New York, November 27 — Red Cross reps are surrounded by protesters as they try to answer the complaints of families from Far Rockaway displaced by the storm and placed in three mid-town Holiday Inns. These families have been displaced with prejudice, with no regard for mental, medical or any of their needs. Kids are going without diapers, the ill without medication, people without food.
By the end of the day, the displaced families were being interviewed by scores of social workers, getting health care referrals and more. Red Cross officials promised to meet with all 106 displaced families at the three hotels.
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How Communists Moved the Masses to Control Floods
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- 29 November 2012 252 hits
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, coverage in the bosses’ media emphasizes the helplessness of humanity in the face of nature’s destructiveness. Under capitalism, we are also constantly bombarded with the idea that people look out for themselves, and can never really work together for a common purpose without a money incentive.
But workers’ own experiences show that these stories told by mouthpieces for the capitalists are lies. PLP members and friends have volunteered in local relief efforts in the New York/New Jersey area. We have heard about and witnessed both stories of life-saving heroism during the storm and the efforts of thousands of volunteers providing basic necessities to their class brothers and sisters.
History also shows that workers and peasants in communist-led societies have shown the human desire to work for the collective without material reward in return. The communist-led revolution in China in 1949 brought workers and peasants to power. Production and work was organized based upon national five-year plans.
These plans were discussed all over the country and decided in advance. In Northern China, near Peking, the capital of China, one area had experienced yearly rains that flooded the farmland because the local mountains were quite dry and had no trees or other vegetation to prevent the water from rushing downhill. To stop this yearly damage to the farmland, the region was scheduled for a “check dam” and reservoir during the Third Five Year Plan in 1963-1967.
The peasants in the local area decided for themselves that there was no need to wait. They put out a call to the communist party and other organizations in Peking in 1957. One hundred and twenty thousand volunteer workers responded. Everyone worked for free. Each factory or office sent no more than 10% of their workers to contribute to the collective labor. The 90% who stayed behind worked a little harder to make up for the labor loss, while the 10% who went continued to have their basic needs met.
Here are the words of a North American resident who was part of the project:
Of all the factors going in to making the project a success, unquestionably the most vital was the enthusiasm of the volunteers. I did a stint with some people from my office and it was an astonishing experience. Men and women who ordinarily did nothing more vigorous than tickling a typewriter or taking half a turn in a swivel chair were suddenly shoveling earth and toting gravel in baskets slung from shoulder poles, day and night, rain and shine.
Our cuisine consisted of gruel, bits of pickled vegetable, and a coarse corn muffin, but we wolfed them down as if they were epicurean delights. We slept eight in a tent, with only pallets of pine branches between us and the ground, but our slumber was deep and dreamless. I heard many a white collar worker say he never realized manual labor was so difficult and so satisfactory.
In less than five months, the dam was finished. Fifty thousand acres of land, which before were constantly hit by floods, now came under controlled irrigation.
Soldiers also volunteered to help, for no extra compensation. In order to support the workers involved in the project, “Peking’s top-flight opera singers and actors and actresses went out to the site to perform for the workers. The boldness of the plan to build ahead of schedule kindled public imagination” (Peking Review, 1958, Issue 1).
As climate change increasingly affects our fellow workers around the world, it will become more and more important for PLP and its supporters to take inspiration from these historical events. The capitalists have no plan to protect workers from the ravages of their profit-induced destruction of the environment. Our job is to participate in the inevitable expressions of human solidarity, to fight the bosses to meet the needs of those affected, and to convince many of the volunteers as well as the victims of “natural” disasters how only communist revolution can end these scourges. The seeds for this struggle to build a profit-less world that will reestablish harmony with nature are contained in the courageous and selfless actions of workers who today are responding to the destruction of Hurricane Sandy.
In my neighborhood, I had an opportunity to speak with workers from Verizon and Con Ed, as well as folks who applied to help out with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) due to the effect of Hurricane Sandy. They told me how, in this capitalist system, those helping in the clean-up were treated as poorly as those they were sent to help.
