to the media. We could have had vehicles driving on the interstates with bullhorns...could have used helicopters with bullhorns. We could have warned the people, `A big flood's coming, take evasive action.' We didn't....

Number one, we could have had the evacuation of the 57,000 families in New Orleans who don't own motor vehicles completed before the storm arrived....I grew up in apartheid South Africa, and what I saw in a lot of the images was mostly white policemen and military officials ordering mostly black Americans around. And I flashed back on the apartheid scenes that I saw back in the 1980's. It was totally disgusting, and the federal government really needs to apologize to every one of those people." (PBS's full interview with van Heerden can be read at:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/orleans/vanheerden.html)

FEMA Foiled Rescuers

Thousands of workers of all ethnic groups inside and outside New Orleans did their best to rescue people. FEMA foiled nearly all such attempts, even Wal-Mart trucks. A line of 500 fishing boats was turned back, as well as an Amtrak train and an untold number of private cars and trucks. FEMA stopped Houston volunteer firefighters at gunpoint. They prevented people from entering the highways to travel toward the city, using the excuse of "danger" from looting and shooting. They burned food sent by England at a Georgia incineration site. They prevented the Red Cross from delivering food, the Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel and sent away a Navy hospital ship. Volunteers in private helicopters told of seeing military helicopters remaining on the ground as they went in to help. (From dailykos.com, London Financial Times, London Mirror, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, New York Times, NBC)

A Transit Strike Could Set Pace for Fight-Back vs. Bosses' Attacks on All Workers

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 30 -- The ruling class has launched an all-out assault on 33,000 transit workers here, demanding multiple give-backs while hoarding a $1 billion surplus in Transit Authority coffers. They're threatening Taylor Law penalties if members of Transport Workers Union Local 100 walk out -- a fine of two day's pay for every day on strike. Possibly noting a recent modest increase in strikes nationally -- Philly transit workers, Verizon wireless, Sprint telecom, copper workers at Asarco LLC -- up 14% over last year, they want to ensure TWU members don't follow suit, especially while they're spending hundreds of billions to kill our brothers and sisters in imperialist wars abroad.

The Transit Authority bosses are demanding a string of give-backs: that new hires pay health premiums and work an additional seven years to qualify for pensions; force workers to work "out of title" (including lumping conductors and motormen together) meaning more work with less jobs, heavier work-loads and more dangerous conditions, both for riders and workers; removal of station token clerks, again dangerous for riders, especially at night; and expanding computer-operated one-person trains (already instituted on several subway lines), eliminating conductors.

The subway and bus workers are predominantly black and Latino, and have suffered over 15,000 disciplines in one year, falling heaviest on the minority and women workers in the lowest-paid jobs.

The Toussaint misleaders (originally elected on a "militant" reform platform) are in abject surrender mode. Barely talking "strike," they're not even pretending to prepare for one. Local 100 President Toussaint backed Hilary Clinton in the last election, the same Clinton who supported use of the Taylor Law to break any possible strike in 1999. He not only uses union funds to hire Israeli "counter-terrorist" agents to "train" transit workers to act as cops, but also backs an alliance with the police "union," the same cops who would bust heads in any strike.

Meanwhile, yesterday rank-and-filers marched out of a number of facilities across the city, chanting, "No contract, no work!"

The bosses who wield state power under capitalism -- through anti-strike laws, court injunctions and police attacks -- and their "elected" politicians who back the bosses every time, must be seen as a class enemy by workers, who cannot rely on some "neutral" government for justice. Rank-and-file transit workers must unite with all other workers, most of whom use the subways and buses to get to work, to fight to shut down the rulers' city. In the course of such a struggle, with communist leadership, they can come to the realization that getting rid of the profit system is the only solution to this constant assault on our class.

Rail Strikers in France Needed Unity with Anti-Racist Rebels

Under capitalism, workers' strength depends on the extent of their unity. The divisions among the rail workers in France during their recent Nov. 22 national strike -- by age, inter-union rivalry and especially by racism -- caused the walkout to fall far short of its potential.

The strike -- with just 31% of the workers participating -- shut down two-thirds of high-speed train traffic, three-fourths of regional train traffic and two-thirds of Paris metropolitan traffic. Only international service was near normal. This was enough to force the right-wing Chirac/de Villepin government to agree, "in writing," not to privatize the rail system, a principal political demand of the workers. They also won a $140 bonus, a .3% wage "hike" effective Jan. 1st (which may lead to more raises later), the replacement of 700 retiring workers and 200 new hires, and no closing of any lines.

But the strike came at a crucial moment. The government was reeling after three weeks of the greatest rebellion in 40 years. If the workers had demanded that the strike continue until the bosses agreed to give these 900 jobs they won to the rebelling black, Asian and North African youth, think of what that anti-racist demand would have meant to the unity and strength of the working class in challenging the government.

The national rail company hires mostly "French nationals." In 2002, only 800 of the 180,000 rail workers were citizens of non-European Union countries. It's a safe bet that few of the "French nationals" are children of Arab, African or Asian immigrants. If the rail workers were to fight for a big increase in the hiring of these youth, the workers' overall strength would rise sharply.

But the workers themselves are divided into seven competing unions. Three of them (comprising one-fourth of the workers) refused to strike and proclaimed the action a "flop." Another union, representing one-third of the engineers, mobilized along narrow craft lines. And two of the main unions -- the CGT, strongly influenced by the French "Communist" Party, and Sud-Rail, where the Trostkyites are strong -- were busy trying to pose as more "leftist" than the other while the government tried to play them against each other. And these union "leaders" had done little to impress the need for solidarity among the 70,000 new workers hired since 1997, another cause of the low number of strikers.

Meanwhile, the increasing use of ticket inspectors as virtual cops has separated them from the engineers. Twenty years ago, inspectors welcomed and helped passengers as much as checking tickets. Today, with the emphasis on profitability, making sure everybody pays is their main job. Many local suburban factories have closed, making it more vital for people living in the suburban projects (many of immigrant origin) to take the train. Meanwhile, growing unemployment and poverty has forced more people to ride "illegally." So now the inspectors are grouped into "shock teams," board suburban trains and systematically check everyone's tickets, being quick to call the cops when there's a "problem." They've become fertile ground for the racist propaganda of LePen's fascist anti-immigrant National Front. The inspectors' cop role divides them from the engineers who remain more faithful to traditional union values.

Because the government, having been shaken by the recent rebellion, was in a weak position, it tried to talk tough early on to try to bluff the workers. Transport minister Dominique Perben threatened to impose guaranteed service throughout the country in a contract clause, while the governing UMP party launched a petition drive to impose minimum service by law. Both would have forced a certain level of service during a strike, which, in effect, means workers scabbing on their own strike.

But the danger of the walkout spreading to other industries and turning into a long strike forced the government to back down, ordering management to back-track on dividing the train company by activity, universally seen as the first step to privatizing the most profitable sections. It moved quickly to offer enough concessions to settle, given that the workers were themselves divided, with 70% still working. Notably, the iDTGV service, which sells cut-price rail tickets, is to be reintegrated in the company. This acts as a brake on privatization, preventing management from spinning off this service separately to private ownership.

However, a serious threat to the workers looms in the European Union's (EU) intention to open rail service to competition next year. Other EU private companies will aim at underselling particular rail services in France. If no one uses particular French-owned lines, the national company will shut them, effectively privatizing those sectors. And given the probability other EU rail companies will use lower-paid immigrant labor, it would set up the racist/nationalist cry that they're "stealing French jobs." All the more reason for all EU workers to fight for anti-racist, anti-nationalist unity, to prevent whatever concessions they may win from their "own" ruling classes from being undercut by the EU overall.

In 1995, a strike by 70% of the rail workers set off a wave of labor unrest that ultimately toppled the right-wing government of Prime Minister Alain Juppé. But now France finds itself with still another capitalist right-wing government. While a stronger and more wide-spread strike might have toppled this one, it would only be followed by still another capitalist ruling group. Toppling whatever section of a ruling-class dominated government holds power, only to be replaced by another one, won't cut it for the working class.

The workers and youth have been politically disarmed by the opportunism and racism of the old "C"P, "Socialist" Party, and the Trotskyites. As usual, social benefits no longer hold as the EU rulers must increasingly attack their workers to compete with other imperialist rivals in this era of endless imperialist wars. Workers and their allies need to break with all these forces to turn their struggles into schools for communism. In recent weeks, we've also seen mass strikes elsewhere in the EU -- two general strikes in Belgium and one in Italy. Again, these workers and youth need revolutionary communist leadership to turn their actions into a fight for a society without any racism, exploitation or warmakers: communism.

Guatemala: CIA-Trained Racist Killer Army Becomes Drug Cartel

A few weeks ago, Adan Castillo, top Guatemala drug investigator and two of his aides, were arrested while arriving in Virginia for a training course on fighting drug trafficking. They were indicted for importing and distributing cocaine in the U.S. (BBC World News, 11/16/05). Since July, the Border Patrol was on alert because it suspected active and retired Guatemalan special forces soldiers (known as Kaibiles, after the ancient Mayan Prince Kaibil Bajam) were training drug cartel paramilitary forces across the border from McAllen, Texas.

The Kaibiles are among the most feared death-squad groups in Latin America. During the 1980's, with Reagan-Bush-CIA support, they led huge massacres. In September, Mexican authorities arrested seven Kaibiles; four were still active in the Guatemalan army. The seven were planning to join the Zetas, soldiers expelled from Mexico's special forces unit, who've now become goons for the drug cartels.

According to annual State Department reports, since 1999 Guatemala (which borders Mexico) has become the preferred route for shipping cocaine to the U.S. According to DEA officials, 75% of all cocaine reaching the U.S. goes through Guatemala. The Guatemalan army is the main drug cartel.

Recently, the State Department revoked the U.S. visas of retired generals Manuel A. Callejas and Francisco O Menaldo, both former commanders of Guatemalan intelligence. The State Department said the army is totally run by drug dealers. (Texas Observer, 11/17, reprinted at http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=31128).

According to U.S. intelligence reports, the retired generals are also among the founders of an elite, shadowy club within Guatemala's intelligence command, "La Cofradía" or "the brotherhood." The reports credit the "club" with defeating Guatemala's guerrillas, using "engineering" tactics that a U.N. Truth Commission found included "acts of genocide" for driving out or massacring the populations of no less than 440 Mayan villages.

Of course, Guatemala is not the only country whose military is involved in drugs. The Colombian army is famous for this. Last year, "Don" Quirino, the top drug dealer in the Dominican Republic, was arrested and later sent to the U.S. for trial after a truckload of drugs belonging to him was seized, along with the driver and other guards (all officers in the local police and Army). Quirino himself was given an officer's ranking in the National Police despite never having served in it.

This is another side effect of Blowback (when U.S. policies and action come back to haunt them), the results of many CIA operations. Osama bin Laden and the opium trade in Afghanistan are the best known examples of blowbacks (OBL was a known CIA operative). In 1954, the CIA organized a bloody right-wing coup in Guatemala, overthrowing Jacono Arbenz, a reformist-nationalist President who tried to nationalize United Fruit plantations there. Since then, 200,000 of Guatemala's workers and peasants have been killed by CIA-trained generals and politicians. During the dirty war of the 1980's, when the Reagan-Bush gang supported death squads throughout Central America, the Guatemalan army practiced "draining the sea to kill the fish" -- attacking civilians suspected of supporting guerrillas instead of attacking the armed combatants themselves.

The right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) was founded by Ret. Gen. Efrain Ríos Montt, whose 1982 coup d'etat gave him the Guatemalan Presidency just as La Cofradía was emerging. Also a born-again Christian, Montt oversaw the worst massacres. Today he's linked to the U.S. Republican Party. The current vice-chairman of Congress's Western Hemisphere subcommittee is Illinois Republican Jerry Weller III, who recently married Montt's daughter. Weller's father-in-law groomed Guatemala's last president, FRG member Alfonso Portillo, who fled the country in 2004 to escape arrest for alleged money laundering (State Department report).

Along with drug-trafficking, Guatemala is one of the region's most crime-ridden countries. The powerful maras (gangs) are protected by the military and the cops. Their murdering of women is also among the region's highest, almost similar to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

The Guatemala guerrillas of the 1980's must also bear some responsibility for the situation. They basically betrayed the struggle of the masses, making a deal with the government and the U.S. embassy to become part of the country's corrupt political structure.

Again, under capitalism, drugs, crime and racist -sexist mass murder go hand in hand.

100,000 Aussie Workers Back Boeing Strike

Twenty-five Boeing Australian maintenance workers have become a powerful symbol in the fight against the Howard government's industrial reform. On November 15, the country witnessed what was probably the largest labor protest in Australian history as nearly 500,000 workers laid down their tools and rallied against the government's plan to slash the right to organize. In Sydney, 100,000 marched to Boeing's headquarters to support Boeing workers who've been striking for 5_ months. The company still refuses to recognize their right to bargain collectively. Many linked this attack to Howard's support of the U.S. war in Iraq. Assaults on workers domestically and internationally will continue as long as we allow this system to survive. Large numbers, as inspiring as they are, are not sufficient. We in PLP must intensify our efforts to spread communist politics internationally.

Military Recruiters, `Democracy' and Public Health

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the 50,000-member American Public Health Association (APHA), could not have been pleased when its board voted to pay for a booth opposing the war in Iraq at the Dec. 11-14 national meeting in Philadelphia. He's still dealing with fallout from last year's "confrontation," where somebody stuck anti-war slogans on the military booth, an action the Army branded as "vandalism." Benjamin ran the Emergency Departments of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other elite military facilities for many years and made his name as the architect of Maryland's anti-bio-terror program.

Most years, upwards of 12,000 people attend the annual meeting, including several PLP'ers from different cities. We participate in the political debates and discussions in various sections and caucuses. The vast majority of APHA members oppose the war. PLP has been a leading force in every anti-war initiative over the past several years, helping to pass anti-war resolutions in the 300-member Governing Council in 2001, 2002 and 2003 with strong majorities (one exceeded 80%).

Many who oppose the war feel powerless to change U.S. foreign policy and prefer to simply run their clinics (or what's left of them) or teach public health students with a "progressive" slant. They think APHA helps them do their good work.

Our goal is to get to know good people and, by fighting for our communist analysis in struggles over political issues, help them see their communist potential and the futility of trying to reform capitalism.

But APHA members, including some in our movement have ideas at odds with communist consciousness. Communists say imperialism makes war inevitable. Yet many people believe that launching a war is based on the president's personality or fluctuations in the economy. We believe liberal and conservative politicians are just two sides of the same capitalist coin. Other APHA members see them as different as night and day.

The ruling class, either directly or ideologically, controls the bureaucrats that lead the labor unions, professional associations like APHA and other mass "progressive" organizations, to win workers and others to carry out their imperialist plans. The pro-war side of APHA emerges when the leaders are called on to implement anti-war policies. APHA depends on the dues and convention fees of tens of thousands of federal employees, such as health workers from the CDC (Center for Disease Control), and would find itself in a serious financial crisis if the government cut off dues reimbursement and travel support for federal employees.

In February, the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) section discussed a proposal to exclude military recruiters from the annual meeting, and consulted the section's 3,000 members via a mass e-mail. When the section Chairperson sent the e-mail to APHA headquarters for distribution, she was told it would not be distributed because, "it could be an embarrassment" to APHA.

This heavy-handed response shocked some members. But after 20 MCH leaders endorsed the proposal, it was debated in the executive board, which passed a compromise motion: APHA would sponsor a booth "somewhere in the exhibit hall" where our anti-war position could be publicized and the $1,500 rental fee would be waived.

Many anti-war members were excited and volunteered to staff the booth, but their celebration was premature. Instead, the Executive Director situated the booth across the hall from the military booths, entitling it "APHA -- Working for Peace," and decided it would not be staffed by those opposing the war, but by hired staff.

For the dozens of members who've participated in this struggle, the process has been educational. We live under a capitalist class dictatorship that is using APHA to bring health professionals into line with the imperialist agenda. Six weeks after September 11, former Surgeon General David Satcher told thousands of members at the 2001meeting, "You represent the front lines in the war against terrorism." But promised public health funds for "the front lines" never materialized and the government's motive for invading Afghanistan and Iraq has been revealed to be control of oil supplies.

Add the racist horror of hurricane Katrina and the stage is set for very productive and sharp discussions with a wide circle of APHA members (originally this year's meeting was scheduled for New Orleans in November). We'll find more potential communists in those discussions. Most APHA members hate racism and are appalled by the slaughter in Iraq. Unfolding events can provide new incentives to abandon numerous long-held beliefs and embrace revolution as a realistic option. The way we wage the battle over ideas will determine where things go from here.

Red Teacher Organizes School To Oppose Sellout Contract

New York City -- A PL'er's patiently advancing communist politics at a high school here won a majority of teachers to oppose the UFT's (United Federation of Teachers) sellout contract, built class consciousness, drew a number of teachers and students closer to PLP, and increased CHALLENGE readership. This was particularly important because the contract did nothing to fight the racism inherent in a school system with a predominantly black, Latin and Asian student body which capitalism is by offering the "options" of minimum-wage jobs (or none at all) or joining the military to fight and die in imperialist wars.

The PL'er has been working in the school for a year and a half, pursuing pro-student activities and has earned much respect among his fellow teachers. Many know his radical views and that he works hard for the students. Initially he organized an after-school club for students to write creatively and fully express themselves.

The respect he's earned was tested in the recent struggle between the rank-and-file teachers and the union's sellout to Mayor Bloomberg's contract. The teachers saw the UFT's strike "threat" as an empty one and therefore were unwilling to sacrifice and walk out over its narrow goals. Sensing this, the UFT leadership dispatched their dominant UNITY caucus misleaders into the schools to explain why we should blindly follow a strike call which doesn't fight for the best interests of all teachers and students.

At our school, one of the misleaders attacked rank-and-file teachers, saying we were "destroying the union." His sexist behavior emerged in a vehement attack on a young female teacher who asked him a question, contrasted with his civil answer to a similar question from a late-arriving male teacher. Angry over this, the PL'er -- following a few more questions -- asked the hack if this strike would be about class size, building unity with other unions and creating militancy. The hack replied that it was about getting a new contract since Bloomberg kept violating the old one. This provoked the simple question of what would keep the Mayor from violating the new contract if the precedent of violating the old one was already set. This deflated the hack. The PL'er later discussed the hack's blatantly sexist behavior with other teachers.

This challenge to this union sellout earned the PL'er even more respect from rank-and-filers. He continued to concentrate on his students, building CHALLENGE readership among them, while also discussing the contract and the recent Bronx high school walkout. His conversations about the war helped bring some students and teachers to the September 24th Washington anti-war protest. All these militant activities enabled him to build a strong base of support for the next union chapter meeting.

The chapter leader, nearing retirement, has a vested interest in the cost-of-living increase (which would increase her pension) and which the bosses' media has paraded as a "raise." The school delegate is a vocal parrot of the UFT leadership's UNITY caucus.

The chapter leader began by saying her vote at the Delegate Assembly (DA) would mirror the teachers' desires. A "yes" vote would recommend the contract to the rank and file; a "no" vote would reject it outright, spinning the truth by saying that "yes" was "a vote for democracy."

The PL'er said that the rank and file, not the union leadership, are the union, . This influenced many teachers to change their votes from "yes" to "no." This turning of the tide angered the delegate, who said that he "believed in democracy." A veteran teacher then asked him if he would vote the way the teachers wanted. He hypocritically replied that he would vote his "conscience" and "not against democracy." He then ran out of his own union meeting as several teachers shouted they wanted to impeach him!

One teacher proposed they all march on the DA meeting. He got this idea from literature the PL'er had left in the teacher center. Many teachers were open to the idea. A teacher close to PL advanced our idea of a rank-and-file revolt against -- and picketing -- the union leadership. Six teachers along with many from other schools picketed the DA in direct opposition to the union leadership, chanting slogans in their own class interest.

Many teachers signed a petition to impeach our delegate. It was then sent to the union. On December 8th, the UFT leader is coming to the school to discuss this situation. The PL'er and his base are preparing to meet this traitorous misleader.

A study group has been formed with the PL'er's base at school. Several students have attended, CHALLENGE distribution is rising, and a fellow teacher wants to learn more about the Party and may join soon. The determined spreading of communist ideas has helped the Party's influence grow at the school, enabling the workers to advance their own class interests, and proving that many workers really like our politics.

All this has demonstrated the importance of participating in union meetings to advance communist politics. The struggle is long-term. But this is the road to turn our schools into schools for communism.

Workers in Latin America Should Not Support Any Capitalist-Imperialist Side in Free Trade Dispute

Eleven years ago in Miami, Bill Clinton euphorically proposed the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an agreement stretching from Alaska to Argentina's Patagonia. The presidents of 33 North and South American countries enthusiastically greeted his announcement and agreed to enact it into law by 2005. Thus was born the U.S. FTAA dream.

In April 2001, at the third Summit of the Americas, Bush confidently announced the FTAA would be law by 2005. The 33 hemispheric presidents signed it, including Hugo Chavez, however reluctantly. How things have changed! At this last November Summit Meeting in Argentina, Bush couldn't even get the FTAA on the agenda, much less get it signed. What has wrought such drastic change?

Sharpening Inter-imperialist Rivalry Fuels Latin America Rulers' Nationalism

The U.S. first organized the Summit of the Americas, comprising all the hemisphere's residents, in 1957 and then again in 1967, to counter rising Soviet influence in the region. In 1994, after the Soviet collapse, Clinton proposed hosting another Summit to create the FTAA to stop and reverse European and Japanese imperialist inroads in the region.

Although traditionally subservient to the U.S., dissent has been developing within Summit ranks. The FTAA defeat at its last meeting and its polarization into two blocs, one with 28 presidents supporting the U.S. and five -- Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela -- opposing, is a culmination of this process. Diverging economic and geopolitics interests, fueled by inter-imperialist rivalry, are the root cause.

The first four opposing countries comprise MERCOSUR (Venezuela is processing its admission). MERCOSUR was developed by these countries' rulers to counter U.S. influence in the south cone and to gain better bargaining power with any and all imperialists. For this, they must develop and/or expand their domestic industrial bases, while promising to deliver sufficient improvements to workers to guarantee some social stability -- difficult because 50% of their populations live in abject poverty.

Fledgling industries need protection and social-oriented programs need a "democratic-socialist" agenda, not the open markets and neoliberal programs Washington advocates. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay have elected presidents who support a fast-disappearing European capitalist mode: more social spending and regulation of the private sector. Chavez has chosen this model, basing it on cooperatives and participation of all sectors of society in managing local affairs. He calls it "Socialism of the 21st century." But Europe's rulers themselves have launched an assault on this mode, slashing jobs and benefits for the working class. Capitalism cannot satisfy maximum profits and simultaneously provide social justice for workers.

