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    Fight Oakland School Closings

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    22 June 2012 273 hits

    OAKLAND CALIFORNIA, June 18 — PL’ers along with parents, teachers, students and Occupy Oakland Education have been fighting the closing of five Oakland elementary schools that serve mainly black and Latino youths. We’re currently occupying Lakeview Elementary in Oakland and are running a free summer school, “The People’s School.”

    The bosses already decided the fate of the schools. Lakeview Elementary is scheduled to be transformed into Administrative Offices. Another will become a charter school, one is being leased to neighboring Emeryville, (for revenue) and the other three will close, pushing their students elsewhere creating even more overcrowding.  

    In discussions with people, we are working to make communist ideas the topic of conversation. (More next issue.)

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    Workers, Parents, Students Unite: No to Layoffs!

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    22 June 2012 268 hits

    NEWARK, NJ, June 4 — The attacks on students and education workers in the Newark Public Schools are continuing.  As previously reported in CHALLENGE, there have been budget cuts, school closings and dual locations of charter schools.  The newest attack comes in the form of layoffs of about 200 teachers and support staff.  These workers were notified a month before school ended that their positions will be eliminated next fall because of budget cuts.

    These attacks are part of a larger, nationwide plan to “reshape education in the United States and put this country on track to be an educational, economic, military, and diplomatic global leader” (cfr.org — U.S. Education Reform and National Security).  In other words, the ruling class will continue to use the education system to prepare the working class to fight in imperialist wars and maintain U.S. domination throughout the world.

    In response to the latest attacks, a newly formed caucus in the Newark Teachers Union organized a demonstration of over 200 education workers, community activists, parents and students outside the Newark Board of Education.  This call for worker-parent-student unity reflected the struggle within the caucus to develop class consciousness.  Through weekly caucus meetings, members and friends of Progressive Labor Party have fought for all caucus members to understand that an attack on one is an attack on all.  

    Now the real work begins.  As our base has expanded, the bosses’ attacks have given us many more opportunities to engage with our co-workers, students and parents.  In one school, a PLP member struggled with her co-workers and their initial response to “lay low.”  As individuals, she pointed out, we are more susceptible to the bosses’ attacks. Only when we unite do we realize the potential and strength of the working class.

    By fighting these attacks against the schools, we will organize, build our CHALLENGE networks and recruit new members.  The struggle continues.

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    Thousands March vs. Israeli Rulers’ Apartheid

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    22 June 2012 286 hits

    TEL-AVIV, ISRAEL-PAESTINE, June 9 — Thousands of workers and activists, both Jewish and Arab, marched in central Tel-Aviv . They protested the apartheid enacted by the Israeli regime against Palestinians in the West Bank and within the “green line” (the western part of historic Palestine). This rally came at the time when the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to build hundreds of new apartments in West Bank settlements, marketed exclusively to well-off religious Jewish settlers. The marchers chanted “Occupation is a Crime — Freedom Now for Palestine!” “Jaffa and Ramallah — the same Revolution” and “The People Demand to End the Occupation.”

    Many of the rally’s leaders, however, were liberals and revisionists (“leftists” in words, but not in actions), who also added slogans such as “Struggle for Peace,” “No Peace, No Security — Disband the Government” and “Bring Down the Government.” While we in PLP wish all working people around the world to live a peaceful life free from war and oppression, we understand that the only way to achieve this is by an armed workers’ revolution and open class war against capitalism and imperialism, not “peace” between capitalist leaders such as Netanyahu and Abbas. 

    Even if the Netanyahu government will be “brought down,” the capitalist alternative to him and his ministers are more of the same. The real enemy is not only the current administration, but the capitalist regime in general. Another weakness of the march was that almost all the slogans targeted only the West Bank “occupation” since 1967, but not the racist, fascist apartheid regime in the western part of Palestine since 1948; workers on both side of the apartheid fence must unite and smash all forms of the Zionist apartheid regime, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean sea.

    Two PL’ers took part in this rally and marched up front, distributing dozens of leaflets calling for “Neither Two States Nor One State - but Workers’ Power” and leading several other workers in chanting “The Answer to Apartheid is Revolution!” and “Tel-Aviv-Jaffa, Gaza — Same Revolution!” The international Progressive Labor Party calls for a united, communist-led struggle of workers from all nations against racism, imperialist war and capitalism and for a worldwide communist revolution. We PL’ers  fight for this goal in our area. We strive to unite all workers from both ethnicities to smash the racist Zionist state and build towards a red Middle East and a borderless communist world.

