Challenge Radio(Podcast!)  PLP @plpchallenge @plpchallenge

    Type 2 or more characters for results.

    Select your language

    • Español
    • Français
    Join the Revolutionary Communist Progressive Labor Party
    Progressive Labor Party
    • Home
    • Our Fight
    • Challenge
    • Key Documents
    • LiteratureToggle dropdown
      • Books
      • Pamphlets & Leaflets
    • New MagazinesToggle dropdown
      • PL Magazines
      • The Communist
    • Join Us
    • Search
    • Donate
    Open slide pane
    1. You are here:  
    2. Home
    Information
    Print

    Hyatt’s ‘Hospitality’: Racist Firings Spur Class War

    Information
    07 January 2010 449 hits

    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 

    Information
    Print

    Airport Contract Fight Exposes Need for Revolution, Not Reform

    Information
    07 January 2010 429 hits

    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. 

    Information
    Print

    Promoting PLP’s Politics at MLA Convention

    Information
    07 January 2010 419 hits

    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. 

    Information
    Print

    Newark Rally: ‘Bush, Obama — Different Name, Same Game!’

    Information
    07 January 2010 405 hits

    NEWARK, NJ, January 4 — On the cold, rainy, dark evening after Obama announced his expansion of the war in Afghanistan, 50 people, including PLP members, joined in a rally outside the Gateway Center offices of New Jersey Senators Lautenberg and Menendez. In spite of the lousy weather, we could have distributed hundreds more leaflets than we had. The support we received from commuters returning from New York City and drivers passing by was amazing. And people were eager to join in our chants, including “Bush, Obama. Different name, same game,” “Soldiers, sailors and marines. Resist the bloody war machine,” and “Lautenberg, Menendez. Stop the funding for the killing.”

    By the beginning of 2008, the U.S. ruling class as a whole knew that it was in big trouble. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not going as planned, the house-of-cards economy was beginning to crumble and large sections of the working class, including students and those who consider themselves “progressives,” were rapidly growing into a disaffected force bemoaning the direction of the country. But all was not lost for the ruling class. The old money section found its knight in shining armor: a young black man with a charming wife and adorable children, who spoke in terms reminiscent of their earlier “heroes,” Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers. And it worked, at least for a while. Students, members of black and Latino communities and aging activists from the 60’s believed, and rallied in numbers with enthusiasm not seen in decades.

    But those of us in the Progressive Labor Party, and our friends, saw immediately that this was yet another cruel hoax being perpetrated on the working class, for whom there is no truly “kinder face” of capitalism. Whether the titular head of the government is Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, black or white, the message for the working class is clear — the ruling class will use whatever means it feels necessary to maintain its place on the world stage, including driving the working class further and further into the hole of unemployment, insecurity and endless wars.

    So what has the working class seen from Obama during his first year in office? An official unemployment rate currently at 10%, with a real rate over 20%, and even higher in many working-class communities. Billions upon billions of dollars pumped into the banks and big business, with little to nothing being done to help people save their homes and get jobs. A retreat from promises to close Guantanamo and stop Bush administration policies such as rendition. A healthcare “reform” program which ultimately will do nothing more than pump billions more into insurance and pharmaceutical companies while forcing working-class families to privately pay for policies with no meaningful restrictions on cost. And while Obama was somewhat truthful about his plans for Afghanistan, he never admitted that when done, he would put more troops in that country than Bush ever did and expand U.S. attacks to Pakistan and Yemen.

    Many workers support this latest version of the ruling class’s “knight in shining armor.” Many of them believed that they could get universal health care by just demonstrating and lobbying for it. Even more believed that Obama was just making his “more-troops-to-Afghanistan” statements solely in order to get elected, that he’d never “really” do that. When Obama came to the new sports arena in Newark, several days before the November gubernatorial election, thousands of people, overwhelmingly black, stood in line for hours, young children in tow, in order to see and hear him.

    Four members of local chapters of two anti-war groups went down to the arena with 400 leaflets calling for the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. We were stunned at the response, with many people practically grabbing the leaflets from our hands. We gave out all 400 within a half hour, and could have distributed several thousand more.

