BROOKLYN, NY, December 21 — As soon as students at our school heard about the rally against Metrocard cuts, they got together to figure out plans to mobilize our friends and teachers. We were furious about the MTA’s latest proposal to cut free and reduced-fare student Metrocards for all NYC students in order to balance their budget. This racist attack against the overwhelmingly black and Latino school population would cost families about $1,000 a year for each child when one-in-three black workers and one-in-four Latino workers are unemployed. Half-a-million students use free or half-fare Metrocards to get to school.

Once again the bosses are forcing the working class to pay for their ongoing capitalist crisis and imperialist wars. This system, that can’t provide basic education and transportation for its young people, must be destroyed.

Over the weekend we decided to hand out flyers by the train station most students use, calling for a walkout and then to go to the city-wide rally. All day students talked with their friends about the actions. We passed out leaflets in the cafeteria and in their classes. We made signs for the rally and there was a sense of excitement throughout the school.

Some teachers used their history classroom to help organize for the rally. They said that these attacks are part of a class war being waged against the workers by the ruling class. The point was made that we could see these attacks as a test, to see how New York City students will respond to ongoing attacks.

In one class, students organized a debate. The resolution was: “Mayor Bloomberg should pay for NYC’s economic crisis.” Twenty-six students supported the resolution while only three argued against it. This debate led to even more discussions about whether a walkout and protests were the correct way to deal with budget cuts.

One student talked about the need to fight back and explained that the reason why the budget cuts exist is partly because of the trillions of dollars being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for oil. He pointed to all the bases the U.S. has built in the Middle East and told students not to have any illusions about the U.S. pulling the troops out.

When two o’clock came, a small group of students, signs in hand, went around the school knocking on classroom doors and encouraging students to walk out. Unfortunately the walk out was smaller than we had hoped. More time was needed to really organize such an event. Although some students got discouraged, the students who did go to the rally were glad they went and plan on continuing to organize more actions in the school.

When we got to the rally, Charles Barron and other city council members were making speeches and playing loud music. The music was so loud that it drowned out most attempts at chanting led by students. As PLP members arrived with our own bullhorns, we began to give speeches exposing this latest racist attack as part of the capitalist system, and raising the need for communist revolution. We explained that since trillions are being spent on imperialist war in Iraq and Afghanistan, bailouts for the banks and auto industry and debt service to the banks, the bosses must increasingly attack the working class. This began a series of speeches made by students, all expressing their anger at this attack.

One young man said that students had joined the rally to show their anger, not to celebrate. He directed his comments at the politicians and demanded that they turn the music off. Within seconds the whole crowd was chanting “Turn the music off.” The bosses’ politicians were isolated and students then took charge of the rally, chanting and picketing in the cold for the next hour. Three students, who made speeches about the need to fight back, were speaking on a bullhorn for the first time.

We learned a lot about what it takes to organize class struggle with both boldness and patience. We are gaining confidence in our ability to defend revolutionary ideas. One student expressed it this way: “This wasn’t my first experience walking out from school, and I’m sure it won’t be my last. I was excited and proud to be part of this movement and I know we will fight back and win students, teachers and workers to our side.” 

BOSTON, MA, November 11 — “Hyatt says lay off, We get pissed off” chanted faculty and students from Roxbury Community College (RCC) who, along with fired Hyatt workers held a spirited picket line at the Hyatt Hotel at Logan airport. The rally was called to protest the racist firing of the entire housekeeping staff, 90% Latinas, from the three Hyatt hotels in Boston. Through signs, speakers, and chants, we connected the firing of Hyatt housekeepers and cutbacks at community colleges to the crisis of capitalism.

All summer Hyatt’s General Managers kept bringing in new housekeepers and assigning their staff to train them. The bosses told them that the new workers, hired by an out-of-state staffing company, would be filling in for them when they took vacation time and on weekends (so that they could have weekends off!). On August 31st, the Hyatt bosses informed their housekeepers that they were all being fired and replaced by the same workers they had just trained. 

Many of them were overwhelmed with outrage, panic, and disbelief at such treatment. The new workers, also mainly Latinas, were hired at half the pay and with no benefits. Some, having made friends with the veteran workers, quit in solidarity.

When the workers began to protest their firings, liberal Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick tried to pacify them by brokering a deal with Hyatt: Give the workers their jobs back for one year with the same pay and benefits. The workers unanimously voted down this sellout!  However, under the mis-leadership of Local 26, the Hotel Workers’ Union, they’ve been pursuing another losing strategy. They have been trying to get guests and conferences to boycott the hotels rather than use workers’ power to shut down the three Hyatts (as well as other unionized hotels in the Boston area).

A month later, Governor Patrick announced the lay-offs of 1,000 Massachusetts state workers. When he was challenged for his hypocrisy, he said, “But we’re not making them train their replacements!” To workers, it doesn’t matter if we get fired by vicious and lying Hyatt bosses, or by two-faced liberals like Gov. Patrick. We are still losing our jobs to save corporate profits. Throughout Massachusetts the firings at the Hyatt have become a symbol of the class war against workers as the financial crisis intensifies. 