    Workers of the World - Unite!

    [A Note on the term “Occupation:”  When many in the U.S. think about “Occupation” or “Occupy,” they now think about the tent movement of the working youth and students against Wall Street and the rest of U.S. imperialism. However, when we in Israel-Palestine talk about the “Occupation,” we talk about the fascist military occupation of most of historic Palestine by the state of Israel.]

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    Jim Crow Israeli Style

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    22 June 2012 295 hits

    TEL-AVIV, ISRAEL-PALESTINE, June 11 —Dozens of immigrant refugees, mostly black workers who fled the horrors of war and fascism in Eastern Africa, were rounded up today by the “Oz” unit of the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs (the equivalent of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit.) Violently arrested in the early hours of the morning, these workers were hauled off to detention centers, pending their deportation back to war-torn, famine-struck South Sudan or overtly fascist Eritrea.

    This pogrom, carried out under the bosses’ laws, is only the latest attack in the Israeli ruling class’s campaign against the so-called “infiltrators,” workers who came to Israel either as refugees or as immigrants from East Africa. On May 23rd, a mass rally of racists in south Tel-Aviv was led by Knesset Members Regev, Ben-Ari and Danon. During this violent rally, several black passerbys were attacked (with the racists calling them “Dirty N****,”) and a pub belonging to the African community was vandalized and robbed by the incited mob.

    In the last few months, attacks against black workers are becoming commonplace in Israel. The bosses’ politicians blame these refugees and immigrants for all the problems of capitalism, namely the deterioration of slums, unemployment, crime and even disease. Gangs of fascist criminal youth terrorize and rob black people in southern Tel-Aviv, KKK style. The bosses’ politicians, aping the Nazis, even called these refugees a “cancer.”

    But who are these refugees and why have they come to Israel-Palestine? Most come from two countries: Sudan and Eritrea. The Chinese capitalists dominate the government of North Sudan (which has a Muslim majority,) while their U.S. rivals have long funded the Christian revolt of South Sudan against the northern government, all in the struggle for Sudan’s oil reserves. The result? A bloody civil war killing millions and pushing millions more into homelessness and famine. In Eritrea, the murderous fascist government, a close ally of the Israeli regime and a major client of the Israeli Military Industries, enslaves the working class with hard labor for starvation pay in the name of “National Service.” Others are jailed or murdered because they dare to speak against the regime.

    Because of these horrors, caused by imperialism and its local servants, many East African workers flee Sudan and Eritrea on foot, heading to Israel-Palestine through Egypt. In Sinai they are sometimes robbed and kidnapped by local criminal elements until ransomed by their families, enduring physical and sexual abuse while in captivity.

    When they finally reach the border between Egypt and Israel, the Egyptian border guards shoot them. Whoever survives crawls to Israel through the barbed-wire border fence. The Israeli border Guards round them up, give them basic medical treatment and jail them for a day or two, then load them on busses and drive them to southern Tel-Aviv. There they are left to their own devices without money, a home, appropriate clothes or food.

    The Israeli government does not grant them the official status of refugee. Therefore, based on the racist Israeli law, they are not allowed to work legally, are not entitled to public healthcare and thus have no money for food or housing. These refugee and immigrant workers are forced to work illegally, which usually means being super-exploited by Israeli bosses and being paid far less than even a minimum wage. This leads to super-profits, and, especially, to driving down the wages of other workers by means of competition.

    This shows how racism divides workers while profiting the capitalists. By inciting Jewish workers against their black brothers and sisters, the Israeli ruling class separates and weakens the Jewish, Arab and African workers. It keeps the African workers in constant fear of arrest or deportation, making them unlikely to fight for better pay or work conditions, not to mention for revolution.

    Having Africans and Arabs as scapegoats also benefits the rich. Instead of having workers blame them for the horrors of capitalism, workers blame each other for crime, disease, poor housing conditions and unemployment. While the Israeli government makes a fuss over the “Refugee Problem,” the workers are blinded to the open attacks on their livelihood like tax hikes, budget cuts, and even possible war with Iran.

    The only answer to this virulent racism is for us, workers and unemployed worldwide, of all races and creeds, to unite, cast out the racist ideas and leaders, and build our own working-class unity against the real enemy, the bosses and their state-machine. Progressive Labor Party fights for a communist workers’ world with no borders and no racism, where all workers will have access to housing, food, education, healthcare and all according to need.  We will work together based on our commitment for a better future. Join us!

