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    Racist Unemployment: A Vicious Circle Destroying Workers’ Lives

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    20 January 2012 296 hits

    NEW YORK CITY, December 10 — More than forty people came together at a church here to discuss the devastating impact of unemployment on all workers, as well as the racist attacks on education and healthcare in immigrant communities.

    A pediatrician reported that job losses in poor neighborhoods cause increases in homelessness, domestic violence, poor nutrition and obesity, along with higher rates of asthma and other chronic diseases. Children suffer from higher stress, anxiety and low self-esteem, which contribute to behavior problems and low grades in school.

    Unemployment Cuts Workers’ Health

    As unemployment worsens, more workers lose health coverage and are unable to pay for the high cost of private insurance. Due to the bosses’ financial crisis and an ever-growing war budget, massive cuts in public services and the safety net are forcing the closing of hospitals, layoffs of healthcare providers, and reduced access to wellness or prevention programs in working-class communities.

    An immigrant worker pointed out that these problems are even more severe in immigrant communities because of racist laws and the scapegoating of undocumented workers. Some documented immigrants are blaming the undocumented for the loss of jobs, causing division when there needs to be unity to fight the bosses. More arrests and higher deportation rates are dividing families and making them more impoverished. The fear of deportation makes the undocumented easier targets for super-exploitation. They are working harder for even less pay, and are less likely to seek healthcare when ill.

    With the U.S. economy’s loss of millions of “living-wage” jobs in the manufacturing sector, many working-class students are forced to defer entry into the job market. As college tuition costs rise and cuts are made in traditional scholarship grants and lower-cost government loans, these students are at the mercy of the private-sector student loan racket, which exploits them with high interest rates. With few good-paying jobs available after they graduate, they may never get out of debt.

    Bosses Say: ‘No Job? Join the Army’

    The major reason for all of these cutbacks is the huge outlay the bosses need to defend the U.S. oil empire. As rising military spending destroys the ability of all workers to make a decent living, the capitalist war-makers recruit working-class children into the army with promises of teaching them useful skills, getting them into college and paying off their student loans. They will say anything to get young workers to fight and kill other working-class youth around the world for the imperialist needs of the ruling class.

    After the panel presentation, we broke into groups to come up with actions and fight-back opportunities to take to our communities. We all agreed that we can’t rely on the government to help us. Our working-class communities must come together to resolve these issues.

    In a joint action with Occupy Wall Street, we are planning to co-sponsor a press conference and rally outside a hotel that is hosting a power breakfast of financiers, politicians and other capitalists. Their topic: how to “solve” the hospital crisis in Brooklyn (see page 4). At $75 a plate, you can be sure the interests of the working class will not be on the menu.

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    PLP Forging Ahead in Tanzania

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    20 January 2012 277 hits

    DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, January 7 — Recently, a group of CHALLENGE readers met here for a discussion about our Party and its ideas. First the group examined Obama’s war in Libya. When he was elected, many people in East Africa had mistakenly believed that his policies would help Africa rather than initiate invasions and assassinations of African leaders. However, this U.S.-backed invasion exposed the “First U.S. African President” as pursuing the same oil-driven imperialist foreign policy as George Bush. In the discussion, Party members debunked the lie of “humanitarian intervention” (i.e., protecting civilian lives) as nothing but a cover for U.S. imperialism. 

    Next the group confronted the challenges of building the communist movement in Tanzania where widespread anger at the government’s corrupt collusion with foreign and local big business exists side-by-side with a culture of passivity and resignation. The Tanzanian public sector trade unions, for example, are big on talk but short on action, leaving government workers defenseless against layoffs and oppressive working conditions.

    Spirit of Rebellion Growing

    The opposition party, Chadema, is as corrupt as the ruling party, CCM (Party of the Revolution). Chadema is opportunistically trying to take advantage of widespread discontent — especially among unemployed youth — to gain power for itself. The Tanzanian comrades agreed that despite Chadema’s motives, its militant condemnation of CCM is inspiring workers to have the courage to speak out and fight back. PL’ers pointed out that this spirit of rebellion will be squandered unless it is organized and led by communists.

    A comrade from U.S. explained how the liberalism trap works in the U.S. where the Democrats are trying to co-opt the Occupy movement in order to help Obama’s election campaign and keep its supporters focused on reform rather than revolution. In Tanzania, as everywhere else in the world, the electoral system is used to control the working class rather than serve its needs. History has shown that only communists will lead an uncompromising fight on behalf of the working class.

    Plenty of Graduates — But No Jobs

    Destroying capitalism and replacing it with communism seemed like a far-away dream to some of our comrades in Tanzania until the discussion moved to the deep crisis facing global capitalism, which is opening up opportunities for our movement internationally. For example, In Tanzania, secondary schools and universities are cranking out tens of thousands of graduates with credentials and high expectations for a better life but with almost no chance of employment. These youth are a natural base for the international communist movement we’re building.

