MADISON, WI., March 12 — Today over 100,000 workers descended on the capitol here to protest the bill introduced by Republican Governor Scott Walker and passed by the State Legislature, removing collective bargaining rights for public employees, including teachers.

Fourteen Democratic Party Senators hiding out in Illinois to forestall the bill’s passage failed miserably because Walker maneuvered to pass the bill without them.  However, flanked by bagpipe-playing musicians, flags and Jessie Jackson, they returned today to Madison welcomed as heroes: “Thank you Fabulous 14, thank you!” 

Our PLP contingent was there to bring our message of communist revolution and working-class solidarity. We distributed 500 CHALLENGES and 1,500 leaflets.

Our first speaker announced on our bullhorn that we’d come from Indiana and Chicago and this received a huge “Yeah!” He thanked all the workers for their courageous stance against these latest anti-working-class attacks. He also noted that they are occurring in Indiana and Chicago as well and that we need to strike against this assault.

Then, referring to one of the popular chants of the day — “recall Walker, recall Walker!” he declared, “Recalling Walker will not work but smashing capitalism will.”

The next speaker encouraged workers to read CHALLENGE and the Party’s leaflet “Middle-Class Dream??? Or Working Class Power!!!” It reported that while the Madison-area Central Labor Council had voted for a General Strike, the AFL-CIO and its top dog Trumka had turned workers’ militant mass anger into a passive recall petition limited to the voting booth. The union leaders have sold out our class and will continue to do so.

The “middle-class dream” that union leaders and politicians want us to buy into has been a nightmare for most black and Latino workers due to the racist nature of capitalism. The former auto capitals of Detroit, Flint and Milwaukee have unemployment rates exceeding 50%! Among young black males it’s around 75%. “It’s not Walker it’s capitalism!” said the speaker. “These attacks have been coming fast and steady under the Democrats too.” Obama’s bailout of the auto industry put many more workers on the unemployment lines while the auto bosses are now reaping huge profits.

‘Thanks for keeping it real…’

Several workers stopped and took our literature. One AFSCME member told us he was looking for a job because he was about to be laid off. He said that when he told his union leader we needed to prepare for a strike the union “leader” replied, “No, that’s not what we need to do.” Another worker listened to our speeches for several minutes, took literature and gave one of our comrades a hug, saying, “Thank you all for coming and keeping it real.”

There was much opposition to our line, too. The push for recall had definitely replaced the call for a general strike. Reliance on Democratic Party politicians has replaced the power of the workers and students who early on had occupied the State Capitol and shut down the schools. In essence, today’s rally became a dangerous “get-out-the-vote-for-the-Democratic-Party” event.

However, we should have brought many more comrades and friends with us. One Party friend contacted us because she knew if anyone was going to Madison we would be. But, self critically, we should have called her. We marched and hung out the whole day together, talking about communism and why only in a communist society could we share the fruits of our labors, without racism, poverty or imperialist oil wars. While she’s still not ready to join, after today she’s much closer.

Other comrades who went got valuable practice in putting forward communist ideas to workers who otherwise would not be exposed to them. Only the Party was championing the working-class to take state power.

While we call for a general strike to shut down the entire system and unite the working class, still this is just a tactical move. The only long-run strategy we can follow is winning millions of workers to fight for communist revolution.

We agreed that our political offensive must be recruiting and developing more comrades through this struggle in Wisconsin. We’ve formed a committee to organize visits to contacts we made in Madison and to plan regular trips there. We also want to have some Madison workers speak at our Chicago May Day dinner.

However this struggle in Wisconsin turns out, we have everything to win by seizing this opportunity to build the Party. The struggle for state power and the building of a communist society is not a mere dream for the international working class. 

NEW YORK CITY, March 12 — The Political Science club on our campus has provided a glimpse of the force that young workers and students can become in leading the struggle for change. These students are providing leadership in the multi-racial, working-class struggle against our school’s administration, against the racist budget-cutters on the CUNY Board of Trustees and in the New York City and State governments. Communist ideas are not only present, but in a leading position.

The most recent club activities highlight both the international character of class struggle in the fight against capitalism as well as the need for workers and students to engage in both theoretical discussion and practice. The first event was a teach-in, entitled ‚”Youth Movement Rising”. Three professors covered the events in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the student protests and rebellions in Europe and the role of U.S. foreign policy in all of these places. Unlike in the bosses’ media which stresses the fight for democracy and freedom, the speakers focused on the class struggle, including the fight against racist unemployment and increases in food prices.

The final speaker was a student leader who enthusiastically linked the uprisings around the world to the situation in New York. He noted students’ protests against budget cuts, against tuition increases, how we have held solidarity events for students in Haiti (including another teach-in last year). And he stressed the need to do more: for more students, teachers and workers to stand up against the attacks that the bosses launch at us.

Afterwards, the discussion reflected the communist-led nature of the event. One student asked if what we are seeing is a fulfillment of Marx’s prediction that the underclass would rise up to defeat the bourgeoisie.

But these students walk the walk‚ as well as talk the talk. Our cafeteria is being renovated and a new service provider is being brought in. Many students are happy with this change because the old food service was terrible, with very few healthy options (U.S. urban areas have the highest rates of obesity and Type II diabetes). In the process, however, the nine long-time employees, all union members (in UNITE-HERE), and all black and Latino were laid off.

This racist attack did not go unnoticed by the Political Science club, which joined the professors’ union, the cafeteria workers and other students for a campus rally. About 70 people rallied and chanted, “Union workers are under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!” We also witnessed the utter fear that bosses (be they big CEOs or our relatively small-time administrators) have of a united, militant working class.