Unfortunately, many honest workers and their allies believe these programs are a real alternative to capitalism. If Brazil's rulers want to become an all-around power center, they must create an internal market. But with 95% of the country's wealth in the hands of 5% of the population, it won't happen. Venezuela and the other MERCOSUR countries are in similar contradictory situations. Any redistribution of wealth can only temporarily defuse social tensions, which is why centuries ago the rising capitalist class invented nationalism to win the working class to willingly fight and die for them. Since then, the world's bosses have also honed it into a powerful anti-communist weapon to divert the working class from revolutionary communism, the only viable alternative to capitalism and imperialism.

Therefore, the more "anti-imperialist" regional bosses become, the more ardent the nationalism they profess. Chavez, for example, is building a 300,000-strong army -- purchasing weapons from Russia, Spain and China --to defend Venezuela's "sovereignty" against U.S. aggression. But nationalist bosses are never really "sovereign." They're always beholden to one imperialist or another. MERCOSUR bosses and Chavez are no exception.

THE CHINA FACTOR

Until recently, MERCOSUR has mainly been supported by European imperialists, who've been invading U.S. turf with investments and trade. Now China's rise as a major imperialist power -- thirsty for raw materials, for markets for its manufactured goods and for places to invest its trade surplus capital -- is accelerating these nationalist bosses' drive to unchain themselves from U.S. imperialism.

The FTAA aims to prevent this by boosting U.S. exports to squash the growth of their domestic industries and destroy MERCOSUR and other regional trading blocs. Unlike U.S. and European imperialists, China has presently no major contradictions (such as agricultural subsidies) with MERCOSUR. Thus, China can promise to help these bosses achieve their geopolitical ambitions.

Therefore it's no surprise that as China becomes a bigger player in the region, these nationalist bosses become more openly defiant of U.S. imperialism. China's trade with Latin America -- after inching upward from $200 million in 1975 to 2.8 billion in 1988 -- has exploded. From 1993 to 2003, China-Latin America trade skyrocketed by 600% to $26.8 billion. From January to November 2004, it increased almost another 40% to $36.4 billion. In 2005, trade and investments are well over $50 billion.

When China's President Hu visited Latin America in November 2004, he pledged to invest $100 billion over the next decade, rivaling the U.S. cash infusion during Kennedy's vaunted Alliance for Progress, which pumped $20 billion into the region in the 1960's (about $120 billion in today's dollars).

The growth of Chinese and other imperialists' influence threatens U.S. hegemony.

In 1823, the U.S. Monroe Doctrine proclaimed its "ownership" of Latin America, threatening war against any power daring to encroach upon it. The Doctrine, now nearly 200 years old, won't die without a fight. Trading blocs and trading wars will lead to shooting wars. The battlefields of World War III will decide which imperialist will exert its hegemony over Latin America and the world.

BOSSES WIN, WORKERS LOSE!

Trade -- products exchanged for money on the market -- always benefits one capitalist or another. It never benefits the working class, which in order to survive must sell its labor power on the market. Capitalism can't exist without the market and the exploitation of that labor power.

It doesn't matter which capitalists do the trading, run the factories or even administer the whole system. The revolution in the Soviet Union and China tried to do that through socialism -- which bacame state capitalism run by the working class and its communist parties -- didn't lead to communism but reverted to open capitalism/imperialism. Only communism -- which will eliminate money, wages, the market and wars for profits -- can meet the needs of the international working class. The growth of a mass PLP throughout the Americas will guarantee this fight.

UNDER COMMUNISM:

How Women Fought to Gain Equality

To begin to answer that question, this article begins a short series on the role of Soviet women as pilots in World War II. Events and quotes are from the book "A Dance With Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II" by Anne Noggle, Texas A&M University Press, 1994.

There were two major differences between the Soviet Air Force in World War II and those of the capitalist nations. First, the communist-led Soviet Union (SU) was the only participant in the war that didn't bomb civilian targets, knowing that the main victims of such bombing would be working-class men, women and children. The U.S. and Britain, like the Nazis who bombed London, destroyed the entire cities of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others.

Second, during World War II the SU was the first nation to let women fly combat planes. When the Nazis invaded in June 1941, nearly one-third of trained pilots in the SU were women. Indeed, by the time of the invasion, Soviet women had "claimed more women's aviation records than any other nation." Women who were already civilian flyers came to be trained as combat pilots, mechanics, navigators and ground crews. However, many male instructors, still steeped in bourgeois ideology, were less than enthusiastic about women flyers. Women, with the help of the Communist Party (CPSU), had to fight for their equality as pilots.

After Marina Raskova set a world record for flying non-stop from Moscow to the Soviet Far East, the Party allowed her to form all-female combat regiments in October 1941. During the war women accounted for more than 12% of the Soviet fighter aviation strength. Women's regiments flew more than 30,000 combat sorties.

They flew mainly the Pe-2 trainer, low in fuel consumption and able to land virtually anywhere. It had an open cockpit, a crew of two, and six to eight bombs, with the rear navigator often armed with a machine gun. Made of wood and fabric and traveling only 60 mph, the plane was a fire hazard in combat. It was a difficult plane for women to fly, especially "small women who were slim and hungry. The control stick was heavy to move, and our arms and legs were so short we had three folded pillows behind our backs. The navigators helped us by pushing on our backs as we pushed on the stick to get the tail up for takeoff."

The women carried no parachutes until 1944, because if they couldn't land safely back behind their own lines, they preferred to burn with the plane rather than suffer brutal Nazi torture.

The women sometimes flew 18 sorties a night. To avoid German searchlights they approached from a high elevation, throttled back the engine to idle, flew over the target soundlessly and dropped the bombs almost before the enemy was aware of their presence. They often flew in pairs, one noisily as a distraction. They flew in a continuous stream, bombing every few minutes. They returned to refuel, rearm, and immediately take off again. The Germans came to call them the "Night Witches" for their uncanny accuracy and persistence.

Once going 100 days without a rest, "we slept two to four hours each day throughout the four years of the war...Sometimes I even forgot whether I was flying toward the target or back from the target. At those times we had to peer under the wings to see if the bombs were attached in order to know whether we were going or returning!"

Some women even led male squadrons. "They [the men] trust you -- not because you are a woman but because you are a skillful and trained pilot."

"It was very difficult to be the leader of a squadron....The Germans always fired at the lead plane, because if the leader could be shot down, the formation would disperse and leave without a commander."

(Future columns will focus on women's struggle for equality as pilots and unity among the men and women pilots.)

LETTERS

Angry Militant Moms Oppose Iraq War

On Nov. 19, I had the privilege of attending the "Students and Educators to Stop the War" conference in LA. I was invited to speak as a member of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO). I also helped lead discussions in two workshops. They were centered on issues facing soldiers and their families. Other presenters included two members of Gold Star Families for Peace, two young students with a loved one currently deployed, and a mental health counselor who deals with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).

These workshops were often very emotional. People poured out their grief, anger and frustration against the bosses' bloody war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It became very clear that PTSD directly affects families and friends as well as soldiers.

As many of us have long suspected, the military brass and their masters in government and business are not providing the care and support these soldiers and their families need. An article in USA Today (10-18-05) said, "More than 1 in 4 U.S. troops have come home from the Iraq war with health problems that require medical or mental health treatment..." Thousands of seriously wounded are put on medical hold due to staffing shortages. Yet these greedy and ungrateful bosses want to slash the budget even more! They're now "pre-screening" soldiers, hoping to prove they had mental health problems before deployment so they can later be denied care for PTSD!

Some of the workshop participants said that when their soldiers actually got up the courage to seek help (the military tells them they're not "real men," or are "half soldiers" if they do), all they get is a video game and drugs that are supposed to help them forget the war.

When I spoke, I acknowledged their grief, and agreed with their anger. I encouraged them to join MFSO, because it's a good, broad-based organization that provides support, information and many levels of participation for military families. However, I also said that the best hope for ending this war lies with the soldiers themselves. Conferences, demonstrations, petitions, referendums, even work stoppages and strikes are all good ways to protest the war. But when the soldiers themselves organize, resist and rebel, that's when "the fat lady sings!"

I gave a few examples of soldier rebellions throughout history and talked about the line the military pushes...that you "signed a contract to do a job and you have no choice but to obey orders," etc.

This is a very controversial subject, and the discussion took a whole new direction after that. It carried over to the next two plenary sessions and the final workshops. The whole conference seemed to open up to more militant and revolutionary ideas. It was very encouraging to see so many young people interested in these ideas. I noticed many carrying a CHALLENGE.

It was a successful day. Each of my workshops had 20-30 people; at least 75% were either in the military (six or seven had recently served in Iraq), were veterans, or had a close relative or friend active in the military. Very promising!

Military Mom

`Stop the War' versus Anti-imperialism

Recently I attended a conference in South Los Angeles organized by Students and Educators to Stop the War and was incredibly surprised by the level of political sophistication and working-class consciousness of the students there. Approximately 500 high school and college students and teachers came and participated in workshops that discussed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Throughout the day-long event, the students demonstrated their working-class solidarity, linking the war machine, tuition hikes, the growth of recruiters on campuses, increased attacks on workers (wage cuts and mass layoffs) -- amid monolithic oil profits -- and the re-emergence of a strong anti-immigrant, nationalist movement. They boldly challenged those at the conference who repeated the empty, popular anti-war rhetoric of the need for a "peace movement," as opposed to a militant anti-imperialist movement.

The conference tone, thanks largely to these students, took on an anti-imperialist character. It moved towards organizing students and educators to see there's no common interest between the working class, sent to fight oil wars, and the ruling class whose only concern is their profits. This point of unity was the single most important development to emerge from the conference.

A fighting student

Racism/Nationalism Help Build Profit Wars

I participated in the Nov. 19th Students and Educators to Stop the War Conference in L.A. and led one of the workshops. A panel of students and religious leaders discussed racism and nationalism during wartime. Several students analyzed the Minutemen and how racism/nationalism go hand in hand. The religious leaders gave anecdotal accounts of why we need to end racism but didn't explain what to do about it.

As a PLP member I described how racism/nationalism is used to build for war and fascism and how the former are inextricably linked. We noted how those two ideologies are used to justify the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of our class brothers and sisters worldwide. The discussion also included a healthy debate on white skin privilege. Everyone in the workshop received CHALLENGE and our PL leaflet. One workshop I attended included veterans, and also discussed revolution.

For me, the weekend's best part saw three members of my campus group attend the conference despite it being a 6-hour drive. They returned inspired, having learned a lot, and spent much time with our Party and comrades.

They had nothing but really positive things to say about the whole experience. Topping it all was a conversation at Sunday breakfast with older comrades. We discussed the need for revolution and how capitalism stops at nothing to co-opt and misguide the younger generation's anger against capitalism into something futile.

Overall, these three friends were moved by our politics and presence. These events make me very optimistic for the growth of our Party. Hard work is ahead of us but we'll get there!

A Northern California comrade

Fighting Military Recruiters on Campus Is Not Enough

Some students from my campus, including close friends, attended the Nov. 19 anti-war conference in Los Angeles [see article front page]. It provided an alternative to the large demonstrations that focus only on Bush and create the illusion the war can end simply by marching, or even worse, by merely voting Bush out of office.

Those who came from my campus were re-energized, both politically and personally. Many left the conference with a stronger political understanding of the root causes of the war in Iraq, and now better understand the need to organize and fight against the source of these endless profit wars - imperialism and capitalism. Some even realized the limits of counter-recruitment, seeing that kicking recruiters off campus (which they've been working for) wasn't enough.

Soldiers are crucial to defeating imperialism and stopping its endless cycle of profit wars. We need to reach out to them and win them to active anti-imperialist organizing. Some friends have begun to re-think their counter-recruitment strategies. Others have showed new energy in committing themselves to organizing local actions for the next semester.

Some close friends have shown more openness to communist ideas and to PL. All these small advances provide great opportunity for building PLP on campus and winning students, workers and soldiers to fight for a communist future.

Red Student

Picketed Rep. Murtha When He Was Openly pro-War

Rep. John Murtha, the Democrat hawk from Johnstown, Pa., has called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. imperialist troops from Iraq, sending imperialist war criminal neo-conservatives into a frenzy. After first claiming that he had joined forces with his party's liberals, Bush and Cheney changed their tune, stating Murtha was a fine man and a patriot.

I've had my own experiences with Murtha. I'm a member of Johnstown's Citizens for Social Responsibility which has protested the imperialist debacle in Iraq at Murtha's local office, (on one occasion placing a body bag there).

But Murtha is not opposed to imperialist war or the capitalist system which breeds it. He was a Marine officer during the U.S. imperialist war in Vietnam and is a very strong supporter of the military. Murtha is a devoted anti-communist and supported, and pushed for, the first Gulf War. He also supported all of Reagan's military actions. Murtha backed El Salvador's death-squad regime that massacred Salvadoran workers.

On Nov. 22, I attended a press conference in Johnstown featuring Murtha. He said the public turned against the war before he vocalized his call for troop withdrawal. Murtha explained that success in Iraq required a huge mobilization of more troops. He had made the claim in May 2004. Now he said the U.S. war effort had begun with under-trained, poorly-equipped troops, citing a lack of body armor. (Incidentally, supporters of the fascist Lyndon LaRouche were outside distributing literature claiming Murtha was right on target.)

Murtha also mentioned that enlistment is dwindling and equipment is deteriorating, saying, "The future of the army is going down the drain." [Ed. Note: Murtha is championing a quick-strike force in the region to move into Iraq "when necessary."]

Murtha's call for withdrawal reflects his fears that the U.S. imperialist military may be incapable of effectively fighting future wars. He also recognizes the fact that Bush's popularity has been going down the tubes, endangering popular support for future wars.

Red Coal

Fighting for Honoring Picket Lines at SF Schools

Recently the possible strike of school workers in two different unions raised the potential for working-class solidarity. I teach at a San Francisco middle school. My friend sent me a PLP leaflet calling on teachers to honor an SEIU picket line in case the clerks and custodians walked out. I went to the SEIU members at my school, asked them to read it and contribute a few dollars to get it photocopied. This could build support for a strike and for PLP.

The first custodian I spoke to said he would copy it at school for me. I told him I didn't want him to get in trouble, but he insisted. I took his copies and began distributing them. Soon I met people who already had one. The custodian had made extra copies and had passed them out himself.

Tensions were mounting at the schools as people had to decide what to do. Some SEIU members announced they wouldn't honor their own picket line. A teacher who's a former Black Panther came to me for advice. I told him he shouldn't follow these scabs, that they're wrong and that his years of struggle against the system should teach him right from wrong. I said he should honor the strike. Two people saw CHALLENGE for the first time.

When I criticized the head of the Labor Council for showing up at our meeting and then disappearing, a co-teacher asked what PLP would do to support us. I called up a PL'er and asked him to organize friends to leaflet a nearby school, which would have happened if the SEIU leadership hadn't settled with a sellout contract.

With wages frozen for three previous years, the leadership settled for a two-year contract: a 2% raise at the end of this school year and 2% a year later; and health coverage up to 75% without a cap (which did cover some new members for the first time). But the cost of living has risen at least 2% a year for the past three years and is still increasing now, so the settlement is actually a wage-cut in purchasing power.

The crisis has passed, but the problems remain.

An SF teacher

Laborers Must Not Ignore Racist Minutemen

Recently a comrade and I went to Herndon, Virginia near Washington, D.C. to talk to day laborers at the local 7-11 store. They're being harassed by the racist Minutemen, who photograph and videotape the workers and employers to turn into Immigration, the IRS and the FBI. They even hide in bushes to do their dirty work, and provocatively follow workers to and from job sites and their homes. The workers don't feel safe.

The Minutemen claim they're not racist, but one of them wore a White Power shirt during their "filming." If it walks like a pig and smells like a pig...it's a pig!

An NGO working with the laborers to create a day-labor center tells them to "turn their backs on the Minutemen; ignore them and hope they'll go away." But there have already been documented reports of violence against day laborers in nearby Maryland. In one instance, someone posing as an employer called a worker over to his truck, and then a group of men jumped him (just like on Long Island). We cannot ignore the racist Minutemen. We must fight against them and show they're not welcome in Herndon, New Jersey, Arizona or any other place for that matter.

We were open with the workers. As the two of us were separating the DESAFIOS from the CHALLENGES, the workers became curious, then surrounded us, and even before we could hand them out, the workers ASKED us for copies. Over 40 of the 75 workers took papers! The second day we re-introduced ourselves and said we were communists, that we were anti-racists and that PL had experience in fighting the Minutemen. We were received with open arms and many more took the paper.

It will take many more visits, time and effort to build ties with these workers as well as to organize against the racist Minutemen. Many of us should learn Spanish and find out where these struggles are occurring near us. The workers themselves must lead this struggle. We must struggle politically with them. One of my best personal political moments came when a worker told me: "We feel good that you are here with us." That's how all workers should feel about us communists!

Red Internationalist

Criticism Appreciated

Being the one who wrote the letter called "The Other Superpower" (CHALLENGE, 11/16), I thank and appreciate the comrade who criticized it (CHALLENGE, 11/30). The writer is absolutely right -- the ruling class would not want to be exposed, as they were by Hurricane Katrina, in the writer's words, "for their racist neglect at home while spending hundreds of billions for imperialist oil wars..." That's absolutely true, and it's left Bush and the rest of his fascists vulnerable to criticism that the tame "opposition" press has all but refused to do since Clinton. Even the liberals, crying all the way, have had to attack Bush.

In my letter, I should have added that the gross incompetence the ruling class showed in its preparation for, and reaction to, the awful hurricane is not something they want to have to answer for -- especially because the devastation, largely in the black and other poorer areas, was preventable. I criticize myself for using imprecise language, and do so especially because in other letters, and in discussions with people in PL, I have stated that clear language is all-important in getting PLP's line and arguments across. Thanks again.

(Since I wrote the above, however, I've been repeatedly hearing news shows and analyses about how the "new" New Orleans will be aimed at the elite. Black and white workers -- who were murdered by the federal government as surely as if Bush had hijacked a plane and crashed it into the neglected levees that destroyed the city -- are and will be ignored and driven into other depressed areas. That's what capitalism has to say to us all.)

Freezing in the tundra, North Country Red

Last Half-Decent UFT Contract Was in 1972

There were two errors in the Nov. 30 article on the new NYC teachers' union contract. The membership vote approving it was not "the closest vote in the union's 40-year history." In the late 1990's, we actually rejected a contract recommended by the leadership, negotiated with the Giuliani administration. Secondly, the statement that "the last contract teachers won better working conditions and higher salaries was in 1975" is incorrect. The last half-way decent contract was in 1972.

Incidentally, the front-page articles on the rebellion in France and the anti-KKK march in Texas in this same issue were particularly good.

NYC H.S. Teacher

Anti-Racist Celebrations Raise Money for Fighters Against Minutemen

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 19 -- Inspired by bold fund-raising activities in support of arrested and jailed anti-racist fighters in California, PLP'ers in this area organized two major events to support those arrested in the fight against the Minutemen. Over 40 people attended our August crab feast, raising $1,700. Over 80 workers, students and professionals attended the 20th Thanks for Fighting Racism (TFFR) Feast today, raising $835 more. When our brothers and sisters have been jailed, it's no time to be wishy-washy about supporting them!

PLP's growth among transit workers (Local 689, Amalgamated Transit Union) contributed to the success of these events, with many workers donating money, buying raffle tickets and speaking eloquently on the program.

The TFFR brought together students from a Baltimore high school and Howard University; workers from government offices, transit, and utilities; health professionals; and community members engaged in fighting police brutality.

TFFR began as a response to Thanksgiving -- the food is great, but the politics of European colonialism and genocide against Native Americans associated with this holiday are lousy. So we kept the food and changed the politics, celebrating the many facets of the anti-racist struggle in an international, multi-racial dinner with speeches, music, poetry and spoken word.

This 20th anniversary dinner concluded with a spirited singing of the Internationale. The many fists raised in the air expressed their enthusiasm for continuing the struggle against racism worldwide.

Red Eye On the News

US, like Saddam Hussein, uses chemical arms

...American forces at the siege of Falluja used "shake'n'bake" shells on residential areas. White phosphorus, as reported by George Monbiot and confirmed by the Pentagon, is worse than napalm. Since it is "chemical" in its effect on humans, it falls under a ban by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention for use against "areas of high civilian population."

One of the most cited reasons for toppling Saddam Hussein was his deployment of chemical weapons...(GW, 12/1)

China health-care now profit-driven and corrupt

"In China today, if you don't have money, you don't dare go to the hospital,"....

In the first three decades of communist rule China eradicated some diseases and dramatically increased life expectancy, employing state-funded hospitals and "barefoot doctors" -- practitioners with basic training who ran rural clinics. But in the 1980s....Doctors and hospitals became responsible for living off their profit....

That decision is now widely viewed as a disaster . Pharmacies have become profit centres for Chinese hospitals, the source of up to 90% of revenue, encouraging doctors to overprescribe drugs....

...The free Aids treatment programme is being used to create profits....

"The reform process has made hospitals into clubs for the rich," said Zhang Ke, an Aids specialist at Beijing Youan hospital. "If the hospital is focused on making money, why would they tell anyone about these free drugs? There's a basic conflict of interest." (Washington Post in GW, 12/1)

Liberal media silent on oil motive in Iraq war

To the Editor:

The times Book Review published nearly 8,000 words reviewing five books on Iraq without the word "oil" ever appearing. What a remarkable symptom of...denial about what has been done in...Iraq. (NYT, 11/20)

US bigotry exposed by venerated black Prof.

John Hope Franklin....An African-American, raised and educated in an era of stifling race prejudice and legal segregation, .... now 90 years old, has spent his career exposing the bigotry that once dominated American intellectual life and continues to infect society at large. His scholarship is his weapon....

In 1961, he published "Reconstruction After the Civil War," a seminal work that challenged the common portrait of the era as one in which wild and ignorant former slaves, led by corrupt Northerners, rode roughshod over the defeated white South. "I would insist," he writes " that most freedmen were desperate for an education and extremely eager to participate in the ongoing development of their communities." Indeed, Franklin dared his opponents to find "anywhere at any time a more serious and responsible group of people so recently in bondage." There were no serious takers.

At Chicago, and later at Duke University, Franklin trained a legion of graduate students to merge the study of African-American society and culture into the larger fabric of American history. As a public intellectual, widely quoted in the media, he spoke out against what he saw as the federal government's retreat from civil rights....