    Another example is the 40 people in Dar es Salaam who died needlessly from flooding just before Christmas. Last fall, CCM used helicopters to win people to vote for them in the elections, but they couldn’t produce one helicopter to save the lives of stranded people.

    PL’s line of “one international working class, one party” is a winner because it helps us learn and gain strength from struggles in other countries, like Pakistan, where the class struggle is more advanced. CHALLENGE readers in Tanzania need to take heart. Things don’t stay the same, and the subterranean fire produced by capitalism’s wars, poverty and inequality is burning in cities and villages worldwide.

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    Bosses’ ‘Security,’ Dress Code Turns High School into Jail

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    20 January 2012 270 hits

    BROOKLYN, January 16 — The rising wave of fascism in the United States is apparent at Clara Barton High School. Under Principal Richard Forman, the administration is focused on order and discipline while neglecting students’ needs at every turn. A security system is turning the school into a jail. A dress code is imposed without any evidence that it benefits learning. Essential courses are not offered for all students who need them. Teachers who fight to do more for students are “excessed” and moved out.

    Predictably, the school is failing. According to online data from the New York Times, only 43 percent of students earn state-exam diplomas, and less than half enroll in college after graduation. Forman has gotten rid of teachers to whom students went with problems at school or even at home. These teachers exposed students to the outside world instead of relentlessly pushing their heads into textbooks. They attempted to start new clubs and new Advanced Placement (AP) classes. But now they are gone.

    A ‘Uniform’ Education

    Forman’s racism is exposed every day. He and other school officials seem more concerned with students’ physical appearance than their education. They have done nothing to address the shortage of AP classes, with only one class available for each subject. Meanwhile, the principal’s allies on the Parent Teacher Association have pushed for all students to wear a uniform, but they never discuss how the school could provide all the courses students need. Students in grades nine to eleven are supposed to wear uniforms, while students in the twelfth grade “dress for success”: collared shirts and dressy pants. Jeans, t-shirts, dresses and sweaters are banned. When students are caught out of uniform, their ID cards are scanned for referrals for disciplinary action.

    Furthermore, promoting the dress code over a better education is time-consuming and leads to unfair punishment. Students must stop at the door each morning to show their collared shirts, a delay that leads many of them to get lower grades because they are late for class.

    Even worse, students are criminalized by being forced to undergo scanning before entering the school. They are harassed each day by security guards and school officials. One student was asked to take off her hijab (the traditional head covering for Muslim women and girls) to show her collared shirt. After she walked away, she was called back twice to show her shirt again. When asked about the incident, she said, “What surprised me the most is that Dr. Forman stood right there and did not say a word.” The principal uses this racism to intimidate and divide students and to keep the Department of Education’s oppressive system in place.

    Clara Barton is far from the only school dealing with budget cuts and rising fascism. The “elite” Brooklyn Technological High School has similar problems, including a lack of paper, teachers, and even books. Virtually all public schools in New York reflect the inequalities of capitalism, a system where the working class suffers while the rich rule. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of money for the U.S. rulers to compete with China and to fight to protect their oil interests in the Middle East.

    Clara Barton has a long history of students fighting back, from protests against restrictions on students bringing in water to anti-racist assemblies and anti-budget-cut rallies. All students need to be more active in building this movement to fight for a worker-run world.

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    Profit System Hazardous to Workers’ Health Protest; Racist Attacks on Brooklyn Hospitals

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    20 January 2012 269 hits

    BROOKLYN, January 11 — Hundreds of angry hospital workers and supporters rallied loudly in front of the Brooklyn Marriott Hotel here this week as racist financier Stephen Berger, a darling of Governor Cuomo, announced his plan to “save” health care in the borough of Brooklyn. Workers who had never been at such a protest (or at least not for a long time) chanted as bosses from Downstate Hospital, Wall Street moguls and Berger himself entered the hotel for a fancy breakfast.

     Brooklyn is a borough of 2.5 million people.  One in five live below the poverty line and two in five are on Medicaid. An untold number are without any health insurance. In 1980, Brooklyn had 26 hospitals — now it has 15. There are now 41% fewer acute care beds, 2.3 beds per 1,000 residents, compared with Manhattan’s 4.7, the state’s 3.1 and the nation’s 2.6. Disparities in health by income and “race” are concentrated in certain New York City communities, including several in Brooklyn. In 2001, life expectancy in our poorest neighborhoods was eight years shorter than in its wealthiest; that is 4,000 extra premature deaths/year in the poorest communities.