Verizon had laid off so many workers that the remaining ones were left to carry the load of the overtime from Sandy. Somehow, the overtime money didn’t compensate for the absence of the workers who did the job so well at our side.
Con Ed workers were promised overtime. Then they got an e-mail saying those who worked in Staten Island did so “voluntarily.” These workers said thousands more homes had been devastated than the media reported, mostly in impoverished areas.
One friend who was trained to be a FEMA employee said, “The qualifications required were a clean criminal background and citizenship. I was to report to a training site in Philadelphia. I had to take classes for two days, paid $125 for each day and 50 cents for traveling expenses. My friends and I went together.
“There were at least 1,000 people wanting to be employed. On the third day, a Parr agent (working on behalf of FEMA) told us many were being denied. I received a letter a week later stating, ‘ The Chief Security Officer has found you unfit for employment as a contractor employee with FEMA. This decision is based on adverse information contained in your credit bureau report.’
Never before in my life had I been told I was found unfit to help individuals. Every week, I run a soup kitchen and clothing donations from my church. I have never had a complaint. If the government hadn’t closed its eyes in 2007 and allowed Wall Street to ravage the hard-working community, maybe I would be found fit to be a contractor for FEMA. Is FEMA fit to work for me or anyone struggling with disaster?”
In the communist-led Soviet Union and China, unemployment was zero; rebuilding flooded areas, constructing dams and wiping out diseases like syphilis and schistosomiasis were priorities, making useful jobs for millions.
Red Worker
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What will stop the attacks on Gaza and the West Bank?
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- 20 November 2012 241 hits
ONE STATE, TWO STATES or A COMMUNIST STATE?
Once again the Israeli Zionist rulers are launching a full-scale murderous military attack against the Palestinian civilians - men, women and children - in Gaza, just as they did with the brutal Cast Lead massacre in 2008-2009. They claim that this is in retaliation for and to stop the rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. This is a big lie! The current murders are simply the latest step in the constant fascist attempts to “ethnically cleanse all of Palestine.
*There is no doubt that the 2nd attack on Gaza is a war crime and that the military occupation of Palestine by Israel is wrong and unsustainable. At 44 years, it is one of the longest occupations in history and violates every precept of international law. Not only are Palestinians reduced to living on 22% of their former land, but they have been deprived of much of their water, farmland, employment, and freedom of movement. Continuous warfare afflicts not only the region but fuels world conflict. No one demonstrating here today disagrees with any of this.
*The much more difficult question is what should we be fighting for? Is it enough to demand that siege of Gaza and the occupation end, the settlements be dismantled, or a “Palestinian state” be established? This issue cannot be addressed without considering the role of racism and nationalism in the history of Israel and the current struggle between Israel and Palestine.
The influx of Jews into Palestine was a response to their racist persecution in Europe and the nationalist impulses of the late 19th century. The massive increase in immigration after the Holocaust also largely reflected the refusal of Western nations to accept Jewish refugees. In addition, the US and Britain were glad to have an enclave of people with Western capitalist values and ties in the Middle East, which was rapidly gaining importance as the major source of oil.
Instead of going to “a land without people for a people without land”, the Jews arrived in a densely populated area. In 1948, the UN gave 55% of the land to the Jews, when they comprised only one third of the population and owned only 6% of the land. 750, 000 Palestinians, 6/7 of the population, were brutally expelled from their homes. In the 1967 war, Israel began the occupation of Palestinian land and took total control over 46% of the West Bank. Now the Wall, the checkpoints, the ban against Palestinians working in Israel and other indignities have reduced Palestinians to a state of desperation.
*None of this would have been possible if the Zionists were not themselves guilty of racism. Instead of learning from centuries of anti-Semitism that racism is the father of genocide and divides poor peoples against one another, they used the same ideology to suppress other people. Meanwhile, now as throughout history, the wealthy and the rulers use these ethnic divides to their own advantage. The US arms Israel to the teeth, not out of love for Judaism, but to maintain bully-power over the oil rich nations and their potential allies in the area. Ordinary Israelis suffer the costs of occupation in lives lost, morality destroyed, and social services cut to finance the military, all tolerated only because of anti-Arab racism.
