WASHINGTON, DC, June 23 — Hundreds of low-wage women workers of 50 federal subcontractors walked off their jobs today to demand the right to form a union. The one-day strike and rally at the National Zoo was aimed to coincide with President Obama’s Summit on Working Families at the White House. “We do not make enough money to survive,” said a woman who works at the zoo.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts, grants, loans, and property leases go to low-wage companies, fueling the low-wage economy and growing inequality.  And women hold over 70 percent of low-wage federal government contract jobs. The vast majority are black, Latin and immigrants.
Today’s action, organized by Good Jobs Nation, comes a year after it filed a complaint with the Department of Labor that accused food franchises at federal buildings of violating minimum-wage and overtime laws. They want Obama to sign an executive order requiring federal agencies to contract only with companies that engage in collective bargaining.
The union leaders pulling the strings behind Good Jobs Nation are the same people who got us into this mess in the first place. Most contract jobs used to be full-time union jobs, and the unions did nothing to stop the bosses from eliminating them. Now the unions are trying to rebuild their ranks among low-wage workers who replaced their former members. We need to abolish wage slavery with communist revolution. And the struggle between reform and revolution must be waged within struggles like this one.

 A small group of CHALLENGE readers traveled to a farming town in California to view The House I Live In, written and directed by Eugene Jarecki. There was a mix of young college students,  teachers, and older workers. The film’s subject was the “War on Drugs.”
The “War on Drugs” has never truly been about drugs. It is a racist war on young black and Latin men and a means of filling up the prisons for profit. This film depicts the horrific and devastating effects of this war on the black and Latin working-class communities. The U.S. incarcerates more of its domestic workers than China or Russia, 2.3 million prisoners behind bars. In large part they are there for non-violent and drug-related offenses.
Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, makes a clear and poignant point when she states, “There are more African Americans in jail or on probation and parole than were enslaved in 1850.” The racist nature of this war on drugs is revealed by these stats: black Americans are 13 percent of the population, 14 percent of the drug users and 56 percent of those incarcerated for drug-related crimes.
During the discussion after the film, one CHALLENGE reader pointed out that capitalism is the culprit and the driving force behind the “War on Drugs.” To end this racist war on our black and Latin youth, we must end capitalism. After the discussion, one youth came forward to say he liked what was said about capitalism and that he had been studying Marxism. He gave his contact information.
The prison guard and other principals in the film, who were portrayed as sympathetic, said the prisons needed to be changed but they had no idea of what to do. Under communism all workers will have useful work to do and will divide the products and wealth of society according to their needs. Prisons will be reserved for ex-capitalists who wish to return to a system of exploitation.

DETROIT, MI June 25 — “There are people who can’t cook, can’t clean, people coming off surgery who can’t wash. This is an affront to human dignity…Every day, we’re shown that black lives, black quality of life, black communities, don’t matter.” That’s how an organizer of the Detroit People’s Water Board described the latest case of mass racist terror as the Detroit Water Department shuts off water to those who owe $150 or are two months behind on their bill. More than 150,000 customers (as many as 300,000 mostly poor and black residents), are late on bills that have increased 119 percent in the last ten years. They are targeting as many as 3,000 homes every week!
Denying water to almost half the population of Detroit in a blistering summer comes after almost 170,000 homes with children and the elderly went without heat during the brutal winter of 2013-14.  To add to the racist terror, state welfare authorities can take children from any home without running water.
Meanwhile, more than half of the city’s factories and office buildings, including the Detroit Lions’ Ford Field, the Redwings hockey arena at Joe Louis Arena, and the Palmer Park Golf Course owe a total of $30 million. No one is shutting their water off.
This is not about unpaid bills. The shutoffs are intended to drive people from their homes so developers can buy up the land dirt cheap, while making the Water Department more attractive to a private investor. Privatizing the Water Department has been on the agenda for the past two decades.  
These attacks are the result of the decline of the U.S. auto bosses, the UAW’s (United Automobile Workers) total submission to their billionaire masters, and a financial crisis that left millions jobless and homeless. The racist character of these attacks is stark and indisputable.
People are parking their cars over water valves to prevent shut-offs and teaching each other how to turn the water back on. Community groups even filed a human rights complaint at the United Nations, demanding an end to the shutoffs. The Detroit Water Brigade, an Occupy-type group, is collecting supplies and trying to serve those in need.
Just weeks ago, the UAW held its national convention here with more than 2,000 delegates. The water shutoffs was even mentioned. Instead of a brief photo op at a nearby hotel organizing drive, the UAW could have led thousands out on strike and seized the Water Department, ending any shutoffs and demanding that the auto billionaires pay the bill. But it didn’t. And it won’t.
As home to millions of industrial workers, Detroit was once a center of communist-led, anti-racist struggle. In 1932, after six workers and youth were killed by company thugs at the Ford Hunger March, 100,000 workers marched behind the red-flag-draped coffins singing the Internationale. Five years later, workers seized the GM factories in Flint, Michigan and established the UAW. And in 1967, the armed uprising against racist police terror shook the bosses and was probably the greatest single act of solidarity with the Vietnamese in defeating U.S. imperialism.
Today, as Detroit workers face winters without heat and summers without water, they are organizing mass militant actions against the water department. What w we win is temporary as long as the bosses hold power. The main lesson of the Detroit water shutoff is that we need to build a mass PLP to destroy wage slavery, with communist revolution. Then, “dark night will have its end!”

