MUMBAI, INDIA, February 28 — Millions of workers in eleven major unions and 5,000 smaller ones went on a 24-hour general strike in one of the largest walkouts in the country’s history. They were demanding protection against soaring prices of vital commodities, more jobs, an end to privatization and to government anti-labor policies and a rise in the minimum wage.

The strike was virtually total in transportation in Kerala state, with buses, taxis and rickshaws off the roads. Striking banking workers halted all financial transactions in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. In Mumbai, the country’s financial center, the shutdown in banking was complete.

While the bosses and government were attacking even a one-day strike, it remains to be seen if workers will begin to realize that they need an extended walkout to get any real results. While the ruling classes always refer to India as the world’s “largest democracy,” the mass poverty and unemployment that exists here exposes the hypocrisy of that claim. Real solutions to workers’ problems here will only come when the working class takes power, led by a revolutionary communist party.

NEW YORK CITY, February 16 — “How do you spell racist? DOE!”

A young comrade led over 500 people in a series of such anti-racist chants as billionaire Bloomberg’s Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) used their state power and had their Department of Education (DOE) close 33 largely black and Latino schools for “underperformance.”

PLP members’ exposure of capitalism as the real underperformer was well-received among co-workers there, as well as among passers-by who took over 300 leaflets containing the above headline.

NYC teacher union mis-leader Mike Mulgrew led a rally outside, trying to “boycott” the sharp struggle inside where angry masses had gathered in the high school auditorium. His effort to lead folks away from the panel meeting flopped. He made a lackluster cameo appearance once the defeat of his boss-serving ploy became apparent to all.

Comrade Indicts Profit System

Only PL had students actively leading chants. At one point, the crowd demanded to “let the students speak.” Then our young comrade took center stage to give the only speech that named capitalism as the culprit. We met this young leader several years ago and she has been schooled in the fight against racist school closures. We need more youth like her.

The manipulation by Bloomberg and his henchmen emerged when black families appeared to speak up in favor of their charter schools which they see as a slight improvement over the abject failures passing for institutions of learning citywide. This set-up pitted them against other black and Latino families whose children overwhelmingly attend the public schools slated for closing. Rather than fighting each other, all working-class families must unite against the rulers who are destroying any opportunity for their children to make their way in this rotten society.

The purpose of the bosses’ school system is to reproduce the racist class structure of U.S. society. The main function the bosses have for all teachers — public and charter — is to assist in this massive and ongoing “sorting” of human beings to keep the social pyramid of capitalism intact. From K to 12 and beyond we are expected to inculcate each generation with patriotism and passivity.  

Charter schools, with the federal government behind them, are spreading like a cancer, functionally breaking the presence of unions in education, a way to make them weaker than ever. These Charter Schools are just another source of profit on the backs of the public sector. These attacks, with all their attendant dislocation and chaos, are focused on black and Latino working-class communities.

The assault on teachers, students and parents reflects the heightened state of siege in which the rulers have placed the workers since the demise of the old communist movement. Workers’ revolution is not on the agenda and the bosses are taking full advantage. For years, the bosses have been “measuring” and “analyzing” the performance and productivity of the working class.

For example, the bosses’ managers want to convince workers making $8.50 an hour at the local Kmart that they’re “accountable” for stocking the shelves as fast as they can so the company can prosper “for the benefit of the team.” Kmart bosses making six- and seven-figure salaries use the word “team” to motivate and drive workers making minimum wage. Many workers see through this.   

‘Toe the Line or Be Fired’

For factory workers, discipline is tied to getting the worker to speed up production or be terminated. For teachers, this means using standardized tests — which teach nothing — and the new Danielson Framework for Teaching to develop a fascist monitoring tool. If teachers don’t toe this line, they, too, are fired.

Ruling-class attacks on teachers directly attack students. The rulers’ ideas of success for our children are minimum-wage jobs, mass racist unemployment or the “choice” of a “job” in the military to fight in their imperialist oil wars killing other workers. Throughout the country the majority of schools being closed are in black and Latino communities. The rulers are trying to further segregate our children in order to continue to exploit and profit off all working-class people. 

Capitalism does not offer solutions to the racist education our children are experiencing. The young comrade who pointed to capitalism as the main culprit deserves much more than the non-existent “good old days” of public education the liberals are advocating. She, like young people worldwide, deserves a communist future, without bosses and profits. Today it felt like we brought that future little bit closer to fruition. Join PLP and fight for it.

NEW JERSEY, February 22 — Sixty people marched twelve miles today to protest against the racist expansion of detention centers in Northern New Jersey. We were young and old, black, white, and Latino, representing many countries.  We marched to three detention centers and three branches of the Wells Fargo bank, which invests in the federally funded companies that profit from the workers they imprison. 

