Every day it becomes clearer that the education bosses who run a small Los Angeles school district only care about one thing - maximizing profit. While schools are seen as non-profit organizations, the bosses running this district have over $80 million piled in reserves. Year after year they have robbed students of what they need in the classroom to continue to line their pockets and stack their reserves. But educators have only deepened their resolve to fight for a “fair” contract (see 11/16 article for the backstory). Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP), who had already played a central role in uniting teachers, counselors, and community members, continue to help organize a growing rank-and-file movement committed to centering the needs of their students.

Party members’ message throughout this struggle has remained consistent: even the best-won contract cannot fix an education system rooted in inequality. We are struggling with those around us to not only be involved in the fight for a “fair” contract, but for a long-term goal of building a society where all people can fully realize their potential - communism.

One coworker in particular was hesitant to attend the last board meeting. A Party member struggled with her and she decided to go. She was so inspired by the event that she came back to the school and gave a rousing talk to the rest of the staff about how empowering it was to participate, and she encouraged everyone to join the November protest. The group in attendance from that school tripled in size as a result.

Then, at the protest, she shared that she always would drive by protests and not pay much attention. Since the October board meeting though, she drove by a protest and laid on her horn enthusiastically, remembering how important supporting workers fighting back was. This seemingly small change is important in building a growing class consciousness among workers with whom we have influence.

Bosses’ lackeys fail to trick workers into backing down on protest

The district’s administration attempted to pressure educators into jointly filing for impasse—an effort many workers saw as an attempt to shut down legitimate collective action. Instead of backing down, organizers helped mobilize another 50 workers to attend the district’s monthly board meeting in protest.

Outside the building, passersby leaving work or driving by honked, slowed down to listen, and accepted union leaflets. That organic support energized the crowd—and students joined in too. Several wrote to the board to express their solidarity with the educators they see every day, highlighting the deep ties between school staff and the young people they serve.

As protesters entered the meeting, the district’s two highest-paid officials glared, but the atmosphere shifted when the union president took the microphone. He reminded the board that the people who keep schools functioning were in the room—organized, united, and unwilling to accept disrespect.

When he yielded the remaining time to a veteran math teacher of over 20 years, the district’s CEO abruptly attempted to block the educator from speaking. Witnesses described this moment as a turning point. A PLP member in the crowd began chanting “Let him speak!”, to which the entire group joined in. Despite warnings to “remain civil,” the workers continued chanting until the CEO relented.

Party members’ involvement is essential to the fightback

The math teacher addressed the board with calm resolve. He noted that the district’s 25-year history of passive labor relations had ended and that  a new chapter—defined by confidence, unity, and collective action—was beginning.

Once his remarks concluded, the same PLP organizer led the group in another chant as they marched out in lockstep from the district’s polished downtown offices. On the sidewalk, workers congratulated one another and began planning how to bring even more coworkers, parents, and students into the next action.

Party members will continue to emphasize with base members, coworkers, and students that although they are fighting fiercely for a fair contract, they view the deeper struggle as much larger. Capitalism inherently produces educational inequality, regardless of how many small improvements are won at the bargaining table. The lasting achievement of this movement is the political development of workers, students, and families who—through participation in collective struggle—begin to question why the system operates as it does.

Our fight is far from over. We refused to file for impasse jointly, so the district filed unilaterally. The review board has since denied their petition, so they will be forced back to the table. Of course district leaders will continue to rely on intimidation or delay tactics, but educators and their supporters appear increasingly confident in their collective strength. More actions are on the horizon, but we will remain focused not only on immediate contract demands, but also on building a broader movement capable of reshaping the future of our schools and communities.

The old Progressive Labor Party (PLP) song, “Power to the working class,”or at least its chorus, rang out once again on the Starbucks picket line this afternoon. Starbucks United Workers has been carrying out pickets with large numbers of striking workers and their supporters, leading militant chants and at times taking bold actions in front of the stores. PLP members are actively supporting the strike, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with workers.

