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Mideast Wars, Oil, Imperialist Rivalry: A Lethal Mix
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- 05 October 2013 614 hits
MEXICO CITY, September 30 — It’s been a month since teachers from states throughout Mexico, organized in the National Coordinating Committee (CNTE), struck against the rulers’ attack on workers in the guise of education reform. Now the struggle has spread throughout Mexico as other teachers, parents and diverse groups of workers and students join the fight.
The bosses’ government, headed by the criminal lackey of imperialism and the local capitalist class, President Enrique Peña Nieto, is pushing this reform. It will privatize schools and put them out of reach for most working-class children.
When teachers nationally learned of this cruel news, their struggle grew through massive actions in areas normally controlled by the sellout leadership of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), along with the Mexican bosses’ three largest parties: PRI, PAN and PRD. The national strike of workers and students grew from 300,000 to 500,000. More than 300,000 protesters occupied the Mexico City center. Huge marches have blocked the international airport there. Numerous actions at the state level have strengthened the movement to squash these latest fascist laws.
No Peaceful Retreat
September 13 marked the historic battle of the Heroic Children of Chapultepec against the 1847 invasion by U.S. imperialism. The Mexican ruling class spent millions of pesos on this “patriotic holiday” in a crude attempt to mobilize people to cheer the president — and as a pretext to send 4,000 federal cops to brutally evict the CNTE from the city center. These fascists expected us to peacefully retreat on our knees. Instead, teachers, neighbors and students courageously resisted the attack. The goons injured hundreds and arrested 32 CNTE members. But many cops who “lost” their weapons got what they deserved. While the cops emptied the plaza, the bosses’ campaign to build Mexican nationalism and patriotism failed.
This is how the dictatorship of the ruling class works. The capitalists disguise it as “democracy” and use their laws, ideology, and repressive apparatus to impose their interests on the working class. When that doesn’t work, they resort to more open fascism — to military dictatorship and state terror.
The violent eviction in Mexico City, far from diminishing the struggle, sparked a nationwide expansion. CNTE grew stronger. On September 19 and 20, it organized a 48-hour national civic strike. Twenty-eight of 58 union locals, including SNTE members, joined militant actions. They effectively shattered the control of the sellout leadership headed by Juan Díaz de la Torre.
Trade unions and peasants, university students in Mexico City and parents, community police in Guerrero and Michoacán — all have joined the struggle. They have blocked roads, ports and airports. They have taken over custom offices, bridges and government buildings.
Bosses Scapegoat
Teachers
Since August, the liberal capitalist dictatorship, masquerading as a democratic government led by Peña Nieto, began implementing a series of “structural reforms,” a pro-capitalist and anti-working class project. They are backed by the leadership of the main bourgeois parties (PRI, PAN, PRD and PVEM), grouped in the so-called “Pact for Mexico.” They are also supported by the mafia of goons and pimps who compose the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
The treacherous Pact for Mexico first cooked up a criminal plan to impose labor reform and privatization of the education sector. They launched a huge media campaign to extol the virtues of the reforms. At the same time, they waged relentless attacks against the SNTE and teachers in general, blaming them for the backwardness of education in Mexico. Local 22, the militant Oaxaca local, was particularly targeted for a media lynching by the media.
Televisa fired the first shot with “De Panzazo” (“Belly Flop”), a mediocre film produced by the deceitful Carlos Loret de Mola and sponsored by the Mexicans First Industrial Group, whose main interest is to turn education into a lucrative business. This pack of hounds was joined by TV Azteca, the press, radio and other media owned by the ruling bosses.
Constitution: For and By the Bosses
The Mexican Constitution legitimizes capitalism, a system designed to serve the capitalists and exploit the workers. In a move to maximize their profits, the bosses’ stooges recently amended Articles 3 and 73. These changes legalize repressive measures in education and steal back the gains we have won through the blood and lives of thousands of fighting workers in this country and worldwide, including the SNTE teachers’ strike and numerous struggles by the CNTE over the last 30 years.
After militant CNTE members trapped them in their legislative chambers, these thieving deputies hid in the Banamex executives’ auditorium. There, protected by their capitalist masters, they passed the secondary laws that were later approved by criminal-in-chief Peña Nieto.
Under capitalism, education is constructed to serve the needs of the bosses. It teaches students a full curriculum of bad ideas, from individualism to competition among workers. Now the bosses are determined to make a bad system worse. They have the legal justification to strike the final blow against education workers’ employment and labor rights, and to eliminate free, secular, public education. Through the punishing mechanism of standardized evaluation, they are making teachers’ employment conditional on passing the test. The tests will lead to temporary contracts without labor rights or job guarantees.
