NEW YORK CITY, April 8 — Recently workers in a local community organization participated in a press conference on the steps of City Hall here at which City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was supposed to present a resolution asking the NY State Senate to pass the minimum wage law.
A group of workers in the organization had smuggled in a sign which they held up demanding Quinn pass the paid-sick-days bill. This created a commotion. Several people, including the organizer of the press conference — not expecting such an action — demanded we remove the sign. However, we disobeyed their orders, standing strong and militantly.
Ultimately, Speaker Quinn failed to appear. Although the workers were criticized by the organization’s leaders, it was a small victory for those involved.
Two weeks later, because of growing pressure — and as part of her strategy in her run for mayor — Quinn called a City Council vote for paid sick days. However, Quinn and Council members, together with the bosses they represent, had made a number of changes in the bill.
Instead of five paid sick days to workers in businesses with more than five workers, they proposed five days to workers in businesses with more than 20 workers. Workers in smaller businesses would get five unpaid sick days with no retaliation. So-called oversight and enforcement of the law would be given to the Dept. of Consumer Affairs.
Initially there was euphoria among the workers in the NYC coalition for paid sick days. But later, when workers in the community organization analyzed the proposal in detail, we realized we’d fallen for the bosses’ lies. If the proposal is voted into law in July 2013, it won’t be effective until April, 2014, and then only if the City’s economy doesn’t decline as measured by the financial index of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the country’s leading capitalist bank.
Once again we see how the biggest capitalists use their tools to serve their class interests. We need mass, international working-class fight-back. Our class will be able to truly organize workers’ health and safety only when we overthrow capitalism through revolution and establish communist workers’ power.
At the last meeting of the community organization, the directors proposed a party to celebrate the workers’ “historic victory.” When a comrade explained the truth about the proposed paid-sick-days law, all the workers agreed there was nothing to celebrate yet. For the workers, the best way we can celebrate is to march on May Day, read and distribute CHALLENGE and join the Progressive Labor Party.
On February 8 on a Delta Airlines flight, racist Joe Rickey Hundley slapped a black 2-year-old. The racist attacked Jonah Bennett while he was in the arms of his adopted white mother, Jennifer Bennett. This animal Hundley called Jonah the n-word because the child was crying over descending cabin pressure.
When Hundley slapped baby Jonah, an anti-racist passenger helped subdue him. He was arrested upon landing. He was charged with “simple assault.”
He should have been charged with a hate crime. Antiracists are trying to get drunkard Hundley’s charges upgraded to a hate crime. Capitalist law is racist for not valuing the life of a black child.
The Bennett family lives in Minneapolis so I had asked my Unitarian Church to show solidarity. I gave the pastor a card that was sent to the Bennett family on behalf of our church members. It was the least we could have done.
Under communism, workers will make examples out of people like Hundley who dare to harm a child based on color. He is infected with capitalism’s racist ideology. We will use our state power to protect our most valued asset, our children, in the new communist society.
Moreover, since workers will run the airlines under communism, we won’t serve alcohol. Personally, I think alcohol needs to be called into question after the revolution because it is a drug as well. This incident and others like it show the need for communism and revolution as the only way out of capitalism and its inhumanity.
Minnesota Red
Before I was introduced to PLP, I was clueless to know that students, teachers and parents were fighting for this victory against the bosses. Throughout this weekend I learned a lot about this struggle that PLP is working to accomplish, and it inspired me to be part of this struggle. I feel like way too many people are being lied to; more people need to be exposed to PLP and unite to overcome the bosses. Thank you, PLP, for introducing these everyday problems. It has also changed me, and I like it.
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For these few days, I enjoyed this communist school trip with my eight classmates and my teachers. It gave me a great simple idea about communism. Before I attended this trip, I really didn’t understand the meaning of capitalism and communism. I used to think capitalism was cool because it was all about making money. Then when I realized that it’s a certain number of people, not all, who make the money, it gave me a different point of view.
This trip showed me that with communism more people can be satisfied and equal because everybody is sharing and working together such as cleaning, cooking and sharing our knowledge. But with capitalism it’s all about the paper money that changes you and affects many people by their “race” and gender. A lot of people think it’s cool to be a part of the middle class and not worry about the lower-income class because it seems such people supposedly choose to put themselves in that category, but that’s not true. They can’t choose the dreams they want because they can’t afford them, such as colleges and other programs. But imagine if the society was all about sharing — it would help everything become better than it is now.
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They say honesty is the best policy, so I will be honest by stating that I really didn’t have any idea what the outcome of this PLP camp was going to be, and I had no idea we were going to be sharing our thoughts about how the world is run under capitalism and what it’d be like under communism. From the main idea of how everyone can understand the way the world works and can figure out how to change it, I have learned that a lot of stereotyping is what segregates us human beings from interacting and stops us from creating a great force which can stabilize us.
Apart from racism, the way we are set up by class structure under capitalism is pitiful and just brutish. The government just wants us to compete with each other, which is ugly like a dark, evil force that stops us from progressing. Under communism, none of these rivalries would occur. Instead, humans will help lift each other to greater heights instead of knocking them down. All these cases made me think of one of my favorite philosophies: “Man is born free and everywhere he’s in shackles.” All these attacks by the upper class need to be eliminated.
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I came here at first not knowing much about this group and the reason it wanted to get justice from the government. Being here made me realize how much people wanted to fight back and not be treated like they were not part of this world and had no say. It also made me see how a group of people could feel so strongly towards something and work hard to try to achieve something they believed in. Being here opened my eyes to see that you shouldn’t just sit and watch something happen that you know is wrong. You should say something and fight for what you think is right.
