1. MAY DAY 2007: FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM
2. WAVE THE RED FLAG OF WORKERS' POWER
3. LATEST MASS KILLER NOT `NATURAL BORN' BUT BRED BY PROFIT SYSTEM
   1. RULERS' RACISM HELPED PULL TRIGGER
   2. KILLER'S COLLEGE A LIBERAL INCUBATOR OF DEADLIER MASS MURDERERS
4. Unemployment -- The Hidden Massacre
5. PL'ers Force Racist Minutemen Founder to Flee
6. Black-Latino Students' `Unity Walk' Fights Racism, Nationalism
7. Storm Through Rutgers Campus, Attacking Imus' Racism, Sexism
8. Vets Denounce U.S. War Machine
9. Mounting Problems Taxing Reliability of Rulers' Military
10. El Salvador PLP: `Will have May Day bus for every state...'
11. Spain's Delphi Workers Lead General Strike
12. Skoda Workers Strike in Czech Republic
13. Russia's Profiteers Murder 108 Miners
14. Workers Shed No Tears for Yeltsin
15. `Reform' Exploits Immigrant Workers with Poverty Jobs, Youth to War
16. THE BLOODY FLAG OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
17. Women-led General Strike Helped Spark Russian Revolution
18. The Racist Rip-off of Subprime Loans
19. U.S. Rulers Free Mass Murderer (`What Terrorist'?)
20. French Elections: No `Left' or Right; Only Wrong for Workers
21. LETTERS
    1. When is Terrorism Not Terrorism?
    2. Turns Job Site into Political Battleground
    3. Racism Kills Babies from Chiapas to Mississippi
    4. Black Mayor Backs Troops vs. Urban Rebels
    5. U.S. Gov't Killers at Home and Abroad
22. REDEYE ON THE NEWS
    1. Dublin writer looks to Marx
    2. TV + movies demonize Islamics
    3. GIs: Deaths are tip of iceberg
    4. It's more than Imus, Muslims say
    5. Africans go sour on `democracies'
    6. Labor market is also slavery
    7. Liberals pave road to fascism

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MAY DAY 2007: FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM

From the imperialist bloodbath in Iraq to the growing fascism of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and "renditions," (secret CIA torture jails), workers need communist revolution. From the crushing racist poverty, the rising infant mortality rate killing black babies in the U.S. deep South due to healthcare cuts, to civil wars and the AIDS plague in Africa to the 98 million homeless in Latin America, workers need communist revolution. From the destruction of 100,000 GM, Delphi and Ford jobs in the U.S. to the closing of hospitals and health clinics to finance the slaughter in Iraq, workers need communist revolution. To smash the mass racist terror that was exposed with Hurricane Katrina and the fascist terror aimed at millions of immigrant workers and youth, workers need communist revolution.

 This May 1st, millions around the world will march to commemorate May Day, the holiday of the international working class. Many will be marching in the midst of struggle, like thousands of Airbus workers across Europe striking against the elimination of 10,000 jobs. May Day marches throughout Latin America will see nationalist leaders like Chavez and others try to break the grip of U.S. imperialism, only to make deals with other imperialists. In the United States, various immigrants' rights organizations, and their Democratic Party backers, want to funnel the anger of May Day marchers coming to the demonstrations into nationalist citizenship campaigns and dead-end elections. PLP will be everywhere we can to spread our communist message and reclaim May Day for the workers of the world.

May Day, after all, is the workers' day. It 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, 1886 the cops murdered six strikers and the next day thousands marched in protest into Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by a police agent. Four workers were killed, seven cops died and 200 workers were wounded in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre. Nine demonstration leaders were framed for "instigating a riot." Four were hung. A mass protest movement forced the Governor to free those still alive when the government admitted the frame-up.

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.

The defeat of the communist revolutions in Russia and China decades ago gave world capitalism a new lease on life. While past revolutionaries certainly made reformist mistakes (such as believing in a gradual transition to communism through socialism and lacking confidence in workers ability to grasp communist ideas), capitalism has not changed and remains deadly for all workers.

We live in a capitalist world where 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. At the same time, the ruling class makes record profits and the head of ExxonMobil makes $145,000 a day! What's more, this is all just a warm-up, the opening acts leading to greater wars on the horizon.

If poverty, racism and war spontaneously led to communist revolution, the red flag would fly over most of the world. But communist revolution can only come about when millions of workers are politically conscious of how the world works and how to change it. The future is in our hands. This can only be accomplished by the tireless efforts of a mass, international, and revolutionary communist party.

This May Day, PLP is marching in NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, El Salvador, Karachi, Bogota and other cities 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 PLP!

WAVE THE RED FLAG OF WORKERS' POWER

The PLP will wave the red flag this May Day, and try to provide as many workers as possible with the flag that belongs to our class. The red flag flew high in Russia and China when workers seized power for themselves and flew over the Reichstag in Germany when the Red Army crushed the Nazis. It is a flag that stands for the elimination of exploitation and the ability of workers to make decisions over our lives. The red flag calls for the unity of the working class as well as defeating the racism and sexism that divide us. It is the flag that belongs to the workers of the world, and stands for communist revolution to smash all the bosses' borders.

LATEST MASS KILLER NOT `NATURAL BORN' BUT BRED BY PROFIT SYSTEM

As the bosses' media struggle to psychoanalyze Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech mass murderer, they deliberately avoid identifying the main source of his anger, capitalism itself. With its relentless competition, the profit system fosters an outlook of individualism. To the individual, others appear as rivals who must be defeated or wiped out. This process plays out constantly, from dog-eat-dog business dealings to genocidal imperialist turf wars. Cho's horrifying video rant shows a "me-against-the-world" attitude, entirely consistent with the prevailing social system.

RULERS' RACISM HELPED PULL TRIGGER

Other aspects of capitalism helped mold the killer. One was the bosses' absolute disregard for workers' human needs. Cho no doubt suffered a certain emotional deficit because he seldom saw his overworked parents. When Cho lived in South Korea, his father toiled in the oilfields of Saudi Arabia. After moving to Virginia, Cho's parents worked from 8 AM to 10 PM at a dry-cleaning shop.

Another force pulling the trigger was racism, the capitalists' strongest weapon against working-class unity. At school in the U.S., laughing classmates would taunt Cho with dollar bills to get him to utter his Korean-accented English. Racism turned fellow students into bitter foes for Cho.

A third factor was anti-communism. Cho's parents mistakenly equated communism with the dictatorial North Korean regime his mother's family had fled. The parents, though workers themselves, pushed service to U.S. rulers instead of service to their own class. Cho's mother used to boast of her "successful" daughter, a Princeton grad, who now works for the State Department on projects in Iraq.

The Blacksburg massacre exposes capitalism's tendency to create Frankenstein-type monsters. U.S. imperialism needs killers for its wars. So it peddles increasingly anti-women, violent "entertainment," in the form of movies and video games -- Cho was a fan of both -- to boys and young men. But rampant individualism spawns lone gunmen like Cho. The rulers want death-dealing soldiers, not disruptions on the campuses where they formulate and spread their deadly ideas.

KILLER'S COLLEGE A LIBERAL INCUBATOR OF DEADLIER MASS MURDERERS

Located in a Bible Belt "red state," Virginia Tech is an outpost of liberal U.S. imperialism. Its corps of military cadets, second largest only to Texas A&M's (besides the service academies), accepted women as early as 1973. It took the rulers more than two decades after that to compel nearby colleges VMI and the Citadel to get with their agenda.

Virginia Tech president Charles Steger has led university collaborations with the liberal imperialist Carnegie Corporation and World Bank. In addition to its ROTC, which churns out officers in all three service branches, VaTech does research and trains engineers for the Pentagon's Space and Naval Warfare weapons project. The college website flaunts a list of alumni generals and admirals as long as your arm. It also shows VaTech grad Army officers in Iraq chalking "Go Hokies" (VaTech's sports nickname) on artillery shells. Hokie ROTC alums who match Cho's death toll in Iraq or Afghanistan receive promotions.

No doubt the rulers will use this incident, much the same way they used 9/11, to increase fascist oppression in the U.S. In the name of "security," they will increasingly create a prison-like atmosphere on campuses and in public schools.

Before killing himself, Seung-Hui Cho slew 32 people in all. But the system that produced him has cut short hundreds of millions of lives worldwide through imperialist wars and its wretched oppression of workers. The U.S. "surge" in Iraq, for example, a desperate grab for oil wealth and a brainchild of the liberal Baker faction, is killing Iraqis by the hundreds per day. Blacksburg is simply another Monday in Baghdad. This bloodshed -- senseless to us but immensely profitable to capitalists -- will end only when our class destroys the profit system.

Unemployment -- The Hidden Massacre

Massacres are endemic to the capitalist system which puts profits first over people's dead bodies. From one million Iraqis dying in 12 years since Gulf War I, plus over 10,000 GI deaths from U.S. depleted uranium weapons used in that war, to 650,000 Iraqis dead in the current U.S. invasion of Iraq (British medical journal Lancet) and now 32 Virginia Tech students (see editorial, above for the real cause). Some are stark, some accumulate over time.

One massacre, well hidden, but a massacre nevertheless, is the continuous deaths resulting from unemployment. Does losing a job mean losing one's life? Absolutely.

A study published on Oct. 30, 1976 by the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee, based on 40 years of statistics from the Great Depression until 1973, concluded that every 1.4% rise in unemployment led directly to the death of 30,590 workers in the following five years. Over decades, millions of workers become jobless due to the bosses' drive for maximum profits. Taking each 1.4% increase in unemployment during those decades, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, may very well have been sent to an early grave because of the effects of losing a job. And most laid-off workers who obtain other jobs usually suffer a lower wage and a loss in benefits, contributing to the deteriorating condition of the working class.

Those 30,590 unemployment-caused deaths are composed of: strokes, heart and kidney ailments (26,440); suicides (1,540); homicides (1,740) and cirrhosis of the liver (870). Heart disease peaks three to five years after the start of a recession. The study reported that infant mortality rates show dramatic increases within one to two years after an economic recession. Johns Hopkins professor Harvey Brenner testified to the Committee that, "The national rate of suicide in the U.S. can be viewed as an economic indicator," so close is the link between joblessness and workers' violent deaths. Since black and Latino workers in the U.S. suffer double the average jobless rates, a disproportionate number die as victims of racist unemployment.

The millions of workers who have died "before their time" since the Great Depression as a direct result of being laid off could rival any mass killing anywhere on earth. When Circuit City laid off 3,400 sales clerks recently, denying them relatively decent-paying jobs, health insurance and pensions -- in order to hire replacements at much lower wages -- they were not only wiping out their "American Dream" but also contributing to the unemployment that leads to workers' deaths. Every time auto workers, aerospace workers or healthcare workers are thrown on the street, the basis is laid for "unemployment massacre." This is a worldwide phenomenon because capitalist-created unemployment is worldwide.

There has never been full employment under this profit system. Unemployment is built into capitalism. Laying off workers is the first option for bosses looking to reduce costs and increase profits. Coincidentally, when tens of millions of workers were walking the streets during world capitalism's Great Depression, only the communist-led Soviet Union had full employment. While the USSR later reverted back to the full-scale capitalism that exists in Russia today, true communism -- abolishing the wage system, eliminating bosses and the profit motive -- is the only solution to the mass death and poverty visited on the world's working class by this degenerate system.

PL'ers Force Racist Minutemen Founder to Flee

SOUTHWEST, April 19 -- A conservative student group recently brought Chris Simcox, founder of the anti-immigrant Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, to a university in the Southwest. Many students were outraged and planned to protest. PL members transformed what would have been an unplanned outburst into a militant expression of multi-racial unity and working-class solidarity. Through PL's leadership, the demonstration turned out to be the largest in university history, and we forced Simcox to cut his speech short and flee surrounded by police officers.

The cops tried to arrest at least five people and left one PL member covered in bruises. However, every arrest attempt failed, as the crowd immediately descended on the officer chanting, "Let him go!" or physically removing the cop. Eventually the police gave up, realizing they were vastly outnumbered and their harassment was only increasing the militancy of the protestors.

Before the protest, PL members had a discussion with friends which contrasted the philosophy of Lenin with that of pacifist historian Howard Zinn. We emphasized that fascism must be faced down by the organized resistance of the working class rather than the peaceful protest advocated by pseudo-leftists. As a result, those close to the Party came, ready to face down not only Simcox, but also the police and university officials who protected him.

Minutes before Simcox went on stage, one university official tried to shut our action down. Many were prepared to give up and move to another area when a PL'er confronted the official, insisting, "We are not going anywhere!" The other students then refused to be cowed into moving.

Simcox denounced protestors as a "vigilante lynch mob" -- a label that much more accurately applies to his own group. We passed out leaflets documenting ties between the Minutemen and white power groups like the National Alliance and showing that they are merely a continuation of the Klan Border Watch of the 1970s. We raised signs with slogans like "Smash the Minuteklan!"

Our leaflets explained that the multi-racial worker unity demonstrated recently by the shipbuilder strikers in Pascagoula, Mississippi represents the future, as opposed to the dead-end ideas of the Minutemen. Students were supporting their working-class brothers and sisters in Mississippi by buying our homemade buttons reading "Smash the Minuteklan" and "Workers Unite Against Racism." We will send these donations with letters of support to the workers in Pascagoula.

Some students tried to turn the protest into a celebration of Chicano nationalism. One of these students illustrated the absurdity of such identity politics when he said, "I support the KKK. They're about whites having pride in their racial identity." We responded to the nationalist chants of "Viva la Raza" with "Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras" (workers' struggles have no borders). In the end, multi-racial, working-class unity dominated the protest.

We were surprised that some of the most vicious hostility was not from the Minutemen or the conservatives, but from liberals and Democrats in the audience who shouted, "Let him speak!" and leveled insults at us. It was clear proof that alliances with liberals are a dead end.

Our militant politics fired the passions of the protesters. Typically reserved students found themselves in direct confrontation with the police. One conservative student insisted that our style of protest will not win anyone, but a student immediately told him, "They convinced me!" High school students, invited by a PL teacher, skipped class to attend the protest. Some are currently in training programs to become police officers, but after witnessing the treatment of the protestors by the police, were shocked into realizing that the true role of the police under capitalism is to protect the ruling class.

When Simcox cut his speech short and was escorted out by the police, our crowd chanted triumphantly, feeling that we had accomplished our goal. The effects of the event have since reverberated throughout the entire city and have given us many opportunities to talk with students and workers about the need to fight against racism and capitalism. We plan to hold meetings with those who were at the protest to further develop these points and to continue to advance PL's politics on the campus and around the city.

Black-Latino Students' `Unity Walk' Fights Racism, Nationalism

Los Angeles, CA, Thursday, April 19 -- Today students held a Unity/Peace Walk in front of the whole population of their high school. Black and Latino students read poems in English and Spanish about the need for working-class unity against the bosses' racism. Posters promoted unity between black and Latino students. This was a victory in an ongoing struggle against racism and nationalism, for class-conscious, anti-racist, multi-racial unity.

On a school field trip, some teachers had told Spanish-speaking students, "This is America. Speak English on this bus." Suspensions and discipline have been applied disproportionately against Latino students. Even though the school has about 45% Latino students and 55% African American students, at many functions, Latino students have been underrepresented. Also, a small group of gang members harass some Latino students, especially more recent immigrants.

As a result, a small group of Latino teachers began meeting to address these issues. One of the teachers invited asked, "Why weren't other teachers invited?" and was told, "We want to discuss the matter among ourselves first." The teacher replied, "I think the way to respond to prejudice, racism or any form of discrimination is by building unity with the entire staff." One teacher responded to the call for an integrated discussion with nationalism: "The problem is that you have acculturated yourself and don't understand."

While the group was responding to legitimate concerns, some of their proposed solutions, like asking for more Latino administrators and security guards, won't fix anything. Building a united force to take on the racism of the administration is the way to go. Terms like "acculturation" and "assimilation" are pushed in the universities to divert us from looking at things from the point of view of working-class unity against racism and the capitalist system that produces it. It also became clear that in an attempt to fight against racism, often the victims of racism respond in a narrow, isolationist, nationalist way that can become racist itself.

At a faculty meeting after a student stabbing in the school (see CHALLENGE, April 25), a teacher called on colleagues to "not fall for the perceptions being pushed by the media about violence between blacks and Latinos. These stories are not the reality, but they could become the reality and destroy the unity and understanding that a lot of us here have worked so hard to achieve." Most people listened. The comments dissuaded some teachers from calling for more Latino administrators and security guards. While a School Board member applauded the call for unity, she only wants students, teachers and parents to back up the bosses' School Board. We need the unity of students, parents and teachers AGAINST the bosses' racist plans!

Afterwards, teachers and students discussed an Op-Ed piece in the L.A. Times that said that of 236 homicides last year in the "highest murder districts" in L.A., only 22 crossed racial lines. It's terrible that so many youth die at the hands of other youth due to the bosses' gang culture. However, the fact that so few were between different groups shows that the "race war" the media is claiming is a myth.

The Unity Walk shows that this struggle is producing results. The PLP May Day contingent at the immigrants' rights march will be an important step forward in calling on the youth and workers of the world to unite as one class to destroy the bosses and their capitalist system of racism, exploitation and war with communist revolution. Let the bosses tremble at the specter of a united working class with communist ideas. The working class has a world to win!

Storm Through Rutgers Campus, Attacking Imus' Racism, Sexism

NEWARK, NJ, April 11 -- "IMUS MUST GO -- NOW!" rang through the halls of Rutgers University's campus here as students, professors and community residents streamed into campus buildings, blocked traffic and confronted the campus provost. They were demanding that the university administration call for firing "shock jock" Don Imus -- not simply express "regret" -- over his racist and sexist verbal attack on the Rutgers Women's basketball team. (Imus was later fired by MSNBC-TV and CBS radio).

The multi-racial group of protestors, ages 16 to 60 and beyond, represented a number of different organizations as well as Rutgers students and faculty, students from local high schools and PLP.

The demonstrators were protesting Imus's extremely racist, sexist and homophobic language degrading the Rutgers' women athletes. Imus is paid $10 million a year for spewing forth his garbage "humor." His "Imus in the Morning" radio-TV show has reached millions of listeners every day and been supported by the many prominent politicians and authors whom he has hosted, as well as by corporate sponsors, from Staples to General Electric. He has helped build the fascistic culture permeating U.S. society.

Although his bosses fired him after corporate sponsors, reacting to the mass outcry, dumped him, Imus can either retire on his millions or go onto satellite radio and TV. But he is just the tip of the reactionary media iceberg.

A spirited rally preceded the campus protest march of about 100 people and contrasted dramatically with a much larger "press conference" called earlier by the Rutgers administration and the Newark political establishment which specialized in hot air. They "deplored" Imus's words which tapped into the deep racism and sexism in U.S. society. But they didn't explain how his show has been part of the ideological apparatus of class rule in the U.S. Instead, they exclaimed racism and sexism are "still" with us! No kidding.

Newark Democratic Party Mayor Corey Booker kept repeating that "America is better than this" -- as if Imus violated the "real" principles "the nation" stands for.

But speaker after speaker at the smaller rally afterwards made very different points. An SDS representative expressed her disgust with the Rutgers administration's inaction, saying Imus's words are part and parcel of U.S. society, not "an exception to the rule." A professor stressed that Imus's description of black people helps rationalize the U.S. government's racist handling of Hurricane Katrina. A community organizer linked the racism Imus fomented with the xenophobia needed to fuel the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; he especially urged students to follow the lead of SDS of the 1960's and 1970's, which organized against the Vietnam War.

The head of NOW-NJ exposed the persistent -- and profitable -- dehumanization of African-American women in U.S. mass culture since slavery. Two young Rutgers women described how African-American women are continually made to question their self-worth and persuaded to spend billions of dollars a year on hair and skin products designed to change their natural appearance.

Several speakers pointed out that capitalism is the root cause of the "Imus phenomenon," and that only its abolition will free the airwaves of his poison. Two high school students sharply analyzed the mass media and class rule. Applause and cheers greeted their call for the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling class. An adjunct professor's speech urging the students to build a mass campus movement to reject "business as usual" inspired the group to march through the campus and confront the administration.

This was an important day for Rutgers. From this acorn may a great oak grow. Wherever we are, we need to continue to organize struggles against racism and sexism and all other anti-working class ideas fueled by capitalism.

Vets Denounce U.S. War Machine

SOUTHERN CAL., April 16 -- "I got thrown into a war I didn't want to fight...Now I get to choose to fight against it." A young vet back from Iraq related his experiences with courage and anger. He said he and some buddies had consistently refused to carry out racist orders to mistreat Iraqi civilians, and that others refused to run over Iraqi civilians with military vehicles and refused orders to "step on their faces" during apprehension and interrogation.

His comments exhilarated a near-capacity crowd of 250 students, staff, teachers and community members on a college campus.

Having lived with racism in the U.S., one veteran identified with the plight of Iraqi civilians who suffered the terror of U.S. military assaults. Having seen an Iraqi family killed, he declared, "I had nothing to do with the killing, but felt responsible because I belong to the U.S. Army. That's why I feel [I must]... speak out against the war."

The forum on the war featured five veterans recently returned from Iraq. Other veterans came to listen and asked to speak. One declared, "Seventy percent of the soldiers in Iraq don't want to be there and are against the war." Another said angrily that his unit risked their lives to clear a road of IED's, "And you know what they used that road for? To bring white vans full of lobsters for the officers."

Another vet denounced as naïve any well-intentioned but misguided plan to send more money so the troops could have better body armor. "That money will just go to Halliburton, not to me and my buddies in the field." He further emphasized that the war was not about more money "to protect the troops" or to stay the course to "protect Iraqi civilians."

Still another vet urged the audience not to listen to the U.S. government's claim to be in Iraq to "help the Iraqi people." He condemned the Clinton Administration for bombing Iraq three times per week when Iraq had no air force. He stressed that supposedly six months of diplomacy preceded the war. However, on March 20, 2003, when the U.S. unleashed its genocidal "shock and awe, a lot of us felt betrayed," feeling that war had been the plan all along, that "diplomacy" had been a ruse.

He outlined the horrors for the Iraqi people: 50% of families have lost sons; gas lines in this oil-rich country are a half a day long; the occupation has killed 655,000 Iraqis, with no end in sight; and the one trillion war dollars spent will short-change schools, roads and other essential civilian services.

Several vets described friends' medical conditions with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and denounced the mistreatment at the VA health facilities.

Afterwards, about 75 people formed separate discussion groups, staying late into the afternoon to discuss the war. Group leaders described the history of imperialism and petroleum economics. They emphasized the critical role active-duty soldiers can play, and have played, in stopping wars and opposing imperialism and racism. The veterans' understanding, anger and commitment inspired many to think more deeply about this war. Debates ensued between those who favored continuing the war, some who thought the Democratic Party and the electoral system can stop it, others who were unsure, and those who said that soldiers' actions were crucial to ending this and all wars. Vets and students alike were interested in the history of soldiers' rebellions' against the war in Vietnam. The understanding that capitalism is the problem and that soldiers, workers and students fighting for communism is the solution, all were received, along with CHALLENGE, and great interest in several workshops.

Mounting Problems Taxing Reliability of Rulers' Military

Political problems are undercutting the world's largest military from within and without. Failure to win quickly in Iraq has exposed fundamental problems in the U.S. ruling class's effort to maintain a reliable military.

Weakening domestic support for the war has severely hurt the military. Foremost is recruitment. After missing its recruiting goals for several years, the Army has resorted to short-term fixes: raising the enlistment age to 42, lowering recruiting standards and increasing bonuses for enlistment, re-enlistment and combat.

Therefore, the military is inducting more alienated soldiers -- those with drug and health problems, high school drop-outs and gang members. Historically the Army avoided such soldiers because they tended to be less committed to the military, with more discipline problems. Newly-recruited older soldiers are dropping out of basic training at twice the rate of those under 35, the previous age limit.

Recruitment problems go beyond the enlisted ranks. West Point failed to meet its officer graduation goal last year. Re-enlistment rates among West Pointers are 25% lower than the other service academies.

The ruling class's inability to get and keep soldiers is a big problem because their plans for confronting their biggest rivals (China, Iran, Russia, etc.) require several hundred thousand additional troops.

Lack of support for the war also involves the unwillingness of sections of the bosses to sacrifice for the overall good of U.S. capitalism. The profiteering, extravagance and corruption -- from Washington to Wall Street to Halliburton -- make it difficult for the rulers to demand sacrifice from the working class. This forces them to try to maintain "normality" at home, thus limiting their ability to finance wars.

Soldiers' morale is also suffering. Although from 2003-2006 re-enlistment rates were higher than normal among soldiers who served in Iraq, this is changing. In the last year, even with increased bonuses, re-enlistment rates have dropped. Through personal accounts and in polls, troop dissatisfaction appears to be growing.

Morale problems also reflect internal political weakness. Soldiers supported the war based (at least partially) on the Army-fed assumption of low casualty rates, reinforced by comforts in the field -- bonuses, video game arcades, field posts resembling home bases with gyms and PX's, and U.S.-style concessions popping up in the middle of the desert. Essentially they've been building a mercenary-type army. But politically such an Army is not equal to the hardships and casualty rates of sustained guerrilla-type warfare. It's now difficult for the rulers to change soldiers' motivation mid-stream without it appearing as the bait-and-switch that it is.

There is a definite growing anti-war sentiment within the military, along with indications of increased low-level resistance: not following routine orders, desertions and others, even more significant. Two soldiers in Germany have been jailed for refusing to load weapons being shipped to Iraq. The jailing occurred after soldiers in the unit supported the two in the face of administrative punishment.

The ruling class is trying to get out in front of this resistance by promoting its own ideology within the GI anti-war movement. Groups like Iraq Vets Against The War, the Redress Movement and Military Families Speak Out reflect both growing resistance but also ruling-class attempts to limit GI resistance to the current formulation of the Iraq war, rather than an attack on U.S. imperialism.

Morale problems, plus fundamental structural problems, are driving up war costs. Even excluding bonuses, the per-soldier expense of maintaining troops in the field is skyrocketing. The need for armor on humvees and increased personal protection to try to prevent GI rebellion is a new development. The cost of personal equipment per soldier in World War II was $175 in today's dollars; in Iraq it's $17,000.

Even more than costs, the demand for safety has limited mission capabilities. When a war is not worth dying for, soldiers are reluctant to leave their base without adequate protection.

Division within the ruling class exacerbates many of the military's internal problems. The daily attacks on Bush and the war by the NY Times, CNN and the bulk of the ruling-class media reflect dissatisfaction with Bush's handling of the war. In many ways, ruling-class unity was also a victim of the failed quick-win strategy.

The liberal media's increased focus on Darfur, Iran, North Korea and China seems to reflect a desire to re-group and redeploy some of the military, perhaps to Africa, or to develop a military strategy for attacking Iran. These liberal imperialists realize that currently the U.S. is hard put to counter its biggest rivals. This was evident when U.S. forces sat on their hands while the Iranians seized those British sailors.

There also appears to be a growing realization among some ruling-class sections that as a political strategy to win working-class support for imperialism, Iraq is dead in the water. Building the Darfur movement on college campuses and in religious groups seems like an attempt to re-cast oil-grabbing in Africa as a "humanitarian" war against genocide. This time they want to build political support among the troops and the working class before the next invasion.

To "fix" their military, the bosses will have to change drastically. They will try to create a pro-war patriotism that the majority of workers and students will buy into. They must increase the size of their military and convince those soldiers to die in their oil wars. And they must curb their own corruption and profiteering, and win their own class to sacrifice for the overall good of U.S. imperialism.

Will they succeed? It seems questionable, but past failure hasn't stopped them. Their efforts will surely wreak havoc on the lives of millions of workers in the U.S. and worldwide. But a future full of dangers is also full of opportunities to win the world's workers to the only politics capable of confronting and smashing the imperialist butchers: the communist politics of PLP.

El Salvador PLP: `Will have May Day bus for every state...'

SAN SALVADOR -- "These kinds of meetings have made me feel alive again," said a veteran of the war in El Salvador. "Of course, it's urgent to march on May Day. The capitalists say it's `only' a workers' day, but it's much more."

"It's the main day for us workers," said another. "We know that the electoral `left' is not interested in these activities. They're only thinking of elections."

"We in the PLP must keep advancing the need to fight for communist revolution worldwide," said a new Party comrade, concluding the discussion.

For months we've been mobilizing workers throughout the country to march on May 1st, in meetings, lunches, dinners and movie showings. The effort is bearing fruit. Hundreds of workers in various zones are now ready to participate in the march in the capital.

"At 2:00 AM we must be ready to leave," said a comrade. Workers will walk long distances to get to the bus site."

"While looking for numbers, we should also look for workers interested in our revolutionary politics. That's what PLP needs to help win the rest," said an older PLP member.

Since the signing of the "peace accords" between the FMLN and the Salvadoran government, enthusiasm has waned about coming to a May Day March. At a meeting of representatives of the country's biggest unions, someone said, "We need to urgently organize the unity of the working class as a guarantee of a better future for the workers and not continue believing in politicians who only serve to defend and reform the capitalist system. Only the working class can and must be the guarantee for this future. People should not continue believing that the 2009 elections are the solution to poverty and exploitation. The struggle for revolution doesn't end in some elections. The struggle is life-long." After this, many of the workers present agreed that the bosses' elections don't change anything, only serving to change the hangman. "We're going to have a bus for every state," said one representative emotionally. "We can't continue to follow passively in the face of the system's attacks," said another worker angrily.

PLP comrades' efforts here and in other parts of the world are beginning to yield fruits, which, while modest, are of the greatest importance; pushing to destroy the capitalist system and the fight to build an international party representing those who have been oppressed by the bosses' system.

The struggle for communist revolution is a challenge for the international working class. PLP is the vanguard party that has never backed away from the fight to build a workers' system. Communism is the only solution to resolve the workers' problems worldwide. PLP mirrors the unity of the working class. Organize in CHALLENGE readers' groups and be part of the revolutionary communist struggle.

Spain's Delphi Workers Lead General Strike

CADIZ, SPAIN, April 18 -- Delphi workers led a 100%-solid general strike of 200,000 workers shutting down all industries, including shipyards, petrochemical plants, hospitals, public transportation, construction and garbage collection in the 14 municipalities of the Bay of Cadiz region. The Delphi workers were protesting the closing of their Puerto Real plant; over 4,000 jobs will be lost in the province. It was Spain's first general strike in many years against the rash of mass job losses affecting workers, an example the world's workers must follow. Barcelona Delphi workers also struck for several hours and several joined a march outside the plant in solidarity.

On February 22, Delphi announced it will move its Puerto Real plant to Poland where labor costs are lower and workers have fewer rights -- these are the fruits of anti-communism. Immediately workers took action, organizing weekly work stoppages, including mass protests along with Airbus workers. On March 1, 50,000 workers marched chanting, "Delphi won't be closed."

Last week, tens of thousands again marched. Two days before the general strike, a general meeting in the plant called for sharpening the struggle, so over 1,000 marched out and shut the bridge connecting the area to the plant for an hour.

Before Delphi announced the closing, the three unions representing the workers told them to remain calm, that there was nothing to rumors of the plant closing. They're still pushing the regional and national governments of Social-Democrat Prime Minister Zapatero to do something against Delphi. Workers should have no illusions that this will happen.

