TEXAS, January 13—A recent school and community art project has galvanized working-class struggle here. A widely viewed, student-created mural of a mass of students, parents and workers fighting back against the racist inequalities in our school district inspired teachers to organize and fight back.
Class Struggle Imitates Art
After weeks of conversation about the mural, teachers issued a collective statement that cited student concerns about district budget cuts and the school-to-prison pipeline. The teachers then made a plan to deliver the bold statement at the next local school board meeting. In a period of intensifying fascism and fear, this was no small feat.
At the meeting, nearly 20 teachers, students, parents and community members confronted the school board. Standing united, they called out the injustice of ongoing district budget cuts and made demands that the board restore programs cut years ago. One after another, they exposed the board’s lies about providing students with a quality and equal education.
One grandparent and Progressive Labor Party member denounced the entire school board as a corrupt gang of racists. He stated that their complicity in keeping the school district in a perpetual state of crisis served capitalism by forcing underserved students into a lifetime of low-wage work, the military or prison.
This inspiring event revealed the potential of working-class unity. The teachers, students and parents who stood together got a glimpse of working-class power. When the working-class is united and armed with a communist analysis, the potential is enormous.  
Liberal Union Bosses Pacify, Then Betray
This struggle, organized with rank-and-file teacher leadership, stands in sharp contrast to the misleadership of the union bosses. The following month, the school board announced an “emergency meeting” to vote on a new district health insurance plan. Given the last-minute timing of the meeting, teachers were unable to organize a rank-and-file response, and relied on their local union bosses.
The union misleaders first called on members to attend the meeting and pressure the school board to increase the district’s contribution to the health plan. But the three health plan options presented to the board all had higher rates than last year. No matter what plan the board chose, teachers were facing a pay cut!
In the ensuing discussion, board members who’d been endorsed by the union expressed their “regret” in raising the rates and explained that we all had to “sacrifice.” Several teachers yelled at the board in anger, but the union misleaders could only beg for a few more crumbs.
In the end, the board voted on the “least bad” option, which still raised rates and cut wages. While many teachers felt betrayed by the board, the more dangerous betrayal came from their own union, which pacified and misled the teachers to prevent them from fighting back. In practice, the union’s actions led to acceptance of the school board’s attacks.
Lessons Learned
The experience of these events highlights the opportunities involved in seizing and sharpening seemingly small political struggles like school board meetings. This struggle exposed the role of liberal bosses and their unions in dividing and misleading the workers away from the militant, anti-racist student-education worker-parent unity shown at the first board meeting.
We learned we must engage in struggle anywhere and everywhere, no matter how small. Where there is no struggle happening, we must create one. We must fight back against the racist injustices that workers experience every day. Daily conversations with friends and co-workers about these injustices have the potential to be organized into larger on-the-job struggles. Guided by communist politics, these struggles have the potential to inspire bold action by regular workers and to produce long-lasting class struggle.
The struggle continues! The next step is to connect worsening conditions in the school to the larger issues of war, fascism, and growing inter-imperialist rivalries around the world. We will continue to struggle for teachers, students and parents to join PLP in organizing the fight for our class and a communist future.

I recently participated in my first job action, helping organize bike messengers for Uber RUSH, a delivery network the on-demand company started in New York City in April 2014.
Since I joined RUSH last year, Uber has constantly cut messenger rates. They justified these cuts by saying more customers would use RUSH because it is cheaper, meaning more money.
Uber’s drivers—largely African and Middle-Eastern men who left their cab jobs for Uber’s promise of higher wages in less hours—have experienced the same racist cuts under the same premise, and have to work much longer hours now to make ends meet.
NYC messengers in general are young Black and Latin workers. Bike messenger work is dangerous. We constantly have to navigate crazy traffic, potholed streets and overzealous kkkops giving us motor vehicle tickets to generate profit for the bosses. Most messengers work as independent contractors, meaning they receive no benefits (i.e. health insurance, disability, unemployment).
