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Haiti: Student Strike Supporters Champion Communist Internationalism
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- 01 March 2013 73 hits
“Everything we do now counts.” Revolutionaries in the international PLP often say this. We mean that you have to see every act of organizing workers, right now, as one step in the communist movement we are rebuilding one step at a time. You have to hang on to that belief, especially now, when the working class often loses everyday reform battles, the strikes and protests which CHALLENGE covers. We need a mass communist party which can unify all our struggles, redouble our strength, and raise the idea of taking back from our exploiters all the value which we create as workers and which they steal from us in the form of profits.
The student support letter from Haiti for the NYC school bus strike (CHALLENGE, 2/27) raised that idea as an international goal, saying workers “from everywhere must unite to fight together under the red flag.” Their message of support counts because it lifts the strikers’ eyes from a local struggle which they may not win to their broader power, as one international class, to change the game entirely. This generation of radical students in Haiti has fought and lost many battles (and won a few), but they refuse to despair.
As they graduate and become workers themselves, they will keep fighting, many of them, because they have the hope that a unified, international, communist-led working class can win the world. That is why they wrote this letter. For them, and for us all, it counts because it represents one small example of that revolutionary hope and resolve which an international communist movement can bring to workers who may often lose their local battles.
In Haiti despair is precisely what the bosses hope to create (read any media story on Haiti). But unionized teachers and bus drivers and conductors, who have themselves led many bitter struggles with little immediate gain (see teachers’ strike stories in CHALLENGE issues of November and December), also wrote letters of support to the ATU Local 1181 strikers. They don’t have the revolutionary fire of the student letter, but they ring true as messages between workers in struggle from different countries. They count as refusals to accept defeat. They rise above local despair to find hope in our potential power as an international class.
The laid-off bus drivers of Port-au-Prince, for example, call in their letter for “respect for the agreements ratified by all the unionized countries of the world — as well as for respect of our human rights as workers.” This is respect they totally find lacking themselves in Haiti! They were all fired five years ago for striking (like the air traffic controllers under Reagan), even though that is illegal under Haitian labor law.
They have not won their jobs back to this day, and unemployment in Haiti is a life sentence. Yet they still keep alive the idea of internationalism, albeit in liberal form. They still see the point of calling for respect of workers as an international human right. They point to agreements that have been won by workers’ union strength internationally — even though they themselves are proof that under the bosses’ dictatorship such liberal labor laws and treaties, and human rights talk in general, are often not worth the paper they’re printed on!
Also, the bus drivers’ letter thanks workers from the U.S., including transport workers, “who have always brought their support to us through the different problems we have encountered in Haiti.” Obviously this is not true of the sellout international transport union leaders! But these workers in Haiti have seen such support first-hand from rank-and-file unionists over several years, and they know it counts. They respond by writing to the NYC strikers because they know that counts too. These are small steps to proletarian internationalism, but they count.
To the multinational workers of Local 1181 (not a few from Haiti), a letter like this must be recognizable as a letter from a brother and a sister. It must make them feel they do have that bond as workers — in the same industry, in this case — although the bosses’ frontiers try to separate them. It’s the job of revolutionaries to transform that bond into communist comradeship.
The teachers’ letter to Local 1181 strikers sounds the same internationalist note:
The struggle for job security, attacked more and more by bosses and governments during this capitalist crisis, is one we have in common. It deserves the highest international solidarity. That’s why from Haiti we strongly support this strike.
This message too doesn’t wave the red flag, but is it far from doing so? It shows that each group of strikers, in whatever country, faces a common enemy, the capitalist system, with its constant crises and its bond between bosses and the state. It calls for international solidarity in a common class struggle against a common class enemy.
This too must ring true to the strikers in New York; they know workers everywhere (in their first countries, for example) have the same problems, though “in different degrees,” as the student letter put it. It’s the job of PL’ers to raise that truth to a higher level and recruit strikers in New York and teachers and transport workers in Haiti to the Party.
Out of these temporary, but real and cruel, defeats in the class struggles of today can come victory. Each struggle strengthens our forces for the next struggle and especially our efforts to create that mass PLP we need for victory in “the final struggle” which the red anthem the “Internationale” sings of.
