Challenge Newspaper - Progressive Labor Party

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, June 17, 2009

Information: 17 June 2009 391 hits

North Korea Joins China’s Nuclear Club:
‘Nuke-free’ Scheme Impossible in Imperialist World

Under the profit system, competing capitalists, either as individuals or nations, pursue advantage ruthlessly. Today, the ability to wipe out rivals’ military bases, factories and cities by touching a button is an increasingly available advantage. While Obama rode into the White House on an “anti-war” platform and has now touted “a world free of nuclear weapons,” even the Pentagon says weaker U.S. foes would be fools not to produce atomic bombs, making a nuclear-free world impossible under capitalism.

The latest issue of the U.S. Army War College’s journal “Parameters” says, “our current conventional superiority obliges our enemies to seek asymmetrical offsets [see footnote*]. The more effective are NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) conventional arms, the more likely it is that regional great powers would choose to emphasize a nuclear-based deterrent and defense. If you do not believe this, you are in effect claiming that, say, China or Iran would choose to be defeated in conventional war, rather than raise the stakes through nuclear escalation.”

The war-makers’ article admits that “anti-nuke” Obama is lying: “Nuclear proliferation [the spread of atomic weapons] is here to stay. We say that we endorse the abolition of nuclear weapons. We do not mean it...A world of zero nuclear arms could not be monitored or verified, at least not by our side....”

On May 19, with Vietnam-era mass murderer Henry Kissinger at his side at the White House, Obama tried to hide the above admission, saying, “It is absolutely imperative that America takes leadership.... to reduce and ultimately eliminate the dangers that are posed by nuclear weapons.” (Voice of America broadcast)

A week later North Korea exploded a Hiroshima-sized A-bomb and launched a series of ballistic missile tests. Obama & Co. push other nations not to manufacture nuclear arms (“non-proliferation”) in order to maintain the U.S. as the capitalist nation with the largest, most powerful nuclear arsenal. But North Korea’s actions point to a Chinese-led effort stretching from the Far East to the Middle East to counter Washington’s arms supremacy.

China Calls North Korea’s Dictator ‘Our Loose Cannon’

For U.S. rulers, the current economic crisis makes criticizing China’s effort to gather together a bloc of nuclear-armed nations a touchy matter. Obama just sent Treasury-Secretary Geithner to beg Beijing’s bankers to buy more Treasury-bills (in effect, loans from the Chinese to enable the U.S. to pay for its wars and to save its financial system). But meanwhile, the U.S. bosses’ media calls North Korea an “isolated, rogue” nation. However, North Korea, in fact, functions as a war-threatening client state for China.

China’s $2 billion in yearly exports to North Korea — quadrupled since 2004 — effectively amounts to outright aid, because China seldom demands payment. The bulk of these “sales,” mostly food and fuel, go to the military, North Korea’s biggest employer. In return, perpetually-mobilized North Korea serves China as a buffer against U.S.-occupied South Korea, and soon will threaten U.S. ally Japan.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il has a reputation as a self-obsessed madman in the West. Chinese rulers’ opinion differs significantly. Zhang Wantian, vice-chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, described Kim as a loose cannon “but our [China’s] loose cannon.” (Asia Times, 9/12/03)

China’s Rulers Expanding Their ‘Nuclear Club’

North Korea lies at the heart of China’s sponsorship of the new members of the nuclear club among present and potential U.S. enemies who China hopes will oppose the U.S. in a crisis. Thomas Reed, Air Force Secretary under liberals Ford and Carter, has written a book, “Nuclear Express,” dedicated largely to exposing this goal.

Reed told U.S. News and World Report (1/2/2009), “China has been using North Korea as the re-transfer point for the sale of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen.” U.S. foe Russia provided North Korea nuclear material-handling technology essential to its recent blast. And Iran’s burgeoning nuke program depends entirely on Chinese and Russian fuel and expertise.

Control of nuclear-armed Pakistan totters between an unstable government rooted in the army and Islamist militants. U.S. strategy relies on billion-dollar bribes to the military, which doesn’t seem to be paying off. China on the other hand, courts both sides. It contracted a deal with the current Pakistani regime to run an oil pipeline carrying Mid-East crude from Pakistan’s Gwadar port (where China is building a naval base) to eastern China.

But if Pakistan’s generals should fall from power and lose their grip on the nuclear trigger, China’s bosses have a plan B, which U.S. rulers lack. A surprising number of sophisticated Chinese weapons have been found in Taliban hands in Obama’s newly-enlarged Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater.

The U.S. quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan also help China’s rulers gain a nuclear leg up. Any U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities in North Korea or Iran would entail massive ground wars — no wars have ever been won without an invading, occupying army. This would mean restoring a military draft in the U.S., quite inconvenient right now for Obama’s Pentagon.

‘World’s Only Superpower’ Spurs Nuclear Upstarts

In the last century, capitalists carving up the globe killed well over 100 million workers in their imperialist wars. And after all, the U.S. ruling class is the only one that ever used atomic bombs, mass-murdering over 250,000 civilians in two Japanese cities in a few minutes. They did this mainly as a warning to the Soviet Union not to challenge U.S. post-World War II supremacy (Japanese rulers were already ready to surrender). With all the important profit-seekers, great and not so great, now or soon wielding nuclear arms, the likely death toll for our class stands infinitely higher in this century. The broadening threat of capitalists’ nuclear, profit-inspired holocaust makes the need to build a revolutionary workers’ party all the more urgent.

PLP’s efforts to build a massive base for communist revolution to take on these imperialist butchers are crucial to workers’ ability to challenge and wipe out this hellish system. As a class, the working class will never die. No amount of capitalist nuclear arsenals can destroy our class, which produces all value. Dare to struggle; dare to win.

* Non-traditional, technologically-based and biological warfare

‘What’s good for Obama’s GM is death for workers...’

Now that the UAW union leaders helped elect their “friend in the White House,” who has also become the workers’ boss at GM, the sellouts have sunk to the following:

• A ban on strikes until 2015;
• A wage freeze (after having cut wages in half for new hires);
• Allowing GM to close 14 more factories and lay off another 21,000 workers without a fight.

With friends like Obama, who needs enemies?

Shining Example for U.S. Working Class:
Mass March Backs Stella D’Oro Strikers, Defies Cops

BRONX, NY, May 30 — “Shut it down and shut it tight, the bosses can’t profit when the workers unite” chanted over 1,000 workers, students and teachers, who rallied and marched in support of the courageous Stella D’Oro strikers. The Stella workers, who have been fighting for nearly 10 months against the vulture capitalist bosses of Brynwood Co., have set a shining example for workers nation-wide by refusing to accept cuts in benefits and wages.

A group of demonstrators seized the moment as the march approached the Stella D’Oro factory, and surged through and around police barricades blocking the street between the marchers and the Stella D’Oro plant. Pumping fists and chanting, they stormed right up to the factory gate, catching the cops completely off guard.

PLP organizers have won the respect and confidence of many of the strikers based on our consistent strike support and our involvement in preparing what was a very successful rally. Hundreds of CHALLENGES were sold throughout the day. Besides bringing our friends to the march, PLP’ers in the New York City UFT (United Federation of Teachers) have brought strikers to its Delegate Assembly to raise support, and into their schools to speak to teachers and parents.

The strikers’ determination has inspired people throughout the area, and contrasts sharply to the sellout nature of the labor bosses. At the opening rally, union members from the Professional Staff Congress of the City University (PSC) and the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) spoke of the importance of the Stella struggle to the entire labor movement and vowed their continued support. A PSC member read a poem “The Great Tablecloth” by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. (See sidebar) A NYSUT activist gave the workers an envelope with more than $2,000 that she had personally raised from rank-and-file members on Long Island.

Except for the PSC contingent of 60 and the two busloads of NYSUT teachers that came from Long Island and Westchester, “organized labor” is not supporting the Stella strike. The leadership of the Stella D’Oro workers union, the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union (BCTGM) did not make a big effort to turn workers out for this rally. Instead it has encouraged the workers to rely mainly on a court case the union has filed against the company.

Marchers Stand Up to Scabs in Blue

As we began to march through the neighborhood, we were enthusiastically received by the community and our numbers swelled. Transit workers on the elevated train line above sounded their horns and waved at the marchers in solidarity.

When we reached a Stop & Shop supermarket which sells scab cookies, the organizers attempted to have a brief rally on the sidewalk. The cops ordered the marchers to keep marching. One of the security leaders, a NYC transit worker, who has recently been on strike, raised his arms and exclaimed, “This is our march. We’ll move when we’re ready!” When it became apparent that the cops were going to arrest the transit worker, others came to his defense and the cops backed off.

Since the strike began, the cops have been busy protecting the scabs and bosses, and hassling the workers. The cops tore down an awning the strikers had erected to protect themselves from the rain. For months the precinct stalled before granting the strikers a permit to park a “warming bus” on 237th St. At an April rally, the police told organizers they could have a sound permit but then changed their minds. PSC leaders were threatened with arrest for using even a small hand-held bullhorn. So much for “free speech.”

March leaders were looking for an opportunity to go more on the offensive against the company and the cops. As we approached the factory site, the cops had erected metal barricades to block off the street to the plant gate. The cops expected we’d go right into the pens they had set up. Instead, organizers in the march seized the moment and moved past the barricades, surprising the cops. Over 100 chanting marchers ignored their pleas to turn around and return to the pen.

The raised fists and shouts electrified the major part of the crowd on the main street and a woman striker got up on a platform with her bullhorn to lead a chant of “boycott Stella.” The cops found themselves surrounded by two groups of angry workers.

Only Communist Revolution Can Destroy Capitalism

After making our point, the demonstrators moved back into the street, assembled in the penned area and began the second rally where rank-and-file members from several unions spoke. A PLP member, a UFT teacher, warned not to rely on Obama or union misleaders. Instead, he declared that this strike is the “real ‘stimulus package,’ representing what workers must do worldwide. Eventually, black, Latino, Asian and white workers will recognize their true potential and bring the capitalist system down.”

Raising a copy of CHALLENGE in the air, he called on every demonstrator present to support the strike by “...organizing on their jobs, in their churches and mass organizations with CHALLENGE in your hands!”

PLP members are discussing with the strikers the limits of relying on the union strategy of mainly working through the courts. It’s an on-going struggle for the strikers to maintain their morale. This rally helped invigorate them and their supporters, and showed the importance of building mass support for workers’ struggles.

We call on all CHALLENGE readers to raise money, organize people to demonstrate at local grocery stores selling scab cookies, and support the next battle in the Stella struggle, which is indeed a fight for all workers.

“El Gran Mantel”/“The Great Tablecloth”

Pablo Neruda

Hunger is a cold fire.
Let’s sit down soon
with all those who haven’t eaten,
spread the great tablecloths,
shake salt on the lakes of the world,
planetary bakeries,

tables with strawberries in snow,
and a plate like the moon
from which we all will eat.

For now I ask no more
than the justice of eating.

LA Students, Workers Fight Capitalist Storm Hitting Calif. Colleges

LOS ANGELES, May 30 — Community college students were angered over the Board of Trustees’ cancellation of summer classes district-wide starting July 1, as part of state budget cuts that could slash nearly $100 million from its nine colleges through 2010. In the fall, fees will rise while the CalGrants financial aid system may shut down completely. Veterans and CalWorks (welfare) recipients may lose their sole source of income if they can’t find classes. Others depend on campus-based childcare and might be unable to hold onto their jobs.

“What’s going to happen to us?” some students wondered. A teacher replied, I don’t know what will happen to each of you individually. But many like you who came to college hoping for a better life will wind up in exactly the jobs they wanted to escape. Some people in CalWorks will be forced into slave-labor jobs. Some will end up in the military. Bottom line, wherever you end up, it’s important to organize the people around you to fight back. And that fight has to be for revolution.”

The students nodded slowly. Then someone brought out CHALLENGES. One student hadn’t read it before. Another student told her, “This paper shows us how to fight!”

Someone else said her teacher had dismissed communism as “a nice idea that didn’t work.” That sparked a discussion about why the bosses push lies about communism even harder as it becomes clear that capitalism doesn’t work — not for the working class!

Disasters Are ‘Natural’ Under Capitalism

The Chancellor compared the budget crisis to Hurricane Katrina. “It’s a natural disaster,” he said, “all we can do is pull together and plan to rebuild.” But even Katrina was mainly a capitalist disaster. After 2001, money allocated for flood control was diverted into “Homeland Security” and the Iraq war.

Like Katrina, the California budget cuts are racist attacks hitting black and Latino workers hardest. For example, the college with the largest percentage of black students, and the one that’s growing fastest, was reported to be the ONLY one with no summer school at all.

The budget cuts are a 100% capitalist disaster. The bosses are forcing workers to pay for the steep decline in tax revenue resulting from the general crisis of their racist profit system. Meanwhile, state interest payments to large financial institutions have more than doubled as a percentage of the state budget. And the $100 million LA community colleges will lose is only 1% of LA’s share of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars!

Students, Teachers: Unite With Industrial Workers

Comparing the district to General Motors, the Chancellor said that wages and benefits for teachers and other campus workers are “too high.” Like auto workers, we’d better not count on our union leaders to fight for us. The annual faculty union meeting was all about how (not whether) medical benefits would be cut. One union member drew both jeers and cheers when she called for a general strike against the cutbacks. The Chancellor’s reference to GM opens the door to struggle with college teachers about the need to unite with industrial workers. One way is to support the PLP Summer Projects in Seattle and LA.

Since February, community college student activists have collected signatures, rallied and marched against budget cuts. They’ve become bolder and more confident in their ability to lead, while beginning to understand that reforms are difficult, if not impossible, to win in the present period.

“The rally in Pasadena turned out to be bogus,” a student leader explained to another student who is just getting involved, “but we started chanting ‘They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back’ and students from other campuses joined in. We took it to the streets. Then when we went to Sacramento, it was the main chant for the whole march.”

Someone suggested a new chant: “Budget cuts are no solution, workers need a revolution!” Others liked this. Several took extra copies of CHALLENGE. We invite these students and their friends to join our communist “summer school” of struggle.

Derail CTA Racist Health-Care Rip-Off!

CHICAGO, IL, June 1 — If the bosses prevail, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) will stop paying retiree health care on July 1. Almost 7,000 retired workers and their families will pay as much as $1,300/month for medical coverage, deducted from their pension checks. They will also pay large deductibles, $100 for office visits and as much as $50 per prescription. Many will join the over one million uninsured workers in Cook County, just when the County health system is being severely cut back. A system that can’t provide health care should be destroyed!

This deadly racist plot was hatched in the winter of ’07-’08, during the “doomsday budget” hysteria. The plotters included ATU (Amalgamated Transit Union) leaders Darrell Jefferson (Local 241-bus) and Rick Harris (Local 308-Rail), Democratic Party Mayor Daley, the Democratic Governor (on his way to prison) and State Legislators, who together have collected untold millions in campaign contributions from transit workers for decades.

The unions and CTA agreed to sacrifice retiree health care in an arbitration settlement, by-passing a membership vote that would have rejected the deal. Then, with the blessings of the ATU and the Chicago Federation of Labor, the State Legislature passed a law to “guarantee permanent funding for mass transit.” This law states that as of July 1, 2009, CTA is no longer responsible for retiree health care.

CTA claims it has no money for retirees, but it has plenty for the racist bankers that are forcing millions of us from our homes. CTA cut its pension contribution from $58 million to $18 million-a-year, but is paying Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley $132 million-a-year in interest (“debt service”) on bonds they hold to finance mass transit. The “debt service” far exceeds the money raised from the bonds in the first place.

CTA is the second largest mass transit system in the U.S. Our labor creates $2 billion in value-added-wealth by bringing 1.6 million riders-a-day to work, school, shopping and events. But that $2 billion goes into the vaults of the bosses and bankers. Now they want to steal the “guaranteed” health care from retired workers who sacrificed their health to keep this system running.

The rulers are trying to dig their way out of their global financial crisis with racist cutbacks and layoffs that hit black and Latino workers first and hardest. That’s how the racist profit system works. It’s no coincidence that this attack affects mostly black workers who entered the workforce in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. From Obama to Daley, the Democratic Party and the union leaders are doing the dirty work. Ultimately, these capitalist crises lead to fascism and world war.

Workers have instituted a federal lawsuit and are seeking an injunction to stop the July 1 cut-off. They’re reaching out to both retired and active workers for support. The best way to get the court’s attention would be to shut the city down with a wildcat strike, surrounding CTA headquarters or City Hall with tens of thousands of workers and riders.

As we wage this life-and-death struggle, PLP will organize support from transit workers in NYC, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco. In the process we can show thousands of transit workers that only communist revolution can end capitalist crises and racist terror. A communist society will exist to meet the needs of the international working class. Mass transit will be the main form of transportation and health care will be universal and free for all.

France: Anti-Racist Unity, Red Leadership Could Sack Sellouts

PARIS, FRANCE, May 28 — If you blinked, you probably missed the French labor movement’s national day of mobilization two days ago. Its showcase was the strike called by four rail unions, involving only 25% of the rail workers, down from 41% in the last big walkout on March 19. On May 26, from 50% to 75% of regional, Paris commuter and high-speed trains were running normally.

The unions issued no national strike call in other sectors, calling only a few regional ones, accompanied by a half-hearted call for workers to demonstrate without striking, so the protests were small. The biggest, 15,000 in Marseilles, compares with 300,000 there on March 19.

After the recent wave of wildcat seizures of bosses by angry workers, one might expect bigger actions. There’s certainly plenty of reason to protest:

• Skyrocketing unemployment could lead to 4.4 million officially jobless by year’s end, plus another 2.8 million who want to work but have given up trying to find jobs. In a potential workforce of 31.1 million, the current 20% real unemployment rate could hit 23% by New Year’s.

• Racism doubles those rates for black and Arab workers. A 2007 French government study reported unemployment is twice as high among immigrants, many of African or Arab origin. (France has 4.9 million first-generation and 2.3 million second-generation immigrants.)

• Six million people survive on RMI (welfare payments). At least 1.5 million have no home, living with family or friends, in loaned accommodations, in shanties or on the streets. On May 26, Frédéric Lefebvre, ruling right-wing UMP party spokesman, insulted all workers by floating a proposal to “give workers the right to work from home” while on sick leave or maternity leave!

But workers here are no longer willing to lose a day’s wages in symbolic one-day strikes that don’t frighten either the bosses or their government. Yesterday, the eight union confederations met with representatives of the bosses’ organization. Instead of serious discussions, the bosses called two recesses totaling 3½ hours and finally agreed to discuss “the social management of the consequences of the economic crisis on employment” in two weeks.

That’s far less than the unions’ May 25 platform demanding higher wages, easier access to unemployment benefits, “a new deal” on the distribution of the wealth created by labor, stable jobs for youth and greater union rights. Today’s CGT union claim that “the extent and unity of the workers’ mobilization has shaken the bosses,” rings hollow.

The CGT said successful mobilizations are not “a numbers game,” citing the many different protest forms — leafleting, protests targeting prefectures and chambers of commerce, barbecues and picnics — as “proof” that the protest movement is broadening. It said hundreds of thousands of workers — who would not have joined traditional protests and strikes — participated in these actions.

Thus, May 26 is supposedly a springboard for a bigger national day of mobilization on Saturday, June 13. But once again no national strike — only “protests.”

A strategic retreat is O.K. if it makes future advance possible. The unions claim that layoffs announced for the summer and the massive entrance of high school graduates on the job market this fall will create “a critical mass” of worker anger. But dragging out the struggle for five months risks disheartening and demobilizing the working class.

It’s likely union misleaders will call more symbolic one-day strikes in the fall. On March 27, 2007, François Chérèque, the CFDT union sellout leader, asked about subcontracting by the bosses’ circle ETHIC, replied: “Take Airbus [as an example]. To you, I say: the government doesn’t need to invest a penny. We’ve got to do to Airbus what was done to Boeing! Increase and develop subcontracting, and then let them all compete.” (From “Riches et presque décomplexés,” by Jacques Cotta, p 125.)

As long as these traitors are running things, demonstrations and strikes will be schools for cynicism and discouragement. These union misleaders restrict things to harmless symbolic actions, letting workers blow off steam.

Workers here and worldwide need to develop communist leadership and organize hard-hitting actions that unite all workers black, Arab and white, native-born and immigrant. That will help transform the class struggle into a school for communism.

Immigrant Airport Workers Resist ‘Homeland Security’ Attack

Naked fascism has finally come to the airport where we work. The racist bosses have declared open war against airport workers who dared to believe they had a right to defend their jobs from the boss-created global economic crisis. The bosses started their terror campaign when night-shift janitors, members of SEIU, met to discuss over-work and firings for petty offenses. They met in a public area before their shift started.

The bosses instructed our supervisors to call the Airport Police if workers have “unauthorized” union meetings. The cops raided the meeting of mostly immigrant workers and declared it “an illegal gathering in violation of airport and Homeland Security rules.” The workers were briefly detained, identified, and cited. When the cops let them go, they warned that next time they would be subject to arrest and having their airport security ID confiscated. News quickly spread to other workers and other shifts. For many workers from Africa and El Salvador, these fascist raids are nothing new.

This fascism is occurring with a black U.S. president and his Homeland Security laws. Changing the appearance of capitalism does absolutely nothing to change its racist essence. There is no such thing as a “good boss.” All bosses expect workers to accept capitalism’s global crisis without fighting back.

SEIU officials came to the airport for an emergency meeting. Before the meeting started, a racist supervisor warned that we had three minutes to get back to work after the meeting, and failure to do so could result in a suspension. Some workers whose work areas were further away from the meeting did not go. Others did. Workers discussed how this treatment is a fascist and racist attack on all of us, like what was done in Apartheid South Africa or civil war-era El Salvador. We have a right to organize and no one is going to stop us!

After the meeting, a worker was accused of taking more than three minutes to return to work; his work area is on the far side of the terminal. The entire staff of managers and supervisors came to deliver his write-up in a clumsy attempt at intimidation. The worker was not intimidated and refused to sign!

This whole episode was a set-up from start to finish. These fascists want to make an example out of this worker because they feel threatened. Some airport workers are afraid, but others, including regular CHALLENGE readers, are organizing against these fascist attacks. Workers under the political leadership of PLP are committed to fighting racism. Together we can resist fascist attacks and build even more CHALLENGE networks. Only a PLP of millions can lead the international working class to communist revolution to put our fascist oppressors where they belong. Then we can build a new world without poverty, racism, sexism, and oil wars.

Airport Red

LETTERS

Haiti May Day: Cops’ Tear Gas Fails to Stop Workers’ Protest

POTOPRENS, HAITI, May 1 — Unlike previous years when May Day was celebrated as a kind of fair, thousands of workers here took to the streets with slogans like “Down with the Capitalist System, Down with Exploitation!”; “A Worker Is Not a Slave”; “500 Gourdes [$12.66] Minimum Wage”; “No to Corruption”; “No to MINUSTAH” (the UN occupation force in Haiti); “No to the Occupation.” All along the route the demonstrators sang the Internationale, the anthem of the working class: “Debout! Les damnés de la terre!” (“Arise, ye wretched of the earth!”). Bands from the poor districts enlivened the march.

A whole string of mass organizations returned to the origin of May Day and held high the demands of the vulnerable workers crammed into the filth and destitution of the bidonvilles (shack towns), the peasantry, and the working-class districts of Haiti. Trade unions, peasant, university, and other movement groups took to the streets of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, around the theme “Yon lòt premye me pou yon lòt sosyete”: “Another May Day for Another Society.”

The mass organizations included the Confederation of Public and Private Sector Workers (CTSP), Tèt Kole ti peyizan ayisyen (Joint Leadership of Haitian Small Farmers, 500 of whose members were massacred in 1988 by the military and right-wing vigilantes for demanding land), the Union of University Workers and Teachers (STAIA), and the Association of Dessalinean Students (ASID).

In spite of agreements with the police, the government used the same weapons as the authoritarian regimes of the past to try to wreck our movement. Although we know this country is not a country of laws but a police state, we thought things might go well, given the government propaganda claiming crazily that the regime is following a path to democracy. Our “right-thinking” turned out dead wrong.

In the past, especially under the authoritarian regime of the Duvaliers (1957-1986), historic days like May Day, May 18th, July 22nd, and September 22nd had been celebrated in style: the state used to bring thousands of poor, trusting peasants into the capital, giving them red scarves, shirts and jeans like the uniform of the Tontons Macoutes (fascist government militia). This year we should have started the demonstration in front of the Parliament, but to everyone’s surprise the government had brought the peasants there again, blocking us with lots of agricultural machinery given Haiti by Venezuela in its politics of solidarity.

Even when the police burst in to disperse the crowd, claiming they had received an order not to let us go further, workers continued to struggle on. Several marchers were beaten, including a woman in her sixties who had to be taken to the hospital bleeding from her ears.

After the march was broken up by tear gas from the police, some demonstrators decided to go over to the Presidential Palace in the Champ de Mars, where a fair was going on. In spite of more police, we all — students, feminists, teachers, unionists, the unemployed — kept pounding the pavement. And so we celebrated this May Day in Port-au-Prince not as a fair but as a day of protest.

Trade Unionist in Haiti

Editorial Note: The mood of revolt among workers and students in Haiti is inspiring. We’re sure many at their militant May Day marches will be looking now to carry out that great slogan “Down with the Capitalist System! Down with Exploitation!” But to do so, we in PLP believe workers, students and soldiers need to join and build the international communist PLP. We commit ourselves to working with our friends in Haiti to achieve this end.

We note the fact that tractors given by the Venezuelan state to the Haitian state were used to block a workers’ and students’ May Day march. Whether government propaganda proclaims democracy, solidarity, or even socialism, only one class at a time can hold state power: in Venezuela and Haiti it is the capitalist class which holds that power and uses it to maintain their system of wage slavery. But not forever, if workers in every country keep marching on the road to revolution.

Resistance Rising in Guadeloupe vs. Capitalism’s Misery

For about two months recently workers’ kinetic energy in Guadeloupe — notably the workers’ unions and other organizations — exploded in a fury like that raised by the slaves of Saint-Domingue [now Haiti] in August 1791. Then the colonized denounced the inhuman, unjust, and cruel slave-owning colonial system and pressed on at all costs and at great danger to their lives to win freedom. Now their Guadeloupean cousins were demanding a substantial lowering of the cost of living, especially necessities like sugar, oil, milk, bread, gas, beans, etc., as well as a wage hike of 200 Euros.

Guadeloupe, an Overseas Department of France, has something approaching the rule of law, while the Republic of Haiti, the first independent black republic in the world, sinks into the authoritarian mud from which a police state is emerging. One thing is certain; in Guadeloupe there is an organized working class with leaders capable of backing mass demands, drawing on their political commitment to avoid any kind of compromise with the bosses (carriers of capitalism) and the government (attack dogs of imperialism). But here the shoe pinches: a large part of the “unions” in Haiti are in the pay of the pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist government instead of working to create class consciousness and to stand alongside the weakest, the poorest, those in the worst misery and distress.

These so-called “unions” set themselves up as spokespeople for a corrupt government blind and deaf to the distress of a destitute population. Last January the Guadeloupeans revolted against the high cost of living and demanded a wage hike, and in Haiti in April 2008 riots broke out pretty much all over to say no to famine. In Guadeloupe, however, there is some buying-power, while in Haiti buying-power is almost non-existent and the watchword is famine, destitution.

Spartacus didn’t win, but the slaves of Saint-Domingue brought off the only victorious slave revolt anywhere in the world. At that time the slave-owners knew they had to provide their subjects with the primum vivere, that is, the minimum: housing, clothing, food...while the modern capitalist slave receives nothing, for the only aim of the capitalist is to impoverish the worker. In spite of the persecution and threats of the French colonizers in Guadeloupe, the LKP [Guadeloupean union] has resisted capitalist corruption. Similarly, in Haiti the CTSP (Confederation of Private and Public Sector Workers) is resisting the perversions of the capitalist system. The Guadeloupean experience is an experience to follow.

Friend in Haiti

Editor’s Note: The sharp class struggle in Guadeloupe is an inspiration to workers everywhere. But while trade union leaders in Guadeloupe may have been more militant in fighting for wage-hike reforms, they did not challenge capitalism as a system, leaving workers in Guadeloupe just as deeply mired in wage-slavery as workers in Haiti. To break free of our chains, we need to bring communist ideas of revolution to these struggles so that the “workers’ kinetic energy” can create a lasting workers’ power.

‘Liberalism 101’ Masks Class Exploitation

Currently I’m completing my first year of graduate school at a local research university. This university plays an important role in developing liberal capitalist perspectives on issues such as race, immigration and education. It also ideologically trains many future labor organizers and teachers through its labor center and related programs, and its school of education. Thus, the university generates liberal reformist ideas and organizers utilized by the ruling class to put a caring smile on the continued exploitation of the working class.

Without a communist alternative, many well-intentioned students are won to these ideas, such as the student-led campus campaign for the Dream Act. However, recently I had the opportunity to help organize a May Day forum on campus where several comrades helped me advance the Party’s communist analysis on capitalism’s current crisis.

Speaking from the panel, a comrade teacher explained that the cutbacks to education represent the type of attack on workers the capitalist ruling class uses to “solve” its crisis. He also explained that the current meltdown results from the historic crisis of overproduction U.S. capitalism has experienced since the early 1970s. He concluded that capitalism’s only “solution” is intensified fascist attacks on workers and imperialist war against its competitors.

During the ensuing discussion, a comrade in the audience explained that the Dream Act was an example of liberal fascism, used to win immigrant youth to buy into the illusion that capitalism can work for them. Another participant attacked Marxism as an antiquated idea. A comrade responded that Marxism is based on a scientific outlook of the world and has evolved over time to reflect the changes in capitalism and the need to fight for communism. Many received CHALLENGE.

Following this event several students have asked how they can learn more about our ideas. Currently, a couple of students and I are reading “Marx for Beginners.” This is a good start which will surely lead to more struggle over communist ideas.

A Campus Comrade

As Bosses Push Us, Airport Workers Must Push Back

Conditions for workers at LaGuardia airport are deteriorating, just like on many jobs around the world. As our company here wages a publicity war against the union and its competitors, workers on the ramp and at the ticket counter know that it’s really just the same old bull. With the economy in crisis, the bosses are looking for even more ways to cut costs at the expense of us workers.

