TO OUR WEB READERS: This issue of CHALLENGE includes a special supplement on the racist sociobiology "science." How it has spread to all areas of the academic world and its effects on our daily lives. Again, we ask our web readers to help us keep both versions of our newspaper (the digital one and the printed one) spreading communist politics as an antidote to the poisong of capitalism and all its different ideologies. You can help subscribing to the printed version of the paper or sending a contribution. One year sub to CHALLENGE cost 15 dollars. You can send a check or MO made out to Challenge periodicals and mail it to PLP: GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, USA.

CHALLENGE, April 25, 2001

a href="#Spy Plane Deal Can’t Hide Sharpening Imperialist Rivalry">"py Plane Deal Can’t Hide Sharpening Imperialist Rivalry

Anti-Oil War GI Shakes Brass

KKKops Protect KKKross-Burners

a href="#Union Leaders, Bosses Push Fascist ‘Solutions’">Un"on Leaders, Bosses Push Fascist ‘Solutions’

Rebellion Against Racist MurderousKKKops

a href="#Students Indict Horowitz: ‘Racist of the Year’">St"dents Indict Horowitz: ‘Racist of the Year’

Salute Brown U. Students For Anti-Racist Action

a href="#Free Trade=Battle for Profits From Workers’ Blood">"ree Trade=Battle for Profits From Workers’ Blood

Anti-Globalization Protests in Quebec and Tijuana-San Diego

a href="#Viva Democracy Cry Won’t End Racism In Mexico">"iva Democracy Cry Won’t End Racism In Mexico

Jobless Benefits: An Endangered Species

a href="#Wanted For Murder—Litton Bosses">"anted For Murder—Litton Bosses

Worker-Student Alliance Backs Garment Strike

Fight Fascist Slavery In NY Welfare

LA Janitors Fight Corrupt Union, Plan for May Day

Salvadoran Workers Headed for May Day

Dinner Boosts N.J. May Day

a href="#A Seattle Mother Fights Racist ‘Justice’">A "eattle Mother Fights Racist ‘Justice’

a href="#Psychiatric Rx For Kids’ Problems: ‘Just Say Yes!’">Psyc"iatric Rx For Kids’ Problems: ‘Just Say Yes!’

John Brown Play Gets it Right

Census Spawns Racist Divisions

Bosses Blow Fuse; Workers Get Shock

• Response From California Comrade

• ---

a name="Spy Plane Deal Can’t Hide Sharpening Imperialist Rivalry">">"py Plane Deal Can’t Hide Sharpening Imperialist Rivalry

The deal made by the U.S. and Chinese bosses over the recent collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet will not end the sharpening of a rivalry that will ultimately lead to a war for world domination between these imperialist gangsters.

Workers must focus on the long-range nature of this contradiction. We mustn’t place our class’s future in the hands of imperialists, whose only peace is the "peace" of the grave. As our Party prepares for May Day 2001, we must win every marcher to understand that a world without profit wars is impossible under the profit system. The spy plane incident should heighten our awareness of the need for communist revolution and our commitment to fight for it.

The Bush White House is telling the rest of the world to behave or else. Chinese, Russian and Iraqi rulers are Bush’s main targets. Barely a month after becoming President, Bush launched a particularly heavy bombing raid on Iraq and threatened the Chinese for helping upgrade Iraqi air defenses. Then came the flap over Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent arrested for peddling U.S. security information to the Russians. Bush retaliated by expelling 51 Russian "diplomats" and by telling the Russians the U.S. would no longer finance Russia’s missile destruction program.

Now comes the latest incident with China. Bush, Powell and Cheney are hypocritically pretending to be shocked that the Chinese take a dim view of U.S. spying over their borders. What they really mean is that the U.S. ruling class wants to keep China from behaving as though it has the potential to become a key rival to U.S. control of international markets, energy resources and shipping lanes. Clinton had already tried to deliver this message in 1999, when he ordered a bomb dropped "accidentally" on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the U.S./NATO air war in the former Yugoslavia. Chinese rulers couldn’t counter that provocation with more than verbal protest.

They aren’t ready to go to war with the U.S. over the spy plane incident either. However, they are deepening their resolve to include Taiwan as part of their empire by extending their deployment of missiles across the Taiwan Strait. Simultaneously, Bush has threatened to increase arms sales to U.S. buddies in Taiwan. This conflict has the potential to sharpen seriously in the coming period.

Some of the bosses’ media, including the liberal New York Times, believe that the current U.S.-China "mix of tensions and mutual dependence" will continue indefinitely without leading to war (April 8).

True, U.S. rulers have extensive economic ties to China. Chinese bosses export billions worth of merchandise to the U.S. market. Important U.S. companies like Motorola, General Motors, Boeing and the AIG insurance group have huge investments in China. The restoration of capitalism in China has encouraged some U.S. companies to dream of super-profits there. But investment doesn’t preclude eventual war. U.S. firms had enormous positions in Germany in the 1930s, and the U.S. still fought World War II. Furthermore, the U.S. ruling class sharply disagrees over doing business in China. The companies involved want to protect their investments and bottom lines. The more strategically-minded bosses, particularly those around Exxon Mobil, who intend to rule the world by maintaining control of energy supplies and shipping routes, see these deals as self-destructive "trading with the enemy." The Clinton White House reflected this struggle. The Bush White House has yet to resolve it.

The Chinese are drawing their own conclusions. As the usually accurate Stratfor intelligence report says (April 4): "Beijing will continue to refrain from direct confrontation, as it is not yet ready politically, economically or militarily challenge the United States in Asia. China will, however, plan for that day."

There’s an immediate objective element as well. As thousands of workers know from the harsh truth of daily layoffs, the long 1990s U.S. boom is over, for the time being at least. This downturn may well set the tone for the rest of the world in the period ahead. The U.S. economy accounts for 30 percent of global output and 15 percent of global trade. As U.S. companies try to solve their overcapacity crisis by liquidating inventories, the U.S. market is likely to absorb fewer imports than in the past. This won’t help Chinese bosses’ export strategy.

The U.S. economy may not recover in a hurry. If it continues to tank, it will drag down the rest of the world’s main economies. Global capitalist profit crises don’t lead to love-fests among the big capitalists but to the opposite: "As economic hardship reduces incentives for political cooperation and raises competition for money and markets, international politico-military crises will become more frequent and intense" (Stratfor, 4/4).

World war is not necessarily around the corner. The U.S. rulers remain in command, if not in full control. However, the current deal between U.S. and Chinese bosses should not encourage illusions about a future of peace and stability. Imperialism always leads to war. We must prepare now, in every possible way, for the day when our class can smash imperialist war with communist revolution. A successful May Day 2001, with new recruits to the PLP, will advance that goal.

If the shoe was on the other foot:

SHOOT TO KILL

When a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane flying 32 miles off the Chinese mainland provoked a confrontation with Chinese fighter pilots on August 23, 1956 and crashed into the East China Sea, killing all 16 aboard, President Dwight Eisenhower told the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

"We seem to be conducting something that we cannot control very well. If planes were flying 20 to 50 miles from our shores, we would be very likely to shoot them down if they came in closer, whether through error or not." (New York Times, April 5)

Anti-Oil War GI Shakes Brass

Recently I enjoyed a visit with friends in the military. I didn’t realize how much I missed the place until this week-end visit, which was very productive.

These friends are the closest to the Party. They went to May Day last year and are enthusiastic about coming this year. We watched a great documentary, "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq," exposing the horrific consequences of sanctions against Iraqi workers.

A friend said he’d been reading CHALLENGE and decided to show it to one of his closest friends, who likes to discuss politics. This is exactly what the Party needs, having the courage to introduce the paper to another soldier. Building political relationships in the military is vital for Party members and friends. We need more Party members in the military and to talk about politics there.

Inter-imperialist rivalry is sharpening. The Army blots out world politics; they fear the truth will come out, a problem for their war campaigns.

An example of the latter occurred in a discussion at a recent National Guard week-end drill on the quality of food being served. Then a soldier switched things, wanting to know our company commander’s opinion on the spy plane in China. His reply sparked a wider conversation. He said there was no way the U.S. would go to war with China, but that U.S.-China relations are unstable. He then questioned the public’s response to U.S. casualties. He said currently it’s harder to gain public support for sending troops into battle abroad, as in Kuwait and Kosovo.

Soldiers were eager to discuss all this. Then something extraordinary happened. A soldier spoke up exposing the interests of major oil companies in the regions mentioned above. He said, "People don’t want to go to war for the oil companies." This comment startled the company commander. The discussion was getting heated. He quickly put an end to it. He had gotten a taste of working-class consciousness. Then, in a shaky voice, the commander asked, "Well, do we want to sit around and talk about world politics or go home?" The soldiers, there for the weekend, were ready to go.

This is a good lesson for all of us in the military. The brass will never tell the truth about politics, but our Party’s politics are in the interest of all soldiers, especially those involving the military’s goals. Organizing in the military is critical. The kind of discussion my friend started with his buddy can spark great political discussions among soldiers.

This is why it’s important to take May Day seriously. Marchers should not only be enthusiastic about celebrating May Day, but should also consider joining the Party and making a concrete commitment to PLP. We invite soldiers to join PLP and discuss politics, in the barracks, in the fields and with our closest friends.

A Red soldier

KKKops Protect KKKross-Burners

GARY, IN, March 27 — Two weeks after an army of riot cops protected a KKK rally, a black family in Valparaiso (about 15 miles from here) had a cross burned in their back yard. This racist attack came after a group of swastika-adorned racist skinheads menaced a 15-year-old black youth at a bowling alley.

Police arrested three youths for the cross burning, but claim it was not racially motivated! The cops don’t only protect Klan rallies but also cross burnings, labeling them "kids’ stuff."

Black residents walked to City Hall to meet with the mayor and police chief. They used the racist cross burning to take aim at racism in general and the cops in particular. They complained that the police follow them or visitors from out of town. Mrs. Alexander, whose home was the scene of the cross burning, said a majority of the police treat blacks as "less than human."

It’s no coincidence that the Klan is more active, and the cops are more protective, as the economy slides deeper into the dumpster. For decades, U.S. Steel in Birmingham, Alabama, financed and directed the KKK. (See CHALLENGE [4/11] and Carry Me Home, by Diane McWhorter.)

Now Bethlehem Steel could go under, while Republic and LTV (steel) have filed for bankruptcy. Thousands of LTV workers will lose their jobs and tens of thousands more will lose pensions and medical coverage. Over a dozen steel workers have been killed in recent years by murderous cost-cutting policies. American Steel is closing down, and U.S. Steel is moving 25% of its global production to Slovakia where wages are $2.00 an hour.

a name="Union Leaders, Bosses Push Fascist ‘Solutions’"></">Un"on Leaders, Bosses Push Fascist ‘Solutions’

What choices does the system offer? One union leader said that war production could produce more jobs! They push nationalism against workers from other countries. Gary bosses want to build a $20 million minor league sports stadium to complement their gambling casinos and beauty pageants. Cops work with the drug dealers to keep workers stoned. This follows the Nazi pattern when they were coming to power in Germany!

The Gary Klan rally failed to get its message out, so now they want to rally in downtown Gary on May 19. If they do, there will be an even larger group to oppose them. But our overall strategy is to smash capitalism completely.

The Indiana PLP has grown modestly, and we expect a good turnout for May Day. The cross-burning KKK and the economic crisis are sure signs that the bosses are on the road to increased fascism and war. This May Day can be an important step in building a stronger Party and a more powerful revolutionary movement!

Rebellion Against Racist MurderousKKKops

CINCINNATI, OHIO, April 11 — "If they keep killing us, it ain’t gonna be peaceful," declared Hosea Thomas, 27, outside police headquarters here during two days of rebellion by hundreds protesting the racist murder of a fourth black man in the last five months. Timothy Thomas, 19, unarmed, was shot by a racist cop chasing him, allegedly because of warrants for traffic violations and misdemeanors.

The cops were forced to cordon off police headquarters and City Hall after protestors — including Mrs. Thomas — surrounded and took over the City Council for three hours, rallied and threw bottles, and rocks at the police station, shattering the station’s glass entrance and ripped down an American flag. The cops fired rubber bullets and rounds of beanbag shotguns and mounted police rode their horses into the crowd. The demonstrators then marched through downtown streets shouting anti-police slogans.

This latest racist murder follows a long line of similar police actions in cities throughout the country in an attempt to terrorize black and Latino workers and youth who refuse to accept the racist conditions imposed on them by the bosses’ profit system.

a name="Students Indict Horowitz: ‘Racist of the Year’"></">St"dents Indict Horowitz: ‘Racist of the Year’

BOSTON, MA, April 2 — PLP students and friends from Boston University (BU), Harvard and MIT and Boston area workers demonstrated today outside the lecture at BU by fascist journalist David Horowitz to protest his racist ad in college newspapers around the country. Horowitz angered thousands of students with his ad entitled, "10 Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea — And Racist Too!" He claims that black people should be "thankful" for what the U.S. has "given" them; that black poverty is "the result of failures of individual character rather than...of racial discrimination and a slave system"; and that "there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Christians – Englishmen and Americans – created one." (!) He uses the "reparations debate" as a cover for his racist lies.

We worked for a mass protest against Horowitz at BU, raising the idea with members of Students Together Against Racism, and Unite, a progressive coalition of BU student groups. Their leaders said students should peacefully question Horowitz’s views.

PLP was the only group at BU to publicly protest Horowitz. It began shortly before his "lecture." We distributed CHALLENGE, handed out about 400 PLP leaflets and carried signs, all of which proclaimed, "No Free Speech for Racists/Reparations for the Whole Working Class = Communist Revolution," calling on people to march on May Day. We chanted, "Brown students lead the way, Shut this racist down today!" (See box.) We raised a large banner naming, "David Horowitz, Racist of the Year." We explained why Horowitz is dangerous, and talked about the intensifying racism in the U.S. and on campuses, in particular. We also pointed out how racists like Horowitz help spread fascism in the U.S. today.

We were unable to get inside the hall to raise our banner and shout him down as we had planned — something we should always try to do, no matter how small we are. But many BU student friends and supporters also unable to get in stayed outside, took our leaflets and CHALLENGE, watched our demonstration and debated the issues. While some were afraid to publicly condemn him, they agreed he was a racist and should be opposed, but many still believed he has a "right to free speech."

Ironically, everyone entering the hall was searched to prevent any public display of signs or banners protesting Horowitz’s racist filth. Meanwhile, dozens of cops guarded him — just like they do for the KKK — so he could spread his garbage. So much for "free speech."

The next day we continued to pass out the same leaflet. Some students approved our protest and one took 20 leaflets to show to friends. We clearly had a positive, anti-racist impact at BU. We remain in contact with the Brown U. students and will go back soon to help them fight racism. We will raise the importance of marching on May Day as the best immediate way to help smash racism and capitalism, the system which breeds it.

Salute Brown U. Students For Anti-Racist Action

BOSTON, April 7 — The Brown University students who last month trashed the Brown Herald containing the racist filth in the ad paid for by fascist David Horowitz have become a beacon in the fight against racism on all campuses.

The Brown students invited Boston PLP students to yesterday’s Brown student/community meeting on fighting racism. It was the most inspiring and intense mass meeting of recent memory. We met black and white students with great courage and commitment to fight back against racism. In accepting their invitation, we had told them, "We look forward to meeting fellow anti-racist students and applaud the work of all Brown students who participated in the protesting of the Brown Herald placing Horowitz’s racist ad against reparations by removing the Brown Daily Herald press run."

However, while many want to fight racism, they have limited experience on how to wage a long-term fight against it. A racist climate of fear has developed at Brown since the Horowitz ad. Some black students have been threatened physically by racists. We are supporting them in fighting back against this racist terror. We will try to win some of them to join the May Day March in Washington on April 28.

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BUENOS AIRES, April 6—Chanting "No ALCApitalismo, No ALCAos y ALCArajo" — "No to Capitalism, No to ALCA Chaos, ALCA go to hell (ALCA are the Spanish initials for FTAA or the Free Trade Area of the Americas) — 15,000 workers and anti-globalization activists marched today past the Sheraton Hotel. Trade ministers from 34 countries of the entire hemisphere (except Cuba) were meeting here to discuss if, when and how to establish this FTAA by January 2005. Many see it as just another NAFTA deal, favoring the U.S. bosses.

The demonstrators included trade unionists from neighboring Brazil and Uruguay, even though the border was closed at the last minute and 20 busloads were barred entry into Argentina.

There are sharp disagreements over FTAA. U.S. bosses wanted FTAA to begin in 2003, but Brazil led the opposition to push the date to 2005. The Brazilian bosses also want other big changes in the FTAA, to prevent it from becoming just another tool for U.S. imperialist control over Latin America. Said BBC News (4/8): "Brazil said it wants the FTAA to be an option, not destiny. It wants to hold parallel talks with the European union, with whom it trades more than the U. S….Latin-American countries want sharp reductions in U.S. agricultural subsidies as a condition for a free trade pact—something which is expected to get a rough ride in the U.S. Congress. U.S. farmers oppose negotiations on domestic subsidies of the FTAA, because it would not require other developed countries like the European Union and Japan to make similar cuts."

FTAA has become an important battleground among the world’s imperialist bosses. It represents a market of 783 million people from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, 40% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product and 20% of world trade. As the U.S. stock market tumbles and the Japanese economy stagnates, many investors are looking towards Latin America as a "young emerging market." Brazil’s public trading, for example, grew from $40 billion to $700 billion in the last decade (Prudential Insurance investment report).

As CHALLENGE reported (April 11), European bosses are make inroads into a region the U.S. has considered its "backyard." The U.S. Plan Colombia (equipping Colombia’s death squad army to war on anti-U.S. guerrillas) and a U.S.-controlled FTAA are part of the U.S. fight to keep the European imperialists at bay in the region.

Brazil, the hemisphere’s second largest country after the U.S., is now a leading recipient of Germany’s exports and capital and therefore leads the opposition to the U.S. version of the FTAA. The trade union leadership of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, along with other anti-globalization forces demonstrating here, believe that the European imperialists are "better" than the U.S. They declare that free trade á la U.S. imperialism has meant more exploitation for workers. But the European bosses don’t want to end that exploitation. Rather they want to control it.

Anti-Globalization Protests in Quebec and Tijuana-San Diego

On April 19-22, the rulers of these same 34 countries will meet in Quebec, Canada, to continue discussing the FTAA. Thousands of anti-globalization forces and trade unionists will demonstrate "in the sprit of Seattle 1999, D.C. and Prague 2000." The rulers are preparing for these protests with measures unseen in Quebec since the War Measures of Act of the early 1970s, when the army occupied Montreal after the Quebec Liberation Front kidnapped several officials. Protests in solidarity with the Quebec demonstrations are also planned along the San Diego-Tijuana border, with the demand to "Stop the FTAA." But even some who call themselves anti-capitalist tend to push the idea that without FTAA or NAFTA, "things would be better." Others just see U.S. imperialism as the only enemy.

The fact is that all these trade agreements are part of the sharpening rivalry among the different capitalist and imperialist forces seeking better deals for their particular group as they all scheme to make workers pay even more for the deepening crisis of capitalism. This rivalry lays the basis for another world war. The only alternative to FTAA, NAFTA, etc. for workers and their allies is to fight to destroy capitalism and build a society without any bosses: communism.

a name="Viva Democracy Cry Won’t End Racism In Mexico">">"iva Democracy Cry Won’t End Racism In Mexico

MEXICO CITY, APRIL 5 — Esther, an Indigenous woman commander of the Zapatista movement, spoke late last month before Congress here exposing the racism ten million Indigenous people suffer in Mexico. This dramatic event ended the trek by the Zapatista leadership from the jungles of Chiapas. To speak to Congress, the Zapatistas had to overcome the opposition of right-wing PAN (ruling Party) politicians like Senator Diego F. De Cevallos. But the massive anti-racist feeling sparked by the Zapatista presence here finally forced Parliament to let them speak.

Esther’s anti-racism developed from fighting the oppression of Indigenous people. She revealed how malnutrition and lack of essential services kill tens of thousands of children every year. In extreme cases some parents sell their daughters like commodites and marry them to whomever the father chooses. These conditions have led to many rebellions among Indigenous people. (In addition, alchoholism affects 4.6% of all Mexicans between 18 and 65, overwhemingly males.) The Zapatistas were here demanding a law to end this racist and sexist oppression. They also want to maintain the collective ownership of land in the Indigenous communities.

Commander Esther trusts a law enacted by the capitalist Parliament to liberate the Indigenous people. To rely on the oppressors never solves oppression and reflects a lack of communist understanding of the racist and criminal nature of capitalism. The bosses invent "races" to divide workers and oppressed people, and to make maximum profits. The enemy is not only the PAN and other right-wing bosses, but the whole racist system. Our struggle should not be to give it a humanitarian mask but to destroy it.

It is good to take up arms as Indigenous communities did in Chiapas, but the real solution lies in winning the entire working class to an armed revolution to eradicate capitalism and build a new system — communism — that eliminates the basis of racism, profits.

Collectivizing the land and work is an advanced demand of the Indigenous movement, opposing capitalist private property. That’s why many politicians disapprove of — or at least want to modify — the law proposed by the Zapatistas. But we have no illusion that a ruling class law will allow the collectivization of land to survive in the Indigenous communities.

Currently a fierce struggle exists among local bosses and U.S. and European imperialists over control of the rich resources and low labor costs in Southern Mexico and its Central American neighbors. No matter who wins, this fight will only increase racism and exploitation in the region.

The lack of a class analysis by commander Esther and the entire leadership of the EZLN (Zapatista movement), their denial of class struggle as the engine behind all social changes and their reliance on bosses’ laws, condemn the very people they seek to protect to a life of more racist oppression. The EZLN then becomes an ally of one or another of the various bosses’ factions fighting to enslave Indigenous people and control the oil wealth of the region. Our goal should be communism, not a mask for capitalist democracy.

Jobless Benefits: An Endangered Species

U.S. bosses and their apologists are always boasting that their capitalist system is "depression-proof" because of the "social safety net" in place. Well, that "net" now has more holes than net.

Official figures are showing the largest one-month job loss in ten years. But a combination of changes in the unemployment insurance (UI) laws, a massive shift in the workforce towards part-time, temporary and low-paid workers and the gutting of welfare means that the vast majority of these workers will get no benefits when they lose their jobs. Four decades ago half the unemployed were eligible for UI and millions more for welfare. Now less than one-third receive UI (the lowest of all the industrialized countries) and virtually no one who had been forced off welfare and managed to get a job will be able to get back on welfare.

For these millions of workers it’s not a recession but an absolute DEPRESSION.

The "millions of new jobs created" in the 1990s, about which Clinton was always boasting, are the very ones that have created this vast pool of 34 million workers virtually unprotected by unemployment or welfare benefits — the low-paid, the part-timers and the "temps." Of all of Clinton’s "new jobs," over 40% pay less than half of a livable wage. In fact, with temporary jobs at a record level, it has created a $72 billion industry. The largest employer in the country is a temporary job agency!

A new feature involving these unprotected workers is the "independent consultant" category, exempt from UI, largely the "dot.com" group that plunged into the ’90s looking to become instant millionaires in what they thought was a permanently expanding "new" economy. Now tens of thousands are out on the street with no UI as the dot.coms downsize and fold altogether. Such is capitalism’s current version of "pie in the sky."

The changes in the UI laws under Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Gore have made it more difficult for all workers to qualify for benefits, especially for the low-wage/temporary/part-time sector. Unless laid-off part-time workers are ready to take new full-time jobs, they are automatically ineligible for UI in most states. Part-timers comprise 20% of the total workforce, 70% of whom are women. These jobless women, most with children, have particular child-care problems which make full-time jobs (outside the home) impossible. And given the racist nature of unemployment — the jobless rate for black and Latin workers is more than double that of white workers — the impact on such workers is especially hard.

Most workers forced off welfare won’t qualify for UI because they won’t have earned enough or worked long enough. Even if they do qualify, they will net a pittance. In Georgia, a worker on a minimum-wage job for half of the year prior to being laid off, would receive a total of $672 over 13-weeks. In Florida, such a worker gets zero. In Texas under the new standards, only one in five workers overall is eligible for UI, and only one in ten within the low-wage/part-time/temporary category.

The bosses have a vested interest in keeping workers ineligible. The fewer eligible for UI, the lower the tax rate for the boss paying into the UI fund. Georgia has already cut this rate 73% and established a moratorium on any payments for the year 2000, saving the bosses $700 million. Then, when unemployment rises — as is happening now— there is less money in the UI fund to pay workers. Ain’t capitalism just grand!

Even this "social safety net" of which the bosses so proudly boast — and which they are now destroying — was never handed to workers on a silver platter. It resulted from mass struggle in the 1930s, led by communists. But this is just one more example how limiting the fight to reforming capitalism will always see the bosses taking back these reforms one way or another. They have state power and use it to enforce their drive for maximum profits, especially in times of crisis, like now. The working class’s only answer is to build the communist PLP to lead a revolution that will destroy this unemployment-driven system with one that banishes profits and therefore joblessness forever.

a name="Wanted For Murder—Litton Bosses">">"anted For Murder—Litton Bosses

NEW ORLEANS, LA, MARCH 24 — The bosses are getting away with murder in their race for oil profits while building the Navy to protect them. Litton Avondale Industries paid a meager $80,000 in fines for the deaths of three shipbuilders last summer. The toothless Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited Avondale for damaged electrical cables, improperly grounded high-voltage power boxes and failure to ensure safety procedures. In 1999, OSHA fined Avondale $717,000 for 63 safety violations.

On May 24, Clarence Rhyans was killed when his neck was pinned against an overhead beam. He was working on the deck of the USNS Mendonca, a ship under construction for the Navy. On June 27, Faustino Mendoza died of head injuries when he fell 60 feet from a scaffold. He was working without fall-protection equipment. In 1999, Avondale was cited for unsafe guardrails on scaffolds. On July 18, "E.J." Bourgeois was electrocuted while checking a power panel. He was working on a double-hulled oil tanker being built for Polar Tankers Inc. The panel had not been disconnected from its electricity source, and there were damaged power cables and faulty grounds. He had no protective gloves.

OSHA initially fined the company $89,950 for this killing spree (with no criminal charges), but lowered even that paltry sum after Avondale "promised…to make the shipyard safe." Prior to this, hard hats, safety glasses and steel-toed boots were not required.

Avondale is the Gulf Coast’s second-biggest shipyard, with 4,500 workers. Seventy percent are black. Average pay is about $9.00/hour. Many young workers and single mothers make less than $7.00/hour and work two jobs to support a family.

In 1993 the workers voted to join the Metal Trades Union. Twenty-five workers were fired for pro-union activity. The bosses used Pentagon contracts to finance a six-year fight in the courts and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Of all the black workers who were observers in the 1993 union election, only one remains.