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My experience here has been a great opportunity. I got the chance to learn about the ideas that other people have of the system. These ideas have led me to realize how the government really works and how much of a change is needed. I have learned more about the capitalist ideas and how wrong they are. They want to have full control over everything and everyone, which only helps them and no one else. With the ideas I’ve learned here, people would be equal and the world would be a better place.
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When I first got to this communist school, I thought it was a retreat. not a mini-school. I made new friends and learned new things. One thing I’ve learned was that stereotypes are not true, because the media can always twist up things. You should meet people before you believe those stereotypes. We also learned about contradictions and that you always pick a side that you want to work on to do better. Another thing we learned was dialectical materialism, the study of how things change. This helps us understand our experiences, giving us a deeper knowledge of the world. I would like to join PLP.
This May Day Progressive Labor Party will proudly unfurl the red flag of workers’ revolution across the world. Why do we carry high the red flag?
In 1890, on the eve og history’s first May Day, Frederick Engels wrote, “The proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces. It is mobilizing for the first time as one army, one flag, one class...”
Both the red flag and the word “strike” first appeared in 1768, when sailors “struck” (or removed the topgalant sails of merchant ships at port), thus immobalizing the ships. The red flag indicated defiance and readiness for battle. Again in London in 1780, when 100,000 workers marched on Newgate Prison to burn it to the ground, the multi-racial leadership carried the red flag. Their cry was, “Away with all prisons,” because the working class was being increasingly incarcerated in them.
In 1831, the red flag was part of the struggle of the working class in Wales as well as in the revolution to topple the monarchy during the French revolution (1789-1794), especially during the struggle in July of 1791. But the general adoption of the red flag as the workers’ own symbol occurred in 1848 when it appeared spontaneously on the barricades in Paris, and then everywhere throughout revolutionary Europe.
During the Paris Commune of 1871 — when workers first took over a whole city and held it for two months — the red flag of the working class flew over Paris. It had become the symbol of emancipation. By 1892 it flew above the May Day marches throughout Europe, Australia, South America, Cuba and Japan. In 1889, in order for the newly formed Labour Party of Great Britain to win the masses, a song was written about the red flag which became the anthem of the Party: “Bandiera Rosa”
In Italy, too, “Bandiera Rosa” became a symbol of May Day.
In the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, the red flag became the symbol of the working class in power. And as revolutions spread around the world in the next 50 years — from China to Eastern Europe — the red flag of working-class emancipation was raised on high. Significantly, the Cultural Revolution that fought the capitalist turn in China were led by the Red Guards.
In 1971, the Progressive Labor Party picked up the red flag from where it had been dropped and has marched proudly with it in every gathering we hold throughout the world. The red flag is truly the flag of workers’ internationalism, as opposed to the hundreds of flags that the bosses-of the world fly to symbolize their respective capitalist states.
The March 13 CHALLENGE article, “War on Terror: Mass Red Movement Can Defeat Rulers’ High-Tech Tyranny”, was a wake-up call for many of us. The article discussed the various technologies that have emerged at an accelerated rate for surveillance and spying since the Arab Spring. There are conferences all over the world debating and attacking the growth of fascist technology to monitor and control citizens.
The bosses are using terrorist attacks since 9/11 as an excuse to tighten the screws on all workers and monitor them more closely as a means of social control. In addition to monitoring cell phones to track workers’ location and activities, the internet increasingly cannot be accessed without proper institutional affiliation (or money). The bosses control workers’ access to information to make it harder for workers to educate themselves.
Many progressive workers have tried to fight back against the establishment by promoting free access to educational materials on the internet. Those who have rebelled have been punished severely. Aaron Swartz, a talented programmer social/activist, committed suicide at the age of 26 last January 1. He had been arrested two years earlier for allegedly hacking the servers at the Massachusetts Institution of Technology (MIT) to download millions of on-line library files of academic journals.
In the case United States v. Aaron Swartz, he was facing up to 35 years of jail time and was overwhelmed by despair. He had the education to understand the need to fight back and revolt against the status quo, but he lacked the discipline and support of a collective so he gave in to the intimidation and bullying of the (il)legal system that serves the capitalist system.
Although his death was actually a suicide, and Aaron’s family acknowledged that he was a troubled person, his father released a statement saying, “Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal-justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office and at MIT contributed to his death.”
Although we cannot consider Aaron to be a member of the working class, as he was a millionaire by 19 and came from a liberal and elite family. However, he had a very close friendship with Quinn Norton, a tech journalist with working-class roots. Today, Aaron, Quinn and many other young people understand that corporations and the government pervert and distort technology and the internet to serve their own profit-making interests. We in PL need to work harder to seek out and engage rebellious youth, to expose them to our ideas and struggle with them to see that only with the destruction of capitalism can information be made “free” for workers and youth.
Although Swartz was right to fight against the bosses, many like him are isolated and acting alone, making it much easier for the rulers to destroy Swartz and others who act without a collective like PLP.
What can we learn from this tragedy? If we could have more PL’ers in technology to bring our revolutionary ideas — with the focus on the fight for a new egalitarian communist society — Aaron might not have succumbed to extreme individualism and taken his own life in one destructive self-centered act. Communism could have given him the discipline, focus, and mission to continue on in his work to fight for a better world.
Red hacker