The protest was organized by First Friends and the Interfaith Refugee Action Team at Elizabeth (IRATE), an umbrella group that sponsors legal aid, social services and volunteer visits to detainees. Some of us were critical of the march’s vague demands, such as “justice” and “freedom.”  We remarked that the sort of justice that has people paying up to $12,000 to release their loved ones into a system of unemployment is really an extension of imprisonment.  

And we argued that workers are free under capitalism only to have our children and resources used to wage war for the bosses’ profits. 

After beginning the march at Liberty Island, we visited a Catholic church, an Islamic school and a Jewish synagogue in Jersey City. We stopped for a while at the new, 420-bed Delaney Detention Center, one of several in this area. (The Essex County Jail is making room for up to 800 detainees. Hudson County in Kearny is up to 800 beds, Bergen County to 1,500, and Elizabeth to 320). The Delaney facility is in the middle of a toxic waste area where the pollution has a strong odor.

IRATE has a mailing list of 4,000, which they used to draw more than a hundred volunteers, social workers, attorneys and former detainees to a closing vigil in Elizabeth. The more progressive chants included, “No ganáncias, no cárceles” (No profits, no jails) and “Comunidades unidas, no serán vencidas” (Communities united will never be defeated).  A PLP member explained that the entire capitalist system is organized around profits for a small ruling class, and that our “communities united” consist only of workers, not the rich who exploit us. At the soup supper later, the comrade distributed CHALLENGE to everyone there while pointing out the necessity of an international party.

There was tremendous enthusiasm and energy among these interns, low-paid social workers, and over-worked attorneys. One group of twenty Mother Seton High School students had participated in this march for several years. A young woman had just been accepted to law school, where she plans to focus on immigration law. These people cheered each other on despite the sad news about one woman’s husband who’d been deported to Lebanon that morning after two months in solitary confinement with insufficient medicine for his chronic illness. His case is one of countless stories of how immigrants are terrorized in the U.S. It’s also a reminder that the capitalist system cannot be reformed and must be destroyed.

LOS ANGELES, February 29 — In the months following the clearing of the Occupy encampment in downtown Los Angeles, the idea of the 99% has penetrated college campuses and workplaces throughout Southern California. From public college students facing tuition hikes to transit and airport workers confronted with wage-cuts, the Occupy message resonates deeply in their respective fights. This political development is an opportunity to build the strategic worker-student alliance that can serve as the basis for a revolutionary communist movement. 

Student members of Progressive Labor Party recently organized a conference on the economic crisis of capitalism and higher education at a state university here. The students collaborated with transit workers, high school teachers and friends from the Occupy movement to hold workshops on the need for a worker-student alliance. One political goal was to show the similarities between the struggles of students and teachers in high schools and colleges. 

Point of Disunity

At the morning plenary, one group of students raised a “point of unity” that called for the exclusion of communist parties from the conference. Some Occupy participants, particularly the self-proclaimed “facilitators” (the de facto leaders of this “leaderless” movement), red bait organizations they see as “authoritarian.” 

But on this campus, where a PL comrade has spent months building a base around communist politics, most disapproved of this red-baiting. A PL teacher pointed out that this proposed “point of unity” was both anti-communist and dishonest at a conference that was designed for the exchange of ideas. Many in the audience responded with applause, and the anti-communist proposal was shot down. 

Later in the afternoon, the worker-student alliance workshop explored the real points of unity between student and worker struggles. One transit worker recalled his experiences as a student organizer in Central America and pointed out capitalism will continue to oppress us regardless of any victories in reform struggles around tuition hikes or wages. The discussion then turned to consider what kind of revolutionary movement was necessary to destroy capitalism. 

Connect Cuts to Capitalist Crisis

At a writing workshop, teachers and students planned a pamphlet to explain the economic causes of the problems in education and to strategize fight-backs that unify students and teachers on high school and college campuses. Another workshop connected the rapidly rising cost of higher education, firings of teachers, and cutbacks in class offerings to the current crisis of finance capital. 

Students and instructors understood that a failing economic system is to blame for these problems and enthusiastically agreed that this discussion should be part of future conferences.  

Between now and May Day, PLP students and workers plan to organize similar events in various worksite and campus struggles in Southern California. The Occupy movement shows that many are angered and frustrated with the crisis of capitalism but also unclear as to how to respond.  By building a mass, militant worker-student alliance, PLP can advance toward the development of a revolutionary communist movement that is powerful enough to destroy capitalism.