These letters from Haiti should inspire us. The key to the bosses’ victories at present is that they hold state power. So everything that weakens their grip on that, and strengthens our forces, counts; everything — the smallest thing — we do right now to build a PLP capable of seizing that power from them counts. The letters from our comrades and friends in Haiti are a living example.
NEW YORK CITY, February 24 — After standing strong through a month-long strike in bitter cold, rain and snow, striking New York City school bus workers were told by their Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1181 “leaders” to end their strike and return to work February 20. The order came via a teleconference that let the sellouts dodge any questions and avoid any objection to ending this strike. And the workers were not permitted to vote on this decision.
The role of the union leaders became increasingly clear to the workers. On the last day of picketing, workers at one site did not receive their weekly check while the union representative boasted that “you are damn right, I received mine.” Workers were furious and talked about picketing the union headquarters demanding their full pay. This union hack actually thought what he did was more important than what the striking workers were doing.
The workers were striking for their jobs; they work for companies that have contracts with the NYC school system, which put the contracts up for new bids. In a 1979 strike, the workers won the right to keep their jobs and benefits with any new contractor, but the city provoked the 2013 strike by refusing to continue to honor those gains. The city intends to replace the current workforce with low-wage non-union workers.
For the last two weeks of the strike, misleaders of the NYC Central Labor Council, and the local and international ATU had been begging for a “face-saving” way to end the strike. They asked Mayor Bloomberg to delay bids on bus routes and negotiate for three months while workers returned to work. Bloomberg refused — but when a group of Democratic Party candidates for the 2013 mayoral election signed a statement pledging to respect seniority rights if elected, the phonies seized on this statement to declare victory and end the strike.
But, as we well know, politicians will promise anything to get themselves elected! This hollow promise is not a contract and won’t protect the jobs of workers. The new bids will allow bus companies to hire workers without regard to seniority, enabling them to replace higher-paid workers with lower-paid ones. A revolving-door system of newly-hired workers will likely replace the existing stable, reliable long-term workforce.
Throughout the strike, PL’ers took part in picket lines and support activities, brought friends and co-workers, and had wide-ranging discussions with strikers on issues that workers face. We explained that we wanted to support and spread the strike and talk to union members about why ultimately workers need to take power. Many workers wanted to discuss issues larger than the strike itself and welcomed our communist ideas. Many workers saw this as part of the crisis of capitalism and knew that the class struggle would continue after the strike ended.
Primarily we discussed how U.S. capitalism’s efforts to maintain its supremacy in the world economic order was driving attacks on the living standards of the working class all over the U.S. Many immigrant workers related the struggle here to those in the countries they came from. We also discussed the nature of the union leadership, their ties to the bosses and the bosses’ system.
The union leaders tried to build passivity in the workers, telling them what to do and when. But if what we saw on the picket lines is any example of the militancy and class consciousness of the workers in this union, this battle is far from over.
Now we are continuing our discussions about what winning would mean. A grouping of bus workers meeting with PL’ers to learn about our ideas and activities will be a step forward. This will lead to an even stronger fight as layoffs and contract fights loom. Recruitment of friends we have met on the picket lines will bring the day closer when we can rid ourselves of the capitalist yoke once and for all.
We invite all of the striking drivers and matrons to march on May Day, so that we can honor their fighting spirit and inspire other workers and students to fight back.
San Francisco, February 24 — Several hundred students, faculty, and supporters occupied the administration building of City College of San Francisco (CCSF). They were challenging state bosses’ plans for cuts to classes, programs, faculty and staff, and to limit community colleges to full-time students transferring to 4-year colleges or earning vocational certificates. The changes, if they go through, could turn working-class students’ dream of lifelong learning and chances at a good living into a nightmare of lifelong debt slavery and grinding servitude to the ruling class.
Under the bosses’ “Student Success” initiative, even those allowed to continue in community colleges would graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt which they could neither pay off with low-paying jobs, nor escape from by filing bankruptcy.
Students are demanding that all the cuts be reversed, and that Proposition A tax money, approved by the voters to save City College, be used precisely for that, and not by the bosses. They are demanding town hall meetings at all campuses to help students organize. The bosses want to go forward with a list of 14 demands from the accreditation agency for downsizing and more administrative control at the colleges. The student-worker campaign is demanding that the agency’s changes be scrapped.
