The leaders of the three unions at Downstate won’t lead that fight. They aren´t interested in fighting the bosses. They prefer to be on their side and they pin their hopes on making deals with politicians. One of the unions, CSEA, even agreed to a contract that gave no raise for 2011 or 2012, and only a “bonus” for 2013. It took away nine days pay while imposing higher deductions for health care. Despite that deal, there have been 400 layoff letters, and 600 more are on the way. So much for relying on the politicians.
But we, the workers, have recent examples, such as the Chicago teachers’ strike, where workers, students, parents and the community united to grow the capacity and potential of the workers. At Downstate we have to place ourselves on red alert, and stand up and fight against the layoffs and the passivity of the unions. The fight can give us what the boss wants to take away.  
The U.S. capitalists are trying to squeeze from workers the cost of the bosses’ battle with other imperialists for “top-dog” status in the world. But that doesn’t mean they are broke. They are happy to spend money on themselves. They say there´s no money to maintain the hospital, but they’ve given out contracts for new buildings. The administrators’ salaries used to reach $500,000 a year — but now they’ve gone up to over $700,000! There´s money. We the workers, provide the state with taxes. We pay for everything, including their wars. When politicians make deals to make each other rich, that is our money, too. We are paying the money that could maintain our hospital and our jobs — but it is being used against us. The bosses never have been, and never will be interested in solving our problems. Let’s remember that all the benefits we have are a product of our fight; nothing has been given to us by the bosses.
But to change all this, we must do more. We have held protests with the community, students and patients. Hundreds have signed up for a protest in Albany January 8th.  But we need more: A permanent campaign, with weekly protests in the entrances of the hospital and around it, forums, talks and preparation for a strike to stop the closing.
In the long run, the working class needs much more. Capitalists don´t care about our health. PLP fights for class consciousness, for workers understanding and acting as a class against our enemy, the bosses. We must organize workers to once and for all destroy this system of misery, and to build  a new society, run by workers, which will make healthcare a priority. JOIN US!

LILLE, FRANCE, January 12 — Today some 200 supporters rallied to back the 71-day hunger strike by 41 undocumented workers who represent the demands of 161 of their sisters and brothers for work papers for all. The action of these immigrant workers has exposed the utter disregard of the working class by the racist, “lesser-evil” Socialist government which has refused to issue these papers. More support has come from other undocumented workers who occupied the royal cathedral in Saint Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, on January 9. The strikers initially occupied the Fives-Lille Protestant church but were evicted. Since then, about 40 have lived in a tent in front of Saint Maurice’s church in downtown Lille.
The racist Lille prefecture (the central government’s local representative) has hypocritically blamed the victims, mainly Algerian but also Guinean and Thai workers, for the processing delay, saying only five workers have filed “proper” requests for papers. But eligibility depends on filing eight pay stubs which is impossible since they have been working in the underground economy and therefore lack such proof.
It’s the nature of capitalism which establishes national borders — mostly through wars with rivals — and then uses nationality as a weapon to divide and exploit workers. And President François Hollande’s Socialist government, which enforces this profit system, uses this weapon to help maintain that system. That’s why Progressive Labor Party champions the slogan “Smash All Borders!” and destruction of the system that creates them.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls said, “We aren’t going to legalize 50, 100, 200, or 300 requests for papers because associations have engaged in an action.” This is the same racist who as mayor of Evry in June 2009 complained that there were too many “non-whites” selling things at the local flea market.
The prefecture demands that the group, the “Collectif des sans-papiers du 59,” constitute itself as a legal entity as a precondition for continued negotiations. A member of the Socialist Party first secretary Harlem Désir’s inner circle said, “The party totally supports the government’s immigration policy.”