Franklin uses "Mirror to America" to vent his considerable anger....At one point he claims that the "Negro seat" on the Supreme Court once held by his idol, Thurgood Marshall, has been "bleached white" by the appointment of Clarence Thomas, a man he thoroughly despises....

Franklin has studied his nation for nearly three-quarters of a century. His scholarship tells us that people must be judged by their willingness to remove the obstacles and disadvantages that oppress society's most vulnerable members. His conscience reminds us of how much remains to be done. (NYT, 11/27)

US workers slipping down; Dems won't fix

...There is also a profound anxiety over the economy that neither Democrats nor Republicans have fully understood, much less tried to answer. It wasn't just the quagmire of Iraq that prompted a stunning 68 percent of respondents to say they were dissatisfied with the country's direction, according to a recent Gallup poll. Despite unemployment rates that remain relatively low, many Americans are anxious about their bills, uncertain about their retirement prospects, and worried that their children won't fare as well as they did.

Slowly, stealthily, globalization is taking a toll throughout the American middle and working classes, shutting down factories, decimating unions, even threatening the Southeast's cotton farmers, who fear competition from cheap fiber grown in Africa and South America. The crosswinds of free trade have achieved hurricane force, battering factories and offices, rendering them unsteady spheres where a worker with 10 years of good performance reviews can walk in any morning to find he's out of work.

Add to that health insurance costs, which have left millions of parents stranded in a scary place where they ignore a child's hacking cough unless it persists for weeks and put off their own checkups indefinitely. Even families with medical insurance have discovered that a major illness can lead to bankruptcy....

As lackeys of the big-business, wealthy-investor class (or charter members of it), congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to make the lives of working folks worse....kicking them in the shins. Congressional Democrats helped supply the steel-toed boots. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 11/13)

 

France: Youth Explode Against Racism

• French Rulers' Long History of Racist Warmaking
• 'Socialists' Back Anti-Immigrant Racism

3,000 Marchers Confront KKK in Texas

a href="#Why Bosses’ Factions Sharpen Fight Over Presidency">"hy Bosses’ Factions Sharpen Fight Over Presidency

Imperial Presidency

Uncertain Terms

Hundreds of D.C. Marchers Link Racism to AIDS Epidemic

Racist Contract Sparks Growing Fight in NYC Teachers Union

• An Important Contract

Puerto Rico: 3,000 Teachers March to Demand End to Wage Freeze

Laws of Capitalism Erasing Reform Gains in Auto

UAW Sellouts Giving Away Store to GM, Ford

a href="#Young French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’">Youn" French Auto Workers Speak:‘It’s like an erupting volcano’

The Struggle at CUNY: What Does Unity Mean?

A Dialectical View of Unity

Bringing Class Consciousness to H.S. Struggles

a href="#Vets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade">"ets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade

Spontaneous Rebellions Not Enough

a href="#Capitalism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options">Ca"italism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options

Red Leadership At Phila. Strike Picket Line

D.C. Transit Workers Bring Solidarity to Philly Strikers

Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Catastrophe for Working Class

Spreading Communist Ideas in Reform Struggles

Redeye On The News

• Liberals don’t deliver fairer incomes
• Business bigs find judge Alito all neato
• Democrats help deny rights in Guantanamo
• 40% in US have skipped their costly drugs
• Despite laws, CIA has secret prisons
• Thousands of homes mined by $trip mining
• Elections make public education worse

a href="#Need Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans">"eed Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans

• Guns, Too…
• What We Can Do

The CFR: Center of the Web that Spins U.S. Foreign Policy

Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco

Under Communism: What will prisons be like?

---

France: Youth Explode Against Racism

The rebellions against police brutality, racism and unemployment sweeping across many French cities have ripped the mask off the slogans of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, exposing a society in which millions of immigrant workers and their French-born children and grandchildren have been forced into high-rise ghettoes and into the country's worst jobs, education and living conditions.

The rebellion started on October 27, when cops began chasing two Muslim teenagers of African descent in Clichy-sous-Bois, an impoverished, ghettoized "suburb" northeast of Paris. The young men ran and climbed a fence, not noticing a warning about the presence of a high voltage electric generator. They were electrocuted. The cops told the usual victim-blaming lies when committing racist murder. And the rebellion was on.

Within days, it had spread across France to hundreds of oppressed "suburbs" where half the population is under 20. Many of these youth are the French-born sons and daughters of North African and sub-Sahara immigrant workers. Unemployment there is more than double the national average. For 18- to 24-year-olds it ranges between 30% and 40%. ID checks and police harassment are a way of life. (See page 4)

These French citizens and immigrants face the worst housing. All those who died in last summer's fires in run-down Paris buildings were black, from sub-Saharan Africa. While two-thirds of French children receive the equivalent of a high school diploma, less than half of foreign-born children do.

Police State

Now a three-month "state of emergency" exists nation-wide, permitting local officials to impose curfews and a ban on demonstrations as the rulers try to institute more of a police state. They've unleashed the special CRS "anti-riot" cops, known for their own brand of unlimited racist brutality.

With no communist political leadership, the young rebels have often targeted the most obvious symbols of a society that treats them like trash: the police, who brutalize them; the schools that humiliate and fail them; and the town halls symbolizing the government that exploits and discards them. Sometimes they've made serious mistakes, like trashing and burning thousands of cars, most belonging to other workers, or a deadly assault on a retired auto worker.

One wing of the racist French government and ruling class is using these incidents to characterize the rebels as "rabble" and "scum" and to depict the rebellions primarily as "vandalism" (Interior Minister Sarkozy). Another wing, resembling U.S. ruling-class liberals including Prime Minister De Villepin, Sarkozy's main rival for the presidency in the next election is shedding crocodile tears over a situation its system helped create, hypocritically decrying racism and calling for reform . The French "Communist" Party long ago gave up the idea of fighting for revolution. Along with the "Socialist" Party, more right-wing sections of both support the government crackdown and some called for even harsher measures. The unions they lead are misleading workers into the racist trap laid by the ruling class. And the Muslim religious "leaders" joined the chorus — the French Union of Islamic Organizations issued a fatwa telling young Muslims to "calm their anger" if they want to obtain "divine grace."

The conditions that prompted these justifiable uprisings can't be reformed. Their history proves the indivisibility of racism and the profit system. The universal laws of capitalism apply to France just as rigorously as they do to the U.S.

French Rulers' Long History of Racist Warmaking

Many in the international anti-war movement saw the French rulers as "allies" in the fight against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But Chirac opposed that invasion only because French oil companies lost their Iraq contracts when the U.S. expelled Saddam Hussein.

In the 19th century, French rulers colonized large parts of northern and western Africa, seeking an advantage in their competitive dogfight with British and German imperialism. This dogfight eventually led to two world wars. By the end of World War II, two developments were emerging. First, French rulers needed a massive influx of cheap labor power for their drive to become a major industrial force on world markets. Second, throughout the French empire, a growing independence struggle, led in large part by sincere communists with the old movement's incorrect pro-nationalist line, was taking shape.

The sharpest expression of this struggle for France was the Algerian War, which began in 1954, ended in 1961, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. French President DeGaulle understood better than most of his political rivals the key class needs of French bosses, that an "independent" Algeria could be much more lucrative than an Algeria kept "French" by a costly colonial war threatening to tear France apart. So he signed the deal that made Algeria an ex-colony and turned its new bosses into business partners.

Importing Immigrants For Low-Wage Jobs

The war's end led to an explosion of immigration from Algeria and other parts of northern and western Africa to fill the most dangerous, lowest-paid jobs in heavy industry. The government gave French companies huge tax concessions to import these workers. The politicians were quite frank about the purpose of the newly-liberalized immigration policy. In 1963, Prime Minister Pompidou admitted: "Immigration is a way to loosen up the labor market and resist social pressure." When the bosses began to fear that legal immigration quotas might not fill the expanding economy's demand, Labor Minister Jeanney warbled praises of "Clandestine immigration" as "…not entirely useless…[otherwise] we might lack manpower."

But the profit system is unstable. Boom quickly turns into bust. By the mid-1970s, the "glorious years" of economic expansion were over. The bosses were laying off super-exploited immigrant workers rather than recruiting them. In 1974, Prime Minister Chirac, now president, suspended immigration. In 1978, Secretary of State Stoléru promoted an infamously racist measure to expel 500,000 immigrants over a five-year period. Throughout this period, Jean-Marie Le Pen was building the "National Front" — the most successful openly fascist electoral party in Europe since Hitler - around blatantly racist, anti-immigrant slogans.

The mainstream bosses' parties were co-opting his agenda while pretending to distance themselves from him. In 1991, Chirac was preparing his eventual presidential campaign. He visited a French family living in the same neighborhood as Arab immigrants and wondered aloud how "good French people" could bear the "stench and noise." Four years later he won largely because he captured a large section of Le Pen's political base, much like the two Bushes and Reagan before them, who pandered to the openly racist elements of the U.S. electorate. Now main-line fascistic leaders and presidential hopefuls like Sarkozy are again co-opting LePen's followers.

'Socialists' Back Anti-Immigrant Racism

But France's anti-immigrant racism doesn't belong exclusively to the open fascists and right-wingers. Barely two weeks after Chirac's racist tirade in 1991, Edith Cresson, then the "Socialist" Prime Minister, proposed charter flights to forcibly repatriate "unwanted" immigrants. Two weeks later, President Mitterrand, another "socialist," made a speech on July 14 (France's national holiday) supporting Cresson. Mitterrand had earlier distinguished himself as a collaborator with the Nazi occupation in World War II — supplying the Hitlerites with intelligence that sent anti-Nazis to prison and/or execution- as well as the Interior Minister who launched the French government's first wave of brutal colonial repression when the Algerian war erupted in 1954.

So Interior Minister Sarkozy's racist filth against today's rebels hardly falls from the sky. Every single cause of the present rebellion — racist super-exploitation of immigrant labor power, racist unemployment, racist police terror against immigrant workers and their unemployed children, racist schools that miseducate children and throw them onto a labor market to seek non-existent jobs, and racist insults by victim-blaming politicians — can be traced directly to the profit system.

The universality of racism and its consequences under capitalism is one important lesson to draw from the current rebellions in France. Others include:

•During the time the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong was sincerely fighting for workers' power, he wrote, "Revolution is not a tea party." Well, neither is spontaneous rebellion. The masses of young workers involved in today's uprisings are lashing out as best they can against a system that has made their lives intolerable. They aren't doing so in the most effective way, but they're hardly to blame for the current vacuum of revolutionary political leadership in France. The old communist movement first betrayed them, then abandoned them. Our Party salutes their rebellion and recognizes in it a sure sign that class struggle will always rise to the forefront sooner or later, even in the bleakest of periods.

•In a context of sharp, massive international class struggle, today's anti-racist rebellion by French youth could potentially serve as a catalyst to galvanize the world's working class. This was the case in April-May 1968, when a militant protest by university students outside Paris led to a general student strike and very rapidly thereafter to a general strike of the French working class that virtually shut down the country for three weeks. The powder in France and throughout the world is just as dry today as it was then. The difference lies in the absence of a vital communist center (like the inspiration drawn from that era’s Chinese Cultural Revolution) to transform class hatred into a force for the seizure of political power. However, a looming national rail strike (Nov. 21) against privatization of the railroads and an accompanying mass demonstration in Paris is an opportunity for oppressed youth to unite with workers in a pro-working class, anti-racist alliance.

We have a long way to go before we become such a force. But that's the Progressive Labor Party's goal, in the U.S., France and everywhere. We salute today's rebels. We celebrate their anger and their fighting spirit. We are inspired by their actions, which have once again placed class struggle on the front page. And we promise to keep building the PLP until it deserves to be recognized as the revolutionary communist leadership of the world's workers.

3,000 Marchers Confront KKK in Texas

AUSTIN, TEXAS, Nov. 5 — More than 3,000 protesters marched against the Ku Klux Klan today at City Hall here, the state capital. PLP members and friends from three Texas cities participated, some seizing leadership and leading chants, including "Black, Latino, Arab, Asian and White; No KKK No Way!"

This leadership galvanized the largest contingent of several hundred demonstrators, encouraging hundreds to join the march, and united with members of the U. of Texas Black Students Association to try to confront the racist Klan. Fake leftist organizers had no plan and were pushed aside as they almost led the march into an early police trap. Liberal peace groups trying to drown out militant chants were told by marchers, "We’re here to confront the Klan, not listen to speeches and songs." Hundreds more at two other intersections were less organized, some obeying misleaders’ instructions to hold a "silent vigil."

Austin’s mayor protected the Klan with several hundred baton-wielding riot police, including dozens on horseback, with spotters, snipers and photographers on rooftops. These Klansmen in blue protected the seven Klansmen who tried to rally, sealing off two square blocks and keeping the racist Klan right next to a large armored police vehicle. Each street intersection leading to the City Hall where the Klan hid was blocked by lines of cops, their batons at the ready.

For the week before this Klan action — "in support of family values and against gay marriage" — the mayor, peace groups and newspapers pleaded with Texans not to demonstrate and to ignore the Klan "so it wouldn’t get publicity." Obviously many workers and students refused these pro-fascist instructions, but some took them seriously until they heard the various ways the government is building fascism, including publicizing Klan events. Others argued the demonstration "wasn’t important" if there was no way to physically attack the Klan.

But asking people to protest the Klan is important; strength of numbers can change what’s possible. The bottom line is that thousands will fight racism and sexism, even without understanding how capitalism depends for its survival on keeping people divided.

PLP members talked to people about the militant rebellions of North African youth against the racist French government this week, the anti-Nazi rebellion in Toledo, and the massive street demonstrations against the U.S. and Bush in Argentina. We in PLP have a great opportunity to rebuild an international revolutionary communist movement among these thousands of angry demonstrators, from Austin to Argentina to the suburbs of Paris, to turn their militancy into a fight to destroy capitalism, the root cause of racism and fascism.

One radio station predicted hundreds would come to support the Klan because it supports a law banning gay marriage. But only a tiny handful of KKK’ers showed up while thousands came to protest. This indicates that the Klan is a product of the rulers’ media which publicizes its racist actions, and of their government which protects them. Every such event is an opportunity to win people to the need for revolution, not just reform.

In that vein, PL members met and exchanged phone numbers with marchers and spectators, including undocumented workers from Latin America who face attacks today from U.S. rulers’ newest nazi group, the Minutemen.

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The bosses' state is not neutral. It represents the interests of the capitalist class. Workers must understand its nature, and why different ruling-class factions fight to control it. When workers grasp that concept we can see that we have no friends in the ruling class and that the only state that serves our interests is one where workers rule and abolish wage slavery, capitalist profits, their wars and racist/fascist terror — communism.

The presidency of the United States is both supremely powerful and precarious. A president can make war (see box on Imperial Presidency), steer the economy, and shape society in significant ways. But the very importance of the office makes it a highly unstable element of the capitalists’ class dictatorship. Factions among them constantly battle tooth and nail over control of the White House. For more than a century, the struggle has essentially involved two camps: imperialist liberals, the dominant group, who need to militarize the U.S. for ever larger wars; and bosses who would only employ capital and manpower for their own companies’ gain. This fundamental rift, inseparable from the profit system, turns elections into circuses and underlies an endless series of presidential scandals, impeachments, and attempted and successful assassinations.

Today the liberal imperialist wing is using the Cheney-Libby-CIA flap to scold Bush for failing to secure Iraq and failing to whip up patriotic spirit for future wars. In response, Bush is taking small, halting steps to get on board the liberal agenda. In a Veterans’ Day speech, he vowed to finish the job in Iraq and even spoke the liberals’ magic word, half-heartedly acknowledging "the sacrifices that might lie ahead." "Shared sacrifice" has become the liberals’ slogan for the coming phase of inter-imperialist conflict. Capitalists will have to sacrifice some profits in the form of war taxes. Workers will have to sacrifice their wages, personal freedom and lives. But Bush’s efforts are too little and too late for liberal media outlets like Newsweek, which recently saddled him with a dismal approval rating of 36%.

The imperialist camp upholds Franklin D. Roosevelt as the presidential ideal. The regulatory agencies he created bent finance and industry to U.S. imperialism’s needs. He boosted U.S. troop strength from 400,000 to 14,000,000. But until FDR actually accomplished the liberals’ tasks, they employed their media to correct and direct even his administration. In 1938, the New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent Arthur Krock praised FDR for his "political execution of the right-wing conservative" and for planning "to mobilize industry under...a government agency reminiscent of the [World War I] War Industries Board." But simultaneously, Krock — speaking for the impatient imperialists — attacked FDR’s "incapacity to consolidate progress." FDR’s vindication, for the liberal warmakers, came only with the U.S. invasion of Normandy. Liberal sainthood followed soon after FDR’s death, when Truman executed the nuclear genocide FDR had planned for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The liberal wing hasn’t yet determined what it can do with Bush & Co. But it clearly wants them either ousted or thoroughly purged and the White House reshaped in the liberal image. The Times’ editorial (11/8) lamented, "It's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long." The Times, targeting Cheney as a chief hindrance to the liberal war agenda and complaining that he can’t be fired, urges Bush to "keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm."

We can’t predict which of the bosses’ favorite forms the housecleaning will take (see box, "Uncertain Terms", page 2) — or even if the liberals can pull it off completely. But we can be sure they’ll keep trying. As scandals pile up and harsher actions become more plausible, we must avoid the trap of siding with either of the rulers’ factions. This is not about the ethics or intelligence of any politician. What drives the Oval Office dogfight is the liberal imperialists’ need to dominate the world, while killing millions of workers in the process.

Imperial Presidency

The growing need for U.S. rulers to expand and protect their worldwide profit empire by force has led to ever broader presidential war powers:

When the U.S. was just joining the ranks of the major imperialists in 1917, Wilson had to battle Congress for a declaration of war against Germany. Fifty-six congressmen voted against it. By 1941, the war declaration had become a rubber-stamp formality. Congress’s 470-1 vote for war on Japan merely blessed the mobilization FDR had begun years before. Truman dispensed with war declarations entirely, never bothering to ask for congressional ratification for the Korean War.

Presidents since then have had a free hand. JFK had troops in Vietnam long before Congress discussed the matter. Nor did the White House seek Capitol Hill’s advice for subsequent U.S. military assaults on the Dominican Republic, Panama, Haiti, Libya, Lebanon, Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Sanctimonious debates in Congress over launching the two Iraq wars were hollow farces. They both took place as the invasion fleets were already under way. Bush had Special Forces in Afghanistan well ahead of 9/11.

Uncertain Terms

As the importance of the presidency increases, recent history shows tenure in the White House gets shakier:

Kennedy: Assassinated in first term. His call for economic sacrifice for U.S. imperialism angered many capitalists, great and small.

Johnson: Forced to forgo second term by failure in Vietnam and rebellions at home.

Nixon: Forced to resign under threat of impeachment over Watergate. Economic policies hindered U.S. imperialism.

Ford: Never elected. Two assassination attempts. Defeated by Carter who vowed U.S. war for Persian Gulf oil (Carter Doctrine).

Carter: One term. Iran revolution and hostage crisis revealed inability to deliver on Middle East.

Reagan: Two terms. Courted right-wing voters. Doubled-crossed them by pursuing imperialist agenda once in office. Shot by neo-Nazi, domestic oil heir Hinckley. Continued military expansion begun by Carter. Benefited hugely from collapse of politically corrupt Soviet Union.

Bush, Sr.: One term. Won back Kuwaiti oil for U.S. but fell short of seizing Iraq.

Clinton: Two terms. Impeached by anti-regulation camp over "sex scandal." Bombed ex-Yugoslavia. Bombed and starved Iraq with sanctions. Never managed to launch ground war. Failed to rein in industry, especially drug companies.

Bush, Jr.: Stole 2000 election from liberal imperialist Gore. Future uncertain.

Hundreds of D.C. Marchers Link Racism to AIDS Epidemic

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 9 — On Nov. 5, hundreds of marchers from the national movement to stop HIV/AIDS took its anti-racist message to the predominantly black Anacostia southeast neighborhood here. They included PLP public health activists and local members of Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) and the Prince George’s County Health Action Forum. PLP members distributed dozens of CHALLENGES to marchers and residents, emphasizing that capitalism is to blame for AIDS having gone from being a disease to a genocidal epidemic, and that only communism can organize society to consistently stop such social disasters.

The Anacostia community is the most at-risk for the disease but the most-ignored by the bosses. Residents welcomed the march, declaring, "You’re doing the right thing!" During the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) Days of Action (11/5 through 11/8), chants rang out like "HIV Prevention Worldwide — Anything Less is Genocide!"; "Fund Condoms Not War!"; "Dead Addicts Don’t Recover — Needle Exchange and Harm Reduction Now!"

Three days later, C2EA convened in a park near the White House and "awarded" Golden Tombstones to right-wing groups which promote "abstinence only," fight sex education in the schools and oppose life-saving needle exchange programs for drug-users. After an energetic visit to the headquarters of one of these fascist lobbying groups, marchers demonstrated at the White House where 29 demonstrators were arrested after lying down on the sidewalk with gravestones reading, "Killed by Abstinence Only," and "Killed by Lack of Medications." In reality, racist capitalism is the killer, from the AIDS epidemic to the war in Iraq.

The MWPHA’s Disparities Committee, in fighting the racist HIV/AIDS epidemic, will be holding monthly street outreach, and education in the libraries of the most affected neighborhoods, and will be organizing residents to demand drug treatment on demand, HIV prevention policies, outreach to vulnerable groups, testing and care for all.

All this is greatly needed here where 1 in 20 people (over 75% black) have the deadly HIV infection, a rate comparable to Tanzania and Mozambique. HIV is one of the most racist health inequalities in the world. Over 40 million people have HIV, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa. In the U.S., nearly half of all black gay men have HIV; rates are growing fastest among young people ages 15 to 24. In D.C.’s poorest areas, drugs fuel the epidemic with IV drug-users spreading HIV to women.

The C2EA is demanding: HIV prevention based on science — condoms, comprehensive sex education, clean needles for drug users; treatment for all everywhere — maintain Medicaid for all beneficiaries; medications for people everywhere; full funding for the Ryan White Care Act, a critical source of financing HIV programs; Research for a cure and better treatment and prevention options; and an end to stigma and discrimination against people with HIV. Actions need to go beyond politics as usual.

Generating profit, not health, is intrinsic to capitalism. Blood-sucking drug companies insist on unaffordable prices for their drugs, so in Africa only 15% of the people who need medication are treated with the HIV drugs that keep people alive in the U.S.

