HAITI, May 1—On May Day in Haiti, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) continued to denounce capitalism while raising the consciousness of the masses about the conditions of workers and the atrocious exploitation and domination by the bosses. In one small city, comrades organized a day of activities, including a conference-debate during which we presented the history of May Day and the situation of the working class in this region; a dinner and cultural evening of militant song and poetry. Other comrades participated in a mass march of workers in the capital city, Port-au-Prince.
Prior to May Day, comrades had invited a local labor leader to participate in a regular weekly local radio show that they host, to speak about the May Day march. Our comrades put the emphasis on class struggle, ending capitalism and fighting for a just, worker-led egalitarian society—communism.
Every day our Party is creating confidence in the masses. More and more, those close to us are becoming class conscious and coming closer to the struggle that we fight for. In order to organize our May Day activities in the town, we relied on local and international comrades for financial support. Workers and students living abroad and in Haiti contributed what they could to make the day a success. Despite the threat of rain (there had been serious flooding in this town for the week prior to May Day), close to 100 people participated enthusiastically in the day’s activities, which lasted seven hours.
The speakers denounced the attempts of the ruling class to expropriate May Day from the workers. The bosses try to make the day one of mindless festivity, food and fairs. They call it the Day of Agriculture and Work, but several speakers noted what a lie that was, since Haiti has neither prospering agriculture—there is instead systematic deforestation and total lack of support for small farmers and farm-workers—nor work—the Haitian working class faces an unemployment rate of 83 percent, with most people involved in the below-subsistence level informal sector and the 7 percent employed in the private sector rarely earning the $5/day minimum wage (the remaining 11 percent are in government jobs).
Despite a mass struggle since 2009 for an increase in the daily minimum wage—now $5/day—workers have been suffering. Despite election box approval, the bosses, the State and the Council on Salary have continued to lie and deceive. Horrible, crushing inflation has not changed the rulers’ minds; to the contrary, there have been firings in the factories for those who dare to complain. And that’s only among the formally employed: for homemakers, market sellers, drivers, cultivators and sharecroppers, things are maybe even worse. For teachers and office workers, the situation is also precarious, especially given the devaluation of the Haitian gourde (prior to the 2010 earthquake, there were 40 gourdes to the U.S. dollar; today it’s 68.5). A high school teacher working 6 hours a day earns less than $160 (all wages cited in $US)/month (and often is owed at least 6 months wages); a bank cashier earns about $245/month; women house servants earn between $28–$80/month. So-called “free workers,” that is, those without a fixed job in the informal economy can earn $3–5/day; a mason can earn $7.8–$11.70 for a day’s labor. These workers have no benefits, unemployment nor health insurance and can be fired at will by the bosses.
Other speakers stated emphatically that this was all really just another form of slavery. Many examples were given, including newspaper reports that in some U.S.-owned businesses, workers face such intense speed-up that they have to wear diapers because the bosses don’t allow them time to take care of their needs; there are factories in the free trade zones that don’t give workers enough time to have a meal during the work day. It is clear that the capitalist system tries to dehumanize workers, who create all value and profits for the bosses. “We can’t accept these conditions!” several workers exclaimed. “We have to fight back against them and the bosses who profit!”
One leader of a local women’s group, with whom we have been working since our forum for International Working Women’s Day last March 8, noted that women must take part in the class struggle of the working class. Several participants made clear that they understood that the working class is exploited and dominated everywhere in the world and that workers must get together to fight for their liberation.
In order to end once and for all the system of exploitation and domination that is capitalism, PLP raises class awareness in several countries at the present time. We are growing, despite the problems that workers face in this dark night. It shall have its end. PLP comrades are respected and they have the confidence of many workers. Workers everywhere, join us for communist revolution.
MEXICO CITY, MAY 1—A group of 45 comrades, sympathizers, and friends of Progressive Labor Party carried the red flags of communism in the May 1st march in Mexico City. Our revolutionary slogans and chants were heard by thousands of workers. We distributed 1,500 pamphlets of Challenge. In Oaxaca, another group of 12 comrades distributed 3,000 pamphlets in the march organized by the Teacher’s Union Local Section 22.