Our rally begin in front of the cafeteria, but we quickly moved to the administration building. You should have seen their faces! Every single security guard on campus was there to stop us. They even called some NYPD pigs to help them out. This time we were not ready to challenge the cops and enter the building, so we rallied for 10 minutes in front and then returned to the cafeteria.

This struggle is not over and the Political Science club is committed to taking part and providing young leadership. The club is getting bigger, with more and more students attending meetings. PLP’ers are there, with CHALLENGE in hand, trying to consistently fight for a vision of a communist future. The club’s focus will likely turn back to the budget cuts and the further tuition increases that are coming, but whatever the issue, the Political Science club will be ready to fight. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.  March 10, 2011 — Over 150 bus drivers and other Metro workers picketed outside the bosses’ headquarters today to demand that management withdraw its appeal to federal court of the arbitration award and agree to the contract that provides a 3% annual pay raise while cutting back on benefits. 

Workers have been without a contract for three years! Anger is boiling over at the bus garages. What part of “binding arbitration” do the bosses not understand? What they do understand is that they are backed by the power of the government and can probably get away with whatever the working class lets them. 

Arbitration Is A Loser for Workers

Arbitration is a win-win situation for the bosses. Invariably, the arbitration will force workers to accept less than they demand, forcing them to take the losses. That’s why the bosses have the gall to try to renege on a contract that is already a give-back contract for the workers! That’s why smashing the bosses and their government through a revolution to establish workers’ power and communism is the only permanent way to solve our problems.  And why flexing our collective muscles in this contract dispute through mass action is the only way to have any hope of stopping the bosses’ attack today.

The union leadership has a different plan, though.  At today’s rally, after meekly moving workers away from the entrance to the building at the request of the Metro cops,  they passed out postcards to send to various politicians in the jurisdictions served by Metro to encourage them to support the union.  What nonsense! Only the threat of a strike — most likely illegal — will make them pay attention. The politicians are all in the bosses’ pocket.

PLP’ers have distributed well over 600 CHALLENGE’s to Metro workers over the last few months at special union meetings and at the garages, while Metro PLP’ers have fought hard in the garages and at union meetings for a more militant approach that would show an understanding of how capitalism works to systematically exploit workers. The ideas of anti-racist class consciousness are being debated and discussed by Metro workers more and more, which may help to win many angry workers away from cynicism.

Over the next 90 days, the court will issue a final decision, and then we shall see how robust the mass struggle can be at Metro in today’s climate. At the same time, several additional Metro workers have stepped forward to work with the PLP, so whatever happens in the coming three months, the communist presence at Metro will continue to grow. 

TRENTON, NJ, February 25 — “Workers have dignity; the rich have our wealth!” This poster expressed the outrage of 4,000 New Jersey workers rallying in solidarity with Wisconsin state workers. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, along with other governors — including NJ’s Chris Christie — is spearheading a bogus nationwide campaign, to destroy the largest remaining group of organized workers in the country: the public employee unions.

This campaign is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers through their Americans for Prosperity front group. After voting massive tax cuts for the wealthy for two decades — starving state governments of revenues and creating a false “budget crisis” — these same businessmen and their lackey politicians are now blaming public workers for their multi-billion-dollar state budget “deficits.” 

Workers at the rally weren’t buying this line, however, with some holding up posters that said, “Union-busters are the new terrorists!” PLP members from NJ state colleges organized on their local campuses to get fellow American Federation of Teachers (AFT) members and Communication Workers of America (CWA) staff to attend. One teacher, who canceled classes and urged students to attend, got five emails from students after the rally asking how it went. Another recent graduate, now a social worker who will soon be in the CWA, attends a Party study group and looks forward to helping build a worker-student alliance in New Jersey.

Forming a sea of red rain ponchos and hats in front of the State House, the 4,000 New Jersey workers — both private and public sector employees — didn’t match the turnout of the 70,000 Wisconsin workers who occupied their capital building a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, the protest was one of the largest in New Jersey and signals an upsurge in working-class solidarity.

Private sector workers, after years of layoffs, wage-cuts and disappearing benefits, see that they have a lot more in common with state workers than with the billionaire businessmen funding this nationwide campaign or the governors hypocritically fronting for them. It’s impossible to believe the rhetoric describing public employees as “privileged” with “bloated salaries and pensions” when more and more workers know that the top 1% of the population controls 43% of total national wealth and the bottom 80% has only 7% (2008, extremeinequality.org).

Unfortunately, at a time when workers need class-conscious leadership, most of the state public union leaders speaking at the rally actually endorsed the position of the politicians on givebacks. After giving lip service to the view that the banks and their speculative practices — not public workers — caused the economic crisis, virtually every union leader stated that their unions would be willing to “negotiate” wage-cuts and reductions in benefits, to “share the pain.”

Their rallying cry, “Negotiate not dictate,” however, is a losing strategy that will put the ruling class in a win-win situation. They win if they can get rid of collective bargaining for public unions AND they win even if they can’t, so long as unions bargain away the salary and benefit gains their workers struggled for decades to win. 

As the class struggle heats up, this defeatist line at the Trenton rally shows the important role that communist ideas must play if workers are to build a movement that will not be sold out by the current labor leaders. As communists, PLP members in these unions need not only to participate in class struggle but also to consolidate their personal ties with co-workers and discuss why the rules of capitalism make it a necessity to push to reduce wages and benefits in order to maximize corporate profits.

More than ever, as U.S. capitalism faces fiercer global competition with China and the European Union and must maintain a global military force to protect its interests, it needs to squeeze every penny it can from workers.