When Litton bought Avondale, they made a deal to grant recognition to the gangster union in return for keeping out the fired workers, even though they won their NLRB cases. Last December, the company and the union saddled the workers with a four-year "partial contract" that excludes pension and health care benefits. What’s more, the racist New Orleans Metal Trades Council dispersed the workers into twelve separate local unions, rather than have them be the largest and potentially strongest local.

The struggle for one local union, and against the racism of the company and the Metal Trades Council has the potential to rally the support of the whole working class. Against all odds, and the whole capitalist system, the embers of working class rebellion continue to burn among Avondale workers. CHALLENGE can fan those flames.

Big Warmaker Becomes Bigger

On April 4, Northrop Grumman Corp. completed a $3.8 billion merger with Litton Industries, creating what it calls, "a $15 billion, top-tier global defense industry enterprise." This new global aerospace and defense giant is now the largest supplier of non-nuclear surface ships for the Navy. Litton also bought the Avondale shipyard for $529 million in 1999, joining it with its former competitor, Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss.

Northrop Grumman expects revenues to double to $15 billion in 2001 and reach $18 billion in 2003.

Worker-Student Alliance Backs Garment Strike

LOS ANGELES, April 3 — Last week at Santa Monica College (SMC), PLP students in the SMC Progressive Alliance helped organize a labor forum to inform students about current workers’ struggles and why and how students can and should play a role in them. Students participating with workers’ fight-backs exposes them to the reality of workers’ resistance to bosses’ abuse and exploitation, the essential role cops play, etc. — that is, to class struggle.

The forum, attended by nearly 50 students, was moderated by a PLP student who began by speaking about the importance of building an alliance between students and workers. Next, a garment worker representing a committee of fellow workers described the conditions they face here and in their struggle to build a workers’ organization within the garment industry. Then a garment worker with the union UNITE reported on a strike of nearly 500 workers at her factory, Hollander Home Fashions. She stressed the importance of students joining the picket line to show support.

A hotel worker outlined the fight to organize a union at local hotels. She described the support received from the community and asked the students to get involved. Finally, a transit union bus mechanic explained how the capitalist system causes the exploitation workers face and criticized the unions’ leadership and politicians for defending capitalism instead of the working class. He emphasized the importance of fighting for workers’ power within the union and building a revolutionary working class movement. He concluded by inviting students to march on MAY DAY.

Following that another garment worker in UNITE came to the front and voiced his agreement. Pointing to the bus mechanic, he said the real union is the one between workers marching side by side on the strike picket line.

Students signed up to support the strike. Several expressed interest in coming to May Day. We have confidence that many of these friends will march.

Strikers have applauded high school and college students joining the picket lines. When they’ve announced over their bullhorn, "Here come the students," cheers go up.

Scabs continue getting in. Strikers have been arrested trying to stop them, or just for being on the picket line. The union leaders advise workers to be cautious and obey the law. But workers challenged the cops, "Why don’t you arrest the owners for exploitation?"

The strikers and their student supporters see the cops defending Hollander’s huge profits and attacking the workers. Marching on May Day to fight for a system that outlaws exploitation is the best way to quickly answer these attacks.

Fight Fascist Slavery In NY Welfare

NEW YORK CITY, April 9 — As CHALLENGE has said for several years, the ending of welfare benefits for millions of the poorest workers — over 70% women and children — and the building of mass slave labor Workfare programs are parts of the development of fascism. Exaggeration—or a reality millions face every day?

• A 1997 Citizens Budget Commission study, "The State of Municipal Services in the 1990’s," found that new welfare applications procedures caused "otherwise eligible indigent New Yorkers to be denied cash benefits." Data showed in 80% of all contested cases (98% where families had some legal representation), case closings were reversed.

• The study "Who Feeds The Hungry?" (www.food for survival.org) shows that between 1995 and 1998 Emergency Feeding Programs (EFP’s) grew from 735 to 971; meals served monthly increased from 2.7 million to 5.2 million; people served per month increased from 309,280 to 615,858. Over half of those eating at EFP’s are children or the elderly. During 1998 one-third of EFP’s report they were forced to turn people away.

• By 1999, 40,000 Workfare workers were working for the city of New York. According to "Workfare: The Real Deal II" (July 1997) by the Community Food Resource Center, eight times as many workers are now jobless, without welfare, as there are workers who’ve obtained real jobs.

The next step towards ending "welfare as we know it" is taking place here. Offices that used to be called Welfare Centers, then "Income Support Centers," are being changed into "Job Centers." Programs that used to offer public aid as a last resort to individuals and families with no other income are now subject to rigid time limits and slave labor Workfare requirements. As stated by NYC’s Human Resources Commissioner Jason Turner’s October 2000 proposal to create the Job Centers, the focus is "on self-sufficiency." This new "focus" translates into a new center for "disruptive clients" due to open in East Harlem. Anyone who fights back against wrongful closing of their case, assignment to slave labor Workfare or any of the many demeaning events occurring in a center daily can be kicked out of their neighborhood center and forced to travel (up to two hours) to the East Harlem Center.

At the March membership meeting of AFSCME Local 371, representing many workers in the welfare industry, there was a heated discussion of the Job Center proposal and the new civil service title of workers employed in these centers. On the one hand there was the narrow trade unionist view of which of three unions would represent the new title. The leadership of each union wants the dues of the workers in the Job Centers. Such workers were concerned with their safety.

A veteran PLP’er rose to declare that if he was the head of a family being wrongfully denied assistance, he would certainly fight back. It was wrong, he said, to ignore the content of what the Job Center workers would be doing. The PL’er pointed out that during strikes of this local in the 1960’s, welfare clients had mobilized to support the strikers by demanding that the city provide needed services at once. Worker/client unity had also been built by workers supporting client demands in the welfare rights movements. In fact the first contract of this local, in 1965, contained clauses guaranteeing the issuance of school and camp clothing for children when receiving welfare. Safety for workers, he concluded, was in building worker/client unity, not in calling for cops. This talk shifted the discussion away from "safety" and towards a broader analysis of where welfare reform is leading and the role of welfare workers within this.

In this period, we in PLP must struggle to win our co-workers to critically evaluate what they’re being asked to do and not blindly cooperate with these fascist developments. Rather we must organize against them.

LA Janitors Fight Corrupt Union, Plan for May Day

LOS ANGELES — A year ago the janitors made history here with a mass, militant strike. The union leaders, Democratic and Republican politicians, liberal organizations and churches praised capitalist democracy and the change to "a new Los Angeles unionism." The union’s slogan was, "A penny to rise up out of poverty." On the outside, everything looked rosy, but on the inside this whole process was corrupted. Strike donations were lost; strikers never received food collected for them that was later sold at the 99¢ stores. Traps and tricks punished the most militant strikers. The following is an interview with one of the rank-and-file strike organizers.

PLP: What’s new at work?

Janitor: Local 1877 has a new plan of "dues for self improvement" which is really another trap. They want to charge every member an extra $4.30 a month for five months, about a million dollars extra per year. They say they’ll use the money for classes in computers and English, and for child care during marches.

PLP: What do most workers think of this plan?

Janitor: They’re mad and have every reason to be. Look, people who make $7.50 an hour are paying $27.50 a month to be members and a dollar extra for strike funds. Now with a small wage increase, we’ll have to pay $1.80 more to the union. Altogether we’ll be paying $34 a month in dues. Apart from this, they wanted us to pay $3 a month for three years to help the bosses’ politicians. They filled us with propaganda from all the politicians who had their pictures taken with us during the strike, and now tell us, "These are your friends; now they need us to pay them something back for what they did for us. "Many people told them "NO!" Some said, "You are Democrats. We’re not Democrats or Republicans."

PLP: Do you and your friends have a plan to struggle inside the union?

Janitor: Certainly. These "dues for self improvement" have been imposed on us. Once they take the money out of our checks we’ll demonstrate in front of the Local to expose them as corrupt. They made a mistake with all these charges. They think they can fool the workers with this "self improvement." Instead they’ve got an angry membership.

PLP: How can we win the workers to be more political, to fight these attacks, and to turn more to revolutionary politics?

Janitor: With more leaflets and struggles in the work centers, with CHALLENGE and with political marches.

PLP: Last year, many janitors made revolutionary history by marching on May Day in San Francisco. How can we bring a large group this year here in Los Angeles?

Janitor: May Day is the workers’ day. I think they must come. We’ll invite them and explain the importance of the march, and show why the fight for workers’ power is the alternative to the bosses’ and union’s corruption.

PLP sent a May Day March invitation to all the janitors who read CHALLENGE. Many responded enthusiastically. A worker called to say, "I want to become a May Day organizer." We’ve been visiting and calling many janitors, to win them to participate in the march. Also, a motion was put before an opposition group in the union to endorse the march. They’ll decide at their next meeting whether they’ll come as a group or only call on the workers to march. There is great potential for a big group of janitors at the May Day March. We must sharpen the struggle to make this potential a reality.

Salvadoran Workers Headed for May Day

EL SALVADOR — May Day 2001 is being celebrated here amid growing misery and pain for a working class devastated by earthquakes and rotten conditions caused by capitalism. Thousands of workers from the cities and rural areas will be joining the official union May Day marches. Workers will not only honor the Martyrs of the 1886 Chicago General Strike — where May Day was born — but also will protest the current government’s anti-working class policies. Unlike previous May Days, intellectuals and professionals — now seeing they are not exempt from the bosses’ attacks — will march this year.

We in PLP are also preparing for May Day. Comrades will be travelling long distances from mountains and distant towns, passing through police check-points, to come to the capital city for a PLP May Day planning meeting. "It is important that each Party comrade understand why we march on May Day, to bring to the marchers our communist politics and to make newer comrades more aware of the meaning of our ideas," said a comrade teacher.

CHALLENGES and our communist leaflets, red flags and banners will be present at the march in San Salvador. Fight for communism on May Day!

Dinner Boosts N.J. May Day

ORANGE, NJ, March 24 — Fifty-five people attended the annual May Day Dinner and Cultural Evening here tonight, boosting our May Day organizing. The multi-racial crowd of workers and students included many who had never been to one of our events. Nearly $400 was contributed for May Day tickets and for lots of literature.

Our cultural presentations included poetry and prose, some of it original, forceful speeches and songs, both rehearsed and ad-libbed. The May Day presentation reviewed the executions of the Haymarket radicals in 1886 following the Chicago general strike for the 8-hour day which gave birth to May Day. The decision to kill these revolutionary heroes reminded us of how the legal system has always served the bosses. But as August Spies declared on the gallows: "The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices that you strangle today."

The Morristown case here continues that criminal injustice system. Like those who came before us, we will answer the rulers’ attacks by building our revolutionary movement. But we will not be content with a "reformed" capitalism. Our goal is the seizure of power, the destruction of capitalist wage slavery and racist oppression, and the creation of a communist world where our working-class culture will flower.

The event was organized and led by some of the newer PLP comrades, a step forward for the Party here. Although we needed more participation from younger comrades and friends in the cultural part of the program, still the dinner set a good tone for the following five weeks.

Our increased turnout was due in no small part to an increased commitment of Party comrades. The struggle to increase literature distribution has sharpened the question of whether we are serious about our revolutionary goals. Nothing less will do in the face of growing fascism. Two eight-year-olds from a grade school in Irvington were recently arrested, questioned for five hours and then charged with making "terroristic threats." All this for playing "cops and robbers" with paper guns! The Newark school superintendent wants video cameras in every high school. We are building the fight against fascism in mass organizations while explaining to our friends there about a communist view of the police and legal system.

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[A letter in our April 11 issue reported the brutal racist murder by two Seattle cops of Michael Randall Ealy, a 35-year-old African American. Neither an inquest nor a civil suit brought by Michael’s mother produced any justice for Michael. The following is an interview with Mrs. Ealy.]

Challenge: What do you think of this system?

Mrs. E.: You could be innocent, or you could be guilty, but there’s no justice. The judicial system shows that more every day. People think they are safe, but they aren’t. If there aren’t poor people or people of color, then the cops get whoever else is around. The person who is more powerful always gets off. Even if it’s proven that the cops are guilty, they are still found innocent.

Challenge: Why is it this way?

Mrs. E.: In most of the cases in Seattle and other cities around the country, the police have been found innocent, but we know that’s not true. We hope these cases will be reopened, as where DNA has shown that the people are innocent, even though they have spent many years in prison. I am hoping that someday it will be fashionable for a jury to say that when anyone committed a crime, they will be accountable for their actions; this includes the police.

Challenge: What are you planning to do next?

Mrs. E.: We are hoping for a retrial/appeal, but that is very expensive. It will cost nearly $10,000 to get the trial transcripts. Still, we are determined to continue the fight. I want to get the families of the people who have been murdered in the Seattle area together, because we are stronger with greater numbers.

What I have to ask: Is there such a word as justice?! That word should be stricken, because we know there is no justice for people of color, poor people and other "undesirable" people,

Challenge: There is no justice for workers as long as we are bound by capitalism. That is why we organize for a revolution. We are hoping Mrs. E. will join us on May Day, to tell us about the continuing fight against cop murders and to make our numbers stronger.

a name="Psychiatric Rx For Kids’ Problems: ‘Just Say Yes!’"></a>"sychiatric Rx For Kids’ Problems: ‘Just Say Yes!’

NEW YORK CITY, April 6 — Last Sunday a half-day conference at a local church here explored the question: Are too many children being diagnosed as "mentally ill" and treated with psychotropic drugs? The conference was timely because the psychiatric profession, pediatricians and government health agencies are spreading the notion that, within any given year, 20% of children are mentally ill and that these "illnesses" are nearly all biologically-based and therefore best treated with medication. The most common diagnoses are Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, anxiety and depression. Over five million children are on psychiatric drugs in the U.S., primarily Ritalin. Now a multi-site study is underway to evaluate the effect of Ritalin on 3-year-olds!

A well-known psychiatrist and former department head at the National Institutes of Mental Health described the massive drug-company influence over psychiatry. He noted that the drug companies spend twice as much money on marketing as on research; that they sponsor over half of the country’s medical research and influence what gets published. Consequently, psychiatry has turned completely away from "talk therapy" and interaction with patients to treatment with medications only. The speaker was disturbed enough by these trends to resign from the American Psychiatric Association.

The second speaker, a child psychiatrist, pointed out that drugs like Ritalin are often sought by middle class parents as a way to improve their children’s "performance," without really dealing with their problems or accepting their abilities. He did indicate that for some children, Ritalin combined with school and family adjustments may be helpful for a short time.

The third speaker was a psychologist who works with the NYC public schools. She pointed out differences in how Ritalin is used. Among the well-to-do, mostly white suburbanites, it is viewed as a short-term agent to "enhance performance." Meanwhile it is pushed on poor working-class parents, both urban (often black and Latino) and rural, as a means of controlling children. In both cases there is no analysis of the many factors influencing behavior. Parents may not even be informed that their child is being evaluated. Often if they object to medication they are threatened with charges of "neglect" and removal of their children.

Although presenting a factual picture about current child psychiatric practices, the speakers mostly failed to place this emphasis on controlling children’s behavior into a social context. During the discussion period several PLP’ers pointed out that the need to pacify children rather than improve schools or attack poverty is part of the current move towards fascism and war. Intellectually, biodeterminism is infecting all areas of academic life (see CHALLENGE supplement, April 11). It claims that our genes and body chemistry — rather than the social system in which we live — determine our happiness, abilities and success in life. Not only are children being held responsible for alleged behavioral or academic "deficiencies," but they’re being chemically controlled to make them passive and malleable.

This conference can be a stepping-stone to intensify the fight-back among teachers, parents and social workers in several organizations and unions also alarmed about this trend. Another demonstration against the drugging of toddlers is planned at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. PLP’ers will continue to give political and organizational leadership in this struggle.

Workers of the World, Write! John Brown Play Gets it Right

CHALLENGE readers and friends should see a new play on John Brown if and when it comes to their area. It allows for audience discussion after the show. John Brown played a major role in the fight against slavery. He was one of the few white abolitionists who was not merely against slavery but actually believed in racial equality. Besides participating in the Underground Railroad, he lived with free blacks in Ohio and New York State. Anti-racists in Internaitional Commitee Against Racism and communists in PLP in the Washington, D.C. area have organized trips for many years to Harper’s Ferry to draw modern-day lessons from John Brown’s raid. The trips emphasized several aspects of his life: (1) the multi-racial unity he exhibited; (2) the support of many workers around the country; and (3) the necessity of violence to overthrow slavery.

Some friends and I in attended the two-person play, "Sword of the Spirit," by Greg Artzner and Terry Leonino, based on letters John and Mary Brown wrote while he awaited execution for leading the Harper’s Ferry insurrection against slavery. Their words lift the veil of lies written about John Brown. Most history books, if they mention John Brown at all, call him insane. As one woman who attended the play declared, "My father told me ‘of course they thought John Brown was insane. Here was a white man fighting to free the slaves!’"

The play depicts the passion and courage of his convictions, and reveals the depth of devotion both his wife and their children had for the cause. Their marriage was strengthened by their political commitment. The play will be touring all the places where John and Mary Brown went.

Much discussion ensued about John Brown and the role violence plays in social change both during audience participation after the play and in inviting our friends to attend. Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks was mentioned as a book NOT to read because of its false portrayal of John Brown. It says he was an authoritarian father whose belief was "spare the rod and spoil the child." In fact, the two actors who researched letters for this play said this was untrue. An older son commented on how John Brown was very devoted to his children. His wife mentioned how he would nurse them through their various illnesses.

D.C. Comrade

Census Spawns Racist Divisions

The 2000 Census figures show that Latinos are becoming the largest minority in the U.S. Instead of building unity among black and Latino workers and youth, some forces are playing the old-fashioned racist game of divide and conquer. The Daily Challenge, a black newspaper in Brooklyn, NY (absolutely no relation to this paper), ran an incredible KKK-type article entitled, "Blacks Have Reservations About Influx of Hispanic Immigrants" (April 5). It quotes a computer engineer from Charlotte, NC (where the Latino population is only one-fourth that of blacks) as saying: "Hispanics come over here, start businesses and multiply like rabbits. It is no surprise they outnumber us because they have a baby every year." [!] The article repeats distortions and lies which could have been taken right from a KKK rag. This paper claims to fight racism.

Not to be outdone, many Latino politicians are trying to use the growth of the Latino population to build themselves up. They push similar lies like, "blacks got theirs; now it’s our turn." They, of course, mean black politicians and Latino politicians.

Meanwhile, racism is increasingly rampant. Low wages and rotten working conditions and jobs affect black and Latino workers as much as ever. While a small number of politicians, artists, athletes and a very tiny number of business owners have snatched some crumbs from the racist system, building illusions among many black and Latino workers and youth that the system works, the reality is quite the opposite. One telling example: there are two million in jail, two-thirds of them black and Latino males.

The best antidote for this racist crap is the unity of black, Latino, white and Asian workers and youth marching with PLP on May!

NYC Comrade

Bosses Blow Fuse; Workers Get Shock

The deregulation of power in California helps us to somewhat understand how capitalism works and why it can never serve the interests of the working class.

The California State government declared that prices the California utilities pay for power (to companies outside the state) be subject to supply and demand. Meanwhile, ostensibly to protect consumers (mainly California's working class) from higher bills, the State put a cap on the prices the in-state utilities could charge.

So this was the set-up: the State government allowed (or couldn't prevent) prices the in-state utilities pay to rise without limit. At the same time, the State prevented the in-state utilities from raising their prices higher than they were charged for the wholesale power. On the surface that sounds like a way to protect the consumer, but that's only if the in-state utilities could stay in business.

The State government has not given itself the legal authority to force the utilities to stay in business, and even if it did, it can't get blood from a stone. If the utilities are operating at a loss, they cannot pay their workers. Nor will the banks lend them the money with which to buy more power, because the utilities would be unable to re-pay the loans. In other words, this set-up, with its built-in losses, forces the utilities out of business.

Neither has the State given itself the authority to prevent the utilities from shifting money between itself and its parent companies, outside of California. But even that would not save the utilities from going bankrupt. And if the utilities do go out of business, that wouldn't help the working class either. If prices were forced down, that only helps if the power is available.

Since the State doesn't give itself the authority to keep these utilities in business, its only alternative is to become the supplier of energy itself, buying power at the outrageous prices charged by the out-of-state wholesalers. Where would the State get the money to buy the power? Through its authority to tax the citizens, mainly workers. But then the workers would be paying for the higher prices charged by the wholesale power companies. These out-of-state power companies are beyond California's jurisdiction, so the State government could not control the prices it would have to pay.

No matter how you slice it, workers could get the needed energy at reasonable cost only by owning the State and giving themselves the authority to take over the energy companies, right through to the sources of the energy. That's the only way workers could maintain the supply at a cost low enough so they're not forced to choose between heat and food. But if the workers owned the state they would not need to charge themselves any price. Rather they could simply provide everything they need for themselves. But that's not capitalism, that's communism, and to get there will take a revolution.

An energy user

TO OUR WEB READERS: This issue of CHALLENGE includes a special supplement on the racist sociobiology "science." How it has spread to all areas of the academic world and its effects on our daily lives. Again, we ask our web readers to help us keep both versions of our newspaper (the digital one and the printed one) spreading communist politics as an antidote to the poisong of capitalism and all its different ideologies. You can help subscribing to the printed version of the paper or sending a contribution. One year sub to CHALLENGE cost 15 dollars. You can send a check or MO made out to Challenge periodicals and mail it to PLP: GPO Box 808, Brooklyn, NY 11202, USA.

1. Spy Vs. Spy Shows
   U.S.-Russian Bosses on Collision Course
2. Rulers Want Latino Mayor For
   L. A. to Curb Class Struggle
3. SCABS, NATIONAL GUARD
   BREAK NURSING HOME STRIKE
   1. SOLID MULTI-RACIAL UNITY
4. Boeing's Top Bosses Leave Town:
   Are They Taking our Jobs and Pensions with Them?
   1. Even The Bosses Admit What The Workers Know
   2. A Strategic War Asset
   3. How Did CHALLENGE Know?
5. Ford Workers Fight for A Better Idea
6. Europe's Bosses Invading U.S. `Backyard'
   1. European Imperialist Inroads in Latin America
   2. The Boys from Brazil
7. Pipeline Politics Fueled Balkan Bombing
   1. Macedonia: Pipeline Politics II
8. Garment Strikers Fight Scabs, Welcome CHALLENGE
9. Transit Workers' Unity Jails
   Sexist D.C. Boss
10. Jobs Cut, Profits Rocket, Capitalism Kills 91 Oil Workers
11. UCLA: Take Affirmative Action To Smash Bosses' Racism
12. `No Free Speech For Racists!'
13. Capitalism's No Accident; Murders Two More Steelworkers
14. LETTERS
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. They Can't Stand
       the Truth
    2. Smack C.R.A.C.K.
    3. Fighting for
       Our Children
    4. U.S. STEEL, KKK
       Go Way Back
    5. Vietnam: Turning
       The Guns Around
    6. Murder in Seattle By Racist Cops
    7. Capitalist Anthropology:
       `Science' of Extermination
    8. Guns, Germs, Steel and Anthropologists
    9. BACKLASH
15. Zapatistas March:
    Can't Reform Bosses' Racist Rule.
16. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Special Effects Make History Disappear

Editorial 1

Spy Vs. Spy Shows
U.S.-Russian Bosses on Collision Course

The recent "spy vs. spy" finger-pointing between U.S. and Russian bosses confirms that the main political trend in the world today is sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry.

In the wake of revelations that an FBI agent had been handing U.S. security secrets to the Russians for years, Bush ordered the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats. The Russians retaliated. Both groups of rulers will eventually limit this particular incident. Regardless of its short-term tactical result, however, the incident itself shows that U.S. and Russian bosses are on a long-range collision course. U.S. bosses want to rule the world. After all, the Russian bosses still have one of the world's largest nuclear arsenals and the largest country in the world. They don't want to be ruled by other bosses.

When the old Soviet Union self-destructed in 1991, many U.S. capitalists thought they could take advantage of a super-profit bonanza. They rushed in with loans and investments. They succeeded mainly in wreaking economic terror against the Russian working class by helping Russian vulture capitalists strip it bare of broad protections and benefits workers had enjoyed for decades under Soviet socialism. But the U.S. business pipe-dream was short-lived. Led by current president Putin, a group of Russian nationalist politicians and generals grabbed power away from the Yeltsin clique, who had favored deals with the U.S.

Many in the U.S. ruling class have done an about-face over policy toward Russia. One of the most important is Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. As C.E.O. of aluminum giant Alcoa, he tried to take over the huge Russian aluminum industry during the Yeltsin years. Putin gave O'Neill the bum's rush, preferring to deal with the French aluminum company, Péchiney. Now O'Neill calls further loans to Russia "crazy" (New York Times, 3/25).

O'Neill reflects Bush & Co.'s overall hawkishness toward Russia. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz made hostile statements to the British press about Russian arms deals with Iran. In February, Bush National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice called Russia "a threat to the world in general" (New York Post, 3/25).

This sparring isn't just verbal. The Bush administration intends to expand NATO to include the Baltic nations on Russia's border, a clear attempt to surround Russia and prevent it from becoming an imperialist threat to U.S. world domination. Further trying to humiliate Putin & Co., a Bush State Department official will meet with the foreign minister of the Chechen nationalists with whom Russian rulers have waged a brutal war for the last year and a half.

The Russian bosses have a long road to travel before they can confront U.S. imperialism as equals. However, they are mapping out such a strategy. "Despite Russia's economic weakness...[Putin...is rebuilding] relationships with...former Soviet republics in hopes of slowing NATO's expansion" (New York Times, 3/25). The Russians are re-establishing toeholds in other strategically vital areas -- the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, Korea and even Cuba.

The Russians aren't alone. As the Times grudgingly admits, the U.S. may still be the "lone superpower," but the "world is starting to get in its way" (3/25). The "world" includes the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, China and Western Europe. U.S. efforts to impose "peace" on Israel and the Palestinians are fizzling. Saddam Hussein still holds power and continues to thumb his nose at Exxon Mobil. Differences between the U.S. and Chinese bosses are growing. And "the U.S. and the European Union are on the brink of a major trade and economic conflict," according to C. Fred Bergsten, head of the Institute for International Economic Studies (NYT, 3/25).

None of the above furnishes a recipe for peace and tranquillity, particularly if the worldwide profit system's current economic slump continues. Like the Russians, the Chinese and Europeans are a far cry from the strength they will need to unseat U.S. imperialism. But contradictions between U.S. rulers and their rivals are slowly sharpening and U.S. isolation is increasing.

Competition among imperialists for markets, resources and cheap labor makes war inevitable. As CHALLENGE has often noted, all the world's rulers are secretly planning for this war, even if it lies in a still-undetermined future. We, too, must make our plans as a class. As the drift toward world war accelerates over the coming decades, the progress we make today and tomorrow in building our Party and in sharpening the class struggle will enable the working class to understand the necessity to turn imperialist war into class war for communism.