Over time, the bosses plan to lay off 1.5 million workers, teachers and school support personnel. In rural areas, education will be under municipal control. In cities, it will be privatized and controlled by private companies and universities. Televisa and TV Azteca have already established a competitive education project. Parents and students will be forced to pay high enrollment fees. Families who cannot pay will go without. Educational inequality and illiteracy will soar.
The workers’ growing resistance movement has the potential not only to repeal the bosses’ nefarious reform laws, but also to remove the sellout SNTE leadership. These would be positive steps, but they are not enough. The only true solution for teachers, students, and parents is to overthrow the fascist government that oppresses us and to establish a communist society under the leadership of a mass Progressive Labor Party.
Beyond Reform Struggles, to Communism!
Trade union struggles may achieve temporary benefits for workers. But these gains are inevitably reversed by the rulers as they move from one capitalist crisis to the next. Reform movements, no matter how militant, cannot destroy capitalism. The working class must go beyond nationalist, pacifist groups like Lopez Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement, which seeks to benefit local bosses. Workers must reject armed nationalist movements, like those in the Middle East, that serve the imperialist powers. We must recognize that today’s “socialism” is a state-capitalist fraud led by a new class of oppressors and exploiters. As we have learned from hard experience in the Soviet Union and China, socialism does not lead to communism.
Our fight must be directly for communism, for a new system of production and distribution without oppressors and exploiters. In a communist world, we would study and work collectively for the common good, to serve the needs and wellbeing of the whole working class. This is the goal of the Progressive Labor Party. Join and build it!
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BROOKLYN, NY, September 21— Over 200 people rallied and marched in Flatbush to demand justice for Kyam Livingston. Kyam was a 37-year-old African-American mom who was denied medical attention while in Brooklyn Central Booking and died in police custody. The death of Kyam, due to the callous indifference of the cops, is yet another instance of the racist reign of terror which is U.S. capitalism.
It has been over two months since Kyam’s murder by the NYPD, and still no one has been held accountable. The NYPD has refused to release the videotapes documenting what happened to Kyam and will not release the names of the officers responsible for her death. Marchers called out, “We want the tapes! We want the names!” as they followed in Kyam Livingston’s final footsteps.
Today’s march and rally focused on Kyam Livingston’s murder. But this particular instance of state-sanctioned terror must be seen in the context of a pattern of death after death after death of mainly young black and Latin working-class victims. As one speaker declared, there is something wrong with a system in which such deaths go unpunished. The threatened closings of three hospitals serving central Brooklyn’s black and Latin working-class communities, he pointed out, will certainly lead to more deaths. There is something wrong with a system in which money for needed hospitals can’t be found, but money for imperialist war budgets is never in short supply. Such a system must be smashed.
Speakers at the rally included the family, the family’s lawyers, city council representatives and labor movement officials. Ms. Anita Neal, Kyam Livingston’s mother, vowed never to stop until justice was served and the officers responsible for her daughter’s death were prosecuted. Progressive Labor Party will join with the family and friends of Kyam Livingston in their fight for justice. We must point out that that racist police terror won’t end until we overthrow the capitalist system that creates, profits from, and promotes the conditions under which Kyam and countless others have died.
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Workers Fight Pro-Boss Union Hacks over Hospital Jobs, Wages
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- 05 October 2013 538 hits
PHILADELPHIA, PA, September 24 — Today Local 1199C members marched around Jefferson Hospital and then several blocks to the headquarters of Aramark, a subcontractor famous for low wages. A few years ago Aramark took over management of Jefferson’s environmental services, dietary and transportation departments. The march protested the attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions by Aramark and Jefferson itself. A protest letter written by a Jefferson worker was delivered to the Aramark bosses.
One strength of the march was that it was organized by a group of rank-and-file union delegates and that almost two hundred workers responded despite some organizational problems. The workers were angry and enthusiastic. Energy was high as we marched around the hospital and even more electric as we marched into the lobby of Aramark’s headquarters.
However, this energy is limited and undermined by how most of us view this struggle. Almost all the union members expect the union leaders to lead it and see the fight itself mainly as an effort to defend what was won by earlier generations of union members. This view cripples us.
Workers storm into Amarak Headquarters, while dumbfounded security guards and administrators watch.
Unions were organized to get workers a bigger piece of the pie under capitalism. While there’s no denying the benefits of past union struggles, the problem is that they never had the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism itself. Even if unions are victorious, the bosses still make their profits and keep state power, that is, they run the government. And since our labor creates all wealth, any profit the bosses make is theft from us. No matter what wage and benefit increases we win, under the profit system the bosses still profit and the working class never gets the wealth we create. Only communism can do that.
