1. MARCH ON MAY DAY
   FIGHT FOR WORKERS' POWER
   1. Workers and Youth Fight Back
2. CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST FOR FASCIST CUBAN EXILES
3. FIERCE CLASS STRUGGLE SOLD OUT
   YES, WE CAN WIN JANITORS TO MARCH ON MAY DAY
4. PHILLY HOSP. BECOMING MAY DAY ORGANIZERS
5. HAITIAN WORKERS MARCH:
   `STREET CRIMES UNIT=NYPD DEATH SQUAD'
6. How Capitalist Medicine Is Dangerous to Your Health: Three Case Histories
   1. Case #1: Diabetes + Capitalism = Coma
   2. Case #2: Staff Cuts Nearly Kill Baby
   3. Case #3: Early Discharge Can Cause AIDS
   4. "Serve the People"
7. NY/LAPD-STYLE TERROR
   HITS AGENTINIAN WORKERS
8. WHO REALLY WON THE BALKAN WAR?
9. A RED DAWN CAN GROW OUT OF A DARK NIGHT
10. May Day and the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the International Working Class
11. LETTERS
    1. `WORKERS NEED THE WHOLE COAT...
    2. CONN. STUDENTS NEED PLP
    3. REFORM CAN'T END SWEATSHOPS
    4. HARVARD HILLEL SINGS NAZI TUNE

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MARCH ON MAY DAY
FIGHT FOR WORKERS' POWER

Workers worldwide will be marching on May Day 2000. Progressive Labor Party will be proudly waving the red flag of communism in its marches in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and in marches in several Latin American countries. It is no exaggeration to talk of the period between last May Day and today as "the best of times and the worst of times!" It is a world of sharpening contradictions.

* Even with its latest "corrections," when compared to last year, the stock market has gone through the roof. So too has the prison population. A world record two million are now jailed in the USA.

*A recent Wall Street Journal article claimed "peace has broken out" throughout the world, with fewer wars than ever in recent memory. Yet India and Pakistan test atomic bombs. Today, thanks to the U.S./NATO 78-day air war on Yugoslavia, you would be lucky to see even a water-rat swimming in the Danube. Only last summer it was Europe's busiest waterway. Today Russian imperialists have once again reduced Grozny to rubble, along with other Chechnya towns. And the U.S. and British imperialists continue their genocidal embargo and virtually daily bombing of Iraq.

* The U.S. boasts more billionaires than ever. Simultaneously, the Tribunal on Africa, meeting in February, asked if there would be another generation of Africans, concluded that --because of poverty and preventable disease--for parts of Africa, the answer is "No!"

Workers and Youth Fight Back

This last year also saw growing numbers of workers and students battling some aspect of this rotting system. In South Carolina, nearly 50,000 demonstrated against the slaveocracy's confederate flag. Hundreds of black and white longshoremen battled the cops there to fight union-busting. In Seattle, thousands marched against the World Trade Organization. Boeing engineers and technicians led a five-week strike filled with growing solidarity between machinists and the strikers, and growing treachery by the IAM leadership. In New York City, workers marched and fought against police terror.

In Washington, D.C. tens of thousands demonstrated against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, demanding they stop impoverishing the world's workers. AFL-CIO leaders blamed China for low wages, not the world's bosses--including U.S. outfits like Boeing--who exploit Chinese workers, as well as hundreds of thousands of prisoners in U.S. jails who are paid even less.

In Los Angeles, workers and students marched and walked out against racist Proposition 21, which will imprison more teenagers, especially black and Latin youth. Meanwhile, liberal politicians say "vote" to stop fascism.

Over 8,000 LA janitors struck, stopped scabs, picketed and marched in a month-long struggle against the richest landlords in Southern California. When a cop from the Rampart police station attacked one of the women strikers, her brothers and sisters planned a march to the police station. This inspired other workers and youth to prepare to join them. The union leaders called it off, instead diverting workers to march elsewhere against the building owners.

The worldwide anger of workers and youth against the capitalist system in crisis spilled onto the streets as well. The UNAM student strike in Mexico lasted almost 10 months, with mass mobilizations every week against the planned school cutbacks. Battles against attacks by the government's fascist goons continue today. From El Salvador to Brazil, workers have led mass strikes against privatization and murderous cuts in services. In China, 20,000 miners struck against the privatization eliminating their jobs.

Clearly workers and youth are unhappy, angry and fed up. The crucial question before us is this: to whom do we entrust our future? Whose leadership will we follow in the coming greater battles against racism, exploitation and imperialist wars? Progressive Labor Party is determined not to abandon the working class to the Democratic Party, the AFL-CIO leadership, nationalist politicians and other outright agents of the bosses! We will fight tooth and nail in every boss's organization.

In times of crisis, the working class, led by its communist party, has taken up the challenge, and twice in the last century has seized power and built a society run by the workers. That it was reversed, that socialism retained too many features of capitalism, doesn't change the fact that communists led workers to take power. And communists, especially the heroic Soviet Red Army under Stalin, led workers to smash Hitler's fascism during World War II.

Capitalism is a deadly system, serving only the needs of the capitalist bosses by attacking the world's workers. It can't be reformed to meet the workers' needs. There are no lesser evils, "good" corporations, or "friendly" cops! Racist, fascist terror and war are the "riches" that the profit system "bestows" on our class!

PLP's long-term goal is for workers to take power once more, this time to destroy capitalism once and for all and build communism! Communism means production for the needs of the international working class, not the bosses' profits...from each according to commitment, to each according to need. This is not an easy fight. Yet, even in this period we are growing modestly. And we can continue to grow! Join the PLP. Help make it a mass Party of the working class, a Party steeled in fighting and giving leadership in small and large battles against the bosses--in the factories, unions, schools, churches and other mass organizations.

The only sure path for victory for the working class is fighting for communism. Each new member of PLP, each new CHALLENGE subscriber, becomes a step forward on the long march to working-class liberation. Each member is a fighter against racism and imperialism, a potential leader of the working class. Join us! Fight to put the future in the hands of the workers.

CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST FOR FASCIST CUBAN EXILES

After the kidnappers of little Elián González defied the federal government for months, after fascist Cuban thugs made U.S. imperialism look like a pitiful, helpless giant, Attorney-General Janet Reno ordered an INS tactical squad to seize him and reunite him with his father. Many right-wing Cuban exiles and their conservative allies in Congress cried foul. "I thought this country was a democracy"; "these are tactics are only used in totalitarian countries like Cuba," they complained. Even racist NYC Mayor Giuliani got into the act, criticizing the raid. What gall! This is the same Giuliani who has defended and encouraged the NYPD to declare open hunting season on black and Latin workers and youth.

Even after the armed raid ordered by Reno and Clinton, the kidnappers have received very little sympathy from most people except for a few Republican fascists and the hardcore supporters of the Cuban exile leadership in Miami. Most people justified the INS raid when they saw Elián united with his dad. People also saw through the kidnappers, who used anti-communism to cover their economic and political greed.

As we've said previously, apparently the main section of the U.S. ruling class--represented by Clinton--has decided that the Miami exile leadership is now more an obstacle to, than a benefit for, their interests. While European and Canadian capitalists are investing in the growing Cuban tourist industry and in other joint capitalist enterprises with the Cuban government, the powerful Miami exile lobby makes it almost impossible for U.S. businesses to do the same.

The media deluge is ignoring another aspect of this kidnapping. The hard-line Cuban American National Foundation, the most powerful exile group and one of the most powerful lobbies in the U.S., suffered a big defeat. This group, founded by millionaire Mas Canosa, ran U.S. policy towards Cuba for almost 40 years. Mas Canosa became strong through its connections to the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations. He also made millions from juicy building contracts awarded by crooked politicians in the Miami-Dade County government (many of them Cuban exiles in Mas Canosa's pockets).

Mas Canosa died in 1997 and his son José Mas Santo took over. But other right-wing exiles refused to recognize the son's leadership. There was a constant fight among them for control of the Foundation. Mas Santos saw the Elián case as a way to win this power struggle. He financed the kidnappers and tried to use his Washington connection to prevent the boy's father from reclaiming him. When this failed, Mas Santos was forced to confront the federal government. His side lost.

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, who leads one of the moderate exile groups in Miami and opposes the U.S. embargo on Cuba, attacked the Foundation group, saying that no dissident voice is allowed. "They control the mass media in Miami," he charged, "and they use anti-Castroism as a cover to control Miami and the money from the contracts with the city." Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo also said that the silent majority of Cuban exiles in Miami opposes the right-wingers and wanted Elián united with his dad.

The Cuban workers in Miami who have followed these crooked fascists may have learned a great lesson about capitalism: anti-communism and belief in capitalist democracy are deadly for most workers. To side with one group of bosses against another won't win you any friends among other workers. For years, Haitian immigrants have been deported and jailed in the Krome federal concentration camp outside Miami with no protest from the right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami. This city's poverty rate is among the highest in the country, particularly among children. For years, black workers have been brutalized and murdered by cops in Miami, many of whom are of Cuban origin. Again, Cuban exiles have said nothing. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

FIERCE CLASS STRUGGLE SOLD OUT
YES, WE CAN WIN JANITORS TO MARCH ON MAY DAY

LOS ANGELES, CA., April 24 -- In the final days of the janitors' strike, many workers signed up for the May Day March in San Francisco.

When we called workers about the details of the march, one worker said, "Look, I want to go, but I have my doubts, because some of the union leaders say the police could arrest us or attack us, and that the union won't be responsible for us. I'd like you to come tomorrow to the picket line to talk to our group of strikers."

A Party member and two other workers went and boldly explained the need to march together with garment workers, bus drivers, aerospace workers and anti-racist youth, people marching against police brutality and with communists from PLP. The strikers gave them the megaphone to speak and answer the strikers' questions. One worker came close to a comrade and asked "do you have material in Spanish n Dialectics?" "Absolutely," said the comrade. When this discussion ended, more than 40 workers re-affirmed their desire to come to the march.

One rank-and-file leader from another building said, "The list is growing. We better be ready with buses!" At the contract ratification meeting, some workers lined up to sign up for May Day.

During the strike, hundreds of janitors read CHALLENGE. Thousands read the Party's leaflets. Many called the office for information about the May Day March and the Party. Many of these workers can become leaders, not only of the strike, but revolutionary leaders as well. The opportunities we have after this strike show us that, by fighting for our ideas, we can build the Party and fight for communist revolution in the mass movement. It's a long hard road and we're marching on it.

On the other hand, this is how the strike ended:

"Si se puede" (Yes, we can!) chanted the leaders of the Janitors' union. "No se puede" (No you can't) loudly chanted many janitors. The leaders were telling the workers about the "last, best" contract offer by the bosses. They asked the members to ratify the new contract. The workers received about half the increase the union had demanded. The union leaders had promised this struggle would raise the janitors out of poverty. Not true. The workers had been fighting for an increase of $3 an hour over three years. They now average $6.80 an hour. Some received $1.90 and others got $1.50 over three years. In some areas, sick days were taken away.

The day before in a similar meeting many workers yelled "sellouts, traitors" at the union leaders. The majority was not satisfied with the contract offer after three weeks on strike. But the majority voted for it because they didn't see a serious strategy to win more or to continue the strike.

However, the strike experience can be an advance for many workers. During the marches and picket lines, thousands of women and men heroically showed their courage and strength in the fight against the bosses. Dozens of scabs and abusive supervisors got a little of what they deserve. Hundreds of workers helped lead daily struggles, from keeping peoples' spirits up to organizing political discussions, to spreading garbage and dog food in the buildings where the biggest bankers and law firms have their offices, and preventing scabs from entering the buildings.

The strike exposed the police as the first line of terrorists for the bosses and their state. During the strike, the police arrested and beat many workers. We never saw them arrest any bloodsucking boss for refusing to negotiate with the workers. When a cop from the Rampart Division beat a woman striker senseless, her enraged brothers and sisters planned to march on the Rampart police station, but the union leaders, rather than upping the ante, re-directed them elsewhere.

The cops' role is to protect the bosses and their property. The bosses use their hired thugs for racist terror to keep workers' wages low and the system of wage slavery in place. The social-fascist union leaders played their role, diverting the angry workers away from a political target--the state apparatus of the ruling class--to maintain a strictly economist outlook.

Under capitalism, the wage system is a chain around the workers. The bosses only pay us what's needed to get us to work so we can produce more profits for them. It's a big lie that we're going to rise up out of poverty under the wage system.

The power to change the situation is in the workers,' relying on themselves, not on liberal politicians and their buddies who head the AFL-CIO. During the strike there was a parade of Democratic Party politicians from Jesse Jackson to California House Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, to Cardinal Mahony and even Vice-President Gore. Gore is part of the Clinton administration that brags they've deported more workers than any other administration, including the 1,500 people who've died trying to cross the border in the last five years. Clinton and Gore and the biggest bosses they represent are also responsible for the deaths of thousands of workers in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Colombia. And they've thrown millions of workers in Mexico and Central America into deep poverty. They are not the workers' friends!

One of the most important lessons of the strike is the need to destroy this capitalist system and build a new communist society. Then workers will have power and production will be planned to meet the needs of the international working class, not to enrich the bosses. This means that the janitors' struggle continues. It won't stop here.

Many workers signed up for PLP's May Day March in San Francisco and to learn more about PLP. These workers are open to seeing way beyond this contract fight and to joining the long-term struggle to destroy the fascist bosses and their wage slavery with communist revolution.

PHILLY HOSP. BECOMING MAY DAY ORGANIZERS

PHILADELPHIA, April 23 -- "This shit gets you wound up!" said Bill holding this week's CHALLENGE. Bill is a long time reader who's never marched on May Day. "Maybe it will get you so wound up that you'll come to Washington this year," said Fred. "Maybe," Bill replied. "Jane's been all over my ass about coming!"

This conversation may be crude, but it represents some modest, yet significant political developments in building May Day at Jefferson Hospital here. Making May Day a mass activity won't happen by one organizer bringing everyone. It can happen, however, when many workers become May Day organizers. Jane is one of them.

This year is the first time Jane sold many May Day tickets. She's gone further in explaining to workers why they should march. This year workers approached Fred and said, "Jane told me about May Day and I think I'll come," instead of, "Jane told me to ask you about May Day." Jane's efforts are helped by the development of several other workers who are marching for the first time and are bringing other workers.

We also learned how to better link May Day to daily struggles--from the ongoing contract negotiations to the struggle of part-timers for full-time jobs--as well as relate it to building ties at work. For example, in all of our on-the-job struggles workers complain about the many divisions among us. May Day, on the other hand, represents the interests of the united international working class. Participating in the March helps to break down these divisions.

The current contract negotiations represent the sharpest attack on workers here since the union was organized. Several negotiating team members have reported the discussions from the meetings to the union members. This has become very controversial and has raised good questions.

During the last contract talks, the Local 1199C union leaders told the negotiating team members NOT to reveal anything to the workers. The union leaders said that this would cause "trouble" among the workers. Some of the members figured the only "trouble" worrying the union leaders was trouble for the bosses, and so they continued to report directly to the workers.

As workers learn more about the negotiation process the basis exists for them to understand its limits, how this process is the bosses' way to curb class struggle. Once the day-to-day fights on the job and the principles of May Day are linked, building for the March becomes more significant. It helps workers more clearly understand the need for class struggle and the long-term outlook of communist revolution. In many ways, a busload of Jefferson workers at May Day can be more important than all the negotiation sessions combined!

HAITIAN WORKERS MARCH:
`STREET CRIMES UNIT=NYPD DEATH SQUAD'

I attended the march called by the Haitian Justice Committee against police killings. The majority of the marchers were working class Haitians, with many high school and college students. It began at Grand Army Plaza and went over the Brooklyn Bridge to City Hall. I would estimate there were between 5,000 and 8,000 people. Many joined the march along the route, and there was a lot of support from bystanders. It was lively and spirited, with whistles, music and colorful banners, including one saying, "Street Crime Unit = NYPD Death Squad."

Marched through downtown Brooklyn, thousands lined the sidewalks, many applauding the march. Passing by some factories, workers at the windows gave the clenched fist and shouted support. Marchers angrily yelled at the hundreds of cops walking alongside us, warning them of retribution the next time they murder a Patrick Dorismond or an Amadou Diallo.

I marched alongside a sanitation worker who energetically chanted "Giuliani Must Go!" We talked about how police brutality, especially against people of color, was rampant throughout the U.S. I offered the opinion that this wouldn't stop as long as capitalism,

with its inequality and poverty and the need of those on top to keep those at the bottom in place, prevailed. He agreed and took a copy of CHALLENGE to read.

Manhattan Teacher

How Capitalist Medicine Is Dangerous to Your Health: Three Case Histories

Good health care depends on how services are organized, facilities staffed and the attitudes of the people who provide care. "Serve the people" was the slogan of the Chinese Communists. In the first 25 years following the 1949 communist revolution, Chinese medical and public health workers brought about the most dramatic increase in life expectancy, and the steepest decline in death rates ever seen in any population in history. This stemmed from a revolution in attitudes and distribution of limited resources according to need, not because of high-tech hospitals.

In capitalist China, infant death rates among infants are rising again, now that free services have been eliminated. The following cases are from a major U.S. "public" hospital, but they could be from ANY major U.S. "public" hospital.

Case #1: Diabetes + Capitalism = Coma

A 60-year-old man was admitted with a new diagnosis of diabetes. His doctor prescribed insulin and a new diet. Ordinarily, the "Diabetic Teaching Team" (DTT) would then have seen him. The DTT is a group of nurses who go floor to floor, instructing new diabetics how to give themselves the proper dose of insulin, draw their own blood and check their own sugar level. The patient then understands how to manage the disease. But the administration eliminated the DTT two years ago, saying the floor nurses could perform this task. But the floor nurses were already overworked with other new responsibilities, all in the name of cost-cutting and "efficiency."

After only 24 hours, the patient was sent home where he lived alone. He gave himself insulin as he thought he'd been instructed by the floor nurses. Two days later, his daughter broke into his apartment and found him unconscious. He was rushed to the hospital and into intensive care, diagnosed with dangerously low blood sugar from insulin overdose. He remained in a "persistent vegetative state" (coma) and was sent to a special hospital for long-term care.

Case #2: Staff Cuts Nearly Kill Baby

A young woman having her first baby did well in labor but had a hard time pushing the baby out. After about 2_ hours, her doctors called for a Cesarean Section, but there were no nurses because a reduced staff was busy handling trauma cases. She pushed for another two hours. When the baby was delivered, it was almost dead and had to be resuscitated. Only time will tell if there was permanent brain damage.

Case #3: Early Discharge Can Cause AIDS

A woman was admitted to the maternity unit for evaluation. An HIV test was requested. The special team handling HIV had more patients than it could handle. Her blood was drawn even though the counselors had not spoken to her. She went into labor and delivered her baby. The early discharge program sent her home before doctors discovered she was HIV-positive. She wasn't notified until she had been home breast-feeding her baby for a week. The risk of her baby being infected with HIV, during delivery or through breast-feeding, and dying of AIDS is over three times what it would have been had the HIV result been known before delivery.

"Serve the People"

Honest self-criticism, anti-elitism and serving the working class are communist ideas. They reached a pinnacle in Chinese hospitals during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. These ideas inspired health care workers around the world.

As fascism develops in the U.S., we see the opposite. Mistakes are covered up. Decisions once made with collective input from nurses, therapists and interns, are now made in a dictatorial style by head doctors. Hospital budgets are cut to the bone and selfish attitudes are pushed.

We must fight hospital bosses who want to remove life-saving services from our patients. We must struggle against the insidious growth of anti-patient and anti-worker attitudes among health professionals. But none of those fights will lead anywhere unless they are connected to the overall fight for working class power. When the workers hold power, "Serve the People" will be the order of the day.

NY/LAPD-STYLE TERROR
HITS AGENTINIAN WORKERS

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, April 24 -- Police terror is not unique to New York or Los Angeles. Workers here got a taste of it last week while demonstrating outside Congress against a labor "reform" bill. Forty-nine workers were arrested and 30 were injured during the cops' attack, 14 of them hospitalized after being hit by rubber bullets. What made this attack different was the "Rodney King" effect--someone videotaped five cops clubbing a worker over and over while he lay on the floor with blood pouring from his head. One cop was filmed while taking a knife from a demonstrator and slashing the worker's back with it. The outrage was so widespread that 12 cops were suspended.

The 500 demonstrators were part of the truckers' and sanitation workers' union federation, which will be severely affected by the "reform," ending industry-wide contracts and allowing each company to negotiate separately with its workers. In late February, 18,000 of these workers demonstrated in Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires' main square, while the Lower House of Congress passed the bill. Last week's protest was to demand that the Senate reject it.

The reform bill was introduced after the International Monetary Fund demanded that the new government of President Rua reduces Argentina's "high labor cost" in exchange for a $7.4 billion loan.

The truckers' federation head, Hugo Moyano, is trying to portray himself as a defender of workers' rights. He broke with the leading CGT (the Central Labor Federation), led by the opposition Peronista Party, whose Senators already approved the bill. Moyano denounced the CGT leaders when they refused to organize a general strike against the bill.

But union leaders in Argentina are no different from union leaders worldwide. The current CGT boss, Rodolfo Daer, used to lead the Argentinian Workers Movement (MTA) and attacked the old leadership of the CGT for not opposing a similar labor reform bill in 1996 when Peronist Menem was the Argentina's President. Moyano succeeded Daer as head of the MTA, and now considers his union faction the "real" CGT.

Just as cops serve and protect the bosses, union leaders also serve them by keeping workers tied to capitalism. Sometimes these hacks sound militant, like Moyano, but they end up betraying workers. Why? Because reformists function within capitalism, according to the bosses' laws, which are geared to enforce the profit system..

This is the opposite of communist workers, who are active in unions and other mass organizations and participate in all workers' struggles precisely to raise the idea that capitalists and workers have irreconcilable contradictions. Bosses thrive on exploiting workers. The only way to end this is by destroying their system, with its police terror, and building a society where workers rule: communism.

WHO REALLY WON THE BALKAN WAR?

