Challenge Newspaper - Progressive Labor Party

LUBBOCK, TEXAS, Sept. 25 — In July 1999, police in Tulia, a town of 5,000 in the Texas panhandle, indicted over 40 alleged "cocaine dealers" in a dawn raid. Thirty-eight of those arrested were black (of a black population of 240). The rest had close ties to the black community. The raid netted no drugs, no money and no guns. Yet most of those arrested have been convicted on the testimony of a single undercover agent, despite the fact lawyers have proven his testimony false. Sentences have been harsh, with people with no prior convictions receiving 20-25 years in prison; others received 60, 99 and over 400 years. These long sentences have forced still others to accept plea bargains in order to care for the community’s children. On September 20, over 100 people attended a forum at Texas Tech University (TTU) here exposing these racist prosecutions and discussing the campus campaign to boycott prison-made goods, such as Dell computers. A minister from the Tulia Friends of Justice, a defense lawyer for one of the accused and a student from TTU Activists spoke. The minister and the lawyer both detailed the injustices of these trials. The student linked these arrests to broader issues of racist police actions and the rise of prison labor.

TTU Activists first initiated a campaign against prison-made goods and learned of the Tulia atrocities at a May Day dinner last April. Since May, we have sponsored a fund-raising dinner for Friends of Justice, participated in their activities and attended one of the trials. This fall we began leafleting the campus and local working-class communities. We took CHALLENGE, PL Prison Labor pamphlets, the petition against prison-made goods and a forum leaflet to a local Green Party meeting. Students there endorsed the forum and the prison labor campaign and helped to leaflet the campus.

We went to first meeting of the student feminist organization and highlighted the Tulia incidence, prison labor and the forum. They agreed to co-sponsor the forum. Many from this group distributed leaflets and sign-up sheets and petitions during the forum. We also contacted the student ACLU, the Black Student Association and the campus Democrats. Many teachers allowed us to announce the forum in their classes. Others did so on their own.

The forum was one of the biggest political events in many years on our very conservative campus. Many students stayed afterwards to continue discussing these arrests and prison labor and how they could get involved. Some wanted to confront local political candidates. Others wanted to figure out how to help the Tulia families. Over 30 students signed up to participate in the TTU Activists’ campaign against prison labor. Twenty-five CHALLENGES and over 20 PL Prison Labor pamphlets were distributed.

Many of these groups and concerned individuals view what happened in Tulia and the growth of prison labor as "deviations" from a basically sound and fair legal system. In fact, as the election nears, national liberal groups, the LA TIMES, ABC-TV, and other national media have been developing exposes of the incident in Tulia some saying it’s a product of a few rural Texas racists. The ACLU is contemplating bringing a civil rights lawsuit.. Many hope these actions will lead to reforms that will correct the injustices in Tulia and the prison system.

In working with these groups and individuals, we intend to show the fundamental relationship between racism and capitalism and the growth of fascism and war. The corporations that demand ever cheaper labor and employ prison labor and their henchmen—the local DA and courts, the federal government that funds the "war on drugs" and "community policing"—are responsible. We cannot rely simply rely on the courts and appeals, but must raise the fight against these arrests and prison labor on our campus, on the job and in the community, to build a mass movement of workers and students. Only when the working class is in power, when capitalism’s wage system has been abolished and replaced with communism, will the racist exploiters, not the working class, be in jail.

a name="Editorial: Clinton-Gore’s OIL Is More than an Electoral Ploy">">"ditorial: Clinton-Gore’s OIL Is More than an Electoral Ploy

Clinton's decision last week to release 30 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (or SPR, oil put aside for the military in case of war) isn’t just a cheap gimmick to help Gore’s presidential campaign. Sure, Clinton-Gore want to pose as opponents of high energy prices and as friends of the working class. But there’s more to this maneuver than electoral politics.

The SPR decision is consistent with U.S. rulers’ search for a tactic to eventually provoke a military provocation with Iraq. Iraq holds the largest, cheapest petroleum reserves in the world, next to those of Exxon ally Saudi Arabia. According to the French newspaper LA TRIBUNE (9/18), despite U.S. sanctions, Iraq could produce as many as four millions barrels a day right now, and possibly much more than that if sanctions were to end. PETROLEUM INTELLIGENCE WEEKLY (2/1/99) reported that Iraq has a master plan to pump more than six million barrels a day, after the embargo is lifted. Production costs in Iraq average less than a dollar a barrel.

So Saddam Hussein & Co. could throw a big monkey wrench into the Clinton-Gore wizardry simply by cutting production. Exxon Mobil, Chevron and other U.S. oil firms are the biggest users of Iraqi crude at the moment, though they resent having to pay Russian and French middlemen for the privilege. If Hussein decided to withhold this oil from world markets, prices would rise again. Clinton-Gore know this. Their decision to release a modest amount of SPR reserves could be interpreted as a dare to the Iraqis. Eastern Establishment mouthpiece BUSINESS WEEK warns: "Saddam May Soon Release His Best Weapon: Oil Blackmail" (issue dated Oct. 2).

U.S. imperialism is gearing for another Persian Gulf war. Saddam Hussein and the gang of bosses he represents have their own immediate profit interest. But much more is at stake. Whoever controls Iraqi oil can dictate trends in the crucial world oil market. As CHALLENGE has repeatedly pointed out, the current situation is intolerable to Exxon Mobil and other Rockefeller-controlled oil companies. The U.S. policy of sanctions has failed politically. Its only success has been the murder of a million Iraqis, mostly children, since the end of Desert Storm I in 1991. Despite these sanctions, Iraq is "officially" producing nearly three million barrels a day and another 200,000 to 500,000 on the "illegal" market. Worse yet, from U.S. rulers’ viewpoint, is the series of multi-billion dollar contracts the Iraqis have with Russian, French and Chinese oil firms. These contracts become effective the moment sanctions end.

Control of oil is critical to the world domination every imperialist power craves. U.S. bosses’ strategy requires preventing the emergence of a rival super-power in Europe and/or Asia. In Europe, only the Russians could play this role. Right now, they are down but not out. If Russia’s Lukoil were to play the same role in Iraq that Exxon Mobil plays in Saudi Arabia, Russian imperialism might get well in a hurry and threaten U.S. rule.

So behind the Clinton-Gore bullshit about lowering home heating bills for "working families," the outlines of a much larger conflict are emerging. France is clearly allying with Russia to end the embargo against Iraq, on Saddam Hussein’s terms rather than Exxon’s. In direct defiance of U.S. policy, French and Russian airplanes landed in Baghdad on September 24. The visits were supposedly for "cultural" and "humanitarian" exchanges, but the Russian flight just "happened" to have on board some executives from Russian oil companies.

French bosses are playing a pivotal role in the developing inter-imperialist rivalry over Iraqi oil. In 1990-91, the U.S. managed to bribe them into joining the Gulf War coalition by offering them a cut of Kuwaiti oil. But Kuwait’s oil reserves pale against Iraq’s. France stands to gain much more from co-operating with the Russians and Chinese to beef up Iraqi production than from taking a few Kuwaiti crumbs offered by Exxon Mobil. With Iraqi crude and Russian and Chinese markets at its disposal, France’s oil giant Elf TotalFina could leapfrog past BP Amoco and Shell to rival Exxon Mobil as the world’s top supplier of refined oil products.

The main Rockefeller wing of U.S. rulers is determined to prevent an anti-U.S. alliance that would include France, Russia and China and that would drag the rest of Europe into its net. But bribery can go only so far. Ultimately, war remains the only solution for U.S. imperialism in its drive to prevent Exxon Mobil's chief rivals from cornering Iraqi oil.

By releasing a fraction of SPR reserves, Clinton-Gore have solved nothing. Even if prices dropped slightly in the short run at the gas pump and for home heating deliveries, they could rise again when the SPR reserves must be replenished. However, if Saddam Hussein takes the bait and pulls some Iraqi oil off the market to counter the U.S. move, look for more sabre-rattling from Washington.

U.S. rulers know their sanctions policy has failed to accomplish its goal. Iraqi oil must be controlled on the ground. Whoever holds the oil wells will determine who pumps the oil, refines it and profits from it. The capitalist system can never solve these disputes without armed conflict. If the SPR ploy fails to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving U.S. bosses a reason to beat the war drums, they'll find another excuse.

War and imperialism are inseparable. The next oil war will kill more workers than the last. It will also sharpen many contradictions among the major imperialist powers and possibly generate a lot of mass anger both inside and outside the armed forces. Our Party can certainly grow in the crucible of these contradictions.

U.S. Air Sorties Against Iraq: More than During Vietnam War

The recent CHALLENGE articles about the U.S. presidential elections becoming a forum for war against Iraq are correct. Both Bush and Gore favor this position. As CHALLENGE has said repeatedly, next to Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the world’s biggest oil reserve, and it is cheap to produce.

Since Desert Storm 1991, U.S. policy towards Iraq has been based on (1) bombing, and (2) trying to build an internal opposition to topple Saddam Hussein and put a U.S. puppet in power.

Interestingly enough, one of the key forces in the U.S.-financed anti-Saddam group is the Iraqi "Communist" Party (ICP). Indeed, the April ICP Central Committee meeting called for no change in the U.S. Iraqi policy following the U.S. elections (IRAQ NEWS, 6/28). The history of the ICP’s turn from having led mass general strikes and being the key force among the oil workers from the 1940s to 1960s to a totally corrupt pro-imperialist party today is beyond this short letter.

The other aspect of U.S. policy to take Iraq is war. "According to the Pentagon, since the end of Desert Storm 280,000 air sorties have taken place against Iraq, the biggest U.S. modern air campaign ever, bigger than during the Vietnam war. Iraq says that since December 1998 more than 300 civilians have died and 890 have been injured by 21,600 air attacks carried out by U.S. and British planes. The Pentagon spends $50-$60 billion a year in its military siege of Iraq." (WWW.laInsignia.org, 9/25).

The imperialist fight for control of oil combined with Saddam Hussein’s nationalism have been deadly indeed for the working class of Iraq.

NYC Comrade

Spread MTA Strike to Bay Area Transit Workers

LOS ANGELES, CA., Sept. 27 — With the transit strike in its third week here, contract talks have broken down. Picket line morale is good. Mechanics and clerks continue to honor them. But the bosses are determined to slash wages and increase workloads. Waiting on the AFL-CIO leadership or Democratic Governor Grey Davis to save the day would be a big mistake. There are no "good" and "bad " bosses. They’re all bad. Striking drivers, along with mechanics and clerks, have the power to take on all the bosses, and in the process spread the movement for communist revolution.

During a dinner meeting at the home of a striker, an MTA mechanic (a regular CHALLENGE reader and May Day marcher) said, "I want to join the Party, and I want help to involve my friends." After this, the Bar-B-Q ribs tasted even better.

The next night, a striking driver called a PLP member to ask, "What do you think about this strike? What should we do?" The Party member explained, "The union is always working with one set of bosses or another—sometimes with both. We need to expose the bosses’ plans, along with those of the union sellouts. We need to meet and visit workers in their homes, and put the fight for workers’ power and political demands on the table." The driver answered, "I agree. If you want, we can meet at my house. I’ll invite another driver who thinks like a radical too."

The MTA Board of Directors, with their $500,000 professional negotiating team, is insisting on $23 million in givebacks from the drivers (plus what it wants from mechanics and clerks). However, we have other enemies too. Transit unions throughout California gave a lot of money and manpower to elect Democratic Governor Gray Davis. But the union big wheels were shocked when he vetoed a bill that would have "guaranteed" that any privatized "transit zones" maintain union drivers. A union leader said, "The strike would be over in 24 hours," if Davis signed the bill. The union’s strategy of relying on these slime balls means delivering workers into the hands of our enemies!

More than 2,000 strikers and supporters marched on Gateway Center last week to protest outside contractors scabbing on the strike. Teamsters and United Transportation Union(UTU) members are transporting the well-paid, white collar, mostly white suburban commuters. Strikers must confront the Teamster and UTU leaders, reach out to the drivers, and organize mass pickets to shut Gateway Center tight!

What’s more, MTA mechanics and clerks should be on strike, not merely honoring picket lines. Everybody out together! No one goes back until we all go back! Clerks and mechanics are receiving neither strike benefits nor unemployment checks. Going on strike would start the meager strike benefits and raise the ante against the bosses.

MTA strikers are battling for the whole working class. In the Bay Area, MUNI and AC Transit workers have rejected similar contracts, but are being kept from striking by the union, media, politicians and courts. This strike can encourage AC and MUNI workers to follow their lead. Simultaneous transit strikes in LA, San Francisco, and Oakland would go beyond our local bosses and expose the hand of the main wing of the ruling class behind the drive for low-wage mass transit. PLP is active in all three of these contract fights. We will organize more concrete support between MUNI, AC and MTA workers.

The PLP is bringing communist revolution to the workers through CHALLENGE, leaflets, and discussions. We are bringing some workers and students to the picket lines, but we can do better. We are exposing the dogfight between the bosses, while alerting workers to the growing threat of a Mideast oil war. By giving more concrete leadership to the struggle at hand, and fighting for the political leadership of the workers, we can build the movement for communist revolution, and a society where free mass transit will exist to meet the needs of the workers.

MTA Strikers Welcome Student Support

The MTA bus drivers have been on strike in LA for about 12 days. Students have struggled to get to school, asking friends and neighbors for rides. Many students miss school because their parents may not have cars. They must walk blocks and blocks to get there, all because of the MTA bosses.

I feel it’s wrong for the MTA bosses to take advantage of the bus drivers. Without them there’d be no MTA, no bus transportation at all. The main reason for the bus drivers’ strike is the long hours and hard work the bosses force on them.

We went to the bus drivers’ picket line with signs reading, "Students support MTA strike"; "Defend and support MTA strike"; and, "If MTA workers win, students win; if MTA workers lose, students lose. Workers and Students Unite."

The bus drivers were very glad to see us. When we got there they started a picket line and we joined them. It seems like we energized them. We gave them CHALLENGE and leaflets and had good talks with them. We said we’d return with more students. They said we would be welcome.

If the bosses weren’t so selfish and greedy, the bus drivers would not be on strike and students would not have to miss their education like the bus drivers are losing out on their jobs. We will continue to support the strikers.

LA High School Student

Bosses Battle For Control Of LA!

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 26 — For the last fifteen years, two groups of capitalists have been battling for control of this city. This fight has been fueled by the general crises of overproduction and the sharpening inter-imperialists rivalry, especially over oil.

The Committee of 25 used to rule LA. These were leading industrialists not allied to the Rockefeller group. But as the NEW YORK TIMES (8/13) reported, "Nearly all of the Fortune 500 companies that once had headquarters in Los Angeles, from Arco and Unocal to the First Interstate Bank, have been acquired or have moved elsewhere…But the most potent symbol of the decline of the old order was the sale of the LOS ANGELES TIMES…to the Tribune Company of Chicago by its controlling share-holders, the Chandler family, which once defined civic commitment but now has almost vanished."

Ever since this happened, the LA TIMES has been attacking the motley crew of real estate developers around Mayor Riordan who have essentially replaced the Committee of 25. This has helped the Rockefeller drive to capture LA politically. Occidental Petroleum remains headquartered here but is locked in competition with the Rockefellers.

The battle for LA has been hell for the working class. A UCLA study ranked Los Angeles County 100th among 318 urban areas in personal income, down from 36th some 10 years ago. Thousands of high-paid jobs in aerospace and manufacturing have been wiped out by Rockefeller victories against their rivals, such as McDonnell-Douglas.

Like the war in Yugoslavia, or the invasions of Haiti and Somalia, the main wing of the ruling class is using "humanitarianism," this time to politically re-capture LA. Their mass organizations are their foot soldiers. THE NATION (8/21) pointed out, "But when the [janitors] strike came, the public response was overwhelmingly supportive. Not a day went by without an article or column in the LOS ANGELES TIMES about how the struggle of the primarily Latino janitors reflected LA’s class and ethnic divisions." Later on it explains, "Community groups and unions have always talked about economic justice, but now these issues are resonating within the mainstream, the media…and even some business folks."

The Rockefeller wing is building this Latino community base to gain its allegiance in the battle against the local ruling bosses and in order to use its youth in a future war for oil in the Middle East.

Riordan and the remnants of the Committee of 25 may be vicious, but they are up against the masters in the Rockefeller gang. When NYC transit workers threatened to strike last December, the courts issued a fascist injunction, threatening huge fines against the union and each striking worker. There was no strike.

In LA, a 1996 Consent Decree ordered the Metropolitan Transit Authority to invest $1 billion in improving bus service; the biggest civil rights award ever! Again, this was to insure that the low-wage, predominantly Latino garment workers (without cars) get to their exploitative jobs efficiently enough as well as win them for the aims previously described. Behind this contrasting tale of two cities, the Rockefeller section of the ruling class dominates both court systems and uses each for their own purposes.

The LA transit strike presents us with a chance to organize against wage progression, part timing, welfare-to-work and prison slave labor. To add fuel to the fire, 47,000 County Hospital workers, court and welfare workers in SEIU Local 660 have set a strike date for October 10. In strikes like this, we can learn that we can organize and run society better than Riordan or Rockefeller. We can expose the billionaires’ dogfight and build a mass base for PLP. We can learn how to make a revolution!

a name="Workers’ Power Is "Illegal" Under Capitalist Democracy">">"orkers’ Power Is "Illegal" Under Capitalist Democracy

Apparently, workers’ power is illegal in the manufacturing plants of the USA. Class collaboration, on the other hand, represents the height of "democracy."

Recently thousands of leaflets appeared at my plant, from candidates for union office calling for workers’ power. The present union leadership wants a "partnership" with the company. Management declared the "Workers’ Power" leaflets, "Illegal!" The union hacks had already distributed their literature throughout the plants the prior week.

While the bosses cut our jobs and sell whole sections of the plant, the present union leadership pleads with the company to "find a solution together with the union." We call for class struggle, international working-class unity, strike support, fighting racism and sexism on and off the job and uniting immigrant and native-born workers to build workers’ power to fight these attacks. We are also the only ones campaigning to end fascist prison labor.

The events of the past week have led to many good discussions about how the bosses use the cover of democracy to maintain their dictatorship. We’ve discussed the history of how the company fired communist activists and leaders of our union after World War II. The union’s anti-communist leadership, with the support of the company and the government, organized locals according to crafts, spread over vast distances. This was to discourage rank-and-file groups from organizing at the worksite and developing voting blocks. Shop stewards were appointed, and expected to support the misleadership if they wanted to maintain their badges. Not to mention the large numbers of paid full-time union functionaries whose main job now is campaigning.

The discussion of the local elections has not ended. Our supporters have gotten into public debates with the hacks about the AFL-CIO calls for "workers’ rights" and "democracy" around the world. We’ve obtained proof that the new AFL-CIO international department is getting its money from the same old source—the CIA! Then we showed how the AFL-CIO supports U.S. imperialism around the world. (More in next issue.)

Another hot topic is whether to make fighting racism a big deal in the campaign. Some opposition candidates think pictures of us fighting the Nazis "wouldn’t get us any votes." "It’s alright to put in one sentence about that, but no more," they say. Even some rank and filers question how fighting the fascists relate to the campaign. We answer that resolute struggle against racism, on and off the job, is absolutely necessary to build the type of rock-solid unity we need to fight back against the bosses’ fascist attacks.

An older white worker expressed his support for one of our candidates. "I’ll tell you why I’m voting for you," he said in front of a group at work. "It’s because you are against racism and because you have left-wing ideas. There are too few like you around here!"

As these examples show, the question of whether we should "curb" our politics to get votes has been front and center. Votes can’t be our primary goal if we are to build the revolutionary movement. We will carry on a serious electoral campaign, even while the very nature of the workplace limits our "freedom of speech." We must judge our success in a mass way by how many workers we’ve moved to understand the true nature of capitalism in this period. Let’s see if we can’t get a few more like our anti-racist, left-wing candidate around here!

We should have no illusions. In the final analysis the only way workers can take power is with communist revolution. Winning masses to the left will give confidence to our new and potential members. In this way, we can make this campaign a "school for communism." Being declared illegal won’t stop this campaign, or our revolutionary march to workers’ power.

Mid-West union-election campaigner

Union Bosses Win Big At IAM Convention

SEATTLE, WA., Sept. 20 — CEOs aren't the only ones widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. The Executive Council of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) gave themselves huge salary increases at the IAM Convention here this week. International President Buffenbarger’s salary went from $138,000 to $180,000. General Secretary-Treasurer Wharton went from $127,000 to $170,000. The General Vice-Presidents went from $112,000 to $155,000. It pays to be a union leader!

How did the rank and file fare at the anti-Republican, pro-Democrat Machinists love-fest? Union bosses gave their wholehearted support to an increase in strike pay, from $100 a week to a whopping $115!

A proposal to add language to the IAM Constitution opposing prison labor was voted down. A proposition to elect union stewards where they aren't currently elected—voted down. Prohibitions against discrimination and harassment—voted down. Propositions to remove provisions preventing over 95% of union members from seeking office—voted down. A proposition to eliminate language that limits freedom of speech—voted down.

Not all IAM members, including some Convention delegates, are "allowed" copies of Official IAM Circulars that govern the actions of union members. A proposal to make copies available to all union members was voted down. A proposal to add a union member's Bill of Rights to the IAM Constitution was voted down. The Law Committee said that the IAM Constitution already contained the rights listed, so it wasn't necessary to add anything to the Constitution. However, when the exact same proposal was brought before the 1996 Convention, the Law Committee said the Constitution would have to be rewritten to provide the rights contained in the proposal.

The CEO of Harley Davidson spoke at the convention and received a standing ovation! A previous recipient such an ovation was Boeing CEO Phil Condit. Condit is selling off chunks of the company and has already off-loaded enough work for a company the size of Boeing. Meanwhile, Boeing has turned its back on retirees and laid-off workers.

Boeing managers who are also IAM members attended the convention, so the company has reps voting on proposals. The convention promoted the "lean manufacturing" High Performance Work Organization (HPWO) that supports maximum profits for the elite at the expense of workers. HPWOs mean more paid union reps on the company payroll, acting as managers for Condit. Bath Iron Works (BIW), the flagship IAM Local where the HPWO was introduced, is now on strike. Workers there have rejected the IAM/company HPWO.

It's obvious that IAM’s union bosses have earned their reputation of having a COMPANY/union. They support the bosses’ corporate-funded Democratic Party that helped give working people NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, all of which cut jobs and workers’ wages.

IAM Convention Delegate

CHALLENGE comment: As the delegate describes, the IAM international leadership wants to assure complete control over this manufacturing and "defense" industry union.

The BIW strike referred to was like the proverbial elephant in the room that nobody wanted to talk about. The BIW workers have rejected both the original contract and a company/union deal arranged a few days later. This bitter strike, along with a similar one against Raytheon, has lasted over a month.

Both Raytheon and BIW, a unit of General Dynamics, are key war producers. The union leadership, with political allies like the Kennedys, aim to build pro-war feelings blaming others (Like Iraq) for the problems suffered by workers like the current high price of gasoline and heating oil (see editorial and Raytheon article).. Our Party must fight tooth and nail to realize the revolutionary potential contained in this outburst of working-class anger against job elimination. As pressure builds for another Middle East confrontation, our Party has the responsibility to make strikes like these "schools for communism" throughout the working class.

Defense Contractor Raytheon Makes War on Workers

BOSTON, MA, Sept. 26 — The laws of capitalism are operating full blast against the strike of Raytheon workers fighting the third largest war contractor in the country. The company netted $400 million in profits last year. Now it is forcing workers to fight to maintain their health and pension benefits and to prevent their jobs from drowning in a sea of fierce bosses’ competition.

Other war contractors have moved as far away as Arizona to take advantage its lower wages. To compete, Raytheon has reduced its IBEW union workforce by two-thirds. It is also "rewarding" its non-union white collar workers for their loyal scabbing by threatening to move 550 of their jobs out of state.

Capitalism drives bosses to strive for maximum profits to stay afloat. This leads to fierce competition to cut costs, mainly the cost of labor. Raytheon is no different than any other boss. So no matter how much profit they make, if they "rest" for one minute, other war contractors will leap ahead of them.

PLP supports these striking workers. A leaflet prepared for distribution at the picket line pointed out that these attacks on workers are "happening when the U.S. economy is supposed to be the strongest it’s ever been. Perhaps these attacks are one reason the economy" is "booming."

However, it is important for workers in war factories to understand that their jobs produce the weapons used by the ruling class to enforce poverty-level wages around the world and kill millions on behalf of Exxon’s need to control oil supplies. Even more, when workers in the U.S. rebel against this same ruling class, the bosses call on the National Guard and even the Army to smash the workers. And the weapons they use are produced by the very same working class being attacked.

Turning strikes into schools for communism—and building a mass PLP to smash all the bosses—is the best victory Raytheon and all workers can achieve.

Stop Attacks against Immigrant Workers!

Morristown Politicians Beat Fascist Drums

Morristown, NJ, Sept. 25 — Politicians in this city, which has become a center for racist attacks on immigrant workers, are goose-stepping behind the fascists in Farmingville, NY. There last week two day-workers were picked up and beaten, almost killing one of them. This attack followed "complaints" that the workers were "crowding the streets" in the morning. The NEW YORK TIMES reported that these workers are harassed on daily basis and have even had their residence shot at in the middle of the night.

In Morristown, almost 100 immigrant workers from Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia and Honduras gather at many corners early in the morning for work. Most of these jobs are hard labor ones like landscaping or bricklaying.

Morristown politicians pushed, but failed to pass, a so-called "quality of life" loitering law which would have punished immigrant day-workers with fines and jail terms for standing on corners.

These events follow a string of racist attacks in Morristown:

• Several months ago the First Baptist Church—located right across the street from the Morris County Courthouse—"mysteriously" burnt down. The church was used mostly as a soup kitchen and a place where many Latin and black workers gathered;

• On July 4th, the fascist Nationalist Movement, protected by the cops, held a rally against affirmative action and defended the former Chief of the State Police, Carl Williams, who admitted using racist profiling to make arrests;

• During the counter demonstration that day, cops arrested ten anti-racists (including PLP members) and viciously attacked demonstrators with pepper spray. Those arrested were charged with felonies and held on high bail;

• Immigrant workers trying to play soccer in the town continue to be harassed in local parks by the cops and neighbors. Town officials claimed that if they wanted to play soccer in one field they needed a million-dollar insurance policy!

All these racist attacks are signs of the bosses’ fascism. The sharpening of the inter-imperialist rivalry steps up the bosses’ march towards war against their competitors. They need to use a bigger stick to discipline workers to accept their war plans. PLP has been organizing Morristown residents—black, Latin and white—to fight these attacks, expose the bosses’ racism and fight for workers’ power.

Local 371 Donates $1,000 to Anti-Fascist Fighters

NEW YORK, N.Y., Sept 20 — Tonight the Delegate Assembly of Social Service Employees Union (SSEU) Local 371 voted overwhelmingly to support the anti-fascist defendants who protested a racist march in Morristown, N.J. on July 4th. PLP’ers have a long history of bringing anti-racist and anti-fascist issues both to our members on the job and to city-wide union meetings. We have organized and joined co-workers from our job sites in demonstrations against police terror here in NYC, against slave labor Workfare and around issues big and small where we work.

Our mass sale of CHALLENGE also helps ESTABLISH an atmosphere in which we can raise sharp political issues. Tonight, for example, 52 CHALLENGES were distributed among about 180 union members present.

We hope other comrades will raise similar proposals in their locals. This will help spread the anti-racist, anti-fascist, pro communist message we helped bring to Morristown, NJ into our mass organizations.

The approved resolution reads as follows:

"WHEREAS SSEU Local 371 has a proud history of opposing the activities of racist groups like the KKK and against police brutality; and,

WHEREAS at a July 4, 2000 rally in Morristown, N.J. against the racist Nationalist Movement of Mississippi nine adults and one minor were arrested; and,

WHEREAS vicious police tactics at this year's anti-World Trade Organization demonstration in Washington, D.C., and at the Republican and Democratic Party conventions, as well as the anti-racist action in Morristown reveal a change in how federal, state, and local governments respond to mass demonstrations; and,

WHEREAS these changes in police tactics and use of the legal system as well as the growth of Workfare and prison labor are signs of growing fascism; therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED that this local support those arrested in Morristown by contributing $1,000.00 to their legal defense."

Bosses Have Shaky Hold On Amnesty Marchers

CHICAGO, IL, September 23 — Today, about 10,000 workers and youth marched for amnesty for the six million undocumented immigrants living and working in the U.S. More than 300,000 live in the Chicagoland area. The Democratic Party and AFL-CIO leadership used nationalism and patriotism to line up votes for the upcoming elections.

Workers mainly marched in groups by their country of origin, while being encouraged to take a shirt with the American flag and the Statue of Liberty.

But the marchers were way ahead of the misleaders and wide open to PLP. We distributed 1,500 communist fliers and sold over 650 CHALLENGES (More workers might have chosen CHALLENGE than the Statue of Liberty T-shirts). We could have distributed twice as many if we had done a better job at mobilizing our forces to attend the march.

