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    Campus Workers Invade Bosses’ Office

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    15 August 2012 259 hits

    LOS ANGELES, CA, July 11 — Progressive Labor Party joined together with workers from a university campus here to rally and march into the office of the assistant vice chancellor. These workers have been fighting for four years in order to be hired by the university itself — not by an outsourcing company that had fired workers on a whim and forced the remaining workers to do twice the work. Recently, the workers won that battle, but the fight continues. 

    In the last three months about 30 workers, almost a third of the staff, have received “counseling memos.” This is a fancy way of saying they were written up. Many of these write-ups were based on the fact that the supervisors didn’t understand what was necessary in order to get the work done. For example, one worker was written up for being “out of area.”  The worker wasn’t working in the building they were supposed to be because the workload they had been given in another building was too much and they could not finish on time. Three workers have been fired recently because of these attacks.

    Latina Women Won’t Back Down 

    The supervisors have also been harassing the workers in other ways, such as giving them their checks late. This is a blatant attempt to intimidate these militant, mainly Latina women workers. The bosses and supervisors are scared of these workers because they have refused to back down.

    Today was no exception. The workers chanted and refused to wait as they walked into the building and into the assistant vice chancellor’s office. They presented him with a petition. They demanded that the harassments stop, that workers be rehired, that all “counseling memos” be rescinded, and that the workloads be reduced to a reasonable size for each worker.

    The assistant vice chancellor said that he would “look into it.” These workers have heard that before. So they told him they need action within a week or they would continue to fight.

    These university bosses and their pet bureaucrats should be scared. These workers have the will to fight and communists are on their side. We must transform this reform fight for reasonable working conditions. A reform maintains the system that keeps the working class fighting the same fights over and over again for the bare minimum. It essentially builds capitalism, and fools workers into thinking that capitalism can be reformed for workers’ interests. We need to put forth revolution. We need a system that works for all workers: communism.

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    Mexico: Building International Unity and Communist Solidarity

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    15 August 2012 307 hits

    Fifty members and friends of Progressive Labor Party from around the U.S. and Mexico, across borders, are participating in a Summer Project in Mexico. The PLP has planted the seeds of communism in Mexico, the U.S., and many other areas worldwide. We’re cultivating these seeds, a long-term process with many ups and downs, which will prepare the international working class for its role in making communist revolution.

    This process involves many inter-connected elements, all of which are evident at the Project in Mexico:

    The working class requires international unity, which we put into practice by building ties between comrades and friends across borders and by supporting workers’ and students’ struggles in all areas of the world. In building an international Party, we are overcoming capitalist divisions caused by racism, nationalism and sexism, as well as obstacles like different languages and cultural backgrounds.

    Communists organize the working class and give leadership in the class struggle while introducing and fighting for PLP’s communist ideas in the struggle.

    We understand the importance of raising the political consciousness of the working class and making communist ideas mass ideas. In the process of revolution for communism and consolidation of the new communist society this ideology is a powerful weapon.

    We learn how to answer workers’ questions about the strengths and weaknesses of the old communist movement, how communism works in practice and overcoming capitalist individualism and anti-communist lies.

    We are building a base among workers and students in order to organize Party study-action groups and Party clubs (collectives of members).

    We are developing new leadership, especially among youth and women.

    Spread PLP Literature 

    In all areas, the PLP in Mexico is advancing. During the Summer Project, we organized study groups to understand the Party’s line: “What We Fight For.” Workers and youth in Party concentrations in factories, communities and schools agreed to join the study groups. One dynamic young woman, active at her university, joined PLP. 

    In the first week of the Project, we distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES written and printed in Mexico. We also distributed 3,000 flyers about a community fighting back against government plans to cause flooding. They want to form reservoirs where water will be sent to purification plants and sold at prices working-class families can’t afford. Whole neighborhoods risk losing their homes so the government can continue to provide abundant water to wealthy citizens and irrigate large farms owned by capitalists inside and outside Mexico. Meanwhile, water is turned off in poor workers’ homes for many hours at a time.

    Anger and fear are mixed as neighbors in this community organize to fight back with communist leadership and growing consciousness about the necessity to organize for communist revolution.

    Capitalism offers scarcity, poverty and exploitation to the working class, from Mexico to India! The Party will organize international support for this struggle. (More details in an upcoming article.)