[Editor's note: The Bush administration is also retooling its foreign policy to treat China as a strategic enemy. Regardless of tactical disputes among U.S. bosses about which of the two looms as the primary threat to their domination, the trend is toward treating each as a strategic foe. Future CHALLENGE articles will examine the growth of these two rivalries.]

Editorial 2

Rulers Want Latino Mayor For
L. A. to Curb Class Struggle

About two dozen candidates are running for mayor here on April 10. Only six are considered serious contenders. Of these, only two will remain for a June run-off that's virtually inevitable with such a large number of candidates. The run-off will most likely be between James Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa. Hahn is the city attorney and son of the late Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, remembered kindly by many liberals and black voters, particularly in South Central LA. Villaraigosa is the former speaker of the California State Assembly.

Hahn is white. Villaraigosa is Mexican-American. In a city over 60% minority, of which the majority is Latin, Villaraigosa is the candidate of choice of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, the Eastern Establishment. Not surprisingly, he has been praised by the New York Times, and endorsed by the LA Times, Gov. Gray Davis, the LA County Federation of Labor and by many black liberal politicians and religious leaders.

He is proud to describe himself as a "product of the American dream," a poor boy from the barrio, whose abandoned mother's efforts and affirmative action put him through college and on the road to success. He is charismatic and, as the LA Times writes, has "the highest potential to take up the unifying mantle of the late Tom Bradley." Bradley made "history" as the first black elected mayor of LA.

But Villaraigosa, 48, is not without blemishes. Besides having Clinton-style marital relations, after being appointed to his first public position by County Supervisor Gloria Molina, one of his first acts was to grant Molina's husband a contract for $193,000.

But none of this worries the ruling class. Their politicians' rampant immorality in both private and public life is common knowledge. What does worry the rulers is his claim that sometimes he leads "with my heart instead of my head," as he said to explain his letter to President Clinton to pardon Carlos Vignali. Vignali was a big-time drug dealer whose father was a hefty contributor to Villaraigosa's political campaigns. Another main concern is that, although he is an able coalition builder, "Does he know the line between trying to forge coalitions and trying to please everyone all the time?"asks the LA Times (3/25) "As Mayor, will he be able to say no to them [the unions] when necessary?"

Nevertheless, he's their best choice for implementing their plans for war and fascism. According to the same LA Times editorial, the main problems to be addressed are "rehabilitating the LAPD,.... saving the public school system, [and] the racial and class resentments simmering just below the surface." War is not mentioned, but the U.S. military has a major propaganda blitz to recruit more Latino youth. The ruling class hopes that Villaraigosa will be able to dampen the class struggle, maintain fascist police terror through community policing and get Latino and black youth to willingly fight and die for U.S. imperialism.

But capitalism is driven by its own internal laws that no boss or politician can correct. Voting for any of these politicians won't change a thing. The deepening economic crisis inflicting misery and havoc on the working class, plus a racist police state mowing down young black and Latin youth in the streets, terrorizing and imprisoning tens of thousands, does not bode well for "peace and harmony." Communists in PLP will fight to turn that "simmering racial and class resentment" into a fight for communism.

SCABS, NATIONAL GUARD
BREAK NURSING HOME STRIKE

BLOOMFIELD, CONN., March 27 -- "This is supposed to be these people's golden years," declared a locked-out nursing home worker at the Alexandria Nursing Home here. "It's impossible to do the kind of job that will allow this to happen," she said. She was one of 4,500 nursing assistants and food and maintenance workers, members of District 1199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union, who walked out last week at 40 nursing homes throughout the state in a planned one-day strike.

The workers' main demand was for increases in per-patient staffing levels. Here there is only one nursing aide assigned to 40 patients on the night shift.

Gov. John Rowland immediately called out the National Guard to break the strike by escorting the bosses' hired scabs into the struck workplaces. Rowland pledged $6 million to cover the cost of those scabs.

SOLID MULTI-RACIAL UNITY

The strikers here are largely black women whose overwhelming feeling is concern for their patients who they treat "like family." But when they headed back, the racist bosses, with no feeling either for the workers or their patients, locked out 1,500 statewide for the next four days while the scabs continued to work their jobs. Then the bosses threatened to refuse to take back the mostly white LPN's altogether because they're seeking union recognition. But the predominantly black aides and maintenance workers vowed, "We'll all stay out together. Everyone in or no one in!" This multi-racial solidarity resulted in the LPN's returning with everyone else. Workers grabbed whatever CHALLENGES a PLP member had as they told him to make sure he brings this next issue with their story.

Rowland's attack follows Bush's latest blocking of a Northwest mechanics walkout and pledge to break any strike by 100,000 airline workers whose contracts expire this year. (See CHALLENGE, March 28.) Under capitalism's class rule, government (State) power is the bosses' biggest weapon to make strikes illegal and force workers to knuckle under to their profit system.

The Governor claimed it was necessary for the State to pay the scabs (with workers' tax money) to safeguard the nursing home residents. But he hasn't appeared worried over the threat to their safety caused by understaffing and sped-up workers the other 51 weeks a year.

Despite all the hoopla about budget "surpluses", the bosses face a crisis, trying to re-coup falling profits in many industries while planning for costly wars in the Middle East and the Balkans. Maintaining a huge naval armada in the Persian Gulf to control oil routes costs $50 billion a year -- a billion dollars a week!

This kind of 1-day walkout the union called won't cut it. It reveals to the bosses the union leaders' refusal to wage an all-out battle. The unions, while calling strikes here and there, are loyal to the bosses' profit system and refuse to mobilize the entire working class to back particular groups of workers on the front lines. That kind of class war will only happen with communist leadership that doesn't operate within the bosses' laws. Through that kind of political struggle workers can learn, and act on, the necessity to get rid of the whole damn system.

Boeing's Top Bosses Leave Town:
Are They Taking our Jobs and Pensions with Them?

SEATTLE, WA, March 25 -- Last Monday we were debating if the Boeing bosses suckered us by offering 401k's instead of adequate guaranteed pensions with a cost-of-living escalator. On Wednesday, CEO "Lyin Phil" Condit announced corporate HQ was moving to Chicago, Denver or Dallas. On Friday, we got the "good news": Boeing was not going to sell the commercial division "for the foreseeable future," but 500 manufacturing jobs would soon be eliminated and the 757-fuselage assembly would be gone from here.

The week was not so bad--for some. Lyin Phil got a 400% raise, pulling in a hefty $18.7 million. Boeing president Stonecipher got $16.2 million, while Alan Mulally, CEO of the Commercial division, netted a "meager" $8.5 million.

While some workers on the shop floor seemed baffled, soon a theme emerged: capitalism had pushed the aerospace industry into a crisis of overproduction. The anarchy of the bosses' system was destroying our lives.

Even The Bosses Admit What The Workers Know

"Boeing...is...a company that is generating a flood of cash," said Wolfgang Demish, an investment banker and a long-time Boeing specialist. (New York Times, 3/23) "The critical issue from a corporate perspective is how do you deploy that cash for the benefit of the shareholders."

"I listened to Condit," said a machinist, using wisdom gained through class struggle, "and all I heard was shareholders, shareholders and profits, profits, nothing about employees."

It's true we made oodles of money for the bosses. The "financial markets" (i.e. the biggest capitalists) demand huge profits from the investment of this capital. Boeing can't make that kind of profit building airplanes because "it can no longer dominate the market for airplanes, as it once did." (Reuters, 3/22) Too many jets are chasing a shrinking market. Orders have dropped more than 50% the first quarter of this year.

Lyin Phil's answer is to dump money into the "new economy" and speculate in the stock market. The company has spent more than $3 billion of the money we made for them buying back its own shares. More billions have been sunk into airborne Internet schemes, but "airlines enthusiasm for in-flight Internet has cooled."(New York Times, 3/23) Boeing has also expanded aircraft maintenance services, but run into competition from some of its big customers, like United and Northwest. Meanwhile, European Airbus has invested $10 billion in their new Superjumbo jet--which is already replacing Boeing's cash cow, the 747.

Boeing is forced to look for places to generate bigger profits so it's moving its headquarters to free itself to make more of these speculative investments, financed by gutting its manufacturing base. "It's a lot easier to slaughter the cow when it's not in your own back yard," observed a machine operator.

During the last year and a half, Boeing stock would rise every time the company announced one of these "asset reductions." Interestingly enough, last week's announcements saw Boeing stock sink. You can only go to that well so many times. The absurdity of capitalism is becoming all too obvious.

A Strategic War Asset

Boeing is a strategic war asset, necessary to the dominance of U.S. imperialism. Ultimately, U.S. bosses won't allow Boeing to collapse--no matter how many of us they have to destroy. The situation is even more urgent since, "The European Commission and aerospace industry executives have unveiled `A Vision for 2020' which calls for a $93 billion investment over 20 years to obtain `global leadership' in aeronautics," reports Aviation Week and Space Technology (3/05).

The crisis in commercial aircraft production has put U.S. bosses between a rock and a hard place. Commercial production helps war production with technology and capital, but as commercial production becomes less profitable, the benefits rapidly disappear. The Pentagon intends to aid Boeing in a desperate gamble to "free up" capital for military production. The Air Force is telling the airlines to buy C-17 military transports from Boeing, subsidized by the Pentagon and use them for commercial freight shipments. But if war comes, the airlines must lease them back to the Pentagon. All this means the C-17s will be virtually given to airlines at taxpayers' expense, while the Pentagon's Defense Science task force recommends a dozen ways to lower our wages.

The union leadership says they will fight for every job. To them that means calling another press conference. To us that means organizing class struggle pointing the way to the only sensible solution--communist revolution. We'll advance this struggle on many fronts, including flooding the plants with May Day leaflets. Each and every May Day marcher will help us organize for the coming battle against this exploitative system. To Lyin Phil and his gang, we say, "You can run, but you can't hide!"

How Did CHALLENGE Know?

"How did you guys know about Corporate's move before the announcement?" asked a Boeing CHALLENGE reader.
"We didn't."
"But I read that article about how you have to pay attention to the primary contradictions of this system, just like you can't ignore faults in the ground."
"Oh! We were just talking about the crisis of overproduction and inter-imperialist rivalry in general."
"I guess I'm going to have to study that paper more carefully," concluded the now-avid CHALLENGE reader.
A few others that we know have also decided--on their own--to take CHALLENGE more seriously. Their faith in this system has been shaken. How many more will read, sell and contribute to our paper, given the present circumstances, if we consciously campaign for a bigger circulation? Let's find out!

Ford Workers Fight for A Better Idea

MEXICO, March 26 -- In order to maintain its position in the sharpening competition for markets, Ford is trying to impose its fascist production program (FPS). Ford bosses want to nullify labor contracts and make class struggle illegal. This is a stage of capitalism called fascism. The new Fox government, like the PRI before it, has opened the door to legalizing the Ford program.

For three years they've tried to get workers at a Ford assembly plant here to submit mind, body and soul to the interests of the company. But rank-and-file workers are resisting. Ford said, "Accept or you're fired," but only a minority wears the company shirt. In a February audit to guage its progress, Ford reported reaching a level 3 on a scale of 10. But even this is fictitious.

The local union committee opposes FPS. Ford and the gangster leadership of the national union (CTM) decided to get rid of it. They tried to win the support of the workers, but the majority repudiated them. In spite of this massive rejection, Ford dissolved the local committee.

The committee called an assembly. Ford and the national union attacked and intimidated the workers but half of them attended the meeting. The fired committee has rejected the national CTM and declared itself independent. The fired committee has accepted the support of another labor federation which unfortunately is just as fascist as the CTM, converting it into a fight of gangsters vs. gangsters for power. Meanwhile, Ford persists in imposing the CTM national committee.

A rebellious worker asked CHALLENGE, "What's happening?" We answered, "Capitalism is in a crisis of overproduction, which leads to increased work-loads, layoffs, fascism and war. We can't win with pro-capitalist gangster union leaders. We need a communist party to confront the bosses and destroy them."

This worker showed his agreement by singing a stanza of a song calling on the workers to fight. He promised to write a song about the Party and the revolution. This kind of response makes the decaying atmosphere of capitalism livable.

Europe's Bosses Invading U.S. `Backyard'

Since President Monroe's 1823 Doctrine of "America for the Americans," proclaiming the Western Hemisphere as the U.S. sphere of influence, the U.S. has considered Latin America its "backyard." In 1845, the U.S. annexed Texas. The ensuing war cost Mexico a fifth of its territory (including California).

In 1898, the U.S. provoked a war with Spain by having its own agents sink the U.S. battleship Maine in the port of Havana, Cuba. Spain lost the remainder of its empire -- Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines -- to the U.S. In 1903, the U.S. supported a rebellion to separate Panama from Colombia. Then it built the Panama Canal. Throughout the last century U.S. rulers sent the Marines to country after country, installing the most brutal dictators in power (Trujillo, Somoza, Batista, Pinochet, the death squads governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, etc.). In the second half of the 20th century, as the U.S. launched its cold war against the former Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands were murdered by the anti-communist death squads and right-wing governments imposed by the U.S. in Central America, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Haiti, etc.

Now U.S. bosses have launched Plan Colombia, spending $1.7 billion to maintain the Monroe Doctrine in Colombia, using the "war on drugs" as a cover. It was begun by Clinton and is now being continued by Bush. But instead of sending the Marines, the White House uses mercenaries (mostly former U.S. Special Forces) and local death squads. Since closing the Panama Canal military headquarters of the U.S. southern command, the U.S. has used bases in other countries (like the Manta air base in Ecuador) to pursue its Plan Colombia.

European Imperialist Inroads in Latin America

European imperialists are increasingly exploiting the cheap labor and resources of Latin America. Spain's banks are the leaders. From 1995 to 1998, the Spanish bank BBVA bought banks in Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and Puerto Rico and became partners with the Bhif bank of Chile. In 2000 it took over Mexico's Bancomer, its biggest acquisition in Latin America.

In the last year BSCH, Spain's largest bank, spent $8.4 billion to acquire three banks: Banespa, Brazil's third largest private financial group and Banco Serfin and Banco Caracas, the fourth largest banks in Mexico and Venezuela respectively.

The Boys from Brazil

This financial "invasion" is part of the growth of European investments. Previously they were centered in Brazil and Argentina, but now Europe's annual investments have virtually equaled those of the U.S. Latin America draws 60% of Germany's overseas investments, 52% of Holland's and 44% of Britain's. Europe is now Brazil's main trading partner. Germany accounts for 27%, ahead of the U.S. at 20%, in trading with Latin America's largest country.

BP, Elf-Totalfina, Repsol and Shell are among the European energy companies expanding into the U.S. "backyard," along with auto giants like VW, Peugeot, FIAT and Renault. They represent intense competition for U.S. companies.

U.S. bosses still have many aces up their sleeve to protect their empire, including the expansion of NAFTA into the so-called Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, to try to keep out the European bosses. The competition among these imperialists will continually sharpen.

(Coming articles will deal with various aspects of this struggle, including the price paid by workers and their allies because of imperialist rivalry, the role of opportunist forces allying themselves with the different imperialist forces and how can we build a revolutionary communist movement to fight these imperialist butchers.)

Pipeline Politics Fueled Balkan Bombing

A special report appearing in the British newspaper Guardian (2/15) confirms CHALLENGE'S analysis of the Balkan war as a struggle for control over oil pipelines. It documents a project "little-reported in any British, European or American newspaper," the Trans-Balkan pipeline, whose "purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian Sea....likely to become the main route for the oil and gas now being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day.

"The project is necessary, according to...the U.S. Trade and Development Agency because the oil coming from the Caspian `will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus [Strait, through Turkey] as a shipping lane.' The scheme, the Agency notes, will `provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries, provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor, [and] advance the privatisation aspirations of the U.S. government in the region.'"

The Guardian reports that Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, said in November 1998 that, "This is about America's energy security,....about preventing strategic inroads by those who don't share our values....

"We would like to see them [Central Asian countries] reliant on Western commercial and political interests rather than going the other way. {Russia] We've made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right."

The Guardian also stated that the pipeline "featured prominently in Balkan war politics. On December 9, 1998, the Albanian president...noted `that no solution [to the pipeline scheme] confined within Serbian borders will bring a lasting peace.'" "The message," says the Guardian, "could scarcely have been blunter: if you want Albanian consent for the Trans-Balkan pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the hands of the Serbs." That was exactly the main purpose of the U.S./NATO Balkan bombing: to oust the Serbs from Kosovo. In fact, the Guardian reports, "In July 1993...the U.S. sent peacekeeping forces to the Balkans. They were stationed not in the conflict zones in which civilians were being rounded up and killed, but on the northern borders of Macedonia...."-- precisely where this pipeline project was headed.

Concludes Guardian reporter George Monbiat, "I can't tell you that the war in the former Yugoslavia was fought solely to secure access to oil from...central Asia. But in light of these findings, can anyone now claim that it was not?" Enough said....

Macedonia: Pipeline Politics II

Fighting over export oil pipeline routes for Caspian oil continues to fuel violence in the Balkans. In 1999, when the U.S. and its NATO allies rained "humanitarian" high explosives on Serbia, CHALLENGE revealed that the Western powers' real goals were to protect a U.S.-backed pipeline project that would run through Macedonia, within ten miles of the Serbian border. Another U.S. aim was to prevent strongman Milosevic from building his own Russian-sponsored pipeline network to export Caspian crude to the West through Macedonia and Serbia. (See article left.) Gun battles have now broken out inside Macedonia between Albanian nationalists (people of Albanian background living in Macedonia) and the government right along the route of the major U.S. pipeline.

The shooting is centered just to the west of the Macedonian city of Skopje. Halliburton -- Vice President Cheney's old company -- is building a line to move Caspian crude from Bulgaria through Skopje to Albania and from there to Western Europe and North America. BP Amoco and Chevron support this route. But Skopje also serves as a strategic junction for competing projects. Russia's Lukoil and Greece's Hellenic Petroleum plan to pipe Caspian oil from Thessaloniki to Skopje. And before the NATO bombardment, Milosevic boasted of a grand design to pump Russian-produced Caspian oil from Skopje through Serbia and then to Croatia for export to the world market. The ousting of Milosevic and the current occupation of Kosovo by U.S.-led NATO troops puts this scheme on hold for now.

But Moscow's influence in the Balkans has been growing ever since Russian troops seized Kosovo's main airport at the close of NATO's bombing campaign. Today, Washington appears forced to tolerate the Albanian fascists -- who want a bigger slice of the pipeline profits for themselves -- because they are sworn enemies of the Russians and Serbs. For the warlords, both the local nationalists and the big imperialists, too much is at stake for the pipeline question to be settled peacefully.

The endless battle in the Balkans shows that the capitalists are willing to spill barrels of workers' blood for a secondary source of petroleum. We must also be ready for a bigger, more deadly, showdown over the grand prize, the oil of the Persian Gulf.

Garment Strikers Fight Scabs, Welcome CHALLENGE

LOS ANGELES, March 25 --"We're tired of so much injustice, that's why we're on strike," declared a worker from Hollander Home Fashion. These workers, who make curtains, bedspreads and mattresses, have been out for over two weeks.

"We produce everything. You need us more than we need you!" charged an angry worker when a bosses' agent came out to speak with the strikers. The bosses have refused to negotiate. In January they sharply attacked the workers, cutting their wages in half while bringing in new machines to speed up the work and lower costs. Then over 450 workers in two plants in Vernon (a small city near here) struck for decent wages, a pension plan (they have none) and an end to harassment by supervisors. Workers with 25 years seniority earn between $7.50 and slightly over $8 an hour. These workers have been represented by the UNITE union for many years.

The strikers, especially the women, are very militant. They welcomed CHALLENGE with open arms and asked for extra copies of a PLP leaflet. It related a struggle in another garment factory and called for workers to fight for power and to March on May Day.

Several strikers spoke at a nearby high school, asking students for support and explaining that workers create all value. The strikers have welcomed the support of other garment workers, students and other workers. We are urging workers and students to raise money for the strikers and join their picket line.

The bosses are using scabs. When the scabs discover they're breaking a strike, many don't return. The union leaders obey the bosses' laws. When the strikers stopped a scabs' bus for ten minutes, the union opened a path for the bus to go through.

Many workers resist this, and want to use workers' violence to stop the scabs. Many agreed that the laws serve the bosses' interests, not the workers'. And many workers agreed that workers must break the bosses' laws to win anything. The bosses' State -- cops, courts and laws -- exist to keep workers exploited.

The entire capitalist system and its crisis of overproduction, not just the Hollander bosses, are attacking these workers. The fierce competition among the bosses driving for maximum profits has cut workers' wages or jobs in California while thousands of workers in China, Mexico, Central America and elsewhere, are forced to work for $2 to $4 a day.

Strikers said they're interested in coming to the May Day March on Saturday, April 28, to unite workers against the bosses' attacks and fight for workers' power. This strike shows capitalism cannot meet workers' needs. Our alternative is to fight together for a communist society where a decent retirement for workers is a priority--not expendable on the alter of the bosses' profits.

Transit Workers' Unity Jails
Sexist D.C. Boss

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 20 -- A Metro senior supervisor was convicted here in Superior Court of sexual assault on a northern bus operator and given a 90-day jail sentence. This was the latest battle in an ongoing struggle against sexism at Metro, the city's mass transit system.

For several years women drivers have stood up to management's sexual attacks. In each case, the bosses have refused to take any serious action against the supervisor involved and have intimidated the workers making the accusations.

Men and women workers have circulated petitions to fight this management sexism. This has emboldened other women to fight back. In this particular case -- because of the support of her fellow workers -- this woman withstood an all-out attack on her credibility and the portrayal of her as a "disgruntled" worker trying to get back at management by "making false charges" against them.

Will this end sexism at Metro? No! The conviction was the result of a liberal woman judge, a very arrogant supervisor, some obvious lying by management and a very credible victim. The bosses who control the judicial system will not let this happen very often.

Sexism is very important for the bosses. It divides the working class and prevents many women from leading class struggle. Sometimes the bosses are willing to let one of their stooges go to jail to maintain their system's credibility.

Sexism, like racism will only end when workers make communist revolution and take political power away from the racist and sexist rulers. Because of the PLP's involvement in this struggle for many years, some workers have learned the above political lessons and have moved closer to the Party. Others believe the system can yield justice for women workers. But this is the nature of any reform effort. Without engaging the bosses in a struggle, no lessons can be learned.

Jobs Cut, Profits Rocket, Capitalism Kills 91 Oil Workers

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, March 16 --Today, an oil workers protest denounced the real causes behind the off-shore sinking of the state-owned oil company Petrobrás' biggest oil rig into the Atlantic Ocean. At least one worker died and ten are missing. Yesterday, three explosions within a few minutes of each other sank oil rig 36, located 125 kilometers (78 miles) off the coast here.

The United Federation of Oil Workers, which organized the protest, blamed Petrobrás for the "accident" with its policy of using contractors and cutting labor. In 1990 Petrobrás employed 60,000 workers. Today it's down to 34,000. Rig 36 opened in 1999, with a daily capacity of 180,000 barrels. Later that year it was producing a record one million barrels daily. Between production speed up and rising oil prices, profits shot up, but 91 oil workers paid with their lives. Twelve died on Rig 36 in 1999 alone. These non-union workers have less training and, of course, are paid less.

Capitalism and its industrial "accidents" kill workers from Inland Steel to off-shore in the Atlantic.

UCLA: Take Affirmative Action To Smash Bosses' Racism

LOS ANGELES, March 21 -- On March 14, PLP youth participated in a demonstration at UCLA for affirmative action and for the repeal of SP-1 and SP-2, the policies that ended affirmative action on University of California (UC) campuses. About 3,000 people came from all over the state, including many local high school students. About 140 CHALLENGES and nearly 1,000 leaflets were distributed that, as one comrade told people, "shows you need a revolution to get rid of racism." The march was spirited, rallying to chants like "U C Regents, We see racists!"

Despite the militancy and numbers, it did not force the Regents to vote on the issue. This left many students frustrated and angry. Others were more optimistic, saying that the effort caused several Regents to agree to put the vote on their agenda for their May meeting. While this is true, PLP is working to spread a critical communist approach to affirmative action, to explain why it was created and why it's been removed. Students involved in this struggle wrote a PLP leaflet about the racist nature of capitalism and the need for revolution to end it, calling on students to march on May Day.

Participating in this struggle is reaping results. Several local junior college students came and, for the first time, helped distribute PLP leaflets. We also met others from another UC campus that we've been working with who agreed to help with May Day. Friends of other comrades at different schools got the leaflet as well. This can inspire them to build for May Day on their campuses. PLP's presence also helped the Party at UCLA, where many students are linking the fight against racism to the fight against capitalism. All this will hopefully help bring a bigger college contingent to May Day this year.

Affirmative Action was a compromise won through student struggles. It helped integrate the colleges and universities. Faced with massive social unrest from urban rebellions and anti-war demonstrations at the end of the 1960s, the ruling class felt it could allow certain reforms like Affirmative Action. The U.S.' relative position of dominance in the world and the growing post-World War II economy convinced the rulers that not only could they allow more women and black, Latino and Asian students into the universities but they could turn them around and use them to defend the capitalist system and teach patriotism and loyalty to the U.S. bosses. California State Speaker of the House Bustamante spoke at the rally in favor of affirmative action. He represents the liberal politicians who want more black and Latino youth to go to college and to graduate believing that the system works.

As long as capitalism controls the schools, they will try to produce people from these groups who make racism and sexism legitimate while serving the bosses. But now that capitalism is in crisis, it is sucking the schools dry of needed resources and funds in order to pay for the bosses' global war plans. The bosses have fewer crumbs to give to youth and workers. So their need for more pro-capitalist black and Latin graduates conflicts with their need to divert funds for social programs, including affirmative action, into investments and wars to dominate their imperialist competition.

PLP fights this system's racism, for a world without racism, sexism, exploitation, bosses, or borders...a communist world. An attack on any one of us is an attack on us all. All students fighting racist attacks must understand that racism was born with capitalism. The only real end to all forms of racism will come destroying its creator, the capitalist system. Marching on May Day is one step towards that goal.

`No Free Speech For Racists!'

BERKELEY, CA, March 15 --"10 Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks are a Bad Idea for Blacks-And Racist Too!" Right-winger David Horowitz placed advertisements in college newspapers across the U.S. with this headline. When he came to speak at the University of California here, PLP'ers rallied outside, distributed nearly 200 leaflets with the headline, "NO FREE SPEECH FOR RACISTS!" and made communist speeches. We said the best reparations for racism is destroying the capitalist profit system that needs it. We ended by inviting all students to march on May Day for a communist world.

