SAN FRANCISCO, CA, October 22 — Today, 2,400 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train operators and station agents (Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555) and service workers (SEIU Local 1021), began returning to work, ending their four-day strike. This was the second walkout since June 30 when Governor Jerry Brown ordered a 60-day cooling-off period. The strike focused on wages, safety, seniority scheduling rights and preserving work rules. Union leaders ordered the strikers back to work before the rank-and-file knew what’s in the new contract.
Rather than bargain for a new contract and avoid a strike, the bosses used the “cooling off” period to cool off workers’ militancy and train managers to run scab trains. On the strike’s first full day, two workers who crossed the picket lines to inspect tracks were run over by a manager-operated train. The strikers were outraged that two workers were killed and they wanted to use the incident to spread the strike and made homemade signs, like “RIP Two Workers Murdered by Bosses’ Profits,” and “GM Grace Crunican Murdered Two Workers!” In the last analysis, the workers sympathized with the two dead workers even though they had scabbed on the strike.
Fearing the strikers would start picketing other area bus depots and train stations, the ATU leadership cancelled picketing for two days. They refused to strike at AC Transit, a sister local with an expired contract that serves the same area. On the third day they had their deal.
The economic crisis of 2008 and the drive to privatize mass transit have intensified the attacks on all transit workers. These are racist attacks, sharpest in the major cities where wages and benefits are better and the workforce and ridership are mainly black, Latino and women. The bankers, bosses and real estate developers make huge profits from mass transit and then want us to pay them via give-back contracts and fare hikes.
Over the last decade, tens of thousands of transit workers have suffered cuts in wages, pensions, health care and working conditions. Thousands more have lost their jobs. In 2010, Washington, DC METRO’s new hires lost retirement health insurance. In 2008, BART workers were forced to take a five-year wage freeze. Chicago Transit Authority workers were forced to substantially increase their contributions to the pension system. In San Francisco, a City Charter amendment cut pay and benefits and wiped out 40 years of vital work rules. In Alameda County, an “impartial” arbitrator imposed wage, benefit and schedule cuts in the 2010 contract. In New York City, transit workers have gone without a contract or pay increase for four years and ATU leaders abandoned striking school bus drivers and matrons last winter.
BART workers were on the cutting edge of the fightback and they’re not alone. ATU members in the Bay Area, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC have all distributed a national flyer, urging their locals to do more to support and spread the strike. This same week there were job actions by bus drivers in Detroit and NYC. Recently school bus drivers had a wildcat strike in Boston and last winter a very militant NYC school bus strike was squashed by the City, contractors and the ATU leadership that left drivers and matrons hanging.
The missing ingredient is an alternative center of leadership to enable workers to counter the pro-capitalist union mis-leaders who are wedded to a profit system that only offers growing wars, poverty and racist terror. Their job is to keep us bound by the bosses’ laws. We need anti-racist leadership that is anti-capitalist, with a revolutionary communist outlook and the goal of leading the working class to power through communist revolution. Militant class struggles must be turned into schools for communism.

NEW YORK CITY, October 30 — The Morales-Shakur Center at City College of New York (CCNY) was where students hung out, studied, and organized. Its door was painted red with a black fist. Above the couches, the words “this space was won thru struggle” was painted in red. On Sunday Oct. 20, the week of midterms, students came to school to find this center closed. Hundreds of students and community members rallied that Monday, followed by another protest on Thursday, leading to the sudden suspension of two student leaders on Oct. 28. PLP and friends participated in this struggle, and are building ties with these protesters.
While PLP forces continue to participate in this struggle at CCNY, we are stepping up our anti-war efforts at other CUNY campuses as well. Today, PLP students and friends occupied the lobby at Hunter college in solidarity with the struggle to seize the Morales-Shakur center. Wanted posters of Petraeus were hung and many were invited to our upcoming college conference. But we must step up our fight.
Students vs. Campus KKKops
The center was a result of student protests and building occupation over the first rounds of tuition increases in 1989. It is named after the Armed Forces of National Liberation member Guillermo Morales, and Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur. For over two decades, the Morales-Shakur center has been a space for women and gay-lesbian fighters, and community and student organizing.
The administration, under the guise of “expansion,” shut down the center, its building, and the library. The campus kkkops also locked down $1,000 worth of student belongings. At the first protest, Oct. 21, hundreds of students, faculty and the community denounced the administration’s fascistic seizure of their center. The fire alarm was pulled. Hundreds more students joined.