A year ago, Clinton and other NATO imperialists were dropping "humanitarian" bombs on Yugoslavia, a relatively poor country of 11 million people. To justify this aggression, the liberal media told horror stories about Yugoslav president Milosevic, whom they dubbed the new "Hitler" of the moment. The other side of this hypocritical accusation was the supposed U.S./NATO rescue mission to save Kosovar Albanians from Milosevic's brutality. But what the Clinton-U.S. "rescue mission" accomplished was to show Milosevic as an amateur in genocide. Milosevic had made thousands of Kosovars homeless. Clinton drove out hundreds of thousands, terrorized millions throughout Yugoslavia, and wiped out huge chunks of the Yugoslav infrastructure in the process.

From the beginning, CHALLENGE exposed Washington's big lies and printed the truth about this air war. U.S. rulers' immediate goal was to keep Milosevic & Co. out of the oil pipeline business. Their long-range strategic purpose was to prevent a Russian-Yugoslav alliance which would spur the revival of Russian imperialism. Despite their overwhelming tactical superiority, Clinton and his masters failed on both counts. Milosevic still holds power and continues to make oil deals. And U.S.-Russian imperialist rivalry is heating up all over the world. New oil wars, possibly soon, are in the cards.

Clinton's bombs seem to have accomplished little more than a postponement of the inevitable. Milosevic's plans to build an oil empire call for a pipeline network from the Russian-dominated Caspian to Skopje in Macedonia, then north to Pancevo in Serbia, and west to Croatia's Adriatic coast. This scheme would enable Milosevic to make billions as a middleman supplying western European oil needs. The key to the operation is the construction of the Skopje-Pancevo link.

The destruction wrought by NATO may have slowed down this grand design. There seems to be little mention lately of the Skopje-Pancevo connection. However, Milosevic has become an energy partner with Russia, through the intermediary of Hellenic Petroleum, owned largely by the Russian oil giant Lukoil. Hellenic is building a pipeline from Skopje to Thessaloniki in Greece. In late January, Greek and Macedonian ministers celebrated the completion of its first ten kilometers, gloating about "a reply to those [e.g. Clinton & Co. -ed.] who disputed the agreement" (Athens News Agency, 1/21). Hellenic plans to export electric power to Kosovo.

As for the U.S., one of its planned Caspian export pipelines seems to be going ahead; a second never had a chance. According to Stratfor's Global Intelligence Update, the route from Burgas, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea through Skopje to Albania, is likely to be built. But there's a big drawback for Exxon Mobil: Rockefeller's rival, BP Amoco, will use this pipeline to ship Russian oil. Protecting the line would mean a permanent U.S. military presence in Macedonia, Albania, and Kosovo. U.S. rulers, whose main wing represents Exxon Mobil, still haven't reached unity about what to do on this question.

U.S. oil moneybags confront a further strategic dilemma. Clinton had made a false promise to build a pipeline from the Caspian to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. This plan would avoid Russia and Iran and at the same time tempt Turkish rulers with a cut of the action. But it's too expensive to build, and Clinton probably knew this all along. Oil is far more profitable, especially for Exxon Mobil, when it comes from the Persian Gulf instead of the Caspian, and can therefore be shipped anywhere by sea under the U.S. Navy's protection. But not building the costly Turkish pipeline could politically damage U.S. imperialism's carefully built relationship with the Turkish fascists, whose support Washington needs for its overall Middle Eastern oil goals.

So after all the bombing, U.S. rulers face the same contradictions they went to war to eliminate. The main difference is that the basic conflicts have sharpened as a result of Clinton's "problem-solving." Under their new president, Putin, Russian bosses have served notice that although they may not yet be ready to tackle the U.S. head-on, they intend to mount a challenge for world supremacy. They already cancelled their "no-first-strike" nuclear war pledge. A new Russia-Iraq-Yugoslavia axis appears to be emerging. "There is a substantial history of military cooperation among the three countries" (Stratfor, April 18), and the Russians are upgrading both Iraqi and Yugoslav air defenses. The U.S. and British bosses continue their almost daily bombings of Iraq.

It doesn't take a wizard to see where all these maneuvers are headed. As Saddam Hussein and Milosevic have demonstrated, the best way for a two-bit dictator to retain power in a tough situation is to get himself declared U.S. bosses' number one enemy of the day. But U.S. rulers will keep picking up rocks only to drop them on their own feet. Their need for maximum oil profit forces them into contradictions they can't solve. The logic of these contradictions is more war. Already, the Democratic Leadership Council, which sponsored Clinton and Gore, has identified the next president's chief immediate foreign policy goal as ousting Saddam Hussein.

As the burgeoning Russia-Yugoslavia-Iraq romance shows, Putin & Co. won't give U.S. imperialism the blank check for mass murder that Russian leader Gorbachev handed George Bush in 1991, when Exxon launched its Desert Storm slaughter for oil. The next oil war may well be even bloodier than the last and will further sharpen the antagonism between Russian and U.S. bosses.

As we prepare to demonstrate on May Day, we should reflect on our responsibility as communists. Only communist revolution can end bosses' wars for oil and profit. Communists in PLP have this as our goal. We must not only warn of bosses' wars but also prepare to act as militantly and massively as possible when they break out. Building PLP in the crucible of anti-imperialist struggle becomes the order of the day.

A RED DAWN CAN GROW OUT OF A DARK NIGHT

RICHMOND, CA, April 24 -- "What is the ruling class?" This question started a discussion and invitation to May Day at Kennedy High School in Richmond, California. Students offered up such sharp answers as, "the owners" and "the wealthy." The speaker from PLP dropped some facts: the top 1% of the population owns 40% of the wealth, while the bottom 80% owns a meager 16%. This helped to clarify the idea of a ruling (capitalist) class. As the main character says in John Sayles' great movie "Matewan," about a coal miners' strike, "There's two kinds of people in this world: them that works, and them that don't."

We discussed topics which the students are angry about, mainly the passage of Proposition 21, the new law which will make it even easier for the cops and the courts to throw young people in jail, sentencing them as adults and for longer terms. The students tied the racist prison system to the media in two ways: first, the two institutions are used to control the working class, building mental and physical prisons to lock us down; and second, the media is actually instrumental in the prison boom because of the racist, sensationalist portrayals of crime on television.

One student illustrated the racist character of the laws by explaining that penalties are much harsher for crack cocaine than powder cocaine, since crack is more commonly used in poorer, black and Latin neighborhoods than it's "designer drug" counterpart, powder cocaine (See PLP pamphlet PRISON LABOR: FASCISM U.S. STYLE).

"Why don't we see much fighting back in our community? What is holding us back?" asked the teacher. The most frequent response was that students don't feel they can make a difference. The teacher responded with an insightful comment: "I think you're right; talking about a revolution seems overwhelming. We learned about slavery in class. Don't you think, for a man or woman born into slavery, that it seemed like things would never change? But after a long struggle, it did change."

That insight reflects an important aspect of dialectical materialism, the scientific philosophy of the working class. It talks about the coexistence of the actual (what we see around us today) and the potential (what might be achieved sometime down the line). As one youth said, "It seems like we still got slavery, but instead now they give you a little money and call it something else." He's right, it is slavery; it's capitalist slavery, wage slavery. But while the actuality today is "overwhelming" and the system seems strong and invincible, we can't lose sight of the potential, that is, the society that we can build when the working class is united around the communist Progressive Labor Party.

Sign-up sheets were passed around. By day's end, 49 students had signed up to march on May Day in San Francisco on April 29. Just as these angry students have the potential to become communist organizers, so does our Party have the potential to replace the bosses' flags of exploitation, racism and war with the red flag of communist revolution and workers' power. Onward to May Day!

May Day and the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the International Working Class

May Day has always had two sides to it: one that demands reforms, and the revolutionary side that organizes to destroy capitalism. May Day commemorates a massive strike wave in the U.S., and the particular battle in Chicago's Haymarket Square in 1886. The movement's leaders demanded an 8-hour day, but also advocated the "abolition of the wage system." Six of them were hung by the rulers for their allegiance to the working class and defiance of capitalism. Then and now the capitalists feared this revolutionary side to May Day.

Then and now the capitalists feared this revolutionary side to May Day. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Communism." By 1886, the rulers of Chicago saw this specter. "The newspapers and industrialists were increasingly declaring that May 1, 1886 was in reality the date for a Communist working class insurrection modeled on the Paris Commune. According to Melville E. Stone, Head of the Chicago Daily News...a 'repetition of the Paris Communal riots was freely predicted' for May 1, 1886." (Page 90, "Labor's Untold Story," Boyer and Morais)

In December 1886, San Francisco transit workers joined this rising strike wave. They demanded a workday reduction from 13-15 hours to 12 hours (then 7 days a week), and for a pay increase from $2.25 to $2.50 a day. "Strike-breakers were hired, and there was a great deal of violence. Cars were damaged, strike-breakers were beaten, and one person was killed." Newspapers reported eight instances of the use of dynamite by the striking workers. In March 1887, the Governor signed a bill "limiting gripmen, drivers, and conductors to a 12-hour day." ("Transit In San Francisco" published by SF MUNI RR Communications Department.)

In the 1880's the early leaders of the American Federation of Labor were somewhat radical--it was actually an AFL delegate's report to the Marxist-led International Workingmen's Association that led to the call for the first May Day. But by the 1920's the pro-capitalist AFL leadership, fearing the growth of communist ideas in the working class, collaborated with the U.S. government to subvert May Day. At the 1928 AFL Convention, the Executive Council supported a Congressional resolution to make May 1 "Child Health Day." They said, "May 1 will no longer be known as either strike day or communist labor day."

The revolutionary side of May Day dominated when the communist movement was strong. During the peak of the communist organizing of the CIO unions in the 1930's and '40s, May Day was celebrated in the U.S. As many as 250,000 would march to New York's Union Square. However, with the advent of the Cold War, and U.S. imperialism's launching of a worldwide anti-communist offensive, the bosses' government in Washington helped oust communists from union leadership by making it illegal for them to hold union office. With the triumph of business unionism and anti-communism, organized labor discarded May Day and recognizes Labor Day in September.

From the Haymarket battle in 1886, revolutionary workers spread May Day around the globe. But history is written by the conquerors, and many workers born here know nothing of the contribution that the U.S. working class, with the support of the international working class and communist movement, made to the development of this revolutionary holiday. Today May Day is the official Labor Day in most countries, but the leadership of these marches demand reforms, and stress the "common goals" of labor and capital.

PLP has learned from the triumphs of the communist movement in the USSR and China, and from their failure to fight directly for communism. We advocate "Abolish the Wage System" as part of changing the relationship of workers and work in a new communist society.

The abolition of money, of production for sale or profit and of the wage system is absolutely necessary to establish communism. When the international working class wins and holds control over all economic, political and cultural institutions of society, it will unleash a creative power that will propel the human race to its highest accomplishments in all fields of endeavor. We call this the dictatorship of the proletariat. We need a mass revolutionary communist party to do this. The capitalists will use every means--including mass, fascist terror and war--to prevent it.

In the San Francisco Bay Area and Canada, some groups now want to "Reclaim May Day." They want to reform the "evils" of capitalism, but disconnect May Day from its communist roots. PLP seeks to keep May Day as a revolutionary international working-class holiday; to advance and popularize communist production for need as the future of the human race; to develop a strong and healthy class hatred that will destroy wage slavery and fascism everywhere.

Long live the 1st of May, the revolutionary, international, working class holiday! Fight for communism!

LETTERS

`WORKERS NEED THE WHOLE COAT...

Recently one of our progressive student clubs showed the documentary "Global Assembly Line," about major U.S. corporations moving production to low-wage regions in Asia and Latin America. It's about 50 minutes long, in color and, although made in 1986, seems amazingly current. It shows workers as leaders of struggle, not simply objects of exploitation and pity, unlike the Global Exchange film, "Sweating for a T-Shirt."

The film begins with interviews of company bosses explaining they've moved operations to Mexico and the Philippines. The attraction is not only because of low wages and benefits, but also the predominantly female workforce would be "good workers"--those willing to work long hours doing boring, repetitive detail work. Electronics workers endure toxic chemical fumes. Company bosses state they must seek lower costs or go under to the competition. When they close U.S. plants, lay off workers there and exploit the hell out of workers abroad, it's "nothing personal," just the logic of capitalism.

Mexican and Filipino workers explain how they became conscious of their exploitation and the need to unite and fight against their exploiters. There is dramatic footage showing strikes in both countries. In 1983, in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, 8,000 workers, mostly women, shut down 11 of the 12 maquiladora factories, including the General Electric and Zenith plants.

The struggle reveals the limited possibilities of reform under capitalism. First, the workers are under enormous pressure to limit their demands because of company threats to relocate to another Mexican city. The strike succeeds in winning two concessions: "a brief two-month wage increase," and the right to elect their own union leadership. Elections are held and workers celebrate their reform candidates' victory. But the local authorities prevent them from taking office. Four of the five leaders go on a hunger strike in the main plaza, but after 14 days are dragged away by the police to a hospital, where they are force-fed.

We also see a militant strike of Filipino electronics, textile and garment workers. At one point the workers form a human barricade to prevent the transfer of goods from one of the struck factories to a different city. The army breaks up the barricade and arrests the strikers, who resist bravely. In the end, workers in both countries are shown continuing their struggle.

Yet the film, funded in part by the AFL-CIO, fails to draw the important political lessons: (1) that the government is not and cannot be neutral but represents the interests of the owners, both national and international capitalists, and (2) that no reform movement can win more than a few concessions from the capitalists, who have the state on their side and can always move operations elsewhere. The workers must be won to go beyond their trade union consciousness, as militant as that is, to revolutionary class consciousness.

The only possible solution offered by this documentary is the idea of forming transnational unions in order to combat the multinationals. As Brecht once said, the goal of these mainstream unions is to convince the corporate masters to turn over a slightly bigger piece of the coat, while the workers need the whole coat, which they've created in the first place. After listening to the workers in this film, one becomes convinced that these women and men have the capacity to run these factories and a worker-led society themselves.

Manhattan Teacher

CONN. STUDENTS NEED PLP

The April 5 CHALLENGE article about Paul Robeson was very informative. The great courage of millions of comrades like Robeson cannot be questioned. Growing out of that experience it is important to learn what it means to be a communist today. The most significant lesson drawn by PLP from that era was the realization that a revolutionary communist party was needed to prevent the sellout of workers' struggles worldwide.

The 125 Connecticut working-class students who attended the presentation were most excited about the report of the recent anti-Klan action in New York City. The smashing of the Klan happened only because of PLP. The Klan is very active in Connecticut where the presentation was held and those students need to know what PLP fights for and why they need to join PLP for their own survival.

Whether we are known as PLP'ers or pro-working-class comrades, we should try to find a way to steer the enthusiasm of 125 potential comrades in that direction. They will be facing racist attack and other capitalist horrors. They should not only learn more about Paul Robeson but should be inspired by that knowledge to begin reading CHALLENGE and learning about PLP and its 39 years of serving the working class and the lessons from that.

A Comrade

REFORM CAN'T END SWEATSHOPS

Eleven students and workers from Muncie, IN, traveled to Washington, D.C. for the Sunday International Monetary Fund/World Bank protests. The cops had already shut down the first coordinating center. Another site was found and thousands gathered there for meetings on non-violent protest methods, legal procedures, logistical planning and emergency first aid.

The next day protesters blocked off as many intersections as possible to prevent the IMF and World Bank delegates from reaching their meeting site. Some linked arms across intersections, others chained themselves together. Some moved parked cars into the middle of the street.

We were out there at 6:00 A.M., but the delegates--anticipating our blockade--arrived at 5:30 A.M. With no heavy clashes between the cops and protesters that day, the event began to resemble a street fair. Some even played stick ball.

Our group included PLP members, environmentalists, Anti-Racist Action members, a local university newspaper photographer, and some unaffiliated people. All of us were angry over the way people worldwide are being exploited for profit, and how the IMF and World Bank are facilitating that. For our group, going to D.C. was mainly a way to take a stand against corporate "globalization," or its proper name, imperialism.

The question is, how do, or can you "reform" "globalization," the IMF, the World Bank or the World Trade Organization? Many groups advocated debt relief for countries owing so much money to the IMF that they can't even pay the interest. Others wanted to "democratize" the IMF and World Bank.

One example is an oil pipeline through Chad and Cameroon in Africa. The World Bank is funding it in the name of "development," but without the input of the inhabitants who will be displaced. So reform was on the minds of many protestors.

Reform, however, is sure to get us another version of the World Bank with a friendlier face, but serving the same oppressive purpose. PLP's main theme was that capitalism was the number one enemy and that the World Bank and IMF are only tools of that system. One comrade said exactly that at a teach-in. People couldn't believe he'd said it! But globalization (imperialism) is not new. It's been around since the beginning of capitalism. What about Columbus? American ventures into Latin America (Cuba, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Chile)? European adventures into Africa (Congo, Algeria, Egypt, South Africa)? Japanese invasions in Asia (China and Korea)? No reform will eliminate such fundamental components of capitalism. These institutions and the system that surrounds them need to be wiped out. Then we can talk about ending human exploitation.

PLP needed a stronger presence in D.C., but the literature we distributed at the main rally raised peoples' interest in the idea of communism. PLP is organizing for a future without IMFs and World Banks. No more capitalist exploitation. No more debt. Instead a future communist society--to each according to need, from each according to commitment. Elements of this future will be on display in full force at May Day marches in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco in the coming weeks. There we will see it isn't about reforming these capitalist institutions, it's about organizing a revolutionary army to take them down once and for all, and building our future as a communist society. To paraphrase muckraker Lincoln Steffens, "We see the future, and it will work!"

A Midwest Comrade

HARVARD HILLEL SINGS NAZI TUNE

Here's a story so ludicrous that even Mel Brooks couldn't have invented it. Can you imagine that a leading Jewish organization would sing a Nazi song in Hebrew? As absurd as the idea sounds, Harvard's Hillel Society has come close. More precisely, Harvard Hillel has just released a CD of it's a capella group singing a bilingual English-Hebrew version of the song that gave Hitler & Co. the idea for their fascist mass rallies.

The ditty in question is "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard." It's Harvard's main football song. It got to Hitler via a character named Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl. Putzi, a German with family ties to the U.S. establishment, had graduated from Harvard in 1909. As heir to a Berlin art publishing fortune and one of the Nazis' earliest supporters, he used his social connections to introduce Hitler to the German ruling class. It's no exaggeration to say that Hanfstaengl was crucial in helping Hitler get the contacts and financial backing necessary for the Nazi party's rise to power.

Hitler and his propaganda minister, Goebbels, needed gimmicks to use in mass mobilizations. According to John Tolland's book, "Hitler, A Study in Tyranny," Hanfstaengl proposed the song, "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" and Harvard pep rallies as models. Hanfstaengl played the song for his Führer on the piano and later told an interviewer: "Hitler loved it." This is how the Nuremberg rallies were born. Hanfstaengl broke with Hitler in 1939, probably over the plan to double-cross the western European bosses by attacking them before the Soviet Union, and made his way back to the U.S., where he became an advisor to President Roosevelt.

Harvard Hillel has now made this source of Nazi inspiration part of its own repertory. Why not, after all? Given Israeli racism against Arab workers, the choice seems fitting. The next song on the CD after "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" is "Jerusalem the Golden." What's to follow? A Hebrew rendition of "Deutschland Über Alles" and "The Horst Wessel Song?" Or are the leaders of Harvard Hillel going to trot out the old excuse: "It's not our fault. We didn't know?"

Harvard Hillel's directors may well be unaware of the football song's links to the Nazis. But ignorance is no excuse here. They certainly know Harvard University's long history of anti-Semitism, which was particularly virulent in the 50-year period between the start of European Jewish emigration to the United States and Hitler's rise to power. In fact, as Allen Chase has shown in his valuable book, "The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Cost of the New Scientific Racism" (1975), the "American Anti-Semitic Association" was founded in 1893 by two Harvard professors. For many years, Harvard had strict admissions quotas limiting the number of Jews it would accept. Harvard Hillel's leaders surely know of this history as well. And if they took the trouble to spend a few minutes researching the illustrious graduate who gave "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" to Hitler, they would also discover that on February 17, 1933, Harvard's alumni notes boasted that Hanfstsengl, "one of the best known and most popular undergraduates of his time in College," had just become "confidential aide to Adolf Hitler, recently appointed chancellor of Germany." Hitler's anti-Semitism was no secret at the time, but the blurb about Putzi doesn't mention it. Harvard seemed quite proud that one of its sons was engaging in "public service."

As Chase's book shows, Harvard's anti-Semitism is exceeded only by its long and shameful record of contribution to intellectual racism and imperialist war. Harvard Hillel's leaders cannot possibly be ignorant of this history as well. But ignorance and choosing to ignore, not knowing and not wanting to know, are two entirely different things.

It's good to read in the pages of CHALLENGE that the PLP is once again active at Harvard, particularly around the school's recent contributions to the rulers' plans to expand racist police terror. Our Party has a long and honorable history of sharp struggle in this bastion of liberal fascism. Obviously, plenty of important work remains to be done.

A Former Harvard SDS'er, still plugging away

 

March On May Day! Cop Terror + Global Injustice =Capitalism

a href="#DON’T INVEST IN CAPITALISM, STOCK UP ON COMMUNISM">"ditorial: Don't Invest In Capitalism, Stock Up On Communism!

How Big Bosses Use State Power To 'Correct' the Stock Markets

Building Workers Needs Support of All Workers

Garment Workers Support Janitors -- Beware of Being Gored!

Union Hacks Push Pro-War Anti-Communism Garbage -- But It Is Hard for Workers to Swallow It

a href="#May Day Dinner: Workers’ Political Leadership Developing">"ay Day Dinner: Workers’ Political Leadership Developing

Painting The Crimson Red: Communists At Harvard Launch Campaign Against George K K Kelling

What Fidel Castro Forgot in His Speech: Communism Is the Way Out of Imperialist Hell

a href="#New Jersey: Feel Workers’ Power on May Day!">"ew Jersey: Feel Workers’ Power on May Day!

a href="#Excerpts From Speech ‘Marching On May Day’">Ex"erpts From Speech ‘Marching On May Day’

a href="#It’s More Than Just Jobs; It’s About Promoting US Imperialism">It"s More Than Just Jobs; It’s About Promoting US Imperialism

Strike Against Lockheed Martin

The History Anti-Communists Cannot Erase: How Stalin And The Red Army Crushed The Nazis

a href="#It’s More Than Just Jobs; It’s About Promoting US Imperialism">It"s More Than Just Jobs; It’s About Promoting U.S. Imperialism

LETTERS

Becoming A Communist Gave Me Courage

a href="#D.C. Cops: ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet’">D.C. C"ps: ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’yet’

Miami Mafia Messes Up

Hoffa Heils Buchanan

a href="#‘Reform’ Capitalism? Ain’t No Such Animal">‘Ref"rm’ Capitalism? Ain’t No Such Animal

Computers Used for Fascist Control

---

March On May Day!