    Racism: The Worst Disease

    The facts show the racist nature of the U.S. health care system. Brooklyn is 36% black and 20% Latino. Latino New Yorkers are twice as likely to have diabetes. Black New Yorkers are three times more likely to die of diabetes than white residents. Ninety-four percent of elevated blood levels in New York City are among African Americans, Latinos and Asians. If infant mortality rates were equalized, the lives of some 200 babies of these ethnic groups would be saved each year (NYC DOHMH “Health Disparities in NYC,” 2004).

    The hospitals in Brooklyn who serve its poorest residents have been set up to fail by Medicaid cuts. Stephen Berger, a hedge fund mogul and part of the unelected government of New York has led a task force for Governor Cuomo to come up with a plan to “rescue” health care in Brooklyn. He proposes closing Downstate Hospital in central Brooklyn and Kingsborough Psychiatric Hospital.

     Another of the proposals is to invite private investors into Brooklyn hospitals. We have already seen for-profit Medisys’ disastrous mismanagement of  Brookdale Medical Center. We’ve seen Continuum executives making between one and two million dollar salaries while millions of dollars at Long Island College Hospital’s real estate and other assets disappeared under their management. We can’t stand by and watch healthcare for profit drain other hospitals in the poor and black and Latino neighborhoods and, then abandon them for New York State to rescue (or not).

    After the rally, workers asked, “Did we accomplish anything? Did anything change?” Our answer is that life is a constant struggle between the working class and the big businessmen who run the economy and the government. We were there in force as this New York ruling class announced its plan to close two public hospitals in the underserved borough of Brooklyn. We took strength from each other. But stopping their attacks is going to take more action. We need to unite patients, communities and workers, black, Latino and white, to oppose them at every stage of their plan, much like what was done during the Civil Rights movement of the 50’s and 60’s.

    Interestingly, the unions were absent from this action. The union that made a deal with the Berger hospital closures a few years ago, SEIU-1199, which represents many of the affected Brookdale and Interfaith Hospital workers, was nowhere to be seen. Also the unions from Kings County Hospital, which is across the street from Downstate, including the city union’s District Council 37, were conspicuously absent. Brooklyn patients and  jobs are in jeopardy. We need working-class unity, not territorialism!

    The bottom line is that we live in a capitalist system where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; a system where the only funds the demopublicans “can’t” cut are for oil wars and bailouts of banks “too big to fail.” We have to fight against these attacks on medical care. But living conditions for the working class, especially black and Latino workers, are so rotten under this system that we will never be healthy until we rid ourselves of the profiteers and run things according to the needs of our class. Contact revolutionary communist PLP to find out more.

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    PL Salvador School: Fight and Mobilize for Communism

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    20 January 2012 283 hits

    EL SALVADOR — In our November communist school here, many comrades participated in the political discussion about the reality workers this country and the rest of the world live in. We must destroy the brutal capitalist domination to have social equality. PL’s politics have motivated many young people. About 26 have participated with us in each school.

    We must fight against the electoral parties of this capitalist machine. This dead-end strategy is used by the bosses to alienate us and to make us believe that their “democracy” works for the working class. As members of the Party, we have made the commitment to spread CHALLENGE widely, as a revolutionary weapon, to politicize and make our co-workers and neighbors aware. We have communist ideas, perseverance and the will to win workers to PLP.

    Mobilize the Masses

    Our young comrades from different parts of the country have developed a strong ideological ability and understanding of PL’s ideas. The main subject of this school was how to mobilize the masses for communism. It is clear that communist revolution is the only way to defeat and destroy capitalism; therefore, this must be the only goal of the revolutionary process. The participation of each one of the comrades was interesting. We discussed our friends’ understanding of the Party’s line, related to the ideological-political work with their communities.

    Other subjects we debated were the way the revolutionary struggle in El Salvador has been betrayed by the FMLN, and the way to rescue the contributions of the Paris commune, the Russian Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution. We highlighted the mistakes made in those revolutions in erecting a new bourgeois class and ignoring the fact that the masses could have led the battle towards communism.

    We analyzed the role of CHALLENGE, which must always spread the Party’s ideas. We focused the discussion on how to use the paper to recruit and how to increase its circulation among our base.

    Each of the participants has agreed to spread our communist ideas. We are working on strengthening the communication between our members from different areas of the country with the international Party. This will help us fight capitalism until we destroy the capitalist class, and its armed power.                  

    It’s worth mentioning that at this event, most of the comrades participating were young women and men, with a high level of revolutionary consciousness, with clarity on the steps to take and with an immediate objective of building a consciousness in the exploited class.  Our main objective is to conquer power by establishing a communist system on an international scale.

    1. Winter Project Helps Build PLP in Palestine-Israel
    2. CHALLENGE a Winner at Young Workers’ Conference
    3. U.S. Billionaire Funds NGO Evictions of Jerusalem Workers
    4. Religion: Tool of Exploitation

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