MID-WEST AIRPORT, February 1 — At the packed SEIU union hall, metro area and airport cleaners voted unanimously to strike against the racist bosses. The metro area cleaners are preparing  to fight against unfair labor practices, contract give-backs and racism. Meanwhile,  janitors in a downtown office building filed two formal complaints  against the cleaning bosses for blatant racism. New black cleaners are forced to wear different uniforms from the Latino cleaners at $2.50 less pay!

This racist super-exploitation is designed to increase the bosses’ profits and maintain a racially-divided work-force. But this divide-and-conquer attempt failed — all the black, Latino, white and Asian immigrants and citizens voted not to clean one single building until our demands are met.

At the airport, the cleaning bosses distributed a letter, implying that we would lose our jobs if we strike against them. The union steward immediately informed airport cleaners that this is just a fascist scare tactic; the bosses know the airport is crucial to the success of the metro area strike.

Greetings To Immigrant Strikers In France

Meanwhile, the airport workers sent a letter of international solidarity to the striking immigrant workers in France. We explained [in both English and French] that their situation is similar to undocumented Latino immigrants here who are targets of racist immigration raids in the U.S., and that all workers must fight racism globally. We also sent them a package of CHALLENGES .

 We have  a study group of airport workers to discuss CHALLENGE articles and PLP’s revolutionary ideas. We are struggling with these workers to distribute the paper. The Party must grow to enable the international working class to destroy capitalism with communist revolution. 

BROOKLYN, NY, January 26 — Billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg’s Panel on Educational Policy voted to close twenty “failing” NYC schools today, some time after 3:00 am following nine hours of testimony from staff, students and parents at these schools protesting such a decision. Two thousand angry workers and youth drowned out NYC schools’ Chancellor Joel Klein with chants during his entire opening remarks. Through long-standing ties at one of the twenty schools, three PLPers managed to gain early spots on the speakers’ list. We used these opportunities to broaden out the already sharp attacks on Klein and condemn the overall racist nature of these school closings and education under capitalism in general.

This was an angry crowd. When a woman called Klein KKK, the crowd shouted out in agreement. When Klein checked his Blackberry, the entire room chanted “pay attention, Klein!” He left the table for a few minutes after a young woman ended her speech by warning him that he was “messing with the youth of New York City and that was not a smart thing for him to be doing.” The crowd, limited by illusions of reform but feeling the power of refusing to obey, roared that he come back to his seat and do his job, which for that one night was to listen to regular workers and youth. The huge police presence in the room did nothing to dampen the fighting spirit of this crowd.

All 200 CHALLENGES we brought were distributed and important political ties to friends were re-affirmed. The bosses will go ahead and close these schools that their racist system neglected for so long. However, our analysis that such a system must go was well received. The union’s stupid line that “our schools are good schools” rings hollow for everyone who knows how badly the system has abandoned so many thousands of children to failing schools in this city alone.

The bosses may attack, and the unions mislead, but we in the PLP will go ahead and do our work to condemn a system that treats our youth like trash to the dustbin of history. As a young comrade pointed out to the thousands in the room, there is no good education to be found in the schools under this racist capitalist system. Real education happens when workers confront the bosses and communists are there to inject revolutionary content into the fight.

This fight over school closures is not over, and the brutal logic of capitalism can only mean one thing: more fights are sure to come. Each attack the bosses mount on our class increases the opportunities we have to bring more of our friends into the communist movement. 

CHICAGO, January 16 — “We know what we’re fighting for!” echoed down 63rd Street in Englewood, drawing people out to watch the multi-racial group of youth and adults march, chanting “No more rich and no more poor!” The march, hosted by a church in Hyde Park, was against poverty and for equality, to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, but the tone turned militant when youth around PLP, mostly Englewood residents, took over the chanting.

We distributed a flier connecting the capitalist-inflicted poverty and the devastation in Haiti following the earthquake to the similar economic-related Hurricane Katrina disaster. PLP’s “Fight-Back!” chant had people dancing in the streets, at the bus stops, raising their fists and chanting. It was a welcome change from the usual gang members walking down 63rd Street!

After the march, there was a panel discussion with professors and community activists. Half the audience was youth, but the discussion was definitely not geared towards them. In fact, activists on the panel repeatedly said that students needed to try harder in school and listen to their elders to fight poverty. If that worked, we would have fixed these problems a long time ago!

The professor spoke with his back toward the students, holding posters that identified high poverty areas. We know where the poor people are —  just walk through the segregated communities and look for boarded-up buildings! We walked past plenty of them on 63rd and King.

To engage the students, a PLP member wrote questions down and passed them around. The youth responded, read each other’s responses, and wrote more questions. This was a more insightful discussion! When the panel ended, three youth informed one of the speakers that the way she talked about students was ‘adultist’ — meaning it had a bias against youth and didn’t value their opinions and abilities.