Delphi is on an international rampage attacking workers' wages and jobs. Recently it fired 600 workers at its Tangiers, Morocco plant. Workers were protesting company violations of the already pro-boss Labor Code in that North African country. A 36-year-old, recently-fired worker with four years working at the Tangier plant said: "The company did not obey a single one of the 598 articles of the Moroccan Labor Code."

Meanwhile, on April 18 night-shift workers struck the Opel-GM plant in Antwerp, Belgium, after GM announced it won't produce its Astra model there. The work stoppage was led by temporary workers who know they'll be the first to laid off. Over 4,000 jobs will be lost, 1,400 blue and white collar GM workers along with 2,800 jobs at 60 subcontractors.

Obviously, the struggle of workers like those at Delphi, GM, VW, Ford, ChryslerDaimler, Peugeot, Renault and Airbus is international. It requires a leadership based on the red May Day slogan, "Workers of the world, unite!" Such a leadership must turn these struggles into schools for communism, showing these industrial workers in these war-making, imperialist companies that capitalism must be destroyed, from Tangiers to Warsaw to Cadiz to Detroit.

Skoda Workers Strike in Czech Republic

Workers in the Czech Republic at Skoda -- bought by VW in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet bloc -- walked out for several hours on April 17, cutting the daily production of 2,500 cars by about one-third. A threatened April 19 strike was averted when VW agreed to a contract ending in 2008 giving workers an immediate 10% wage increase, plus benefits.

Such strikes are worrying auto companies which have shifted production from France, Germany, Belgium and Spain to former Soviet-bloc countries to take advantage of their cheaper labor costs. Already, VW-Skoda bosses are saying that big pay hikes could risk further investments. Again, we can see how the anti-communist regimes of the former Soviet bloc, united with Nazi-collaborators like VW, GM and Ford, have been a disaster for the international working class.

Russia's Profiteers Murder 108 Miners

West Virginia or Novokuznetsk, Russia or Pasta de Conchos, Mexico -- capitalism is always ready to sacrifice miners' lives on the altar of private profit.

The murder last year of nearly 100 coal miners in West Virginia and Northern Mexico because of the utter disregard of safety rules was mirrored in what amounts to the murder of 108 Russian miners on March 19 in the country's deadliest disaster in ten years. A methane gas explosion occurred in an area where, "Automatic equipment showing the methane levels in the mine were deliberately deactivated so that the indicators displayed a lower methane level, but did not switch off the mine's electricity," according to Konstantin Pulikovsky, head of Russia's technical standards watchdog. (RIA Novosti, 4/16)

Functioning monitors would have warned the miners of an accumulation of the deadly gas and probably saved their lives. But to show the true methane gas build-up might have forced the temporary closing of the mine. This would have cost money, costs that eat into profits. Pulikovsky said managers at all levels were involved in the crime.

Associated Press reported (3/20), "The hazardous state of Russia's mining industry fell into disrepair when government subsidies dried up after the Soviet collapse." This situation stands in stark contrast to the high regard accorded to coal miners shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution when their work-day was immediately reduced to six hours, safety was given top priority and the miners themselves enjoyed 6-week vacations.

But now international capitalism is reaping huge profits from the newly-privatized industries in the former Soviet Union, and miners' lives are completely subservient to their bosses' profits. The rate of mining industry deaths in Russia is second only to the other former communist-led country where capitalism now rules the roost: China.

A regional prosecutor told the Interfax news agency that the cause of the "accident" may very well have been "violations of mining work rules." The miners work under a quota system that drives them to work faster for increased productivity on which their wage system is based. It has disaster built into it. Their monthly take-home pay of $575 comes largely (70%) from such productivity bonuses. "It is well understood," the head of the Miners Union told Reuters, "that if a person...is put in such conditions and adheres to all the rules of technical safety, he won't earn anything." Such conditions of speed-up, netting huge profits, lead to catastrophes.

The same disregard for safety is also killing Russia's elderly and disabled. A fire on March 20 in a nursing home in the village of Kamyshavatskaya killed at least 62 people, caused by "a series of violations, including insufficient fire-fighting equipment....to protect against smoke....an incomplete alarm system....[and] bedrooms' wooden panels...not made flame resistant." (NY Times, 3/21) Last year the building recorded 36 fire-safety violations, for which the owners were fined the grand sum of $770. "In 2006, 17,065 people died in fires, an average of nearly 47 a day." (NYT)

Under a truly communist system in which the wage system has been abolished, workers' safety would be the first consideration, especially since it is the workers themselves who will control the society and will be determining their working conditions, not some profit-hungry bosses.

Workers Shed No Tears for Yeltsin

Very few workers are mourning the death of Boris Yeltsin. Even in Moscow, where conditions for some are a bit better than in the rest of Russia, workers shed no tears for Boris. Yeltsin, Gorbachev and now Putin returned full-blown capitalism to the former Soviet Union.

Today, while Moscow boasts as many billionaires as New York, workers' standard of living tells a different story. They're not enjoying the oil and gas bonanza a few CEOs and yuppies are reaping as the Russian bosses try again to become a big player in the sharpening international inter-imperialist rivalry. Racism is rampant in Russia, particularly against workers from the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

But Yeltsin & Co. were not solely responsible for bringing back capitalism to the former communist-led Soviet Union. For decades, state capitalism ruled the country. Finally, a section of the old state capitalist ruling class decided to go into full-blown market capitalism, and cut out any concessions workers still retained from the past, plunging millions into misery. But the working class will rise again, learning from the achievements and errors of the past.

`Reform' Exploits Immigrant Workers with Poverty Jobs, Youth to War

"If you don't like my proposed bill, look at the White House proposal," threatened Congressman Luis Gutierrez. He said if his law wasn't accepted, immigration raids will be more massive than ever. Both the Gutierrez-Flake bill and Bush's bill demand thousands of dollars in fines and up to 15 years to get residency (for which one must leave the U.S. to apply). It also includes "securing the border" and a bracero program. That's the "good" part. It requires undocumented youth to either get a college degree or serve in the military. It establishes a National ID card for all workers and a new Electronic Employment Verification System.

Immigration "reform" for millions of undocumented workers has become a national debate, from churches to factories, in the streets and in Congress. The issue is coming to the fore because one sector of the U.S. ruling class needs to win these immigrants and their native-born children to patriotism, nationalist loyalty to U.S. bosses. They need millions more soldiers in the army, and in factories producing weapons and ships at low cost for their widening wars in the Mid-East and against rivals like Russia and China. The bosses are offering immigration "reform" in exchange for our sweat and blood.

The immigrant rights organizations' and church leaders, along with capitalist politicians, are presenting this patriotic pro-reform movement as the "American Dream." In reality it will become a nightmare. Millions of angry workers, who've been victims of racist immigration laws and raids, are being mobilized to march under the flag of U.S. imperialism, sign petitions to Congress and participate in the capitalist political arena. Of course the politicians don't mention that these same imperialist bosses created poverty and brutal repression, from Mexico and Central America to Haiti, Colombia and Argentina, forcing us to immigrate for a low-wage job.

As one worker said, "The imperialists with their flag (red, white and blue), and the help of the local bosses, took all the value of the mines, rivers and mountains, burned our homes, killed our brothers, sisters and parents, took our land and forced us to go to the big U.S. cities to work in their factories and fields. Now they want us and our children to fight for their bloody profits, to die and kill millions of other workers in their imperialist wars. But we workers will say, "that's ENOUGH -- NO MORE!"

Many workers see immigration reform bringing them drivers' licenses, social security, legal exit from and re-entry to the country, plus better jobs or a university education. But the bosses want "reform" to create a controlled group of super-exploited workers and soldiers.

Immigrant workers play a key economic, military and political role, not just for the bosses but for our class as well, for the international working class. That's why our future lies in uniting with -- and building -- a revolutionary movement of workers, students and soldiers, black, Latin, white, Arab, Asian, citizen and immigrant who are all exploited by the capitalists. It doesn't lie in voting or in relying on bosses' politicians, whether Gutierrez, Villaraigosa, Kennedy or Bush.

United, we have the potential to paralyze the bosses' war industries and organize rebellions against their imperialist wars. Together we can forge the long-term commitment to fight for communism, producing to meet our needs and using to the maximum the creative power of all workers. In a world without borders, every worker will always be welcome in any part of the world. For this, we need the communist ideas in CHALLENGE and to join the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party.

THE BLOODY FLAG OF U.S. IMPERIALISM

The U.S. bosses hope immigrant workers will buy into nationalism by waving the American flag on May 1st and proclaiming that they are "part of America". However, no worker has a stake in the capitalist system that the U.S. and its bloody flag represents.

The American flag has flown over Iraq and countless other countries throughout the world, where millions have died because of imperialism. It is the same flag worn by the racist immigration gestapo and police who terrorize workers every day. It is a flag that represents a country built on slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. Like any other nationalist flag, it represents the bosses' attempt to win workers to siding with the rich, instead of their working-class brothers and sisters in other countries.

Women-led General Strike Helped Spark Russian Revolution

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution which liberated one-sixth of the world's surface from the yoke of capitalism. The revolution began on Feb. 23 (on the old Russian calendar, now March 8) on International Women's Day. Thousands of women, wives of soldiers at the front in World War I and workers, took to the streets, ignoring the pleas of union leaders to "remain calm."

As one worker at Petrograd's Nobel machine plant recalled: "We could hear the voices of women in the streets from the windows in our department: `Down with hunger and scarcity! Bread for workers!' Several comrades and I ran to the windows...The gates of mill No. 1 at the Bolshaia Sampsonievskaia had been opened. Masses of women workers in a militant formation filled the streets. Those who saw us began to move their arms and yell `come down! Stop working!' They threw snowballs at the windows. We decided to join the march."

The next day, 200,000 workers struck in Petrograd (later named Leningrad, now "St. Petersburg). On Feb. 25, armies of marchers fought the troops. The revolution had begun. Feb. 27 was climactic when entire regiments of the Petrograd military garrison deserted and joined the insurgency. A few days later, Tsar Nicholas II, "the butcher," abdicated the throne.

Russia was free from the Tsar but not from capitalism. The bourgeoisie had plans to remain in power. But the workers and soldiers, led by the Bolsheviks, had other plans. While the opportunist Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary parties emphasized calling for "peace" instead of ending the war, confusing workers and soldiers, the Bolsheviks, particularly after Lenin's April return from exile, were firm in their call to turn the imperialist war into a revolution against the capitalist rulers. The revolutionary process accelerated. In October, workers and soldiers stormed the Winter Palace and overthrew Kerensky (who had replaced the Tsar as the leader of Russian capitalism).

The women-led general strike that initiated the process was not an easy one. When WWI began in 1914, patriotism reigned over workers and soldiers. But as it dragged on and Russia was losing, the Bolseheviks' firm politics opposing the imperialist war and Russia's own ruling class gained ground among the masses.

By February 1917, strikes had spread. Many women had joined the working class, replacing men sent to the battlefront. By then, 47% of Petrograd's workers were women. They were a majority in textile, leather, rubber and many other jobs which in the past had been limited to men: including streetcar drivers, printing and metal industries; 20,000 were women.

Before heading for work, many had to wait in long lines to buy bread and other food for their children. Sometimes they had to camp overnight in the cold Russian winter, learning then to "curse god and the Tsar, but curse the Tsar much more." The lack of bread made them doubt the government's politics. As a police report said: "They are an inflammable material just waiting for a match."

The double exploitation suffered by these women made them see the limitations of economic demands and they began to think more in political terms.

The Racist Rip-off of Subprime Loans

Lately the bosses' press has had lots of whining about the bankruptcy of mortgage companies specializing in "subprime" home loans, but a big aspect of the story is the racist rip-off of workers buying homes. Subprime loans are supposed to be designed for borrowers with low credit scores, and carry a much higher interest rate -- as much as 3% -- than conventional loans, and cost tens of thousands of dollars more over the life of the loan. Although smaller lenders specializing in these loans are now going under, the biggest banks also peddle them, and particularly target black and Latin workers.

A recent study by Chicago's Woodstock Institute showed that the seven biggest lenders -- Citigroup, Countrywide, GMAC, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo -- made subprime loans to black and Latin borrowers at much higher rates than to whites, even when their credit scores would have qualified them for lower-cost loans. The study, covering six large urban areas, showed that black borrowers were 3.8 times as likely to receive a high-cost loan than whites, and Latin borrowers were 3.6 times as likely.

Racist differentials were largest in New York City, where black borrowers were 12 times as likely to get high-cost loans than whites, and Latin borrowers were eight times as likely. Washington Mutual has separate divisions to handle subprime loans, and 76% of their loans to blacks and 65% to Latins were in the subprime division, while 80% of their loans to whites were in the low-cost loan division.

Whatever their origins, many subprime borrowers get ripped off by variable interest rates, which make the payments skyrocket when interest rates rise. Now that housing prices have fallen in many areas, many subprime borrowers can't refinance into a better loan, so they lose their homes and a lot of money, too.

This is the way capitalism always works: all workers are exploited but some groups (in the U.S., black and Latino workers) are targeted for especially intense exploitation. Another racist aspect of the subprime crisis is that immigrant workers, the last to be hired in the housing construction industry and other related industries, are also the first to be fired. (Wall Street Journal, 4/23) This also creates economic problems in Mexico and Central America. Remittances to Mexico are already down $600 million.

Communism is the only way for workers to get out from under this racist system.

U.S. Rulers Free Mass Murderer (`What Terrorist'?)

Relatives in Cuba of those murdered when 79-year-old old terrorist Luis Posada Carriles organized the 1976 blowing up of a Cubana Airlines plane after it left Barbados Airport protested his freeing by a Texas judge. Carriles and fellow CIA-operative Orlando Bosch (both rabid anti-communist Cuban exiles) plotted this terrorist act which killed 73 passengers, including the entire young Cuban Olympic fencing team. It was the worst terrorist act involving a plane in the Western Hemisphere before 9/11.

Why was Posada freed from prison and allowed to go to Miami to join his fellow right-wing Cubans? Why was he charged merely with violating immigration laws instead of with terrorism under the Patriot Act? Why isn't he sent to Cuba or Venezuela (where he then operated for the CIA) and is wanted for mass murder? Because he was "a U.S. terrorist," operating under an international anti-communist death-squad ring organized when Bush, Sr. headed the CIA.

If tried for terrorism he might spill the beans on his handlers during his long history of plotting for U.S. imperialism, including planting bombs in Havana hotels in the 1990's, participation in the murder of Chile's former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington after the 1973 fascist Chilean coup, and more.

Next time U.S. bosses preach about the "fight against terror," we know they mean the fight FOR terror.

French Elections: No `Left' or Right; Only Wrong for Workers

Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and "Socialist" Ségolène Royal won the first round of France's presidential elections on April 22, eliminating centrist François Bayrou, and fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen. A run-off vote on May 6 will choose between Sarkozy and Royal -- but there's no real choice at all!

Sarkozy uses much more openly fascistic language. In 2005, he said kindergarten teachers should turn in three-year-olds who "show signs of delinquent behavior." In the March 2007 issue of "Philosophie Magazine," he said people are genetically programmed to become child molesters or to commit suicide.

Given such Nazi ideas, it would be no surprise if a Sarkozy election led to an alliance with the fascist Front National in 2012 in order to remain in power permanently. ("Le Canard enchaîné," 4/11)

But all the French media view the political scene here as moving to the right (as if political ideas dropped from the sky!). All the major candidates -- both those still in the running and those who've been eliminated -- spout the same proto-fascist ideas. Capitalist elections offer no real choice to the working class. This becomes obvious in examining "obligatory civic service."

As noted previously (CHALLENGE, 4/25), French bosses need a fascist ideology, both to motivate people to make sacrifices in a war and to reintroduce the draft. France began switching to a professional all-volunteer army in 1997. The draft was suspended (not abolished) in January 2001. Many people see obligatory civic service the first step in renewing the draft (as U.S. liberal rulers view "national service").

Front-runner Sarkozy makes the link to military service the clearest. In "Le Monde" (3/4/07), he proposes six-month obligatory civic service as an operational reserve to ease the strain on the French army, already heavily committed abroad. Sarkozy wants a civil defense agency to stimulate the "defensive" (i.e., military) spirit in French society. This agency would not only fight natural or technological catastrophes, but also "terrorism." Sarkozy wants to enable young men and women aged 18 to 30 (!) to choose military service instead of civil defense service. ("Liberation," 3/1/07)

"Socialist" presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has been most weasel-like on this issue. Her party's program includes obligatory civic service for all young men and women. But high school and university student union leaders told Royal that youth felt making the service obligatory destroyed the service's "idealistic content," saying young people are extremely wary of re-establishing obligatory conscription.

So she announced a provision for a six-month voluntary service, with 350,000 youth going through the program every six months. This reverses her May, 2006 speech when Royal (daughter of a career officer) said she regretted the abolition of the draft, adding that "at the first sign of juvenile delinquency," young people should be incorporated in "a system that has a military dimension and which will take them in charge."

But former minister Bernard Kouchner's February report sneaks obligatory civic service back into Royal's program, eventually involving 500,000 youth annually, two-thirds of the young people born in a given year. The two losing candidates were no better.

Centrist François Bayrou developed the idea of national renewal most. He said, "Young people really need to get out of their ghettos, whether [those]...of poor youths or rich kids. They need to meet young people from other social classes...to get away from a society...wholly focused on consumption, and to give something of themselves to the community."

This condemnation of the rotten morality of the bourgeoisie, of middle-class consumerism and egotism, echoes fascist ideology. It says rich kids in their gilded "ghettos" suffer as much as working-class youth in rat-infested slums, that the rich and the poor "have something in common."

Bayrou's program stressed police work: "The gift of themselves is needed in public transport security in the big cities, watching for forest fires in the heat of the summer, helping the elderly and the handicapped, and helping and protecting fragile people in train stations and airports." Also, Bayrou wanted to require immigrants do civic service before applying for French citizenship.

Only openly fascist candidate Le Pen rejected obligatory civic service, calling it an "economic, social and military aberration" that would reinstate unpaid "corvee" labor (as serfs had to perform for feudal lords).

Le Pen wanted to attract young voters, but his main goal was racist ethnic cleansing of the military. He said conscription wouldn't furnish the military with "quality human material." He proposed voluntary six-month military service and increased military pay to attract more white youth and reduce the proportion of the army's Muslim-origin youth.

Inspired by fascist conspiracy theories, he also played to militarists by denouncing both "socialist" president Francois Mitterrand and conservative Chirac for crippling the French military. He wanted to increase the military budget and the number of soldiers and upgrade their weapons. Le Pen also proposed a racist cradle-to-grave government assistance policy that excluded immigrants until the needs of all "native French people" are met. That means permanent exclusion of immigrants.

French bosses, seeing war on the horizon, are taking measured steps towards building fascist ideology and reintroducing the draft. Both Sarkozy and Royal want some form of obligatory civic service. Communists must denounce this preparation for war and fascism both inside and outside the civic service program, and organize real working-class solidarity to prepare the way for a communist revolution that will destroy capitalism, the real source of workers' and youths' misery.

LETTERS

When is Terrorism Not Terrorism?

Have you ever tried to figure out what exactly the media demand of mass killing in order to call it "terrorism"? In one 2-page spread of the Arizona Daily Star on April 20, there are six articles: five on the recent killings at Virginia Tech -- one of which compares it to Columbine (the high school in Colorado where 2 students killed 13 people in 1999) -- and one article on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. As it turns out, the anniversaries of these three events are all in the same week -- VT on April 16, Oklahoma on April 19, and Columbine on April 20.

In all that newsprint the word "terrorist" occurs only once, and that is in a reference to the World Trade Center attack in 2001. In other words, the U.S. media only use the word "terrorism/terrorist" in relation to Muslims. Aside from the inherent racism in that restriction of the terminology, if the word were generalized to all mass murder it would lose the misleading political punch that the government and media squeeze into it to provide an excuse to invade and occupy the oil-rich lands of the earth. And it goes without saying that the word "terrorism" is never applied by the media to the mass killings by the U.S. military of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

But not everyone is so reluctant to use the word correctly. I have a poster on my wall that is a picture of Geronimo (the great Apache fighter against U.S. genocide), his son and two other comrades in arms, all standing there holding rifles, with the caption: "HOMELAND SECURITY -- Fighting Terrorism Since 1492."

Saguaro Rojo

Turns Job Site into Political Battleground

Recently, I participated in the PL-led protest against Minuteman Chris Simcox on a southwest campus (see article, p.3).

Because of the short notice of the event, my co-worker and I struggled to get the day off, and our employment was jeopardized. After multiple phone calls with the boss, we stated our final compromise: we would work half the day of the protest, and my wife would volunteer four hours of unpaid labor. On the one hand we didn't want to make our mainly undocumented Latino co-workers bear the burden of the work in our absence. On the other hand, we would be upholding an anti-racist position at our university that would sharpen our communist politics. The boss's final remedy to the situation was that only one of us could go, with serious repercussions if we both left work. After much contemplation and discussion with our fellow workers, we decided together that although the workload would be unevenly shifted onto the backs of our friends, the long-term struggle against racism would be in all of our best interests.

The day after the protest, our co-workers received us with smiles of encouragement. Because of the event's publicity, we could share our political views on immigration, in and outside of the workplace. Co-workers asked, "Do you think this protest will make us all citizens?" My response was that our intention is not to make citizens, but to empower ourselves against the ever-growing racist ideology that is promoted by groups like the Minutemen. That evening we were questioned by a right-wing student who resorted to bullshit arguments about how "alien immigrants" break the law by trespassing on private property. After intense discussion, he was won to the idea that we should fight for the working class, on either side of the border. This struggle went on throughout the week.

Eventually, our boss confronted us about the event, saying, "Because I could not reason with your minds, I am going to bite you in the ass!" He threatened to dock the pay that we earned the day of the protest. We reminded him of our extra-hard work the day before and that our co-workers had reassured us that everything was okay while we were gone. We also brought up our low wages and my wife's four hours of volunteer work. Our boss's reply was, "I admire your political views, but if I didn't show the other workers that there are punishments for what you both did, the workplace would be complete anarchy." This has reconfirmed for us all that the boss will always be forced to retain an illusion of power.

We took what used to be an apolitical workplace and turned it into a political battlefield of bosses vs. the workers. Through this event, my wife and I have been won to PL's line. The effects of the event will continue to help build PLP and crush racism, within the workplace and around the world.

New Reds

Racism Kills Babies from Chiapas to Mississippi

Recent articles in mainstream publication about health illustrate how racism is a universal aspect of capitalism. A front page New York Times (April 22) article reported how health care cuts have raised the death rate among black babies in the Deep South of the U.S. Also on April 22, the Mexican daily La Jornada reported a similar situation in the southernmost state of Mexico: "In Chiapas, extreme poverty has meant that easily curable diseases become epidemics killing the population. Seventy percent of the state's 4.293 million people are indigenous or peasants that live in extreme misery."

More than a million Chiapas residents, mostly indigenous and peasants, have no access to health centers, causing the multiplication of easy-to-cure diseases like tuberculosis, infant malnutrition, diarrhea, trachoma, etc. In the areas where 70% of the population is indigenous, there is only one doctor per 25,000 people.

Some blame immigrants from Central America that daily cross the border for the problem, because they lack even basic vaccinations and spread diseases. But this is only a symptom. The real reason that Chiapas has the highest rate of curable diseases and infant mortality in Mexico is capitalism and its racism. This system only serves the interests of billionaires like Carlos Slim, one of the richest men in the world, and the imperialist and local bosses who pay wages so low that they compete with those of China.

The bosses' racism kills workers and their babies from Chiapas to Mississippi. For the sake of our children, let's get rid of this epidemic.

An Anti-Racist Worker

Black Mayor Backs Troops vs. Urban Rebels

Former Virginia Governor and now Richmond mayor, L. Douglas Wilder just released a statement supporting joint Marine Corps/FBI urban training exercises in Richmond. The exercise simulates urban combat using low-flying helicopters and artillery fire using blank ammunition. Wilder stated, "We are pleased to support the Marine Corps in its efforts to better prepare our soldiers for potential combat in urban areas abroad as well as right here on home soil, if needed."

Better prepare for potential urban combat abroad and on home soil? Wilder, the grandson of former slaves and Civil Rights leader is in support of the continued occupation and slaughter of the working class in Iraq/Afghanistan and future imperialist wars of aggression throughout the Middle East in accordance with the Carter doctrine.

His statement supports the military being used on "home soil" in the tradition of the military force against the Bonus Army in the 1930's, the riot control used in the anti-racist urban rebellions in the 1960's and the use of the military to squelch the uprisings in Los Angeles and Cincinnati in the aftermath of police shootings and brutality.

We should not be surprised by Wilder's embrace of fascism. During Labor Day's Greekfest in 1989 in Virginia Beach, police rioted against black students on the holiday, beating and arresting over 500 students. Students at Howard University were organizing a protest when emissaries from the NAACP (who were engaged in Wilder's election team) disrupted the planning meeting, demanded that no action be taken against the police brutality to avoid tarnishing Wilder's electoral chances. (The students threw out the NAACP disrupters, and went on to stage demonstrations during the trials of their fellow students).

Millions of black workers put their faith in politicians such as Wilder to fight for their interests from within the system to fight racism. This example demonstrates that no politician can be trusted to fight for the interest of the working class against their imperialist bosses. Smash the politicians and the bosses' system. The solution is communist revolution! We have a world of workers to win, and exposing misleaders like Wilder can help do this

Virginia Red

U.S. Gov't Killers at Home and Abroad

A Southwestern newspaper recently had two articles that together exposed the disregard the U.S. ruling class has for working-class soldiers. One article was about the use of commercial airlines to transport the bodies of dead soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than private military jets and a military honor guard. The other article was on the tremendous increase in cases of childhood (and now, adult) leukemia in a small rural town, Sierra Vista, Arizona. Air force jets fly practice runs over the town and shower the town below with fuel exhaust.

The commercial airline scandal only came to light because the father of one dead soldier, himself a military careerist, objected to his son's being shipped home in that humiliating way. The cluster of leukemia cases in Sierra Vista has been known about in the area for almost a decade. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta has investigated but refuses to acknowledge that the number of cases per population size is different from that of any other place. One father had been battling the CDC's lying cover-up for years until he was diagnosed and shortly thereafter died. His two daughters have leukemia also. He was known to call the CDC: the Cluster Denial Coalition.

How much longer will it take us to realize who our real enemies are? Not the Iraqi people, who the U.S. government and military orders to kill in the hundreds of thousands. The U.S. claims they are protecting us from terrorism at home. They don't even care to cover their tracks when they use U.S. soldiers to fight their wars and treat them like garbage when they are no use to them anymore.

All terrorists are the enemy of the working class in the U.S. and all over the world, but who are the biggest terrorists? Those murderers who set off bombs in crowded market places and kill tens of innocent people, or those bosses and politicians who send hundreds of thousands of working-class soldiers to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, thereby creating massive terrorism all in the name of fighting terrorism?

Southwestern Red

REDEYE ON THE NEWS

Dublin writer looks to Marx

...Do you plan to go on book tour in the U.S.? No. As I get older, I find my visits to the States get shorter because I can't take the general culture very much. I know I am back in the States because at the hotel breakfast they are all talking about money....

...Where do you advise us to look for fulfillment? There's a famous phrase from Karl Marx, in which he says that he wants s society in which the full development of each is the condition of the full development of all. What would it be like to find our fulfillment through each other rather than against each other? (Terry Eagleton, NYT, 4/22)

TV + movies demonize Islamics

Government at every level has stimulated the paranoia....

The entertainment industry has also jumped into the act. Hence the TV serials and films in which the evil characters have recognizable Arab features, sometimes highlighted by religious gestures, which exploit public anxiety and stimulate Islamophobia. Arab facial stereotypes, particularly in newspaper cartoons, have at times been rendered in a manner sadly reminiscent of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaigns. (Z. Brzezinski, LAT, 3/24)

GIs: Deaths are tip of iceberg

...Hundreds of thousands...-- at least 30% of the troops who have engaged in active combat for four months or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and mortars, all without suffering a scratch....

...Sudden and extreme differences in pressures -- routinely 1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure -- lead to significant neurological injury. Blast waves....can leave a 19-year-old private who could easily run a six-minute mile unable to stand or even to think....

"Someone should have told us that with these closed-head injuries, things would not really get all that much better.

The Iraq conflict is not a war of death for US troops nearly so much as it is a war of disabilities. The symbol of this battle is not the cemetery but the orthopaedic ward and the neurosurgical unit. The...medical profession and the US are left to play a terrible game of catch-up. (GW, 4/26)

It's more than Imus, Muslims say

To the Editor:

....Muslim Americans are chagrined by the dubious and selective moral fervor demonstrated by the detractors of Don Imus's sexist-racist comments.... When Ann Coulter, speaking about Muslims, opined after 9/11 that America should "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity," the silence was deafening.

Ms. Coulter is not alone. Certain...commentators use gutter language with complete impunity in their TV and radio programs or newspaper columns to denounce Muslims Americans for the crime of being Muslims. (NYT, 4/17)

Africans go sour on `democracies'

Analysts said the Nigerian vote was the starkest example of a worrying trend -- even as African countries hold more elections, many of their citizens are steadily losing confidence in their democracies....

Satisfaction with democracy dipped to 45 percent from 58 percent in 2001....in Nigeria according to the Afrobarometer survey....

By 2005 that number had plummeted to 25 percent.... Almost 70 percent of Nigerians did not believe elections would allow them to remove objectionable leaders.... (NYT, 4/23)

Labor market is also slavery

To the editor:

Indeed, we should not forget ("Domestic slavery is back," March 30). And....Work, any work, cannot be for sale without the worker being for sale. They are inseparable, like the Merchant of Venice's pound of flesh from the blood....

Two hundred years after the abolition of the slave trade, it's high time for the abolition of its successor, the labor market. (GW, 4/19)

Liberals pave road to fascism

WASHINGTON, April 13 -- The administration proposed a bill on Friday to relax certain legal restrictions on the government's ability to intercept telephone calls and other communications in the United States....

Democratic leaders and Congressional aides reacted cautiously to the White House plan....

Representative Silvestre Reyes, the Texas Democrat who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he supported giving intelligence professionals "strong, modern tools to track terrorist communications." (NYT, 4/14)

 

Nationalism Deadly for Workers

• Smash ALL Borders
• Can’t Share Power with Bosses
• Nationalism Only Preserves Capitalism

Union Hacks Torpedo Shipyard Strike

Imus Racism, Sexism Mirrors Bosses’ Rotten Culture

Growing Saudi Unrest Threatens Deadlier Oil Wars

Forced Out, Pentagon Surrounds Saudi Gold Mine for Possible Invasion

• Liberals to Next President: Prepare for Saudi ‘Catastrophe’

Mid-East Monsters Created By U.S. Imperialism

Fight Racist LA Rulers’ Attempt to Break Multi-Racial Unity

From Washington to LA, PLP Backs Striking Shipbuilders

D.C. Bus Drivers Rally vs. Racist Bosses’ Attacks

Los Angeles PLP Preparing for May Day

FBI the New Librarians?