In the 1980’s, the AFL-CIO led the fight to penalize employers who hired undocumented workers. But with the economic "boom," the bosses need more workers at low-wage, dead-end jobs. The union leaders are ready to accept these low-paid workers as long as they pay union dues. Tens of thousands of immigrant workers making minimum wage are already paying dues to SEIU, the Teamsters and others. At the first sign of an economic downturn, they will face mass unemployment and immigration raids.

The bosses are using the amnesty movement as a Trojan Horse. Under Clinton and Gore, "Operation Gatekeeper" has doubled the fascist Border Patrol in four years. This has led to one million arrests and more than 1,500 deaths of immigrant workers! The price of amnesty will be Latin workers sending their sons and daughters to kill and die for U.S. imperialism. U.S. rulers are preparing for ground war in Iraq, and will do whatever it takes to maintain control over Latin America. The politicians and union leaders want us to wave their masters’ flag.

The bosses’ amnesty will not end terror at the border, stop racist cops or starvation wages. To the rulers, we are all "illegal." There will be no amnesty from imperialist war. PLP is an international communist party, open to all. Working people have no nation! Smash all borders with Communist Revolution!

Postmodernism: Virtual Idealism

Rejecting the real world and truth about that world has become very popular in recent capitalist culture. Many current ideological fads reject any possibility that people can have actual knowledge of the natural or social world. Authors widely read in college classes on philosophy and literature declare, in the name of "Postmodernism" or "Deconstruction," that science, logic and history can never be objective and true. These views claim that science and knowledge generally are mere "social constructions" or "narratives" which have no more right to be considered true than religion or astrology.

One reason people consider these fads favorably is their claim to be "liberating" points of view. To some degree many people realize the capitalist media and schools feed us many ideas that either have little value or are downright harmful. Capitalists use their control of these institutions to foster ideology benefitting them and victimizing us. The "postmodernists" respond by saying that if there is no real world and thus no truth about it, then all claims by defenders of the system, and by religious dogmatists, racists or sexists as well, must be bogus. They claim if we all understand that illusion and reality aren’t really different, we will be free of the system’s hypocrisy and lies. This "truth" only liberates the rich and powerful. Here are some examples.

One of the most influential figures in postmodernism is the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche boldly declared that "truth is an illusion" and that "free spirits" would recognize this. (Nietzsche was not troubled by the fact that this implies his own position is an illusion!) Good capitalist philosopher that he was, Nietzsche glorified war and rejected equality and equal rights. He advocated a conception of class liberation which required wage slavery for the working class: "A higher culture can come into being only where there are two castes of society: the working caste and the idle caste, capable of true leisure; or, to express it more emphatically, the cast of forced labor and the caste of free labor" (Human, All Too Human, p. 439).

More up-to-date is French post-modernist Jean Baudrillard, who maintains there is no difference between appearance and reality. "Today the entire system is fluctuating in indeterminacy, all of reality is absorbed by the hyper-reality of the code and of simulation. It is now a principle of simulation, and not of reality, that regulates social life." ("Symbolic Exchange and Death"). Just before the 1991 ground war started in the Persian Gulf, Baudrillard applied this idea that reality and simulation are now the same, and wrote that the Gulf War would not take place. After it did take place and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, he wrote another article saying that THE WAR HAD NOT REALLY HAPPENED. [!] It was only a mass media "simulation" of war.

It is common for Postmodernists to claim that they are exposing important biases in science or history. (Of course, if biases really do exist, then science and history must exist in order to have these biases, no?!) French Postmodernist Luce Irigaray claims Einstein’s famous equation E = mc2 is "sexed" because it "privileges what goes the fastest" and "fastest" is supposed to be a masculine characteristic. She also claims that physics "privileges" rigid body mechanics over fluid mechanics because only the male sex organ becomes rigid. (Never mind that capitalist science and technology uses the physics of fluids f9or its many economic and military applications.) Parts of science certainly are distorted by sexism and used against women, as in medicine or biology. Ridiculous analyses like Irigaray’s can never expose real sexism in natural science, however, since they can’t tell the difference between ideology and genuine knowledge.

Knowledge Indispensable To Organize Change

Undoubtedly there are Postmodernists less stupid and reactionary than Nietzsche, Baurillard and Irigaray, but the postmodern attitude that there is no real world and no truth can never lead to liberation, only to passivity and helplessness. Established powers are always safer if many people believe little or nothing can be known. Changing society to destroy oppressive conditions or institutions requires collective action, and that action requires knowledge in order to plan and organize change. People who believe knowledge cannot exist cannot change things. Baudrillard understands that inaction results from his view, and praises apathy and indifference.But the ruling class knows, and fears, the working class is not always apathetic, so it makes all sorts of bogus claims: that capitalism will last forever and get better and better; that some "races" are "inferior"; that the miseries of this life will disappear in heaven, etc. This, of course, is bunk. But "exposing" it by saying there is "no reality or knowledge" leaves the working class with what we have now—the misery of capitalism, with the rulers on top and the workers on the bottom. Rejecting truth and knowledge guarantees that all changes will be directed only by the rulers of the capitalist system, not by the rest of us. The truth does not automatically make you free, but it’s indispensable for getting there. Lenin was right on target when he wrote, "Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement." The movements we get without revolutionary theory are the movements for more war, racism, unemployment, and police murder that the capitalists already offer us.

Hydrogen Bomb Designer, FBI Informer,

Wen Ho Lee Is No Friend of the Working Class

For months and months, the capitalist media, led by the NY TIMES, told us we should hate nuclear physicist Wen Ho Lee because he was a "Chinese spy." Now many of the same pimps of print and whores of the airwaves urge us to support Dr. Lee because he was lied to and threatened with execution by the FBI, was a victim of anti-Chinese racism, was chained in solitary confinement and is a devoted patriot and family man who loves fishing and is probably not a Chinese spy after all!

Save your tears. Some workers, soldiers, professionals and others have the political sophistication to understand that ALL the actors in this drama represent factions within the U.S. capitalist class. We must spread the idea that to support any of them is against the interests of our class. You cannot fight for freedom and against racism by supporting loyal servants of the racists who divide, exploit and oppress us.

The appearance and essence of Wen Ho Lee

Wen Ho Lee was born in 1939 in Taiwan, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1963. He came to the U.S., and gained a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1969, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1974. "An accomplished physicist with more than 20 years devoted to the design and development of nuclear weapons [LA TIMES, 9/24]," Lee worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in applied mathematics and fluid dynamics from 1978 until he was arrested and fired in 1999. If Lee held a similar position in Iraq, the U.S. government would condemn him for developing "weapons of mass destruction." (Like all capitalists, they emphasize property. The working class should see hydrogen bombs as "weapons of mass murder.")

Dr. Lee may appear to be "loveable," but in essence he is a real-life "Dr. Strangelove," an accomplice in designing efficient weapons to kill our fellow workers. He worked for the only government that has ever used nuclear weapons. In 1945 the US dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing a quarter of a million Japanese civilians, not to end World War II (Japan had already offered to surrender) but to threaten the then socialist Soviet Union. Talk about racism against Asians!

In addition to being a killer for U.S. imperialism, the mild-mannered Lee is a stoolpigeon. The FBI used him and his wife to spy on other Chinese scientists. According to the Sept. 17 LA TIMES, "The case against Lee was complicated by the little-publicized fact that he and his wife, Sylvia, acted as FBI informants in the 1980s, reporting on contacts with Chinese scientists they made on two trips to mainland China.

"Lee first came to counterintelligence attention in 1982," the TIMES reported, "during an unrelated FBI investigation. At the time, the bureau was investigating another Taiwan-born scientist at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory, who it code-named Tiger Trap. The FBI suspected that Tiger Trap had passed information to China about the neutron bomb, and agents overheard Lee talking to the scientist in California. The bureau contacted Lee and asked him to go to Livermore to meet Tiger Trap and try to learn what the other scientist might have done. Lee flew to Livermore, and the FBI paid for his trip."

How To Fight Racism

The FBI has a record of vicious racism. No one who works with the FBI can conceivably be worthy of the support of anti-racists. Yet just as black nationalism has blinded many to Al Sharpton’s history of being an FBI informant, so have Chinese and other Asian nationalist organizations and individuals flocked to the support of Wen Ho Lee.

Communists who participate in these reform organizations should do so with the intention of winning sincere anti-racists away from their nationalist misleaders. For example, in LA today anti-racists should be won to organizing support for the striking transit drivers, who are primarily black and Latino, and building unity between them and the riders, also primarily black and Latino. If the teachers and County workers also strike, we should build unity among all these groups, and blame the capitalists, not the workers, for the rotten public transportation, health services, and education foisted on black, Latin, Asian, and white workers. To ultimately defeat racism means to recruit anti-racists to PLP to destroy the capitalist system that requires racism to survive.

(Next issue: The appearance and essence of the case against Wen Ho Lee.)

LETTERS

Amnesty Marchers Embrace CHALLENGE

As we were separating the Spanish and English versions of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO at the Chicago amnesty march, someone approached me and asked about the paper. When I explained it’s a communist paper, he handed me two dollars.

I know hardly any Spanish except for a few phrases I’ve learned to sell the paper to Latin workers. I took 80 DESAFIOS to distribute. Many workers responded when I said I had a communist paper that fought for the unity and equality of the workers of the world. Often when one worker reached into a pocket for some change, other workers would tap me on the shoulder with change or dollar bills in their hands, requesting copies. (I was asking for donations and telling these workers they should give whatever they wished.) Then I was swept along with the march. While the leadership led nationalist chants ("La Raza si, La Migra no"), many workers around me joined enthusiastically when I started chanting, "Obreros si, La Migra no" and "Las luchas obreras no tiene frontieras" (The workers’ struggle has no borders"). When I ran into a friend I had not seen in many years, she encouraged the group she was with to take up the working-class chants.

Many carried Mexican or U.S. flags and had T-shirts saying, "America is my home." They were following the nationalist leadership that dominates the groups they came with. But many hundreds of these workers were eager for communist ideas. By the end of the day I had distributed 85-90 papers and collected almost $70.00. This experience brought home to me how important it is to be in the mass organizations that brought these workers to the march.

Pocket Full of Change

a name="‘Get In It To Win It!’"></">‘G"t In It To Win It!’

Today we were very excited to be part of the 10,000 workers that participated in the Chicago amnesty march. I work for a community organization involved in the amnesty struggle for 25 years. Now that the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO are behind a new wave of amnesty demands, my group has become more alive.

Still, the march belonged to the ruling class. The community organizations serve the bosses, whether they know it or not. The speeches were both political and religious. Some cardinal was there. I was thinking, "Please don’t start mass now. It’s raining!" He didn’t. Congressman Luis Gutierrez told the crowd he would introduce an amnesty bill in Congress on October 2. Many speakers were honest workers who really believe the politicians are on their side.

One of the most exciting moments for me was to see marchers joining in Party chants as they passed the corner where we had a bullhorn and red flags. "Obreros, Si! Capitalista, No!" Some Party members came to the march in buses from different organizations. We led many chants, passed out 1,500 leaflets and sold over 650 CHALLENGES. But it wasn’t enough. The most important work is yet to be done.

We can’t organize people from the sidelines. We must be in the mass organizations and do the work they’re doing in order to build a mass base for the Party. In this case, we need to be marching with the workers, demanding amnesty with them, while exposing the capitalist misleaders and winning people to fight for communism. How are we going to convince people to join the Party and be communists if we don’t organize with them in the mass movement they are a part of? We’ve got to get our feet wet. We must do this reform work without letting it absorb us. This will make us stronger, like today, 10,000 stronger. Que viva el comunismo!

United with PLP

Kicking Around Communist Politics

Some youth here in El Salvador have organized a soccer team to build unity and friendship among young people. We are also using the opportunity to bring communist politics to these youth.

A few weeks ago we received the supplies and uniforms. We thank our class brothers and sisters for their contributions that made this possible.

One way we’re building PLP is distributing CHALLENGE-DESAFIO after each game. Youth here and in other areas are beginning to realize that the road to our liberation from capitalist slavery is to join with the working class and the PLP. This is bad news for the bosses.

Red Soccer Players, El Salvador

I am a 38-year-old peasant who has always considered myself a fighter for the working class. I feel even stronger about this since PLP comrades have been explaining to us here how to build the Party to fight for communism.

I call on other farmworkers to join with us to build a world without bosses.

A Peasant CHALLENGE Reader in El Salvador

Fired and Fired Up

I am a factory worker in New Jersey. On Sept. 20, at 3 PM, my bosses fired me. Earlier in the morning, a new general manager told the guy with the lunch and breakfast truck in front of the factory to leave and never come back, or he would call the cops. I called the manager outside the factory and told him what he did was unjust, and that workers are not animals and need the food truck. The manager told me he was following orders from the factory owner. So I said, "Let’s go see him."

The manager asked me, "What do you propose?" I said that they should allow the truck to come in the morning. He agreed and even shook my hand. While this was happening, workers had stopped working and were coming out to the eating area to protest what the manager had done. The manager agreed with them and told them what we agreed to just minutes before.

At 3 PM, the head of the shop called me and said the owner had fired me for, "incited the work action earlier." I know deep inside that the action was spontaneous, but I was moved by the reaction of my fellow workers, men and women, who are fed up with all the abuses, exploitation and harassment by the bosses of this factory. I am outside the shop but I know the struggle has just begun. My brothers and sisters will continue fighting back. Long live the struggles of workers! Down with exploitation!

Fired and Fired Up

Peru: Is U.S. Playing Both Sides?

Peru’s president Fujimori’s sudden announcement of national elections minus his candidacy has produced an interesting scenario in that country. Fujimori dissolved the dreaded SIN (National Intelligence Service) and sent his own Rasputin, SIN’s chief Vladimiro Montesinos, off to Panama. Why was Montesinos dumped so fast? After all, he’s been serving U.S. imperialism since the mid-1970s when the Peruvian army began buying Soviet MIGS. Montesinos was jailed for giving the CIA blueprints of the MIGS. Upon his release he became a lawyer and went to work for well-known Peruvian drug dealers. He then became what many believed to be the real power behind Fujimori’s 10-year regime. He used the SIN to spy on everyone and to jail, kill or "dissappear" many of his enemies. Thousands were imprisoned as "subversives," just for being suspected friends or members of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.

Suddenly both Fujimori and Montesinos became a hindrance to U.S. imperialism. This accelerated several months ago when it was revealed that Montesinos and the Peruvian army were importing thousands of Russian rifles from Jordan and selling them to the FARC (the main guerrilla army in Colombia). This erupted at the same time Clinton was visiting Bogota to seal his Plan Colombia ($1.7 billion in U.S. aid for the Colombian government and army).

At first, Montesinos blamed "rogue" officers in the Peruvian army, but Jordan certified the rifles were a legal sale. This was the tip of the iceberg. Either Montesinos was trading with the "enemy" (the FARC), or was part of a CIA maneuver to deal with both sides. Many believe his removal was used to take this incident off the front pages, including the realization that the CIA and the U.S. ruling class might be playing both sides of the fence in Colombia. After all, Montesinos has been a faithful CIA operative for decades; the CIA knew about the Jordanian shipment and sale to the FARC for a long time (Stratfor Intelligence Report, 9/19). As recently as the summer of 1999, the head of the NY Stock Exchange journeyed to Colombia to meet with FARC’s chief, Tirofijo ("Sureshot"), in his jungle headquarters.

This series of events demonstrates that capitalism and its lackeys have no principles except those which serve their particular class interests. It would be a big mistake for any worker to side with either Fujimori or Montesinos or any politician who wants to replace them.

Red Path

a name="‘We Must Get Rid Of Capitalism!’"></" />"We Must Get Rid Of Capitalism!’

A friend and colleague recently told me about a powerful experience he had at a meeting of public health workers. As the invited "scientific expert," he presented research showing that racism is bad for people’s health. He said being exposed to racial discrimination while pregnant contributes to premature birth and infant mortality. This is important because infant mortality in the U.S. is twice as high for blacks as it is for whites.

During the discussion a guy asked, "If society has limited resources and black babies are doing much worse than white babies, it sounds like resources have to be shifted from the better off group to the ones who need more. How is this going to happen?" Another black scientist responded with a long statement about "…the many factors and mechanisms which are still not well understood…" In other words, she ducked the question.

After several more questions, the same guy raised his hand again: "Maybe I didn’t ask my question clearly enough, but what I really wanted to know is how this sort of Robin Hood thing—taking from the well-off to improve the health of the poor, black mothers and babies—how’s it going to happen?"

My friend, feeling a bit nervous, finally jumped in and said, "As a friend of mine is always telling me, the real answer is that it CAN’T happen under this system. If we want to really eliminate the inequality that causes high black death rates, we must get rid of capitalism."

I’m not sure exactly what he expected, but what happened took him by surprise. The room burst into applause. The whole tone of the gathering changed. The boring questions stopped and people started relating the fate of their struggling clinics to the activism of the ’60s, and moved past the proper, academic style into a discussion of society, power and politics.

Hearing this story made me think: how many times over the years did I NOT raise political points in the course of conversations with this colleague, or how many CHALLENGES did I NOT get around to sending him? He seems to have been paying more attention than I thought.

But it works both ways. Years ago when we were working hard on a project, I made the comment, "Well, it’s only research." I meant it wouldn’t change the world. But I kept working on research with him, and it turns out he had a point. This kind of research can be a useful way to get political ideas in front of many, many good people. That can help build the fight against racism and capitalism. And that is exactly what can change the world.

Red Researcher

Information: Print

CHALLENGE Sept. 27, 2000

Information: 27 September 2000 174 hits

Bosses' Thirst for Higher Oil Profits Lead to War:
Workers Pay Through Nozzle Now
With Blood Later
Blair Diverting Mass Anger to `Take Back Iraq'
Capitalist Dogfight Over Control of OPEC
MTA STRIKERS STEER MILITANT COURSE
MTA Strikers, Riders: Don't Take Side on Bosses' Dogfight!
MUNI Bosses...DOWNLOAD THIS!
LA Teachers Must Fight Racist Attacks Agains Youth
Part II: Liberal Literacy Proposals
Rulers Want Fascism As the `Standards'
JUSTICE FOR PRINCE JONES!
FIRED PLP TEACHER PUTS RACIST BOARD ON TRIAL
Boosting the Circulation of CHALLENGE
Capitalism: The Highest Stage of the Oppression of Women
Communism = Jobs; Capitalism = Prostitution
CUBA: Communism and Capitalism Don't Mix
Pro and anti President Alberto Fujimori supporters fight each other
LETTERS

Editorial

Bosses' Thirst for Higher Oil Profits Lead to War:
Workers Pay Through Nozzle Now
With Blood Later

The current conflict over energy prices is another prelude to the oil war CHALLLENGE has warned about for several years. Obviously, workers are paying through the nose for the price hikes at the gas pumps and for home heating. But this is nothing compared to the price we'll be asked to pay in blood when U.S. rulers launch their next military attack to protect Rockefeller's Exxon Mobil domination of the world's largest and cheapest source of oil, the Middle East.

The bosses' media is spilling a lot of ink over the supposed "shortage" of certain fuels. But this is a myth. As Ali Rodriguez, the president of OPEC (the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries) admitted on Sept. 13, "the organization's members have up to three million barrels a day in spare capacity." (Bloomberg News) So there's no lack of supply. The real issue is a conflict between the haves and the have-nots within OPEC. The have-nots--Venezuela, for example--worry that a large production increase without an equal increase in demand "could create a massive drop in prices," like the one in 1997-98, when the so-called Asian "Tiger" economies--South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore--temporarily went into the tank.

A drop in prices would harm mainly the OPEC have-nots, whose oil costs more to produce than the relatively cheap Saudi, Kuwaiti, and UAE Persian Gulf crude controlled mainly by Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and BP Amoco. The biggest oil companies can make money when prices crash because their cheap, plentiful resources enable them to gain market share over their rivals.

So one aspect of the present fight over prices is the attempt by upstarts like Venezuela to break away from Exxon Mobil's domination. Venezuela used to be a Rockefeller vassal. Now it seems intent on freeing not just itself but the entire world oil supply system from Exxon's domination. Venezuelan president Chávez recently invited U.S. competitor Russia to join OPEC. And Exxon's French arch-rival, Total Fina, has become a big player in Venezuela.

But the big prize remains Iraq. Beyond appearances, the current oil "shortage" hides a general overcapacity. The international energy bosses are really fighting over who will dictate how the surplus is used. Control of world oil supplies lies with the producer that can raise or lower production quickly and in large quantity. Right now, only the Saudi-Exxon-Chevron-Shell-Texaco combine can play this role. Iraq could do the same if the U.S. sanctions against it were lifted and its oil production facilities were brought up to speed. French, Russian and Chinese oil companies have signed multi-billion dollar deals to walk into Iraq and do just that once sanctions end.

Exxon Mobil, backed by the U.S. government it controls, can't allow its main business opponents to develop Iraq as an oil source rivaling Saudi Arabia. The only alternative to war would be for Saddam Hussein to break his contracts with Total Fina, the Russians and the others, and roll out the red carpet for Exxon. This isn't in the cards. So in the middle of the presidential campaign, U.S. rulers are defining the conditions under which they will launch further military attacks against Iraq, which they have been bombing since December 1998.

In classic imperialist fashion, the murderers in Washington are looking to provoke an excuse for war. Clinton's Secy. Of State Madeline Albright admitted as much to the press on September 13, talking about "red lines" that Saddam Hussein must not cross. Meanwhile, Kuwaiti oil bosses linked to the U.S. are drilling oil in a zone also claimed by the Iraqis.

We can't predict when U.S. rulers will launch the next oil war, nor what the concocted provocation will be. Another oil war is surely in the cards. The continuing fight over prices shows how crucial oil remains to modern capitalist economies, much more crucial than "new economy" products like software. Whoever controls oil supplies and can defend them holds a decisive advantage over the competition. Exxon Mobil holds this advantage now and will do anything to keep it. We should have no illusions: the 1991 slaughter known as "Desert Storm" is due for a sequel. It will be even bloodier and spawn more opposition than the first, and it will happen regardless of the U.S. presidential results in November.

The system, not individual politicians, dictates the nature of events. Capitalism, which lives for maximum profit, always leads to instability and war. When Exxon's next mass murder for oil wealth erupts Progressive Labor Party must organize workers' opposition and build its forces by advancing the fight for communist revolution as the only alternative to the bosses' periodic blood-lettings.

Blair Diverting Mass Anger to `Take Back Iraq'

The price of energy products is dictated by the producers and their governments. Prices are rising, partly because OPEC members outside the Middle East are dragging their heels on production rises, thus limiting the amount of oil, and partly because Exxon, Shell and BP Amoco have cut their investment in production by 75% since 1990.

In Europe, high energy prices are due primarily to taxes, which pay for social services. French bosses just cut the gas tax. This was probably a political ploy. They don't need to mobilize French workers into a war frenzy against Iraq. Quite the contrary: French oil companies have an open invitation to rebuild the Iraqi energy industry.

This isn't the case in Britain, where prime minister Tony Blair refused to cave in to recent protests demanding lower gas taxes. This is probably a political ploy in the opposite direction: the old British Petroleum company had major interests in Iraq, and its successor, BP Amoco, would love to recoup losses there. Blair seems to be trying to direct mass anger in Britain toward the Middle East. A "take-back-Iraq" campaign could emerge. New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman (9/17) praised Blair's "courage" in refusing to heed the protesters' demands for lower taxes.

Capitalist Dogfight Over Control of OPEC

OPEC is an interesting case study in the first law of dialectics, the unity and conflict of opposites. Each country in OPEC represents a gang of bosses with its own national interests. However, at the same time, they all fall into one or another of the imperialist camps.

The shifting sands of alliances among these oil barons are reflected in the current jockeying for the post of OPEC secretary-general, the organization's top spot. The new OPEC chief is slated to be picked in November. Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq have all fielded candidates. The winner needs unanimous support. The Iraqis won't back a pro-U.S. Saudi. Now a Venezuelan, OPEC current president Ali Rodriguez, has said he may run. Rodriguez would be a compromise between the U.S.-British rulers, who want a Saudi, and the French-Russian-Chinese bloc, who are hoping to refine and market Iraqi oil. Even though the Venezuelan oil bosses lean toward the French-Russian gang, U.S. firms, led by Exxon, still pump a lot of oil from Venezuela.

So there are wheels within wheels. But "compromises" among bosses, especially with control of the world's oil market at stake, are castles in the sand. The main aspect of the relationship here is conflict. All this maneuvering will still end in war.

MTA STRIKERS STEER MILITANT COURSE

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 20 -- "Hey Bobby, I don't have one cent in the bank, but I'm telling you don't give MTA anything. Nothing, you hear?" a bus driver told his union board rep yesterday among a group of striking MTA drivers. "I don't care how long it takes," he continued. "Don't give them a thing."

Such is the spirit of the United Transportation Union drivers in their strike against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). The bosses have stated publicly they want to grab $23 million from the drivers over a three-year contract.

The union leadership is fighting a defensive battle to merely keep what we've got--which means working 12 hours and 51 minutes a day, 5 days a week (24 hours overtime) in order to pay bills and send your kids to college (LA TIMES, 9/16). It means continued use of prison slave labor to clean buses and bus stops. Keeping what we've got means 20% part-time drivers and 24-month wage progression to reach base pay for new drivers and mechanics (a two-tier system). These union leaders would have transit workers keep one foot on the gas pedal and the other on a banana peel.

Striking MTA workers are maintaining solid picket lines. MTA mechanics and service personnel--not on strike--are respecting the lines. The strikers have received support from janitors, garment workers, teachers and students. PLP has gone to the picket lines with CHALLENGES and other Party literature. We have exposed the power struggle behind the strike among different groups of bosses (see box).

PLP says strikers and riders should not take sides in this bosses' dogfight. This lhs led to some good discussions with striking workers. Some are now seriously considering joining a PLP study group and helping to distribute CHALLENGE.

MTA Strikers, Riders: Don't Take Side on Bosses' Dogfight!

Behind the LA transit strike there is a struggle for power among two groups of bosses. The mayor and his cabal of local businessmen all want a piece of the MTA's $2.5 billion budget, no matter how much it screws up public transit. This is why these local bosses, from Riordan to Supervisors Burke, Molina and Yaroslavsky, are calling for the drivers to give up $23 million in concessions.

But the main wing of the U.S. ruling class, led by the Rockefeller forces and their Exxon-Mobil oil giant, are using the Federal government to take power from these local bosses. They had already defeated the old Committee of 25--leading industrialists headquartered in LA--which had been running the city and represented money independent of the Rockefellers. The latter are building a labor-community-environmental alliance of, especially, the large Latino and black population so they can use their youth in a war to maintain control of Mid-East oil.

They are taking hold of the out-of-control LAPD. Their next move may be on the MTA which, for the last four years, has been under a Federal District judge's consent decree to spend $1 billion to rebuild the ruined bus system. Mayor Riordan's MTA is appealing the federal ruling mandating purchase of 300 new buses.

The liberal LA TIMES (bought by the pro-Rockefeller CHICAGO TRIBUNE) and the Spanish language daily LA OPINION are running articles sympathetic to, and respectful of, the striking drivers (just as they had with striking janitors earlier this year). Similarly, they are presenting the case for the mostly low-paid workers who ride the buses in a way that holds transit bosses responsible for the misery caused by the lack of bus service.

The main beneficiary of all this activism will likely be mayoral hopeful Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker of the House in California's Legislature. He can be the junior partner of the coalition being built by the Rockefeller forces to put the final nail in the current local rulers' coffin.

MUNI Bosses...DOWNLOAD THIS!

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, September 19 -- Informal contract talks are continuing between the MUNI and Transport Workers Union Local 250A. Mayor Willie Brown is playing mediator, the union's International Rep is calling for labor peace and the press is incessantly reminding us it's illegal to strike. MUNI management talks about "cooperation," but uses new policies and the press to attack drivers. MUNI workers have twice overwhelmingly rejected proposed contracts.

Drivers carried out a very successful N.O.T. (No Over Time) campaign over Labor Day weekend to expose short-staffing at MUNI. Only about eight of 160 drivers signed up for OT actually worked, resulting in a 15-20% cut in service. This show of the potential power to shut the city down forced General Manager Burns to admit that MUNI was short about 200 drivers.

Management retaliated by threatening to cut OT, leading to service cuts, particularly on the weekend. Then the bosses end up calling drivers in for OT to fill missing service.

Far from terrorizing drivers, it's angering everyone, including the riding public. The bosses need overtime more than we do, even though many drivers rely on it. Unless they hire hundreds more workers, they cannot run their mass transit system without it.

The American Public Transportation Association is meeting here (Sept 24-28). This "professional association" of transit managers from around the country has plenty to talk about. MUNI and AC drivers have rejected contracts on both sides of the Bay, and LA transit workers are on strike. Actions here in support of the LA transit strike, against weekend service cuts at MUNI and the lack of progress in contract talks, can advance the struggle and keep transit workers in the driver's seat.

The bosses are determined to get a four-year contract. They want "labor peace," not another year of struggle, and they'll pay a few more pennies to get it. They are using everything from the Mayor as "the good cop" to front-page attacks on PLP in the San Francisco CHRONICLE. If drivers don't maintain the momentum with growing job actions while reaching out to AC workers and LA transit strikers, the bosses and union hacks will keep us "voting until we get it right."