Despite the fortitude displayed by Palestinians in surviving the occupation, many are now focused on the strife which continues between the corrupt Fatah movement, and fundamentalist, nationalist Hamas, neither of which promises social equality for Palestinians, or leads to an effective resistance. Palestine, like Israel, is a class society, and needs a mass anti-racist movement of workers for a society in their own interests. Jewish and Arab workers. from the river to the sea. must unite to fight the capitalist rulers.
*So we come to the question, what do we ask for now? It is not good enough to ask for equal civil rights and look to South Africa for inspiration, as do many activists. For although apartheid is gone, the condition of the majority poor black population in SA remains abysmal. As long as the same capitalist system, the same corporations are running the country, poor workers are no better off – maybe worse, having lost the activism of the anti-apartheid movement. From India to El Salvador, throwing off colonialism but not capitalism, has not improved the lot of workers.
That is why, while we march against the attack on Gaza and the evil of occupation, we should also march for an egalitarian, anti-racist, anti-sexist struggle and a communist society in Israel–Palestine, History provides many examples of struggles uniting Arabs, Jews and others in the region against common exploiters. Without a fight for communism in the Middle East and the US, global inter-imperialist wars, fought by workers taught to hate and fear one another, will destroy us all.
Capitalism has just dealt the U.S. working class two major blows: Hurricane Sandy and Barack Obama’s re-election as president. While the U.S. ruling class is ever ready to allocate trillions of dollars for wars to preserve its profits and oil dominance in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, it has refused to spend a dime on seawalls to prepare for storms like Sandy, not to mention Katrina in New Orleans or Ike in Texas.
The system’s profit-driven lack of preparation for the latest storm, fueled by profit-driven global warming, killed more than a hundred U.S. workers and made life miserable for hundreds of thousands more without power, water and food along the East Coast. Sandy also devastated the Caribbean, especially Haiti, where racist U.S. bosses have concentrated on milking profits from poverty-level wages following the 2010 earthquake. Their ruthless neglect left those workers wide open to the devastation of Sandy.
In the hurricane’s wake, the bosses brought militarization rather than relief to ravaged black and Latino neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Obama — who managed the crisis by landing Marines in New York and New Jersey — won four more years to spread war and fascism abroad and at home on behalf of his U.S. imperialist backers. The only storms those rulers care about are World War III and its deadly preludes.
The Exxon Mobil/JPMorgan Chase wing of U.S. finance capital backed war-maker Obama’s re-election. These owners of U.S.-based, globally oriented companies face increasing competition from China’s rising capitalists and a resurgent Russia for control of worldwide markets and resources. Using armed force to protect U.S. domination of Middle East and North African oil and gas, especially in Saudi Arabia, has been Obama’s top priority since day one of his first term.
On behalf of Exxon, he has broadened the U.S. war theater far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. Next on Obama’s hit list are Chinese and Russian proxies Syria and Iran — and, after them, quite likely, China and Russia themselves. He is already landing Marines in Australia and troops in the Philippines as U.S. rulers turn their eyes toward Asia.
Meanwhile, Obama has presided over massive cuts in wages. He has slashed newly hired workers’ pay in half (part of his much-lauded bailout deal with GM and Chrysler) and has frozen federal workers’ earnings. His policies have ravaged education, health, housing and other workers’ needs in favor of trillion-dollar-plus funding of the U.S. war machine. Capitalism’s New Depression sharpens both the Pentagon’s scramble for cash and workers’ crushing poverty.
Sandy approached New York City with predicted devastation to low-lying, working-class areas. But billionaire Mayor Bloomberg saved his imperialist allies big bucks by declaring mandatory evacuation of flood zones but not spending a nickel to carry it out. He refused to deploy the city’s 5,900 transit buses when hundreds of thousands of workers, the great majority without cars, required relocation to higher ground. Many workers drowned. Thousands more still freeze and fester without heat, electricity or clean water. And they have become “criminals” for defying evacuation orders.