The strong points of the struggle are solidarity between students, faculty, and the community. Two to three times the number of expected people showed up at a recent community meeting. The weak points are Internal tensions between some people’s desire to “fix” the school by bowing to the accreditation agency’s demands for downsizing and administrative control.
This contrasts with others’ call for a more wide-ranging fight against the bosses’ national educational agenda of downsizing, privatization, and control of teachers and students with standardized testing.
The fact is education under capitalism follows the golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules. These bosses’ rules push racism, sexism, and the idea that capitalism is the best system possible. No matter how many reforms may be won, the schools will always teach the bosses’ ideology. PL’ers involved are discussing the communist vision of education where we work to serve society. Stay tuned.
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‘Restructuring’: Latest Racist Attack on Working-Class Students
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- 01 March 2013 77 hits
MASSACHUSETTS — As inter-imperialist rivalry and the worldwide capitalist crisis continue to deepen, the U.S. ruling class is forcing the government to restructure public schools, healthcare, and other public services, like the Post Office. Its twofold goals are to enforce cutbacks and centralize control. These cutbacks in higher education severely effect working-class students’ access to colleges and universities. After the revolts in universities in the 1970s and 1980s, the ruling class created community colleges to appease the masses. This tricked many working-class students, including immigrants, into believing they were getting a piece of the “american dream.”
Now, as the needs of the ruling class are changing, working-class students are under attack. The bosses no longer need as many workers with college degrees. The government is more tightly controlling local institutions and intimidating workers in community colleges. For bosses to gain maximum profits and control, options for many working-class students are limited to either a low-paying job, or the military for benefits and the lie of secure employment and/or citizenship.
Restructuring public community colleges to serve corporations more efficiently is one way the U.S. ruling class is trying to boost its profitability. More importantly, the bosses need to control the colleges to reproduce the racist, sexist inequalities and the ideologies to justify it. By using their state power in this way, they expose themselves as a class dictatorship rather than a democracy.
Governor Deval Patrick takes his marching orders from the ruling class to restructure the community colleges. He is relying on the Boston Foundation (BF), a liberal think tank, to plan and execute it.
In 2011, the BF issued a report entitled: “The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts.” BF has assets of $860 million spread out among hundreds of non-government organizations (NGOs) set up to serve the ruling class, whether these employees know it or not. Local politicians and administrators, who serve the bosses and want to maximize profits in local industries, tightly control NGO leaders.
By limiting working-class students’ access to education and training with low-level certificate programs under the “workforce development” agenda, a larger pool of contingent labor is created. These students are to work for low pay without unions or decent benefits. This opens the door to diminishing wages and working conditions for all workers. The push towards vocational education has created what is known as the “Crisis in Higher Public Education.”
With a national perspective, the BF report applauds community college systems that are “doing a good job” of complying with bosses that could be “models for reform” here. Corporations work through the government and foundations to develop the desired workforce.
Forbes lists Virginia as the best state for business due in part to its investment in workforce development programs. Virginia leadership assigns the task of “saving the middle class” to their community colleges, slowly chipping away the few choices these students have.
Washington State was the first to systematically implement “performance based metrics.” This means offering financial rewards for the community colleges who achieve milestones set by the state board and denying or limiting funding to those community colleges who do not comply. “A college’s ability to achieve these success points has an impact on its basic funding allocation from the state” the report reads.
This “carrot-and-stick” approach to governance has already been implemented by the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education in some instances since the 1990s. This means funding hinges on complying with the bosses’ agenda. The ruling class is preparing for more centralized control of our class, as it prepares for greater war in the Middle East.
The BF report attacks community colleges as being “uncooperative and hard to work with,” blaming them for failures in the educational system as well as for unemployment and underemployment here. It calls for fascistic tactics of bullying and terror to control staff and faculty at community colleges by threatening to withhold funding for jobs and programs if the schools fail the “performance metrics.” These metrics are the yardstick that will punish the college workers who cannot measure up to imposed state standards.