The workers' anger, the union leaders' isolation and PLP's mass base have temporarily blindsided the bosses. Their plan for low-wage mass transit with no protection for the workers has been exposed. Joint strikes by MUNI and AC drivers would further expose the whole system of wage slavery. This could definitely open the doors for bigger recruitment to PLP and increase the Party's influence far beyond Bay Area transit workers.

By fighting for leadership of this struggle, we can learn many valuable lessons in the fight for communist revolution. We have struck fear in the bosses and many rank-and-file leaders are emerging. The bosses are downloading CHALLENGE off the website while more workers are saying they want to be part of our movement. We are closing the gap of understanding and confidence that exists between the Party and the workers.

LA Teachers Must Fight Racist Attacks Agains Youth

LOS ANGELES, September 19 -- Teachers here will vote on September 25 to authorize a strike. But what kind of a strike will it be? Will it put students first, in a strike against racist attacks on youth and for better education? Or will it be limited to teacher raises?

Last year California passed Proposition 21, a dangerously fascist law, which increasingly targets black and Latin youth for prison. Students state-wide, including those working with Progressive Labor Party here, led walkouts against Prop. 21. One of the main reasons the rulers launched the Prop 21 campaign was to spread the racist lie among millions of adult voters, that youth, especially all black and Latin youth, are in violent gangs and threaten public safety in California.

This fascist attack invaded the educational system itself. Every high school has cops on campus harassing students for non-criminal misbehavior. Some schools have more cops than others, perpetuating the racist idea that kids in some neighborhoods are "more dangerous" than others. What used to be considered ordinary adolescent behavior now gets you into the courts and the criminal "injustice system." An ordinary fight--two kids squaring off on the playground--is grounds for a citation, and will land the student in court along with his/her parent. So will being more than an hour late to school, or being off campus at the doughnut shop after lunch.

We are fighting for the union to address these demands: (1) "Cops and courts out of the schools"; (2) lower class size--20 students per class; (3) well-equipped, clean classrooms with a Teacher's Assistant in every room; (4) the district build 200 new schools.

The President of the Board of Education admits it would take new classrooms for 200,000 students right now to eliminate year-round schools--at current inflated class sizes of up to 38 and more high school students in a room! It would take at least 200 new schools to adequately house LA students.

Both the school bosses and the union give lip service to "improving education." The district says put more power in the hands of the principal (Oh, sure!) and make all teachers work an extra hour every day. (Many teachers already do this.) The district wants to punish teachers at schools that score low on the racist standardized tests by instituting forced teacher transfers, allowing the principal to "choose his own team" and eliminating local school leadership councils. This will only result in more harassment and intimidation, instead of fighting for real working-class accountability to parents and students on the part of teachers.

The union says the way to "improve education" is to pay teachers more money. Teachers need more money to live on, but what makes a good teacher is his/her commitment to the working class--not how much money he/she is paid. The union has a vague demand, without any real teeth, for a grievable Classroom Bill of Rights covering class size cap, clean, safe and adequate facilities, and textbooks, materials, equipment and furniture.

The district's proposals and the union's counters, as well as the union's refusal to fight for enough schools and small enough classes to really teach, shows what hypocrites they are. Schools that don't really teach students the skills and knowledge they need are consigning them to a future of poverty jobs at home or as cannon fodder in the next imperialist war abroad.

Neither the district nor the union will confront the more fundamental issue in public education, the way that national standards for content of education, and textbooks and tests aligned with those standards, are increasingly focused on preparing--and forcing--students to join the Army and go off to fight in the next war.

One tiny example of this is the California Social Studies Standards for 11^th grade history: The United States in the 20^th Century."" The only reference in the Standards to the indigenous population of this hemisphere is to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the U.S. beat Japanese Intelligence during World War II. Not only is this incredibly racist in omitting their cultural heritage as well as the savage racist treatment Native Americans received, but it shows, as one student pointed out, the purpose of teaching U.S. history in high school. The Navajo code talkers were included to teach students the "moral" that even if "your people" had been treated badly by the government in the past, you should still believe in and fight for it when asked. History is taught to indoctrinate students to be "good citizens and soldiers."

As teachers of the working class, we have qualitatively different and higher standards than racist standardized tests or principals. We're fighting to teach what's in the interest of the working class--the truth about society. Although this is most clear in a U.S. history class, it applies in all our classrooms. To win we must teach students the class nature of society and fight for as hell to teach this.. Simultaneously we must show we'll only have such complete schools that operate in the interest of the working class when the working class controls society.

Part II: Liberal Literacy Proposals
Rulers Want Fascism As the `Standards'

The National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE) authored the influential 1990 report, "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages." They argue that U.S. bosses need to invest more money in education to compete with their global rivals. As a symptom of rising fascism, they are now writing workplace standards in every industry, including skills required for each job classification, assessments, and certifications. This represents the direct alignment of business, government and labor unions. NCEE is moving quickly into New York City schools, and the Chancellor's District (the large collection of the lowest performing schools) is adopting their literacy program for all its high schools.

NCEE's program carefully steers between the ideological wars on literacy instruction that have split the ruling class in the past. They advocate both immersion in "authentic reading and writing activities" (whole language), and explicit instruction in reading skills and strategies (phonics). Their research shows one will not work without the other.

The emergence of this bridge between what have been warring factions mirrors the victory of the liberal Rockefeller agenda over their New Money competitors. To put their plans into action, the bosses must use whatever dialectical materialist research has crept into science.

On the surface, this approach to literacy instruction is similar to ours. Students will learn about language as a process, step-by-step. It will be presented as something knowable, but alive and changing, not a set of immutable laws to be memorized for no good reason. Students will get instruction in higher order reading strategies from the beginning, but instruction will also be tailored to their individual needs. Classes will be between 20-25 students. Skills instruction will be spiraled from the more simple to more complex in a comprehensive manner. Teachers will get ongoing training, and an on-site instructional specialist who will assist them and team-teach with them.

However, the bosses are not about to start serving the working class, not by a long shot. Capitalist schools, especially in the cities, are just plain broken. Philosophically and programmatically, the program has many problems.

It is based on students learning a process, reading. However, the content of their learning is pro-boss and pro capitalist. And in case the ideas don't stick, it doesn't matter WHAT students think, only that they follow directions. This encourages the same know-nothingness so common in popular culture. Following directions, although admittedly more complex, is still a high priority for capitalist education.

The program is steeped in the junk culture of popular young adult novels. These works reek with self-centered characters, petty jealousies and competition, either gross-out blood and guts or wildly idealist romance, all kinds of ethnic and gender stereotypes, and of course, no consciousness of social classes or class struggle. While the best of them do deal with more realistic themes and even anti-racism/anti-sexism, they still steer students away from class struggle and into an accommodation with capitalism.

Some teachers say, "At least they're reading." But this represents a cynical view. Communists believe young people can be won to reject capitalist culture, which must be exposed for the almost total lack of literature with pro-working class values and lessons. Without a communist analysis, students will learn all the wrong lessons from junk culture.

The lessons for teacher development are also scripted and mechanical, showing that the bosses can't trust them either!

Formal tracking is being reintroduced into schools. Many classes have students at varied skill levels. In the name of focusing on students who need specific and basic literacy instruction, many schools are now tracking on three levels. Several pro-working class teachers questioned the program's commitment to high expectations, fearing students would end up languishing in the lower levels of the program.

The second year of this two-year program centers almost exclusively on reading non-fiction so students can understand science, math, and social studies. These texts are the tools the bosses rely on to spread their ideology to future workers. The history of U.S. education, and the collective experience of the working class, confirms that capitalism will never truly educate our young people.

(Next issue: the bosses' unsolvable contradictions and the role of communist teachers.)

JUSTICE FOR PRINCE JONES!

UPPER MARLBORO, MARYLAND, Sept. 19 -- Today a delegation of Howard University students and faculty and residents of Prince George's County presented petitions containing over 1,200 signatures to the County Executive on behalf of murdered student Prince Jones. They demanded the firing and indictment of killer cop Carlton Jones, the firing of the police chief and compensation for Prince Jones' family.

The petitions have been circulating at Howard University, at Prince George's Community College, at federal agencies and among labor unions in the area. This presentation was to put the county officials on notice that workers and students will not let this racist murder of a Howard University student be swept under the rug. The petition campaign is just beginning. More actions will be carried out to demand justice.

Justice cannot be achieved under capitalism, however. The police are a critical force for keeping workers, especially black workers, terrorized and intimidated. It is their role to be brutal. Capitalism's attack dogs need constant "exercise." Murdering Prince was just one more example of this.

Al Gore held a campaign rally at Howard to win black students to his side in his campaign against Bush. He even held a minute of silence for Prince. Yet Gore and Clinton promote racist policies, like welfare repeal and war in the Middle East. We should have no illusions about their fundamental support for capitalism and its brutal police, whatever pious words they may preach to sucker us into voting for them.

This murder was the 5^th (and 13^th shooting) in 12 months by PG police officers. The list of PG residents murdered by cops is long. PLP vows to continue the struggle to smash the capitalist and racist system that needs such cruel racist terrorism to thrive.

FIRED PLP TEACHER PUTS RACIST BOARD ON TRIAL

CHUCAGO, IL, September 15 -- Today the three-day termination hearing for PLP member Carol Caref ended. The Chicago Board of Education is trying to fire her for "putting a student in harm's way." This stems from one of Carol's students being arrested at an anti-KKK rally in 1997. During the '97-'98 school year, the Board had 2,303 students arrested for minor offenses like having pagers in school. Clearly, it's the racist Board that puts students in harm's way every day, not anti-racist teachers like Carol.

At the hearing, the Board's attorney questioned our opposition to police protection for the Klan. He asked Carol, "Wouldn't you agree that PLP's ideas are also unpopular?" "No," she said, "not at all. I have discussed communism with lots of people, and explained that communism means an end to the racist profit system. It means organizing society based on people's needs, not the needs of the corporations. That idea is very popular with people I've talked to."

Arrests are only the tip of the iceberg. Students are subjected to daily indoctrination and harassment. The Board uses scripted lessons and high-stakes tests to teach racist lies. They set up military academies to prepare students to fight and die in support of imperialism. In the last five years, these fascist policies have greatly increased under the regime of CEO Paul Vallas.

Many teachers were fired when their schools were taken over by the Board for low-test scores. Those attending the hearing included teachers who have been fired for speaking up or refusing to kiss their principal's ass. The Board is about to fire many more teachers under "intervention." They are not interested in implementing programs that might actually help students learn. Instead, they want to blame teachers, students and parents for capitalism's dismal and calculated failure to educate children.

Teachers like Carol and Moises Bernal (another PLP teacher being fired) teach students to think and to understand the world in order to change it. By firing them and trying to remove PLP from the schools, the Board is sending a message: don't fight back. The decision on Carol's case probably won't come until December. But the legal fight is only one aspect of our struggle.

We are linking the firings of Carol and Moises to the hundreds of other fired teachers. We are fighting racist attacks on students, such as the policy that expels any student who is arrested at any time, even on the weekend, and even before going to court.

We are organizing for next week's Board meeting, together with other teachers, parents and students. We will see many more parents and students that we know in their homes and invite them to participate. The Board meeting is Wednesday, September 27, at Amelia Earhart School, 1710 E. 93^rd St. from 4-6 p.m. Join us.

Boosting the Circulation of CHALLENGE

NEW YORK CITY, September 18 -- A group of us workers recently gathered for our regular political discussion. Part of it concerned why and how we should increase the sale of CHALLENGE. We began by reviewing current sales and plans and problems involved in increasing them.

Bob: In the last few years, I've gotten the paper to perhaps a hundred different workers. Recently, however, it's gotten difficult because my job assignment doesn't allow me to get around to see all of these workers. I put 30 CHALLENGES on a literature table available to various organizations at the school where I work. I get the papers to my co-workers when I see them. I've tried to get some of them to help set up a distribution network but that hasn't happened yet.

Joe: It's great that so many of your co-workers have seen CHALLENGE. I think you should establish regular readers. We need to guarantee that you get the paper at the start of each issue. Then you can make a plan for each day of the week to get the paper to all your regular readers and to as many others as possible.

Ned: I sell 35 papers each week in my office and at nearby offices where other members of my union work. At union meetings and demonstrations, I sell up to another 40 or 50. I'm trying to increase my regular weekly sales from the pool of occasional readers.

Joe: I'm new on my job and I was never that good at selling the paper. I'm trying to get to know some of the workers on my job. They're higher-paid workers, professionals. I'm trying to get more involved in the union. I want to relate what's in CHALLENGE to struggles here on the job. I've had some good talks with A. B knows my politics but doesn't take them seriously. I'm going to ask some of my old friends if I can mail them the paper. I agree that CHALLENGE puts forward communist politics more fully than any of us do individually, but sometimes I think CHALLENGE is too strident.

Bob: It SHOULD be strident and make us angry and want to fight back.

Joe: I like the articles and the editorials. I learn a lot from them. But I'm afraid the jargon will turn off the workers on my job.

Ned: We can go through an issue of CHALLENGE to see what we think of what Joe and Bob are saying. Joe, you could get a paper to A. You could also approach some of the support staff in your office. There might be some workers in WEP [Work Experience Program--Workfare] assignments there. They might like CHALLENGE more than higher-paid professionals. I agree you should get involved in the struggle at your job. There's a contract coming up. Perhaps you could write up some of the discussions you have with your co-workers.

Jack: I distribute 15-18 on my job. That number has gone down in the last year as the number of workers in my office decreased.

Mary: I don't sell any papers. I'm here mainly to find out more about PLP. I think there are some workers at my job that would be interested in CHALLENGE. We often have discussions about what's happening in the world.

Ned: When I think about selling CHALLENGE, I think how quality and quantity constantly interchange. The more we understand the need for a communist press in building for communist revolution, the more we try to increase the circulation of CHALLENGE. The more we try to circulate the paper, the more political discussions we're apt to have with our friends. This in turn can lead to more class struggle. This happened on my job around the acquittal of the cop-murderers of Amadou Diallo. More class struggle then can bring about increased readership and distribution of CHALLENGE. This process strengthens the political awareness of our friends and can help convince them of the need to join PLP to help build the revolutionary movement.

Mary: This has been a good discussion, I think I can try to get a few papers out to my friends.

Capitalism: The Highest Stage of the Oppression of Women
Communism = Jobs; Capitalism = Prostitution

"The best from Moscow." "Sweet, fresh Poles." "Ukrainian Pearls!"

read the ads in a Berlin tabloid. For what? Jewelry? Produce? Caviar? Nope, they're advertising for prostitutes. Now that free market capitalism has swallowed the East whole, "half a million women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are being shipped abroad each year."

"Communism put women to work, post-cold war capitalism does not," reports the NEW YORK TIMES (9/19). "More than 60% of Russia's unemployed are women."

"The business of trafficking for sexual exploitation is booming. It's an industry worth several billion dollars a year," says an official of the European joint police force, Europol. The trade in women from the East has spread throughout Europe. It's increasingly well-organized, dominated by the Russian-German and Ukrainian-German mafias.

It is "a world of violence, disease and misery." Children are born from this capitalist "business." "There are regular clients for pregnant women." Child prostitution is growing as well. (Profits have absolutely no scruples.) Three cases involving 12 children in Usti, a Czech border town near Germany, included one 9-year-old.

This prostitution is borne of the mass poverty and unemployment bred by capitalism. "Prostitution is the only way to feed their families," admits the TIMES. "Others come deluded, lured [by] work as babysitters or barmaids, forced into unpayable debt, deprived of all freedom in the end." The women may be teachers or farm laborers or unemployed, 18 to 30. Often they have one or two children to support.

"The women are terrorized," often unable to pay off the debt to the gangsters for their transportation and visas to the West. And they're terrified the gangs will harm their families back home if they try to escape.

The average rate in brothels is $75 for half an hour. The women are "paid" no more than a tenth of that. From these "wages" they must buy food and pay rent, so their debts mount. Prostitution is not illegal in Germany in designated urban areas. Most of the 7,000 prostitutes in Berlin are from Eastern Europe.

One young Gypsy woman, forced into prostitution at 15, "with a ravaged look in her big brown eyes...seemed a waif broken before she could live." In contrast, the TIMES says, "Under the former Communist governments, Gypsies had jobs...and overt racism was repressed....Women here [in the West] from Belarus, Bulgaria, Russia and elsewhere would also have had jobs."

So capitalism's "human rights" campaign marches on, over the ravaged, exploited bodies of millions of women. Despite all the shortcomings in the Soviet Union and China, under communist workers power prostitution was wiped out for the first time anywhere in human history. With full-blown capitalism comes full-blown degradation of women. The communism that PLP fights for is one in which the cause of these horrors--profits, and the bosses who reap them--are wiped out. Only under such a system will women and men be able to lead full and productive lives, contributing to the greater good of the working class that produces everything of value.

CUBA: Communism and Capitalism Don't Mix

Often things are not as they seem. So we discovered at our last PLP club meeting while discussing the recent Millenium Summit at the United Nations, and the situation with Cuba.

The Summit's stated purpose was to discuss "global" problems like poverty, disease and war. Rosa sighed, "It sounds like so much talk, vague proposals and nothing for the working class." "Capitalism is still capitalism," said Jose. When some delegates applauded Fidel Castro's speech, they were not on the road to communist revolution. Rather they were uniting so-called "third world" countries for a bigger piece of the capitalist pie.

"What about Fidel visiting the Riverside Church where you go?" asked Angel. "Are people more interested in communism?""The church is an Eastern Establishment Rockefeller-built institution," replied Susan. "Since the Elián case, it has spearheaded the move to shift U.S. public opinion towards ending sanctions and "normalizing" relations with Cuba. The Old Money wing of the U.S. ruling class wants to invest and gain market share in Cuba, where they are losing out to their European and Asian competitors because of the 40-year-old embargo. Far from being pro-communist, these forces claim that U.S. capitalist relations with Cuba will cement "civil, democratic society" there."

The goal of the various groups, which attended Fidel's event at the church, was in essence the same as those of the eastern liberal rulers. However, while there is a lot of anti-communism, there is also interest. "One of my church friends told me she started a singing of the `Internationale' in the Nader contingent at the Labor Day parade," said Susan.

A new comrade to PLP, fairly recently in the U.S. from Cuba, said, "The embargo has strangled Cuba, but the workers are ideologically prepared to confront U.S. imperialism. They have defended socialism and under harsh conditions have developed an advanced educational and medical system. I haven't seen the repression they talk about. One is proud to be a communist. Cuban workers went to fight Apartheid in South Africa. Cuba has been a beacon for workers' aspirations.

"But you can't mix capitalism with communism," he continued. "Communism doesn't exist in Cuba. Cuba used to import 13 million barrels of oil annually from the Soviet Union. Since it fell, the figure is now three million. We're at option zero.""There are lessons we must learn," said Manuel. "Cuba followed the line of the Third International, as did all communist parties at that time." "In fact," added Susan, "PLP was born as members of the old Communist Party USA left it to begin the long fight against revisionism."

"Yes," continued Manuel. "The concept of socialism resulted in state capitalism and a new capitalist ruling class. Socialism kept money, material incentives and wage differentials for technicians and managers. It promoted nationalism within countries to `unite all the people,' rather than internationalism to further the struggle of the workers for complete power as a class."

Comrades then made plans for monthly classes on dialectical materialist philosophy, to advance organizing in factories, expand CHALLENGE distribution and participate in a Coalition march for amnesty for immigrants in NYC on Oct. 14.

The international working class needs power and communism. Can do, but not without fully learning history's lessons, building the movement for revolution from below, in every "country," at a new stage. Such is PLP's task. What we don't know we can learn as we evaluate and re-evaluate our daily efforts, actions and inter-actions, struggles and thoughts.

Pro and anti President Alberto Fujimori supporters fight each other

LIMA, PERU, Jan. 18--Pro and anti President Alberto Fujimori supporters fight each other. It wasn't just corruption that made Fujimori call it quits (and call for new elections next year), but the fact that his Rasputin, Vladimiro Montesinos, was either doublecrossing his masters in the US, selling weapons to the FARC (main Colombian guerrilla group) or becoming too much of an obstacle for the Plan Colombia (U.S. war plans for Colombia)

LETTERS

Proud To Be A GI `Neath the Red Flag

Organizing in the military these past three years has been a constant struggle, not only with fellow soldiers, but also with myself. Especially now I often think about leaving the army, as if it has been this isolated part of my life. I realize that building for the Party is a life-long challenge, and that my army experience isn't isolated, but part of a collective, a continuous wave of knowledge and experience for future soldiers.Developing a " wave upon wave" of Party members and friends has always been our collective's goal. However, after attending the International Conference and listening to students in workshops discussing the importance of mass work and military work, now the seriousness of this goal has become more evident. Talking to our teachers and discussing the importance of their role helped put this into perspective.Meeting old comrades and family was great, but seeing the new faces, hearing about their struggles and advances around the world had a definite impact on me. Listening to experienced leaders and most importantly young leaders made me proud to be a soldier 'neath the Red Flag

Red GI

Move to Cheap Labor Not Just From U.S.

The letter "Bosses' `Boom' on Workers' Backs" (9/20), about bosses moving operations to where labor is cheaper, describes suffering not limited to U.S. garment workers. Four hundred garment workers at the Montego Bay Freezone in Jamaica will lose their jobs by the end of September. Mark Hart, CEO of the Hart Group of Companies, told THE OBSERVER newspaper that Apparel Handlers Freezone Ltd. is moving to Honduras where "production costs are lower." The company manufactures Hanes brand T-shirts for the Sara Lee corporation in the U.S.This is how Sara Lee "rewarded" these workers for their good work. "The factory that we are closing down won the quality award for the entire Sara Lee division two months ago," said Hart. "In fact, we were supposed to travel to the U.S. next month to receive the award."These workers are not alone. Thousands have lost their jobs in the Jamaica apparel industry in the last four years in similar fashion. And when they find a place where labor is cheaper than in Honduras, they'll move there (even though what they pay workers is not enough anywhere). That is the essence of capitalism--the less workers earn the more profits the bosses make.

Again, CHALLENGE was correct about the "dirty secret" that the boom capitalists are enjoying in the U.S. and worldwide rests on the backs of workers. The latest World Bank annual "Report on World Development 2000-01: The Fight Against Poverty" clearly shows almost half of the world's population (2.8 billion) subsists on less than two dollars a day; 1.2 billion live on less than a dollar a day. Even though 70% of these poor people live in Africa, Asia and Latin America, extreme poverty has also increased in the imperialist countries and in Eastern Europe. Between 1987 and 1998, the amount of poor people multiplied by 20 times in the former socialist countries (from 1.1 million to 24 million earning less than a dollar a day). In Russia it's 19% and in former Soviet republics of Asia, like Tajikistan, it's 68%.

If capitalism gets away with murder when it's unopposed in what it calls "the best of times," producing such mass misery for so many people, all the more reason to oppose it and fight for communism.

Red and Proud

Rap Music: Pro-Boss or Pro-Worker?

The letter on illiteracy and rap music (Sept. 20 issue) was important. As the writer says, rap music does influence millions of youth who we want to win to PLP.

Today, hip hop--like all culture--belongs primarily to the bosses, to promote capitalist culture and win youth to defend the system. In its early days, rap music was a source of street entertainment and creativity (the originals MCs were black urban youth marginalized by the capitalist system). Their politics even then pushed individualism, trying to brag about their skills to distinguish themselves from other MCs. There was little if any criticism of the society. However, the fact that these youth were "making" the music by themselves--apart from music industry influence--was a powerful statement on the inherent creativity of the working class. Rap became a wildly successful underground phenomenon.

The ruling class caught on, quickly bought the music and institutionalized certain forms, primarily the super-nationalism and later gangsta rap and pretty-boy entrepreneurial rap, with heavy doses of women-hating/exploiting and continued emphasis on individualism. They also attacked anti-police trends.

The ruling class has made hip hop appear "subversive." The bosses market many rappers as social critics because they talk about the "real deal." But much of rap--in the name of "reality"--depicts black and Latin youth as sexist, racist and willing to screw their fellow workers to get ahead (just as capitalists do). This ideology forms the overwhelming thrust of rap music today.

There are always exceptions to the general trend. For example, many politicized youth in New York City like a lesser-known rap group called Dead Prez. They have been at police brutality demonstrations selling CDs for a dollar "for the cause." While their music appears to condemn aspects of capitalism, like the police, their "cause" is counter-revolutionary, ultra-nationalist politics. In the name of hatred of the bosses' state (we're for that), they're primarily working for the bosses by dividing the working class (not surprisingly, they are now being promoted by the local media to a wider audience).

There are undoubtedly working-class rap groups advancing more pro-working class, anti-racist politics who could be won to our ideas. We should review them in CHALLENGE and develop relationships with some of them. We should create communist culture, build a base in cultural groups around our ideas. The ruling class may control culture now, but we communists want to take advantage of their internal contradictions to expose them and eventually destroy them and their sick culture once and for all.

Rap is influential among the Party's base. Let's continue this debate! Articles on culture will get more youth reading, selling and writing for the paper, and better understanding the bosses' lies. READ, SELL, AND WRITE!

Author of literacy series

Big (Oil) Fish Eat Small Ones

Oil companies proved once again that the role of politicians is to serve and obey the rules of bosses' profits. Last month El Salvador's legislative assembly passed a law regulating the huge profits made by Texaco, Esso and Shell here. This was supported by legislators from both ARENA, the right-wing party in power and by the opposition FLMN (the former guerrilla group turned electoral party). These politicians claimed they were doing this to "help the people." In reality they were answering the cries of some local bosses being hurt by the huge cost of oil.

Well, under capitalism the big fish always eat the small ones. Big Oil pressured the U.S. Embassy, which warned the local politicians that interfering with the "free market" would risk getting El Salvador kicked out of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (which lower tariffs for local exports to the U.S.). The three oil companies threatened to move their operations out of the country.

President Francisco Flores did his job and overturned the legislature's decree. He produced a "consensus" allowing the oil companies to self-regulate their profits for two years. That's like letting the wolf guard the sheep.

So while some local bosses might suffer from increased energy prices, workers will wind up paying with higher prices and wage cuts in this bosses' dogfight. What other choice do workers have but to fight to destroy all the bosses, for a society where workers rule: communism?

PLP comrade, El Salvador

`Greens' Like Red Views

Two weeks ago, we decided to attend a Green party meeting to raise issues about prison labor and a local fascist campaign against black youth and workers. Without hesitation, we identified ourselves as PLP members. During the meeting we were able to show how the U.S. bosses use sweatshop labor and prison labor here, not just in China. By raising the true nature of capitalist exploitation, we were able to counter their nationalistic views. This was accepted with great enthusiasm and objective questions.

We also distributed flyers concerning our local campaign against prison labor, PL pamphlets about prison labor and several CHALLENGES. The local Green Party agreed to provide assistance as well as attend a forum concerning prison labor in the future. Although time will tell whether our revolutionary ideas made an impact, it was still a great opportunity to try to show honest local people how capitalism works to exploit all of us.

Your brothers and sisters in Texas

`White Skin Privilege': A Liberal Myth

This past summer some of us in the LA area have had to deal with the current view of racism pushed by the ruling class. The theory of "white skin privilege"--the main liberal explanation of racism's role in today's society--states that white workers benefit from racism through gaining "privileges" or "wages" from their "white skin." This directly contradicts the communist class analysis of racism: it hurts the ENTIRE working class. No worker benefits from racism. Because all workers have surplus value stolen from them--the amount of value workers produce but is kept by the bosses--it seems ludicrous to say that some group is privileged for having less stolen from them. It is no privilege to be forced to work in a factory with layoffs always possible.

Advocates of the "white skin privilege" theory very mechanically pick and choose the "benefits." Yes, white workers do, on average, earn more money, live in better neighborhoods and are more likely to go to college than minority workers. But this alone is not enough to actually determine a benefit from racism. To actually substantiate a real benefit from racism one must compare the position of white and non-white workers when they experience different levels of racism. Compare wage differences between white and minority workers in different areas of the country, a study PLP has made. If "white skin privilege" was correct, then the wages of white workers would be highest where the wage differentials were highest. But the exact opposite is true. In the south of the U.S., wage differentials were the highest, but BOTH WHITE AND MINORITY WAGES WERE THE LOWEST.

Places with the highest degrees of racism are among the poorest in the world. The liberals' answer is that poor people are just racists because they are poor--another lie. Historically the ruling class--the wealthiest--has been the most racist group. They created racism to justify slavery and super-exploitation and the Ku Klux Klan and their ilk to spread racist ideology. The rich paid for eugenicists to "scientifically" justify their racist actions and funded the rise of Nazism.

But, quite the opposite, the working class has made the most strides against racism. From the multi-racial communal working class ghettoes of Seattle during the great depression to the mass actions of the working class today in protests against the Klan in New York or fascists in New Jersey or California, the working class has shown itself to be the most active fighters against racism.

It is incorrect, though, to ignore racism and treat all workers exactly the same. The most important lesson to be learned from all this is that because minorities are by and large super-exploited, they are more aware of capitalism's horrors. Such workers often become the most militant fighters in class struggles. This again shows how racism hurts white workers: racism separates white workers from the proletariat's most militant fighters.

Racism divides the working class into small powerless groups, creating incredible exploitation and oppression. The fundamental aspect of capitalist society is the exploitation of the WHOLE working class. Thus, racism's separatism hinders the working class's fight for its own societal need, communism. Saying that some workers benefit from racism is saying that continual exploitation is a benefit.