Essentially the company is trying to get 8 hours worth of work for 6 hours pay by cramming more flights into a single workday and providing fewer work crews. Work once performed by full-timers is being forced onto part-time and reserve workers.

In recent months local bosses have fired a number of workers for petty offenses. The most notable firing was of an older worker who had over four years with the company, on the bogus charge of “damaging airport equipment.” His real offense? Challenging supervisors’ decisions during briefings and openly supporting the union.

Other workers have been threatened, put on probation and forced to take sick leave at lower pay. Those still on the job work in an environment of fear and have to perform extra work to make up for those missing. All workers get screwed. Meanwhile the bosses have no plans to fix this by bringing anyone back or hiring more people.

In spite of the union’s nationalism and telling us to be hopeful about Obama, it is important to be involved in the union in which we can raise political ideas on the road to revolution. In the end the union will not be able to solve these problems because unions originate with capitalism and its inherently unstable economy; but as the bosses push workers more and more, workers have to push back.

Union or no union, PLP members and friends must join class struggles of the workers against the bosses. Fear gets us nowhere. We need to organize!

Airport Worker

Colombia May Day Marchers Mark Workers’ Bloody History

May 1st marked the 123rd anniversary of the Chicago massacre where courageous workers offered their lives so millions worldwide would have better working conditions. We remember the Chicago martyrs who symbolized the fight for the eight-hour work day. Today those reforms have been criminally taken away by the capitalists who enslave, exploit, and layoff workers. The police, military and paramilitary are used like private security by the drug-trafficking government to break unions, detain protestors in a mass way, and assassinate workers. Some of these capitalists own Chiquita Banana, Postobon, Drumon, Bavaria, Coca Cola, Nestle etc. Today because of the lack of an organized working class, we have lost reforms that cost rivers of blood to gain. The bosses have called this historic day Labor Day to hide its true name, The International Working Class Day. It is not in their interests to have workers recognize our bloody history.

On May 1st, along with the numerous worker and student groups, we mobilized in support of the more than four million displaced workers in Colombia, the millions who rot in the dungeons of the Uribe regime, in commemoration of the thousands who have been disappeared at the hands of the terrorist state, in memory of the more than four thousand unionists murdered, the hundreds of workers threatened with death, and in support of the more than one billion unemployed worldwide.

At the march, the PLP contingent raised our voices. We chanted for the destruction of capitalism with a communist revolution so that we could rebuild the revolutionary class-consciousness to end pacifism that the union leaders misguide workers with. With euphoria and courage some youth confronted the brutality of the state. They were beaten and arrested. We must double our efforts in helping our youth in their everyday struggles, teaching them our science of understanding the world, dialectical materialism, while at the same time getting them CHALLENGE newspaper. We must discuss the paper with them and find the best way to get involved in mass organizations. That is the only road to communist revolution and to rebuild a society that will put an end to all vestiges of racism, sexism and this imperialist system.

Comrade in Colombia

Need Revolutionary Communist Politics

During our May Day dinner a comrade gave a speech on how the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the imperialist conflict of World War I and how Soviet and Chinese communists defeated fascist Germany and Japan in World War II. The question arose, what made the Russians and Chinese different from others?
Prior to World War I workers had class-consciousness in Germany and France, but only the Russians had a revolution. Also, prior to the rise of the fascist powers there were powerful workers’ movements in Germany, France, Britain and the US, but how come only the Soviets and Chinese fought against fascism and not for empire?
The answer is that class-consciousness is not enough. Workers need revolutionary politics in order to escape the horrors of capitalism. In the U.S. during the 1930s the Communist Party stopped advocating communist revolution and fell in behind Roosevelt’s New Deal fascism. As the CPUSA became more involved with the reform struggles they moved further away from revolution until finally sellout leader Earl Browder declared in the 1940s that “communism was 20^th century Americanism.”
Today, too, workers find themselves struggling for their very survival. But it is not enough that we bring them class-consciousness; we must also bring revolutionary communist politics. Union misleaders push the slogan, “American jobs for American workers” and the Obama Administration tells us, “It is a time for shared sacrifice.” Each claim to be for workers and against greedy bankers, all the while wrapping themselves in the flag of U.S. capitalism. Class anger can just as easily be turned into fascist nationalism unless there are revolutionary politics to guide it.
At the immigrants rights march on May 1 here in Seattle, many groups came out to support workers’ “interests,” but only one proclaimed that communist revolution was the only solution — PLP. As members of PLP and readers of CHALLENGE we need to push these revolutionary politics on the campuses, on the shop floor and in the military barracks.

Comrades from Seattle

Karl Marx Scores Again...

In the NY Times Book Review section (5/17) there is a revealing review of a book entitled, “A FAILURE OF CAPITALISM — The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression,” by Richard Posner, a federal judge and a champion of the “market-oriented law-and-economics” movement. The reviewer says Posner doesn’t blame any of the usual suspects. Rather, he says, “blame capitalism.”

Posner maintains “the current crisis is a depression....The typical post-war recession is a partly self-correcting disinflationary contraction that soon subsides....The present downturn is a self-sustaining...contraction whose costly aftereffects will linger for years. The Great Depression led to World War II. Today’s depression...may cause a huge loss of output, an immense increase in the national debt...a decline in America’s economic and geopolitical power and increased instability abroad.”

The review states that, “A depression is a market failure (his emphasis — Ed.)...that the market is powerless to prevent.” The “market” is a synonym for capitalism.

As Karl Marx proved in his analysis of capitalism, depressions are built into the boom-and-bust profit system. And Posner appears to agree, although using different wording. “Decisions that were individually rational” [that is, each capitalist striving for maximum profit] become “collectively irrational” — meaning capitalists collectively striving for that goal produce far more capacity (overproduction) than the market can sustain, leading to a pull-back: laying off workers to try to maintain profits, which leads to a decreasing ability to buy what’s been produced, leading to more capitalists’ pulling back, more layoffs, and on and on.

Posner says that Obama, by attributing the crisis to “irresponsibility” of the banking and real estate interests, ends up “blaming capitalists for a failure of capitalism.” (As PLP’s slogan said, “It’s not Bush [now Obama], it’s capitalism.”)

From this review, it does not appear that Posner deals with the inevitable suffering that this boom-and-bust cycle heaps on the working class, in a Depression that Posner says “will linger for years.” Yes, mass, racist unemployment means sickness, malnutrition, millions of children in poverty, homelessness, and death.

To make society “rational,” we must — as Marx said — eliminate a system that creates “social production” but appropriates the fruits of that production privately (profit). It allocates the vast majority of the value the working class produces to a small number of the owners of the means of production, who also control the State (the government) which, in turn, protects the “right” of the capitalist class to exploit the working class.

No wonder PLP says “communist revolution [abolition of the profit system] is the only solution” to this massive contradiction.

Old-time Comrade

Exploited Subcontractor Workers Need Sharper Class Struggle

LOS ANGELES, June 1 — The growing U.S. unemployment rate isn’t just a number. At factories in southern California, fellow workers are leaving shops jobless while others live in constant fear of losing their jobs. “There have been weeks when I’ve gone to work every day thinking it could be my last,” said one aerospace machinist.

The bosses are utilizing layoffs and cutting hours to maintain or regain profit. International competition and inter-imperialist rivalry are forcing them to rearrange and chip away at their workforce to stay afloat in the economic crisis. The latter means fewer orders for durable goods, causing unemployment in mining and quarrying as well as in manufacturing. From April 2008 to April 2009, the unemployment rate in mining rose from 3.6% to 16.1%. For manufacturing of durable goods, it went from 4.8% rate to 12.8% in that period.

Throughout our shops rumors abound about layoffs. Often workers hear of mass layoffs and complete shutdowns in other shops in the area. Many fear the same fate, and still others feel lucky to still have a job. Layoffs mean more work and speed-up for those still working. Workers go from grumbling to resisting speed-up with slowdowns.

Mainly the bosses tell workers we must sacrifice to maintain the company’s health. Recently hours were being cut in several departments in an aerospace factory. After explaining that management had been doing all it could to obtain more orders, a supervisor remarked that, “Now we must really learn how to budget our money.”

Of course, management works on salary and isn’t adversely affected by working fewer hours, but the “sacrifice” ideology coincides with Obama’s national service, “serve-your-country” talk. Additionally, the “We” talk tries to put bosses and workers on the same side, “working together for everyone’s benefit.” In this crisis, the aerospace bosses are grabbing profits by attacking us workers.

In the short term, many workers feel they must do anything to hold their jobs, their main means of survival. Although capitalism cannot and will never provide security, it’s a process to understand that our real danger is in not acting in our class interests. The loss of jobs and homes for many families shatters illusions about capitalism, but in and of itself that does not build confidence that another world is possible and that workers like us are critical to the revolutionary fight.

Sharpening the class struggle makes it clear that the workers and the bosses have clashing interests. This requires a concentrated dialectical discussion of the system’s contradictions on a “one-on-one” scale between communists and co-workers, and between PLP and workers, students and soldiers on a mass scale.

Our Summer Project here can demonstrate the need and potential for workers’ unity and struggle for communism with masses of workers, students, and soldiers. With the crisis showing no signs of letting up, and the dominant capitalist ideas splattered all over the shop floor, TV and press, we must fight these lies, and organize the class struggle to further develop our understanding of how to make the vision of communism a real thing for workers here and worldwide.

Mandela’s Nationalism Fronts for South African Capitalism

PLP has long exposed nationalist movements as essentially a capitalist tool to maintain the exploitation of the working class. When the Party did just that about Mandela and his government, we were severely condemned for daring to criticize those forces that had defeated the apartheid system. But a NY Times Sept. 12, 1994 interview with Mandela reveals the truth of the fruits of nationalism:

“Mr. Mandela recalled the paternal scolding he had delivered the night before to the Congress of South African Trade Unions....

[He] told the unionists....Ease up on the strikes; you are scaring foreign investors. Prepare to ‘tighten your belts’ and accept low wages....

“When he upbraided the labor leaders...he did not mention an additional reason that their militancy has worried him. Some employers who have been the target of strikes have been secret benefactors of the African National Congress.

“Before the election campaign, Mr. Mandela went to 20 titans of corporate S. Africa and asked for at least a million rand — about $275,000 — to build up the party and finance his campaign.

“All but one, he said, complied. A few, like Raymond D. Ackerman, the head of the Pick ’n Pay grocery chain, gave double the minimum request....So it rankled him that Mr. Ackerman’s stores had just borne the brunt of a raucous strike by store clerks.

“‘For them to target people who have been assisting us creates difficulties. Without funds we could not have built the organization, we could not have won the election....’ When Mr. Ackerman, his benefactor..., phones with a problem, Mr. Mandela instantly takes his call....

“Others in his government have not been...proletarian, prompting...indignant articles about lavish salaries, Concorde trips and free-spending bodyguards.

“‘We have this problem,’ Mr. Mandela said. ‘We have high salaries and we are living in luxury. That destroys your capacity to speak up in a forthright manner and tell people to tighten their belts....’” [No kidding!]

PL’er Helen Jones Dies; Led ‘Rolling Thunder’ Through Boeing Plants

In 1995 Helen Marie Barron Jones and her close friend led 500 mostly white workers banging their tools loudly on metal drums in the first march through a Boeing factory during a contract struggle. It became known as rolling thunder, which brings out thousands of marchers through the plants every contract.

A comrade from Chicago asked how she got the courage to lead all these workers. “Well, somebody had to do it!” she told her. That is how we in Seattle will remember Helen: when somebody had to stand up for the working class, Helen stood up!

Helen, a retired 22-year Boeing worker and comrade, died on May 16th from cancer. She was 68. Born in Monroe, Louisiana, she later moved to Seattle, Washington, raising three children (two surviving). She provided invaluable love and support to her ten grandchildren, three of whom, and their mother, lived with her. Last year, even as Helen’s disease progressed, she and her family attended a BBQ in support of our Party’s work during the Boeing strike.

Helen first came around the Progressive Labor Party as the O.J. Simpson trial hit the news. They had just released the notorious tapes of the racist cop [Mark] Furman. She and her close friend approached one of our members in the shop, asking him what he thought.

“Oh, you don’t have to ask that,” her friend interrupted. “You know what he thinks.”

“No, I want to hear it from him,” Helen insisted. They talked about how the tapes had made it perfectly clear racism was the biggest issue in the trial, particularly the vicious racism of the Los Angeles cops.

At the memorial service, the comrade recalled how he thought at the time, “Man, this woman is tough. She just won’t let you off the hook!”

Discipline and an unsurpassed sense of responsibility — to her family, her friends, her co-workers and the international working class — marked her time in the Party. Until her illness made it impossible, she would faithfully attend every national and local meeting. She was often the first to hand in CHALLENGE sales money and reveled in seeing a stadium full of Boeing workers reading our CHALLENGE extras during strike-sanction votes. She struggled with us to seriously study Dialectical Materialism. Coming from a religious background, she felt it imperative we have a world view that pointed toward communism.

Helen had the discipline to wait patiently at lunchtime factory meetings until everyone had spoken. Only then would she insist we pay attention to what she would call the big three: the fight against racism, nationalism, and capitalism.

When the engineers went on strike for the first time, the IAM refused to organize any real support. Our blue-collar members and friends on 1st shift debated what to do. Helen, a 2nd shifter, caught us in the aisle as we left the building. She laid down the law: we weren’t going to leave until we organized support for those workers on the picket line. ...And that’s exactly what happened!

Many commented, often with bittersweet humor, how Helen had struggled with them. Her sister called her, “that woman who could convince anybody to think what she thinks, to do as she did, because she knew the deal.” When Helen’s health forced her to retire, she helped organize breakfast and lunch strike meetings and brought groups of retirees to the picket lines. The salon where she got her hair done saw hours-long debates about “the evils of capitalism and the need for communist revolution.”

Helen’s first Party writing was a farewell poem to 1999 Boeing Summer Project volunteers. It read in part:

Whenever you’re in doubt
Of what PLP’s about
Look around
What have you found?
Cop’s brutality
School Fallacies
Friends are in distress
Lift your voice
The Party is on the way
The summer of 1999
You stood out on the line
Is now part of history
Etched in your memory...

Helen, you are etched in our memory. We are better for having known you. We dedicate this year’s Summer Project to you.

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, June 3, 2009

Information: 03 June 2009 382 hits

Rulers Use Obama to Widen Afghan-Pakistan Ground War

Obama Flip-Flops on Torture Photo-Op to Protect New War Leader

Obama: Ruling-Class Hero

Killer McChrystal in Ivy League Club Helping Obama Carry Out War and Fascism

Students Say ‘Professor of Torture’ Must Go!

CUNY Students, Stella Strikers Allies in Struggle

LA Teachers, Students Walk Out Against Layoffs

Racist Unemployment Is Capitalism’s Executioner

Again… Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure

PL’ers Bring Red Ideas to Colombia’s May Day March

Workers Storm Steel Bosses’ Meeting

Colombia’s TV ‘Reality Show’ Ponzi Scheme and Other Capitalist Evils

Why Are TV Shows So Important For The Bosses Right Now?

The Fight Against Sexism is Vital to Defeating Capitalism

Letters

Turning Shop Struggle into Class Consciousness

May Day Youth ‘Were On A Mission’

Fight Racism with Multi-racial Unity, Not As ‘White Allies’

‘Liberal’ N.J. Mayor: ‘Who, me racist?’; ‘Yes, YOU!’

Oaxaca May Day Marchers Defy Gov’t Flu Panic

30 Generations of Racism =Billion$ for Bosses

Rulers Use Obama to Widen Afghan-Pakistan Ground War

The dominant imperialist wing of U.S. capitalists is pressing Obama to emphasize ground warfare over air strikes in the widening Afghanistan-Pakistan battleground. The shift spells higher death tolls on all sides and even more U.S. troops than Obama’s surge of 21,000. Current U.S. strategy targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban with pilotless "drone" aircraft is unintentionally swelling enemy ranks.

The May 17 New York Times, the rulers’ leading mouthpiece, published an op-ed piece, "Death From Above, Outrage Down Below," by Andrew Exum and David Kilcullen of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). It warned, "Over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians....Every one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased." Over one million Pakistanis have been forced from their homes into refugee camps because of groundwarfare.

Bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Exum and Kilcullen’s CNAS served Obama’s 2008 campaign as a "Pentagon-in-waiting." CNAS’s president, Michele Flournoy, is now an Undersecretary of Defense.

Obama Flip-Flops on Torture Photo-Op to Protect New War Leader

Consequently, Obama’s dramatic replacement of General David McKiernan with torture expert Stanley McChrystal as top general in Afghanistan launches a more effective killing campaign that implicitly criticizes Bush’s efforts there. Not since President Truman booted General Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War (1952) has a president removed a warzone commander this way. The big switch — along with the White House christening of a new "Af-Pak" theatre of war— makes Afghanistan-Pakistan "Obama’s War."

McChrystal’s expertise lies in the quintessential U.S. ground force, "Special Operations." Early in his career he trained anti-Soviet forces in the CIA operation based in Pakistan that helped oust the Russians from Afghanistan, an effort that produced Osama bin Laden and later al Qaeda.

McChrystal also trained the Afghan warlords in a joint campaign to chase the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, forces he must battle once more, now that they’ve staged a come-back in several Afghan provinces.

He most recently oversaw Delta and Seal Special Operations units. These units train fascist armies and are used to torture and murder "enemy suspects" in prison camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, seldom distinguishing actual insurgents from innocent civilians.

Obama abruptly broke his promise to release pictures of the U.S. military abusing prisoners to avoid embarrassing appointee McChrystal, who gave the orders. [For an account of the war crimes committed under McChrystal’s command, see Esquire magazine, 5/7/09.] The CNAS’s Exum told MSNBC (5/12/09) that U.S. and Afghan casualties "are likely to go up" once McChrystal takes over.

Obama: Ruling-Class Hero

For the war-bent rulers, Barack Obama is proving the most effective leader since Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, in the 1930s, transformed his popularity during the Great Depression into mobilization for World War II. Obama hopes to accomplish something similar, as the rulers plan for conflicts far bigger than Iraq or Afghanistan, against China and Russia. Aided immensely by the rulers’ main ideology-shapers, the liberal media and universities, Obama enjoys sky-high approval ratings.

Meanwhile, the war machine he presides over slaughters more and more civilians in his escalating Af-Pak war. He has reopened Bush’s Guantanamo Military Tribunals, which deny all rights to anyone they care to label "enemy combatant," validating "evidence" extracted by torture. And Obama is prolonging the Iraq war he promised to end.

The rulers’ media constantly urges us to vote for the "lesser evil" (usually a Democrat) in their electoral circuses. Since millions are disgusted with both parties, the rulers use liberals to spread the illusion that they will "reform"the system’s more brutal nature and won’t be as "bad"as reactionary Republicans. As a "lesser evil" who carries out the rulers’ war aims, Obama tops all his warmonger predecessors — Johnson in Vietnam; Carter in the 1979 CIA Afghan war cited above; and Clinton in the Yugoslavia air-war massacre and bombings of Iraq.

Since ultimately only communist revolution can forever halt these endless imperialist wars, we must strive in our shops and unions, in strikes and mass protests in our schools and on our campuses, in churches and all mass organizations, to expose Obama’s regime as an unprecedented, all-out assault on the working class.

Within this class struggle we must show how the super-exploitative, racist capitalist system is the source of this constant assault, and that the elimination of the profit system — replaced by a communist society in which the working class reaps all the value it produces — is the only road to workers’ emancipation.

Building the revolutionary PLP is the key to that goal.

Killer McChrystal in Ivy League Club Helping Obama Carry Out War and Fascism

For the bosses, Obama favorite McChrystal’s ties to U.S. imperialism’s main faction round out his resumé as mass murderer. The liberal Brookings Institution calls him a "superstar." Just before he won his general’s stars, he served as military fellow at the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations, the rulers’ most influential think-tank.

McChrystal did a year-long stint at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. Belfer, part of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, boasts a long roster of members aiding the Obama regime, not only in military matters but also in his anti-working-class economic "restructuring" laying off tens of thousands of auto workers. This includes Defense Under-secretaries Ashton Carter and CNAS boss Michele Flournoy, banking czar Paul Volcker, Mid-East envoy Dennis Ross, National Security aide Samantha Power (who, while working for Obama in 2008, revealed his pledge to leave Iraq as a phony campaign promise), NATO ambassador Ivo Daalder, economic advisor Martin Feldstein, Homeland Security guru Rand Beers and others.

Students Say ‘Professor of Torture’ Must Go!

NEW YORK, May 7 — Students at Columbia University held a small protest today against torture and oil wars, and called for the firing of Professor Philip Bobbitt. Bobbitt is a Columbia law professor, former director of intelligence for the National Security Council and associate counsel to three presidents. He has written that the law should be changed to allow harsher interrogations, that juries should acquit officials accused of torture who are doing it to "save lives," and he was one of the leading ideological advocates of the invasion of Iraq and the need for the U.S. to fight a "long war" in the Middle East. Members of PLP went to the protest to sell CHALLENGE and expose the role of capitalism in breeding imperialist war.

CUNY Students, Stella Strikers Allies in Struggle

NEW YORK CITY, April 22 — Chanting "Education Is A Right, Fight, Fight, Fight!" and "Education Is Under Attack, What Do We Do? Stand Up! Fight Back!" more than 300 students and supporters rallied at City College in Harlem today, the 40th anniversary of the 1969 City College strike and sit-in that brought Open Admissions and integrated the lily-white senior colleges of CUNY. At the administration building where police blocked entry they presented their demands to a Vice-President of the college.

The demands included no tuition hikes, budget cuts, or layoffs of campus workers; free tuition, open admissions, and quality childcare; and pay-cuts and a salary cap for the administration. Twenty striking workers from Stella D’Oro in the Bronx joined the students to offer their support, and were loudly cheered as they marched down the hill into the rally.

Teachers and students in PLP from CUNY and another college explained that capitalism in 2009 means deep economic crisis, global wars, and ecological catastrophe. The pay-cuts and tuition increases demanded of Stella D’Oro workers and CUNY students is a sign of what capitalism has in mind for our class. Our response to these racist attacks that fall most heavily on black and Latino workers and students must be to unite workers and students to organize for communist revolution.

The best feature of this rally was the collaboration of students with workers, who met jointly to plan a double rally: first at City College with the workers coming down, then at the struck plant with the students coming up. From the administration building, we marched, fifty or sixty strong, chanting "Workers and Students Will Never Be Defeated!" to the subway, and, still chanting and singing "Which Side Are You On?" and "Solidarity Forever," occupied a couple of subway cars on this "protest train."

From the elevated train we marched down the long iron staircase to the picket line, chanting all the way, greeted with smiles and cheers from the workers there. About forty students and workers spoke at the two rallies, many of them women taking leadership in both struggles. The MC at the plant site encouraged CUNY and other students to speak, and after a pause seven or eight came up, many for the first time, including one from New Jersey who had heard the strikers speak at her campus last week.

Our friends, both at Stella and at CUNY, understand that PLP fights like hell for our immediate needs, but is also organizing a Party to bring state power to the working class, so that we can use the value we create to benefit all workers internationally in a communist society. One worker at the CCNY rally told the students that the company’s demands for pay-cuts and their use of scabs was a "great social crime," which wouldn’t be punished until large numbers of students and workers united to fight for change. Another told the students that they had to struggle now so that "the capitalists won’t take hold of your lives and wreck them." Students told the workers with passion how much they appreciated their support, and how difficult it was for them to be a student and to work many hours every week to pay for rising tuition.

An Argentine filmmaker was at the rally with a new film on the Zanón ceramics factory that was seized and run by workers — the syndicalist dream of "a factory without bosses." Some of the Stella D’Oro workers were inspired by the film, and they all realize that they could, and should, be running Stella D’Oro without the owners and their agents. Workers can run the factories and students and teachers can run the schools, but only when they control the levers of power — the government and the military — with a communist Party. Today on the protest train, workers and students united had a brief glimpse of the world that is struggling to be born.

Stella D’Oro Strikers Pit Workers’ Unity vs. Bosses’ Wealth

GREENWICH, CT, MAY 11 — Two busloads of over 100 striking Stella D’Oro workers and supporters rallied in front of the headquarters of the private equity firm that owns Stella D’Oro, Brynwood Partners, demanding that the company rescind its plans for drastic cuts in the workers’ wages and benefits. One of the striking workers said, "The owners of Stella D’Oro have their fortunes, their tremendous wealth, their fancy homes and cars. But we have our numbers and our solidarity and our determination to fight and not give up." Worker after worker spoke of his or her determination to keep on fighting and not accept the company’s demands.

Workers and students told the strikers how their unity — not a single worker has crossed the picket line — and courage has inspired them and how they’re providing a stirring example of how to respond to the attempts to force workers to pay for the economic crisis.

Increasingly, more Stella D’Oro workers are viewing their strike as not just important for them but for the working class. Chants at the rally ranged from "The WORKERS united will never be defeated," to "Boycott Stella D’Oro," to "Same Enemy Same Fight, All WORKERS Must Unite."

The strikers have traveled all over NYC — to union meetings, to campus rallies, to high school classrooms — to spread news about their struggle and what it means for everyone today.

On the two busses every worker received CHALLENGE and read it, particularly the articles that featured their fellow strikers attending PL events.

LA Teachers, Students Walk Out Against Layoffs

LOS ANGELES, May 15 — About two months ago, Reduction in Force (RIF) notices were given to over 8,000 teachers in our school district, in essence laying them off for the next school year. About a month after that at a union meeting, PL’ers introduced a resolution for teachers to strike on May Day (May 1st). The union hacks suggested that we strike on any day BUT May Day. They said it would "distract from our issues" to march with the rest of the working class. (see article, page 4)

At one school, there was a "new teacher meeting" a few days after this union meeting. Almost all the new teachers had received RIF notices and were not interested in what the principal had to say about next year. They weren’t even sure if they would have a job next year! They wanted to know why the union wasn’t truly fighting for them. The union chair gave the company line, saying the union "had to think of all the teachers in the district" and not just those at one school. Of course, that school is majority working-class black and Latino students and almost a third of the staff got RIF’ed, while the rich schools only had two or three teachers laid off!

A PL teacher stood up and said that teachers didn’t have to rely on the union; we could do our own wildcat action on May Day, like the original resolution had proposed. The new teachers loved the idea! One said that the PL’er should be their spokesperson, not the union rep. They shamed the union rep so much that she had the teachers at the school vote whether or not they wanted to stay out for one hour on May Day, and 90% of the teachers voted yes!

May Day 2009 saw teachers (not to mention quite a few students) marching in front of the school for the first hour of the school day, chanting "The teachers united will never be defeated" and "Maestros luchando también están enseñando (teachers in struggle are also teaching)." There were quite a few political discussions amongst teachers about the system and the historical importance of May Day, especially those new teachers. One conversation centered around a recent murder/suicide committed by a laid-off worker at a local hospital who not only shot his boss, but also his boss’s boss before he shot himself. One teacher commented that if he was going to do it, he should have gotten the people at the very top. "And the system," was added. She agreed completely. She, and about five other new teachers are now getting CHALLENGE regularly.

The teachers went back inside the school after 9 am, but during 3rd period the students walked out in support of the teachers! They held up signs, marched around inside the school and even tried to march around the outside of the school before being threatened with tickets and having to come back inside the campus. About 200 students walked out. "Next time," they promised as they came back into class, "the walkout will be even better." What a day! What a May Day full of class struggle! Now we must make the rest of the year full of communist class struggle.

Racist Unemployment Is Capitalism’s Executioner

How sick is the capitalist profit system? When the loss of 540,000 jobs in one month is considered "a good sign"!

That’s how the economic pundits reacted to the government’s jobless figures for April, since they were allegedly lower than job losses for the previous two months. But even that figure is suspect (see box).

The fact is real unemployment — reported figures plus "hidden unemployment — has passed 30 million, over 20% (not the government’s phony 8.9%). The latter figure represents 13.5 million jobless. Then add the 8.9 million part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs, plus 5.8 million "discouraged" workers who have given up looking for non-existent jobs, plus at least two-thirds of the 2.4 million imprisoned for non-violent crimes, plus the hundreds of thousands of jobless youth who joined the military, plus those on welfare who are forced onto Workfare who are not counted among the unemployed. Add it all up, and it easily exceeds 30 million.

This is "the longest, most punishing recession since the Great Depression." (NY Times, 5/9; all statistics from that edition)

How sick is this latest capitalist depression? Consider:

• Nearly 10 million jobs will be needed just to get back to the "normal unemployment" at the start of the "recession" in 2007: the 5.7 million jobs already lost, plus the over 2 million jobs needed just to keep up with population growth, plus at least another 2 million jobs that will be cut before the economy may start growing again;

• Children in poverty will rise from 18% to 27.3% by 2010;

• Over 27% of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, the highest on record;

• Wages have been stagnant, while millions have lost their homes and millions more are behind on mortgage payments;

• "The employment picture for…men and women with four-year college degrees or higher is the worst on record," now being labeled the "recession generation."

Racism’s Special Toll

As has existed for generations among the last hired and first fired, racist discrimination takes a special toll on super-exploited black and Latino workers. If the "hidden unemployment" cited above is included, joblessness among black workers is at 30% and among Latino workers it’s 22.6% (doubling the "official" figures). Poverty among black children (39.5% in 2007) will exceed 50% when the "official" unemployment rate hits 10%.

The brutal fact is that, "There are a lot of people who lost jobs [that] …are not coming back," according to Obama’s Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, especially in manufacturing industries like auto and steel. Many "are going to be economically desperate for many years" (Economic Policy Institute), especially when unemployment benefits run out (and only 40% of the jobless are even eligible at all), when tens of millions of workers with no health insurance fall sick, and when millions more who’ve lost their homes become homeless.

A 1971 Congressional study reported that for every 1.4% rise in unemployment, 30,000 workers die in the following five years. Amid this skyrocketing jobless rate, that means capitalism’s mass, racist unemployment will kill hundreds of thousands of workers in the near future. Truly the profit system is guilty of mass murder.

And this is in the "most advanced" capitalist country. Unemployment worldwide is in the hundreds of millions. Several billion try to survive on a dollar or two a day. This is besides the millions slaughtered in imperialist oil wars which will occur as long as imperialism exists.