Yes, we must fight tooth-and-nail to protect our hard-won union benefits and wages. But we can’t forget that unions and union leaders accept and defend capitalism. Unions accept that the capitalists have a “right” to profit from our labor and that the capitalists have a “right” to make laws to restrict workers’ struggles. And when the inevitable crises of capitalism drive the bosses to fascism and crushing of the unions, the union leaders cannot provide the leadership we need.
For example, the day before the march the union leaders attempted to convince the delegates to call off the march. The Jefferson union delegates refused, but many union members were amazed and felt betrayed. We need to remember this lesson.
Trying to stop the Jefferson workers’ march was the union leaders actually doing what they’re supposed to do under capitalism: protect their positions as class collaborators, prevent us from seriously fighting the bosses’ attacks, and blind us to the need for communist revolution. Our older brothers and sisters fought hard, sometimes giving their lives, for the wages and benefits the bosses now take back. Let’s get off this damned merry-go-round!
We’re not just in a fight against Jefferson and Aramark, we’re in a fight against fascist attacks on the working class that are worldwide and connected. Our fight to protect the union at Jefferson must have the ultimate goal of building a movement to overthrow the capitalist system that always takes back whatever victories we might win.
Only communist revolution can give us a system run by workers, for workers. We urge more Philadelphia hospital workers to read and distribute CHALLENGE and to join PLP study groups. (Call 267-319-3515 for more info.)
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Attack in Nairobi Masks Kenya’s Slaughter of Somalis
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- 05 October 2013 634 hits
Since October 2011, when Kenyan military forces were deployed in Somalia, there have been dozens of terrorist attacks in Kenya: shootings, grenades, explosives. More than a hundred people have been killed and hundreds more injured. In the most recent attack, on the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, at least 61 people were killed, hundreds were injured and 71 are still missing. As usual, workers are caught in the middle and we grieve with all those who lost families and friends. As in the World Trade Center attack in September 2011, the Westgate assault was directed at symbols of wealth but took the lives of many working-class people.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media has remained silent about the plundering of Somalia. The capitalist ruling classes have been using violence against workers on a daily basis all over North Africa. Three months after the invasion of Somalia in October 2011, the Kenyan military reportedly slaughtered 700 Somali militants. Since 2007, as many as 3,000 African Union peacekeeping troops have been killed. The Somalis that somehow make it to Kenya face severe hardships. There are also concerns that the Somali community in Minnesota will be targeted in the wake of the Westgate attack (New York Times, 9/28).
On November 19, 2012, Kenyan police unleashed a wave of violence and torture against Somali and Ethiopian refugees in the Nairobi suburb of Eastleigh. These abuses are nothing new. Since 2009, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly reported Kenyan security force torture, rape and inflict other violence. The authorities have yet to prosecute anyone for these crimes. The racist character of this officially sanctioned brutality was revealed when the report quoted local police as saying “All Somalis are terrorists.”
While the bosses’ newspapers analyze the Shabab, the terrorist group claiming responsibility for the Westgate attack, it’s important to point out that the capitalist rulers are the biggest terrorists of all. The ruling class uses its military to carry out mass murder. The president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, has been charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. We should never see this type of violence as any more acceptable than terrorist attacks.
The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Delegate Assembly unanimously passed a resolution in support of students after watching a video showing several NYPD cops holding a man down on the ground while another repeatedly kidney punched him. Two City University (CUNY) students then addressed delegates and seven hundred dollars was collected toward the legal expenses of the six people arrested.
PSC Resolution Against KKKop Brutality of CUNY Students
On September 17, 2013, the New York Police Department arrested six people, including four CUNY students, in an unprovoked police attack against a peaceful protest by students and faculty against CUNY’s appointment of former CIA chief ex-General David Petraeus. CUNY students were punched, slammed against vehicles and against the pavement by NYPD officers…
As the union representing faculty and professional staff at CUNY—and as people who have dedicated our professional lives to the well-being of CUNY students—the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY expresses outrage at the violent and unprovoked actions by the NYPD against students peacefully protesting the appointment of David Petraeus as a Visiting Professor…
We call on the City of New York to drop all charges against the students. Further, we call on the CUNY Administration and Board of Trustees to join us in condemning the use of police violence against CUNY students engaged in peaceful protest and to take all necessary steps to ensure that [such] protest will not be met with police violence.
While the resolution pushed by these workers is commendable, the PSC leadership failed to make a head-on attack against the presence of war criminal Petraeus at CUNY.
The president told us that a resolution calling for his ouster would be ruled out of order. Legal counsel had advised that according to state labor law, the union was obligated to represent all of the members of the bargaining unit. Therefore, the union could not call on the employer to fire an employee. And so the union cannot take a stance to fire Petraeus. At the next Delegate Assembly we will fight to overturn this ruling.