These actions are important, as they show the working class is willing to defy the bosses and fight back. Next, Starbucks workers, along with fellow working class comrades, must push beyond picketing and take actions towards building a movement for workers’ power: communism!

New store in the crosshairs

Today, the target was a Starbucks store located in the Empire State Building on 5th Avenue and 34th Street. A tourist mecca during the holiday shopping season, people heard all the loud chants of “what’s disgusting, union busting” and “no contract, no coffee” while passing this Starbucks location.  To chants of “Brian! Brian!  You can’t hide!  We can see your greedy side!”, a dozen Starbucks union members blocked the entrance of the shop and were arrested.

Once again a principal speaker was a young woman from the south who once worked in a North Carolina Starbucks but transferred to a Starbucks in NYC where scheduled hours are more common. She is a rank and filer we have met three times now who keeps speaking out against capitalism and its system of oppression. She pointed out that the new Starbucks boss, Brian Niccol, earned 96 million dollars in his first three months of work (Fortune, 1/25). Meanwhile, Starbucks workers need to get government support such as food stamps and Medicaid and are unable to get secure shifts and work enough hours a week to make a living. The contract demands are around these issues and similar ones like safety and health and arbitrary management. Workers have unionized but cannot get management to meet their demands.

Meanwhile, the fight keeps growing, because workers aren’t backing down. Hundreds of union baristas from 26 new stores joined our national ULP strike this week. That brings us to 3,000 baristas at over 145 cities holding the picket line. Ninety-five percent of the Union membership voted to strike without a contract. 

A number of labor unions sent supporters to stand in solidarity with striking baristas, including SEIU Local 1199 of the hospital workers union, members of the UFT retired teachers chapter (Party members and friends are active in this group), and some building trades members.

A vice-president of SEIU spoke glowingly of the strikers’ courage and her wishes that this movement will someday create a whole new world. A rank and file leader told us that she was hopeful they will win the strike, and in the meantime they have strike benefits, and in New York State can collect unemployment insurance while out of work. But thus far the Starbucks management, one of the richest corporate entities in the world, has made no offer.

Need to fight reformism

Unfortunately, many members of the DSA (which many strikers are part of) really just want to reform capitalism to become more fair. This is a perspective many people carry around. But the capitalist system, while it sometimes can be pushed back through mass struggle, always regains its footing. Then, with the ferocity of its murderous forbears, it makes life worse for working people. We sang “ain’t gonna let no capitalist turn me around, turn me around”.

Capitalists can be Democrats or Republicans. They have some differences in their style and manner, but the engine of capitalism’s  ever expanding growth for profits through the exploitation of the worker and the natural world will not cease unless the working class rises up and makes a revolution. The capitalist system must be replaced by a communist egalitarian world. History has shown that socialism does not lead to a classless society but maintains some capitalist ideas and eventually returns to capitalist modes of production and thinking.

The Progressive Labor Party, while still small, seeks to bring its revolutionary communist ideas to the working class on the picket lines, in the work place, and in schools, churches, mosques and synagogues. We are building an international multiracial movement to win!

On November 21, students and educators from Hostos and Bronx Community College returned to the streets to continue our mutual aid work in the South Bronx. From our first effort, we learned that 60 bagged lunches were not enough, so this time we prepared 100 lunches, including vegetarian and vegan options. We were also excited to distribute hygiene kits—complete with toothbrushes, toothpaste, and body wash—as well as ANTI-ICE care packages containing Know Your Rights Red Cards, a whistle, and an instructional zine explaining how to use the whistle to alert and organize against ICE when they inevitably raid and terrorize our communities.

Our mission continues to grow, but our message remains consistent: it is long past time to organize workers into a force powerful enough to dismantle this fascist system and build a communist world—one led by workers, for workers—capable of guaranteeing and the fulfillment of all basic needs and a life of dignity for all.