Military Families Need to Expose Democrats, Back Rebel GI’s

National Teachers Strike in Argentina

Reds Must Win Workers Away from Chávez’s pro-Capitalist Socialism

PLP Helped Blast Fascist Minutemen

Black-Latino Unity Can Thwart Racist Immigration Reformers

Church Forum Stresses United Immigrant-Citizen Struggle

LETTERS

PL’er Carries Red Politics Job to Job

Seek Multi-Racial Unity Over Stabbing

‘Fair Wage’ Impossible Under Profit System

Mexico Vies With China For Lowest Wages

Boss ‘Abuse" Cry Over ‘Sick-out’ Spurs Repeat

Mali Worker Pans ‘Bamako’

Johnstown, PA Protests the War

French Bosses Answer to Youth Rebellion: ‘Draft ‘em!’

REDEYE REDEYE

• Army double-crosses Iraq vets
• Cops do big snoop on activists
• Afghan Taliban back, and worse
• U.S. pullout? Over CEO dead bodies
• Desertions up: Troops ‘worn out’
• Young Black and Latin men ‘pipeline to prison’
• Did US provoke Iran on Brits?

PL’ers Helped Defeat Nationalist Splitters in SDS

The ABC’s of Wages, Poverty and Class Consciousness

‘300’ Movie Uses Ancient Past to Promote Future Wars

---

Nationalism Deadly for Workers

No Unity with ANY Boss: Workers of the World, Unite!

Inter-imperialist rivalry is growing. U.S rulers are still massacring thousands in Iraq as the war enters its fifth year, while many in the U.S. anti-war movement still appeal to their elected rulers to end it. In Iraq the workers "choices" are either the U.S. puppet regime or nationalist bosses (Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish) who each want a bigger share of the oil profits. For the world’s workers these are capitalism’s alternatives: bow to the imperialist or to "our" local capitalists. Either way we lose.

Nationalism, like racism, was born with capitalism, initially in France, Britain and the U.S., and is used as another tool to divide the working class internationally. Nationalism means pledging allegiance to the ruling capitalists, based on living in an area they stole and in which they created their state apparatus to legitimize their rule. They push the concept of patriotism, essentially loyalty to "our" particular ruling class within the borders of "our country."

Another form of nationalism stems from a reaction to racism: super-exploited victims of the bosses’ racism — black and Latin workers in the U.S. — are appealed to by black and Latin demagogues (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa) to push capitalism: more black and Latin bosses, more black and Latin cops, foremen, etc. as the "solution" to racism, rather than exposing the super-profits that capitalism reaps from racism. This divides the working class from seeing it has one exploiting class enemy, capitalists, no matter their skin color or language.

Nationalism creates false unity between bosses and workers, between the Rockefellers and Farrakhans on the one hand and the working class, black and white, on the other. There’s only one international working class with the same class interests, directly contradictory to the interests of all capitalists.

Smash ALL Borders

Capitalist-created borders have disastrous effects. For 60 years, Israeli and Palestinian workers have been marching behind their rulers to their deaths. "Undocumented workers" moving from North Sub-Saharan Africa to Europe and from Mexico, Central-South America, the Caribbean and Asia to the U.S. face massive repression because they’re from "different countries." These bosses’ borders divide workers and induce them to pledge allegiance to their local ruling class, maintaining the latter’s class rule.

Historically, all countries were born from the slaughter and coercion of workers by ruling classes fighting to gain new territory for exploitation and profit. The workers’ role was to fight and die and kill other workers for "their" bosses.

The bosses also created the concept of "race" (see CHALLENGE. 4/11)) to divide us. Scientifically there are no "different races," only the human race. Within that there’s only one division: those who own the means of production and those who don’t, bosses and workers, exploiters and exploited. While our oppression may differ in kind, we have the same enemy, and the same class interest to destroy that enemy.

Can’t Share Power with Bosses

The final outcome of all forms of nationalism, of the working class fighting under nationalist banners "for our liberation," is dead revolutionaries and a ticket back to capitalism. PLP concluded this from seeing communists uniting with nationalists and the failures of national liberation movements.

In Indonesia communists allied with nationalist forces to expel the Dutch. The Communist Party, with almost two million members, controlled the labor movement and elected representatives to the government. Their leader, Aidit, became its number two official. Abandoning the correct strategy of armed revolution for communist-led workers’ power, they took the parliamentary road to "share" power with the nation’s bosses. In fact, in a 1961 article, Aidit declared: "[Our] basic principle…is that the class struggle is placed below the national struggle."

But their "legal" status didn’t protect them. Controlling the military, Indonesia’s ruling class assassinated Aidit and, with CIA assistance, using Islamic fundamentalists, slaughtered well over a million communists and trade unionists in a few weeks. Indonesia’s workers still suffer mass poverty and the "joys" of capitalism.

Currently, Maoists in Nepal have repeated the same deadly mistake. On March 31, agreement was reached allowing five Maoist ministers to join the new national capitalist government. These are the same Maoists who led a massive armed rebellion that toppled the monarchy there.

Nationalism Only Preserves Capitalism

In the post-World War II years, communists in the Soviet Union and China abandoned internationalism for nationalist politics, which helped lay the basis for reverting back to full-scale capitalism. This period also witnessed nationalists and victims of racism in many oppressed countries gaining "independence" from the yoke of colonialism. While some paid lip-service to socialism, today all these countries maintain capitalist exploitation, including every country in Africa. The masses are still destitute and lack political power. Unity with the "lesser-evil" bosses dooms liberation from the start. Even the more militant fighters ended up negotiating for a bigger piece of the pie from the former rulers.

For instance, when Mandela’s forces took power in South Africa, and the workers, now assuming they were liberated, struck for their demands, Mandela told them they couldn’t strike because this would damage the rulers’ chances of getting foreign capital. So now South Africa is ruled by a combination of black and (much richer) white capitalists and poverty is even worse than before "liberation."

Nationalist leaders are profit-making bosses! They use the masses’ anti-imperialist and anti-racist sentiment to enlist them in a drive for bigger local capitalism. Given the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry world-wide, nationalist forces try to build themselves by playing one imperialist against another. Similarly, the imperialist powers make deals with nationalists to better exploit the latter’s country. Whoever wins a bigger piece of the economic pie, the nationalists still intensify the exploitation of their own workers.

All bosses represent their own class interests. They will kill and kill some more to maintain their profits. Cast off illusions about these bosses; instead organize against their dictatorship to wipe them out with workers’ power. Unity with the enemy has never led to victory. Only communism, not nationalism, can lead to workers’ revolution. Uniting around working-class internationalism is our road to communist revolution. One Class, One Flag, One Party.

Union Hacks Torpedo Shipyard Strike

PASCAGOULA, MS, April 4 — "It’s clear and obvious they don’t even care about us," said one striking ship-fitter in summing up the new three-year agreement with Northrop Grumman (NG). Almost 7,000 black and white workers had shut the racist war-maker and strike-breaker for 28 days, leaving a Navy destroyer and two freighters sitting like unfinished junk. While the workers were not striking against the bloodbath in Iraq, they gave all of us, and themselves, a lesson in the power of industrial workers to bring the imperialist war-makers to a halt.

Dow Jones News reported that the U.S. Navy is pushing shipbuilders to rein in soaring construction costs and adopt commercial practices without hurting military capability. Allison Stiller, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for shipbuilding said, "If the Navy, shipbuilding industry and ship-repair industry do not change our behaviors, the country will be unable to afford the needed re-capitalization of our fleet." They are trying to keep pace with China, the rising imperialist power which is the number two shipbuilder in the world, and aiming for number one in the next ten years.

The contract was rushed through by the Pascagoula Metal Trades Council, representing 11 of 14 unions, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). Less than half, about 3,300 of the 7,000 strikers, were able to vote — and 40% voted "NO!" Many workers were away job-hunting and others couldn’t afford the gas money on short notice after being on strike for a month. All these workers were nearly wiped out by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and despite NG getting over $3 billion from the Navy and FEMA for post-Katrina clean-up, many strikers still live in FEMA trailers.

Northrop Grumman had cut off the workers’ health insurance on April 1, and the union leaders spread the rumor that if the contract wasn’t ratified the Ingalls yard here would close and the work moved to Newport News, Virginia. The workers that did vote hardly knew what they were voting on since the union passed out contract "highlights" and quickly called the vote. All these factors, plus 500 strikers crossing the picket lines and scabbing on their co-workers, and a lack of anti-racist, anti-imperialist leadership among the workers to counter the union leadership, let NG off the hook.

The workers won a 15% wage hike over three years, $1.68 an hour now, and two 55¢-an-hour raises later. The first-year raise is the largest ever won in a NG contract. Meanwhile, the $144-a-month in health insurance premiums will increase to almost $200 and still will not cover dental or vision care. In Katrina’s aftermath, housing costs have soared and milk is above $4.00 a gallon.

Many workers voiced their anger at the union and the company. Some felt that with support for the strike being organized locally and internationally, they could have held out longer. Some of that support was organized by PLP, from union and non-union aerospace workers on the West Coast to transit workers in Washington, D.C. and more (see left) A friend in France won his local to send solidarity greetings of support as well.

This strike did not sit well with the racist war-makers. It also gave PLP the opportunity to build the revolutionary communist movement. It inspired us to organize strike support by explaining to our co-workers, on the campuses and high schools, and in the barracks, that this fight — like the Airbus and auto strikes across Europe, and the destructions) of 100,000 auto jobs in the U.S. — is the result of the sharpening battle among the world’s bosses. These racist attacks on the world’s workers are paving the way to bigger wars. And the only way to smash imperialism is with communist revolution. Now we can have these discussions with the Ingalls strikers as well. J

Imus Racism, Sexism Mirrors Bosses’ Rotten Culture

Don Imus’s racist and sexist remarks insulting the Rutgers University women’s basketball team have caused a big stir. He’s been suspended for two weeks from his radio program which simulcasts on TV by MSNBC). But Imus’s insults are no surprise. That’s been his trademark for years. Racism and sexism, after all, rot the entire capitalist society.

Imus is not just another shock jock like many who fill the media. His program has been used by top liberal and conservative politicians and media stars. GOP candidates McCain and Romney, and former Democrat candidates John Kerry and Joe Lieberman have been on his show. Liberal and conservative writers use him to promote their books and have "intelligent" discussions. Tim Russert, NBC-TV "Meet the Press" host is an Imus regular. The list goes on. They know his racism and sexism well.

He’s also a big money-maker for GE-owned MSNBC and CBS which owns his show. This is "freedom of speech" under capitalism: pro-war racist and sexist crap fills the air waves, and not only from right-wingers like Imus and Bill O’Reilly. Imus, after all, took the sexist insult from Hip Hop culture, much of which constantly degrades black women.

Yes, Imus should be fired, but this won’t change the nature of the bosses’ media. There’s no "free speech" under this profit system. No real pro-working-class ideas blaming capitalism for racism, war, sexism and so on will be aired because the corporations which own and run the media won’t go against their own class interests. Only CHALLENGE will give you those ideas.J

Growing Saudi Unrest Threatens Deadlier Oil Wars

At a recent Arab League meeting, Saudi Arabia’s king Abdullah labeled the U.S. occupation of Iraq "illegal." But he was hardly signaling a break with his U.S. masters, to whom his oil-soaked dynasty owes its very existence. Abdullah’s remarks reflect instead his family’s faltering grip on the economic cornerstone of U.S. imperialism. By pretending that Saudi Arabia was no longer accepting Washington’s dictates, the king tried to allay mounting opposition — from Saudi workers and capitalists alike — to his clan’s corrupt, oppressive rule.

The royal family controls Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. Its long-standing arrangement to provide Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Shell cut-rate crude has brought the House of Saud fabulous riches, while Saudi workers have become poor and hostile. And Aramco’s excluding non-royals antagonized capitalist "commoners" like Osama bin Laden, who demand their slice of the profit pie.

U.S. rulers (along with their British junior partners) can’t afford to lose the Saudi oil racket, either to local bosses like bin Laden or imperialist rivals like China and Russia which are making deals with the Saudi rulers. Saudi oil represents the most lucrative and strategically crucial business deal in the history of imperialism, helping the U.S. exert political and economic pressure throughout the world. Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson boasted, "We’re the largest purchaser of Saudi crude oil exports...making Saudi Arabia the largest single supplier of raw materials to Exxon Mobil’s worldwide refinery system." (Speech, 4/27/04) U.S. rulers have killed over a million Iraqis and 3,300 GIs for an oil treasure half the size of Saudi Arabia’s. Should the U.S. decide to prop up or replace a tottering Abdullah by force, even greater bloodshed could follow.

Saudi Arabia has one-fourth of the world’s oil reserves. But it also has a demographic time bomb. The Saudi population has quadrupled since 1974, from 7 million to nearly 28 million. It may hit 43 million by 2025. As oil production and other economic growth have failed to keep pace, gross domestic product per person has plummeted, from $16,006 in 1980 to $8,974 in 2004. Real wages have declined 24% over the last decade. While Saudi princes indulge in obscene luxury, unemployment hovers around 25%. Many angry young Saudis correctly identify the love match between the royal family and the U.S. as the source of their troubles. But, without a communist outlook, they fall into the trap of allying with capitalists who oppose the royals and the U.S. under the guise of religion. Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that committed the 9/11 attacks, attracts many disaffected Saudis. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, is a onetime billionaire Saudi contractor, who turned against the king and his U.S. backers when they excluded him from sharing in the spoils of the first Iraq war. [See box.] Saudis comprise a significant portion of foreign anti-U.S. fighters in Iraq.

Forced Out, Pentagon Surrounds Saudi Gold Mine for Possible Invasion

Back at home, the Saudi oil infrastructure stands vulnerable. A year ago, al Qaeda launched a suicide truck bomb assault on the world’s largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq. The Sunni-Shiite split further destabilizes Sunni Abdullah’s realm, which has a local Shiite majority in its main oil-producing eastern region. But, to counter Persian Gulf domination by Iranian Shiites, Saudi rulers have vowed to side with Sunni insurgents in Iraq, if the U.S. withdraws. Such a move would threaten uprisings in Saudi oilfields.

The military situation reveals Saudi weakness on many other fronts. The Saudis deliberately keep their army small, 73,000, compared to Iran’s 350,000. The reason, says London-based journalist Said K. Aburish, is that "the House of Saud wants to maintain itself, but it does not want a strong army capable of overthrowing it." ("The Rise, Corruption, and Coming Fall of the House of Saud"; St. Martin’s Press, 1996). A Saudi National Guard exists, but its mission is "to protect the royal family from internal rebellion and the other Saudi army." (Globalsecurity) The Saudi Air Force trusts only princes to pilot its jet fighters.

Despite record-setting arms purchases (mainly from the U.S.), undermanned Saudi forces are ill-equipped to repel an invader. The U.S. put thousands of troops on Saudi soil during the first Iraq war. But today, vehement anti-U.S. sentiment makes the stationing of large numbers of GI’s there politically impossible. Only 500 remain. So a major part of the Pentagon’s "wider wars" strategy in Gulf Slaughter II has been to create — or beef up — bases that encircle the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. naval facilities in Bahrain and the air base in Qatar have undergone a massive build-up. The U.S. installation in Djibouti will soon expand from 88 to 500 acres. The Pentagon’s permanent bases in Iraq, including the colossal Green Zone fortress, play a role in securing Saudi crude. And the U.S. Navy’s carrier battle groups menacing Iran are actually closer to Saudi oil fields than to Teheran.

Liberals to Next President: Prepare for Saudi ‘Catastrophe’

U.S. rulers understand that the House of Saud is as "solid as a house of cards" and that the strategic stakes are even higher than in Iraq. The liberal Brookings Institution advised "the next president" to prepare for an all-out oil war embroiling the entire Middle East,

"More strife in Iraq will further suppress oil production there and could spark conflicts in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, where a globally catastrophic loss of oil production could result. And, strife in Iraq could adversely affect Iranian oil production and transit." (Brookings, "Independent Ideas for Our Next President")

Capitalism is inherently unstable. Bosses must continually compete; self-interest and the need to pursue maximum profit make all their alliances temporary. As the Mid-East’s current plight shows, war after war results. But capitalism also suffers from another kind of instability. A handful of bosses must try to control millions of workers through killing and oppression. Ultimately, this situation is as untenable as the U.S.-Saudi operation.

As May Day 2007 approaches, the key task of revolutionary-minded workers and their allies in the Middle East and worldwide is organizing for communist revolution as the only way out of the inter-imperialist rivalry driving the inferno of endless profit wars.

Fight Racist LA Rulers’ Attempt to Break Multi-Racial Unity

LOS ANGELES, CA, April 9 -— Students, teachers and staff at a high school here have done much to build multi-racial unity. Teachers have organized clubs around this unity. A slide presentation to staff members provided historical background on how many Mexican and African people share ancestors, and gave critical support to the other, such as for Mexican Independence, the Mexican Revolution and the abolition of slavery among others.

Then a week before Spring break a tragedy occurred. A black student stabbed a Latino student on school grounds. He died on the way to the hospital. The stabbing occurred during a fight between different gangs. Immediately, the bosses’ media propagandized that violence between blacks and Latinos caused the death.

The next day school board and union officials descended on school grounds en masse (most hadn’t set foot there before). All spoke of "securing the campus." They feared escalating racial violence and retaliation. Cops flooded the campus. The following day a power outage darkened the entire school and all of those school officials scattered like quail!

After the death, Progressive Labor Party responded with a flyer at the school entitled, "Blacks and Latinos unite; Don’t fight each other, fight the system!" which was eagerly and enthusiastically received. Many students passed them out hand to hand inside the school. Black and Latino parents, teachers and students thanked those distributing it outside and asked for extras.

The flyer outlined how the cops and FBI created the gangs in order to provoke violence and disunity in the two communities. It also exposed how the same government fears the unity of the most oppressed sections of the working class because of the potential to organize, make revolution and overthrow the racist capitalist system. The flyer emphasized that the bosses use racism to divide the working class at the time we most need to unite against their wars abroad and racist attacks here.

Workers from Latin America have long experience waging armed struggle against U.S. imperialism. Black workers in the U.S. have led militant rebellions against racism in major cities and massive rebellions of black, white and Latino soldiers in the military during the Vietnam War. United with white, Asian workers and soldiers, black and Latino workers can be invincible!

We said, "Let’s make the bosses’ worst nightmare a reality fighting for multi-racial and international unity of the entire working class." This message was eagerly received by black and Latino students and parents.

The bosses are using this death to emphasize racial and gang violence, to promote increasing the LAPD to 10,000 cops. Racist incidents make big news; multi-racial unity does not. One writer pointed out that last year in LA’s "highest murder districts" of 236 homicides 22 crossed racial lines. (LA Times, 3/25) .

The same paper also reported (3/30), "Los Angeles — the nation’s second-largest city — has [an]… officer-to-resident ratios of …one officer for every 436 residents. New York has one for every 228 residents." . The bosses are callously taking advantage of this tragedy to push the ratio closer to New York’s.

More cops mean more racist terror, especially against both black and Latino workers. Mayor Villaraigosa and Police Chief Bratton are also aiming for more surveillance and control programs for the youth. But they also worry about winning these same youth to a patriotic and nationalist outlook, to get them to join the military and die and kill in defending U.S. imperialism.

U.S. rulers have a big dilemma: they need thousands upon thousands of new soldiers to defend their empire while they simultaneously build racist police terror to keep these potential soldiers in line. The bosses’ existence depends on their own gravediggers. Let’s accelerate the grave-digging by uniting against racism and building a massive Progressive Labor Party. We have nothing to lose but our chains!

From Washington to LA, PLP Backs Striking Shipbuilders

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 29 — A group of PLP’ers and friends rallied near Northrop Grumman’s corporate headquarters in Arlington, Virginia to gain support for striking shipyard workers in Mississippi. We distributed over 600 flyers about the strike and 40 CHALLENGES, while collecting donations for the strikers. Our speeches about racism, war and the power of the industrial workers to shut down the capitalist war machine reached thousands of workers.

Several workers we talked to worked for Northrop Grumman. Many more knew the company as part of the war machine. But almost no one had heard of the Mississippi strike until our rally, which made us more enthusiastic about spreading the word about the strike and the need for solidarity between workers at Northrop Grumman and other workers and GIs. One young soldier brought up the military-industrial complex and the need to fight it.

After this rally, we took the issue to our unions and the D.C. Central Labor Council to gain further support through fund-raising and letter-writing campaigns for the battle in Mississippi.

We are proud of our Party’s ability to quickly mobilize internationally to support for such critical struggles. It demonstrates even more why friends of PLP must join us to multiply our revolutionary impact on the class struggle worldwide.J

EL SEGUNDO, CA, April 4 — Today PLP organized a group of youth and others to support the strike of Northrop Grumman workers in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Europe’s Airbus strikers. We went to a large Northrop Grumman facility here with leaflets, CHALLENGES and signs to back the strikes. We carried posters with pictures of the multi-racial march of strikers and their families in Mississippi.

Despite security guards and cops trying to kick us out, and limit our access to the workers, we distributed many leaflets and CHALLENGES. Security guards directed traffic away from us, fearing workers would read about the strikers’ unity. Most workers knew nothing about the strike and were glad to hear about it, thanking us for the literature, which emphasized multi-racial, international workers’ solidarity against the war-makers. Leaflets about the strike also received a good reception on several campuses where students discussed the potential power of the working class to oppose imperialist wars.J

D.C. Bus Drivers Rally vs. Racist Bosses’ Attacks

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 30 — Over 40 bus drivers rallied today outside the Northern Garage to protest Metro transit management’s unsafe workplace practices. The bosses and their media have waged a vicious campaign against the drivers, blaming them for three recent fatal pedestrian accidents. But it is the bosses’ unrealistic scheduling of routes and inadequate recovery time between routes that creates the conditions for tragic accidents. This racist scapegoating of the predominantly black workforce is an attempt to deflect the public’s anger away from management.

Meanwhile, no manager has been held accountable for the deaths of three track workers, all killed in recent months because management refused to adopt the safety measures workers have long advocated. While the management is planning a memorial for them, Metro’s utter disregard for workers’ safety will kill more workers.

The newly-elected union leaders showed their true boss-loving colors by skipping the safety rally and, instead, calling for more cooperation with management. Drivers from Northern Garage are now working to rule (following the rules to slow things down) with management scrambling to enforce their insane schedule. Northern has been one of the strongest and longest supporters of PLP and has a core of CHALLENGE readers.

Management has promised many changes to create a safer and less stressful work environment, but with a $100 million budget deficit any changes will be limited to window dressing. This situation is the trickle-down effect of the war budget and the skyrocketing price of oil-based fuels. One day’s cost of the war budget for Iraq would probably cover the cost of solving most of the safety problems. But the bosses’ priority is imperialism, not safety for workers and riders.

The next step is to spread the work-to-rule campaign to other garages. Meanwhile, we’re trying to recruit more drivers to PLP, win more to read and distribute CHALLENGE, and participate in our upcoming May Day activities. Stay tuned for future developments! J

Los Angeles PLP Preparing for May Day

LOS ANGELES, April 8 — "This dinner is to prepare us for the upcoming May Day March," one speaker announced as everyone enjoyed a delicious dinner that they themselves had brought to share. Everyone emphasized that May Day represents an opportunity to be upfront with its real history, to show that this capitalist system based on racism, widening war and exploitation must be smashed. PLP offers a communist alternative for the international working class.

Last year liberals and phony leftists alike organized and led huge marches demanding a "comprehensive immigration reform" bill, a bosses’ plan to guarantee war production and more soldiers to defend their declining empire. Still without "reform," new marches are scheduled for this May 1. PLP will participate with a multi-racial contingent of youth and workers emphasizing multi-racial unity, internationalism and a communist movement to not only answer the bosses’ attacks but also end their racist, exploitative system once and for all.

After presenting the history of May Day we discussed the bosses’ great fear of the potentially explosive unity of the most exploited — African-American and immigrant workers— against the same bosses’ system which is now pushing more racist divisions here (see page 3, and letter page 6).

Women from the Ramona Gardens community denounced the racist police for murdering Mauricio París Cornejo. They committed themselves to helping organize for the May Day March. Latino and black students presented anti-racist, pro-working class and revolutionary poems in Spanish and English.

Committees were established — banners, flags, posters, CHALLENGE-DESAFIO sales, chants and security — to guarantee a successful march. We closed the dinner by enthusiastically singing the Internationale and Bella Ciao. We urge all those who attended to join PLP to fight for a communist world without racism, borders or imperialist war.

FBI the New Librarians?

NYC, NY, March 30—Be careful about borrowing The Communist Manifesto from your local public library. A recent forum at Pratt Institute School of Library and Information Science exposed the fascist nature of the Democrat/Republican-endorsed Patriot Act.

The forum explained how three Connecticut librarians ("the John Does") were issued a National Security Letter (NSL). It demanded the library hand over its records of subscriber and billing information, and access logs of any person that had used a library computer, all in the name of "national security and fighting terrorism." The FBI uses this information to collect all e-mails, browsed websites, books borrowed and users’ identification, storing it in databases for federal and state agencies’ harassment of people opposing the government.

The librarians refused to give the FBI the information because they believe users of libraries have "privacy rights and are protected under freedom of information laws." This refusal placed the librarians under investigation for "withholding information," proving that we only have those "rights" the capitalists decide to give us.

Such letters are even more fascist because people who receive them cannot tell anyone, including their spouses (!), that they even received a letter. Informing anyone could mean jail time. The FBI now issues about "30,000 national security letters a year." (Washington Post. 11/6/05). The letters don’t even require issuance by a judge (like that would matter) but can be submitted by an FBI field supervisor.

The librarians filed a suit in court against the FBI to fight the demand for information. The individual librarians could not even contact their union to defend themselves. The agency threatened arrest if they went public. Their lawyers found a way of notifying the union which alerted the public about this attack. They fought until the FBI backed down and withdrew the case because a judge decided many of the demands were vague.

During the forum many students questioned whether the librarians should have just revealed themselves and tested the government’s willingness to arrest them. One refused, saying they really feared being arrested. The librarians’ union, the Connecticut Library Association (CLA), backed down also because they didn’t think fighting would accomplish much.

"But haven’t people in the past fought for their beliefs and went to jail?" asked one student. The CLA representative who led the meeting said they didn’t want to push it that far. After the case was dismissed, the FBI fought for a mandatory 5-year prison sentence if one reveals receiving a letter. So much for not fighting.

With PLP’s communist leadership, workers need to fight hard against fascism. We cannot take pleas and dismissals just because it suits us not to face attacks, including jail. The bosses know that complacency and fear hold many workers back from fighting fascist outrages. We need to work with all workers to fight facism step by step, to expose the nature of the bosses’ dictatorship.

Military Families Need to Expose Democrats, Back Rebel GI’s

Amid the current U.S. troop "surge" in Baghdad, members of an anti-war military family’s organization are considering what action to organize. Although they’ve been involved in mass demonstrations and picket lines, before the November 2006 election more time was spent attacking the Republican candidates, and encouraging people to vote Democratic. Since then it’s been mostly lobbying Democratic Party politicians to bring all troops home immediately.

Congressional Democrats have refused to vote to de-fund the war to force a withdrawal. At least one attacked anti-war protestors as "idiots." They won’t even vote for a symbolic de-funding. MoveOn.org, a key pro-Democrat group funded by George Soros and others, is advocating a different kind of "moving on." They’re pushing "clean energy," national health care and "restoration of democracy" as their national agenda, excluding the war completely. The latest Democratic Party scheme attaches the minimum-wage bill onto Bush’s request for more war money. As one politician said recently, "If we’re going to vote to fund the war, he’s going to give us something in return." The Democrats use "pro-worker" rhetoric to hide their actual support for U.S. imperialism in the oil-rich Mid-East.

The Military Commissions Act was passed before the 2006 election. This fascist law gives the President the right to designate any non-citizen an "unlawful enemy combatant," and lock that person up until their trial by a panel of commissioned officers. It abolishes the right to challenge that detention. Many Democratic Senators, including two from our area, voted for it.

Leading up to the election, we took the offensive, linking these laws and the rulers’ need to mobilize the U.S. population to support wars for control of resources under the guise of the "war on terror." Several military family group members, and friends in anti-war groups, responded favorably to these politics. Now a statement advocating these points is being circulated. Our first step will be to call on military family chapters to endorse it.

Meanwhile, the collusion of the Democrats with Bush & Co. has upped the ante within anti-war groups. The national "Occupation Project" has undertaken sit-ins against key Congressional Democrats who have voted to fund the war. Thirteen sit-in’ers were arrested protesting the vote. Demonstrations in support of those arrested also demanded hands off Iran. The cops have invented the novel charge of "failing to disperse from a riot" against the protestors, many of whom are pacifists.

PLP is calling on friends in our military families group and others to expose the imperialist politicians, and back soldiers who resist and rebel. This call has drawn some favorable response. More in-depth discussion with our friends is needed about the key role of soldiers in the fight to overthrow the bosses and their profit wars.

An alliance of workers, students, soldiers and sailors who are revolutionary and class-conscious can defeat the bosses. Our small steps to develop this unity today can lay the basis for bigger advances as larger wars to control oil erupt. Day by day, in these small fights, we’re learning how to create those more significant changes.

National Teachers Strike in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, April 9 — Workers and students participated in strikes and marches nationwide protesting the murder of professor Carlos Fuentealba. A cop hit him in the face with a tear gas canister during a striking teachers’ road-blocking march demanding higher wages in Neuquén province.

In today’s action, bus and subway workers here are stopping work for several hours while teachers strike nationally for higher wages and against police brutality. They’re demanding the resignation of the province’s governor, Sobisch, political opponent of Peronist President Kichner.

Police brutality is not unique to Neuquén. Since "democracy" returned to Argentina, following the brutal military dictatorship of the mid-1970’s and early 1980’s, the number of victims of police murder has been sky-high. Under Kichner’s Presidency, from May 2003, the cops have killed 662 people.

Teachers are paid a miserable wage, particularly insulting in gas- and-oil rich areas like Neuquén, Salta and Santa Cruz, where teachers have struck. In Santa Cruz, Kichner ordered the militarization of the schools.

Capitalist politicians, be they Peronists like Kichner — a friend of Chávez and union hacks — or open right-wingers like Sosbich, are all enemies of the working class. J

Reds Must Win Workers Away from Chávez’s pro-Capitalist Socialism

While Bush toured Latin America, heavily protected and isolated from mass angry protests throughout, Hugo Chávez also toured the region, warmly welcomed by masses of workers and youth. In Buenos Aires, Chavez was cheered by 30,000 people at the Ferro soccer stadium, organized by Argentina’s President Kichner, union hacks and some fake-leftist groups. Millions saw him on TV there. Chávez has become the "anti-Bush," the most admired leader in Latin America since Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara.

But Chávez is not even as radical as Fidel and Ché were during the early stages of the Cuban revolution. While in the early 1960’s the Cuban workers pressured the government to seize imperialist companies like Esso, Shell and IT&T without any compensation, recently Chávez "nationalized" Verizon and a U.S.-owned electrical utility company, paying them the market price of $1.5 billion. These companies and Wall Street welcomed these "nationalizations." Chávez "21st Century Socialism" is not even close to the bourgeois nationalists of the last century like Mexico’s President Cárdenas, who in 1938 nationalized Standard Oil and Shell with minimum compensation.