History has taught us that workers can only confront imperialist war if we fight to get rid of the capitalist system that creates crisis, war, and fascism. That teaching is the heritage that the Russian and Chinese workers left us when they took power during WWI and WWII, respectively. We shouldn’t forget that in order to put an end to both wars, it was essential that workers took power into their own hands.
The recent attacks by the United States on Syria and Afghanistan, much like the mobilization of aircraft carriers to the Korean Peninsula, is a signal of war against the imperialists of Russia and China, their true targets. It’s a sign that the bosses are, with each action, closer to initiating a third world war, in which they will use both conventional and nuclear weapons and spill the blood of millions of workers, all for the sake of their profits. Under this reality, capitalism confirms its devastating and criminal essence.
Within the shadow of imperialist war, the ruling class of Mexico can only offer an electoral circus with increasing fascism. Workers must be very clear that bourgeois “democracy” is a dictatorship of the capitalist class over the working class—a dictatorship of a few privileged parasites who exploit that great majority of impoverished workers.
Electoral democracy is a fraud. This sham tries to trick the working class into thinking they have the “freedom” to choose their rulers, but the reality is that it only serves to legitimize the new oppressors and exploiters. In no place or moment in history has the working class achieved its liberation by means of elections. The working class can only liberate itself when it organizes itself into a revolutionary party to take power through force and establish a dictatorship of the working class.
In the electoral process, the only ones who can participate are those who have millions in resources at their disposal and are willing to represent those who finance them. During their term they have to work to comply with their commitments to those who carried them into power.
All of the electoral parties represent the interests of some faction of the capitalist class, allied or subordinate to imperialist interests, principally those of the US. No electoral party actually represents the workers. The working class needs its own party to achieve a change from the capitalist economic, political and social system – a transformation that cannot be achieved through the electoral path, as that is a process completely controlled by the capitalist class.
When the capitalist “democracy” fails, the bosses turn to fascism, the most violent form of their judicial, police, and military apparatus that invokes the spread of fear among an upsurge of intense violence. To achieve this climate of fear, it is necessary for the country to usher in repressive state institutions before the presence of some supposed enemy that intends to “destabilize peace.”
In Mexico, the supposed democracy has achieved alarming rates of robbery and murder, the deviant millionaires and the abuses of power of the governor of Veracruz through the orders of Felipe Calderon of PAN and of Enrique Peña Nieto of PRI, the killings in Ayotzinapa that they carried out, under the direction of Partido Revolucionario Democrático (PRD). PRD is the leader of Morena (another electoral party) and represents a nationalist sector whose win will only benefit a small group and not the mass of followers that they have succeeded in convincing. None of them represents the interests of the working class.
Drug trafficking, corruption, murder, and disappearances of journalists and fighers, the increase in poverty rates, the sexism that women suffer every day, the enrichment of a select few – all go hand in hand with the “democratic process” created by the capitalist system, the same system that has to be stopped, through the process of understanding its inner working and how to best fight it.
During election season all candidates are
labeled corrupt rats, but no one blames the capitalist system for the tragedies that the working class has to live through day to day in order for the bosses to gain more and more profit. No political platform or candidate in any election attacks the profit system of the bourgeois class. They only put ridiculous names to insufficient programs that are designed to gather votes.
The ex-mayor of Huixquilucan del Mazo Maza (the region with the most drug traffickers) represented the private sector of Banco Azteca and Grupo Servin. He has family connections with different politicians of Grupo Altacomulco, to which President Peña Nieto belongs. Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) politician Vásquez Mota is involved in allegations for his foundation Juntos Podemos (Together We Can), which has received more than $1 billion pesos (Proceso, 5/18). Although Morena candidate Delfina Gómez isn’t known for corruption in her past, her party’s connection with billionaire Carlos Slim and bosses’ union Coparmex leaves many questions to be answered (El Financiero, 5/22).
We can’t ignore the massive business of these elections. For example, according to official electoral sources, there is at least $394 million pesos that will be spent on this election (El Financiero, 5/22), and the 2017 budget for all the political parties combined is over $4 billion pesos (Excelsior, 2/15). These figures may not even be an accurate estimate, as the different ruling class parties sponsor various other activities and buy votes. It’s always necessary to consider the fact that all electoral parties spend exaggerated sums to promote themselves; to follow the money shows who really benefits.
What’s at Stake?