However, attacks on education hurts students the most, as they are forced to accept cutbacks and fed anti-communist ideology. Models with reduced or accelerated developmental education are praised by the BF report for helping to boost graduation rates. This limits working-class youth’s access to college-level education, and feeds into institutional racism by holding down the most vulnerable of our working-class sisters and brothers: black and latino urban youth.
PL’ers are participating in a union committee that aims to give leadership to the faculty, staff, and students to fight back against the ruling class’s’ plans to vocationalize the community colleges. We are also participating in a newly formed caucus, Educators for a Democratic Union, which is dedicated to fighting back against the attacks on working-class students and teachers. Through this work, we are meeting people who we can introduce to PLP’s idea.
PLP needs to win faculty and students to understand that the restructuring of the community colleges is not a response to a temporary crisis, but rather a response to an unsolvable contradiction of the capitalist system that will require fascism to stay afloat. Under capitalism, competition forces technological advancement, putting millions out of work. The capitalist’s ability to produce outpaces their ability to sell what they produce. This causes mass unemployment, underemployment, economic crisis, and war to become permanent features of society.
A reform in education is a restructuring of a capitalist institution in order to better control our class. We must build a worker-student alliance in order to fight against these cutbacks and control. In the struggle, PL’ers can win college workers and students to destroy this system that churns out racism and sexism, and build an egalitarian society: communism.
For hundreds of years, women have been leaders and fighters against sexist and racist oppression in the class struggle. They have been instrumental in victories for women and men alike. It’s this reality that gave birth to International Women’s Day. In celebrating this historic day, members and friends of Progressive Labor Party must shift the discussion to the necessity of anti-sexist struggle within the fight for communism. Capitalism requires sexism; we cannot end sexism without destroying capitalism.
International Women’s Day was born out of the working class. The first IWD was held on February 28, 1909, as part of the fight for socialism and against capitalist working conditions throughout the world. It recognized the role of women as essential fighters against sexism and racism. PLP keeps this militant history alive by fighting against sexism and building for communism.
Eliminating sexism hinges on workers holding state power and destroying the divisive capitalist system that thrives on gender inequalities and oppression. In Copenhagen in August 1910, with the leadership of German communist Clara Zetkin, an international conference adopted March 8 as the day to recognize the contributions of women in the class struggle. In 1913, women in Russia demonstrated in observance of the first International Women’s Day in Saint Petersburg.
In 1917, the women of St. Petersburg (later renamed Leningrad) let uprisings which sparked the Bolshevik seizure of state power in the October Revolution. They then IWD a national holiday. After seizing state power, the Bolsheviks pioneered many material and social changes in the lives of women, from access to higher education to equality in the workplace. Later, in China after the 1949 revolution, the communist movement eliminated prostitution, sexist foot-binding and the disparity in literacy between men and women.
As we prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8, the capitalist bosses are intensifying the exploitation of women while pretending to fight against it. In the U.S., women will soon be allowed to serve in combat positions in the U.S. military — a move that Barack Obama and the ruling class media champion as a victory against sexism. But what does this really mean? Many more working-class women will be sent to the front lines to kill and be killed for the profits of U.S. capitalism.
Meanwhile, Sheryl Sandberg, the billionaire chief operating officer of Facebook, wants to build a new movement to push women to “lean in” and work harder to reach the top tiers in business. Her ideas push the lie that women are to blame for their lack of success, even as the economic crisis hits women — and particularly black and Latino women — the hardest.
With the betrayal of communism around the world, IWD has lost its working-class character. Sexism is an attack on the international working class. It is taught in the schools and media. It corrupts our workplaces and our personal relationships. It permeates the military and infiltrates the mass movements. It abuses, rapes, and murders women every day in every capitalist country. Last November, a fire in a garment sweatshop in Bangladesh killed 112 workers, mostly women, as they made clothes for Walmart. It thrives on the disunity between women and men workers.
We must take back International Working Women’s Day and renew our dedication to building a communist movement led by Progressive Labor Party. Raise anti-sexist politics and struggles at the point of production in the workplaces, schools, and mass organizations. Fighting side by side with men, women workers must become leaders of the revolutionary struggle worldwide.