Feeding the workers, permit or not

Giving away bagged lunches is a small and simple act of resistance in a time and place where the bosses would have us hate each other. If we, the workers, are distracted with hating each other, we lose sight of who the real enemies of the working class are. Despite the clear need for more mutual aid efforts like ours, surprisingly there was a small resistance to our presence in the neighborhood that day. We picked a corner close to a row of produce stands and even interacted with a few who were happy to take our literature. One vendor, however, who was manning the only NYC-run produce stand, decided we were the enemy and threatened to report our group for distributing food without a permit. We held our ground and did not move. Threats of reporting our operation proved empty, as no one showed up to remove us. Perhaps it is a coincidence that the workers in NYC-run produce stand voiced issues with our work, while the freelance produce stands, normally manned by immigrants, were warm and welcoming. Nevertheless, the lesson we learned from this situation is to always have a safety plan in place to deal with agitators and possible police interactions.  

Our supply of sandwiches was depleted after an hour. We met many unhoused individuals who expressed their deepest gratitude for our work, one saying “Thank you so much for thinking about us! They don’t care about us and will let us die in the gutter.” This  statement does not only ring true for the unhoused population but for the entire working class. This point is proved by the 400 million dollars in SNAP funding that was withheld from New York State during the most recent and longest government shutdown in U.S. history. No one deserves to go hungry, and the ruling class parasites weaponized  hunger against us. 

Staying in touch

As good as it felt to help those in need, simply feeding people may not be enough to gain traction on the road to revolution. Education is paramount, so we handed out over 100 copies of CHALLENGE as well as our club’s literature with our club’s email. We hope adding contact info on our literature will help us make more connections with students and workers in the surrounding area and encourage them to join in the fight. We are excited to continue our mutual aid work and will give an update after our next mutual aid event. But more importantly, we will continue our antiracist fightback to secure a communist  future freed from capitalist hunger and racist deportations.

The sit-down strike and occupation of the General Motors’(GM) Fisher Body plant No. 1 in Flint, Michigan, for 44 days and nights —  from December 30, 1936 to February 11, 1937 — demonstrated the power of workers in the basic industries, a central outlook of the three-year-old Progressive Labor Movement, that later inspired the Progressive Labor Party.

A sit-down strike occupies the means of production, preventing the bosses’ use of scabs to resume operations and is harder to attack than an outside picket line. Any company frontal assault would endanger millions of dollars’ worth of machinery. While not a revolutionary act,  the Flint sit-down was completely controlled by the rank-and-file, although the press and GM labeled it as “Soviet-style tyranny.” GM CEO Alfred Sloan called it “revolutionary in its dangers and implications,” possibly because communists played a central role in its organization and leadership.

The city of Flint was company-controlled — the mayor, city manager, police chief, and judges were GM stockholders, company officials or both. 

To combat union organizers, GM hired the infamous Pinkertons (a private police force bosses used to infiltrate unions, keep strikers out of plants, recruit goons, and protect scabs).They also had ties to the U.S. Justice Department and Navy Intelligence. It organized the Black Legion, a terrorist group that beat, tarred, feathered and murdered active unionists — all this to protect Flint, the nerve center of GM’s world auto empire.

Three-fourths of GM’s cars were dependent on the chassis produced in Flint. Eighty percent of the city’s population was directly dependent on GM for a living. The workers suffered the most intense speed-up on GM’s assembly lines, often unable to climb the stairs when they got home.

The workers were determined to slow down the line and smash the open shop. During the Great Depression, with millions unemployed, the company used the threat of layoffs to enforce its speed-up. Flint became a driving force to establish an industrial union called the United Auto Workers (UAW) that included thousands of unskilled and skilled workers, a rarity in unions at that time.

What did the strike demonstrate? 

It was against this backdrop that workers  bravely fought for union recognition, a 30-hour work-week, time and one-half for overtime, abolition of piece work and slowing down the line. They organized the most effective strike apparatus ever seen, completely controlled by the rank-and-file. A mass meeting elected a stewards committee and a strike strategy committee of seven, six of whom were communists.