What drives the desire to win the electoral dispute in one of the most important states on a national level? It’s not the high poverty levels or the alarming rates of sexist violence. It’s the control of one of the most important industrial zones in the country at a key geostrategic point, with one side close to a metropolis that guarantees a cheap work force and the other side in the middle of the country’s most important commercial routes. If this were not enough, it’s also a migrant route for an exploited semi-slave workforce. We find ourselves in an upsurge of capitalist crisis, which will not hesitate to expose its fascist face and exalt the poisons of nationalism, individualism, and sexism, making it harder for workers to fight together against the international ruling class.
The bosses want to make us believe that nothing can be done to change the oppressive and exploitative system that is capitalism, but the Russian and Chinese workers showed that it is possible to wrench power from the capitalists and build a new society, led by the working class. Despite the dark night that offers imperialist war and fascism, the workers, with dedication and organization, will forge a communist future.
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Protest Outside Liberty University During Trump’s First Commencement Speech
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- 18 May 2017 217 hits
Lynchburg, Virginia, May 13—On May Day 2017, a young man from Lynchburg declared to the May Day marchers in Brooklyn, NY that Liberty University (LU), founded and led by the racist and conservatively religious Falwell family, would not be a “safe space” for President Donald Trump to give a commencement speech.
He was not just whistling Dixie! Over 200 protestors marched and chanted along Ward Road across from LU for four hours, condemning the president and the ruling class for their racist policies. “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA!” rang out as friends and members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) from Maryland and Lynchburg joined others in the Seven Hills Progressive Society (SHPS) to challenge the racist U.S. president in a spirited rally.
Protestors carried signs condemning the Trump administration’s efforts to destroy health care and education for the working class and to promote racism against immigrants. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party leadership in Lynchburg criticized the protest as a provocation that would end up helping the local Republicans. They pathetically called instead for a day of service to plant flowers in the city—their idea of “resistance”.
Which Way Forward?
Within SHPS there are different ideas about how to fight back. Several signs called for impeachment of Trump and attacked his connections to Russia. Chants of “Hey hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go” was the most enthusiastic one. While Trump is a lightning rod for our anger, such chants do not expose the power, racism, war, and casual brutality of the capitalist class. Debating “Pence vs Trump” or even “Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/Kamala Harris/Joe Biden vs Trump” will not lead us to the revolution against capitalism that we need. One PLP member said that the choice of a “competent fascist” versus “an incompetent fascist” was not what we were about. This point led to a much better discussion about capitalism and the way it generates racism and oppression. These analyses will have to intensify among SHPS members and their base. Similarly, the strategic emphasis on antiracism and multiracial unity must be strengthened.
Boldness Will Win
LU and its students make up 20 percent of the population of Lynchburg and provide many area jobs directly and indirectly. It is the center of the Liberty Council which brings lawsuits attacking LGBTQ rights and promotes Christianity in government. Many of the protestors had signs calling for “building a wall” between church and state and threw religious teachings back at Trump and the University for policies that attack the working class. One sign said “Jesus was a Refugee”. One student skipped her graduation ceremony to protest the sexism of Trump and LU with a sign “Girlcotting my commencement”, a play on the more common word, “boycott.”
The PLP congratulates the SHPS for organizing this bold action, recognizing that, given the prominence of LU in the city and the rank intimidation carried out by Trumpists across the country, fears about job and personal security was real. But many of the protestors overcame such concerns and joined the rally.
Two young restaurant workers joined the rally after being told about it by a coworker—who had voted for Trump! Another woman came despite working with a LU contractor who is friends with Falwell.
Three racists arrived midway into our protest with a large flag supporting white supremacy and Trump. Members of PLP and SHPS confronted the racists and separated them from the group while chanting for 20 minutes. The racist flag bearer tried to parade in front of our line, but our forces kept pace and chanted at him the whole time, driving the racists about half a block away from the rest of the rally. The racist also offered a Pepsi to the protestors, mocking the rally and invoking memory of the racist Pepsi commercia. Our leadership showed that we cannot just ignore these racists. Confronting them as we did today, and eventually stopping them physically, will be necessary since Trump’s racist goons are supported by the police and courts.
Boldness and solidarity can defeat fear, and the working class can defeat the fascists as more of its members learn the lessons of the world communist movement. Plant revolutionary ideas among the workers, not flowers in the gardens of the bosses.