Chávez’s plan for the oil industry is mixed ownership with such as Shell, Chevron-Texaco and Exxon. These imperialist oil companies now will own 49% of the oil and installations of the fields and wells they were already operating under deals with PDVSA, the Venezuelan state-owned company. Even though Exxon is not happy with the new deal, "Chevron is expected to accept Mr. Chávez’s terms, since it is also negotiating access to a large natural gas project …" (NY Times, 4/10). Sean Rooney, Shell’s Venezuelan manager, showed his approval of this deal, saying: "Being a partner is very different from just providing services."And of course, this deal will dole out a few crumbs to Venezuela’s working class.

While capitalists’ profits are booming from the rising price of oil, 40% of Venezuelans still live under the poverty line, as does the rest of Latin America. Unemployment is 10.5% (23% among youth). While in 2002, workers’ wages were 33% of the national income, by 2005 they had sunk to 25%. So in spite of some crumbs to workers, under Chávez the gap between workers and bosses has risen.

So why do workers and youth consider Chávez a hero? Partly because of his anti-imperialist rhetoric (mainly against Bush and U.S. bosses; U.S. imperialists also hate his deals with China and other U.S. rivals); and partly because of illusions many have in his "21st Century Socialism" plan, basically the fantasy of "capitalism with a human face."

So how can revolutionary communists show workers that following Chávez and others like him (Bolivia’s Morales and Ecuador’s Correa) won’t liberate them from all forms of capitalism? It’s not easy, but it can be done. In the 1940’s and ’50s, millions of workers in Argentina thought General Juan Perón was their savior. The leading wing of the Argentine bourgeoisie did not like the crumbs he gave to workers and U.S. imperialism also disliked him because he flirted with the Nazis during World War II. After a 1955 military coup overthrew Peron, ‘union leaders’ main demand was for his return to power. But rank-and-file workers fought for their own class interests. Mass uprising erupted nation-wide, particularly in industrial cities like Cordoba, center of Argentina’s auto industry. So in 1973, the bosses brought him back to try to cool down the class struggle.

Perón immediately attacked the workers who had fought for his return. When he died, his widow Isabel became President and formed the AAA (Argentinian Anti-Communist Alliance) which organized death squads against militant workers and youth. This opened the doors for the 1975 military coup, which led to the "dirty war," slaughtering 30,000 workers and youth.

Communists must be involved in the workers’ mass movement, even those supporting Chávez and others like him. But our involvement is not to cheer his fake anti-capitalism, but to expose him, while participating in the workers’ daily struggles against their bosses (as is happening in Venezuela and elsewhere). That’s how we can forge real red leadership to fight for a worker-led society with no bosses: communism.J

PLP Helped Blast Fascist Minutemen

NEW YORK, NY, April 9 — Over a hundred people protested the racist Chris Simcox, co-founder and leader of the anti-immigrant Minutemen, today in front of NYU’s Kimmel Center. While the demonstration was originally contained by police barricades off to the side of the building, things changed when the PLP contingent arrived. Chanting "Smash racist deportations, working people have no nation!" we began to picket in front of the main entrance. The police were unprepared for this level of militancy and we were able to partially block the entrance for over an hour. This meant that the Minutemen’s event started over half-an-hour late. Inside, students from NYU booed and heckled Simcox, inhibiting him from starting his speech for over 15 minutes. J

Black-Latino Unity Can Thwart Racist Immigration Reformers

LOS ANGELES, April 7 — A multi-racial group from PLP joined the immigrants’ rights march here today putting forward our communist ideas in this large coalition event. While March leaders said immigrants "should love the U.S.," marchers eagerly took 300 CHALLENGES and 2,000 leaflets calling for unity of black, Latino and all workers against the bosses’ racist attacks and widening imperialist war. Some people joined our contingent with its red flags and class-conscious chants like, "La clase obrera no tiene fronteras" ("The working class has no borders").

This event followed a March 25 pro-immigration reform activity at the Sports Arena by a coalition of various churches and the Democratic Party. A group of workers chanting "Workers’ Struggles have no borders!" while marching to the Arena were greeted at the entrance, along with hundreds of other workers and students, by PLP members distributing leaflets and CHALLENGES exposing the racist, patriotic and pro-war nature of the bosses’ immigration "reform." That same day PLP leaflets, CHALLENGES and chants for multi-racial unity flooded an immigrants’ rights demonstration at the Federal Building and a demonstration against the Minutemen who were trying to spread their racist filth on Broadway.

The Arena meeting was opened with prayers and religious songs led by rabbis, pastors, imams and Catholic priests. Then came the "heavy artillery" of politicians like U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez, co-author of the Gutierrez-Flake proposition; LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Fabian Nuñez, majority leader of the California Assembly; and countless other state senators (black, white, Latin and Asian) who, after congratulating one another, put forward "patriotism and American values" as the "American dream" of millions of immigrant workers.

They ignored the war in Iraq and the U.S. bosses’ need to control Middle-Eastern oil and the stiff competition these bosses face from their imperialist rivals in China, Russia and the European Union. All this will require millions of workers slaving in the bosses’ war industries and millions of soldiers fighting and dying in ever-widening wars.

All their hypocritical embracing of immigrants aimed to make them feel grateful and patriotic, to be willing to fill the bosses’ imperialist needs. Grateful? The bosses’ capitalist system created the horrific conditions of hunger, oppression and death that forced them to leave their families in order to survive.

As desperate immigrants flooded the U.S., the bosses closed factories, cut union jobs for many black and white workers and then hired immigrant workers in low-paying jobs in the economy’s industrial and service sectors. They then pushed racist lies, telling black workers immigrants "stole their jobs," while telling immigrant workers that black workers are "too lazy" to work, pitting slave against slave.

The rulers also flooded black neighborhoods with drugs and the gangs and violence the drug traffic requires, giving the rulers the excuse to imprison masses of black workers and youth. The bosses push this poison because they fear the explosive unity of two of the most oppressed and exploited sections of the working class.

Although the forces leading the immigration "reform" movement serve U.S. imperialists’ needs, PLP’ers enter these organizations to advocate anti-racism, internationalism and communist ideas as the basis of unity of workers, students and soldiers of all ethnic groups. This will enable PLP to lead millions in a communist revolution that will forever smash capitalism, its wars, borders, racism and wage slavery.J

Church Forum Stresses United Immigrant-Citizen Struggle

BROOKLYN, NY — "The U.S. is a country of immigrants." How many times have we all heard that phrase? The bosses’ need for immigrants and why immigrants have always been under attack was the topic at a recent forum sponsored by a social action group of a local church here.

The chapel was full. Members and friends of PL in this church are spreading pro-working class, anti-racist and communist ideas.

The first speaker laid out some of the history of immigration in the U.S. and how immigrants have always been used as cheap labor and as soldiers to fight in their wars. He discussed the struggles of immigrants and "citizens" in the 1870’s and 1880’s, and how they built unions and fights against the attacks by the industrial barons. Although these labor struggles had a limited focus and did not call for revolution, there were always socialists and revolutionaries fighting for anti-racist ideas and a better world run by the working class.

Another speaker described how people are fighting back all over the U.S. against the attacks on undocumented immigrants and how even churches were beginning to understand the need for struggle. She also talked of a growing call within churches for a sanctuary movement for undocumented immigrants, and the idea that people from the U.S. and Mexico should have a demonstration across the border to embrace and shake hands because the working class of both sides are the same.

After the speakers, one teacher wanted to know if there are any actions or events he could invite his students to attend. A number of people talked about the campaigns to create even more racism against immigrants. One case in point: a talk radio station in New Jersey has a host who calls undocumented immigrants cockroaches and pushes the idea of people turning in their neighbors. Several people suggested holding a picket line outside this station and boycotting the sponsors of the programs.

To communists, organizing a mass fight-back against these racist attacks is vital. More importantly, we must fight to win workers to communism. Some people in the hall wore a button that read "workers have no borders". We need to smash the borders created by the bosses. It’s important that we point out how much the wealth and power of the rulers of the U.S. (or any industrialized nation) is based on constant sources of cheap labor and how they try to keep up the illusion that workers across borders should be divided. Only a working class armed with communist ideas can end the plight of immigrants and all workers around the world.J

LETTERS

PL’er Carries Red Politics Job to Job

I’m an industrial worker who has participated in many class struggles, including two very militant strikes at the Croydon plant here in Colombia. The reformist hacks betrayed our struggles, enabling the bosses to shut the plant without paying workers any severance.

Alter two years being unemployed, I started working at Empacor, a paper processing export company with 400 workers. The plant operates seven days a week, eight to twelve hours a day. Workers are totally alienated and oppressed by the bosses.

Making friends with whom I had ideological struggles, I made communist politics primary in explaining our exploitation. Workers listened and began reading DESAFIO. Some bosses’ stooges saw me as a bit different from other workers and squealed. I was fired.

Now I’m a watchman of machinery used to pave and open highways. We work outdoors without any protection from the weather and no place to take care of physical needs. It’s very dangerous since any thief can shoot or kill us. There are more and more people like me, working without any real social benefits. Thousands of workers earning miserable wages clean these highways of stuff drivers throw away. But now the government wants to take away even these miserable jobs and contract them out to multi-national cleaning companies.

These experiences have just strengthened my desire to fight for a world without bosses, to fight for PLP’s communist politics. It won’t be easy, but with patience and perseverance we are building our international party to fight for political power and defeat the bosses’ fascist dictatorship with the dictatorship of the working class.

A PLP’er, Colombia

Seek Multi-Racial Unity Over Stabbing

It’s a big challenge to teach at our school, but the students’ political potential is great. Little by little we’re winning some students to the left.

Almost one year ago to the day, our students had to face riot police at school after walking out against HR 4437 (an anti-immigrant bill). From that struggle, two ex-students are now taking a more active role in the Party. They haven’t joined yet, but they’ve attended every study group since and have stood up for communist ideas in their classes. Another student and some of his friends are now leading a school club that began last year. Some are interested in joining the study group.

Although there’s progress, winning these students to communism means engaging in struggles against the fascist nature of capitalism. For example, recently a student was stabbed to death on our school campus. Needless to say, this was a very tragic incident; students and teachers were horrified. But as usual, the bosses used the tragedy to bring even more fascism down on our heads. The media portrayed it as a "racially motivated" killing. The truth is the two students were from rival gangs (many different gangs exist around this school). Soon afterwards we realized why the bosses’ media pushed that idea: the mayor wants more cops on the streets, for a 10,000 total.

Within our school, they want metal detectors, uniforms, more security guards and school police. The administration pushed aside students who wished to create a memorial for the slain student. These bosses’ agents feared "violent repercussions." Unfortunately the students then went to some very nationalist teachers who viewed it as a "Latino struggle" as opposed to a multi-racial one against fascism. Others have stood up for multi-racial unity. The school club wants to confront these nationalist ideas in the continuing struggle to show we are all one working class.

Red Teacher

‘Fair Wage’ Impossible Under Profit System

A recent conversation with a fellow worker revolved around society and particularly our salary being very unfavorable to the workers, as well as the horrible conditions faced under capitalism. I explained the need for workers to be organized and to fight for communist revolution.

I told him up front that we must eliminate wages but I failed to note that in a capitalist economy workers’ labor is a commodity, like all other products. We workers sell our labor for far less than it’s worth. In a society based on profit, there’s a price on all commodities. Bosses profit off our labor while paying us a pittance. But we need to get past the idea of fighting for a "fair wage" (what the unions say they want) to get to the point of fighting for a system without money and wages.

It’s difficult for many workers to conceive of a society based on distribution according to need, and without money, and it’s tough to explain, especially because it’s never been put into practice and we can’t describe exactly how it would work.

However, it’s an important first step to explain Marx’s analysis of surplus value, that workers work only part of the day to produce enough to pay for their subsistence and the rest goes to the boss. That explains why workers can never make a fair wage under the profit system.

It’s essential to have such discussions, to win workers away from illusions about capitalism, on the road to winning them to the necessity of fighting for communist revolution and to abolish the wage system once and for all.

Red Ironworker

Mexico Vies With China For Lowest Wages

Mexico’s rulers have found an "answer" to competition from China in the cheap labor-cost field: still lower wages. A report by Huberto Juárez, of the School of Economics of the Autonomous Univ. of Puebla (reported in La Jornada, 4/7) shows auto parts, electronics and home appliances maquiladoras (assembly plants for exports) have returned to Mexico, but away from the traditional border states to even lower-wage areas in Southern Mexico. Huge international corporations like Delphi and Yazaki are profiting from this.

Boss-controlled union hacks, along with cooperative local governments have helped keep wages down. The companies have not only moved south from Ciudad Juárez (across from El Paso) — the center of the maquiladoras — but also from big cities to small towns and rural areas to get cheaper labor. Since 2002, wages have declined in these industries and are now below the already low national minimum wage.

This again emphasizes the importance of building an international red-led workers’ movement. With such a massive movement, workers could fight multi-national companies from Detroit to Cadiz, Spain (Delphi is closing operations in both areas) to anywhere in the world where they move searching for cheaper labor. In the heat of these struggles, we can win workers worldwide to the communist idea of smashing wage slavery, which means fighting for a communist society where production serves the needs of our class instead of a few bosses.

An Internationalist Worker

Boss ‘Abuse" Cry Over ‘Sick-out’ Spurs Repeat

Recently, at a public institution where I work, the cleaners have been overworked due to severe short-staffing. While the workers complained, this didn’t stop management from heaping on the work. Needing a concrete plan to fight the bosses, we decided to collectively call in sick one day. Naturally, the head boss didn’t take kindly to this job action and screamed about our "abuse" of sick leave, so we did it again.

The action was truly one of class struggle, but no amount of job actions will change the nature of capitalism! The bosses worldwide are in such fierce competition that they must cut budgets everywhere and stick the burden on the working class, either through increased unemployment or intense speed-up. Our long-term strategy should be to fight for communism, even as we wage daily war on the bosses. While we haven’t won yet, we know the future looks red!

A Red Worker

Mali Worker Pans ‘Bamako’

[Here are some quick comments on the Bamako movie from a friend from Mali.]

Yeah, I saw the movie in Bamako. My objection at the time was that the theme was too abstract. I was expecting to see evidence exposing the IMF/World Bank and other donor countries woven into daily live stories of the actors. For example, how does an ordinary person feel the effect of the structural adjustment policy? [privatization and drastic cuts in social projects] Did it result in family dislocation (immigration for example) or poorer nutrition for the kids?

A Washington, D.C. Comrade

Johnstown, PA Protests the War

JOHNSTOWN, PA., March 18 — This city is widely known for the 1889 flood, caused by a dam bursting on hunting and fishing club property owned by robber baron Andrew Carnegie, drowning over 2,000 people. But in the last several years it has been the site of a series of anti-war demonstrations by local residents.

On this 4th anniversary of the start of the U.S. imperialist war in Iraq, people held a spirited protest near a Wal-Mart store, carrying signs reading: "Out of Iraq!"; "Stop the War on All Workers!"; "This War Is Wrong!"; "Impeach Bush" and other anti-war sentiments.

The Citizens for Social Responsibility (CSR) organized the action. It has been holding weekly protests against the war since January 2003, two of them at the office of Rep. John Murtha, who "represents" the district.

The initial activities of the CSR, formed in 1987, protested U.S. aid to the terrorist Contras who were waging war against the nationalist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua; then against the first Gulf War in 1991, as well as demonstrating against Bush and Cheney campaign stops here in 2004 (at which CHALLENGE was distributed).

Professor Jim Scofield, a CSR founder, said the group will continue its weekly protests until U.S. troops are withdrawn from Iraq. Forty residents had demonstrated last year on the war’s third anniversary. He said the group had been receiving more support than occurred during Gulf War I. Although the CSR is a reform organization, some of its members are regular CHALLENGE readers and the paper was distributed at today’s event.

While the real solution to this imperialist war is to destroy its source, capitalism, through communist revolution, it’s a positive development that people in Johnstown — once a thriving steel town, but now an economically depressed area — are out on the streets publicly voicing their opposition to this imperialist war. This opens the door to spreading anti-imperialist and communist ideas by local PLP members.

French Bosses Answer to Youth Rebellion: ‘Draft ‘em!’

PARIS, FRANCE, March 16 — Just like some U.S. liberal politicians want to impose "national service" to sneak in a military draft, French bosses are planning to prepare for the wider wars growing from sharpening imperialist rivalry. Both U.S. and French bosses face a big problem — motivating people to make the sacrifices war requires. That’s what’s behind the "obligatory civic service" issue in the presidential election campaign here.

The Catholic weekly magazine "La Vie" launched this idea in late 2005 in an appeal signed by 500 parliament members, many "personalities" and 30 associations. This initiative’s leaders are Max Armanet, former "La Vie" editorial director, and Pierre Morel, former French ambassador to China, and later to the Vatican.

(It should be noted that during the 2005 uprising in the working-class housing projects, French president Jacques Chirac promised voluntary civic service with places for 50,000 young people. However, by December 2006 there were only 6,000 places, and only 2,500 youth had volunteered. The "defense second chance" program, supposedly to "straighten out" errant youth through military service, had only enrolled 1,000. Armanet and Morel have just revived a moribund idea.)

Armanet and Morel defended their idea in "Le Monde" (3/15). Political and social crises, they say, have marked the past five years, including the Nov. 2005, uprising and the mass protests against the worsening of working conditions for youth in the proposed "CPE" contract (voiding job protection).

They propose to "solve" this "lack of civic spirit" with obligatory civic service, responding to the widespread feeling that French society is split by a "social fracture" that needs to be healed, as Chirac promised to do during the 2002 presidential election campaign.

Yes, society is divided into two antagonistic classes, the bosses who own and control the means of production, and the workers who own only their labor power. To maintain itself in power, the ruling class nurtures racism and sexism to divide the working class.

But many don’t yet see this. They vaguely feel something’s rotten in French society, and bosses’ servants like Armanet and Morel have a miraculous snake oil to sell — a mixture of nationalism and mysticism, a call for a "moral revolution." These are exactly the ingredients of fascism in the first half of the 20th century.

In "Le Monde," Armanet and Morel say civic service "is the collective realization of solidarity in a society that is threatening to break up, it is a work of integration that draws not only upon youth but also upon the whole of society in a moral renewal,…taking up the transmission of values that is the duty of each generation."

They cite a March 2006 poll showing that 90% of France generally, and 86% of young people, favor some form of civic service. It’s not surprising that people generally, particularly young people, want to help capitalism’s outcasts — "the elderly, the isolated, the illiterate, the marginalized, and the handicapped." It’s also not surprising that, with a 22% youth unemployment rate (not counting two-thirds of those aged 15-24, who are students), young people want to do something constructive with their lives.

Communists certainly favor working-class solidarity — mutual aid among all workers, who form society’s overwhelming majority and produce all value. But Armanet and Morel want to channel this desire into a fascist system to keep the bosses in power.

In a March Internet forum, Armanet offered "carrots" to win youth to obligatory civic service: a driver’s license, job skills and state payments into a retirement scheme. Government jobs would require previous civic service. Youth would get 350 euros a month pocket money.

When one young person complained this was far below the poverty level, Armanet answered that young people shouldn’t demand any pay, that self-sacrifice is necessary to create a spirit of brotherhood and to provide a "rite of passage" to adulthood.

Armanet’s and Morel’s ideas are dangerous because all the major presidential candidates are committed to implementing civic service. (Next: the candidates’ fascist programs.)

REDEYE On The News

Army double-crosses Iraq vets

The individual stories are hard to bear. Soldiers denied disability pay because Army doctors say they’re not wounded, they’re retarded; soldiers denied benefits because their heart attacks are ruled "pre-existing conditions"; soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress disorder being assessed as merely neurotic.

"They started asking me questions about my mom and my dad getting divorced," one soldier told Salon. "That was the last thing on my mind when I’m thinking about people getting fragged and burned bodies being pulled out of vehicles. They asked me if I missed my wife. Well, (bleep) yeah, I miss my wife. That is not the (beeping) problem here. Did you ever put your foot through a 5-year-old’s skull?"

Every last one of these soldiers, remember, volunteered . . .(Arkansas Demorcrat-Gazette, 3/11)

Cops do big snoop on activists

Undercover New York police officers spent more than a year spying on would-be protesters ahead of the 2004 Republican national convention, monitoring church groups and street theatre troupes that had no intention of breaking the law, it was reported last week.

The scope of the inquiry, long suspected by activists, saw officers infiltrating groups opposed to George Bush, or monitoring their activities in web chatrooms, and filing daily reports on their activities, the New York Times reported.

….[T]he investigation quickly spiraled into surveillance of enviromentalists, anti-war groups and even three local elected officials.(GW, 4/5)

Afghan Taliban back, and worse

"Nowadays in Helmand Province the Taliban is winning," said Haji Mir Wali, a member of [the Afghan] Parliament from the southern province of Helmand. "Ninety percent of the area is under the control of the Taliban, and they are imposing their strict rule again."

Outside of the provincial capital, he said, shops in Helmand don’t dare sell music, men who trim their beards are threatened with death, and schools have closed for boys as well as girls. "It’s worse now than it was in the Taliban’s time." he said. (NYT, 4/1)

U.S. pullout? Over CEO dead bodies

What would happen in Iraq if American troops suddenly withdrew tomorrow . . .?

The real chaos would break out in America. Stocks in Haliburton, Lockheed, General Dynamics, Boeing, Raytheon, and other defense firms would plummet, with layoffs in the millions.

Silicon Valley would panic . . . .

If an Iraqi pullout occurred tomorrow, you’d have to dodge CEOs leaping off tall buildings. . . .

And then there’s the oil, you know. (Pythian Press, 3/21)

Desertions up: Troops ‘worn out’

Army prosecutions of desertion and other unauthorized absences have risen sharply in the last four years, resulting in thousands more negative discharges and prison time . . . Using courts-martial for these violations, which before 2002 were treated mostly as unpunished nuisances, is a sign that active-duty forces are being stretched to their limits, military lawyers and mental health experts said.

"They are scraping to get people to go back, and people are worn out . . ." (NYT, 4/9)

Young Black and Latin men ‘pipeline to prison’

"[For] young men of color, American society has created a "pipeline" to prison.

"We expel them from school now at the droop of a hat through zero tolerance programs . . . When they have substance abuse problems or other types of challenges, from the standpoint of behavior and mental health, they go to jail instead of treatment. We’re warehousing our young people in jails where they learn to be criminals."

Minorities’ high school graduation and college-going levels are abysmally low. Imprisonment of blacks and Hispanics is a major factor in America’s shift from 204,000 prison inmates in 1973 to a world-leading 2.2 million in 2003. (Washington Post, 3/18)

Did US provoke Iran on Brits?

In January President George Bush sent a second carrier battle group to the Gulf region; over the past few weeks this has been [sic] conducting exercises close to Iranian territorial waters. US Patriot missiles are now also in place close to Iran. Also in January, US-Iraqi forces seized six Iranians, described by Iran as diplomats but by the US as member of the Revolutionary Guards Quds brigade. They still have not been freed….

The capture of the 15 British naval personnel has to be seen in this context. In Britain the capture is widely seen as a provocation. But when it is placed side by side with the US actions against Iran this year, the question is: who is provoking whom? (GW 4/12)

Is that a threat or a promise?

….The Iraqis are being warned that American patience may run out. They should be so lucky. (NYT, 3/22)

PL’ers Helped Defeat Nationalist Splitters in SDS

SDS — Part V

The PLP and WSA (Worker-Student Alliance) contingent had come to the Convention proposing a multi-pronged fight against racism. Entitled "Less Talk-More Action-Fight Racism!" it called for intensifying the fight against university complicity with the Vietnam War and broadening it to include campaigns against racist courses and racist university expansion into working class-communities. The proposal also called for allying with campus workers.

Key to its practical program was the political analysis that racism is a class question. PLP vigorously argued that workers of all backgrounds and nationalities have common interests and enemies, and that therefore the all-class unity promoted by nationalism undermines anti-racist struggle. These were the principles PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance hoped to debate during workshop time at the 1969 SDS Convention.

As noted previously, the SDS "national collective" had managed to block workshops. The debate about the fight against racism would now move to a plenary session. Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) speakers offered no program, defended no practice, proposed no self-criticism. Their main approach, represented by Mike Klonsky, was to bait PLP for "not believing in the self-determination of oppressed peoples." PLP countered with examples of PLP-WSA practice and struggle in anti-racist campaigns on many campuses and by offering points from the "Less Talk-More Action" proposal as suggestions for moving forward.

Many had come to the Convention with no particular ideological commitment, either to RYM or the WSA. They wanted leadership that would advance the fight against the war and racism. By the end of the racism panel, it had become clear that the "national collective" at best provided no leadership at all or, worse yet, acted against workers’ interests, as it had at Columbia, by blocking the anti-expansion fight in favor of reactionary "student power" demands.

By the Convention’s second day, the "national collective" was getting wobbly; its leaders began squabbling among themselves.

In an ultimate act of racist opportunism, they used the Black Panther Party (BPP) to bail them out. The BPP was a complex phenomenon. PLP supported its militancy and courage. PLP also unequivocally opposed the racist attacks, including murder, which the bosses, the cops and the FBI had launched against Panthers. But the BPP made two deadly errors, which had to be criticized. They supported nationalism, which had proved deadly to working-class movements. They also engaged in suicidal adventurism, rejecting a base-building approach to mass organizing. PLP made its position clear on these questions, adding that the best way to oppose racist attacks on the Panthers was to organize growing, militant struggles against racism, outlined in its "Less Talk-More Action" proposal.

RYM leaders wanted no frank, honest debate. Instead, they called on Panther officials, who then addressed the Convention again, with an "urgent message." It lasted nearly an hour and attacked PLP, including threats. It also included a disgusting pro-capitalist reference to women, that "their position in the movement is prone," which appalled the Convention. Essentially, Klonsky, Dohrn, & Co. were using the BPP as a shield for their own opportunism and political bankruptcy.

Backed by a well-prepared — and necessary — security squad, the PLP student organizer took the mike to explain PL’s position on issues, including "community control" of police, nationalism, imperialism and, most importantly, the way forward for struggle against the rulers. He attacked RYM leaders’ gross opportunism, asserting that their politics had been defeated.

Someone suggested resuming the discussion about how to fight racism. Bernadine Dohrn took the podium. Refusing to answer PLP’s arguments or discuss the fight against racism, she declared: "It’s clear we can’t work in the same group as an organization that hates the Black Panthers and opposes self-determination." Amidst a thunderous chant of "NO SPLIT, NO SPLIT" from most of the room, Dohrn, Klonsky, & Co. led about one-third of the plenary into an adjoining room.

While RYM met in closed session, whipping up support for the idea of ousting PLP, the Convention continued, finally holding workshops and discussing "Less Talk-More Action," as well as the war and the fight against male chauvinism.

Finally, RYM returned. Dohrn launched into a lengthy, incoherent diatribe culminating with the announcement that PLP and its supporters were "expelled" from SDS. The absurdity of this performance turned initial intimidation into its opposite. People began laughing at her. No more than one-third of the room walked out with her. RYM’s ploy had fallen flat.

The next day, the Convention continued in the Coliseum, passing resolutions about fighting racism and male chauvinism, as well as a statement on the walkout and a pledge to continue sharpening on-campus struggle. RYM, meeting in a church under tightly-controlled security, passed no on-campus programs at all. Its first major post-walkout achievement was a faction fight that quickly turned the SDS split into yet another split, this time between one group that allied with the Chinese "Communist" Party that was then hopping into bed with racist murderer Nixon, and another, that would soon become the petty terrorist "Weathermen."

Objectively, the splitting of SDS sabotaged the movement against imperialist war and racism. Consciously or otherwise, the RYM factionalists were helping the U.S. ruling class. But the struggle against the war and racism had to continue. The fall term of the 1969-70 school year would challenge PLP, the WSA and the remainder of SDS to advance under increasing political hardship.

(Next: The November 1969 anti-war demonstration in Washington and the Campus Worker-Student Alliance.)

The ABC’s of Wages, Poverty and Class Consciousness

The battle to keep an understanding of class society fresh in our minds is constant. Ideas that hide it continually bombard us, with name tags like sexism, racism, nationalism and so on. I teach Economics in an inner-city high school. My students are mainly black; a couple have parents who are Mexican immigrants. There is some shared experience among them, but the trend is to say, "Your Blues ain’t like mine." The danger lies in taking the next step: "My Blues are caused by you!"

Recently we looked at the wage system, showing how our idea of a "good" or "bad" wage centered on what it takes to feed, house and clothe a family of four. The Living Wage movement provides us with lots of stats. We also compared the connection between the average factory wage and the official poverty line.

Discovering that most wages (and salaries too) showed a real connection to the poverty line enabled us to show how the wage system actually creates a common interest among wage and salary workers. We are all connected to the official poverty line. We relate our "comfort" or "security" in economic terms to how far above that poverty line our wage or salary places us. In short the poverty line is the benchmark. The wage system unites us as dependent on our wages to survive and simultaneously divides us by making some kinds of work "more worthy" of higher pay. It makes us a class and dulls our awareness of "class."

Next we discussed the U.S. ruling class’s decisions in the 1980’s to lower the working class’s standard of living. If we were running a capitalist state, we asked, how best could we lower the wages of most workers?

Lowering the wage of the lowest-paid worker, it turns out, sets off a chain reaction throughout the whole wage system. We created a model. Imagine a group of workers so desperate for any type of work they would work for less than $7.50 per hour. Over time they would replace the $7.50-per-hour group who would now find themselves jobless and desperate. Over time they would replace the $10-an-hour group since (having worked for $7.50/hr) they would be willing to work for less than $10/hour,and so on. (Of course, there are counter-vailing forces, like skill level, but in general the chain reaction works.)

Having established how lowering the lowest wage becomes an extremely efficient way of lowering the whole working class’s standard of living, we began to catalogue the different policies introduced. "End Welfare as we know it" attacked all workers, white, black and Latino. "Retire retirement," the weakening of pensions and benefits forces more and more retirees to supplement their incomes by flipping burgers. "Mass incarceration" ousts mainly black and Latino young men/fathers from being wage-earners, forcing single mothers into a desperate search for family survival. Prison labor itself directly robs communities of jobs. Finally, mass immigration, workers fleeing imperialist-caused starvation and death squads, adds more desperate workers to the mix.

Then we stood back and again took the ruling class’s view. De-valuing the whole wage/salary system is a risky business. It can build class consciousness, an angry one at that. What would they do? Play the race card, we concluded, play the sexist card, play the nationalist card. Citizen against immigrant; black against white; anything to tear down the growth of class consciousness. "We will not be divided by class," George Bush, Sr. said when President and Clinton followed him by "Ending Welfare as we know it."

"They are playing us," one student summed it up when the class ended.

‘300’ Movie Uses Ancient Past to Promote Future Wars

The distinction between movie fiction and the ugly reality of the War in Iraq blurs in the box-office hit film 300. While the film may be set in the ancient past, Hollywood has released the film in the year 2007 on purpose. The action scenes have drawn millions to the theaters by employing the latest in computer-generated special effects. Yet the political effects of the film are the ones CHALLENGE readers must be on the lookout for. The ideas that the ruling class hopes the film will teach workers are:

• Loyalty, bravery and honor are best fostered in a fully militarized society.
• White soldiers fighting for the rule of law, order and democracy ought to be proud to slaughter thousands of Middle Eastern fighters.
• War is impossible for a society to win when only a fraction of its citizens support the effort.
• The role of women is to support men in times of war (both men and women are sexually objectified by the film).
• When you are defeated with a smaller number of troops the solution is to send more the next time (this point is particularly useful for the Democrats’ war plans).