Here, Democratic and Republican politicians all know that as long as there are enough reasonably healthy people to work (and fight wars), infected people can be ignored and disposed of. On the march we met a woman living with AIDS and ovarian cancer in a Mississippi shelter who was denied disability compensation because she "wasn’t sick enough." Then she couldn’t qualify for AIDS-related housing because she didn’t have an income!

The C2EA days of action were mild reform actions. They showed that only the working class can lead the fight. Virtually no one from AIDS service organizations, Schools of Public Health, Health Departments or the D.C. City Council participated. Just as during Hurricane Katrina, it’s up to the working class to lead the fight for a better society based on equality and health for all. Our class must be organized around PLP’s revolutionary politics, not the wishful thinking that a better politician will come along.

Racist Contract Sparks Growing Fight in NYC Teachers Union

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 4 — The recent contract vote in the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) here saw 63% in favor and 37% against, the closest vote in the union’s 40-year history. Among classroom teachers, the percentage against was probably 40%.

This contract reflected the intense racism that permeates the NYC school system, with its overwhelmingly black and Latino student body. Nothing in the contract did anything for the students, whom billionaire Mayor Bloomberg and the ruling class view as the source of an endless supply for their low-wage economy and of cannon fodder for their imperialist wars.

An Important Contract

The large opposition vote has the union leadership running scared. They’re making plans to try to maintain control of the members. As CHALLENGE reported (11/16), opposition groups are growing within the union, some comprising young teachers who the bosses and the UFT assumed were in their hip pockets.

Two years ago the Mayor won direct control of the schools, no longer having to play political games to get what he wanted. He moved the headquarters of the renamed Department of Education (DOE) downtown, next door to City Hall. The UFT leadership agreed to this change, and therefore it was O.K.’d by the State Legislature. Mayoral control has increased many educators’ fears of harassment and increased oppression.

This contract is one more step in the increasing control of individual classroom teachers, dictating placement of classroom furniture, materials to be placed on bulletin boards and walls, timing and pacing of lessons, down to the minute. This harassment places the burden of the students’ success solely on the teachers, not on the DOE at all.

Even more critically, UFT’ers have lost the right to grieve this harassment, having given up the second step of a 3-step grievance process. They can no longer complain when administrators place letters of reprimand in their personal files. The day after the contract was ratified, union members began hearing about administrators’ plans to target teachers they want to fire.

Due to the increasing harassment and the tremendous workload, many new teachers leave before they’ve worked in the system for five years. The DOE bosses encourage that turnover since they assume these inexperienced teachers will not be loyal to their co-workers or to the union. While somewhat true, we’ve met younger teachers willing to fight and organize, some forming school groups against racism, others engaging in struggles against this contract.

We have to bring our co-workers and friends into action, struggling together against this harassment, micromanagement and racism, and build support for co-workers targeted by the administration. Even more important, we must build a fight for our students who are consistently losing out — class size is still far too large, resources are scarce in most schools, and overworked, harassed teachers cannot do their best.

We must involve the students, their parents and rank-and-file teachers in a united anti-racist fight against these fascist conditions, which are keyed by racist neglect of the students, a situation which the union leadership either does nothing about or, worse, fosters. Gaining strength from fighting for the working-class black and Latino students is the only way teachers can improve their own lives. (The last contract teachers won both better working conditions and higher salaries was in 1975; it’s been all downhill since then.)

The intensification of racism in the schools and control of the teachers adds up to fascism in the educational system. Through a united student-parent-teacher anti-racist struggle, PLP’ers can bring communist ideas to the fore and demonstrate that the racism of capitalism can only be defeated by overthrowing the system itself. That lesson is the best education students can ever receive, to extricate themselves from the rat hole which the profit system has created.

Puerto Rico: 3,000 Teachers March to Demand End to Wage Freeze

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, Nov. 9 — Workers here are on the move. Today, 5,000 members of UTIER (Union of Water and Electrical Workers) marched to the governor’s house (La Fortaleza — "The Fortress") protesting his privatization plan and demanding a new contract with decent pay. Several Senators met with the workers, saying they supported the demands, but the workers don’t trust them and will continue their protests.

Earlier, over 3,000 teachers marched from the Capitol to La Fortaleza in the biggest teachers’ action in recent years, demanding the government negotiate a new contract, with an 18% wage hike, smaller class size and better working conditions. For the last 11 years a teacher’s basic wage here has been frozen at $1,500 a month (a cop’s starting wage is $2,300 a month, over 50% more).

The teachers union — affiliated with the U.S. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — has broken with the AFT, accusing it of just collecting their dues and doing nothing for them. The local here is fighting the AFT’s attempt to put it in receivership.

The teachers are rejecting the government’s claim of a "fiscal crisis" while money is being funneled to the Iraq war, in which many young soldiers from PR have been killed and injured.

One problem affecting teachers, and the population in general, is violent crime. Many teachers fear violence in their schools. The government’s "solution" is increased police patrols. The governor has responded by sending more cops into housing projects and working-class communities. But the main causes of this violence are unemployment, drugs — which cops are part of — and the general crisis of capitalism.

The government has increasingly employed the police state Patriot Act. Even Senators were surprised when they found hidden cameras monitoring them in the Capitol building. A few months ago, an FBI death squad ambushed and, in cold blood, killed Filiberto Ojeda, leader of an underground pro-independence group here. This was repudiated by many, viewed as an attack on all workers fighting back.

This fight-back is a good thing. From this workers can learn that under capitalism lousy education for working-class youth, rotten working conditions for workers and crime are constants. Turning such struggles into schools for communism — learning how to fight for workers’ power, a society without bosses — is he best lesson to be drawn from them.

Laws of Capitalism Erasing Reform Gains in Auto

The latest bosses’ offensive in the auto industry (see article below) proves in spades that trying to reform capitalism is a dead end. Over the last 60 years, of all industries and unions, auto and the UAW are the ones claiming to have provided workers, especially unskilled workers, with the greatest job security, pensions and health care "for life." Of course, the auto companies didn’t just give these reforms out of the goodness of their hearts. It took communist leadership in the unionization drive of the 1930’s to win them, with sit-down strikes occupying the plants and defying the bosses’ laws.

Then along came World War II and the no-strike pledge. In the post-war period, the class struggle resumed, with strike after strike in those years winning cost-of-living wage increases, pensions, health benefits and finally the so-called Guaranteed Annual Wage, SUB pay (Supplemental Unemployment Benefits) that would grant workers 95% of their wages throughout layoffs.

UAW chief honcho, Walter Reuther (who had ousted the communists from leadership in the late 1940’s during the height of the anti-communist cold war hysteria), proclaimed paradise for the workers. But capitalism — the system that Reuther and all his successors in leadership champion — doesn’t work that way.

No sooner had the Big Three — GM, Ford and Chrysler — faced stiff competition from their imperialist rivals in Germany and Japan, the U.S. auto industry hit the skids. Plant closings, mass layoffs, wrecking SUB pay, and billions in wage and benefit concessions became the order of the day, destroying any measure of previously-won job security. The fierce worldwide competition for market share — intrinsic to capitalism — squeezed profits out of the backs of the workers.

Soon GM and Ford greatly increased the number of their plants in Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and elsewhere, long before they started business in China. Now they could export many more jobs and pay these workers anywhere between 58¢ to $2 an hour, leading to even more massive layoffs in the U.S. This outsourcing partly helped cut the UAW auto membership in half. Ironically, VW, Nissan, Honda and Daimler began building plants in the U.S. (mainly in the non-union South) where labor costs are lower than in Germany and Japan.

Now wages, "guaranteed" pensions and health care are taking still another hit. This falls especially hard on black workers, who were the last ones hired in auto and the first ones to go because of the historic racist hiring practices of the Big Three.

So the laws of capitalism — competition, export of capital seeking the lowest labor costs (imperialist "globalization") and racism — are smashing all these reform gains won by the union, enforced by the bosses’ state in the person of bankruptcy judges and laws. The UAW leadership always operated within these bosses’ laws which guarantee that the bosses’ class interests are primary and that their profits must be defended at all costs. Now this means installing fascism in the work-place, which is exactly what these company attacks are producing, similar to what the Nazis did under Hitler.

All this is intensified by the U.S. rulers’ need to launch war after war to defend their class interests internationally against their imperialist rivals. This permanent war economy requires, among other things, money to pay for the enormous cost of their military machine. And the primary source of this money is lowering the living standards of the working class.

Once again, all this proves what PLP has always maintained: no reform is safe under capitalism because the bosses hold state power and, in the last analysis, their pro-capitalist laws and rule hold sway. Therefore, workers must understand that politics are primary — even in struggles for reforms — and that our class interests can never be served under capitalism. So sooner than later, workers must confront the bosses, their state and their union agents, along with their pro-war patriotism, racism and anti-communism, and fight for a system where workers rule: communism.

UAW Sellouts Giving Away Store to GM, Ford

DETROIT, MI, Nov. 1 — Tremors continue to rock the domestic auto industry. Delphi, the country’s largest parts supplier, filed the largest bankruptcy in the history of the U.S. auto industry and demanded billions in concessions, including wages as low as $10 an hour, a cut of more than 50%. GM and the United Auto Workers (UAW) announced health care concessions of $15 billion in GM’s previous contractual commitment, marking the beginning of the end of "guaranteed" benefits. Ford’s plan includes ‘’significant plant closings’’ and job cuts for its North American operations. In September, it was forced to reclaim 24 Visteon plants to bail out its former parts division.

Ford reported a $284 million loss in the third quarter, and GM lost nearly $4 billion through three quarters, including its largest quarterly loss in over a decade ($1.6 billion).

Now UAW president Ron Gettelfinger reported details of the tentative agreement with GM to impose health benefit cuts on union retirees, unanimously approved by several hundred GM local union leaders. Membership ratification (retired workers won’t be allowed to vote) is awaiting a court ruling that prevents retirees from suing the union and the company (see CHALLENGE, 11/16)).

For the first time, GM retirees will have to pay deductibles, monthly premiums and hospital co-payments. Right now this means a $15 billion down payment on a new 2007 contract that will include plant closings, elimination of the job bank for laid-off workers, and a possible end to the "30 and Out" retirement. In the long run, these concessions prove that as long as the bosses hold power, even benefits built up over a century of struggle cannot survive.

Retired GM workers will pay up to $370 a year for traditional coverage, ($752 for a family). The cost of some prescription drugs will double or triple. Current GM workers will give up $1-an-hour in 2006, deferring cost-of-living adjustments and wage increases to help pay retiree medical costs (GM will contribute $3 billion to the fund by 2011). Current workers will also face increased co-pays. Ford and Chrysler are looking for similar deals.

The bosses and bankers are locked in a sharpening struggle with their imperialist rivals, punctuated by high gas prices and declining market share. For them, $15 billion isn’t enough. Merrill Lynch analyst John Casesa said, ‘’Should GM’s results worsen, we are concerned that the door to additional UAW assistance would be closed, increasing the chance of a serious strike.’’ GM chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said, ‘’It’s a very important step. I didn’t say it was the last step…’’

The brutal restructuring of the auto, steel and airline industries are not only destroying pensions, healthcare and wages, but bringing fascism to the work-place amid a permanent war economy. It will also shatter many illusions, the hard way. Along with the naked racism of the Katrina disaster and the building of a Homeland Security police state, the bosses are loaded for bear. Workers will not spontaneously draw revolutionary conclusions. That’s PLP’s job, and this is our opportunity.

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(Interviews with young Citroen workers from the housing projects, L’humanité hebdo, 11/12/05)

"Today it’s like an erupting volcano," said Housni…. Young people have accumulated years of discrimination."

"Me, I worked for Citroen for eighteen months," said Salim, 23…. "They promised [to]…hire me. I took the tests and the medical check-up…. But in the end they told me ‘no’." That was on May 5, 2003. Since then Salim hasn’t found anything. "I’m still furious. I would really have liked to work at the factory…. I had done all the jobs. But the bosses don’t want us."

"I work. I have nothing on my conscience, but I get stopped all the time by the cops." Lionel has registered several complaints on the police blotter against harassment. "I try to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the cops tell me: ‘You’re from the housing project, you’re a delinquent.’ The other day I went to eat in a little restaurant, they pass by in their patrol car,…they stop. They call out my name. I come out, I ask them why. For nothing."

"If my name was Franck, I’d have a good career," said Ahmed. "We’ve always got to slave away four times as hard as the others to be recognized…. When I went to ask my boss for a raise, he answered: ‘In the old days your parents didn’t ask any questions.’ I didn’t understand what he meant right away. Afterward it really hurt me. Our parents left with less than nothing in the way of a retirement pension, without any thanks, without any gratitude. And yet they worked like mad. Today, it’s the same thing all over with us."

Ahmed…echoed: "It’s not normal for them to burn cars. But that’s the only way you can make yourself heard…. What they did to our parents, they want to do to us….The old guys at Citroen tell us they were called n-----s, they got hit. Today it’s starting over again. But they won’t be able to do the same thing with us…. I can’t be any more French than I already am…. They sell us…the dream of equality. But it’s like the American dream. It’s not for us."

The Struggle at CUNY: What Does Unity Mean?

(Second of four-part series)

"I will strike. Labor has been holding up the wall for too long." This overworked CUNY academic counselor, an underpaid Higher Education Officer (HEO) with no real dental benefits, grew angrier as she spoke with the picket captain. The latter was one of 350 faculty and staff organizers trying to inform the 20,000 members of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) that the union might need to strike for a decent salary, health benefits and equity raises for the most exploited. The counselor then signed on to perform picket captain duty herself. She attended the next organizers’ meeting. Her reports of conversations with her list came in on time. She brought people to our first picket, unifying the rank and file at a higher level of organizing.

What does this new unity mean? As an African American woman in the HEO job title, she lives some of the structural inequalities in our own ranks that make unity so difficult. As in other industries, the capitalist organization of workers in higher education profits from racism and sexism through the division of labor. HEOs, with the same salary scale as faculty, earn less as a group because there is virtually no promotion in their series. The majority are women, compared to the 58% male faculty (68% male in the full professor title), and a majority people of color compared to only 23% of the faculty. Narrow professional and status consciousness among faculty, combined with residual racist and sexist ideas, increase their separateness from the more exploited professional staff, HEOs and College Lab Technicians (CLTs). CLTs are also a majority black and Latin with a very low salary scale.

Language Immersion and Continuing Education teachers are even more grossly exploited. The greatest inequality is between full-time and part-time workers. The latter comprise more than half the faculty and teach 60% of all CUNY courses, for one-third the per-course pay of a full-timer at the Lecturer rank. And though community college and senior college faculty have the same salary scale, their teaching loads are harshly unequal, especially because CUNY community college faculty hold Ph.D. degrees at twice the national rate. Meanwhile, management expresses contempt at the negotiating table for all but full-time senior college faculty.

Yet our new picket captain has a sense of workers’ need for unity as a class. Here reference to "labor," pointed to thinking of workers as a whole and the way unions are failing us all in the class war. Precisely as a PSC’er, an HEO, an African American and as a woman, she classifies her specific situation as "labor," as part of the working class. Unusual in her political clarity, she sees the particular in the general, unity in difference. The PSC has a fair representation of HEOs, African Americans and women in the union leadership, but fall short among core activists. The union feels that’s a major issue, so why haven’t we won our new picket captain before now? (Self-critically, a PLP’er on the same campus believes, it is because of white radicals’ fear of rejection by colleagues with black nationalist views.) How can the PSC sustain her new activism? How can faculty unite with staff, white with black, and faculty with our students as full political equals? Tough questions.

This sister prompts both the main question of this article, and perhaps suggests its answer: how to create unity amid inequality in our ranks? As the new picket captains form a permanent network of activists to last far beyond this contract, we cannot placate those who are most exploited with small gains and expect unity to flow from that. We must agitate for the most oppressed, never stop "speaking bitterness," as Chinese communist women once put it?

Capitalism cannot end inequality because the wage and profit system itself endlessly reproduces it. The PSC must agitate for radical labor egalitarianism, not placate everyone as liberal unions do. The union (especially the PLP’ers among us) must win people to a notion of work not as capitalist wage labor, but, in communist style, as commitment to others in a collective social project. We will answer these questions of theory and practice through struggle. In the PSC we’re holding up the wall no longer.

A Dialectical View of Unity

The unity and struggle of opposites is a central idea in the communist philosophy of dialectical materialism. (A brief readable introduction to dialectics is the PLP pamphlet "Jailbreak.") What seems to be one thing (e.g., a union like the PSC) is in fact a unity of opposites, whose connection constitutes the thing as long as it lasts. But the tension between opposites eventually transforms the thing into something else, for good or ill.

In the PSC an equal number of full-timers and part-timers work together in a single union even though part-timers earn only one-third to one-fifth of the full-time scale. But there’s a tension between the two, which, if each group looked out only for itself, could turn unity into division. The faculty at Nassau Community College on Long Island is divided into a full-timers’ and a part-timers’ union (the latter about to strike). "The literature shows that adjuncts who are represented by full-time faculty unions are treated as an afterthought…we must stand alone," said an officer of the Adjunct Faculty Association. Maybe so, if the unions are badly led. But a union in which both really stood together, at a higher level of unity, would put all faculty in a better position.

In dialectics we regard the unity of opposites as secondary, while the struggle of opposites is primary; in other words, everything is in flux, everything changes. In the PSC the tension is not yet at that point and that unity still exists, but the PSC could also split if the leadership treats adjuncts as an afterthought. Revolutionary communists would say politics is primary over economics here. In the PSC leadership and rank and file there’s still enough workers’ solidarity to challenge the capitalist myth of me-first. Enough full-timers want to fight alongside part-timers for equal pay for equal work for the PSC to remain united. But capitalism constantly threatens this unity, with its enforced inequality between the two and its culture of everyone standing alone. The CUNY bosses will fight to the bitter end to maintain the profits of inequality, and that means our political unity will be a constant struggle against the bosses’ ideology. The class struggle entails a constant battle for workers’ unity.

But politics is primary over economics, so higher and higher levels of workers’ unity are possible. The most oppressed workers in France are showing us the way. The political leadership of the union, and for the working class as a whole the revolutionary party, is the key factor. Pressing forward with a strike on the basis of mass organizing behind a strong demand for adjunct parity could lift unity in the PSC to a higher level and make it stronger for both groups. Dropping that plan and settling for a deal that leaves adjuncts behind will weaken unity in the PSC. ("10% of crap is crap," said one PSC adjunct leader.) The New Caucus leadership brought such unity to the PSC in 2000 and it has been much stronger since then. But things can still turn into their opposite under pressure from the boss. PLP’ers strive with our PSC sisters and brothers to keep the pressure on from the workers’ side, fighting for unity not only in one union but in our whole class. Then we can turn the petty mythology of inequality into its noble opposite.

Bringing Class Consciousness to H.S. Struggles

"An injury to one is an injury to all." When that call sounded over the high school’s PA system, teachers all knew it signaled an emergency union meeting to defend a popular counselor who the administration had attacked. It exemplified struggles occurring at this school.

While reforms that fundamentally improve workers’ lives are impossible under capitalism, involvement in the class struggle in the union, even when it appears to be only about "reforms," can contribute to a deeper understanding of capitalism among many people. During this period of increasing wars and war budgets, we can fight for stronger ties among teachers, students, staff and parents, and greater awareness of the long-term fight to destroy capitalism.

This large urban high school has a history of struggle. Its students come from families of Latino and black workers. Some at the school tell the truth about the class struggle, and have close ties with other students, parents, teachers and staff. Some — although too few — have distributed CHALLENGE.

The first struggle this summer involved taking away the right of the local school governance body to choose a principal, because our test scores had not met No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements. While we don’t advocate fighting to choose our own oppressor, this struggle enabled us to explain that NCLB is a war-time austerity measure attacking teachers and parents while making no improvement in the schools. We linked this attack to the need to attend a union-sponsored anti-war conference. A multi-racial effort broke down barriers of "race," age and status so prevalent in the schools. Without having picked our principal, we won more unity and class consciousness, and more people reading CHALLENGE.

This struggle made distributing a communist leaflet about Katrina in the school cafeteria easier. It helped more people understand that capitalism as a whole is a racist, killer system, and see the connection to the war in particular. This complemented work with students who, learning about racism, strikes, imperialism and past soldier rebellions, saw the links to current events in the capitalist system.

Students participated with PLP in the September 24 anti-war mobilization, distributed CHALLENGE, attended PLP study groups and played a leading role in organizing a school club on campus.

In October, when the new principal demoted a competent and popular counselor over an altercation with a notoriously rude administrator, and the union rep called an emergency meeting, announcing that "an injury to one is an injury to all," the entire school community mobilized to defend the counselor. All week the majority of the staff wore red union shirts and stickers with this slogan. Students were sitting-in in the principal’s office, and parents insisted on meeting with the principal. This struggle was victorious and has built unity in the school community.

While the union bureaucrats and many honest teachers were campaigning against Schwarzenegger’s anti-teacher and anti-labor ballot propositions, we emphasized that it’s the unity and struggle of the working class that won back the counselor’s job — teacher tenure laws, the union contract, politicians and elections were of no use here. Now students and teachers are interested in reading PLP leaflets that prove it’s not just Bush and Schwarzenegger, it’s capitalism, especially since it’s the Democrats who are pushing for more troops and more fascist homeland security.

During this struggle the district also canceled the union’s permission to hold the anti-war conference. Teachers district-wide responded by donating hundreds of dollars to pay conference expenses. Students and staff signed petitions demanding the conference be held — and the District backed down.

This has all helped increase class consciousness among many in the school community, especially measured by the doubling of hand-to-hand CHALLENGE distribution since last year. Fighting on a daily basis inspires confidence in the working class, and the need to deepen the struggle for the working class to take power. When communists give even modest leadership, to the class struggle, drawing communist lessons, we’re further along the road to ending this murderous system, and building one based on communist equality and workers’ power.

Letters

a name="Vets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade">">"ets Shake up Bosses’ Pro-War Parade

At the NYC Veteran’s Day parade, I joined my group of anti-war vets on 28th Street and Fifth Avenue. As luck would have it, a large group of politicians, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was directly in front of us, stalled by the marchers in front of them. Our thunderous chants of "Troops home now!" had a visible effect on them, especially on Bloomberg, who began twisting and squirming until some police brass ran over and cleared a path so they could move out of hearing range.

About five minutes later 50 cops, some on motorcycles, surrounded our group trying to shield the rest of the marchers from us. I yelled, "This is Democracy folks — your right to dissent — as long as you’re completely surrounded by cops."

We raised our signs and banners and chanted louder, continuing to grab attention from the recruits marching by until a plainclothes cop ordered his KKKohorts to push us into a side street. They pushed us and we pushed back a few times and then started to chant, "No Police State" until a top cop told the plainclothes ones to back off. The situation was heading toward a battle and arrests so I guess they realized that dragging off vets (some in wheelchairs) might not do their phony democracy image much good.

