For five days and counting….
Ten thousand workers in the Philippines are expected to be among the dead in just one city, with hundreds of thousands left homeless by a fierce typhoon bringing winds of over 200 miles per hour. NGOs are flooding the affected region, but if this is a repeat of the recent experience in Haiti — after the devastating 2010 earthquake — most of the aid promised by the big imperialist countries will not be delivered, and what is delivered will mostly be spent in the donor countries.
Young soldiers carrying M-16 assault rifles were sent by the government to “restore order,” accusing angry hungry people of “highjacking” relief vehicles. Food and water are slow to be distributed and dead bodies are piling up, endangering public health.
The “super typhoon” was known to be coming, but evacuation was mismanaged because the government was calling it a “storm warning” instead of a “tsunami” — a word which carries much more significance in the area.
Capitalist greed is solely responsible for this unnatural disaster. Storms are increasing in intensity due to global warning, with an 11 percent upsurge expected by the end of this century, causing sea levels to rise. Capitalists don’t want to eat into their profits by limiting carbon emissions and other protection for the environment. (Full analysis next issue)

DHAKA, BANGLADESH, November 11 — Another one of capitalism’s unnatural disasters — extreme poverty and exploitation — drove 30,000 angry garment workers into the streets here in a mass strike that shut over 100 factories. The workers who produce clothing for billion-dollar corporations like Walmart, the Gap and Sears are demanding a 260 percent increase of the $38 monthly minimum wage to $100. The government offered $67 which the bosses rejected as “too high,” which government official admit hardly meets a basic diet.
The cops used tear gas and rubber bullets against the workers but the latter fought back, stoning the cops, blocking key highways and roads, smashing vehicles and factory windows.

NEWARK, NJ, November 1 — As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens, sparks of working-class resistance continue to flare up internationally. More workers search for leadership for this fightback. Some see the capitalist system behind the attacks. They’re eager to learn how our class can shape our collective future. PLP needs to be in these struggles, where these fighters will see the truth of our politics.
Legal services workers here are joining in this fight. Today, 50 people, including about 20 legal workers and clients, a vanload of people from a local soup kitchen, community militants, students and other workers marched against the five percent cut in Food Stamps, the continued underfunding of free legal services for the unemployed, and the very low-wage workers, and mass racist unemployment in cities like Newark. The marchers were both united and militant.
Even before the devastating funding cuts of the last five years, inflation has halved the real value of federal government grants to Legal Services. Then the 2007–2008 housing crash killed the main source of funds from property taxes, followed by the slashing of first state and now federal monies.
Hundreds of Legal Services workers statewide have been laid off or forced out. The workloads of those who remain have increased. Wages have been cut. At one office, a four-day week was recently instituted, with total wage and benefit cuts there since 2008 now reaching 40%.
Worse, Legal Services clients have seen their advocates often unable to assist them with legal problems dealing with basic survival — evictions, foreclosures, bankruptcies, unemployment appeals and welfare fair hearings, just to name a few.
The attacks initiated by the Clinton-Republican 1997 welfare reform have not stopped. Neither Obama nor any national politician supported an extension of the tiny 2009 Food Stamp increase. That “raise” followed mass anger against the bankers’ role in the crash of 2007–8, and has now been eliminated.
U.S. rulers need to cut so-called safety-net programs to build a war chest for future wars against their imperialist rivals. Their politicians are sharpening their knives for more cuts to Food Stamps, ranging from $4 billion to $40 billion over the next decade.
A local Legal Services union-formed action committee planned and led today’s march. That committee led an 18-month campaign, gathering nearly 2,000 signatures on a petition demanding restoration of state Legal Services funding. Those petitions were delivered to Governor Christie in June. Before the march, that committee was expanded to include non-union staff and clients. That decision proved to be crucial to the worker-client unity expressed at the march.
Along the way, the marchers stopped at a local Bank of America, Newark City Hall and the state unemployment office. Speakers included a Legal Services worker, a statewide community action group and several soup kitchen clients. The clients’ stories of hunger, homelessness and being turned away by government agencies — supposedly set up to help people — were both heartbreaking and infuriating. At the unemployment office we loudly chanted “Jobs yes, racism no! Food Stamp cuts have got to go!”
During the march, PLP members and friends distributed 175 copies of CHALLENGE. A local union and community militant gave the wrap-up speech at the Federal Building, just as Homeland Security cops were trying to shut down the rally. He pointed to mass racist unemployment as the source of poverty, homelessness, hunger, substance abuse and other social consequences. He targeted the capitalist drive for maximum profits as inevitably leading to the crises being experienced worldwide today.
In contrast to prior speakers, who attacked individual politicians like Christie or Newark Mayor Corey Booker, this speaker made it clear that unemployment and poverty are a product of this economic system.
He asked the crowd what kind of world we would want our children to grow up in. On one side, he posed the dictatorship of the .01 percent, using their vast capital to control the government, grinding down the world’s working class to lower levels of existence; on the other side, an anti-racist world based on equality where workers as a class run our lives for the good of society as a whole.
The speaker declared this march was just the beginning, and challenged the crowd to commit themselves to this last vision of a new society. A number of marchers loudly cheered this call.
The future is bright for those who labor and struggle to make ends meet. PLP’s aim is to lead a revolution for communism to bring about that world, where poverty, unemployment, racism and sexism will be a distant memory.