Meanwhile, the hunger strikers’ condition worsens. Their number has fallen from 126 to 28. Three have been hospitalized. Two Algerian workers were deported after striking for 60 days. The undocumented workers have been drinking sugar water daily, and are now taking vitamins intravenously. One worker explained that he “was experiencing abdominal pain, lost a lot of hair and my teeth were crumbling. I lost 33 pounds in 49 days.” Others have developed similar symptoms, including vomiting and diarrhea. “The health of many was already poor due to their living conditions as undocumented workers,” said supporter Gérard Minet.
Nutritionists find it incredible that they’ve held out for over two months. One said, “You can’t be certain that there won’t be consequences afterwards. Beyond two and a half months, you’re in danger of dying.”
But the fact is capitalists don’t care if these workers die. (UK’s infamous Margaret Thatcher refusal to negotiate with imprisoned IRA hunger strikers led to the starvation deaths of ten of them.) After all, their imperialist wars kill tens of millions. And their disregard for the health and safety of factory workers in the name of profits is all too well known, as the recent murder of garment workers in Bangladesh in fires in buildings with locked exits vividly illustrates.
We fully support the aspirations of these undocumented workers and understand that hunger strikes call attention to the system’s oppression. But given capitalism’s view of workers as commodities to be exploited and then tossed on the scrap heap when they no longer can produce profit, hunger strikes are very limited in their ability to alleviate workers’ suffering.
Workers must support the demands of these undocumented sisters and brothers but must also recognize that only the complete destruction of the system that creates these conditions and divisions can end this oppression. That’s what the goal of communist revolution is all about.

LATE BULLETIN — January 14 — The Lille undocumented workers ended their 73-day hunger strike yesterday following proposals made by the prefecture. Nine were granted papers and seven others’ papers were in the works. One worker, Alouache, who had filed his request a year ago, said, “We will go for a health check-up. This is what we have to do to get papers.”

Jerusalem, Palestine, January 4 — Working-class activists from all over Israel-Palestine, both Jewish and Arab, have visited the East Jerusalem village-neighborhood of Issawiyye to show solidarity with the locals in the face of prolonged police terrorism against the villagers. Today, fifty activists of the Tarabut broad-left movement came to demonstrate against this police brutality. Three PLers, as well as an activist from Tarabut came to show solidarity as well and visited the homes of several villagers whose sons and daughter have been brutalized by the racist Israeli cops.
Before the 1967 war, Issawiyye was an agricultural village on what was then the border between Israel and Jordan, on the Jordanian side. In 1967, Israel conquered East Jerusalem (as well as the entire West Bank and Gaza) and soon annexed the villages in East Jerusalem to its territory. The villagers have blue Israeli IDs and can vote in the municipal elections, but cannot vote in the national elections. Many of the villagers’ lands were confiscated, forcing them to abandon agriculture and become low-paid workers for Israeli bosses in West Jerusalem.
Contrary to what many Israelis believe (misled by the racist media), the residents of East Jerusalem pay taxes in full but do not receive any decent services from either the state or the municipality. In fact, even a small debt owed by the Issawiyye villagers to the tax authorities is met with brutal repression and repossessions. 
The village’s infrastructure is horribly substandard, with little sanitation and narrow, dangerous roads in terrible condition. The village’s children have no facilities available for them except for the (under-funded) schools — no parks, no clubs, nothing to do after school. City hall never gives locals any building permits, and then charges them with “illegal construction” when they build homes for their children on their own land. This usually leads to house demolitions.
Adding insult to injury, the Israeli police terrorize the villagers, especially the youth. We visited the home of a 17-year-old who was recently jailed for eight days for “stone throwing” suspicions. No charges were ever submitted and the authorities have no clear evidence of any crime, but this did not bother the bosses’ court. As the villagers have told us, “the moment the judge hears that the defendant is from Issawiye, he immediately prolongs the arrest.”
Another youth, a 12-year-old who suffers from a tumor in one of his eyes since his birth, was arrested last month and interrogated so aggressively that his sick eye shed blood due to the stress he was in. No charges were ever pressed in his case.