No matter who’s in the ruling class’s White House, whether Republican Bush or Democrat Obama, unemployment and its gruesome consequences will go on and on, recession after depression….

Only the overthrow of the capitalist system by communist revolution, only a system without bosses and profits and racism and super-exploitation — communism — can free the world’s working class from the horrors of the murderous profit system.

Again… Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure

Even the "official" figure of a "lower" amount of lost jobs in April is suspect. The government hired 72,000 people last month, mostly temporary workers to gather the 2010 census. When much of that is added into the reported 540,000 newly-unemployed, the total is well into the 600,000s. Moreover, the figure for March of 663,000 has now been revised to 699,000 and the one for February was upped from the initially-reported 651,000 to 681,000. So what will this April figure become when it is revised in a month or two?

And none of these figures included the "hidden unemployed." So much for the "good news."

PLP Ties Communist Politics to Teachers’ Anti-Layoff Fight

LOS ANGELES, May 18 — "Teachers at three schools have already held illegal wildcat job actions protesting layoffs. The union leadership fears following the leadership of rank-and-file teachers," declared a PLP teacher at the May 6 House of Delegates meeting. On May 12, a judge, acting for the bosses, granted an injunction prohibiting a teacher strike, threatening fines and revocation of teachers’ credentials.

"We should have no illusions about the power of the state apparatus," another PL’er said. "The government is a weapon of capitalist rule against the working class. They’ll bring their full power against us by imposing an injunction, but we must be prepared to defy it."

Such speeches exposed the union president’s fear tactics. He warned that an injunction against a planned illegal one-day job action and potential fines of $1,000 per teacher would break the union. Teachers in PLP had joined with others to fight for a one-day strike on May 1, International Workers’ Day. Although we won support for this in many areas of the city, the union leadership, appealing to anti-communism and anti-immigrant racism, pushed through a counter-motion for a one-day strike on any day in May except May Day. Teachers voted by 75% for a one-day walkout on May 15.

But even this was too much for the mis-leaders. They caved in to the injunction, blocked the strike and instead organized civil disobedience. The union president and 40 teacher activists sat in at an intersection, were arrested and spent the day in jail, hoping to diffuse the anger of the teachers at being sold out. Many teachers called this "just theatrics."

The LA Times reported the union president’s proposal that teachers suffer a pay cut in exchange for retaining the jobs of the 2,600 laid-off teachers, while throwing 2,500 non-teaching employees to the wolves.

Instead of leading workers in a life-and-death struggle against the bosses’ system, the union leaders’ role is "negotiating" the attacks on public employees, trying to convince them that there’s no alternative to capitalism, fascism and imperialist war. As the bosses’ crisis deepens, they must bail out the banks and expand the war, leaving teachers to face huge layoffs.

The layoffs are racist, increasing class size and disrupting mostly black and Latino working-class schools, as are the cuts in the non-teaching staff, many of them black and Latino new-hires.

After layoffs were announced in March, teachers and students at three high schools held unsanctioned one-hour job actions against them, two of which involved over 90% of the faculty. Students in CHALLENGE readers’ groups gave leadership in forums, demonstrations and in the PLP May Day contingent.

Since teacher layoffs are not part of the contract, job actions are illegal. The union leadership failed to prepare the members for this and caved in to the injunction, provoking tremendous district-wide anger and frustration. The injunction claimed leaving students unsupervised for a day constitutes "irreparable harm." This implies a blanket prohibition of all teacher strikes.

Like Obama’s forced bankruptcy of the auto companies and the attacks on autoworkers’ jobs, wages and pensions, this is a fascist attack. As UAW mis-leaders help the bosses slam autoworkers, the teacher union leaders are doing the same by refusing to defy the fascist injunction.

While Obama counts on these mis-leaders to pacify workers and win them to patriotic sacrifice for the (bosses’) nation, communists prepare and call on workers to take the fight outside the bosses’ laws, with wildcats and non-union job actions, aiming to build forces for revolution.

The union leadership called for picketing before school and civil disobedience at the Board of Education. Teachers and students at many schools picketed in the morning, angry at the Board of Education, the judge, and the union leadership. All three — plus the bankers and bosses’ courts — represent the dictatorship of Capital, the capitalist class, attacking the working class to save a system which can’t meet workers’ needs but must use fascism and world war to preserve their blood-soaked profits.

We distributed CHALLENGE on the picket lines. This led to many important discussions with fellow teachers — who read the paper — about growing fascism, the bankruptcy of the union leadership, the dead-end liberalism of civil disobedience and the need for political leadership whose goal is communist revolution.

We rely on the working class, including teachers, students and parents. Our goal is to increase youth and workers’ understanding and hatred of the system, to build the long-term struggle to take political power from the capitalists. Our aim is a communist world, a workers’ dictatorship, where nobody starves and there no bosses, living in luxury off workers’ sweat. The victory is more CHALLENGE readers, militant study-action CHALLENGE groups, the Summer Project (see page 7), and a growing commitment to destroy this fascist system.

PL’ers Bring Red Ideas to Colombia’s May Day March

In Bogota, at one of the biggest May Days in recent years, thousands of workers marched down the main streets shouting their fierce rejection of fascist police, unemployment, low wages, budget cuts to social services, corruption and the rottenness of the whole Uribe government. The vast majority of marchers, while chanting against the genocidal President Uribe Velez, did not identify him as one of the many puppets used by this capitalist system, instead blaming him personally for the misery that Colombian workers endure.

Social democrats, liberals and opportunists, some disguised as communists, offered false promises and took the platform, not to bring a message of working-class solidarity and the need for communist revolution, but for their electoral speeches. Other groups of workers denounced the violation of human rights and the privatization of public institutions like the District University, the National University, and the telephone company.

These workers are honest and earnest in their desire for a better life, but they were missing a key point: the capitalist system is the real cause of all of our problems and only by destroying it can we hope to improve the lives of workers. The PLP supplied this missing ingredient by consistently denouncing capitalism and its degenerate, genocidal, corrupt leaders like Obama, Sarkozy and Uribe and their war policies against the working class in Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

Workers and students, employed and jobless, men and women, all gave revolutionary leadership protesting militantly with our PLP sign and flags. Before and during the march we enthusiastically distributed 3,000 fliers and sold CHALLENGE, showing communism as the only true solution. "It’s May Day, not a carnival!" and "Paramilitarism and racism hold Capitalism afloat!"; "Long live communism and down with capitalism!" and many other chants were shouted by our forces throughout the day, in a disciplined fashion. Many joined our chants while other passer-bys were astonished and asked for our literature. We explained our revolutionary line and how to stay in touch with us and asked how we could continue to send them CHALLENGE.

As we entered the plaza, singing the Internationale, we were attacked with tear gas by the fascist police. As in most years, this ended the march. Later there were confrontations with the police and several businesses were destroyed. These lasted several hours, and some were hurt while 117 were arrested. Here we have another example of the chaos that capitalism creates for workers.

The international working class urgently needs new revolutionary leadership to unify, organize and prepare the working class for its immediate needs and its future goals to destroy this bosses’ system and build the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a long, difficult struggle, but opportunities abound. We must take advantage of the economic crisis of this rotten, stinking capitalist system to bring a communist message to our working-class brothers and sisters. Everything we do counts! The future is bright for the working class!

Workers Storm Steel Bosses’ Meeting

LUXEMBOURG, May 13 — Angry steel workers attacked the Luxembourg headquarters of ArcelorMittal, world’s biggest steelmaker, during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday, setting off smoke bombs and breaking through the front door, protesting 9,000 layoffs. Buses brought 1,000 workers from plants in northern France and southern Belgium. Some hurled cobblestones and steel fencing, smashed windows and tore off a steel molding from the ornate 1920s exterior as riot police lined up to protect the head office.

Colombia’s TV ‘Reality Show’ Ponzi Scheme and Other Capitalist Evils

We know the importance of television and media in modern life as a communication tool. We can also see the how the bosses, conscious of the risks of using it excessively as a tool of repression, use it in a much more subliminal way now. In one case, they are doing this through "Reality TV".

Recently, a new TV show entitled "Inversiones el A.B.C." ("The ABC Investments") has been aired on a local Colombian TV network. The TV show is based on the real life story behind the David Murcia Guzmán (DMG) group. The DMG group is a controversial company disbanded in November 2008 by the Colombian government under suspicion of money laundering and using a Ponzi scheme. Essentially, they got people to spend 100,000 pesos on pre-paid cards they could use to buy various things distributed by the DMG group. They would then get their money back for buying the cards (and maybe even make a profit) only if they got others to buy a lot more cards.

Strangely enough, the majority of the working class here in Colombia did not feel robbed by the DMG group. They felt, rather, that the government robbed them when it precipitated the bankruptcy of the DMG group (acting under pressure from bankers and the U.S. Embassy). The government is now working hard to twist the necks of an important sector of the working class by using the media to show the incident from their perspective.

Why Are TV Shows So Important For The Bosses Right Now?

There are a lot of reasons why the government needs good publicity right now. Lately, the housing problem in Colombia has been getting much worse. According to figures from the Supreme Judiciary Council, the number of foreclosures in 1999 was 550,000 and 347,000 in 2003. According to figures from the organizations of victims of the financial system, there are over 500,000 families that have been evicted by the banks and 400,000 more arein the process of eviction. According to the World Bank, Colombia is the second largest country in concentration of wealth in the world, and five groups control 92% of the financial sector.

The pressure is mounting on this capitalist system, especially when it comes to the local systems. They act as a shield and protection for the global financial system. Because of this, the debt can be maintained even as the dollar falls. Here things happen with this very special formula: when the consumer price index (CPI) falls, the debt remains, but when the CPI rises, the debt rises.

For example, if you go to the bank and give them 100 pesos, hoping to have 105 or 110 if you save it, then the bank says that because of management expenses, card balances and taxes now you only have 80 pesos. Where is the motivation to save? There is none, and if another site, DMG namely, tells you that if you put those same 100 pesos in their pyramid scheme you can expect to get 200 back, then you’ll do it because you have to take the risk.

A survey of the International Youth Organization 2008 says: 120 million young people between 15 and 24 years of age in Latin America suffer an unemployment rate of 12.5%. In Colombia almost 30% of the youth are unemployed. This rate is increasing because of the bosses’ crisis. "It is said that only about 48% of children have access to Preschool. Also, teen pregnancy rates continue to increase reaching more than 20.5% in women 15- to 19-years-old and 16% of poor households living in precarious positions."

The Fight Against Sexism is Vital to Defeating Capitalism

PLP combats sexism, opposing the attacks against women and developing women leaders in our movement. We also continue to spread our communist analysis of sexism: that it is necessary for the bosses because it divides the working class and makes revolutionary struggle that much more unlikely. The fight against sexist ideas cannot be separated from the struggle against the system that creates them.

In a study of the Public Defense Organization and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Pasto, capital of Nariño, 43.3% of women reported having been the victim of physical violence and 70% did not report it or ask for help. Likewise, 19.7% were forced into sex acts or sex against their will. Sexual violence appears as a central strategy of territorial control. The attacks against women around the world are growing. While this system exists, where economic exploitation turns women into a commodity, women will be abused and disregarded both on a small scale to a much larger scale.

When asked: "Has a member of your family ever been physically forced to have sex or sexual acts unwillingly?," 11.1% of the population answered in the positive; 17.9% declared that sexual assault was the determining cause for moving away. Sexism increases oppression through economic, cultural and social means. Women earn less and are treated worse on a political level.

Sexism is not only the personal male chauvinism of a few right-wing and backward men and women or the outcome of the deployment of paramilitaries in the city. In Bogotá, the process of the exploitation of women is reflected in key areas of the formal economy (large projects) or the informal economy (drug trafficking).

For example, trade in San Andresito, money laundering in the neighborhood of Santafé, and other financial activities downtown all use the super-exploitation of women to make a profit. The steps they take are clear: infiltrate, control, prevent acceptance by the population or the institutions that have a presence in the area; create extensive networks in the neighborhoods, proliferate fear; execute the "Undesirable," and attempt total domination of the area. This practice is not new but now it is being done systematically against women workers.

All workers need to combat inequality as an integral part of capitalism. Attacks against women also keep their brother workers in chains. The divisions between men and women help employers cut our salaries. Victory for the working class requires that we break these divisions and join in the fight for equality by destroying the capitalist system. The working class needs to destroy sexism in order to defeat capitalism and build a revolutionary struggle for communism to eliminate the oppression of all workers.

Letters

Turning Shop Struggle into Class Consciousness

I work for a non-union auto subcontractor in the South. As car sales have fallen, the company has cut about half its workforce. Recently, the rest of us have been put on half-time. We work forty hours every two weeks and collect some unemployment. Many have had to pick up extra minimum-wage, under-the-table jobs.

Recently we received another reminder of what capitalism is when we lost eight of our 40 hours to a company "maintenance day." Managers and supervisors were paid to plan how to get even more work out of us, while the production workers were given an unpaid day off and left with a big hole in their paychecks. This became an opportunity to move my friends in the factory to higher levels of class consciousness.

I expressed my anger to another auto worker who works a part-time job with me. I suggested that we stop work, stage a kind of sit-down protest, to force the bosses to give us back our hours. After all, I pointed out, they still have a market for the trucks we make, and they can’t make them without us. My friend agreed, and argued that at this point "we might as well go out fighting." So we made a plan, and the next day we both talked to others at the factory to see where they stood.

People’s opinions were quite divided. Many were down for doing something. Some worried that if too few people agreed to the action that the managers would just step in and run the line. They pointed out that it had to be all of us or none of us.

Another close friend, who had helped write a letter of support for the Boeing strikers, criticized me for being "ungrateful" for the hours that we still had. I told her that "we can’t just be passive and let things get worse." Since she and I talk a lot about relationships, I used marriage as an analogy. When things are wrong there, she doesn’t just say, "Well, at least I have a relationship." For the same reason, we can’t just say "well at least we have jobs" since if we took such a passive approach, the problems for the working class would get worse.

A day later, the bosses announced that everyone who had gotten cut would be able to make up the lost days. We don’t know if they had heard of our plans, but that isn’t the main point.

Key were the discussions about how one can fight, about our role as workers, all of which are part of the struggle to build up a fighting class-consciousness. Some of my friends receive CHALLENGE, and this struggle helped me understand and push the limits of their understanding of what we mean by worker’s power, of a communist society without bosses. We still have a ways to go. Many of these workers were invited to May Day. Two came to a study group to consider our ideas more, and then came to May Day and helped prepare food. These are small steps, but they are the essential first steps on the road to communism.

As we fight for the loaves of bread to eat today
We can’t forget who built the factory,
Grew the grain and who bakes the loaves of bread for tomorrow,
The workers do.

Subcontractor Comrade

May Day Youth ‘Were On A Mission’

The following are excerpts from letters written by youth who marched with the PLP contingent in the Los Angeles immigrant rights march on May Day. Five of them joined PLP and many more subscribed to CHALLENGE, agreed to distribute CHALLENGES and/or be in a study group:

We stood together and stood out for the working class. Our red flags stood tall and angry, against the racist exploitation and mass deportations…. I, in red, stood for my immigrant parents, for my unemployed uncle, my little sisters’ future education and for my friend who was brutally assassinated when the cops didn’t decide to protect but to terminate. I stood for many.

The difference between our groups was that we were all one, like a big red flag. This May Day I was marching, holding a flag and chanting my lungs out. It was hard work, but you feel better about who you are and happy, because it’s not just for your benefit but many others as well…. I was glad that I went out to march on the street to support everyone, not just my Mom.

Our group was the most organized by far. As we walked down the street people could tell that we were on a mission and that mission was a revolution. We had our chants and vision set. We were organized and the most motivated group on the march.

The drums beating, the chants screaming and the red flags flying — there was no denying it, PLP.

The May Day march was amazing to me because I felt that I had a purpose to fight. I was there for workers and what we came for was to unite the working class together to overthrow the bosses and work together for each other and the things we need… The reason we stand out from the rest is because we didn’t get misled. We knew the true meaning of a May Day March; we held the red flag, not the U.S. or the Mexican flag. We marched in red; we told the truth about the people who died for their rights long ago in Chicago. Long Live May Day. Long live PLP.

We let people know the march was about the working class. We talked about CHALLENGE and we were the only ones with the red flag.

The working class has no bosses’ flag and no country. We fought for the red flag that represented all of the working class. It meant that we are all one and that we should unite to fight for a communist society where there is no poverty. I was on the security committee. My job was to keep the shape of our group — we organized how we should march.

From all the multiple crowds we were the ones popping out, the only ones with the red flag, which stands for revolutionary communism. I thought the march was really exciting and a really nice experience.

My friends and I joined together and got to the spot where the march was going to start. We helped distribute CHALLENGE and leaflets to explain the real reason for May 1st. When the time came to start marching, we started chanting. We all sounded like one. We were all organized. To me it was awesome that we were able to speak our minds and scream our lungs out. I’m happy I could assist the march and I really hope I would be able to go next year.

Red Youth

Fight Racism with Multi-racial Unity, Not As ‘White Allies’

I have worked with Jobs with Justice (JwJ) for several years and recently attended their class "Building Unity between Brown and Black." What a disappointment! There were segregated breakout sessions — "Black, Brown in the Workplace," "Black, Brown on Housing Issues" and "White Ally." I commented that this was very divisive and patronizing. The leader’s response was that JwJ was "trying something different." Racial segregation isn’t so "different" in America!

In the "white ally" session, I said I wasn’t comfortable with the separation. We’re all in the working class and need to fight racism together, especially in the unions! This emboldened some others to voice their concerns about this term. The facilitator argued that "white allies" couldn’t lead any anti-racist struggles, and should essentially be a cheerleader on the sidelines.

At lunch, two women union organizers for United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400 (one black and one Latina) told of how they helped workers win the union election at the Smithfield Ham Plant in Tarheel, NC. Last year Immigration, Customs and Enforcement raided the plant for immigrant workers. Five hundred Smithfield workers of all ethnic groups protested this deportation raid! I asked the organizers how they showed workers that solidarity was in their best interest. They canvassed union workers from Richmond, VA, down to Tarheel, NC, and many workers sent letters of support. Smithfield workers realized they were part of a larger group and gained strength from it.

A "white ally" in the audience asked the organizers about the role of "white allies" in the union struggle. They were baffled by the question and didn’t know how to respond. I spoke up and said that in union organizing, you don’t have white workers on the sidelines. One of the organizers explained that workers need to work together to achieve their goals. Afterwards, I thanked the union organizers for their presentation, and when I told them I had to get back to my "white ally" breakout group, they looked at me in disbelief. I told them about the John Brown/Harriet Tubman March in Harpers Ferry planned for October, and that we wanted to organize unions to go. They told me to keep in touch with them.

Later, I discussed the JwJ conference with two fellow union members who meet with me regularly to discuss CHALLENGE. Both agreed the "white ally" strategy made no sense. One said, "How can white workers fight racism by only talking to whites?" Both said it was important to have multiracial unity among workers to win anything from the bosses. I explained that when PLP talks with workers, we always try to go as an integrated group.

Apparently JwJ thinks that "black and brown" workers won’t be able to play a leading role in the struggle if there are any white workers involved. That notion itself strikes me as "white supremacist" thinking! Black and brown workers have often led class struggle, and white workers unified with them give the working class the greatest punch against the bosses.

D.C. Red

‘Liberal’ N.J. Mayor: ‘Who, me racist?’; ‘Yes, YOU!’

Donald Cresitello, mayor of Morristown, NJ, is a face of the growing fascist attack on undocumented workers. Two years ago, Cresitello hosted the anti-immigrant Pro-America group on the steps of city hall. The Party, many of its friends and even some townspeople, shut them down.

Several weeks ago, the American Friends Service Committee hosted a "Conversation with the Mayor on Section 287g," the federal law which allows local cops to be deputized as ICE (immigration) agents. Cresitello, a Democrat running for reelection, has long advocated that Morristown cops act as immigration cops. At this event, he tried to pose as a liberal, proclaiming that he wasn’t anti-immigrant, that he supported providing undocumented immigrants with a "path to citizenship,"that there would never be racial profiling in Morristown. He even claimed not to "care"about section 287g.

One audience member pointed out that racial profiling and section 287g are inseparable. She also described Cresitello’s effort to promote anti-immigrant racism in Newark. There, after three college students were murdered by a suspected undocumented person, Cresitillo asked to speak at the memorial service. Knowing his anti-immigrant rhetoric, the family refused to let him come, and told him that his racist ideas were not welcome. The immigration status of the murderer was irrelevant.

Cresitello quickly exposed himself. He jumped to his feet to denounce the story as false, and threatened that the speaker had better not tell this story in public again. But his red face, bulging eyes, and yelling made it clear to the audience that he was the liar and the same racist he always had been. After the forum, a number of people in the audience came up and thanked the speaker for what she had said.

An important lesson was learned that day. We must never let these racists pretend to be something other than what they are. We must be sure to confront them whenever possible and make sure that we in the working class are not fooled by slick lies. And we must never forget that communist revolution is the only way to end capitalism and its racist exploitation of, and terror against, of undocumented workers.

N.J. Comrade

Oaxaca May Day Marchers Defy Gov’t Flu Panic

OAXACA, MEXICO, May 18 — Just before May Day, Felipe Calderon’s reactionary Mexican government unleashed a nation-wide media campaign about the swine flu epidemic, generating a somber atmosphere and severe anxiety among the population. It appears the government has exaggerated the effects of this disease to divert attention away from the financial crisis and the bosses’ fascist measures to overcome it, which are deepening attacks on workers’ living conditions.

About 10,000 education workers from Section 22 of the Oaxaca teachers’ union and activists from organizations comprising APPO (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca) marched on May Day. They defied the government and overcame its pandemic panic.

A group of 100 members and friends of PLP including farm workers from La Merced del Portrero marched wearing shirts saying: "We fight for a better world against wage slavery." In the five-kilometer (three-mile) march our group stood out with our militant chanting of our revolutionary communist slogans, despite the teachers’ union leadership pushing for a silent march wearing masks covering their mouths.

Slogans resounded through the city’s streets: "The crisis of the system has no solution, the only solution is revolution!"; "Fight, win, workers to power!"; "The flu, capitalism, the bosses — the same garbage!"; "Advance, Advance, Communism will triumph!"

Slogans on our banners and signs stood out: "The virus...and worst pandemic in the world is Capitalism — destroy it with Communist Revolution!"; and "Workers’ Struggles have no Borders!" The 5,000 leaflets and 300 CHALLENGES we distributed were well-received by the marchers and the public who watched.

Afterwards we had a very warm intense discussion, recognizing strengths and weaknesses in this experience. We could have been better organized, and didn’t explain the demands of the farm workers, among others. But our most important strength was our commitment to continue advancing the political work of PLP.

Only Red Politics Can Dump Dead-end of ‘Reforming Capitalism’

PLP members are often asked why we bring in communist politics into every working-class struggle. Why can’t we just fight for higher wages, getting U.S. troops out of Iraq or against racist police brutality? Why should we be concerned with the ideas that are motivating and leading these struggles and not just be content that workers are engaged in struggle against the capitalists and their governments?

There can be no advances for the working class without mass struggle, but recent events in Pakistan show that reactionary pro-capitalist ideas can make that struggle a dead-end for workers. Landless tenants are justifiably rebelling against wealthy landlords and the high taxes and corruption of the U.S. puppet Pakistani government (NYT 4/16/09), but the struggle is being led by Taliban forces that are using the workers’ anger to establish their own religious-fascist rule.

Politics and ideas are a matter of life and death for the working class. Even when communist or left movements have led struggles for state power, if the movements were based on reforming the system, all the gains of the workers were eventually reversed. The Vietnamese working class heroically fought and defeated U.S. imperialism under the leadership of the North Vietnamese communists. The movement focused on economic reforms instead of changing the underlying politics of society. Now, Ford and Nike super-exploit Vietnamese workers and full-blown capitalism with all its misery has returned.

In South Africa, communists led millions of black workers to overthrow Apartheid. The Mandela-led African National Congress (ANC) chose to share power with the old apartheid capitalists. The working class went along with this because the movement had promised that an ANC victory would improve conditions for the country’s black workers as opposed to defeating capitalism and its ideology. With a black-led government in power the shantytowns remain, health care is non-existent for millions of people, and black workers toil for the same minimal wages they had under Apartheid. Still the capitalists rake in billions in profits.

In El Salvador, many tens of thousands who considered themselves communists or leftists fought against the U.S.-backed government fascists. Hundreds of thousands were killed in the decades long civil war. But eventually the working-class forces went along with the FMLN becoming part of the government. Now the former guerilla leaders are sanctioning the exploitation of the working class. The seeds of this betrayal were sown by the movement building itself on making economic reforms as opposed to a political transformation of society.

These defeats of the working class were the result of reformism in the communist movement, the opportunist winning of workers to fight the bosses based on the idea that the communists would provide more than the capitalists. We are fighting for a society that will share scarcity and abundance based on communist politics, not material incentive.

Socialism in Russia and China had many communist aspects but they focused on material benefits and retained the money-based wage system. Eventually the individualism of a system based on wages led society back to capitalism. Even the Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, that moved workers closer to communism than ever before, was undermined by its failure to break free from capitalist ideas.

Red Guards in China attacked privilege and inequality. But these advanced communist ideas that have so inspired our Party were undermined by the Red Guards’ inability to cast aside the "cult of Mao." Relying on an "all-knowing" leader rather than a mass communist party gave capitalist forces in the army and government a free hand to crush the Cultural Revolution.

These hard lessons show why communist ideas are essential to every struggle. Fighting against racism, nationalism, sexism, individualism, and selfishness, are necessary to build working-class unity and ultimately build a society without wages. Learning from the leadership of black, Latino and women workers, and showing that we don’t need the ruling class, are essential to our class gaining confidence in itself and in communism. To win in the long run our movement must have leaders today who are in the forefront of the class struggle and are self-critical about their weaknesses. Communist leaders must fight for the interests of the working class, take risks, and not seek personal gain from the movement.

Communists understand that the government’s "state power" is a weapon of the capitalist ruling class. This understanding is necessary to keep our class from relying on "lesser-evil" politicians whose job is to sabotage workers’ struggles. Armed revolution for communism to smash capitalism is the only lasting solution to workers’ oppression from a capitalist treadmill where reforms are given and taken back. From this the bosses bank their profits and shed workers blood in endless imperialist wars.

The movement we build today will shape the society we build tomorrow. There are no shortcuts. The only road to victory is winning our class to communism.

30 Generations of Racism =Billion$ for Bosses

For years, CHALLENGE has been reporting that the U.S. ruling class needs racism and its resulting discrimination because it nets hundreds of billions in profits from the lower wages paid to black workers (including Latino workers in the last century), dragging down the wage levels of ALL workers. Institutional racist inequality has spanned 30 generations — from slavery to post-Civil War legal segregation, enforced by KKK terror — to current racism. Now reports reveal this generational racism means that for every dollar of assets accumulated by white families (home and auto ownership, government subsidies, savings, pensions, among other factors), black families have only 10 cents worth of assets!

This doesn’t mean that white working-class families are so well off. The average in the above comparison includes upper-income white families, far more numerous than upper-income black families. Actually, the Federal Reserve’s "Survey of Consumer Finances" reports that overall the net worth of the average U.S. family today is less than it was in 2001. (Washington Post, 3/23/09) However, racist discrimination enables the bosses to net super-profits from the differential in income and assets denied to black families as compared to white families.

The biggest single factor in accumulating assets is home ownership. Historically, black families have been far less able to "reap the benefits of government support and tax-paid subsidies, which help...build assets. During the Depression [of the 1930s]…the Home Owners Loan Corporation was established "to rescue families from home foreclosures, but not a single…loan went to a black or Hispanic family….

"The black section of Detroit was simply excluded. After World War II, GIs received government-subsidized home mortgages….Of the 67,000 mortgages issued under the GI Bill in New York and northern New Jersey," only 100 went to black veterans! (Washington Post)

This discrimination is just as marked today as revealed in the home foreclosure swindle. "Payday lenders and other shady financial dealers…have preyed on [black and Latino] people fueling the economic and foreclosure crisis. African Americans…were more than three times as likely as white borrowers to be steered to high-interest loans, even when they qualified for a prime loan."

Moreover, U.S. tax-code rules, "Have strengthened…those who already have assets. You can get a tax deduction for interest on home mortgages of up to $1 million….But if you own a home and make too little to itemize [on one’s tax return], the mortgage interest doesn’t help you at all."

Concludes the Washington Post writer Meizhu Lui, "The over-hyped political term ‘post-racial society’ becomes patently absurd when looking at these economic numbers." The super-profits accumulated from this racism helps the ruling class pay for imperialist oil wars abroad, and they use racism to justify attacks on Arab and South Asian workers at home and worldwide.

The depressed assets of black and Latino families make it more difficult for them to obtain health insurance and therefore access to adequate healthcare, as well as to avoid bankruptcy from uninsured medical bills. This lack of assets lessens their ability to gain legal assistance when needed and to pay the rising tuition of their children’s education.

This generational racism keeps their children in a downward spiral. "The biggest predictor of the future economic status of a child is the net worth of the child’s parents." But as indicated above, historically black families have received less "government support and tax-paid subsidies for their asset-building activities." The GI Bill sending veterans to college after World War II was overwhelmingly denied to black vets, stemming from their discriminatory position in the then segregated armed forces.

This gap in assets or net worth is widening. The 10 cents referred to earlier was 12 cents in 2004. "These African American losses appear near-permanent, the result of the deindustrialization of the United States — the destruction of the black blue-collar workforce." (Black-White Wealth Gap Continues to Widen in U.S., by Joshua Holland, posted on AlterNet) This is especially true of the mass layoffs in basic industries like auto and steel.

As CHALLENGE has reported, the bosses are shifting their profit-making production from higher-paid, formerly unionized plants to non-union subcontractors spread across the South, Southwest and California, paying black, Latino and immigrant workers less than half the wages of the older plants, with no benefits. Given this drive for super-profits, especially based on racism, the wages and conditions of the entire working class are suffering. Racism hurts ALL workers, even as it hurts black and Latino workers the most — just as the bosses’ economic crisis hurts all workers, while oppressing black and Latino workers even more.