We must fight "white skin privilege" and show that racism hurts all workers in order to work towards a revolution and an end to racism and exploitation. If masses of workers are won to believing they benefit from racism, they will then see anti-racism as only a moral issue. Worse, they will be won to fighting wars to "help" the oppressed for "humanitarian" reasons. The ruling class could then easily win workers to fight a war to "help" the Iraqis, Colombians, etc. and thereby rid themselves of their "white skin privilege." Our future depends upon working as a class against racism, both in the U.S. and with our brothers and sisters around the world.

LA comrade

Health Care Needs Red Transfusion

I'm a nurse working at a Philadelphia hospital. Recently I experienced the extent medical fascism has grown in the capitalist health care system. A patient in the intensive care unit (ICU) where I work was being kept alive by heroic measures. He was attached to several machines which were circulating his blood, oxygenating his lungs and dialyzing his kidneys. Two ICU nurses and a team of perfusionists (managing cardio-pulmonary by-pass) were assigned to his care around the clock. This man was hovering on the edge of death every minute. We were pouring blood products into him and he was bleeding them all back out. He was receiving numerous intravenous medications in an attempt to maintain his very unstable blood pressure. I am new to ICU and had never seen such an extensive effort made to keep anyone alive. I was excited and proud to be a part of this heroic effort.

Unfortunately, some of the nurses on our unit resented these measures-we were "wasting limited resources" on a patient who was going to die anyway. One nurse said that if she had a car accident and there was no blood left for her she would have a fit. I have known this young black woman for some years. She is a militant anti-racist and a devoted caregiver. How could such a fascist idea have corrupted her thinking?

Discussion of this incident made me realize that many medical professionals believe "wasting" limited resources on "futile" care drains these resources from other areas of need. This attitude is in sharp contrast to the philosophy described in a book called "Away With All Pests." It describes a number of cases in which heroic measures were taken to save the lives of individual workers in Socialist China. This dedicated care of individual workers took place at the same time that vast social efforts were made to eradicate disease. All of this was possible because medical resources were not limited by capitalist profiteering.

In Philadelphia there is a PLP collective working in an organization fighting for universal health care. Our collective used this example to promote the struggle against medical fascism by this group. We received a sympathetic response from these doctors, nurses and community activists. We're presently discussing how to best lead this group in class struggle against medical fascism. We're carefully considering a campaign against hospital understaffing, an issue that could unite non-professional workers fighting for jobs with professional workers fighting for better patient care. Any ideas how we can best build the Party in the midst of this struggle?

Red Nurse

Is the New Ruling Party of Mexico Nationalist?

To say that president-elect Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN) is nationalist shocks many here in Mexico. After all, PAN is considered by many in the left and liberal circles (like the PRD, the Party of Democratic Revolution) as an agent of U.S. imperialism. Fox himself used to head Coca Cola in Mexico.

PAN's Principles say it strives for the "unity [of the nation] above all forms of divisions like classes..." Therefore, PAN is for all-class unity of workers and bosses, of "all Mexicans." This myth of a society where nobody exploits anyone else, where we are all "one happy family," means that in case class struggle threatens to break up this "happy family," nationalism will slam those who do the threatening.

PAN will continue to do what the PRI (Revolutionary Institutional Party) has done for the last 60 years ruling Mexico, use the educational system (private and public) to push the nationalist myth that "All Mexicans are brothers and sisters." They bow to the Mexican flag and sing the national anthem in the schools. The teachers (both from the national teachers' union--SNTE--and the dissident CNTE union) are the human tools imposing this.

When a ruling group seest its primary interests best served by maintaining class peace, it will fight like hell to make all of us believe that the "national interest" benefits all.

What can we do? Fight against what PAN and all the bourgeois parties push, and show that the class interests of mental and manual workers are opposed to nationalism. The only valid nationalism occurs after an effective social change in society. And then it will be used very briefly.

That's the only reason Fox's PAN could be considered more dangerous to workers than the PRI, since at least in principle PRI doesn't say to use all means at it's disposals to fight against those who would break the "national unity" of Mexico. But PRI has its own way of pushing this nationalism, combining it with "internationalism." It says Mexico must have its own particular "national personality" to efficiently function internationally. That's because PRI repreents Mexican companies like Telmex, Vitro, Femsa, Imsa and many others which export overseas.

So, just as former PRI president Zedillo advanced the cry of "independence" on September 16, Fox will do it his way, telling us to bow to the Mexican flag and the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the "founding fathers."

A new reader in Mexico

CHALLENGE RESPONDS: Thanks for your letter. Nationalism is indeed a weapon used by all bosses in one or way or another to exploit workers. Nationalism was born with capitalism, particularly aftter the French Revolution of 1789. We don't believe workers' revolution will have any use for any forms of nationalism, not even for a brief moment. Internationalism today and tomorrow is the order of the day.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE Sept. 20, 2000

Information: 20 September 2000 175 hits

Anti-Racist Fight for Their Students:
`OUR STUDENTS DESERVE BETTER!'
Fascism Rears Its Ugly Head from Morristown, NJ, to Philadelphia
Clinton's Liberal Road towards Nazi-Like Laws
Support Anti-Racists Arrested for Fighting Neo-Nazis
"GOOD COP/BAD COP": WAGE PROGRESSION MUST STOP!
1. `DEMOCRACY' OR WORKERS' POWER?
Bosses' Dogfight Over How to Best Exploit LA Transit Workers
Gasoline Price Hike Leads to Blockade of Europe Roads
Colombia: Workers Sacrificed for Oil/Cocaine Profits
Preparing for Desert Storm 2
1. Bosses Pushes Bush and Cheney to Break with Bodybag/Vietnam Syndrome
Smash Racist Police Brutality--Justice for Prince C. Jones
Nader Steers Protestors Towards Bosses' Electoral Trap
1. Quote of the Week
Unity Was Best Medicine for Hospital Strikers
Imperialism Program for Africa: Billions in Profits, Pennies for AIDS
There Won't Be Any Real Justice for Victims of Fascism Under Capitalism
Dollarization of Ecuador Won't Change Misery of Workers

Anti-Racist Fight for Their Students:
`OUR STUDENTS DESERVE BETTER!'

BROOKLYN, NY, September 12 -- "Same Enemy, Same Fight; Teachers and Students Must Unite!" "Our Students Deserve Better!" "Put Students First!" These were the slogans as 80 rank-and-file teachers, members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and many students picketed Wingate High School here. They were responding to teacher transfers to other schools and the cutting of many of our programs.

The administration said funding for many important programs was "gone," and that the principal was "doing everything that could be done." But after our picket line on the first day of school, some money was miraculously "found."

PLP has been organizing at Wingate for many years. We distribute 100-150 CHALLENGES every week. We have organized walkouts against racist police terror and brought busloads of students to May Day marches. Students have joined PLP and we have run on a teachers' slate with activists for union office. All this and more has enabled us to challenge the traditional trade union outlook of our UFT local.

As contract negotiations approach we have won a small but meaningful victory in demanding that the UFT address the issue of education for our students and not just raises for teachers. We are demanding that the UFT organize parents and students to fight the conditions that make it impossible for students to learn the necessary skills to graduate.

While Philadelphia teachers are taking a strike vote and the Los Angeles teachers' union is negotiating its contract, mobilizing our UFT local to fight for the interests of the students sets an important precedent.

It has also become clear that rank-and-file teachers can be won to stand up for their students. This is the direct opposite of the UFT-Weingarten leadership's position, which negotiates for pay raises and racist anti-student demands like more "security" in the schools. Last year the UFT fought for and won a law that makes any assault on a teacher a felony.

In the past week, most Wingate H.S. teachers have participated in the struggle by attending chapter meetings, speaking up at faculty meetings, walking the picket lines or joining one of the organizing committees.

We are spreading the struggle to workers in the neighborhood, continuing demonstrations in front of the school and reaching out to other union chapters where many of the same racist conditions exist. We will fight for students and parents to unite with teachers and become the leadership in opposing the racist Board of Education. We will continue to point out how the capitalism destroys education for our children and only prepares them to be wage slaves or or to return home in bodybags from another imperialist war. We will invite students, parents and teachers to join PLP.

Editorial

Fascism Rears Its Ugly Head from Morristown, NJ, to Philadelphia

For many years PLP has been warning about the growth of fascism in the U.S. and around the world. Recent events, including the criminal cases brought by Morris County, N.J. cops and prosecutors against PLP members and others who drowned out the July 4th Nazi/Nationalist rally in Morristown are additional proof of our analysis.

On July 3, a NJ network news program reported that police had been preparing for the demonstration for two months. It said the cops had been investigating several groups aiming to oppose the Nazis (obviously including PLP) to discover their plans. Morris County authorities mobilized cops from towns all over the county, along with State Police. It's a good bet there were federal agents involved on the cops' planning team.

They videotaped the anti-Nazi demonstrators, took hundreds of still photos and used industrial-strength pepper spray developed for crowd control to supress and keep communists and other militant anti-racists far away from the Nazis.

Morristown is just one example of this trend. The Philadelphia and Los Angeles police forces made similar preparations on a broader scale to keep liberal and fake leftist-led forces within bounds. In Philly, prosecutors and cops brought "conspiracy" charges against some liberal leaders who did merely planned pacifist actions against the Republican Convention. Several were jailed, with bail up to one million dollars. The Philly prosecutor refused to answer questions about reduction of charges, telling the demonstrators to "get a life."

LA cops underwent months of training in crowd control techniques. They viciously attacked an anti-police brutality demonstration and invaded the headquarters being used for actions against the Democratic Convention. There probably would have been more significant

attacks had the D2K leadership not included so many forces loyal to the liberal section of the ruling class.

Even before the anti-World Trade Organizations demonstrations in Seattle, the rulers were increasingly using the cops and courts to enforce legal forms of fascism:

An increasing centralization of state and local police forces with the federal government directly funding "community policing" schemes;

More collaboration of local cops with federal agencies, including the FBI, U.S. Army and others in devising tactics to respond to mass demonstrations or "civil emergencies";

Government use of anti-terrorism laws, secret evidence and other new provisions in criminal, immigration and welfare laws (see box);

Raiding planning meetings BEFORE demonstrations and jailing demonstration leaders for "conspiring" to disrupt meetings important to the capitalists (as happened in anti-International Monetary Fund actions in Washington, D.C.).

In the Morristown case, the prosecutor's office is now trying to get the defense attorney representing PLP members kicked off the case before a grand jury has even indicted anyone. The Assistant Prosecutor told the attorney he has a picture of her at the July 4th demonstration, and therefore she is a "potential witness" and cannot represent anybody. They are also refusing to hand over copies of pictures and videotapes taken by the cops. It's clear the Prosecutor's office is going all out to get felony convictions, particularly of PLP members.

PLP members, friends and supporters must take very seriously this latest attack by the ruling class on our Party. In the context of growing legal fascism, communists are among the main targets of the capitalist police state.

The bosses' plans for oil and other wars to secure their continuing control of the world require a "big stick" for control at home as well as abroad. The "Vietnam syndrome" and the specter of mass anti-war resistance continue to haunt the rulers. Communists winning millions of workers, students and soldiers to smash war and fascism with revolution will make their worst dreams a reality.

Clinton's Liberal Road towards Nazi-Like Laws

In 1996, Clinton signed the "Omnibus Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" (OATEDP), as well as the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" (PRWORA).

OATEDP set up special deportation courts which can accept secret evidence presented by the government. The evidence does not have to be disclosed to immigrants (or their attorneys) who are supposedly connected to political groups classified as "foreign terrorists" by the U.S. State Department. Any U.S. citizen who financially or otherwise supports a group on this list can be jailed for 10 years. The PRWORA legalizes slave labor Workfare, penalizes state governments that don't force enough people into "work activities," and uses the FBI to compile lists of people ineligible for food stamps and welfare because of outstanding state and federal arrest warrants.

Support Anti-Racists Arrested for Fighting Neo-Nazis

Come to Morris County Courthouse, Morristown, NJ, Sept. 19, 9 AM

Send Donations to Cover Legal Costs to CHALLENGE, 150 W. 28th Street room 301, New York , NY 10001

"GOOD COP/BAD COP": WAGE PROGRESSION MUST STOP!

SAN FANCISCO, CA, September 12 -- Mayor Willie Brown (the good cop), is trying to nudge MUNI management (the bad cop), into a new round of negotiations to get bus drivers to swallow a 4-year contract. MUNI bosses are insisting that the rejected contract be accepted. Brown might be a "friend of labor" leaders, but certainly not of the rank-and-file drivers who operate the transit system.
Bosses at MUNI, AC Transit in the East Bay and RTD transit in LA are demanding "flexibility." This is the code word for the other "F" word--fascism. Fascism in the workplace means workers' lives become the complete property of the bosses, on and off the job. Union leaders have been going along with this moneymaker for years. Two-tier wage progression, grievance "reform," destroying work rules, worker accountability--they're are all part of this "flexibility-fascism" drive.
Low-cost, more "flexible" workers, particularly minority workers, are the backbone of the downtown corporations' drive for profits and market share. For example, AC Transit is hiring Workfare clients into union jobs with a 48-month wage progression, up from 30 months under the current contract. AC's new wage progression proposal includes reducing starting pay to 65% of regular pay, with only 5% wage steps in the next two years. At $13.04-an-hour, even overtime pay will be less than the regular, straight-time top wage.
The struggle against the bosses must be expanded. Voting down the rotten contracts was a big step. Demanding an end to wage progression at AC and MUNI is another positive move. But negotiations and contract votes alone produce little results.

Drivers are thinking about how to reach out to workers who ride our busses. More are becoming active in TWU and ATU union caucuses. Direct job actions, like slow downs, OT refusal and sick-outs are on the agenda. Workers are discussing the possibility of full-blown strikes and joint actions between AC and MUNI workers. Many are debating what it would mean to take action the bosses have declared "illegal."
Drivers' anger and a growing understanding that the profit system is destroying people all over the world have brought us to the present situation. CHALLENGE expands our vision of what this battle is all about. Capitalism won't let up, no matter what contract is passed. It is a mass base for communist ideas that creates a wild card the bosses cannot control. All this will build a network of activists from which new leaders will emerge to knock the bosses on their ass.

`DEMOCRACY' OR WORKERS' POWER?

Class struggle is the best weapon we have to expose the trickery and lies of electoral politics. From now until November there will be no escaping the intense publicity in TV ads and newspaper articles about the elections. This barrage will tout capitalist "democracy" as the best political system ever devised. We must be careful not to underestimate the power of the media.

It is fair to say, for example, that George Bush Sr.'s racist Willie Horton ads (which claimed the Democrats released a prisoner who then allegedly committed another crime) did not just contribute to his election, but helped justify the vicious racist increase in jailing black and Latin workers carried on by both Republican and Democratic Presidents since then.

Class struggle is the antidote. The contract battles at MUNI and AC Transit in the San Francisco Bay Area are demonsrating some important lessons. We see the "free press," the "will of the people" and the "vote"--all the cherished phrases of capitalist democracy--are so much garbage the moment workers threaten to strike!

MUNI workers rejected the contract 4 to 1 by secret ballot. So the free press immediately warned workers striking was illegal! Lesson 1: The capitalist press may be free, but workers aren't! When the workers rejected what the bosses wanted, they had to vote again. Lesson 2: The will of the people really means you will vote the way the bosses want you to!

At AC the danger of striking was immediate and so the union called a strike authorization vote rather than a strike vote. Lesson 3: Those who control the political machinery control the meaning of the vote!

Every time workers organize, we see that capitalist democracy is in fact a dictatorship of the bosses. Far from being the best system for the working class, it is the worst! The ballot box can never liberate us. For that we need to organize a revolution led by the working class and its communist party, the PLP.

Bosses' Dogfight Over How to Best Exploit LA Transit Workers

LOS ANGELES, CA., September 12--Once again the leaders of the bus drivers' United Transportation Union (UTU) have announced a strike against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), this time for September 15. They have done absolutely nothing to prepare for a strike nor to win the riding public to the workers' side. Drivers are angry over MTA demands for 12-13-hour split shifts, four days a week to cut overtime costs for the next ten years.

Meanwhile, local LA bosses are fighting for a piece of MTA's $2.5 billion annual budget. Construction interests created MTA's ambitious building programs to feast on. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich wants his pals to profit from manufacturing small bus components with minimum wage immigrant labor. Bosses who want to secede from the city of LA want a Transit Zone as their first prize in the Valley.

In this den of thieves, Governor Davis is trying to force some order. Davis is aware that the U.S. government is active in Los Angeles, representing the biggest Eastern capitalists. They are busy taking over the LAPD, with their eye on the LA schools and with three on-going federal investigations into MTA corruption itself. They will no longer permit Mayor Riordan, police chief Bernard Parks and friends run LA any more.

When the head of LA County Federation of Labor, Miguel Contreras, calls for all unions to support striking MTA workers' opposition to Transit Zones (and a low-paid, non-union work-force), these junior partners of the big bosses are delivering their bosses' message and coming on tough. Transit Zones are not to be. The Rockefeller-dominated Eastern Establishment knows it must have public schools that teach workers' kids basic skills, public hospitals to keep workers minimally healthy and a public transit system workers can rely on.

The big bosses need a working class loyal to them and their oil war plans in the Middle East. A fragmented transit system in LA would fatten local zone bosses but would leave workers and their families less willing to defend the American Dream at $8.50 an hour.

Gasoline Price Hike Leads to Blockade of Europe Roads

In London, England, it cost Mark Osten $83 to fill up his Ford Escort gas tank. Of that amount about $63 goes to the British Government in taxes. "It's a wonder anyone can afford to drive in this country ," he told the NEW YORK TIMES (9/12).

Gasoline prices in Britain are the highest in Europe. No wonder truckers, taxi-drivers and farmers there are following protests begun in France--and now spreading to Spain, Ireland, Germany, Italy and Belgium--against the sky-high prices. The protests blockade main roads and freeways or oil terminals and refineries, preventing gasoline distribution.

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin caved in. After granting a break to fishermen, he followed suit with a $45 million tax break to farmers and subsidies to truckers. Jospin had considered using the Army against the protesters but, realizing the support they had, backed off. "One knows how that kind of thing begins," he said, "One does not know how it ends."

However, granting concessions doesn't necessarily mean the end of protests. European governments have raised fuel taxes as part of a broader shift away from taxation on income and wealth and toward indirect taxation on the sale of goods and services. This policy, which moves the tax burden onto the backs of the working class, has been approved by industrialists in general. However, in the case of fuel it attacks business too, since it threatens to bankrupt the trucking industry.

All this leaves European governments on the horns of a dilemma. Concede to direct action on the part of small businesses--like truckers, taxis and farmers--and the working class will expect similar concessions around protests over the hardships they face. Jospin is right; "one never knows where it will end!"

But the protests highlight another dilemma. Control of raw materials like oil--especially the cheapest and highest quality Mid-East oil--is as vital to European imperialists as it is to their U.S. competitors. These domestic protest movements will, in the end, heighten the competition between the U.S. and European imperialists over the control of the world's oil, particularly in the Mid-East.

Eventually, in this dog-eat-dog capitalist world, control of a barrel of oil comes out of the barrel of a gun. As this crisis matures PLP intends to make the choice even clearer. Either we follow "our" capitalists down a road of increasing poverty and war or we seize the gun and blaze a new trail for workers' power and communist revolution.

Colombia: Workers Sacrificed for Oil/Cocaine Profits

Clinton's recent visit to Colombia was incredible, even for a country torn by civil war. On top of the Secret Service, CIA and FBI, 10,000 Colombian soldiers and cops protected Clinton. The 2,000 homeless children of Cartagena were kept hidden like rats from the TV cameras, by the same army and police that usually kills them.

Clinton came to hand-deliver the $1.7 billion in military aid to President Pastrana as part of the so-called "Plan Colombia." U.S. rulers consider Colombia a "national priority."

Under "the war on drugs," Plan Colombia will bring more death and misery to workers and peasants here. This includes the use of deadly chemicals to "kill coca plantations." The deadly fungus, already being used on coca plants in areas controlled by anti-government guerrilla forces, will also affect all other crops.

Less than 0.5% of the population is involved in the coca trade. Even right-wing U.S. journalist George Will admits, "The coca plantations and labs...will just move their operations further into the jungle." (NY POST, (9/10)

Behind Plan Colombia are the needs of some U.S. oil corporations to defend their interests. On Feb. 15, Lawrence P. Meriage, a senior executive of Occidental Oil and Gas Corp. (Oxy), testified before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, on the strategic importance of Colombia. He made the case for more military muscle to fight anti-government guerrillas that hinder Oxy's Colombia operations.

But his testimony revealed the contradictions among certain sections of the U.S. ruling class. He said, "Colombia's oil is of a vital strategic importance to the U.S. because it reduces our dependence on oil imports from the volatile Middle East."

Middle East oil, particularly from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, is the cheapest and most abundant in the world. Colombia produces only 820,000 barrels a day. Most of its oil is unexplored. Increasing oil production will be extremely difficult and expensive. What's more, Rockefeller and Exxon-Mobil competitors--Oxy, BP Amoco and even France's Elf Aquitaine--will control it.

That is the contradiction faced by U.S. imperialism. While the ruling class supports Plan Colombia, the NY TIMES, mouthpiece for the Rockefeller wing of U.S. rulers, cautions Clinton not to overextend military resources in Colombia. They want to "outsource" the war in Colombia, using U.S. mercenaries as advisors and trainers of the special Colombian army units and death squads.

PLP participated in one of the many protests in Colombia against Clinton's visit. We gave out 3,000 leaflets putting forward that the only solution to imperialist war is to build a mass communist movement to smash all the bosses.

Preparing for Desert Storm 2

Bosses Pushes Bush and Cheney to Break with Bodybag/Vietnam Syndrome

U.S. imperialism's main concern is the Middle East. The rising price of gasoline and heating oil could be used as an excuse to start Oil War 2 against Iraq. But they face two big hurdles on their way to war.

One is the need to win mass support. A call to stop gasoline and heating oil price hikes could win some initial backing.

The other, and most important, is for the politicians and military to overcome the "Vietnam Syndrome." In a WALL STREET JOURNAL article (9/11) entitled, "Will Bush Bury the `Body Bag Syndrome?'" editor Max Boot writes, "Why don't Messrs. Bush and Cheney [criticize this syndrome]? Perhaps because this attitude isn't confined to the Clinton administration. Bodybag syndrome has taken root in the Pentagon, run by generals and admirals traumatized by their baptism of fire in Vietnam. One of the foremost proponents of the no-casualties mantra is Colin Powell, seen campaigning at Mr. Bush's side last week. Gen. Powell was even reluctant to launch Desert Storm. Before risking his men's lives, he wanted to wait for sanctions to take effect . . . and then wait some more.

"Messrs. Bush and Cheney are campaigning on a Powellesque platform: We want to increase funding for the armed forces, they proclaim, but not put its personnel in harm's way. This suggests that a Bush administration would be unlikely to bury the bodybag syndrome. For those interested in utilizing U.S. military might to police the Pax Americana, this ought to be disquieting news."

It is quite disquieting, particularly for workers and soldiers who will die on the altar of Exxon-Mobil profits. It doesn't have to be this way. Let the bosses start their wars. Workers and soldiers from Baghdad to Chicago will unite and smash all the war makers with communist revolution!

Smash Racist Police Brutality--Justice for Prince C. Jones

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 8 -- Three thousand Howard University students rallied today to protest the racist murder of their fellow student, Prince Jones, by the Prince George's County police. The call for justice was strong, the anger intense.

The apparent story is this: two plainclothes Prince George's County detectives tailed Jones in an unmarked vehicle from Prince George's County, Maryland, through the District of Columbia, all the way to Fairfax County, VA,. The cops got separated. One of them blocked Prince after he had pulled into a driveway, probably fearful of being followed by a stranger at 3 A.M. Prince backed into the unmarked car, and the cop fired nine shots, five striking the victim in the back, according to autopsy results. This murder was so flagrant that the WASHINGTON POST published an editorial about the case with the title, "This Police Shooting Reeks!"

Jones had no police record. He was described as a hard-working, wonderful

person by all who knew him, the father of a year-old son and engaged to be

married. He needed only a few credits to graduate, and had participated extensively in work as an intern at the H Street Community Development Corporation in Northeast Washington.

Prince George's County police have shot 12 people during the past 13 months, five of them fatally. There has been a long history of similar brutal murders in this county.

The increasing racist police brutality here and throughout the country is not a matter of "rogue cops." It is systemic. The police defend private property and the system of capitalism. That's their job, black or white (here the cop was black). Racist, anti-working class terrorism by the state apparatus has always been a critical feature of capitalism. It attacks and intimidates the most oppressed section of the working class, to keep that population under control.

Why is it that the hundreds of efforts to reverse police brutality--including ostensible efforts by federal and local governments--have systematically failed? Because police brutality helps capitalism work better for the capitalists! If it hurt their profit-making, it would end!

As we continue the fight for justice in this case, we must "connect the dots" between all the police brutality cases; then the idea that revolution against capitalism is the only way to stop police brutality becomes understandable and necessary.

Faculty and students at Howard are circulating the following petition, and encourage readers to sign it, circulate it, and fax it to (301) 864-5772:

****************************

PETITION TO THE GOVERNING BODIES HAVING JURISDICTION

OVER THE CASE OF MR. PRINCE C. JONES

We, the undersigned, demand:

1. That police officer Carlton B. Jones be indicted for first degree murder

in the killing of Mr. Prince C. Jones;

2. That police officer Carlton B. Jones be fired from the Prince George's

County Police Department;

3. That Prince George's County Chief of Police John S. Farrell be fired

immediately from his position as chief for suggesting that Officer Carlton

B. Jones might have been justified in slaying Mr. Prince C. Jones; and,

4. That the family of Mr. Prince C. Jones be provided with substantial

financial compensation for the loss of their family member (recognizing

that no financial compensation can ever make up for the loss of Mr. Prince

C. Jones).

Nader Steers Protestors Towards Bosses' Electoral Trap

Ralph Nader isn't trying to steal votes from Al Gore. Nader is doing what he has done for nearly four decades: trick people who are disgusted with aspects of capitalism into supporting the system. Nader's job is to lure environmentalists, anti-globalists and consumer activists to the polls in November. Many of these people might not vote otherwise. That only half of those eligible actually vote in the U.S. exposes a big weakness in the rulers' power structure. If Nader can bring out another five percent, he will have served well the capitalists he pretends to hate. The bosses, especially the more powerful Rockefeller bloc, need greater loyalty to "American Democracy" as they prepare for their next Mideast oil war.

Nader has always served the dominant wing of the ruling class. The groups he has founded, like Public Citizen, Public Interest Research Group and Global Trade Watch, receive major donations and direction from the Ford Foundation and various Rockefeller philanthropies. The Ford Foundation functions as an affiliate of Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank. The foundation's chairman and president both sit on Chase's board. One Nadir creation, the Consumer Project on Technology (CPT), names the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Rockefeller Foundation as its sole institutional funders. Nader's CPT organizes consumer opposition to Microsoft (an anti-Rockefeller outfit) and lobbied hard for its break-up. Accepting donations from openly fascistic protectionists like Roger Milliken only proves Nader's opportunism. It doesn't change his fundamental allegiance.

The Rockefeller main wing of the ruling class has run third party presidential candidates in the past to unseat bungling incumbents. Rockefeller protege John Anderson undercut and helped oust Jimmy Carter in 1980 during the Iran hostage fiasco. Ross Perot did the same to George Bush in 1992, after Bush had let Iraq seize Kuwait's oilfields. But that's not what we have here with Nader. In fact, Nader, knowing he won't win, openly says he can help Gore's cause by moving him to the "left" and sucking in more voters thereby.

Writing in the BOSTON GLOBE (7/30), Robert Kuttner of the liberal Economic Policy Institute assured readers that Nader intends to "energize" Gore, not torpedo him: "Nader recently observed that in the famous `Give 'em Hell' campaign of 1948, Truman, a centrist, turned populist only after former Vice-President Henry Wallace ran as a third-party progressive to Truman's left. Wallace was polling as high as 12%, Nader told me. In the end, by running as a progressive, Truman mobilized Democratic voters and held Wallace to just 1.3%." Through this analogy, Nader says he wants to build a base and hand it to Gore on a silver platter.

One of Nader's phony tactics is the "class action" lawsuit, in which victims of outrages like Firestone's exploding tires, or their heirs, get pennies for their troubles. As Bush and Gore (with the help of Nader's nationalism) drive towards war, it's time for true class action of our own, building the Progressive Labor Party.

Quote of the Week

David Rockefeller

The Vote That Really Counts

Every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter has been a member of Rockefeller's Tri-Lateral Commission. "Neither Gore nor George W. Bush are members yet , , , so wags have joked that it is unclear who will be the next president." (NY POST, 9/10)

PLP has a better idea, instead of wasting your time voting, organize to fight for workers' power!