The main racist theme of the movie is that the evil "Persians"(now Iran) are the enemies of the Greek good guys. With U.S. rulers weighing plans for future wars, it is no wonder the release of 300 was met with protests in Iran. The main Iranian national newspaper ran the headline "300 versus 70 million" in a reference to the population of Iran today.

While the Iranian newspapers ultimately serve Iranian bosses, U.S. workers could learn from the awareness of Iranian workers in this particular case. We ought to express outrage whenever the bosses produce such racist pro-war culture. Even if the next invasion is five years off, box-office hits like 300 leave a lasting impression as they are recycled through cable TV and on DVD.

It is important to be aware of this film, but this reviewer is hard pressed to suggest that any reader of CHALLENGE actually pay money and sit through it in a theater. The sex is weird, the violence is overdone and that is on top of the horrible politics we can expect from any contemporary Hollywood film on the Middle East.

Readers interested in seeing a heroic battle from the Greco-Roman world would do much better to rent or buy a copy of the classic film Spartacus, which tells the story of a massive slave uprising that shook the Roman Empire to its foundations in 100 AD. Ultimately however, the only solution is to create our own movies and culture through workers’ powerJ

1. Fighting Racism, Imperialism . . . Industrial Workers are the key
   1. Racism, the Imperialists' Tool
2. Black and White Shipbuilders:
   SHUT DOWN RACIST WARMAKER,
3. OBAMA & CO.: MASTERS OF DECEIT
   1. NEXT, STINT AS COMMUNITY
      MISLEADER
   2. JFK'S IMPERIALIST LIAR-IN-CHIEF SEES PROMISE IN OBAMA
   3. OBAMA'S REAL `WAR RECORD'
4. Class Struggle Rocking Europe
   1. LABOR STRUGGLES SWEEPING FRANCE
5. Students, Teachers Beat Attack on New Orleans Volunteers
6. Students Meet CIA Recruiters HEAD ON
7. Black, Latino, White Workers,Youth March vs. Racist Police Terror
8. U.S. Exploiters Can Always Top Themselves
9. PL'ers to Anti-War Marchers: `It's Not Just Bush, It's Capitalism!'
   D.C.:Vets-Workers Unity A Must
10. NYC: Youth Lead, Link
    Racist Terror At Home, Abroad
11. L.A.: `Iraq, Oaxaca, New Orleans;
    Smash Racist War Machine!'
12. Bosses' Crisis Leading to Cal Faculty Strike
13. 30,000 Healthcare Workers Reject War Cuts
14. Immigrant Workers Back Northrop, Airbus Strikers
15. Russia, Romania: Strikers Challenge Ford, Renault
16. Renault Workers Win in Romania
17. Chiquita Banana Gets Slap on Wrist for Funding Death Squads
18. `I was a racketeer for capitalism...'
19. LETTERS
    1. Paraguay's Lugo Shows His True Colors. . . .
       and They're Not Red
    2. Colombia: Bush Visit Brings More Murders
       and Arrests
    3. Murder of Politicians A Fight Among
       Drug Dealers
    4. Hospital Workers Spread PL Flyer
    5. Film Raps Mali Capitalism-- But Offers No Solution
    6. How Will Communism Improve Workers' Lives?
    7. Ex-Sailor Backs Shipyard Strikers
20. REDEYE
    1. Democracy fails the Stalin test
    2. Lula enslaves migrants
    3. Latin America: Rage vs. US trade deals
    4. 50% unemployment destroys black
       communities
    5. Oil $$$ don't help Angola's workers
    6. US military aims at Africa oil
    7. Russia to defy West, not terror
21. PL Worker-Student Alliance Trumps SDS Right-wingers
    SDS: PART V
22. MARK RUDD: FBI's Little Helper
23. Speculators Profit, Workers Pay the Bill
24. Mortgage Collapse Spreading. . .
25. CAL Teachers Oppose Imperialist Wars, Build Unity of Workers and Soldiers

---

Fighting Racism, Imperialism . . . Industrial Workers are the key

"There is no black and white here, just brothers and sisters." So said the Northup Grumman shipyard strikers (see adjoining article) who welcomed young students to Pascagoula, Miss. This multi-racial class outlook is essential to answering the escalating racist attacks on the working class.

From the 7,000 striking shipbuilders in Pascagoula to the 40,000 European Airbus workers that have struck to save 10,000 jobs, these attacks stem from the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry that is leading to wider wars. No workers will be spared. From Germany to the Gulf, from Paris to Pascagoula, the international working class faces the same enemy, same fight. The only answer to imperialism's endless attacks and wars is communist revolution.

Today, fast-charging emerging imperialist competitors are building their war industries. The Chinese government plans to build large commercial jets by 2020. They're testing a regional jet (70-105 passengers). Airbus is building an assembly plant in Yanliang and the Chinese are partners in the European global positioning satellite (GPS) project, Galileo. In January, they completed development of their Jian-10 advanced fighter jet, aircraft engines and air-to-air missiles "soaring to the top levels of aerospace defense technology." (Associated Press, 1/05)

Russia consolidated its aerospace industry under state control last year, and made its own fighter-jet alliance with Italy and France. Airbus gave them a 5% stake in the new A350 passenger jet. Everybody is beating a path to the Russian aerospace engineering centers -- considered among the world's best. "The most influential man in global commercial-aviation said that Boeing and Airbus should expect serious competition to emerge from China and Russia [in the next decade]." (Seattle Times, 3/14)

On another front, China wants to build a blue-water Navy to defend their worldwide oil sources. Their commercial shipbuilding advances make their plans credible. China is now the number two or three commercial shipbuilder, depending on who's doing the counting, and may soon become number one. The U.S. isn't even in the running.

As the rising imperialists flex their muscles, all bosses must wring every last cent out of the working class to compete. U.S. bosses have launched a full assault, especially on the industrial working class, in their bid to remain top dog. These attacks spell fascism, and will finance bigger wars on the horizon.

Racism, the Imperialists' Tool

Racism is the cutting edge of all these attacks. Boeing sent 10,000 jobs to low-cost subcontractors employing mostly Latino immigrant workers in Southern California and Texas. Maine's Bath Works, Pascagoula shipyards' main competitor, pays near $30/hour. In Pascagoula, ravaged by racism, workers receive about $18. In New Orleans, shipyards have replaced the super-exploited black workers -- and white workers -- with Latino "guest workers" at $8/hour. A similar pattern must be developing as Airbus and VW cut tens of thousands of jobs across Europe.

No union leader on either side of the Atlantic will fight for anti-racist, anti-imperialist internationalism. Ultimately they all fight for their bosses. Witness the spectacle of the U.S. auto industry as the UAW arranges for the destruction of over 70,000 union jobs to save Ford and GM. As Lenin noted during World War I, when war approaches these "International" union bosses run to the tents of their masters.

No serious resistance can be mounted until workers consciously fight racism and begin to embrace communist ideas as their own. No matter how militant the struggle for economic gains, workers worldwide will remain chained to their exploiters unless we unite super-exploited black, Latin, Asian and white workers in the U.S., Arab, Turkish, African and white workers across Europe, to lead the whole industrial working class. This fight against racism applies to Asia, Africa and Latin America as well.

We must organize support for the Northrop Grumman and Airbus strikers among all workers, students and soldiers (see page 1). Raising money for food, letters, petitions, resolutions and demonstrations of strike support around our anti-racist, communist politics are the order of the day. The current anti-war movement is aimed at one or another presidential candidate in 2008. But PLP relies on the industrial working class to lead the struggle against racism and imperialist war. Stepping forward in this moment of class struggle can help build our revolutionary forces in key places to end this imperialist nightmare with communist revolution.

Black and White Shipbuilders:
SHUT DOWN RACIST WARMAKER,

PASCAGOULA, MS March 25 -- "We're on strike for the younger workers and their families," was how a few strikers at the Ingalls shipyard explained their fight against Northrop Grumman, which owns the giant yard. Almost 7,000 workers, black and white, men and women, have been on strike since March 8 against the largest employer in Mississippi.

This strike has been billed as the first "post-Katrina strike," in that housing and other costs have doubled in this area, which was devastated by the hurricane. A gallon of milk costs over $4.00. The wages at the shipyards in the Deep South are about half of those at the Bath shipyard in Maine, largely due to the intense racism in the South. This shows how racism is used to attack ALL workers. Workers on the picket line reject this racism saying, "Ain't no black and white on this line, just brothers and sisters!"

To underline the point, many displaced shipbuilders in New Orleans, black workers who were scattered around the country, have been replaced by Latino immigrant "guest workers" for as little as $8.00 an hour! These workers live in small trailers, 8 -10 workers to a trailer, in fenced-off trailer parks in the middle of nowhere. New workers are rotated in every several months as "old" workers are sent home. There have been several protests, especially after one worker was killed, and attempts at unity between guest workers and black workers.

This strike, like Airbus strikers in Europe who are fighting the layoffs of 10,000 aerospace workers, striking auto workers in Belgium, France, Russia and Romania (see page 2, 5) and the loss of 100,000 GM, Ford, Chrysler and Delphi jobs in the U.S., all reflect the sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry as bosses in every country are forced to attack workers more and more to stay afloat. This life-and-death struggle between bosses leads to more and bigger wars for control of markets, cheap labor and resources, especially oil. The Northrop Grumman and Airbus workers are vital to the bosses' ability to wage war, and the key to stopping these imperialist warmakers dead in their tracks. Industrial workers around the world, armed with communist ideas and leading an international PLP, can lead the struggle for communist revolution.

Northrop Grumman is one of the largest defense contractors in the U.S., raking in billions in profits from the war in Iraq. They received almost $3 billion from the Navy and FEMA to rebuild the shipyard after Hurricane Katrina, yet some strikers are still living in FEMA trailers. Northrop Grumman received $101 an hour per worker to clean up the shipyard, but the workers only received the $18 an hour they normally make. The company kept the other $83 an hour.

There are 12 unions on strike, the largest being the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 733. The Pascagoula Metal Trades Council represents the other 11 unions, including from carpenters and pipe fitters to the IAM. In February, 90 percent of the workers rejected a company proposal for a four-year contract with no pay raises and increased health insurance costs, after stealing almost $100 million from the workers' health fund. In March the company proposed basically the same deal, and again 90 percent of the workers voted "NO!" This time, they walked out. On March 12, more than 2,000 strikers marched more than six miles from the shipyard to Pascagoula.

Three students from Chicago were received with open arms when they drove down to Pascagoula, bringing food and support to the strikers. After spending time with the workers, in their homes and on the picket lines, they left with a better understanding of how the bosses use racism to grease their war machine, and that multi-racial unity is the key to smashing racism.

While mostly white students were marching to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war, a student told the strikers that even though they weren't striking against the war, shutting down one of the biggest warmakers, leaving an unfinished Navy destroyer and two freighters sitting silently, was the most significant anti-war action in the country. The workers hadn't thought about it like that, but most liked the idea. One guy started yelling that he was for the war, and other strikers, black and white, told him to go home. The vast majority of strikers they spoke with, including vets and those with family in the military, opposed the Iraq war.

The Northrop Grumman workers are striking for us all. They are showing the unity of black and white workers in a period of growing racism. They have shut down a warmaker in the midst of war. They are walking the line at a time when hundreds of thousands of union jobs in auto, steel, aerospace, the airlines and more are being wiped out with barely a whimper. They need our support.

Take up collections of food and money. Sign and circulate statements of solidarity. Send them to: IBEW Local 733, 2518 Market Street, Pascagoula, MS 39563.

[For information about the food bank, call Tweety at (228) 249-1600]

OBAMA & CO.: MASTERS OF DECEIT

Barack Obama's lifelong service to the biggest U.S. capitalists belies his "man-of-the-people" image and provides an important lesson on the dialectical category of appearance and essence. Examining Obama's career through the lens of class analysis shatters his charismatic false front and exposes a sworn enemy of workers. Despite his popular appeal, Obama has always worked for the main wing of U.S. rulers, helping them implement the police state and widening wars they need.

Fresh out of Columbia University in 1984, Obama landed a job as writer-researcher at Business International Corporation (BIC) in New York. At the time, BIC was helping Big Oil and Wall Street battle the Reagan White House over imperialist policy. For the benefit of Chiquita Banana, Dole and other U.S. agri-businesses, the Reagan gang was arming Nicaragua's anti-government Contras (and the fascist Salvadoran regime) and threatening an invasion of the region. U.S. banks and oil companies, however, needed to shift the focus to the Middle East. The construction of a Mid-East invasion fleet, set in motion by Democrat President Carter, was well under way. So with Obama's assistance, BIC churned out report after report warning that "what Reagan is doing [in Central America] is not good for business." ("Power and Profit," by Ronald Cox, University Press of Kentucky, 1994) In a small but significant way, Obama's scribbling contributed to the exposure of the Iran-Contra scandal, which turned the Pentagon's gun-sights toward the Persian Gulf.

NEXT, STINT AS COMMUNITY
MISLEADER

Having proved his class loyalty at BIC, Obama moved the next year to Chicago, where he launched the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a smoke-and-mirrors operation designed to stifle working-class rebellion by masking capitalism's brutality with liberal illusions of "progress." Funded by the Gameliel Foundation, which gets millions from the rulers' Ford Foundation, Obama's DCP offered "job training" and "college prep" on Chicago's South Side. This was part of the rulers' "carrot and stick approach," the "carrot" being Obama's role, to help hide the "stick," the soaring unemployment and imprisonment among the area's mostly black workers, who also faced torture and murder from city cops.(See CHALLENGE, 1/17/07)

Three years of rubbing elbows with the poor were enough for Obama. In 1988, he was off to Harvard Law School. But unlike most of his classmates, who went on to represent corporations directly, Obama decided he could be of more use to the ruling class by deceiving workers in the greatest charade in history, the U.S. electoral system.

After Harvard, Obama started Illinois Project Vote, which registered 150,000 new voters for the 1992 election. Voting gives workers the illusion that they have a say in a system which actually is a dictatorship of the capitalists. Obama threw his own hat into the ring in 1996, running successfully for state senator. He proved very adept at leading black workers -- whom the system oppresses most severely -- down the dead-end road to the ballot box. Eight years later, Obama won the U.S. Senate seat he hopes to use as a springboard to the White House.

In 1993, Obama had joined the Chicago Law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, where he remains "of counsel." Under the pretense of assisting workers, the firm specializes in voting rights. Its founder and chief partner, Judson H. Miner, was once corporation counsel for the City of Chicago, and, as such, defended rotten schools, hospitals and housing, as well as killer cops. Obama's own love affair with these murderers is blossoming. Obama's website boasts, "He supported the reauthorization of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program in the 109th Congress and supports efforts to increase COPS funding." Begun by Clinton in 1994, "COPS" has put an additional 118,000 armed, anti-working-class thugs on the street. Many perform "intelligence duties" like spying on war protestors.

JFK'S IMPERIALIST LIAR-IN-CHIEF SEES PROMISE IN OBAMA

For his skill in hoodwinking workers, Obama has earned the praise of a grandmaster of deceit, JFK advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen. After introducing Obama at a recent New York fund-raiser as the only candidate he believed could restore the nation's credibility around the world, Sorensen gushed, "`Obama, like JFK, is such a natural." (New York Times, 3/10/07) For the past four decades Sorensen has, with the liberal media's help, spread the lie (still useful to the liberals) that JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam early. This is the same Sorensen who wrote the imperialist manifesto JFK mouthed at his inauguration, "Let every nation know,...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." (For "liberty" read "U.S. imperialism.")

The modern descendant of the JFK-Vietnam falsehood says that Obama and fellow liberals oppose the Iraq war. Essence, in the form of voting records, once again trumps the mere appearance of campaign promises. [See box.] Obama is as phony as the House Democrats who vow to bring the troops home, while they vote the bloodthirsty Pentagon every penny it wants and more. Falling for what politicians say or how they look is a grave error. Getting past liberals' appearance and attacking their warmaking, capitalist essence, is an important step towards understanding the world in order to change it.

OBAMA'S REAL `WAR RECORD'

(Quoted directly from the Boston Globe, 3/20/07):

Campaigning for the Illinois Senate seat in 2003 and 2004, Obama scolded Bush for invading Iraq and vowed he would "unequivocally" vote against an additional $87 billion to pay for it. Yet since taking office in January 2005, he has voted for four separate war appropriations, totaling more than $300 billion. Last June, Obama voted no to Senator John F. Kerry's proposal to remove most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007, warning that an "arbitrary deadline" could "compound" the Bush administration's mistake. And now he's voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution that stated the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq.

Class Struggle Rocking Europe

TOULOUSE, FRANCE, March 22 -- On March 16, thousands of Airbus workers across Europe struck and demonstrated against layoffs of 10,000.

In Hamburg, 20,000 workers rallied. Seven thousand struck the Blagnac factory near Toulouse, and workers from Germany joined the protest. Others from various nationalities wore T-shirts proclaiming, "All for one, one for all -- solidarity against layoffs." In Méaulte, 4,000 struck the whole day, amid demonstrations in Paris, Saint Nazaire and Nantes. In Spain, 7,200 Airbus workers walked out for one hour. In Laupheim, Germany, 2,000 formed a human chain around the plant.

But one big demonstration planned for Brussels was abandoned amid rumors of rifts among the leaders of the European Metalworkers Federation. All the demonstrations were smaller than envisioned, exposing the union hacks' mis-leadership. In Hamburg, the IG Metall union invited right-wing Christian-Democrat politicians to spew nationalist poison. The prime minister of Baden-Württemberg (near the Laupheim plant) proclaimed that, "We're fighting for Airbus in Germany."

Similarly in France, a CFE-CGC union leaflet blamed German workers for production delays that spawned the Power 8 plan, and the FO union leader said more German workers should be axed. Only international solidarity can answer the Airbus bosses' mass layoffs in this age of sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry (see page 1).

LABOR STRUGGLES SWEEPING FRANCE

The French presidential elections have stirred up workers' worries and hopes. The Peugeot Aulnay plant strike for higher wages has sparked wage battles at Peugeot factories in Melun, Mulhouse and Sochaux. In Melun, two shop stewards who persuaded some workers to down tools are being threatened with firing.

On March 14, 300 Aulnay workers protested at Peugeot's swank Paris offices, in a chic neighborhood. "We've come to make some noise," explained Brahim, 25. "I make 1,200 euros a month and [after four years in the plant] my health is already deteriorating. I have stomach problems because of the odors on the assembly line. It's recognized as a work-related illness, but management refuses to switch me to a different work station." One demonstrator shouted at the executives behind the glass doors, "The company's got money, but we don't see the color of it! In the factory, it's slavery!"

On March 17, 500 workers occupied the Metzeler gasket factory near Rouen to prevent the bosses from shipping machines to Tunisia. Peugeot and Renault are pressuring Metzeler to cut costs, and for two years have been planning moving production abroad. On March 19, management signed an agreement promising it won't, reacting to pressure from government politicians, who want labor peace until after the presidential elections.

On March 20, 40% of the nation's schoolteachers struck against education minister Gilles de Robien's plan to axe 5,000 jobs, make teachers work longer hours with no pay increase and force them to teach subjects they haven't studied. In Paris, 5,000 teachers demonstrated. That same day, Paris Transport Authority workers struck. Postal workers have been staging slowdowns.

On March 22, Marseilles dockers voted to continue their week-long strike over work at the future extension to the gas and oil terminal. Tankers are tied up, costing the bosses $250,000 a day.

At the Cabaret sauvage in Paris, where 1,000 people were partying on March 18, Peugeot-Aulnay strikers of Arab and Chinese origin were invited to speak. "It's not just us!" one shouted, "All of France has caught this `disease,' wage plague [demanding higher wages]." That sums up rank-and-file feelings.

All the top union leaders have met with the three leading presidential candidates, and all three candidates have announced -- not too loudly -- that, if elected, they'll push through labor "reforms." Secure career paths, "rigid" work contracts and unemployment insurance are all on the chopping block.

Given last year's anti-CPE movement (halting imposition of "flexible" working conditions) and the current labor agitation, the bosses and their politicians need the union hacks to push through these cutback "reforms." And the hacks are collaborating. While encouraging worker militancy right now, and sounding out rank-and-filers to determine what they'll swallow, they're fine-tuning their negotiating positions. But their reformist outlook will sell out the workers.

The conservative newspaper Le Figaro (3/21) warned that in "supporting" worker fight-backs, the union hacks are playing with fire. Indeed -- workers need to build a red-led leadership to turn this struggle into a school for communism.

Students, Teachers Beat Attack on New Orleans Volunteers

BROOKLYN, NY, March 23--"To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing." We learned this lesson again last week as a sharp struggle developed in our school over a volunteer trip we organized to New Orleans. While many staff members raised money and supported our anti-racist efforts to continue doing work there, the principal began a "witch-hunt," trying to intimidate and scare people who participated in an "unauthorized" trip. He called in a few staff members and students to attempt to frighten them.

However, his strategy backfired miserably when it became clear that students, parents and staff would fight back. It began when a staff member was called in, advised to have a union rep and threatened with a wider "investigation." The staff member, a member of PLP, refused to "name names" of others involved and, with the help of friends, put out a leaflet exposing the attack on the trip. In a heated staff meeting a few days later, she spoke out against the investigation and confronted the principal and his allies publicly.

Since then, teachers have come to her every day, congratulating her and thanking her for telling it like it us. One teacher said, "I know you're a communist. I guess we need more communists to shake things up!" Many teachers have said that they would do whatever is needed to support her. The administration has had to back down, close their phony investigation and retreat for now. The outpouring of both support and anger is the only reason for this.

But, teachers can see the handwriting on the wall at many of our schools as the conditions become more fascist. A climate of fear is developing so that more and more people are afraid of stepping out of line, getting written up and getting into "trouble." Ultimately, it is only the growth of our Party that can meet this head on, As school bosses become less tolerant of our activities and ideas, we need a few victories to show people that you can stand up to these principals and administrators.. The only reason we withstood this attack is the years of daily organizing and political work that has been done here: study groups, meetings, small struggles, getting to know people, socializing and selling CHALLENGE.

Even though a teacher seems to be the focus, the attack on the trip is mainly a direct attack on our students. There is much discussion about new Dept. of Education regulations and whether students have the right to do things outside of school with staff members. The principal is trying to push some bogus regulations that will make it illegal for students to go to rallies, demonstrations or meetings unless he approves! Students are writing a petition and will continue challenging this. They are seeing the school become more like a prison and realize that some of the most important learning to take place is outside of the classroom. PLP will continue growing and organizing at this and other schools, and we will not back down. We plan to bring many students, parents and teachers to our May Day activities. We will continue organizing relief work in New Orleans with teachers, students and parents, and we will stand up to any and all attacks from the administration!

Students Meet CIA Recruiters HEAD ON

NEW YORK, NY, Mar. 22 -- "I felt so empowered!" "Yeah, today the working class is on the offensive," said students after a multi-racial group "welcomed" the CIA's National Clandestine Service recruiters to Hunter College with angry protest. The recruiters sought students for the "global war on terror," with a special interest in speakers of Asian and Middle Eastern languages and in black students. Hunter students and teachers, including military veterans and anti-racists, organized to disrupt the event and expose the true role of the CIA, using a leaflet and discussion with friends, classmates and coworkers.

Many Hunter students said they felt nervous going up against the CIA, but one said "not doing anything would have meant we let the CIA off the hook for the murder of millions of working-class people." Others said they felt comforted because of our solid plan to disrupt the event, avoid arrests, and still effectively reach other students. More than a dozen went in to disrupt, while more leafleted and gathered students outside the room.

Inside, a senior CIA officer described the CIA's "unchanging mission of compiling intelligence from around the world." A protester immediately asked what role imperialism had in its mission and was told he should try the State Department! The officer informed us that President Bush and the National Security Council want to dramatically expand the National Clandestine Service by accepting all who are qualified. As he tried to continue, the student was joined by others who noted the CIA's endless list of crimes, stressing that they were racist terrorists who murdered millions to protect profit and that they couldn't just come to recruit our peers to help torture and commit genocide.

For several minutes, the CIA recruiter stopped his presentation completely while the protesting students and pro-CIA students argued. At least ten students who genuinely wanted to hear the speaker vigorously defended the recruiter's right to speak. A protestor called out, "This is very serious; we're talking about people's lives and we can't just let them speak." We were surprised that the pro-CIA students were more hostile than the school police and CIA recruiters. This argument among students illustrates that the real struggle is the one within our own class, to rid ourselves and each other of capitalist ideas.

School administrators lost patience after about ten minutes and warned that the disrupters would be kicked out if they continued. They persisted. Applause greeted the students outside as they were removed, one by one. As the last young protester was escorted out, students chanted: "Free speech!" She responded: "Not for the CIA!" and led students to chant, "Who is a terrorist? The CIA's a terrorist!" We continued chanting and leafleting passing students as the event continued. Afterwards, the school's dean of students defended allowing the CIA on the campus and said he could have shut down the protest instead of allowing it. One student said, "That's because you have state power and we don't!"

Our party needs more actions like this. We attack racists like the Minutemen and the Klan whenever we can, which is good, but how often do we get to actually attack the designers of imperialism, which has killed many more than those gutter racists? Also, workers get attacked more viciously every day, and we shouldn't hesitate to take the offensive. Students were inspired and consolidated to the Party and are planning a forum to inform more students about what happened. Pro-CIA students will be invited to talk about what they thought. We've got work to do.

Black, Latino, White Workers,Youth March vs. Racist Police Terror

LOS ANGELES, CA. --"The workers united will never be defeated," 100 people chanted and marched to the Hollenbeck police station where the workers, with communist leadership, defied the racist cops for murdering Mauricio Paris Cornejo. This action resulted from working and struggling in mass organizations and with friends, along with distributing 500 leaflets in the neighborhood. Cornejo's friends spoke in several high school classes about the case and invited the students to participate. They stressed that both black and Latino workers face racist police terror and need to unite against it.

When a march and protest was proposed to an immigration reform coalition, some of the members resisted, saying police terror had nothing to do with immigration, that it would "distract" the coalition from its main goal. But others said police terror has the same roots as immigration raids and deportations. Still others noted that both black and Latino workers face brutal racist police terror. Residents of Ramona Gardens (where Cornejo lived) attended the meeting and proposed action. After a sharp debate, the group decided to support the march from the projects to the police station.

We marched that route, some 2_ miles, beginning with a multi-racial group of mostly neighborhood men, women and youth. The anger and determination were visible on the signs and in the voices of all. We chanted, "Police, racist pigs and murderers!" as well as slogans against the immigration cops and the war. As we marched, people left their homes to listen. Hundreds of CHALLENGES and leaflets were distributed.

When we arrived at the police station, about 30 cops formed a fence at the entrance. Speeches, signs and poems denounced the police as the real terrorists for having killed Cornejo in cold blood, for terrorizing the youth, especially blacks and Latinos, and for defending the interests of the capitalist rulers.

"The police are the biggest gang." "The only way to end their racist terror is to see that the root of the problem is the capitalist system and to organize a communist movement in the long run to finally destroy it." These were some of the many points resounding off the station's walls. All who participated were very glad they marched and promised to continue the fight.

Working in mass organizations can bring results. Although these exist to fight for reforms and build loyalty to capitalism, communists must introduce the problems affecting the working class, make the connections and to fight to win the organizations' members to question the very existence of the capitalist system. We must propose the kind of anti-racist actions that enable our Party, its ideas and our friends to sharpen the struggle; that is the way we can build a mass communist PLP.

U.S. Exploiters Can Always Top Themselves

Signal International recruited 300 "guest workers" from India to perform repairs in the Pascagoula shipyard (now on strike); charged them a $20,000 "fee" (!); paid them half the promised $18/hr; "housed" them in groups of 24 in 12X18-foot rooms at $35 a day! When the workers organized to protest these horrific conditions, Signal shipped some of them back to India and lowered the pay of the remainder.

One fired worker, having "sold his home [in India]" and with "no place to return to," slashed his wrists. "He was only able to earn a small part of the thousands paid to the recruiter and said "he couldn't go home like that." (New American Media)

PL'ers to Anti-War Marchers: `It's Not Just Bush, It's Capitalism!'
D.C.:Vets-Workers Unity A Must

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 19 -- Prior to the March 17th anti-war march here, 25 members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party gathered over breakfast to discuss the critical issues facing the anti-war movement, especially the need to bring an understanding to the marchers of imperialism, anti-racism and the need for a revolutionary party. Such an understanding will steel workers and students for the coming intensification of U.S. war actions in the Middle East.

Iraq is just a prelude! Democrat President Jimmy Carter's 1980 State of the Union address warned that an "attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." He created a Rapid Deployment Force to back that up. The likely Democratic Party candidates have already pledged allegiance to the Carter Doctrine by supporting policies that prepare for wider war in the region; they criticize the Bush administration's fiasco in Iraq because its tactics hamper U.S. rulers' ability to control the oil throughout the Middle East.

At the march itself, PLP'ers distributed 150 CHALLENGES and over 500 leaflets explaining the need for communist revolution to stop imperialist war and inviting them to march on May Day to build the PLP to lead this revolutionary struggle.

The best part of the march itself was the presence of several active-duty GIs and about 20 members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), some of whom spoke boldly about the need to move from symbolic demonstrations to active resistance. PLP believes this resistance should include mass GI refusals to fight the war (not just individual AWOLs and desertions), sharpening the fight against racism everywhere, closing down ROTC on campuses and in high schools, developing strikes against war producers, and winning people to revolution, not elections, as the only way to shut down imperialist war.

The next day IVAW conducted "Operative First Casualty" (dramatizing that "truth is the first casualty of war"). A dozen Iraq vets, dressed in their desert camouflage uniforms, simulated Baghdad-style raids at various sites around the city (including the Capitol!) by rounding up their civilian collaborators, restraining them with cuffs and black bags over their heads, and screaming at them, while others distributed flyers to passers-by explaining why they were "bringing Baghdad to D.C." This action was inspired by a 1970 Vietnam Veterans Against the War action called "Operation RAW" ("War" spelled backwards, and standing for "Rapid American Withdrawal") in which 200 Vietnam Vets conducted similar actions in New Jersey.

U.S. capitalists cannot withdraw from the Middle East. The bosses' need to keep control over oil pipelines, away from imperialist rivals, will force them to spill our blood to maintain their profits and dominant geo-political position. The U.S. bosses' continued vicious, racist rampage throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia may very well spark growth of the GI and veterans' movement in size and militancy. The danger is that the liberals will try to direct it into dead-end electoral politics ("elect a Democrat president in 2008"). Uniting the GI-veterans movement with the rest of the working-class movement under PLP leadership is the strategy for revolutionary advance.

NYC: Youth Lead, Link
Racist Terror At Home, Abroad

NEW YORK, NY, March 18 -- "Bush, Democrats, No Solution, We Need Communist Revolution" rang through the streets of Manhattan as a PLP-led youth contingent brought a revolutionary message to the tens of thousands of anti-war marchers.