Since black households "earn less than 60 percent of median white income," says the above AlterNet posting, "At the pace of catch-up since 1968, according to a report issued…by United for A Fair Economy, ‘it would take 581 years’ [for black families] to achieve income parity." But that will never arrive; it will only help to reduce white family income.

It is only through the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist profit-driven society and its state apparatus, and the establishment of communism — without bosses, profits, a wage system and racism — that the entire working class, which produces all value, will receive the full fruits of our labors according to need.

That’s "communist parity."

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, May 20, 2009

Information: 20 May 2009 367 hits

Stella D’Oro Strikers, Auto Workers, GI’s Inspire NYC May Day

NEW YORK CITY, May 1 — May Day 2009 was a great day for the working class in NYC. Workers involved in class struggle against the bosses, was a highlight of the spirited rally and march in Brooklyn and at three dinners throughout the city, which were attended by over 800 people. Stella D’Oro strikers, Axel workers from Detroit’s auto industry who struck against the bosses and their union lieutenants last year, an airport worker fighting to regain his job all were applauded as they spoke at the dinners.

Several decided to join the Party, after having seen the multi-racial unity in the May Day activities and how PL’ers actively supported them on the picket lines and in the spread of communist ideas, especially through the distribution of CHALLENGE. Fifteen hundred dollars was raised for the striking Stella D’Oro workers.

Particularly outstanding this May Day was the participation and leadership of the youth who organized the march and the dinners, which bodes well for the growth of Progressive Labor Party. All told over 3,000 CHALLENGES were distributed.

Participants came from Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Boston, New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore to join the march and dinners in New York. The rain failed to dampen the spirits of the marchers in Brooklyn and then the sun broke through as we strode through the working-class Flatbush neighborhood where over 30 onlookers who took CHALLENGE joined the march.

Comrades and friends led chants all along the route, calling for multi-racial worker unity and communist revolution to destroy capitalism, a system built on racism, sexism, police brutality and exploitation.

At all three dinners speakers clearly explained the state of the bosses’ crisis-ridden world and how workers, students and soldiers were beginning to step up to the plate to fight the misery it has produced, citing communism as the only answer. Other speakers described the history of May Day, born in the 1886 general strike for the 8-hour day in Chicago.

Stella d’Oro strikers spoke about their long and heroic struggle against their bosses — not one striker has crossed the solid picket line in nine months. They recalled their introduction to communism and the PLP, about how the Party was the first to support their struggle and how we’re still with them 100%. Another striker narrated the history of the strike and thanked the Party for its support and for “putting us on the map.” One comrade said when he joined the picket line, workers took him to their trailer headquarters and showed him CHALLENGE.

The dinners heard from transit and other industrial workers, from teachers and students. A young black soldier and Iraq War veteran, now a transit worker, kicked off one dinner describing battles at the plant gate and PLP’s effect on the struggle, linking it to the need to build the Party. Messages were read from comrades in jail who vowed to come out stronger in fighting the system that put them there.

A Detroit auto worker painted a picture of the real-life effects of what the ruling class was doing to workers. “Have you seen my city?” she asked. “It’s like Katrina without the water!” While describing the devastation in auto-worker cities, it was no sob story. She said she was inspired by last year’s May Day and demonstrated her revolutionary optimism by joining the Party this May Day. She was among many who raised their hands when the question was asked, “Who is ready to join PLP?”

At another dinner an airport worker spoke about the PL’ers who were supporting him in his efforts to fight a frame-up that cost him his job. Students involved in battles against the budget cuts were there. The dinner heard about the recent Boeing strike in which the Party played a leadership role. “We must fight back” was a great song performed by a group of teachers and students.

As always the food was excellent amid some super entertainment. Skits and songs prevailed throughout. At one dinner “What’s Going On” was sung to introduce the state-of-the-world speeches. History came through with the Depression song “Brother can you spare dime” and “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night.” Youth jump-started that dinner with an excellent rap and Langston Hughes’ “Good Morning Revolution.”

The walls at the dinner sites were decorated with vintage front pages from past CHALLENGES. The Brooklyn crowd applauded a skit written and performed by high school students who had picketed scab-produced Stella D’Oro cookies being sold at a supermarket. It dramatized a real event in which one student had smashed boxes of them inside the store while on a shopping trip. The traditional working-class lesson that scabs must be fought was cheered as it rang out loud and clear.

At another dinner a skit by a high school debate team demonstrated how the battle between communist and capitalist ideas was not merely an intellectual discussion. A call was made for comrades and friends to participate in the Party’s Summer Projects this year in Seattle and Los Angeles.

All the dinners closed with the singing of the international working-class anthem, The Internationale. Workers, students and soldiers, inspired by the day’s events, vowed to return to their factories, transit barns, barracks, schools and campuses more determined than ever to fight this murderous system with the only solution: the battle for communist revolution. J

Mobilization for War Behind Rulers’ Flu Panic

Anti-Mexican racism and windfall profits for some drug companies are mere side benefits that U.S. capitalists are reaping from the swine flu mania. Its main value to the rulers lies in preparing for a future Pentagon-led mobilization of the nation.

The current, exaggerated outbreak falls short of triggering the dire measures outlined in a Defense Department’s 2006 memorandum, a plan to deal with a health catastrophe, entitled, “Implementation Plan for Pandemic Influenza.” But the dramatic official response — closing schools, stockpiling vaccines, endless public announcements — suggests a dress rehearsal. And it has the effect of diverting workers from the really massive problems caused by the capitalist depression.

Pentagon Penned Flu
Scenario In 2006...

In a health epidemic, the 2006 Pentagon study says the military’s first task is forcibly securing the profit system’s physical plant, “sustaining infrastructure and mitigating impact to the economy.” In addition, the Department of Defense (DoD) would take over airport passenger screening from the inept Homeland Security.

To guarantee profits for the biggest U.S. bosses, the U.S. Army — not Immigration and Customs — would also enforce “a comprehensive border and transportation strategy that strikes a balance between efficacy of interventions to limit the spread of disease and the economic and societal consequences.” Obama & Co. would have a perfect excuse for establishing martial law in humanitarian guise. “DoD will augment civilian law enforcement efforts to restore and maintain order,” with local police taking “instruction” from Army officers.

...Bosses Today Recite Script

The present “crisis” suspiciously resembles the top brass’s 2006 scenario. The report reads, “An efficient human-to-human outbreak will most likely occur outside of the United States....It will enter the U.S. at multiple locations and spread quickly to other parts of the country.”

The military’s 2006 proposals are playing out uncannily now. “Voluntary, community-based measures, such as limiting public gatherings, closing schools, and minimum manning procedures, are most effective to limit exposure to the disease if implemented before or at the onset of the event.” “Afflicted” schools from Texas to Long Island have shut down. New York’s Catholic archbishop Dolan said he would call off Sunday Mass if the authorities saw fit. Boston’s Northeastern University banned graduation handshakes.

The war needs of a challenged U.S. ruling class transformed an ordinary illness into an “emergency.” The U.S. war machine itself provided the hype. According to the Scripps Howard News Service (5/3/09), “On April 16 — five days before the public first learned about the flu surfacing in Mexico [our emphasis — Ed.] — scientists at San Diego’s Naval Health Research Center spotted an unusual sample from a 10-year-old son of a service member, who was part of an ongoing influenza surveillance study. The Navy sent the sample across the country to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which identified it as the current swine-flu strain.” Politicians then began a good-cop-bad-cop routine to alternately sow panic and urge reliance on government. Biden warned us to stay off planes and trains. Obama said, “Trust me.”

The Massachusetts Senate passed a pandemic flu preparation bill 36-0 that would allow the public health commissioner to close or evacuate buildings, enter private property for investigation and quarantine individuals, and would fine people $1,000 for violating public health orders. (AP dispatch, 4/28)

But “the current outbreak...may not even do as much damage as the run-of-the-mill flu outbreaks that occur each winter without much fanfare. As we go to press, there were 22 deaths (19 in Mexico) of 1,001 confirmed cases worldwide. Yet the flu kills 36,000 in the U.S. every year, of 60 million who come down with it, and over a million globally (about 7,500 annually in Mexico). (LA Times, 4/30)

In the face of this, U.S. bosses are pushing the most vile racism against Mexican-Americans, blaming Mexico for an illness that, if anything, is spawned by U.S. corporations (see box) and fades in comparison to the “normal” flu statistics cited above. They use this racism to divide and weaken the working class, internationally. They use a pandemic scare to distract workers here and worldwide from fighting the massive attacks on our class: millions laid off, thrown out of their homes by bankers’ swindles reaping billons in profits and bonuses; unaffordable health care; and millions of children gong to bed hungry every night. That’s the real pandemic — capitalism.

Bosses Push Pro-War Obama
As ‘People’s Savior’

Bush, while launching two foreign wars after 9/11, failed to put the U.S. on a war footing at home. Capital, unregulated, poured into flimflam investments instead of into strategic industry and infrastructure. Much of the public considered Bush’s Iraq invasion deceitful and immoral.

Today, with China rising and Russia ever more belligerent, U.S. rulers hope Obama, far more popular than Bush, can refocus both bosses and workers on preparing for global conflict. A major “disease control” effort along the lines of the 2006 report would enable Obama to exert even more economic clout than he already has and help reverse the public image of government, especially the military, from nuisance and enemy to savior and defender.

The Pentagon paper shows that the rulers’ public health “concerns” are masks for building fascism and militarism. Obama and his masters think that, if masses of workers roll up their sleeves for a federally-administered flu shot they might also someday don a uniform.

The masses of workers who marched with our revolutionary, communist party on May Day displayed the kind of mobilization that aspires to lead the working class away from capitalist depression and imperialist war, the bosses’ twin evils which constitute the longest-running pandemic in human history. It slaughters hundreds of millions through world wars, extreme poverty, wage slavery for billions making less than a dollar or two a day, profit-created famines, preventable diseases, and deaths due to mass racist unemployment.

Only communist revolution can end this butchery of the international working class. That’s the goal of the Progressive Labor Party. Join us! J

U.S. Company is Real Swine Spreading Disease

While assuming the source of this latest flu virus are pigs (still not proven), consider this: La Gloria, Vera Cruz, a community of 3,000 in Mexico, is the suspected location of the development of this new strain of swine flu. The U.S.-based company Smithfield — the world’s biggest pig producer — moved here after environmental violations forced it out of the U.S.

Smithfield owns 50% of the outfit that raises and slaughters almost a million hogs a year. From this operation it has turned the surrounding area into “manure lagoons,” the dumping ground for the feces, urine and waste excreted by these hogs. These lagoons are the incubators and breeding grounds of toxic pathogens and of the clouds of flies that transmit them to the human population.

In the U.S., the Rockefeller Foundation funded a project in the 1950s which radically transformed pig farming into a massive concentration of hyper-crowded pens — from 53 million pigs raised on over a million farms to today’s 63 million on just 65,000 farms. It is profit-driven capitalism that is the source of any diseases spawned by this kind of agri-business, a fact which Obama and his ruling-class-owned media keep well-hidden.

MEXICO: ‘PILOT PROJECT’ FOR POPULATION CONTROL

The bosses in Mexico and the U.S. are using the current flu scare as a “pilot project” in Mexico for massive population control that will be needed in mobilizing both countries for war. Keeping 32 million school children at home, closing tens of thousands of restaurants in Mexico City (largest population concentration in North America), soccer games played in empty stadiums, and, incidentally, prohibition of the May Day march in Mexico City, usually the world’s largest — all parts of keeping masses of workers in check, in the guise of an “epidemic” that is nowhere near the figures for the “normal” flu outbreaks every year.

Whatever deaths do result from the current virus can be traced to the crushing poverty affecting 47 million workers in Mexico, denied medical care by the government’s draconian cuts in social services, made more dire by the deepening economic meltdown (the worst in Latin America). Then, of course, the bosses turn around to try to win workers to rely on “their” government rather than organizing against the massive attacks of the bosses’ crisis.

Support is Spreading for
Stella D’Oro Strikers

Bronx PL’ers Win Teachers to Join Struggle

BRONX, NY, May 3 — Twenty-five teachers and paraprofessionals at a Bronx elementary school recently attended a school union meeting of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) with five Stella D’Oro strikers as special guest speakers.

Producing this meeting was a big struggle. Although many staff members were enthusiastic about it, the school’s UFT Chapter Chairperson, right-wing staff members and the Bronx UFT District Representative were against it. The PLP Delegate at the school challenged their refusal to invite the strikers and built support to counter the opposition.

After negotiations with the UFT District Representative, permission from the school principal and the city’s Department of Education’s lawyer, plus increasing interest from staff members, the meeting was eventually approved. Still several reactionary teachers attempted to organize a boycott.

A few teachers helped the PL delegate draft a leaflet explaining the meeting’s importance, which was placed in every teacher’s mailbox. One teacher on each of the three floors organized other co-workers on their floors. Despite the controversy and a mild climate of fear and intimidation, 25% of the staff attended one of the most educational experiences of their lives.

First, the strikers explained why they struck the Brynwood Corporation and the hardships visited on the workers. Two of the five strikers described the importance of sticking together, preventing the bosses from dividing them. One striker elaborated on Brynwood’s attempt to split the so-called “skilled” workers from the “unskilled.” He explained that the bosses use such classifications to super-exploit one group of workers over another with lesser wages, benefits and working conditions.

“We are all skilled workers,” this worker explained, “and that was one of the big reasons we decided to strike.” One teacher added, “The Brynwood bosses’ attempt to divide the workers in this way is similar to the [Dept. of Education’s] attempt to divide new teachers [from] experienced teachers during contract negotiations.”

Building solidarity with these heroic strikers was only one purpose of this meeting. Meeting the strikers first-hand induced many teachers to ponder their own vulnerability during this current capitalist crisis. One teacher (a CHALLENGE reader) remembered the proposed lay-off of recently-hired teachers, saying, “Looking at this period of massive cutbacks and hearing the strikers talk about their struggle made me think that it can be any one of us out there on the picket line. Supporting these workers,” she added, “is no different than fighting for ourselves.”

Another teacher and CHALLENGE reader declared, “The situation these workers find themselves in is because of one reason — capitalism.” Although none of the teachers agreed to join the picket line, eight signed up to leaflet local supermarkets currently selling Stella D’Oro products produced by scabs.

Since then, three teachers and three strikers leafleted a neighborhood supermarket. Residents shopping at the store responded extremely positively. “As a fellow worker in a union, it’s great to see teachers... supporting factory workers,” remarked one customer. When asked, a number of them offered to distribute the boycott leaflet on their jobs and to friends and family members.

This active unity between teachers and the strikers was important for the latter and for workers city-wide. It sets an example for other local UFT chapters to invite the Stella D’Oro strikers to their schools. With constant struggle, this can produce real action.

Five of these teachers have become CHALLENGE readers and one attended May Day with her family. Since then, the teachers doing the leafleting have been encouraged to organize more boycotts at local supermarkets selling scab cookies. Our next step is organizing a day of support for the strikers, having staff members and parents visit the picket line with coffee, donuts and vocal support.

Finally, three teachers are interested in becoming more active in the union and possibly joining a CHALLENGE readers group. Consistent struggle with the staff over various union-related issues; the distribution of CHALLENGE; and joining the class struggle of the Stella D’Oro strikers, has galvanized a change among some of the teachers. The struggle continues!J

Westchester Teachers Back
Strikers, Defy Cops

BRONX, NY, April 27 — “Scabs in Blue, What’s Wrong with You?” “Police State? Fight Back!” These chants blew into the faces of strikebreaking cops closing in to try to confiscate our bullhorn, as the stubborn little international group of bakers on strike here for nine months were joined by a busload of Westchester teachers from NYSUT (New York State United Teachers), representing 600,000 teachers. The teachers, lifelong unionists, some presidents of their town locals, were not deterred by the cops’ aggression and the militant chants but joined right in. For the moment the cops were foiled, in a glimpse of workers’ power. More important, strikers read the new CHALLENGE as we invited them to May Day.

From the beginning of the rally, the police changed the city’s own regulations on sound systems, and told the rally leaders they couldn’t use the bullhorn for chants or speeches. Strike leaders and union representatives attempted to appeal the cops’ order to turn off the bullhorn.

When the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) President was to begin introducing speakers, she started using the bullhorn, and charged the cops with violating the rights of the strikers and those that support them. The cops began to move into the rally, but strikers and other demonstrators linked arms, attempting to stop the cops. The NYSUT teachers stood their ground as they witnessed the true nature of the police.

Eventually, the PSC President turned off the bullhorn and the cops backed off. Then the protesters began chanting, “Let us Speak” and “Scabs in blue!” Others began heckling the cops, charging them with protecting the bosses and attacking the workers. “Go arrest the scabs!”; “Go arrest Brynwood! They’re the criminals!” some workers yelled at the cops. They attempted to give the PSC President a violation but it was later dropped.

City University union activists (including PLP’ers) had brought the NYSUT teachers into this struggle by getting the NYSUT convention to pass a strike-support resolution. NYSUT was here today to present the strikers with a $2,500 check, and the strikers and supporters, three hundred strong, responded with the chant “Strikers and Teachers Will Never Be Defeated!” Links between us and these teachers will be sustained. A strike leader led the chant of “Thank You! Thank You!” as the teachers, almost all women, filed back into their bus, their faces glowing with the energy of picketing, some holding copies of CHALLENGE to reflect on.

Like the City College students who joined the line last week, this busload of teachers slowly builds the momentum of strike support, and with it the tension with the cops who protect the company and its scabs. May 12 is the day an NLRB court is set to render a decision that could require the bosses to go back to the bargaining table. Can we expand the support and up the militancy of the strike, against the company, the courts, the cops? This May Day, around the world, many battles like this must be raging. All point to the need of PLP organizers embedded for life in the working class, to drive on these endless class struggles holding the red flag of communist revolution. The strikers’ children on the line today — playing, dancing, holding our hands in their’s — must learn to fly that flag.J

Immigrant Workers Join the Picket Line

BRONX, NY, April 28 — It was a hot evening on the picket line; we’d been eating ices brought down by a nurse at nearby Montefiore Hospital, whose picket some strikers had joined the week before. This Friday, May Day, there’s an immigrant march in Manhattan, and three strikers were painting a banner spread out on a table: “Workers, Immigrants, Women...Unite...Support the Stella D’Oro Strikers.”

Then down the iron rungs of the elevated train staircase came a flood of blue shirts: they formed a group at the bottom of the stairs, unfurled their banner, raised their fists, and started chanting as they marched up the street to the evening shift of pickets: “¡Del norte al sur, del este al oeste, Luchamos hasta el final, Cueste lo que cueste!” [“From north to south, From east to west, We’ll fight to the end, Whatever the cost!”]

It was Hace el Camino al Andar, Make the Road by Walking, a community-based immigrant organization come from Brooklyn for a moment of solidarity with these workers, 97% of whom are from twenty different countries. We mingled, we had cool drinks, we spoke in a mix of Spanish and English, they studied our banner, we hung their’s on the fence, and we chanted for half an hour or more — communists and non-communists together — sang and chanted non-stop into the Bronx night. J

MAY DAY 2009 AROUND THE WORLD

Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, May 1st — “Capitalism always fails! Communism will prevail!” was chanted by our red May Day contingent in the immigrant rights march. Our PLP contingent with red flags, shirts and communist banners was led energetically by communist youth, who chanted and spoke without stopping for three and a half hours before and during the march.

Youth took leading our contingent seriously. Throughout the year they were involved in organizing and presenting forums in which communist politics were used to explain the budget crisis, the recession, the election, and the attacks on the working class. They also led several protests against the cuts.

Workers donated money for CHALLENGE, red PLP shirts and flags. The multi-racial group of youth drumming, chanting communist chants, and giving communist speeches was very appealing to other marchers. Some joined us. We distributed thousands of PLP leaflets and about 1,000 CHALLENGES.

Leaflets and speeches attacked the Dream Act, the crisis of overproduction, imperialist war and capitalism. This was important as the leadership of the march is trying to lead immigrant workers into the arms of the ruling class.

Three of the youth leaders had spoken at the May Day dinner about how they read CHALLENGE, distribute it to their friends, and discuss it with them. This has changed them and their friends.

At the end of the march, teachers union President Duffy had the nerve to speak, after he had sabotaged the motion to strike against layoffs on May Day. He said that the U.S. was the land of hope and promise; and we just have to keep demanding reform and our dreams will be fulfilled.

A PLP youth leader spoke on our loudspeaker to call Duffy a liar. He said the only purpose of the U.S. ruling class was to maintain their profit system through exploitation and wars. “We’re not here to beg the politicians for crumbs,” he said. “ We’re here to show that the working class has to take matters into our own hands and build a mass party to fight for communism.” Despite the union mis-leaders’ attempt to sabotage a May Day strike, teachers at one school stopped work for about an hour.

As the current crisis deepens, our choice is: their profits or our survival. Capitalism needs to bail out the banks, not meet workers’ needs. We fight to use our May Day events to show that communist revolution is the only way out of the crisis for workers.

Dinners the week before the march built PLP. More than 270 workers, students, teachers, soldiers and professionals participated. The speeches, poems, songs and a skit showed the need to destroy capitalism with communist revolution.

Two industrial workers (a man and a woman) said during their speeches, “We work in aerospace subcontractors, where the current economic crisis has brought more pressure, speed-up, and layoffs; but this has also brought more opportunities for our Party to grow, lead battles and build a base for communist revolution. CHALLENGE sales have doubled in our shops. Now we all need to double them again.”

A transit worker said, “It’s inconceivable that people are dying of hunger while stores are full of food; it’s incredible that thousands sleep in the streets while there are thousands of homes unoccupied. This crisis is not caused by lack of resources. It’s due to the anarchy of capitalist production. It’s intolerable, even immoral, to remain passive politically in the face of so much pain and suffering by our class.”

His speech ended with, “These crises, holocausts, catastrophes, worldwide massacres, will not be ended by reform movements or electoral parties. They’ll end with a COMMUNIST WALL of millions of workers, students, and soldiers, white, African-American, Latino, Asian, Arab, united in one single fist. Because the freedom of the working class can’t be begged for or negotiated, but won by the force of communist ideas and the power of the working class organized in the factories, schools, and the military. The future will be ours, comrades.”

Several people told how CHALLENGE had been key in bringing them to the Party and they now distribute it to friends. Regular CHALLENGE readers donated money to receive more papers for their friends, and others to receive it for the first time.

May Day was a culmination of a long hard struggle carried out throughout the year. As a result there are new groups of youth and workers around the party, some of whom joined PLP. Between now and the Summer Project we plan a series of meetings and activities to consolidate these youth and workers. Then they can help provide leadership in the upcoming Summer Projects. J

Bay Area

OAKLAND, CA, May 1 – Our PLP contingent joined the immigrant rights march on May 1st. Among our members and friends were young and old, students and workers, vets and civilians of many heritages and nationalities. For some younger people, this was their first May Day or political activity. What a start! They ignored the rain and cold to participate and were very enthusiastic.

In fact, the whole march was enthusiastic and loud. There was a walk out from Skyline High School earlier in the day. Oakland-based youth groups who provided the bulk of the march — over 85% were under twenty-five; mainly organized immigrant youth. The mainstream Church groups pulled out this year. Although the labor leadership officially endorsed the March, they did not mobilize their membership. This and the rain may have made the march smaller in numbers but, as in the Oscar Grant rebellions, the presence of younger people bodes well for the future. Estimates were about 500.

Our younger leadership had reviewed PLP’s participation in last year’s May Day and made improvements. They made sure that we had a well-coordinated and public presence in the march with our red flags, chants, and speeches. Everything was in English and Spanish. Some marchers distributed CHALLENGE and flyers.

Chants like: “Primero De Mayo, Comunista y Proletario – Long Live Communism, Power to the Workers” rang out from our contingent. We made some contacts who were attracted to our chants and communist orientation; follow up is in the works. The groups participating included a student “Revolution Club,” and a Filipino rights contingent. Of course, all the groups don’t agree on a common strategy, but a revolutionary spirit was in the air. A few “veteran” PLP comrades were given words of thanks “. . . for joining us today” by younger immigrant workers. They were quickly told that we weren’t joining them for the day. We’re all in it together from start to finish, until a united working class takes full power.

May Day Picnic a Step Forward
for Local Party

The Party’s May Day picnic held the Sunday before was a step ahead for the local groups, as younger members stepped up to give the main speeches and presentations of PLP’s
ideas to the dozens of co-workers and friends of all ages — students and teachers, junior high to retirees — who joined in the celebration of comradeship and internationalism. The range of nationalities was very broad, with at least nine countries, including Mexico, Germany, Japan, Kenya, and Cuba represented. More than a few sang the Internationale for the first time. As we broke up, a worker from Kenya, a friend of a friend, for whom this was the first encounter with PLP, told me, “I really liked this. These are my kind of people.”

It’s going to be a long, hard road, but as a comrade told a potential new member, “Nothing can be more rewarding than this kind of work.”J

Seattle

SEATTLE, WA, May 1 — “I see capitalism and this crisis leading to mass racist unemployment, and World War may become the only way out for the bosses, but how do I know that communism is the answer?” asked a black university worker at the PLP May Day dinner prior to today’s immigrant rights march. “How do I know we’re not going from the devil to the deep blue sea?”

We made progress answering this question during the recent struggle within the union at Boeing, at our May Day dinner and at today’s march of 2,500.

Only PLP’s contingent raised communist revolution within the march, which was led by reformist immigrant rights organizations that support Obama’s DREAM Act, Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation designed to keep immigrant workers in poverty-wage jobs and recruit their youth for U.S. imperialist wars.

Revolutionary Communist
Contingent

“Las luchas obreras no tienen fronteras!” and “Working people have no nations, smash racist deportations!” rang out from the PLP contingent marching through downtown Seattle. Nearby marchers joined our chants, including two Latino teenagers with their own bullhorns.

Our communist signs — blow-ups of the Party’s May Day poster and a PLP Magazine cover — drew attention. Many marchers snapped pictures. “I agree with everything on that sign. Can I join your group?” asked a friend from an anti-war group.

Marchers snatched up over 1,000 PLP flyers calling for “workers of the world to unite, smash borders and exploitation, and fight for communism by joining PLP.” Between the march, the dinner and sales on the shop floor over 400 CHALLENGES were distributed. One Boeing worker gave $5 for a paper, declaring, “You won’t find articles like these in the union newspaper.”

Our Summer Project plans encouraged many to bring these politics to industrial Boeing workers and soldiers July 5-12.

PLP May Day Dinner Prepares
The Ground

At our May Day dinner, after a delicious meal, a young laid-off construction worker — now a machinist in-training — set the tone.

“Class consciousness is the knowledge that there are those who sell their labor to survive and those who exploit those who sell their labor. These two sides are locked in conflict.” But that’s not enough, he continued.

“We need communist ideas to lead us out of the boom-and-bust quagmire that is capitalism. Historically, only communist ideas have provided solutions for workers in capitalist crises.”

He reviewed the history before World Wars
I and II and the capitalist “solution,” whether fascism or today’s “Obama Mania.” Crisis then world war: eerily familiar to today.

We know what’s coming and know the only solution. Class-consciousness is not enough. Workers must have communist ideas and leadership.

A discussion followed about the realities and depth of the current crisis and the chances for reform solving it. PL’ers raised the need for communism; our guests voiced both reservations and support.

Our May Day activities began with political struggle during a good meal. Though unable to convince all of our dinner guests to march with our contingent, we did end the week with a dozen marchers at a local restaurant after the rally. A Latino hospital worker picked up the tab. Two community college students, whose relatives are long-time CHALLENGE readers, invited us to their student organization’s events.

May Day strengthens our resolve to fight for communism. As the economic crisis deepens, the working class needs this fight more than ever. We will continue to struggle to bring our friends from the dinner and march closer to the Party. J

El Salvador

EL SALVADOR, May 1 — Thousands of workers organized in the main unions here marched in the streets to demand better wages, job security and respect for their rights. Many comrades and friends came from all over the country. Factory and farm workers, students, teachers and youth organized the distribution of our communist literature: 5,000 leaflets and 500 CHALLENGES were put in the hands of workers who welcomed our communist ideas. Nevertheless, even under repressive fascist conditions, this accomplishment was based on the discipline and perseverance of the comrades involved.

On the other hand, FMLN speech-makers said, “Friends, this is a celebration. Let’s not spoil our march, and celebrate the victory of the FMLN.” Then a war veteran declared on the microphone, “Here the only thing that’s been ‘won’ is the government, but the capitalist bosses will stay in power and we workers will continue to be oppressed. Here there’s been no triumph of the revolution.”

Another person in this contingent followed this by saying, “Comrades, we’re facing a class struggle against the capitalists. Those who’ve won are the bosses and their servants. The international working class continues in struggle.” There was much applause for these condemnations of the politicians.

A worker from the Union of Workers of the University of El Salvador (SETUES) said, “They [the FLMN] will repress us just as the fake left has done in other countries. Now we’ll see the red bourgeoisie.” He said he knew people in the FMLN leadership.

The current crisis of overproduction has capitalism sinking daily, similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s which fiercely attacked the international working class. Then the Second World War was on the horizon. Today we’re threatened by a Third World War.

In the ‘30s, revolutionary forces led by Farabundo Marti correctly saw that bourgeois national liberation movements would not liberate any workers from the yoke of capitalism, that only an armed revolution of workers, students, soldiers and farm workers, led by a communist party, could achieve that.

The Progressive Labor Party also has full confidence in our class and, learning from the experiences of the international communist movement, understands that the liberation of the working class depends solely on communist revolution. Like Marti, we reject national liberation because it only perpetuates national capitalism and its imperialist allies of the moment.

We aim to rescue the true revolutionary spirit of May Day from the premature grave in which the bosses and all traitors of the working class have tried to bury it. We reaffirm our commitment to our class, to struggle shoulder to shoulder with our fellow workers — in the fields, the factories, the classrooms and barracks — to bring them revolutionary communist ideas and organization. J

Spain

SPAIN, May 1 — This May Day was a true workers’ celebration in which thousands and thousands of people from all over the world, mainly immigrants, demonstrated. This gave a great impetus to PLP’s activity in the march where we distributed leaflets explaining the significance of May Day. Workers, who represented some of the unions, asked to help us hand out the PLP leaflets.