We then marched to the building entrance. Although the campus police tried to keep us out, we marched through the corridors, chanting loudly, to a second-floor rotunda, where students confronted campus cops and administrators, militantly demanding the return of the Morales-Shakur center.
Three days later, Oct. 24, 200 protested at the Administration building. Despite the lineup of cops, students linked arms and sat down, blocking the entrance. We surged onto Convent Ave, attempting to enter the large North Academic Center (NAC) building. Holding our college ID, we went from door-to-door attempting to get in. Campus security scrambled to keep the doors closed. Students were arrested, including an alumnus, and one was pepper sprayed. The cops shut down the entire building, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving.
On Monday morning, Oct. 28, two of the main student leaders were stopped by security. Their IDs were confiscated; they were given letters of suspension and were immediately kicked off campus. Despite this attack, 60 people rallied at noon and then marched off campus to meet their banned student leaders.
Velvet Glove of Democracy Comes Off
What we’re seeing at CUNY is the removal of the velvet glove of “democracy” to reveal an iron fist of fascism. The administration is retaliating for protests against the ROTC and appointment of CIA and military general David Petraeus as a warrior professor. The bosses are trying to build a base among working-class youth for their future wars in the Middle East.
While many students expressed anti-imperialist sentiments, pushing out ROTC at CCNY was not mentioned. PLP urged students to fight ROTC in connection with the Morales-Shakur fight. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military slaughtered three million workers. The majority of the U.S. officers in charge of this genocide were graduates of ROTC training centers.
The anti-Petraeus demonstrations are an embarrassment to the university, which has reacted in fury. Campus and NYPD cops beat and arrested six students at an anti-Petraeus protest on September 17. Now they stole the Morales-Shakur center. On Nov. 25, the Board of Trustees will vote to implement a new policy to restrict campus protests. Anyone who doesn’t follow the new restrictions will be punished. Surely, the past few months of protests have scared the CUNY bosses. This counterattack is a sign that we must be hitting them where it hurts. The ruling class understands the potential power of a worker-student alliance very well, perhaps more than the current student and faculty body realizes.
We live in a period in which the U.S. ruling class is fighting to maintain itself as the world’s dominant imperialist power. According to the NY Times, the U.S. plans 100 military missions in Africa in the next 12 months. Troops and naval battalions are moving into Asia to confront China. To do so, the rulers need a tight discipline over their institutions. To solve its deep economic crisis, it must implement more laws attacking workers’ wages, healthcare, and education. It is preparing the population for permanent war and sacrifice for their imperialist needs. And that is what we are experiencing at CUNY — the fascistization of the university. But workers and students are fed up. We will demonstrate at the November 25 Board of Trustees meeting, continuing our protests at CCNY and building an anti-imperialist movement on college campuses.  
Our most immediate task is inviting our new friends to the PLP International College Conference on November 8 and 9 to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our campus struggles, and to build for a communist revolution. The only way to purge war criminals like Petraeus, the racist police who murder our black youth like Ramarley Graham, Shantel Davis, and Kyam Livingston, and the daily exploitation under capitalism, is to fight for a workers’ world: communism.

The 2010 earthquake in Haiti dealt a devastating blow that the country has not yet recovered from, and most likely never will under this current profit system. Not only did the earthquake destroy tens of thousands of homes, kill hundreds of thousands and displace many hundreds of thousands more, it also intensified another plague already afflicting the Haitian people: foreign “aid.” Hundreds of non-governmental organizations descended on the country, supposedly to help it rebuild, and United Nations “peacekeepers” intensified their deadly attacks on Haitian workers.
Many in Haiti have wondered, “Why do we need peacekeepers when we’re not at war? When there are still tens of thousands living in tents?” The answer is that the imperialist powers need to control Haitian workers and create inroads for international businesses. For example, the U.S. State Department has used $224 million in earthquake relief funds to subsidize a South Korean clothing manufacturer in the Caracol Industrial Park in northern Haiti (one of the fertile areas in the country), which was unaffected by the earthquake. This project has nothing to do with earthquake-related reconstruction, like clean water and sanitation infrastructure. In fact, the plant presents a further threat to already overburdened water resources in the region and the bosses have already been accused of cheating the workers there out of their meager wages (NYT 10/5/13). In addition, the Red Cross is using money donated for earthquake relief to build a luxury hotel in Port-au-Prince.