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Preparing for Fight DC Transit Workers Disrupt Board Meeting
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- 18 May 2017 184 hits
WASHINGTON, DC, May 17—As the deadline to sign a new contract loomed on April 27, members of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) largest union rallied outside a meeting of the agency’s board to protest management’s failure to bargain in good faith and its aggressive attacks on worker rights.With an initial force of 200 picketers that swelled to 500 before the rally ended, Local 689 members, and two other unions that lent their support, chanted demands for respect and fair treatment while joining hands and surrounding the block-long building. Bold chants of “Whats do we want, respect! When do we want it, now! If we don’t get it we’ll shut this system down” rang out.
WMATA wants to revoke numerous worker gains made in past bargaining agreements, freeze wages, and reduce medical benefits: all in the name of cost savings, most likely at the behest of company’s financial advisor and the man who brought Detroit to its knees as its emergency manager, Kevyn Orr.
The most outrageous WMATA proposal is to abolish the defined benefit retirement plan. This plan has been in existence since 1945, when the union struck against the private transit company that predated WMATA, Capital Transit, and forced the bosses to establish it. WMATA wants to place all new employees in a 401(k), which will drain and ultimately bankrupt the existing pension fund because there would be a steady decline of contributions to the defined benefit plan as older workers retire. This risky scheme could leave workers with nothing to live on in retirement and potentially rob them of the hard-earned money they put in: Investing giant Vanguard has reported declines in 401(k) market returns as well as the average value of 401(k) holdings.
The prospect of workers facing financial disaster in old age are high. Compounding the ordinary risk of market investment is the likelihood of a secondary recession that has followed every major recession in America (like the Great Recession of 2007-09), and which we can expect to experience. That means Local 689’s pension fund may soon be in real trouble. The implementation of this proposal spells disaster for current and future retirees, and, possibly, the survival of the union.
Already, new hires of Local 689 members will not receive medical benefits in retirement. According to a 2015 Fidelity Investment report, “. . . a couple, both aged 65 and retiring this year, can now expect to spend an estimated $240,000 on health care throughout retirement,” an 11 percent increase over the previous year and up 29 percent from 2005. This increase in medical costs far outpaces annual cost of living expenses, for which Local 689 retirees receive increases when active members do. Because health benefits are such an expense to WMATA, management is now pushing to increase worker premium contributions. The effects of such a blow from this major unionized company will echo throughout transit systems and many other unionized companies in the Mid-Atlantic region, and possibly throughout the nation. Active members may respond by using their medical benefits less often, which could lead to more than usual health adversities they may face upon retirement. Add to this the already existing health plan exemptions, and we may be leading into a national health crisis.
These draconian cost saving strategies have been designed by the US’s most well-known financial advisors, Kevyn Duane Orr, part-time “strategic executive adviser” to WMATA. WMATA paid a fee of $1.75 million dollars for two years of service to legal juggernaut Jones Day, where Orr heads the Washington DC branch. The details of this contract have yet to be released, so any additional hidden fees or bonuses may not be disclosed in the near future. The media ignores this payout, as well as the $2.9 million that WMATA spent to retain the two consulting firms, McKinsey & Co and Ernst & Young, which were hired to reform WMATA’s management and financial practices. Instead, the media attacks workers as overpaid and incompetent, trying to divide the riding public from the workers.
The proposed cutbacks thus far have been in discrete identifiable expenses that may prove to be short term solutions at best. Management’s number one agenda item has been to curtail labor and benefit costs, yet very little attention has been given to operational issues that reflect management error and incompetence. One Local 689 member lamented with exasperation, “I had a brief correspondence with the Chief Operations Officer [James Leader] detailing the number of managers and possible malfeasance in my department.” He continued, “I even sent him a letter addressed to Mr. Weidefeld [the General Manager], but he never followed through.” By ignoring workers’ efforts to improve the safety and functioning of the transit system, WMATA management is endangering the public and undercutting the viability of public transportation in the Washington, D.C. region.