After we left the church, we had a student panel discussion over pizza. This gave us a chance to debrief. We agreed that the walk was too long and the panel was too dry, but it was overall a good day. We discussed how poverty came from the creation of class society; that it hadn’t always existed, and that a lot of the poverty we see today is based in racism. Students who had been around PLP explained what the Party is and everyone who came took a CHALLENGE. Participating in events like this brings more youth around the Party and, at the end of the day, we gained a new member for PLP! 

“Public-Transit Passengers Face Rough Ride.”  This is the happy New Year message from the Wall St Journal (WSJ) (Jan. 2, 2010). As spokesperson for the big financial capitalists like Goldman Saks, Bank of America, and Citibank, the WSJ only confirms what we transit workers already know about the destruction of transit jobs and service in our own particular cities.

Here are some Facts:

$8.4 billion of the $787 billion federal stimulus package or 1% went to mass transit; while most of the $787 billions went to bail out Wall St.

The cost of riding public transit rose at a 17.8% annual rate in the six months ending in November. San Francisco’s Bay Area
Rapid Transit increase will be 27% in Jan. 2010. Those on the economic margins will have to choose between giving up necessities or staying home.

Budget deficit: NY, $383 million, Chicago, $300 million, S.F., $129 million.

3.8% fall in riders over the whole year; rising to a 6.1% drop during October, November and December. Some cities estimate ridership could fall as much as 10%.

What Is Behind The Facts About The Crisis In Mass Transit?

Finance capital and the big corporations which own property in every Center City in Urban USA caused the revenue and funding crisis as they refuse to pay for the value that a mass transit infrastructure adds to property and businesses in urban areas. They support the most regressive tax for transit, a “Sales Tax” which hits the poorest the hardest and shrinks in periods of economic bust. 

 Financial Capital has made billions in profits off loans, public bonds, and financial schemes (like leases, buy-backs) used to pay for transit infrastructure.  Like everything in capitalism, transit must be profitable for some boss if it is to develop. Workers needing mass transit, its value as a “green” alternative, and transit workers providing an important social service are not reason enough for it to exist in an economic system that is based upon profit over human need.  

The funding crisis is a result of U.S. imperialism and the budget priority for wars around the world to control resources like oil.

The capitalist class is dismantling jobs in the public sector like transit (teachers, medical workers, etc.) much as they did after the 1970’s in the industrial, manufacturing sectors of auto, steel, textile, etc.  They cannot outsource transit jobs, but they have a consistent policy of part-timing, speeding up schedules, called “efficiencies,” outsourcing to non-union, or subcontracting to cut labor costs.

At the same time politicians and the corporate-owned mass media try to mobilize the working-class tax payers against their class brothers and sisters in the public sector. This is a divide-and-conquer strategy. In S.F., politicians characterized a legal provision that provides partial payment for dependent medical care as a “Year-end Bonus;” this spread in the media as a thinly-veiled attempt to link transit workers with bankers and fat cat Wall Street bonuses. 

The impact of this crisis is heaviest on the poorest riders, the disability community, black and Latino neighborhoods, the elderly, students, and transit workers (who themselves are predominately black and Latino), immigrant, single parents and sections of the working class that saw transit as a way to maintain a family and life in this economy. In New York City, subsidies passes for the mostly black and Latino students who commute to public schools are on the chopping block — another example of the rulers’ institutional racism.

Ridership is down due to unemployment -— a product of capitalism in crisis.

To understand what is really happening in transit, passengers and transit workers need a communist analysis of capitalism which explains the source of these attacks and helps develop class consciousness: knowing which side of the fence we’re on and who’s there with us.  Mass transit moves people and goods; the vascular system of world capitalism.  Transit workers have tremendous potential power to disrupt the smooth operation of the profit system.

Even though, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) top leadership have encouraged and negotiated concessions, transit workers have the potential to step up and fight back.  Groups of workers, with some communist ideas, like “make the bosses take the losses,” have refused to accept that the working class must pay for the transit crisis. 

Transit workers need unity with passengers to oppose fare hikes and service cuts.  Work slowdowns, mass meetings over schedule cuts, newsletters to riders and drivers, rank-and-file caucuses, participation in Union elections and demonstrations with other pubic workers can organize the opposition to the racist fare hikes and attacks on transit workers that the bosses need to finance their expanding oil wars. 

PLP members are immersed in these daily battles, as reported in CHALLENGE, but as long as the profit system remains in place, with financial capitalists running the show, mass transit will not be run to satisfy workers’ needs. Communists organize now to develop collectivity, knowledge of how capitalism works, and class consciousness.  These are some modest steps towards a revolutionary movement, eventually a class war, to get rid of the Wall St parasites.