Cop Terror + Global Injustice =Capitalism

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 18 — Thousands of protesters against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) converged on Washington, D.C. for a week of actions aimed at exposing and disrupting the functioning of these two international capitalist institutions. The Progressive Labor Party was involved in many of these activities, urging these young activists to join us on the road to communist revolution by joining this year’s May Day march.

The Mobilization for Global Justice underestimated the rulers’ goons, the cops, who were not about to allow a repetition of what happened in Seattle. Thousands of police, metal barriers, and over a $1 million of new riot equipment, creating an army of robocops that blockaded 90 blocks around the two institutions. Moreover, the cops carried out preemptive attacks on the demonstrators, closing down the protest headquarters on the pretext of "fire code violations," arresting 600 the night before the opening meeting in an obvious ploy to reduce the numbers of the demonstrators the next day. They periodically gassed, pepper sprayed, beat and arrested demonstrators. Ultimately, over 1,400 were arrested. D.C. Police Chief Ramsey gloated, "I have absolutely no regrets about anything….I make no apologies for anything that anybody [in the police department] did during this time."

But despite these police attacks, many of the IMF and WB delegates were, in fact, blocked, at least temporarily, from getting to their meetings by chains of demonstrators blocking streets. More importantly, thousands of young people joined in a great upsurge of anti-imperialist sentiment. It is up to us in PLP to make sure this sentiment take a revolutionary road, instead of the reactionary one pushed by many forces in this movement (see PLP’s pamphlet "Know Your Enemy: Capitalism. The Truth About the Fair Trade Anti-Globalization Movement).

PLP was actively involved in many of the meetings, teach-ins and planning that led up to the major events and met dozens of young people interested in going beyond non-violent protest. Throughout the main day’s events, the PLP held a vigorous bullhorn rally calling on the demonstrators to link the fight against the IMF and WB to the fight against fascist police brutality, prison labor, anti-immigrant attacks and domestic sweatshops in the U.S., and thereby build a mass anti-fascist, pro-communist movement that spans the globe. The response was extremely positive. Over 1,000 CHALLENGES and PLP pamphlets were eagerly received, along with thousands of leaflets. Many asked to be contacted, and a local study group is already forming. Several old friends and members of the PLP were thrilled to see us; one attended his first Party club meeting in over 14 years the following day.

There is much political struggle ahead. There are numerous dead-ends in this movement which must be combated. Demonstrators were systematically "trained" in non-violence by the pacifists, who reinforced a fatalistic approach to struggle. Some speakers at various events attacked bosses overseas, such as in China, letting U.S. bosses off the hook and laying the foundation for nationalism. Most of the demonstrators, however, seem wide open to a systematic anti-capitalist, militant, anti-imperialist and anti-racist approach, and are certainly winnable to communism. But we should never stop pointing out the misleading paths upon which capitalists and their agents within the movement will try to place us.

Editorial:

a name="DON’T INVEST IN CAPITALISM, STOCK UP ON COMMUNISM">">"ON’T INVEST IN CAPITALISM, STOCK UP ON COMMUNISM

Workers can learn several valuable lessons from the stock markets' recent roller-coaster behavior.

First, as long as the profit system exists, our class will be handcuffed to its stock markets. We're the prisoners of the so-called "business cycle," with its booms and collapses. It's too early to tell whether the April 14th Wall Street swoon will lead to a recession. It could. Recessions always happen sooner or later. They bring a frontal assault on the living standards of millions of workers. But even if the markets recover and a technical recession isn't in the cards, our class has already paid a heavy price for Wall Street's most recent "correction."

Our pension funds, and individual retirement accounts, especially those invested in the hi-tech sector, have taken a big hit. The markets seemed to be rebounding as CHALLENGE went to press, but that doesn't mean anything good for our retirement savings. Our pockets were picked during this "correction," as the biggest investment houses gobbled up chunks of our pensions at fire sale prices. Companies hit hard by this "correction" will try to re-coup losses by taking it out on their workers. Many, with or without IRAs or pension funds will suffer either layoffs or wage cuts or further reductions in services.

Second, the drastic Wall Street price swings show that capitalism is a fundamentally unstable system. Even in the "best of times," financial markets operate on speculation. For example, there’s a standard statistic called the "price-earnings (P/E) ratio." It shows the difference between a company’s stock market price and the value of its sales. Historically, the P/E average is 13:1. Before the current "correction," some older established businesses had a P/E ratio of 30:1. And the "dot.com" bubble had inflated to the point where numbers of newer Internet stocks were at 200:1.

Many of these Internet companies were making billionaires out of their top executives while actually losing money. Sooner or later the bubble had to burst. Now, in classic capitalist behavior, a shake-out is taking place. Many "dot.coms" will soon be "dot.gones," and many small-time speculators will find themselves holding a bag of debt for bad investments. The winners will be the biggest brokerage houses and banks, who still have the massive wealth to buy up these now cheaper stocks at bargain rates. In essence, a huge transfer of capital is taking place. The big fish are devouring the small fry.

Third, this consolidation of capital has an important political aspect. The main wing of the ruling class is using its control of the government to discipline a number of upstarts. The Eastern Establishment couldn't prevent the rise of Microsoft or the huge increases in wealth created by the New Money technology sector. But once the Rockefeller interests decided things had gotten out of hand, that massive capital was being accumulated by others independent of them, they acted quickly and ruthlessly to cut these rivals down to size.

They used every legal weapon at their disposal: the Justice Department, the leading think tanks, the Federal Reserve System and the liberal media (see box). Bill Gates and his cronies have had their wealth cut sharply. Gates still holds a huge personal fortune, but Microsoft and many other upstart hi-tech companies will no longer enjoy freedom from the eastern banks. When these newer high-tech companies need capital to expand, their reduced assets will now force many of them to borrow from these eastern banks or, at the very least, to admit Establishment bankers onto their boards. This is a good object lesson in class dictatorship and its use of state power.

Fourth, even some of the Establishment forces had to take a hit in this battle. The banks and most industries are tightly connected to hi tech, as both investors and users. Lucent, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Goldman Sachs and Chase Manhattan didn't get socked as badly as Microsoft or American OnLine since the beginning of the year, but they lost hefty percentages of their value. Interestingly, Exxon-Mobil, whose profit rate depends not on microchips but on Washington's ability to hold the Persian Gulf at gunpoint, has lost little.

Finally, as the poet Jean de La Fontaine wrote over three hundred years ago: "…the little folk/Have always paid for follies of the great." However, the biggest folly is believing that the present society can solve the problems it creates. If we want to stop paying the price for capitalist instability and the periodic blood-letting of bosses' conflicts among themselves, we have to fight for a different system. Only communist revolution can create an economy based on workers' class needs rather than on maximizing capitalist profit.

What can be said for a system whose stock market considers a drop in unemployment "bad news," except that it belongs on history's manure pile? The job of putting it there will be long and difficult, but it's the only worthwhile goal for us as individuals and members of the working class. This is the goal for which the Progressive Labor Party will lead thousands of marchers in San Francisco and Washington this May Day 2000.

How Big Bosses Use State Power To 'Correct' the Stock Markets

* Summer 1999: Two scholars from the Rockefeller-run Brookings Institution launch the Internet Policy Institute (IPI) and stack it with anti-Microsoft forces. The IPI defines "briefing the President" as its main goal. It underlines the importance of high tech as an edge for U.S. imperialism against foreign competitors but at the same time warns against exceeding "economic speed limits."

* September 1999: Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley's top high-tech analyst, cautions about "gargantuan losses" in this sector ("Business Week" interview).

June 1999-April 2000: Federal Reserve head Alan Greenspan raises interest rates five times, hurting the highly capital-dependent hi-tech sector.

* April 2000. A Federal court nails Microsoft on anti-trust charges.

* April 6, 2000. Clinton presides over a White House conference on the "new economy." Bill Gates attends. Alan Greenspan tells him that the Fed will keep raising interest rates to slow down the market boom, making it more expensive for him and others in the hi-tech field to raise capital for future investment. Former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, now an investment banker, predicts: "There's going to be a correction; it's probably going to be a sharp one, at least in terms of technology equity values." But he reassures established companies like Intel that they won't be badly hurt. Even Goldman Sachs, which has big bones to pick with Rockefeller, climbs on board. Abby Cohen, their tech guru, calls for a market slow-down (Washington Post, April 7).

Building Workers Needs Support of All Workers

NEW YORK CITY, April 18 — The 26,000 workers of Local 32BJ, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representing janitors, elevator operators, doormen and maintenance workers in 2,900 apartment buildings here are fighting for a new contract. Their current one expires April 21. They work long hours, many standing on their feet for their entire shifts. Union demands include a wage increase, improved health care and job security.

Over the last decade there has been a surge of new buildings. The rents and maintenance charges tenants pay have increased at an astronomical rate. The real estate barons have made enormous profits. And now these bosses are demanding greater "flexibility" to lay off workers. They planned to recruit subcontractors who—with Mayor Giuliani’s blessings—said they would recruit Workfare workers as scabs. However, the outcry by other unions caused Giuliani to scrap this pland.

Local 32BJ’s leadership has no plan of action to win its demands. Its parent union, 1199/SEIU, is the largest union in the state, with a membership of over 240,000. So far this union has failed to build mass support for a potential strike, neither massive rallies nor calling out health care workers in Local 1199. It’s given only limited support to striking janitors in Los Angeles and Chicago.

This leadership, especially from Local 1199, now the biggest single force in SEIU, has made deals with everyone from Governor Pataki to Giuliani to the hospital bosses. Their main thrust is to suck workers into looking to the Democratic Party for their salvation, not to their own strength as a militant rank and file that can stop production.

The last time 32BJ struck, the bosses were able to institute a 2-tier wage system. There were a number of rank-and-file marches and demonstrations. With the leadership lacking a plan and more concerned with controlling workers’ militancy, the rank and file will have to take matters into their own hands. Mass picket lines surrounding buildings can stop scabs. All NYC workers must unite with welfare clients forced onto Workfare to prevent their being used as scabs. All workers who live in these buildings must refuse to do the work of the strikers.

PLP members and friends should organize on their own jobs to win workers to join the strikers’ picket lines, raise money to give directly to the strikers, perhaps "adopting" a particular building to support. We should press our unions to turn out en masse at strikers’ rallies, help block scabs and even call one-day strikes—or more—to help the workers defeat the real estate bosses. Students in colleges and high schools, who themselves have organized anti-racist walkouts over the Diallo verdict, could repeat these actions to support the overwhelmingly black and Latin 32BJ workforce.

If a strike does occur, the union leadership may very well turn it into a political battleground allying with the liberals representing Hillary Clinton against Giuliani. But all these politicians are only concerned with enforcing the bosses’ laws that repress the working class. The class interests of these servants of the ruling class automatically unites them with the real estate bosses. Workers must not allow ourselves to be sucked into relying on liberal politicians who themselves take thousands of dollars in contributions from these very same real estate barons.

In the final analysis, this struggle is aimed at winning reforms. History shows that whatever concessions the bosses might be forced to give, they are able to take them back in other ways. They have state power and often use it to break strikes. They contract work out to non-union subcontractors who many times are able to displace the union workforce. The bosses already rob workers by paying them only part of the value of their labor. The rest the bosses keep as profits, or pay to the banks as interest, which becomes the bankers’ profits.

For workers to reap the full value of our labor, we would have to destroy capitalism with communist revolution. Communists can relate all the issues described above to why the profit system must be destroyed altogether. A big step on this road would be linking the intensification of this class struggle to winning these workers to march on May Day in Washington, D.C., May 6, uniting with workers internationally under one flag, the red flag of a communist-led working class.

Garment Workers Support Janitors

Beware of Being Gored!

LOS ANGELES, CA., April 18 — Garment workers have been supporting the striking janitors in their marches and picket lines, bringing coffee and food to the strikers’ picket lines at night. The enthusiastic reception from the strikers has inspired the garment workers. It led to vital discussions about international workers’ unity, about capitalism causing poverty level wages and about the need to destroy it.

The strikers are open to new ideas. "The workers lined up to get the Party’s leaflet," said one striker. "The comrade from PLP was passing out leaflets and distributing CHALLENGES with both hands."

With fellow strikers and friends, the strike has been useful to show the militancy of workers and their families fighting for $1/hour more per year. Most are now paid $6.80/hour. It shows the potential of workers in general once they understand we can fight for the whole pie, not just for tiny reforms the bosses don’t want to give us.

In discussions in garment factories, we’ve exposed the cops’ role of using terror to protect the private property and profits of the bosses who own the big office buildings cleaned by the janitors. We’ve also discussed why Cardinal Mahony, Mayor Riordan, other politicians and even bosses say they support the strike. Last year, Mahony told a conference of Churches for Labor Justice, "We must support labor struggles from the pulpit if we don’t want the workers to become reds and look for other alternatives."

But the cleaning contractors answered back, "It’s fine that they’re building all this political support with the Mayor, the Cardinal and the Vice-President, but even if they bring the Pope, we’re not giving in." So far the support of these politicians and the union leaders fighting within the laws and limits of the capitalist system haven’t been able to win the $1/hour per year increase. And it won’t solve the problems of the working class.

"Your fight is for everyone, for your families, for justice, dignity, equality," presidential candidate Al Gore told the striking janitors at a rally last Saturday. The day before, Gore dined with rich backers of his presidential campaign in a Hollywood mansion at $100,000 a plate.

Gore is no friend of the workers. He’s the representative of the big banks and the millionaires who dictate the policies of organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, who, together with the bosses in general, murder hundreds of millions of workers throughout the world—from hunger, poverty and war. Gore represents the most bloodthirsty ruling class in the history of humanity. The blood of millions of workers from Mexico, to Central America to Africa, Asia and the Middle East is on their hands.

We can help change the balance of forces by winning striking janitors and workers from other factories, unions and community organizations to stop the scabs who are cleaning the buildings and turn this strike into a rebellion against capitalism. We must depend on our fellow workers, not on the bosses, to win.

We’re fighting to turn this strike into a school for communism, by using every aspect of this strike to show the potential of workers’ unity and power and the need for communist revolution. This is a good opportunity to distribute CHALLENGE more massively in the factories, on the picket lines and in the schools and also to mobilize strikers and other workers to March on May Day in San Francisco and join the Progressive Labor Party.

Union Hacks Push Pro-War Anti-Communism Garbage --

But It Is Hard for Workers to Swallow It

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 14 — Over 15,000 steel, auto and textile workers and Teamsters rallied on the Capitol steps, listening to various politicians and union leaders attack China. The workers came because of growing insecurity, despite the bosses’ claims about the "longest period of economic growth ever." It appeared as an effort to stop China from getting permanent normal trade relations with the U.S. The essence was politicians and union hacks winning us to war!

The Teamsters had the union-busting Hitlerite Pat Buchanan as the main speaker at their rally. But Hoffa and Buchanan had nothing on the "liberals" who lead the USWA, UAW, and UNITE!

On Wednesday, at a symposium on lobbying the next day, a speaker said that while Russia and the U.S. have cut their military budgets, China is using the $68 billion trade surplus with the U.S. to buy armaments from the Russians. He said that during the Cold War, the U.S. sold Russia some grain, but nothing of military significance. Paraphrasing Marx (although he attributed it to Lenin), he said some U.S. companies were selling China the rope they will use to hang the U.S.

He said that those who believe the old saying, "Countries that trade with each other won’t go to war with each other," are wrong. He pointed to the two World Wars, and said the U.S. could be at war with China in two to three years! There was no clapping or cheering during this speech. The workers understood the connection between trade wars and shooting wars, and are not won to going to war for the bosses.

A big aspect of the anti-China campaign is anti-communism. USWA president Becker called China an "evil empire." This was matched by a T-shirt of a pro-U.S. "dissident" being manhandled by two cops. The caption read, "Workers Rights, Chinese Style." Many refused to buy it. Most refused to wear it. They really should have put Amadou Diallo on the shirt. The truth is communism means abolishing wage slavery and the class of bosses that lives off the exploitation of our labor.

China is the world’s largest steel producer. Russia is the biggest steel exporter. In 1998 China produced 14.2% of the world’s steel. The U.S. produced 12.6%. China’s production is steadily increasing. U.S. steel imports from China are up. U.S. steel exports to China are down. As China’s industrial capacity grows, its need for oil will eventually challenge the U.S. grip on the Middle East.

China is also the world’s largest textile exporter—which threatens the racist, union busting U.S. textile industry. It was sad to see so many UNITE! (garment/textile union) members at the rally because they are so poorly paid themselves. Talk about fighting over crumbs! Clearly all the talk about "human rights" is a smokescreen to cover the increased inter-imperialist rivalry between capitalist China and the U.S.

There are disagreements among the rulers over how to treat China. Sweeney and Becker are at odds with their bosses on this, but they are 100% loyal in the long run. The revisionists (phony "leftists") suck up to the union leaders and lead workers into this fascist, nationalist trap. This racist, pro-war movement cries out for a revolutionary communist solution.

Our participation in, and exposé of this rally, is helping us to slowly emerge as political leaders in the union. We are more active in local union elections and strike support. We need to raise our communist worldview from many vantage points and confront the pro-boss, pro-war line of the union leadership. We met and talked with many workers, and got several addresses of workers to visit and show CHALLENGE. The storm clouds are gathering, and the Party is growing among steel workers.

a name="May Day Dinner: Workers’ Political Leadership Developing">">"ay Day Dinner: Workers’ Political Leadership Developing

CHICAGO, IL, April 15 — "Why didn’t you tell me more about May Day before? My friend got shot by the Chicago police 13 times, and we had a march against his murder. I’m going to see if his family can come to the march." "I wish I knew more about the march earlier. Now I have to try and change my vacation plans."

These were comments of postal and steel workers who attended our club’s May Day Organizing BBQ and Fish Fry. Postal workers helped buy the food and did most of the cooking. Amidst the aroma of barbecue and frying fish, more than 35 people attended our most successful club event yet. The house was so packed we had to have three different showings of the May Day video.

A PLP member just back the United Steel Workers’ anti-China protests in Washington, D.C. said that after seeing the racist, pro-war union leaders at work, May Day is more important than ever. A steelworker who had also been to Washington committed herself to going to May Day and trying to bring others.

The dinner itself reflected our slow but sure emergence as political leaders on our jobs, in our unions and in our communities. It became evident that years of struggle and base-building at the Chicago Post Office built up a lot of support for the Party and May Day. But we have a long way to go.

Just about everyone who attended the dinner, and many who didn’t, can become CHALLENGE distributors and May Day organizers. This will impel more workers to join the Party and become political leaders themselves. We’ll be visiting and struggling with these workers in the next few weeks to come to Washington, and to bring their family and friends.

Painting The Crimson Red:

Communists At Harvard Launch Campaign Against George K K Kelling

CAMBRIDGE, MA, April 17 — For the past several weeks, PLP members and friends at Harvard and other universities have been involved in a campaign against Rutgers professor George Kelling, a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. We’ve been petitioning Harvard to disassociate itself from Kelling. This is part of a broader struggle against Harvard's role in developing fascism. We are also preparing for a rally on April 25 at the Kennedy School.

The petition charges that Kelling is one of the main architects/popularizers of the liberal fascist strategy of community policing which calls for the police to "reclaim" urban areas by taking severe action against even the pettiest of "crimes." Kelling's anti-working class, racist views have helped strengthen the ruling class' official policy of police terror. Harvard's support of Kelling continues a long history of Harvard's backing of U.S. imperialism and its racist, fascist, genocidal policies..

We have now collected hundreds of signatures from students and workers at Harvard and other schools in classes, at student group meetings and during public mass leafleting. Harvard's Black Students Association and Haitian Student Alliance have not formally endorsed the campaign. However, we are struggling with Harvard La Raza and the Harvard Progressive Student Labor Movement for their endorsements. In this campaign we have linked Kelling and Harvard as being in large part respnisble for police terror. Kelling, the liberal ruling class and their community policing scheme have played a key role in the mass imprisonment of many of the two million workers in the U.S. Furthermore, Kelling-type strategies used in Boston have helped to more than doube Massachusetts' prison population. We have declared that the only way to end racism and fascism is with communist revolution.

This campaign has deepened our struggle with our friends to connect poverty wages, racist police terror and developing fascism. The many workers who have signed this petition, in connecting these struggles, have helped combat the cynicism of some of our friends.

A student from Wellesley, a women’s college near Boston, has become one of the campaign’s leaders, collecting over 70 signatures. She’s also coming to PLP's May Day march.This week we’re having a meeting at Wellesley to build support for our Harvard rally.

Many workers and students hunger for an alternative to the fascist future which capitalism offers. However, we must do more. We must strengthen all social ties to grow and ensure students move toward the need to smash capitalism with communist revolution.

What Fidel Castro Forgot in His Speech

Communism Is the Way Out of Imperialist Hell

HAVANA, April 16 — The Southern Summit meeting (or Group of 77), representing the underdeveloped countries, ended this weekend here in Cuba with a speech by Fidel Castro denouncing the ravages suffered by most of the world’s population.

Castro said: "Before people talked about apartheid in Africa. Today we can talk about apartheid in the world. More than four billion people lack the most essential rights of human beings: health, education, drinking water, food, housing, jobs, the hope for a future for them and their children…In less than 18 months the world suffered natural disasters never seen before in the 20^th century,…in Central America, Venezuela, Mozambique and many other countries, almost all of them in the ‘Third World.’ Tens of thousands died in these disasters caused by the change in climate and the destruction of nature."

Correctly, Castro blamed the rich imperialist countries for all of this: "The rich world pretends to forget that the causes of underdevelopment and poverty were slavery, colonialism, the brutal exploitation and pillage suffered for centuries by our countries. They look at us as inferior, blaming it all on the so-called incompetence of people from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America…."