Unity Was Best Medicine for Hospital Strikers

GARY, IN -- After the Methodist Hospitals strike in Gary and Merriville, Indiana, ended six weeks ago, a group of comrades and friends, strikers and supporters, gathered to talk about the lessons learned.
They all felt they won a better contract because of the strike, but that the best time to strike would have been three years ago, when they accepted a third tier to the wage system and an extremely small wage increase. However, everyone wasn't convinced at that time. They comprised half of a very small amalgamated union (District 1199) of 1,200 members. This past year they merged with Chicago-based SEIU Local 73, with 25,000 members. The Methodist workers felt more confident being in a bigger union, and management's offer left them no choice. Over 80% of the 650 Methodist workers voted to strike.
One Local 73 member from Cook County Hospital said she and others were initially shocked because in her eleven years in the Local she had not known it to go on strike. But this time the vote to strike was so overwhelming, the members forced a walkout.

Methodist workers and some union staffers worked very hard, but the union was unprepared. Local 73 had no strike fund, and no intention of mobilizing its 25,000 members to support the strike. On the contrary, their role is to keep things under control, not to challenge the basic inequalities of the profit system. They hid behind the bosses laws ánd its threat of fines.

Once management made a slightly better offer, there was heavy pressure on the negotiating team to accept. We struggled with the choice of accepting the offer and returning to work together, or holding out for more and risking people breaking the strike and returning to work.

The union called a Sunday night meeting. Only after workers arrived were we told we would be voting on the offer. The union showed distrust of the workers by counting on the small turnout to vote to return to work. The result was 180 YES, 104 NO.

The union initially said they would fine people between $500and $1,000 if they crossed the picket line. After the strike was over, we discovered that those who crossed only had to pay $100.
On the negative side, we were too peaceful. This kept us from stopping deliveries and scabs. We should have organized more violent resistance to scabs. Why hadn't we? Firstly, the union leadership was against it. More militant leadership would have had to come from rank-and-file leaders. Secondly, some weren't sure what and when to do something. Others feared it would break the strikers' unity. All this points out the need for organized groups of communist-led workers who are not bound by the bosses' laws restricting workers, and who have their eye on the bigger picture.

On the positive side, workers felt pride in standing up to management and winning a better contract. We became closer and developed more confidence in each other. We will need this as we continue to fight. Also, there was a lot of community support. As economically devastated as this area is, the scabs mostly came from Illinois and Mississippi.

We all grew from this experience. We led some workers to support the strike and a few strikers who knew us introduced us to others. When Party members first came to the picket line to sell CHALLENGE, union organizers told workers to stay away from us and not give us their correct phone numbers. They had only limited success because, (1) we are active in the union; (2) many workers are not afraid; and (3) we have long-term ties to a spouse of one of the strikers.

Having a mass personal/political base on the job and in the union is crucial. Overall, we have met some new friends who are interested in learning more about the Party.
Chicago comrades and friends

Imperialism Program for Africa: Billions in Profits, Pennies for AIDS

PART II (Conclusion. In our last issue the source of AIDS was traced to the holocaust-like poverty heaped on Africans through colonialism, forced labor and slavery, creating starvation conditions which impelled these super-oppressed people to kill apes for food, apes which--it later turned out--carried the AIDS virus.)

Starting in the 1960's, African societies changed from colonialism to rule by indigenous nationalist or fascist rulers allied with imperialism. For example, the Belgian Congo became Zaire. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the CIA. They installed Mobuto, a worthy successor to King Leopold in greed and bloodthirstiness. South Africa and Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) remained under fascist apartheid throughout this period. Armies of male migrant workers left the countryside for the newly-crowded cities, while their wives remained behind in remote rural areas. Prostitution became a major growth industry, some European companies even setting up whorehouses near their factories for their workers. A seemingly endless series of nationalist and inter-imperialist wars sent millions of soldiers and refugees all over central Africa.

Enslaved by the global market economy, conditions created by colonialism continued and worsened in "post-colonial" African societies. HIV spread like wildfire through populations ravaged by poverty, war, famine and disease. HIV spread to Europe and the U.S., and then to Haiti and Thailand, primarily through sex tourism, often child prostitution. Prostitution and dirty needles spread it to Latin America, India and Eastern Europe, centers of new epidemics. The IMF's (International Monetary Fund) stranglehold on poor countries caused massive unemployment, promoted prostitution, imposed cutbacks in health care and education and made life-saving drugs unaffordable.

Sexism kills, just as surely as--and combined with--racism. In Africa, traditional oppression of women has meshed with new, profit-driven forms of oppression. In southern Africa, married women often don't dare ask their husbands to wear condoms, and are pressured by relatives to stay unprotected for maximum fertility. Husbands are expected to have many sex partners while their wives are expected to be monogamous.

Some day the HIV pandemic will be known as one of imperialism's worst crimes. Rulers in both Africa and the U.S. claim that the situation is hopeless, and that millions are doomed. Yet the money it would take to provide effective prevention and therapy now ($100 billion yearly) is only a small fraction of what imperialists spent on wars against Iraq and Vietnam. It is an even smaller fraction of the profits they've made from African rubber, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and slave labor. In a few countries (like Uganda and Thailand) even simple prevention campaigns have had a big impact. So building a larger movement now, that refuses to accept rules protecting the bosses' profits, can save many more lives. Mass production and distribution of pirated anti-AIDS drugs, in collaboration with medical workers in Africa, can prevent transmission and provide treatment for millions.

A larger movement must also lead a sharp and prolonged struggle against sexism in order to transform relationships between men, women and children, ending prostitution and sex slavery. It must fight to end the super-exploitation of migrant labor. These goals can only be achieved through the revolutionary destruction of capitalism. The experience of once socialist China in eradicating prostitution, syphilis and drug addiction (which have all returned in now capitalist China) shows that revolutionary communism can, even in poor societies, solve massive public health problems.

Sources: Hahn, B.H. et al. (2000); Korber et al. (2000); Science 287: 607 Chitnis et al. (2000), AIDS Res. Hum. Retroviruses 16: 5-8; Gao et al. (1999) Nature 397: 436-441; Hooper, E.M. (1999) The River; Schoofs (2000) "The Agony of Africa" (at http://www.villagevoice.com/specials/africa) ScientificAmerican, January 2000; New York Times, 6/28/00 and 7/9/00. Recommended background: A. Hochschild King Leopold's Ghost; W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; B. Davidson, "The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State"

There Won't Be Any Real Justice for Victims of Fascism Under Capitalism

SANTIAGO, CHILE -- On August 8, Chile's Supreme Court decreed there was "fundamental suspicion" that Senator-For-Life General August Pinochet was involved directly or indirectly in crimes committed against many people during the military regime he led. Therefore, the Supreme Court decided he could lose his senatorial immunity and be tried. Many people see this as a "victory" since "justice" finally will be done for the victims of the Pinochet regime. But will there be real justice? We don't think so.

Firstly, there's almost no chance Pinochet will be jailed. Even if he is, what about Kissinger, then Nixon's National Security chief and the real brain behind the 1973 coup that overthrew the Socialist Party president, Salvador Allende, labeling him a Soviet puppet? What about the other military officers involved in the coup that put Pinochet in power and their many crimes? What about the bosses of International Telephone and Telegraph and local Chilean bosses who helped finance the coup? There cannot be justice under capitalism for the thousands who were jailed, tortured and murdered by the Pinochet regime.

Some say that because Chile is now ruled by another Socialist Party candidate, President Lagos, maybe there will be some justice. Well, Lagos has not changed one iota the capitalist exploitation which existed under Pinochet and has continued since "democracy" was restored in the 1980s under the Christian Democratic Party. Today's socialists are far behind even Allende. If Allende had illusions that somehow socialism could be achieved through capitalist elections, Lagos believes in free market capitalism forever. Today's socialists took down their Che Guevara posters long ago. Now their idols are unbridled capitalism.

We in PLP say that if workers and their allies want to avenge the crimes the bosses and their butchers commit against us and achieve justice, we must fight to destroy the system of wage slavery and fight for workers' power--communism.

PLP club, Chile

Dollarization of Ecuador Won't Change Misery of Workers

The sucre was the official currency of Ecuador. Just like any other capitalist currency, it was born with one purpose: to bury the working class in exploitation and poverty. Its function was to put a price on the labor power of the workers and super-exploit them with a wage which buys suffering, hunger and illness. Marx called it wage slavery.

The sucre's disappearance stems from the brutal inter-imperialist struggle to control world markets. The U.S. imperialists have imposed dollarization as a symbol of colonialism and their total control of Ecuador.

On September 9, the sucre replaced the dollar. Dollarization was complete. Hundreds formed endless lines at bank windows to exchange their last sucres for U.S. currency.

Workers have been fed nostalgia for the disappearance of the miserable sucre. The social movements and unions, led by traitors, revisionists (fake leftists) and sellouts posing as popular fighters, push this absurd nationalist sentiment of "my currency," "my country" and "my boss." They never tell workers the oppressive nature of the sucre.

Communists understand the only way to end exploitation is by eliminating money, the capitalist wage system and all the machinery generating super-profits for the bosses and super-poverty for the workers.

The working class is an international class. There are many more similarities than differences among us, the fundamental similarity being we are the class that produces everything of value. We have common enemies: capitalism, the bosses, currency, poverty wages, lack of housing, unemployment, as well as social fascist labor "leaders" who push nationalism to serve their masters. They're all birds of a feather.

Under capitalism, workers need currency to get food, medicine, clothing, education, etc. Under communism workers will never again need money because production will not be for profit but for the needs of our class, distributed according to need.

We've had enough of fixing the capitalist economy and enough rulers' lies. If the capitalist economy is falling apart, let it! We shouldn't sacrifice ourselves to save it. All our efforts, all our sacrifices, all our force, all our valiant energy, we dedicate to build the society of and for the workers. To that end we must organize and build PLP.

Comrade from Ecuador
LETTERS

ALL Workers Need Revolution

It was an exhilarating experience to take part in our workshop at the PLP international conference where comrades and friends from Africa, Jamaica, Europe, Guinea, the Near East, Mexico and the U.S. excitedly exchanged ideas. The international Party we are building seemed to be already firmly established.

But although we all had essentially the same political outlook and experiences, our discussions revealed ideological problems we need to overcome in order to construct a world-wide party of millions. One is convincing each other that all workers, in industrialized and developing countries alike, need and are capable of communist revolution.

This point arose when a U. S. comrade described deteriorating conditions here, where 48 million people are without healthcare and the number of families in poverty is growing. A comrade from the Near East responded that conditions are much worse in his country where 86 % of the population makes less than $2000 a year. When an African comrade said that most workers in his country don't even have clean drinking water or electricity, it became clear that ALL workers are exploited under capitalism, although some more than others.Whether it be a landless peasant in Africa, a maquiladora worker in the Near East or a U.S. factory worker living from paycheck to paycheck, our similarities are greater than our differences. We all have the same enemy and the same fight.

However, differences still remained, especially the idea that workers in poorer countries are more revolutionary than workers in the U.S. But if this were the case and degree of misery were the criteria, then why haven't workers in, say the Congo, made a revolution?Another point raised was that U.S. workers have a better standard of living because they benefit from the super-profits made by U.S. and multinational companies in developing countries. The surplus value U.S. bosses steal from workers in places like Latin America, Asia and Africa goes straight into their pockets, not those of U.S. workers'. These same U.S. bosses rake in surplus value from U.S. workers' labors as well. The extension of this idea, that workers in the industrialized world are a highly-paid, pro-boss, "labor aristocracy" applies to a very small percentage of workers--formerly among the skilled craft unions and now more among the "dot.com" group of white collar workers.

Yet "Yankee Go Home," the cry of anti- imperialists everywhere, seems to be applied indiscriminately to all people in the U.S. A class understanding would direct it against the class responsible for the exploitation worldwide, the U.S. bosses. As communists we promote solidarity among all workers across the boss-created national barriers.Flip a coin. Today, workers in developing countries see workers in industrial countries as better off and therefore part of their problem. Meanwhile, U. S. workers victimized by U.S corporations relocating abroad many times fall for the bosses' ideology blaming overseas workers for their own unemployment or lower wages here. This lack of unity, class perspective and understanding of the international character of capitalism only helps the bosses control and exploit us.Those of us in our workshop, hearing first-hand the appalling conditions of workers' lives in the developing world and the terrible repression suffered by our comrades, only makes us fight harder to do what it takes to build the Progressive Labor Party into one worldwide Party, one united working class with one aim--the destruction of capitalism and the construction of a communist society.

A Brooklyn comrade

Bosses' `Boom' On Workers' Backs

Last week I visited a relative just to say hello, expecting to talk about Gore and Bush, Hillary and Lazio. But instead of trying to explain to her why I don't vote and why all the candidates are racist warmongers, she started telling me about a reality faced today by many workers who have had relatively well-paid jobs.

She works in a big garment shop with several hundred mostly women workers. After the summer layoff, she went to work as a sewing machine operator. The bosses called a meeting to say "how sorry" they were, but they had to eliminate hundreds of operators. Why? Not because of lack of work. As a matter of fact production is up. But because the company is sending work overseas and to non-union sweatshops all over New York City where labor costs are much lower.UNITE is the garment workers union and is behind United Students Against Sweatshops, which organizes protests against companies using overseas sweatshops. What are they doing about this? Nothing! They were content to settle for "re-training" and severance pay for the fired workers, as long as the company keeps some unionized (dues paying) workers assembling the parts made in sweatshops.

Re-training is a lie. Most of these workers are older immigrant women, who are sent to be "re-trained" for jobs that younger workers will take for less. A year from now, when the re-training and money runs out, they will be working in sweatshops for rotten wages. This is happening to workers all over the U.S.

This is the "dirty secret" behind the economic boom of U.S. bosses. At this year's conference of U.S. Federal Reserve officials and economic policymakers, Alan Greenspan said one of the main reasons high-tech capital and investment in the U.S. is greater than in Europe and Japan was that, "by law and by custom, American employers have faced many fewer impediments in recent years to releasing employees." Lower labor costs have meant higher profits.

So now my relative understands better how capitalism functions, and how neither Gore nor Bush in the White House will fundamentally change this.

A NYC Comrade

Are Whites `Privileged'?

While on vacation in the southern U.S. I attended a meeting to promote anti-racism at my family's church. I found people friendly and sincere. They were interviewing anti-racist "trainers" from groups like Visions and Crossroads. They discussed the difference between an "anti-racist and a multi-cultural church," "healing racism," reforming institutions by working on the racist attitudes and practices of individuals, the "white skin privilege" theory as well as historical approaches to understanding racism.

It reminded me of experiences at my own church. My treasured friends and I have had many struggles in my own city about the origin of racism under capitalism and its central role in capitalist society. We've discussed the bogus concept of "race. While they respect me, my friends remain wary about the revolutionary communist approach to destroying racism.

This brings me to the editorial in the last CHALLENGE, "PLP Exposes Anti-Globalization Liberals As Pro-War Patriots." The editorial was excellent, on target. However, at one point the editorial explained how PLP youth exposed the "lie" of "white skin privilege," that is the "idea that white people, not capitalism, are the cause of racism" and that we need to "fight racism to unite the working class." This is correct. However, we should be careful while working with people in "anti-racism workshops" and as we communists organize, initiate and/or participate in, and lead, anti-racist fights.

There are differences between us, as well as similarities as members of the working class. Our experiences as white or black people in history, growing up, living every day and being exploited in the U.S. are different. And, yes, whites DO have "privilege." There is no damage to our communist analysis of the "white skin privilege" theory to acknowledge and explore this aspect of racism. Our friends will demand this of us. In fact, I think we will not be able to build a fighting anti-racist Party if we are either defensive about, or gloss over, this reality.

NYC Comrade

Comrades Are Life-Savers

I don't know of any better place than the CHALLENGE letter page to thank the many comrades and friends who continue to give their support during my current illness.

In early August I had to be hospitalized for a serious health problem. I went to one of the "better" hospitals in Philadelphia. But several times my wife and two other comrades had to strongly intervene with the doctors because my life was further threatened by the doctors' lack of aggressiveness, their refusal to question the usual treatments which were clearly hurting me, and their resistance to listening to my family and friends. I was unconscious during much of this, but from what I hear I pretty much owe my life to my wife and two comrades in particular.

I often think about the difference between my experience and the reports of health care in the book "Away With All Pests" during the early days of the Chinese revolution. One particular difference is that the Chinese comrades organized collective discussion of patient treatment open to all. In my case the doctors resisted listening to my wife and comrades who are doctors and nurses themselves!Meanwhile my recovery is teaching me some deeper lessons about collectivity, individualism and dialectics. It's amazing how being a communist in PLP continues to offer profound lessons throughout life.During my recovery I do look forward to reading more reports in CHALLENGE about our efforts to build PLP and communist revolution. I know I won't be disappointed. My thanks and love to you all.

A Philadelphia comrade

Postal Workers Get Stamped On

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has made billions of dollars the last five years by squeezing the workers harder through automation, speed-up, and harassment. Now, with the Internet, email, automatic billing, etc., they're crying broke. And that means they'll try to squeeze us even more.

In Chicago, hundreds of workers have been "part-time subs" for seven years. Being a sub doesn't mean you work fewer hours than a full-timer. It means you have no right to refuse overtime and are treated like a dog.

"Subs" have worked 6-day weeks since November of 1999. Now these "part-timers" are scheduled to work 9_-hour days as well. After working these long hours for so long, workers are tired. But when they ask for an extra day off they're told, "Services Needed." When they call in sick they are written up. At the same time, the bosses tell us that automation is taking our jobs and we are no longer needed. The stress of working almost 60 hours a week while taking care of a family is taking its toll. Many subs are single mothers and must take off for family needs. They're getting disciplined and fired.

A small group of "Subs" came to the monthly APWU union meeting last Sunday. They want the union to fight for them to be turned full-time. After waiting patiently through hours of talk, one finally got up and explained their situation. The president's response was, "Yeah, I know it's bullshit, but there's nothing we can do." Another worker asked if he couldn't put some kind of pressure on management to turn these workers over after seven long years, especially since they've worked more than full-time workers for almost a year. Again the president's response was, "No. We can't do anything."

The union's line is that if the contract says they can screw you, hey, you're screwed! We must win the workers to fight for what we need. The USPS has made billions off of the racist and sexist super-exploitation of black and women workers. Organizing against this exploitation will help workers see that only communist revolution will end exploitation. More workers are reading and distributing CHALLENGE. The sooner we build a mass movement to smash this system, the better!

Red postal worker

Red Values Only Hope for Workers

An incident at my job made me think of just how badly we need to destroy capitalism with communist ideas and practices. Recently one of my co-workers was injured when a door fell on his head. The door covers moving parts of one of the many machines used to sort the mail. My co-worker needed stitches in his scalp.

When he returned to work, two supervisors grilled him on what happened and tried to convince him to take the blame for his injury. This was done on the shop floor with no union representation. The supervisors were both craft workers until very recently becoming management. In their new role, they have taken the bosses' side. For a few extra dollars they're willing to sell out their working class brothers and sisters by doing anything management wants.

This event rekindled my belief that the only hope for workers is communism. Bosses and their flunkies will never do what is best for us. A society based on money and individualism will always have sellouts, whether they're supervisors or union leaders. Communism promotes different values based on the collective good. But knowing this and doing something about it are two different things. I'm working on it. Postal Comrade

We Were the Talk of the Theatre
Rocking the Cradle

It turned out to be a great idea. As some of us were planning the recent education conference, we thought it would be very interesting to go see the play "The Cradle Will Rock" as a Saturdat night social activity. It was written and produced by members of the Federal Theatre Project in the late 1930's. This was a New Deal program containing many communists, including the playwright, Marc Blitzstein. So the government cut the funding for this production.

Many of us had recently seen the movie of the same name, which describes the entire struggle to produce this play. Some of us had shown it to groups of young people during the summer. So we decided to see the play. It was wonderful.

There were about 40 of us. During intermission many of us got the same idea. Let's sing the Internationale at the end of the performance! We designated a leader. He did a great job getting us started and it was quite a stirring rendition. We were all tickled pink (really excited) to be able to make this little contribution to the struggle for communist revolution.

But we were not the only ones affected. Someone in the audience cried. One of our members hugged someone who was emotionally moved and wanted to know more. We talked and exchanged phone numbers. It was quite an evening.

On Monday there was more. The person who actually arranged to buy the tickets had a message on his answering machine from the theatre's artistic director. "I would like to speak to you about the wonderful event that happened at the Saturday performance." The next day they talked. "You have been the talk of the theatre. It was truly unique. Who are you?" There was more. The quotes were not written down but you get the idea. The artistic director had just been on a Manhattan cable TV program and had talked about the singing of The Internationale. This will be aired on the Metro Arts Channel on a program called "Speaking Freely." He asked if he could use the name of the Progressive Labor Party in the future. We said yes and agreed to send him a copy of CHALLENGE.

Everything we do counts. People everywhere want a better world. Let's get the message of communism out every way we can.

Red Teacher

Rap Gets Bad Rap

In the article "Illiteracy Poses Big Problem For Bosses in Crisis" (Sept. 13, page 5), I found an erroneous generalization in an otherwise helpful description of capitalist education. The fourth paragraph says, "The capitalist culture they've created is a monster: MTV, rap music, video games, the sick sit-coms--they all emphasize a decadent "do-what-you-want" ideology that keeps people distracted and stupid, but also self-centered and demanding."

While I agree with most of that statement, I disagree that all rap music fits this description. In fact, many rap artists, though mostly little known ones, have ideologies similar to ours in some respects. They are fed up with the system, they want to fight back against police brutality and sometimes they even call for revolution in their songs. They seem to be good people who draw good people to them. If we are serious about trying to influence masses of youth who are fed up with capitalism, it's a grave mistake to put such a generalization in CHALLENGE.

Red youth

P.S. In the Sept. 6th issue (pg. 3) the name of the band mentioned is spelled Ozomatli.

NEXT ISSUE We will run the second part of the series on illiteracy in the U.S.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, September 13, 2000

Information: 13 September 2000 172 hits

With this issue we return to our weekly schedule

Editorial: Bush or Gore -- Exxon-Mobil Votes for Middle East Oil War

Bay Area Transit Workers Are "Ready To Walk!"

‘‘Turn Off Your Machines! Join The March!’

Feds Vs. LAPD: It Takes a Criminal Gang to Know One

Smash Racist Killer Cops!

The Enemy is At Home: Boeing and Union Hacks

Maine: Bath Iron Works on Strike

LA MTA: Fascism in the Workplace

Illiteracy: a Big Problem for Bosses in Crisis

King Leopold’s Legacy: Imperialism and the Origin of AIDS

LETTERS

Sharpton’s ‘Solution’ Is Prescription for Disaster

Nationalism Turns ‘Dream’into Nightmare

There Is a Way to Fight Medical Fascism

Red Farmworker Back In Fold

Summer of Inspired Struggle

Needs Advice

Nader: Illusion And Reality

Bosses Make Mess of Philly Schools

DK2: A Collective Evaluation

Oops! Error corrected

Editorial:

Bush or Gore: Exxon-Mobil Votes for Middle East Oil War

The Democrats and Republicans are finally starting to admit that U.S. bosses must launch the oil war CHALLENGE has warned about for months. Behind all the baloney about "military preparedness," Gore and Bush are starting to focus on a sequel to Bush, Sr.’s 1991 Desert Storm. That slaughter for Exxon’s profits murdered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. A million more, the majority of them children, have died since then because of U.S.-enforced sanctions. U.S. bombing raids continue to kill Iraqi civilians and soldiers indiscriminately.

But this butchery has solved nothing for U.S. imperialism. Saddam Hussein remains in power. U.S. oil rivals in Russia, China and France have multi-billion dollar contracts to buy, refine and market Iraq’s oil, which remains the world’s cheapest. Rockefeller’s Exxon Mobil stands to lose big time if these deals go through. Saudi Arabia, the U.S.’s main ally among oil producers, is growing more unstable by the day. No matter who becomes president in 2001, either one will follow the orders of their master, Rockefeller & Co. and invade the Middle East once again, either to oust Hussein and occupy Iraqi oil fields, or to guarantee the flow of Saudi oil, or both.

The candidates haven’t said too much directly about this yet, but both their party platforms let the cat out of the bag. The Republicans are more open: "…we must protect our economic interests and ensure the reliable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf." The Democrats are only a bit less obvious: "The nation must be prepared to use force when American interests are truly at stake…we must be ready to act." Over 20 years ago, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, identified "national interest" with the Persian Gulf.

Exxon Mobil itself is leaving little room for guesswork. Every Thursday, it buys a quarter-page ad on the NEW YORK TIMES op-ed page spelling out the Rockefeller position on major issues. On August 24, the oil barons offered the following wisdom: "The sources of oil and gas will be increasingly concentrated among a comparatively small group of producers, mainly in the Middle East. New discoveries in West Africa, the U.S. Gulf coast and the Caspian region all help but do not fundamentally change the trend."

As the Eastern Establishment’s main media mouthpiece, the TIMES editorial page has been echoing the Exxon Mobil line about getting the military "ready to fight one regional war on short notice, using ground forces if necessary." The paper also warns Clinton not to over-commit U.S. military forces in Colombia (August 21).

The Times cautions Clinton to keep his eye on the oily ball and scolds Bush-Cheney for pretending in speeches that "less involvement by U.S. ground troops in peace-keeping in Europe and elsewhere" may be an option (Sept. 3). Translation: the candidates can lie all they want about any number of issues, but they must start preparing the working class and military for this oil war.

The last few years have seen a successful counter-offensive by Rockefeller forces to take command of the Republican and Democrat parties. The Clinton impeachment flopped. Rockefeller enemies Gingrich and Buchanan have been marginalized. Even Dick Cheney is toeing the Exxon line on committing to a ground war in Iraq. Eighteen months ago he sided with Exxon’s rival BP Amoco in urging a ground invasion of Yugoslavia—opposed by Rockefeller’s Exxon—to defend the oil pipelines his firm Halliburton was building there for BP Amoco.

Some contradictions remain between Rockefeller interests and competing bosses in both parties, but the trend clearly favors the Rockefellers. The next White House will carry out Exxon Mobil’s orders. Be prepared for the oil war rhetoric to escalate as the electoral circus heads into the fall.

The big question isn’t whether Bush and Gore will obey Rockefeller but rather what the working class will do. The next oil war will be far bloodier than Desert Storm I—on both sides. The bosses have a powerful military, but mainly in terms of numbers and hardware. Millions of working-class soldiers are up for grabs politically. Most can be won to see there are better alternatives than killing and dying for U.S. rulers’ billion-dollar oil profits.

In the coming period our Party’s main job is to show workers and soldiers that communist revolution is the best, in fact, the ONLY alternative to the endless profit wars that capitalism inevitably spawns. Whenever it breaks out, Desert Storm II will provide PLP with ample opportunity to grow in the heat of class struggle. What we do now, on the job, at school, in the mass movements, and in the military, will develop our ability to act as conditions continue to sharpen.

Bay Area Transit Workers Are "Ready To Walk!"

SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, Sept. 5 — On Labor Day weekend over 30 MUNI, AC Transit and BART (train) workers held a Bar-B-Q and met to plan joint actions. These were some of the core activists who led workers to reject contract offers at MUNI and AC.

"These people are serious, they are committed," said one driver. Another said, "I’m in this fight because I don’t have anything, so I’ve got nothing to lose." Another spoke about political economy, and how the big capitalists use mass transit to make huge profits and want us to pay for it through low wages and high productivity. A PLP leader and union activist spoke about the need to build the Party and make communist revolution to meet the needs of the working class.

Workers on both sides of the Bay are realizing that they are not just battling isolated transit authorities. They’re taking on the whole ruling class with its state power, press and willing union leaders.

For months now MUNI workers have rebelled against the Transport Workers Union Local 250A leadership, attacking wage progression (a form of two-tier wages) as a particularly vicious aspect of wage slavery. Along with part-timing and temporary work, it divides and weakens the working class.

On August 22, both MUNI and AC Transit workers rejected contracts that maintained or extended wage progression (MUNI workers for the second time!), and created a potentially explosive situation. The idea that MUNI and AC workers could strike together made us all realize the power that workers could have.

On August 30, AC workers voted 98% in favor of authorizing a strike.

"I’ve got my picket sign, girl, and I’m ready to walk!" said one young worker as she left the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 192 meeting. AC workers were furious with the leadership, prompting union president Zook to plead, "I’m not the enemy. I’m not the enemy." We sold over 50 CHALLENGES and distributed 300 "No Contract, No Work" leaflets urging a strike. Some drivers took handfuls to distribute at their Divisions.

All the powers-that-be want to wear us down with fact-findings, rollovers, cooling-off periods, votes, votes and more votes. They’re doing everything possible to prevent a strike, let alone two simultaneously.

The union at AC Transit claimed that a strike could upset plans to pass Measure B (a ballot initiative giving AC Transit $15 million a year to which will enhance the booming real estate market off the backs of workers victimized by wage progression).

The SF CHRONICLE pointed out that a MUNI strike is illegal, and singled out PLP in a front-page article, as central to the rebellion among MUNI workers. The bosses are using fear, nationalism and anti-communism to try to pass their lousy contract. We don’t fear their anti-communist attacks, we welcome them. It gives us a chance to discuss why capitalism doesn't work, who is attacking us and that there is an alternative way to organize society. PLP has helped open the flood gates of workers' rebellion.

Bay Area transit workers can take advantage of this contract fight to open the door to revolution. They are beginning to organize along class lines, breaking down the artificial divisions of union membership or local geography. CHALLENGE is becoming a political organizer of this fight, and as the circulation grows, so will our ability to defeat every scheme of the capitalists and all their agents.