In mid-November, nine RUSH messengers confronted RUSH’s manager at Uber’s Manhattan office, demanding he release tips owed to the fleet: literally wage theft!
One messenger even threatened him with a chair if he kept ignoring them! Later that day, the manager announced Uber would dispense the tips. That showed the power workers have when we unite against the bosses!
The messenger who lead this action announced the strike for December 1. He created a Facebook page promoting it. The plan was for all RUSH messengers to take no jobs for the entire day, then show up at the office in the afternoon to make our demands clear.
Though I found out about the action days later, I sprang into action, leafleting with our list of demands from a post on the FB page.
I held routine conversations with other messengers about how capitalism exploits us as workers and Uber is making money off our efforts. This demanded the need for us to fight back!
I underestimated how much organizing comes into a successful strike. Fourteen days was too little time. Worse, we never held meetings before the action. This meant our “strike” was a disjointed effort that didn’t resonate well.
Most people who clicked “Going” on the FB page didn’t show up. While Facebook can be a organizing tool, it will never replace building true interpersonal relationships with workers.
Uber, in an attempt to curb the strike, offered an extra $50 bribe to messengers who completed five runs that day.
The RUSH manager heard our case in the office before stating the original rates were too expensive for the company to keep up with its massive delivery fleet, and quickly left.
Though I distributed a few CHALLENGEs, I felt upset. Self-critically, I began calling the workers sellouts. Thankfully, fellow comrades struggled with me to understand why that was the wrong line and why this action failed.
I have learned much from this experience.
Paramount is that we should not blame workers, whose minds have been poisoned by capitalist individualism and passivity. And that these actions need real organizing.
But I am making progress. One person I gave CHALLENGE to was turned out to be already familiar with and receptive to the paper. Even better, I gained the courage during this struggle to openly reveal to another worker that I’m a communist—another first for me.
I plan on forming better relationships with my co-workers, and get them to understand that communism is the ultimate solution to this garbage system.
Though I am generally asocial, I’m struggling to change that. Hopefully, I’ll make things happen.

I work for a private electrical contractor as a “helper.” I run wires, work on live circuits, break down walls and the like. I’ve been in this field for two years and nothing about it has been easy. I’m in a field with a group of international workers, from China to Ghana, who are all being screwed over by the boss. Despite our terrible wages, many of these workers still suffer from capitalist ideologies. One of those ideas is sexism.
While we’ve had many conversations on the job, many of my co-workers are influenced by the foreman—a real sexist pig, to put it mildly. When you’re green like myself, you get teased a lot and the foreman loves picking on me. For one, he thinks that all wives cheat on their spouses. I told him, “No, not in my marriage.”
When you’re in a relationship where you share not just your bodies but also your minds, politics, hopes and fears, there’s nothing that could break that trust.  He told me, “You’ll see when James comes.” (“James” is the equivalent of the milkman joke that exploits the fear of adultery.)
 “Why is that?” I asked.
“Because you look like your woman wears the pants. I bet when you come in, you say, ‘Honey can I have some sex, please? No! Oh, okay then.’”
By that time, a big crowd had formed. I told the foreman that my wife isn’t my property and I understand when she isn’t in the mood. The foreman shouted, “When I’m ready, she has to be ready!”
I said, “That’s horrible,” and walked away.
“Because I’m a man!” I heard him shout in the distance.
Later, on the train ride home with one of my co-workers, I asked what he thought. “I don’t know, man,” he said. I told him that I thought the foreman sounded like a rapist. My co-worker just laughed and looked away. I thought that maybe his response showed that he was afraid of saying something against the foreman, or, worse, that he might feel that type of behavior is okay.
Contracting is traditionally a male-dominated field, and there were no women present at the worksite.  It’s an environment that breeds sexist, misogynist, disgusting ideas about women. Under communism, we would have a different kind of workplace. We won’t be segregated by race, sex or sexual orientation. Working people will just work together, without foremen.