This all sounds good, but an important element is missing: the rulers who met in Havana are part of the problem. They are not allied with the exploited workers and masses being ravaged by imperialism but with one group of imperialists or another against the people they rule. One reason imperialism is still able to get away with its savagery is the cooperation of these rulers. They side with one imperialist against another for their own interests, never for the well-being of the people.

Take Africa, where a "little" regional war is occurring in the Congo (Zaire). Armies from Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Rwanda are helping one side or another in the war between two sets of local rulers fighting to control the Congo’s diamonds and other mineral wealth. France, the U.S. and Britain are also deeply involved, arming and training one side or another.

The solution, long forgotten by Castro, is not for some kind of "unity" by rulers of the "Third World," but for unity of workers and peasants from Kinshasa to Paris to New York to Mexico City to Tokyo to build an international communist movement and put an end to the scourge of the earth—capitalism.

a name="New Jersey: Feel Workers’ Power on May Day!">">"ew Jersey: Feel Workers’ Power on May Day!

ORANGE, NJ, April 9 — Police terror, war and the vital need to March on May Day and join the PLP were the themes of our May Day dinner/forum here in New Jersey. Forty-five comrades and friends enjoyed a spirited evening of good food and music, strong political speeches, and a discussion about the importance of bringing large numbers of people to this year’s march.

Our dinner was well organized and showed a new level of collective effort for us in New Jersey. Even more importantly, the evening’s political program involved several younger and relatively newer members, reflecting more working class leadership in the Party here. In particular, the inspiring speech about why workers and others should march on May Day (see below) was greeted by rousing applause.

Although our turnout could and should have been larger, several comrades seem more determined this year to organize for May Day, including some newer comrades, an important development in light of the growth of fascism this past year.

Recently, several people have joined the Party and others can be recruited by May Day. Our sales of CHALLENGE have increased. When we fight hard, we can make advances, however modest they may appear. Today’s small victories are the building blocks for our communist revolution.

a name="Excerpts From Speech ‘Marching On May Day’"></">Ex"erpts From Speech ‘Marching On May Day’

May Day is pretty special to me…I joined the Party a few years ago on May Day. It was the first time I truly felt workers’ power…Now I call on you to march on May Day.

We need to wake up and smell the fascism, the fact that our cities are turning more and more into police states, the fact that we are being exploited by the ruling class. We need to…see that there is no difference between ourselves in the working class,…we are more alike than different. That’s why we all need to march on May Day.

You see, the emancipation proclamation is nothing but a figment of the imagination. Instead of using chains and shackles…they use ideological chains to bind us. Instead of whips, they’re using bullets. The more things change under capitalism, the more they stay the same.

The ruling class and their front line soldiers, the Klan in blue, are the real culprits…You cannot be a black man in the ghetto with a wallet, a pager, a cellular phone or a set of keys because the Klan in blue will be quick to open fire on your ass.

The problem with brothers like Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo, Malcolm Ferguson, and Earl Faison is that they fit the description that the ruling class wants to fill up their jails with to create more prison labor.

You may look at me and judge that I am white or latino, red is the only color that can represent me. Red, the color of our blood. The color of passion and rage that comes over me when my brothers’ and sisters’ blood is spilled. That’s why we need to march on May Day.

That’s what May Day is all about, and you will feel it, you will see workers’ power on May Day and we will do it as a collective, men, women and children, no matter the color of a person’s skin...And soon the masses of people will realize that the only solution is a communist revolution.

a name="It’s More Than Just Jobs; It’s About Promoting US Imperialism"></">It"s More Than Just Jobs; It’s About Promoting US Imperialism

Seattle, WA, April 13—I started a good number of conversations about the Teamster’s Anti-China rally today by asking workers if they knew who was the featured speaker. Nobody guessed Pat "we-shouldn’t-have-fought-Hitler" Buchanan. Some were quite upset. One friend immediately began to talk about the fight against Nazi’s in his "native" country.

Another guy hated Buchanan, but was torn because he didn’t want China to get permanent Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status.. "Boeing will ship all our jobs to China if they get NTR status," he warned.

This led to a discussion about imperialism’s need to drive down the standard of living of all workers. In particular, we zeroed in on the increase in prison labor.

"Why don’t the unions focus on prison labor here, where they can have an immediate impact," I asked.

"But prison labor here is only a small thing," my friend answered.

"That’s what the AFL-CIO would have you believe when they focus your attention on China. In fact, the US has the largest prison population in the world—half a million more than China, which has five times the population of the US—and racist slave prison labor in the good old U. S. of A. is mushrooming. Even Boeing is getting in on the act."

Then we got down to brass tacks. "Look," I said, "Let’s say the unions manage to derail MFN for China. We still loss if the hacks can use this campaign to build a big anti-communist crusade."

He smiled at that.

"If, and when, we ever actually end up fighting a war with China," I continued, "Do you thing these hacks will say, ‘don’t support this war because if the US wins, the corporations will have all this cheap labor to threatened our jobs’? "

"When pigs fly," he assured me.

Strike Against Lockheed Martin

FORT WORTH, TX, April 19 — 2,300 blue-collar Lockheed Martin workers here have shut down production of the Air Force F-16 fighter jet. Mediation talks failed on Monday, sending the strike into its second week. Because of layoffs and subcontracting, the average age of these strikers has grown to 52 years.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin’s competitor, Boeing, was caught trying to bribe a member of the UAW negotiating committee at its Long Beach, CA. Plant. That contract expires April 30.

The History Anti-Communists Cannot Erase:

How Stalin And The Red Army Crushed The Nazis

According to the worldwide capitalist media, "communism is dead." Yet they have kept up a constant drumbeat of how "bad" communism is, had been, would be. The ruling classes know that the international working class has not quite been won over. So they feel they must maintain this barrage of anti-communism.

The linchpin of this campaign, the bugaboo that the rulers feel they must scare workers with is one word—Stalin. Hardly a week goes by when Stalin is not somehow reviled in the bosses’ media. Books, editorials, letters, TV series and movies appear all with one aim in mind: Stalin is the most foul person who ever lived, "worse than Hitler," worse than anything one could imagine.

This anti-Stalin campaign has been occurring for over half a century. The anti-communists try to rewrite history, but there are millions that still remember the accomplishments of Stalin, the Soviet workers and their Red Army. In the dark days of World War II, when Hitler was seemingly unstoppable and threatened the world with the most brutal dictatorship ever seen, it was Stalin and the Soviet Union who first stopped the Nazis, and then, 55 years ago May 5, flew the communist Red flag over the ashes of Hitler’s Berlin and his murderous Third Reich.

For those who may have forgotten and for the many others who are too young to remember, it is instructive to read what one of the most anti-communist of all the bosses had to say about Stalin and the USSR in 1942. Time Magazine, of the Henry Luce Time-Life-Fortune empire, selected Stalin as "Man of the Year" in 1942. In its January 4, 1943 issue, with Stalin’s picture on the cover, Time entitled its story, "Joseph Stalin: Die, But Do Not Retreat." Here are excerpts from that tribute.

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"The year 1942 was a year of blood and strength. The man whose name means steel in Russian…was the man of 1942….

Had German legions swept past steel-stubborn Stalingrad and liquidated Russia’s power of attack, Hitler would have been…undisputed master of Europe, looking for other continents to conquer. He could have diverted 250 victorious divisions to new conquests in Asia and Africa. But Joseph Stalin stopped him. Stalin had done it before—in 1941—when he started with all of Russian intact. But Stalin’s achievement in 1942 was far greater. All that Hitler could give he took—for a second time….

The 1942 accomplishments of…Churchill and Roosevelt pale by comparison with what Joseph Stalin did in 1942.

At the beginning of the year Stalin was in an unenviable spot….Gone was roughly one-third of Russia’s industrial capacity….Gone was nearly half of Russia’s best farmland.

With all this gone,….Stalin still had the magnificent will to resist of the Russian people….[but] the strongest will to resist can eventually crack under continued defeat….

With these reduced resources, Stalin tackled his problem, trying to pick able leaders for his Army, trying to improve its resistance, trying to maintain the morale of his underfed people….

Only Stalin knows how he managed to make 1942 a better year for Russia than 1941. But he did. Sevastopol was lost, the Don basin was nearly lost, the Germans reached the Caucuses. But Stalingrad was held. The Russian people held. The Russian Army came back with four offensives that had the Germans in serious trouble at year’s end.

Russia was displaying greater strength than at any point in the war. The general who had won that overall battle was the man who runs Russia.

Joseph Stalin…worked 16 to 18 hours a day. Before him he kept a huge globe showing the course of campaigns over territory he himself defended in the civil wars of 1917-20. This time he again defended it, and mostly by will power. There were new streaks of grey in his hair and new etchings of fatigue in his granite face….But there was no break in his hold on Russia and there was long-neglected recognition of abilities by nations outside the Soviet borders….

For his armies Stalin coined the slogan "Umeraite No Ne Otstupaite" (Die, But Do Not Retreat). It had been shown at Moscow that a strongly fortified city can be held as a strong point against attack by mechanized forces. Stalin chose to make Stalingrad another such point….Stalin was organizing the winter offensive which burst into the Don basin with the fury of the snowstorms that accompanied it….

Stalin…called to his people to sacrifice collectively to preserve the things they had built collectively….Production norms were increased, apartments went unheated, electricity was turned off four days a week. At year’s end, the Russian children had no new toys for the New Year’s celebration….But there was rejoicing. [Russia] had been saved for the second time in two years….

On the 25^th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin, in his big state speech of the year, reviewed the past and for the future struck the note of statesmanship.

The Past. The Revolution that was begun in 1917 by a handful of leather-coated working men and pallid intellectuals waving the red flag, by 1942 had congealed into a party government that has remained in power longer than any other major party in the world. It began under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, on Marxist principles of a moneyless economy which challenged the right to accumulate wealth by private initiative….

Stalin faced the fundamental problems of providing enough food for the people and improving their lot through 20^th-Century industrial methods. He collectivized the farms and he built Russia into one of the four great industrial powers on earth. How well he succeeded was evident in Russia’s world-surprising strength in World War II. Stalin’s methods were tough, but they paid off….As Allies fighting the common enemy, the Russians have fought the best fight so far."

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Postscript. As it turned out, the Red Army encircled the Nazis at Stalingrad and forced the remaining 330,000 troops to surrender in February 1943. The Red Army was never to retreat again, in little more than two years forcing Hitler’s legions to retreat all the way to Berlin. The Soviets had battled 80% of the Nazi army on the Eastern Front, far more than the rest of the Allies combined.

Of course, this tribute by Time accentuates the accomplishments of Stalin as an individual and underplays the role of the Communist Party he led. It was this and the dedication of the Soviet people who followed communist leadership, the Red Army and the workers on the production front at home that indisputably saved the world from a fascist victory.

It was a British general who said, in an introduction to a TV series "The War in Russia," that had it not been for the Soviet people, the Red Army and Stalin’s leadership, untold numbers of British and U.S. citizens would not be alive today.

LETTERS

Becoming A Communist Gave Me Courage

Five months ago I joined a PLP club. In the past whenever my husband talked to me about the Party, I was apathetic and said that I didn’t want to know anything about politics. He always looked for ways to bring communist ideas to me. I remember that once he told me to come with him to a cadre school to make food for those at the meeting. I went. While preparing the food I listened to the conversation and liked the way it was going. This gave me a better idea of what it was about. From that time I indirectly reminded my husband of the meetings and asked him questions about the Party. He said they were forming a club with the wives of some of the comrades to learn about the Party and the Party to learn about us.

My husband said it wasn’t correct to have a permanent club made up solely of women because we aren’t trying to form feminist groups. This would be anti-Party. The plan was to introduce us to the Party, get to know each other and share communist ideas with our children and among ourselves.

I’ve always been timid, but we started to meet and developed confidence in each other. I started understanding the main problem—the bosses’ exploitation of the workers.

I work in a maquilla. Sometimes I have to work twelve or thirteen hours a day for minimum wages. But since I wasn’t thinking about the boss exploiting us for his profits, I was thinking mainly about being careful and acting correctly so that I didn’t lose my job. Now I understand that our wages are based on eight hours and that the bosses are stealing from me and robbing me of five hours more every day in addition to the profits they make off my work for the entire day. It’s the same with millions of workers around the world.

Because of my timidity I never talked back to the bosses and I thought that was the reason I had lasted eight years on this job. I didn’t know that the bosses only saw me as a tool that was useful for their interests.

But now the supervisors have driven me to desperation. My husband was right when he said I had to confront the bosses, because I was putting myself at their mercy. I would carry out their every whim and generate more profit for them. Living in this system is living in hell.

It’s gotten so bad that I wanted to quit my job. I haven’t done it because of the great needs of my family and because now I’m a member of the Party which has taken away my fear and timidity! Now I confront the supervisors who are the servants of the boss!

The other workers support me. They tell me it took me a long time, but that’s how it has to be. I can’t let the bosses mistreat me. The workers admire me now because I used to just put my head down in front of the supervisors.

Thanks to PLP I’m not afraid of the bosses and I defend myself. I’m not afraid of being fired for responding to the supervisors. I’m learning all this from the discussions we have in the club meetings and the cadre schools, which are helping us develop communist ideas.

There are moments when I ask my husband why, having such great communist ideals, he has so many weaknesses. And he tells me that while we live in this capitalist system that isn’t for the working class, its difficult to be pure communists. But our struggle is aimed at developing the masses of workers in the best possible way to fight for communist ideas so that we can destroy the capitalist exploiter and achieve a communist society.

A PLP Comrade in El Salvador

a name="D.C. Cops: ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet’"></a>D.". Cops: ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet’

My experiences in Washington, D.C. at the recent anti-globalization protests revealed to me just how brutal fascist cops become when defending their bosses’ system. While distributing PLP leaflets, we saw the Klan in blue in full riot gear, firing shots from air rifles as helicopters flew above. The question was not would the police attack but when.

With other comrades we set up a literature table and spoke on a bullhorn. Thousands of protestors came by in waves. While distributing May Day stickers and leaflets, I asked one what the cops had done. She said a cop had run over her friend’s foot with his motorcycle. When she demanded an apology, the cop snarled "You ain’t seen nothing yet," and beat her with his nightstick, bruising her liver and kidneys. This protestor seemed ashamed over being beaten. I told her the cops are ordered to do this to workers and students, that it was "not her fault." She gave us her name and address. I gave her CHALLENGE and May Day stickers and asked her to invite other protestors to join us at May Day. She agreed to help.

I next got on the microphone and asked the protestors, "How many of you were beaten by the cops?" One third raised their hands. I then asked, "How many of you are sick of this?" and was greeted by a loud shout of agreement that the cops must be stopped. I invited them to May Day and attacked the cops for their fascist actions. Other comrades called for smashing the police and capitalism, the system which needs police brutality. While distributing stickers I spoke with 30 protestors who the cops had attacked, mostly white workers and students, many new to such experiences. I pointed out that the attacks the bosses have gotten away with against black workers for decades, they are increasingly doing to white workers today.

On the bus returning to Boston, I told all the protestors we need to destroy the fascist cops and their capitalist system, which needs cop terror and all these bosses’ global financial institutions.

This protest was the largest I’ve been to and the first time I personally saw and heard just how fascist the police are when the bosses feel threatened. Both the KKKops and capitalism must be smashed!

Red Student

Miami Mafia Messes Up

The editorial and article on little Elián (CHALLENGE April 12, 19) really shed light on this soap opera, and the capitalist forces behind it. Here are a couple of other observations.

Firstly, the Cuban exiles ("gusanos" or worms as they used to be known—now the Miami Mafia) have not only exposed themselves as fascist and arrogant, but have actually made their nemesis, Fidel Castro, look good. Despite all the anti-communism pushed by the Miami Mafia (and a good deal of the press, particularly Univision and Telemundo, the two Spanish TV networks in the U.S.), most people, including non-Cuban Latinos in Miami and throughout the U.S., support Eliancito’s return to his dad and to Cuba. Given that most people see the father and Cuba as communists, that’s a blow to anti-communism.

Secondly, even if the Miami Mafia has lost some of its usefulness among certain sections of the U.S. ruling class, it’s still treated with kid gloves. After all, they have openly defied the Federal government. It’s true that Janet Reno doesn't want another Waco, but still, if the family had been Haitian, Dominican, Mexican or Afro-American, the Feds would have seized the kid right away.

C.H.E.

Hoffa Heils Buchanan

The new PLP pamphlet "Know Your Enemy: Capitalism," discusses organized labor’s role in preparing a patriotic, "America first" working class. The union leaders have a difficult task since they have allowed corporate America to devastate the working class to fuel the current boom.

The leadership of the AFL-CIO talks about internationalism in its Campaign for Global Fairness (CGF). "We have reached an historical turning point. It is time for a Campaign for Global Fairness that writes new rules for the world economy, a campaign not just about trade and the institutions that govern trade, but a campaign for a new internationalism." But the main focus of their campaign is to attack China. They oppose granting capitalist China Normal Trade Relations or admitting them to the World Trade Organization.

Malcolm X once said, "Racism has you looking East when you should be looking West."

Enter Pat Buchanan. At the recent CGF rally in Washington, he told 5,000 Teamsters, "If I was in the White House and the Chinese communists came to my office, I'd tell them 'stop threatening my country, stop persecuting the Christians, or you will have sold your last pair of chopsticks at any mall in America." (SF Chronicle, 4/13)

Of course, Buchanan knows full well that China is a capitalist country, but he labels them "communist" to spout both anti-Chinese hatred and especially anti-communism. The media publicized it far and wide. There were no denunciations of his racist "chopsticks" remarks from the union leaders or liberal politicians who shared the stage with him.

While posing as a worker’s "friend," Buchanan actually represents the Southern textile industry, one notorious for its racism, low wages and murderous conditions. These small-fry manufacturers don't have the investment capital to move their production off-shore to make extra profits from cheaper labor in other countries so they are demanding that the U.S. Government impose tariffs to protect their markets. Buchanan already showed his fascist side when he said that the U.S. had no reason to fight Hitler. Now he is trying to lead a working-class movement based on racism and "America First," and convince U.S. workers to support their own bosses. In Germany this fascism was called National Socialism.

Here in the Bay Area in the Transport Workers Union, we plan to mobilize a counter-attack to this racist campaign and build real working-class international solidarity. It is especially important for union workers to lead the fight against anti-Asian racism because we have a large number of Asian workers in our industry. Back in the 1880’s, the union movement collaborated with the Southern Pacific RR, Leland Stanford, and the biggest Bay Area bosses to lead anti-Chinese raids that divided and weakened working-class struggles. During World War II, the internment of Japanese-Americans was centered in California, and Asian workers have been the source of huge profits in many industries such as agriculture and garment.

PLP's May Day marches are a clear alternative to Buchanan and the AFL-CIO leadership. The working class has a proud tradition of anti-racism and international workers’ unity. May Day is the workers' day around the world, and PLP has been restoring it as a revolutionary communist holiday for 30 years. This is the best answer to Buchanan and his corporate backers' filthy racism. This march is squarely against capitalism, which is killing working people here and around the globe.

Red Transit Worker

a name="‘Reform’ Capitalism? Ain’t No Such Animal"></a>"Reform’ Capitalism? Ain’t No Such Animal

On April 14th^, we attended a conference at the University of Washington. Workshops included issues such as racism, sweatshops, the UNAM strike, the Zapatistas, police brutality and the prison industrial complex, and how they related to globalization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

At one workshop panelists representing various organizations spoke about the LA janitors strike, the UNAM strike, the Chiapas rebellion and immigration. They agreed global capitalism is the source of the problems workers face worldwide. Their answer? Reform capitalism and somehow make it more "democratic."

During the discussion, a young PLP’er said these problems resulted from capitalism, which is fundamentally flawed. It is a system based on commodity production where profit is valued more than human life. He explained that this truth is kept from workers since it might lead them to crush the system and fight for communism. He said the discussion should center around that point to resolve the problems affecting the international working class.

Then the focus shifted to a debate over capitalist and communist ideology. One panelist said when you mention the "S" word (Socialism), people would not understand how it relates to their lives—"most workers don’t know socialism from shit." The other panelists agreed.

This lack of confidence in the working class stems from a misunderstanding of the revolutionary role of the working class and its capacity to change society. Another young PL’er explained that capitalists push this false consciousness on workers, all the more reason why we should educate our class.

Cynicism about the working class has no place in our movement. If anyone could understand communism and the need for revolution, it’s the working class.

Red College Student

Computers Used for Fascist Control

You read a lot these days about how computers and the Internet are supposed to improve education. It turns out that one of the ways our bosses plan to use them is to spy on students and keep them in ever more prison-like conditions.

I recently went to a teachers’ meeting to see a demonstration of video-conferencing. Instead we got a demonstration of a system that can put dozens of miniature spy cameras all over a school and send the pictures to the deans’ or principal’s office—or even, they bragged, over the internet to the local police station. They talked about putting cameras in classrooms, in the cafeteria, hallways, locker rooms…everywhere. They already have one system installed in this area, at Malcolm X Shabazz H.S. in Newark.

The presenter claimed it was for the "security" of students and teachers, and that it could have saved lives in incidents like Columbine, but it is clear that this is a next step in the increasingly prison-like atmosphere they are building in the schools. First cops in every school, now electronic watchtowers, and soon, perhaps, machine-gun towers at the school walls.

Ironically, the company claims it first invented this system so that parents could log in and watch their children playing happily in daycare! But the real agenda is to pressure and intimidate teachers and students alike, to keep us fearful of being on "candid camera." Let this new taste of Big Brother remind us that the real criminals are on the other side of the cameras. We don’t need Internet security cameras to know what the enemy is doing!