Horowitz claimed black people should be "thankful" for what the U.S. has "given them," and that "the failures of the black `underclass' are failures of individual character." Topping this racist garbage, Horowitz lied, "there never was an anti-slavery movement until white Englishmen and Americans created one." Mass slave revolts in Brazil created an independent communal society. In Haiti ex-slaves drove out the French slavemasters and then smashed Napoleon's invading hordes. In the U.S. over 400 slave revolts occurred before the Civil War. The 180,000 freed slaves who joined the Union Army became the decisive forced that defeated the Southern slaveowners.

However, calling for reparations for slavery and segregation, but not for an end to job and housing discrimination, police terror, incarceration or sub-standard schools is also a mistake. It implies racism no longer exists. It is true that slavery under capitalism was one of the cruelest forms of murder and exploitation in history, but ever since societies were divided into classes, the exploiters have murdered and brutalized the exploited masses, stealing the fruits of their labor. Today's bosses will never pay us that debt. That's why we need revolution.

The campus reactionaries say they invited Horowitz because he should have "a right to free speech." Well, he sure did: he was defended by cops and bodyguards and was interviewed on the evening TV news! Free speech is a question of power. The bosses have more free speech in their TV, movies, newspapers, schools and universities than workers will ever have under capitalism. On top of that, the cops defend racist speechmakers but attack demonstrators and striking workers. Speech and action are not unrelated. Spreading racist ideas leads to racist actions.

At this event we met friends and acquaintances who we'll see in "Students for Justice in Palestine" meetings or back in our classes. There we'll discuss the need for militancy.

We did not go in and disrupt the speech. This was a big mistake. We compromised our ideas by not doing our best to shout him down, mainly because we worried about not getting enough support. Next time we'll organize to do this and will struggle to mobilize groups from our mass organizations to join in.

Capitalism's No Accident; Murders Two More Steelworkers

EAST CHICAGO, IN, March 16 -- Ronald L. Robinson, 45, and Norman L. Brown, 53, were killed in a fiery explosion at Ispat Inland Steel. Both workers, with more than 25 years seniority, were burning out ductwork in the mill's No. 4 shop by cutting steel pipes with hand-held torches. Dan Kado and Mike Davis died in a similar explosion Feb. 2 at Bethlehem Steel's Burns Harbor plant.

The explosion occurred when the workers cut into a 12-inch high-pressure oxygen pipe that feeds oxygen to the furnace. The oxygen pipes are painted green, but years of grime and dust made them indistinguishable. The oxygen pipe was not shown on the building's blueprint and was the same size in diameter as other pipes in the area.

Before the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration had any time to investigate this double murder, United Steel Workers Local 1010 president Hargrove said, "We're not laying blame on anyone. We have a good safety program."

This is what it's coming to. Gambling casinos and beauty pageants. KKK rallies protected by hundreds of riot cops. Plant closings, layoffs, and funerals for murdered steel workers. This garden of weeds is bringing fascism and war, and must be pulled out from the roots. Steel workers have two more reasons to march on May Day and build PLP.

LETTERS
Workers of the World, Write!

They Can't Stand
the Truth

The article describing the "racial profiling" of babies at Cook County Hospital in the last CHALLENGE is causing a stir. Most people who read that newborns get their urine tested for drugs without anyone telling their mothers agreed with us -- it's terribly wrong to make criminals out of our patients and cops out of us medical workers. But administrators and doctors in charge of the program were furious, especially after 1,500 copies of the article in leaflet form filtered through the hospital last week. One clinical director saw some on a secretary's desk and asked angrily, "What are you doing with THOSE?" She replied coolly, "I'm planning to distribute them in my community. People need to know what's going on."

One of the doctors opposed to drug testing seems to be getting blamed for the leaflet. Of course! The bosses would assume no "mere" worker could be behind writing a leaflet. The head doctor, his boss, refused to speak to him. When he mentioned this to a nursing assistant friend, she said, "They can't stand it when the truth comes out."

Some people object to controversy. Why should we get everyone upset and cause tensions? Because if you rest comfortably while others are oppressed, it's only a matter of time before they come for you, too. Struggle, although stressful, gives knowledge, life and hope.

Some of those on the newborn ward have jokingly started calling each other "comrade." Not a bad start.

Red Hospital Worker

Smack C.R.A.C.K.

The Ad Hoc Coalition Against CRACK, organized a community forum opposed to the group Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK). The latter is a private organization paying $200 to women with substance abuse problems who verify they've been sterilized or use long-term birth control methods. The Coalition is concerned with drug policy, women's health and racism.

Last summer CRACK opened a chapter here and placed subsidized ads on Metro buses serving the black and Latin communities. Several organizations immediately circulated petitions against the ads. Metro unions and the American Federation of Government Employees passed resolutions condemning CRACK. Last November, the American Public Health Association (APHA) passed an interim resolution opposing CRACK's approach to women who use drugs (see http://www.mwpha.org under Issues, and the March 2001 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, page 516). We urge other unions and organizations to use this resolution. In Seattle, organizers are plastering anti-CRACK messages over the CRACK advertisements.

At our meeting, speakers from the National Black Women's Health Project and the South Carolina Advocates for Pregnant Women spoke eloquently about CRACK's dangers. They explained how poverty and racism cause many of the problems that encourage self-medication or drug use, and how CRACK uses racial profiling to deal with this problem. For example, they don't try to reach women who use tobacco, which is much more widespread.

They also related CRACK to eugenics, the attempt to select "good genes" for reproduction and to limit "bad genes." During the 1920s and '30s, over 30 states legalized involuntary sterilization for those considered "mentally defective." Population control measures have been used on welfare recipients during the 1970s. Today, we see many groups linking inattention, violence or depression solely to biological causes rather than social conditions.

Black and Latin women are especially stigmatized for drug use. In many states, pregnant women who test positive for drugs can be arrested for inflicting harm on the fetus. Black and Latin people who use drugs are disproportionately arrested and jailed under harsh drug laws.

There are no quick fixes to drug addiction, but people can change with compassion, support and treatment. While we would support people who fight for that outlook, PLP believes that only a society free of exploitation for profits can eliminate drugs and addiction. We encourage all people opposed to CRACK to march on May Day on April 28 in Washington, D.C.

Participants at the Coalition meeting planned to organize an anti-CRACK campaign by holding more community forums, notifying clergy, meeting with City Council members and distributing the statement.

CRACK is also organizing in many other cities. Check their web site at http://www.cashforbirthcontrol.com to see if it's in yours so you can take action also.

D.C. Comrade

Fighting for
Our Children

Parents, teachers and a school nurse at an urban school have united to retain a free dental program and win safety rumble strips on the street in front of the school. The nurse found out which residents of the housing complex across from the school wanted to be involved through a regular neighborhood CHALLENGE route.

We faced many obstacles. While the authorities revealed how little they care, we persisted to achieve these immediate benefits. However, the fact that fatal accidents still occur and that our dental program is still in jeopardy demonstrates that we need a strong communist party to fight for a system where children will be our priority.

When a car crashed through the apartment complex, a parent who is a regular CHALLENGE reader and contributor alerted the school nurse, a communist, to begin a safety campaign. Only two other schools in the area have rumble strips. One has a very active parent-teacher coalition with communist involvement. At the other a student was killed despite the strips. Funds have been available for several years through a state grant for ALL the schools.

We asked the principal if we could circulate a petition for the rumble strips inside our school. She said it was a "community" affair, that we should take our case to the parent advisory council. The council (most of whom had never been public school parents) initially said a petition in the school was impossible. Two days later they called the school nurse saying we could go ahead. Evidently, they had second thoughts, worrying they would look bad if someone got hurt.

Even after hundreds signed, asking for traffic lights in addition to the strips, it still took many follow-up phone calls before the strips were installed (but no lights and no school signs). Just a few weeks later a speeding car killed a fourth-grade girl. The City then said it would have to do a survey because signs were so expensive. Today there are signs but still no traffic lights at the school corner.

Conditions have worsened since the state take-over of our schools. The dental program provides for buses or vans to take some children every week to get their teeth fixed. However, the dental bus attendants were privatized and then removed altogether. Now parents volunteer as unpaid attendants to keep the program running. When such a parent attendant has an emergency and can't escort the children, dozens are denied dental care. A fight possibly could be made to restore the original attendants. Still, the ongoing volunteer effort by parents and grandparents (most don't even have children in the program; many must go to Workfare sites), shows that communism won't need money and wage slavery to induce people to work to meet society's needs.

We have experienced first-hand that even though we put band-aids on the capitalist system, our children continue to bleed. Yet if we don't unite and fight, the rulers rip off whatever little monies are due us. Under the cover of state "supervision," school administrators have already stolen millions, while ceilings are literally falling on our children's heads.

As we PLP members lead class struggles, we must expose the nature of the capitalist system. CHALLENGE is an important tool. Two mothers have agreed to take five and three copies respectively for friends and folks in a Workfare program. This is all part of re-building a new communist international. We can begin now by marching on May Day, asking our friends to come, and join PLP.

Concerned parents, teachers,

aides and nurse

U.S. STEEL, KKK
Go Way Back

CHALLENGE readers are familiar with the March 10th KKK rally in Gary, Indiana. The police staged an overwhelming show of force to protect two dozen Klan gutter racists. It was especially outrageous given the high level of racist police terror directed at young black and Latin workers, and the crisis in the steel industry that means plant and mill closings, job cuts and a rash of workers killed in explosions. But really, this is nothing new.

In her new book Carry Me Home, Diane McWhorter covers Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when she was growing up. She reveals "the long tradition of enmeshment between law enforcers and Klansmen," including the FBI, state and local police.

She writes that in the 1920's, the coal and steel bosses used the KKK to get U.S.-born Protestants to fight immigrant Catholics so there would be "no danger of union solidarity even among whites, let alone across color lines." U.S. Steel and other corporations kept Klansmen on their payroll as anti-union thugs. When the owners of industry, known as the Big Mules, were no longer willing to dirty their own hands, they used "the racism they had fomented whenever the have-nots threatened to organize across racial lines," McWhorter writes. "Rather than give specific orders to the [KKK], they would delegate political intermediaries to oversee...racial violence."

Birmingham's police chief "Bull" Connor ran the Klan on behalf of the murdering Mules. Among the racist terrorists under Conner were Troy Ingram, who learned about dynamite while working for Charles DeBardeleben's coal mining company, and Robert Chambliss, who organized the infamous 16th Street church bombing that murdered four black children, using a device rigged by Ingram.

Conner was picked to be the center of an alliance of the Big Mules, the judges, the police, the politicians, local newspaper editors and the Klan. When Freedom Riders arrived in an integrated bus in 1961, he kept his police away so Klansmen could beat defenseless protesters. When children marched peacefully, Connor had them met by snarling police dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, cattle prods and clubs.

So the steel bosses and the KKK go way back. Old friends. Then as now, communists saw the struggle against racism as crucial to the liberation of the whole working class. And then as now, "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, are all a part of the bosses' plan!"

Chicago Comrade

Vietnam: Turning
The Guns Around

A recent CHALLENGE supplement summarized the history of working-class revolts inside the bosses' military during the Vietnam War. We received the following letter from a long-time PL'er, a college professor. He tells of a comrade who was drafted after refusing the military deferment available at the time to college students and who entered the army to organize for communist revolution.

On the day this comrade was inducted into the army, I was one of those detailed to keep the MP's out of the room so he and fellow PL'ers could give speeches to the other recruits. When the MP's finally threw me out, they ripped off my pants, and I had to take the subway wrapped in newspaper. I heard the speeches were good, though. When M... returned from Vietnam a couple of years later he told this story. He was stationed in Pleiku and some guy fired quad 50's at him. He assumed the guy was trying to kill him because the guy disliked his politics. Later he confronted the guy, who apologized profusely, saying he had thought M... was an officer who they all hated! I still use this story with students from time to time.

A Comrade

Murder in Seattle By Racist Cops

On December 28, 1998, Michael Randall Ealy, a 35-year-old African American, was brutally murdered by two Seattle cops, McLaughlin and Traverso, and two American Medical Response (AMR) attendants. Michael had been calling for help; he was ill, very weak and unable to stand on his own. Some passersby called 911 to try to get help for him. Cops McLaughlin and Traverso arrived on the scene, as did Danny Hill and Brett Munsey in the AMR ambulance, which had been called to transport Michael to Harborview Hospital. Something happened on the way to Harborview, and Michael was DOA. He had intrusions, scars and bruises all over his body, and died of brain damage from suffocation.

It took 85 days to get an inquest. When one was finally called, it was composed of five white men and one white woman. There was no justice for Michael at this inquest.

At the end of last year, Michael's mother sued the four men involved, hoping to focus media attention on the case and get the King County police officers and AMR employees to be accountable for Michael's death. However, the jury voted 11-1 in favor of the murderers.

Challenge interviewed Michael's mother (see next issue). She has been very active in continuing the fight to determine what happened to Michael, to bring the responsible parties to justice, to organize the families of other people murdered by the police and to fight against this ever happening again.

Seattle Comrade

CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT

Nazism 101--
Sociobiology: Genes For Genocide

With this special supplement, CHALLENGE is reinvigorating our Party's struggle against the murderous theory that genes determine society. This idea starts as a "scientific" discussion, but its consequences are far from academic. In the first part of the 20th century, millions of workers died as victims of policies first developed by Harvard "eugenicists." Hitler could never have carried out his "Final Solution" without first establishing "racial science" in German universities. More recently, the U..S.imperialist war of genocide in Vietnam, racist budget cuts, the fascist Workfare slave labor scheme and many other body blows against the working class owe a lot to the Big Lies of genetic determinists like Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. Like the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, they all have close ties to Harvard. Wilson's "Consilience" (Consilience, a little-used word, roughly means "being on the same page.") is just the latest disguise assumed by this many-headed monster. Exposing and smashing this trash in a revolutionary manner is, quite literally, a matter of life and

death for our class

A recent CHALLENGE editorial (2/28) described the report of the U.S. Commission on National Security as a bosses' "blueprint for fascism" -- to centralize and strengthen the state apparatus, unite the capitalist class, increase attacks on the working class and indoctrinate us for war against rival capitalist countries. The rulers need the support of millions of college students and professors. The most important blueprint for the colleges is the 1997 book by Harvard professor E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge.

The ruling class is striving to make its government totally consilient in its preparations for "homeland security." Similarly, Wilson and the ruling class want to make all academic disciplines consilient, to effectively indoctrinate students and the general public by updating the Hitlerite lie that putting millions in concentration camps and carrying out genocidal wars is the highest calling of a genetically-based human nature. For example, Wilson claims the recent genocide in Rwanda and "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans were rooted in genetically-based "tribal instincts, ethnic rivalry, and religious dogmatism," calling Rwanda "a microcosm of the world."

Ant specialist Wilson's 1975 Harvard-published book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, updated the old social Darwinist ideology that there is an underlying biological basis for all human social behavior. The bosses showered Wilson with publicity and praise, transforming him from an obscure investigator of ant colonies into an academic celebrity.

Four years ago they extolled Consilience as the crowning achievement of a visionary elder scientific statesman. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal lavishly praised his call for the subjugation of the social sciences and the humanities to the natural sciences.

Last June, a 3-day a New York Academy of Sciences conference, "Unity of Knowledge: The Convergence of Natural and Human Sciences," based itself on Wilson's book and featured him as keynote speaker. It involved prominent supporters of sociobiology, discussing how to promote consilience.

An example of this promotion occurred last month in New York. Senior administrators from Texas Tech University (TTU) met with Steven C. Rockefeller, chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express and E. O. Wilson who has helped develop the TTU program in natural sciences and the humanities. They wanted funding for, (1) a new inter-disciplinary major in "natural sciences and the humanities," and (2) an environmental institute for government research on germ warfare.

Since the 1890s, the Rockefeller family has used philanthropy to influence how the world is organized and to shape the direction of education. The Rockefellers' financed the field of "industrial relations" to promote reforms that would quiet U.S. workers unrest and radicalism. Here Rockefeller and Wilson were looking to establish a beachhead for Wilson's views within the university and develop a pro-business environmentalism.

They told TTU officials that campuses like theirs could become the cutting edge in reforming liberal arts education according to Wilson's Consilience ideas. They apparently viewed TTU as receptive to consilience and as "business friendly."

These developments reflect a broader consilient trend in universities. Biological anthropology and sociobiology have marginalized cultural anthropology. Evolutionary psychology, a disgustingly sexist update of sociobiology, has made significant inroads into psychology. Behavioral genetics and biological psychiatry have displaced social explanations for alcoholism, mental illness and violence.

Worse still, sociobiology has been applied in practice with horrific consequences. New York psychiatrists Wasserman and Pine have drawn blood samples from, and given fenfluromine to, young black and Latin boys to test abnormal serotonin levels in the brain as a "cause" of violent behavior. These children had no history of violent behavior and were subjected to risky experimentation without informed consent. These studies are part of a larger program of U.S. government- funded research once known as the "Violence Initiative."

Further, anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and geneticist James Neel experimented on the Yanomami, indigenous people living on the brink of extinction in the Amazon basin of Brazil and Venezuela. Beginning in the 1960s, they bribed the Yanomami with metal goods, incited internal warfare, exposed them to epidemics of infectious diseases and dislocated villages, all to obtain 12,000 blood samples to test their sociobiological and eugenic theories.

In the 1970s, Wilson invented sociobiology based on Chagnon's lies about the Yanomami as "the fierce people" to support his claims that men are genetically predisposed to fight each other over access to women. Last year, British journalist Patrick Tierney published Darkness in El Dorado, exposing the genocidal crimes scientists like Chagnon and Neel committed or justified against indigenous Amazonian people. The book has provoked sharp struggle in the field of anthropology. The ruling class values sociobiology enough to mount a concerted attack against Tierney. (See review of Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado, next page.)

These examples of racist medical experimentation on minority children and indigenous Amazonian people offer a glimpse of capitalism in crisis moving toward fascism and world war. After all, U.S. genocidal sanctions have killed 1.2 million Iraqis, imprisoned two million workers at home and forced hundreds of thousands into slave labor in prisons or welfare Workfare programs.

Our Party fought against sociobiology in the 1970s. We led modest struggle against the racist Bell Curve in 1994. Recently we've built a more sustained campaign against the Violence Initiative. We need to increase our efforts to build a broad movement against the rulers' fascist ideology and strategy of consilience. This should include campus-based struggles against local sociobiologists, classroom struggles against sociobiology curricula and exposure of consilience at academic meetings.

These beliefs that everything is genetic have become very mainstream in the U.S. Every day we hear people say that intelligence, racism, nationalism, obesity, mental illness and children's behavioral problems are genetic. Such fascist ideology is being promoted throughout popular culture -- movies, songs, TV shows, etc. We must expose it and organize many more workers, students and professionals to learn through this battle the need to join and build the PLP in order to destroy the system responsible for fascism, capitalism.

Capitalist Anthropology:
`Science' of Extermination

The science of anthropology has just been rocked by its worst scandal in 50 years. Patrick Tierney's book Darkness in El Dorado charges prominent scientists with genocidal crimes.

During the early 1960's the Atomic Energy Commission funded research into mutation rates of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the Cold War objective of establishing "tolerable" nuclear radiation dosages. As an unexposed "control" group, it chose the Yanomami, semi-isolated Indians living on the brink of extinction in the Amazon basin of Brazil and Venezuela. Geneticist James Neel, program director, and Napoleon Chagnon, then an anthropology graduate student, collected 12,000 blood samples from their "research subjects," bribing them with steel axes and pots.

Chagnon depicted the Yanomami as unusually brutal warriors, calling them " the fierce people." He claimed murder and trickery were rewarded in Yanomami society, and that they typify human society before agriculture. Actually, today's Yanomami are survivors of once-large Amazonian populations decimated by colonial slavery. After E.O.Wilson published Sociobiology (1975), Chagnon applied this new biodeterminist theory that human behavior is genetically inherited, falsely claiming that Yanomami men who kill have more children and are more likely to pass on their genes. When gold was discovered in Amazonia, Brazilian rulers -- seeking to carve up Yanomami land for profit -- used Chagnon's portrayal of Indians as bloodthirsty killers to justify genocide. By 1990, Chagnon, hated by Yanomami activists, was barred from Yanomami territory. His research was enshrined in popular films and college textbooks but attacked by other anthropologists who studied the Yanomami.

Guns, Germs, Steel and Anthropologists

According to Tierney, Neel and Chagnon carelessly or deliberately used an obsolete vaccine to spread a lethal measles epidemic among the Yanomami. This charge has grabbed headlines, and drawn angry rebuttals by Chagnon's supporters. But even more serious are charges that Chagnon became a village headman and created the very warfare he described by bribing Indians with sought-after steel goods and stirring up enmities. Chagnon's frequent trips to remote villages to gather blood samples and genealogies ignored the health of Yanomami, who lacked immunity to urban diseases and died by the thousands.

At one point "Chagnon's village" actually made war on "Lizot's village" run by another corrupt anthropologist! During the early '90s, Chagnon conspired with the crooked mistress of Venezuela's president Perez and gold mining bosses to create a Yanomami reservation which would allow unlimited access to minerals and to Chagnon's human research "subjects." Obviously Chagnon's "research" is scientifically worthless.

(Incidentally, this is the same President Pérez who, in 1989, sent tanks to murder hundreds of workers and youth who had rebelled against an austerity plan imposed by him and the International Monetary Fund. The reservation scheme was derailed when Pérez was ousted and imprisoned for being a crook and helping oil-rich Venezuela go broke.)

BACKLASH

Chagnon's crimes have shaken U.S. anthropologists, who tend to be more left-leaning than most academics. Their national association began a formal investigation last month. But leaders of the academic right, who regard Chagnon's "research" as the poster child of human sociobiology, launched a pre-emptive strike against Tierney's book even before it was published, according to a Science magazine investigative reporter.

Chagnon's defenders campaigned by e-mail to discredit Tierney, lining up sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, philosopher Daniel Dennett, zoologist Richard Dawkins of "selfish gene" fame, psychologist Steven Pinker and science writer Matt Ridley. These men have no expertise in anthropology, human genetics or the Yanomami, and had not even seen Tierney's book. They are all hardcore biodeterminists; each is celebrated for pushing the idea that genes rigidly control human behavior.

This struggle is clearly very important to the ruling class and its academic bloodhounds. Our Party can give the leadership exposing the political motives and inevitable spread of fascism behind such "science".

Zapatistas March:
Can't Reform Bosses' Racist Rule.

MEXICO CITY -- The Zapatista march from Chiapas to Mexico City attracted masses. It dramatized the poverty, racism and oppression of the indigenous communities. Yet they sought protection from the bosses' constitution and used the rulers' flag as their banner. The EZLN's (Zapatista) nationalist alternative is "good democracy," a "just nation" and a world where all fit in. This creates the illusion that this exploitative capitalist system offers something beneficial to the working class. Yet for 500 years, millions of indigenous people have been subjected to the most brutal oppression. Without class content, the Zapatista movement becomes an obstacle to the liberation of the indigenous people.

All this politically disarms the oppressed in the face of growing fascism, a result of fierce imperialist competition for the natural resources and low-paid labor of Chiapas. It's no accident that President Fox is trying to negotiate with the EZLN in order to stabilize the southeast region and begin huge profit-making projects (see below).

In 100 days of rule, Fox and the group of fascist bosses he represents, have raised the price of everything, pushed speed-up in the work-place and aims to tax everything, while lowering wages. (Real wages have already declined 25% since 1980 -- LA Times, 3/25)

The indigenous people suffer the most rabid and brutal racism in the world today. They've been so marginalized that urban workers are either ignorant of, or passive and indifferent (sometimes accomplices) of the discrimination and terrible conditions of the indigenous people. "The worker in the white skin will never be free while the worker in the black skin is in chains," said Karl Marx. This applies to the indigenous communities, which provide the cities with domestic slave labor and forces the abandonment of children to the streets.

Up to now, the North has been the primary source of low-paid skilled labor while the South supplies oil and electricity. But now the Puebla-Panama project will employ indigenous slave labor to develop Southern Mexico in order to produce low-cost goods for the Central American market and act as a brake on emigration to the U.S.

Historically the indigenous people in Mexico have fought back the hardest. Today, they are the most willing to take up arms, to sacrifice their lives to end oppression. The rise of the EZLN publicized the racism afflicting the indigenous people. But its political alternative will lead to alliances with one or another capitalist/imperialist gang.

PLP must spread our communist politics to the rebellious communities. We're convinced that only communism can liberate them and the whole working class from racism and exploitation. We must win these communities to make the fight for communism their fight. CHALLENGE is distributed in some indigenous communities and has sparked discussions and study groups about communism. This is the beginning of the fight for liberation.

[Editor's note: Using the term "Zapatour" in our last issue was an error. "Zapatour" is a term created by the right-wing racists who degrade the indigenous rebellion.]

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Special Effects Make History Disappear

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the recent multiple Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee attempts to play off two film genres: the Hong Kong-based martial arts melodrama and the "yakuza" saga. Yakuza culture (gangster samurai serving the ruling class in one form or another) is Japanese, and Crouching Tiger is Chinese, but the analogy holds. These films are really about mythologies of violence, revenge and redemption in which the central character is provoked into using his/her martial arts skills in defense of an aggrieved sense of communal moral outrage. In the case of Crouching Tiger, the main achievement is not the awesome and breathtaking special effects, but the way in which the film makes the oppressive "communal" bonds of feudalism and early mercantilism in China completely invisible.

One interesting aspect of this film is its use of complex female characters in prominent roles. As a matter of fact, these women are far more interesting than the men! In martial arts films, women are usually either sex objects or the victims of male action; rarely, are they the subjects of the plot. Although Ang Lee deserves some credit for nodding in the direction of women's independence, the women are eventually circulated back into the male-dominated social relations of a feudal culture. The female protagonist, played by the actress Michelle Yeoh, owns a private security business which guards shipments of commodities and currency from place to place in China. The male protagonist (Chow Yun Fat) is the alienated (exiled? retired?) leader of a yakuza cult, formerly in service to the same ruling class. Yeoh's character is like an ancient Pinkerton or rent-a-cop! What's totally absent and romanticized beyond belief are the class relations of feudal, semi-feudal, and emergent mercantile economies. There is also the distorted history of the warlords -- glorified gang leaders posing as military officers -- who also use the yakuza/samurai/martial arts cultists for the same purposes as the various Chinese dynasties and ruling classes do: extreme repression and coercion to guarantee their own personal power and that of their allies, available for a price, of course.

So the film uses impressive cinematography and special effects to lull the audience into a sense of wonder and awe at its beauty and the exotic allure of seemingly bizarre and distant Chinese cultures of the past. "Oh, how inscrutable, how beautiful, how honorable, how loyal, how romantic! It took my breath away!" While the audience gasps in temporary, but pleasurable, cardiopulmonary distress, ideologies of primitive capital accumulation, murder, racism, rape, pillage, etc., go unobserved or are so disguised as to be unrecognizable. This, I think, is the point of the film--to create a world elsewhere, to distort history. In this sense, the film reminds me of the Godfather trilogy and the current HBO hit, The Sopranos. With one or two exceptions, mainstream films about organized crime romanticize the violence of the criminals, disguise their relationship to big capital, and lure us into fuzzy thinking about the nature of crime, honor and loyalty.