In the words of Zachary M. Shrag, author of The Great Society Subway, “great fires inspire rebuilding.” The recent series of safety lapses in the transit system due to management incompetence—some resulting in death and injury—and the barrage of attacks from the General Manager Weidefeld and local politicians may be the accelerant that Local 689 needs to reinvigorate and reaffirm its members and their responsibility to the labor movement. Workers united have the power to change all things that harm their well-being and that of others. That unity will require knowledge that our membership to learn the specific history of Local 689, of the global labor movement, and of the revolutionary political leadership that can defeat the global and local capitalists, and then develop the right fightback strategy. As the anti-Apartheid leader Steve Biko declared, “The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Armed instead with new revolutionary knowledge, and developing new dedicated selfless leadership, Local 689 will gain the power to defend their rights and help preserve the liberties of the working class.
Newark, NJ, May 9—“Ho ho, hey hey, Carimer is here to stay!” “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!” So chanted a multiracial crowd of 300 students, union members, church leaders, and community fighters in support of Carimer Andujar, a 21-year-old student at Rutgers University at risk of deportation.
Carimer had been summoned to appear at a hearing at the Federal Building before ICE (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency) that might have resulted in her detainment and deportation. At the age of 4, Carimer immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic along with her sister and mother, who was fleeing from domestic abuse. Though Carimer is in the Obama-era DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), she was still vulnerable to being deported.
Carimer is a founder and current president of a campus organization called “UndocuRutgers,” a support group for students with DACA status; her being summoned before ICE was widely interpreted as an attempt at political intimidation. But Carimer contacted the faculty union, the AAUP (American Association of University Professors). The union spearheaded a spirited rally to defend Carimer outside the Federal office where the ICE hearing was held. She rejoined the crowd after 2.5 hours and a five minute hearing, telling them that no further action was being taken in her case. She thanked the crowd warmly for their support, saying that had they not been present the case might have turned out very differently.
The rally displayed both strengths and limitations.
On the plus side: (1) The militancy of the crowd at the rally exemplified what “sanctuary” has to mean at this time. While lots of cities and university campuses have designated themselves as “sanctuary” zones (that is safe areas for people in danger of deportation), this doesn’t necessarily mean anything when push comes to shove. Rutgers President Robert Barchi, for instance, made a big deal of declaring Rutgers a “sanctuary” campus soon after the 2016 election, but he did not lift a finger to defend Carimer. It was up to students and workers to take up her cause. (2) The multiracial make-up of the crowd, and its rejection of racist immigrant-baiting, constitutes the kind of defense that is needed in these increasingly perilous times, when the ruling class is vigorously promoting racism and US nationalism. (3) Some of the speakers were pretty radical! One pastor of a church with many Indonesian members who have been detained and deported declared, “I am a man of God and am not supposed to hate anyone. But I HATE the government symbolized by that [Federal] building!” (4) Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) distributed some 150 leaflets and copies of Challenge newspaper to the crowd.
On the negative side: (1) Only the PLP leaflet connected the attack on Carimer and the wave of attacks on undocumented immigrants with the larger crisis of capitalism and the designs of U.S. imperialism. PL’ers need to get more deeply involved in these pro sanctuary organizations and fight for a revolutionary, class based analysis that explains that it’s “the whole damn system” and a better world is possible.
(2) While a few speakers alluded to the millions of deportations that occurred under the Obama regime—“This situation is nothing new”—in general the Democratic Party (DP) got a free pass by the organizers of the rally. A number of prominent DP politicians sent their warm wishes to Carimer, even though they have done nothing to combat the wave of state terrorism against predominantly immigrant communities in New Jersey.
(3) Even the most militant speakers embraced U.S. nationalism, proclaiming the multiculturalist credo that immigrants have always “contributed” to “America” and are the source of its “greatness.” This kind of seemingly progressive patriotism is a sure loser for the working class.
So self critically, we need more PL members more deeply involved in the organizations that are defending NJ’s undocumented population from racist attacks. We were not able to have a PLP speaker at this rally though we did speak at a small May Day rally on the Rutgers campus the week before. We were able to expose the hypocrisy of President Barchi’s inaction around and explained the need to abolish the capitalist system that is at the core of all social injustices. But we need to get our revolutionary ideas out more often and in more places. We need to be more deeply involved in various NJ immigrants’ rights organizations; including those defending DACA youth. At the Federal building rally, PL was present only in our leaflets and newspapers. Our revolutionary class analysis would have made a big difference and would have been well received. You have to be in it to win it!