The strike not only demonstrated the ability of workers to halt and seize production. It exhibited many instances of working class leadership militancy through organizing that included:

• The creation of rank-and-file committees that governed food distribution, security, information, sanitation and health, a “kangaroo court,” entertainment, education and athletics.
• Two mass meetings of 1,200 — the supreme body — were held daily. Every worker served six hours duty — on three, off nine in every 24 hours.
• A Special Patrol of 65 workers that formed part of a security committee carried out a 35-minute inspection everyday and every hour, to check on any problems, “rumors,” and disruptions.
• Daily cleanups occurred as dozens of workers moved through the plant in waves, leaving it spic and span.
• Strikers’ children were hoisted through the windows to visit their fathers.
• Labor history and writing classes were organized.
• Charlie Chaplin donated his film “Modern Times” for workers’ viewing.
• A “Living Newspaper” was established for workers to act out the events of the day.
• Women workers and strikers’ wives constituted brigades armed with 2x4 clubs to guard the plant from the outside against police attacks and potential assault by the National Guard.       

‘We have only one life’  

To capture Chevy Plant No. 4 (which assembled 1,000,000 Chevrolets a year), workers planned brilliant military maneuvers, where they feinted attacks on two other Chevy plants (Plants No. 9 and  No. 6), drawing company guards scrambling there, which left Chevy Plant No.4 unprotected and free to capture by strikers. Soon after, the 14,000 workers from the newly seized plant joined the sit-down. After the victorious takeover it was not long before the National Guard surrounded the plants and waged war on workers, attacking them with tear gas. Amid the chaos and blinding clouds of tear gas, one worker, a UAW leader named Joe Sayen, addressed a crowd of equally courageous workers:

“We want the whole world to understand what we are fighting for. We are fighting for freedom and life and liberty...What if we should be defeated? What if we should be killed? We have only one life. That’s all we can lose, and we might as well die like heroes than like slaves.”

The effect on the working class

The workers’ fightback proved too costly for the bosses. After a decisive battle, GM–fearing destruction of its machinery– surrendered, especially when 40,000 workers from four nearby states marched into Flint and surrounded the struck plants, ready to defend the sit-downs. This inspiring feat, which was once deemed “impossible” by the leader of GM’s security thugs (a Hitler-sympathizer), shook the bosses and their goons to the core.

Despite the bosses’ railings and weak attempts to undermine worker’s power, the workers won union recognition for the CIO’s United Auto Workers, for the 40-hour work week (which led to weekends off for tens of millions of U.S. workers), overtime pay, and a slowing-down of the assembly-line speed-up. In its wake, the strike had an electrifying effect on the working class. In less than two weeks, 30,000 workers staged sit-in’s in a variety of industries. U.S. Steel, the world’s largest steelmaker, and General Electric saw the handwriting on the wall and signed up with CIO unions — without a strike. Women in the million-dollar Woolworth chain were sitting in. Within the next four years, five million industrial workers had joined the CIO. Industrial unions were born.

The role of communists

Communists in the Communist Party U.S.A. (CP) played a fundamental role. As historians noted, “Had it not been for the Communists, there is serious doubt that the forces of industrial unionism would have lived through this period.” However, the CP failed to link this huge reform struggle to the need to win workers to the real solution: revolution. It did not expose the relationship of state power to the ruling class and fostered illusions about government being some “neutral” institution in the battle between classes. It did not explain the class nature of the law. The CP essentially backed Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election, even though it ran its own candidate.

Trade unions are a defensive weapon for workers. Historically, any reforms workers win are eventually taken away by the rulers’ state power and government control. Capitalism is a worldwide phenomenon. Reform victories like these are undercut by capitalists moving their plants to low-wage areas. Today, GM produces more cars in China than in the U.S., not to mention the U.S. auto industry’s presence in South Africa, Vietnam and Eastern Europe.

The only answer to this contradiction is overthrowing capitalism — along with its government — a profit system which always exploits workers wherever it can, pitting one group against another. As one striker remarked as he left the Flint plant,“the first victory is ours. But the war is not over.”