By the way, none of the above is meant to suggest that we should avoid these films. My breath was taken away at some of the scenes in Crouching Tiger, and I laugh at some stuff on The Sopranos. All the more reason to see such films with our friends and discuss the political nature of art with them.

To our web readers:

For the benefit of many of our readers who cannot get the printed version of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, Progressive Labor Party communist newspaper, we place the entire content of the paper in the web. We thank you for reading our paper. If you agree with what we do, analyze the world and the struggles of the international working class from a communist point of view, please help us continue and expanding what we do. Subscribe to the printed version of CHALLENGE, it is only US$15 a year. Or send us a contribution. Any amount helps. Our address is GPO Box 808, NY, NY 10001, USA. You can make checks or money orders payable to Challenge Periodicals.

a href="#Bush’s Tax Cut Scheme:Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers">Ed"torial: Bush’s Tax Cut Scheme Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers

• The Real Worry? Money For War
• Rockefeller Forces Organize For Bi-Partisan Tax Cut Limits
• U.S. Bosses Fight For Control
• Why Liberal Bosses Up in Arms Over Bush Tax Plan

a href="#Hundreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"">"undreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"

Demopublican Strikebreakers Begin PATCO;

NY Welfare Workers Endorse May Day, Blast Workfare

• Anti-Workfare Outburst Stuns Bosses

Union Hacks Sweeten Pot for Domino Bosses

Angry Workers Tell Off Union Hacks

Bavaria Class Struggle School For Communism

Harvard University: 360 Years of Racism and Counting

a href="#Capitalism Won’t Crumble Until Workers Rumble For Communism">"apitalism Won’t Crumble Until Workers Rumble For Communism

Black Monday, Wednesday

Anti-Racists Link Clinton Diallo Decision To Fascism

CHALLENGE Sparks May Day Buzz In LA Garment Shop

Are Humans Naturally Selfish?

Fired Daewoo Workers Battle Cops

Workers Have No Nations

LETTERS

a href="#ESL’ers Learn the Language of May Day">"SL’ers Learn the Language of May Day

Jury Duty: Make-Believe Justice

May Day, Class Struggle: A Winning Combo

Fight APHA Award To Drug Moguls: Health Professionals Resist Sellout

Racism Rules Roost in Newark Schools

Editorial

a name="Bush’s Tax Cut Scheme:Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers"></">Bu"h’s Tax Cut Scheme:Billions for Billionaires—War for Workers

When a politician or boss says he’s giving us money, look out! They normally give it with one hand and take it back — and more — with the other. Capitalism, by definition, gives nothing to the working class. The bosses are always on the take.

Bush’s 1.6 trillion-dollar tax cut bill is a transparent give-away to the big business pals who helped steal the presidency for him. But let’s not fall into the trap of joining with the liberal rulers who oppose it. This is a major tactical fight among the bosses. We have no stake in supporting Bush or his opponents.

As the tax bill moves from the House to the Senate, it has outraged the main wing of the ruling class, the Eastern Establishment liberals. On a daily basis, the New York Times has printed editorials and columns attacking it. "The richest one percent of tax payers would get 43 percent of the benefits," thunders the Times indignantly. "Fifty-five percent of African-American children and 56 percent of Hispanic children would receive nothing from the proposed tax cut," the Times adds (3/1). The paper warns that the Bush plan puts Medicare and even Social Security at risk. But make no mistake. The editors of the biggest capitalists’ leading mouthpiece haven’t suddenly become anti-racist and pro-working class. They have an ulterior motive.

The Real Worry? Money For War

The rulers’ main wing is worried that Bush’s cuts will impair its ability to control society and wage war. As CHALLENGE’s reporting on the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century shows, the major U.S. capitalists are seeking a more cohesive and disciplined state apparatus that will enable them to remain "the world’s only superpower." But that requires trillions of dollars. When Bush revealed his plan to repeal the estate tax, Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, David Rockefeller Jr., Steven Rockefeller, billionaire George Soros and others protested that, "the billions of dollars in state and federal revenues lost will inevitably be made up...by cutting Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, and many other government programs so important to our nation’s continued well-being." While they’re worried about Bush cutting social programs too much, they’re even more concerned about the danger Bush’s scheme poses to "increasing defense spending" — according to Congressional testimony by William Gale, a scholar from the liberal Brookings Institution.

Rockefeller & Co. also fear for their own foundations: "Repeal would have a devastating impact on public charities." Groups like the Rockefeller, Ford — and now Gates and Soros — foundations exert tremendous influence on what gets taught in schools, how heath care is administered and how the police patrol the cities. These bosses don’t want Bush to weaken their leverage.

Rockefeller Forces Organize For Bi-Partisan Tax Cut Limits

On March 7, a bi-partisan group of representatives and senators with strong links to the main wing of the ruling class called for limits to the tax cuts. Concerned that the government wouldn’t have enough cash for "national priorities," they demanded "triggers" that would hike taxes if the U.S. budget surplus fell below a certain level.

One Republican in that group, Rep. Amo Houghton of New York, is an heir to the Corning Glass fortune. His brother James sits on Rockefeller’s Exxon Mobil board. Joining Houghton is fellow Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who’s in the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations. She proved her loyalty to them by crossing party lines to vote against convicting the impeached Clinton. Rep. David Bonior, a Michigan Democrat, also opposes the tax cuts. His 1999 minimum wage bill was formulated by the liberal Economic Policy Institute and financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

U.S. Bosses Fight For Control

Major challenges confront U.S. capitalists in the near and far term. They must forcibly reassert control over Persian Gulf oil and prepare to confront the eventual emergence of rival superpowers based on one coalition or another of European, Russian and Chinese forces. These are vast and costly military undertakings that require the biggest capitalists to impose economic discipline on the others.

But the profit system drives individual capitalists to pursue their immediate interests. The fight over Bush’s tax program shows just how hard it is to get capitalists to see beyond their own companies’ bottom lines. Bill Gates indicates he’s joined with Rockefeller to oppose the tax reductions; he now invests in naval shipbuilding as well as software. But Gates came on board only after Clinton had hauled him into court and Wall Street had relieved him of $30 billion during the 2000-01 technology market swoon.

Disunity within the bosses’ ranks persists despite their serious efforts to reverse it. This disunity and many other factors temporarily hinder the rulers’ war plans. We should see these difficulties as a chance for us to organize our Party, especially to expose the liberals as the warmakers and fascists. We must rely on ourselves, not on them. Organizing masses of workers and youth to march on May Day is an important element in achieving this goal.

Why Liberal Bosses Up in Arms Over Bush Tax Plan

The list of big-gun liberals opposed to the Bush tax package is growing. Two former Treasury Secretaries, Clinton pal Robert Rubin and long-time Rockefeller stooge Paul Volcker, attacked Bush’s plan as "too large and risky for the nation’s economy" (New York Times, 3/13). They made this statement at a news conference sponsored by the Concord Coalition, a "bipartisan" group opposed to budget deficits. The group is chaired by Warren Rudman, the same former Republican senator who co-led the U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. Rudman is "very nervous" about Bush’s tax plan because it threatens the big bosses’ plan to militarize U.S. society and prepare for a period of major wars. Workers’ interests can never be served by rejecting one enemy—Bush—only to unite with an even more dangerous one, the liberals planning a future of mass terror against our class.

a name="Hundreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"">">"undreds Defy KKKops and Klan:"Stop Singing—Start Swinging!"

GARY, IN, March 10 — Despite overwhelming police intimidation, hundreds of angry workers and youth demonstrated their hatred of the Ku Klux Klan and the cops, rattling the cage we were placed in. It was like a scene out of Nazi Germany (well, not quite yet), as the fascist Klan rallied in an empty sports stadium in a remote corner of a park. The government went all out to prevent any protest. Newspapers withheld information. Several unions and fake radical groups cancelled their plans to protest, as afraid of the workers as they were of the cops.

To get inside Gilroy Stadium, every anti-racist was patted down and passed through a metal detector — no coins, watches, jewelry or pens permitted. No cell phones or cameras. No literature or picket signs. Inside and around the stadium, about 300 cops, sheriffs, state police and federal agents were armed with rifles, tear gas grenade launchers, shields, sticks and dogs. They had an entire motor pool of cars, vans and trucks, and three helicopters. All this to protect the Klan. "Free speech," brought to you by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Outside the stadium, a PLP member was arrested for carrying a bullhorn, while one cop shouted racist insults. A youth was later arrested for "intimidating" a group of armed cops!

Inside, we had to walk a narrow path into a holding pen, surrounded by dozens of riot cops and under the constant view of police snipers. They held us in the pen while they gave the Klan a motorcade out of town with a helicopter escort. After the Klan was safely out of the stadium, anti-racists were forced to walk a narrow gauntlet of armed riot cops. The working class of Gary experiences racist police terror every day. But this open display of fascism helped many understand the true nature of capitalism.

Despite this intimidation, the protestors were militant and determined. More than 250 entered the stadium, including about 60 under PLP’s leadership.

For over an hour, the KKK was completely drowned out. Much of the anger was directed at the cops. One of the most popular chants was: "The Klan in White, the Klan in Blue — F___ YOU!" When a "Jesus Saves" minister tried to pray for love and the KKK, militant youth chanted, "STOP SINGING—START SWINGING!"

However, we could have done better at thinking on our feet and providing overall political leadership. In the holding pen many discussions and debates took place in between verbal barrages against the fascists. We discussed May Day, nationalism, fighting for jobs, the need for mass violence and many other questions. But we gave very few May Day speeches to the anti-racists.

Over 70 CHALLENGES and hundreds of leaflets had been distributed at a nearby shopping center a week earlier. We leafleted the neighborhood and a nearby high school the day before and distributed another 40 CHALLENGES and 1,000 leaflets the day of the protest. Overall, about 3,500 PLP leaflets were distributed in the community and the Purdue campus. A number of people asked to be contacted about future activities, and many black residents expressed a strong respect for our multi-racial group.

We raised the issue in steel and SEIU local unions. At the protest, steelworkers and Cook County Hospital workers met fellow hospital workers and union members who had been on strike last year. There was a bold and militant group of high school and college students, young workers and others. The overt display of fascism helped deepen their anger and renew their confidence in the Party and the working class.

We were all disappointed at being unable to physically smash the KKK. But we should be clear about winning and losing. We will not be able to prevent the development of fascism, but what we do will strengthen our forces and weaken theirs! Doing the day-to-day work to build a mass PLP will ultimately destroy the KKK along with the racist profit system spawning it. With all our limitations, this effort was a step forward. Now we can strengthen the Party by building for a strong May Day.

Demopublican Strikebreakers Begin PATCO;

Airline Workers Must Break Law

On March 8, strikebreaker Bush appointed a Presidential Emergency Board to block a strike of 10,000 mechanics at Northwest Airlines. The executive order extends the strike deadline to mid-May. Bush said he would take "the necessary steps" to prevent strikes by more than 70,000 workers at other airlines. Northwest mechanics immediately picketed the White House to protest Bush’s strikebreaking.

In February 1997, Clinton used the emergency board to order striking American Airlines pilots back to work, five minutes after they walked out. Democrat or Republican they’re all strikebreakers, and workers must be prepared to break their laws when we take them on.

The Northwest mechanics took pay cuts in 1993 to save the fourth-largest US airline from financial collapse. They have been without a contract since 1996. Negotiations have been going on for 4½ years.

At United Airlines, 26,000 members of the Association of Flight Attendants are beginning a job action called "CHAOS" (Create Havoc Around Our System), after their contract talks broke down. They and 14,000 mechanics in the International Association of Machinists (IAM) want some job protection when United merges with US Airways.

Contract talks also broke down between Delta Airlines and the 9,800 members of the Airline Pilots Association. Baggage handlers and others picketed Southwest Airlines to protest an "unacceptable" contract offer.

American Airlines got a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order against the Transport Workers Union. American claims a slowdown by mechanics forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights at New York’s Kennedy Airport. The Supreme Court recently upheld American’s claim for $45.5 million in damages against the Allied Pilots Association for a 1999 sick-out — one of the largest fines in U.S. labor history. In the original District Court decision, Judge Kendell threatened the pilots that, "If the activity and consequent damages continue...all the assets of the union, including their strike war chest, will be capable of being stored in the overhead bin of a Piper Cub."

What’s more, American is demanding that TWA’s 16,000 mechanics, flight attendants and service workers grant major concessions before it buys the bankrupt airline.

The sharpening attack on 100,000 airline workers grows out of the intensifying competition among the bosses. United’s "merger" with US Airways and American’s takeover of TWA are reflections of the big fish eating the little ones. With every merger and acquisition, thousands of jobs are destroyed and profits soar. This "consolidation of capital" is a hallmark of developing fascism. So is the more open use of state terror to settle labor disputes.

Since Reagan fired the air traffic controllers (PATCO) in 1981, the past two decades have been a trail of broken strikes and unions. Some of the mile markers on the road to fascism include Greyhound, Hormel, Staley and Caterpillar and more recently, the Detroit newspaper strike (despite overwhelming popular support). It has become legal to fire strikers and permanently hire scabs. For the overwhelming majority of workers, including most of the 13.5 percent in unions, it’s illegal to strike!

Despite a minor face-lift, this is the same union leadership with the same outlook that left the air traffic controllers hanging back in ’81. Although 16 million jobs have been created since 1992, union membership is at its lowest point in over 60 years. The union leaders have been unable to stop the closing of unionized factories, mines and mills. They’re not looking to wage class war. Like the other small fish, they’re trying to stay in business. This may put them in conflict with the bosses, but above all else they are loyal to the profit system and wage slavery.

In contrast, communist leadership would meet the current crisis with a general strike of all airline workers, grounding every flight and shutting every airport. The government, courts and cops would be mobilized to attack the strikers. The army and National Guard would be used to break the strike. Whole sections of the working class could be mobilized to defend the strikers, defy the courts and hold the airports and jumbo jets hostage.

But even with this scenario, we could break the laws and still lose the reform demands. Look at PATCO I or the Daewoo auto workers in South Korea! Leading the masses to break the law stands in stark contrast to the politicians, preachers and union leaders who want us to fight for better labor laws and trade accords. Exposing the class dictatorship of the bosses helps prepare our Party and our class to make revolution.

We should raise the need to break the bosses’ laws in our factories, schools and barracks. We can raise resolutions in our unions, encouraging airline workers to defy Bush and the courts. We can make contact with them at local airports and invite them to march on May Day. We can win regular CHALLENGE readers and distributors to spread the word that we must replace the dictatorship of the bosses with the dictatorship of the workers.

NY Welfare Workers Endorse May Day, Blast Workfare

NEW YORK CITY, N.Y., March 6 — Tonight, Social Services Employees Union (SSEU) Local 371 voted to endorse May Day organizing, including PLP’s march in Washington, D.C., and agreed to buy 50 tickets for members, family and friends who wish to attend. A long-time union member introduced the following resolution:

"Whereas, May Day is the international holiday of the working class, and,

Whereas, May Day demonstrates the fighting unity of the working class, and,

Whereas, members of this local have traditionally participated in May Day events, and,

Whereas, issues like the threat of war, prison labor and slave labor Workfare, police brutality and racism affect all members of this Local and must be fought;

Therefore, Be It Resolved that SSEU Local 371 urges its members to participate in May Day events including the March in Washington organized by the Progressive Labor Party, and,

Be It Further Resolved that this Local purchase up to 50 rickets for members, family and friends who wish to attend."

Anti-Workfare Outburst Stuns Bosses

The following day, rank-and-file representatives on the union’s negotiating committee erupted during a bargaining session between the union and city bosses. When the latter sought to shoot down the workers’ demand that, "No work performed by employees covered by this contract shall be performed by non-city employees, including Workfare participants and Wildcat workers," most members of the 60-member union negotiating committee broke their silence and loudly yelled their support or clapped for the fight against slave labor Workfare, clearly stunning the bosses’ hired guns.

Normally, members of the union negotiating team speak in the union caucuses but are quiet as the bargaining process unfolds, limiting themselves to an occasional remark. However, when the union negotiator responded to the bosses’ put-down of the anti-Workfare proposal, saying it "was an important demand and that this local would fight to keep these jobs" (as union rate jobs), the sentiments of the rank-and-file committee representatives rang out loud and clear.

These contract talks affect some 16,000 workers among the Social Service and Related Titles. Currently, contracts for 300,000 city workers have expired, and negotiations have proceeded at a snail’s pace. Secret negotiations between top union and city boss honchos will undoubtedly seek to establish a wage pattern for all city unions. It’s up to the rank and file to break any back-door deals.

PLP has played an important role in making the fight against Workfare a mass issue in Local 371. We know one outburst won’t stop slave labor Workfare any more than resolutions will fill a May Day bus. The combination of spreading communist literature and ideas, encouraging and participating in class struggle, and building communist ties among co-workers can establish the basis for a mass pro-communist movement led by PLP that can smash the bosses and their system once and for all!

Union Hacks Sweeten Pot for Domino Bosses

BROOKLYN, NY, March 5 — The 20 month strike at the Domino Sugar refinery ended when workers voted 56 to 48 to accept a contract and return to work. The new contract cuts 110 jobs, shatters seniority and the 40-hour week, and speeds up production with fewer workers, "wiping out the protections people fought for, for 50, 60 years." (New York Times, 3/6). This plant once employed 1,300 workers. It will now dip below 200.

The 300 workers were forced back to work, abandoned by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney’s "new labor movement," the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the NYC Central Labor Council.

The strikers symbolized the international solidarity of the working class. They included U.S.-born workers, black and white from the North and the South, and immigrants from Egypt, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia and the Caribbean. Their ranks were solid. From June 15, 1999 to April, 2000, not one worker crossed the picket line, even though they received no strike benefits and lost $14.3 million in wages. The same solidarity existed during their five-month walkout in 1994. Last April, 104 demoralized strikers returned to work.

They were fighting the British firm Tate & Lyle, the world’s largest sugar and sweetener company. Over the last two decades, this global conglomerate has made billions in world-wide profits. With holdings in 21 countries, from Australia to Zimbabwe, this is the same company that busted the Staley strike (a T&L subsidiary) in the mid-’90s. While Sweeney is always ranting about multi-national companies that pit workers against each other worldwide, he did absolutely nothing to defend these courageous workers. Zero, zilch, nada.

PLP members joined the picket lines every week, distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES and talking with the strikers. Several of them now receive the paper regularly. Our worker groups should have organized more strike support, including demonstrations and forums. This might have given some of our co-workers, and possibly some strikers, a clearer understanding of the long-term struggle to defeat capitalism, and drawn them closer to the Party.

The fate of the Domino workers is a glaring example of the limits of fighting for reforms. Domino workers battled for better conditions for 60 years only to see them and 1,100 co-workers wiped out. Why? The bosses hold state power. Over time they will always take back whatever gains we force out of them. As the bosses prowl the globe looking for cheap labor, markets, and resources, more workers will be victimized by fascist attacks. Only a system run by and for workers — communism — will enable the working class to live a decent life. We call on Domino workers to join the fight for workers’ power. March with PLP on May Day, the international working class day.

Angry Workers Tell Off Union Hacks

BROOKLYN, NY — A group of a dozen disgusted Domino Sugar rank-and-filers descended on their union leaders to read the riot act to them after they betrayed the workers’ 20-month strike. The 12 angry workers shouted and screamed at the union hacks that while they were mad at the company they were even madder at the union, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA).

"We lost the strike," said Bobby Horn, a company mechanic for 27 years. "Our union didn’t support us. They didn’t help us in any way." The workers were angry with the union for not having provided any strike benefits and for failing to rally other workers to their side. Horn was furious at ILA president John Bowers for never even visiting the picket line in one of New York’s longest, hardest fought strikes in decades.

"I always thought the ILA was a real powerful union," said Horn. "I guess we all learn."

Bavaria Class Struggle School For Communism

Colombia—Workers at the union meeting of Bavaria brewery workers here in Colombia were angry as hell. They damned Minister of Labor Angelino Garzón — ex-union leader and ex-member of the old "Communist" Party — as a traitor to the workers for sending the strike to arbitration. Workers know arbitration means the bosses will win easily. But despite that, workers recognized the limitations of the situation: if they rejected the deal the government would ban a strike and workers were not ready to directly confront the cops and the army that would have been sent to force us back. So most voted to return to work, to continue the struggle inside the plant.

For 72 days, workers and their relatives shared each other’s lives. We sang together — union songs and The Internationale, the revolutionary workers’ anthem; shared food, wine and a place to sleep; and developed close friendships. We also organized conferences, watched videos about things like Plan Colombia, the U.S.-Colombian governments’ war plans for the country and had sharp discussions about the world’s labor movement. We realized that our problems at Bavaria were similar to those faced by workers internationally.

We received support from many other workers and unions. We built trenches around our strike tent, with bags of sand, rocks and even barbed wire. Workers bravely kept guard, armed with lead and rubber pipes and bats. We constantly chanted against capitalism.

All these images reminded one of the Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny Institute in Petrograd, Russia, in 1917 described by John Reed in Ten Days That Shook the World. Indeed, for over two months the strikers’ tent became a center for workers fighting the bosses’ fascist drive.

All this time we shut down 18 breweries owned by one of the biggest capitalist groups in Colombia (the Santodomingo family), causing them millions in losses. We marched into the plants and took them over. We broke up secret scab meetings, confronted the bosses’ mass media lies and refused to be intimidated by the constant threats from the cops. When workers unite lots more can be done.

When tractors demolished the tents a lot of workers cried. "The tents come down but the strike continues," said many defiantly. Now the bosses and the arbitration board are taking away some of the gains we’ve had for decades. The union executive board exposed itself more by building illusions that were shattered.

We have won a lot politically. For many workers it was the best school in class struggle they’ve ever had. PLP is proud of being part of it. Our literature, videos and leaflets were there all the time. We tried to give political leadership at decisive moments. Many workers in several breweries are now reading CHALLENGE. We’ve made new friends and new comrades.

Finally, we thank all the people and unionists who showed political and financial solidarity with the strike. This support helped us maintain this anti-capitalist struggle for 72 days.

Bavaria Workers

Harvard University: 360 Years of Racism and Counting

Harvard students are outraged by the racist comments of government professor Harvey Mansfield who spread the racist lie that the admission of many black Harvard students in the early 1970s was the sole cause of a supposed "lowering of standards and grade inflation" (Boston Globe, 2/7). Mansfield continues a long Harvard tradition of defending racism and imperialism. It was founded from the profits of the slave trade. Its more recent racist/imperialist faculty includes Henry Kissinger, George Kelling (the father of community policing), and Richard Herrnstein, author of the notoriously racist tract, The Bell Curve and head of the Harvard psychology department when he wrote that trash.

On Feb. 13, more than 60 students held a silent sit-in in Mansfield's class, organized by the Black Students Association (BSA). A member of PLP participated. Although a number of students took a PLP leaflet, no student in Mansfield's class confronted him about his racism.

Mansfield asked the protesters if we wanted to talk, but, because the BSA leadership explicitly called for a silent protest, no one spoke. Mansfield should have been prevented from holding class.

The BSA leadership's reasons for a silent protest were, (1) acceptance of Mansfield's "right of free speech," and (2) the threat of expulsion. Prior to the sit-in a comrade pointed out to BSA rank-and-filers and leaders that racist words lead to racist acts. Moreover, while the expulsion threat for stopping Mansfield's class is real, not attempting to do so out of fear only spreads demoralization and only helps the racists. From the Social-Democrats of the 1920s and '30s who handed Germany over to Hitler, to the Al Sharptons and John Sweeneys of today, misleaders have used fear of the bosses' retaliation to keep workers and their allies from fighting back.

We believe the BSA leadership is choosing what they believe is the best way to combat the racism. However, opposing militant struggle against racism only ensures its triumph. Indeed, had Harvard expelled militant, protesting students, it would have sharpened the class struggle and raised the consciousness of many more about the true nature of Harvard. Also, more militant tactics might have had a better chance of silencing Mansfield and/or forcing Harvard to fire him.

Before and after the protest, I distributed about 100 PLP leaflets calling for communist revolution to destroy racism. The leaflet exposed Harvard's long history of defending racism, fascism and imperialism. The leaflet also called on all students to unite to fight racism in the interest of all workers and students. It also invited students and workers to march on May Day. I also made a new student contact and raised the struggle against Mansfield and his racism in the classroom.

This experience shows the importance of PLP members joining a student group. I've been active in the BSA for several years, building social ties with other members. I've also tried to sharpen anti-racist struggle, attempting to involve BSA in fights against racist police terror and prison labor. To have more of an impact on such protests, I need to give more leadership in them and be involved in their preparation.

We will follow up our new contact and learn from these experiences how to unite all workers and students, a prerequisite for successful communist revolution.

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SEATTLE, WA., March 3—"I didn’t think Seattle would ever have much of an earthquake," began our May Day dinner speaker, quoting an 18-year veteran flight controller at Seattle-Tacoma airport. After the control tower collapsed around him, the flight controller admitted: "I guess I was wrong."

"This controller learned you can’t ignore faults—primary contradictions," continued our speaker. "Even if you can’t predict exactly when the next ‘big one’ is going to hit."

"Just so, capitalism is riddled with contradictions that can’t be ignored—like overproduction and inter-imperialist rivalry. We can’t predict exactly when the next depression or world war will come, but just as assuredly as that control tower came tumbling down, so capitalism will eventually lead to depression and war."

Even as we dined on the delicious food prepared by our comrades and sipped good Seattle coffee, our speaker described the first tremors of economic uncertainty and the rumbles in the manufacturing sector. Key Mid-West states, like Michigan, are officially in recession. Basic industry has laid off hundreds of thousands.

Stresses are building internationally. The lead article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the magazine of Eastern Money’s foreign policy think-tank, warns of "America’s Two-Front Economic Conflict." The U.S. bosses are heading for "double trouble," says this article, in uncharacteristically blunt language. Asians and the Europeans are on the "brink of major trade and economic conflict" with the U.S.

Trade wars eventually lead to shooting wars, while the shooting wars seem to be spreading. Plan Colombia has spilled over into neighboring countries, according to the New York Times. The Middle East continues to be the mother of all hot spots.

Locally, the bosses’ media is building racist hysteria over the fights at Mardi Gras. Every major paper has run half-page pictures of black youth beating up partygoers. Where are the pictures of the racist cop assassins that murdered the son of our friend at the dinner?

While all this is happening, the King County Labor Council (KCLC), AFL-CIO, has endorsed demonstrations to reform the upcoming Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)—the plan to extend NAFTA to the whole hemisphere. Changing the language or even abolishing these trade accords will not eliminate the contradictions of capitalism. The KCLC wants to apply a new coat of paint to the same old rickety shack, and then tell us its earthquake proof.