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    French Elections: Heads Bosses Win, Tails Workers Lose

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    22 June 2012 266 hits

    PARIS, June 18 — Whatever the outcome of the June 17 second round of legislative elections, the workers will be the losers based on French bosses’ plans A and B.

    Plan A is a socialist government intended to disarm workers as the bosses continue to attack using austerity plans to please the finance capitalists who own France’s sovereign debt. 

    The first round of legislative elections on June 10 showed that Socialist Party president François Hollande succeeded in mobilizing working-class voters with a few crumbs. By decree, he “generously” restored retirement at 60 for workers who began working before age 18 and who have worked continuously for 41 years. The head of France’s largest union, the General Confederation of Labour, hailed this mini-measure as an historic “European event.”

    Other mini-measures are a 25 percent hike in back-to-school aid for low-income families’ school supplies; a promised 1 percent increase in the minimum wage in July; and wage and benefit limits for public-sector company bosses.

    Only 56 percent of the voters went to the polls, a record low. However, enough working-class voters did cast ballots to put the Socialists in the leading position for the elections’ second round in which Hollande won a majority in the National Assembly. This would allow the Socialists to rule without their junior partners in the Green and Left Front parties.

    However, Hollande is dispelling any illusions about his future policies. He warned the Greeks — prior to their June 17 balloting — that “if the impression is given that the Greeks want to distance themselves from the [austerity] commitments they have made and to abandon all perspective of economic recovery, then there will be countries that will prefer to end Greek presence in the euro zone” — and then had the gall to pretend he wasn’t threatening Greek workers!

    Hollande will not hesitate to impose similar austerity measures on workers. A post-election 50-billion-euro [US $60 billion] cut in workers’ social benefits over the next five years is in his presidential campaign platform.

    Hollande is expected to cut spending on labor, ecology, aid to cities, social housing, health care and retirement pensions, and push through another increase in the retirement age, despite the partial return to retirement at 60 for 100,000 workers (of the 600,000 workers retiring at 62 each year).

    The Socialist Party program also provides for using half the money saved through government budget cuts to pay off the finance capitalist who won France’s soverign debt, whichs stands at $2.4 trillion. To do this, the Socialists will have to cut $20 billion from governemnt services (with $10 billon going to reduce the budget deficit, and $10 billon going to reduce the soverign debt). If workers rebel against these austerity measures, then it’s:

    Plan B 

    The Front National finished third in the April 22 presidential elections with 6.4 million votes. Sarkozy’s UMP (Union for a Popular Movement)party has already formed an unofficial alliance with the Front National against the Socialist Party. UMP officials have praised its values and even support Marine Le Pen’s election to the National Assembly. UMP leader Jean-François Copé has called for updating UMP’s program to move it closer to the fascists. 

    The fascist Front National has undergone a facelift since Marine Le Pen succeeded her father as party president in 2011. Although she’s smoother than her father, the party program remains fascist. Notably:

       • Militarist — proposing creation of a 50,000-soldier National Guard, presumably to repress worker rebellions, and a naval construction program to fight “Asian navies”;

       • Nationalist — proposing a program to indoctrinate government workers in “the meaning of the state and patriotism”;

       • Racist — proposing “a thorough-going reform of the law on French nationality,” prohibiting public health care for, and demonstrations by and for, undocumented immigrants, and making “anti-French racism” a crime;

       • Repressive — proposing 40,000 new prison cells and reintroducing the death penalty, as well as increasing the punishment for “verbal violence” against cops, doubling the number of anti-crime brigade cops, and filling the streets with plainclothes cops.

    Despite this, the Front National has supposedly become respectable. Throughout his five-year term, right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy adopted the positions of the Front National, trying to counter his unpopularity, and thereby popularized its fascist ideas.

    The Front National has built a base in the working class. According to an April 2012 opinion poll, in the presidential elections Marine Le Pen won 29 percent of the blue-collar worker vote compared to 27 percent for Socialist Hollande, 19 percent for Sarkozy, and 11 percent for the Left Front.

    Historically, this is the weakness of the French left. There’s been no tradition of disruption of fascist marches, rallies and meetings, while for decades the Front National has been able to hold profascist “Joan of Arc rallies” on May Day in Paris.

    Right now the bosses are relying on Plan A — a Socialist government to impose austerity measures on the working class. If working-class rebellion threatens that agenda, Plan B can move to outright fascism, possibly through a joint UMP-Front National government.

    The future holds very bitter struggles for the working class. The only way to ensure victory is to build a revolutionary communist party to destroy capitalism and the fascism that capitalism breeds.

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    4. Capitalism Caused the Crisis

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