To most Haitian workers, UN troops are an occupying army — even before it was discovered that the troops brought cholera to Haiti. Prior to 2010, Haiti had not seen a cholera outbreak for a hundred years! But when UN troops from Nepal were deployed to Haiti in the fall of 2010, they brought cholera with them. Nepal has an active cholera epidemic that was known prior to deployment, but the troops were not tested for it. They turned out to be carriers, if not actually sick. The waste matter from the camp leaked into the Artibonite River, which serves as a source of bathing, cooking and drinking water for the surrounding working class populations. Cholera has now infected more than 600,000 and killed more than 8,000, with the toll rising daily. Although the source of the cholera has been proven beyond a doubt (it is the same strain as the cholera in Nepal) and is even acknowledged by the UN’s own investigators, the organization denies that it owes any compensation for this devastating epidemic. The UN is hiding behind a standard immunity agreement signed by the Haitian government when the troops first began arriving in 2004.
In the face of the largest cholera outbreak in memory, and despite widespread support by its members, the leadership of the American Public Health Association (APHA) recently rejected a resolution calling upon the UN to take financial responsibility for the epidemic, including vaccinations for the entire population, adequate cholera treatment centers (most were closed after the initial outbreak), and building a modern clean water and sanitation system. The resolution will be revised and resubmitted for next year’s meeting. It will be important to build more support in the membership around this critical issue.  
Those of us in Progressive Labor Party, along with other members of APHA, know that getting this resolution passed is not enough. No resolution can save workers’ lives from the death machine of capitalism, or even prevent the next epidemic. We are working in Haiti and elsewhere to raise consciousness about the role of capitalism and imperialism in the destruction of workers’ lives around the world. We say that the only road to public health for all workers is to destroy the rotten profit system and replace it with communism, a society that values the life of every worker and will use resources for the good of all.

Los Angeles, October 26 —  Recently, nearly all of the healthcare providers of our HIV organization and dozens of our patients held our first public demonstration against the worsening “assembly line” working conditions in our clinics.  We are medical doctors, nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants. Additionally, we are threatening to strike to win union recognition.
We made a conscious effort to organize with our patients and had an integrated group of patients speak at our rally. Five of our patients gave powerful, heartfelt testimonies, moving many to tears. We distributed a
leaflet and CHALLENGE.
This small demonstration was organized in spite of the union. The union reps talk big, but at the end of the day wanted us to simply wait while the National Labor Relations Board decided on whether our petition is valid or not. Meanwhile, the bosses continue to intimidate workers and suspended one provider for three weeks without pay. The union did nothing to get his job back and if it weren’t so difficult for them to get a scab he would still be suspended! It is inspiring to work with such providers who do not back down. They correctly recognize the union double-talk and push for more actions.  
One friend and coworker who receives CHALLENGE and helped with this article always emphasizes the point that our reform struggle “is a war.”  She’s absolutely correct. However, the larger understanding that this union supports the politicians and ultimately the ruling class, our real class enemy, is still developing.  
For instance, the UN recently released a report on Syria stating that the Assad government is attacking hospitals in rebel-controlled areas and that this “denial of medical care” is “a weapon of war.”  The same is true in the U.S. or anywhere workers’ healthcare is at risk — it’s a declaration of war! As the ruling classes of the world move closer and closer to world war, the U.S. bosses need to maximize profits at home by allowing the insurance companies to set prices for coverage and drug companies to decide costs of medicines.  Building illusions is ever more important for the bosses, which is why unions and the Democratic Party are in bed together, already launching a missile attack on us!
Both sides of this reform fight produce a lose-lose situation for workers and patients. That is why we must do a better job writing for and distributing CHALLENGE, which has been reporting on other healthcare struggles involving the Party. Like our NY comrades, we are also watching movies about class struggle as a social event. We’ve watched and discussed Matewan and Norma Rae, and will recommend Salt of the Earth for our next one.
We are also trying to expand this struggle.  Just this week, a young teacher and comrade put forward a motion for her union to support our unionizing effort. At their House of Reps meeting, the teacher and healthcare comrades spoke briefly, comparing the attacks we face in healthcare and the effects on our patients to the attacks teachers face and their effects on their students. The union voted unanimously to support us.  While the unions have proven to be very valuable resources for the bosses to mislead workers, they are also full of workers open to communism if we work hard within them. 
We are now pushing our union to do more than symbolic one-day “strikes,” perhaps have sit-ins, where we keep the clinics open, get more workers and patients involved and continue to see our patients. But we can turn them into free clinics.
Within this reform struggle there is the potential to learn some valuable lessons such as providers learning from their patients, having confidence in each other that we as workers and patients can lead this struggle and we don’t need union hacks or bosses to run a clinic. This could produce a vision of the future, a vision of communism. More CHALLENGE readers AND distributors are crucial! Power to the workers and patients!