Once more we went to the streets to spread the communist ideas of PLP, the only ideas that will lead the workers to join the struggle to get rid of capitalism. We showed once again that PLP’s ideas are the only ones that offer a clear way to uproot this rotten system, to build the only solution to the problems of the working class, a communist system.

The PLP in Spain, consisting of some members with the support of friends of the Party, has said to the working class that we need to fight to organize workers, students, and soldiers to convert the wars for control of oil profits into revolutionary wars for communism. PLP took to the streets to tell the working class that communism isn’t Fidel or Chavez, that communism means abolishing wages, money and profits, abolishing racism and sexism, that communism will destroy all the weapons that the capitalists use against the working class. The comrades were very happy because the march was massive and our ideas were welcomed by the people who marched. We feel reborn, with more strength to continue giving leadership to our party, the Progressive Labor Party. Long live Communism! Long live the working class! Long live the PLP! J

Mexico

MEXICO CITY, May 1 — Tens of thousands of workers, teachers, students and farmworkers defied Mexico’s rulers’ using the swine flu to ban May Day marches and took to the streets in Oaxaca, Puebla and other cities.

When the PLP group arrived at the place in this city where they were supposed to meet up with hundreds of thousands of workers to celebrate May Day (traditionally one of the world’s largest), the streets were deserted. Not so much because of swine flu (AH1N1) but because the union leaders, the electoral parties and other organizations joined the fascist plans of President Calderon and his gang.

To date, the schools, restaurants and government offices are closed, but not the factories, nor the barracks nor the police stations. This experiment in terror and control of society using the bosses’ “flu” excuse did not stop the masses.

In Oaxaca, more than 25,000 teachers, students, city and farm workers challenged the prohibition and marched, blaming the government and capitalism for all the evils the workers suffer. Hundreds of PLP leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed along the way.

In Puebla, two hours from Mexico City, more than 20,000 marched, especially teachers. A column of at least 2,000 teachers confronted the police in riot gear to rescue the building (Local 51) that the government had seized and was under police guard. The teachers shouted slogans against President Calderon, Governor Mario Marin and the fascist Ester Gordillo, leader of the national teachers’ union (SNTE). Elsewhere there were also marches and May Day celebrations.

The capitalist crisis is sharpening and the desperate bosses fight like wounded tigers. Our role as communists is more important than ever. As fascism spreads more darkness, the light of the communist alternative shines brighter. (More details next issue.) J

Colombia

BOGOTA, May 1 — The May Day march organized by unions and anti-government groups gathered some 60,000 workers and students. In its usual fascist way, the police attacked the marchers even using tanks to split the march. Young workers and students fought back and many were arrested by the cops of the “best friend”the U.S. has in South America, President Uribe.

A PLP contingent of 75 workers and youth also marched, distributing over 3,000 communist leaflets and several hundred copies of DESAFIO.J

letters

Detroit Mom’s Decision Inspires
Red Grandma

Thank you to the NYC PLP for organizing a wonderful May Day March and banquet! The march was a shining example for the working class. It’s hard to assess what workers felt who were viewing the spirited and united multi-racial mix of men and women, older and younger, marching through Brooklyn, but I know they liked it! It was definitely easy to get out CHALLENGES.

Among the many inspiring moments at the dinner, one stands out for me as a mother and grandmother many times over. A woman from Detroit was describing the devastation there and comparing it to “New Orleans after Katrina, without the water.” Then she talked about herself, saying it was her participation in last year’s May Day that made her decide to keep her baby.

She didn’t explain, but I think it was that the message of May Day — the fight for a communist future — gave her HOPE for the working class, and for her own unborn child. My mind jumped to news that my husband had just received from his family in Tanzania that his teenage niece is pregnant. In Tanzania, when a girl becomes pregnant, her options close forever. It’s as though her life is over, a time of mourning.

How can it be that new life brings sorrow when it should bring indescribable anticipation and immeasurable joy? Our niece made a mistake, but should it end her life? She, too, was once somebody’s “bundle of joy”! It is the epidemic of poverty created by capitalism that causes these perverse and unnatural reactions. If we lived in a society where children were perceived as the greatest gift and were cared for collectively, then rarely would people need or want to consider ending a pregnancy.

Communism is a powerful message. It can nourish hope and deliver babies!

Red Grandma

May Day Greetings From
Friends in Peru

Revolutionary greetings to workers all over the world. Our commitment to fight for communism is as strong as steel. Marxist-Leninism is the scientific ideology of the proletariat, which unites all communists. This is what guides our practice as we fight to break the chains of wage slavery.

May Day born in Chicago in 1886 as a day of struggle against capitalism is today being turned into a “feast” by the imperialist bourgeoisie and lackeys trying to turn workers away from class struggle against the bosses, particularly today when the economic crisis sinks more and more workers into misery.

Communists in Peru are fighting hard to build a communist party that unites urban and rural workers, students, and peasants to fight for a proletarian revolution. This task requires every minute of our lives to bring our ideas to the masses and fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism.

Aora, the ruling party, the servant and lapdog of U.S. imperialism, just approved another law attacking workers, increasing fines for traffic violations supposedly to curb “drunk drivers and protect passengers.” But this is just an attack on transport workers.

We recognize the struggle being waged by PLP spreading communist ideas in the belly of the beast, CHALLENGE helps us share ideas and analysis based on Marxism-Leninism. We promise to soon send PLP our proposal to help in the unity of all communists in the fight against capitalism, which only brings us imperialist wars, sexism, racism and exploitation

Red October Communist Nuclei

Marcher Picks Up Red Flag
on May Day

We were marching in the pouring rain toward Oakland City Hall, miles away on the horizon. I’m struggling with my cap tangled up in my umbrella in one hand and a red PLP communist flag in the other. I’m asked, “Hey, can I give you a hand?” “O.K. You want to carry the flag?” I replied to the day laborer who had moved up with his friends to march with our contingent. “Sure.” He carried our flag for the rest of the march. He told us that he and his partners did all kinds of construction jobs. E-mail addresses and cell-phone numbers were exchanged between them and us. They were drawn to us by our chants in Spanish and English: “Las luchas obreras, No tienen fronteras!” “Can we win communism? Si, se puede.”

As we marched, drenched to the bone, we sang the Internationale and kept up the revolutionary chants. Onlookers on both sides of the street in the long corridor of worn-down shops and apartments raised their fists and cheered. Cars and AC bus drivers honked horns in support.

At the end, I looked over the hundreds who had marched under a banner of “Justice for Immigrants,” which was quickly transformed to a demand for an end to all borders in the signs and chants of the marchers — overwhelmingly young workers and high school and college students.

Bay Area Comrade

Pope is Angel of Death for
AIDS Epidemic

In his recent trip to Africa, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) opposed the use of condoms in fighting AIDS. This is a criminal, unscientific attack on the millions of people infected by the HIV virus, from Washington, D.C. — one of the most affected cities in the imperialist world — to Soweto.

The World Health Organization reports 22.5 million people in Sub-Sahara Africa infected by the HIV virus, 60% of the world’s total. A UN report said one person is infected by this virus every 13 seconds. Worldwide, 32.9 million — 30.8 million between 15- and 49- years old — suffer from AIDS. Half of those are females. Each year, two million die from AIDS, for a total of 25 million in the last couple of decades.

The Pope proposes sexual abstention as the best option. But this myth contradicts nature. At the International AIDS Conference last August, Dr. Nancy Padian and Dr. Myron Cohen of the Univ. of North Carolina concluded that male use of condoms is one thing proven to prevent AIDS.

So the Pope has become just another angel of death of world imperialism and local capitalists who have already ravaged Africa with wars for slave labor and raw materials (over five million have been killed in the Congo since the mid-1990s). Pope Joseph Ratzinger seems to want to continue with the Nazi-like extermination campaigns of his Nazi past by trying to win Africa’s growing Catholic population away from using condoms.

The Great Train Robbery:
Bankers Profit, Workers Pay

NEW YORK CITY, May 6 — The latest swindle of this city’s working class will jack up subway and bus fares while handing $2 billion of the 2009 Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) budget (nearly 20%) in “debt service” to the banker-bondholders. This has been going on for decades. This interest is the profit that these bankers steal off the backs of transit workers and riders, while Obama hands over hundreds of billions to these same banks and his administration doles out $12 billion a month to fund imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The department stores, shopping malls, real estate interests or any big boss in the city would make zero profits without a functioning mass transit system that transports their customers and workers.

Meanwhile, masses of workers, many subsisting on poverty wages, and those jobless because of the bosses’ crisis, now must fork over still more money to get to their jobs or try to find one. A huge proportion of these riders are black and Latino, so the bosses use widespread racism to help get away with this robbery on their backs. And Mayor Bloomberg, the $16-billion robber baron, says we must “share the sacrifice” to balance the bosses’ budget.

The transit union “leaders” never utter a peep about the tie-in of the banks, the MTA and the billions spent on the bosses’ wars, nor about the bankers’ $2 billion-a-year gravy train.

PLP fights for a system without profits, bankers and phony “deficits”: communism. Workers will put these leeches six feet under. J

France: Million May Day Marchers Need to Dump Labor Sellouts

PARIS, May 2 — Over one million protesters — five times more than last year — participated in over 280 May Day demonstrations across France. It was the first time the eight major trade union confederations marched together on May 1.

But this was a show of unity at the “lowest common denominator.’’ The confederations’ March 30 call only put forward “making May Day a new key moment in the mobilization,” and repeated the four previous demands of the March 19 demonstration: opposition to public- and private-sector job cuts; opposition to non-permanent jobs and economic deregulation; maintenance of purchasing power; and maintenance of social security.

The call lied to the workers, saying the January 29 and March 19 protests had forced the government to limit the bosses’ stock options and golden parachutes. This is contradicted daily in the media.

Whereas last year striking undocumented immigrant workers led the Paris May Day march, this year there was less visible support for these mostly black and Arab workers. With the Sarkozy government launching a media blitz on “security” — which amounts to building racist fears — multi-racial unity with first- and second-generation immigrant workers is more crucial than ever for the working class in France.

The unions’ strategy of organizing bigger and bigger demonstrations every six weeks has not brought meaningful change for the workers. The movement’s momentum has been broken. Another day of action may very well be smaller, and the union leaders have little idea of what to do now. They are counting on the approaching summer holidays to let them off the hook.

However, they have succeeded in restoring their image. They appear to be doing something, which attracts many workers who have been depoliticized. (Trade union membership is below 8% of the working population, and less than 5% of the private sector.) The world capitalist crisis is pushing many into a new activism. The union leaders hope to continue shadow-boxing with the government, striking ferocious poses in public while signing sweetheart deals in private.

While the union misleaders are short on future plans, the “left-wing” electoral parties are all proposing to “give a political outlet to the labor movement” in the June 6 European parliament elections. These politicians all hope the economic crisis will induce workers to forget past betrayals and get on the electoral treadmill for another round. In any case, the unelected Council of the European Union has greater legislative powers than the European parliament, meaning that the different national ruling classes always have the final word, no matter what the elected representatives decide.

Millions of workers, in France and worldwide, are seeking answers to mass unemployment, the destruction of social security guarantees and increasing government repression. But the real solution — communist revolution — will not fall from the sky. It’s up to communist revolutionaries to explain that reformism is a dead-end and advance the alternative to capitalism.J

Workers Fight Back As Foreclosures Breed
New Profiteers

In the midst of staggering job loss and foreclosure rates, and while most people are too busy trying to figure out how to pay bills that are twice as high with half the money, the bosses’ media continues to avoid blaming capitalism. Instead, they create the anti-working class myths of “irresponsible home buyers.” When anger still rages, the bosses throw an individual capitalist like Madoff, under the bus.

Hours on radio talk shows and prominent headlines wax poetic about the evils of corporate greed, pointing to the few among the bosses who have been disciplined and rallying “good Americans” to dutifully assume the burden of “shared sacrifice.”

The bosses have played the part masterfully, finding a politician in Obama that could woo the most exploited among the working class. The current foreclosure crisis, while suffocating the working class, has fattened the pockets of many who can afford to bide their time hoping the economy evens out. A recent New York Times story, Homeowners’ Hard Times Are Good for the Foreclosure Business (April 5, 2009) celebrated the entrepreneurial spirit of real estate agents who are cashing in on workers’ misery by selling homes banks have grabbed through foreclosure. With 700,000 bank-owned properties on the market (compared with only 100,000 two years ago), some of the very same people who helped create the housing bubble are still able to expect a profit.

Many cities are purchasing these homes and refurbishing the area for sale to developers. Boston, Minneapolis, and San Diego have been using both private and taxpayer money to convert working-class communities into the “it” neighborhood of tomorrow. While the economy lags, developers have time to work at their leisure, anticipating huge rewards in the future.

Even in areas not ravaged by foreclosures, politicians and developers have found ways to try to force struggling working-class families from their homes to make way for the money. With Tax Increased Financing (TIF), which lets cities keep tax increases in areas being “redeveloped” and gives tax incentives, developers have moved into neighborhoods scourged by poverty that predates the crisis by generations. While this money could be used to improve the abysmal conditions of schools and clinics in the area, it is instead being used to build luxury homes and condos that for the time being remain unoccupied- betting on the promise of tomorrow’s profit rather than giving people basic necessities.

Developing class-consciousness in these neighborhoods and fighting back are the only hope we have of turning this crisis into a fight for revolution that will free us from the backward logic of capitalism. Earlier this year, in a beautiful gesture of solidarity, workers in New York, Oakland, and Houston organized resistance campaigns to help keep families in their homes. Supporters formed human chains in front of homes in efforts to keep sheriffs out and their working-class brothers and sisters in.

Across the country, people are refusing to leave their homes, and their neighbors are rallying around them (NYT 2/17). In neighborhoods facing gentrification and take-over by developers, residents have begun flyering campaigns and have hung banners. They have organized their own rallies and demonstrations to save their neighborhoods and are struggling to find ways to create their own economic opportunities. PLP members must reach out to these people who want to fight the effects of capitalism’s contradictions, and present them with a real solution- revolution for a communist society.

Until then, corporations, developers, and politicians will continue to devastate our communities with impunity.

It is precisely this drive for ever-greater gains — even in the face of capitalism’s failure — that has condemned the working class to the tremendous suffering we are experiencing today. The production for profit is the essence of capitalism. The brutal cycles of boom and bust inevitably lead to depressions and ultimately the capitalists resort to war to get out of them.

Our Party has a vital role to play in this chapter of worker history. We must make the most of every opportunity, every struggle to bring to light the misery that comes with capitalism and the promise of a better tomorrow only communism can offer. While the bosses flounder, we must be more disciplined and dedicated than ever. In this critical juncture in history, we must make the most of all of capitalism’s contradictions; the working class is ready to see them. While everyone else says “Wait, it will get better,” we must offer our hand and lead them to the only true solution, the battle for communism.J

Subcontractor Workers, Facing Cuts,
Speed-up, Welcome CHALLENGE

LOS ANGELES — “Oh, this is the newspaper they pass out in front of the factory. I make sure to get it every time and read it right away,” explained a worker in an aerospace plant when his co-worker showed him CHALLENGE.

The bosses are taking advantage of this crisis by forcing fascist conditions. PLP is responding to their attacks by expanding our networks.

Raises were supposed to go into effect, but instead the bosses have cut some workers pay by as much as $3 per hour. With all overtime cut, many struggle to survive on $8-12 per hour. Rumors of lay-offs stop workers from asking about their raises, fearing they may lose their job. In some of these shops 80% of our working-class brothers and sisters are undocumented, making their situation more critical.

The aerospace industry is crucial for war, but the bosses must reduce costs, so they force workers to speed up. What used to be produced in 10 hours is now made in 8. The bosses cut breaks, raise production goals, audit production daily and require operators to document every minute of their shift in the computers. Workers joke when they see new office furniture saying, “Oh, there goes your bonus and overtime.”

They joke but almost everyone understands the contradictions they face every day. The workers are angry. With communist class-consciousness these workers have the power to stop production and spark a wave of strikes and fight-backs that could advance the battle for communist revolution. With workers’ only other option being to sacrifice more for the bosses’ profits, the PLP must and is spreading communist ideas and literature both inside and outside the factory walls.

CHALLENGE networks have doubled since the speed-up started and every member should struggle to double them again. Thanks to many discussions, barbeques and meetings with our friends, they were the first to react and consciously slow down production to fight back. One recruit told us of three more workers who should receive CHALLENGE and be a part of our activities. One of them has now come to a Party event for a discussion on the economic and political situation. This worker and others will be some of the participants in our upcoming Summer Project.

The two past Summer Projects have mobilized workers, students and soldiers to pass out communist literature and visit workers in Seattle and Los Angeles. These projects build a worker-student-soldier alliance and make the PLP stronger. The PLP invites everyone to participate with us this July in our Summer Projects in Seattle and in LA.

In this period the necessity for a communist revolution is clear. The Progressive Labor Party can act and grow. The bosses’ system will never provide for the needs of the working class. Join us in the PLP and fight to build a new communist world without fascist exploitation. J

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, May 6, 2009

Information: 06 May 2009 371 hits

May Day Means: Fighting Racism, Capitalist Crisis, Imperialist War with Communist Revolution

a href="#Obama’s ‘Dream Act’: Nightmare for Immigrant Youth">Obam"’s ‘Dream Act’: Nightmare for Immigrant Youth

Who Are the Real Pirates?

a href="#When Liberal Obama Kills, It’s a ‘Good War’">When"Liberal Obama Kills, It’s a ‘Good War’

a href="#Can’t Pay? It’s Debtor’s Jail!">Can’" Pay? It’s Debtor’s Jail!

May Day Fight Exposes Pro-Boss Union Hacks

Stomping on Scab Cookies

Ivan the Nazi Stays, BP Immigrant Workers Jailed

a href="#Spain: Will Lead With PL’s Politics on May Day">"pain: Will Lead With PL’s Politics on May Day

N.J. Gov. Using Crisis to Rob Workers of $500 Million

a href="#Linking Fight vs. School Layoffs to Bosses’ Crisis Builds PLP">"inking Fight vs. School Layoffs to Bosses’ Crisis Builds PLP

Campus Forum Attacks U.S. Escalation In Afghanistan

a href="#Imperialist Rivalry, Bosses’ Crisis Drives U.S. to Militarize Mexico">"mperialist Rivalry, Bosses’ Crisis Drives U.S. to Militarize Mexico

May Day in El Salvador:‘Fight to end this murderous rotten system...’

a href="#Immigrant Workers’ Rally Protests Racist Cop Harassment">"mmigrant Workers’ Rally Protests Racist Cop Harassment

Letters

Ties to Co-Workers, Communist Movement Cures Isolation

a href="#More Ammunition for Stella D’Oro Strikers">"ore Ammunition for Stella D’Oro Strikers

Skycap Fights Frame-up, With PLP Support

Farmworkers Block Highway, Renewing 30-yr. Struggle

Back Fired Unionists in Haiti

Capitalist Crises: Boom for Bosses, Bust for Workers

May Day, the Historic Struggle of the International Working Class

May Day Means:

Fighting Racism, Capitalist Crisis, Imperialist War with Communist Revolution

As we celebrate May Day, the lives of millions of our working-class brothers and sisters worldwide hang by a thread on the decisions of imperialist butchers — including racist U.S. bosses and their politician servants like Obama — who have the power to decide who among us lives and who dies.

They have that power because their capitalist system rules the world. Capitalism is based on production for bosses’ profits, not workers’ needs. The bosses make profits only from workers’ labor. If they can’t sell profitably what is produced, they will destroy it or let it rot. Thus, every year they murder hundreds of millions of our class through starvation, diseases that can easily be prevented or cured, imperialist wars and other capitalist-created evils.

Hundreds of millions of workers worldwide are forced to migrate in search of an ever-more elusive job just to be super-exploited and hounded like criminals. Billions more, unable to migrate, are condemned to a life of brutal poverty and premature death.

Over 12 million undocumented workers in the U.S., plus their three million U.S.-born children, are hoping their dreams of legalization may come true at last. Tens of millions more in Latin America, Asia and Africa who depend for their livelihood on money sent by these workers must be harboring the same hopes and dreams.

But, in times of deep economic crisis, the bosses’ drive for maximum profits requires complete and total control — fascism — over workers intent on rebelling against the mass racist unemployment, and the wage and service cuts devastating their lives. And this drive for maximum profits pits the U.S. bosses, the top world imperialists, against the challenge of rising imperialists in China, Russia and Europe, all fighting each other to capture the planet’s resources and "right" to exploit billions of workers — a dogfight which inevitably leads to world war. These needs driving capitalism — not "humanitarian" concerns — are behind Obama’s DREAM Act and Comprehensive Immigration Reform bills.

World supremacy is decided on the battlefield and requires the fascism and the war economy outlined above. U.S. bosses will need millions to loyally slave in their war industries for low wages and tens of millions in their armed forces to fight and die for U.S. imperialism’s blood-soaked profits.

The proposed immigration bills mirror these U.S. bosses’ war needs. The DREAM Act, hailed as a bill to help undocumented youth, in fact will kindly "offer" a pool of over a million youth the "opportunity" of serving in the rulers’ military to shorten the "path to citizenship" — but more likely a path to the cemetery (see box).

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill will create another pool of over 12 million undocumented workers to follow a torturous (and costly) path to legalization, at least a 12-year ordeal of slave-like working conditions in the bosses’ war industries. Deportation will always hang over their heads.

Capitalism is the bosses’ system built on racism which both nets them hundreds of billions in super-profits from the lower wages and benefits forced on black and Latino workers (which drag down conditions for ALL workers) while pitting these groups against each other to weaken any united fight-back against the attacks that oppress us all.

The latest wrinkle in this racist divisiveness, backed by the bosses’ lieutenants among black "leaders," is to blame mainly Latino immigrants for the unemployment among black workers — "they’re stealing ‘our’ jobs." But it’s the bosses’ profit system and its latest financial crisis/depression that is throwing millions of black (and white) workers into the streets and out of their homes, not their brother and sister immigrant workers who are also suffering the same attacks, besides fascist government raids and imprisonment. Many of these workers come with a long history of class struggle and can help the working class lead battles against the bosses.

Thus, the unity of the international working class under the leadership of a mass international Progressive Labor Party has never been more urgent. Only millions of students, workers and soldiers armed with our communist ideas can destroy this capitalist-imperialist inferno. Communism will abolish all borders and exploitation. It will use working-class state power to deal racism and sexism a death blow. It will eliminate the bosses, their wage system and money because production will be based on the needs of the international working class. Speed the bosses’ "path to extinction." Join PLP!

a name="Obama’s ‘Dream Act’: Nightmare for Immigrant Youth"></a>"bama’s ‘Dream Act’: Nightmare for Immigrant Youth

The Obama administration’s latest version of the "DREAM ACT" promises undocumented immigrant youth citizenship in exchange for fighting and dying in U.S. imperialism’s oil wars.

Re-introduced into Congress last month, the Act would grant citizenship if these undocumented youth had lived in the U.S. for at least five years, graduated from high school and completed two years of either college or military service. But the Act does not change their ineligibility for government financial aid for college.

For most working-class immigrant youth, it’s far easier to join the military than to enter college, which is prohibitively expensive. So, in effect, it becomes a recruiting tool for the military. It fits right into Obama’s current aim to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has been a major backer of the DREAM ACT because it would provide 279,000 possible new recruits for the military (the brass is certainly not supporting it to send these youth to college). Furthermore, there are 715,000 additional youth between 5 and 17 who the military could get their hands on in the near future.

Supporters of the DREAM Act hide all this behind a "reform" label, but give undocumented immigrant youth who can’t afford college (the overwhelming majority) the "choice" of deportation or puts them on a path to the cemetery, while killing their brother and sister youth in imperialist war.

Mass Action is The Order of The Day

• Unite citizen and immigrant workers to stop the government raids, and the imprisonment and deportation of undocumented sister and brother workers;

• Organize strikes against layoffs; stop work if co-workers are being laid off;

• Stop foreclosures with a mass fight against evictions;

· Organize in the military to refuse orders to murder other workers;

• Establish union committees to unite those still working with the unemployed, led by rank-and-filers defying foot-dragging by sellout union leaders;

• Win local unions to organize marches on government buildings and mass demonstrations surrounding companies that announce future layoffs;

• Raise demands in unions, community groups, churches, schools and colleges to unite with workers in their areas to protest bosses’ attacks;

• Support striking workers in our areas, such as those at Stella D’Oro in the Bronx, NY and elsewhere, with funds and by joining picket lines;

• Organize students to participate in these actions and to support their parents who are either on strike, face layoffs or can mobilize their co-workers into action;

• Reach across all borders in solidarity with workers internationally who are facing these same attacks, especially auto workers who are in a unique position to unite against the auto bosses who have "globalized."

• Organize workers, soldiers, and youth everywhere to join Progressive Labor Party.

No doubt many rank-and-file workers will come up with additional ideas for action. Communists in PLP and their close friends will inject our red ideas into this struggle, to advance the need for communist revolution to overthrow the profit-driven capitalist system that has thrived on unemployment, forcing workers to suffer the losses caused by the bosses’ crisis. These ideas can be spread effectively by the mass sale of CHALLENGE, the expansion of CHALLENGE networks and winning workers to subscribe to the paper.

Who Are the Real Pirates?

The support Obama has received while expanding military attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and now killing teenage pirates in Somalia, highlights his value to U.S. rulers as they broaden their war machine’s existing theaters and open new ones. Obama, in his liberal guise, is able to "sell" patriotic militarism to a far broader audience than his predecessor ever could.

Obama’s deadly "humanitarian" rescue of the U.S. freighter captain furthers a U.S.-led NATO mission, begun in March, that makes the strategic Gulf of Aden and Horn of Africa a war zone under the pretext of combating piracy. Pirates do indeed threaten commerce. But Obama and his masters’ main goal is to assert U.S. dominance of Mideast oil export routes against greater foes, especially China’s developing "blue-water" navy. The Maersk Alabama incident was a military operation from start to finish. The ship belongs to the Pentagon’s Military Sealift Command, having run thousands of tons of lethal supplies to Iraq. The ship’s officers, graduates of the U.S. Navy-affiliated Massachusetts Maritime academy, deliberately sailed into the pirates’ well-known range. The ship’s captain is the main trainer of anti-pirate tactics at the academy. A Navy destroyer just "happened" to be nearby. Obama’s high seas drama coincides with the Pentagon’s establishment of a new Africa Command, to safeguard U.S. interests — access to energy supplies in particular — throughout the continent.

The pirates of Somalia are being used to mask the real pirates, the big imperialist powers militarizing these waters. All kinds of warships, spy and combat planes, satellites from the U.S., France, Russia, China, India, Japan, the European Union and Spain have been sent there.

While Somalia’s population is of little interest to the major powers, the 1,900-mile-long waterways along Somalia’s shores have great geopolitical importance. Somalia, on the Horn of Africa, is separated from Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula by the Gulf of Aden. About 11% of the world’s seaborne petroleum passes through the Gulf to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

During the 1970s, U.S.-supported Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia waged war against Somalia, then ruled by pro-Soviet strongman Siad Barre. When Selassie was overthrown, and a pro-Soviet military junta seized power in Ethiopia, Barre switched sides and became pro-U.S., which then used the Somalian port of Berbera as a base for operations in the Persian Gulf.

When the Cold War ended, U.S. interest in Somalia waned. After Barre lost power, a civil war among different warlords ravaged the country. In 1992, Bush, Sr., invaded Somalia for "humanitarian reasons," leading to the famous "Blackhawk Down" incident, when a U.S. chopper was shot down after firing indiscriminately into a crowd in Somalia’s capital city. Once Clinton became president, he withdrew U.S. troops from the country.

Somalia had no central government and was ruled by different clans. Then Somalia’s waters became a dumping ground for nuclear toxic waste from Europe, destroying the livelihood of Somalia’s fishermen. This waste became dislodged and washed ashore during the massive tsunami in December 2004. Thousands of Somalis were poisoned.

It was then that local fishermen first began to seize ships they believed were dumping toxic waste. They began to chase away fishing trawlers. This was the beginning of the pirates who are seizing ships today and making millions. In 2006, the Ethiopian army, aided by the U.S., invaded Somalia to topple a pro-Islamist government which had actually stopped the piracy. After killing thousands, mostly innocent people, the Ethiopian army left, leaving the country in an even more chaotic situation.

So the little pirates are from a country where most of the population makes $2 a day and many are unemployed teenagers — like those killed by U.S. Navy Seals snipers — working for "pirate cartels." They’re small fishes compared to the huge imperialist navies, who are using this situation as a prelude to their big fight for control of the important oil routes from Somalia and along the entire Indian Ocean. These imperialists are the real big-time pirates who are fighting among each other to exploit and rob the labor and natural resources of workers in Africa, and have been for centuries.

Somehow the history they teach us does not define that as piracy.

a name="When Liberal Obama Kills, It’s a ‘Good War’"></a>"hen Liberal Obama Kills, It’s a ‘Good War’

Obama’s liberal aura also builds popular support for the U.S. rulers’ "surge" of 40,000 more troops into Afghanistan. A year ago, the New York Times could not have run the story they did this April 17, "Turning Tables, U.S. Troops Ambush Taliban With Swift and Lethal Results" without provoking an outcry against "warmaker Bush." But today, with Obama waging a "good war," the Times glorified a U.S. platoon that wiped out 13 unsuspecting insurgents. The Obama-worshipping Times saw fit to describe a "brave" U.S. sergeant stabbing a "cowardly" Taliban fighter in the eye. Obama, likewise, gets off scot free as he extends the conflict with civilian-slaughtering air raids into Pakistan.

a name="Can’t Pay? It’s Debtor’s Jail!"></a>"an’t Pay? It’s Debtor’s Jail!

(From NY Times, April 6)

"Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son. When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union…which helped get her out…after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments….

"In Georgia, poor people who cannot pay off fines — plus a monthly fee to the private company that collects the payments — are often being sent to jail for non-payment….In 2006, the [Southern Center for Human Rights] sued on behalf of a woman who was locked up in Atlanta for eight months…because she could not pay a $705 fine.

"Until a few years ago, the police in Gulfport, Miss., regularly did sweeps of the city’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, identified people with unpaid fines and put them in jail. Defendants who could not pay were forced to remain there until they ‘sat off’ their fines. The city ended the practice after they were sued."