Last June cops came to another family in the village we visited, broke their front door with a massive sledgehammer, arrested the family’s father, his 21-year old-daughter and two more sons, beat them up and then charged them with “assaulting a police officers.”
Last month again, the cops came to terrorize a group of village kids who were playing soccer. One  18-year-old young man, tried to escape the cops by climbing a wall. The cops shot him three times with “rubber bullets” (regular bullets coated with rubber to slightly reduce their lethality), causing him to fall from the wall. The cops grabbed him and took him to the police station, where he was severely beaten and his arm was broken by the fascist cops. He was then interrogated for long hours, and only after midnight was he brought to a hospital. When the cops heard that he needed to be operated on, they ran away as fast as they could to avoid blame.
Faced with this kind of fascist terror, it is natural that the village’s enraged children throw stones, from time to time, on cops and people they suspect are undercover cops. This, of course, is used as an excuse by the cops, many of them undercover, to rampage through the village. We in PLP need to transform the youth’s anger into revolt against the entire capitalist system these cops defend.
The villagers have sometimes been demoralized by years of police terrorism, but they are now trying to build local and international solidarity with their plight. The plan is to hold weekly demonstrations in the village to smash the racist KKKops and demand better infrastructure and services for the village. We in PLP will, of course, join these demonstrations and raise our red flag in them.


NEW YORK CITY, January 14 — Gentrification is a racist policy used by real estate profiteers, landlords, bankers, investors, educational institutions and government politicians to transform mostly black and Latino low-income neighborhoods into high-rent, mostly white enclaves. Landlords empty buildings, abandon them and declare neighborhoods “blighted.”
Columbia University is currently building a satellite campus in Manhattan’s West Harlem that will raise rents in the surrounding areas.
Landlords spread racist lies, saying black and Latino tenants in low-income neighborhoods are “dirty” or “criminals,” or that too many people and children live in the apartments and destroy property. Facing harassment, tenants move, seeking a better situation but where conditions turn out to be worse, crowded and neglected. The new neighborhood is often further from workplaces and has large numbers of unemployed.
The average price of condos here is 1.4 million dollars. Monthly rents run from $2,000 to 10,000. Condo prices in lower and mid-town Manhattan can reach as high as $90 million. Meanwhile 60 percent of NYC tenants earn $50,000 a year or below, and 30% of those earn under $30,000.
Such tenants are forced to flee these high-rent areas.
Neighborhoods change, become “hip.” Businesses cater to high-rent tenants, opening pricey markets and stores. Williamsburg in Brooklyn has been gentrified and now it’s spreading to surrounding boro neighborhoods, especially Bushwick. Bushwick’s white tenant population has grown by 19.7 percent. Agencies sometimes no longer rent to Spanish-speaking tenants.
PL’ers are helping to build a fight-back in Bushwick. We must unite black, Latino, Asian and white working-class tenants.
Demand:
Only low-rent housing
Turn vacant buildings into good low-income housing
Take over expensive condo buildings and change them into good low-rent apartments
Immediate low-income housing for families and individuals in shelters and for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Lower rents now! Low-income families can’t pay $1,200 to $2,600 and more in rent. There are thousands of multi-millionaires and scores of billionaires in NYC. Landlords and their agents are raking in obscenely high rents on the backs of the working class.
Capitalism can not and will not provide decent affordable housing for the working class, only profits for the capitalists. We need to overthrow capitalism with communist revolution.
Communists believe that consciousness of how capitalism works is a powerful tool in the hands of the working class. We believe it’s not for the working class to make reformist compromises with the capitalists. It’s our job to unite and fight for what we need. The working class must be bold and purposeful.
Communists believe that, over time, workers will join PLP in ever greater numbers and build the fight for communism, a society in which the working class will hold all power. We will provide housing for the working class in an egalitarian society. To this goal we dedicate ourselves now in the fight against racist gentrification.