Red Eye

1. Anti-Communist Is Deadly to All Workers and Youth
   Capitalism: The Root of World Poverty
   1. U.S. Bosses on Horns of China Dilemma
2. Send the Boy Home:
   Little Elián: Pawn in in Imperialist Chess Game
3. CSU STUDENTS STAND UP TO `PUSH' POLICE
4. Youth Up Struggle at Bogan High
5. Strike: One Battle in Long War to Smash Capitalism
   1. Leaders of the Working Class or of Capitalism?
6. Harvard PLP Says: Can't Poverty Abroad Without Opposing Cop Terror Here
7. Striking Janitors Must Flush Out Bosses' Agents
8. Can't Fight World Poverty Without Fighting Imperialism
   1. PLP Exposes Sweeney Anti-Communism
9. Youth at PLP May Day Dinner"
   `To Get Rid of Division You Need Multiplication'
10. PLPer Spreads Red Ideas in Postal Union Election
11. Resolutions at SF Teachers' Union Against Cop Terror, for May Day
12. Staten Island: African Workers Join Fight Against Racist Cop Terror
13. PLP School Discusses the Political Economy of Making a Basketball Ball
14. Upper Manhattan May Day Dinner
15. Marking the 25th Anniversary of PLP of Racist Anti-Busing Movement in Boston
16. LETTERS
    1. Spreading E-Communism in Cyberspace
    2. Play About Marx Plays with Marx
    3. CIA's Mitchener Lies About Kent State U.
    4. Racist Daytona Beach Cops Maul Black Youth

---

Editorial:

Anti-Communist Is Deadly to All Workers and Youth
Capitalism: The Root of World Poverty

Thousands of workers and students will be marching in Washington, D.C. this weekend to protest against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. They want to create a better world and fight against the exploitation of workers. But the leadership of the protest, the AFL-CIO and groups like Global Exchange (see below), will never end exploitation and oppression. They will only mislead us into a patriotic movement that serves the interests of U.S. imperialism.

The AFL-CIO is bringing thousands of steel workers, teamsters and others to lobby and rally against China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). As in the NAFTA battle, they are temporarily parting company with their ruling class masters, and their politicians like Clinton and Gore.

The AFL-CIO has accused the Clinton administration of "prostrating itself for a deal with China that treats human rights as a disposable nuisance." And Teamster president James Hoffa praises Hitler-apologist Pat Buchanan as "the only candidate that is speaking about the issue of world trade, of China..." The back page of last month's Teamster magazine showed a picture from Tienanmen Square, with a pro-U.S. demonstrator standing in the way of three tanks. The message reads, "If he can stand up to `Communist' China, so can you."

They claim to be outraged at China's record on "human rights" and the use of prison labor. In reality, they are afraid of seeing auto assembly and other jobs transferred to lower-wage capitalist China as the price for opening up new markets for U.S. bosses. While these labor bosses want to appear to be militantly protecting U.S. workers, in fact, "The AFL-CIO backs the idea of [U.S.] inmates working but wants it done `carefully." (The Wall Street Journal, 6/29/99)

Currently there are two million prisoners in the U.S., double the figure of ten years ago. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, about two-thirds black and Latin, are working for private corporations like Dell Computers, Boeing, Microsoft, and the Federal Prison Industries, for as little as 20cents an hour, some as low as 75cents a day! They make everything from clothing to aircraft parts, from computer circuit boards to Army helmets and ammunition cases. The garment industry lost 8,000 jobs to the federal prison system alone (Wall Street Journal, 7/22/99).

Global Exchange is on the board of the Fair Trade Federation. It hopes to make production in U.S. sweatshops and prisons more competitive by slightly raising labor costs in Asia and Latin America. By focusing on China they promote protectionism and patriotism. Global Exchange receives grants from foundations tied to manufacturers who benefit from Fair Trade's campaigns against their competitors. Would these foundations keep contributing if Global Exchange targeted exploitation of workers in the U.S.?

Take the garment industry. Hundreds of thousands of mainly immigrant workers have no unions, sub-minimum wages, no benefits, no overtime pay, work in death-trap conditions and are subject to physical abuse by their bosses. Nationwide only about 12% of U.S. workers are covered by union contracts, one of the lowest percentages of any country in the world. In New York City, there are an estimated 4,500 garment sweatshops. In Los Angeles, with 150,000 garment workers, thousands of undocumented workers labor for less than minimum wage under terrible working conditions. The murderous LAPD terrorizes black and Latin neighborhoods to enforce these low wages.

There are also tens of thousands of Workfare participants who labor under slave-like conditions, well below the minimum wage. In New York City more than 60,000 Workfare participants clean parks, streets, subway stations and hospitals, replacing city employees who earned union wages.

When Global Exchange joins with the leadership of the garment union UNITE in opposing sweatshops, with the leadership of the Teamsters who oppose Mexican truck drivers entering the U.S., with the leadership of the steelworkers union in opposing steel imported from Brazil and Russia, they are not building international solidarity. They are uniting with U.S. imperialism in its trade war against its European and Asian competitors. Trade wars eventually lead to shooting wars.

Police terror, sweatshops and prison labor are symptoms of growing fascism. An anti-racist worker-student alliance must be at the core of any movement to defeat imperialism. We must fight racist exploitation, police terror and wage slavery right here in the U.S. We can build a mass communist movement, from the factories and fields to the campuses and barracks, to smash U.S. imperialism with communist revolution. This movement and these goals will be on display in PLP May Day marches in the U.S. and Central America.

U.S. Bosses on Horns of China Dilemma

The lovers' quarrel over China between Clinton and the AFL-CIO bosses reflects a number of important contradictions created by U.S. imperialism. CHALLENGE readers may remember that Clinton first campaigned in 1992 against "human rights" abuses in China. He quickly changed his tune, for two reasons.

First, many U.S. companies have fat contracts with China. Boeing alone has deals worth $19 billion. So there's a large lobby of U.S. rulers who, for their own selfish profit motives, want to normalize business relations with the fascists in Beijing.

There's a broader strategic question as well. The current U.S. foreign policy doctrine calls for preventing an anti-U.S. alliance between the Chinese and Russians. Granting China entry into the World Trade Organization could be viewed as a tactic within this strategy. Obviously, it generates contradictions between the U.S. ruling class and the capitalists who lead the AFL-CIO (see editorial). But the strategy itself will never work for other reasons as well, because it's based on the drive to maintain U.S. imperialist dominance in Asia.

The Chinese rulers have a different idea. They want to rule the roost. All their business and political arrangements with U.S. imperialism are merely tactics on behalf of their own strategy to become top dog. The Chinese have already taken steps to develop a strategic alliance with the Russians. All this wheeling and dealing can lead only to war.

Editorial 2

Send the Boy Home:
Little Elián: Pawn in in Imperialist Chess Game

The Elián Gonzalez case proves yet again that capitalism perverts and corrupts the most basic human values. A small boy loses his mother under tragic circumstances. His father, divorced from the mother, has been a good parent. The boy is now in a different country from the father. Solution: return the boy to his surviving parent. You don't need a fancy psychiatrist to figure out this one.

However, as CHALLENGE briefly pointed out last week, imperialist rivalries have turned little Elián into a political football. With the exception of his father, who seems to want the same as any dad under the circumstances, all the actors in this sordid drama shout about the boy's welfare in order to cover up their true class motives. The hypocrisy is nauseating.

First come Elián's Miami "family" and their supporters. This is a motley little army of out-and-out fascists. Their parents and grandparents were members or allies of Cuba's pre-Castro ruling class, in the days when the island was a low-wage paradise for U.S. sugar companies and a playground for the degenerate rich and famous. Many of the Miami-based "Cuban exile leadership" are using the Elián crusade as a big lie to disguise their true dream of recovering the property Castro & Co. confiscated from them. They don't want U.S. imperialism to make any deals that would keep Castro in power. They're allied with the powerful U.S. sugar industry, which hopes to prevent cheap Cuban sugar from penetrating the U.S. market and lowering prices. So this gang has decided that Elián belongs in the U.S.

Then there's the Clinton White House. Clinton is so passionately "devoted" to the welfare of children that his economic sanctions have murdered hundreds of thousands of them in Iraq since he began his first term in 1993. He loves them so deeply that he bombed them in Yugoslavia for nine weeks last year. In fact, the liberal bosses who run U.S. imperialism are so "child-centered" that they have been murdering, terrorizing, and starving youngsters around the world for decades. Now they want to make Elián the beneficiary of such "humanitarianism."

The bosses' real motive is to prevent Cuba from once again becoming a strategic pawn for their biggest rivals. In the heyday of the old Soviet Union, Cuba was a major thorn in the U.S. rulers' side. When the USSR broke up ten years ago, Cuba's threat to U.S. world domination diminished. But now Russian rulers are making a comeback. It will take time to mature, but the logic is clear: "As relations with the U.S. deteriorate, Russia's interest in Cuba will be identical to the Soviets' interest" (Stratfor Global Intelligence Update, "Russia Revives Relationship with Cuba," 12/22/99). The Russians still have a military arrangement with Castro and an intelligence-gathering site in Havana. They're also trying to arrange a three-way oil-for-sugar deal among themselves, the Cubans and Venezuela, which happens to supply 17% percent of U.S. oil imports.

The European Union (EU) bosses have become an ingredient in this scramble. These imperialists have launched a big trade offensive throughout Latin America. They're building a beachhead in Mexico, from which they intend to penetrate the multi-trillion dollar U.S. and Canadian markets. U.S. imperialism is in for a long-term battle to control foreign investment in a region it once considered its private plantation.

Cuba is thus re-emerging as a strategic key. Despite U.S. rulers' cynical red-baiting of him, Castro is no communist. He's a state capitalist looking to get the best possible deal for the class he leads. He's promoting trade relations with Africa, China and the European Union, in addition to his renewed romance with the Russians.

The U.S. liberal imperialists want to prevent Cuba from allying with their enemies. Clinton's insistence on returning Elián to his father must be viewed as part of a plan to bring Cuba back under U.S. economic and political influence. We can't predict whether the U.S. or the Russian and E.U. rulers will succeed here. Either way, the sharpening imperialist rivalries that lie beneath the Elián case must lead to more war. As they have in the past, new imperialist armed conflicts will slaughter millions of youngsters like Elián Gonzalez. Only the successful fight for communism can lead to a society in which profit wars become unnecessary. Then children can be brought up to lead fulfilling, productive lives.

CSU STUDENTS STAND UP TO `PUSH' POLICE

CHICAGO, IL, April 8 -- Twenty students from Chicago State University (CSU) joined HS students to give militant leadership to the April 4 Operation PUSH march against police brutality. They led chants in English and Spanish. But when PUSH security tried to stifle the chants by seizing their bullhorn, the student resisted, saying, "I've been brutalized by the police. That's why I am marching. No one's going to shut me up."

CSU students repeatedly beat back threats from PUSH security. When a "PUSH Police" grabbed a high school student by the arm and shoved him into the line of the march, a CSU student (herself the mother of a teenager) got in his face and made it clear that this will not happen again.

This action grew out of the March 1 forum against racism initiated by PLP, followed by two May Day dinners. Students decided it was time to stop talking about racism and do something about it. They collected several hundred signatures on a petition, and were given an excused day from class to attend the march. An ad was placed in the student newspaper and PUSH provided a bus to take students to the march.

On the ride to the march, a PLP leader led students in militant anti-racist chants. This built our unity and drew a line between PLP and PUSH, which never mentioned police killings and beatings. Instead they focused on school funding and less money for prisons. Students were ticked off because they had to wait in the freezing cold while Jackson was inside a school mouthing off to the media.

Students were sharp in attacking the "PUSH police." PUSH security were laughing and joking with the cops. The way security threatened and assaulted marchers was typical of the cops. A PLP member pointed out that Jesse Jackson had hired one of the cops fired for the murder of Latanya Haggerty as a security guard. Only protest within PUSH led to his dismissal.

In class we looked at the PLP May Day video. Four students said they are going to the march, and others are very interested. Fighting for the political leadership of the mass movement against police terror has given us more confidence in the Party and ourselves.

Youth Up Struggle at Bogan High

CHICAGO, IL, April 8 -- " I received your literature at the march and I would like to know when your next meeting is. I would also like to help pass out literature if you need me." This Bogan High School student called the Party office after marching with PLP on Jesse Jackson's "Dignity Day" April 4. The youth contingent of 60 sharpened the march ideologically and made it more militant, distributing more than 200 CHALLENGES and dozens of Prison Labor pamphlets.

Our banner read "Smash Racist Police Terror with Communist Revolution!" As we marched, one comrade explained the meaning of the red flags to the 1,000 marchers. It was inspiring. The confidence and support displayed by the college and high school students for the Party was a big improvement over the Jackson/Operation PUSH demonstration last November over the expulsion of six black students in Decatur, Il.

The main difference was our struggle to mobilize for the march. At Bogan H.S. we spent three weeks trying to organize a walkout. A group of students tried to talk to the principal about providing buses for the march, but she refused to meet with them. This only made them more committed. Many students circulated literature throughout the school. There was much discussion about whether to walk out. Should students risk suspension? What about the police? Even teachers were involved in the debate. It appeared large numbers would be walking out.

However, "for every action there is an opposite reaction." The administration sent out letters to all parents saying that police brutality, funding for public education and stopping the incarceration of youth of color were important issues, but high school students should not be "used" as warriors, and high schools should not be battlefields. It said that a walkout would "disrupt the educational process," and anyone who participated would face a 3-day suspension. Our counter-attack was to struggle with parents to march with the PTA. We were unsuccessful but it was important to wage the struggle.

The week before, a lunchroom full of students watched as a cop put a student in a choke-hold. The student was suspended for three days. What hypocrisy! Bogan High suspends black and Latin students daily for the least infraction. What does that say for the administration's commitment to not "disrupt the educational process?"

The day of the march, the school looked like a fort. But despite the fascist intimidation of squad cars and police wagons, five students walked out and four marched in the PLP contingent. At Lincoln Park and Whitney Young, more "liberal" schools, more students walked out. The students gained a lot from their experience with the Party. We now have the big job of winning them to be organizers for May Day.

Strike: One Battle in Long War to Smash Capitalism

SAN SALVADOR, April 11--Eleven Social Security (government health system) workers are continuing a hunger strike begun on April 3^rd to win their jobs back. The Supreme Court refused to order the re-hiring of 221 fired workers following their 4-month strike. Prior to the recent elections, the politicians promised that the workers would get their jobs back.

"The strike should not have been ended until the workers were reinstated!" declared a Social Security doctor.

The FMLN party (former guerilla movement) said the strike was a complete victory for the workers--that they had halted privatization, been reinstated and forced the government to negotiate improvements in workers' health care. But in reality privatization has brought guards, laboratories, washing services and clinics run by private companies. In addition, the hospitals do not have adequate medicines--one must go to private pharmacies to fill prescriptions.

Leaders of the Working Class or of Capitalism?

In a truly disgusting display, FMLN representatives donated a paltry $340 dollars to the fired workers. Each FMLN legislator's monthly salary is ten times that amount and thee are 27 of them. So from their total $91,000 a month, they "gave" $340. What a joke!

Union representatives will be visiting the U.S. to meet with union leaders and workers. They should not be fooled by "victory" statements. The Social Security workers are being left to twist in the wind.

Although we respect the workers on the hunger strike, we don't think that tactic will win. The bosses are already killing us from hunger on a daily basis. They couldn't care less if one or two more workers die of hunger. During the civil war these same bosses massacred over 100,000 workers. They're only affected if their profits suffer.

We need to re-start the strike and organize more workers to support it, until all strikers are re-hired. However, the most important lesson learned from this strike is that capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed and replaced by a new society based on the needs of the workers, not the profits of the bosses, be they nationalist, U.S.- or European-dominated.

We must prepare ourselves for total war against the bosses. Today it is Social Security. Tomorrow it could be your factory, maquiladora, high school or university carrying forth the battle against the capitalist system. March on May 1^st behind the Communist Red Flag of the Working Class.

Harvard PLP Says: Can't Poverty Abroad Without Opposing Cop Terror Here

CAMBRIDGE, MA, April 6 -- Today PLP members attended a teach-in against globalization, preparing for this week's demonstrations against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Washington, D.C. Many students are disgusted by the super-exploitation of workers around the world. The AFL-CIO bosses and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), however, are leading this movement to build fascism and war.

During the teach-in, one of the leaders from United for a Fair Economy (UFE, a Boston-area AFL-CIO-backed group) asked people where their clothes were made. They were pointing out that most of our clothes are made in countries in Latin America or Asia. Another student discussed the horrors that workers face in Nicaragua.

These rulers' group want us to believe the horrors of capitalism only happen elsewhere. But you don't have to go overseas to find exploitation. One comrade pointed out that clothes made by Lee were made by U.S. prison labor.

The meeting's high point came when the UFE speaker called on everyone to oppose granting normal trade relations (NTR) to China and it's entrance into the World Trade Organization. A comrade responded by pointing out that while the AFL-CIO hypocrites denounce prison labor in China, they don't lift a finger against slave labor programs like Workfare and prison labor in the U.S. He noted that the AFL-CIO march set for April 12 against granting NTR status to China, builds the lie that U.S. bosses are "better" than Chinese capitalists. This helps the rulers win workers and students to fascism and war!

Earlier in the day hundreds of workers and students attended a rally called by the Harvard "Living Wage" campaign. This group fights for a $10.25/hr minimum wage for all Harvard workers. At the rally we circulated our petition against George "Killer" Kelling, a Rutgers professor who was a fellow at Harvard's JFK School of Government where he developed many of the murderous policing policies used to terrorize black and Latin youth in recent years. We connected Kelling to the anti-globalization movement, as well as exposing that wage slavery can never be "fair."

We made several contacts during this action. We will continue working with rank-and-file students to expose the horrors of this system, and why it must be destroyed with communist revolution!

Striking Janitors Must Flush Out Bosses' Agents

LOS ANGELES, CA, April 10 -- The janitors' strike of SEIU Local 1877 is in its second week. The union is demanding a wage increase of $1/hour per year for three years. Most janitors make $6.80/hour. Many political struggles, experiences and contacts have come out of this strike. The following is an interview with a rank-and-file leader.

Q: How's the strike going?

A: I think it's going well. Of the 3,500 janitors on strike, 98% are actively supporting the struggle. We are 8,500 janitors in the union, but some haven't been called out on strike yet, like the airport janitors. The morale of the strikers is very high. Relations between rank-and-file leaders and the rest of the workers have gotten stronger. There's more trust between us.

Q: What do you think about the official union leadership?

A: They put their faith and confidence in the politicians and the Catholic Church to win this strike. They've brought experts in "putting out fires" to the marches: Jesse Jackson, Speaker of the California House of Reps, Antonio Villaraigosa, Cardinal Mahony, Mayor Riordan and others. It's an election year and they're looking for votes and to get workers to support the Democratic Party. The sellout leaders have confidence in the politicians, not in the masses of workers. I think the real leadership in this struggle comes from the rank and file, from the masses.

Q: What have you won from this struggle?

A: More unity and confidence in the workers. On the picket lines, we've stopped some scabs. But the best is that we've discussed with some workers that it's the bosses and the capitalist system that are the problem. These discussions have given me the opportunity to distribute CHALLENGE to more workers and to talk to them about communism and coming to the May Day march.

Q: How can other workers and students support this struggle, locally, nationally and internationally?

A: The most effective support locally is to participate in the marches to politicize them. Nationally and internationally people can send letters of support and organize activities to publicize this struggle, which can inspire other workers around the world. It shows that workers will fight for our interests.

Q: What motivates you to march on May Day?

A: It's International Workers' Day. PLP celebrates it as a communist day, and we workers are communists.

Q: Do you think you'll bring a busload of janitors to the march?

A: We're going to try. What I do know is that many brothers and sisters want to come, and if they help give leadership, a bigger group will come to the march and come closer to the Party.

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

This strike has produced three important aspects: the militancy of the workers, the social-fascist leadership of the AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party, and the opportunities to build the revolutionary communist PLP.

Hundreds of CHALLENGES have been sold to the strikers. In a recent march a group of strikers asked for CHALLENGE and one striker took 20 to distribute among his brothers and sisters. Many are open to discussions about the need to fight for workers' power and some to participate in PLP study-action groups.

The bosses have launched a mass media campaign to support the strike. This is the same media that supported the bombing of Yugoslavia, which murdered thousands. Cardinal Mahony is negotiating between the strikers and the millionaire cleaning companies. This is the same Mahony who in 1985 smashed the union of Catholic cemetery workers. The strike is "supported" by the LA City Council, the Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Riordan. They have all looked the other way at racist police terror, or at more than 140,000 garment workers earning less than minimum wage in LA sweatshops.

Why are all these bosses' agents supporting the strike? To win Latin and other workers to see the unions and the Democrat Party as the way out of poverty and racist police terror. They want to win our allegiance so we'll send our children to the army to defend U.S. rulers' interests around the world. They offer us a few pennies more in exchange for this, but we won't accept it.

Two opposing forces are fighting for the hearts and minds of the working class. On one side are the liberal social fascists with their plans for police terror, mass jailings, exploitation, racism and wars. On the other side is the PLP with our goal of revolution and workers' power. We're small but the potential of the workers is great. March on May Day against racist exploitation. March under the red banners of communist revolution.

Can't Fight World Poverty Without Fighting Imperialism

WASHINGTON, DC, April 9 -- "The Banks Say, `Pay Back,' We Say, `Fight Back!'" chanted 3,000 workers, students and professionals rallying to demand cancellation of "Third World" debt. PLP gave out hundreds of leaflets calling on everyone to march on May Day for communist revolution. Over 60 CHALLENGES, 15 prison labor pamphlets and several PL Magazines were also distributed, linking the struggle against racism in the U.S. to the international fight against imperialist oppression. The activity was organized by Jubilee 2000, which urged marchers to lobby Congress. This Mobilization for Global Justice focuses on "Third World" debt and lets U.S. capitalists off the hook for their racist super-exploitation of workers in this country through prison labor, Workfare, domestic sweatshops and severe intimidation of undocumented workers.

A speaker from South Africa said the apartheid regime had made huge international loans for military equipment to oppress and kill revolutionaries. International financial organizations are requiring debt repayment. Mandela and the new post-apartheid capitalist government have refused to repudiate that debt. Black South Africans are paying twice for these armaments-first with their blood, and then with higher taxes.

We met some American University (AU) students who have organized protests against AU's connection to the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison labor corporation in the U.S. This is important if we are to avoid the trap of only opposing super-exploitation abroad.