May Day Fight Exposes Pro-Boss Union Hacks

SEATTLE, WA., April 13 — "It’s enough to make someone a revolutionary," concluded a comrade after the last union meeting. "You’re right!" agreed another Machinists’ union member who had just fought for our May Day resolution.

It called for "build[ing] the multi-racial, multi-national unity we so desperately need to answer the worsening attacks on working families" and outlined racist super-exploitation in low-cost aerospace subcontractors, noting that Boeing announced 10,000 layoffs. Joining with immigrant workers during their march on May 1 was a good first step in organizing against these attacks.

That very night the company revealed additional production cutbacks and more layoffs. "Boeing Forced To Park New Jets" [in the Arizona desert because airlines can’t pay for planes they ordered] screamed subsequent headlines. Still another reason why we need working-class unity to fight the bosses’ crisis!

The resolution was introduced at the Executive Board. They agreed to full discussion at the membership meeting. But just before the May Day resolution was to be introduced, the general meeting was abruptly adjourned without a word from the president who had supposedly agreed to this discussion. Some said it was set up; others were mad the leadership broke their word. Even some lower-lever union officers said, "It’s time they [the misleadership] got some balls."

What Are They So Afraid Of?

"It figures," most said back on the shop floor. Over time, with our help, dozens of these discussions raised the question, "What are they [the union misleadership] so afraid of?"

This question drew added weight after many read the CHALLENGE article on the Los Angeles teachers’ union resolution for a 1-day illegal strike on May Day. There the hacks counter-proposal was: a strike on any day in May, but May Day! (See CHALLENGE, 4/22)

The union movement was poisoned by business unionism with the anti-communist purges in the 1950s. Their heirs are dead set against a mass, militant fight-back that refuses to accept the losses for the bosses’ crisis. But class struggle is raging worldwide, and starting here, where the hacks want to control and divert it.

When Yugoslavia established free-market capitalism in the 1990s, it attacked workers mercilessly. Workers organized general strikes and mass demonstrations. Within a year, the bosses turned those struggles into "ethnic cleansing" and war because international, anti-racist class solidarity was sidetracked.

Even now mass actions in Europe play the divisive nationalist card: "French jobs for French workers;" "German jobs for German workers." (See CHALLENGE, 4/22). When Illinois steel workers began demonstrating against layoffs, the union diverted the campaign to "American jobs for American workers."

The sharpening crisis — threatening world wars — means we must strenuously advocate anti-racist, international class-consciousness. "Anything less means war," declared our friend who fought for the resolution. "Now I see why you [PLP] started this fight."

Is It Worth It?

This same friend complained his shop-mates didn’t understand the seriousness of the crisis. "They don’t believe this stuff," he said, a bit astonished. For him the crisis is real: his uncles work for GM and his daughter, a new schoolteacher, may be laid off anytime. Furthermore, he’s aware the bosses’ labor lieutenants are fiercely determined to halt any class-conscious, let alone revolutionary, pro-communist activity. All this raises the question, "Is the [hard] struggle for our politics worth it?"

Our friend’s greater understanding of the logic of revolution and the serious shop-floor discussion of CHALLENGE articles makes it worth it. Out of this struggle, some have bought tickets to our revolutionary communist May Day dinner and agreed to join the Party’s contingent in the immigrant workers’ march on May 1. Building our revolutionary communist forces amid this crisis is winning.

The crisis may press the pro-boss union leaders to fight us even harder, but opportunities to expand our base on the shop floor increase with every fight. Dare to struggle, dare to win! J

Stomping on Scab Cookies

I am a high school PL member in Brooklyn. For the past months I have heard about the Stella D’Oro workers on strike against the bosses’ racist acts towards them. My PL members and I have had many picket lines against the racist bosses. We went to a Stop & Shop supermarket and protested against them selling Stella D’Oro cookies. Doing this made me want to fight back even more. A couple of weeks after the picket line I went into a nearby supermarket where I lived and saw that they were selling Stella D’Oro cookies. Taking action I threw the Stella D’Oro cookies on the floor and began to stomp on them. Nearby a worker saw me doing this and asked me to stop but I didn’t and continued to do so. The manager then approached me and escorted me out of the store. After leaving the store I was proud of myself for taking action against the racist bosses. Taking this action shows that the workers can fight back against the bosses.

Cookie Smasher

Ivan the Nazi Stays, BP Immigrant Workers Jailed

I was outraged as I learned the news that Ivan the Terrible, the former Nazi prison guard responsible for 29,000 deaths at the Treblinka concentration camp, had been granted a stay of deportation. The story jumped out at me because of the work I’ve been doing with the British Petroleum (BP) refinery workers rounded up in an immigration raid a few months ago. My fury was only given more fire when later that same morning, these same BP workers were lured to the Federal Building in downtown Chicago. They were told they would either be getting work permits or having their ankle tethers removed. Instead they were arrested and charged with federal crimes.

The women, all mothers, were then jailed in Hammond, IN, held for hours in a freezing cell, frightened and unaware of what was happening. They have already been arraigned on immigration charges and are awaiting hearings over the summer and early next year.

I rushed to make arrangements for their children to be picked up from school, and was devastated as one school official reported that she was going to suggest the child be turned over to the State. Luckily, while on the phone with her, I learned that the women had been released on new federal charges.

I marveled in disgust at how cleverly the system plays on our sympathies to protect an elderly Nazi war criminal and racist mass murderer, while exploiting capitalist-created racist fears to criminalize workers like my friends at BP.

Under this system, it will always be more of the same. Whether it’s "respecting" the contracts of AIG executives while demanding major concessions from auto workers, or "humanitarian" efforts to spare a vicious Nazi while criminalizing and terrorizing working moms, and possibly costing them their children, workers can always expect the deck to be stacked against them until we unite to fight for Communism.

Red Mom

a name="Spain: Will Lead With PL’s Politics on May Day">">"pain: Will Lead With PL’s Politics on May Day

SPAIN — Two years have passed since I came to this country, looking for a better job to be able to maintain my family economically. During this time I’ve always asked myself if it was worth it to have made the long journey, to have had to live in the street and put up with the racism that exists here against the "sudacas" (Central and South Americans).

I’ve always maintained the firm confidence that whether I’m here or anywhere else in the world, I have to continue building the PLP, that by organizing the working class we can get rid of this system, regardless of whether I can find a "good-paying job."

May 1st is always our end and our beginning of the calendar and surely I’ll be in the streets passing out CHALLENGES and thousands of leaflets, talking with the people and trying to explain what Communism really is. Friends of PLP, some ecologists, others pacifists, will help us pass out the leaflets.

Millions of people are out of work in Europe and the world. Everyone I speak with always talks with me about the worldwide financial crisis and I try to explain to them that this system has never been nor will ever be in favor of the working class. That the capitalists will always look for their profits and they’ll do it even if it costs the lives of millions of workers, making wars for the control of oil, squeezing the worker so he’ll work more and generate more profits for capitalism.

But all of us who are really part of the working class will work this May Day and try to duplicate the number of leaflets that we passed out last year, all together in spite of the barriers that the capitalist system puts in our path. It’s our duty to keep fighting for Communism and showing the imperialists that the working class is waking up.

The working class has to respond this May Day and we in PLP have to be there to be able to lead with our Communist political line, which is the only weapon of the working class capable of destroying capitalism. Everyone this May Day: go to the streets and demonstrate our true strength: the strength of the working class against the imperialist assassins! LONG LIVE MAY DAY! LONG LIVE PLP!

Comrade in Spain

Thousands Rally vs. Fascist Labor Scheme:

N.J. Gov. Using Crisis to Rob Workers of $500 Million

NEWARK, NJ,April 21 — On March 25, Democratic Governor Corzine was granted emergency powers by his hand-picked appointees at the New Jersey Civil Service Commission (CSC). They accepted Corzine’s argument, presented without proof, that the state of New Jersey is in "imminent peril" as a result of the economic crisis. Their ruling allowed the State to impose mandatory furloughs and a wage freeze without notice and without the pretense of "good-faith bargaining" called for in the bosses’ labor laws. With the furloughs, Corzine wants to take half a billion dollars from the salaries of state workers over the next year.

Hundreds of state workers, along with thousands across the state, rallied in Newark at lunchtime on April 7 to oppose this fascist labor plan. The workers, members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), were angry and militant. Chants of, "They say cut back, we say fight back," and, "The workers, united, will never be defeated" filled the streets.

Unionized workers from other local offices, including legal services workers, joined the line. One of those workers had a sign that said, "Make the bankers and the bosses take the losses, not the working class." Many CWA workers who saw the sign said, "That’s right" and "You’ve got it." The legal services workers were told about a rally to be held at the next meeting of the CSC.

The Civil Service rules also give county and local bosses the right to submit layoff plans. Sixty of these have been submitted already, affecting thousands of government workers. On April 17, an appellate court upheld the "imminent peril" finding of the CSC. Although the furloughs were temporarily stopped by the court, that is no big victory for the workers. Corzine’s Public Employee’s Commission can still decide the state doesn’t have to bargain. Meanwhile, Corzine is holding over workers’ heads the threat of 7,000 layoffs as his "alternative" to the furloughs.

During his election campaign, Corzine posed as a "pro-labor" reformer. But his past stinks of the ruling class. Before becoming governor, Corzine made hundreds of millions as CEO of Goldman Sachs. During Corzine’s reign, Goldman "invented" securities that offered Enron and other companies a new way of shielding their debt from investors. Who were the biggest losers? The workers of Enron and others who were sucked into buying company stock and were left holding the bag as Enron bosses sold theirs off before the company went bankrupt.

The CWA leadership has no answers for the workers. One of their local presidents, Carla Katz, who has since been removed, was literally "in bed" with Corzine during his election campaign. In the face of these attacks, the leadership calls for "shared sacrifice," exactly what President Obama and other ruling-class representatives put forward. It is the capitalist system that is behind this crisis. The biggest bankers and bosses, including Corzine, couldn’t make enough profit off of U.S. industry, so they devised more elaborate speculative schemes. It is these schemes and the anarchy of their competitive, unplanned production that caused this depression. (See page 7) Why should our class have to pay for that?

Communist revolution would end this boom-and-bust nature of capitalism, which always ends up screwing workers. In building for that revolution, we need to spread class solidarity and sharpen the struggle against the bosses’ attacks. These schemes and the anarchy of their competitive, unplanned production led to this depression with its racist sub-prime mortgage rip-off that will leave millions of black and Latino workers homeless. These ideas will help workers see through all politicians, push aside the enemy within our ranks, and seize power for the workers away from the rulers.J

a name="Linking Fight vs. School Layoffs to Bosses’ Crisis Builds PLP">">"inking Fight vs. School Layoffs to Bosses’ Crisis Builds PLP

LOS ANGELES, CA — In the ongoing struggle against teacher layoffs, fighting to make the capitalist crisis central reveals the potential to build PLP. Teacher union leaders, attempting to deflect the tremendous anger at the layoffs and the support for the resolution to strike on May 1, are calling instead for May 1 to be a "day of action" at each school. We encourage students and teachers to rally and march with the PLP contingent in the immigrants’ rights march on May 1 against the layoffs and the crisis-ridden capitalist system. The latter is bailing out the banks by attacking students, teachers and workers worldwide. We’re spreading CHALLENGE and the fight for communist revolution as the only solution to this crisis and building for the PLP Summer Projects.

At one union area meeting, a new teacher who was just given a layoff notice also received a PLP leaflet and CHALLENGE for the first time. He underlined parts of the leaflet, and showed it to a fellow teacher, saying "Look, they’re talking about communism." Turning to the teacher who gave him the leaflet, he asked, "Are you a real communist?"

"Yes," was the reply. "We must fight these layoffs, but also see this as a crisis of the whole system. To defeat it, we’ve got to destroy this system; it’s based on expanding war for oil profits and attacks like this on teachers, students and other workers." The new teacher nodded in agreement.

At this meeting, where 95 teachers voted to support a strike on May 1, the teachers told off union President Duffy. He got red-faced when teachers demanded to know why the union wasn’t organizing a strike against the layoffs. They noted that half the teachers in the predominantly black and Latino South Central area got layoff notices — many more than in the Valley. They wanted action.

Duffy answered, "We have to represent the whole union." This racist attack on black and Latino students through more layoffs in South Central LA is an attack on ALL teachers, students and parents. Capitalism stays in power by dividing the working class. Multiracial unity to fight the sharpest, racist attacks like this is fighting for ALL workers!

To prepare for May Day and for struggles like this one, we organized three potluck dinners to advance the politics described above. This helped students to not only understand that the capitalist profit-drive is behind these attacks but also to participate in actions opposing them: marches, picketing before school, walkouts, increasing CHALLENGE distribution to their friends, and at marches and factories.

At one dinner, everyone was invited to come to the PLP Summer Projects to bring CHALLENGE to industrial workers and soldiers. A student who’d been in the last three projects said, "They changed the way I see the world. They’re really great. Everyone should come."

At another dinner, we explained that the drive for maximum profits is the goal of capitalism, not producing for workers’ needs. One worker commented, "I liked the symbolism of Obama, but with the seriousness of this crisis, I see he won’t get us out of it." He questioned how long the honeymoon with Obama would last, since if people say, "Waiting to see what Obama does before fighting racist cuts, layoffs or imperialist wars" just helps the bosses.

When someone said it’s hard to be optimistic in today’s world, others commented that while we’re not optimistic about U.S. rulers resolving this deepening crisis, we are optimistic about the working class. History shows that workers will fight back and fight for communism when communists show the need for it, participate in class struggle and spread CHALLENGE to more workers, soldiers, youth and teachers.

Join with PLP on May Day and for a lifetime of struggle to unite the working class in the fight for a communist society which will produce to meet the needs of the international working class.

Campus Forum Attacks U.S. Escalation In Afghanistan

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, April 14 – Presentations opposing the U.S./NATO Afghanistan war were given by two students and two faculty at a forum sponsored by a campus anti-war group. Some speakers argued that the U.S.’s real aim for the Afghan war is to get access to Central Asian oil and gas, now dominated by Russia. Other speakers showed that if the Obama administration were really trying to "fight terrorism" as it claims, then killing thousands more Aghans and Pakistanis would be the last thing they would do. Others showed that the U.S. invasion and overthrow of the Afghan government in 2001 never had any justification in international law. They also denounced the new Aghan law that legalizes rape of wives and forbids them to leave home without a "legitimate reason."

About 60 people came to the forum, and many stayed for discussion afterwards and gave their email addresses for further contact. One person asked the key question: if this is the way the U.S. and other big powers operate and have operated for a long time, what can we do about it?

The questioner was invited to continue participating in the anti-war group. The openness of these students and faculty to anti-imperialism shows that there is a real potential to build up an anti-imperialist movement on this campus. To answer the student’s question about what to do about imperialism, however, we need to increase our CHALLENGE distribution. This will show students and faculty that only international communist revolution can end imperialist wars. J

a name="Imperialist Rivalry, Bosses’ Crisis Drives U.S. to Militarize Mexico">">"mperialist Rivalry, Bosses’ Crisis Drives U.S. to Militarize Mexico

MEXICO CITY, April 20 — The international economic crisis has driven the bosses worldwide to increasingly depress workers’ conditions every day. While they lay off masses of workers, and cut or eliminate loans and workers’ rights, they simultaneously financially rescue the big bosses using the wealth only the workers created.

This year 750,000 jobs have been lost in Mexico so far, an average of 6,250 daily. Those still working are forced to produce more while their real wages decline due to the devaluation of the peso and to price increases. The bosses try to threaten workers, saying if they don’t accept these conditions, thousands are waiting to take their jobs.

The sharpening dogfight among the imperialists for the world’s markets and natural resources has led to war, mainly over control of oil. Rising imperialists — China, Russia and the European Union — are challenging U.S. bosses, the top imperialists. This rivalry will inevitably lead to world war (see front page).

Mexico, one of the U.S. rulers’ main allies, is of crucial geopolitical importance. Eighty-six percent of Mexico’s industrial output and all of Mexico’s oil exports go to the U.S. (Mexico is the second biggest provider of oil for the U. S.) These industries, relying on abundant low-paid labor, can easily be converted to war production. Mexico can also become an enormous source of cannon fodder in wars as well as of food supply and other vital natural resources.

That’s why U.S. rulers urgently need to guarantee direct political and military control of these strategic sectors and protect them from their imperialist enemies, including the more nationalist sector of Mexico’s bosses.

So, under the pretext of "fighting narco traffic" (which they have helped promote), U.S. rulers are implementing Plan Merida to militarize the country, and Plan Puebla Panama to guarantee the flow of wealth to the U.S. rather than to any other imperialist. Obama’s recent trip to Mexico was part of this strategy.

Here in Mexico, the bosses allied to the U.S. are fomenting police terror against the workers with mandatory arrests, home searches without legal orders and unjust prison sentences, in addition to approving new laws authorizing capital punishment. Their fascist objective is to squash whatever opposition exists to their genocidal plans.

U.S. imperialism’s excuse to militarize Mexico, in preparation for a future invasion, is the excessive violence this country suffers from drug traffic. In Mexico, there are 5,700 deaths a year from violence. Mexico’s population is about 110,000,000. Meanwhile, in El Salvador there are 4,000 people killed per year because of violence. El Salvador’s population is 7 million. Yet, if El Salvador’s population equaled Mexico’s, the proportional number of deaths would be over 60,000 per year. Nevertheless, the U.S. Plan Merida is investing millions of dollars to fight the "insecurity" in Mexico, not in El Salvador. They talk about "humanitarianism," but the U.S. government’s real goal is control of Mexico’s wealth.

However, the nationalist rulers opposed to Mexico’s president Calderon and his allies are willing to fight for this wealth through their main political leader, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who’s preparing for the 2012 elections. If necessary, he would lead a civil war to defend the nationalist Mexican bosses’ interests. We workers shouldn’t choose any sides among these capitalist groups. We should organize to turn the bosses’ wars into armed struggle for communism.

The capitalist crisis, with its attacks on workers and fight among the bosses, provides us with great opportunities. By overcoming nationalism, sexism, racism and individualism, we can build international workers’ unity and the fight for communism. During imperialist wars communist-led workers have turned their guns against their class enemies, organizing the most momentous revolutions in human history, in Russia during World War I and in China at the end of World War II. When masses of workers are armed with revolutionary communist ideas, no force on earth can stop them! J

May Day in El Salvador:

‘Fight to end this murderous rotten system...’

EL SALVADOR — "A system that cannot meet the needs of the working class does not deserve to exist." This is our slogan on May Day 2009.

"This year the march will be a celebration," assured the union leaders in El Salvador who are planning on celebrating "change" in the government. The revisionist (fake leftist) leaders of the FMLN will dominate the new government, which will try to give a better mask to the capitalist system through reforms that will not improve the lives of Salvadoran workers.

El Salvador is considered one of the most violent countries in Latin America. This is the fault of the capitalist profit system. In this country where there is great poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression, there is an average of 12 murders a day, with a population of less than 7 million people.

In the current worldwide economic crisis, the bosses can’t grant any significant improvements and the working class is finding it harder and harder to live. That’s why the only alternative that’s left to us is the struggle for a system that will provide and meet our class’s urgent needs, like food, housing, work and freedom from wage slavery.

This May Day, we denounce the bosses’ system, whether it be neoliberal (ARENA) or state capitalist (FMLN) financed by the imperialists, whether they be from the U.S., Russia or China; both are forms of oppression for the workers. The international crisis of capitalism and the coming inter-imperialist World War III represent an opportunity for the working class worldwide to intensify the struggle to end, once and for all, the bosses’ exploitation.

"What will the Party do to take advantage of this opportunity?" asked a PL’er. Another worker answered, "The Party is us and each one of us has the task of fighting to put an end to this rotten murderous capitalist system."

Let’s all march this May Day, youth, students, war veterans, soldiers, industrial workers from the maquillas, and workers from the fields to distribute thousands of CHALLENGES and leaflets to our fellow workers and for the death of capitalism.

a name="Immigrant Workers’ Rally Protests Racist Cop Harassment">">"mmigrant Workers’ Rally Protests Racist Cop Harassment

ORANGE, NJ, April 8 — Eighty immigrant workers, along with members of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County, the Family Success Center, PLP and the ACLU, demonstrated against police harassment at the Bravo Supermarket parking lot where hundreds of workers gather to seek day work. At this lot, the racist police drive through, lights flashing, chasing the men from the sidewalks and the lot, onto back streets. On March 11, unprovoked, the police fired pistol shots above the men’s heads.

Obama and the liberals’ talk about "immigration reform" is just a cover to super-exploit immigrant workers even more and, through the DREAM Act, try to win them to join the army and fight in the rulers’ endless wars. These ideas were spread in up to 100 CHALLENGES distributed among these workers here.

Workers have gone to the Family Success Center several times to seek help getting back wages for weeks of work when criminal employers have deliberately cheated them. During meetings, a PL’er has pointed out that this system of layoffs, pay robbery and unemployment is one of the many ways the profit system survives, by dividing us and driving down all our wages.

One of the employers that hires these workers is a former East Orange cop who has been indicted on 22 counts of insurance fraud! The legal system released him to continue his criminal activity.

The signs at the demonstration at the supermarket read, "To Be Human is Not to Be Illegal"; "We Are Workers, We Are NOT Criminals"; and, "We want to be part of the community." Channel 47, a Spanish-language news show, broadcast the demonstration at 6 and 11 pm. As soon as the supporters and media left, two squad cars pulled up and the police forced all the workers off the parking lot. But the workers have already returned to the lot, and so has PLP, with more issues of CHALLENGE, which workers ran to grab and read. Six of the workers have signed up to join PLP’s May Day celebration.

Letters

Ties to Co-Workers, Communist Movement Cures Isolation

In regard to the letter (4/8) from "Red Comrade In Spain," knowing my somewhat similar situation might help you.

I’ve been in PLP for 23 years. I live in North America and work at a major airport among mostly immigrant workers, away from any major political concentration, so I’m somewhat "alone" too. (To paraphrase Marx, "Workers don’t always make history the way they choose to.")

1. Having friends helps avoid political and personal isolation. Seek them out for advice. (Self-critically, I myself could always improve on these points.) Your friends can also "watch your back" against class enemies you’ll encounter during your struggles.

2. Seek advice from Party comrades as often as feasible.

3. Maintain a routine and stick with it to instill discipline.

4. Practice criticism/self criticism. It’s O.K. to make mistakes. From political practice we learn to be good communists. (As Mao said, "Turn a negative into a positive learning experience.")

5. Study dialectical materialism, particularly Marxist classics and Ira Gollobin’s ground-breaking scientific work, "Dialectical Materialism." Also, study science; many dialectical materialist examples can be drawn from scientific concepts.

Study history’s many examples of international working-class fight-backs. Learn from our successes as well as our failures, everything from the Paris Commune to the reversal of workers’ power in the former Soviet Union and China. We stand on the shoulders of giants. History can inspire us to greatness.

A fine autobiography of a Bolshevik revolutionary who experienced political isolation is, "20 Years in Underground Russia: Memoirs of a Rank-and-File Bolshevik" by Celia Babuskya. (If you can’t find this or other books mentioned here, contact the Party.)

I hope some of this is of help. Your letter reveals your heart is in the right place! You’re not alone. Many of us want to help change the world. We have Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and the revolutionary practice of millions who came before us as guides. We have a world to win and our potential friends are in the billions!

Airport Red

a name="More Ammunition for Stella D’Oro Strikers">">"ore Ammunition for Stella D’Oro Strikers

CHALLENGE is doing a good job in reporting the struggle of the Stella D’Oro strikers. They are fighting not only a company that puts profits before workers (like all capitalists) but one fighting to survive during the newest crisis of capitalism. Brynwood Partners (BP) owns Stella D’Oro. BP is an investment fund. It mainly gets money (capital) from investors like large public-employee pension funds (including the largest — CALPERS of California — and the Pennsylvania State Retirement System), venture capitalists and other private investors. Without capital, BP cannot acquire other firms or "turn around" the ones they’ve already acquired.

BP brags on its website that it specializes in making profit from "underperforming" companies like Stella D’Oro. "Underperforming" means that the bosses haven’t squeezed out the last bit of profit off the workers’ labor. So they lower wages and reduce or eliminate benefits. This is why they can brag of how an investment of $175 million makes an annual return of 28.8%! They tell investors that when they sell a company they make three times the capital invested!

A Dow Jones newsletter says: "Brynwood Partners has pulled off a rare feat as it gears up to market its sixth fund, returning money to its investors via a dividend recap." In a dividend recap[italization], a company borrows money to pay a special dividend to its investors — almost always a small group of private investors. This puts downward pressure on wages, as a portion of the company’s profits must go to pay off the loan.

BP’s website lists eight managing partners. Most of them have experience with big Wall Street firms, such as Merrill Lynch or Paine Webber, or with Nestlé, a mega food producer. Nestlé was the leading company, according to Wikipedia, in which the "promotion of infant formula over breast-feeding has led to health problems and deaths among infants in less economically developed countries."

The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco, Grain Millers Union (BCTGM) talks about boycotting Stella D’Oro products but does not tell workers the role their bosses play in the capitalist system or the connections their strike has with other workers. BP owns a number of food companies such as DeMet candies, makers of Turtles; Flipz Pretzels, and Richelieu Foods (pizzas). Just as Stella D’Oro workers are getting the shaft from BP, we can be sure that workers at their other companies are also getting screwed.

BCTGM has union locals in food companies like See’s Candy, Nabisco, Keebler, Interstate Bakers (Wonder Bread, Twinkies, Hostess cupcakes, Columbo) and Nestlé. These companies have many plants; some are in NY, Chicago, and southern and northern California, all areas where we can help reach out for support from other BCTGM workers. Nestlé workers might especially be receptive as DeMet, Stella D’Oro and other BP companies were at one time owned by Nestlé. Seems that BP bosses use their connection with Nestlé to pick up companies to plunder.

I hope that this information helps the Stella D’Oro strikers. The better we are able to make the connection of workers’ struggles to the workings of capitalism, the more they will value our communist ideas and analysis.

A Comrade in LA

Skycap Fights Frame-up, With PLP Support

I am a skycap worker at LaGuardia Airport and have been so for nine years. Last November, I was at work doing my normal duty of helping passengers with their luggage from the baggage carousel to their taxi.

When we reached the taxi line it was long and after waiting 25 minutes only two people had been placed in cabs. So I was asked to call a private taxi for the family I was with. After doing so I went to the pickup island to wait for the taxi. When it came I went on my way to get the passengers and out of nowhere a man in plain clothes viciously grabbed me and slammed me on the side of a bus. Then came another plain-clothes man who lifted me up from the ground, cuffed me and took me to jail without ever identifying himself as a police officer!

I was held in jail for over 36 hours. I was charged initially with "trespassing" and "soliciting." Later the charges were changed to resisting arrest and soliciting.

A few days later, I returned to work and was fired without a reason. When I filed for unemployment — for being fired without cause — my boss claimed I was "hustling" passengers. At an unemployment hearing to review my case, several friends from PLP accompanied me; the judge threw out the case since there was no proof (he also said that in 18 years he had never seen someone bring supporters to a hearing and kicked them out of the room because he was suspicious).

I have been to criminal court over four times trying to free myself from the charges. Thanks to friends from PLP and those who have been helping me, at my last court date around 25 people showed up with me and we shocked the whole courtroom. The bailiff asked why they were there and a supporter said they were there to support me.

When we walked out of the courtroom everyone started talking and there was a lot of noise because more than half the room stood and left together.

Friend of PL

Farmworkers Block Highway, Renewing 30-yr. Struggle

In the decade of the 1980’s, the farm workers who grew coffee in Merced del Potrero, a rural community on the coast of Mexico near the isthmus of Tehuantepec, organized a massive violent struggle to form a cooperative to directly administer the cultivation of coffee. They did this to confront the exploiters and landlords of the area who maneuvered to buy their coffee for a very low price.

Now, after almost thirty years, forced by marginalization and poverty generated by the bosses and their capitalist system, this group of workers have again risen up in struggle. They are now blocking the Administrative Center in the city of Oaxaca. Earlier they blocked the Coast highway to Huatulco near the Pacific Ocean, to pressure the fascist government of Ulisis Ruiz Ortiz (URO) to give them economic aid to pay for the needs of their community.

In order to divert them from a more effective struggle, the workers of these localities have been bombarded with electoral politics from the bourgeois parties coordinated by the State Electoral Institute with seductive speeches about progress, equality and democracy. With their goal of tying the population to the fraudulent trap of capitalist elections, the PRI Governor threatens the needs of the poor by offering crumbs with their Firm Floor Program. They give away supplies like cement in hopes of gaining votes and to win seats in the upcoming federal delegations for Congressional elections and to prepare the ground for the Presidential election in 2012.

The bosses’ parties and their elections will never solve the problems of the farm workers, city workers, students or the rest of the marginalized and exploited population. The only real solution is the destruction of this capitalist system of constant crisis which attacks our class every day. We need to join together in one party of the international working class, the PLP, to take power and build a communist society that will guarantee the well-being and equality of all.

Comrade from Mexico

Back Fired Unionists in Haiti

Eight employees of the National Archives of Haiti have been fired for union organizing, and their union COSEANH (Union of the Employees of the National Archives of Haiti) has asked U.S. friends for help. The fired unionists have also received death threats against themselves and their families. Eighty percent of the Archives employees have been kept on one-year contracts, since reduced to six months.

There is a long history of racist U.S. imperialist invasion and domination of Haiti, where slave workers led the first revolution in the New World. Let’s come to the aid of the threatened Archives workers. Haiti today is occupied by a UN armed force led by a Brazilian contingent. Their flashy white SUVs lord it over the capital city as the U.S. marines and the Tonton Macoute did before them, but they will go the way of the macoutes.