The cops then informed our group that if we wanted to march we had to walk back a couple blocks and wait on a side street (where we wouldn’t be too effective). We moved there and waited until the very end of the parade, missing contact with the rest of the marchers. After almost two hours one vet joked, "Folks the Veterans’ anti-war parade has now officially become part of the Thanksgiving Parade."

When we finally got to march, we were dead last, with cops at our backs hurrying us along. We had a float for the disabled, playing music. The first song was, "War; what is it good for?" An 80-year-old vet in a wheelchair yelled, "Oil profits!" Everyone laughed and took up that chant, along with our anti-war drill cadences like, "We’re veterans against the war, We know what we’re fighting for; Bring our troops back to our soil, We say no more blood for oil!"

I had made a sign with Marine General Smedly Butler’s quote, "The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag." When vets asked who Butler was, I showed them a CHALLENGE with articles about him and another one about soldiers being turned into mindless killers.

It turned our to be a day when about 50% of a supposedly patriotic and pro-military crowd gave us the thumbs up or cheered us on wildly and when some vets and recruits learned something about "Democracy" and who the cops really protect. I want to thank CHALLENGE for its very timely articles and I hope it continues to take note of dates important to veterans and workers.

Veteran Comrade

Spontaneous Rebellions Not Enough

The CHALLENGE article (10/19) saying Toledo youth supposedly "put revolutionary ideas into practice" is incorrect. Their actions surely were fantastic, militant and an expression of violent anti-racism, which we should encourage. But "revolutionary"? That implies they supported, or at least were aware of, communist politics, but that hasn’t been the case. These brave, local, mostly black youth acted completely out of their own anti-racist volition.

The article doesn’t counterpose the issue of the militant anti-racism with the need for a communist society. We must be as disciplined in our writing as we are in real life. We cannot afford to write something that — in the heat of unbridled praise — supports "revolutionary spontaneity," a concept all serious Marxist-Leninists oppose.

Young Red

a name="Capitalism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options"></">Ca"italism’s Anarchy Limits Bosses’ Options

The "Other Superpower" letter (CHALLENGE, 11/16) makes good points about working-class power but draws an incorrect conclusion about Katrina, that the ruling class is "glad" when large groups of workers die in disasters and other tragedies caused by capitalism because there will be fewer unemployment benefits, Social Security payments and less people to protest their crimes. The writer is criticizing another letter about Katrina saying the ruling class doesn’t care about the victims.

Of course, bosses don’t care if workers suffer as long as it means more profits, but they cannot be glad to be exposed for their racist neglect at home while spending hundreds of billions for imperialist oil wars abroad. A recent health study showed that while over 80,000 black and Latin people died last year from lack of health care — equivalent to almost one Katrina every week — it took the hurricane to make the rulers’ gross indifference a media event. The recent honoring of Rosa Parks and the resurrection of other black heroes shows that the ruling class realizes it needs millions of consenting minority troops for its imperialist plans and is desperately trying to repair its image.

The specter of black and Latin rebellions during the 1960’s and ’70s — which caused troops to be diverted from Vietnam — still haunts the U.S. ruling class, especially now with an ongoing two-week rebellion of exploited Muslim workers throughout France, spilling into Belgium and Germany.

While U.S. rulers cannot be glad when workers they need for imperialist expansion become devastated or politically hostile, the bottom line is that the anarchy of capitalist profiteering limits their options and creates the conditions for fascism which our Party should use to build its forces.

A Comrade

Red Leadership At Phila. Strike Picket Line

On November 3rd a group of D.C. Metro workers drove to Philadelphia to support the transit workers' strike there. We didn't know what to expect, but when we arrived, we found something definitely: leadership. The workers were sitting and talking amongst themselves. When we walked over, the workers were very receptive and excited about us being there to support them.

Soon the news cameras showed up and asked what we were doing there. We said we were showing solidarity with the strikers and helping do whatever is necessary to win the struggle. However, once I mentioned we also had to stop an imperialist war, the reporter quickly stopped asking questions. That's when we realized we needed to give some political leadership.

We started some chants with the strikers, including, "Asian, Latin, Black, and White, Workers of the World Unite!" Just like that the strike went from people standing around to people talking about what needs to be done to fight the bosses. It was an example of what correct leadership - communist leadership - could do for the workers.

Red D.C. Metro Worker

D.C. Transit Workers Bring Solidarity to Philly Strikers

PHILADELPHIA — On Nov. 3, a group of Washington, D.C. Metro transit workers brought solidarity greetings to transit strikers here during their recent walkout. The predominantly black strikers welcomed them to two picket lines and joined their chants, "Black, Latin, Asian, White; Workers of the World Unite!"; and "Healthcare Cutbacks mean Fight Back!"

The strikers were fighting the racist bosses’ attempt to make workers pay a $600 annual premium for health benefits. The Transport Workers Union conceded a payment of 1% of their base wage for health costs. Although the strike saved the drug prescription plan, it will be denied to all new hires when they’re covered by Medicare.

The act of solidarity by Metro workers, members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, in supporting rank-and-filers from a "rival" union, sharply contrasts with the airline unions that not only refused to support striking Northwest mechanics but ordered their members to cross their picket lines.

Capitalism Turns Natural Disasters Into Catastrophe for Working Class

MEXICO CITY —Under capitalism, natural phenomena become a problem for the working class, provoking destruction, death, further impoverishment of the people and in many cases leaving them without enough to survive.

The hurricane Katrina devastated some U.S. cities and revealed the great contradiction that saw U.S. rulers sending thousands of soldiers to Iraq to defend the rulers’ oil interests, while being incapable of sending adequate aid to those affected by Katrina. It also brought racism to the forefront, since New Orleans is inhabited mainly by black and Latino workers, for whom aid was practically nil.

This same problem was seen even more cruelly in Mexico and Central America with Hurricane Wilma. Many communities were buried in mud and thousands died even though the bosses’ press lied that it was only a few dozen.

In Chiapas the government hasn’t shown the slightest interest in helping those hurt by the hurricanes and floods. On the contrary, the funds slated for natural disasters (10 billion pesos) were stolen by the ruling politicians.

The human losses could have been prevented if the government had evacuated those who lived in the areas at risk. Both the U.S. and Mexican governments had the meteorological warnings.

Some bourgeois foundations like Televisa, TV Azteca and some politicians have taken advantage of this terrible situation to try to present themselves as the "saviors" of the communities by doling out crumbs.

Certainly very soon the government will disburse considerable monies to reconstruct devastated areas, but not to the communities where the poorest and most affected people live. Rather it will be used to rebuild tourist areas, the benefits going to the hotel and restaurant owners, as happened in Cancun.

We workers should be clear that under communism, natural phenomena will not become natural disasters, since people will live in secure areas and will build decent housing. They won’t lack services or food, since all will work for the common good, not for profits.

Building the communist PLP should be the most important job of every worker if we want to rid ourselves of this criminal system of exploitation which cannot solve the problems of the majority of the population, the working class.

We must fight for a society where the common interests are primary, not the interests of the individual or a small group. Communism will abolish racism, nationalism, sexism and exploitation, all of which only divide and weaken our class.

Spreading Communist Ideas in Reform Struggles

Being a relatively new full-time factory worker, I’ve sometimes mistakenly thought that mass ideas can only be reformist. The major contradiction facing me is, on the one hand, keeping my job by not exposing myself to my enemies, versus spreading communist ideas. The way forward is to develop closer ties with, and confidence in, my co-workers. My enemies are the bosses. Some workers seem right-wing, possibly snitches and close to the bosses. My outlook is building friendships of trust and organizing social gatherings leading to political discussions off the job.

Recently one worker, Humberto, with whom I’ve made friends, said, "Man, what should I do? The boss was all upset because I told Health and Safety our workbenches are an injury risk. They said they’d observe my workbench. The boss told me to lie, to tell Health and Safety we aren’t at risk."

I told him he should lie to Health and Safety, that he should work on multiple machines and workbenches and then lead them to where I work all day hunched over a workbench assembling parts. Then I’d tell them about the way I worked.

The day before I tried to adjust my chair because my neck was hurting. This angered another co-worker who said he’d been using this chair for over 20 years and that I shouldn’t adjust it. Actually the chair was difficult to take apart and adjust for my height.

I told Humberto about this conversation, noting that the bosses don’t want to buy new chairs because they’re locked into a global competition for profits and have accountants counting every single penny — that’s why we risk injury.

I’ve been struggling with Humberto for some time. Occasionally he says a worker must be on friendly terms with the racist bosses in order to get higher wages and keep one’s job. I’ve continually told him to keep it cool, not get too involved with them, that greater power lies in friendships and unity with co-workers.

We ate lunch at a nearby restaurant and discussed a plan to bring Health and Safety by "chance" to my workbench. My neck hurts too much not to say something.

Humberto told me about an uncle, much older than us, working as an assembler in another factory, and that he had gotten surgery on both hands and on his neck because of the repetitive stress of the job. Now, when he brought the conversation down to something personal, I seized the moment to sharpen the struggle over his ideas. I said that’s why the bosses can never be your friends. No matter how nice you are to them, no matter how friendly they may seem, even shaking your hand, they’ll never be your friend because their sole interest is in profits. You could die, have multiple surgeries, but they don’t give a f--- about us. They count the pennies that add up to billions of dollars of profit.

He then said we needed a union. I mentioned the Boeing machinists’ strike in Seattle. I said these were some of the best-paid workers in the country and yet they’re still having to fight for their healthcare and benefits. If workers do manage to get something, the bosses take it from somewhere else, because their profits always must be made. In general, they’ve been outsourcing most of their work to people like us, to break their union and pay lower wages, raising their profits in order to compete with other bosses.

He then asked what we should do. I said workers need to fight every day, fight for power from top to bottom. For that we need — in the long run — revolution in the complete interest of the workers, a state where the betterment of the workers is the sole interest. He nodded. Health and Safety never came. But I’m planning to get CHALLENGE to more co-workers.

A Factory comrade

REDEYE

Liberals don’t deliver fairer incomes

Income inequality is now near all-time highs….The average CEO now takes home a paycheck 431 times that of their average worker….

And inequality is non-partisan. The pace of inequality has grown steadily over three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses. The Gini index, the global measure of inequality, grew as quickly under President Bill Clinton as it has under President George W. Bush. (MINUTEMEIDA.ORG. 10/27)

Business bigs find judge Alito all neato

…Business cases, which arise far more often than privacy and abortion cases,…are the bread and butter of the appeals courts and the Supreme Court….

Judge Alito’s record in business cases….over the last 15 years was such that corporate lawyers relished the prospect of his participation.…

Officials at the National Association of Manufacturers and the United States Chamber of Commerce said that as they combed through his record, they had been favorably impressed with what they had learned.

"He has come down on a host of issues in a way that the business community would prefer"… (NYT, 11/5)

Democrats help deny rights in Guantanamo

Democrats…provided the margin of victory…for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts….

"A foreign national who is captured…in the world war on terrorism has no more right to a habeas corpus appeal to our courts than did a captured solider of the Axis powers during World War II," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement….

Fewer than 200 of the approximately 500 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have filed petitions for habeas corpus hearings. They are not seeking trials, merely asking why they are being held. And according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority should not have been taken prisoner in the first place. These men have been in isolation for nearly four years, subject to months of interrogation… (NYT, 11/12)

40% in US have skipped their costly drugs

…America’s health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.

But don’t people in other countries sometimes find it hard to get medical treatment? Yes, sometimes — but so do Americans….

The journal Health Affairs recently published the results of a survey of the medical experience of "sicker adults" in six countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany and the United States. The responses don’t support claims about superior service from the U.S. system….

Above all, Americans are far more likely than others to forgo treatment because they can’t afford it. Forty percent of the Americans surveyed failed to fill a prescription because of cost. A third were deterred by cost from seeing a doctor when sick or from getting recommended tests or follow-up. (NYT, 11/7)

Despite laws, CIA has secret prisons

…The reported existence of secret prisons in eastern Europe where the CIA has detained top al-Qaida captives….could violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention Against Torture.

….It is illegal to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the US, which is why the CIA placed them overseas… (GW, 11/7)

Thousands of homes mined by $trip mining

Last month, the Bush administration demonstrated just how regal King Coal remains when it issued a long-delayed report on mountaintop removal that callously announced that "these expensive studies" on damages to the countryside have become too "exorbitant" to be continued.

…Scientific studies confirmed the damage to streams and forests….Thousands of Appalachian residents pleaded in hearings and petitions that the government bring mountain-top removal under control…

Many hamlets spared condemnation found the…stripped mountains causing torrential drainage shifts and floods dismissed as "acts of God" by mining officials.

"It wasn’t God who went up on our mountain with a dozer to leave it naked," observed Betty Banks amid the muck in her house in Kentucky…

Estimates are that by the end of the decade, an area larger that the state of Delaware will have been laid waste by dynamite and bulldozer… (NYT, 11/7)

Elections make public education worse

Almost all states report that, based on their own tests, incredibly large proportions of their students meet high standards. Yet the scores on the federal test (which was given to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders) were far lower. Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation….

Why the discrepancies? The states function in a political environment. Educational leaders and elected officials want to assure the public that the schools are doing their jobs and making progress….

States…cling to lower standards for fear of alienating the public and embarrassing public officials responsible for education. (NYT, 11/7)

a name="Need Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans">">"eed Worker-Student-Teacher Unity To Block Colleges’ Racist, Imperialist Plans

We’re told that universities are neutral institutions with little involvement in U.S. imperialist wars. But actually universities play a major role in planning and carrying out U.S. capitalism’s policies, used to fight rival capitalists and dominate the world. Universities also play a key role in pushing ideas that keep the rulers in power. The fight against these policies can lead to united action and building the long-term struggle to destroy the profit system, the source of imperialist war and racist exploitation.

Many imperial policy-makers circulate between the universities, private consulting firms, the State and "Defense" Departments, or White House jobs (see below). Recent examples include Condoleezza Rice (Stanford), Madeline Albright (Georgetown), and Zbigniew Brzezinski (Johns Hopkins). These universities have institutes specializing in particular aspects of imperial policy. In one Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) project, Charles Kupchan (a Clinton National Security Council staffer) argues that the U.S. needs a multi-lateral foreign policy to maintain world dominance.

The elite schools are the major sources of pro-imperialist ideology for public consumption. In a New York Times Magazine article (Jan. 2003), "The American Empire (Get Used to It)," Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff argued that imperialism is a good thing for Arabs and especially Iraqis.

Guns, Too…

Some universities develop weapons. Univ. of California-Berkeley’s Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley and Los Alamos Laboratories develop and produce nuclear weapons. At MIT (Mass. Institute of Technology), labs that developed MIRV nuclear warheads in the 1960’s are now working on military robots. MIT’s Security Studies Program researches "The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," and "The United States as an Asian Power."

Although policy planning is concentrated on a few campuses, all universities support imperialism. College ROTC programs provide 60% of all U.S. military officers and 75% of Army officers. The Solomon Amendment bans all Federal money for faculty research and students loans from colleges refusing to have ROTC. Clearly, for the rulers, these schools exist to serve imperialism, not the students or working class.

Many courses teach that capitalism is eternal, "the best of all possible worlds." Others teach that workers are powerless, that the U.S. "way of life" or "democracy" is superior and needs to be spread to other countries, and that communism cannot succeed. Teachers who encourage students to challenge these deadly lies are attacked and must be defended.

Programs students need for graduation — remedial classes and financial aid — are being cut drastically, along with workers’ pensions, to pay for the growing war budget. The CFR’s Chairperson pushes politicians to cut all entitlement programs to fund wars in coming decades. Liberal Democrats like Hillary Clinton support these attacks, calling for 100,000 more troops in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Homeland Security planning is implemented on most campuses.

What We Can Do

As long as the capitalist class holds power, universities will be capitalist-run institutions and serve the system’s interests, supporting imperialism, racism and fascism. Students, faculty and campus workers are getting angrier. We have opposite interests from the rulers. We’re starting to unite to expose and fight pro-imperialist and racist activities on campus. We can: (a) attack and discredit the lies that justify imperialism and racism; (b) campaign against military recruiters and ROTC, exposing their imperialist nature, demanding they be removed, and reaching out to rank-and-file soldiers whose class interests are anti-imperialist; and, (c) oppose planners, research and spokespersons for imperial policies.

Some student activists are uniting with workers to fight cuts in wages, benefits, classes and financial aid that pay for imperialism. Such activities can lead to united strikes against both racist cutbacks and imperialist war, turning schools into arenas of struggle against imperialism. Through CHALLENGE, more students, faculty and workers can see the potential and need to build a mass PLP to destroy the root cause of the problem — capitalism.

Students alone cannot stop imperialism. The working class is the key, not just another "interest group." They can become leaders in the fight against imperialism and for a communist society. Under communism, schools and production itself will serve the working class, not the imperialists. Wars for profit, and the profit system itself, will cease to exist.

The CFR: Center of the Web that Spins U.S. Foreign Policy

The hub connecting the small group of institutions which makes U.S. foreign policy for the ruling class is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). It includes executives of giant corporations, government officials, politicians and academics, who meet every few weeks in New York or Washington. The CFR publishes the journal "Foreign Affairs," and sponsors numerous books, study groups and special projects.

Other major foreign policy sources include top officials of the State Department and the National Security Council, a few key Senators, some think-tanks (Brookings, American Enterprise, Center for Strategic and International Studies), certain foundations (Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Shell Oil, Olin), and a few elite universities — including Harvard, Columbia, Rice, MIT and Stanford. Universities develop military technologies — from missiles to robots — that are crucial for present and future imperialist wars.

A much larger group of universities provides training for military officers, spies and diplomats, develop pro-imperialist and racist ideology, and are currently developing spying programs for Homeland Security.

Bush Went for Churrasco, Got A Fiasco

MAR del PLATA, ARGENTINA, Nov. 4 — Thousands repudiated Bush’s visit here during the Summit of the Presidents of the Americas. Bush just doesn’t have too many friends, from Washington, D.C. to the South Cone. Instead of churrasco (a popular steak dish here) he got a fiasco. The Summit sharpened the differences between the U.S. imperialists and the leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela over the U.S.-controlled continent-wide Free Trade Agreement.

The rulers of Brazil and Argentina see this U.S. plan as a blow to their own free trade agreement (Mercosur). Venezuela’s President Chavez was Bush’s most vociferous critic. This has ballooned into a fight between Chavez and Mexico’s President Fox, a supporter of the U.S.’s Free Trade scheme. Chavez and the rulers of Mercosur are fighting for their own class interests, seeking better deals with China and other imperialists.

Many workers believe Chavez’s "Bolivarian Socialism" is the road to their liberation. That’s a big mistake. Chavez’s main aim is strengthening the power of the section of the ruling class he represents, which controls the state-owned oil monopoly PDVSA. This powerful company owns CITGO, the largest gasoline-station owner in the U.S.

Under Communism: What will prisons be like?

A Political Prisoner in China

(Part Three)

In the early 1960’s, while author Edgar Snow was in China, he was invited to question a prisoner of his choosing. He selected a political offender under a suspended death sentence. The man was rugged in build, middle-aged and solemn. When Snow asked what his crime had been, the man answered that as a cop for the Kuomintang (the capitalist ruling party before the 1949 communist-led revolution), he led an anti-Red squad and had arrested many suspects.

Urged to elaborate, he said he had personally killed four revolutionaries, including a pregnant woman. He had compounded his crime by not coming forward after the revolution when everyone was given an opportunity to confess, repent and ask for punishment. Instead he hid, taking a textile mill job, pretending to be an ordinary worker. This worked for almost nine years, until someone recognized him and had him arrested.

Snow asked him if he felt he’d been treated fairly. He responded, "I ought to be dead. I deserved death but instead I’ve been given back life. I am being educated and I can now handle machines and do useful work. I am doing my best to remold myself to show my gratitude."

To Snow the man seemed sincerely remorseful, undoubtedly realizing that one bad mistake could be his last. Further, the man knew his salvation was completely dependent on his own repentance and reform. Snow thought that this knowledge must have placed a far heavier burden on him than there would be on a condemned man in a U.S. prison. In the U.S., prisoners realize that even a change of heart will generally have no effect on their situation, so at least they’re not subject to the agony of attempted self-reform. Instead they can blame society or their lawyers for their fate and avoid responsibility in their own minds. Rehabilitation is next to impossible under these circumstances.

Snow explained that the starting point for Chinese prisoners was sincere repentance, recognition of the crime and welcoming the sentence as "good." Once this happened their confinement was relaxed somewhat. The next step was the genuine desire to reform. Many prisoners were "really ignorant and understood nothing about the revolution or what the government was trying to do for the people." To overcome this ignorance, prisoners visited communes, factories and schools. Seeing the good being performed by workers was designed to make them ashamed. Those who were illiterate were taught to read and write. Everyone attended political lectures.

Prisoners who had already undergone these changes did much of the teaching. They were placed in cells with new arrivals and backward prisoners. True reform increased a prisoner’s chance of release.

Order and discipline was mostly maintained by these advanced prisoners, instead of by prison guards. Political prisoners did the same shop work as others but were subjected to much more intensified thought remolding in cells led by reformed prisoners. Punishment in prison consisted of overtime work or loss of holidays, but Snow was told that violence was never used and that solitary confinement never lasted more than a week.

Sometimes it took up to two years for prisoners to see the light. Very infrequently did prisoners refuse to admit error. However, even these silent resisters would be released when their sentences expired, as long as they worked well and were not political prisoners. But they were made to serve out their entire term. (Source: Edgar Snow, "The Other Side of The River")

(Editorial comment: Some American Indian cultures utilized similar "punishments," confining a murderer to the family of the person he had killed, forcing him to provide for food and maintenance for the family.)