The march, on the 4th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, was organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). It was yet another liberal call for U.S. bosses to bring the troops home. These liberals build illusions that the Democrats will end the war. But these same Democrats in Congress, while passing a resolution for a supposed timetable to get the troops out of Iraq, also gave Bush $100 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The multi-racial youth-led PLP contingent at the march countered the pacifist, anti-Bush politics by distributing 1,000 CHALLENGES and 1,500 leaflets and leading spirited chants the whole time. Many marchers took leadership from high school students and joined in the many chants they led. At one point a young comrade was giving a speech about the racist police-murder of Sean Bell, when a marcher came over and asked "What does Sean Bell have to do with this anti-war march?" Our comrade responded immediately and repeated the question for the crowd on the bullhorn. He then made the connection by explaining that the bosses use racist terror both at home and abroad to maintain their capitalist system. He described how this country was built on the genocide of Native Americans and the enslavement of African workers and today continues its imperialist murder of Iraqis to protect its system. Our group then chanted "Sean Bell here, Iraqis there, fascist terror everywhere!" We will continue to spread our communist message to our friends, family and neighborhoods with study groups and CHALLENGE sales every Saturday leading up to May Day, the international workers' holiday. As another youth explained today, "Imperialist war and racist oppression will continue for as long as capitalism continues." Only when workers around the world understand that our common fight is the one against this brutal system and for communism, will we have won. Let's gear up and make this May Day the biggest one yet.

L.A.: `Iraq, Oaxaca, New Orleans;
Smash Racist War Machine!'

LOS ANGELES, CA, March 17 -- Chanting "Iraq, Oaxaca, New Orleans, Smash the Racist War Machine!" in military cadence, our enthusiastic multi-racial group marched here holding a PLP banner proclaiming, "It's not just Bush -- It's Capitalism!" sharply contrasting with the liberals' thrust of "Get Bush." The 10,000 participants showed widespread discontent with the war in Iraq, providing an immense opportunity to direct this discontent toward its rightful source, the capitalist system.

A sizeable group of students and workers explained that replacing Bush with Obama or simply bringing the troops home temporarily won't end the death and suffering caused by imperialist wars; the only real alternative to this atrocity is communist revolution.

We distributed hundreds of CHALLENGES, including to young vets, and about 2,500 leaflets, proving that the U.S. capitalists' drive for oil is nothing new. For 25 years, presidents from Carter to Clinton have goose-stepped to the needs of U.S. imperialism, killing millions of workers.

At a post-march rally, a military mother who, though heartfelt in recalling her son's death, offered anti-Bush sentiment and an echo of the march's dominant mantra: "Bring the Troops home now!" When Democrat politician Maxine Waters told the crowd to "write their representatives," a group in the audience had a different idea, with raised fists chanting, "Fight imperialism!"

The liberal rulers' attack on Bush reflects their preparations for wars against their imperialist rivals. They're building support for Barack Obama (see editorial, page 2) or Clinton, hoping to curb discontent, but also to win workers to a new imperialist politician as "a change for the better." U.S. bosses are counting on the 2008 election hype to win workers to support larger future wars.

The GI presence at this march highlights the necessity of bringing PLP's communist line to soldiers and vets at demonstrations, as well as those serving in the Mid-East and elsewhere.

This reinforces the need to spread communist ideas everywhere, both in a mass way and in smaller groups. PLP's uncompromising struggle against racism and for workers' revolution to take state power is a necessity for us, the working class.

Bosses' Crisis Leading to Cal Faculty Strike

LOS ANGELES, March 26 -- By a 94% vote, the unionized faculty of the California State University (CSU) voted to strike the 23-campus system, which serves 435,000 students, half of them black, Latino and Asian. The vote was over management's salary offer, but opposition to higher workloads and student fees are issues, too. Although management recently gave themselves big raises, faculty raises since 1997 are far behind inflation. Management's offer is less than 15% for four years, about 20% behind their list of "comparable institutions," Faculty workload has increased. The system has 29% more students than in 1995, but only a 21% increase in faculty, most of them part-timers. Class sizes are growing; at one large campus, it's up 13% and the number of classes dropped 11% in the last four years. With this growing workload, faculty are forced to cut corners, giving less time to each student. Meanwhile, in the last 10 years, student fees have increased 64%, with another 10% hike scheduled next fall.

The reduced funding that is gradually destroying the CSU system is a direct result of the growing crisis of U.S. capitalism, and particularly of its imperialist wars. Like most of the large industrial states, California bounces from one fiscal crisis to the next, mostly because the federal government sucks money out of the states so that they can pay for war plans.

For years, the feds have been transferring big-ticket programs like Medicaid, aid for low-income families, and medical care for poor children to the states. The feds give block grants for these programs which the states must match, but they cut the grants or fix them at too low a level, so the states must find the money somewhere to make up the difference or else eliminate the programs.

As war spending skyrockets, federal funds for the states are slashed further, including Medicaid last year, while an administration proposal would chop another $24.7 billion over the next five years. The feds are also taking away $12.7 billion for student financial aid over the next five years. Like the CSU tuition hikes, these cuts are racist, affecting black and Latino students most.

California's bosses have intensified the budget crunch for workers through a huge increase in legal repression, which they hope will contain anger against worsening conditions. The prison population has increased 73% since 1990, three times faster than the adult population. Prison funding has risen much faster than that for higher education. The "Three Strikes" law -- 25 years to life for any third conviction -- has meted out much longer sentences, costing at least a half billion dollars extra per year, equal to nearly one-fifth of state funding for the CSU.

The strike vote signifies that faculty intends to fight. However, the plan is only for two-day strikes at each campus. The union slogan -- "I don't want to strike, but I will" -- hardly expresses the determined struggle that will be needed to make any headway against the CSU cuts. Students should support these efforts and raise their own demands. PLP must show both faculty and students that capitalist imperialism and war lie behind the attack on CSU, and make the U.S. war budget a strike issue. These politics and PLP's participation in the struggle will enable the Party to grow and fight for the only long-range solution -- communism.

30,000 Healthcare Workers Reject War Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, March 15 -- Today, 30,000 angry healthcare workers demonstrated here in a freezing rain against Governor Spitzer's proposed $1.2 billion healthcare cuts in Medicaid funding to hospitals, nursing homes and home-care providers.

Workers of all nationalities -- black, Latino, Asian and white -- represented their hospitals and nursing homes, coming from NYC, Long Island, Buffalo, and other upstate areas.

Many CHALLENGES were sold and hundreds of leaflets distributed denouncing the bosses' for-profit healthcare system. Some PL'ers marched with contingents from their jobs. A group of home-care workers passed out a flyer about their struggle for overtime pay. Until now the 1199 leadership has ignored their demands, and has relied on a court case filed six years ago. According to government figures, the 60,000 mainly immigrant women workers lose $250 million per year in stolen overtime pay! Imagine the billions stolen over the past decades.

Since the invasion of Iraq, billions of dollars have been diverted from social programs to fund the war. Thus, millions of workers nationwide face huge budget cuts in the Medicaid and Medicare programs. These cuts will severely impact the lives of patients and healthcare workers.

NYC workers are predominantly black and Latino, making the cuts distinctly racist. Most are women. Already victims of a higher racist unemployment rate, still higher joblessness will spread more disease throughout their communities and the cuts will reduce health care there still further.

The Berger Commission recommendations are a direct attack on all aspects of healthcare workers' lives and patient care. They would close, merge and restructure 57 hospitals state-wide, eliminating 4,200 beds and thousands of jobs.

The 1199-SEIU union and the hospital bosses representing the Greater New York Association made an alliance to fight Spitzer's cuts. Full-page newspaper ads criticized the Governor. However, this alliance was short-lived, with the bosses soon pulling out of the campaign.

At a Brooklyn hospital, many workers felt betrayed by the union leadership that allied with the hospital bosses. Only a limited number of workers were allowed to attend the rally. One worker stated to a group at the hospital, "The 1199 SEIU union is always forming a coalition with hospitals bosses and politicians to stop healthcare cuts. The union is misleading many workers to rely on these capitalist forces that represent the system that creates conditions for layoffs and hospital closings" in the first place.

Another worker said, "Our union contributed funds towards Governor Spitzer's campaign for Attorney General. Now he turns his back on us."

At the rally many politicians and union leaders advocated reforming the healthcare industry. But in the past 15 years such reform programs did not prevent the closing of 34 hospitals in the State nor laying off thousands of workers. However, workers are constantly waging battles with the hospital bosses against short staffing, violations in patient care and to keep whatever benefits we have.

Under capitalism, the needs of workers and patients to improve health care through preventative measures and to assure health care for all in a non-racist healthcare system cannot be met. Only in a communist-run system, with no bosses, politicians and rich people, can the working class have a commitment to all our brothers and sisters.

Immigrant Workers Back Northrop, Airbus Strikers

"Those bastards do the same thing to all of us!" exclaimed a worker in our factory. We were discussing how all imperialist bosses trim costs on the backs of industrial workers because of their need to remain competitive against their rivals. We noted how the attacks on Airbus and Northrop workers stem from imperialist rivalry, just like the war in Iraq, immigration raids, racism and attacks on workers employed by these subcontractors.

These immigrant workers at several Southern California industrial shops showed a strong sense of class solidarity, anti-racism and internationalism. Despite the fascist conditions in these factories, they eagerly wrote, circulated and signed petitions supporting striking Airbus workers in Europe and Northrop workers in Mississippi (see pages 1, 2).

One worker, who gladly agreed to help write the petition, took it home for her neighbors to sign. One neighbor, also a factory worker, responded by taking it to work to share with some of his co-workers.

The petitions all clearly extended support and international solidarity and included links to the imperialist war in Iraq. One worker's petition read in part, "We support your struggle because we are exploited too. They suck every last bit of labor from us for a measly wage while cutting our health benefits every chance they get." Another petition called for "international solidarity, not the bosses' nationalism".

The extent of support and political struggle generated with these petitions was limited primarily by our size. This makes two things very clear to our PLP club: One is the need to recruit more comrades to working in these factories; the second is to put CHALLENGE into the hands of more and more industrial workers in order to expand our base and recruit these workers, inside and outside the factories, out of intensified class struggle.

These immigrant workers' response to the Airbus and Northrop strikes is a small example of exactly what the bosses fear most: workers' unity and communist leadership among the industrial working class. But the anti-racism and international solidarity demonstrated by industrial workers in Southern California would not have occurred without PLP'ers in these shops bringing these ideas to them.

There's great potential for building a mass base for PLP and international communism among these workers. The bosses are trying to win us to nationalism. Our job is to continue winning industrial workers to see that our interests lie with workers worldwide, in the fight for communist revolution, to destroy the world's bosses once and for all.

Russia, Romania: Strikers Challenge Ford, Renault

St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) is now "Russia's Detroit." The world's auto giants are erecting assembly plants there to get into the growing Russian market (1.8 million cars purchased in 2006). But workers are fighting for their own demands.

Contrary to Ford's U.S. situation, production is growing at its 5-year-old Vsevoloysk plant (66,000 Focus models built last year). Ford expects a 10% increase in 2007. But on Feb. 14, workers threw a monkey wrench into the bosses' plans: 80% of its 11,000 unionized workers (of a workforce of 19,000) struck, rejecting Ford's offer of a 14% to 20% wage hike. The workers not only won the wage hike but also permanent jobs for temporary workers and job protection in case of job-related illness.

Ford's cries of losing money worldwide cut no ice with these militant workers. This strike sets an example internationally, showing workers in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere that autoworkers can fight back despite Ford's poverty cries. (On Jan. 25, Ford announced a historic loss of $12.7 billion in its U.S. operations).

Renault Workers Win in Romania

In 1979, Renault bought the Dacia auto plant in Romania, producing 100,000 cars a year with 28,000 workers. In 2006, 11,000 workers built 196,000 cars, an 80% increase in productivity.

The workers demanded a 25% wage hike to partially compensate for this super-exploitation; the company offered only 6%. On Feb. 15, a two-hour warning strike and the threat of a total strike the next day forced Renault to change its mind, fearing a long walkout by angry, determined workers. So the workers won a 20% wage hike for 2007 plus one hot meal daily and a 60% payment for the cost of workers' transportation to the plant.

French workers at the huge Renault Technocentre design plant outside Paris should emulate this fight-back against speed-up. In the last five months, the intense speed-up has caused five employees there to kill themselves. Renault is well-known for its racism and brutal treatment of workers.

Auto bosses are using the workers of the old Soviet bloc as a source of cheap labor, but these workers are beginning to stand up and fight. However, under capitalism, one way or another, the bosses will eventually take away gains made today. Thus, the main lesson drawn from these struggles should be workers' need to rebuild an internationalist communist movement, learning from the mistakes and achievements of the past. That's how the slogan, "Workers of the world, unite!" will become a reality.

Chiquita Banana Gets Slap on Wrist for Funding Death Squads

Chiquita Brands, one of the world's largest and most powerful food companies, has agreed to pay a $25-million fine to end a federal investigation accusing it of paying off Colombian death squads to protect their profits. Human rights groups have quickly called the settlement too lenient, charging that the Bush administration chose to file a "document of criminal information" against the company -- a less aggressive form of prosecution -- instead of forcing Justice Department indictments which could have quadrupled the fine. Some Democrats, fearing the growth of Chávez and other anti-U.S. capitalist and imperialist rivals in the region, are pushing for some cosmetic changes in the U.S. support for the fascist death squads. But this won't change the murderous essence of imperialism.

Chiquita has a long history of murdering workers in Latin America. On Dec. 6, 1928, over 3,000 strikers were massacred in the main square of Cienaga, Colombia, one of the largest such slaughters in Latin America. After 24 days of striking the United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands), the army attacked a rally in that plaza. The army gave demonstrators five minutes to disperse, but before the time was up workers declared, "Save yourself a minute; we're not moving."

The army opened fire, killing some 3,000. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's famous novel "100 Years of Solitude" claims even more were murdered since many were thrown into the sea. In 1953, United Fruit organized the CIA-led coup against Guatemala nationalist President Jacobo Arbenz, who had threatened to nationalize the banana plantations. Several decades of death-squad governments followed, killing hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan workers and peasants, many of them Indigenous.

Chiquita is not alone in supporting death squads to terrorize its workers and kill union leaders. Coca Cola and Drummond, which operate coal mines in Colombia, are being accused of such crimes.

Bush's failed "anti-Chávez tour" follows a long history of U.S. presidential claims of "helping" the people of Latin America. Roosevelt had his "good neighbor policy" in the 1930's while the U.S. supported dictators like the Dominican Republica's Trujillo and Nicargua's Somoza. In the early '50s, Eisenhower sent his brother Milton to the region. He returned to report that it needed economic aid. Instead, more military hardware was sent.

Nixon, then Eisenhower's Vice-President, toured the region and was almost killed by angry crowds in Caracas and Lima. Again, more military aid and support for military dictatorships. Later Nelson Rockefeller went, producing a similar U.S. response. Kennedy established his "Alliance for Progress" to counter the influence of the 1959 Cuban revolution with the same results: military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, among others. Under his administration, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba aimed at bringing the country back under U.S. imperialist control but failed miserably.

In 1965, after a right-wing junta in the Dominican Republic had deposed a liberal president, Lyndon Johnson invaded the country with 38,000 Marines to crush a mass uprising bent on bringing back the elected president. When Nixon was president, he and Kissinger engineered the 1973 fascist Pinochet coup in Chile, ousting the then-elected socialist president Allende. Carter and Reagan armed the death squads and Contras of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Clinton initiated "Plan Colombia," helping its drug-infested death-squad army. So Bush is just following his predecessors' footsteps.

(Next article: the need to build a red-led internationalist workers' movement to win the masses away from bourgeois nationalists like Chávez).

`I was a racketeer for capitalism...'

(From a 1933 speech by Marine Corps Major-General Smedley Butler)

War is just a racket....conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses....

I spent 33 years...as a member of the country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps....most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the Bankers....I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street....I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912....I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested....

I feel I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

LETTERS

Paraguay's Lugo Shows His True Colors. . . .
and They're Not Red

Ex-Bishop and reformist Fernando Lugo has announced that he will be leading a Citizens' March on March 29 to push him to the top of the polls for Paraguay's 2008 presidential elections (see CHALLENGE, 1/17/07). To placate the ruling class's liberal wing, he has officially become a member of the Concertación (a united front opposing the Colorado Movement). The Colorado Party has ruled for more than 60 years, and this opposition is going to great lengths to derail it.
The Concertación includes the supposedly left-wing Lugo, social movements, farmer, worker and student groups, several socialist parties, the Liberal Party, UNACE and the Fatherland Party (Patria Querida). But many don't realize that Lugo is extremely dangerous for workers. The lesser-evil strategy is neither a temporary solution nor a long-lasting one. This parallels the 2006 U.S. election and the "anybody-but-Bush" strategy. It is doomed to fail; it does not serve the interests of the Paraguayan working class. Lugo & Co. might loosen the shackles a little, but they will not and cannot free the slave.

Recently Lugo announced that as president he would initiate policies similar to Bachelet's in Chile or Lula's in Brazil. Workers only need look at Chile to see the inequality of their free market-"socialist" model, or look to a Brazil full of criminal gangs, drug traffickers, poverty and high disease rates to see that such models, mixing state- and free market-capitalism, do not benefit the working class.
President Nicanor Duarte Frutos compared Lugo to Venezuela's Chávez and then proposed putting all of Paraguay's reserve money into Venezuelan banks, not in the U.S. This strategy clearly placates the so-called leftists, yet meanwhile the U.S. military presence in Paraguay has increased under Frutos. Lugo also raised the possibility that imprisoned General Lino Oviedo -- trained at the CIA-run death-squad School of the Americas -- become his running mate.
When we march on the 29th, we must strive to sharpen these contradictions, sell DESAFIO and distribute pamphlets demonstrating that Lugo, the Liberal Party, Patria Querida and others won't change the situation in Paraguay. We must do much more to build the communist PLP, to fight for a society sharing what we workers produce based on need.

Red Guarani

Colombia: Bush Visit Brings More Murders
and Arrests

Bogotá was militarized when Bush visited his buddy, fascist President Alvaro Uribe. There were over 5,000 raids and searches and 325 arrests. Thousands protested despite heavy repression. Many were injured.

PLP participated, sold DESAFIO-CHALLENGE and brought our politics to workers and students to try to turn the spontaneous anger of many into a school for our communist ideas as a way to counter the imperialist-capitalist terror.

This battle energized us to fight harder for our line in the middle of the sharpening capitalist-imperialist contradictions, and to raise the level of the growing consciousness of many workers and youth about the phony nature of the bosses' democracy. Many are understanding the sellouts of the union hacks and even "progressive" Bogotá Mayor, Luis Eduardo Garzón, who did not hesitate to use the cops to viciously attack protestors.

Red Worker in Colombia

Murder of Politicians A Fight Among
Drug Dealers

The Feb. 19 murder in Guatemala of three Salvadoran Congressmen from the ARENA party (also members of the Central American Parliament) along with their chauffer once again revealed the terror of narco politics. Although we may never know the whole truth because "respectable and powerful politicians" from Guatemala and El Salvador are involved, we do know that those who control the enormous profits from the murderous drug trade and who make the decisions are in the top hierarchies of the government. The gangs are only "soldiers" who carry out orders from above.

According to the NGO Washington Office for Latin American Affairs and the UN Truth Commission in Guatemala, there are clandestine groups acting from inside the Guatemalan government, controlled by retired and active military leaders. These groups are linked to the bosses' political parties, the police, the judiciary, the army and the public accounting office. This allows them to act with complete impunity in laundering money, selling weapons and other crimes.

The Minister of Public Security and Justice in El Salvador, Rene Figueroa, says the murdered politicians "were not linked to narco trafficking." But in what seemed like double-talk, National Civil Police Chief Rodrigo Avila said, "There's no doubt that this was related to drug trafficking."

One of the murdered politicians was Eduardo D'Aubisson, son of Major Roberto "Blowtorch" D'Aubisson, leader of El Salvador's death squads. These squads, created in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador with CIA training, murdered hundreds of thousands of workers, students and farmworkers. Today these creatures of capitalism and imperialism enrich themselves by killing and poisoning the population with the dirty drug trade.

The phony left in El Salvador (the FMLN) calls on the U.S. FBI to "investigate" the "roots" of the problem to obtain "justice. That's like Tony Soprano investigating the godfather Don Corleone!

The drug trade is a capitalist business, based on profits and murder. Only by destroying the cause can we end this plague. This will be achieved by fighting for communism.

Salvador PLP

Hospital Workers Spread PL Flyer

While riding the train to the 1199 rally, I met a group of workers crowded into my subway car having an animated discussion on Spitzer's cuts and resulting layoffs. They were tremendously angry and frustrated that the union wasn't doing more. One woman said her army son was in Iraq and was very bitter about there being plenty of money for war but not for health care.

Distributing some Party leaflets, I gave one to the military mom. Immediately hands were reaching for copies. It was headlined "a system unable to provide decent health care shouldn't exist"; it linked these cutbacks to the oil war in Iraq; and sharply attacked the Rivera leadership for its alliance with the hospital bosses. It called for communist revolution to build a system that produces for the needs of the working class, not for profits.

The workers readily agreed that today's rally was too little, too late and reflected the fact that Rivera had already agreed to the cuts. They echoed many of the flyer's anti-capitalist statements.

At the rally I walked among the workers distributing flyers while shouting its headline and some of its main points. Scores of workers took small stacks for their friends and co-workers. Others asked for copies to take back to their job sites. After the 800 flyers were gone, I distributed 30 CHALLENGES, using the front-page article from the Chicago hospital struggle to illustrate the similarity of workers' struggles elsewhere. All in all, a good day!

Retired Comrade

Film Raps Mali Capitalism-- But Offers No Solution

I saw the African movie Bamako with two other teachers from my school. We were all very impressed. The film, whose setting is Mali's capital Bamako, is a powerful and artistically interesting indictment of the policies of capitalist financial and trade organizations: the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Set in a residential courtyard the film follows the personal lives of several Malians, while institutions of global capital [imperialism] are being tried outside. The prosecution calls witnesses (workers and farmers) who give heart-wrenching testimony about the devastating effects of huge debt; structural adjustment programs that drastically cut government social projects; the privatization of water and other basic needs; the charging of tuition for primary education; the replacement of food farming that sustains life with farming that produces crops for export; and unfair trade practices such as U.S. and European subsidizing agribusiness to the disadvantage of African producers.

The witnesses are eloquent and cite fact after fact of the social catastrophe befalling Mali and other African countries. The defense argues that the architects of globalization policies never intended to hurt the people of Africa. Rather, they "wanted to help" but were stymied by corrupt government officials.

The prosecution responds that corruption exists worldwide, and that global capital actually encourages and enables corrupt politicians. It also shows that the onerous debt African countries are paying has been repaid many times over, and that the amount paid for debt service is many times the amount spent on human services like education and health, ravaging the uneducated and the sick who can't get medical care.

The prosecution explains to the court and the sympathetic audience that Africa's enormous wealth -- its gold, diamonds, oil, uranium, cocoa, cotton and other raw materials -- as well as millions of slave laborers, have enriched the capitalist world, particularly multi-national corporations. Banks and capitalist outfits like the World Bank now loan money to corrupt local leaders, repaid on the backs of Africa's working class.

In the courtroom finale, the film unabashedly indicts capitalism, on behalf of which the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO function. But then the film has a dilemma: if the problem is capitalism, then the solution must be anti-capitalism and revolution. But then the director pulls back and calls for reform and the adoption of "humane" policies from organizations that the film has spent nearly two hours indicting.

It notes, for instance, that the World Bank is currently led by Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, money that could have been spent on schools and hospitals. The profit system is good at enriching a relatively few and instigating deadly wars for control of oil, and completely incapable of eradicating poverty, disease, and inequality. We can support reforms like canceling the debt, but we shouldn't spread illusions about capitalism becoming a "humane" system.

Nevertheless, Bamako is an amazing film, one that we should see with fellow workers, students, neighbors and people in organizations to which we belong.

Red Moviegoer

How Will Communism Improve Workers' Lives?

I think a letter in the March 14 issue correctly criticizes two CHALLENGE articles on the struggles at Cook County Hospital in Chicago for failing to describe how health care would be better for all workers in a world run by the international working class under a communist egalitarian system.

The letter points out that some possible health care improvements had been covered in the column entitled "Under Communism," later changed to "Forward to Communism." The column ran on the back page of every issue for over a year.

It would be better if such expected improvements were made part of articles about the struggles that PLP members are engaged in with fellow workers. Many articles about the Party's participation in struggles could benefit by referring to the way the particular focus of the struggle would be better for workers under communism.

That will take some thought on the part of the writers of each article, but this is one way we can keep communist politics as the most important focus of the article and of the struggle it describes.

Saguaro Rojo

Ex-Sailor Backs Shipyard Strikers

I was stationed at the Pascagoula shipyard in 1977. It was my first duty station where we met our ship, the USS Saipan, on which I spent the next three years. It was a very impressive yard then, 40,000 workers at shift change. Workers from four states worked there.

They build everything there -- aircraft carriers, submarines and destroyers. It's no exaggeration to say that these workers have shut one of the biggest warmakers. They, and CHALLENGE, have my complete support.

Former Red Sailor

REDEYE

Democracy fails the Stalin test

Riot police officers swarmed on a group of several dozen journalists and demonstrators on Saturday in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia's third-largest city, cutting off a protest against the government of President Vladimir V. Putin....

A small group of elderly people yelling "Fascists! Fascists!" tried to hold back a second wave of police officers....But they fell to the ground under heavy police shields.

"Look, this is a democracy," said one woman there who refused to be identified. "Under Stalin we had free education and free health care. Now we are not free to say anything." (NYT, 3/15)

Lula enslaves migrants

...Drive to the outskirts of Palmares Paulista and a much bleaker picture emerges of what President Lula has dubbed Brazil's "energy revolution". On one side, thick green plantations of sugar cane stretch out as far as the eye can see....

...At the same time [,] inside prison-like construction are the cortadores de cana - sugar cane cutters - part of a destitute internal migrant workforce of about 200,000 men who help prop up the country's ethanol industry....

"They will do anything to get by."

That includes working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat and earning just over $1 per tonne of sugar cane. (GW, 3/29)

Latin America: Rage vs. US trade deals

...Protests have been fierce, with Mr. Bush being taunted by signs and grafitti calling him a "murderer" and a "fascist"....

Officials traveling with Mr. Bush acknowledged the sense among the region's poor that the benefits of trade deals with the United States have not trickled down to them....

"For close to 20 years of democratic processes and rhetoric about the benefits of democracy and free markets, the average person is waking up and saying, how's my life gotten better?" said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity. "This is a fair question..." (NYT, 3/14)

50% unemployment destroys black
communities

...The official unemployment numbers...understate the problem of joblessness for all groups....

Over the past few years, the percentage of black male high school graduates in their 20s who were jobless (including those who abandoned all efforts to find a job) has ranged from well over a third to roughly 50 percent. Those are the kinds of statistics you get during a depression.

For dropouts, the rates of joblessness are staggering. For black males who left high school without a diploma, the real jobless rate at various times over the past few years has ranged from 59 percent to a breathtaking 72 percent....

Jobless rates at such sky-high levels don't just destroy lives, they destroy entire communities. (NYT, 3/15)

Oil $$$ don't help Angola's workers

...Angola is finding itself at the crossroads of today's energy geopolitics. It has become the latest stage in a global rivalry playing out among Western, Russian and Chinese oil companies....

...Angola earned more than $30 billion last year from its petroleum exports. But according to a recent World Bank report, 70 percent of the population lives on the equivalent of less than $2 a day, the majority lack access to basic health care, and about one in four children die before their fifth birthday. (NYT, 3/20)

US military aims at Africa oil

The decision to establish Africom, as the command will be known, reflects the Bush administration's primary reliance on the use of force to pursue its strategic interests. Among the key goals for the new command, for example, is the assurance of oil imports from Africa which have assumed much greater importance given the hostility to the US presence in the Middle East. (GW, 3/22)

Russia to defy West, not terror

Russia is to replace its military doctrine with a more hawkish version that identifies Nato and the West as its greatest danger. In a statement posted on its website Russia's powerful security council says it no longer considered global terrorism as its biggest danger and was developing a new national strategy....

The chairman of Russia's academy of military science, Mahmoud Garayev, said Russia could no longer afford to ignore that threat from Nato. Drugs and terrorism were an irrelevance, he said. (GW, 3/22)

PL Worker-Student Alliance Trumps SDS Right-wingers
SDS: PART V

The 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention (June 18-22) in the Chicago Coliseum brought to a head the internal battle between left- and right-wings that had been seething within the organization for several years.

The left was represented by PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) Caucus. Invigorated by the practical experience gained in leading sharp on-campus struggles against racism and the bosses' Vietnam genocide, the PLP-WSA contingent arrived at the Convention with a proposal entitled "Less Talk-More Action-Fight Racism!"

The right-wing (which shortly spawned the terrorist Weathermen) was led by outgoing SDS National Secretary Mike Klonsky and Inter-organizational Secretary Bernadine Dohrn. It included Mark Rudd, a former Columbia SDS chapter chair, whom the rulers had turned into a media star after the 1968 Columbia strike. Throughout the period leading up to the strike, Rudd had consistently opposed the campaign over its main issues: Columbia's ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses and the university's racist expansion into Harlem.

The national SDS right-wing had named itself the "Revolutionary Youth Movement" (RYM). During the pre-Convention period, RYM leaders had focused on two goals: in-fighting for political control within SDS and uniting to "get" PL by smashing the growing Worker-Student Alliance Caucus. Expelling PLP from SDS had replaced the struggle against racism and imperialist war as RYM's priority.

The bait was two-pronged: first, the time-worn anti-communist cliché about PLP as "external cadre" bent on manipulating the SDS rank and file, and second, pseudo-revolutionary nationalism, backed by RYM's unprincipled alliance with the Black Panther Party. (See next issue for an analysis of this alliance.)

Two thousand people attended the Convention, by far the largest turnout in SDS history. The first major fight concerned workshops. PLP and the WSA supported them as the best vehicle for discussing the tactics and politics of struggle and the important ideological differences within the organization. Klonsky & Co. opposed such discussion, offering the lame excuse that there was "no room in the vast Coliseum." When that was exposed as a hoax, Klonsky offered the absurd argument that workshops were PLP's "hunting ground for young people." Another RYM leader called supporting workshops "anti-communist" because it showed the SDS rank and file didn't trust a few leaders to settle matters on the floor.

The membership voted down this nonsense in favor of the workshops, but the RYM "national collective" offered speakers and panels to replace slots of workshop time. This tactic was cleverer, the "national collective" using it to block the workshops.

Most people had come to the Convention expecting to discuss different political approaches to the practical task of building an anti-imperialist, anti-racist movement. PLP's anti-nationalist position, which by now had been published in PL Magazine ("Revolutionaries Must Fight Nationalism"), could be understood only in this context. But the opportunist RYM crowd avoided all discussion of practice, smearing PL as "racist" and "opposed to struggle."

The RYM leadership never showed how the WSA's supposedly "reactionary" ideas undermined its practice during militant campus fights from San Francisco State to Harvard, in which the PLP and WSA had played key roles. When the RYM leaders' own practice was criticized, as at Columbia and Berkeley, they had no response except more red-baiting.

The racism panel exposed the total bankruptcy of the "national collective." (Next: The minority "expels" the majority.)