Mayor’s Racism Hits Projects
In a further racist move to humiliate mostly black and Latino workers in devastated city projects, Bloomberg is distributing adult diapers to waterless project residents instead of fixing their plumbing. But in Lower Manhattan, home to U.S. capitalism’s Wall Street, the bosses spared no effort or expense to rebuild exploded power stations, pump out vaults and repair thousands of miles of pipes and wires. The stock exchange lost only two days of trading. But workers in neighborhoods like Brooklyn’s Red Hook and Queens’ Far Rockaway have no basic services well into the third week after the storm.
In anticipation of broader wars and police-state fascism, Obama, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have used the storm to justify a martial law crackdown far tighter than the one after 9/11. Workers traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan had to wait for hours in holding pens before boarding buses. They still face gasoline rationing. More significantly, Marines have joined the National Guard in patrolling streets in Brooklyn, Queens, and Hoboken, New Jersey.
It used to be that relatively integrated National Guard “citizen soldiers,” under the command of local governors, would assist in disasters. But in and around New York, racist rulers at the highest Pentagon levels are deploying mainly white Marines, trained to kill Arabs and Asians, against potentially rebellious black and Latino workers. In some blacked-out areas, residents are restricted at night to their apartments. They lack light, heat and water while cops and troops patrol the streets.
Obama’s Latest Surge —
The Marines
While terrorizing our class, Obama’s surge of Marines into New York warms the hearts of racist killer cops and their ruling-class patrons. The Obama-boosting New York Times featured triumphal, D-Day-style photos of Marines taking the beach at burnt-out Breezy Point, Queens, the guarded, gated, most segregated enclave in New York.
Meanwhile, undocumented workers face double suffering. Ineligible for FEMA assistance, they may be used at below the minimum wage to clear devastated areas, like what happened in post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana.
All of this adds up to the rulers expanding their social control over the working class. While they make no plans to ward off “natural” catastrophes, the bosses use these opportunities to exert control over workers and pave the way for more open fascism. In hard-hit cities like New Orleans and Galveston, Texas hundreds of thousands of workers — most of them black and Latino — have lost their jobs and homes and are never coming back. Housing projects and private homes are not being rebuilt. The ruling class treats workers like garbage, to be thrown away when they cost too much to sustain.
On the opposite side, workers’ collective answers to Sandy shows how working-class control of society would both deal constructively with weather disasters and also plan to prevent widespread damage in the first place. (See box on the Soviet Union and China and its former communist leadership, page 1.) This bodes well for our class and the Progressive Labor Party’s goal of replacing the bosses’ profit-minded dictatorship with workers’ rule.
“In the void left by the slow and inadequate institutional emergency response, improvised relief networks sprang up. Neighbors helped one another” (Village Voice, 11/7/12). While police arrested volunteer water distributors as “looters,” and troops grudgingly dispensed meager Army food rations, workers shared real meals with one another. They cooked on sidewalk and rooftop grills and at churches and community centers they took over (see letter on page 6). Workers, not cops or Marines, organized water-hauling brigades to bring a semblance of decency to those without plumbing.
Our Party’s members were out in the streets, in the projects and the hospitals, delivering food, water and clothing to those who had lost everything. PL teachers organized their students, in solidarity with their parents, to distribute aid to the stricken. PL doctors administered medical assistance to workers bereft of needed medicine. (See page 3.)
Glimpse of Communism
Imagine an entire society organized and run on the principle of workers tending to workers’ needs. Our Party understands that it will take a revolution to achieve it. One of the biggest obstacles to our class’s seizing power for itself is the trap of electoral politics. More than 62 million people, most of them workers, voted for Obama. They believed, against all evidence, that he would bring progress and improve their lives. But Obama’s vicious suppression of the working class in his first four years and in Sandy’s aftermath proves that he will continue to serve war-bent imperialists.
Progressive Labor Party calls on all of its members and friends to go to the devastated areas with material aid and political aid, as well. We need to use CHALLENGE to point out how a communist society, run by and for the working class through collective action, can overcome any and all problems workers face.
Once profits and bosses — and the racism, sexism and poverty they create — have been eliminated, the working class can conquer any storm.