India held its general elections in April and May. As the world’s second most populous country, its elections caught the attention of mainstream media outlets, many of which heralded “the largest democracy in the world.” India has a multi-party system, including some phony communist parties that have posted major electoral victories in the states of Kerala and West Bengal in the post-independence era.
In reality, as in the U.S., the elections were fought between the two mainstream parties, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the liberal Indian National Congress, both of which represent the Indian ruling class and have significant links to global capitalist interests. BJP won in a landslide victory — to the delight of the global ruling class, which needs more discipline of the working class during this period of intensified capitalist crisis.
Narendra Modi, the BJP head who became the nation’s prime minister, is accelerating the bosses’ move towards fascism. Modi was formerly chief minister in the state of Gujarat. In 2002, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire and sparked violent riots directed at the Muslim inhabitants in the surrounding areas of the Godhra, leading to the vicious slaughter of over 2,500. The police in the areas reportedly stood by and even facilitated the rampage, and strong evidence suggests that Modi allowed the massacres to go on unabated. (As a result, Modi was denied an entry visa to the U.S. in 2005.)
But Modi’s role in the massacres did not prevent him from being repeatedly elected in a Hindu region where anti-Muslim racism is strong. Nor did it stop investors from funneling billions into the state of Gujarat. Modi, it seems, will wield a heavy hand to crank the profit-making machine for a handful of millionaires, while hundreds of millions in India live in absolute poverty. In the “largest democratic country in the world,” according to a 2010 report by OXFAM, eight Indian states account for more poor people than the 26 poorest African nations combined.
Modi’s BJP is in fact the political wing of the racist extreme right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organization founded in 1925 and openly modeled on Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. RSS members regularly participate in ethnic cleansing against Muslims and Sikhs and played a major role in the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat. As the crisis in global capital spirals out of control, the ruling class aligns itself with fascism to smash working-class resistance to free-market exploitation. This is clearly the case in India, which has seen a widening resistance movement against privatization and a flaring gap between haves and have-nots.
One of the biggest headaches of the Indian ruling class is the Maoist insurrection in the Central and Eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent. With a legacy dating to 1968, the rebels have built a substantial base among the tribal populations and the historically dispossessed “untouchable” castes. Since they staged a rebellion in Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, a revolt brutally crushed by the State in conjunction with the mainstream Communist Party of India (CPI), the Maoists have followed the “Chinese Path” of armed struggle in the countryside while focusing effort on political organizing in the tribal communities. Additionally, there has been a slow-developing but rigorous campaign in the urban centers, led mostly by students and intellectuals, to gain support for the militant struggle in the rural areas.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite splits within the Maoist movement, their focus has continued to revolve around issues of food and land, along with caste inequality and sexism. In 2004, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) merged with the Maoist Communist Centre to form the CPI (Maoist), which continues to advocate “seizure of political power by armed struggle” through a People’s War combined with political agitation of tribal communities with the aim of overthrowing the Indian State. While the immediate aim is to establish “compact revolutionary zones” that extend from India’s Southeast to Nepal, the Maoists’ stated goal is to achieve a socialist state by “accomplishing the new democratic revolution and continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Prefacing the most recent military campaign to root out “the greatest threat to India’s security” was the 2005 signing of hundreds of memorandums of understanding between the government and multinational mining corporations. A terror campaign ensued by the ultra-nationalist Salwa Judum against tribal people who refused to give up their lands for multinational development. The vicious campaign only deepened internal resistance to the state and resulted in the formation of grassroots organizations backed by the Maoist insurgency.
Although both the political right and the institutional left in India criticize the Maoists for the use of guerilla violence, the insurgency offers a glimmer of hope for workers’ anger at the system and their willingness to smash it. The mainstream phony communist parties in India, which ran numerous candidates in the recent elections, channel their energy into creating reformist alliances that leave capitalism in place.
With the crisis in capital spiraling out of control, the ruling class needs to turn to movements like the RSS and to racist demagogue like Modi.
We must fight directly for communism through the armed struggle of a mass workers’ party. The struggle of the working class in India is a symbol of continuing resistance as we build stronger ties among the international working class in creating a communist future. The beginning is now.