"To deal with the faults—the primary contradictions," concluded our speaker, "we have to build a movement to end capitalism with communist revolution. Unlike the control tower, capitalism won’t collapse of its own internal weaknesses without the efforts of conscious revolutionaries with a long-term outlook. Building this communist movement and developing those revolutionaries is job #1 of May Day. We have limited numbers so let’s concentrate. For the next two months, we can do no better than to build for the May Day March."

At the dinner new comrades signed up to march. Others had sharp, but comradely questions. After tonight, we have a shot at bringing one of the largest Seattle contingents ever to May Day. Hard work over the next two months will make the difference.

Anti-Racists Link Clinton Diallo Decision To Fascism

Newark, NJ February 15, 2001—A small, but dedicated group of anti-racists held a lunchtime rally at the Federal Building here today. We were protesting the Clinton administration’s decision refusing to prosecute the NYC cops who executed Amadou Diallo two years ago.

People from several local organizations came to the rally. Speakers exposed how the bosses’ government allowed this racist atrocity to stand, connecting it to deepening fascism. One student speaker eloquently explained that she’s viewed as a criminal by the Newark police merely because she happens to live in a high-crime neighborhood. Many people stopped to listen. Thirty CHALLENGES were distributed.

PLP has begun a campaign in some of the organizations represented here today to expose the creation of a police state in New Jersey, NYC and elsewhere. We will link this growing fascism to the need for communist revolution.

This police state has many components: the explosion of "community policing," spearheaded by Rutgers professor George Kelling; massive racial profiling by the NJ state police; police murders like that of Earl Faison (killed by Orange, NJ cops); links between local cops and federal plans to suppress demonstrations under the guise of "fighting terrorism"; the mass jailing of mainly black and Latin youth; and the use of prison and Workfare slave labor.

The Diallo case reflects several of these trends. After Diallo was murdered, Kelling wrote several high profile articles in NYC newspapers basically saying the cops "made a mistake" and should walk. The court system in New York State made sure that happened.

Then "community" leaders and politicians like Al Sharpton misled thousands of angry demonstrators by calling for a federal civil rights investigation. Clinton’s Attorney-General Janet Reno deliberately withheld the no-prosecute decision until after the Bush inauguration. According to a NY Times article, Reno/Clinton did this to limit the number of angry anti-racists who otherwise would have joined the thousands who had already planned to protest at the inauguration.

We in PLP must take advantage of this anger of the masses against growing racism, fascism and war. If we persistently build our Party among the honest people in mass organizations, we will move ahead. A big step along this road will be bringing these people to the May Day march in Washington, D.C.

CHALLENGE Sparks May Day Buzz In LA Garment Shop

LOS ANGELES — "Last night I prayed to God that the boss would read this CHALLENGE article, so that she would shake with fear, because we’re tired of all this harassment!" declared a garment worker. She was referring to the article in the March 14 issue about the successful struggle to stop the firing of a worker. Despite our disagreement over religion, this religious co-worker respects our Party’s commitment to defending the workers and fighting the bosses.

The workers’ response to the article was magnificent. Some workers read it to others. Still others asked, with respect and admiration, "who wrote it?" The article provoked many discussions inside and outside the factory. This has created the basis for more struggle to mobilize more workers to march on May Day.

Conditions in this factory and in the city’s entire garment industry are sharpening. The bosses continue to move production abroad where they pay workers $2 a day. This competition drives bosses here to lower wages even more. Many mid-level bosses can’t compete with the big manufacturers who send their production to other countries. One garment boss told a group of workers, "The Korean Association of garment bosses wants to increase restrictions on imports." The main way they try to resolve their crisis is to attack workers here even more.

Now, with the increase in the minimum wage to $6.25 an hour, the bosses have sped up workers to produce more and make them pay for their "wage increase."

During the successful struggle against firing the worker, the boss declared, "I’m the owner of this factory and I do what I want" — if the workers let her. Under capitalism, the bosses own the factories, but we workers produce ALL the value and their profits. For example, if the boss pays even $1,000 a day for a machine, it still won’t sew a stitch of clothing by itself, nor make any profit for the boss. Only if a worker sits at the machine and sews the clothing will new value be created. A small part pays the worker’s wages —as small as the boss can get away with; the rest becomes the boss’s profit. This is the key to capitalism—the bosses’ robbery of the sweat and blood of the workers.

Under communism, the working class as a whole will own the factories. We’ll produce to meet the needs of the international working class, not to fill the pockets of the greedy bosses. Garment workers will work to clothe all workers and their families. Today there are thousands of stores full of clothing while millions of people worldwide barely have a shirt to cover themselves.

We have a long road to travel to achieve a world where workers control society. But with increased struggles in the factories, the discussion and spreading of communist ideas through CHALLENGE and a mass May Day March, we will advance towards our goal. In uniting with our co-workers in class struggle, we welcome disagreements whose resolution will become a key to building a revolutionary communist movement.

Are Humans Naturally Selfish?

A review of Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, by Frans de Waal.

Azalea, a rhesus monkey at the Wisconsin Primate Center, was born with an extra chromosome and multiple disabilities. Slow-moving and slow-witted, she can’t figure out the rules of rhesus society and would never have survived in the wild. But others in her group protect her and overlook her social blunders. To treat Azalea so tolerantly, monkeys must have qualities rarely attributed to animals—empathy, to grasp that she functions differently from them, and sympathy, to make them want to help her ¹.

Frans de Waal, Dutch-born scientist who studies the behavior of non-human primates (monkeys and apes), uses stories like Azalea’s to argue that human morality has deep evolutionary roots. His lively books challenge the conventional wisdom that human nature is innately selfish, male-dominated, and warlike.

Konrad Lorenz, Austrian founder of ethology, the study of animal behavior in nature, argued in "On Aggression" (1967) that humans had an innate drive to violence, at best feebly suppressed by "civilization." (Lorenz may have been justifying his own past: he would later be exposed as one of Hitler’s professors, who taught during WWII that Jews should be exterminated.)

Similar ideas have flooded popular culture. The 1950s novel "Lord of the Flies," still a staple of high school classrooms, features shipwrecked boys who revert to "killer ape" instincts and vote each other off the island with sharp weapons.

Sociobiology and its current alias, evolutionary psychology, echo Lorenz’s ideas, invoking genes for rape, war, racism and sexism. If, as sociobiologist E.O. Wilson says, our genes keep us on a short leash and make us mean, there is not much hope for transforming the world.

Despite de Waal’s inconsistent and often reactionary political ideas, his writings are useful in countering this cynical, unscientific view of human nature. De Waal’s chief contributions are a more balanced approach to animal behavior, an explanation of the role of reconciliation in primate societies, and evidence for culture in animal societies. ("Culture" in this context means nongenetic transmission of behaviors and inventions.) He points out that many complex behaviors are not properties of individuals, but are aspects of interrelationships between individuals. Aggression, for instance, does not belong to a chimpanzee, and is not inherently good or bad, but is a socially imbedded interaction. This is a step toward a dialectical understanding of animal societies.

According to de Waal, acts of reconciliation between two chimps, following an act of aggression, are just as important to their relationship as the aggression. Shortly after a fight, the combatants often hug and kiss each other, while other chimps may intervene to prevent fights from arising in the first place Sociobiologists are one-sided in their neglect of reconciliation, which de Waal considers the essential glue that holds primate societies together. Some of de Waal’s open-mindedness may stem from his experience studying bonobos (a rarer ape species related to chimps). Bonobos are more egalitarian and peaceable than chimps, share food, and have female-centered societies that use sex to promote social cohesion ².

Culture and behavioral flexibility, once thought to be exclusively human, are found throughout primate societies. In a revealing experiment, young rhesus monkeys were housed with slightly older stump-tail monkeys. On their own, rhesus tend to be aggressive, fighting at slight provocation. Stump-tails are more peaceful. After months of co-existence the rhesus adopted the easy-going behavior of stump-tails. Even after separation, the rhesus retained these friendlier behaviors. De Waal’s experiment shows that behavior can be culturally (not biologically) transmitted, and can change within a generation. It also suggests that conciliatory behavior has a social usefulness apparent even to monkeys.

De Waal’s research argues against a narrowly deterministic view of ape (and human) behavior ³. Without culture and history, there is no human nature. We say that capitalism, not biology, encourages wars, racism and sexism.

While his optimism about human potential may help us counter cynicism, don’t count de Waal as a political ally. He is crudely anti-communist, railing against formerly socialist East Germany and China. He prefers Adam Smith (father of capitalist economic theory) to Karl Marx. He is often sexist, suggesting innate gender differences in our ability to sympathize with others, and racist, speculating that "an impoverished social environment" may rob poor children of peacemaking skills ^4.

De Waal accepts sociobiological assumptions even as he undercuts their foundation. Indeed, one sometimes wonders whether he has read his own books." It is remarkable," Marx noted drily, "how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his own English society with its competition, opening up of new markets, and the Malthusian struggle for existence ⁵." De Waal, who naively praises the European Community as a model of peacemaking ⁴, seems to recognize among conciliatory apes the shaky "peace" deals and shifting alliances of European imperialism.

1

de Waal, F. (1996) "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals." Harvard University Press.
² de Waal, F., and Lanting, F. (1997) "Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape." University of California Press.
³ de Waal, F. (2001) "The Ape and the Sushi Master." Basic Books.
⁴ de Waal, F. (2000) "Primates: a natural heritage of conflict resolution." Science 289: 586-590.
⁵ Marx, K. (1862) Letter to Engels.

Fired Daewoo Workers Battle Cops

INCHON, SOUTH KOREA, March 7 — About 1,500 workers fought thousands of cops in the streets with rocks, bricks and Molotov cocktails as the Daewoo auto factory reopened today. The plant had been closed for three weeks to reduce excess inventory and slash 1,750 jobs.

The 7,000 workers still employed at the plant had to be brought in on 100 buses from four different pickup points. About 200 workers tried to block the buses while others tried to enter the plant grounds. More than 9,000 cops did what cops are paid to do: protect the bosses and scabs from workers.

Surprising the police, the workers marched about a mile to Inchon University of Education, where about 500 students joined them. A scuffle broke out and a dozen workers and students and six cops were injured. They tried to redirect the march toward the Pupyong railway station, but lines of police blocked them.

In 1999, Daewoo Motor collapsed under a debt load of more than $10 billion. Since then they have slipped from second to third place among South Korean automakers. The creditors who control the bankrupt company want to sell to General Motors. But GM is demanding more massive job cuts before making an offer.

The South Korean rulers’ struggle to increase profits by restructuring the economy and coping with a huge debt threatens more job cuts, which is spawning more resistence from workers. Bank workers have protested mergers in the banking industry, trapping one chief executive in his office for several days. Cutbacks in auto and shipbuilding industries are being met with sit-down strikes and mass militancy.

At the time of this battle, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was in Washington and Chicago assuring U.S. bosses they shouldn’t worry. GM Chairman Jack Smith introduced him to a luncheon at the Chicago Hilton. To attract investors, Kim, the bosses’ Nobel Prize winner, boasted that his government had cracked down on illegal labor actions, saying he will not tolerate union violence. He said that foreign investment totaled $24 billion in the three years before he took over but it’s now at $41 billion. Bush and GM should award him the "Piece Prize" for giving them a bigger piece of the action.

One of the dismissed workers said, "GM will close this factory if they take over Daewoo." He may be right. Factories at Kunsan and Changwon are much more modern than the 29-year-old Inchon plant. In this global crisis of overcapacity, the weak will be swallowed by the strong. Just as Daimler grabbed Chrysler, GM will keep what is profitable from Daewoo and destroy the rest.

Workers Have No Nations

This same worker added, "We have to struggle for our survival, for our lives, for our nation. I don’t like foreigners to take over." Here he is dead wrong. Unlike union leaders from Detroit to South Korea, we can use this fight to build international solidarity and the revolutionary communist movement. Nationalism is a completely reactionary idea because it ties workers of one nation to our exploiters. "Buy Korean" is as bad as "Buy American." Imperialist competition for markets, resources and cheap labor inevitably leads to war. Autoworkers must unite across all borders, against all bosses.

We salute the mass heroism of the Daewoo workers. All PLP workers’ collectives, especially in basic industry, should organize letters of support at our jobs and in our unions. And when we march on May Day we will tell this Daewoo worker, Korea has never been nor will it never be "your nation," but it can be your world!

LETTERS

a name="ESL’ers Learn the Language of May Day">">"SL’ers Learn the Language of May Day

I work part-time in a Chicago community organization, preparing immigrants for the U.S. citizenship test. Most of my students are adults who speak little or no English.

My PLP club discussed how to invite my students — and many others waiting for an amnesty and their immigrant papers — to participate in the May Day march in Washington, D.C. All my students and those working in the center (including the director) know CHALLENGE and PLP.

One day I was preparing my students for the exam, and simultaneously presenting a working-class view of history. A week before we had discussed May Day and they all had tickets. I said they should all come to the March and invite their friends and relatives. I told them I wouldn’t be teaching this Saturday (March 10) because I’d be in Gary protesting a KKK rally. I invited them to participate. Immediately a 65-year-old woman added, "Yes, it’s important because those killers should not be allowed to speak. If we don’t fight them they will continue murdering people at the border and all over. I am sorry I cannot go because I can hardly walk."

A student then said he wanted to pay for the May Day ticket and gave me $60. Another gave half the ticket money, and even though she couldn’t go she said she wanted to pay for someone else to go. We continued talking even after class.

Later, a cousin of mine said she’d received a call from one of my students, who happened to be a relative of hers, inviting her to May Day!

I learned workers can relate things quite well. They link the fight against the racist KKK to marching on May Day, to the fight for an amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and so on. Sometimes we don’t do our job of explaining the relationship between all these struggles. Talking and listening to workers I can see how we are all part of the same working class with a common interest. Fighting for communism is the best we can offer workers, the best way to win workers to our Party. The struggle is just beginning.

Juana Gallo, Chicago

Jury Duty: Make-Believe Justice

Recently, I was called as a potential jurors in a police brutality case. Some of us were asked to explain why we had stood in response to any of the questions the judge posed earlier.

I said I believe the police serve capitalism, and that capitalism requires the police to be racist and brutal. The judge then asked, would my beliefs prevent me from rendering a fair and impartial judgment. I said I would surely be fair, but not impartial! (Are the cops impartial when they choose who to brutalize?)

That did it! The judge removed me on the spot from the pool of potential jurors.

Apparently, in cases like these, "jury of one’s peers" means excluding anyone who doesn’t feel some peer kinship with the cops. Anyone with a little awareness of police brutality and its roots in capitalism is quickly excluded. I suppose we’re not reliable actors on the stage of make-believe justice.

A majority of the population in Baltimore is African-American. One might think that white people living in a majority-black city would have a better-than-typical understanding (for white folks) about police brutality. However, when the judge asked if any potential jurors would be prejudiced about any cops testimony as witnesses — either favorably or unfavorably — virtually every white person who stood said they would believe the word of a cop more than other witnesses. Clearly, we in Progressive Labor Party have a major job ahead of us, winning white workers to understand that racism is real and must be fought!

Finally, I met up with a friend and former colleague was also assigned to jury duty for that day. She said a family member of hers had been a cop working for an internal unit investigating other cops. He had shown her papers revealing that the police chief himself was getting large, routine payments from major drug traffickers.

When my friend was asked, as a potential juror, if she would be prejudiced about the testimony of cops as witnesses, she said loudly and clearly that she wouldn’t believe anything the cops said!

When I was leaving the courtroom my friend and I smiled to each other, and so did a new acquaintance who had gone to lunch with us.

Capitalism creates its own grave-diggers — throwing workers together in large numbers, thus helping us organize and spread the truth! All in all, a pretty good day!

A Baltimore Comrade

May Day, Class Struggle: A Winning Combo

Early one morning two workers are huddled in an out-of-the-way corner at a major hospital. From their pockets come wads of crumpled money and some unsold tickets for the area’s PLP May Day dinner. "Yeah," says Jewel, "Billy says she’s coming and Angela says she can take the train to the job, but she’ll need a ride from here." "I saw Marilyn when I punched in today," says Lenny. "She told me you also sold her a ticket and did a good job of explaining what the dinner was about."

Jewel is selling the May Day dinner tickets like she’s got some kind of fever. Many, many workers are buying them. Some are planning to come to the dinner and are interested in coming on May Day. But then there’s a large group who are buying a ticket because they like Jewel. We can always use money. But part of our organizing this year is to work with Jewel and figure out how to win more of these workers to actually come to our dinner and to the March. Thanks to Jewel we are now talking about May Day and PLP to many workers for the first time.

During lunch Linda and Izzy meet casually on the street and appear to be watching the traffic go by. But Linda and Izzy are actually meeting to organize a group of women with young families to confront a hospital boss. Some had to leave work early because their children were dismissed from school due to a snowstorm scare. This boss then threatened to fire one of the women.

Izzy had written a rough draft of a letter from the workers demanding a meeting with the boss. "Me and the other women didn’t like what you wrote ‘Viejo’," Linda says to Izzy. "You made us sound like we’re whining."

"So write it the way you want it," answered Izzy, "I just want us to get this fight on!"

Linda and the other women are taking this fight very seriously and are doing a good job of preparing for it. Linda started reading CHALLENGE during our involvement with our union’s contract struggle last year. She missed the March then. This year Linda’s more involved with workers’ fights on the job and therefore with us in PLP. We’re fighting harder to ensure she and her friends join us in Washington.

Later that day Lenny meets with a group of black and Latin women workers who feel they’re being passed over for full-time, higher-paying jobs. Ronnie, one of the black women, is the most outspoken and has decided to run for union delegate in the department. Lenny, Ronnie and the other workers develop a plan to deal with the department’s union delegates who don’t want to confront the boss. They don’t want to rock the boat. Later Lenny laughs and says to Ronnie, "It’s a small world."

Ronnie’s uncle "JJ" had been a PLP member for several years and is still very friendly. Ten years ago JJ and Lenny were side by side when PLP organized a fight that stopped a KKK march in a small nearby town. Now we’re in a fight side by side with JJ’s niece. We will introduce Ronnie to PLP, CHALLENGE and May Day.

PLP members participate with our co-workers in many fights, big and small. But through them all we struggle with our co-workers to do three things: read CHALLENGE, march on May Day, join PLP.

A Hospital Comrade

Fight APHA Award To Drug Moguls: Health Professionals Resist Sellout

A fight has erupted at the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) governing council for the maternal and child health section (MCH) over a new award to be named after Glaxo, an international drug company that’s raking in profits over the dead bodies of AIDS victims in Africa. This is extremely offensive.

Many of us in APHA want to "serve the people" in some capacity. The main thing transnational corporations serve is their bottom line —profits. They may produce some good medicine, but money controls which ones and how much.

The major health problem today is capitalism. Profit-driven health care is NOT the best way to serve the needs of the greatest number. Capitalism is very good at accumulating capital. Sometimes it’s even good at promoting innovation. But it is not designed for distribution to the people according to their needs. Only communism is.

At APHA meetings I see many who protested U.S. imperialism in the anti-war movement. This is where the old civil rights protestors have landed decades later. But with the collapse of the old communist movement political forces are pulling people so far to the right that naming an MCH award after a multinational corporation seems almost OK.

Glaxo has billions to entice professionals to its side. Communists offer love and respect for the masses of people. Most people are either cynical or misled about communism so they can’t see how to eliminate capitalism. We may not be able to prevent its flagrantly murderous excesses. But we don’t have to embrace it, bow down and worship it and name the finest efforts of colleagues after its corporate icons. With a long, hard fight, many intellectuals and professionals will be won over.

Red Doctor

Racism Rules Roost in Newark Schools

I am the parent of a high school student in Newark, New Jersey. Many years ago, Newark schools were "good" by ruling class standards. One high school was considered one of the country's best. Then the Newark rebellions of the '60s, led to "white flight" from the city. Services of all types declined. Once Newark's population became mostly working class black and Latin, the ruling class dropped its school funding far behind the predominately white suburbs. Even the New Jersey Supreme Court, unable to justify the disparity, ordered equalized funding.

But the state legislature refused to fund city schools at that level. The schools' decline continued. In a last ditch effort to appear "concerned," the State took over Newark's schools six years ago.

The State's first "improvement"? Metal detectors in all high schools! Some well-meaning parents, teachers and students believe this will ensure students' "safety," but it merely continues ruling class efforts to get city kids used to being treated like criminals and believing they're "bad." In fact, the president of the State's school psychologists' association said metal detectors actually make students feel less safe!

Recently, the State-appointed Superintendent of Newark schools decided to install video cameras in all high schools. Students will be continually videoed in all common areas - hallways, stairwells, cafeterias and gyms - with a security guard watching the video screens all day. Talk about schools feeling like prisons! This is happening after statistics show violence actually declined in Newark schools by 50% during the 1998-99 school year.

It's no accident this is all occurring precisely when the bosses are pushing more "community policing," the U.S. prison population is the world's highest and the federal government - in line with the Hart-Rudman Commission report - would consolidate all governmental law enforcement agencies. This is fascism, U.S. style.

It's critical for parents, students and teachers to unite to stop this increasingly repressive criminalizing of our children. Communists understand that the criminals are the rulers, not our young people. It's true that many students are less passive and more angry nowadays. Unfortunately, some of that anger is misdirected towards fellow students and teachers, rather than against this violent, racist, capitalist system which causes all this harm. We must point out that only a communist society will enable children to direct their energy and exuberance towards positive, collective goals, beneficial to the working class.

A Newark Mom

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For the benefit of many of our readers who cannot get the printed version of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, Progressive Labor Party communist newspaper, we place the entire content of the paper in the web. We thank you for reading our paper. If you agree with what we do, analyze the world and the struggles of the international working class from a communist point of view, please help us continue and expanding what we do. Subscribe to the printed version of CHALLENGE, it is only US$15 a year. Or send us a contribution. Any amount helps. Our address is GPO Box 808, NY, NY 10001, USA. You can make checks or money orders payable to Challenge Periodicals.

1. Continuing the Line of Bush Senior and Clinton
   Dubya Bush Bombs Iraq and Makes Plans for Oil War
   1. U.S. Policy Is A Flop
   2. Daddy Bush's New World Order Didn't Last Long
   3. U.S. Bosses' Plans For Land War: Easier Said Than Done
2. Arrest of FBI Spy Shows Renewed U.S.-Russia Rivalry
3. IT'S THE BOSSES' CRISIS--MAKE THEM PAY!
4. Take a Stand
   OPPOSE RACIST KKK RALLY
5. NYTimes `Advice' to Workers:
   `This won't hurt a bit . . .'
   1. Layoffs Aren't Too Bad -- They Just Kill....
6. Strikers Forced Back to Work
   Red Politics Brewing Among Bavaria Beer Workers
7. `Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel....'
8. KILLED FOR A PACKAGE OF MEAT
9. Fascist Welfare Cutoff Looms for Over 200,000
10. RACIST MURDERING COP ACQUITTED
    FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY GROWS
11. Suspended Red Teacher Should Be:
    `Commended, Not Condemned'
12. Students Attack Racist LA Schools
13. Bosses' Rivalry Heats Up Over `Zapatour'
14. ORGANIZE AGAINST `RACIAL PROFILING' OF INFANTS
    1. LIFE (AND DEATH) AT CCH
15. Daewoo Autoworkers Fight Cops Attacking Occupation of Plant
16. Letters
    Workers of the World, Write!
    1. A Streetcar Named Communism
    2. Jewish-Palestinian Unity Indicts Israeli Fascists
    3. ESL Students Meet The CHALLENGE
    4. `Let the red fire in our bellies burn hot . . . `
    5. `War On Drugs' is War On Workers
17. CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
    War Crimes of U.S. Imperialism
    `Death is our business, and business is good...'
18. Icelanders Resist Gene Pirates' Looting 0f Health Records

Editorial

Continuing the Line of Bush Senior and Clinton
Dubya Bush Bombs Iraq and Makes Plans for Oil War

Bush's increased bombing raids over Iraq show U.S. rulers will stop at nothing to restore their dwindling influence over the Persian Gulf and its oil.

These air raids are nothing new. U.S. and British warplanes have been terrorizing Iraqi civilians for years. But Bush's latest round represents an enlargement in both frequency and intensity. It coincides with growing U.S. isolation in the face of tactical victories by Saddam Hussein and U.S. oil rivals Russia and France.

U.S. Policy Is A Flop

The U.S. policy of using sanctions to force Hussein from power is a flop. The sanctions' only "success" has been the wholesale murder of Iraqi workers and children. U.S. pals and foes alike violate the sanctions every day. Iraqi oil has returned to the market. Exxon Mobil, the power behind the bombings, ironically, is its biggest customer, because Iraqi oil is the region's cheapest, and controlling the cheapest oil is crucial to market domination.

Another irony leaves U.S. bosses with egg on their faces. According to the London Times (2/21), Iraq's oil barons are smuggling their cheap oil in tankers into Turkey, tankers which the U.S. could easily bomb because they're breaking the sanctions. But since the U.S. is using the Turkish air base at Incirlik as a launching pad for U.S. and British war planes patrolling the northern no-fly zone over Iraq, they're allowing Turkish rulers to break the sanctions in exchange for use of that base. Thus Iraq is reaping oil profits growing out of the very bombing campaign that's aimed at weakening Saddam Hussein. Profits drive all capitalists, whether U.S., Iraqi or Turkish.

Bush's bombing occurs in a setting that reveals significant gains by Saddam Hussein. Despite U.S. threats, contact between Iraq and the outside world is increasing. Technicians and businessmen fly into Baghdad regularly from Western Europe and Russia, thumbing their noses at U.S. policy. Their visits aim at launching the multi-billion dollar deals for Iraqi oil and gas that await only the formal lifting of sanctions. Only days after Bush had taken office, Iraqi rulers signed free trade pacts with Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Daddy Bush's New World Order Didn't Last Long

This situation is a far cry from the so-called "New World Order," of which Bush's father boasted after slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers in the 1991 Desert Storm. In that war, U.S. imperialism had managed to arm-twist and/or bribe the Europeans, Arabs and Russians into a supposed "coalition" which, even if it did very little fighting, at least didn't stand in Washington's way. But current Russian rulers are regrouping around a long-range plan to challenge the U.S. for world domination.

In 1991, French oil bosses came on board, however reluctantly. Now, with dreams of using Iraqi oil as leverage in the race against Exxon Mobil for maximum profit, they have a huge stake in opposing U.S. policy. And the Iraqi trade deals with former Arab enemies could spell further big trouble for the U.S., which so far has also failed to impose a "peace" deal between Israeli and Palestinian bosses on the crucial western flank of the Middle East.