Would CHALLENGE readers please send letters protesting these firings and death threats against COSEANH unionists to Jean Wilfrid Bertrand, Director General of the National Archives of Haiti, at jwbertrandarchives@acn2.net

Compère Général Soleil

Capitalist Crises: Boom for Bosses, Bust for Workers

The bosses’ media has pointed fingers at various causes of the current economic crisis: seedy mortgage brokers, "deadbeat" homebuyers, "stupid" investment bankers, greedy and arrogant CEOs, Ponzi schemers like Madoff, and now AIG executive bonuses. They claim the root cause is the "subprime mortgage" fiasco, the housing market collapse, the financial industry crisis and the freezing of credit. Except for workers trying to keep and/or buy homes, all the above characters are part of the problem. And all of the above crises have contributed to what increasingly looks like a Depression,

But all these explanations don’t really explain what’s at the heart of this worldwide debacle for capitalism: fundamental laws governing the inner workings of the system itself. Over 140 years ago after decades of struggle by workers against capitalist exploitation, Karl Marx, in his work "Capital," revealed important laws of capitalist development. In that and other important works, Marx described two: the tendency of the overall rate of profit to fall, and the occurrence of periodic crises of overproduction as the necessary result of a competitive and unplanned system of production. Communists say that only revolution to overthrow capitalism can end this system’s "boom-and-bust" nature.

Real Wages Falling Since ‘73

The rate of return on capitalist investment (rate of profit) in the "developed" economies (U.S., France, Britain, Germany, etc.) has been falling since the end of the 1960s (see interview with Robert Brenner in "Asia-Pacific Journal," 2/7/09). This happened despite the fall in real wages since 1973, which should have caused the rate of profit to increase. The profit rate fell because emerging capitalist economies in Europe and Asia began producing "the same goods that were already being produced by the earlier developers, only cheaper."

Bosses in the more developed economies tried to hold on to their dominant positions by pouring money into new technology. However, this only made the problem worse, for two reasons. Firstly, more high-tech upgrades led to even greater overcapacity in industry, with goods flooding the world market. Secondly, the higher the percentage of total capital invested in plant and machinery, the further the rate of return on capital investment tends to fall. Profit can only be made off of human labor power, not from machinery (see box).

As their economic position worsened, U.S. and Western European bosses cut real wages, increasing racist exploitation to attack ALL workers. They used their control of the government to cut back "social wages", i.e. social service benefits for workers paid for from taxes. But these attacks on their income meant workers were less able afford the products that the bosses had to sell in order to realize their profits.

Fed’s Policy Led to Toxic Assets

The solution? The U.S. bosses’ state, particularly the Federal Reserve, encouraged the massive use of public and private credit. Government budget deficits increased dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, the Fed deliberately kept interest rates very low. This induced a huge increase in private borrowing and encouraged investment in financial assets like stocks, bonds and more exotic instruments like bundles of mortgages (see CHALLENGE, 12/08). Prices of these assets soared. In addition, workers bought more and different products using borrowed money, credit cards and refinanced mortgages.

A succession of asset "bubbles" — first the dot com/technology stock market "bubble" of the late 1990s, then the housing and credit "bubbles" of the 2000s — were basically speculation sanctioned by the government and Fed. But these bubbles only temporarily postponed the day of reckoning. Again, only labor creates actual value under capitalism, not writings on pieces of paper, or computer entries. The huge increase in speculative investment pulled U.S. and other "developed" capitalisms further away from the labor-created method of wealth accumulation.

Thus, the two laws of capitalism revealed by Marx interact with each other. Both contribute to the inevitability of crises as long as capitalism exists. It’s the anarchy of capitalist production and the system’s competitive nature that generate these built-in problems, which are always taken out on the backs of the working class. Communism, a planned, cooperative system of production based on our class’s needs, not bosses’ profits, would abolish these capitalist relations.

The above Brenner interview estimates that capitalism can solve the global economic crisis without major imperialist wars, including World War III. He argues that "[t]he world’s elites want more than anything to sustain the current globalizing order, and the U.S. is key to that." The Russian revolutionary Lenin wrote that inevitably rival imperialist powers settle their economic competition by war. This is proven by the history of capitalism — one war after another, and now world wars.

Bosses’ Solution for Disputes: War

Thus, thinking the bosses can peacefully solve their disputes produces deadly consequences. Rising rivals of U.S. imperialism like Russia, China and their allies will not, and cannot, stop short of trying to take down the top dog. The fight to control oil and to use that control to keep or gain number-one status continues. Wider war plans are being prepared right now.

Meanwhile, the bosses are casting the weight of the economic crisis onto us. As we unite unemployed and employed to fight these attacks, remember: the bosses need our labor, but we don’t need the bosses or their crisis-ridden, exploitative system. The working class under the leadership of a mass PLP will put an end to this sordid chapter in the history of humanity. J

May Day, the Historic Struggle of the International Working Class

On this May Day, the international working class is under sharpening fascist attack while the drums of inter-imperialist rivalry beat louder and millions are slaughtered in widening war. World capitalism is pushing its economic crisis onto workers’ backs with mass racist unemployment and wage-cuts, and throwing hundreds of thousands of workers out of their homes.

We can’t be misled by Obama’s promise that the stimulus package will help workers survive this crisis. Capitalism doesn’t work for the working class and cannot be reformed to change that. Masses of workers are fighting back around the world. From general strikes and militancy against the bosses across Europe to strikes in Guadaloupe and Martinique to the fight against budget cuts in Los Angeles and the ongoing 9-month-long Stella D’Oro workers’ strike in the Bronx, workers are saying "make the bosses take the losses."

May Day (May 1) is the working-class’ international holiday. This year, millions of workers around the world will march to commemorate this important day. It is the day when the world’s working class "holds a review of its forces, mobilized for the first time as One army, [under] One flag...[to] make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all lands are, in very truth, united."

May Day was born in the heroic struggle for the 8-hour day when 350,000 Chicago workers went out on a general strike on May 1, 1886 and shut down the city. On May 3 the cops murdered six McCormick Reaper Works strikers. The next day thousands of workers marched in protest into Chicago’s Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by a police agent, killing four workers and seven cops, and wounding 200 workers in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre. Nine demonstration leaders were framed for "instigating a riot." Four were hanged. In 1891, the then Illinois Governor freed those still imprisoned, declaring they had been convicted unjustly.

At the 1889 meeting of the Second International -— a working-class organization patterned after the First International led by Karl Marx — the world’s workers decided to honor the Chicago strikers and martyrs by mobilizing as "one army, with one flag." May Day had begun. Ever since, with communist leadership, it has symbolized workers’ demands and class interests, united in the fight against capitalism.

Capitalism creates a world in which workers and youth, infants and the elderly, are dying in unprecedented numbers from hunger, poverty, curable disease, war, death squads, police terror and a poisoned environment. Poverty, racism and war do not spontaneously lead workers to communist revolution, or the red flag would fly over most of the world. Communist revolution can only come about when millions of workers are politically conscious of how the world works and how to change it. This can only be accomplished by the efforts of a mass, international, and revolutionary communist party.

In 1971, the Progressive Labor Party picked up the red banners of May Day in the U.S. It has organized May Day marches and activities in many countries for 39 years, to unite workers around their universal demands, regardless of capitalist-created borders. These include opposing imperialist war, racism, the special oppression of women, wage slavery and fascist police terror, while championing unity of all workers — immigrant and citizen, Asian, Latin, black and white.

This May Day we must stand as one class, with one interest: to destroy the capitalist murderers with communist revolution and build a world based on production to fulfill the needs of our class. On this May Day, international workers’ solidarity must meet the bosses’ assault head-on.

With PLP building international unity and a base for rebellion and revolutionary communism among industrial workers, soldiers, and students we can fight the bosses’ racism, nationalism and patriotism, and unite the world’s workers to destroy the scourge of capitalism forever.

PLP is marching to win workers, soldiers and youth to realize our great potential to overthrow the war-makers and build a communist world based on serving the needs of the international working class! Join the march and join PLP! J

Assemble with PLP:

NY- May 2, 11 am, Linden Blvd. & Flatbush Ave.

LA- May 1, 11 am, Olympic & Broadway

Seattle- May 1, 3:30 pm, Judkin Playground

Information: Print

CHALLENGE, April 22, 2009

Information: 22 April 2009 419 hits

Worldwide Fight vs. Crisis Needs Communist Leadership:

Workers in Europe Seize Factories, Bosses

Militant, mass demonstrations hit London and other European cities protesting the G20 meetings while the big imperialist powers bickered about how to handle the capitalist economic meltdown. There was also a demonstration attacked by the cops in Strasbourg, France, during NATO’s 60th Anniversary meeting where the European rulers decided to send a very limited amount of extra troops to aid the U.S. war over oil-gas pipelines in Afghanistan.

Workers are angry. A common chant in many of their protests — from Dublin to Paris, from Rome to Athens — is, “We won’t pay for their crisis!” Workers in the U.S. and elsewhere should follow their example in upping the ante of class struggle against the capitalist attacks. However, the anger and class hatred of these workers are being misled by union hacks, fake leftists and ruling-class politicians who build nationalism and illusions that voting for a “lesser evil” capitalist is the solution.

Nationalism and racism hold back these struggles. GM workers in Germany and Sweden limited their demands to to keeping their plants open since they are “more efficient” than others, which weakens and divides international workers’ solidarity. Meanwhile, racism against immigrants and non-white citizen workers is growing throughout the continent. Anti-racism is vital to these fight-backs.

General Strike in Greece

On April 2, a massive general strike in all industries shut down Greece, with huge marches in Athens and nationwide, protesting G20 policies and their own right-wing government of Prime Minister Karamanlis. Most schools, ports and department stores in most big cities closed down. TV, radio and newspapers were affected.

In Athens there were three marches by different union groups, including heavy contingents of workers — mostly women — from the United Textile company whose 14 factories are suffering mass layoffs. The Finance Minister is demanding United Textiles fire 950 of the 1200 workers at these plants before approving a “survival plan” for the company. Hacks of two unions are accusing each other of betraying this struggle, but neither are supporting workers’ occupation of the plants. This is no surprise, since these sellouts also refused to support the mass rebellions of young workers and students that hit Greece last year when the cops killed a young student.

France: Caterpillar Workers Seize Bosses, Continental Workers Burn Tires in Paris

Striking Caterpillar (CAT) workers at the Grenoble and Echirolles plants held five bosses in their offices after management refused to discuss a 733 jobs-cut in a workforce of 2,800. After netting a $3.5-billion profit in 2008, CAT announced it would eliminate 22,000 jobs worldwide based on an estimated 55% drop in orders.

CAT, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment, produces much of that large machinery in France and provides armored vehicles for the British army and several other countries. It also makes the D9 armored bulldozers with which the Israeli army razed Palestinian housing. CAT CEO James Owens was Bush’s nominee to a trade advisory board and is now on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

The “CAT-napping” is just the latest in a series of similar actions throughout France:
• March, 2009 — The boss of Sony France was forcibly held at the Pontons-sur-Adour plant.
• Workers seized the industrial manager of the 3M factory at Pithiviers near Orléans.
• Riot police had to rescue the billionaire chief executive of the retail and luxury group PPR after workers protesting 1,200 job cuts blocked his taxi for over an hour as he left a meeting.
• Union delegates at the FCI plant near Paris held two directors in the meeting room until police intervened. They were supported by striking workers who have been picketing around the clock for six weeks against layoffs and plant closings.

On March 25, workers from the German-owned Continental Tire factory in Clairoix converged on Paris to burn tires on the city’s main boulevard, demanding the government bail out the company. Continental is moving its work to Timisoara, Romania where the average monthly wage is 280-420 Euros ($375-$500). In Clairoix it’s 1,700 Euros (over $2,000). Continental is closing two plants in France and another in Germany. It broke its promise to keep work at the Clairoix factory through 2012 after workers had made big concessions in 2006.

On March 16, angry workers burst into a board meeting and pelted the bosses with eggs and shoes. The bosses held their next meeting, under strict security, 600 miles away in Nice.

These bold actions are good but demanding to “save our jobs” without international solidarity with workers in Romania is a dead-end for the working class.

Visteon Workers Occupy Factories from London to Belfast

“They’ve treated us like dogs....But the workers in Ireland occupied so we thought now it’s our turn to do something,” declared a British Visteon worker as he and 100 of his co-workers occupied the Enfield factory in north London. Another added, “While [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown was living it up with the G-20, we were losing our jobs. Brown says he has a big plan to save the world, but how about...our jobs?”

The plant’s 200 workers built parts for Jaguar and Land Rover. On April 1, they were fired ten minutes before the end of their shift, and told they would have to ask the government for their last seven days’ pay and would not collect any benefits.

Workers also occupied two Visteon plants in Basildon and Belfast Ireland. Over 50 workers slept inside the Basildon plant and many more were on the road outside. About 100 workers protested outside the Visteon Customer and Technology Centre. Showing solidarity, the office staff there walked out to join them.

Visteon was spun off by Ford in 2000; the majority are ex-Ford workers. One who worked for both companies for 25 years warned, “We know that if we’re going to get anything we’ll have to fight for it. Over the years we’ve given a lot of ground, maybe too much. We’ve even bought our own tools on occasion, just to help the company. And this is how they repay us.” Another declared, “A lot of us are in danger of losing our homes. We’re determined to stay because we have nothing to lose.”

All workers, students and youth should send messages of support to the Visteon workers to: stevehart@unitetheunion.com.

Huge March Against Fascist Berlusconi

On April 3, hundreds of thousands of workers protested the economic policies of Silvio Berlusconi’s fascist government. (His ruling party recently fused with remnants of Mussolini’s old fascist movement.) The huge march in Rome started from five different points and converged on the Coliseum.

The marchers opposed government plans for mass cutbacks in education and public services and demanded an improved policy towards immigrants — super-exploited and persecuted because of racism. But the CGIL union federation leading the march, and the different politicians addressing the rally, just want to replace Berlusconi with their own brand of capitalist rule. They have no real solutions to the deep crisis of Italian capitalism hit hard by the worldwide financial meltdown.

The bosses and their pundits parroted nonsense about the “end of history” — meaning the end of class struggle — after the implosion of the Soviet Union, but workers never stop fighting as the system bails out billionaires’ while millions lose their jobs. But to turn that fight into the beginning of the end of capitalism, the main ingredient needed is a revolutionary communist leadership. May Day 2009 is the day to raise the red flag of communist revolution worldwide. That is the lesson CHALLENGE and PLP bring to the world’s workers. Join us in making it possible! J

Obama Ups ‘Body Count’: Afghan Deaths, U.S. Jobless

Barack Obama won 62 million votes on a “peace” platform — that slated 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan — while promising “to create new jobs.” Instead, his brief regime has relentlessly attacked workers with intensifying war and economic misery.

Obama is sending 21,000 more GIs to Afghanistan now and backs his generals’ demands for an additional 10,000 this fall. U.S.-led forces have slain 27,000 Afghan civilians since 2001. Obama’s surge can only worsen the death toll.

The U.S. war machine’s new commander-in-chief is also stepping up airstrikes into Pakistan. One such raid killed a dozen civilians on April 1. More than 400 people have died in the Iraq war since Inauguration Day. Bush Sr.’s invasion, Clinton’s sanctions and bombings, and Bush Jr.’s invasion and occupation took over two million Iraqi lives. Obama, despite his lies about “withdrawal,” is extending the U.S. oil war’s body count while pledging to keep combat brigades in Iraq.

Domestically, it’s workers’ livelihoods that suffer mass extermination. According to doctored government figures, at least 1.7 million jobs have disappeared on Obama’s watch, so far. The true figure, counting “discouraged” workers and part-timers who can’t find non-existent full-time jobs, is double that. And his scheme to “save Detroit” forces both job- and pay-cuts on autoworkers.

Obama can’t and won’t bring either peace or prosperity because he, like all politicians, serves his nation’s capitalist class. Obama’s top advisors, hailing from major corporations and ruling-class think-tanks, are tightly tied to the dominant, imperialist JP Morgan Chase-Exxon Mobil-Rockefeller wing of U.S. capital, as CHALLENGE has often noted.

Obama’s bailout of Citigroup, AIG & Co. further exposes his true class loyalty. It wipes out shareholdings that include workers’ pensions and 401Ks, but guarantees billions — via AIG’s bailout money — to creditor banks like Goldman Sachs.

White House Job No. 1: Wars to Save U.S. Oil Empire

Obama’s U.S. capitalist masters face sharpening political, military and economic competition from imperialist and regional rivals. Thus, he’s expanding military operations in the Mid-East and Central and South Asia to protect U.S. bosses’ most important single source of profits, oil, and its control as a weapon against its rivals.

But threats to Exxon Mobil’s and Chevron’s “black gold” keep mounting. Energy-thirsty China is building attack submarines and aircraft carriers to challenge U.S.-Navy dominance over oil routes. Iran’s oil baron mullahs exert growing influence in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, which surround Saudi Arabia, U.S. imperialism’s grand profit prize. Putin’s Russia, which supplies energy to much of Europe, using it as blackmail, seeks a new empire that includes a nuked-up Iran.

Obama is pouring $10.5 billion in lethal military aid into already nuclear, unstable Pakistan in hopes of rooting out Taliban and al Qaeda forces there.

At home, Obama’s “stimulus” won’t reverse U.S. capitalism’s inevitable descent into decay. U.S. workers’ real wages have declined over the past three decades. Yet producing useful goods here, with aging plants and infrastructure — increasingly costly to upgrade — has become, in the main, less profitable than in rival countries.

So U.S. finance capitalists turned from investing in cars, appliances and textiles to trading basically worthless “paper” instruments like bundled bad mortgages and credit default swaps, and at exorbitant prices. Fraud disguised as finance boosted U.S. earnings rates for a time. But the current bust lays bare U.S. bosses’ fundamental and widening global profit disadvantage.

Rival Rulers Draw Daggers at G-20 And NATO Summits

Obama’s feeble effect at recent G-20 and NATO summits underscore U.S. rulers’ deepening predicaments. Rising capitalist powerhouses China, India, and even Brazil played 800-pound-elephant roles at the G-20 economic confab in London, new threats U.S. bosses can’t deal with. Pundits said G-20 was more like the failed 1933 central bankers’ meeting in London, which highlighted the insoluble economic disputes that led in large part to World War II.

Meanwhile, Obama’s attendance at NATO’s 60th birthday party gained only token support for the U.S.’s Afghan war. Only Britain, whose Mideast-focused Shell and BP tie it to the Exxon-Chevron-Pentagon agenda, pledged more than a few hundred soldiers. The NATO festivity also unintentionally prompted a 20,000-strong pro-Russian protest in Ukraine’s capital Kiev against president Yushchenko’s bid to join the U.S.-led war coalition.

World War III Needs Spur U.S. Infrastructure Schemes

If Obama does, in fact, overcome a dysfunctional Congress to create jobs, it won’t be to revitalize GM’s Pontiac sales, but rather to beef up U.S. infrastructure, enhancing its capacity to wage world war. Felix Rohatyn, a major U.S. imperialist strategist, has written a book, “Bold Endeavors,” which recounts past huge U.S. public/private undertakings that enhanced “national security.” These include transcontinental railroads, the Panama Canal and interstate highways.

Rohatyn urges Obama to rebuild rails, ports and roads to make the U.S. not just more productive but better able to withstand attack and project its considerable military might overseas. U.S. rulers, and servants like Obama and Rohatyn, understand that, ultimately, recovery lies in destroying rivals’ productive capacity (including human capital) through war and forcibly seizing their territory, raw materials and markets.

War-maker, job-destroyer, union-buster Obama nevertheless enjoys a high 66% approval rating, according to pollsters. Many people, who rely on government to solve their problems, believe his election struck a blow against racism. But Obama, by winning workers to support the government, actually helps U.S. rulers get away with racist murder, quite literally in their Iraq and Afghan slaughters. Unemployment under Obama, approaching 30 million and counting, hits black, Latino, and immigrant workers hardest. Obama’s military cold-bloodedly targets unarmed Arabs and Asians.

For workers, supporting Obama, or any agent of the class enemy, is a big mistake. Rather we need to organize to destroy the profit system, which can’t provide us a living but often deals us death. That is our revolutionary, communist Party’s long-term aim.

‘Scabs in Blue! Scabs in Blue!’
Stella D’Oro Strikers Face Bosses’ System and Its State

BRONX, NY, April 1 — On a rainy, cold afternoon, chants of “Scabs in blue! Scabs in blue!” rang out as the bosses’ cops stopped Stella D’Oro strikers and their supporters from marching from their picket line to a local supermarket. They wanted to urge neighborhood workers to support this strike by boycotting Stella D’Oro products. As a PL’er addressing the rally explained, Stella strikers are fighting not just their own bosses but the capitalist system and its state. The strikers very much liked the front-page article in the April 8th CHALLENGE championing their struggle — one of the very rare strikes in the U.S. today showing multi-racial, working-class unity against the bosses’ attacks.

Sometimes strikers talk with cops at a picket line or demonstration. Cops, however, are not neutral. They serve to protect the interests of the bosses and their system. Has a cop ever arrested scabs for dangerously racing their cars through a picket line or arrested bosses for falsely accusing strike leaders of harassment? Hell no! Has a judge ever issued an injunction to prevent bosses from hiring scabs to break strikes? Never.

At today’s picket line the cops invented laws to limit the effectiveness of strikers and their supporters. First they said we couldn’t cross the street in front of the factory. Then they said if we left the picket line in front of the factory, we couldn’t return to resume picketing. Finally when we tried to march on another route, they said that we couldn’t walk on the sidewalk to the supermarket because we needed a march permit.

Although the multi-racial group of over 150 strikers and supporters wanted to press forward, a score of cops with guns at their sides were able to stop us. Later, at a closing rally for today’s action, a strike supporter from the Professional Staff Congress (college teachers’ union) declared that if the cops didn’t protect the Stella bosses, the workers might have won this strike long ago. Like the speaker said, “We’ll be back!”

While the Stella D’Oro strike is about trying to maintain prior levels of pay and benefits, this strike has proven that the capitalist system benefits only the bosses. What we need is to smash the bosses’ system with communist revolution!

May Day Brings Communist Politics to LA School Struggle

LOS ANGELES, April 4 — “I move that UTLA adopt the motion calling for a one-day strike on May First,” said a comrade in the teachers union (UTLA) House of Representatives. This motion had passed overwhelmingly in four of the nine area meetings two weeks previously.

On March 13, nearly 9,000 teachers and health and human services personnel got pink slips for June layoffs. The jobs of many classified workers are threatened too. In response, teachers, other school workers, parents and students are fighting back and PLP is giving communist leadership.

The day of the layoffs saw walkouts and spontaneous demonstrations. Since then, there has been much more organized struggle, including before-school picketing and some militant job actions where teachers and students walked in an hour late. More actions are planned, with students, parents and non-teaching employees. Hundreds of “Petitions to Save our Schools” are circulating charging teacher layoffs as racist — layoffs of new teachers hit schools with black and Latino kids (the vast majority) the hardest — and an attack on the whole working class.

PLP members and friends are active in these struggles, linking these layoffs to the deep crisis of capitalism. The capitalists’ goal is profit at all costs; our goal is the well-being of ourselves and our class, to have decent jobs, raise our families and survive. These two goals are directly contradictory. The bosses demand more and more of the value workers produce (which is all value) through cuts and taxes to prop up their banks, profits and expanding wars in the Middle-East for control of oil and gas resources to maintain their empire.

We advocated an illegal strike against layoffs and cutbacks, calling for a one-day work stoppage on May 1 — joining with immigrants organizing for an immigrants’ rights march that day — in an action to defend the education of the children of all workers. From the start, the union leadership opposed the resolution, saying it would be too difficult politically to organize a one-day strike on May Day, the same day that immigrants were marching, because so many teachers are both anti-communist and anti-immigrant.

These fake leftists are seen nationally as “progressive,” but when it counts they’re unwilling to fight for the unity of the working class or to defend the rights of immigrants and their children. “Our message will be diluted in the immigrants rights march,” said a member of the Board of Directors. A young teacher responded, “May Day represents the international working class, and we support a one-day strike in defense of our teachers, our students, and their families.” The union leadership put forward, and narrowly won, a substitute motion for a membership vote to ratify a one-day work stoppage — any other day in May but May Day!

Many were angry. Of 250 teachers at the meeting, 100 took CHALLENGE. There are real victories here. By making May Day a mass issue we’ve raised with students, teachers and other school workers the real meaning of May Day — International Workers’ Day.

May Day is the day when workers worldwide fight for our class, against the racist exploitation and wars of the capitalist bosses. It’s been our day since 1886, when workers in Chicago fought for the eight-hour day, and has been celebrated around the world ever since. PLP has brought the fight for internationalism and communist revolution back to May Day.

That’s why we’re having a PLP contingent within the immigrants’ rights march, to champion this communist nature of May Day. This is distinct from the march organizers who support the liberal rulers’ plans to exploit immigrant workers for super-profits in low-wage jobs and use their youth as cannon fodder in the bosses’ imperialist wars.

The struggle is helping our friends see the nature of the capitalist crisis. We say shutting down Los Angeles on May Day would be part of building up to a strike to shut down the school system until all jobs are restored. More importantly, it would help to build unity for the long-term fight to destroy the profit system. We’ve explained that we should have no illusions that even a militant strike will reverse all the attacks. This is a contracting capitalist system in crisis — one built into the system based on profits for a few at the expense of millions of workers.

Instead we need a system run by and for the working class, not the bankers, to eliminate the bosses and organize society to produce for the needs of the working class, not for profits. We need communism, not socialism (which retained banks), for a world without money, bosses or borders. Our success will be measured in expanding CHALLENGE networks and recruiting more PLP members!

Building for May Day Amid Capitalist Carnage in Detroit

DETROIT, April 6 — “Why are we marching? What are we going to get out of it?” she asked. A PLP member responded, “We’re marching to build a movement. We’re marching to show the workers in NYC, and those we bring, that there’s a movement growing that’s out to overthrow this system and fight for communism, equality, no bosses and no profits.” “YES!” shouted the American Axle worker from the couch. “That’s what we need!”

That exchange captured the mood of the May Day committee meeting here last week. Bringing a busload of workers and youth to march on May Day will be our answer to the overwhelming racist oppression that has laid waste to Detroit and stolen the future from our youth. This is our answer to the bankers and auto bosses who grab billions in salaries and bonuses while destroying jobs and boarding up homes.

Here, more than 50% of all black males are unemployed and the jails are full. There are no supermarkets or movie theaters but there are curfews against our youth and plainclothes cops harass students inside the schools. Forty thousand homes are boarded up, more empty homes than homeless people, because under capitalism if the bosses can’t sell it for a profit, it can’t be used, no matter what the need.

We met in the shadow of GM world headquarters, while the Obama auto task force, led by two former investment bankers, was forcing chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner into a retirement worth about $23 million. With the global financial crisis deepening, the federal government is taking direct control of the fascist restructuring of the shrinking auto industry. GM was given 60 days to come back with a bigger list of plant closings and job cuts, and still more wage, health care and pension cuts from the UAW. Chrysler was given 30 days to form a partnership with Fiat. These conditions must be met in order to get more government money. If not, both companies will be forced into that financial chop shop known as bankruptcy court.

The ruling class is using Obama to whip the auto industry into fighting shape after having been routed on their home turf. CEO Wagoner’s ouster means an even more fascist crackdown on GM workers who should realize they are in great danger. GM’s pro-capitalist UAW “partners” will be asked to deliver even deeper wage and benefit concessions, including retiree health benefits. The message to the workers is clear: if you don’t give it up, we’ll take it in bankruptcy court. Many illusions that auto workers have in Obama are being challenged, if not smashed.

Fiat said it was eager to merge with Chrysler, especially after Obama said he would bless the deal with $6 billion in federal aid. G.M. said it would “take whatever steps are necessary to successfully restructure the company.” So far, all is quiet at UAW headquarters at Solidarity House, as these miserable low-lifes finally face their own mortality. They hitched their wagon to U.S. imperialism 50 years ago, and now they are feeling every bit of the decline of their masters.

Unlike them, we shed no tears for the bosses. We will build a new communist world on their graves. We fight for the laid-off truck driver and his family, the high school students, the hospital, county and hotel workers, the American Axle worker and his partner and their 8-month old baby boy. After the four-month American Axle strike in the winter of ‘07-’08, two-thirds of the workers lost their jobs, and wages were cut in half. At the ratification meeting at King H.S., workers tore up the contract and shouted down their leaders. One year later, the flicker of communist revolution still burns. This May Day it will burn a little brighter.

‘DREAM Act’ is Attack on Immigrant Youth

LOS ANGELES, April 7 — We’re fighting to bring people to march with PLP on May Day for internationalism and communist revolution. There were immigrants’ rights marches here the last two Saturdays, giving us a good start. The immigrants’ rights groups are mobilizing for Obama’s “ comprehensive immigration reform” and the DREAM Act. We’re fighting in the streets, schools and factories to make this a struggle to unite the whole working class against the capitalist crisis and show the solution is communism.

In the March 28 march, when PLP youth answered every liberal chant with a different one, many others joined in. When we chanted that we’ll have a world without borders, a good section of the march took it up.

Then on April 4, about 2,000 mainly Latino immigrant workers, marched through downtown Los Angeles in support of the DREAM Act, re-introduced in both houses of Congress on March 26. The latest version of this immigration legislation puts undocumented immigrant youth on a path supposedly to citizenship if they’ve lived in the U.S. for at least five years, graduated from high school and completed two years of either college or military service. But the DREAM Act does not change an undocumented immigrant youth’s current ineligibility for government financial aid for college.

For most working-class immigrant youth it’s far easier to join the military than enter college, which is prohibitively expensive. In effect, the DREAM Act offers undocumented immigrant youth the promise of citizenship in exchange for service to U.S. imperialism. In fact, the timing for this Bill fits right into Obama’s current effort to send more troops to Afghanistan. The Pentagon has been a major supporter of the DREAM Act. It would result in 279,000 newly eligible people for either college enrollment or the military, and 715,000 more between ages 5 and 17 in the near future.

A contingent of PLP students and teachers participated in the march, leading chants for international working-class unity, and distributed leaflets that explained the fascist nature of immigration reform proposed by the U.S. ruling class. We passed out 1,600 leaflets which called for marching on May Day with PLP for workers’ unity and communist revolution. We also distributed about 400 CHALLENGES.

After the march the PLP group, mainly Latino immigrant high school students, analyzed the illusions created by the DREAM Act among immigrant youth and the need to understand how these type of reform movements ultimately serve the ruling class’s efforts to build patriotism and

recruit youth into their army. We also discussed organizing against imperialism in the military.

Participating in this DREAM Act march helped PLP youth understand the importance of fighting for revolutionary communist politics that expose how immigration reform potentially can lead workers into supporting U.S. imperialism. The group of students and teachers also vowed to redouble their efforts to bring more youth to march with PLP on May Day.