    This period is certainly one fraught with danger for the working class, as the ruling class attacks on us became increasingly vicious. But it is also a time of great opportunity, as our brothers and sisters learn first-hand the painful lesson that capitalism offers nothing but more suffering. Only a communist revolution will provide us with what we need, a society in which we are able to develop our full potential and enjoy the fruits of our labor. 

    Information
    Print

    Youth Leadership Takes Hold at Salvador PLP Communist Schools

    Information
    07 January 2010 406 hits

    EL SALVADOR, January 2  — “There will always be the exploited until we eliminate the exploiters,” declared a worker at one of two communist political schools comprising 35 workers, students and farmworkers. These end-of-the-year gatherings were filled with political education, revolutionary solidarity and splendid dinners.

    We discussed an international report, the document “Reform and Revolution” and CHALLENGE — distribution, writing articles and building clubs and study groups.

    Two junior high school students explained how inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S., Russia, China and Europe has worldwide effects, including directly on the working class here. They are understanding and spreading PLP’s communist ideas. One participated in several meetings; the other was attending for the first time. Both were applauded for their contributions about PLP’s revolutionary struggle.

    Two comrades led the “Reform and Revolution” discussion. The youth directed questions to everyone, especially the Party leadership here, about the urgency of advancing revolutionary communism, not becoming absorbed in the work of the reform leaders. The older  comrade reviewed his experience in mass organizations since the 1960’s.

    One comrade observed that those here “are those we’ve most developed onto the communist road and we’re directing to take our scientific  Marxist Leninist ideas into all the mass organizations.”

    Another comrade revealed that her organization just had a march of 500 women demanding jobs and better living conditions. Because of this, they immediately assigned a comrade to that area in January,  aiming to establish contacts with the factory workers in the “free zones” (maquillas) through comrades living there.

    Another comrade said she was leading classes for women on “Non-Sexist and Inclusive Education,” presenting a communist line. Some teachers have already responded positively. El Salvador has many feminist movements which pose the struggle as one of men against women, not as a fight to destroy the capitalist system, the source of sexism. This comrade has a political base in this union, helping to strengthen this work. Together with these other teachers she explained that her political training stems from the Party’s line, centering the discussion on the evils of capitalism, like sexism.

    A comrade heading the editorial collective led the discussion of CHALLENGE, emphasizing two points: (1) the need to write more for the paper; and (2) using CHALLENGE as an organizer, educator and agitator for the working class. On the first point, a young comrade noted that Lenin, in “What is to Be Done,” emphasized “that a Party without a communist newspaper reporting workers’ struggles worldwide has serious problems growing with a communist line.”

    On the second point, it was stressed that each Party member must convert CHALLENGE networks into study groups about communist politics and activity. We can’t continue giving someone the paper without following up with that person politically. Just distributing the paper doesn’t guarantee political development; quantity and quality should go together. The paper should open the door to political discussions about building more clubs, study groups ad class struggle.

    The comrades also emphasized how the content of CHALLENGE historically has reflected the reality of the capitalist system, and how we must fight the illusions within the working class in reformism, and in the bosses’ elections. We discussed the electoral victories of Obama in the U.S. and Funes-FMLN in El Salvador. Many workers think, “here comes the change.” CHALLENGE has fought these illusory
    ideas the bosses try to instill in workers.

    This weekend culminated a whole process of previous meetings and visits throughout the year which defined the topics, decide who would come and who would lead the discussions, as well as the process of teaching and learning inside the PLP to develop more and better leaders. We pledged, in 2010, to enter the fight with greater commitment, strength and desire to build the PLP in the working class. 

    1. China-U.S. Pipeline Battle Speeds Drive to World War
    2. Capitalism Turns Cure into Racist Killer, Cutting Back on Mammography
    3. Comrade Lee Simon: A Selfless Fighter for the Working Class
    4. A Life of Struggle Leads to PLP

    Page 749 of 806

    • 744
    • 745
    • 746
    • 747
    • 748
    • 749
    • 750
    • 751
    • 752
    • 753

    Creative Commons License   This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

    • Contact Us for Help
    Back to Top
    Progressive Labor Party
    Close slide pane
    • Home
    • Our Fight
    • Challenge
    • Key Documents
    • LiteratureToggle dropdown
      • Books
      • Pamphlets & Leaflets
    • New MagazinesToggle dropdown
      • PL Magazines
      • The Communist
    • Join Us
    • Search
    • Donate