1. Bushites, Liberals: Both Racist Warmakers, Strikebreakers
2. Liberal Democrats' `Blueprint' for Fascism
3. Angry Howard Students Protest Bushes' Visit
4. Role Of Communist Influence In Rosa Parks' Act of Defiance
5. Racist Hypocrites `Laud' Rosa Parks
6. Workers, Youth Vow to Fight Nazi Return to Toledo
7. Six Hundred Anti-Racists Confront Fascist
8. Howard U. Students' Anti-Racist Resolution Wins At Amnesty Int'l
9. D.C. Metro, Health Workers Unite vs. Racism, AIDS Crisis, War
10. Workers Shut Down Philly Transit
11. NYC Teachers Angry Over Misleaders' Give-Away of Grievance Rights
12. Union's Reliance on Politicians Won't Stop Racist Attacks on `1199' Members
13. Struggle at CUNY Needs Unity, Solidarity and Class Consciousness
    1. Preparing for an Illegal Strike
14. Students and Workers Unite to Fight Racist Subcontracting
15. Protest Pay Cuts, Job Losses At Massachusetts Community Colleges
16. UAW GOES TO COURT...TO BLOCK RETIREES
17. LETTERS
    1. GI's: Sign Up For Revolution
    2. THE OTHER SUPERPOWER
    3. Mountain Dew, Army Take Aim at Students
    4. Church Members Organize Against Iraq War
    5. Mitterrand: `Socialist' Torturer
    6. Hire Mercenaries from Peru for Iraq War
    7. Mexico's Rulers and `the Train of Death'
    8. Belgium: Two General Strikes in Three Weeks
18. REDEYE
    1. Hussein trial should quiz his US backers
    2. Like Iraq, Vietnam War was sold by a lie
    3. Black enlistment drop threatens army
    4. Chevron in Ecuador: `Environmental disaster'
    5. Could these really be headlines in 2035?
    6. Muslim chaplain tells Guantanamo crimes
    7. Recyclers turn computer gifts into scam
19. Marine Vet Exposes Truth About
20. UNDER COMMUNISM
    1. Part II: What will prisons be like?
       The Story of a U.S. Prisoner in a Chinese Jail

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Bushites, Liberals: Both Racist Warmakers, Strikebreakers

The scandal that has led to the indictment of V-P Cheney's aide, Lewis Libby, is nothing new in U.S. national politics. Fights among the big bosses over how best to exercise their state power in their own class interest have in the past produced civil war, presidential assassinations, and impeachments. Today the stakes for the rulers are as high as they've ever been, and we should expect the internal struggle among them to sharpen. At issue is the survival of the U.S. empire. Workers must avoid the deadly trap of choosing sides among the bosses' factions. Our interest lies in gaining strength as a class until we can eventually seize power and smash their rotten system. Understanding the nature and details of the current dogfight over the Bush White House can help us avoid fatal illusions and learn how best to build our own revolutionary forces in this period.

Not one, but three big lies ooze from the deepening Bush-Iraq-CIA scandal. The lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has cost the lives of at least 100,000 Iraqis -- a recent estimate put it as high as 194,000 -- and over 2,000 GI's. The second lie is that Bush and his neocon cronies alone fabricated the WMD story and that they pushed for the Iraq invasion against fierce liberal opposition. The third claims that liberals can end the carnage in Iraq by "cleaning up the White House." The last two lies are even more lethal than the first because they build support for the ruling-class faction that has a widening array of armed conflicts on its agenda.

The truth is that the loudest cries for war came from the liberal wing of U.S. capitalism -- especially from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), its chief imperialist think-tank, and the New York Times, its leading media outlet. In 2000, the CFR published a book by its "diplomat-in-residence," ex-UN weapons inspector Richard Butler, called "The Greatest Threat." It began: "The greatest threat to life on earth is weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, biological....The most determined and diabolical of such challenges has been mounted by the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein." Judith Miller, a Times reporter, filed story after story, backed by Times editorials, "proving" the existence of WMD in Iraq.

Democrat Gore made "regime change in Baghdad" a central plank of his 2000 campaign. Meanwhile, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), Gore's (and Clinton's) idea factory, put out manifestoes with titles like, "When to Go In." Seeking allies for a U.S.-led invasion in February 2003, liberal darling Colin Powell parroted Butler's and Miller's falsehoods at the UN. The CFR had prepared plans for the occupation a month earlier in a report entitled "Guiding Principles for U.S. Post-Conflict Policy in Iraq." It outlined everything from the future government of Iraq to the disposition of its vast oil wealth. And U.S. forces entered an Iraq "softened" by years of sanctions and bombardment courtesy of liberal Clinton.

But now, with U.S. casualties mounting and Iraqi oil barely trickling, the liberals most responsible for the fiasco are trying to lay the blame on the Bush gang exclusively. Fareed Zakaria, a CFR director, wrote in the Times (10/30/05), "A few neoconservatives, most prominently Paul Wolfowitz, had long believed that ousting Saddam Hussein would pave the way for a grand reordering of the Middle East."

War criminal and CFR member Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush, Sr., in the first Iraq massacre, reminded the world of his August 2002 article in the Wall Street Journal, headlined "Don't Attack Saddam" (New Yorker, 10/31/05). Like other main-wing strategists, Scowcroft thought Bush & Co. invaded with too few troops. The CFR favored postponing D-Day until a larger force could be built but nevertheless praised Bush for "pursuing the only realistic alternative (CFR Publications, 3/13/03).

Liberal columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, the Times' top anti-Bush snipers, are having a field day rewriting recent history. Referring to the Cheney-Libby mess, Dowd says, "To protect a war spun from fantasy the Bush team played dirty." (10/29/05) Rich targets neocon defense undersecretary Doug Feith, "whose rogue intelligence operation...supplied the vice-president with the disinformation that bamboozled the nation." (10/30/05) In reality, the fantasy driving the war is the liberal rulers' dream of pumping six million barrels of Iraqi oil a day and establishing permanent military supremacy over the entire Middle East.

While Rich himself provides disinformation on the causes of the war, he hints at the real reasons why the rulers are attacking Bush & Co. It's because they have "bungled the war in Iraq," in other words, have not won decisively and secured the oil fields. Rich criticizes the "utter ineptitude" of the Homeland Security department. The bosses require a police state apparatus more effective and far-reaching than Bush's stepped-up airport screenings.

The liberals are headed down a path deadlier than anything the Bush gang can envision. An overview of the challenges, which liberals complain Bush is not steeling the nation to meet, comes from the liberal Brookings Institution and Democratic Leadership Council. Testifying in Congress on October 26, Brookings' Michael O'Hanlon rattled off a list of "plausible scenarios" for near-term U.S. military action: defending Taiwan against China, countering a North Korean invasion of the South, reversing a fundamentalist coup in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, blocking a Chinese-backed Iranian grab of Persian Gulf oil, propping up strategic states like Indonesia, Nigeria or Congo, and so on. Some operations would demand a rapid three- or four-fold increase in troop strength, necessitating "drastic policy changes including a full activation of the National Guard and Reserves -- or perhaps even a form of military conscription." The DLC calls for an all-out fascistic militarization of society to bail out U.S. imperialism. [See box below.]

Gloating over the Bushites' come-uppance would be a serious political error, amounting to cheering on their warmaking liberal assailants. The liberals remain the more dangerous band of murderers, no matter how hard they try to hide that truth.u

(Next: The U.S. presidency, key to the rulers' state power.)

Liberal Democrats' `Blueprint' for Fascism

The Democratic Leadership Council, led by Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, represents the party's dominant wing. The following are excerpts from its publication "Blueprint," July and October 2005.

[PROMOTE PRO-BOSS "PATRIOTISM"]

* Democrats need to show the country a party unified behind a new patriotism -- a progressive patriotism determined to succeed in Iraq and win the war on terror, to close a yawning cultural gap between Democrats and the military, and to summon a new spirit of national service and shared sacrifice to counter the politics of polarization.

[EXPAND IMPERIALIST MILITARY]

* We challenge Washington to increase America's Armed Forces by 100,000 troops. Iraq isn't the last war we'll have to fight, and we need a bigger army. We need to challenge more Americans to serve, and give them the means to do so.

[BRING BACK DRAFT IN "NATIONAL SERVICE" DISGUISE]

* We need a voluntary system of universal service that offers every young American the opportunity and responsibility to serve his or her country in a military or civilian capacity.

[PREPARE FOR WORLD WAR III]

* We need to evaluate what a rising China means to our national security policies. So, our military must be equipped not only to look at the jihadist threat and the ongoing threat of terrorism over the next few decades. But, it should be equipped to do more than that.

[TURN SOCIETY INTO A MILITARIZED POLICE STATE]

* Democrats should lead in ensuring the tightest possible bonds between the Army and the American people. Democrats must be seen to embrace a philosophy of uniformed leadership. We need homeland security that puts safety ahead of bureaucracy and politics by securing one of our greatest vulnerabilities -- our borders -- and launching a new domestic intelligence service to prevent terrorist attacks from within.u

Angry Howard Students Protest Bushes' Visit

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 27 -- Over 200 Howard University students broke through campus police lines and a Secret Service/campus cop lockdown -- defying sharpshooters on building roofs and a ban on entering the main yard -- to rally there, condemning the war in Iraq, racist cutbacks in education, and the presence of George and Laura Bush. In a vain attempt to get a fig-leaf cover over the government's racism, Laura Bush and Howard's administration convened a conference on "youth development." She brought hundreds of hand-picked individuals to this photo-op, excluding virtually all Howard students and faculty from the event. Their contempt for us was evident in thinking they could use this historically black university as a backdrop for their mutterings about youth violence. This very plan is racist!

The students angrily denounced their exclusion from the event, their detention in buildings that open onto the yard, and their blockage from the student cafeteria.

Panicked, the school administration first sent Franklin Chambers, vice-provost of student affairs, to control the students. He warned them that the Secret Service sharpshooters might fire if they felt Bush was threatened! Still, the students refused to move. Then university president H. Patrick Swygert arrived to "reason" with the students, grabbing one by the arm and insisting she follow him to a newly-designated rally spot. She refused, tearfully stating that her father was in Iraq, and that she would not be moved. The students remained until the end of the conference when Laura Bush was whisked away past the line of protesters. (George W. entered separately with his Lincoln Navigator/motorcycle entorourage and sped away shortly afterwards.)

This student anger and militancy bodes well for the development of a revolutionary movement opposing the entire system of capitalism that generates the wars, cutbacks, and poverty facing the working class. Liberals and revisionists (phony leftists) will try to channel this energy into voting for a "better" administration, but Democratic politicians, like Republicans, are determined to continue the war in Iraq, reduce social benefits, cut wages, and beat their international competitors by any means they deem necessary (see adjoining editorial).

To deal decisively with the U.S. ruling class, more students should be reading CHALLENGE, attending PLP study groups and building a long-term alliance with the PLP-led Metro workers union in order to form a more powerful anti-capitalist force.

Role Of Communist Influence In Rosa Parks' Act of Defiance

Rosa Parks, whose action 50 years ago this coming Dec. 1 partly triggered what turned out to become the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's, died Oct. 24 at the age of 92. Although her refusal to move to the back of the bus was a crucial factor in setting off that movement, she is often described as a "simple woman with tired feet" who out of nowhere spontaneously decided to do what she did. But this is far from what actually occurred, as described by author Diane McWhorter in her book, "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama -- The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution"; Simon & Schuster, 2001 (the source of all quotations and information that follows, unless otherwise indicated).

Rosa Parks herself was measurably influenced by left-wingers and communists, as were the events that preceded and led up to her action. She met her husband when they were both raising money for the communist-led defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men who were framed on a "rape" charge in the early 1930's. "Her action [refusing to move to the back of the bus], spontaneous though it seemed, was actually the world-changing vindication of Alabama's long tradition of civil rights activism...by the Southern Conference for Human Welfare and the Southern Negro Youth Congress." (Both organizations had communists playing leading roles.)

In 1942, the Youth Congress began a "premeditated `direct action' against segregation on public transportation.... Mildred McAdory, a young cook who moonlighted as an organizer of steelworkers, had boarded a Birmingham streetcar with two SNYC colleagues and moved the `segregator,' a wooden bar posted with a warning against touching it. After the police beat her up and took her to jail, the SNYC mounted a campaign to desegregate the streetcars." However, "it never amounted to the intended legal challenge.... McAdory ended up moving to New York, where she became active in the Communist Party. But her protest had made an impression on Montgomery's premier black activist, E. D. Nixon."

Nixon, a member of the SNYC advisory board, also had founded the local chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first significant black trade union, and was a leader of the Montgomery NAACP, whose chapter secretary was Rosa Parks. Nixon had remembered McAdory's heroic action and began looking for someone to challenge bus segregation.

Now in 1955, Virginia Durr, who worked closely with communists in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (which she helped found), received "a request from...a fellow architect of Rosa Parks's rebellion, Myles Horton, a poor white son of Appalachia...[who] ran the Highlander Folk School in his native Tennessee." The school taught how " oppressed people [can] collectively hold strategies for liberation that are lost to individuals."

Horton had no hesitation "about embracing...communists, which included "Don West, who founded the Highlander School." Horton asked Durr "to recommend a Montgomery Negro for a scholarship he had available" for a Highlander workshop "to develop grassroots leaders for an offensive against segregation." She "nominated her seamstress, Rosa Parks, who went to Highlander that summer to discuss the possibility of mobilizing blacks in her hometown."

Four months later, Rosa Parks, 42, a $23-a-week seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store, boarded a bus home, sitting in an aisle seat near the front. When a white man got on after her, the driver ordered Parks to get up and move to the back of the bus. ("Blacks had been...killed for disobeying bus drivers." N.Y. Times, 10/25/05) Instead, Parks just slid over to the window seat. The driver called the cops; two came and took her to jail.

She called Nixon, reporting what had happened and asking him to bail her out. Nixon and Durr freed her and Nixon told her, "Mrs. Parks, this is the case we've been looking for." When Nixon got home, he told his wife, "Our people should just stop riding the buses." That weekend, in a frenzy of activity, organizing, mimeographing, leafleting, and preaching, urging blacks to boycott Montgomery buses, the stage was set for Monday morning, when "the buses rolled through black Montgomery, empty." The bus boycott was born.

The next day 500 people showed up at the court hearing for Rosa Parks. It was the largest mass protest in modern Alabama history. The city's black leadership met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Nixon headed up the organizing of car pools, taxis and just plain walking for blacks to get to work.

Although Martin Luther King, Jr. had just arrived in Montgomery as minister of the Holy Baptist Church, he was goaded -- much to his surprise -- into heading the MIA. Given his pacifism, King was anointed as "America's answer to Mahatma Ghandi," but Nixon said, "I figured on pushing him out so far that he couldn't run away." The boycott was to last 13 months, until the Supreme Court outlawed segregated seating on public buses.

Many more anti-racist actions flooded the South, including armed self-defense groups in North Carolina and Louisiana, as well as various reformist groups leading non-violent actions. However, it took the violent black rebellions from Harlem -- in which PLP'S CHALLENGE became the "flag" of the rebels in the streets -- to Detroit, to Newark to Cleveland to Los Angeles to really shake up the ruling class and begin to win jobs and break down some racist barriers. When Memphis' black sanitation workers struck against racist conditions, King was sent there to cool things down, but he fled a militant march which had turned into a mini-rebellion. Reformist leaders managed to dampen many of these protests -- but working within capitalism meant they could never end racism. The profit system thrives on racism and it will not end until capitalism is overthrown by communist revolution, eliminating bosses and profits, the source of racism,

Still, Rosa Parks should be remembered as a heroic black working-class woman who bravely stood up against the system's vicious racism. Yet it still exists across the country for black and Latin people in double rates of unemployment, infant mortality, job discrimination, lousy schools and housing, all netting the bosses super-profits, as the latest layoffs in auto and other basic industries take away any gains made in these militant struggles.

Racist Hypocrites `Laud' Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks, an unassuming black working-class woman who defied the racist segregation laws of the South, stands in sharp contrast to the politicians, black and white, who are trying to use her legacy to hide the source of the racism -- capitalism -- that created the conditions she stood up to. The likes of Jesse Jackson, FBI stoolpigeon Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton and the other Democrats who are praising her are themselves defenders of that system.

They put on a great show professing to laud her defiance of racism while they themselves continue to support the Democratic Party, the author of the Clinton racist wipe-out of welfare which disproportionately affected black and Latino working people, and the racist Clinton immigration "reform" law which also made life miserable for immigrant workers.

And for Bush to extol her is the height of hypocrisy. His presidency has contributed to more racist laws and actions that exploit black and Latin people which bring down the living conditions of white workers as well. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and cuts in social services especially affect black and Latino workers, not to mention the racist slaughter of Muslim people in Iraq. The latter was also part of Clinton's "legacy" in bombing that country for the eight years he was in office, and the Democrats who all voted to authorize Bush's invasion of Iraq.

When the final history of the struggle against racism is written, the memory of those who fought and died against Jim Crow segregation and racism will long outlast these hypocritical murderers who benefited and fostered from these evils of capitalism.

Workers, Youth Vow to Fight Nazi Return to Toledo

TOLEDO, OH, Oct. 22 -- "Yeah we kicked their asses. And if they try to come back... we'll do it again." That's what one young white resident of North Toledo told PLP one week after a planned Nazi rally sparked an anti-racist rebellion against the Nazis, cops and politicians. A PLP group came here today to spread our politics and build the revolutionary communist movement among these anti-racist rebels.

We received a warm reception going door to door and standing at busy intersections. In barely three hours, we distributed more than 160 CHALLENGES, hundreds of PLP leaflets and got the names, addresses and phone numbers of interested workers and youth. Our message of fighting racism and destroying capitalism was well received. Some people gave donations for CHALLENGE and took extra copies for friends and family. One woman asked for a stack of leaflets to distribute at work.

When we arrived at noon, the streets were virtually empty. An 8:00 PM curfew had been lifted days before but the streets were under constant police patrol. However, people didn't fear speaking with us about the rebellion and the conditions leading to it.

The rebellion erupted in an integrated neighborhood called Polish Village. The bosses' press reported a bar and a house being burned down as well as a Seven/Eleven being looted. However, the bar was torched because of a long racist history of hostility towards black residents, who weren't welcome there. The looted store had drawn over 160 complaints of mistreatment against blacks over the past two years. Finally, the house that was burned to the ground is said to have belonged to the racist who contacted the Nazis and was responsible for them coming to Toledo in the first place.

About 120 workers and youth were arrested in connection with the rebellion and curfew violations. The police still have outstanding warrants for others.

The decline of the U.S. auto industry has ravaged Toledo with mass racist unemployment and cutbacks spawned by the war budget. Over 40% of black youth live in poverty. One woman said she's been looking for a job for over a year while trying to support two teenagers.

When those mass layoffs hit the auto industry, the rulers tried to use the Nazis and Klan to divide the workers and thereby weaken any potential fight-back. In the 1960's, mass rebellions had the Nazis on the defensive. In the 1970's and 1980's, PLP led a total of 100,000 anti-Klan, anti-Nazi demonstrators throughout the U.S. wherever these racists raised their heads.

Now there's talk the Nazis are planning to return here. Black and white workers and youth will not tolerate these racists in their community. The militant anger of these workers and youth represents a good sign for the building and growth of a mass fighting PLP.

Six Hundred Anti-Racists Confront Fascist

SACRAMENTO, Oct. 29 -- Between 100 and 150 racist Minutemen rallied today at the State Capitol building. The cops protected them from 600 angry counter-demonstrators confronting these racists. When the cops busted the anti-racists' picket line, a scuffle broke out and four people were arrested.

While coalition leaders who organized an opposition rally -- including leaders of MAPA (Mexican American Political Association) -- tried to keep counter-demonstrators far away from the racists, many said "let's go confront them" and moved as close as they could get. Even after the coalition leaders led anti-racist demonstrators away from the racists, members and friends of PLP, along with members of MeCHA (a Chicano student organization) and others, led the crowd back to confront the racists.

We led chants like, "La clase obrera no tiene frontera" ("The working class has no borders") and, "The cops, the courts, the Minuteman, All a part of the bosses' plan!" Our speeches to the crowd linked the racist Minutemen to the rise of fascist attacks on all workers and to the war in Iraq. About 60 CHALLENGES and 300 PLP leaflets were distributed, all showing the need for building unity to end racism with revolution.

Before the rally, at debates within MeCHA at some area schools, one MeCHA leader opposed joining the demonstration, stating that, "We shouldn't be reacting to these people. It's reactionary to confront them. We should be doing our daily work and not be diverted." But another member totally disagreed, saying the racist vigilantes must be confronted and, when possible, stopped by a united working class. "It's more reactionary to refuse to confront them," he said.

Many MeCHA members went in carpools together. They confronted the racists and helped take leadership. They now see PLP in a new light. This gives us the obligation and opportunity to initiate more mass discussion about the growth of fascism in the U.S. and how to build a movement to fight it. This will lead to more mass struggles against the racist MinuteKlan, fascism and the war in Iraq, and to the growth of a mass, revolutionary communist PLP.

Howard U. Students' Anti-Racist Resolution Wins At Amnesty Int'l

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 23 -- Howard University students presented a hard-hitting resolution at Amnesty International's (AI) Mid Atlantic Regional Conference on the racist character of the Katrina catastrophe and the need for AI to investigate and respond to these attacks on New Orleans' black population. It contrasted sharply with AI's weak statement on Katrina, which didn't mention racism, focusing instead on crime!

The students' resolution explained the history of racism in terms of employment, police brutality, and housing as ongoing attacks on New Orleanians, and that Katrina was just the climax of this process, one which is continuing with the government's plans for -- and racist exclusion from -- gentrification of the city.

The resolution won resounding support from other AI student and local groups. It's part of a continuing effort by the Howard chapter to turn AI's attention towards fighting racism. AI's general meeting in Portland, Oregon is the next stop in securing passage of this important anti-racist initiative.

The Howard students sponsoring the resolution are all CHALLENGE readers and agree the paper needs a wider distribution. During the trip they discussed how to make that happen, in classrooms and among friends. This points the way forward, while the struggle within AI will help us learn better how to win even more students to revolution.

AI's limitations are clear. Seymour Hersh (a major speaker) gave a moving talk about the war in Iraq, attacking both Democratic and Republican leaders for being pro-war. But when queried about alternative political strategies for fighting against the war and racism, he only offered the hope that grassroots groups like Moveon.org could grow in strength and generate better candidates for future elections.

However, "better candidates" won't solve the problems of imperialism. The system requires racism and war to survive; militancy and revolution are needed to destroy its capitalist roots. AI would reject this approach out of hand, so AI members who see the need for revolution should consider a lifelong commitment to PLP, to raise the revolutionary flag in whatever jobs they enter or organizations they join after leaving college.

D.C. Metro, Health Workers Unite vs. Racism, AIDS Crisis, War

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct, 29 -- The transit workers union here hosted its 2nd Annual Committee On Political Education conference. It was a significant step forward in building PLP among Metro workers because it was led almost entirely by rank-and-filers, advancing their political leadership and development. In the discussions and debates, Metro workers demonstrated that they're gaining an increasingly scientific analysis of the world around them, which will lead some to become strong Party organizers in the future.

