LONG BEACH, CA, December 12 — Seven hundred workers shut down business at the Long Beach Port. This march revealed a split between the Occupy movement’s liberal organizers and the rank-and-file occupiers, including Progressive Labor Party comrades who gave key leadership at the protest.  

The liberals’ plan, orchestrated with the Long Beach Police Department, was to funnel the march along a narrow sidewalk, with the ocean on one side and the cops on the other. But with PL leading a communist chant of “Shut it down, shut it tight, workers of the world unite!” the march quickly turned militant. PL’s friends in the movement were evident as we crossed the line of cones and took the streets leading to the port.

The kkkops responded by attempting to use their motorcycles as barricades, splitting the protest into two halves. It was a potentially dangerous situation, with one group facing a wall of cops in riot gear. But we quickly organized ourselves and led the march back and sandwiched the police!  At first, the other half of the march was hesitant to walk through the police barrier, but our comrades again led the way and soon the whole march followed.

An hour later, as the Long Beach police tried to push the protesters back onto the sidewalk, they were met with heavy resistance. The protesters stood their ground in open defiance, linking arms, chanting and singing. The standoff lasted for nearly an hour. It ended only after rank-and-file occupiers discovered that some trucks were getting into the port through a back entrance. After a brief discussion, the protest was moved to a location where we could better block all entrances. Traffic at the port was shut down for five hours before the police could disperse the crowd. Port workers who walked to the gates to watch the protest told us that they didn’t believe any work would get done that day.

While our PL leadership was critical in organizing the Occupiers to defy the liberal leadership, we were weak in organizing our own base from the jobs, schools and campuses to participate.  We also need to distribute more CHALLENGEs.

We do have a small but active base within the Occupy movement, however. After this action, more than 20 young people met with us over breakfast to debrief.  While there is a lot of potential to deepen these relationships and build the Party, we must struggle harder to make the Occupy fight more prominent in our workplaces and classrooms.  The struggle continues.

CHICAGO, December 14 — On an unseasonably warm and rainy day, about twenty PL’ers and friends gathered in front of Stroger hospital, under an overhang, to protest the deadly cuts in the Cook County public hospital system. Stroger Hospital was moving forward with planned layoffs even though the holidays were almost here. We handed out fliers while calmly holding our signs and giant photographs of patients who are losing their healthcare, including one who recently died as a result. CHALLENGEs were distributed.

It wasn’t long before the kkkops told us to move from “private property.”

“What are you talking about? This is a public hospital and I work here!” a protester snapped. Together, we decided to march twenty-five yards away, but still on county property. We marched as a group chanting, “They say cut back, we say fight back!”

After establishing a picket line, we took turns on the bullhorn, denouncing the layoffs and service cuts. A few union hacks tried to talk to the demonstrators to divert our anger, but we kept spreading the word to the hundreds streaming by. We distributed all of our fliers and made a few contacts with patients and their families who were inspired to see workers fighting for their county healthcare system.

Last week the administration laid off eight respiratory therapists. This is a direct result of the closing of Oak Forest Hospital (see CHALLENGE, 11/2/11). Respiratory therapists from Oak Forest with more seniority are being transferred to Stroger Hospital. Rather than increase the staff of respiratory therapists at Stroger to help take care of the flood of new patients, management decided to fire the therapists with less seniority.

New patients are crowding into the ER, setting records for the number seen per day. They are coming from Oak Forest and from dozens of private hospitals, where thousands of patients are no longer welcome since they lost their health insurance.

The day after the layoffs, management asked the remaining respiratory therapists to pick up night shifts and work overtime! The therapists have been actively fighting these layoffs. Most of the night shift went as a unified group to protest to the head of the Intensive Care Unit. A few days later, fifteen workers went to SEIU union headquarters to confront the union president. Workers were invited to a negotiation that morning that resulted in a week’s postponement of the layoffs. Respiratory therapy workers have been at every one of the three pickets held in front of the hospital since October.

The lead organizing force for this demonstration was a community group called Chicago Healthcare Justice, which was founded a year ago. Members have been discussing healthcare, racism and capitalism, and also participating in some rallies and demonstrations with the Occupy movement and others.

These young workers felt they were finally ready to try to lead an action. They decided to demonstrate against the attacks on health workers and patients at Stroger Hospital. Two members researched the history of Cook County healthcare as well as current spending and put it together into a fact-filled flier. The flier demonstrated that Cook County has been cutting back on services and staff since long before the Great Recession, which is used to justify current cuts. Our group then spent time at Occupy Chicago events promoting the rally, making contacts and discussing the movement’s issues. Although this action was relatively small in size, it was a huge step forward for the Chicago Healthcare Justice group.