PLP Exposes Sweeney Anti-Communism

Last week, the Southern California Fair Trade Network held a debate about whether the group should support the campaign against admitting China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and grant China Permanent Favored Nation Status. A Party member and two union activists spoke explaining that the campaign is reactionary and builds nationalism rather than internationalism.

Some PLP'ers have been active in this group and a related group since before "the battle in Seattle." After Seattle we began raising the issues of China and prison labor and sweatshops here in the U.S. in these groups. The debate on China emerged from a long struggle. It occurred because several members of the group fought hard for it.

We explained that since the end of World War II, the AFL-CIO spent more money outside the U.S. than inside, organizing workers to help U.S. imperialism. They helped overthrow the governments of Guatemala, Chile, and Indonesia and destabilized many movements in Africa and Europe that opposed U.S. imperialism.

The other side said they were concerned for Chinese workers and lowering standards for all workers. While some may be concerned about the workers, the AFL-CIO leadership is concerned with building anti-communism and support for U.S. imperialism. We displayed the back page of the Teamsters newspaper that says, "If He [a man in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square] Can Stand Up to Communist China, So Can You!" A goodly section of the ruling class see China as a long-term strategic enemy. China's expanding capitalist economy needs a source of oil that's independent of the U.S. They have signed oil deals with U.S. rivals like Iraq and are building a deepwater navy to defend their interests.

In the U.S., hundreds of thousands of prisoners make products for sale for "wages" of 23cents to $1.15 an hour. Racist police terror keeps wages down and is an attack on all workers. Wages for most workers in the U.S. have been declining for 20 years. Instead of mobilizing workers against these attacks, the AFL-CIO leadership is mobilizing them against China. Another panelist pointed out that the anti-China campaign leads us into the camp of Hitler-apologist Pat Buchanan who blames "Communist" Chinese workers for lower wages here.

A PLP member pointed out that as long as the profit system exists, corporations will cross borders for lower paid labor. Some countered that the imperialists, led by Clinton, were the ones pushing free trade with China. That's true. But Sweeney and the AFL-CIO leadership push protectionism and blame Chinese workers, rather than U.S. bosses, for low wages here. In a speech at the National Press Club last November, Sweeney attacked China 23 times! Pushing nationalism among workers here also helps the rulers win us to their wars for profit.

A Teamster found the debate very interesting. Another woman asked the "against" panel whether the bosses were after cheap labor or markets in China. "Both," answered another panelist. "It's the classic dilemma of capitalism." They're competing with the Japanese and Europeans for market share. The Party member panelist also explained that some people thought a long-term plan for war between the U.S. and China was impossible because that could mean World War III. She said that's exactly what it means and it's not unthinkable because Exxon & Co. won't give up their empire without an all-out fight.

A panelist for the other side said that the way to stop imperialism was to keep China out of the WTO. In the following discussion, a student PLP comrade explained that the only way to stop imperialism is to build a movement of workers and youth across all borders that eliminates the profit system with communist revolution. He said that siding with the agents of imperialism means building a fascist movement.

We made an impact. Afterwards many were trying to figure out how to oppose China's entry into the WTO but at the same time oppose the anti-communist stance blaming Chinese workers for low wages here. Most people took copies of the PLP prison labor pamphlet. After the debate, an AFL-CIO organizer said the AFL-CIO had just endorsed the A16 demonstration in Washington, D.C. A worker in the back of the room yelled out, "What are your demands?" She was now less willing to take whatever this organizer said at face value.

A Comrade

Youth at PLP May Day Dinner"
`To Get Rid of Division You Need Multiplication'

BROOKLYN, NY, April 9 -- "The world is like an equation. In order to get rid of division you need multiplication. And in order to get rid of capitalism, you need communism." That was the "lesson plan" offered by an Erasmus High School student to over 130 members and friends of PLP at one of a number of New York May Day dinners. The workers and youth applauded the phrase, "Let's go, Revolution!" when six young people finished reading the pro-communist poem by Langston Hughes, "Good Morning Revolution."

The dinner was a real sampling of what the PLP has to offer to workers and youth. The evening began with a great meal from a Flatbush restaurant. While we ate, two high school comrades spoke on world and U.S. politics and on communist responses to attacks by fascism and imperialism. Other youth read their own communist poetry, including a performance of the reggae song, "Anytime" by an energetic group, "The Suspects," from Wingate High School. The evening was rounded out with a talk by a worker from Guinea (for background on this worker, see page 1) on the state of the African working class, by a teacher on the challenges of teaching in the bosses' schools, and a screening of the May Day video.

As always the Party brought together a wonderful mix of workers and youth, all united in a struggle to smash capitalism. We should not underestimate the tremendous significance it has for us, for our friends and our movement each time we organize a multi-racial event. On top of this, high school youth led the way in reports, poems, music and speeches, showing that communist consciousness is sinking deep roots in various areas. Due to the determined efforts of comrades to respond to an anti-police brutality demonstration in Staten Island, a contingent of new friends from hat area also attended.

The strengths in the program at this year's dinner can be traced to relationships and political struggle developed over months and years. In leading walkouts, confrontations with bosses on the job, with tutoring and organizing social events, our relationships have become increasingly political. May Day is our time to call on all friends and allies to march against fascism and imperialist war and for communist revolution. That is our task. "Let's go, Revolution!"

PLPer Spreads Red Ideas in Postal Union Election

NEW YORK CITY, April 11 -- The entire slate of 32 "Candidates For Change" (CFC) won a decisive victory in the New York Metro Area Postal Union (NY-MAPU) election. This completed the job, begun a year ago, of sweeping out the old union leaders. The newly elected officers and trustees, who ran on the slogan "Members First," averaged 57-58% of the vote. The 2nd place slate averaged about 22% of the vote. For example, William Smith received 2,511 votes for President and the runner-up had just 920 votes.

A PLP member with CFC received 2,352 votes, the second highest of 20 candidates for five Trustee positions. This reflected the positive reputation earned by the PLP member's activism as a shop steward and as an open communist for most of his 29 years on the job.

The results reveal the widespread sentiment among rank-and-file union members that the former union leaders were too passive, complacent and/or corrupt. NYC postal workers hope the CFC slate will improve working conditions, wages, etc.

The fundamental goal of communists in PLP is to actively struggle on behalf of the class interests of all workers and through that build the Party. The PLP member supported and campaigned with the new union leaders, most of whom seem to have an honest desire to lead the union on behalf of postal workers. But the class interests of workers also includes fighting against racism and racist murders by police, supporting striking workers, opposing sexism, protesting U.S. imperialism and organizing for communism.

The new Executive Vice-President wants to register more postal workers to vote for Democratic Party candidates this year. This will not protect us against the loss of jobs from privatization. All politicians are puppets of one or another group of bosses. They want our votes and our subservience. Clinton and the Democrats led Congress to pay for 100,000 more cops nation-wide. This produced more harassment and intimidation of workers and youth by cops, as well as the racist murder of Amadou Diallo and other victims of "law and order."

Severe limits on what can be accomplished within the system are imposed by USPS management and by bosses in general. Our labor may produce all postal revenues, but the bosses control those revenues. They use the system to enhance their profits and power at our expense. The grievance procedure, the courts, politicians, the government, cops, the military, the mass media are the tools through which the rich exercise power and control. Their state power and their ownership of the means of production--from which they amass great wealth--puts them in the driver's seat. If we restrict ourselves to using the grievance procedure, the courts, etc., we may win some small battles, but we will lose the war.

To best serve the interests of postal (and all) workers, we must build the movement to seize power from the rich and impose workers' power through a communist revolution.

During the election campaign our PLP member worked long and hard to win votes for the CFC slate, and at the same time to build support for our communist movement through the expanded sale of CHALLENGE and in discussions with other CFC candidates and rank-and-file workers.

Resolutions at SF Teachers' Union Against Cop Terror, for May Day

SAN FRANCISCO, April 10 -- In two separate resolutions, the San Francisco teacher's union (UESF) condemned the killing of Amadou Diallo and urged its members to participate in May Day activities.

The first resolution directed the UESF leadership to notify our state and national affiliates that we condemn all racist acts including the killing of Amadou Diallo and sent a copy of the resolution as well as a check for $100 to his family as a sign of support.

The second resolution called for the union to urge members to participate in May Day activities. It was signed by approximately 30 members from various schools. At a meeting of the Teachers for Change caucus, several copies of a petition calling on the UESF to support May Day were distributed. Fifteen of the 30 teachers signed it. They received a photocopy of that petition to get more signatures at their schools. Some did that. Now it's time to win them to march on May Day here.

The second resolution reads as follows:

Whereas May Day has been the international holiday of the working class for over 100 years; and,

Whereas May Day demonstrates the unity of the world's working class; and,

Whereas issues such as the criminalization of youth, police brutality, racism, the use of prison labor and Workfare to replace union jobs, and the preparations for war all affect our students and ourselves and must be opposed; and,

Whereas the struggle to build an international movement that opposes these attacks on the working class will be aided by participating in May Day events; therefore,

Be it resolved that UESF urges its members to participate in May Day events.

Staten Island: African Workers Join Fight Against Racist Cop Terror

STATEN ISLAND, NY, April 10 -- A Progressive Labor Party member addressed an April 8th rally here of about 100 people against police brutality and invited all the demonstrators to join PLP's May Day march in Washington, D.C. on May 6. Community leaders and students from the College of Staten Island organized the rally.

Many speakers expressed anger towards the brutality of the cops as evidenced by their killing innocent unarmed black men. However, their solutions called for reforming the capitalist injustice system--"sensitivity training," more black and Latin cops, "community policing," voting and participating in the Census 2000.

The PLP speaker explained that the cops' role is to protect the bosses' profit system. Therefore these reforms would merely help continue their role behind a different mask. Only the overthrow of capitalism by a communist-led working class will bring justice for working people.

His remarks were greeted warmly. Many participants came up to him afterwards and said his speech was one of the best things about the demonstration. Many more took CHALLENGES.

PLP's invitation to, and presence at, this demonstration grew out of a year of developing ties with a worker from the African country of Guinea. He is a leader of The People Rally of Guinea (RPG). It fights against the exploitation of workers in Africa as well as police brutality here in New York City.

We met this worker a year ago at the second Bronx demonstration protesting the cops' murder of Amadou Diallo. It was organized by liberal Democrat Al Sharpton. PLP moved through that march chanting on the bullhorn, but was never invited to speak. However, the crowd around us pushed us forward to the spot where Diallo had been shot where we did speak. It was then that we met the Guinean worker. He asked us to join forces with him.

Two months later he invited PLP to speak about May Day at a dinner in Harlem organized by workers from Senegal. A month later our Guinean friend was a featured speaker at last year's May Day march. He said his friends in Guinea saluted the Progressive Labor Party for having a May Day march in the U.S.

Last week he was invited to a Staten Island meeting that planned the April 8th demonstration. At that meeting, he distributed all his CHALLENGES and invitations to our annual May Day dinner. He asked if PLP could have a speaker and literature table at the rally and his request was granted. A phony leftist attacked PLP and told him PLP doesn't really fight for communism. He shot back, "Don't go there! Don't go that route! Wait until you meet my friends and then you will see." And so they did, as PLP'ers attended the rally and march.

We talked to demonstrators and distributed 150 CHALLENGES and other literature. They were extremely friendly to our ideas. A fourth of the people at the rally had already received papers and invitations to the dinner from our friend. He introduced us to many at the rally and encouraged us to exchange phone numbers and addresses with many workers and students from Staten Island.

As a result of our friend's work, four people from Staten Island attended our May Day dinner in Brooklyn the following day. He spoke at our dinner and linked conditions in Africa to capitalism. He closed his talk with a call for revolution. Both he and another member from his group have May Day tickets and are now organizing for our May Day March.

To build a mass Party we must have confidence in the working class. Every person we meet is a potential organizer for PLP. We invite all workers and students from Staten Island, friends and members of The People Rally of Guinea and every worker who reads this paper to our May Day march. Join us!

PLP School Discusses the Political Economy of Making a Basketball Ball

BERKELEY, CA -- Twenty-two PLP members and friends in West Coast colleges held a political economy study session on the UC Berkeley campus on the weekend of March 19th.

We were evenly divided between seasoned Party members and friends completely new to communism. People came from LA, Seattle, the Bay Area and the Central Valley. We started with an explanation of commodity production, discussing what "value" meant. Using a basketball as an example, we discussed the difference between its use value and its exchange value. Some said humans need more and more "things" and this leads to greed and social problems. But it was explained that social problems under capitalism occur because those "things" were produced for exchange, not use. Having a basketball didn't cause problems, but having Spalding and Nike compete to make them did.

From there we discussed super-exploitation and racism. It was said that the concept of race was completely manufactured by capitalism. In the U.S. in the 1700's they had to legally define a "black man" just to make that distinction. Many people shared stories of how racism affected their lives. One Party member exposed the liberal line of "celebrating diversity" as a support of racism. It was pointed out that in some LA garment factories the managers are specifically hired if they are a "different nationality" from the workers, making racism a useful tool for the boss.

After lunch, we talked about imperialism, war and fascism. We pointed out that world conflicts are based on imperialist rivalries. These rivalries are worsened by capitalist crisis, like overproduction and the falling rate of profit. To suppress workers' resistance to these crises capitalism builds towards fascism and war. During these sections Party members described their recent work. The discussion of worldwide problems needed to be balanced with a sense of hope about what can be done locally to build the Party. The light at the end of capitalism's tunnel doesn't need to be an oncoming train--it can be PLP! We touched on how imperialism will lead inevitably to World War III and highlighted events in the Balkans as an omen.

We ended the day with plans for building May Day 2000. Although we made mistakes, the mood was open and friendly without a sense of heavy-handed lecturing. It was a reaffirmation that revolutionary communist politics inspires people--it doesn't scare them. We will chalk this up as a victory and continue the struggle forward.

Upper Manhattan May Day Dinner

This past Friday night (April 7) one of the Upper Manhattan clubs had a wonderfully congenial pre-May Day dinner and discussion. Six of my friends from church came (a good example of the old "ask-26-to-get-6" rule). Three are activists in our soup kitchen, one a retired teacher-musician, and a choir member and her seven-year old son. A perfect-sized group for easy give-and-take talking.

I began with a very brief overview of May Day's history and what the Party hopes to accomplish by mobilizing its base. I also noted that there is always a personal reason or two to detest capitalism. I had just learned that a mutual friend of mine and the teacher had been diagnosed the day before with colon cancer. He had gone for months ignoring some symptoms because, as a free-lance musician, he has no health benefits!

One of my friends from the soup kitchen had marched two years before and gave a vivid description of the day's events, including her efforts to help supervise my sometimes "challenging" son. I gave her credit for helping to develop him into the march-marshal organizer he has become.

Then a long-time friend of one Upper Manhattan organizer remembered having gone to May Day years before as a little girl. She described the horrible situation on her job now. Her supervisor and some co-workers are making life hard for her because she became a "whistle blower" about theft and corruption in her workplace. All of us tried to help her figure out how to keep fighting. We plan to connect this particular struggle to a likely union-busting campaign. Thus we can prepare for a struggle that will help all the workers there and involve some outside forces in support.

This created an excellent atmosphere for relating the May Day march to the class struggle in specific ways. Everyone took ticket books, CHALLENGES and May Day stickers and promised to ask friends to march.

The following Sunday one of my friends announced the march in church. Three visitors were sitting next to me, one from the Congo, his niece and her friend from Paris. After the service we discussed "Le jour du travail" [Workers' Day]. He promised to come to May Day and the two Parisians promised to write us letters of support.

The results of our efforts in this stage of class struggle are modest. But if we can make May Day-building a regular part of our lives it will help to deepen and transform relationships and yield an ever-renewing group of workers who will be active with us, learning from us and teaching us how to be better communists.

From the belfry, Red Churchmouse

Marking the 25th Anniversary of PLP of Racist Anti-Busing Movement in Boston

This summer marks the 25th anniversary of the Boston Summer Project, the first such project held by the Progressive Labor Party and its ally, the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR). We would like to commemorate this occasion by holding a reunion in Boston on July 14-16.

Twenty-five years ago, Boston was one of the most segregated and racist cities in the country. The ruling class of Boston profited greatly from dividing workers along racial lines and many white workers bought into the racist ideas pushed by the politicians. It was dangerous for black people to enter all-white neighborhoods like Charlestown and South Boston. Black families who moved into white neighborhoods were attacked. Schools in black neighborhoods were woefully underfunded and overcrowded and schools in working class white neighborhoods were not much better.

For years, black parents and community organizations had fought for better schooling for their children. It was found that the city of Boston had engaged in a deliberate, systematic pattern of segregation of its public schools. Therefore, in 1974, Boston was ordered by a federal judge to desegregate its schools by busing black children to schools in white neighborhoods and vice versa. Immediately, racist city council members Louise Day Hicks and Albert O'Neil organized a group called ROAR-Restore Our Alienated Rights, (which was more accurately nicknamed Racists on a Rampage) to protest the busing order. During the 1974-75 school year, ROAR organized mob violence against black children bused into South Boston.

PLP decided to organize a project in the summer of 1975 to combat this fascist violence. It began with our May Day march in Boston where we were physically attacked by a group of racists and soundly defeated them. Then the Party and INCAR sent more than 125 people from all over the U.S., mostly students, to Boston for the summer. Our activities varied. Some organized an anti-racist summer school for black children who had lost considerable schooling due to a year of racist attacks. Others enrolled in courses in community colleges to spread ideas of multi-racial unity. We held daily rallies against ROAR's racist ideas and collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for multi-racial unity, an end to mob violence and quality, integrated education for all. We went on the offensive against the local racists by fighting them physically again and again. There was a constant tension that permeated the city. By the summer's end, we so weakened the power of the racist anti-busing movement that ROAR was defeated.

For many, Boston'75 was a defining moment in our lives. For some it marked an increased commitment to fight for a communist revolution. Even for others who are no longer members of Progressive Labor Party, it was a time of political commitment and activism that is looked back on with pride.

We invite all the participants in this heroic struggle to join us in Boston on July 14 to celebrate those accomplishments. We also invite other members and friends of Progressive Labor Party to join us in workshops to learn more about the history of that summer of struggle. It is especially important now to learn about that movement since the ruling class rewrote history, and expunged the blatant racism of the anti-busing movement from the record.

We are planning a weekend of social and political activities. If you would like to attend, or want more information, please contact PLP at: 1-800-330-9953; E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Comradely,

A Boston '75 Participant

LETTERS

Spreading E-Communism in Cyberspace

As a college student, the World Trade Organization (WTO) protest in Seattle was very difficult for me to deal with. I am part of an internet community for fans of a particular music group. We discuss everything from the music group, music in general, health, environmental issues and politics. Several friends of mine from this community supported the protest and some were even there.

When Seattle turned ugly and got media attention, most of the discussion within the community turned to the protests. It was really disheartening to see so many people with the right intention being swayed to believe that only the WTO is responsible for destroying the environment and exposing people to slave labor conditions. I was afraid to speak up in a group of over a thousand people who all believed this lie. I was afraid that in trying to tell people what's really going on, they would feel insulted, so I let it go.

Last month people started discussing labor conditions in other countries since there is going to be another protest against the WTO in D.C. However, there seemed to be a slight change in the tone of the discussion this time around. People seemed more interested in the labor conditions than the environment. I felt more comfortable joining in the discussion.

One person had written about the awful labor conditions in countries in Asia and Latin America. So I replied saying that although labor conditions are unbearable in other countries, those in this country were not much better. I mentioned garment sweatshops and then prison labor. I informed the thousand plus internet community that when they buy a garment that says ``Made in the U.S.A.,'' it's probably made in a prison. I ended my e-mail with an invitation to receive a pamphlet on prison labor, the one put out by PLP. Within a couple of hours two people had asked me for pamphlets. I wrote them back to let them know that the pamphlet was communist literature and I asked if they still wanted the information. I realized that I had unintentionally omitted that and wanted to let them know ahead of time what they would receive. They both wrote back and said they still wanted the pamphlet. In fact, one of them asked for seven pamphlets to pass around to co-workers and friends. I mailed off the pamphlets feeling reassured that I had done the right thing getting into the conversation ; there was really no need for me to be so reluctant.

When people get as upset as they were in Seattle, they are open to new ideas, to real solutions. The protest this week in D.C. is the perfect opportunity to talk to the youth and other people who have the right intentions but are being swayed by the ruling class to concentrate on the wrong issues.

Student Reader

Play About Marx Plays with Marx

A couple of my classmates and I attended a play about the life and times of Karl Marx, produced by students and faculty from a neighboring university. The one-man play was written by Howard Zinn, author of The People's History of the United States.

We discussed the production afterwards. We agreed the acting was very good and the whole production brought about some struggle and more class awareness among the people attending. But we felt there was not much emphasis on the conditions of society that led Marx and Engels to write The Communist Manifesto urging the working class to build a revolutionary movement.

My classmate had expected to learn more about the class struggle for communism that Karl Marx wrote about instead of the speculation on Karl Marx's daily life. This kind of "this-is-your-life-Karl-Marx" information was really unimportant.

When the question arose about a consistent, reasonable plan for the working class to get from point A, (our current condition in capitalist society) to point B (revolution for international communism) the general answer was really no answer. No one said the working class needed such a revolution to really improve conditions permanently. We both felt this was Marx's main message to the working class.

I told my classmate that only the Progressive Labor Party is actually organizing a revolutionary movement for communism, not one for socialism, as in the past. The ruling class will not voluntarily give up state power; the working class must take it by force. We struggle to bring communist leadership in the many current battles against growing fascism--police brutality, prison labor, Workfare, and bosses' attacks on working class youth. These fights build for revolution because, for one, they unite us as a class. We learn from class struggle against the bosses.

We decided to plan our own student/community forum on Marx's writings and connect them to present-day class struggle, followed by open discussion.

My two classmates are seriously considering marching on May Day with PLP. Marx did not stand for a gradual reform of capitalism. Both Marx and Lenin told us revolution, ASAP, is necessary to free our sisters, brothers and our children from capitalism.

Mid-West College Student

CIA's Mitchener Lies About Kent State U.

The April 5th issue of CHALLENGE had a Red Eye item about the CIA using liberal intellectuals to influence culture and promote anti-communism by actually rewriting the end of "Animal Farm" and other things.