So the stakes are climbing. Arab rulers will have to choose between the U.S. and Iraq. As usual, oil lies at the heart of the struggle. The big Persian Gulf producers, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, face a profit squeeze related to the current worldwide economic slump, a regular feature of the capitalist system. Growing amounts of Iraqi oil on a depressed market will lower prices. If Bush can convince these bosses that military force and sanctions against Iraq can stabilize the price of oil, then U.S. influence in the Persian Gulf may make a comeback. That was undoubtedly a key goal of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's recent Mid-East jaunt.

However, relying on the profit greed of wobbly oil princes isn't a recipe for long-term stability, peace or unchallenged U.S. supremacy. Nor is a failed policy of unenforceable sanctions or a military strategy that relies on bombing to resolve a situation that can be settled only on the ground.

Although U.S. imperialism continues to sit on the horns of a dilemma, we must not make the deadly error of believing that because launching war for Iraqi oil is difficult, the rulers won't do it. This is the isolation of a caged, untamed tiger. They must try everything to control and profit from the oil. Sooner or later this competition will lead to ever-widening armed struggle. We can't predict the timetable, but we must prepare our Party and our class for this inevitability. Imperialism and war are inseparable. Our job now and for the future remains mustering the determination and skill to build our revolutionary movement under all conditions.

U.S. Bosses' Plans For Land War: Easier Said Than Done

Everyone, from the Bush administration to U.S. foes, knows that control of Iraqi oil can be determined, as the London Times (2/21) puts it, "by the only means possible, a land war." However, U.S. rulers are unprepared both internally and externally for ground war in Iraq.

Internally, as CHALLENGE has often pointed out, the rulers have little confidence in the political will of the working-class soldiers and sailors in their military machine. Ground war means many casualties. Since Vietnam, no U.S. government has managed to convince workers to die in droves for the profits and power of the U.S. ruling class. This situation is unlikely to change.

Externally, the sanctions and bombing raids against Iraq generate sharper international contradictions with every passing day. Bush blamed and threatened the Chinese for giving Saddam Hussein improved radar defenses. In Russia, the February 16 raids--with no prior U.S. notification--will strengthen the rulers who "argue that the only way for Russia to avoid being ignored, marginalized and eventually dismembered is to win respect through strength." (Stratfor Global Intelligence Update, 02/21.)

Arrest of FBI Spy Shows Renewed U.S.-Russia Rivalry

The recent arrest of FBI agent Robert Hanssen on spying charges reflects increasing hostility between U.S. and Russian capitalists. As long as Gorbachev and Yeltsin welcomed Western investment and U.S. rulers dreamed of exploiting the former Soviet empire's cheap labor and resources, catching spies did not seem to be a priority as before. But now the party's over. The rise of the Putin faction clearly shows that U.S. and Russian strategic interests fundamentally conflict rather than coincide. Hanssen's plight is one signal of the end of the deal-making.

As analysts at Stratfor point out (2/21), "For the past decade, Russia has been led by a cadre of Western-oriented politicians, who, to various degrees, have been willing to sacrifice Russian strategic interests for economic and political integration with Europe and the West. They have been challenged by a much larger faction in the government, the military and the populace that argues Russia must re-establish itself as a superpower to avoid complete dominance by the United States." While they have a long way to go, Putin & Co. have done all they can, from Iraq to the Caspian to the Balkans, to build Russian political, military and economic influence at Washington's expense.

U.S. rulers, however, are planning to take drastic measures at home and abroad to ensure their survival as the "world's sole superpower." CHALLENGE has reported on the efforts of the Hart-Rudman commission to restructure the government into a police state in liberal clothing. One Hart-Rudman provision is to rein in the FBI by restricting its ability to block presidential appointments. The ruling class has a problem with the FBI. Since its inception led by J. Edgar Hoover, the bureau has largely recruited conservative Catholics, who don't necessarily share the liberal ideology of the ruling class's main wing. These super-obedient followers of rules are useful for enforcing the bosses' laws but not reliable in setting overall policy. Hanssen's purging can be seen as a tightening of the chain of command.

Hanssen belongs to Opus Dei, an overtly fascist Catholic sect. Louis Freeh used to belong but had to quit before he became FBI director (London Telegraph, 6/17/96). Hanssen once gave a talk at the bureau in which he equated "communism" as it was practiced in the last days of the Soviet Union with his own ultra-right religion (Boston Globe, 2/24). He was right; both are basically anti-communist attacks on workers. Thus, he justified his and the U.S. rulers' open door policy to Moscow at that time. But bosses on both sides have slammed the door. Furthermore, the main wing of U.S. rulers is not betting on religious conservatism as the primary means for rallying the masses, or its own cadre, for war. Exit Hanssen.

The bosses' media are using the Hanssen drama to pump up anti-Russian patriotism. We can use it to discuss what genuine communism is.

IT'S THE BOSSES' CRISIS--MAKE THEM PAY!

GARY, IN, February 22 -- "I think you're going to see it getting much worse. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel." That's how United Steel Workers (USWA) District 7 Director Jack Parton described the future facing steelworkers in Indiana and Illinois.

Parton's right, the only light at the end of the tunnel, is the headlights of Usinor, the giant French steel manufacturer, which just merged with Arbed of Luxembourg and Aceralia Corporación Siderúrgica of Spain, to create the world's largest steel maker.

The new European steel giant will produce 46 million metric tons of steel a year, almost double the biggest Asian steel makers -- Nippon Steel of Japan and Pohang Iron and Steel of South Korea -- which combined produce about 52 million metric tons annually. Usinor will control 30% of European steel production and over 5% percent worldwide. It will make half of Europe's flat steel, used in autos and appliances.

The steel industry must consolidate to destroy excess capacity and combat falling prices. Klaus Soer, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said, "The process of consolidation is in full steam in the steel sector." Usinor recently acquired Cockerill Sambre S.A. of Belgium, for $1.1 billion in 1999. Thyssen Krupp, Germany's biggest steel maker and Nazi war criminal, was formed by a merger the same year. Corus, created by merging British Steel and Royal Hoogovens of the Netherlands in 1999, just announced it will cut its work-force by 20%, or 6,050 jobs, to keep pace with the competition.

To make a profit, the U.S. steel industry must run at 85% to 90% of capacity. Most have been running under 80%. The industry as a whole fell to 65% in the final week of 2000.

During the crises of the 1980s, the USWA leadership gave up 350,000 jobs and billions of dollars in wage and benefit concessions, so the bosses could compete and profit. Despite the massive cutbacks, the steel bosses are facing a new crisis of low prices, high energy costs and the ever-sharpening battle with European and Asian steel bosses, with a lot less room to maneuver.

The union leaders are again rushing to the aid of the bosses. After the super-nationalist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign, District Director Parton now says he would suspend the job security clause of the current contract if the bosses eliminate overtime, lay off all contract workers and "prove the cuts will help."

In fact, the union leaders support their billionaire masters' war plans. Parton wants Bush to tour the steel mills accompanied by Pentagon officials. "Having a good steel industry is vital to our national defense," he said.

The life-and-death struggle among the bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor will inevitably lead to war. That's the nature of imperialism. Steel workers have no stake in bailing out the bosses, competing with our brothers and sisters around the world or following our worse-than-useless union leaders to war. While we fight for every job, we must build an international PLP to destroy the war-makers and lead the international working class to power.

Take a Stand
OPPOSE RACIST KKK RALLY

WHERE: GILROY STADIUM (32ND AND HARRISON)
IN GARY, INDIANA
WHEN: MARCH 10 AT 12 Noon
FOR MORE INFO, CALL: 1 800 330 9953

NYTimes `Advice' to Workers:
`This won't hurt a bit . . .'

Last month, companies announced plans to wipe out 140,000 jobs. DaimlerChrysler--26,000; Lucent--16,000; Nortel--10,000; Goodyear--7,200. Montgomery-Ward will close, eliminating 37,000 jobs. JC Penny will shut 47 stores and slash 5,000 jobs. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Gateway computers will cut 6,000 jobs. The list goes on and on with new cuts announced daily.

But in an article entitled "Behind Layoffs, Reality is Often Less Severe in US"(New York Times, 2/19), we're told things aren't as bad as they seem. "More than half of the 7,000 cuts planned at Sara Lee...will occur in other countries." "...The 12,000 hourly Chrysler workers subject to layoff in the United States will continue to receive 95 percent of their pay..." "At least a third of the 16,000 jobs to be eliminated at Lucent will still exist--as parts of other companies."

The Times speaks for the bosses, not workers. Reality is less severe when the stock market is soaring and record profits result from increased productivity. "As the economy's growth has slowed, investors...cheer the announcement of major cost cuts and layoffs." True. "A single corporate layoff of a few thousand workers, likely to be spread over a few weeks or many months, has a minimal effect..."

You get a much different perspective from the streets of Detroit or Gary, Indiana, not to mention Ciudad Juarez or Bupyong, South Korea. In the U.S. during the 1980's, over 500,000 jobs were lost in auto, 350,000 in steel. More than 1.5 million industrial jobs vanished. The massive cuts were accompanied by a wave of strike-breaking and union-busting that continues to this day.

This may have had "a minimal effect" on the Times editors, but it took a terrible toll on the lives of the workers. About 75% of the displaced workers ended up working for two-thirds of their previous pay. Some turned to drugs, alcohol or petty crime. Many ended up homeless, in jail or dead. From western Pennsylvania to Logan, West Virginia, from East Chicago, IN to Flint, MI, whole communities were destroyed and never recovered.

Today, one-third of the auto industry and two-thirds of the coalmines are non-union. Auto production is at an all-time high, with 500,000 fewer workers. Thousands of young workers in Gary and Detroit are working in gambling casinos instead of the factories and mills. Health and safety standards and work rules have been gutted, reflected in the series of explosions at Rouge and Bethlehem Steel.

LTV, the third largest U.S. steel maker, has declared bankruptcy. American Steel is closing, moving the work to Monroe, NC, cutting wages in half. One difference between this crisis and the last is that welfare has been wiped out, along with many other health and welfare programs. Contrary to what the Times says, for many workers this wave of cuts will be more severe. And with the widespread use of multi-tiered wage systems and wage progressions, getting hired can be as severe as being laid off.

Layoffs Aren't Too Bad -- They Just Kill....

A Congressional Joint Economic Committee study published in 1976 attempted to "estimate the cost in human suffering of people being out of work." (New York Times, 10/31/76) That report concluded that when unemployment rose 1.4% in 1970 (from 3.5% to 4.9%) it led directly to the death of over 30,000 workers in the following five years-- from stress-related ailments, suicide and homicide. Of these, 26,440 were linked to strokes, heart and kidney ailments, 1,540 to suicide, 1,740 to homicide and 870 to cirrhosis of the liver.

Dr. Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins University told the Committee that, "The national rate of suicide in the United States can be viewed as an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths. How conveniently the Times "forgets"....

Strikers Forced Back to Work
Red Politics Brewing Among Bavaria Beer Workers

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA, Feb. 27--The two-month strike by 6,500 Bavaria brewery workers ended when the union accepted the Minister of Labor's decision to send it to binding arbitration. Angelino Garzón, a former union leader and member of the Communist Party, is the Minister of Labor. Now it should be renamed "Minister for the Bosses."

PLP forces have emerged stronger from this struggle. We have made many new friends and recruited several. Workers from various Bavaria plants around the country who didn't know our Party and our paper CHALLENGE do now. Bavaria strikers also learned what PLP means by "one working class, one flag, one international communist party."

Workers feel betrayed by the local and national union leaders. They had told workers the strike would continue until the demands were won. This is exactly what PLP had warned about: union hacks are not on the workers' side; they serve the bosses one way or another.

Despite the hacks, thousands of workers showed solidarity with the Bavaria strikers. PLP members in the U.S. and other countries also built support. Bavaria workers will long remember this moral and monetary backing fellow workers gave them during the struggle. This international solidarity showed in practice the validity of the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!"

But although we've been forced to return to work, the struggle will continue. We will be vigilant against any threatened firing of rank-and-file strike leaders. We will also continue to fight for the strike demands, to stop the company from taking away what we have fought for and won in recent decades. Mainly, we will continue to fight to win workers to PLP's communist politics. The strike became a school for communism for those many workers who became conscious of the need to fight for a new society, without bosses, without death squads and drug cartels. Communism has gained a foothold among these workers.

`Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel....'

In my first semester at the State University of N.Y. (SUNY) I've been more active than I envisioned. I joined a Ralph Nader organization involved in causes such as homelessness, the environment, voting and sweatshops. I chose the sweatshops committee because I thought it would produce the most activity.

A demonstration was planned to protest several stores that used sweatshop labor, especially the sneaker manufacturer NIKE. Nike uses slave-like conditions and wages in countries like Indonesia to super-exploit workers .

Five busloads carrying 120 students and two older leaders converged on a small town outside NYC. Two lawyers were present just in case people were "carried away." We were told repeatedly there would be no civil disobedience.

We marched to a large Nike store, chanting: "Down with sweatshops, shame on Nike!"; "No justice, no peace." It was a beautiful sight, a mass of young adults fighting for a cause. Hundreds of shoppers stood still, mouths open, while we marched and chanted.

As soon as we hit the Nike shop, security ordered us out. Although I wanted to stay, our strict leaders said to leave as soon as we were told, peacefully. We left chanting, "We'll be back."

Later, we went to a Mall, the biggest in the state. Divided into groups, each with a "tour guide," some dressed in Dresden shorts, long socks, straw hats and Hawaiian shirts, we were to walk through the mall pretending to be tourists. We followed our tour leaders from store to store, saying these clothes were made in sweatshops and describing the slave-like conditions those workers faced.

Mall shoppers, employers and employees watched. Some even followed us, laughing. They appeared not to know what to think. The five groups met in the center of the mall chanting our slogans. Security finally "escorted" us out.

I was excited and felt powerful but "accepted." I didn't believe the people watching us felt threatened as I think they sometimes do. The two lawyers present gave me a (false) sense of security. That's the danger of joining other groups -- one can get lost in that group and their fight.

On the bus returning to school the person next to me said he was a socialist. I felt this was a good opportunity to become friends. When I said I was in PLP, he said he used to buy CHALLENGE at his local grocery store. Some people overheard our conversation and declared they were communists, socialists and Marxists also. It was amazing. We started discussing politics and why we considered ourselves communist, socialists and Marxists.

Before I went to college I felt I would be isolated at school because I would be the only Party member at my university. I realized the importance of being in a mass organization, about the potential in every worker to become a member of PLP.

However, there's a contradiction: in mass organizations, you're fighting for reforms that maintain capitalism instead of abolishing it. These groups have good people who want a better world and we need to win them. Like CHALLENGE says, capitalism has really got to go. So, how do you tell your friends you're a communist, how do you introduce CHALLENGE, how do you explain all that complicated stuff about communism? And what will your friends think?

All too often we sell our communist ideas short. Communism is the greatest thing since the wheel. Many workers and students will grasp some aspect of that. When my fellow students first discovered I was a communist, their main reaction was a very friendly curiosity.

I remember struggling repeatedly with some young comrades about distributing CHALLENGE to their friends and relatives. One was a newly-arrived cousin from Africa. I was told he wouldn't be interested in politics or communism. One day, I asked him what he thought about communism. Without hesitation he said, "I think it's the greatest thing in the world." I'll never forget that.

As the semester progresses, many students on my campus may want a communist explanation of various events. When I participate in reform activities, they know I'm for more than some small change in the system. For me, there's nothing better than being known as a communist by friend and foe alike. It makes life worthwhile.

Workers and students want to understand the world. They want the truth. CHALLENGE and communism are what they're looking for. We're responsible to get it out there.

KILLED FOR A PACKAGE OF MEAT

DETROIT, MI, Feb. 21 -- On February 8, security guards at a Kroger supermarket killed 38-year old Travis Shelton. He was headed for the door with two packages of meat under his coat. Shelton's wife Jennifer said, "Nobody should have to feel this way. People should know, next time it could be your loved one."

Travis was 5'6" and weighed 260 pounds. He had asthma, high blood pressure and diabetes. A history of drug abuse had damaged his enlarged heart. But for all his ailments, it was racism that killed him. Racism where ten more dollars in Kroger's cash register is worth more than a man's life.

Security guards confronted Shelton. Within minutes he was face down on the floor gasping, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe," as 260 pound guard Jason Clover sat on his back. When the police arrived, they handcuffed Shelton and rolled him over only to find they had handcuffed a dead man.

An off-duty firefighter tried to assist the guards and held Shelton's arm. "I can't help but feel responsible," he said. "If I hadn't helped the guards, [he] would have had an arm free and still be alive."

On February 14, the Medical Examiner who preformed the autopsy ruled the death a homicide. The police response was, "Not every homicide is murder."

Shelton was the second black man in eight months to be killed by store security guards. Last June, Lord & Taylor security guards killed Frederick Finley when his barely teenage daughter was suspected of shoplifting a $10 bracelet.

Whether its police murders on the street, mass expulsions from school, strip searches at airports, or just driving in your car, racist terror infects all of society. The bosses have turned every black and Latin person into a suspect. With one in four young black men in the criminal justice system, and more than a million in prison, whole sections of the population are already living under full-blown fascism.

But more to the point is the question raised by the firefighter. Yes, he is responsible. We are all responsible for each other to fight the bosses' dictatorship. We can't be "Good Nazis" and claim, "We didn't know about the concentration camps." Building a fighting PLP that serves the working class can help develop a sense of responsibility for our class. This is a requirement for becoming a more serious force for revolution.

Fascist Welfare Cutoff Looms for Over 200,000

NEW YORK CITY, Feb. 26 -- Over 200,000 people on welfare in this state face the cutoff of their cash benefits by the end of this year (New York Times, 2/10). At that time, each of them will have reached the arbitrary five-year federal limit enacted in the 1996 Clinton/Gingrich so-called welfare reform. Some 180,000 people in the U.S. have already lost benefits as some states, like Florida and Wisconsin, imposed shorter time limits under waivers granted by the Clinton Administration. Hundreds of thousands of men and women have been forced into slave labor Workfare programs.

The racist ideology of the Democratic/Republican Clinton/Gingrich gang insists that people on welfare "don't want to work." However, among the adults facing cutoff, nearly 28% are wage earners who work an average of 30 hours per week. Another 15% have disabilities that prevent them from working. Welfare bosses point to decreased welfare rolls as "proof" that the so-called reform is working. Soup kitchens and homeless shelters however report overwhelming increases in people seeking help. Welfare advocates report that large numbers of eligible applicants for welfare, food stamps and medicaid benefits either are wrongfully turned away or discouraged from applying in the first place.

NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has plans for six-month jobs for those reaching their five-year limits, followed by slave labor Workfare for those unable to make ends meet. As "payment" for this slave labor, families will receive a greatly-reduced cash benefit and vouchers to be used towards food and rent. The absolute terror of starvation of men, women and children will be a club used to lower the wages of, and divide, the entire working class, a clear indication of increasing fascism in the U.S.! We will continue and intensify our campaign opposing Workfare, both on the job and in the unions.

RACIST MURDERING COP ACQUITTED
FIGHT AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY GROWS

Upper Marlboro, MD, February 23 -- Today a murdering racist cop was acquitted in Prince George's County, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, D.C.), to the surprise of no one but angering everyone.

Brian Catlett is the first cop ever tried for killing someone in this county. He murdered a 19 year old unarmed black man, Gary Hopkins, Jr., in November 1999 during a fracas after a dance. The evidence of the cop's guilt was so overwhelming that Jack Johnson, the County's chief prosecutor, felt compelled to indict the cop for "involuntary" manslaughter and reckless endangerment. He was under pressure to make this gesture, given that 17 people have been shot -- some fatally -- by the County's cops in the last 18 months. (Howard University student Prince Jones was the latest fatality of the PG cops' rampage; see CHALLENGE over the last six months).

The trial was rigged from the start. The judge was a veteran conservative. The cop rejected a jury trial, choosing to be tried by the judge. Gary's mother described the judge-cop connection as part of an "old boy" network. Moreover, the prosecution was so inept that, for such a high profile case, can only be described as deliberate incompetence. For instance, the prosecution raised in an improper manner the fact that the cop and Hopkins had had previous run-ins, which was critical history behind the murder in November 1999; so this evidence was ruled inadmissible. Had a young black man killed a cop, no gross prosecution mistakes like this would have been made!

The anti-police brutality movement has really advanced. The Prince George's County People's Coalition for Police Accountability organized a prayer vigil of 150 people on the eve of the trial to back the family. The family's supporters packed the courtroom all week (along with the fascist cops and their "union" leader Rodney Bartlett). Dozens rallied outside the courthouse calling for the conviction of cop Catlett. Demonstrators included many county residents and Howard University workers. Speakers attacked the prosecution's malpractice and called for a broader movement against police brutality and racial profiling. One speaker called for a determined fight against the capitalist system and all its politicians, since capitalism spawns police brutality as a bosses' tool to better control and intimidate the working class, especially black workers.

During this campaign many important political issues have arisen. Who are our friends and who are our enemies? A cadre of black politicians have emerged over the last 15 years and, to a great extent, lead Prince George's County. They include County Executive Wayne Curry, State's Attorney Jack Johnson and local congressman Al Wynn. Yet these politicians have said virtually nothing about the fascist police force, merely suggesting a few minor reforms in police procedures (mounting video cameras on police cars, modest changes in the Law Enforcement Officer's Bill of Rights).

Nevertheless, some Coalition members believe the best political strategy for fighting police brutality is to work through the electoral system -- "which politicians are on our side." Other members, including PLP'ers, declare that, since the cause of the problem is capitalism, a mass revolutionary movement against capitalism is needed, which relies on the masses of workers and students to join the fight. The PLP identifies the media, politicians and legislative initiatives as all part of the enemy's apparatus, and will at best lead us to waste our time and energy and wind up demoralized.

Nevertheless, the Coalition has gotten several bills introduced in the state legislature to reduce the cops' protection against investigation and prosecution. Meanwhile, a major mass conference is being planned for mid-March at St. Paul's Baptist Church where the struggle over political direction will continue.

The PLP continues to urge the Coalition to fight racist police brutality and the system which generates it and to rely on the workers and students in the struggle. More will then see that reliance on the media, the politicians and the official political process does not produce the desired change.

The fact that hundreds of PLP leaflets about this case have been distributed in the County and at Howard University, and that most Coalition members have read CHALLENGE occasionally, makes this more possible. The PLP will continue to bring more workers and students into this movement, bolstering its mass character and its potential for militant action. They can be won to joining the revolutionary struggle and PLP.

Suspended Red Teacher Should Be:
`Commended, Not Condemned'

CHICAGO, IL February 21 -- "You can pay me back the money I lost, but you can never compensate the students for the education they lost. You say you care about the students, but everything you've done in this case indicates the opposite." This was the charge made by suspended communist math teacher Carol Caref against the Chicago Board of Education at their monthly meeting.

Carol was suspended without pay over a year ago for taking a student to an anti-KKK rally. In December, a hearing officer ruled that Carol should be sent back to work and "commended, not condemned." The Board can overrule the hearing officer, and that decision was supposed to have been made at the Board's last meeting. However, her case wasn't even on the agenda. They said they would poll the Board within two weeks and then issue a decision.

In the meantime, Carol's students at Chicago Vocational School (CVS) have been without a math teacher since the end of January. After Carol was removed from school last year, they were denied a teacher for several weeks. At a recent Local School Council meeting, the principal said Carol would be coming back, but that the Board will build another case against her. They're "out to get her."

About 75 supporters attended a victory party last month celebrating the hearing officer's favorable ruling. They are fighters against the repressive, anti-student regime of Schools boss Paul Vallas. Each one will be asked to be a May Day organizer and CHALLENGE distributor. The Caref-Bernal Defense Committee also plans to visit CVS parents and students. Fighting to carry out this struggle with each and every person in this way will help give communist political leadership to the fights against racist " intervention," high stakes tests, teacher layoffs (at a time of shortages!), and fascist "zero tolerance" policies.

The Board serves its capitalist masters, running the schools like factories designed to produce patriotic, individualistic, pro-capitalist soldiers and workers. Our Party fights for just the opposite. PLP serves the working class. We believe that all students are capable of learning, and becoming organizers and leaders of the revolutionary communist movement. Build a fighting Party in the schools! March on May Day!

Students Attack Racist LA Schools

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 27 -- Over 70 black and Latino high school students organized by the Coalition for Educational Justice attended a citywide high school conference. They condemned the rotten conditions in their schools and the racist education they're receiving: broken bathrooms and a lack of toilet tissue, overcrowded classrooms, teachers not teaching, constant harassment by school officials and police, and the lack of books and computers. The discussion revealed that overcrowded classrooms lead not only to a high teacher-student ratio but also assignment of one counselor to hundreds of students.

The "Stanford 9" standardized test, was attacked as racist, culturally biased and anti-working class. An Academic Performance Index (API) is based on the test's results. Each school is awarded money for improved API scores. Most of it has gone to the wealthier schools while the poorer ones get poorer. In addition, the curriculum is being geared to passing the test at the expense of critical educational development.

A group of students and teachers distributed a PLP leaflet attacking the U.S. bombing of Iraq. They told conference participants that the same rulers responsible for racist education are bombing Iraqi workers for oil profits. They said we need to build an international struggle against them.

These students want to fight back against racist education and conditions. We need to win them to understand that U.S. rulers are in trouble. They must defend their empire against imperialist rivals worldwide. They must change the schools to serve this goal. This includes building a national curriculum that justifies U.S. imperialism; pushes cultural nationalism and restricts students to learning only English; and obscures inter-imperialist rivalry leading to war. They want to build patriotism and win youth ideologically to fight and die for U.S. imperialism. Such tests as the Stanford 9 reflects this (see box).

All students can learn the real nature of the world and how to change it. Our fight is against capitalism because capitalism will never serve the educational interests of working-class students. The bosses' schools exist to reproduce their racist system. Only by destroying capitalism with a communist revolution will education ever meet the needs of the entire working class.

We need to deepen this fight and help prepare students today for the future by fighting to learn and learning to fight. A crucial part of this process is winning many of these angry students to march on May Day. This got a good push when one of the conference-goers called PLP applauding the leaflet and wanting to get together.

Sample questions reveal how the Stanford 9 exam obscures class relations and justifies U.S. imperialism in the attempt to win youth to defend and die for it:

What factor most strongly binds people together in a culture
a. Having simiilar economic problems
b. Living in similar neighborhoods
c. Sharing a common language
d. Joining the same political party
Their answer--c. Real answer--Which class one belongs to.

Events in Bosnia-Herzogovina both in 1914 and in the 1990's indicate the continuing influence of
a. international organizations
b. economic interdependence
c. economic self-interest
d. ethnic rivalries
Their answer--d. Real answer--Inter-imperialist rivalry.

The U.S. had numerous commitments around the world during the 1960's because it was
a. the richest country in the world at that time
b. the only superpower in the world at that time
c. leading the struggle against communist aggression
d. attempting to acquire a global empire
Their answer--c. Real answer--d.