More workers are looking to PLP for leadership and will fight to defend the Party. "You really turned me on to communism," exclaimed one driver. "This is fascism, a dictatorship," said another. "Why vote on a contract over and over if your vote doesn't mean anything. Action is what counts." For Bay Area transit workers, this protracted struggle is a class in the need for workers’ power and communist revolution.

‘‘Turn Off Your Machines! Join The March!’

LOS ANGELES, CA. August 17 — "Turn off your machines and join the march against exploitation and racism," yelled through a bullhorn a garment worker and PLP member. Dozens of garment workers were watching from the windows. Some answered, "We’re coming." Others indicated with their hands to wait for them, while others raised their fists high in the air.

A woman garment worker declared, "The boss threatened to fire me, but I don’t care. This march is a chance to come out and protest and I want to be here." A group of young garment workers reported that "the bosses let us out early so that we would go home, but we stayed here to participate in the march."

This was one of the four big marches organized during the Democratic Party Convention by the Free Trade Network, Students Against Sweatshops, MECHA, pro-immigrant organizations and PLP. Unlike PLP, many of these groups are organized by the AFL-CIO. At the pre-march rally, while most other speakers pushed passivity, patriotism and voting for Nader candidates, PLP called for international working-class unity and workers power.

For weeks before the march, PLP distributed thousands of leaflets and a special edition of CHALLENGE in many different garment shops. PLP members also participated in protests, leafleting, meetings and lunch-break discussions in the factories on shop floors.

The bosses launched a campaign of fear in the press and on TV that was mainly directed at immigrant workers. Their message: "there will be many arrests and fighting on in the streets." They repeatedly showed what occurred in Seattle. Many bosses in the area of the march closed their doors or sent workers home early.

It was a difficult ideological struggle to mobilize factory workers to march. On the one hand we were faced with the AFL-CIO’s opportunism and lies with their sudden "concern and friendship" toward immigrant workers. On the other hand we felt it necessary to be in this fight for unconditional amnesty and unionization, but with a revolutionary communist outlook, exposing Gore, Bush and Nader and the AFL-CIO hacks all as pro-war enemies of the working class.

CHALLENGE was central to the discussions as we tried to win new readers and sellers. Before and during the march we met many garment workers willing to participate in the campaign for unionization and the fight for unconditional amnesty. Some want to know more about the Party and communist ideas. Some will try to involve their community organizations in these campaigns. We’re organizing factory committees that we will also build in the churches and neighborhoods.

At the corner of 7^th and Los Angeles St., hundreds of garment workers inside the factories, men and women, greeted the march with fists in the air and waving red cloth from the windows. Hundreds of marchers chanted in Spanish "Workers, united, will never be defeated! and "This fist you can see, workers to power!" Workers and students, black, Latin, Asian and white were on the street. Behind the factory windows stood immigrant workers. Many protestors were moved to tears by the strong feeling of internationalism. We got a taste of the working class potential as one united powerful fist, with the single goal of destroying capitalism and building a new communist society.

Feds Vs. LAPD: It Takes a Criminal Gang to Know One

Since May, the Justice Department has been investigating whether there is a "pattern or practice" of civil rights violations by the LAPD. A part of the Rockefeller oil interests’ plan to consolidate control over Los Angeles involves cleaning up the image of the LAPD. A federal takeover of the LAPD has been rumored for weeks. Inevitably the LAPD must either accept a consent decree or face a suit in federal court it would almost certainly lose.

The latest wrinkle in this fight is the RICO suit against the LAPD. On August 30, U. S. District Judge William J. Rea, a Reagan-appointed Republican, ruled that plaintiffs in a federal class action civil rights case can offer proof that the LAPD is a criminal enterprise. This statute, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, was designed for use against more traditional examples of organized crime. If it happens, it would be the first time that it would be used against a government entity. Its use involves acts of racketeering such as planting evidence, setting up innocent people, extortion, assault-like behavior and attempted murder. Victims of police terror will attest that these are easily proved allegations. Workers will agree that the LAPD is the real gang.

LA politics has begun to be characterized by fights between the Eastern Establishment and the local LA bosses over several issues, from who runs the schools to which industries will be unionized to who will be mayor. CHALLENGE has detailed these fights. Their most dramatic battleground has been the LAPD.

The U.S. ruling class is faced with a real, and ultimately unsolvable, contradiction. On the one hand, capitalism needs racism to divide the working class and repress the super-exploited sector of the population that provides them with super-profits. On the other hand, they need to use the youth of these same super-exploited sectors to fight in their imperialist wars. The same youth whose parents work in non-union garment and other factories, whose mothers make $630 a month for a family of three on make-work welfare (until 2003 when they will get kicked off), the same youth who themselves are the targets of police abuse are the ones the ruling class will ultimately need to rely on to fight and die for oil in the Middle East.

This contradiction is inescapable for them in the long run. But in the short run, different sectors of the ruling class come down on one side or the other of this contradiction. LA garment and other bosses who rely on immigrant labor have come down on the side of open police terror. In order to stop garment workers from organizing and demanding even the minimum wage, these bosses have waged a campaign of terror in the garment district as a whole, particularly in the Pico-Union neighborhood, where the LAPD’s Rampart division (together with the Immigration and Naturalization Service) has waged a similar campaign against youth.

The Rockefeller bosses have longer-term needs, especially troops for the next oil war. While they require racism, to provide super-profits for the whole capitalist class, they can definitely downplay it—and do their best to mislead minority youth into believing in this system enough to fight and die for it. These forces are pushing for community policing which, while continuing to terrorize workers, would try to win workers to support the cops and see the Federal Government as "humanitarian."

A federal takeover of the LAPD will not end police terror. After all, this is the same Clinton administration which paid for the hiring of 100,000 more cops nationally under the guise of "gun control," which ordered mass racist cutbacks in social services, which has bombed and murdered many thousands in Iraq and Yugoslavia.

PLP is building a base among the youth of Los Angeles. As we grow, and are more active in the mass organizations fighting against racist police terror, we can expose these bosses’ lies, and recruit these young people to our Party. In the schools, and in the army, they will organize to turn the guns around.

Smash Racist Killer Cops!

DETROIT, MI, September 5 — Killer-cop David Krupinski murdered Errol Shaw in his own driveway in cold blood on August 29. This comes just weeks after Fairlane Mall security guards killed Fredrick Finley, after his daughter allegedly shoplifted a $4.00 bracelet.

This racist murder is the latest in a long trail of death. Detroit cops have averaged one murder a month for the last twelve years, and are the deadliest police force in the U.S. That is how two black mayors and a string of black police chiefs have tried to terrorize black workers and youth into accepting a future of low-paying jobs, racist budget cuts and more wars. Chief Benny Napoleon boasted that cops are "trained to shoot…to kill."

Errol was married with two children. He couldn’t hear and he couldn’t speak. He was the neighborhood yardman, and had a history of mental illness and drug and alcohol problems. The racist cops in the 8^th Precinct knew this since they had been called to the house before. They shot him down for failing to drop his rake!

The small church where the funeral was held overflowed with hundreds of relatives, friends and angered residents. But unlike the Findley murder, there has been no mass protest. The main reason is the treacherous role of the nationalist leadership. Findley was killed in Dearborn, a white suburb with a long racist history. Al Sharpton and a host of opportunists led a rally of 7,000 against that murder.

But Shaw was killed in Detroit and the nationalist misleaders can’t, and won’t, attack black politicians. They’re too busy trying to win black workers and youth to vote for them. Meanwhile, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality picketed the 8^th Precinct, calling for an "independent" investigation of the Detroit Police.

Only a communist-led working class can end racist police terror. What would happen if walkouts shut every auto plant in response to Errol’s death? That’s what we’re aiming for and more. We’re bringing the fight against racist police terror to our jobs and unions. We want to raise resolutions in our unions and organize job actions. Our goal is workers’ power and communist revolution. That’s a tall order and a long hard struggle. But we can turn every racist murder against the rulers by building a mass PLP.

The Enemy is At Home: Boeing and Union Hacks

SEATTLE, WA., Sept. 1—Defense and aerospace workers are flexing their muscles. The two prime Navy shipyards and the top three aerospace companies have all been struck this year. Job cuts and work rules have been central to all these strikes, even as the bosses brag of a ten-year "boom." In glaring contrast to this sharpening class struggle, Machinist Union District 751 leadership pleads with Boeing’s bosses that "we can find a solution if we work together."

On August 18th, Boeing announced the closing of some Seattle area facilities and consolidation of others, affecting 3,500 workers. Two months ago they said they intended to sell the St. Louis fabrication center, involving another 1,500. Through leaflets and radio commercials, District 751 urges Boeing workers to "call Boeing Chairman Phil Condit and join us [the union] in asking him to work with us to find a solution to keep Boeing competitive and keep our jobs here."

How does the union plan to keep Boeing competitive? Dick Schneider, overall Boeing coordinator for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), let the cat out of the bag. When asked why tooling work was being shifted from Seattle to Wichita, Kansas—Boeing’s new tooling center, Schneider said, "[The Wichita plant] has a ‘high performance program’ in place, in which the company and union work together to become more efficient, increase performance and tackle problems"—speed-up, pure and simple. The IAMAW at Bath Iron Works in Maine negotiated the flagship "high performance program." Last week, Bath workers struck against this program because, they said, it would eliminate 500 production jobs. No wonder the District’s leaflets say this strategy "makes good business sense!" For us, it’s nonsense!

Misleaders Serves Bosses In the Short-and Long-Term

The union misleaders’ strategy disarms us first in the short-term. The aerospace bosses are caught in a crisis of overproduction. The job cuts and work-rule changes are the bosses’ answer to this crisis. Instead of uniting with aerospace workers worldwide to defend ourselves against these attacks, District 751 president Bill Johnson says, "We understand Boeing needs to compete in the global marketplace and earn a profit. We understand Airbus is the enemy."

Over the long haul the union strategy will be even more damaging. The job cuts and destruction of work-rules are part of the bosses’ overall fascist assault on the working class to try to solve their crisis, from slave labor Workfare to prison slave labor to racist police terror. Ultimately, the bosses will have to solve that crisis by going to war to crush their competition. Both presidential candidates have endorsed war in the Middle East to secure an oil stranglehold on U.S. imperialism’s competitors. Portraying foreign Airbus workers as our enemy builds nationalism within our ranks—a key political necessity for any imperialist war plans.

Short-Term Memory Loss

The hypocrisy of the union leadership knows no bounds. "Last year the Boeing Company and Phil Condit promised us ‘unprecedented job security,’" say union flyers, condemning Condit and the company for going back on their word. But Johnson said the exact same thing at a joint press conference with CEO Condit. They both repeated that lie as they traveled the radio talk show circuit hand-in-hand to sell the last contract.

The Party, in alliance with other rank-and-file activists, were the only ones calling for rejection of the contract because it meant job cuts.

"Tens of thousands of our fellow workers covered under this [new] contract will soon find themselves on the street without a job," warned our leaflets. Truer words were never spoken!

"How can you get job security in a market driven economy?" asked a number of shop stewards during last year’s contract debate.

"Job security remains an illusion as long as are wage slaves, living in a society that produces for profit," we answered in our leaflets. "While the warmakers and strike-breakers hold power, and carry out mass terror to ‘beat the competition,’ we have the same security as a pig at a barbecue. Yes, we need to strike. Yes, we need to fight against every job cut, and for those young workers looking to raise families like we did. But most of all, we need to strike to expose the deadly nature of the profit system, and to build a mass communist movement." Strikes, sit-downs, fights for every job to achieve these aims are still the order of the day.

The choice is clear: hypocrisy that paves the way for accommodation, or class struggle for every job to build working-class revolution!

Maine: Bath Iron Works on Strike

Machinist Union members recently struck Bath Iron Works (BIW) in several locations in Maine. Bath is one of the two prime Navy shipbuilders. The Machinists’ leadership brags that the BIW is also the home of the flagship High Performance Work Organization, a type of contract emphasizing cooperation between workers and bosses to increase productivity. Bath workers had enough of this HPWO, which they said would lead to the layoff of 500 of their brothers and sisters. Fellow workers who had been cross-trained under the term of this "ground-breaking" contract would fill those jobs.

Joe Donlin, a 46-year old tool and dye maker, now on strike against Raytheon, remembered bitterly: "We worked around the clock when they needed us [during the 1991 Gulf War]. We were heroes then." These Raytheon strikers are learning that support for U.S. wars ends up biting you in the ass.

LA MTA: Fascism in the Workplace

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 6 — Last week an MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) bus mechanic asked two bus drivers for the latest dope about a possible drivers’ strike. The mechanic’s jaw dropped when both drivers told him, "We heard it was you guys" [the mechanics’ union] who are going out."

Despite a 5-month run-up and a 60-day "cooling off" period, a virtual news blackout in the three transit unions has left the drivers unaware of the company’s plan to attack their working conditions.

MTA, like all transit outfits, has seen its federal and state funding grow in the last two years because of the overheated U.S. economy. LA transit bosses gave away $4.5 billion to their influential pals in the construction industry for a 17-mile subway. They let the bus system go to hell. A Federal judge forced MTA to scramble and spend over $300 million on high-maintenance natural gas buses or risk a federal takeover like the one facing the LAPD. Now, with this crisis in maintenance, there’s a shortage of qualified mechanics so their union is not being attacked as hard—for now.

MTA bosses seem determined to make up any extra costs for mechanics by squeezing drivers who they feel are a dime a dozen. Even in the best of capitalism’s "good times" they want to cheapen the cost of drivers’ labor power. MTA’s plan against the drivers is two-fold:

· Get their union leadership to contractually agree "in principle" to hold down workers compensation costs. MTA says "some of the savings will be passed on to the drivers as increased wages."

· Get the drivers’ union leaders to sell the membership on lengthening the current split shift of 8 hours pay in a 10- to 11-hour work-day in a 5-day week to a 12- to 13-hour work-day in which drivers are paid for 10 hours at straight time over a 4-day week.

Currently drivers have plenty of stress and injuries working 8 hours over an 11-hour day. A 13-hour day will greatly increase drivers’ misery and more workers comp claims as drivers go out on still more job stress, back injuries and accidents.

With this scheme the MTA "hopes to reduce the costs of overtime for certain job categories" by keeping drivers around from 6 A.M. to 7 P.M. daily. Talk about fascism in the workplace!

This bosses’ shell game pits drivers against each other. When the number of drivers going out sick on occupationally related illnesses rises, the bosses will use the "agreement in principle" (on workers comp costs) to take wages away from drivers. This could cause drivers to blame each other for a loss in pay and for the rotten conditions of overwork under capitalism.

Similarly much bigger bosses, of the Rockefeller variety, hope to pit "foreign" workers against U.S. workers, blaming each other for the problems caused by capitalism. They hope to win us and our children to link our interests to the bosses’ interests and die in their wars overseas even as we kill ourselves behind the wheel and in the factories here at home.

PLP members have distributed several hundred leaflets exposing the MTA’s schemes, connecting them to the rejected contracts in the Bay Area (see page 1). At a Labor Day march we handed out leaflets calling for support of an MTA drivers’ strike.

Despite the expiration of the 60-day "cooling off" period, there has been no strike. The union granted an extension while waiting for Democratic Governor Davis to sign a bill he vetoed last year which would "guarantee" MTA workers’ jobs and union contracts if transit were privatized. Don’t hold your breath.

We must consolidate mechanics and drivers from several divisions into a communist study-action group to counter the union/MTA-inspired passivity among transit workers and to build the Party among drivers and mechanics.

Illiteracy: a Big Problem for Bosses in Crisis

A student comrade looking up world literacy in his new computer encyclopedia found the U.S. has a 100% literacy rate. Wow! Another reason why this is "the greatest country of the world." Yeah, right! The capitalists may try to mask the truth at every turn, but facts are stubborn things.

In truth, almost half the U.S. adult population reads at low levels of literacy (National Adult Literacy Survey [NALS], 1992). That’s about 80 million people, excluding teenagers who cannot read or who read only at very low levels. According to NALS, over 20% of all U.S. adults are functionally illiterate. That means they’re unable to "read, write, and speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one's goals, and develop one’s knowledge and potential." (My students calculated that to be about 40 million functionally illiterate adults, 75% of whom were born in the U.S.!). In addition, almost a quarter of the young people who GRADUATE from, or drop out of, high school are functionally illiterate, reading below the fifth grade level.

Our Party has often said the ruling class "wants the working class to be ignorant and divided against itself." A report compared today’s education system with the pre-Civil War South, which passed laws against teaching slaves to read. Capitalism still thrives on keeping workers from the knowledge that would invite revolution. However, the bosses face a serious contradiction. In this age of increased capitalist competition, U.S. imperialism also needs the working class to defend it from their capitalist rivals. Lawrence Siskind, the Chairperson of History/Social Science Committee on the California Academic [Standards] Commission explained the bosses’ requirements clearly: they need students who will graduate "ready to vote, to serve on juries, and to take their place in society as responsible citizens. Should they ever be called upon to fight for their country, these standards will teach them why their country is worth fighting for." The bosses need ignorance all right, but they also need obedience.

The capitalist culture they’ve created is a monster: MTV, rap music, video games, the sick sit-coms—they all emphasize a decadent "do-what-you-want" ideology that keeps people distracted and stupid, but also self-centered and demanding. But U.S. rulers need better literacy skills for the working class to satisfy the bosses’ own needs, to outperform their rivals in their do-or-die profit system and—mainly—to better train the working class in capitalist ideology, to win their hearts and minds to defend capitalism.

Business—both big and small—has been complaining for years about the money they must spend to train workers in basic reading and math. In contrast to the public school system, whose money comes largely from the working class through taxes, businesses are having to take money directly out of their profits. They don’t like that. The military has also had to invest in costly basic education programs so they can recruit black, Latin, and white youth to fight their profit wars. As U.S. business feels increasing pressure from its rivals in Europe and Asia, and as they prepare for war to defend their oil empire in the Middle East and elsewhere, business wants a more serious government commitment to protecting its interests.

This is the context for the substantial new investment in literacy training in school systems across the country, promoted at least in part through formal business-education coalitions. These "partnerships" have always existed under capitalism. The schools have always existed to train the wage slaves of tomorrow. But these alliances are becoming more open. Portraying education as a neutral bestower of knowledge is quickly coming to an end.

(Next: the liberal plan for teaching literacy and what’s wrong with it.)

King Leopold’s Legacy: Imperialism and the Origin of AIDS

"I can choose to die of starvation now, or of AIDS later"—Prostitute in Harare, Zimbabwe

Reports to the 13th International AIDS Conference last month in South Africa described a holocaust of mind-numbing dimensions. Fifteen million have already died. Thirty-four million are HIV-infected, including 25 million in sub-Saharan Africa. HIV/AIDS will kill 67% of today’s teenagers in some African countries. Women are twice as likely as men to become infected. Thirty million African orphans are predicted by 2010, life expectancies dropping from 70 years to 30 in some countries. If neutron bombs were dropped on the dozen biggest cities of Africa, the damage could not be worse. International response to this crisis has been obscene. Bosses and politicians fight over drug prices and profits, while they spend much more on Viagra and baldness remedies ($333 million QUARTERLY earnings, according to Pfizer), than on all international HIV programs in sub-Saharan Africa ($600 million YEARLY of international aid for HIV/AIDS).

Though many see the AIDS pandemic either as a "natural" disaster or as a biological warfare conspiracy, it is actually rooted in the devastation imperialism has inflicted on African societies. This first of a series of articles on the political economy of AIDS will discuss where the HIV virus and the AIDS pandemic in Africa came from.

¤¤

Scientists have recently learned much about the origin of HIV. Like influenza and rabies, AIDS is a disease transmitted from animals to humans. The closest relatives of HIV are SIVs, viruses carried by apes and monkeys. HIV-1 most resembles a chimpanzee SIV, found in rain forests of coastal West Africa. HIV-2, a milder West African virus, is nearly identical to a monkey SIV. These viruses have lived in their natural hosts for millions of years and don’t make them sick. Among scientists, the currently favored idea of how the viruses jumped into humans is that people hunted chimps and monkeys for meat, and cut themselves while butchering.

HIV is relatively new to humans. The earliest verified HIV case was in 1959, in Kinshasa, Congo; African blood samples from earlier times are free of the virus. HIV exploded in Africa during the early 1970’s, just before it spread to the U.S. and Europe. Very early cases were found near the borders of Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. From there it quickly spread to Zambia and Tanzania. Before the 1970’s, AIDS was as unknown in Africa as in the U.S.

HIV evolves rapidly. Its gene sequences accumulate mutations in a steady, clock-like manner. The more differences, the more time has passed since viruses had a common ancestor. By comparing the genes of currently circulating viruses, it is possible to make an informed guess as to when the common M type of HIV-1, the one responsible for the worldwide pandemic, began. The best guess is in the 1930’s.

HIVs not only jumped from animals to humans recently; they also did so OFTEN, at least four times. This is inferred from the fact that some HIV strains are genetically more similar to SIVs than to each other. So it seems that HIV is relatively easy to catch from animals, and that no special mutations are needed to make it virulent in humans. In fact, a lab worker recently developed AIDS from a monkey SIV after an accidental needle stick.

So, if the virus jumps easily to humans, why did the pandemic not start until the late 20th century? What changed that made repeated transfer to humans more likely and explosive growth a certainty?

Until the late 19th century, most Africans farmed and lived in rural villages. Then feverish land grabs among imperialists—seeking rubber, gold, ivory and diamonds—created the largest forced labor system since African-American slavery. For example, King Leopold II of Belgium seized the Congo and ruled it for years as his personal rubber plantation. Fifteen million Congolese died in this genocidal holocaust. Forced labor was the rule in colonial Africa. Copper mines in Katanga (Congo) rounded up miners from Zambia, Rwanda, Angola and Mozambique. Colonial armies drafted millions of Africans during both world wars. During the 1930’s, the French built a railroad through coastal West Africa, drafting hundreds of thousands of African laborers from distant locations and marching them through the rain forest under appalling conditions of near-starvation. According to one theory, it is here that Africans first were exposed to SIVs, as workers made desperate by starvation had to hunt apes as food.

Another theory places the origin of AIDS in the Belgian Congo and neighboring countries. In his thoughtful book, The River, Edward Hooper argues that HIV spread to humans through racist trials of polio vaccines. During the late 1950’s, Hilary Koprowski of Philadelphia’s Wistar Institute gave an experimental oral vaccine to over 300,000 Africans, using them as guinea pigs. Hooper suggests that Koprowski may have grown vaccine poliovirus in chimp cells contaminated with the SIV ancestor of HIV. Hooper’s ideas lack solid evidence, but they are being taken seriously enough to prompt testing of remnant vaccine stocks.

Whichever theory turns out to be true, it is clear that the crossover of the virus was a result of conditions created by colonialism. But what caused HIV’s later explosive growth? (Continued next issue)

LETTERS

Sharpton’s ‘Solution’ Is Prescription for Disaster

On August 26, thousands—90% African-American—demonstrated at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to "Redeem the Dream." Sponsored by Martin Luther King, III and Al Sharpton and his National Action Network, this event was called to protest racial profiling and police brutality. A group of us distributed leaflets and CHALLENGE, trying to convince people that only destroying the system that relies on racism to divide the working class can end racial profiling and police brutality. Sharpton, King and D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams instead told everyone to vote on November 7th and to "trust the cops first and fear them last."

This is a recipe for disaster. All U.S. police forces represent the bosses’ interests, defending their "right" to private property and to steal the fruits of our labor. We should hate the cops first and destroy them in the end! While the liberal ruling class hacks were misleading the masses of black workers in the crowd, we were running off a racist who foolishly decided to set up his anti-immigration table right next to us. He quickly found out how PLP deals with racists.

Racist profiling and police brutality, nationalism (from Sharpton and his cohorts), and the anti-immigrant racism we confronted all serve to preserve and strengthen capitalism by weakening the working class. They must be fought wherever they appear. When we have millions of workers won to communist ideas the Dream we Redeem will be the reality of communist revolution!

D.C. Comrade

Nationalism Turns ‘Dream’into Nightmare

On August 26, some 51,000 anti-racists of all political points of view demonstrated in Washington, D.C. against racial profiling. The dominant ideological position was Black Nationalism, the use of minorities to push separatism, all-black unity, etc., blaming white workers for racism, all as an aspect of maintaining racism.

This Redeem-the-Dream rally demonstrated that nationalism is becoming a major part of the development of the liberal fascist movement in the U.S. The leadership and the vast majority of the participants were black, led by Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III. Clearly the Rockefeller bosses are building Sharpton to be one of their black messiahs. Victims of racism like Abner Loumia and Mr. and Mrs. Dialo were used as the Kool-Aid to cover up the cyanide of neo-racist politics.

This was in sharp contrast to the 1963 march when white brothers and sisters were major participants in a real march. This time our bus was one of the few multi-racial groups there.

Indeed, when Sharpton lied about white people being the cause of racism, one of our white comrades rightfully shouted, "Capitalism causes racism, not white people." A few nationalists around us wanted to take him on but we calmed the situation. However, the fascist nature of Black Nationalism was revealed when one of them called the cops on the comrade.

As a matter of fact, it was PLP that led the attack on the KKK when these scum appeared in New York City, protected by black and white cops, while Sharpton was nowhere to be seen. And it was PLP that joined thousands of militant black workers and youth in confronting the cops at the funeral of Patrick Dorismond—murdered by racist cops—while Sharpton skipped off.

The commitment of Black Nationalists to U.S. American nationalism was symbolized by the singing of the Star Spangled Banner capitalist anthem before they sang the African-American nationalist anthem. The black capitalists just want to guarantee that their class interests are protected. So the main attack was against racial profiling because too many members of the "black middle class" are being profiled. They attacked "rogue cops," not the vicious, racist nature of the entire criminal injustice system, because lots of cops are black nationalists.

In other words, the main purpose of this rally was to guarantee that members of the Black Nationalist Movement get a piece of the fascist pie, which the Rockefeller bosses are baking in preparation for Gulf War II. One of the functions of these Rockefeller agents is to ensure that black workers do not participate in mass resistance to this plan.

That's why our leaflet pointed out that this anti-racist rally was being used as a step in winning black workers to support a coming ground war in Iraq, just as President Johnson hijacked the old Civil Rights Movement to win black workers and youth to support the invasion of Vietnam 35 years ago.

There were many weaknesses in our effort: for example, we never sharply attacked Sharpton before the rally, in deference to some of our reformist friends. We only attacked him after he sabotaged the rally by canceling a bunch of busses. Nevertheless, we did wage a broad, anti-racist struggle in organizing for the march. We did bring out a multi-racial bloc of workers and students. And at the march we did raise the red flag of communism, distributing about 2,000 leaflets and about 150 CHALLENGES. So upon returning I had this thought: even the little that we do doth count in the struggle to create communism, the force which will ensure that the dark night of capitalism will end one day.

Red Deacon

There Is a Way to Fight Medical Fascism

As a physician recently "downsized" by a private practice, here are a few observations about how medical fascism might develop.

We know a high percentage of doctors in Nazi Germany were members of the Nazi Party. Physicians played an integral role in the functioning of the death camps. How this could happen, what with their training to "heal the sick" and allegiance to the Hippocratic Oath, etc.? I recently glimpsed how that might develop here in the U.S., working in a private clinic.

The other physicians in this practice seemed to be under a siege mentality. They constantly rant about the poor reimbursement rate by HMO’s, the incessant paperwork, the bills unpaid for months or years. These doctors are small-time businessmen with a bottom line, overhead and a profit margin. They feel squeezed against a brick wall. They lament the "unfairness" of it all. They condemn the insurance companies and the government and then "fight back" (I use this term very loosely) against what they see as a cause of their predicament: their own patients. This translates into shoddy health care at best, and dangerous/negligent care at worst.

I’d been a salaried employee until my effective layoff. While there I saw how the owner/physicians treat non-private (e.g. HMO or public aid) patients. Assembly-line medicine: the faster patients are seen, the more that are seen, the better for the bottom line. One problem only per visit, please. If you have several, choose one only and make another appointment (weeks or months later) when you can miss a day of work again and endure another 2 to 3-hour wait. This "privilege" will only last for a couple of visits. If you’ve signed on with an HMO—tough! No consideration is made for people who have jobs or families.

"Blaming the victim" rules the day. Although these doctors are in some sense victims of a greedy and rotten capitalist health care system, their answer is to provide only minimal, "no frills" health care or care only on paper. They see no problem because they feel it’s a question of survival.

These doctors and many others like them see no way out. The remedies capitalism is providing are bankrupt (a single-payer system such as Canada’s). They end up sacrificing any principle they may have had for what they see as survival for the almighty dollar. Because they don’t see (and are becoming more incapable of seeing) any alternative (communism) they persist in continuing to be dictated by capitalism. If this means medical fascism, rationing, etc., so be it.

Are doctors effectively a lost cause in building for a communist society? Can they be won to see their interests lie with their patients? Cynically, I conclude right now that most doctors will continue to believe they have a stake in capitalism. Many, but not all doctors in Germany became Nazis. What moved those who didn’t not do it?

Red MD

CHALLENGE comment: The writer is correct in showing how HMO doctors have developed a proto-fascist small business mentality. Their resentments and blame-the-victim nastiness is based on the dashed hope that somehow these doctors could still become entrepreneurs, as they did 25 years ago. No longer. Whose fault? The main bosses.