The discussion-based conference featured four topics: how racism affected the outcome of Hurricane Katrina, HIV/AIDS and the healthcare crisis, the war in Iraq and the state of the labor movement. The daylong meeting showed how communist leadership could create an open environment of struggle, ideas, learning and strategy. About 15 Metro workers participated, joined by a group of allied public health workers.

A militant young worker kicked things off with a powerful, energetic poem about the dismal state of the capitalist world and the absolute need to fight back. A Metro worker pointed out that Katrina shows the bosses don't care about our health. We must rely on ourselves to stay healthy and help each other to make time to see the doctor and demand service. Exercising, no smoking and eating right should be our watchwords.

A public health worker then led a discussion that followed, with emphasis on creating a campaign to stop AIDS (among 41 major cities, D.C. leads the nation in the number of new cases of infection --one in 20 people lives with HIV/AIDS in D.C.). Metro workers took buttons and flyers to spread the word about the upcoming D.C. rally by the Campaign to End AIDS and to plan for new ways to combat the epidemic in our neighborhoods. One worker declared that the bosses don't care about stopping the AIDS epidemic because, with millions unemployed (especially black workers), to them workers are disposable.

Another Metro worker then led a discussion on the war in Iraq, highlighting oil company profits and how their stock has skyrocketed due to the war. He said we can best honor the troops who imperialism has killed by awakening our fellow workers to the horror and injustice of this war, and the continuing wars that will occur under capitalism. A worker declared that we need to make the war unprofitable for the bosses to stop it. The speaker then played a short excerpt from Martin Luther King's speech opposing the war in Vietnam, showing the parallel need today to address the linked issues of racism and poverty at home and racist imperialist war abroad.

Another Metro worker then gave a presentation on the racism apparent in Hurricane Katrina. She spoke on New Orleans' future, predicting high-cost housing that will make the city "better, which means [for the rulers] making it whiter." The workers were disgusted with the government's blatant disregard for lives. The speaker passed around a poster she and a comrade had made that showed the disparate impact of Katrina on the white and black communities.

The union president (a PLP'er) concluded the conference with a brief history of the labor movement, focusing on its decline due to the leadership's shift away from class struggle and towards electoral politics once communists were purged from the unions. He stressed the need for the labor movement to fight racism and imperialist war.

Then workers stood with their fists in the air as they sang "Solidarity Forever," a class-conscious song that was an inspirational ending to this excellent conference.

Workers Shut Down Philly Transit

PHILADELHIA, Oct. 31 -- Five thousand workers struck this city's transit system today, the country's fifth largest, shutting the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's (SEPTA) buses, subways and trolleys. SEPTA demands for workers to begin paying for health care is a central issue, along with pensions and wages. A union official said that, "Under their health care proposal, if you or your spouse or kid... [were in] the hospital for five days, you'd spend your whole raise." SEPTA workers' wages rank 20th among the country's mass transit workers.

The ruling class is attempting to destroy workers' healthcare benefits --won through decades of struggle -- so they can afford their imperialist wars and maintain profits. The rank and file must guard against any leadership sellout as has occurred in the airline and auto industries. All workers, especially in this predominatly black and Latin city, should back the strikers as they attempt to beat back the bosses' latest assault. An attack against one is an attack against all.

NYC Teachers Angry Over Misleaders' Give-Away of Grievance Rights

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 24 -- Many members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) are furious over the contract deal made by their union leadership with the city's Department of Education (DOE) and are demanding its rejection. There was an angry picket line at a city-wide Delegate Assembly (DA) which voted to recommend approval of the contract by a slim margin. Ten days later about 200 members protested outside the union's headquarters. (The rank-and-file vote was to be announced Nov. 3)

In this period of increasing U.S. fascism, oppression of the working class is increasing. Jobs, pensions and wages are being cut or eliminated altogether, to help pay for the bosses' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See CHALLENGE, 10-19-05.) This onslaught now includes teachers and other education workers.It is a racist attack that falls heaviest on the overwhelmingly undereducated black and Latino student body, leaving them with the "choice" of a minimum-wage job (if any job at all) or joining the military to fight and die in bosses' imperialist wars, killing other workers.

City bosses have been demanding more work for the same or slightly more pay, essentially a bribe to go along with the racist educational system. Teachers have repeatedly been blamed for students' failures -- while the DOE and the rest of the ruling class are really at fault. But if teachers and their union don't fight for the students, they, too, bear responsibility.

Using the dead end offered the students, the ruling class responds by sending military recruiters into the schools to convince the mainly black and Latin students that the military is their only option. Meanwhile, most education workers struggle under difficult conditions, but don't see that the problems they have on the job are tied to the problems the students have getting an education.

Some in the union claim this contract will help the students because it will be easier to oust "poor and abusive" teachers. They also say the extra work-time, which will be packaged into 37_-minute blocks of "small-group tutoring" will help students prepare for state exams. But others say the extra hours and days will tire teachers, and that increasing their student load will make it more difficult to reach all of their students. The contract doesn't address working and learning conditions, and neither side has made that an issue.

The UFT focuses on "fighting" cases in the courts, and even when a case is "won," no force compels the city to carry out the court's orders. Significantly, the contract will nullify teachers' rights to grieve letters placed in their file. Therefore, they'll be unable to challenge that letter, meaning supervisors will have a free hand to write up anyone who dares to open their mouth.

The union has been losing at Steps 2 and 3 in the grievance procedure, revealing the weakness of the leadership. The answer is not to dump Step 2, as has been done in this contract, but instead to organize ourselves to win those grievances, both within the process as well as through mass militant action outside it. Since the union leadership picks which grievances are taken to Step 3, workers will have lost any real right to grieve.

The sellout UFT leadership claims this is the best that can be done in the current anti-union environment. But the answer is not to surrender to the bosses' attacks -- the UFT leadership constantly tells workers not to fight while relying on endorsing one politician after another, the very same politicians who push these sellouts. With that kind of leadership the DOE can start planning the next round of its demands and give-backs.

There is growing mass opposition to the contract, reflected in the rallies at the DA and at UFT headquarters. Many teachers opposing the contract do so for good reasons: they want better teaching and learning conditions. But just defeating the contract will not produce those changes. The struggle must take place in the schools, and must include the understanding that these conditions and contracts only stem from capitalism, which is well served by their education system. Only the overthrow of the bosses' profit system can lead to real education. Communist leadership must unite parents, students and education workers, to turn this short-term battle into a real "school for communism," winning these working-class forces to become part of a mass PLP fighting for that goal.

Union's Reliance on Politicians Won't Stop Racist Attacks on `1199' Members

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 30 -- At the September 1199 SEIU union meeting, one worker spoke passionately about hardships endured by workers under capitalism, particularly in these days of endless wars and a Homeland Security police state: "U.S. workers' living standards continue to deteriorate. Layoffs, speed-up and overtime are increasingly the norm. The bankruptcy of U.S. industries is leading to racist mass layoffs, healthcare benefit give-backs and a freer hand for bosses to lower wages."

At the same meeting, the union leadership endorsed the NYC Democratic mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer. It also proposed changing the union's name to 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. This adds healthcare workers from Maryland, Washington D.C. and Massachusetts, creating an opportunity for the leadership to involve more members in the capitalist-run political system. It also partly compensates for the many hospitals in arrears in payments to the benefit fund, which includes workers' pensions.

The 1199 SEIU healthcare workers face huge problems. Since 1996, 32 hospitals in New York State have closed, mostly in poor areas. Recently, St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn, located in a black community, shut its doors, laying off 1,000 workers. 1199 put on a "show," pretending to stop the closing, but in reality the leadership agreed with the elected officials, along with the racist hospital bosses, that St. Mary's was not profitable and therefore should be closed.

The union also represents thousands of home health care aides, mostly black and Latin women, earning from $7 to $10 per hour, with limited health care coverage. Agencies that employ these workers charge Medicare, Medicaid and other insurance companies between $30 and $40 an hour for these services and keep the difference, netting huge profits. The 1199 leadership has failed to mount a militant campaign for higher wages and full health care coverage, equal to members' rates in hospitals and nursing homes. The leadership's passive approach weakened the workers' struggle.

Yet for 73 years, 1199's involvement in capitalist reform politics has spent millions of members' dollars to elect Democratic or Republican politicians who represent the bosses' profit system. This has proven deadly for workers, the majority of them black and Latin.

Endorsing Clinton for President only allowed him to abolish welfare and institute slave labor "Workfare" programs, forcing former welfare recipients to replace unionized workers and "earn" their welfare checks at a rate well below the legal minimum wage. They endorsed Pataki who cut millions of dollars from health care, helping to close those 32 hospitals during his reign.

Now they're spending huge sums to elect Ferrer, mobilizing members to canvas door to door, establishing phone banks to remind members to register and then vote. But no matter who is mayor, both candidates' "promises" will never meet the needs of working-class families.

Under capitalism, political parties exist first, to serve individual groups of bosses pursuing their particular profit goals, and second, to mislead workers into backing politicians that represent these profit goals with the illusion that the "right vote" makes the U.S. a democracy.

Workers must fight against a union leadership that defends and supports the bosses' capitalist system. They must unite workers across all borders to wage war against capitalist exploitation.

Local 1199 union workers are always fighting to keep whatever benefits we now have, waging battles against the hospital bosses, their using agency workers to do union work at lower rates, their short staffing, and their violations in patient care. We in PLP must increase our activities among these workers, distributing more CHALLENGES and spreading our political ideas which will help eradicate the basis for capitalist exploitation that creates all these problems.

Struggle at CUNY Needs Unity, Solidarity and Class Consciousness

(First of a four-part series.)

The City University of New York (CUNY) today is a political battleground, and the struggle is sharpening. The university is a harsh boss to its workers (especially adjuncts), and an aggressive cop and military recruiter to its students. It trains the city's workforce for wage slavery, and its curriculum is mostly a propaganda machine for the capitalist system. The cost of imperialist war in Afghanistan and Iraq has U.S. bosses scrambling to wring more money out of workers and students by concessionary contracts and higher fees, so the economic attacks at CUNY are worsening.

Political attacks are also escalating, as the system reorganizes its universities for racism, fascism and war. Recruiters -- protected by the administration -- exploit the economic draft, deceiving students with offers of tuition money to kill and die for imperialism. The administration, backed by cops and the courts, represses counter-recruitment and anti-tuition students at CCNY, Hunter and Hostos Community College. Others like Borough of Manhattan C.C. are put forward as training facilities for Homeland Security. David Horowitz's fascist academic group ABOR -- the mislabeled Academic Bill of Rights outfit, with its classroom spies in Students for Academic Freedom -- tries to muzzle progressive teachers at Brooklyn and Queens Colleges. Racism continues to exclude masses of youth from CUNY and instead sends them to prison or the military. CUNY has dismantled the developmental courses at senior colleges that once helped students left unprepared by the racist public school system.

CUNY, like the entire system, is not all-powerful. Contesting the bosses' national interest and ideology, some of its 200,000 mostly working-class students and 20,000 unionized faculty and staff are fighting back against these economic and political attacks. Some are beginning to look for allies: K-12 teachers and students, the adjunct unions at New York University and the New School University who are preparing to strike, and transit workers whose contract expires in December.

Can these forces stop the escalating annual tuition hike being voted on by CUNY's Trustees on November 21? Can they make CUNY a base for a more militant worker-student alliance against imperialist war? Win a better union contract, showing the way by busting the anti-strike Taylor Law? Can they deal with the racism that divides us here and makes many believe the lives of Iraqi workers are not as worthy of those of GI's? It's long odds, but the moment may be ripe to try.

Preparing for an Illegal Strike

Presently CUNY's professional workers are better organized than the students. The PSC (Professional Staff Congress, AFT Local 2334) declares it won't accept the give-back contracts signed by other city unions, and has begun serious rank-and-file organizing to prepare the union for an illegal strike if necessary. On Sept. 29, at its biggest mass meeting ever, the PSC announced a Nov. 3 deadline for an acceptable settlement. If not, a strike referendum may be held.

The PSC actively seeks student allies, saying correctly that its working conditions are the students' learning conditions. The new leadership elected in 2000 has opposed the war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, defended immigrant students and those on welfare, and fought for remedial courses, open admissions and free tuition. Students too are beginning to organize, a few joining counter-recruitment groups, opposing tuition hikes and supporting the PSC. A student-faculty-staff alliance is becoming possible.

Can the PSC go beyond the limits of liberal reform unionism? If the PSC sticks to its guns, and if it unites effectively with masses of students, it will be poised to advance even under heavy attack from the city and state bosses. PLP student and faculty/staff members at CUNY think three things are necessary to make this advance. First, unity in the workers' ranks; second, solidarity with students and other unions (by-passing their sellout leaders); and third, class consciousness, understanding that we are in a class war, and need to expand every struggle to more and more workers if we are to counter the bosses' use of their state power. None of these three communist principles is easy and we're far from attaining them yet. (Three subsequent articles will elaborate on these principles and try to show their application at CUNY.) We aspire to win political leadership for PLP's ideas through joint struggles in which they prove their worth in practice. We aim to build a mass party at CUNY that energizes and leads the struggle.

The U.S. labor movement is taking big blows industry after industry. Decades of anti-communist, pro-boss union sellouts have left workers disarmed on all fronts. Universities are not "ivory towers," benign and isolated from the rest of society; they function to reproduce capitalism.

Recently, a student stood up in a large lecture class and said: "What we really should be talking about is revolution. Who's with me?" About half the room applauded. This shows the potential of building a mass revolutionary movement among CUNY students, who represent many nationalities and ethnic groups, the basis for an international worker-soldier-student-alliance to fight racism, imperialist war and a police state. (More next issue.)

Students and Workers Unite to Fight Racist Subcontracting

A group of nearly 30 students and workers disrupted a secret meeting a subcontractor had called between themselves and service workers. The bosses wanted to intimidate the workers from joining a rally that day supporting their unionization on a west coast campus.

Students stormed the meeting chanting, "Si Se Puede!" ("We can do it!") and confronted the managers, vowing that students and workers would stand united against their attacks. Some dining workers at the meeting started pounding on the table, backing the students. Management resorted to threats, and later called the campus police.

Forced to leave the meeting, the students surrounded the building, chanting, "Obreros, Unidos, Jamas Seran Vencidos!" ("The workers, united, will never be defeated!"). Many workers later joined the main demonstration organized on the main campus.

The dining workers and groundskeepers are attempting to kick two subcontractors off the campus and become regular employees, working directly for the university. This would raise their wages and benefits under the union contract already in place for other campus workers.

For months, students, working closely with local AFSCME union organizers, have been speaking to and struggling with the dining workers and groundskeepers, building a strong worker-student bond. A formal campus-based group was organized, calling itself the Student-Worker Alliance. Some of the active participants have struggled with other students and workers, broadening the issues of the union campaign. The outsourcing of labor in the U.S., mostly the racist super-exploiting of immigrant workers from Mexico and Central America as well as black workers, is the product of U.S. capitalism's growing political and economic crisis. Because of the war in Iraq and sharpening rivalry between U.S. and other imperialists, the bosses are cutting wages, benefits and pensions to secure profits and fund their war simultaneously.

The alliance between workers and students on campus is getting stronger. Many workers as well as students are beginning to realize the power they have to confront the bosses. Some are also seeing the limits of trade unionism. Many are seeing the connection between the cutbacks on campus and the devastating war in Iraq. With intense struggle, the unity we're building could grow into a strike against the outsourcing of workers, the attacks on students and the war in Iraq. That would send a powerful message about the possibility of uniting to win the long-term fight against these attacks.

Some in this struggle are beginning to see that PLP's communist politics are the road forward: to smash racism capitalism must be destroyed.

Protest Pay Cuts, Job Losses At Massachusetts Community Colleges

BOSTON, MA, Oct. 18 -- Today, 25 faculty and students picketed the Administration Building at Boston's Roxbury Community College (RCC). Signs said: "Parity for Adjuncts at RCC" and "Faculty working conditions are student learning conditions." Inside a grievance was being heard challenging last semester's forced pay-cut of adjunct faculty. The picket line heightened campus awareness of the super-exploitation of adjunct faculty and how it divides the faculty and erodes the quality of education.

Ten years ago there were 2,100 full-time faculty members at Massachusetts' 15 Community Colleges; today there are 1,700. Those 400 were replaced by adjuncts. These full-time positions are some of the millions of decent jobs lost to the next generation of U.S. workers. The adjunct faculty are among the 46 million without health benefits in the U.S.

At RCC this has an added racist character. As a college that serves black, Latin and Asian students, most of whom are immigrants, it has been victimized by the State's racist neglect over decades. RCC is in a continual budget crisis, contributing to the administration's attempts to cut costs off the backs of the adjuncts.

Today, 7 of 10 faculty in the community college system are adjuncts, and growing. This is the elephant in the living room staring us in the face -- a powerful bosses' strategy (used in every industry) designed to both save labor costs and divide the workforce. However, in general, neither faculty unions nor student governments are fighting it, essentially because of the destruction of class consciousness and working-class solidarity that plagues our class.

The RCC chapter of the state's community colleges is fighting the inertia, cynicism and fear that grip its membership. Like workers everywhere, the faculty/professional staff has become passive, conditioned to allow legislators, union misleaders and local "progressive" black politicians to advocate for them. Many full-timers, focused on their retirement, have illusions that they will be able to escape the full wrath of capitalism in decline. Adjuncts, meanwhile, have been terrorized into silence.

The immediate future of the class struggle at RCC will depend on winning more faculty and students to see that the fight to protect their working conditions and education is part of the broader working-class struggle. This is what PLP is trying to do by selling CHALLENGE and raising class politics at the school.

UAW GOES TO COURT...TO BLOCK RETIREES

Anticipating a wave of legal challenges by retirees against both GM and the union, the UAW filed a complaint asking a U.S. District Court in Detroit to legally sanction the agreement, enforcing $15 billion of GM cutbacks. Auto analyst Brian Johnson told the Detroit Free Press, "They're worried about being sued by retirees for changing benefits. They're out to make sure they don't."

Federal labor law does not automatically recognize the right of unions to bargain for retired workers. Labor specialist Thomas Kienbaum said, "The UAW cannot bargain on behalf of retirees. So the only way you are going to bind every retiree to the agreement is through a court order."

The complaint, filed in the name of two retired auto workers as representatives in a class action on behalf of half a million retired autoworkers and their families, requested a permanent injunction against GM unilaterally terminating or modifying retiree health benefits. But this was all window dressing, since an agreement had already been reached. The real purpose, as a GM spokesman said, was to "bind retirees together so that there is no doubt the settlement applies to all of them." A UAW rep said, "It's strictly part of the approval process. It's the way things have to be done." GM issued an official statement that said, "GM and the UAW agreed...that the UAW would seek court approval."

If the federal judge rules that the UAW is the legitimate legal representative of the retirees and sanctions the agreement, it will be a new low in the union's defense of the bosses, stripping retirees and their families of any legal defense against being sacrificed in the name of "global competition."

These are the same retirees who, for the previous four decades, fought like hell and struck numerous times to wrench these benefits from GM, who produced tens of billions of profits for GM, the same retirees who built the union in their working lives, who gave up wage increases to win these benefits. But now they're forced by the class collaborationist UAW misleaders to sacrifice all this on the altar of profits. Could there be any further proof that capitalism is a system which has the destruction of workers' lives built into it?

LETTERS

GI's: Sign Up For Revolution

I'd like to thank the "D.C. Metro Operator" for his/her heartfelt letter "Reflections on the War." The operator eloquently sizes up the situation: "Our government can legally murder our loved ones and there's not a darn thing we can do about it -- or can we?" This driver ends with the warning, "...the line [you sign on to join the armed forces] is dotted for a reason -- all the spaces in between the dots are where they expect you to fall."

The letter writer challenges us to shed our illusions about U.S. imperialism's viciousness. Even the notorious liars at the Pentagon admit nearly 27,000 Iraqi casualties (New York Times, 10/30). We all know there are many more. It stands to reason we must smash the capitalist system that breeds this imperialism.

There can be no thought of accomplishing this without large sections of the military won to the side of revolution. Many contradictory ideas weigh on the minds of today's troops. Winning them is not for the faint-hearted. Nonetheless, the overwhelmingly preponderance of our experience, both historical and current, points to the potential for revolutionary growth -- even among those who joined for more "patriotic" reasons.

History is filled with examples of the working class turning the bosses' armed forces to our side. The bosses hide this history from us. Check out PLP's web page for past articles on troop rebellions. We should definitely study this history. We can win soldiers again with the correct combination of perseverance and confidence in working-class troops.

The D.C. Operator asks, "What can we do about it?" Revolutionary youth must "sign on the dotted line" to win fellow soldiers to anti-imperialism and revolution. We can struggle with the many soldiers we know from CHALLENGE sales, high school classes, our relations, etc. True, there are serious dangers, but also the greatest of opportunities.

Red Veteran

THE OTHER SUPERPOWER

In an excellent letter in CHALLENGE (10/5) from New Jersey Comrade titled "Primary Lessons of Katrina," about the predicted devastation of Hurricane Katrina, I disagree with one important point. Talking about the destruction of large parts of the working and some in the middle class and what little possessions they owned, the writer said of the ruling class: "They don't care."

It's far worse than that, and the implication that the rich and their government should care is misleading. In fact they do care -- they're basically glad when large groups of workers starve, die from disease, commit suicide, get destroyed on jobs or in disasters -- or are "just" worked to death. Then there are far fewer people to protest the U.S. rulers' rape of the world, here and abroad. The rich have shipped out millions of industrial jobs to poor[er] countries. But the working class is and always will be here, and is the one force that can stop the rich in their tracks. (Don't look for answers from liberal politicians.) So if hypertension wipes out ever greater numbers of black men (and women and white workers and others too), why should the rich do anything but smile? Then they don't even have to pay a dime in unemployment or social security benefits.

The rich and their government like to call the U.S.  the "one superpower." But with all their arrogance they know there's a bigger superpower that must, to save themselves, learn of their power to wipe out the murderous capitalists -- that's the international working class. When we rise up, the murderers will be wiped out for good.

The longer it takes to organize the working class and their allies against the rich, the more people they will have killed.

North Country Red

Mountain Dew, Army Take Aim at Students

Recently, nearing my college campus, I noticed a large party-like spectacle in the distance. It was indeed a party, in mid-day, sponsored by the Mountain Dew corporation. The DJ was encouraging bystanders to "get down," while the scantily-clad Mountain Dew girls distributed merchandise stamped with the official Mountain Dew logo. This extravaganza was no surprise considering Pepsi, Mountain Dew's parent corporation, has a monopoly on our campus.

Sick of listening to the DJ, I rounded the corner and lo and behold, looking back at me were over 50 glowing plasma big screens featuring videogames of all kinds. Hordes of students stood mesmerized. One particular game stood out. Commanding four screens alone, "America's Army" promised a real Army-like combat experience to its players. Its caption read, "Empower yourself -- Defend freedom."