MARK RUDD: FBI's Little Helper

(Excerpts from a Feb. 17 speech to the "Movement for A Democratic Society" by Mark Rudd, former leader of the SDS's right-wing, on "The Death of SDS," exposing the anti-communist lie that "PLP wrecked SDS." Actually PL'ers fought for a mass Worker-Student Alliance-based SDS while facing physical and ideological attacks from the terrorist Weathermen and other right-wingers.)

I [was]...one of the principal authors, almost forty years ago, of a totally failed strategy.... My little faction seized control of the SDS national office and several of the regional offices. We then made the tragic decision -- in 1969, at the height of the [Vietnam] war -- to kill off SDS because it wasn't revolutionary enough for us....

I remember a certain meeting with no more than ten people present -- out of a national membership of 12,000 and perhaps ten times that many chapter members -- at which we in the Weatherman clique running the NO [National Office -- Ed.] decided to scuttle SDS. I remember driving a VW van with Teddy Gold from the NY Regional Office...[in NYC -- Ed.] to the Sanitation Dept. pier at the end of W. 14th Street...and dumping the addressograph mailing stencils and other records from the Regional Office onto a barge. These...decisions...I and my comrades made unilaterally....

We could have... fought to keep SDS in existence...to unite as many people as possible against the war (which is what the Vietnamese had asked us to do) while at the same time educating around imperialism. I often wonder, had we done so, where we would have been a few months later, in May, 1970, when the biggest student protests in American history jumped off?....

The Weatherman faction, by killing off SDS, did the work of the FBI for them. Assuming we weren't in the pay of the FBI, we should have been.

Speculators Profit, Workers Pay the Bill

The recent subprime mortgage scandal shows that greed for profits under capitalism knows no limits. When profiteering causes a crisis, the pain is always passed on to the working class.

The booming real estate market in the early 2000s attracted speculators who wanted to get in on the scam of lending money to people with imperfect credit. Regulated financial institutions like banks could only give mortgages to those with adequate credit. Speculators rushed in to fill this void and set up new outfits that borrowed from banks in order to finance mortgages to subprimes (mostly low-wage workers who couldn't qualify for credit elsewhere) giving out mortgages pretty much to anyone who applied.

The media exclaimed how the "American dream" of home ownership now had been extended to all. The subprime mortgages were a fraud right from the beginning. They had seductive low-interest rates for the first few years but then the rates ballooned. To keep up the mortgage payments, workers could refinance (going further into debt) because housing prices were still rising. But now that the boom is over, and rising interest rates have made monthly mortgage payments much higher, millions of workers have fallen behind and are in default.

As the foreclosure sales (when workers are thrown out and the banks sell their houses), these workers will be saddled with the difference as a mountain of debt in many cases won't cover the amount of the bloated mortgages, (with capitalism's racism causing a disproportionate number of them to be black and Latin).

Workers woes will be compounded by new laws that largely prevent them from declaring bankruptcy -- at the same time corporate bankruptcy rights to abrogate union contracts and void worker pension guarantees were preserved. So much for the "promises" of capitalism!

Faced with the threat that the failure of the subprimes could cause a financial crisis, liberals are calling for regulating the mortgage speculators. This call for capitalism to "change its stripes" flies in the face of the bosses' constant drive for maximum profits. The "regulated" banks, after all, who weren't allowed to make the subprime loans, had little reservation about buying "bundles" of these mortgages from the speculators so that they could get a cut of the profits from workers' future misery. The only solution for workers will be getting rid of the speculators AND the "respectable" bosses who, with their usual greed, financed and profited from the subprime mortgages.

Mortgage Collapse Spreading. . .

Lost profits from the collapse of the subprime mortgage speculations are worrisome to U.S. bosses. The real fear is that this collapse will spread throughout the whole economy. The NY Times estimates that over $800 billion of highly vulnerable mortgages have been written in the last five years of the housing boom. Banks that have profited from those mortgages may now have to write off losses, as foreclosures are rising to record levels. These losses will depress housing prices, making it impossible for other homeowners to continue the refinancing that have enabled them to pay the higher mortgage payments caused by recent increases in interest rates.

This collapse promises to slow down or end the boom in new housing construction that has been the biggest plus for the bosses' economy in recent years. If the economy slows down sharply, the rulers will be harder pressed to pay for their war plans. Foreign capitalists who have financed the growing U.S. debt will want higher interest payments to "stay the course" and those higher rates would only make the housing crisis worse. US rulers will use tax increases, wage cuts and terror tactics to try to pass their losses onto the working class. Liberals will call for "shared sacrifice" which just means that workers get to pay the bill!

CAL Teachers Oppose Imperialist Wars, Build Unity of Workers and Soldiers

LOS ANGELES, CA, March 18 -- Delegates to the annual convention of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) voted with their feet and their ballots this weekend. Almost 100 delegates joined the mass anti-war march in Hollywood. Some carried signs calling for "US Out of Iraq Now, No War on Iran." Other signs linked the Iraq war to racism and class struggle at home, supporting Katrina survivors striking war profiteer Northrop Grumman in Mississippi (see page 1). Others demanded the U.S. government stop destroying Baghdad and start rebuilding New Orleans.

Convention delegates supported a resolution of solidarity with the Northrop Grumman strikers, identifying the company as a major military contractor and highlighting the resources fattening company profits by 39% in the last quarter of 2006, resources desperately needed by workers who survived Katrina. Several delegates agreed with a leaflet saying this strike shows "the power of the working class to throw a monkey wrench into the heart of the war machine." Some also agreed that European strikers against Airbus face the same attacks.

Delegates also enthusiastically supported the Oaxaca teachers, raising over $2,000 to send home with a guest speaker from their union. They approved resolutions opposing war on Iran and declaring solidarity with the faculty of the California State University system (who are not CFT members) in their current contract struggle. Nearly 400 delegates also voted to support Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused deployment to Iraq, but said he would go to Afghanistan, and to encourage CFT locals and members to "report our anti-war position to active-duty soldiers wherever possible." This indicated a growing awareness of the need for an anti-war movement inside the U.S. military. However, its cautious wording and lack of a plan show that much more work is needed to win anti-war teachers away from legalistic, patriotic pacifism, to a revolutionary anti-imperialist outlook.

The liberal CFT leadership didn't openly oppose these resolutions, but pushed its own political agenda with speeches from Democratic Party politicians and a boring presentation on healthcare "reform." State Senator Gil Cedillo promoted his "California Dream Act" which would allow undocumented immigrant students to pay in-state tuition. The Act's name aims to confuse people into supporting the national "DREAM Act" which would draw immigrant youth into the military.

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa begged teachers to support his plan to take over the city school system, for "reform" and "accountability." Few were impressed, but many still wrongly believe that liberal boss-sponsored "reforms" would benefit black and Latin working-class children. Little time was allowed for discussion. Sharper struggle is needed to expose the roots of the racism in the education system. These "reforms" aim to win students and teachers to patriotism. Some mistakenly try to "work with" or "around" these liberal reformers in the CFT leadership rather than confront their pro-imperialist politics.

The American Federation of Teachers Peace and Justice Caucus members gave leadership in advancing many of these resolutions and in organizing the march contingent. Now they must raise the issues in their schools and organize teachers and students for action.

CHALLENGE readers should get the paper to friends and invite them to PLP's May Day activities. This will prepare them to even more sharply challenge the leadership's liberal politics next time. Such a struggle can help PLP grow and is necessary to organize a communist revolution that would truly destroy the profit system and its wars.

 

Fight Racism: Bosses' Tool To Divide Workers

Racism Hurts All Workers

Anti-Racists Expose Obama Rally

Obama Wants Wider War

Dems Pledge More Billions for Iraq Slaughter

Obeying Imperialist Masters, Democrat Attacks GI Mom

Democrats' 'Anti-War' Move Aids Deadly 'Surge'

Like It Or Not, Rulers Will Restore Draft

Students See Racist Capitalism at Work in New Orleans

Strike Against Katrina Profiteers

Campus Rally Links War, Racist Lab, Budget Cuts

Aerospace Workers Need Multi-Racial Internationalism

Airbus Walkout Faces Labor Fakers', Pols' Sellout

Strikers Must Fight Peugeot Racism

Capitalism's Poverty Killed Mali Immigrants in Bronx Fire

Fascist Storm Troopers Round Up Immigrant Women Factory Workers

Mexico: Abolition of Wage System Only Answer to Slave Labor

LETTERS

Letter from Spain: The ETA, Nationalism and Communism

CHALLENGE Comment

It's the Bosses Who Dictate Censorship

CHALLENGE Comments

PL'ers Leaflet London Anti-War March

Mailer's Book Clueless on Fascism

CHALLENGE COMMENT

Back to New Orleans

Paul Sporn 1921 - 2007

REDEYE

• Yes, US in Iraq for oil
• US funds create the terrorists
• China legalizes robbery by rich
• Bosses' laws enslave 'guests'
• Young workers can't find jobs
• Misuse troops then rob them

PLP HISTORY. 1969 PL-Led Strike Paralyzed Harvard

U.S. Rulers Throw Wounded GI's on Scrap Heap

Bush Trip In Latin America Reflects Sharpening Inter-Imperialist Struggle

---

Fight Racism: Bosses' Tool To Divide Workers

Racism has been, and continues to be the main contradiction in the working class. It divides and weakens the international working class, greases the imperialist war machine and allows the bosses to stay in power. It is the main fiber that holds the capitalist system of wage slavery together. What else can be expected from a system built on the labor of African slaves and the genocide of indigenous Native Americans?

Capitalism created racist terror. As the black historian Lerone Bennet, Jr. wrote in "The Road Not Taken," black and indigenous slaves and white indentured servants "had to be divided by rivers of blood." Segregation and racism did not come easy or naturally. It was never "human nature." Instead, many slaves and wage slaves of all colors lived together, struggled together, raised families together and rebelled together against every attempt to divide them.

From Nat Turner and countless slave rebellions, to John Brown and Harriet Tubman's planned raid on the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry to form an army of freed slaves (which helped spark the Civil War), to the ghetto rebellions that rocked the U.S. a century later, most massive and violent struggles of the U.S. working class have been in the struggle for equality, to smash racism. That struggle will never end until capitalism and wage slavery are destroyed with communist revolution!

Racist terror, segregation and lies against black workers are meant to punish militancy and divide the working class. The bosses try to get native born-workers to blame immigrants for lower pay and worsening conditions. They want us to see Arab immigrants as "terrorists" to dehumanize them and win us to fight for ExxonMobil's oil. While the police use black and Latin gangs to violently divide us, they use Illinois Senator Barack Obama and LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to lead us to the Democratic Party and wider wars.

Hitler's Germany, South Africa's apartheid system and Israel's brutal racist oppression of the Palestinians all took their lead from U.S. racism. And in every measurable sense, racism is on the rise, the cutting edge of fascism as U.S. rulers prepare for a future of endless wars and genocide. The lower family income of black and Latin workers compared to white family income adds up to an extra $250 billion in super-profits for the bosses. From life expectancy to infant mortality, from a widening wage gap to blacks suffering twice the unemployment of whites, from increased poverty to increased drop-out rates, black and Latino workers and youth are being hit first and hardest.

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. To enforce these attacks, the bosses rely on racist police terror and mass incarceration. While blacks and Latinos comprise only 25% of the U.S. population, there are more than twice as many in prisons compared to white inmates.

It was Clinton, the liberal "first black president" who ended welfare, put 100,000 more racist killer cops on the streets, doubled the border patrol leading to hundreds of deaths of immigrants trying to cross the border, deported more people than any president in U.S. history, and doubled the prison population to over two million, the highest in the world! About 70% of the prison population is black and Latino. The brutal racist incarceration of black youth (the "War on Drugs") preceded and laid the basis for, Bush's "War on Terror," mass round-ups of Muslim and Arab immigrants, secret prisons and torture.

Racism Hurts All Workers

With the union leaders' help, the auto, steel, airlines and aerospace giants have sub-contracted tens of thousands of jobs to low-paid mainly black and Latino citizen and immigrant workers. While Boeing eliminated 50,000 jobs in Washington, subcontractors in southern California boomed, paying mainly immigrant labor less than half of Boeing wages. With the addition of over 15,000 auto-related factories - many Asian and European-owned - auto production has shifted to lower-paid workers across the South, leaving cities like Detroit, Flint, and Toledo in ruins. While black, Latino and immigrant workers are shouldering the main burden of U.S. imperialism in decline, all workers' jobs, wages, pensions and healthcare are being devastated. This shows how the bosses use racism to divide and weaken the whole working class.

U.S. imperialism has killed over 650,000 Iraqis in the last four years, well over 1.2 million since 1992. More than 850 million people live on less than one dollar a day - the World Bank's international poverty line - and half the world lives on less than $2-a-day! Over 250,000 children die every week of hunger and malnutrition. The vast majority are black, Latin and Asian.

Attacks on African and Arab immigrants sweep across Europe while over one-third of the African population is malnourished, AIDS is rampant and life expectancy is under 41 years. In Latin America there are 98 million homeless people.

From the Serb-Muslim "ethnic cleansings" in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to the Tutsi-Hutu genocide in Rwanda, to the current U.S.-sponsored Sunni-Shia bloodbath in Iraq, to the slaughter of four million Congolese in a war for diamonds, coltan and gold, to mass murder in Darfur, racist genocide has become a growing trend, the cost of doing business in a world still suffering the loss of a once powerful world communist movement. Can the U.S. be far behind?

From the chilling sight of 100,000 black workers being left behind to die when Katrina struck New Orleans, to the closing of half the health clinics in Chicago with a patient population over 80% black and Latino, to AIDS being the #1 killer of black women between 20 and 40, the answer starts to become clearer.

Black and Latino nationalism helps the racist bosses by dividing the working class and simultaneously weakens the fight against racism, the rulers' main divisive tool. We are one international working class with the same enemy and the same fight. Only the working class, which creates all value, can unite to destroy capitalism and run society without wars, racism, bosses, or wages.

U.S. bosses are drowning in a quagmire in Iraq and are facing increasing challenges from rival imperialists worldwide. But they still have a lot of life left in them. The one contradiction they can't escape is that they must rely on those they oppress the most to save their racist empire. That's why the morale of their army is lousy, and why soldiers will eventually be won to rebel against the brass and fight for communist revolution. Black and Latino workers and youth can bring their vast experience in fighting racist terror to lead the revolutionary movement and PLP.

When the Party leads fights against racism while exposing nationalism and patriotism, and puts forward communist ideas, then the fight against racism becomes not just another reform but leads to building PLP and is a major step on the road to revolution. We need to bring the fight against racism into all mass organizations, expose the bosses' ideas and win angry workers and youth away from the leadership's racism, nationalism and patriotic loyalty to the bosses' system. We need to make communist politics primary. The fight against racism is the key to building the mass PLP that unites the working class for a communist revolution.

Anti-Racists Expose Obama Rally

CHICAGO, IL March 3 - Today, PLP members unfurled a banner calling presidential hopeful Barack Obama, "The next Iran WAR President!" at a rally hosted by the AFL-CIO and its pro-war president John Sweeney. We shouted at Obama to come clean about his plans for widening imperialist oil war in the Middle-East. As security roughly escorted us from the Hyatt hotel, Obama said, "Someone tell that sister that I'm against the war," even though the day before he had addressed a group of Israeli businessmen and talked about dealing with the "Iranian threat." One anti-war activist left with us.

Calling the event a rally for "workers rights," hundreds of nurses and laundry staff from the Resurrection Catholic Hospital system were brought by AFSCME, which is trying to organize them. Sweeney, Obama and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin were all in attendance, to support the organizing drive and new proposed federal legislation to support union organizing.

These are the same pack of union leaders and politicians who did nothing to oppose the racist budget cuts in the County health system that are being carried out by fellow racist Democrats Todd Stroger and the Daley machine. The County will close half of its 26 clinics that serve hundreds of thousands of uninsured workers and children, more than 80 percent black and Latin. The cuts were made to fill a $100- million cut in federal funding due to the $2-TRILLION war in Iraq. These cuts will kill thousands of mostly black and Latin patients.

Still, workers were ecstatic when Obama walked into the room. Minutes after he began speaking, an integrated group, including health care workers and students involved in the County struggle, unfurled the banner and began walking toward the center aisle. We want Obama to know that he can't speak in Chicago without being exposed as a war mongering agent of the racist ruling class. We distributed PLP leaflets titled, "Where Was Obama When the Clinics Closed," and sold CHALLENGE.

Taking on Obama, especially on his home turf, is not easy or popular right now. This is similar to when Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago about 25 years ago, and no one on the "left" opposed him but PLP. But we are not in a popularity contest. We are out to challenge the misleaders and fight for the political leadership of the working class. In order to do this we will have to take this battle into the unions and churches, and the Obama and Hillary campaigns directly.

A woman who heard about the action later in the day told one of our comrades that she is active in Obama's campaign, and that the next time she has people over to her house, she will invite her along to discuss her ideas. That is the kind of ties and struggle it will take to turn the tide and expose the rulers' latest shooting star. There should be no place Obama can speak unchallenged! Join the PLP and march with us on May Day.

Dems Pledge More Billions for Iraq Slaughter

Phony "anti-war" Democrats in Congress want to give the Bush administration $20 billion more than the $100 billion it seeks in emergency funding for U.S. imperialism's increasingly deadly efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Disguised as demanding a 2008 Iraq withdrawal timetable, while "supporting our troops," liberals are, in fact, trying to make the U.S. war machine more lethal and more effective in stabilizing the Mid-East, and securing its oil.

The liberal NY Times (3/10) blessed the move: "House Democrats now want to add funds to speed the production and delivery of badly-needed protective armor, provide better medical care for wounded troops and veterans, and shore up the Army's eroding combat readiness....We hope they succeed." AP reports (3/8): "Democrats also intend to add $1.2 billion to Bush's request for military operations in Afghanistan." As they hand the bloodthirsty generals all the cash they want, and more, the liberal lawmakers reveal their unswerving loyalty to U.S. imperialism.

Obeying Imperialist Masters, Democrat Attacks GI Mom

Wisconsin Democratic congressman David Obey showed his true colors in a particularly disgusting incident. When Tina Richards, an Iraq war protester and mother of a Marine, demanding that Congress bring the troops home, asked Obey why he would vote for a war spending bill, Obey lost it. Labeling war opponents "idiots," he shouted in his constituent's face, "If that [the war bill] isn't good enough for you, you're smoking something illegal. You've got your facts screwed up." (Washington Post, 2/10)

The House Democrats' proposal (Obama and Clinton back similar Senate measures) gives a green light to at least one more year of carnage in Iraq and opens wide loopholes for future U.S. troop presence there. The liberals call for "withdrawal" in 2008, except for "targeted counterterrorism operations, embassy protection and efforts to train Iraqis." Counter-terrorism includes stifling sabotage against the Iraqi oil industry. The U.S.'s puppet government has offered Exxon Mobil and Chevron open access to Iraq's crude, but increasing violence keeps the firms out. "Since 2003, there have been more than 380 attacks on Iraq's oil assets: pipelines blown up, terminals set on fire and key personnel killed. Although some of the oil majors have privately identified areas in the country where they would like to explore, especially in the south, none have so far taken the plunge." (London Telegraph, 3/11) U.S. rulers' need to control Iraq's oil infrastructure is one of the more compelling "facts" Obey alluded to.

Democrats' 'Anti-War' Move Aids Deadly 'Surge'

Boosting the war effort now, while effectively delaying any de-escalation for a year or more, helps U.S. imperialists make the best of the remainder of the Bush presidency. The liberal imperialists, with the NY Times and the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations in the forefront, had called for a massive invasion of Iraq. But Bush, to please his donor and voter base, has refused to raise the taxes required, or to mobilize the nation. Lately, however, the liberal imperialists have asserted greater, but not full, control over Bush's war policy.

Rumsfeld is out and Chaney chastened. And the "surge," brainchild of imperialist James Baker, is growing by the day. Imperialist strategists decry it as "too little, too late," but it represents the best they could manage under Bush. Liberals in Congress are enabling the surge and thus stand as guilty as the Bush gang - amid a host of other war crimes - of the recent murder of a non-combatant and his two young daughters in Sadr City.

The Democrats' actions mesh with the recommendations of the liberal imperialist Brookings Institution: "Rather than force a showdown with Mr. Bush this winter and spring, Congress should give his surge strategy a chance ....There are good reasons to give the war effort...another six to nine months....[T]he new surge strategy being implemented by Gen. David Petraeus, while still insufficiently resourced, is much more consonant with classic counter-insurgency doctrine than anything the coalition has tried to date." (Brookings' Michael O'Hanlon, Wall Street Journal, 3/1)

The surge buys the liberals time until the 2008 elections, when they hope to replace Bush with one of their own. They need a president with the will and skill to militarize the U.S., for an imminent clash with Iran and a superpower conflict down the road. They need someone who can sell the draft, or as Democrats label it, "national service." [See box.]

Nobody should fall for Obama's or Clinton's or any other politician's empty promises to bring the troops home. Rep. Obey's open hostility is more honest. Backing liberal candidates advances the imperialists' war agenda. The only viable alternative lies beyond the voting booth, in relying on our own working class and recruiting masses into a revolutionary communist party, PLP.

Students See Racist Capitalism at Work in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, LA., Feb. 28 -- Over winter break, a multi-racial group of twenty high school students helped New Orleans workers fight the bosses' attacks, originally thinking their purpose was to "help the people down there because there is a lot to be done." Many had not understood the use of the words racism and fascism or the residents' anger at the government. That quickly changed in New Orleans.

The first day, residents of the CJ Peete (aka Magnolia) housing projects moving back into the houses asked for the student volunteers to help clean them out. These apartments, constructed during the 1940s, were not affected by the flood and were ready to live in right after the hurricane. The Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO), however, locked them up and wouldn't let the residents move back, even with "legal" leases. This is part of a plan to get rid of the public housing and replace it with mixed income housing, driving black workers away. According to Bill Quigley, law professor at New Orleans' Loyola University, "CJ Peete will go from 723 units to 410; of the 410 units, 154 will be public-housing eligible, with 133 mixed-income and 123 market-rate." In other words, the workers depending on these houses are being kicked out to make do with trailers if they can find nothing else.

As the students spoke to the residents, many of them began to learn about the daily lives of workers. These interactions motivated them to work harder to help, building a sense of working-class solidarity and willingness to serve the working class. But we sometimes allow the anger to fade or become cynical if we work on reformist projects without examining the bigger picture. We must understand the workings of capitalism to smash it and build a more egalitarian society.

While they cleaned houses, HANO police noticed more residents moving back in, so they acted to protect the bosses, telling students that they could be charged with trespassing and vandalism because the residents did not have "the right papers." The students left, some saying "I would have gotten arrested, we should have fought back." This proved the essence of state power: those willing to fight for the working class will be punished, jailed, tortured, or even killed. As the week went on, students began to make connections, saying that, "They can spend billions of dollars on a war for oil, but they can't give the people down here money to move back into their homes."

Deeply moved by what they saw of the racism intrinsic in the history of this tragedy, the students were politicized by their experience. Black students who were less surprised by evidence of racism felt a new obligation to organize more where they live. But this anger is not enough if directed at particular politicians rather than the system that produces racist inequalities. We must work closely with these students to develop a more revolutionary perspective. It is very easy to get caught up with reformist issues (getting people back into their homes is not something to be taken lightly), but if we make this primary, we lead the working class into the wrong direction.

We have distributed CHALLENGE to some of the students and teachers on the trip, one student and two teachers are attending a study group and many more will be asked to organize for May Day. This trip, along with communist leadership, creates the potential for a strong base in our school.

Strike Against Katrina Profiteers

PASCAGOULA, MISSISSIPPI, March 14 - The rulers' profit-driven reaction to Katrina's devastation has sparked a strike over wages and benefits by nearly 7,000 black and white workers here, shutting down Ingalls Shipyard (the state's largest employer), owned by Northrop-Grumman. The workers walked out on March 8 after a company wage "offer" would be wiped out merely by a $50 monthly increase in health premiums. This from a Navy contractor making huge profits from the $2 billion a week the ruling class spends on its oil war in Iraq.

"They left their houses to get this company up and running," declared fork-lift driver Willie Hammond, father of three, "and this is how they show their appreciation." (NY Times, 3/13)

After workers lost homes, cars and a way of life, they now see a doubling of rents and house prices, a gallon of milk now costs $4.19 (up from $2.59) and payday loans are needed to just buy gas to get to work.

Current projects on a giant Navy destroyer and several transport ships are at a standstill. The bosses' divisive weapon of racism was invisible as this united multi-racial group of strikers were determined to "hold out indefinitely." Their picket-line spirits are high; blues music echoes in the background while they set up barbeque grills to feed themselves.

They have received considerable support from townspeople after a solidarity march through the city. As electrician John Reed told the NY Times, "We're living…paycheck to paycheck, and we're tired of it. If we can survive Katrina, we can survive this."

All workers should raise support for these strikers.

Campus Rally Links War, Racist Lab, Budget Cuts

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - "One, two, three, four! We won't fight your oil war!" was the chant opening an anti-war rally on our campus. Some students wore orange suits and covered their heads with black hoods, depicting Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisoners. This caught passer-bys' attention, mirroring how U.S. imperialism has treated so-called "terrorists" and continues to build fascism and racism by portraying Middle-Eastern people as "terrorists" to justify torturing and terrorizing them.

We distributed over 50 CHALLENGES, while speakers shed light on the role of racism and the need to spread anti-racist struggles on our campuses. Speeches linked the war to growing fascism in the U.S.: Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama recently announced support for construction of the anti-immigrant wall on the Mexico-U.S. border. Like L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Obama also supports more cops in the neighborhoods to terrorize youth and workers.

Students made it clear that the Iraq war, possibly followed by war with Iran, comprises a U.S. ruling-class plan not only to ensure oil for Exxon-Mobil, but also to keep other imperialist powers like Russia and China away from this vital source of profit. Afterwards, many more students came outside for a fire drill, enabling us to continue distributing CHALLENGE and to put forward our politics.

One CHALLENGE seller talked with a soldier who was part of the group around Abu Ghraib when that scandal erupted. He agreed that the war profited the rich, but said that regardless of what the mission was, he only cared for his "brothers" fighting alongside him, showing soldiers' loyalty with each other. But this solidarity must be transformed and deepened into a class-conscious, internationalist solidarity rather than a nationalist one. Although he wouldn't take CHALLENGE, he stayed to listen to all the speeches. Hopefully, the conversation and the event itself exposed some of the lies soldiers like him are told.

Experiences like these show the greater need to reach out to soldiers, both inside the military and by distributing literature from the outside. We must also support rebellions in the military, as PLP did during the Vietnam War.

By themselves, counter-recruitment activities won't end the war. Eventually the rulers will need a draft, which Democrats like Charles Rangel have been pushing, as well as the current backdoor economic draft that has maintained troop numbers for this war. Ultimately, to stop this war and all wars for profit, soldiers and workers will need to rebel against the brass and the rulers to destroy the capitalist system that creates these wars.

Active students on this campus plan more action. They've been campaigning against the racist criminology building and in support of teachers fighting benefit cuts. The budget cuts, the war and the racist criminology lab (site of joint research with the LAPD) all have the same source: racist capitalism. We will mobilize students against these attacks and that root cause.

Aerospace Workers Need Multi-Racial Internationalism

SEATTLE, WA., March 8 - "Boeing says Airbus is the enemy, but the Airbus workers are in the same pickle we are," concluded a Machinist at the last Boeing union meeting (see article below). "We've heard tonight about [IAM International president] Buffenbarger's national industrial policy, but to answer the horrors of subcontracting we need international solidarity!" This call for the world's workers to unite stood in stark contrast to the phony interim IAM District 751 presidential election, where the candidates argue this month over experience (in collaborating with the bosses) and vague calls for change.

While a business agent and the current vice-president duke it out over nothing but their careers, 10,000 of our aerospace brothers and sisters at Airbus will lose their jobs. The candidates have studiously avoided mentioning the European strikes.

(Racist and Nationalist) Birds of a Feather

Unfortunately, the leadership of these Airbus strikes mirrors the lies of our own union misleaders during the "We Can Do It!" campaign held a few years ago. Airbus's Power8 downsizing is a carbon copy of the Boeing Dreamliner subcontracting plan. When Boeing initiated its plan, our leadership mobilized union members to screw mostly Latino farmworkers out of unemployment insurance, gut workers' compensation and give the company huge tax breaks to keep the Dreamliner assembly in Everett, WA. We ended up losing jobs anyway as the company sold whole fabrication and subassembly plants. The Airbus strikes may be more militant, but these pro-capitalist misleaders - on both sides of the Atlantic - are "united" in dividing workers along national and racial lines.

The Dreamliner manufacturing plan is racist. Indeed, the whole reorganization of U.S. industry is racist. Subcontractors pay slave wages to hundreds of thousands of mostly Latino workers churning out Boeing parts in Southern California and Texas. Mercedes-Benz's Alabama assembly plant is staffed by a largely white workforce. Down the street, 3,000 mostly black workers toil in a lower-paid, sped-up subcontracted shop. No doubt Euopean Union bosses will - if they haven't already - export this kind of highly profitable racist division of labor back to the European continent.

Bosses' or Workers' Values

At this same union meeting, the District legislative officer quoted Buffenbarger's warning that countries that don't share "our values" would control the nation's destiny if we didn't beef up our industrial [read: war manufacturing] capacity.

The implications are clear. As inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens, the EU's formidable war industry may not be an ally of the U.S. ruling class. Russia and China have each made huge production deals with EADS (a British-French-German-Spanish conglomerate). Buffenbarger places loyalty to the needs of U.S. imperialism over our need for international working-class solidarity against all bosses.

The union leadership wants us to "race to the bottom" against Airbus workers to help finance the bosses' war plans. Our answer is to rely on the super-exploited black and Latin workers in the subcontracting plants to embrace communist class-consciousness and lead the whole working class. Multi-racial internationalism is what PLP can bring to the class struggle.

We saw a taste of this when reporting on the union meeting back in the shop. Workers requested reprints of old CHALLENGE articles to learn how the bosses violently built nationalist and religious divisions between Jews and Palestinians. They wanted historical examples of how communists united workers in the Middle East. Next step: study-action meetings on this question to build rank-and-file leadership and morale.

Airbus Walkout Faces Labor Fakers', Pols' Sellout

TOULOUSE, FRANCE, March 8 - In their first mobilization since 1993, tens of thousands of France's Airbus workers struck on March 6 protesting the company's downsizing plan for 10,000 layoffs. At the Toulouse, Saint Nazaire and Méaulte plants, up to 90% of the workers downed tools. Nearly 15,000 marched in Toulouse, 3,000 in Saint Nazaire and 2,000 in Méaulte. The Power8 downsizing would sell the latter two plants and lay off 1,600 in Britain and 400 in Spain. Airbus employs 57,000 workers at 16 European sites.

Immediately after the plan was announced, Germany's Airbus workers in Varel, Nordenham and Laupheim also walked out for a short time, as did nearly 14,000 workers at four French sites. Eurocopter workers in Marignane and La Courneuve also struck in sympathy with the Airbus workers. Both Eurocopter and Airbus are EADS (EU conglomerate) subsidiaries.