But HMO doctors won’t arrive at this understanding by themselves. If we become active in a mass movement related to our specialties and dig in for a number of years, raising in an appropriate way the issues mentioned by "Red MD," patient, energetic work could move them towards the Party. Many physicians want to provide "good care." By getting involved with them on a regular basis and sharing their frustrations and struggles, win can win them. Write us more on your progress.

Red Farmworker Back In Fold

I was a little skeptical about participating in the recent PLP International Conference, saying to myself, "what else can I learn?" My cynicism paralleled a recent lack of enthusiasm in doing revolutionary political work. In my 20 years in PLP I have seen some good active comrades leave the movement. I always thought I would never do that, but frankly, I was afraid I was headed that way.

The first big blow against my cynicism came during the Conference dinner, when hundreds arose to chant, "Fight for communism, power to the workers!" in saluting one of the founding member of PLP. Tears rolled down, tears which said thanks to comrades like him who have dedicated their lives to the struggle for a world without capitalist exploiters. "I want to be like him," I said to myself.

The next day during a Conference workshop I talked about my cynicism the last two years and asked for help in fighting it, saying I want to stay in the Party. All the comrades there used all their resources to help me. I felt like they were trying to bring a stowaway back to life. The younger comrades injected their enthusiasm into the discussion. The older comrades showed their long-range outlook and patience in doing communist political work. Someone shook my ego saying, "Being a Party member must not be seen as a sacrifice but as a privilege."

During the final closing assembly a young woman gave a short speech that brought everyone to their feet, cheering and applauding. This time the tears in my eyes mirrored shame in allowing myself to be weakened by cynicism.

After the conference came the dialectical materialism class. When my group discussed contradictions, a comrade said, "Being both emotional and scientific is a contradiction." Indeed, that was the contradiction in my political life. I have always relied on my emotions to do the work and it has helped because I am very romantic. But the long-range nature of the work and some setbacks blew holes in my romanticism. I must be more scientific, make plans and do the work not because it satisfies me but rather because it is necessary. I must find satisfaction in serving the working class, not just my ego. As a comrade, who had just came out of a similar state of depression, said: "I have discovered that behind my depression hid my bourgeois ego. This ego makes us subjective and stops us from realizing we belong to a tremendous Party. With all its zigzags it is still leading to the road that will emancipate the working class from the hell of capitalism."

Red Farmworker, California

Summer of Inspired Struggle

What a summer! We feel younger now than at the beginning. Earlier we worked with students in an action project which also involved some of the deepest discussions of dialectics—led by young comrades— that we’ve ever experienced. And we have been involved a long time. In 1964 we saw PLP being attacked on TV for its role in the Harlem Rebellion—the first mass action against racist police brutality in the ’60s. Then after forming our own study group, we decided to join the Party.)

There was the inspiration of the International Conference, the many comrades who participated and together discussed how to build a new international movement. We had more deep discussions about dialectics in the workshops.

Finally we traveled in Europe and visited some comrades with a long history of struggle. They are not yet in the Party but they told us how important CHALLENGE (and its web site) and PLP are to them. They e-mail parts of our paper to hundreds of people every week.

They detailed many important items of agreement with us which they arrived at from their own struggle: We must go straight to communism. Nationalism is always a loser for the working class. For a communist movement, racism is the most important thing to fight against. Attacks on Stalin are attacks on the working class—although we don’t agree with him on every point.

CHALLENGE stands out as a beacon of revolution today. Things are hard, with the fall of the Soviet Union and China. It may seem a daunting task for our relatively small Party to take up the flag of international revolution—but to many in the world we have already done it!

Comrades: PLP and the whole working class will win!

Now back to school to win more comrades and deepen the class struggle!

Two Red Travelers

Needs Advice

I am a young comrade from Chicago in a complicated situation. My girlfriend and I have been going out for a little over two months. Her parents have hated me since the beginning. Why? Because I am partly black. They want her to break up with me because of their racist ideology. To her credit she has refused.

I’m very confused on how to handle this. When we come up against racist groups like the KKK, the VCT or ROAR we beat them down, because of their violent nature towards particular sections of the working class. This girl’s parents are not in any type of racist organization; in fact they are Hispanic working-class people. But their racist ideology is killing our relationship. I know that violence is not the answer, but how do I reach these people with a communist perspective on "race" and racism, when they refuse to speak with me?

Anti-racist Fighter

Nader: Illusion And Reality

(The following are excerpts from my response to someone who believes that Ralph Nader is a progressive force.)

Dear J,

Nader's views are a parody of the class struggle. Marxists regard the two main contending forces in capitalism to be: (1) the class that owns the means of production and the products made with them, and (2) the class that works the means of production and owns none. In contrast, Nader regards the two main contending forces to be (1) the corporations and 2) the citizens. At first glance Nader's categories seem to be the same as the Marxist categories. Not so.

His citizen category combines the capitalist class with the working class and treats corporations and citizens as adversaries only in the voting arena. By naming corporations as the enemy of the citizens, Nader feeds the illusion that the enemy can be beaten at the ballot box.

In reality, the capitalist class and the working class are primarily adversaries in the process of production, where exploitation takes place. So Nader's categories are: (1) something owned and controlled by the capitalist class (corporations) versus 2) the capitalist class plus the working class (citizens).

Nader claims corporations seized power from the citizens only 20 years ago and that citizens can re-gain control of the government from the corporations. He ignores several hundred years of history, during which the capitalists controlled the government and have used it to consolidate their repression and exploitation of the working class. From the genocide of the Indians to the enslavement of millions of Africans to the extreme exploitation of white immigrant workers from Europe, the government has always done the bidding of the dominant forces within the capitalist class. Furthermore, in any direct conflict between workers and bosses, such as daily exploitation or strikes, the government has never sided with the workers.

Nader sidesteps the issue of who controls the legal means of force and violence. He implies that violence by the government (war, killings by cops, etc.) is not a normal part of its functioning, and it would end if only citizens would capture control of the "legitimate" political process. He ignores the relationship between the executive branch (the Presidency) and the other two branches of the government--Congress and the courts. He implies that if he were President, through him the citizens could gain complete control over the entire government.

Contrary to Marxists, Nader poses that economic power is subordinate to political power at the ballot box. His prescription for the working class is to vote, an arena in which political power would remain securely in the hands of the capitalists. So by sounding unusually progressive and on the side of the working class, Nader acts as a pied piper for the ruling class, whether he knows it or not. Like Allende in Chile in the early '70s, even if he won, at best he would set himself up to be assassinated and the working class to be the victims of rapidly-imposed fascism.

Some try to expose Nader as a hypocrite, since he has amassed millions in the stock market, investing in the very corporations he publicly attacks. He claims he pours almost all his income into his consumer advocacy organizations and lives on a very modest income. I think the strongest case can be made against his IDEAS by granting that he is honest about them and not arguing about the man's character, a point that is more contentious and irrelevant.

Exposure of the fallacies in his outlook prepares the working class, students, and other allies of the working class to see the need to capture political and economic power by destroying the form of government that lends itself only to rule by a small class over the vast majority and expropriating the means of production from the capitalists. Hiding the fallacies in Nader's outlook disarms the working class and its allies and leads to the futile belief that power can be captured within the capitalists' wholly-owned voting arena. Progressive people, like professionals, who look to his campaign to solve their problems will be left as victims of economic exploitation and political repression.

Your friend, B

CHALLENGE comment: The writer is correct in exposing Nader as feeding the illusion that the working class can "capture the government from the corporations" at the ballot box. However, we believe the main role Nader's candidacy plays is to keep workers, youth and "progressives" who are disenchanted with the bosses' parties within the electoral system, giving them this "radical" to vote for. As we will detail in future issues, Nader is financed by many of the same Rockefeller interests that fund the two major boss-run parties.

Bosses Make Mess of Philly Schools

I’m a member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT). I’ve been following the negotiations closely—the quality of my job is at stake. The school district has become increasingly antagonistic towards its own workers. They want to increase the school day by over an hour and the school year by five days without compensation; establish cheaper healthcare plans costing us over $1,000 each; increase class size; AND give almost complete authority over transfers and placements to school principals. The PFT originally asked for a small raise BUT has now turned defensive. It’s just trying to stop the district from taking everything away.

Besides the school district’s anti-labor position (its bureaucrats couldn’t teach a class to save their lives), last year the State passed a law preventing contract extensions, virtually guaranteeing State takeover of the city’s schools if a contract is not settled by today, August 31. This would mean the State nullifies the contract and enforces its own rules. Everything could be lost.

The school district and politicians like Democrat Dwight Evans love to tell the teachers how to teach, about "what’s best for the children." Yet they’ve never spent a day of their lives in the classrooms. They don’t know what’s necessary or what works or doesn’t. They just love to blame the teachers. They also "can’t understand" why so many teachers either leave or fail to apply for positions. It’s simple: lower salaries, cheaper health insurance, harder working environments, huge class sizes, a lack of resources and a completely incompetent school district. Why would anyone want to work in the Philly schools?

Aggravated and anxious Philly teacher

DK2: A Collective Evaluation

At the end of the LA Democratic Convention, we met to collectively evaluate our week's activities. Each person spoke in turn. An LA teacher from Manual Arts H.S. said the presence of thousands of police and miles of 17-foot-high fencing indicated the bosses were afraid of the workers. Then a young woman said in her experience the bosses didn't fear the workers; on the contrary, they take advantage of us. Later a young man said both were true—the bosses do take advantage of us and exploit us, but they're afraid of us when we're united. He criticized himself for forgetting to bring a friend to the garment workers' march.

Another person felt that just as the politicians always say one more vote is really important to them, likewise every person coming to the march is really important to us; we each need to bring one more person.

Someone said we mishandled our relations with another group in the march, drowning out their chants with our chants. He said we should have talked to them and worked together. People agreed. A Party veteran said people should join PL clubs and study groups. The young comrade who had forgotten his friend took the lead, saying everyone who wanted to be in a Party club in west LA should see him. The person who spoke about the chanting said he'd call.

These were a few of the many interactions that night and throughout the week between old and new Party members and people just getting to know the Party. At least five people had never been to a march, but one got a sense of how much people were ready and willing to contribute. We made about 25 contacts in person and another 65 on sign-up sheets so we have lots of work to do.

A Friend of the Party

Oops: In the article titled "Nazi Torture: The Racist Beasts of Clinton Prison" (CHALLENGE, 8/2) we said that Felix Jorge, the young Dominican imigrant who either committed suicide or was murdered at Clinton Prison, "succumbed to alchohol" as a youth. Felix was NEVER involved with alchohol. Our apologies for this error.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE September 6, 2000

Information: 06 September 2000 179 hits

Elections 2000, Preparing for War
1. Candidates Target Baghdad and Young Workers
2. Bosses' Dilemma Is Workers' Opportunity
PLP Exposes Anti-Globalization Liberals As Pro-War Patriots
1. L.A.P.D. Attack Youth
Nader, Buchanan also push racist nationalism
Verizon Strikers Must Hang (Up) Union Hacks
AC Transit Contract Driving Workers Over the Edge
Dialectical Materialism: Ideas Come from Practice
Renewed U.S. Bombing of Iraq Omen of Gulf War II
Nazi Mass Base Built on Racism, Anti-Communism
1. Nazis in Chile
2. Nazi Cops Key to Carry Out Holocaust
LETTERS

Elections 2000, Preparing for War

Candidates Target Baghdad and Young Workers

Who can better mobilize the U.S. for the next oil war, Bush or Gore? This issue has been played down but is the main one in the 2000 presidential race. The dominant Rockefeller section of U.S. capital plans a massive invasion of Iraq in order to overthrow Hussein's regime and securely tighten Exxon's access to Mideast crude oil. Unlike Desert Storm I, seizing Baghdad won't be that easy. Young U.S. workers, disproportionately black and Latin, will bear the brunt of the fighting and dying. To help the rulers expand popular support for their coming bloodbath, Bush staged an orgy of multi-racial militarism in Philadelphia, with the highest black official, former Chief of Staff Colin Powell, leading the way.

The Gore camp, not to be outdone, has been just as strident and inclusive in its call to arms. Gore laid his cards on the table in a May 23 speech. "We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone. We have sought coalitions of opponents to challenge his power from within or without.... We have used force when necessary. And we will not let up in our efforts to free Iraq from Saddam's rule. Should he think of challenging us, I would strongly advise against it. As a Senator, I voted for the use of force. As Vice President, I supported the use of force. And if entrusted with the Presidency, my resolve will never waver."

The organizational engine that drives Gore's campaign is the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a centrist group that counts Gore and Clinton as its star protégés. With Joseph Lieberman as chairman, the DLC publishes a journal aptly named "Blueprint," a series of policy pronouncements comprising a blueprint for war and fascism. In the Winter 2000 edition, Robert Satloff says the next president should pounce on Iraq as soon as it provides a pretext for invading. U.S. planners need to actively prepare for a window of political opportunity to attack Saddam. There are two plausible scenarios under which Saddam might "provoke" the United States--and hopefully the Desert Storm coalition--to forcefully intervene with the international community's acceptance. The first would be if Saddam stymied the efforts of a new inspection regime cobbled together by the United Nations Security Council. The second would be Saddam's pursuing some sort of break-out strategy, using terrorism, conventional military means or even weapons of mass destruction.

By choosing Lieberman as his running mate, Gore openly endorsed the DLC's war tactics. The important thing about Lieberman is not his religion but his record. Lieberman had co-authored the Senate resolution authorizing the original Gulf War. Gore's vice-presidential selection panel included General John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Senator Jay Rockefeller (NEW YORK TIMES, 8/9). We're not dealing with empty campaign rhetoric here but an imminent military action directed by the nation's most powerful capitalists. Gore's foreign policy advisor, Leon Fuerth, supports the strategy. He belongs to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's Committee for National Security.

Capturing heavily defended Baghdad could lead to far more U.S. casualties than Desert Storm I did. Gore--or Bush--will have to win public acceptance of this grim reality. Gore's DLC team makes overcoming the "Vietnam Syndrome" (see box) a top priority. NY Senator Stephen Solarz wrote in Blueprint (Winter 2000) that immaculate interventions in which there are literally no U.S. casualties are likely to be the exception, not the rule. If the objective is compelling and the risks are made clear, says Solarz, "our" national leadership should be politically skilled enough to secure the support of the American people for military action.

Not everyone, however, will swallow the lie that dying for Exxon is sweet and beautiful. For those who don't go along with the program, the DLC proposes tighter social control. It favors expanding the Clinton Crime Bill. This boils down to more cops in black and Latin neighborhoods, more arrests, longer sentences and more jails. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a DLC policy setter with a liberal pedigree, wants to put cops and probation officers in inner city schools.

Our Party, too, has aims for working-class youth. We work to make them leaders of an organization that can some day, through communist revolution, put an end to the rulers' deadly oil wars.

Bosses' Dilemma Is Workers' Opportunity

The U.S. ruling class has a big problem. It needs to go to war. The urgency is growing as Venezuela and Indonesia have recently joined France, Russia and China in demanding an end to U.S.-led sanctions on Iraq. But ever since the Vietnam War, U.S. rulers can't be sure their troops will follow orders. Nor can they count on public support.

The Vietnam War laid bare the racist, murderous core of U.S. imperialism. Over three million Vietnamese workers perished. Black and Latin U.S. troops died in numbers far beyond their percentage in the population. Millions militantly opposed the bosses' slaughter. Within the military, mutinies and fragging (killing an officer with a grenade) became common. Once an entire division refused to fight. On the homefront, rebelling workers battled cops and shut down cities. Students seized campuses. Anti-war marchers filled the streets. Our Party played a leading role in this struggle.

The potential for similar uprisings haunts the U.S. high command today. One Gulf War criminal, General Bernard Trainor, discussing a ground invasion of Iraq, complained that the military and the public have become casualty shy (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 8/3). The Vietnam Syndrome is causing some strategists to take a go-slow approach to invading Iraq. When former arms inspector Scott Ritter says that Hussein doesn't currently pose a threat, he's buying time for a longer-term build-up, recognizing that U.S. forces are unready.

But whatever the timing, Rockefeller & Co. must someday resort to force in the Middle East. The bosses' war preparations open the door for communist organizing.

PLP Exposes Anti-Globalization Liberals As Pro-War Patriots

LOS ANGELES, August 16 -- PLP youth had a bold contingent at the large march on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. We carried two banners: "End Police Terror and Oil Wars with Communist Revolution" and "Worker-Student Alliance Against Capitalist Attacks Worldwide." Many people took up the slogan, "Workers of the World, Unite," every time we raised it. During the week-long protests we have distributed thousands of CHALLENGES, fliers and Party pamphlets. We have also gone to garment factories, where workers have welcomed our literature. Our bold, clear and revolutionary message was well received by most but was contested every step of the way by the leadership of the anti-globalization movement.

The latter, behind many of the protests at the Democratic Party convention, have pushed the line of "Human Need, not Corporate Greed!" They leaders of this movement demand that "our" government control the corporations to limit corporate greed. On the surface, it appears progressive and pro-worker. It opposes poverty wages and prison labor in other countries and says that "the people should take back" the U.S. government, which is being controlled by multi-national corporations.

They neglect to say that the government is set up to serve the interests of the biggest capitalists, who are preparing for Desert Storm 2 (see editorial). Therefore they are building a pro-war patriotic movement that ties workers and youth to the government, rather than exposing it as a weapon in the hands of the racist rulers. The thousands of demonstrators will never end poverty and war by relying on the government and politicians. The main wing of the ruling class wants to use their government to control their rivals, carry out a ground war for oil and enforce more fascist working conditions. The bosses' government can never be "our" government.

The anti-globalization forces are building their pro-war, patriotic and protectionist movement while using anti-communism to bash capitalist China which they call "communist." This is central to all these anti-globalization groups, from Ralph Nader to openly fascist Patrick Buchanan. We in PLP are trying mightily to build the opposite: a communist movement to smash all the bosses and their lackeys.

On the Friday before the convention opened, we held a well-attended forum involving many youth, where we exposed the AFL-CIO and Global Exchange leadership. In rallies before Monday's march, we told the crowd that no matter who wins the election, Bush/Cheney or Gore/Lieberman, the rulers are preparing a ground war to control Iraqi oil.

PLP youth went to the D2K center and found meetings about "white skin privilege" under a sign that read "WHITES ONLY." We exposed this lie and talked about fighting racism to unite the working class. We showed that racism only helps the bosses and is an attack on all workers and youth. The view of workers as helpless victims who should be "saved" by self-sacrificing students stands in sharp contrast to the truth. Workers lead struggles every day and will lead the fight for their own liberation, as they have in the past. We explained that immigrant workers and youth can give valuable leadership in the struggle to end racist police terror, and that we need a powerful worker-student alliance to build a mass PLP capable of turning imperialist war into communist revolution.

Meeting hundreds of angry workers and students is exciting. We're learning that we have to work hard to win them to multi-racial international unity, the antidote to the nationalism and patriotism the Rockefeller rulers dress up in liberal, "humanitarian" garb to win acceptance of a war for Mideast oil.

Most important, many friends are helping to get out our line in the marches, the factories and the schools. We have confidence that millions of workers and youth will carry these fights further. We have a long road to travel, full of contradictions. The other side is trying like hell to win angry workers and youth to one form or another of capitalist pro-war ideology. But history is on our side. Communist revolution is the only solution to the bosses' road to war and fascism.

L.A.P.D. Attack Youth

On the first day of the Democratic Party Convention, a huge number of cops were ordered out during the mass march led by the D2K and Global Exchange. After the march, "Rage Against the Machine" played a free concert for the demonstrators outside the Staples Center (the Convention site). Since the concert was highly publicized, many other youth came. The "Rage" was followed by three speakers who told the youth to vote. One urged them to vote for Ralph Nader.

Then the multi-racial band "Oso Motley" performed. The LAPD turned off the electricity and gave everyone 15 minutes to leave. A few youth threw plastic bottles at the cops, falling way short. The cops then shot rubber bullets into the crowd and beat many youth.

Earlier, the site of the Shadow Convention--a group of left liberals who have some criticisms of Clinton and Gore--was shut down by the LAPD, claiming a "bomb threat." A SWAT team ordered everyone out of the hall. It appears that the threatened civil rights lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department accusing the LAPD of systemic "misconduct" has not stopped the cops from doing their customary brutal job..

By working in the mass organizations and in the classrooms, we can win many of these angry youth to become fighters against police terror and imperialist war, on the side of the working class.

The coming oil war in Iraq and the fascist attacks on workers demand that PLP work very hard on the campuses, in the classrooms, the factories and the barracks to win these youth and workers to the long-term fight for communist revolution.

LA Comrade

Nader, Buchanan also push racist nationalism

The 2000 elections have become a platform for all forms of nationalism. The nationalism of Gore/Lieberman and Bush/Cheney is openly pro-Big Oil (particularly Exxon-Mobil). The liberal nationalism of Ralph Nader, under the guise of fighting globalization, is based on anti-communism (bashing capitalist China and mislabeling it "Red" China). Many youth and rank-and-file workers who might support Nader and his Green Party must not forget that his counterpart Greens in Europe supported the U.S./NATO air war against the former Yugoslavia. The Greens in Germany, in the government as part of a coalition led by the Social Democratic Party, supported this war under the guise of "liberating" Kosovo from the bloody Milosevic regime. They knew full well that the war was for control of oil routes and pipelines (see page 8).

Patrick Buchanan represents another form of racist, fascist nationalism. Forced out of the Republican Party by the Rockefeller wing of the U.S. ruling class, as it regained control of the GOP, anti-Rockefeller Buchanan hijacked Perot's Reform Party. He chose Ezola Foster, a black woman, as his candidate Vice-President. Mrs. Foster is a member of VCT (the anti-immigrant group PLP has fought many times in Los Angeles) and of the anti-communist, ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. Mrs. Foester's acceptance speech reflected her racism, even attacking ballot instructions in other languages besides English. She was a leader of California's anti-immigrant Proposition 187 movement.

Buchanan has been financed by protectionist billionaire textile boss Milliken (who has also financed Ralph Nader). In his acceptance speech Buchanan not only attacked immigrants and "Red" China but also the foreign policy which protect the oil profits of Exxon-Mobil: "We will no longer squander the blood of our soldiers fighting other countries' wars....All troops will come home from Kosovo, Kuwait and Korea. We will put them on the borders of Arizona, Texas and California and we will start putting America first."

Voting for any of these politicians is a vote for war, fascism and racism. Don't vote; organize and join the PLP!

Verizon Strikers Must Hang (Up) Union Hacks

NEW YORK CITY, August 12 -- The strike of 86,000 telephone workers across 13 northeastern states against Verizon confirms that the "new technology" of capitalism still functions according to the old laws of the system:

* The bosses still drive for maximum profits and squeeze as much as they can out of the workers' labors;

* Capitalist oppression of the working class generates class struggle between the workers and bosses;

* The rulers' state apparatus is still used as an instrument of oppression to enforce the bosses' profit system; and,

* No matter how much the ruling class prattles about competition and the break-up of Ma Bell into scores of "Baby Bells, the laws of capitalism drive relentlessly towards monopoly. (The industry is now dominated by four large corporations, with Verizon the largest.)

This strike also demonstrates that the union leaders are wedded to the bosses' system--they refuse to really shut down production because it means violating the bosses' laws.

The bottom line of this struggle is signified by the company's aim to maintain and expand its profits, which, in the second quarter of this year were a whopping $4.91 BILLION! (WALL STREET JOURNAL, Aug. 9) Verizon's 32,000 non-union wireless workers EACH generate $325,000 revenue per year and are paid ONE-TENTH of that in wages. The fast-growing wireless division generates $532 in annual revenue per customer, 60% more than the local telephone division. (NEW YORK TIMES) According to one union official, "In ten years everything will be wireless," which means an astronomical increase in profits produced by each worker's labor.

The strikers want the jobs installing the high-speed Internet connections which are now contracted out to lower-paid non-union workers. Of Verizon's 32,000 wireless division workers, only 50 are in the CWA (Communications Workers of America).

The workers' demands center around forced overtime, job losses due to mergers (Verizon is the result of a merger between Bell Atlantic and GTE) and contracting out of work and job stress (see box). The union wants a provision for "card check" which would mean that if a majority of non-union workers at any job site were to sign union cards, the union would be certified without an election.

That appears to be the limit of the union leaders' "militancy." They content themselves to telephone "hot line" soundbites supposedly "informing" the members about the strike while some stewards and chief stewards talk friendly and joke around with management scabs.

So far the strike has had a limited effect on parts of the company's operation, although its automated equipment has maintained most of it. There have been delays in repairs, installations, operator-assisted calls and in answering billing questions.

The strikers' militancy and black-white unity has led to a reported 455 "incidents," as of August 8. Trying to answer Verizon's use of its 30,000 "managers" as scabs (working 12 hours a day, seven days a week), the workers have blocked entrances in Philadelphia and Delaware, burned a scab truck in the Bronx, lowered an electronic gate onto a scab maintenance truck, removed lug nuts from scab vehicles and hurled eggs, stones and bottles at entering scabs. Slashed wires have cut off telephone service to thousands. Two dozen workers have been arrested and nine pickets have been hit by scab vehicles.

However, all this militancy has not prevented the company from maintaining well over 90% of its service (while saving millions in wages). Firstly, the bosses got a judge--all of whom are elected through or appointed by the political parties absolutely controlled by the ruling class--to issue an injunction barring pickets from blocking entering scabs. But more important, the union hacks, in working within the bosses' system and rules, refuse to lead the workers in the only serious way the company could be shut down: by organizing a sit-down strike INSIDE the work locations and putting the kibosh on all computerized operations. As one union official admitted, the workers "know the infrastructure because they built it."

Of course, if that occurred, the ruling class would answer with the National Guard and the army to keep their communications system going. Then the workers would have to be prepared for a battle on a higher level, including opposing the union leaders who are pulling them in exactly the opposite direction, kowtowing to the bosses. Such leadership rarely seriously challenges the bosses and never challenges the system that drives the bosses for maximum profits.

This would be especially true at this time during an election year with the CWA tied so closely to the Democratic Party, being one of its biggest financial contributors. A massive sit-down strike shutting Verizon completely would be extremely embarrassing to the Gore campaign.

The kind of leadership that challenges the system itself can only be provided by a revolutionary communist party. It is only when such a base is built and telephone workers join PLP that they and the entire working class will be able to overthrow the bosses' profit system and establish communism, the answer to capitalist oppression.

Meanwhile, every worker should be supporting the strikers' efforts, joining their picket lines, participating in their anti-scab efforts and trying to help them up the ante of class struggle. In the course of such activity, communists will be in a better position to win some of the strikers to PLP's ideas, the biggest victory that could be gained in this strike.

Straight from the Horse's Mouth....

"This [moving production to where labor is cheapest] is something we consider essential to the functioning of our company on a competitive level," said Eric Rabe, Verizon's spokesman. "This is about the workings of capitalism."

Pushing Buttons

The anarchy and insanity of capitalism is vividly portrayed in the kind of job stress Verizon forces on its workers. The following is from the August 12 NEW YORK TIMES:

Dawn Barbour, a customer service worker for Verizon--then Bell Atlantic--had just made an angry customer stop ranting, solved his problem and even elicited a kind word.

"I hate Bell Atlantic, but you're the nicest rep I ever had," the caller said.

A simple "thank you" seemed the right reply, but Ms. Barbour had to follow the script.

"Did I provide you with outstanding service today?" she inquired.

"Isn't that what I just said?" barked the customer, steaming right back up again.

I felt like a total idiot," Ms. Barbour said. But Verizon requires customer service agents to ask the "outstanding service" question at the end of every call...and if she had dropped it, a supervisor listening in could have deducted points from her performance....

New technology means customer calls now roll in assembly-line style...mean[ing] frequent mandatory overtime, disrupting family schedules. Today's heightened focus on earnings growth [read maximum profits--Editor] requires...pitch[ing] products to all callers, even those who do not want to buy anything.

Customers sometimes become angry and abusive, but the representative cannot slam down the phone, hide in the bathroom or do much else except follow the script, since their supervisors may be listening in and rating them....

Recent studies suggest that "emotional labor"--acting friendly when you're seething inside--can actually weaken one's immunity and overload the cardiovascular and nervous systems

....The median length of absence for occupational stress is more than four times that of other workplace injuries and illnesses.

....The stress became much worse after Verizon installed a system that automatically routes a call to a representative two seconds after his or her previous call disconnects.

"There's no downtime. The customer disconnects and the next call's right there. Try living like that, taking calls every two seconds

Compounding the pressure is the need to sell to virtually every caller....to shift the conversation...to a sales pitch....Strikers say...selling causes stress [when] having to do it according to standard scripts when common sense tells them not to....

"It fights with the inner part of the rep. She's thinking, `Look at this poor 80-year-old woman, what does she need three-way calling for?' I'm offering her gadgets and she can't even see the pushbuttons on the phone."

But if the workers do not make the offer, a listening supervisor may note the failure.

`Replacements'are scabs

The role of scabs in essentially breaking strikes is especially glaring in the phone workers' walkout at Verizon. Sixty years ago the use of 30,000 scabs would have been unheard of and considered a crime against the working class. Virtually no one crossed a workers' picket line in the 1930s and 1940s. If they did they were taking their life in their hands. This was particularly true in the basic industries, when communists were in the forefront of many industrial unions.