So there I was, at the crossroads of capitalism. To my left, a corporate monopoly soft drink corporation pushing its product on students, solidifying the image in their minds that Mountain Dew = party and fun! And to my right, a videogame aimed at allowing students to "experience" the Army, and at the same time, ideologically duping them into supporting the very military violence that facilitates the larger profit-making adventures of corporations like Mountain Dew.

People do not naturally gravitate toward things like Mountain Dew. Capitalism could not function if it didn't continually trick people into buying its products. Further, it couldn't survive without the military occupations that rob the wealth of other countries and funnel it back into the coffers of the capitalist U.S. ruling class. The very people that the ruling class kills with its products, it sends to die in its military.

Southwest comrade

Church Members Organize Against Iraq War

The activities around the Sept. 24 Washington anti-war demonstration helped sharpen our PLP club's understanding of imperialism. For two months we built for the demonstration both at our weekly soup kitchen and our church's morning services. We joined with a peace group in a much larger church nearby that chartered a bus, and we filled half of it. Several of our parishioners were unable to go, but subsidized members of the soup kitchen family who are barely surviving.

Eight of the children in my Sunday School class came with their aunt (a comrade) and their mother. Several made posters on the bus stressing anti-imperialist slogans like "US Out of the Middle East" and "Support Soldier Rebellions." These contrasted sharply with the demonstration's liberal anti-Bush line. Church interns made signs for us to wear with the names of Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers killed in the occupation. This led to many good discussions, especially as I distributed CHALLENGES apart from our group.

Prior to and after the demonstration our members and some close friends saw a powerful play about a Vietnam vet from Detroit. This led to excellent exchanges linking racism to imperialism. I think we'll be recruiting a friend who has read CHALLENGE for years but only began organizing with us this summer, and was deeply impressed by our work around Iraq and in our immediate response to the contradictions raised by Katrina. Our Party leaflet distributed three days after the flood destroyed New Orleans greatly sharpened our struggles to bring people to D.C. We now have four more people taking the paper and interested in our study group.

Red Churchmouse

Mitterrand: `Socialist' Torturer

Recently Michelle Mitterrand, the wife of former French Prime Minister François Mitterrand, was interviewed by Spanish journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina (rebelion.org). Mme Mitterrand attacked neo-liberalism (free market capitalism) and the U.S. ruling class for championing it.

But let's face it, her husband François Mitterrand, like all Social-Democrats and other "friends" of the workers (like Bill Clinton) were in the forefront of neo-liberalism. Mitterrand never stood up against U.S. imperialism because he never dared to depend on the working class. And that's because he was running France in the interests of capitalism.

It was Mitterrand who broke with post-World War II "welfare capitalism." It was under Mitterrand that, for the first time since WW II, profits began growing faster than wages.

When Mitterrand was Minister of Justice during the Algerian insurrection, he agreed to subordinate the French judicial system to the military establishment. Concretely that meant sanctioning torture. Someone I know was a soldier in Algeria then. He told me they would make an Algerian "suspect" bend his knees and assume a position as if sitting in a chair. Then they inserted the neck of a wine bottle in his anus. He had to remain in that position, neither standing up nor squatting down. As his legs began to give out, the wine bottle would be pushed further and further up his rectum. He had the choice between splitting, ripping his rectum and talking, and if he knew anything, betraying his comrades.

The French "Communist" Party, the ultimate in phony communists, withdrew from Mitterrand's coalition government because it didn't want to be blamed for participating in his program.

Mitterrand was a government official under the Vichy Nazi-collaborationist regime. He only jumped onto the De Gaulle bandwagon when it became clear that the days of the Vichy regime were numbered.

A Friend in France

Hire Mercenaries from Peru for Iraq War

The U.S. military in Iraq is doing what occupation armies have always done: using mercenaries to fight their wars, like the ancient Roman legions, the British and French colonial armies and the Nazis. As the "Coalition of the Willing" dwindles, the Pentagon is relying on mercenaries from throughout the world. The Pentagon's contractors have been busy in Chile, Colombia and El Salvador hiring former soldiers and cops (many of whom have lots of experience in killing innocent civilians back home) to serve in Iraq. Latin mercenaries are used because at a distance they can "pass" as Iraqis. Now they've added Peru.

Two Peruvian subcontractors -- Gesegur and Gun Supply (both linked to retired military and intelligence officials and to high officials in the Toledo government) -- are hiring hundreds of former cops and soldiers for duty in Iraq. They've paid the Peruvian army $400,000 to train them and provide them with ammunition for target practice.

They're paid $35 a day (cheap compared to mercenaries from the U.S., Israel, Europe and South Africa) and get other small benefits plus insurance which only covers "on-the-job" personal injury or death, not if they're blown up "off duty."

These two subcontractors work for Triple Canopy, an Illinois-based "security company." The U.S. military uses many more of these "Mercs Corporations" to "privatize" imperialist war-making.

According to the Peruvian daily La Republica (10/29), up to 700 Peruvians are already in Iraq. The newspaper also reported that Gesegur's owner is the brother of Ramiro Mendoza, chief fund-raiser for President Toledo's re-election campaign.

The other subcontractor, Gun Supply, also contracts with CNI (Peru's National Intelligence Service), and has sold ammunition to President Toledo's security guard, even though they're officially members of the National Police, and therefore should be armed by it. Gun Supply's owner is the son of retired Col. Jorge Mendoza, now security chief at the U.S. embassy in Lima.

Most of these mercenaries had become unemployed after no longer being needed by Peruvian rulers to fight the now-disappeared Shining Path guerrillas. Some of their relatives are afraid for their lives and for the rotten "life insurance" they're getting from Triple Canopy.

Tupac Rojo

Mexico's Rulers and `the Train of Death'

While Mexico's rulers rail against the "Minutemen," self-appointed border vigilantes to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the U.S., the Mexican "Migra" arrests, robs and deports thousands of Central Americans. Mexico's rulers and their U.S. counterparts have agreements to "strengthen border vigilance" and therefore prevent the flow of immigrants. They're part of the racist, repressive measures against the international working class.

However, in many towns on the route north, Mexican workers respect and sympathize with their Central American brothers and sisters. For example, hundreds of workers travel atop a cargo train going from the south to the north of Mexico. Many die trying to climb onto the moving train. Others fall asleep due to fatigue and fall off. This is the "train of death." But amid these adversities, many Mexican workers express their solidarity by bringing food, water and clothes to those on the moving train, wishing them luck in gaining their goal.

Capitalism and its insatiable thirst for profits impoverishes workers worldwide, leaving many jobless. Thousands must emigrate from poor countries to the imperialist nations of Europe and the U.S. But when it serves the class interests of the capitalist rulers, they decree this "illegal," that labor has no freedom to travel between nations, that the only power possessing this freedom is the capitalist exploiter.

As long as imperialism exists -- now euphemistically called neo-liberal and globalization -- in any form, the workers will continue uprooting themselves seeking work. Neither the European Union nor the U.S. will totally reject them. U.S. bosses view the workers who actually make it across the U.S.-Mexican border as the strongest youth, able to survive this trial by fire, while hypocritically attacking them to conceal the roots of the problem. They need such workers in their industries, farms and imperialist army.

PLP also sees great revolutionary potential in these millions of emigrating workers, who can play an important role in the struggle for communism worldwide. Their experience with capitalist oppression and the struggle to survive, combined with communist ideas, can help convert the workers' "train of death" into one for the bosses and their system.

We workers in Mexico must organize protests against the Mexican "Migra," demanding they stop persecuting our brothers and sisters from Central America, Korea and China, many of whom have been arrested here recently. We must expose the bosses' hypocrisy and unite all workers to fight for abolition of all borders.

Communism would provide freedom of transit for all areas liberated by the working class, strengthening the links among our class to continue fighting against all the vestiges of capitalism, which, without doubt, will persist for some time.

Comrade in Mexico

Belgium: Two General Strikes in Three Weeks

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- In the second general strike to hit this country in the last three weeks, over 100,000 workers rallied here on Oct. 28. This second walkout followed Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt's Oct. 11 "state of the nation" speech announcing a "Generation Pact," backed by the union bureaucracies, the bosses and politicians.

The "pact" was negotiated after the huge Oct. 7 general strike. The bosses blamed that one on "older workers" wanting to retire early. But the latest strike drew a huge number of 20- to 30-year old workers who see the new retirement law of " work till you drop" as an attack on them. Many bosses and union leaders couldn't believe two general strikes could occur so quickly, since it's been a decade since the last one.

The latest general strike began with wildcats in the big southern factories. Then Volkswagen workers -- Flemish and Walloon -- struck for 32 hours, followed by a strike in another big factory to the North.

Workers are angry not only at the retirement law but also at capitalism's general attacks here, as well as those suffering throughout Europe and the world. The bosses and their media are mad at the union hacks because they can't control the workers as much as in the 1970's and '80s.

Workers must seize this moment to break with the union hacks and politicians -- particularly in the Socialist Party -- and to unite both of Belgium's regions to fight the wave of anti-immigrant racism now blanketing Europe. Workers must refuse to pay for the European bosses' plans to drive down their conditions in the name of competing with the U.S. and other imperialists.

REDEYE

Hussein trial should quiz his US backers

To the Editor:
It seems to me that no one has asked Saddam Hussein the truly revealing questions about his longstanding relationship with the United States...How did Saddam Hussein attain and retain power? Who were his global backers?

I seem to recall a certain photograph of our current defense secretary shaking hands with this criminal... (NYT, 10/21)

Like Iraq, Vietnam War was sold by a lie

The National Security Agency has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence....

...Communications intercepted by the N.S.A. the secretive eavesdropping and code-breaking agency, were falsified so that they made it look as if North Vietnam had attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after a previous clash. President Lyndon B. Johnson cited the suppose attack to persuade Congress to authorize broad military action in Vietnam, but most historians have concluded in recent years that there was no second attack....

...Government historians argued that it should be made public....Higher-level agency policy-makers...were fearful that it might prompt uncomfortable comparisons with the flawed intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq... (NYT, 10/31)

Black enlistment drop threatens army

...Black enlistment has fallen off, particularly in the Army....

This year, about 14 percent of new Army recruits were black, down from nearly 23 percent in 2001.... A study commissioned by the Army last year also concluded that more young blacks were rejecting military service because they opposed the war, or feared dying in it....There is broad agreement among military experts that if black enlistments continues to fall, it could create long-term manpower problems for the Army. (NYT, 10/26)

Chevron in Ecuador: `Environmental disaster'

...Chevron's lawyers are in Ecuador defending the company against charges that it contributed to one of the worst environmental disasters on the planet. The company is accused of dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste, over a period of 20 years, into the soil and water of a previously pristine section of the Amazon rain forest.

According to a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of some 30,000 impoverished residents of the rain forest, this massive, long-term pollution has ruined portions of the jungle, contaminated drinking water, sickened livestock, driven off wildlife and threatened the very survival of the indigenous tribes, which have been plagued with serious illnesses, including a variety of cancers....

Crude oil was also spilled in the jungle, millions of gallons of it.

Disasters of this kind, involving poor people in remote areas of foreign countries, tend to stay low on the level of awareness of the American news media. The suffering tends to go unnoticed by the outside world. (NYT, 10/20)

Could these really be headlines in 2035?

*President George Z. Bush says victory in Iraq "just around

the corner"

*Hurricane Katrina victims still awaiting federal aid

*South Florida voters confused by octopus-shaped ballot

*Capitol Hill intern indicted for refusing to have sex with congressman

*51st state to be named "Halliburton"

*New study: Diet and exercise keys to weight loss

*Gas prices top $20 a gallon; GM introduces 4 mpg SUV

*Only 2 percent of registered voters cast ballots

*Microsoft patents zeroes[and] ones (NYT News Service, 05)

Muslim chaplain tells Guantanamo crimes

James Yee, who retired from the US Army as a captain last January....was investigated, thrown into solitary confinement and threatened with the death penalty in 2003 for mutiny, sedition, espionage and aiding the enemy....

His book about this experience...For God and Country is an indictment of the sloppy assumptions and religious and cultural blindness that he charges US officials frequently reveal...

...Yee writes that it was commonplace for testosterone-charged military police to goad detainees by poking or kicking the Muslim holy book, and he even names a Connecticut army reserve unit that he says took particular relish in doing so. Hundreds of detainees ended up demanding that their Qur'ans be removed from their cells to reduce the chances of desecration, but officials declared the books must remain; inmates who refused to grasp the Qur'ans when they were returned through slots in cells doors were physically attacked, he writes.

Yee tried to get Guantánamo officials to change their handling of both Qur'ans and detainees which, he writes, led to the investigations of him. Soon he was in solitary confinement....

...All the charges were ultimately dropped. (Washington Post)

Recyclers turn computer gifts into scam

...Americans may be lulled into thinking their old computers are being put to good use....

Much of the used computer equipment sent from the United States to developing countries for use in homes, schools and businesses is often neither usable nor reparable, creating enormous environment problems in some of the world's poorest places.... The unusable equipment is being donated or sold to developing nations by recycling businesses in the United States as a way to dodge the expense of having to recycle it properly....

...An average computer monitor can contain as much as eight pounds of lead, along with plastics laden with flame retardants and cadmium, all of which can be harmful to the environment and to humans. (NYT, 10/24)

Marine Vet Exposes Truth About

Kill! Kill! Kill! by Jimmy Massey with Natasha Saulnier. Paris, Editions du Panama, 2005.

(Note: Co-author Saulnier says in the book's introduction that it was published in France rather than the U.S. because several big U.S. publishing houses -- although initially enthusiastic -- later said they couldn't obtain "legal clearance." Others objected to the accusations of criminal killing, while "progressive" independent publishers objected to the descriptions of Marine sex life as "too crudely honest.")

"... I fired. I watched the bullets hit the demonstrator right in the chest ... I found a new target right away, a demonstrator on his hands and knees, who was trying to get away as fast as he could. I quickly aimed at his head ... I wanted to continue shooting and I kept saying to myself: `My god, there's got to be more of them.' It was like eating the first spoonful of your favorite ice cream. You want more."

How does an ordinary young man get turned into a merciless killer? Sgt. Jimmy Massey thinks the Marines have got it down pat. He should know. Massey spent 11 years in the Corps, as a recruit, a recruiting sergeant and a participant in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

According to Massey, the Marine Corps' recipe is to recruit vulnerable young men and brutalize them so they will kill without any second thoughts. As long ago as 1947, Army historian S.L. Marshall said the military needed to "free the rifleman's mind in relation to the nature of his target."

To do that, Massey says, the Corps begins by targeting men who were raised by single mothers, and who need to prove themselves. As a recruiting sergeant, Massey found intelligent men who "came from broken homes and were loaded with problems" to be "easy prey." He was also in cahoots with the local district attorney to offer small-time criminals and drug addicts a choice between prison and the Corps.

Once in the Corps, Massey writes, the men are brutalized not only by military training but also by the whole Marine culture. They become fans of music and films that push the image of the noble barbarian -- Rambo and Conan the Barbarian, among others. In 350 pages, Massey evokes 13 bands and 14 films.

He says drinking and violence are also part of the culture. On one drunken spree in Okinawa in 1993, one of Massey's buddies disemboweled a stray dog and drank its blood. "I can honestly say that Marines are monsters," Massey writes. "Nobody is safe when there are Marines around."

The macho Marines culture is also hostile to any meaningful relationship with a woman. According to Massey, sexuality in the Corps is a whirl of pornographic magazines and films, group masturbation, group sex with prostitutes, some homosexuality -- and periods of impotence. "I had become insensible to any romance, to any sensuality," Massey writes. "For me, love was just `slam, bam, thank you, ma'am.'"

Finally, Massey says, the Marine Corps teaches soldiers to scorn civilians as wimps.

According to Massey, the Marines behaved like an invading barbarian horde during Operation Iraqi Freedom. His unit's first mission was to seize "the crown jewels," the Ar Rumaylah oil fields. The workers were rounded up, hooded, and packed off as "prisoners of war."

As they advanced on Baghdad, Massey says U.S. soldiers shot up abandoned Iraqi bases and equipment with depleted uranium munitions, spreading enough radioactivity to "slowly kill off the Iraqis, one after the other." At the deserted Al Rashid base, the Marines devastated everything and then crapped on the overturned desks and bookcases.

At one point, Marine intelligence officers used Massey's unit as gunmen to neutralize the armed guards at a wealthy Iraqi's house, and then seized "huge quantities of cellophane-wrapped American dollars and Iraqi dinars." It's clear that Massey believes the officers pocketed part of the money, but didn't share it with the enlisted men.

Massey's unit despised the Iraqis, calling them sand-n-----s and ridiculing English-speaking Iraqis who asked for information or help. Massey overheard one Marine express the general sentiment: "These f-----s aren't human. We're gonna blow away their gene stock so they'll never be able to reproduce ever again."

All this forms the backdrop to the massacres of unarmed civilians Massey describes. Killing is compared to having an orgasm and being in nirvana -- an echo of the feelings of Nazi storm troopers, as set out in Klaus Theleweit's two-volume study, "Male Fantasies."

According to Massey's co-author, Natasha Saulnier, "The portrait of the Marines painted by Jimmy bears witness to the success of the American strategists." But, she continues, the battlefield success -- soldiers who do not hesitate to kill -- comes at a high price for the soldiers themselves. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, one in six Iraq war veterans suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome -- in plain English: intense, life-long feelings of guilt.

Massey describes how guilty he and other soldiers felt after the killing frenzy: "Schutz just stared at the dead Iraqis. When I got close to him, I heard him muttering: `I know I killed him. I know I killed him...' I felt bad for him."

This is not inevitable. Soldiers need to know that the U.S. ruling class wants to turn them into mindless killing machines, but that soldiers have to pay too high a price. Most rank-and-file GI's come from the working class and are turned against their class by the rulers' armed forces. Thousands of Marines were part of the rebellions inside the military against the Vietnam War, including a massive black Marine rebellion against Klan forces at Camp Pendleton, California. Winning the GI's to defending their class interests means turning them against the brass and the interests of U.S. imperialism.

It's not surprising that Massey couldn't find a U.S. publisher for his book, which is presently only available in French (a Spanish translation is to come out early in 2006).

`I WAS A RACKETEER FOR CAPITALISM . . .'

(In 1933, Major General Smedley Butler, a 33-year Marine veteran, was in the center of a fight between two U.S. ruling-class factions: the Roosevelt liberals and the conservative right-wingers -- somewhat similar to the current dogfight.

There were many pro-Hitler forces in the U.S. in those years, including such luminaries as Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg. The NY Herald-Tribune (May 22, 1932) ran an editorial entitled "Fascism for America," saying "each `race' has originated a fascism to meet its crisis of the moment." In fact, U.S. rulers were more worried about the threat to their system by Soviet communism than by German fascism until they realized that Hitler actually threatened Western capitalism. And they didn't actually launch a Second Front in Western Europe until 1944 when they feared that the Red Army, already having wiped out millions of Nazi troops on the Eastern Front, might go all the way to France.

In 1933, General Butler testified before a Congressional committee about having been approached by a group representing the J.P. Morgan-DuPont-Wall Street banking interests to lead a fascist military coup to overthrow the Roosevelt presidency. Fearing the liberals' approach to handling the Great Depression would squeeze their profits, this fascist group promised Butler unlimited financial backing and 500,000 soldiers to march on Washington. Butler refused. The Congressional committee concluded that his testimony was true, but no prosecutions followed.

It is during such ruling-class dogfights that the truth sometimes comes out.)

Following is an excerpt of a 1933 speech by General Butler:

War is just a racket....It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses....

When the dollar only earns 6% over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100%. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

...The military....has its "finger men" to point out the enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism....

I spent most of my time [in the Marine Corps] being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism....

I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street....I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912....I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....

I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

UNDER COMMUNISM

Part II: What will prisons be like?
The Story of a U.S. Prisoner in a Chinese Jail

Harriet Mills was an American who went through four years of "thought remolding" in a Peking (Beijing) jail and released in October 1955. She was born in China to a family of Presbyterian missionaries and spent 25 years there. A Wellesley College graduate, she returned to China in 1951 as a Fulbright scholar and then was arrested, charged with espionage. After her release she taught Chinese at Cornell University in upstate New York.

In the Atlantic Monthly magazine (Dec. 1959), Mills described "thought remolding" this way. "The communists know that only if people are truly persuaded of the justice of (their) position will they release their spontaneous and creative energy and cooperate not from necessity but from conviction." Physical violence would not produce sincere changes in thinking, the main objective of imprisonment.

She continued, "In serious cases where criminality is involved, thought-reform and punishment are combined but the essential aim remains redemption through criticism [her emphasis].... Reform by labor goes hand in hand with reform through study in rehabilitation of prisoners [and] the right to labor comes only after a certain level of reform through study has been achieved."

In group study, she explained, prisoners were not free to be silent. Merely parroting answers was not acceptable. Those who resisted or lacked sincerity faced tou-cheng (struggle) from the rest of the group, "a humiliating combination of loud criticism...and -- very rarely [her emphasis] -- minor violence." Criticism was the primary method of change, with self-criticism more important than criticism of others, a method used by PLP since its founding in the early 1960's. Intellectuals proved the most difficult to redeem.

Ostracism from the group was the worst punishment. Group study was effective because people have an essential need to belong, to achieve and maintain emotional balance. In this way, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convinced people from various social classes, both in and out of prison, that it was right that China should be made new and strong [PLP does not agree with this nationalist position -- Ed.], and that opposition to the CCP bringing medicine, schooling and security to half a billion peasants was wrong and not to be tolerated. They convinced millions to resist the U.S. aggression in Korea in the early 1950's. They convinced millions that women should be emancipated and guaranteed equality with men.

Mills explained the use of carrots and sticks. The strongest stick was the general sense of social guilt that developed as prisoners engaged in group criticism, worked side by side with the others and were allowed visits to collective projects outside the prison. The carrot might be the right for the prisoners to work unguarded on a dam or a bridge or on something else needed by the people whom they had wronged. This contribution to social welfare became a kind of joyful freedom.

Mills stated in an interview with Edgar Snow in 1962 that "even strong-willed persons who might never bend before force alone did undergo slow, stage-by-stage, and finally dramatic and wholly convincing transformations." ("The Other Side of the River," by Edgar Snow)

Contrast this with prisons under capitalism, in which rehabilitation is a rare exception in the U.S. injustice system, while brutality against prisoners and preventing unemployed workers from endangering capitalist state power is the rule (see CHALLENGE, 11/2/05).