May 4th will mark the 30th anniversary of the murder of four students at Kent State University in Ohio who were protesting against the National Guard's presence on their campus. James Michener, named CIA article and a popular writer here, wrote a book on the Kent State killings which promoted the "outside agitator" theory and depicted the murders as an accident.

Later, a made-for-TV movie was based on Michener's book. As pointed out in a book by I.F. Stone, "Kent State: How Murder Went Unpunished," and in another very good book by Peter Davies and The United Methodist Church, in reality the National Guard actions were murder pure and simple.

The Guardsmen were acquitted in a sham trial. The dead students were labeled communists and were the ones on trial. The Guard claimed they were defending themselves, but there were many photographs taken that day and Davies uses them in his book. A Guardsman shot Jeffrey Miller directly in the mouth, blowing out the back of his head. He was standing at the top of the hill, 100 yards away from the Guard. The other murdered students were even further away. Allison Krause was shot in the side as she attempted to hide behind a car in the parking lot. Another dead student was well over 200 yards away and was lying on the ground to protect himself. It was a turkey shoot.

Nine students were wounded, one remains paralyzed to this day and many of those wounded were hit in the backside as they were running from the Guard. Michener conveniently ignores the reality of the situation and tries to make it all seem like just a bad accident. In Davies' book, one man testified that after the shootings he overheard a Guardsman state: "I put one right down the alley." Of course, not long after Kent State, black student protesters were shot to death at Jackson University in Florida by the cops. This incident was conveniently swept under the rug. Racism, no doubt, played a big part here as it does in the recent cop killings. So it comes as no surprise that Michener would help the CIA attempt to re-write history, as he did at Kent State.

This May Day thousands will march under the red flag for workers' power all over the world. The murder of those at Kent State, Jackson State and countless others can only be avenged with a workers' revolution against capitalism, which is the real villain here.

Red Rocker

Racist Daytona Beach Cops Maul Black Youth

I am a student at a mainly black university and recently attended the Black College Reunion in Daytona Beach, Florida. From my focal point the event proved to be a successful, peaceful event for young blacks across the nation. However, because of the instilled racism that exists within police departments across the U.S., over 300 young black students were arrested.

Personally, I did not witness anything that called for any arrests. Additionally, even if there was any wrongdoing, I'm sure over 300 people were not involved. The overabundance of police at the event was disgusting and unnecessary. It was almost like a military war zone with the excessive number of police. Police were posted on every corner, driving up and down the street in squad cars, in police wagons, and overhead in helicopters. Who knows exactly how many undercover police I could add to the list?

It does not matter where the event takes place or what the event is, if it involves young blacks the police will react on their racism and make it a priority to be around and capitalize on it. I am sure that off of the Black College Reunion alone, the Daytona Beach Police Department made millions of dollars off from arrests and citations. The system sucks and furthermore it is sickening.

A Black College Student

(Editor's Note: A few weeks ago, when--as reported in Long Island Newsday--a bikers' union resulted in over a dozen bikers getting killed racing head to head, getting drunk, etc., the Daytona Beach rulers did essentially nothing. The same city that virtually coddles white college student spring rituals treats black college reunions as a gathering of "criminals.")

A Student

 

Editorial: Building for May Day

Dialectics: Communist Philosophy That Can Remove Mountains

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Wanted for Racist Murder: LAPD

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a href="#Janitors’ Anger About to Explode">"anitors’ Anger About to Explode

Miners Rebel Against Capitalism in China

a href="#Teachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers">"eachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers

May Day Resolution at UTLA

USWA Hacks March by 5,000 in Support of AKSteel Strikers

LTV Drive for Profits Is Deadly for Workers

a href="#The Battle In Seattle Continues…">"he Battle In Seattle Continues…

a href="#Elián Soap Opera""Elián Soap Opera

Boy, Did They Lie to Start Kosovo War!

a href="#Building for May Day: Details, Planning, Hard Work…">"uilding for May Day: Details, Planning, Hard Work…

a href="#A Red May Day Versus a Hacks’ May Day">" Red May Day Versus a Hacks’ May Day

LETTERS

Communist Principles Win Out

Bring PLP Ideas to Fighting Students in Mexico

The X-Generation Is Not Safe from the Men in Blue

Careful with Symbols in Our Literature

American Beauty Is Real Ugly

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Editorial: Building for May Day

Dialectics: Communist Philosophy That Can Remove Mountains

As the May Day organizing heads into its final month, we should take a moment to think about the future. On April 30 in San Francisco and May 6 in Washington, D.C., several thousand workers, students and soldiers will march for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship and a world free of the profit system’s horrors.

In order to win these goals, our Party must grow until its members number in the millions. To win a communist world, we must become billions. Is this possible, or as some believe, are we merely a bunch of well-motivated people who are spitting into a hurricane?

On the face of it, the bosses would appear all-powerful. The old communist movement, which had once led great revolutions and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the world, died from its own political weaknesses. Capitalists hold power everywhere. U.S. imperialism, which years ago could claim more victims among the world’s workers than even Nazi Germany, still rules the roost. So today, communist revolution would seem to be a noble but unattainable dream.

However, communists have a "secret weapon," which teaches us how to look deeper than appearances and see the possibilities that lie beyond the actual. It’s called dialectical materialism. It’s our philosophical tool for understanding everything in the natural world, in society, even in our own minds. Dialectics enables us to see that everything changes, that things turn into their opposite, and that a small Party can grow until it eventually becomes capable of seizing power. Many people believe social classes have always existed and that the few have always oppressed the many. But the truth is that social classes came into existence only about 15,000 years ago, after human beings had been a biological species for hundreds of thousands of years.

What’s this got to do with May Day? Plenty! Fifteen thousand years may seem like an eternity when compared to an individual life span, but relative to human history, it’s a very short time. The bosses would love us to believe that the present rotten order of things will last forever. They talk endlessly about the "end of history." But we see that history’s pages are filled with tales of class struggle, revolution and change. We see the hundreds of years the capitalist class needed in order to make their own revolution, which overthrew feudalism. Feudalism itself had needed centuries of struggle to dump slavery as the dominant form of class society. And almost at the very moment when the capitalists were taking hold of state power barely 200 years ago, working-class revolutionaries were rising up to Challenge them.

Eighty-two years after the first capitalist revolution, in France, the Paris Commune of 1871 tried to overthrow it. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most profound event of the last millennium. The Chinese Revolution and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1949 and the 1960s again shook the world. These great movements defeated themselves. Our Party is still trying to absorb the lessons of these defeats. But we should learn from the victories as well.

Each of the parties that led these revolutions began as a small, weak organization facing apparently overwhelming odds. Despite their many errors, the great leaders of these movements learned through dialectics how to build the possible from the actual. This lesson is crucial for PLP’s leaders and members to absorb now, as we enter the last few weeks before May Day.

This year’s May Day organizing is characterized by a spurt of Party activity against racist police terror. This is good! It means that we are acting and fighting as well as talking. It gives us an opportunity to expose the liberal rulers’ deadly "community policing" scheme as well as to struggle against the more obvious Giuliani brand of fascism. It creates the possibility of bringing more May Day marchers. But each new May Day marcher is also something more than a May Day marcher. Each new May Day marcher is also a potential Party member. And each new Party member is a potential mass leader. Everything we do to ensure a larger, more militant May Day creates the opportunity to build a bigger, more militant Party. A bigger, more militant Party can take bolder, sharper action in the mass movements and win still more members and leaders.

So far, we’ve mentioned dialectics only to show our Party’s potential for growth despite its present apparent weakness. That coin has another side. The rulers appear strong, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the enormous advantages they hold over us. But they have many weaknesses as well. They can’t hold power without oppressing us. They can’t rule the world without driving their rivals to unite against them. Capitalism is an unstable system. It will always lead to war. History shows that communist revolutions can seize power in the turmoil of imperialist war.

Our Party is on the right side of history. Our class is bound to win. As we approach May Day, we should think about the ancient Chinese fable about "The Foolish Old Man Who Moved the Mountains" (see box). The Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong liked to quote it to show the importance of revolutionary optimism and of digging in to accomplish the seemingly "impossible."

At the end of the fable, the "foolish old man" is helped by a god. But the working class doesn’t need god to get the mountain of capitalist misery off our backs. We need to build the Party, day by day, May Day marcher by May Day marcher, Challenge sub by Challenge sub, recruit by recruit, struggle by struggle. Mastering the science of dialectical materialism will enable our class to achieve eventual victory, however long and hard the road ahead may be. Whatever we do now and for the rest of our lives to build the Party can help change the face of the world.

a name="THE Fable of the Foolish Old Man That Could Remove…">">"HE Fable of the Foolish Old Man That Could Remove…

There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains." An old man who lived in northern China long, long ago was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. He called his sons and, hoe in hand, they began to dig up these mountains with great determination. Another graybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, "How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up those two huge mountains." The Foolish Old Man replied, "When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and then their sons and grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?" Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs.

(This is quoted directly from Mao’s concluding speech at the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China, June 11, 1945.)

Wanted for Racist Murder: LAPD

LOS ANGELES, April 1 — Today over 100 workers and youth demonstrated outside the Ramparts police station, protesting the racist, murderous brutality of the LAPD. But the real story of this demonstration is how it got organized, the combination of forces that produced it. It is a testimony to the close political and personal ties being developed with workers we meet on our jobs, youth in schools and in mass organizations and in the struggles we and they are involved in together.

Recently a co-worker on one of our comrade’s jobs told him about a relative of his, Jason Rodriguez, who had been murdered by the Montebello cops. This co-worker and friend had been reading Challenge for a while, especially its coverage of many such cases around the country. This led to some PLP’ers going to Jason’s funeral and to a demonstration his family and friends organized in their community.

Through these activities, we met some friends of Jason’s who became friends of ours. Two of these friends came to a rally with us against Proposition 21 (which will try teenagers as adults and send them to adult prisons). Another friend of Jason’s spoke in a class of one of our comrades and decided to help build for today’s demonstration.

He and his friends put out their own leaflet about it and distributed our leaflet in the neighborhood surrounding the Ramparts station. A bus driver who has known the Party for several years came to the May Day Dinner with his wife, who had been beaten by the Rampart cops seven years ago. He took some leaflets from the dinner to distribute in the neighborhood. Then he called for more early in the morning before the march. He spent the entire morning passing out the leaflets in the Ramparts neighborhood.

We invited Jason’s best friend to speak at our May Day dinner, which he did. He also went with some of our comrades to a police-organized community meeting where he rose to denounce the cops. Another friend of Jason’s came to a forum on police terror we organized at Santa Monica College.

Meanwhile, Party members in shops and schools had been discussing the issue, the Rampart scandal and today’s demonstration with co-workers and classmates. Garment workers and bus mechanics responded. Students from Manual Arts and Washington high schools, who had been involved with us in walkouts against Proposition 21 and police terror, also were convinced to come, along with students from Huntington Park HS. Party members brought classmates from their college campuses. Several rank-and-file Central American workers, whom we know from a community organization, came. People from the neighborhood who had received the leaflets showed up. Jason’s family and friends also attended. Many of these participants have been regular Challenge readers.

All these workers and youth rallied in the Ramparts neighborhood and then marched to the stationhouse. Two dozen racist Rampart thugs were guarding the station, with black, Latino and women cops in front. They had cordoned off the streets for four blocks around the station to prevent people from seeing and joining us. Despite this, neighborhood people whistled, honked their horns and raised clenched fists in support. The angry demonstrators yelled "Murderers!" and "Liars!" at the cops. They chanted, "Hey, hey, what do you say, how many drugs have you sold today? How many kids have you jailed and killed today?"

One woman passionately denounced the cops who had arrested her son and are holding him on false pretenses. Several others said the Ramparts cops had beaten and unjustly imprisoned them. One man who came had recently been attacked and arrested by the Rampart cops. He and his wife loved the march. A pastor said the Ramparts cops had harassed his family for years. He wants us to come to his church to help organize a bigger march. Others declared that the entire LAPD, Police Chief Parks, D.A. Garcetti and Mayor Riorden, Clinton and the Feds are all guilty. The Feds want to impose community policing on us to win workers and youth to support the cops.

One young speaker said the system will not and cannot reform itself. The bosses need racist police terror to enforce low wages and lousy conditions. Only communist revolution will end that. We must build a mass revolutionary movement for workers power. Another called on the demonstrators to deepen this fight by marching on May Day in San Francisco. One high school student who marched told a comrade in school a few days later she was joining PLP. She asked to get the red May Day T-shirts soon so she and her friends could wear them to school to publicize the march.

This demonstration was a good start. Some of the work we have done in mass organizations, in unions and shops, in schools and on campuses and in the communities led to this turnout. But we must deepen these ties and class struggle to be able to move masses of workers and youth into action against these racist terrorists and the profit system they protect and serve. This will help dispel the illusion that the system which is somewhat revealing this Ramparts scandal will somehow "take care of the problem."

Through these efforts, PLP will grow. This is the long-term struggle we aim to win.

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BRONX, NY, April 4—As part of the wave of protests against cop terror, high school students demonstrated today against police brutality. They marched from Wheeler Ave., where the four NYPD cops murdered Amadou Diallo in February 1999, to the Bronx Supreme Courthouse.

In the last few weeks, after the four cops who killed Diallo were found not guilty, the NYPD has slain Malcolm Ferguson, Patrick Dorismond and two black Brooklyn youth who supposedly tried to rob two undercover cops with toy guns.

After PLP and other rank-and-file high school students organized large walkouts in March against cop terror, liberals like the ACLU have gotten into the act. They don’t want these youth to understand what PLP says: the role of cops is to oppress workers and youth.

The ACLU and other liberals are using the April 5th student march on City Hall to try to divert these increasingly militant youth into the "safe" politics of "reforming" the NYPD. This "reform" includes "community policing," a scheme where the cops can oppress us with our support. Workers and youth must fight their ruling class ideas.

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CHICAGO, IL, April 4 — Today 1,000 people marched against the growing prison industrial complex and racial profiling by the police. The action was called in the wake of the acquittal of the four racist killer cops who shot Amadou Diallo in NYC, and many other incidents of racist police terror.

Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and a host of other preachers led the march. But due to a lot of struggle to prepare for it, the working class and PLP led a good section of the crowd, 100 of whom came directly because of our efforts in mass organizations and elsewhere. Their presence, unified chants and militancy gave leadership to several hundred others.

In our club meetings and mass organizations, we had made ambitious plans to bring people to the march under our leadership. We saw this as an opportunity to organize in the schools and on the job, to bring revolutionary communist politics into the mass movement against racist police terror. To some degree, we accomplished this. A contingent of postal workers marched because of the discussions we had raised in union meetings and the resolution to march we had gotten passed (see Challenge, March 22). Similarly, 25 students came from Chicago State Univ., growing out of a teach-in we had organized there, inspiring people to organize for this march. We brought rank-and-file workers came from Cook County Hospital. Modest advances in the mass work enabled us to lead hundreds in this mass action.

The youth were very enthusiastic. Their energy and militancy set the tone. Many wore May Day stickers on their coats and book bags, and we distributed hundreds of ChallengeS, May Day leaflets and Prison Labor pamphlets. These youth and workers defended the Party from the harassment of Operation PUSH security. Workers all along the march received our literature enthusiastically.

This constant interaction between the Party and the masses in struggle will illuminate the road to revolution. Fighting for the political leadership of the mass movement has strengthened and excited us. Everyone is feeling stronger and more confident, in themselves and in the Party. The stage is set for a bigger May Day. On to Washington!

a name="Janitors’ Anger About to Explode">">"anitors’ Anger About to Explode

LOS ANGELES, CA, April 3 — "Strike! Strike!" "Give it to the Scabs!" yelled thousands of janitors during a meeting to vote on the final contract offer of the cleaning companies. Workers unanimously raised their red cards to say "no" to the contract offer and "yes" to strike.

This militancy contrasted with the union leaders’ "strategy": "Today you’re going back to work. We’ll go out in small groups, little by little, to show the companies we’re strong, and to take them by surprise." As we go to press, the leaders are striking only a few buildings at a time, and not telling the workers which building until the last minute. This makes it difficult for other workers to support the strike. It saps the strength and power of a united working class. The union leaders want us to rely on politicians, not our class.

But the bosses were prepared with their scabs and police thugs. The first workers to walk out were confronted by the cops, who shoved and beat strikers who tried to block scabs. The strikers fought back but some scabs got through.

The AFL-CIO has used the militancy of the janitors in their marches, protests and previous strikes, to build support for the Democratic Party. When they say, "Yes, We Can" ("Si Se Puede"), they mean, "Reform the System." But if we win strikers to join PLP to get rid of the bosses and their system of exploitation, this militancy and class hatred can build the revolutionary communist movement. Every strike and struggle can be a lesson in how to put the working class in power with communist revolution.

"A Penny to Get Them Out of Poverty" is the slogan of SEIU Local 1877 in its campaign for a new contract. The old contract between 8,500 workers and the cleaning bosses expired on March 30. Some of the main companies are One Source, ABM, Advance and Peerless. Most janitors make $15,000 a year. Even if they won the wage increase the union is demanding—a raise of $1 an hour every year for the next three years—in the first year they would make $17,000. That would not get them out of poverty! The companies are only offering $1.30 over three years, and only for some areas, with no increase in any benefits.

The Democratic Speaker of the State Assembly and LA mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa came to the strike meeting to "give his support." So did a Teamsters official, who said UPS and sanitation workers would honor the picket lines.

But the Teamsters have been organizing against truck drivers from Mexico, and the Democrats put an additional 100,000 racist killer cops on the streets. The essence of their "support" is to keep the anger of the janitors within the limits of this rotten system and maintain the illusion that it can be reformed. The main wing of the U.S. ruling class is counting on the union leaders to deliver the workers to fascism and imperialist war. They want us to accept poverty wages as a "victory," and then send our children to fight their oil wars.

PLP is organizing garment workers and others to join the picket lines to support the strikers. We are building class consciousness, exposing the role of the liberals, and inviting factory workers and striking janitors to march on May Day.

Miners Rebel Against Capitalism in China

The AFL-CIO lieutenants of the bosses claim that China is a communist country. They are using that fiction in their anti-China campaign to serve U.S. imperialism in its drive to compete with China’s bosses. This, in turn, also spreads anti-communism. But the fact is China is now a capitalist country and exploits workers the same as any other capitalist set of bosses. Chinese workers will rebel the same as any other group of exploited workers. In fact they are doing exactly what the AFL-CIO bosses try to prevent their own members from doing.

In recent months, workers’ rebellions have been erupting throughout China, reacting to the spread of capitalist exploitation. Last February, in the northeastern city of Yangjiazhangzi, 20,000 miners and their families took to the streets after their mine was closed, protesting the low level of unemployment benefits. The mine, which produced molybdenum for the electronics and aerospace industries, was the area’s only major employer.

Police were unable to prevent the workers from blocking traffic, smashing windows and vehicles. Several hundred army troops from nearby towns were called in to quell the uprising.

At least five million workers will lose their jobs this year as Chinese capitalism moves into high gear. BBC correspondent Duncan Hewitt reports the mining industry is particularly vulnerable to these "drastic economic reforms." More than 20,000 mines are due to close.

In the latest protest, on April 1^st, 500 miners in Sichuan province blocked rail traffic for several hours on the Gulyang-Kunming railway. Several hundred cops were called in to clear the tracks. The miners from the Liuzhi mine were protesting the effects of the company declaring bankruptcy, threatening 40,000 workers’ jobs.

At least 10 similar protests have erupted on the railway line in recent months. The biggest occurred in December when 10,000 workers halted rail traffic for half a day.

The solution for workers in China is similar to the one for workers worldwide: destruction of capitalism and the building of communism. Chinese workers, having gone through the "half-way house" of socialism, need to learn from that experience and build a mass communist party that will abolish the capitalist wage system and fight directly for communism.

a name="Teachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers">">"eachers Must Fight Against Rulers’ Use of School to Control Workers

LOS ANGELES, April 2 — Thousands of teachers and other workers mobilized in downtown Los Angeles last week in a show of strength designed to kick off contract negotiations and build the unions. The largest group was the teachers. They were angered by the district's contract proposal which amounted to a measly 1% pay increase after deducting a proposed payment by teachers into the medical plan. They were also enraged over "merit pay" linking teacher salaries to scores on standardized tests. Teachers also face attacks on seniority and the rights of teachers to select their grade and class assignments. Rather than paying for medical benefits, teachers are demanding increased health benefits and calling for a strike. Many were happy to get Challenge and hear about the student walkouts at Manual Arts and Washington high schools against racist police terror and Proposition 21.

The demonstration was big due to the efforts of rank-and-file teacher activists, with little help from the union bureaucracy. This indicates teachers’ anger at being blamed for the failure of the educational system. The teachers' union leadership is deflecting this anger into a useless proposal for a legislative initiative to increase school funding.

The attacks on teachers reflect a move nationally toward a more fascist educational policy. The capitalist system is tightening its control, to better use the schools for social and ideological control of the working class. The curriculum is to be standardized, only one reading series will be used in schools with low test scores, lessons will be scripted and tests will measure adherence to the scripted curricula. Schools will be ranked on how well their students measure on standardized tests and teachers will be graded on how well they push the standardized curricula. Students who score low on high stakes tests will be flunked and then flunked out, instead of getting the tools they need to survive. Unions will collaborate with administrators and institute "peer review" to eliminate teachers who cannot or will not toe the line.

It's part of a move towards a more fascist U.S., with cops shooting down black and Latino youth in the streets, two million people in prison and a widening gap between rich and poor. Teachers are told to teach that this country is a democracy and that we have "freedom." In truth, this country’s rulers are launching racist terror at home and abroad. They are now trying to force teachers to teach a curriculum that unquestioningly guarantees that teachers and students defend this system to the hilt.

PLP stands 100% for teaching and learning the basic skills needed by youth not only to survive, but also to better fight against fascist attacks and for liberation. Neither the school board nor the union leadership wants this kind of education, a kind that’s in the interest of the vast majority of students, teachers and parents.

Social control or teacher-student-parent unity against fascism—that's at stake in the current contract and in the struggles to come. The union leadership has already folded on the question of peer review, instituting it a full year before it was mandated by the state. The union has tried to lessen the impact of the Stanford 9 and other high-stakes tests only because of organized rank-and-file pushing from below. In teachers' contract struggles around the country, union leaders have given in on all the questions that affect the rights of teachers and students in exchange for a small pay raise. The role of the teachers' union leadership is to try to guarantee that teachers toe the ideological line, and prepare our students to march off to war.