Most importantly, the rally helped to bring several students around PLP. Their desire to support the Hyatt workers shows that many in our class reject the individualism that is rampant under capitalism. Their participation in a CHALLENGE Reader’s Group will help them develop an understanding of capitalism and what it will take to liberate our class. Also, a PLP leaflet blaming capitalism for the mass firings at Hyatt was passed out at RCC by faculty and students from another college, building the kind of worker-student solidarity that will strengthen our Party work 

MIDWEST AIRPORT, December 30 — The class struggle of airport and metro-area cleaners is getting sharper as the bosses attempt to stall and delay over union contract negotiations. The SEIU bargaining committee, composed of rank-and-file janitors, confronted the cleaning bosses’ high-priced lawyer in an angry exchange. Metro-cleaning bosses are keeping new cleaners on probation for an illegal extra 60 days. This is anti-working-class and nothing but racist super-exploitation which has many workers ready to strike if need be!

The majority of cleaners are African and Latino immigrants, from El Salvador, Mexico, Ethiopia and Somalia. These workers are tired of the cleaning bosses not respecting them, something bosses will never give workers under capitalism.

The bosses know that if negotiations break down after the December 31st deadline, it would take three weeks to replace strikers with scabs, which could be crucial for the metro cleaners’ contract fight as well. This is why airport bosses are harassing the union shop steward. After an onsite union meeting at the airport, supervisors and managers wrote up only the steward for “failure to return to work area on time.”

The airport bosses are desperate because they know what could happen if airport cleaners strike. They want to make an example of the steward to scare workers into not fighting back, and use this attack on the steward to get the union’s focus off contract negotiations. The workers seemed determined in their battle against the racist bosses. The contract struggle is opening new opportunities for airport workers to learn about PLP and revolutionary politics.

The union steward gave a presentation to fellow workers called “Communist Revolution versus Capitalist Reform in our Contract Struggle.” The workers asked great questions and some agreed a communist revolution for an anti-racist society is needed.

We put our small class struggle at the airport and metro area in the context of larger struggles worldwide, such as the immigrants’ strikes in France, making the connection that we are all oppressed by capitalism. We also showed how our airport /metro area struggle is connected to the capitalist economic crisis. The bosses’ solution for their problems is by taking away workers’ gains. A communist revolution globally would liberate the international working class. We will win some day against our fascist oppressors. 

PHILADELPHIA, January 2 — PLP members and friends were active at the recent Modern Language Association (MLA) convention through our participation with friends in the Radical Caucus (RC). In two RC-sponsored panels we advocated the need for revolution rather than reliance on reform, no matter how militant. In one panel, in fact, a presentation was made specifically on “teaching revolution.”

We also helped promote two resolutions at the Delegate Assembly (DA). One called for firm job security and benefits for all higher education workers and was easily adopted. The second advocated that the University of Colorado rehire Ward Churchill, a Native American studies expert and activist who was fired because he expressed indifference to the deaths of those killed on 9/11.

Churchill was fired for expressing his opinion. Debate was so lengthy that a quorum — a critical number of delegates — was no longer present to vote on it. The RC may raise it again next year.

For the first time in many years there’s an organized right-wing movement in the MLA. Russell Berman, Stanford U. professor and “senior fellow” at the anti-communist Hoover Institution, did his best to confuse the issue around Churchill’s firing. Berman will be MLA President in two years.

The DA Organizing Committee (DAOC), which runs the annual meeting, opposed both resolutions, as they’ve often done, although delegates have often ignored its recommendations, as they did here.

That’s why the DAOC is aiming to sharply limit members’ ability to bring resolutions before the annual meeting. This distrust of the delegates — who often pass RC motions and resolutions — will sharpen future struggles.

The DAOC and Executive Council appeared troubled by a 2008 RC-sponsored resolution critical of Israeli terrorism against Palestinian workers which passed at last year’s annual meeting and in a MLA-member vote. Conservative and Zionist members will probably try to recall this resolution, which would open the whole issue to debate again.

Fewer members attended the convention this year, reflecting sharp cuts in university budgets and also causing a smaller RC meeting than previously. This trend will surely continue.

This foreshadows much struggle ahead in the MLA. Next year the RC may propose that MLA’s dues structure be progressive. Now it’s regressive, the lower-paid members paying a higher percentage of their income in dues than higher-paid members do.

At this annual RC meeting our members and friends explained that capitalism, not who’s president, is the root cause of all the injustices and problems in higher education, in society and in the world. We promoted a Marxist class analysis and the need for communist revolution to overthrow capitalism.

Some younger activists have begun to help lead the RC in reaching out to other groups within the MLA, an excellent development.

Our most important effort is to develop ties with new people and with older friends. It’s challenging to plan political activities among members spanning all of North America and who meet only once a year. We struggle to stay in touch during the year and introduce CHALLENGE to them.