The next day, to my surprise, a co-worker approached me and said he really admired and respected the way I handled myself, and that I didn’t have to disrespect my wife to do so. When you fight sexism, your co-workers will pay attention and might even take your anti-sexist cue. Today, we argued with the foreman over his sexism till he walked away (see more next issue). This co-worker is now my friend and a CHALLENGE reader.
I learned many things from this small struggle—most of all, that we must not give in to capitalist ideas. We must stay confident in our Party’s anti-sexist, anti-racist line. The working class is listening, and ready to strike back!

BROOKLYN, January 8—Teachers and their friends had a delicious dinner and an even more scintillating conversation about possible presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and the current elections. This teacher discussion group was focused on the how elections are used by capitalism. We began by discussing how things were going in each other’s schools, getting to know one another, and introducing ourselves. This was the second time for most that they were all meeting, but there were some new people for the first time. We all watched a video on Trump from The Guardian and read CHALLENGE’s July 2015 editorial that discussed Sanders in depth.
One parent, also a school psychologist, provided some insight into the current contradictions in schools when she said that “some kids just aren’t ready for college.” This led into a fruitful discussion about how bosses use education to sort out the working class. Though Sanders promised free college tuition to those who earned the right to go to college, this would actually be used to reinforce the idea that those who didn’t make it into college deserve the struggles, oppression, and exploitation that they get. We identified this policy as racist, because primarily Black and Latin students are excluded from college.
We then connected free college to imperialist war. How? In order to pay for college tuition, Sanders would have to discipline the rich and effectively raise taxes. That way, when the time comes for imperialist war with China and Russia, the U.S. will have the money to fix the U.S.’s failing infrastructure and fund the military. So, if Sanders ever actually provided free college tuition, it may benefit the working class some, but it would actually benefit the bosses more in the long run.
With this in mind, we continued by discussing who was the bigger danger for the working class: a gutter racist like Trump or a left-leaning liberal like Bernie Sanders.
On the surface, it seems that Trump is the main danger. He whips up racism and openly talks about deporting millions of immigrants. A teacher and friend of the Party said that Sanders made a lot of promises and had a lot of appeal, followed up by another friend who said that he gave her hope. A PL’er countered that he still served the ruling class and was a career politician. When it was brought up that he didn’t want to take the Super Pac money, we discussed that he was doing this in order to build his image as against corporations. This is no different than some rappers who refused to sign to a major label in order to maintain his “cred” and ultimately continue to sell lots of albums the way that he had been. Sanders Sanders will not fight against the Democratic Party in the interests of the working class when the rich will be the ones financing him and putting him in the White House. Rather, he will play right into their hands: he pacifies the working class and gets them to work within the system, all the while building for imperialist war.
One PL’er highlighted that Bernie Sanders does not have a pro-worker history. His voting record is not anti-war. Sanders had anti-war protesters arrested when they occupied his office as they were protesting his support for the Bill Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo. He also supports the apartheid state of Israel. In fact, Sanders wants to be commander-in-chief of the most powerful military responsible for millions of deaths in Iraq, Syria, Mexico, El Salvador, Haiti, Vietnam, and so many other countries.  
Many well-meaning anti-racists are lining up to support Sanders because they see him as the lesser evil. CHALLENGE was a major instrument in unmasking Sanders as yet another tool of the imperialists during our discussion. Though not every person there was convinced of the need to build for communist revolution by joining PLP, they did agree to come to our next discussion in February. Small Victory! By getting teachers to consistently come and discuss these important political ideas, we will eventually be able to solidify our understanding of the world as well. We have much to learn from our friends just as they have much to learn from us.
All politicians are masters of war, or aspiring to be. “Come you masters of war, you that hide behind desks. I just want you to know I can see through your masks” Sanders is just another politician in a long line of misleaders who wears a worker-friendly mask. Support working-class struggle, not politicians and their war agendas. Learn to fight, fight to learn!