One member of the group translated the leaflet into Spanish for distribution  by the family of one of the former Oak Forest ventilator patients, who now lives in the Medical ICU at Stroger. Protests at Stroger have maintained attention on this patient, David Moreno, and probably prevented the hospital bosses from sending him to a death-trap nursing home, as they did with some of his fellow Oak Forest patients, now deceased.

Fighting against every attack is essential but is not enough. We know this was a modest step. We also know that the only way workers have ever won anything from the bosses is by fighting back. We plan to take the momentum from this action into the new year and keep learning and fighting back together.

Those of us in Progressive Labor Party will continue pointing out the failures of capitalism and the desperate need for a better, communist world. We will struggle to win these workers to join PLP.

U.S. imperialists’ face-off with Iran’s nuclear-bent bosses is escalating towards war. At stake is control over the Middle East and its increasingly strategic energy resources. According to CNN, Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “is quietly leading the ongoing military planning for an attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons in the event the president gives the order to do so” (12/20/11).

In the latest round meanwhile, Obama tried to slap tighter financial sanctions on Iran unless it gave up its nuke program. In turn, Iran’s naval brass threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz. Virtually all of the oil and gas exports of Iraq and Kuwait and more than half of Saudi Arabia’s pass through that waterway sails. All of these resources are dominated by U.S. and British oil giants.

Then Obama sent an aircraft carrier group through the strait while the Iranian navy practiced maneuvers nearby. Obama also pointedly announced a “$30 billion sale to Saudi Arabia of advanced-model U.S. F-15 fighter jets and associated weapons systems” amid “recent irrational behavior by the Tehran government” (Voice of America, 12/29/11). In direct response, Iran “test-fired a medium-range surface-to-air missile near the strategic Strait” (VOA, 1/1/12). Iran warned it would not accept return of the aircraft carriers.  

China-Russia-Iran Axis Speeds Ayatollahs’ A-Bomb

Iran’s rulers have since eased off shutting Hormuz, since its closure would also deprive themselves of oil export revenue and cut off their main customer, China. But aided by the anti-U.S. coalition, they remain determined to build a bomb. The Washington Post (11/7/11) reported:

Intelligence provided to U.N. nuclear officials shows that Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon, receiving assistance from foreign scientists to overcome key technical hurdles....Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction....Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea [both heavily influenced by China — ed.] also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability.

Rockefeller Ruling-Class Wing Chanting ‘Bomb Iran’

Consequently, calls in the U.S. for blasting Iran’s nuke plants have recently expanded from the Israel lobby to the highest capitalist circles. The imperialist, Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) speaks for its funders: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and banks like JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. A CFR headline in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs says it all: “Time to Attack Iran.”

The article’s author, Matthew Kroenig, has Obama’s ear. From July 2010 to July 2011, he was a special adviser in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, “responsible for defense strategy and policy on Iran.” A nuked-up Iran, Kroenig warns, could hamstring future U.S. invasions of energy goldmines Saudi Arabia and Iraq: “With atomic power behind it, Iran could threaten any U.S. political or military initiative in the Middle East with nuclear war, forcing Washington to think twice before acting in the region.”

U.S. ‘Surgical’ Strike Could Go Global

Ruling-class mouthpiece Kroenig absurdly proposes a moderately deadly “hit and run.” He ignores the realities of the sharpening imperialist rivalry and the related and growing importance of oil, the lifeblood of capitalism, especially in its cheap and highly profitable Middle East form:

Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war. Faced with that decision, the United States should conduct a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, absorb an inevitable round of retaliation, and then seek to quickly de-escalate the crisis. Addressing the threat now will spare the United States from confronting a far more dangerous situation in the future.

U.S. bosses, however, face problems in their attempts to avoid a more widespread armed conflict. First, the U.S. military is already stretched thin. It must defend more than seven hundred bases worldwide, and is especially dependent on an all-volunteer army. Second, Iranian retaliation might be more drastic than Kroenig thinks. “Iran said Monday it had successfully test-fired a long-range missile during its naval exercise in the Gulf, flexing its military muscle to show it could hit Israel and U.S. bases in the region if attacked” (MSNBC, 1/2/12).

Then there are the inevitable entangling interests and alliances of capitalism. Another Rockefeller-bankrolled think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), identified these “regions of competition” as inseparable from the oil dogfight now centering on Iran: “Gulf Cooperation Council countries [including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and U.S. Fifth Fleet host Bahrain], Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and Asia, Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil” (Iran and the Threat to ‘Close’ the Gulf, CSIS website, 12/29/11).

Wider wars will likely result from a U.S. attack on Iran. Planning the attack and awaiting Obama’s order, General Dempsey said, “Any [Iranian] miscalculation could mean that we are drawn into conflict, and that would be a tragedy for the region and the world” (CNN, 12/20/11).