    The Project so far has been well-organized and strongly led by a team of workers and students, including five women leaders from Mexico and the U.S. Capitalism uses sexism, like racism and nationalism, to divide workers and keep our class weak. Communists reject the idea that women and men should have separate roles in society. We need to pay more attention to winning and developing women in order to build unity and strengthen the Party and the working class.

    Workers and youth from Mexico and the U.S. are organizing together, cooking and cleaning collectively, and overcoming the language barrier. Onward to week two!

    (More articles and letters will follow about communist organizing among workers and youth and in the communities, among teachers and students, and evaluation and experiences of Project volunteers.)

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    Tel-Aviv Workers: Burn Down Capitalism, Not Yourselves!

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    15 August 2012 253 hits

    TELL-AVIV, ISRAEL-PALESTINE, July 20 — Moshe Silman, died from his wounds after setting himself on fire during last week’s rally against the government’s economic policy. This act of desperation served as an example to several other workers, pushed to the brink of suicide by the inhuman capitalist system, who began setting themselves on fire to protest their poverty.

    One hundred sixy years ago, Marx and Engels wrote how the capitalist system, in its dog-eat-dog competition between businesses, drives many petit-bourgeois (the self-employed and the small businessmen) into the proletariat (working class). Silman’s tale is a clear example of this. At one time he owned a tiny transport company with four trucks, but due to debts to the National Insurance (Israel’s “Social Security”), one of his trucks was repossessed, starting a downward spiral for him.

    Soon he found himself penniless, forced to work for his living as a taxi-cab driver. Eventually he suffered a series of strokes, forcing him off his job. He then had to live on about $550 a month in disability benefits, hardly enough to pay for food, medications and rent. Finally, he found himself living on the mean streets. As an act of protest, he committed suicide by setting himself on fire.

    Capitalism is an economic system with no mercy. The bosses (much less than “1%” of the population) own great wealth produced by the labor of workers. The workers (more than “99%”) own nothing substantial and are forced to sell their labor  power — essentially, the best part of one’s life and livelihood — in order to earn an often meager existence. There is no real middle ground between these two classes. Competition between businesses leads to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few big capitalists at the expense of their smaller and less vicious competitors, who end up, in many cases, driven into the working class. Even the so-called “middle class,” workers who were given a few more crumbs than usual from the bosses’ table, find themselves more and more thrown back to the bottom of the working class by the crisis of the capitalist system.

    The only real way out of this hell on earth is to get rid of the root of the problem, the capitalist system itself. Instead of harming themselves out of desperation, workers should organize, fight back and eventually lead a communist revolution under the banners of the Progressive Labor Party to overthrow the profit system once and for all. Only together, led by a Party of millions of workers, will  we be able to build a real future — a communist future where workers will run the world for the interest of the working class!

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    Profit Wars, Racism Drive U.S. Troops’ Suicide

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    15 August 2012 259 hits

    Local working-class people in Iraq and Afghanistan, mainly civilians, have bore the brunt of suffering in the U.S. imperialist wars, with casualties, both deaths and injuries, numbering in the millions. This carnage has also damaged working-class U.S. troops — who’ve survived physically uninjured — by what they’ve seen and done. For every U.S. soldier killed in the war zone, about 25 vets die by suicide.

    The racist lies the Pentagon uses to direct U.S. working-class troops’ anger towards local workers, especially anger over a battle buddy’s death, underlie  these skyrocketing suicide rates. These racist lies lead many troops to kill, beat or harass innocent local workers or at least passively support those troops that do.

    Since the U.S. military defines the troops’ mission as only to “carry out good intentions,” it’s easy for troops to get angry at civilians who refuse to turn in insurgents and view these civilians as “ungrateful savages.”

    Individualism A Loser

    But once troops learn more about the profit motive behind the mission and are separated from the chain of command that reinforces racist lies, it becomes difficult to live with what happened.

    Unlike Vietnam War veterans who had the option of joining a massive GI and veterans’ movement against racism and war (see box, page 2), today many veterans individually tear themselves up with guilt, shame, depression and rage. Many feel no one knows what they’re experiencing except maybe those who were there with them.

    For thousands of veterans who wonder why they survived, the burden of carrying the memories of dead friends and civilians haunts their minds and becomes too much to bear.