Workers considered a scab--one who violates class solidarity by crossing the line during a strike and immediately pits worker against worker--subhuman, the lowest form of vermin, the scum of the earth.

The ruling class has the indispensable help of their lieutenants in the labor leadership. Through them they're able to erode this working class solidarity with a combination of weapons: (1) anti-communism, ousting reds from union leadership; and, (2) using their state apparatus--the cops and courts--to O.K. and escort scabs across picket lines. The union leaders, by organizing workers to "obey the [bosses'] laws," have contributed their full share to this violation of workers' solidarity. A class-conscious leadership would attempt to shut down the entire industry, not just Verizon. (Interestingly, the deaths of people who died in Ford cars equipped with defective Firestone tires can be traced back to the period when the Decatur plant producing them was run largely by scabs--NY TIMES, 8/15.)

Our Party has a crucial role to play here in building a communist base in the working class which will spread the cardinal principle that workers everywhere support workers anywhere engaged in militant struggle against the rulers. The ruling class knows this danger too well and pulls out all stops to control it. That's why they produce such "comedies" as the new movie "The Replacements," which glorifies a gang of scabs who replace striking football players. The very use of the term "replacement worker" is the bosses' attempt to prettify strike-breaking and banish the word "scab" from the workers' vocabulary, as they papered over layoffs with the word "downsizing."

It becomes the task of communists and all militant workers to support all strikes of workers against bosses in any way possible, and plant the seeds of class-consciousness in these struggles. A working class that accepts scabbing is a working class unprepared to fight the ruling class. Barring trying to win over scabs in certain circumstances, smashing them is one important class-conscious step on the road to working class unity and turning class struggles into schools for communism.

AC Transit Contract Driving Workers Over the Edge

OAKLAND, CA., August 12 -- Here in the SF Bay Area, the capitalist "boom" means "bust" for the working class. In the heart of the dot.com "El Dorado," housing prices have risen 30-50% in the last year. Rents in new units have skyrocketed and evictions have increased by over 300%.

So what do AC Transit bosses and Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 192 leaders propose? Cut drivers' starting wage to $13.04/hr (65% of top scale) and lengthen the new-hire wage progression period from 30 to 48 months! The new contract offer projects a workforce of all full-timers, largely because management needs the manpower and the flexibility to use lower-wage workers for overtime. And the low-wage supply will comes from requiring new hires and current part-timers to work two full years to reach 75% scale.

When AC Transit is about to receive over $15 million/yr in new revenue, why do union leaders expect workers to sacrifice so much? Because they defend a profit system in which the capitalist class fuels its economic boom through racist wage cuts, layoffs, part-timing, Workfare and prison labor, and they need to keep milking that cow.

An AC Transit job used to be a plum, but a $13.04 starting wage guarantees survival and nothing much for other workers to look up to. The new contract means that, based on a 46-hour work-week, each new hire will be robbed of $15,000 to $20,000 in the first year alone and at least $50,000 in the four-year wage progression. That's millions of dollars every year taken from working-class families and communities.

One thing leads to another. Now other workers must reduce their expectations, too. ATU para-transit drivers, who pick up disabled riders, are also employed by AC. They are mainly black women and receive only $10.30 to 11.34/hr. Their contract expires next year and they will be hard-pressed to get a decent wage and benefit increase. So this current contract binds them to virtual poverty, too.

These are the economics of fascism. Although most workers don't see it in such political terms, few are surprised the union leaders--long-time sellouts--endorse them. The question is how fiercely will the rank and file fight them. Some activists have been inspired by the stand and organization of the MUNI drivers. A caucus is meeting once again.

Simultaneously some drivers have begun again to distribute CHALLENGE, with several others doing it for the first time. These are important steps as we all begin to realize that the contract is not just a trade union matter. We are beginning to see it as a political struggle against the on-going development of racism and fascism.

This, of course, raises all sorts of questions. Some think it makes the fight so big that it becomes impossible to deal with. Others think drivers will never understand it. In one way or another we are all affected by these ideas. It is here that CHALLENGE can play a vital role by reporting on the political struggles of workers throughout the world and so keeping our eye on the prize.

In the inflationary housing market of the East Bay, $13.04/hr. spells racism and a 48-month progression spells fascism. But PLP's CHALLENGE spells working-class power. Sitting "side by side with management in collaborative bargaining," the union leadership has dismissed the working class. Calling on the unity of Para-transit and MUNI workers with AC drivers, PLP is rallying the working class.

Dialectical Materialism: Ideas Come from Practice

(The following selection from a study guide on Dialectical Materialism used in the PLP cadre school on the subject discusses two important aspects of this philosophy.)

Think Universal.

The two "magic words" to keep in mind at all times are objectivity and universality. Dialectics begins with materialism: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness" (Marx). But materialism applies to everything. Dialectical materialism isn't just a guide to political practice. It is that; however it is much more. It provides the foundation for a scientific understanding of all nature, society and human thought. In our school, we should concentrate on politics. But we should also show dialectics' universal validity. Use a wide variety of examples. Think about daily life, the human body, child-rearing, the production process at work, math, the weather, attitudes--anything with which you and others in the group are familiar--and examine it from a dialectical perspective.

Stress That All Ideas Come From Practice and the Real World.

This is true not only of political ideas but of all thought as well. To learn swimming, you have to swim. To learn fighting, you have to fight. To become a guitarist, you have to play the guitar. To build a political base, you have to make friends and raise the ideas with them in a wide variety of situations. We've talked a lot lately about the importance of fighting to teach, fighting to learn and learning to fight in our schools and on campuses. Some of the conversation has centered on math. To make a revolution, workers need many things, including math. Capitalism presents math as a mystery, knowable only to a handful of "brains." Well, everyone has a brain. As the English author Lancelot Hogben wrote in Mathematics for the Million: "Our studies in mathematics...show us that whenever the culture of a people loses contact with the common life of mankind and becomes exclusively the plaything of a leisure class, it is becoming a priestcraft. It is destined to end, as does all priestcraft, in superstition." This insight is valid for all forms of thought. The school can help us reaffirm the primacy of practice and the crucial role of theory in helping improve it. We can spend useful time examining some of our errors.

Comments on DM School

Following the July PLP International Communist Conference, several dozens comrades from the U.S. and other countries took part in a three-day cadre school on dialectical materialism. Here are some of their comments:

"The school gave us new weapons to fight back and to win other people to the Party by sharpening our own internal contradictions and analyzing the mistakes we make in our political work," said a new young comrade.

"The school convinced me to move from being an emotional organizer to a more objective one. This requires a planned practice, concentrating our efforts where there is more potential. We must be consistent in our work to achieve qualitative changes. We must take into account the external contradiction, such as how the mass movement is led by pro-boss forces and how the contradictions among different capitalists reflect themselves in that movement. Then we must use this contradiction to sharpen the boss-worker contradiction, which give us fertile ground to win the masses to our communist ideas," concluded a veteran comrade who rekindled his revolutionary fervor during the class and the international conference.

Other comrades wrote:

"Dialectical materialism makes even illiterate people into scientists." "The collective discussions were great and it clarified how to build the Party in my work place." "Each time we study Dialectical Materialism we learn something new. The entire universe runs based on the laws of dialectics." "Building the Party is the key to turn what is today a secondary contradiction, workers vs. bosses, into the primary one." "To change things we must sharpen contradictions."

"The school was like an injection of political consciousness and gave us a more scientific basis to win workers to communism. I was very moved seeing workers using Dialectical Materialism to evaluate their political practice. That is how, as Marx said, the ideological struggles become a material force."

"I want to thank PLP for inviting me to the class. The two comrades leading my group were very good. They were patient in allowing each one of us analyze things to get better results. One suggestion is to have more discussions on the contradictions facing us women workers, to make future schools more complete."

Youth on Dialectics

Our recent three-day international cadre school about Dialectical Materialism was certainly a step forward for the Party. At the same time that "the bosses have shit to offer us," this school raised the seriousness of many of our members. Older and younger, newer and more veteran members, all re-educated themselves to more serious study of all of life's processes using Dialectical Materialism as a guide. This short cadre school pointed us to a more profound understanding of all aspects of our lives.

Dialectical Materialism is universal to all processes, whether political, cultural, scientific, personal, etc. A deeper understanding of all the happenings (processes) in our lives should keep us steady and fight subjectivity during the long haul toward communist revolution. But this can only happen if this cadre school is just the beginning. All Party clubs must take up the study of this working class philosophy of ours and try to apply it in practice.

Controversy and struggle brewed during the week about how the classes were grouped. It was decided that the school would break up into two beginner and two intermediate classes. Some comrades thought it would have been better if comrades with various levels of understanding were mixed in the same classes. Some of the young comrades felt they could lead introductory classes for other youth. Teachers would learn and learners would teach. This issue was not resolved.

But everyone thought that the classes were too large and that 8-10 was the best size. Since the Party has not organized such an international cadre school in many years, if ever, mistakes are inevitable. As we continue the study of our philosophy and apply it in our practice, we will do better.

There were a few other suggestions about how to improve future cadre schools. Many comrades, but especially the young people, felt that they needed more time, but, at the same time, the days were too long. One way to solve this problem is to study 365 days a year, which everyone wanted to strive for. But for the young people, future summer projects can solve this problem by focusing on both the study and application of Dialectical Materialism.

It was also suggested that it might be useful to have one entire cadre school try to apply all the laws and categories to just one process. A related suggestion was to have a report of someone's work and try to evaluate it using all the laws and categories.

The key idea is to study and apply this philosophy all the time. We can then put into practice many of these excellent suggestions. We will then also be able to develop a curriculum that includes different levels and different areas for study, both political, cultural and scientific. We are on the right track.

Renewed U.S. Bombing of Iraq Omen of Gulf War II

After a short lull, U.S. and British planes resumed bombing Iraq on August 12. The Iraqis reported an attack on a railroad station 170 miles south of Baghdad. Meanwhile, the Pentagon claimed they bombed "hidden anti-aircraft batteries." In war, truth is the first thing to go, so it's hard to know who's lying during this continuous air war. However, given the Pentagon's history, the Iraqi spokesman's question, "Is a railroad station now a weapon or missile?" is probably closer to the truth.

The bombing of Iraq has resumed for many reasons. One is the recent visit by President Chavez of Venezuela to Saddam Hussein a day before the bombing resumed. This visit, bitterly opposed by the State Dept., was the first one by an elected Western leader since 1991, again breaking the U.S.-imposed isolation of Iraq. However, the more important reason is that the U.S. bosses are preparing for another Desert Storm to guarantee Iraq's oil doesn't fall into the hands of anti-Exxon-Mobil forces (see editorial).

Meanwhile, a recent confidential report by Britain's Ministry of Defense revealed that six of ten missiles launched by the British during the air war against Yugoslavia failed to reach their objectives. Overall, only 2% of the bombs hit their targets. Similar figures have been reported in the past about the U.S./NATO air war.

That air war did "achieve" the death of many innocent civilians (as in Iraq). The effects of the air terror launched against Yugoslavia's civilian population, particularly children, continues. "Children still remember the 78-day air war and every time they hear a plane they tremble and grab their mothers," said a Spanish Red Cross worker stationed in Belgrade, Serbia. "The mothers must explain to them they are passenger, not military planes."

The 1999 air war in the Balkans, Desert Storm I and the continuous bombardment of Iraq have nothing to do with "fighting rogue states," as the State Department claims. The real reason is Exxon-Mobil's drive to control oil and oil routes and pipelines (in the case of the Balkans war).

Nazi Mass Base Built on Racism, Anti-Communism

As we begin the 21st century, workers and youth worldwide must never forget the horrors of Nazi fascism and the heroic struggle waged by the Soviet Red Army to crush them. The Nazis built the most successful mass fascist movement in history. Millions and millions helped them, even among those they murdered and killed. Fascism, Nazi-style, is not an aberration but just the cruelest form of capitalist rule. It can and will happen again.

The controversy around 80-year old Israeli rabbi Ovadia Yosef is not surprising. Yosef, after insulting Palestinians, claims that the Jewish victims of the holocaust died because they were "reincarnations of sinners"(NY TIMES, 8/8). Yosef, spiritual leader of the extreme right-wing Shas party in Israel, represents the Judenrat (Jewish Council), traitors who helped the Nazis carry out the Holocaust. An article in PÁGINA12 (8/8), Argentina, compares Yosef to the Taliban and the fascist priests who helped the Nazis, adding, "In 1939, as soon as the Nazis entered Warsaw, the right-wing Jewish community leaders ran to save their skin. The organization and resistance of the Warsaw ghetto was led by the `Jalutzians' (pioneers) movement, the Bundists (socialists) and the communists: Indeed it was a left-wing rebellion of the Jewish Combatant Organization, not the ritualists. Yosef, a descendant of those who ran, totally agrees with the anti-Semites to deny the victims of the Holocaust."

Nazism is alive and well. Hundreds of terrorist acts by Neo-Nazis in Germany have attacked immigrants and Jews. On August 7, a bomb was placed in front a Jewish man's house (it was disarmed). Weapons and explosive were found in a racist cop's house (he was fired). Neo-nazi activities are so rampant that Jewish organizations are threatening to warn the few thousands Jews remaining in Germany to emigrate. It is therefore important to understand more about the Nazis, and how to fight them.

Nazis in Chile

Two recent books on the Nazis show how widespread the Nazi movement was worldwide. "Los Nazis en Chile" by historian Victor Farias, a Berlin University professor, exposes the links between the Nazis and leading political and religious figures in Chile. From 1934 to 1940, 479 orphaned and poor children were given as guinea pigs to a German Nazi doctor. Those responsible for this horrendous act were important figures among the Jesuits, Salesian and Sacred Heart Catholic denominations.

In 1939, secret documents revealed the Chilean foreign ministry ordered its consulates in Europe to deny visas to Jews.

Both fascist dictator General Pinochet and socialist President Salvador Allende, overthrown by Pinochet, as well as world renown pianist Claudio Arrau all either had links to the Nazis or allowed them to function.

The Nazis and the Chilean ruling class maintained their relationship after the war. Nazi hunters tried for many years to seize Hermann Julius Walter Rauff, a war criminal who invented the mobile gas chambers that killed 97,000 during the Holocaust. Rauff lived in a high-class neighborhood in Santiago for 26 years until he died in 1984. His name was listed in the telephone book. He was arrested on December 3, 1962 in the city of Punta Arenas and freed by Chile's Supreme Court in less than five months. In September 1973, Simon Wiesenthal asked socialist President Allende to change the Supreme Court verdict but Allende said he couldn't do it.

When Allende was overthrown, Rauff worked for the Pinochet regime's DINA (secret police). In 1983, Nazi hunters Wiesenthal and Beate Klarfeld and David Kimche of the Israeli foreign service, asked Pinochet to send Rauff to Germany to face trial for his crimes. Again Rauff was left alone.

Rauff is buried in Santiago. His tombstone reads, "Heil Hitler, Heil Rauff."

Nazi Cops Key to Carry Out Holocaust

Holocaust historian Christopher Browning deals with several aspects of the Holocaust in this book NAZI POLICY: JEWISH LABOR, GERMAN KILLER. One is of particular interest for those who need to understand the racist nature of cops under capitalism. His study of the German Order Police is even more interesting because many of these cops were not lifers but conscripts and this force was a key instrument in deportations, ghetto-clearances and massacres." (FINANCIAL TIMES, 8/6).

This study shows that no matter how "compassionate" cops might be to some of their victims, as a few of them were, in essence that means zilch. "There is a letter [in the book] from a Jewish survivor remembering the kindness of some of the policemen, who tried to help him escape... The unhappy conclusion Browning draws is that even there though there were many individuals who were sickened and distressed by what they did, their scruples counted for nothing. A core of eager and dedicated officers and men, abetted by a larger body of men who did what they were told, reluctantly or not, carried out racist murder on an immense scale."(FT).

The fact that millions helped the German ruling class carry out its fascist Holocaust and fought and died for the Führer more ferociously than any other capitalist army demonstrates the need to fight racism, fascism and anti-communism now and all the time. We in PLP are very conscious of this and always fight every act of racism, every fascist KKK or neo-Nazi scum that today try to terrorize workers and youth. Our message is to not only fight fascism and racism, but also the creator of these monsters--capitalism.

LETTERS

Bosses' cops, Flag at Dems sideshow

A friend and I attended a small sideshow to the Democratic Convention, a "Unity Over Hate" rally of about 250 people in the San Fernando Valley. Big, small or medium, every event in and around this Convention built patriotism to the bosses' interests. It marked the anniversary of a neo-Nazi shoot-up of a nearby Jewish daycare center last year, after which the same gunman killed Joseph Aleto, a Filipino postal worker. The rally was organized by Congressman Brad Sherman, who hogged the limelight to showcase a federal "hate crimes" bill he's sponsoring, along with other liberal politicians and the LA County Human Relations Commission. The "Million Mom March" group, which mainly pushes for "sensible gun control" legislation, brought the most people.

Most of the crowd wanted to hear the Aleto family and other relatives of hate crime victims, but first there were two dozen politicians and celebrities all wanting to toot their own horns. Worst of all, two of the featured speakers were LA Police Chief Bernard Parks and LA County District Attorney Gil Garcetti. They and their departments commit more hate crimes against black and Latin workers each day than everyone else put together! When I said this to my friend and a few other people, they all agreed.

From beginning to end, the rally pushed one political theme: Americans are all united in our diversity, except for a few crazy people who commit hate crimes. This was not an anti-racist rally--the word "racism" was not even used once!--but rather a patriotic rally to build the Democratic Party.

As one politician put it, "This is what we do when we salute the flag--we are dedicated to liberty and justice for all." They tried to get us to take home posters saying "Pass Hate Crimes Legislation" with a picture of the American flag. The rabbi who gave the invocation even used his so-called "prayer" to promote Gore-Lieberman by celebrating the move toward "more inclusion in national politics" that had happened last week. Next thing you know, he and the rest of the politicians will be blessing the mass destruction of Iraq in the name of "stopping hate crimes" by Saddam Hussein, or some such thing.

It was frustrating to be at this rally without having the base in the organizations represented there that would have made it possible to confront and expose the hypocritical racist cops and politicians. We have a lot of work to do.

West Coast Comrade

PLP International Conference a Big Hit

A big family debating ideas

The conference was a great experience for me. I was surprised to know PLP existed in Turkey. Meeting new people that share your ideas is great. We were a big family debating ideas, and sharing them. The cadre school taught me a lot. I can understand dialectical materialism and the Party's line better. The people who participated in the conference, the cadre school, security and the food did a great job; thank you. I'm more open after the great experience I had during the week, and I grew greatly as a person. Viva PLP!

Cindy

More Open to the party's ideas

The conference was great. It made me feel so good that so many people shared their ideas with me. Seeing so many people from different states and countries made me feel more confident about the Party. Now after the conference and the cadre school I feel more open to the Party's ideas and more committed to it. The people in charge of the food, the conference, the cadre school and security did a great job. Thanks to all the comrades who made this great experience possible and congratulations to the people who came to these events and learned as much as I did. Keep up the good work and fight for communism!

Quinn

A taste of communism

My experience in the conference was great. We had a little taste of what living in a communist society would be like. I learned about a struggle for the Party around the world. It was inspiring hear about them. Although I thought it was a short time to learn about dialectical materialism and the Party's line, this experience made me grow more towards--and inspired me to work harder for--our Party. Congratulations to all the comrades who took part in the conference and cadre school. Long Live Communism

Jane

Better Equipped for the Struggle

When we discussed the role and the importance of the military work in our party I realized we hadn't discussed it in our club and that we remain unaware of our options about the military. I brought it up at our next meeting and we plan to discuss what the work in the military is like and how we "can be all we can be" for the working class.

The conference helped me analyze my work and better understand capitalism. It defined what fascism is, sharpened my perspective about cops and their role in a class society. I feel better equipped to struggle with people. Also, it helped me analyze my first few months of organizing in the classroom and in a mass organization. I had decent CHALLENGE sales and was good at arguing politics with teachers and the club leader but I neglected making friends and earning the trust of my classmates. It was a weakness that made my work less fruitful. This term I hope to take what I learned at the conference to continue arguing for the working class, deepen my relationship with the classmates I met last term and make new friends along the way.

Sometimes being a small Party can make you feel isolated and overwhelmed but seeing workers from around the world, and hearing about the circumstances that others have to work in, strongly inspired me and made me realize I could be doing much much more.

The workshops were great. They enabled us to learn from the mistakes and achievements of Party members nationally and internationally. Most important for me is to take our raised inspirations and what we learned and apply it to our work.

Neo

LA shows mass base needed

People have come to LA with lots of good intentions--a long wish list for a better world--but lots of confusion about how to get there. For example, people demonstrated to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, but no speaker, no leaflet, no demonstrator that I spoke to, said exactly HOW to free him. At some point, we need a plan about how to get people out of prison.

Another example is non-violence vs. violence. Non-violence was assumed because it was a pre-condition for having legal marches. It wasn't debated so that neither the arguments for non-violence nor for revolutionary violence have been sharpened even to the point of say Martin Luther King vs. Malcolm X, or Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet."

The only thing that keeps us from leading all the marchers with our chants is our small number. The people around us readily take up "Policia, cochina, racista y asesino," "The cops, the courts, the Ku Klux Klan, all are part of the bosses' plan," but we don't have enough people to be in the front, back and middle of the march.

I think the main opportunity for us in LA this week is being around large groups of people who don't agree with us. We have much to learn from a small group of us participating in a meeting of say 50 people or a march of 5,000.

The young people in the Party are awesome. They love the Party and its ideas and hate the misleaders.

A friend of the Party

Has Slavery Been Abolished?

I am a new member of PLP and was recently introduced to the Party's pamphlet, "Prison Labor--Fascism U.S. Style." It hit close to home because I have a loved one currently serving time. Over the years I've watched him suffer due to forced prison labor so I quickly mailed him the pamphlet. He received it but lived in fear of getting caught with it; any inmate attempting to organize a protest or demonstration will be written up on a major infraction, causing them to lose up to 180 days of "good time." However, he did read it and passed it on to a friend.

A short time later I went to a "celebration" at the prison called "Juneteenth," which commemorates the end of slavery (in Texas). The inmates and their guests were enjoying the food and speeches. Then to my surprise and delight, one inmate got up and made a speech on prison labor that reflected the Party's line! I discovered this was the friend who had received the pamphlet from my husband!

I hope many other inmates get to read it because then they will understand how the bosses use them to keep wages low for all workers, and guarantee bigger profits for themselves. This form of super-exploitation is the reason for longer sentences and "three strikes" laws. Prisons-for-profit are the fastest growing industry in the U.S. Just today (Aug. 10) my local paper reported, "The number of people behind bars in the U.S. broke the two million mark last year, a record high despite the slowest prison population growth rate in 20 years." This must mean that more people are serving longer sentences.

These prisoners have organized hunger strikes, and, in the month of August, are boycotting the prison's phone system that makes tons of money ripping off the inmates and their families. I want to applaud the work that the prisoners are doing, but say that we can stop this exploitation only with communist revolution. I think that we should refuse to celebrate "Juneteenth" because slavery is not dead. It is happening here and now. And we definitely need to insure these incarcerated workers receive our paper CHALLENGE by any means necessary! I encourage any CHALLENGE readers to do the same if they know someone in prison.

A new comrade

`Summer School' takes to streets

I want to share an example of how working in youth programs can help build working class consciousness. I direct a summer program for youth in grades 2 through 10. We try to develop academic skills and a career interest and have sports and cultural activities. A local activist group, "Homes Not Jails," occupied a vacant property near our summer camp to demand that the property be turned over to a family who needed housing. We discussed the civil rights struggles and organized class work to encourage small group cooperation.

I felt our summer program students could learn a lot from the Homes Not Jails occupation, especially a sense of the historic and current struggles against racism and about basic workers' rights. We spent the better part of the afternoon discussing housing as a right, about the unfairness of homelessness and how we could support the occupation.

We made posters with a variety of slogans on them. I wanted our 40 children to march in front of the occupation, but some of the counselors and teaching assistants feared doing that without first getting parental permission and a parade permit. A vigorous debate ensued and we decided to march holding the posters from the site of the summer program to an elementary school so the students would have some experience participating in social action. I think that more such education could help lay a foundation for youth becoming active in the revolutionary movement.

Red Director

Page 766 of 772

CHALLENGE October 4, 2000

Deep in the Heart of Texas: Students Rip Racism

a name="Editorial: Clinton-Gore’s OIL Is More than an Electoral Ploy">">"ditorial: Clinton-Gore’s OIL Is More than an Electoral Ploy

U.S. Air Sorties Against Iraq: More than During Vietnam War

Spread MTA Strike to Bay Area Transit Workers

MTA Strikers Welcome Student Support

Bosses Battle For Control Of LA!

a name="Workers’ Power Is "Illegal" Under Capitalist Democracy">">"orkers’ Power Is "Illegal" Under Capitalist Democracy

Union Bosses Win Big At IAM Convention

Defense Contractor Raytheon Makes War on Workers

Stop Attacks against Immigrant Workers!

Morristown Politicians Beat Fascist Drums

Local 371 Donates $1,000 to Anti-Fascist Fighters

Bosses Have Shaky Hold On Amnesty Marchers

Postmodernism: Virtual Idealism

Knowledge Indispensable To Organize Change

Hydrogen Bomb Designer, FBI Informer,

Wen Ho Lee Is No Friend of the Working Class

The appearance and essence of Wen Ho Lee

How To Fight Racism

LETTERS

Amnesty Marchers Embrace CHALLENGE

a name="‘Get In It To Win It!’"></">‘G"t In It To Win It!’

Kicking Around Communist Politics

Fired and Fired Up

Peru: Is U.S. Playing Both Sides?

a name="‘We Must Get Rid Of Capitalism!’"></" />"We Must Get Rid Of Capitalism!’

CHALLENGE Sept. 27, 2000

Bosses' Thirst for Higher Oil Profits Lead to War:Workers Pay Through Nozzle NowWith Blood Later

Blair Diverting Mass Anger to `Take Back Iraq'

Capitalist Dogfight Over Control of OPEC

MTA STRIKERS STEER MILITANT COURSE

MTA Strikers, Riders: Don't Take Side on Bosses' Dogfight!

MUNI Bosses...DOWNLOAD THIS!

LA Teachers Must Fight Racist Attacks Agains Youth

Part II: Liberal Literacy ProposalsRulers Want Fascism As the `Standards'

JUSTICE FOR PRINCE JONES!

FIRED PLP TEACHER PUTS RACIST BOARD ON TRIAL

Boosting the Circulation of CHALLENGE

Capitalism: The Highest Stage of the Oppression of WomenCommunism = Jobs; Capitalism = Prostitution

CUBA: Communism and Capitalism Don't Mix

Pro and anti President Alberto Fujimori supporters fight each other

LETTERS

Proud To Be A GI `Neath the Red Flag

Move to Cheap Labor Not Just From U.S.

Rap Music: Pro-Boss or Pro-Worker?

Big (Oil) Fish Eat Small Ones

`Greens' Like Red Views

`White Skin Privilege': A Liberal Myth

Health Care Needs Red Transfusion

Is the New Ruling Party of Mexico Nationalist?

CHALLENGE Sept. 20, 2000

Anti-Racist Fight for Their Students:`OUR STUDENTS DESERVE BETTER!'

Fascism Rears Its Ugly Head from Morristown, NJ, to Philadelphia

Clinton's Liberal Road towards Nazi-Like Laws

Support Anti-Racists Arrested for Fighting Neo-Nazis

"GOOD COP/BAD COP": WAGE PROGRESSION MUST STOP!

`DEMOCRACY' OR WORKERS' POWER?

Bosses' Dogfight Over How to Best Exploit LA Transit Workers

Gasoline Price Hike Leads to Blockade of Europe Roads

Colombia: Workers Sacrificed for Oil/Cocaine Profits

Preparing for Desert Storm 2

Bosses Pushes Bush and Cheney to Break with Bodybag/Vietnam Syndrome

Smash Racist Police Brutality--Justice for Prince C. Jones

Nader Steers Protestors Towards Bosses' Electoral Trap

Quote of the Week

Unity Was Best Medicine for Hospital Strikers

Imperialism Program for Africa: Billions in Profits, Pennies for AIDS

There Won't Be Any Real Justice for Victims of Fascism Under Capitalism

Dollarization of Ecuador Won't Change Misery of Workers

ALL Workers Need Revolution

Bosses' `Boom' On Workers' Backs

Are Whites `Privileged'?

Comrades Are Life-Savers

Postal Workers Get Stamped On

Red Values Only Hope for Workers

We Were the Talk of the TheatreRocking the Cradle

Rap Gets Bad Rap

CHALLENGE, September 13, 2000

Editorial:

Bosses' Thirst for Higher Oil Profits Lead to War:
Workers Pay Through Nozzle Now
With Blood Later

Part II: Liberal Literacy Proposals
Rulers Want Fascism As the `Standards'

Capitalism: The Highest Stage of the Oppression of Women
Communism = Jobs; Capitalism = Prostitution

Anti-Racist Fight for Their Students:
`OUR STUDENTS DESERVE BETTER!'

We Were the Talk of the Theatre
Rocking the Cradle