U.S. rulers have employed direct military action in the Middle East since 1979, when Iran’s Islamist oil barons booted out Shah Reza Pahlavi, the Exxon/Rockefeller puppet whom the U.S. CIA had installed in power. U.S. influence in this cornerstone of its worldwide empire continues to erode. In response, U.S. rulers must forcibly claw back strategic lost territories, like Iraq and Iran, and militarize for its inevitable confrontation with strengthening imperialist foes China and Russia. Whether they can accomplish these goals in the face of their own internal disunity is another question (and the subject of coming CHALLENGE articles). Their struggle is further complicated by the worldwide economic crisis that threatens both U.S. and European stability.

Working Class Must Rise Up Against Capitalism’s Mass Murder

The global scramble for energy profits has already killed millions of working class Iraqis and thousands of their working class brothers and sisters in the U.S. military. This imperialist competition is killing still more in Afghanistan and Pakistan. With Chinese and Russian involvement and the nuclear wildcard, an Iran oil war could prove far deadlier still for the international working class.

The only way to stop the worsening murder and misery inflicted on our class by oil-soaked billionaires is to destroy the profit system itself and replace it with working-class rule. Tens of millions of workers throughout the world are already resisting the bosses’ attacks. Strikes and demonstrations are on the rise in the Middle East, the European Union, Latin America, China, Pakistan, India, and — with the Occupy movement — in the U.S.

But to smash capitalism, the root cause of this misery, requires communist leadership to point the way. It’s not enough to replace one set of capitalist murderers for another; the entire, horrific profit system must be replaced with workers’ power. A new system must be erected to produce for workers’ needs, not bosses’ profits — the source of racism, sexism, mass unemployment, poverty and unceasing wars.

That new system, our Party’s ultimate aim, can be won only through communist revolution.

Recent CHALLENGE articles about fascism’s growth in Haiti (see issue 12/14/11) and its attacks on the Occupy movements worldwide inspired me to report recent efforts to build PLP amid growing fascism in Chicago.

I am a laid-off black schoolteacher here, among the disproportionate number of laid-off black teachers. These racist layoffs and those of all groups reflect the economic and political crises of capitalism.

Global fascism and its imperialist wars make workers’ lives miserable, attacking the working class in many ways. One tactic is forcing government employees (teachers, health workers, among others) to accept lower living standards — reduced wages, skimpier benefits and lousier working conditions. For teachers, this includes layoffs, denied pay raises (or lower pay scales, inducing them to move to a growing number of higher-paying charter schools), more expensive health care coverage and increasingly poor working conditions.

In education, one such condition is overcrowded classrooms. More students per teacher are cheaper for capitalists, whose gain is the working class’s loss in schools. Classroom overcrowding reduces the quality of education for students, often implemented in a racist way. Black and Latino students, already enduring racist oppression, are stuffed into learning environments ill designed to meet their needs.

Then there’s the increased repression of those who fight these attacks. Because of my activism on the local school Council, the administration took special measures to eliminate my position and lay me off. My co-workers elected me to be a

teacher representative on the Council. I and other community members challenged the principal’s hiring of an extra administrator/assistant principal (to terrorize teachers) and an armed off-duty cop (to terrorize students). Standing up to these attacks ensured my trip to the reassigned teacher pool.

The fact that the administrators are black shows that racism is not about the perpetrators’ color but rather about the racist conditions they help enforce.

The school is now battling closure. Staff members, food service and custodial workers will lose their jobs. Students will be forced to attend schools miles from home. Some will cross dangerous gang territories and/or attend schools where academic ratings are even lower than their current school. School bosses are funding newer computer technology in the “closing” building, preparing to re-open it as a charter or “selective enrollment” school which won’t serve the students of this area.

Community organizations are campaigning to keep this school and several others open. These efforts are well-intentioned, carried out by honest people, knowledgeable about organizing. Parents wanting a good education for their children and grandchildren are joining this effort. Unfortunately, they’re organizing around capitalist liberal principles that will fail at best, and at worst will lead workers away from PLP’s revolutionary communist principles.

Both before and after my layoff I’ve distributed CHALLENGE to several school staff members and won some workers to continue distributing the paper in my absence. I still meet with school staff and have remained active in the community organizing efforts. One teacher has attended a Party club meeting and I’ve had political discussions with others. I’ve also encouraged a few 8th graders and their parents to read the paper and check the PLP website.

I will continue to build relationships with co-workers and friends and increase distribution of CHALLENGE and other PLP documents. I’ll write more for CHALLENGE, enabling my friends to see that our conversations are part of a global movement to free the working class from the bonds of capitalism. We want to win people to see that education under capitalism only serves the system. It can never provide for workers’ needs. I’m committed to building my confidence in the workers and the workers’ confidence in our Party that is theirs to join and build.