    Additionally, troops have been driven to suicide because of racist harassment. Army Private Danny Chen killed himself in Afghanistan after repeated anti-Chinese harassment from two Officers, four NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) and two fellow lower enlisted soldiers.

    After public outrage from Danny’s family and the Chinese working-class community in New York City, the Army pressed charges on the eight soldiers who hazed Danny for weeks before his death. But the first soldier to stand court martial only received a 30-day sentence, a fine and demotion out of a possible 30-month sentence!

    A Veterans Affairs hotline on suicide exists but capitalism has little to offer veterans dealing with suicidal thoughts. Addressing the racist lies of profit wars on a mass scale would undermine the bosses’ imperialist mission.

    According to a pair of liberal mental health pundits, the mental damage imperialism does to working-class troops is a “moral wound” that can only be treated socially by a non-judgmental community that has the moral courage to “examine its own responsibility for the war.” 

    But it is not this “community” that is responsible for the U.S. bosses’ wars, it is capitalism. The VA suicide hotline may help some individuals but it cannot own up to exploiting the good intentions of working-class troops without risking rebellion within the ranks.

    The most positive, lasting and significant way to address profit wars, racism and the intense feeling to make amends is to become part of a communist movement to smash the capitalist system that spawns these oil wars and racism. Getting vets involved in anti-racist fight-backs for jobs, education and more veterans’ services can be an important part of healing for many troops.

    But ultimately, taking anti-racist and anti-imperialist actions in the barracks, on the battlefields and in the neighborhoods as part of the Progressive Labor Party is the most important way to undercut the imperialist mission that drives troops to suicide.

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    Pakistan: Slaying of Woman Fighter Fuels Farmers’ Anger

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    15 August 2012 320 hits

    Landless farmers are facing horrible exploitation in Pakistan. They are absolutely dependent upon the rule of big landowners, even in their private life. They’re constantly abused, physically, verbally and sexually, and may be kept imprisoned while they have no work.

    When laboring in the fields, they are treated as slaves. From dusk to dawn, they either endure the scorching heat or shiver in the cold. Their legs are chained, and are even denied access to food. These parasitic bosses are becoming richer and richer off the blood of the poor workers and are gaining increasing control of the state.

    A comrade addressed the 65th anniversary of the death in Sindh province of Mai Bukhtawar, a poor farmer woman who worked in the fields. She had no formal education, but she had great class consciousness. She refused to accept the so-called laws formulated by feudal lords (landowners descendent from aristrocracy) to control the working class. A brave worker, she stood firmly against new methods of exploitation and subsequently was assassinated by these powerful bosses.

    The comrade noted that her death fueled anger among the peasants against feudal lords, inspiring them to resist and revolt against oppression and exploitation. 

    Reform No Substitute for Revolution

    He made his point loud and clear that without an international communist revolution we cannot eliminate these miseries. He explained that the struggle against landlords is deep-rooted in Pakistan. Many poor peasants have sacrificed their lives in the fight against exploitation but the situation hasn’t changed. History proves that reform struggle cannot be a substitute for revolution.

    The peasants twice forced the rulers to announce land reforms, in 1959 and 1972, but the bosses used these reforms to cheat us. They did this by putting a cap on the amount of land an individual can own but not on the amount a family can acquire. Through many provisions and loopholes, the landlords were allowed to transfer land beyond the cap to their children and relatives. Exemptions were granted for orchards, livestock farms and huge hunting areas.

    Ironically, many high government officials used these reforms to acquire land in Sindh and Punjab provinces at exceptionally low prices, using their officialdom to increase their wealth. Thus a new class of landlords emerged to intensify the exploitation of the working class. 

    Now 18 million farm workers, about 70 percent of the entire work-force, have no right to unionize nor organize sit-ins or strikes. Most are treated as slaves, receiving only cheap food for their hard labor. The comrade emphasized that to eradicate this exploitation we must build an international communist movement, led by PLP, and establish workers’ power.

    1. Israel-Palestine Bedouin Workers Fight Racist Land Grab
    2. Red Bread: A Woman’s Fight for Soviet Collective Farms
    3. Dark Knight Rises: Batman Spews Anti-Communism to Save Capitalism
    4. U.S. War Machine Tops All Atrocities

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