BOSTON, November 6 —  “Bloomberg is NO Public Health Hero” was the rallying cry of activists at this year’s meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA).  APHA leadership was giving New York City Mayor Bloomberg the “Legislator of the Year” award, down playing the NYC mayor’s racist stop-and-frisk program targeting hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino men was unimportant, given his anti-smoking, anti-gun and anti-soda stances.
PLP members and friends organized several anti-racist campaigns at this year’s public health meeting, along with the Medical Care Section of APHA, and Radical Public Health students from Chicago informed the 13,000 attendees. They worked with fighters in several APHA Sections to write a formal protest letter to the Executive Board, and distributed over 2,000 leaflets exposing the Board’s decision.  Many thanked us and could not believe racist Bloomberg would be given a public health award.
The Black Caucus of Health Workers sponsored a session on Mass Incarceration that drew over 50 people. Students presented data on the full scope of damage by the “War on Drugs” on communities and individuals.   This war targets black and Latino men and women with arrests and imprisonment for minor drug possession and non-violent crimes.  While government data show that white and black people use and sell drugs at similar rates, the cops arrest and courts convict blacks at a disproportionate rate.  In Washington, DC, 90 percent of adults arrested for drug possession are black while they represent less than 50 percent of the residents.
Conviction for drug offenses deprives communities of parents and workers, social support, and partners.  Returnees face barriers to housing, jobs, food stamps, and other necessities, keeping the unemployment and homeless rates high among black workers.  The APHA journal reported that people on parole lose two years of life for every year in prison, leading many to call this an “early death sentence.”
The ruling class uses this policy to criminalize, pacify, and marginalize a population that has led major rebellions and reform movements in the past.  The policy continues the enslavement of black workers that started with slavery and continued with Jim Crow laws. Like stop-and-frisk practices, it increases the stereotypes that black men are all drug dealers who deserve punishment and blame for high unemployment rates, poor graduation rates, and violence.  This lies at the base of the racism the capitalists need to deflect anger from their exploitation of all workers.
Speakers analyzed the superprofits the capitalists make off  racism and the loss of wages and jobs from privatization of schools, transit and housing.  A member of PLP highlighted the fight for jobs at Washington, DC METRO for people returning from prison.  Plans for protests, resolutions and sessions at next year’s meeting in New Orleans came out of this intense program.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Think Global, Act Local”.  Our continuing fight against cholera in Haiti showed that PLP and our friends go way beyond this sloganeering.  We were important in helping organize an extraordinary evening session on Haiti that was put on by the Black Caucus, anti-cholera campaigners and people from Haiti who are suing the UN to compensate victims and develop clean water systems. Sanitation and mass vaccination against cholera are effective and possible, but the countries that want to profit from Haiti as a mass sweatshop are not interested.  Only 1 percent of Haiti’s population has been vaccinated because there is no money to ramp up vaccine production there.
A Center for Disease Control engineer described a “long-term” safe water project but said only about 10 percent of the needed money is in the pipeline. Cost estimates range from  $800 million to $2 billion, which  the UN should pay and pull out it troops.  A sharp debate at an earlier session focused on the role of the U.S. in destroying the economy and autonomy of Haiti and allowed a political discussion of the role of imperialism.  
Many other activities linked our Party to this mass organization.  We presented a poster on “Capitalist Determinants of HIV” which compared a communist approach to public health to the limited programs in the U.S.
A friend chaired the growing Jail and Prison Health Committee within the Medical Care Section.  This committee can sponsor events next year and her  resolution on Mental Health and Prison  can be used in advocating reforms during the year.  The traditional Troublemakers Breakfast also drew in new students and APHA members to discuss the role of APHA under capitalism and the need to challenge the system as we build for revolution.  On to New Orleans!

NEW YORK CITY, October 29 — The retiree association of District Council 37 voted today to support the activities of the Committee for Justice for Kyam Livingston who died in a Brooklyn holding cell on July 21. The association, which represents 50,000 retired NYC government workers, will help circulate the petition seeking Justice for Kyam and will accept contributions for activities backing the aims of that committee.
The retirees voted this support out of an understanding that what happened to Kyam could have happened to many of our members, their children or grandchildren. Our collective experience in the union movement taught us well the lesson that unity of black, Latino and white workers, men and women, is the only way we can move forward. Also, many of us understand that the principled fight against racist police violence is an important way to build real unity.