Salvadoran Bosses’ ‘Lesser Evil’ Preserves Profit System

EL SALVADOR — “If Funes wins, we’ll be more controlled by the right and the fake left,” remarked a comrade at a PLP communist school.

In the recent Presidential election, the FMLN’s Mauricio Funes won with 1,350,000 votes, 51.2% of the electorate. Thousands of workers celebrated in the streets of the country’s main cities, shouting, “Yes we could”; “The people united will never be defeated”; and, “Today is different. Funes is President.”

When Funes and the FMLN’s political commission declared victory, they said there were no winners or losers in this election — the victory was “for everyone”; that change had come and there were no distinctions between right and left.

It was very different from the speech people expected, which is why the right celebrated too. That same week, Vice-President-elect Sánchez Ceren stated, “Not all the promises made by the FMLN during the election can be fulfilled.”

The liberal rulers paid for much of Funes’ electoral campaign. They represented the group “Friends of Mauricio Funes,” which includes millionaire businessman Nicolas Salume. He also financed the previous campaign of Antonio Saca (the outgoing President from the right-wing Arena party). Two sectors of Funes supporters made a deal for the FMLN to continue to control the mayors and the representatives while the capitalist “Friends of Funes” would pick the cabinet ministers. The bosses made sure that whoever won would continue capitalist policies.

The workers who see Funes and the FMLN as the solution within the capitalist system to the international crisis of unemployment, poverty and hunger will be frustrated since capitalism is in decline; none of these politicians can solve the crisis. Actually, they’re part of the problem.

The sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry is also reflected here. Funes said he would follow the governing model of Obama and Brazil’s Lula, while an FMLN group continues to insist that Funes must offer an opening to Cuba, Russia and China through Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

The international capitalist crisis is intensifying here. The bosses can’t keep hiding the emptiness of state coffers, so empty that subsidies for energy, transportation and rent can’t be paid. Fiscal collections, consumption and sales have declined, and, according to the Central Reserve Bank, the country’s projected growth rate is nearly zero. This is one of many countries affected by the crisis due to its dependence on remittances from families in the U.S., down $250 million in the last year.

Progressive Labor Party has shown the only way forward amid the international capitalist crisis is to sharpen the workers’ struggles worldwide; this country is no exception. Only the working class can save the working class.

During the election campaign, union and social group leaders diverted the working class from any sign of protest against the bosses or their system. But PLP continued to struggle against, and denounce, the deals among the bosses who financed Arena and the FMLN.

This election was a multi-million dollar campaign by the FMLN and Arena. The FMLN leadership paid $36 million to the media companies while 20,000 people are losing their jobs.

All these electoral events are aimed at lining up both the leaders of the capitalist system, as well as the workers, behind a group of bosses, whether in the U.S., Europe, Russia or China. All of these latter forces face the growing necessity of wider war and World War III, a war over international markets.

Now, after the elections, workers’ anger is starting to surface. A worker on a local radio program said, “This Funes has already shown he’s allied with the right. He just won the election and he showed his capitalist leanings. He’ll respond to the capitalists’ interests, like those of his friends who financed his campaign. As the saying goes, ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune.’”

The election results mean a change in the governing party but not in the capitalist political and economic orientation. Those capitalists who now hold State power won’t change the way they exercise it. Whether there’s a neo-liberal or a state capitalist government, both are bad for the working class. There’s only been a superficial change among the bosses.

The only solution for workers is the long-term struggle for the dictatorship of the working class and communism through the growth of an internationalist PLP. To all workers: lets all march worldwide on May Day!

As Economic Crisis Looms Over Contract Fight:
Forging Communist Base Among LA Transit Workers

LOS ANGELES, April 6 — “One of the first things I do each day is put CHALLENGES or leaflets in my backpack,” said a PLP member. “I think about who I’m going to get the paper to today or what kind of political discussion I’ll try to develop. I am motivated by a deepening anger against the storms of crisis, war and fascism that confronts our class, an anger that is growing in many of my co-workers.”

Building a base of communist workers for the Party means knitting together a network of CHALLENGE readers, organizing study groups, forums, and personal social and political visits, as well as becoming part of class struggle. It also involves our own families, in trying to have the time and space for all this. Ideally it means integrating our family’s participation in this process.

We’ve been working in the transportation industry for 10 years. Our PLP club now regularly distributes 55 CHALLENGES — having six veteran members, four new members and another five readers who help distribute one or two papers each.

We’ve worked with many workers over time. Some have responded immediately. Later, when they understand the seriousness of the situation, they may pause to think about it. Others are more cautious from the beginning and slowly get closer to us. Others want our literature and to help the Party in some way, without committing themselves completely. Others have joined and are advancing, taking more leadership.

Recently we’ve organized four forums involving 30 different workers —Latino, African American and white, and some from Russia and the Middle East. The forums concerned the history of the working class and the need for PLP and the fight for communism as the only viable alternative to the world-wide crisis of capitalism, imperialist war and fascism.

There’s a great potential to recruit new members in a short time. Building a communist base requires patience and urgency — patience because it’s not so easy to change workers’ minds. Much consistency and persistence are needed.

Consistency: we can’t just take people CHALLENGE once and then, after a few months, bring them another one. We have to take the political development of each worker seriously and follow up, but without being mechanical. Many times we want to force the process of development because we’re not viewing things dialectically. If you plant a fruit tree, you can’t expect to be eating mangos in one month. It won’t happen! Then you could decide to abandon it and leap to a new one, and on and on, without success.

We’re involved in the class struggle. We’re forming a strike committee, with PL’ers, readers and co-workers to fight around the contract this summer. Three years ago, during the last contract fight, we formed a committee that gave communist political leadership during the strike, organizing protests, meetings, leafleting, articles and CHALLENGE sales, and bringing other workers and students to the picket lines. The current economic crisis — which our contract fight is a part of — is an opportunity to expose the capitalist system and show workers the vision of a new communist world.

Besides inviting all the CHALLENGE readers to the May Day Dinner, we’re also struggling with them to invite their friends and families. May Day offers the chance to clarify PLP’s communist ideas, enabling us to build a mass communist party of the working class. To achieve that, we need many communists, and for that we need an expanding network of CHALLENGE readers that becomes a mass network.

These advances come from sharpening the political struggle inside the club and the leadership to spread PLP’s communist politics.

“When are we going to talk about politics?” a transit driver asked a CHALLENGE seller at a work site. “I’ve got a lot to say and some questions to ask you.” In the past, this driver occasionally took a paper. He was friendly but not particularly interested in PLP’s communist ideas. Today that’s changed. He, his wife and two children are all victims of capitalism’s crisis. In the “tender” phrase of the bankers, this family is “underwater” — they owe substantially more on their house than it’s worth, even after paying $100,000 down. He’s one of millions being sacrificed to bail out the billionaire swindlers. Stung by the betrayal of his “American Dream,” we hope this driver and more like him will come to the May Day Dinner where he can learn about the historic battles against capitalism and begin to participate in the current movement. We plan to involve him in PLP activities during the contract struggle and upcoming Summer Project.

Now, even before the contract expires, the collapsing U.S. economy is falling on our heads and on the rest of the world’s workers. The bosses’ media complain about the speed of the collapse of manufacturing, but transit workers could be next on the chopping block if they need us to transport fewer workers to the factories. The economic meltdown increases our opportunities to win these workers to PLP’s politics while fighting the attacks on our co-workers’ and riders’ lives.

During the last contract struggle we encouraged drivers and riders to unite, held social events and explained that “Contracts only spell out the terms of our oppression; they don’t stop exploitation.” Some transit workers who participated in these activities became more interested in the long-term possibility of communist revolution.

We say everyone can help fight for communism. A retired comrade, no longer driving, has helped circulate CHALLENGE and communist leaflets to transit workers. Not being tied to the time clock, he can visit drivers and mechanics on all shifts. Guys ask him, “How is retirement?” He replies, “I love not being a wage-slave, but this system is after us old folks too. A pension based on capitalist investments is a contract written on toilet paper. The contract struggle will involve retiree issues. The company will try to play active transit workers against retirees by saying there isn’t enough money for both with this budget deficit. Sure, I retired from the company but you can’t retire from the class struggle and the fight for communism.”

One thing is certain. The capitalist crisis will continue to push workers “underwater.” As bosses under Bush allowed workers to drown in Hurricane Katrina, the bosses under Obama will not, and cannot, rescue our class from the ravages of this economic hurricane. PLP’s goal of communist revolution is the only lifeline in these storms.

LETTERS

Anti-Communism: Bosses’ Key Weapon vs. Workers

Many workers in Europe are taking to the streets to protest the bosses’ forcing workers to take the losses for capitalism’s financial meltdown [see front page — Editor]. Now “theories” are being advanced on why workers in the U.S. aren’t taking similar action. The NY Times’ (4/5) labor editor comes up with a series of lies and half-truths, with “analyses” from various academics and union “leaders” to “explain” it: workers here “have individualistic streaks”; “guilt, shame and individualism undercut any impulse to collective action”; “declining numbers” in union membership; “enthusiasm for Obama”; blah, blah, blah.

Unable to hide the militant history of the U.S. working class, the Times admits that “worker protests” in the 1930s “were fueled by the then powerful Communist...Part[y].” And even then the Times feels incumbent to attribute the militancy of the 1936-37 44-day Flint sit-down strike and seizure of GM plants to “President Roosevelt’s blessing.” It fails to mention Roosevelt’s National Guard surrounding the plant with machine guns aimed at the sit-downers. Some “blessing”!

Then it says “American labor leaders...work hand-in-glove with C.E.O’s to improve corporate competitiveness.” It quotes Leo Gerard, Steelworkers union president, saying there are “smarter things to do than demonstrating against layoffs.” What’s “smarter”? “All that is needed is some expert lobbying in Washington.”

Yes, this “expert lobbying” has reduced union membership from 35% to “just 7.4 percent of private-sector workers today.”

Of course, the Times and their pundits don’t want to point to the real source of passivity: anti-communism and the ouster of communists from leadership in the labor movement. The full weight of the ruling class and its state apparatus was brought down on the working class in the rabid Cold War anti-communist offensive following World War II.

The demise of militancy got its start with the kicking out of the reds in the late 1940s, masterminded by the Times’ darling labor “leader,” Walter Reuther. In the 1950s and ’60s, mass movements erupted against racism and the war in Vietnam, alongside the Cultural Revolution in China, all of which involved masses taking to the streets and no doubt influenced workers’ struggles. This included armed miners’ battles in the Kentucky coalfields, nationwide strikes in steel and GE, the ’71 national shutdown by postal workers and the ’73 PLP-led Chrysler Mack Ave. sit-down strike.

But with the end of the Vietnam War and the demise of the international communist movement, the situation deteriorated, so by the early 1980s President Reagan felt secure enough about the pro-capitalist union leaders to fire 10,000 striking air controllers. Had the labor fakers organized the rest of the unionized airline workers to respect the strikers’ picket lines, it could have shut the entire industry tighter than a drum. Then it wouldn’t have been so easy to fire those workers. (Coincidentally, the only union to support Reagan’s 1980 run for the White House was...the air controllers! Which goes to show how far workers can get when they follow the union honchos’ lead to look to elections to solve their problems.)

Unfortunately, the communists of the pre-World War II era made the fundamental mistake of not really trying to win the tens of thousands of workers supporting them to the goal of revolution to overthrow the bosses’ system. So even though the ruling class and its lieutenants in the AFL-CIO succeeded in ousting the communists from leadership, a huge base could have been established for future militant and revolutionary action.

PLP is trying to learn that lesson. Historically, workers have always fought their oppressors, especially with militant and revolutionary leadership. Therefore we immerse ourselves in the workers’ class struggles, in the fight against racism and for unity of all workers. We tie those experiences to understanding the necessity for communist revolution, not settle for reforms that can be taken away at the first drop of the Depression hat. Marching on May Day is a good step in that direction.

Red Labor Buff

Boston, MA: Thousands fight school cutbacks

“You won’t balance your budget on the back of my child!” “Do you know what Boston students’ lives are like? We need MORE social workers, not less!” “Bail out schools, not banks.” That’s what some of the thousands of parents and students said, as they angrily attacked school cutbacks in “budget hearings” called by Supt. Carol Johnson. Between 210 and 900 school jobs (out of 8,000 teacher and staff positions) will be cut; 110 “permanent” teachers and paraprofessionals, and 400 provisional teachers, will be cut. Art, music, and language programs are to be closed; many math, English, science, and social studies teachers will be cut.

The capitalist government works for the rich against the working class. That’s why anything that workers have won, like public education, can be taken back.

Gov. Deval Patrick announced $165 million for schools in Mass. but $0 for the mainly black and Latino students of Boston! Teacher unions spent heavily for Patrick/Obama — but these politicians are the enemies of working people.

The Boston Teachers’ Union has called a mass rally for May 19 at 4 pm together with parents, teachers, and students to restore all school cutbacks. Now the job of PLP’ers is to build a massive rally; to talk to more parents, students and teachers about PLP; to sell more Challenges, and recruit members during this struggle.

Boston Comrade

Capitalism Can’t Crush Memories of Collective Struggle in East Berlin

On a recent week’s trip to Berlin, we — a group of veteran communists — spent a lot of time thinking about history. People are often taught to honor things that, if they were taught the truth, they wouldn’t be celebrating at all.

In Berlin’s case, there is the glory of this or that ancient era (when most people were crushed under feudalism), the golden age of one king or another with his palaces (built with the blood of workers and sustained by war), the rise of German power in the 19th-century (as part of the rise of imperialism all over), and more. In this century, publicly everyone agrees not to celebrate Hitler’s era, but Berlin is still caught in its aftermath.

After WW II, Berlin was a capitalist outpost surrounded by East Germany. With whatever errors they made, East German workers were trying to create a socialist Germany — not glorifying capitalism. We recognize that socialism could no more happen under revisionist East German leadership than it could under western capitalism. But we saw exhibits explaining the struggles to rebuild after the war — clearing the rubble, meeting in collectives to try to figure out how to rebuild, what the much-needed housing should look like. Despite all the stories about people cramped together in apartments, East Germany had actually overcome its housing shortage through these initiatives.

West Berlin had exactly the opposite mission: to try to lure people from the east back into accepting capitalism, to wanting Levis and Coke and glorification of big business and celebrities. So, it needed not only huge amounts of capital invested in shiny new office towers, and subsidies to lure people from West Germany to live there and give the impression of a lively city; it also needed to constantly trash-talk East Germany and in particular East Berlin.

We went expecting that even 20 years after the end of the wall East Berlin would be old and decrepit and gray, and that former West Berlin would be in Technicolor and young and lively. That’s what we’d always heard. Hah. It didn’t take us long to discover, when looking at buildings that pre-dated 1989, that both sides looked very much alike. We’ve read for years about big, soul-less, dispiriting apartment blocks in the east... well, the same designs were built in the west as well, and most of them don’t look bad at all.

Throughout the week we found a considerable degree of nostalgia for the pre-1989 East. People were looking for change as their revisionist government became weaker and less responsive but they weren’t looking for a corporate takeover by West Germany. People still come to the statues of Marx and Engels near the City Hall to take family pictures. A plan to replace the East-style walk-don’t walk signs ran into big resistance, and more.

Perhaps this is why, today, so much of the history talked about in Berlin is focused on the Berlin Wall which divided the city East from West, and on continuing to depict East Germany as the gray place with the ugly buildings, and all the rest. They’ve even rebuilt “Checkpoint Charlie” on a downtown street with students hired to masquerade as border guards. Even with glitzy modernism, even with the Euro zone, even after 20 years, capitalism is faced with memories it can’t kill, of a time when, even with errors, a different history was being built.

Red tourist

Union Turf War Leaves Workers Hanging

CHICAGO, IL March 30 – On March 21, the SEIU held a secret meeting and removed four militant women leaders from being stewards and chief stewards at Stroger (Cook County) Hospital. This is SEIU’s revenge for these women’s role in a recently failed organizing drive. The four stewards and chief stewards, Sonja Sanson, Bernadette Cornejo, Angie Ballard and Dimples Hughes-Williams, are going to need the active support of their co-workers to answer the County/SEIU attacks that are coming. More than anything, we need a stronger PLP at County.

For the past eight months, Cook County healthcare workers were caught in a turf war between the giant SEIU and the California Nurses Association’s (CNA) national organization, National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC). After two years of budget cuts that cost over 2,000 jobs and closed half the clinics that serve the more than one million uninsured workers and children here, SEIU and NNOC decided to spend millions raiding each other for a bigger share of a shrinking pie instead of organizing a massive strike of workers and patients against racist cutbacks. These pro-capitalist unions compete with each other just like the bosses do.

The most militant and class-conscious workers put their necks on the line for NNOC’s workers union, the Caregivers and Health Employees Union (CHEU). Despite their “progressive” reputation, NNOC maintains separate unions for nurses and workers. Based on the active support of these most militant rank and file leaders, the CHEU organizing drive became a mutiny against the SEIU leadership that had supported the budget cutters and sabotaged any fight back. Elections were scheduled in all four SEIU bargaining units.

On February 20, just days before the scheduled elections, CHEU pulled out, without any discussion with the workers involved. SEIU and CNA, who had been battling each other all over the country, formed an “alliance” to end the feud. While SEIU president Andy Stern and CNA president Rose Ann DeMoro were shaking hands and passing checks, the most militant County workers were left holding the bag. Some CHEU supporters had already been fired, and SEIU has no intention of fighting to bring them back.

As the economy continues to crumble, workers face more racist unemployment and cutbacks while the bosses get trillion-dollar bailouts. As workers have been forced to accept speed-up, wage-cuts, increases in our healthcare premiums and loss of pensions, the unions serve the bosses. We cannot expect anything different. No union can end the global crisis of capitalism. No contract can negotiate away the growing fascism, racist terror and war that the capitalists will need to force us to pay for their crisis. We are turning these attacks, and the growing anger of the workers, into a bigger base for PLP and more May Day marchers. Communist revolution is our answer to these attacks, and to the bosses’ crisis.

Black Youths Jailed; Real Criminals Go Scot-free

February — Two 16-year-old youths have been incarcerated for several months now by the criminal IN-justice system. They are being charged as adults for “aggravated assault” and denied bail! According to allegations, the young men used a knife to demand money from someone on the street.

At the time of the arrest they were separated and forcefully interrogated for hours. The police told the youths that if they did not “confess” to more crimes, their pictures would be shown to any number of random victims who could be convinced to “identify” them as perpetrators. The racist cops told the youths that this would be easy to accomplish simply because they are black. About 70% of the U.S prison population is black and Latino. While blacks and Latinos comprise only 25% of the U.S. population, nearly triple that percent are in prison.

The official police report does tell the truth about one thing. It states that the youths said they were hungry. Viewing that issue more broadly, every day over 30 million people go to bed hungry in the U.S., including 46% of all black children, 40% of Latino children and 16% of white children. The cause of this hunger is the international system of capitalism – U.S. imperialism in particular – which has also killed over 650,000 Iraqis in the last four years, and well over 1.2 million since 1992. Globally, more than 850 million people live on less than one dollar a day - the international poverty line set by the World Bank - and half the world’s population lives on less than $2-a-day! Over 250,000 children die every week of hunger and malnutrition. The vast majorities are black, Latin and Asian.

Why aren’t the criminals responsible for this in jail? For one, what they call democracy is really a dictatorship of the business owners, of the capitalist class. They control the power of the state, — courts, cops, government, schools, and military — that they use it to violently maintain power. Two, there is not yet a mass revolutionary communist movement to overthrow this system.

Members of PLP are active in the defense and support of these two teens. The support group is having regular meetings and has divided up tasks, like organizing a schedule for visits to see the youths in jail, raising money to put into the jail commissary accounts (so the two teens have access to basics like writing paper and stamps), meeting with the defense lawyers, and generating publicity about the case.

The jails will be filled with the capitalists only when we make a communist revolution, put an end to the whole profit system, and struggle successfully to completely defeat the legacy of racism. For now, as the system drives our class further into misery, PL does not condone anti-working class actions. It is wrong to forcefully take something from another member of our class. Even more importantly, however, we must point out that the main criminals are not youths who may sometimes make a bad decision, but the system itself which ravages our lives much more deeply.

Our alternative is to bring communist ideas to workers, youth, and soldiers. We must organize to smash capitalism, the root of our class problems. An important first step is to bring a sizable contingent to our May Day activities, where everyone can be inspired by a glimmer of the positive, communist future ahead.

Obama’s Plan ‘Stimulates’ Bosses’ Attack on Workers

Barack Obama recently lectured workers, not on capitalism’s systemic inability to avoid crisis and depression, but to “look beyond our own short-term interests to the wider set of obligations we have to each other...That’s when we succeed. That’s when we prosper. And that’s what’s needed right now.” The working class, not the bosses, will take the losses, that’s the meaning behind Obama’s stimulus package.

The international working class must brace for this “stimulus” as an outright attack, foreshadowing even greater misery. One former economist of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Worsley, openly pondered the bosses need for war, saying to Bloomberg news recently, “Can we spend enough with peacetime spending to get us out [of the crisis?]”

In addition to the major banks, many states are on the verge of bankruptcy; their failure would trigger a catastrophe. Only $54 billion has been allocated to states while 43 face a combined deficit of at least $200 billion for this year alone. “This is a band-aid” said Michael Bird, of the federal affairs counsel at the National Conference of State Legislatures (U.S. News & World Report, 2/25/09).

Between mounting job and home losses, decades of gutting federal social programs, and deep cutbacks made after the previous recession of 2001, the crises facing workers, especially in states like California, New York, Florida, and Michigan, are set to intensify.

While Obama stated that this crisis was years in the making, Marx predicted crises like these in the mid 19th century. Workers in the U.S., especially blacks and Latinos, the biggest holders of sub-prime mortgages, are being crushed under mountains of debt which threaten to amplify the crisis as millions are tossed out onto the streets, unable to make their payments.

As for solutions, the bosses can’t seem to print money fast enough. The billions of dollars in cash “injections” triggered unease amongst the Chinese ruling class, which holds several trillion dollars in U.S. Treasury Bills made worthless by the influx of dollars. The Chinese imperialists, flexing their new muscles internationally, recently called for a replacement of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

The Path Towards Wider War Among Imperialist Rivals

Obama’s plan to “tax the wealthiest” is a sham, since the upper echelons of the ruling class have all sorts of loopholes to avoid paying taxes. Since the U.S. bosses can’t sell off their own assets to rival imperialists without losing their position as top imperialist dog; their only option is to look to squeeze profits from workers currently being exploited by their imperialist rivals. This is a path towards war.

At the end of WW II the U.S. rulers were in a position to penetrate Latin America, Asia, and Africa unopposed by other capitalists. Times have changed. There is not a single part of the globe that hasn’t been penetrated by one or more rivals to the U.S., namely China, Russia, and Germany. The era of unchallenged U.S. dominance is over.

It’s unclear whether or not the financial wizards can cook up even a short-term solution to this crisis; the best they can hope for is to postpone this crisis for a larger one down the road. Rising competition in the face of worldwide crisis will ultimately lead to war between the biggest powers. The U.S. rulers will be forced to directly confront one or more of their rivals in wars of a scale that will dwarf the so-called “brushfires” around the globe now.

As the crisis deepens, millions of workers in the U.S. have been and will be laid off, and bankruptcies will only mount. The U.S. bosses will intensify exploitation here, and make us pay for their losses. As Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel put so eloquently to the Wall Street Journal (11/21/09), “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

The Revolutionary Path Workers Must Take

As May Day approaches, PLP’ers and friends must step up our efforts to win workers and their allies to our Party to fight for a path for workers out of this hell: the fight for communism. Our fight is to organize as large a section of the international working class as possible to oppose these cuts and “make the bosses take the losses.” Everywhere we must support and build unity between employed and unemployed workers, and sharpen the struggle against racism in our schools, workplaces, and barracks. Workers worldwide must see that this crisis is capitalism’s “business-as-usual,” and that this system can only oppress us, bankrupt us, and send our children to kill and die to save one or another bosses’ empire, while sticking us with the bill!

‘Renewable Energy’ Subsidy for Profiteers?

Attempting to ride the growing wave of genuine concern many workers share over the health of the environment, the handouts given to “renewable energy” programs are supposed to reduce dependency on foreign oil but most of the petroleum consumed in the U.S. comes from either Mexico or Canada, and a large share is produced domestically. The U.S. rulers’ main interest in Mid-East oil is about controlling the other imperialists’ access to it. The popular slogan to “reduce dependency on foreign oil” is nothing but a hollow lie, but that won’t stop Obama’s ruling-class allies from paying their friends and business cronies at the expense of workers’ taxes!

Page 755 of 806

CHALLENGE, June 17, 2009

North Korea Joins China’s Nuclear Club:‘Nuke-free’ Scheme Impossible in Imperialist World

China Calls North Korea’s Dictator ‘Our Loose Cannon’

China’s Rulers Expanding Their ‘Nuclear Club’

‘World’s Only Superpower’ Spurs Nuclear Upstarts

‘What’s good for Obama’s GM is death for workers...’

Shining Example for U.S. Working Class:Mass March Backs Stella D’Oro Strikers, Defies Cops

Marchers Stand Up to Scabs in Blue

Only Communist Revolution Can Destroy Capitalism

“El Gran Mantel”/“The Great Tablecloth”

LA Students, Workers Fight Capitalist Storm Hitting Calif. Colleges

Disasters Are ‘Natural’ Under Capitalism

Students, Teachers: Unite With Industrial Workers

Derail CTA Racist Health-Care Rip-Off!

France: Anti-Racist Unity, Red Leadership Could Sack Sellouts

Immigrant Airport Workers Resist ‘Homeland Security’ Attack

LETTERS

Haiti May Day: Cops’ Tear Gas Fails to Stop Workers’ Protest

Resistance Rising in Guadeloupe vs. Capitalism’s Misery

‘Liberalism 101’ Masks Class Exploitation

As Bosses Push Us, Airport Workers Must Push Back

Colombia May Day Marchers Mark Workers’ Bloody History

Need Revolutionary Communist Politics

Karl Marx Scores Again...

Exploited Subcontractor Workers Need Sharper Class Struggle

Mandela’s Nationalism Fronts for South African Capitalism

PL’er Helen Jones Dies; Led ‘Rolling Thunder’ Through Boeing Plants

CHALLENGE, June 3, 2009

Rulers Use Obama to Widen Afghan-Pakistan Ground War

Obama Flip-Flops on Torture Photo-Op to Protect New War Leader

Obama: Ruling-Class Hero

Killer McChrystal in Ivy League Club Helping Obama Carry Out War and Fascism

Students Say ‘Professor of Torture’ Must Go!

CUNY Students, Stella Strikers Allies in Struggle

Stella D’Oro Strikers Pit Workers’ Unity vs. Bosses’ Wealth

LA Teachers, Students Walk Out Against Layoffs

Racist Unemployment Is Capitalism’s Executioner

Racism’s Special Toll

Again… Figures Don’t Lie But Liars Can Figure

PLP Ties Communist Politics to Teachers’ Anti-Layoff Fight

PL’ers Bring Red Ideas to Colombia’s May Day March

Workers Storm Steel Bosses’ Meeting

Colombia’s TV ‘Reality Show’ Ponzi Scheme and Other Capitalist Evils

Why Are TV Shows So Important For The Bosses Right Now?

The Fight Against Sexism is Vital to Defeating Capitalism

Letters

Turning Shop Struggle into Class Consciousness

May Day Youth ‘Were On A Mission’

Fight Racism with Multi-racial Unity, Not As ‘White Allies’

‘Liberal’ N.J. Mayor: ‘Who, me racist?’; ‘Yes, YOU!’

Oaxaca May Day Marchers Defy Gov’t Flu Panic

30 Generations of Racism =Billion$ for Bosses

CHALLENGE, May 20, 2009

CHALLENGE, May 6, 2009

May Day Means:

Fighting Racism, Capitalist Crisis, Imperialist War with Communist Revolution

a name="Obama’s ‘Dream Act’: Nightmare for Immigrant Youth"></a>"bama’s ‘Dream Act’: Nightmare for Immigrant Youth

Mass Action is The Order of The Day

Who Are the Real Pirates?

a name="When Liberal Obama Kills, It’s a ‘Good War’"></a>"hen Liberal Obama Kills, It’s a ‘Good War’

a name="Can’t Pay? It’s Debtor’s Jail!"></a>"an’t Pay? It’s Debtor’s Jail!

May Day Fight Exposes Pro-Boss Union Hacks

What Are They So Afraid Of?

Is It Worth It?

Stomping on Scab Cookies

Ivan the Nazi Stays, BP Immigrant Workers Jailed

a name="Spain: Will Lead With PL’s Politics on May Day">">"pain: Will Lead With PL’s Politics on May Day

Thousands Rally vs. Fascist Labor Scheme:

N.J. Gov. Using Crisis to Rob Workers of $500 Million

a name="Linking Fight vs. School Layoffs to Bosses’ Crisis Builds PLP">">"inking Fight vs. School Layoffs to Bosses’ Crisis Builds PLP

Campus Forum Attacks U.S. Escalation In Afghanistan

a name="Imperialist Rivalry, Bosses’ Crisis Drives U.S. to Militarize Mexico">">"mperialist Rivalry, Bosses’ Crisis Drives U.S. to Militarize Mexico

May Day in El Salvador:

‘Fight to end this murderous rotten system...’

a name="Immigrant Workers’ Rally Protests Racist Cop Harassment">">"mmigrant Workers’ Rally Protests Racist Cop Harassment

Letters

Ties to Co-Workers, Communist Movement Cures Isolation

a name="More Ammunition for Stella D’Oro Strikers">">"ore Ammunition for Stella D’Oro Strikers

Skycap Fights Frame-up, With PLP Support

Farmworkers Block Highway, Renewing 30-yr. Struggle

North Korea Joins China’s Nuclear Club:
‘Nuke-free’ Scheme Impossible in Imperialist World

Shining Example for U.S. Working Class:
Mass March Backs Stella D’Oro Strikers, Defies Cops

‘Scabs in Blue! Scabs in Blue!’
Stella D’Oro Strikers Face Bosses’ System and Its State

As Economic Crisis Looms Over Contract Fight:
Forging Communist Base Among LA Transit Workers