Bosses' Rivalry Heats Up Over `Zapatour'

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 27 -- The march of the Zapatistas--the so-called Zapatour--led by Subcomandante Marcos from the jungles of Chiapas, has turned the eyes of the world toward Mexico. The academics say Marcos will revive the Mexican left. But behind all this is a fierce battle of rival bosses--from Mexico the U.S., and the European Union (EU). They view the Zapatistas home state, Chiapas, as a cash paradise, with its oil and mineral resources.

One example is the group PULSAR, a huge transnational company led by Alfonso Romo, which sells genetically engineered seeds. It wants to plant thousands of acres of eucalyptus trees to produce cellulose in the forests of Chimalapas and Lancondona. Then there's the ambitious project to build the super trans-isthmus Tehuantepec highway to connect the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific Ocean.

Today the bourgeois intellectuals want to solve the Chiapas situation by accepting some of the demands of the rebellious indigenous. They figure this can counter the influence of European non governmental organizations (NGO's) who have been organizing sympathy with the Zapatista movement by implementing assistance programs. The Fox regime must settle the Chiapas conflict in order to start constructing the trans-isthmus superhighway. It aims to negotiate directly with the rebels, offering them trinkets while continuing their poverty. The U.S. media and its NGO's are even "supporting" the Zapatistas to counter EU influence. This is all part of the U.S. bosses' strategic plan for control of all resources from the Texas border south to Panama. All the bosses use the people's needs as fodder for their own class interests.

Many progressive people see Zapatismo as a solution to at least the immediate evils of capitalism. But the fight for tiny reforms only changes the mask of the exploiters. Amending the Constitution will not change people's lives. The Constitution is an arm of the bosses who use their laws to maintain their class oppression. We need to get rid of it, not reform it. Getting the indigenous people to vote still leaves power in the bosses' hands. We have to fight for power for the working people.

That's why today more than ever we must fight for communist revolution, for a society where our class will reap the full value of all we produce.

The indigenous people have valuable experiences to draw on in building a communist society.

They still practice features of primitive communism -- mutual aid, collectivity, preserving the earth as the source of needed resources, not as a component of capitalist production, serving the people without receiving any wages for it. Their tradition doesn't conceive of imposing control on another group. They make their important decisions in general assemblies of the collective, not in back door meetings.

Workers and students shouldn't follow the U.S. or the EU imperialists. Our class can gain tremendously by the integration of more indigenous workers in the fight for communist revolution!

ORGANIZE AGAINST `RACIAL PROFILING' OF INFANTS

AT COOK COUNTY HOSPITAL

CHICAGO, Feb. 25 -- The viciously racist incident in the ER (see box) was the last straw. It moved a group of black and white doctors to meet and struggle to come up with a plan to oppose the "racial profiling" in the Cook County Hospital (CCH) newborn nursery. They want to fight the drug testing of newborns without the mother's knowledge or consent. This practice, long-standing at CCH, would not be tolerated for a second by private patients at a predominantly white suburban hospital. The doctors decided they must stand up for the working-class families using CCH. Most were emphatic that treating their patients as "suspects" is not why they became doctors.

This issue is complicated. Some feel mothers "cannot be trusted" because they may conceal their drug addiction and harm their infants. But reporting her addiction risks losing custody of her baby.

Are we serving the people or the police? How "concerned" could the bosses be about helping people with drug problems when they fail to provide enough rehab facilities for low-income patients? Why did they cut the number of social workers in the newborn unit from three to one?

Once a woman is reported for drug use in pregnancy -- especially if she is black -- her infant may be taken away. No wonder women are tempted to conceal their problem! Many experiences in the life of a black or Latin working class woman would lead her to mistrust healthcare providers. Secretly testing a baby's urine for drugs will not likely restore any trust. And it makes the doctors and nurses into cops.

As fascism develops, there is a struggle for the hearts and minds of hospital workers and professionals. The bosses want us to side with them, against our working-class patients and become auxiliary police, not healthcare providers. Despite ever-increasing numbers of armed police and threats of job loss, hospital workers must resist. Our interests and those of our patients are the same.

At a recent meeting, the new chairman of pediatrics, recently arrived from one of the country's most elite historically black medical schools, delivered the bad news: while as of January, only 591 of the hospital's 1,200 beds remained open, by next July, it will fall to 464. Unity of all CCH workers and professionals is essential to fight these layoffs.

Some feel the administration has intentionally created the atmosphere of intimidation over recent years, to ward off expected resistance to worsening conditions. However, staff members have protested each new regulation, like the lock-down of the stairwells, the requirement of multiple pass checks or the strict limits on family members allowed to visit. As the countdown proceeds, the situation deteriorates.

The rulers and their police and CIA are responsible for the drug epidemics in the large cities. Clinton's buddies get pardons, while low-level dealers and users are locked up. Oppression breeds resistance, so the rulers ratchet up the police state. Part of that process is winning workers and professionals ideologically to the side of the police, and against the workers, especially black and Latin workers. Resisting this tendency is more than being a "nice person" or a good healthcare professional. It's being an anti-fascist and an ally of the working class.

Many come to work at CCH because they believe in providing care with concern, regardless of ability to pay. The main way to serve the people is to fight to win them to become revolutionary communist organizers and members of PLP. We value and respect black working-class infants and their mothers for what they are: future fighters and leaders of the working class. As this fight unfolds, we can build a contingent of CCH patients, workers and professionals to march on May Day. Now that's the best thing we can do with our lives.

LIFE (AND DEATH) AT CCH

The baby was dead on arrival. The small lifeless form of the four-month-old was brought into the pediatric emergency room. It was soon clear that efforts to revive him would not succeed. Still the doctors and nurses continued to pump on the little chest and inject medications for forty minutes. The mother did not arrive for nearly two hours, reportedly because there was a warrant for her arrest. Indeed, she arrived in shackles. She was given some privacy to see her dead child. But while the mother sat holding her cold, gray infant, a police officer stood behind her, silently mouthing the words "piece of shit." Another cop told one of the doctors in the room, "The baby is in a better place -- he shouldn't be raised in this environment." Capitalism couldn't offer this young family a life, only hopelessness and harassment, injury and racist insults.

Daewoo Autoworkers Fight Cops Attacking Occupation of Plant

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA -- Daewoo auto worker preparing to hurl a Molotov cocktail at some of the 4,000 armed cops who stormed the Daewoo plant near here after several hundred striking workers occupied it. The strikers are protesting the layoff of over 5,000 workers, victims of capitalism's worldwide auto overproduction. "Workers of the World, Unite!" must become the battle cry of autoworkers facing similar attacks on five continents.

Letters
Workers of the World, Write!

A Streetcar Named Communism

Last month I traveled to San Francisco from another state on a trip with two co-workers. We got on the famous cable car to go to Fisherman's Wharf. I asked the conductor/brakeman, an older white worker, how many years he had to drive a bus before being eligible to work the cable car. "Ten years," he replied. He described how physically difficult the front brakeman's job was.

Then he explained how the Muni workers had finally elected an honest shop steward, John Murray, who was kicking out the sellout union misleaders. He told the group of passengers around him that Murray was a communist who really fought for better conditions for the workers. He said he hadn't understood the importance of communists before but now he has gone to the communist bookstore to buy a book about the history of his union. Then he told everyone listening how he explained to the union's young workers that kicking the crooks out of union leadership took a long time. It couldn't be done overnight and John Murray had stuck with it over the long haul.

I said, "Well, I hope you keep John Murray honest." He told all of us that wouldn't be a problem. If we had stayed on for one more stop, there might have been a group discussion of workers' revolution right on the cable car.

San Francisco visitor

Jewish-Palestinian Unity Indicts Israeli Fascists

The renewed outbreak of fighting in Israel-Palestine over the last five months has inspired a growth in numbers and activity of anti-nationalist Jews in the U.S. and elsewhere, primarily among young people, but including many others. Several PLP'ers have been involved in these actions.

A number of new organizations have emerged here, opposing the actions of the Israeli ruling class. The most militant is Jews Against The Occupation (JATO). It is composed mostly of young people, many of whom took part in the anti-police brutality demonstrations around the Diallo murder in which the group Jews For Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) participated.

JATO's program calls for complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from all territory occupied after the 1967 Israeli-Arab war and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to areas from which they've been expelled since 1948, in both Israel and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. This is a specifically anti-nationalist demand; carrying it out would dramatically change the demographics of the entire Israel-Palestine region.

JATO has organized or participated in actions against the Israeli ruling class, including picketing the Israeli Consulate; demonstrating against an Israeli Cabinet member appearing at a New York YM-YWHA; entering, and demonstrating against the Israel Discount Bank in New York (where "blood money" was tossed inside the bank); and participating in an informational picket line at Zabars, a large UpperWest Side delicatessen patronized by many Jewish people.

In some of these actions JATO worked together with Not In Our Name, another youth organization, and with Jews For Peace Through Justice, primarily older women who are also members of JFREJ. JATO has also linked up with a group of young people of predominantly Palestinian ethnicity called Al-Awda.

The anti-nationalist, anti-occupation movement is growing in other areas as well. A group named Jews Against the Occupation is active in England. In Montreal, The Jewish Alliance Against the Occupation and a Palestinian and Jewish Unity group hold demonstrations every Friday at noon outside the Israeli Consulate there.

Many people in this growing movement hold anti-imperialist views and recognize and oppose the role of the U.S. ruling class in developing Israel as an anchor for its push to control Middle East oil. They should be given CHALLENGE and urged to march on May Day. They need to be won to the view that there will be no permanent peace in the region until a united Arab-Jewish working class carries out a communist revolution and workers power is in control.

New York comrade

ESL Students Meet The CHALLENGE

Our PLP workers' club has a class in dialectical materialism. Recently we began studying the first law of dialectics, the unity and conflict of opposites. Out of that we discussed the contradictions holding us back from distributing more CHALLENGES. Then we read a CHALLENGE article describing healthcare cutbacks at a Brooklyn hospital. We looked for the contradictions between the workers and bosses in that story.

I said I'd been holding back from distributing more CHALLENGES in my ESL (English as a Second Language) class. One of those students, also in the dialectics class, noticed that. She offered to help distribute more papers there.

My union-sponsored ESL class is for home attendants. I've been selecting articles in each issue while my student distributes the paper. We discuss them, like the story in the last issue about the LA garment workers who stood up to the bosses to stop the layoff of a co-worker. It was inspiring. Most of my students had been factory workers until their plants closed or moved. They then became home attendants.

I also picked out the story from Ecuador and the one about Boeing workers supporting strikers in Colombia. My students eagerly marked down the pages of these stories. I plan to use the article on the drugging of children in the last issue in a class project called Problem-Based Learning. The class is small, but so far almost all the students have begun reading CHALLENGE.

In March I'm having a May Day dinner for my students. Usually many march with their families. Reading the paper will show the meaning of May Day and help motivate them.

What are other comrades' experiences with CHALLENGE? Do we realize what a good paper we have, how much it means to workers and how it can help change their perspectives and lives? How did LA garment workers receive the excellent article about their struggle? I bet it would enable us to introduce CHALLENGE to many more garment workers, janitors, their families and others as well as to their children who go to schools where our comrade teachers work.

A PLP member

`Let the red fire in our bellies burn hot . . . `

I have been enjoying CHALLENGE for a year or so and pass them on to others when I've finished them.

The Johnstown, PA police department's racism is overtly and shamelessly displayed by its fascist enforcers. According to the local media, three cops are being investigated for allegedly accosting a black tourist, Sherman Fauntleroy, two weeks ago as he pulled into a Wendy's restaurant on Broad Street for lunch. The cops stopped him without cause, searched his car and "reviewed" his driver's license, registration and other information without charging him. He then drove back to the Holiday Inn where he was staying with his wife, Diane (a National Drug Intelligence Center employee who was in the city on business at the agency's Johnstown offices).

Shortly thereafter, another cop confronted Mr. Fauntleroy as he walked from the Holiday Inn to a nearby store. According to Johnstown NAACP president Clea Hollis, all stops made by the police are to be documented and the "race" of the person(s) stopped recorded. This policy was adopted because of racial profiling occurring for more than a year in the area. Hollis contends that Police Chief Huntly should also be held accountable for his officers' behavior.

City councilman Ron Stevens said, "(The officers) know what the policy is. It's their problem. Not the chief's...not the city's." No, it's everyone's problem as long as capitalism continues to foster ignorance and racism.

Recently the Moxham section of Johnstown was leafleted with racist Klan literature. Shortly afterwards a letter appeared from a Lisa Penrod defending the leaflet as "free speech." Penrod is a local Klan sympathizer living in nearby Somerset County. A year ago she offered her farm for the Klan to hold a cross-burning.

Especially troubling is the fact that both black and white youth in this area are turning to drugs and violence. Since our children are our future, I don't like what I see in the crystal ball for Johnstown, this country or the world.

But I do hope and dream. I dream of a society where people are not stopped by the police for Driving While Black. I dream of a large bonfire using white sheets for fuel, (topped with a confederate flag for good measure). And I dream of a society where our children understand and practice communist principles.

As people become more oppressed, harassed and poorer, the opportunity to educate them about communism grows. Let the fire in our bellies burn hot and let our actions reflect what is true and honorable.

Red Hot

`War On Drugs' is War On Workers

The CHALLENGE article (2/28) on U.S. bosses' heavy involvement in drug trafficking -- in one way or another -- for several decades is very useful. The "war on drugs" is a racist and imperialist war on workers overseas and in the U.S. In one week in New York City's mostly black and Latin West Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods, three separate incidents show the real nature of this war.

First, several city, state and federal agencies (including the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the NYPD and the National Guard) raided several bodegas (grocery stores) in Washington Heights, "looking for drugs." The bodegas apparently were being used by local drug dealers. In the past, there have been many raids in that community, but I don't remember such an onslaught of agencies. It seems like a preview of the proposals by the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission to impose a wider police state in the U.S. (see CHALLENGE editorial, Feb. 28).

Then, a few days after that raid, Mayor Giuliani and all his top aides held a "town meeting" in a local West Harlem school. Many neighborhood people who attended demanded more action against the local drug dealers, refuting the cops' and Mayor's claims that they've "cleaned the streets" of these vermin. Unfortunately, many honest people see more cops and more arrests as the only solution to this problem. There are already two million in jail in the U.S., two-thirds of them for non-violent crimes (usually involving drugs). Drugs are big business. A new UN report stated that the use of new drugs like ecstasy and old ones like marihuana are growing, particularly among U.S. youth (the highest consumers of these drugs worldwide). Some people at the meeting did demand better and increased treatment for drug users as the solution.

Finally, that same week a racist leaflet appeared in English in certain sections of Washington Heights -- where the population is more affluent and white -- labeling all Dominican residents of the area as drug-dealers. This leaflet reflects the racist nature of the war on drugs. Indeed, while there are many young Dominican workers who sell drugs there, 99.99% of all Dominican residents of Washington Heights are hard-working people trying to make ends meets.

When I grew up in the Dominican Republic in the '50s and early '60s, drugs were unknown (alcohol has always been the big problem there, particularly among males). When I arrived in New York City in 1962, drugs were still unknown among my generation of Dominican immigrants. But in 1965 U.S. bosses invaded the Dominican Republic, intervening to back a right-wing junta deposed by a popular rebellion. They sent as many troops there (38,000) as there were in Vietnam at that time. It was only then that drugs became popular in the inner cities all over the country. Why? Because during that period millions were protesting the war in Vietnam and racism in the U.S. Rebellions were erupting against racist cops in all major cities.

That was why the CHALLENGE article on drugs was on the mark in explaining that the bosses and their cops, CIA, etc. began dumping drugs into the inner cities to dull the drive for rebellion. Knowledge is indeed subversive if it is used to fight the real drug dealers.

Red Immigrant

CHALLENGE SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT
War Crimes of U.S. Imperialism
`Death is our business, and business is good...'

Progressive Labor Party has often described the lords of the U.S. ruling class -- both in and out of official government positions -- as war criminals "worse than Hitler." Perhaps some think this is simply exaggeration and rhetoric. But they may actually be underestimations.

The term "U.S. ruling class" is a broad term referring to the biggest capitalists who own the main industries and banks, plus their servants in government, like presidents, generals, leading underlings and the governors and mayors of the larger states and cities. Over the past 35 years, one of the leading lights of this class has been Henry Kissinger, the Rockefellers' chief foreign policy advisor and an appointee/advisor of numerous presidents. If anyone deserves to be strung up by the international working class for crimes against our class, it is Henry the Monster.

Kissinger has been a designer and director of policies that have directly killed millions of people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Chile, the Middle East, South Africa, Angola and Central America. He was also the protector of the murderous Shah of Iran. While destruction of this entire ruling class by communist revolution is a necessary goal, many individuals must be held most accountable for the oppression and deaths of tens of millions of workers. Few can top Henry Kissinger.

Kissinger's Hitlerian crimes against the working class speak volumes. This article is drawn mainly from "The Case Against Henry Kissinger" by Christopher Hitchens in the February 2001 HARPER'S magazine. Here we will deal only with his genocidal actions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Kissinger's "career" took off during the 1968 Paris negotiations to end the war in Vietnam. This war involved five U.S. presidents -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford. After the Viet Minh's People's War defeated the French colonialists, U.S. rulers decided to "save Vietnam from communism" (more accurately, for imperialist exploitation). They, too, were run aground by the organized might of the workers and peasants. Unfortunately the Vietnamese leadership was abandoning the goal of a workers' dictatorship over the bosses and began negotiating with the losing U.S. invaders. This has led to the welcoming of U.S. corporations and presidents back to Vietnam, ushering in capitalism in the name of "socialism."

In the fall of 1968, the Johnson Administration was about to end the massive bombing of north Vietnam and sign a peace deal with the Vietnamese. This -- given the ever-growing opposition to the war in the U.S. -- would have probably won the '68 election for Humphrey and the Democrats. Kissinger (a trusted "advisor" of that Administration) leaked this information to the Nixon-for-President campaign. Nixon then told the south Vietnamese, puppets of the U.S. (and necessary participants in a deal), that if they pulled out of the negotiations they would get a better deal from the Republicans, assuming that he (Nixon) would then win the Presidency.

On October 31st, Johnson ordered a halt to the bombing. Two days later the south Vietnamese fascists fulfilled Kissinger's double-cross and pulled out of the peace talks, virtually ending them. The result? Nixon beat Humphrey -- barely. His first appointee was none other than Kissinger as National Security Advisor. (Had Humphrey won, Kissinger was a certainty for a high position in his Administration as well since he had written in the Rockefeller House organ Foreign Affairs that he fully agreed with the Johnson Administration Vietnam policy.)

But the larger result was that the war was to continue for another four years, killing 600,000 more Vietnamese soldiers, at least two to three million more Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian civilians and 20,000 more U.S. GI's. This didn't include the effects of the massive sprayings of defoliants and pesticides, effects which continue to this day. Moreover, the 1973 settlement was virtually the same as the one agreed upon in 1968.

Kissinger was the architect of these barbarous four years, all of which promoted him from a "mediocre academic to an international potentate." In just those "extra" four years of war, there was such massive "carpet bombing" of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia -- more than twice the tonnage dropped during the ENTIRE World War II -- that Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton exclaimed, "We seem to be proceeding on the assumption that the way to eradicate the Vietcong is to destroy all the village structures, defoliate all the jungles and cover the entire surface of South Vietnam with asphalt."

Kissinger's first operation, "Speedy Express," designed under Johnson/Humphrey and carried forward under Nixon, was the "pacification" of the province of Kien Hoa in the Mekong Delta, to take political control away from the National Liberation Front. Knowing full well that there were no north Vietnamese troops in the area, 8,000 infantrymen and 3,381 tactical air strikes murdered 11,000 civilians in pursuit of "pacification."

Newsweek Saigon bureau chief Kevin Buckley was told by a U.S. official (June 19, 1972) that, "The...inflicting [of] civilian casualties...was worse than My Lai....sanctioned by the command's insistence on high body-counts...."

"There were 5,000 people in our village before 1969, but there were none in 1970. The Americans destroyed every house with artillery, air strikes, or by burning them down with cigarette lighters....Many children [were] killed by concussion from the bombs which their small bodies could not withstand, even if they were hiding underground."

General Creighton Abrams announced Operation Speedy Express a huge success. Kissinger's memoirs reveal that he micromanaged the war in such detail that nothing like this could take place without his knowledge or permission. It is no wonder that the slogan painted on one helicopter's quarters read, "Death is our business and business is good."

Such were some of the results of Kissinger's four extra years of genocidal war.

Still another atrocity carried out under Kissinger's direction was the massive bombing and then invasion of Laos and Cambodia. The initial bombing was performed secretly, knowing the effect on civilians. The revolting code names were: "Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner and Dessert." From March 1969 to May 1970, 3,630 such raids were flown over Cambodia. The official death toll from bombing was 350,000 civilians in Laos and 600,000 in Cambodia (not the highest estimates). "In addition, the widespread use of toxic chemical defoliants created a massive health crisis that fell most heavily on children, nursing mothers, the aged and the already infirm. That crisis persists to this day." (HARPERS, 2/01)

Kissinger's reaction to this slaughter appeared in Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman's "Diaries" for March 17, 1969:

Historic day. K[issinger]'s "Operation Breakfast" a great success. He came beaming in with report, very productive.

(Then, on April 22, 1970, Haldeman reports that Nixon, following Kissinger to a National Security Council meeting on Cambodia) "Turned back to me with a big smile and said `K[issinger]'s really having fun today, he's playing Bismarck."

Kissinger's joy over the murder of at least a million innocent people recalls Adolph Hitler's dancing a jig in the streets of Paris after the fall of France in World War II. Kissinger was not just issuing general directives. According to Colonel Sitton, by late 1969 his office was regularly being overruled in target selection: "Not only was Henry carefully screening the raids, he was reading the raw intelligence" and fiddling with the mission patterns and bombing runs.

Kissinger's manipulation of the war and the increasing genocide is reflected in another conversation recounted by Haldeman that occurred on December 15, 1970. Nixon had told both of them that he had this big "peace plan" set for the following year. Haldeman reports Kissinger opposed it. "He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the '72 elections. He favors a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of '72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election." So the war went on as Kissinger planned.

These millions of deaths of workers and peasants could easily be defined by working-class historians as "Kissinger's Holocaust." While the five presidents, their underlings like McNamara, the heads of the CIA, the generals and admirals, and their real bosses -- the Rockefellers and their ilk -- are all as guilty of this mass murder as Kissinger, no capitalist court or "war crimes tribunal" will ever try them. Only a successful communist revolution will mete out working-class justice, like the communist-led Italian partisans "sentencing" of fascist dictator Mussolini -- death by immediate hanging.

Icelanders Resist Gene Pirates' Looting 0f Health Records

Human genes are now a commodity. The "rough draft" of the human genome was published this month, amid squabbles between the publicly-funded genome project and Celera, a private company. Behind these squabbles is big money. Some 100 biotech companies are competing for billions in investments toward the discovery of new drugs, based on gene information. Investors are moving from the generic information provided by "the" human genome to the genetics of human differences. A recent Iceland scandal gives us a glimpse of the future as genomes go on sale.

In December 1998, Iceland's Parliament passed a bill which gives a single, Delaware-based start-up company exclusive rights to Iceland's medical database and genetic profiles. Despite international outcry, at one point the bill was supposedly favored by a majority of adult Icelanders.

As people realized the scary implications, protest grew, led by the new organization Mannvernd ("Human Protection"). By now hundreds of Icelandic physicians are defying the new law and boycotting the registry, and over 10% of adults have opted out of the program. As the Icelandic model is being copied in other countries, notably Estonia, it bears close watching.

The database law was the brainchild of Kari Stefannson, Icelandic-born Harvard neurologist. Claiming that Iceland's genepool was a unique resource, Stefansson founded deCODE in 1996, with $12 million in venture capital, and began operating in Iceland. In 1998, deCODE signed a $200 million deal with Swiss-based pharmaceutical giant Hoffman La Roche.

The selling point was: common diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer and arthritis have both a genetic component and an environmental one. Knowing the genes involved helps drug companies design better, more profitable drugs. But it's difficult to discover disease-influencing genes in typical human populations. Alzheimers, for instance, is influenced by variants (alleles) of many different genes in different families.

According to deCODE, the small Icelandic population (270,000) is less genetically diverse than most. Iceland was settled in the ninth century by a small number of Viking pirates and remained relatively isolated until recently. It suffered population bottlenecks when many people died of epidemics, volcanic eruptions and famine. Surviving families would be expected to carry only a few kinds of Alzheimer's-influencing alleles, making these genes easier to hunt.

Other advantages for studying Icelanders were a national health care system and detailed genealogies (family records), some hundreds of years old. deCODE would establish a centralized database linking the entire country's medical records to individual genetic information, including tissue samples, and to family records. In exchange for paying $100 million for the database, deCODE gets a monopoly license to sell information to customers and other big biotech companies. Icelanders have been promised a few biotech jobs and free research-based drugs, if these ever materialize.

It's a sweetheart deal for deCODE, Roche and a few Icelandic bosses, but most Icelanders will gain nothing and have much to lose in privacy. Although identities are encoded, security experts say that it would be child's play to break the code in a small country where "born on April 8, 1970, has two great-uncles and four children" might be a unique ID. That would make everyone's medical records--complete with alcohol abuse, psychiatric history or genetic risk factors--open to snooping. "A nation of Trumans," wrote one critic, referring to the movie "The Truman Show," in which a man's life is watched by a TV audience of millions.

In contrast to the standard of "informed consent" to human research, deCODE has invented "presumed consent," meaning that a person's records are added to the database unless he or she opts out. Outrage grew with the scandalous revelation that Parliament members had received a hefty bribe from deCODE just before voting. Many Icelanders resent the racist claim that they are "pure-bred" or carry "superior" Nordic genes. Icelandic geneticists point out that Vikings brought Irish slaves with them from Ireland. Over half of Iceland's relatively diverse genepool is probably of Celtic origin.

deCODE had counted on Iceland's pro-science public to be swept off their feet by high-tech promises. Like Nazi "race hygiene," the new science of genomics offered unprecedented social power to professionals. This is what 21st century fascism will look like--slick, high-tech and benevolent. Now it has encountered unexpected roadblocks, doctors and patients who inspiringly refuse to cooperate.

As one Icelander wrote, "On the eve of World War II, Adolf Hitler's emissary in Iceland, Werner Gerlach, [was]...sorely disappointed at not finding the Fuhrer's master race in our country, where the Nazis imagined it had been preserved in isolation for centuries. No such luck. What he encountered was a tribe of tall, gray-eyed, auburn-haired and red-bearded storytellers, insolently lacking in respect for Teutonic self-delusions of grandeur."

Opposing `Big Brother'
"Dear Sigmundur,
It is my pleasant duty to announce that I shall not send information about patients to the Health Sector Database operating according to Act nr. 139/1998, except with a written request of the patient....
Best regards, Haraldur Briem, Chief of Infectious Disease"