PLP teachers have been organizing together with other teachers, students and parents to resist these attacks. We are inviting our fellow teachers and students and their families to march with us on May Day for the unity of the working class against these attacks. Whether or not there's a strike, the main victory will be more teachers, students and parents marching on May Day and reading Challenge. That way, more will join the long-term fight to smash fascism and build a communist system where the development of the youth to lead in producing for need will be the top priority.

May Day Resolution at UTLA

The following resolution was passed by the Central Area of the UTLA (LA Teachers' Union). We plan to fight for it in the House of Reps and to show it to teachers throughout the district, along with literature about the revolutionary history of May Day and our PLP May Day March. Our goal is to unite workers, soldiers and students to fight racism and imperialism. The only way to end these capitalist evils is with communist revolution.

WHEREAS, our students and the working class in general are increasingly subjected to racism, overcrowded schools deprived of resources, police terror, skyrocketing levels of incarceration and increasing use of prison labor, and ongoing wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and elsewhere; and,

WHEREAS, May Day is the international holiday of the working class, and demonstrates the fighting unity of our class; therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED that the United Teacher newspaper publish an article about the origins and history of May Day; and,

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that UTLA urge its members to participate in the celebration of May Day and the various May Day events planned for this year.

Teach-In at Santa Monica College on Police Brutality

LOS ANGELES, April 3 — About 50 students at Santa Monica College (SMC) attended a communist led teach-in on police brutality. Students—including a PLP member—organized the event. The speakers included a PLP member from UCLA, a community activist from Watts and an SMC staff member.

The speakers explained the role of police brutality in capitalist society. The student speaker described police terror’s relationship to the Three Strikes Law [giving 3^rd felony offenders 25 years to life no matter what the actual sentence for that conviction] and to Proposition 21 [sentencing teenagers as adults and jailing them in adult prisons]. He said this was part of the ruling class’ attempt to oppress the working class. He also pointed out that victims of these fascist laws are used by capitalists to super-exploit prison laborers as part of the growing prison-industrial complex. He said James Q Wilson, who teaches in UCLA’s Business School, is one of the main proponents of tougher policing and targeting youth early on for prison.

The Watts community activist recounted his experience under the Three Strikes Law, explaining that he had unjustly been given a 25-year sentence because of it (but was one of the first to win release on appeal). He blamed capitalism for this injustice and encouraged the students to organize to prevent such cases.

Finally, the SMC staff member described the racism underlying these attacks on the working class and how it is instituted in the educational system. She encouraged students to ally with part-time teachers in their fight for paid office hours and a place to meet with students She said these conditions showed the Administration didn’t care about working-class students, many black and Latino, reflecting another racist attack. Others pointed out that to effectively attack police brutality, we must attack capitalism, the system that creates it.

Students enthusiastically joined the discussion, relating fascism to imperialism and proposed ways to fight back. One said, "In the schools, they teach you how to think, but not to think." Another student concluded, "Education is necessary in order to understand police brutality and organize a communist revolution to end it."

A communist student who helped organize the forum invited students to May Day, describing its significance in the workers’ fight against fascist police brutality. Many students belonging to different campus clubs agreed to help organize for May Day. Some have been reading Challenge. Three days later one group came to a demonstration at the Rampart Police Station, organized by PLP and friends, and by family members of Jason Rodriguez, murdered by the Montebello police (part of LA County).

USWA Hacks March by 5,000 in Support of AKSteel Strikers

MANSFIELD, OH, March 25 — "Hey, Hey, What Do You Say? Kick a Scab in the Ass Today!" That was the most popular chant as 5,000 workers marched in support of 620 members of the United SteelWorkers (USW) Local 169. AK Steel has locked them out since last September 1. It’s a familiar story.

AK Steel was originally ARMCO Steel, having made high quality stainless steel for 28 years with absolute labor peace. Then ARMCO merged with AK Steel and brought in 200 uniformed security guards during contract negotiations. The new company is demanding unlimited mandatory overtime, to slash jobs and increase profits at the expense of workers’ lives.

The wonderful potential of the mighty working class and the formidable obstacles to be overcome were both on display. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised from rank-and-file workers and delivered by the various union contingents. Food was prepared by the locked-out workers, delicious and hearty, and plenty for all. Donations accepted!

But we also were subjected to speeches by local politicians and union hacks. The union leaders had us honoring a court injunction against mass picketing so we did not march to the plant gate and confront the scabs. Following a sparsely populated route, many strikers complained there was "nobody to give hell to."

Finally, USW President George Becker said the workers, many of whose fathers and grandfathers worked at the plant, have more at stake than the new owners. While the strikers have been attacked by the scabs, cops and courts, Becker tried to cover up the class dictatorship of the bosses stating, "When we go back in the plant to claim our jobs, democracy will go back with us!" Becker’s job is to keep us tied to the bosses’ system of wage slavery. That’s why he’s led the fascist "Stand Up for Steel" campaign as a spokesman for Big Steel. He will have us going to war to save the bosses before he’d lay a glove on them.

By involving more of our co-workers in actions like this, we can build on the positive aspect of workers’ solidarity while exposing the role of union leaders like Becker. By being active in the class struggle, we learn who are our friends and enemies. We call on all steel workers to march on May Day as part of the fight to smash the bosses’ dictatorship and replace it with the dictatorship of the working class—communism. Then all production will be to meet workers’ needs, not some bloodsucker’s profits.

LTV Drive for Profits Is Deadly for Workers

EAST CHICAGO, IN., April 3 — In less than a month, one worker has been killed and another severely burned at LTV Steel. The company and the union lament these "unfortunate incidents," claiming they want to prevent them. But what's really going on?

In the first case, an electrician in his late 40’s, nearing retirement, tripped and was swept into a water discharge trough where the water was travelling over 40 miles per hour. A warning sign stated, "Do Not Enter While Casting," or while the water is running.

But the bosses want workers to go down there regardless. The pressure is always on to get the job done. And all too often, we go along with this. "Let's get the job done"; "We've done it a million times"; "It’s not really that unsafe." And then following the bosses’ dictates forces us to pay the price.

It's called an "accident," but it's really not. Capitalism and the drive for profits caused this death. The head of the union safety committee said this was a preventable accident--if we’d done things just a little different. In one sense he’s right. All that was needed was to shut off a valve. So why was the valve open? Because it was easier. Because that's how the job gets done quicker. Because that’s how we keep production going. The bosses will wear your ass out if you don’t wear your safety glasses. But if safety means shutting down, well that’s a different story. And that is why Eddie is dead. Because closing that valve would have shut everything down, and his life just wasn't worth it—to the boss.

Two weeks later a train crew member, trying to avoid an impending accident, jumped off an engine and fell into a slag cooling pit that was full of boiling water. This worker had over 25 years seniority, but less than six months on the engine. He was burned over 30 percent of his body. The next day the pumps used to drain the slag-cooling pit were back in service. Workers had complained about the inoperable pumps and all the steam. If those pumps had been working properly, this guy would be working today.

When PLP says capitalism kills, it sure ain't just rhetoric. Day in and day out the profit system kills and maims workers to make the bosses richer. It’s time to stop cleaning up after boss-caused catastrophes and start running the show for the workers—for ourselves.

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HAMMOND, IN, March 30 — Tonight anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) coalition forces in this area, including some USW (United SteelWorker) activists, showed a documentary called, "Showdown in Seattle." The video was directed at steelworkers in night school. It called last November’s anti-WTO demonstrations a "great people’s victory." AFL-CIO president Sweeney, USW president Becker and other demonstrators repeated this term in the video.

This movement has attracted thousands of honest forces opposed to child and prison labor and mass poverty caused by imperialism. But only Challenge and PLP have exposed the leadership, especially the AFL-CIO, using this anger to build support for U.S. imperialism against its rivals.

A USW member and Seattle protester said that if Sweeney and Becker called it "a people’s victory," everyone should be very suspicious. He said the same union leadership that attacked the anti-Vietnam War demonstrators and was now praising workers and students for "fighting the system" had ulterior motives.

These bosses’ junior partners are attempting to convince everyone that the "good" U.S. bosses really care about prison and child labor, and "bad" bosses, like China’s, don’t. This sets up a future scenario of U.S. bosses saying, "China has to be stopped," like Iraq or Yugoslavia, for "humanitarian" reasons.

Another USW member defended Becker, saying he had sent lots of people to maquiladora factories on the Mexican border, and that Becker truly cares about the workers. But all of the "cross-border organizing" by U.S. unions has been against Asian-owned factories in Mexico. They haven’t led one campaign against Ford or GM, even though there are 300,000 autoworkers in Mexico making less than one-fourth of U.S. wages.

A PLP member attacked the widespread use of prison labor, and women locked in garment factories in the U.S. When she Challenged the organizers about what their plan was to deal with this, their answer was to elect people "friendly" to labor, protest the IMF/WTO meetings in Washington, D.C. and fight to keep China from having normal trade relations with the U.S.

Some ChallengeS and Prison Labor pamphlets were distributed, and some contacts were made. The bosses are pushing nationalism inside the workers’ movement. We have to be there, fighting U.S. bosses and their labor lieutenants, and fighting for internationalism and communist revolution.

a name="Elián Soap Opera""Elián Soap Opera

Who needs "The Days of Our Lives" when the Elián story has stuff the best soap opera can only dream of? As the Elián saga approaches its finale (maybe), it’s had everything: lies, political intrigue, fancy lawyers, rabid anti-communism and last week even the image of the Virgin Mary "appeared" in the Little Havana house of little Elián’s kidnappers. Wow!

But the most interesting aspect of this real life soap opera, and the one never mentioned, is the inter-imperialist rivalry and the fight among different U.S. bosses behind it. A good section of the U.S. bosses have decided to break the inordinate power of the Cuban exile lobby (better known as the Mafia) over U.S. international politics. They have decided they just can't let the Europeans, and maybe even the Russians, grab Cuba. So the Cuban exiles, with their kidnapping of Elián, have given this section of the ruling class and Fidel Castro an opportunity to make a deal.

The fact that Al Gore opportunistically broke with the Clinton administration and the leadership of the Democratic Party over the Elián case (Florida has 25 electoral votes, and the Cuban exile vote is crucial) is just one more proof of the need for some U.S. bosses to break the Cuban exile lobby.

Boy, Did They Lie to Start Kosovo War!

It is now a little over a year since the NATO/U.S. war against Yugoslavia. Remember how the imperialists justified it, saying that Milosevic’s Serbian forces had killed "100,000 Albanians" (according to Secretary of Defense Cohen). The grotesque comparisons by NATO and the U.S. of the plight of the Albanians with the holocaust served to win people to support the imperialist war. Now the real truth comes out: "Figures released by war crimes investigators have been in the hundreds rather than thousands. "Financial Times, April 1). Many of these were probably killed by the bombing or the KLA nationalists.

Never believe the imperialists’ justifications for war!

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(This is the conclusion to last issue’s article, "May Day 2000, What Everyone Does Counts," which discussed the political importance of May Day internationally, its relation to recent class struggles and the link between May Day and every individual involved—and not-so-involved—in those struggles. Part I ended by saying, "May Day doesn’t organize itself simply because we want it to. It requires detailed plans and hard work.")

A Plan

NEW YORK CITY — In Upper Manhattan our leadership collective and clubs have an overall plan. In mid-February, over dinner and discussion, a group of comrades prepared our first mailing to 800 households, which included a Party letter and a ticket book. Club meetings planned protests of the not-guilty verdict in the Diallo trial and for each member to mobilize for May Day. We identified key mass organizers and made pledges to help pay for the May Day buses.

On March 11 our section had a May Day dinner. A student spoke about fighting police terror. A factory worker reported on conditions on her job and on inviting co-workers to May Day. A spirited discussion followed. She later wrote a leaflet inviting her co-workers and other factory workers to the March. The workers’ club made a plan to distribute this leaflet inside and outside three factories where the Party has members or friends. We will distribute the flyers at an Upper Manhattan location where hundreds of factory workers board buses and vans to their jobs in New Jersey.

A group of us will soon do our second mass mailing, reminding people to contact us and soliciting ticket money. We will include two May Day stickers and distribute many moreto our members and close friends. Those stickers have a way of appearing in many apartment buildings and on street corners.

In mid-April we will hold our bus captain’s dinner and discussion, open to all members and numbers of Challenge readers and May Day organizers, whether or not they have a specific bus captain responsibility.

Our Goal

Our goal in Upper Manhattan is 600 marchers. We continue to focus on factory workers, on the job and inside mass organizations. The factory workers’ contingent should be 45 to 50. Probably 10 to 15 marchers will come from friends in our mass organizations. This work is important, but not sufficiently developed to produce more. The bulk of the may Day marchers, including many families, will come from an area where the Party has had a mass following for years.

A Six-Point People Plan

Specifically, each club member has a plan to invite friends. Additionally, we have four groupings: the first contains 42 Party members, active and not so active plus those in a study group and other close friends of the Party. The second grouping includes 77 people: more Challenge readers and distributors, annual May Day marchers and organizers and factory workers. We have varying degrees of personal and political ties with them. Twenty-four people in the grouping are previous May Day marchers with whom we have little or no contact. There are 45 names on a telephone tree.

An important part of the six-point plan is the effort to mobilize a two-person bilingual team with long term neighborhood ties. So there are a total of about 200 individuals and households. We have seen or contacted 115 so far and will finish by April 15. Of course, not all of these will march or help mobilize for it, but many will. Finally, as we cover all these groupings we can expand into the other names from our mass mailing list. How far to spread out depends on how much time we’ll need to gather in those people who express interest.

There are obstacles. Communists welcome struggle and solutions. Each member and friend, whatever his or her effort, needs to feel part of the team. We must delegate more responsibility, overcome language barriers and timidity; open ourselves more to the questions and needs of our friends and contacts; be patient, persistent and positive. We must continue to struggle against the outlook that all May Day marchers should be, or will be, fully informed about the Party’s ideas and goals. Our job is to work with masses of workers and youth and fight for their hearts and minds. In the real world, this process is not smooth and easy. But it is necessary and also invigorating, and out of this the Party can grow and lead.

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SEATTLE -- Here in Seattle our kickoff for May Day was a successful dinner on March 25. It was especially heartening to see a good number of high school and college youth and young workers, all of them on low-paying jobs. Five additional young workers and students said they would be making the 1600-mile round-trip to May Day in San Francisco, among them the son of a recent Boeing striker. We will be visiting the rest to assure their presence.

All over the world, workers, students and soldiers are preparing to celebrate this working-class holiday, led by communists. This is our annual opportunity to join with other workers, students and GI's of all backgrounds to take stock of our forces and celebrate the world we aim to win.

But there are groups who would usurp this holiday and try to make it their own, even though they are subservient to the bosses. Some of the coalitions formed around the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests are having their own "May Day" rallies against the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc. At our May Day dinner, one Party friend said, "It's great there are all sorts of May Days, like those sponsored by the anti-WTO organizations." He was being fooled in the same way the capitalists hope to fool many left-leaning workers and students. Unless communists fighting for revolution lead the May Day marches, they are deceptive at best and more likely to be deadly to our class. They lead workers straight into the arms of the bosses by offering them the hope of reforming capitalism. The liberals or fake-leftists will not deceive us. We are clear that the only real May Day is the communist one. It is the property of the working class.

The wife of a Teamster from the Boeing local brought the back page of the most recent union magazine to the dinner. This ad showed the real aims of this "anti-WTO" coalition.

The back page features an individual in front of Chinese tanks with the caption: "If he can stand up to communist China, so can you" The thrust of this ad is to prevent the U.S. government from establishing normal trade relations with China. Under a humanitarian guise, they’re saying those awful "communists" are violators of human rights.

This is from the same union leadership who vigorously pats itself on the back while losing 25% of the jobs it covers at Boeing. Last week they agreed to a contract with Boeing costing many more jobs. Adding insult to injury, the union pushed a plan for the "right of first refusal"—if the union drivers cannot do a job "competitively" the company can hire cheaper labor. Other Business Representatives in this local, allied with the national leadership, undercut rank-and-file efforts to answer the bosses’ attacks with a strike. It seems all this Teamster leadership can do is sabotage class struggle and spend our money building anti-communism.

In the face of these "traitors within our ranks," it is time to hold fast to our proud heritage. May Day, the working-class holiday led by the communist Progressive Labor Party, is a symbol of our strength, our potential, the world we have to win. Come to May Day with PLP. Show the bosses that we are not fooled by the rhetoric of the fake left.

LETTERS

Communist Principles Win Out

A recent experience illustrates how people who are not workers can be won to our politics. My immediate supervisor at work was very different from most supervisors. He showed some solidarity with people under him. For months I thought about showing him Challenge, but feared he would fire me for this.

One day two years ago I decided to do it, telling him, "Boss, read this and we can talk later." I was still afraid, but the next week he asked, "Do you have the new Challenge?" When I gave it to him I noted that Challenge says what others don’t dare to say.

That began his relationship with PLP. He participated in many of our activities, including some cadre schools, and joined the Party.

A few weeks ago, the big boss asked him to fire two workers because they "weren’t doing a good job." The comrade refused, saying "They are two exploited workers and have families to support." He told the big boss to do the dirty job himself, but he was too cowardly and sent another supervisor to do it.

Of course our comrade lost his job. At our last club meeting he told me, "I still have not found a new job, but I have a clear conscience. I did not betray those workers."

I now have a plan to recruit other co-workers who have told me, "If all communists are as rebellious and show as much solidarity" as the fired comrade, they "would like to work with our Party."

That’s the difference between communist and capitalist ideology. We don’t think of ourselves as the bosses want us to be, but serve the working class and win others to fight the bosses.

A Member of the PLP Grouping in Dominican Republic

Bring PLP Ideas to Fighting Students in Mexico

A small group of students in the Party went to Mexe, Hidalgo where workers and students had routed the police while demanding that students protesting the closing of the Rural normal school be released from jail. We wanted to meet these students.

It was very inspiring. We were surprised to find they have a disciplined organization with study groups where they read the Communist Manifesto and other books by Marx and Lenin. We agreed to return next weekend to discuss our Party’s ideas. We took them Challenge, copies of the Party’s Political Economy pamphlet, Road to Revolution IV and the pamphlet on Dialectical Materialism. We’ll tell you how it goes.

A PLP Student

The X-Generation Is Not Safe from the Men in Blue

When I was an adolescent many years ago, I was taught to respect police officers. They were called "Officer Friendly" when they came to my school. I viewed them as individuals who served and protected the community without regard to race, creed or color. Unfortunately this perception has changed in the African-American community as a result of several incidents.

First, police officers shot and killed Latonya Haggerty. They were eventually fired, but not prosecuted. Second, a police officer shot and killed Robert Russ, a black male college student. Finally, my 15-year-old son was almost arrested for a false allegation of shooting another black adolescent.

The neighbors observed one police officer pointing a gun at my son's body, throwing him against the police car and hitting him twice on the back. My son sustained a fractured wrist and torn ligaments. He also experienced elevated blood pressure, detected during his physical exam.

My son is a student in a very prestigious private school. He was wearing his school uniform when this ordeal occurred. The officers stated that he was under suspicion because the alleged shooter had the same color coat as my son, but in fact my son had on a sweater of a different color. Fortunately the neighbors who observed the incident said my son was visiting them and could not have shot anyone.

I am appalled at the tactics used by police officers to investigate the X generation (Lost Children). This is what they are called in the 21st century. I feel more working-class people, especially minorities, need to come together as the neighbors did to identify police brutality and defend our youth. We should hold law enforcement officials responsible for their officers' conduct.

As a concerned mother, an educated professional and a single parent, I felt compelled to let the community know this incident happened to my child. DON'T THINK THIS CAN'T HAPPEN TO YOUR CHILD OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW!

An Outraged Chicago Mother

Careful with Symbols in Our Literature

The recent PLP pamphlet, "Prison Labor: Fascism U.S. Style," is excellent. My thanks to the comrades who must have worked hard to research and write it.

For many years, without publicity, the U.S. Postal Service has used prison labor to repair torn mail sacks. With this in mind, I recently gave copies of the pamphlet to most other members of the "Candidates For Change" slate in the NY Metro-Area Postal Union election. One of those workers has read the last few issues of Challenge as well. He asked, "What is the meaning of the symbol of the hand with the swastika on Page 2?" He was clearly wondering what Nazism had to do with communism.

We looked at the symbol together and agreed the meaning was unclear. Perhaps the almost uniform red color, or the positions of the different parts of the total symbol, are what confused the meaning. I said the idea must have been of communist workers smashing Nazism.

In our writings, cartoons, etc., we must be very clear about what we say to our readers and friends. We should consider how things might appear to our friends.

A communist postal worker

American Beauty Is Real Ugly

It was disappointing to read Red Rex’s review of "American Beauty" in the March 29 Challenge. Rex liked the movie because it shows the misery of long hours at work and alienated personal relations at home that workers have to put up with. But he doesn’t mention the movie’s line on what can be done about this. Kevin Spacey’s character quits a white collar job to work in a fast food take-out place. I doubt that many fast food workers will believe this change would mean less frustration from powerlessness at work. Marx showed long ago that alienation at work and in personal relations is a product of capitalism and can’t be eliminated without getting rid of the system.

American Beauty has a different line, however. It gives no indication that rotten jobs or personal relations can be changed. Instead it argues that beauty compensates for misery in the rest of our lives. This line is a very common capitalist view of what art should do, that art should make it easier for people to tolerate an intolerable system. Finding beauty in everyday life is not a bad thing, of course. But American Beauty makes beauty a kind of drug that anesthetizes us to the realities of capitalism. The beauty that the movie offers as an escape is pretty pitiful in any case: rose-covered kiddy porn and a flying plastic bag.

The truth is that personal relations can improve through struggle, and workers’ struggles can resist and eventually destroy capitalism. Art that shows beauty in these processes is not escapist, but helps move humanity forward.

American Beauty is beauty that holds us back, and is therefore a reactionary movie, that should not be praised in Challenge.

San Diego Reader