The co-president of the Airbus workers' council, Jean-François Knepper of the FO trade union, declared that "if we are not heard today, we will have to strike harder. The struggle is only just beginning." But his radical-sounding rhetoric was accompanied by nationalist complaints that there are too many layoffs in France (4,300) and not enough in Germany (3,700).

The leaders of the five big union confederations, and three pseudo-leftist presidential candidates also marched, but all these fake leftist leaders accept the bosses' line - "there is no alternative" to capitalism. They're falling over each other suggesting ways for the capitalists to "solve" their crisis, mainly by pouring capital into Airbus.

On March 5, the five union confederations' leaders said they were "reassured" by their meeting with right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and centrist candidate François Bayrou. "Both…were concrete and…gave us their firm support," said CGT leader Xavier Pétrachi. "Although they think that restructuring is necessary to meet this crisis, both agreed that this…plan is not the right one….That's…what we believe, too."

This supposedly "left-wing" union leader supports axing workers' jobs so long as the axed jobs are "the right ones."

His rival in the FO trade union, Julien Talavant, gushed with gratitude because the politicos agreed to meet him. "We gave them our main demands, they listened to us, they noted them down, and they confirmed many of them…. They won't be able to let us down now." Talavant must believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, too!

"Socialist" party presidential candidate Ségolène Royal proposes "authorizing the [French] regions entering [Airbus's] capital ... and that the government commit itself to providing grants for research and development." Since the regions have no money to invest and the government is up to its neck in debt, Royal's proposal is an empty one.

"Communist" party candidate Marie-George-Buffet proposes "a low-interest European Bank loan to recapitalize Airbus and get it through this rough patch, so as to preserve the technological know-how." She's appealing to the capitalists' self-interest, telling them that tomorrow they'll need the skilled workers they're axing today. She "forgot" that the iron law of capitalism is dictated by the bottom line.

Trotskyist candidate Olivier Besancenot wants a "European consortium" to nationalize both EADS and its subsidiary, Airbus. As if a capitalist government could change the workings of the capitalist market or would hesitate to lay off workers any more than a private sector boss!

The European aircraft unions are calling for united demonstrations throughout Europe on March 16 to pressure the European Commission.

These fake leftists and their labor faker friends can't solve this crisis because there isn't a solution under capitalism! The only real solution to job cuts and all bosses' attacks is, in the long run, a communist revolution, when workers can run the economy in our class interest.

Meanwhile, one capitalist is laughing all the way to the bank. Arnaud Lagardère, holding 15% of the voting shares in EADS, sold half of his shares last April, before Airbus's problems became public. The sale fetched two billion euros - not bad, considering his late father paid only 120 million euros for his total investment in EADS in 1999. (Arnaud inherited his father's stake in March, 2003.)

Lagardère refuses to risk reinvesting in EADS or Airbus, but he's enchanted that all the politicians are making cheap promises about pouring in taxpayers' money to bail out the company. [Source: "Le Canard enchaîné," 3/7/07]J

(Next Issue: The European Military-Industrial Complex

Strikers Must Fight Peugeot Racism

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, FRANCE, March 6-The strike launched on Feb. 28 by 460 Peugeot autoworkers continued in this Paris suburb today. One assembly line has been shut down and the other is running at a snail's pace. The workers are holding strike rallies twice a day. On March 2, 150 Aulnay strikers went to Survilliers to support striking drivers at Gefco, Peugeot's haulage company.

The Aulnay strikers are demanding a 300-euro-a-month pay hike, permanent jobs for the plant's 700 temporary workers (Peugeot usually denies permanent jobs to these mostly immigrant workers), and the right to retire at 55. Six hundred workers are over 55; their retirement could create jobs for younger workers, particularly Northern and Sub-Saharan Africans from the nearby housing projects, scene of the November 2005 anti-racist rebellions. In 1982 and since, immigrant workers have led nationally-historic struggles at the Aulnay plant.

The workers' average take-home pay is 1,100 euros a month. The plant employs 5,000 workers, 3,200 in production. Peugeot, which netted 176 million euros in profits last year, is sticking to the 25-euro-a-month wage increase stipulated in the 2007 contract signed Feb. 28 with five unions. The strike is backed by two other unions, and one that initially signed the contract.

The Peugeot workers are inspired by the successful strike of workers at Magnetto, a Peugeot division that was spun off and is now a subcontractor. The Magnetto workers won a pay hike and bonuses amounting to 100 euros a month, an extra five days vacation and permanent jobs for the temporary workers.

On March 1, 50,000 marched in Cádiz, Spain, opposing the closing of the Delphi plant in Puerto Real, where 2,800 workers were dumped, 1,600 at Delphi plus 1,200 at plants supplying Delphi. Airbus, Eastman Chemical and other area workers also affected by job losses joined the march. Delphi workers in Barcelona stopped work for an hour in solidarity with the march. The workers are doubly angry, knowing that Delphi had broken a promise to remain open till 2010 after receiving a 62-million euro subsidy from Cádiz's local government.

All across Europe, autoworkers are becoming more militant. But a revolutionary communist leadership is needed to internationalize their struggles and build a powerful red-led workers' movement to get off the reformist treadmills since the bosses take away any short-terms gains at the first opportunity.

Capitalism's Poverty Killed Mali Immigrants in Bronx Fire

BRONX, NY, March 12 - The city's ruling class and its media are using the horrific fire that took the lives of ten members of two immigrant families on March 8 to: (1) make their whole sorry lot look like the ultimate example of compassion - including School Chancellor Klein, Governor Spitzer, Senator Hillary Clinton, Mayor Bloomberg (who changed his tune after being forced to return from Florida after actually blaming the victims for having space heaters) and, of all people, Yankee boss George Steinbrenner; and, (2) burying the news about the probable grand jury cover-up of the cops who murdered Sean Bell.

Soon after one of my West African students at a Family Literacy program called to tell me that another student's best friend from Mali had died in the Bronx fire, (nine children died altogether), we visited our classmates and with them the stricken families. Our program is collecting donations for the families.

The working class has shown again its solidarity and generosity, accompanied by an outpouring of grief and love for the families. Neighbors have erected shrines, established donation centers and collected food. Teachers and children at the local public school which three of the dead children attended are mourning their loss.

The tragedy was no accident. It grew out of the poverty and desperation that imprisons millions of our working-class brothers and sisters, living lives so fragile that they become a tragedy waiting to happen. Capitalism, by its nature a system of exploitation, repression, racism, brutality and profit wars, creates the underpinnings for such calamities.

In the High Bridge neighborhood where the house burned, 41% of the population lives below poverty line; 35% are under 17. Meanwhile, here in NYC the rich have multiple dwellings worth billions. Condos sell for millions. Landlords divide family-sized apartments into small units and charge $2,000 rent each. Working-class families can't find affordable, safe housing. Workers' homes like this one that burned here are often dilapidated fire hazards needing thousands of dollars in repairs.

The banks and the City hold hands: the banks enrich themselves financing dangerously shabby houses for low-income, unsuspecting buyers in search of the "American dream of home ownership"; the City co-operates, having no regulations and zero responsibility for such structures. The cost of heating fuel has skyrocketed, leading low-income dwellers to use dangerous space heaters and ovens for warmth.

Oil giants like Exxon-Mobil made a record $39 billion net profit last year while the U.S. government spends trillions on imperialist military operations. Workers labor long hours on two and three jobs to support their families. Large numbers of undocumented immigrants are caught in this trap, fighting poverty while sending generous parts of their meager earnings to their families ravaged by imperialism back home.

Racist profiling and persecution run rampant. Their effects pervade our communities and jobs and have surfaced in our classroom. But the potential for unity among working-class immigrant students from Mali, Gambia and other West African countries, from Mexico and the Dominican Republic have surfaced as well. We talk, we learn and we struggle, and many stand up to injustice and fight for our needs.

Only under communism, where workers hold power, will the system serve our class's fundamental interests. Such a society, free of racism and capitalist borders, built on production for need, will eliminate the extreme vulnerability in which so many of our working-class brothers and sisters, especially children, currently live. Those of us now building the international communist movement and the Progressive Labor Party must re-dedicate our lives to this struggle.

Fascist Storm Troopers Round Up Immigrant Women Factory Workers

NEW BEDFORD, MA., March 6 - Early this morning over 300 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, backed up by local cops and two Coast Guard helicopters, descended on the small Michael Bianco Inc. (MBI) factory. The raid's target was 500 or more workers - mostly undocumented Latina women - sewing armored military vests.

This notorious sweatshop started as a small leather goods producer, but multiplied in size after 9/11 when it got military contracts to make backpacks and bulletproof vests. MBI makes its profits by paying workers $7 an hour, without benefits or overtime pay, and by enforcing a system of massive fines for tiny infractions like lateness or talking on the floor. They get away with this by threatening arrest and deportation.

ICE raid tactics came right out of a Gestapo handbook: exits guarded, and eight hours of interrogation about each worker's immigration status. (Some workers were questioned as many as three times.) By the end of this ordeal, 361 workers were detained with 45 released because of pregnancy and other medical issues, subject to later questioning. The remaining detainees were then handcuffed and bussed to a military base. After a night in unheated facilities, most were flown to remote cities in the South, the rest being sent to Massachusetts jails. No arrangements were made for the detainees' children, leaving as many as 200 missing a parent, and stranding many at day care or with babysitters.

The factory owner and two managers were arrested and immediately charged with conspiring to import and hire "illegal aliens" without government authorization and then released. MBI will apparently keep at least some of its military contracts. Significantly, the court gave the owner permission to travel to Puerto Rico, perhaps to hire more workers for his sweatshop.

While the media and the governor "deplored" the abandonment of the detainees' children, they will not address the impossible dilemma undocumented workers pose for U.S. bosses. On the one hand, these 12 million workers represent an invaluable source of cheap labor and higher profits for the bosses, and the military sees them as a partial solution to its manpower problems. On the other hand, the Homeland Security bosses pose these workers as a serious "security problem" that might interfere with the bosses' plans for a "secure" U.S. Congress is still working on legislation that will somehow harmonize these two sets of interests, but the end result is already clear: entering the U.S. without documents will no longer be a civil offense, handled administratively. It will be a criminal offense involving jail time and/or heavy fines. Hiring an undocumented worker will be a crime with heavy penalties. Non-citizens will be permitted to work only under strict controls. But the key force in imposing this new element of fascism will be the terror raids on immigrants (documented and undocumented) carried out by the ICE storm troopers.

The New Bedford round-up is not the first such raid, and it won't be the last, because capitalism depends on this kind of repression to maintain control of workers and maximize profits, especially in the current crisis. It won't be restricted to immigrant workers but will be used against all workers who fight back. We must join the battle against fascism to turn it into the revolutionary struggle that will build a communist future.

Mexico: Abolition of Wage System Only Answer to Slave Labor

MEXICO CITY, March 8 - On this International Women's Day, thousands of workers and their allies, organized by the Electrical Workers' Union, marched in the Zócolo (city center) demanding a pay raise in the face of rising inflation; to repudiate the Calderon government's economic policies; and to protest Bush's visit. The justified workers' anger against the rulers' attacks finds no real solution in the union leaders and other organizations. They only push "Obradorism" (support for Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador - the opposition presidential candidate). The workers don't need "reformed" capitalism; we need to fight for communism.

This year the hourly minimum wage was raised for millions of workers from 3.60 pesos (US 35¢) to 5.50 pesos (US 54¢). The "better-paid" industrial workers earn an average of US $2 an hour. Meanwhile, multi-billionaire Carlos Slim rakes in $2.2 million per hour, 24 hours a day! His fortune exceeds US $49 billion, making him the world's third richest man. Slim, Televisa, TV Azteca, the banks and the financial groups who own the mines all exploit and repress the workers, reap billions from exploiting workers, millions of whom go hungry.

Even worse, prices of tortillas, eggs, meat, milk and other basic products have all risen, while the current minimum wage doesn't cover basic nutritional needs - only enough to buy 8 of the 100 products needed to survive. At least five times the daily minimum wage (238 pesos) is needed to provide a family's basic nutrition, without even considering housing, health, education, clothing, shoes, etc. A family would need a 435.7% wage hike to cover the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing.

The worldwide war over markets forces the bosses to drive workers into this misery. This super-exploitation is generating massive immigration. The International Organization on Migration reported that during ex-President Fox's 6-year term more than 4.3 million young workers, 40% of them women, emigrated to the U.S., joining more than 10 million already there.

In Michoacán alone, 40,000 children are forced to work under extreme conditions up to 13 hours a day in the fields. The same or worse occurs in more rural areas like Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

Those with jobs live under threat of joblessness or underemployment. Capitalism uses the reserve army of unemployed to force poverty wages and long hours on those who hold jobs. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography reports that 10,480,299 people are self-employed and 26,453,462 are wage-earners. This excludes labor performed in jails or reformatories, where people are forced to work to "repay society" while the profits from their slave labor fill the pockets of a few bosses.

The massive, brave struggles in Pasta de Conchos, Atenco and Oaxaca demonstrate that the working class is looking for an alternative to this capitalist inequality. It's up to revolutionary communists to show that supporting Obrador's brand of capitalism is no alternative. The solution is a society without capitalists, where the workers produce to meet their own needs, not to increase the megamillions of Slim or any other exploiter. This struggle is international, against a capitalist system that only offers wars, fascist terror, drug cartels and racism. CHALLENGE must increasingly become the beacon that guides these struggles towards building a mass PLP in the fight for communist revolution.

LETTERS LETTERS LETTERS

Letter from Spain: The ETA, Nationalism and Communism

After nine months of a "peace process," last December's ETA [Basque nationalist group] bombing of Madrid's Barajas airport surprised many. One should not underestimate its symbolism and psychological impact.

First, it's a clear message from the ETA that the "peace dialogue" does not mean surrender of Basque political aims it's been pursuing since long before the end of Franco's fascist dictatorship.

Second, in the last few decades Madrid has profited from investments coming from the European Union fund for regional development. The airport's brand-new terminal is a good example of the economic privileging of Madrid while Spain's other regions suffer economic constraints. The bombing is a symbolic response to these economic inequalities.

The Spanish media, political parties and government were unanimous: the peace process was broken and the ETA was responsible. This is politically motivated to feed public anger towards the ETA and the Basque nationalist movement, to show the power of bourgeois democracy against the "assassins." Spain's prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said optimism about peace prospects was a mistake. But this is all maneuvering in the political circus transpiring between the Spanish government and the ETA. Nobody knows what's really happening inside those negotiations; the bombing could only be understood in the context of that process.

In any case, these explanations of the airport bombing exclude a communist analysis of the situation in the Basque Country and in Spain. As Lenin once said, communists oppose any form of oppression, and therefore have always supported nationalist struggles, insofar as they are carried on by a specially oppressed regional or ethnic section of the working class against the dominant national capitalists. But the cultural, regional and linguistic differences which are part of human diversity, and should not be oppressed, should also not be used to divide the working class.

That's the problem of many nationalist workers' movements today, including the left Basque national movement. Originally the ETA had a somewhat clear communist perspective, and focused its struggle against Spanish and French capitalism as part of a more general workers' struggle. The ETA thought its fight could awaken the Spanish and French working class on the road to communist revolution.

In recent years, however, a less leftist tendency emerged in the ETA. A more nationalist language replaced a communist one. Spain as a whole, not Spanish and international capitalism, became the enemy. That is important ideologically. As clear statements against Spanish, French, and Basque capitalism lost ground, nationalist claims became central, and the joint struggle of the working class (Spanish, French and Basque) became marginal.

Today the Basque Country is one of Europe's richest regions. Unemployment is virtually non-existent. Therefore, many people in Spain see Basque nationalism as a kind of economic egoism, and Spain's rulers use these feelings to stress the unfairness of nationalist claims.

The left Basque nationalist movement, unlike many nationalisms, has always supported migrants and victims of sexual abuse and racist attacks. But such solidarity is meaningless without communist struggle. Revisionism and petty-bourgeois ideology have won the minds of many Basque leftists. That's why their struggle has degenerated into a competitive struggle between different groups of capitalists for the prize of the rich Basque Country.

The "peace process," therefore, is not an issue for the communist movement. The real problem is not whether one is for or against the ETA, or for or against the linguistic and cultural rights of the Basque people, but rather that in the Basque Country the working class has lost its battle against capitalism. It was defeated on the battlefield of ideology. Nationalist ideology is always keen to accept leftist tendencies, petty-bourgeois ideology, and egoistic claims. That's its great danger. Only a communist vision can clear the battlefield. Capitalism is the source of all inequalities and communism is its worst enemy. All kinds of oppression can only find their answers inside the communist movement.

Love and Struggle, a Reader

CHALLENGE Comment: Thanks for your letter. We would add that individual acts of terrorism in any form don't help the cause of workers' liberation. History has already proven that. And workers ultimately pay with their lives. The recent ETA bombing killed two immigrant Ecuadorian workers, just like the Jihadists' March 11, 2005 terrorist bombing of train commuters killed hundreds, mostly workers, including immigrants. Indeed, nowhere have nationalist movements led to the liberation of the workers they claim to represent. They have merely exchanged one form of capitalism for another. Only a united working class led by revolutionary communists can end the national and racial oppression which were born with capitalism.

It's the Bosses Who Dictate Censorship

A recent article about censorship appeared in the Hollywood Reporter as a response to "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isiah Washington's homophobic remark in the Golden Globes press-room. Shortly afterwards Washington apologized and entered rehab. The article said that censorship is no cure for the way people think; that words are simply words. The mainstream press has avoided using these words, and the writer feels this is a retreat and cop-out.

The debate over the media enforcing "political correctness" comes up on my job; one co-worker even labeled it fascist. My co-worker said black rappers use the "N-word" all the time, so why shouldn't white people be allowed to say it? The argument goes: words aren't the problem, only the "bad thoughts" behind them are. Meanwhile, the other side argues that censorship is necessary so people aren't exposed to offensive language that could insult a minority, ethnic, or religious group.

However, this debate lacks any class analysis or bearing on how workers are treated every day. At my job, for example, everyone is talked down to and yelled at to work faster so the company can reap maximum profits. While no one openly directs racist slurs at me, I'm certainly treated in an inferior manner. Women, black and Latino workers are paid less. Still many of us push the racist and sexist music that justifies super-exploitation to the rest of the working class.

Banning slurs from the media doesn't mean that the capitalists aren't sexist or racist in exploiting workers. The rappers and comedians who don't use slurs, often still advocate black nationalism or reformism. They're even more dangerous because they disguise pro-capitalist programs and music. Political media is heavily censored to keep working people ignorant and their senses dulled in favor of pro-capitalist ideas.

Censorship as handled under capitalism is a reformist issue that sweeps class consciousness and revolutionary politics under the rug. Saying offensive words to get a rise and reaction, then shrugging them off as just "expressions," is useless without a revolutionary solution for the audience that listens.

Ultimately, workers can never have free speech while there's a bosses' dictatorship. Bourgeois democracy can never fix the situation. The working class shouldn't fight for the freedom of the entertainment industry to keep us in the dark about revolutionary politics. Our voices can only be free under communism.

Red Student

CHALLENGE Comments: Justifying use of offensive words also ignores the historic roles that slurs play in dehumanizing and spreading racism/sexism

PL'ers Leaflet London Anti-War March

On Saturday, February 24th a large demonstration against the War in Iraq, and the Trident nuclear weapon system was held in London. Anti-war activists assembled for the march beneath Hyde Park's Speakers Corner. This area in London has historically been a place for free speech and political argument since the 1830's. The spot was originally Tyburn, the place of execution where for centuries the public watched while people were hung. Later, during the days of the Chartists who fought for the vote for the working class, it became a place for mass demonstrations and speeches.

When we heard about this demonstration, we printed 200 copies of a leaflet about the victory of students and teachers who got NYC's teachers' union to pass a resolution against military recruiters in the high schools. We spent a lot of time talking about this struggle. Many people told us that the army comes to the schools to recruit in the UK as well, and they were excited to hear what New Yorkers had done.

Here are some of the comments: " We're trying to do the same as you over here. Get the recruiters out of the schools." "We also oppose racism." "We do have some victories every now and again. One day we'll have the big victory, when the workers take over." "It's a start, it's a start." "It's great that you're here." People also eagerly questioned us about events in the U.S. We had been a bit unsure of ourselves at first, but each positive comment encouraged us.

It was an exciting afternoon -- amongst people opposed to the war. The police said there were 3,000 demonstrators. The march organizers said there were 60,000. Someone heard there were 100,000 who attended the march. The next day all of the Sunday newspapers were strangely silent.

Two New Yorkers

Mailer's Book Clueless on Fascism

I just read Norman Mailer's latest novel, "The Castle in the Forest," and if I didn't already know about fascism, I wouldn't have learned a thing about it from this book. Perhaps Mailer (who I think is Jewish) will make the case that the devil was behind the Nazis and Hitler. That seems to be his point.

The only time there is even a hint of what fascism was all about is when Mailer mentions briefly that Hitler was able to "con" wealthy tycoons into supporting him.

Red Coal

CHALLENGE COMMENT: Actually it was the "tycoons" that used the Nazis to invade, and exploit, all of Europe and North Africa, and eventually attack the communist-led Soviet Union.

Back to New Orleans

When I was invited to visit New Orleans during winter break, I had mixed feelings and was full of expectations. I expected to see more people, more built homes, and at least 70% of the garbage cleaned up. To my disappointment, things have remained the same. In fact, there are fewer people living there and helping out. I felt sad because of the destruction, but I was also angry and speechless because I couldn't comprehend the government's slow response in rebuilding the city. A year and six months and the same shit! I was even angrier to see how the government-built levees in the Lower Ninth Ward compared to those in the French Quarter. It amazed and angered me that the French Quarter levees look like docks while in the Lower Ninth Ward they looked like the wall in a handball court. This proved to me the inequality between the rich and the working class. It showed me that the government's main concern is not the people, but the war.

On my second day, I needed to gain strength from somewhere, and that's one of the things that made me happy about New Orleans. The people who live and work there are amazing. It's empowering to see that after devastation people come together and help out. On this trip I met wonderful and interesting people like our group tour guide, John. I was really touched by what he taught us about the history of New Orleans, especially St. Bernard's Parish. I felt sad when he told us how the tragedy affected him mentally and how he wanted to commit suicide because of the devastation. At that moment, I wished I had all the power in the world to help him and others who felt that way. After this, I was eager to start working, because I was desperate to clean up and let my frustrations out. When I began gutting a green house in the Lower Ninth Ward, all the emotions I had experienced from two days of seeing destruction came out. I felt good bringing things down.

I'm really looking forward to going back to New Orleans in the summer. I realized through this experience that it is our duty to understand that the system has no good intentions for the working class and to educate others about this reality. New Orleans is proof of the capitalist agenda. It is a struggle to help people learn that this was not some act of God, but that officials knew what was coming and still disregarded what was needed to reinforce the levees. If one sits down and starts contemplating what is going on now, one can see that the capitalist system is only about the rich.

We really need to help more in NO. I figured if the government won't do anything, it is our duty as caring people and workers to help the people of New Orleans. I advise everyone to experience what I experienced.

Bronx student

Paul Sporn 1921 - 2007

Paul Sporn, one of the founding members of the Progressive Labor Movement - forerunner of the Progressive Labor Party - died on February 27 in New York at 85.

Comrade Paul hated capitalism, which he saw as a system that bred poverty and racism. These views led him to join the Communist Party (CP) in the 1940's. During World War II he joined the Air Force to fight fascism, serving in North Africa and Europe.

When the war ended, he was one of a group of CP members who moved to Buffalo as part of that party's industrial concentration policy. There he worked in an auto plant for five years and later became an instructor at the University of Buffalo. This circle of party members in Buffalo became the core of a group that felt the CP had degenerated into an organization that had accommodated itself to capitalism. It was committed to reforming capitalism and gaining Socialism by a constitutional amendment abolishing private property, rather than seeing the necessity for the working class to have to violently overthrow the ruling capitalist class. In 1961, members of this group left the CP and formed the PLM the following year.

In 1964, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), as part of a nation-wide witch-hunt to root out communists, especially in the working class, descended on Buffalo (then a major industrial city). They subpoenaed workers and teachers, many of them, by then, members of the PLM. We organized a counter-offensive against these budding fascist anti-communists, massing nearly 1,000 pickets in front of the building where the hearings were being held. Comrade Paul was one of the first to be called.

Heretofore, the CP had told members subpoenaed by such committees "not to get the inquisitors mad," to "be nice" and, if necessary, "take the 5th" - refuse to answer questions on 5th Amendment grounds that it could "incriminate" them. But PL had a different line.

Our idea was to take the offensive and challenge the red-baiters. When Paul took the stand, the first question asked him was, "Where were you born." Rather than refuse to answer, he drove the Congressmen crazy for the next three hours, as they tried to get him to answer that one question. They finally gave up and didn't ask anything else.

The following day, the Buffalo Evening News (the city's main newspaper) ran a front-page banner headline: "Univ. of Buffalo Instructor Defies HUAC." This set the tone for the entire hearings, which ended in a flop for the Committee. They hadn't run into such opposition in all their previous hearings.

Soon afterwards Paul was fired under a NY State law banning teachers who were members of organizations the government labeled "subversive." He moved to Detroit where he taught at Wayne State University and helped lead the PLP group there for a number of years as well as helped organize the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR). In later years, Paul was no longer active in PLP but still held to the view of the necessity for working-class revolution. In 1995, he published a book entitled, "Against Itself: The Federal Theater and Writers' Project in the Midwest."

PLP sends its condolences to his family and will remember Paul for his contributions as one of the earliest founding members of our Party.

REDEYE

Yes, US in Iraq for oil

If you suspected that oil lay at the bottom of it all, you guessed correctly.

In February 2001, White House officials consulted with outsiders on possible replacements for Saddam and means to exploit his oil fields. In a memo titled "Plan for post-Saddam Iraq," troop requirements, war crimes tribunals and "apportioning Iraq's oil wealth" are discussed.

A month later, the Pentagon circulated a document titled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts, listing 30 countries with interests in Iraq's oil fields . . .

Since there was no legal reason for a preemptive invasion of Iraq, Wolfowitz's said, "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction." (Pythian Press, 2/20)

US funds create the terrorists

In the 1980s, the Central intelligence Agency shipped about $3 billion worth of weapons to Afghan commanders fighting the Soviet occupation, a struggle that left perhaps one million Afghans dead and perhaps three million in exile in Pakistan.

A disproportionately large share of the CIA.'s weapons went to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…a Pashtun commander who was the murderous leader of the Islamic Party. Mr. Hekmatyar stockpiled many of the weapons. After a brief stint as prime minister in Kabul…He became a strong ally of the Taliban….

His forces have been killing American and NATO troops in eastern Afghanistan… (NYT, 3/11)

China legalizes robbery by rich

China was set to take another giant stride away from Maoism this week with the passage of a controversial bill to protect private property….

Critics of the new bill say it will legitimise what they see as a mass theft from the people. "The property law basically takes all the illegally gotten income and legalises it . . ."

…In a survey by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences half of the respondents believed that the rich had acquired their wealth through illegal means. (GW, 3/15)

Bosses' laws enslave 'guests'

The report is titled "Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States."…

Workers recruited grom Mexico, South America, Asian and elsewhere to work in American hotels and in… labor-intensive industries….are routinely cheated out of their wages, which are low to begin with . . . .And they are virtual hostages of the American companies that employ them.

The law does not allow these "guests" to change jobs while they're here. If a particular employer is unscrupulous, as is very often the case, the worker has little or no recourse….

A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is the seizure of guest workers' identity documents, such as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the workers incredibly vulnerable….

Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of encountering the authorities, who will treat them as "illegals." They are completely at the mercy of the employers….

"This is not a situation where there are just a few bad-apple employers," (NYT,12/3/06)

Young workers can't find jobs

The strongest job market New York City has had in decades has not helped the city's youngest workers find jobs, leaving them at risk of becoming permanently unemployable…

The report…citied sharp decreases in employment among residents ages 16 to 24 from 2000 to 2006, a period in which employment rose for most other groups….

…The share of people actively looking for work and unable to find it - among those aged 16 to 19 was 28.4 percent….

Young men who get locked up for drugs offenses "are basically unemployable" after they leave prison . . . .

Even for those dropouts who stay out of legal trouble, there is an economic isolation… "You have no real connection to the world of work." (NYT, 2/27)

Misuse troops then rob them

…The administration uses carefully cooked numbers to pretend that it has been generous to veterans, but the historical data contained in its own budget for fiscal 2008 tell the true story. The quagmire in Iraq has vastly increased the demands on the Veterans Administration, yet since 2001 federal outlays for veterans' medical care have actually lagged behind overall national health spending.

To save money, the administration has been charging veterans for many formerly free services…

More important, the administration has broken longstanding promises of lifetime health care…Two months before the invasion of Iraq the V.H.A., which previously offered care to all veterans, introduced severe new restrictions on who is entitled to enroll in its health care system. As the agency's Web site helpfully explains, veterans whose income exceeds as little as $27,790 a year, and who lack "special eligibilities such as a compensable service connected condition or recent combat service," will be turned away. . . .

…The parallels between what happened at Walter Reed and what happened to New Orleans - not to mention parallels with the mother of all scandals, the failed reconstruction of Iraq - tell us that the roots of the scandal run far deeper than the actions of a few bad men. (NYT, 3/5)

PLP HISTORY

1969 PL-Led Strike Paralyzed Harvard

(Students for A Democratic Society, Part IV)

The ideological struggle within SDS over nationalism peaked during the San Francisco State strike. It sharpened further over the negotiations U.S. imperialism was conducting with North Vietnamese government representatives.

From the start PL had opposed U.S. imperialism's "right" to negotiate anything in Vietnam, upholding this position once the negotiations began in 1968. It was a difficult, unpopular principle to defend, because the mass heroism of the Vietnamese struggle had justly captured the admiration of hundreds of millions of anti-imperialist workers and students, and because SDS's right-wing leadership pandered to nationalism. But despite threats and intimidation, PLP continued to maintain that negotiating with U.S. bosses would inevitably lead to betraying everything Vietnamese workers and peasants were fighting and dying to win - most notably, a life free from imperialist oppression. Events were to prove the Party correct.

As at SF State, PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance (WSA) caucus of SDS organized militant action as well as principled debate. The action followed the logic of PLP's anti-nationalist, pro-working class line. The April 1969 Harvard strike soon provided a stunning affirmation of this marriage between theory and practice.

By 1969, liberal U.S. university presidents were falling over each other to mislead the anti-war movement. They sponsored pacifist teach-ins, day-long "moratoriums" and other diversions from militancy. Many had backed the 1968 presidential candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, a Wisconsin Democratic senator, who had entered the campaign with the explicit purpose of channeling student dissent into a pro-boss electoral dead-end.

PLP argued that capitalist universities were an inseparable part of U.S. imperialism's Vietnam butchery and that the student movement should take clear action against this relationship rather than promote illusions about it. Harvard provided a leading example. For several years, PLP'ers within the Harvard SDS chapter had led militant struggle against Harvard's collaboration with the war. In 1967, Harvard students confronted Defense Secretary McNamara. Later that year, a militant sit-in temporarily blocked recruiters for Dow Chemical - which produced the horrific weapon napalm - demonstrating inside the chemistry building when the Harvard professor who had invented napalm was in his office there. PLP and its base within SDS consistently exposed Harvard fascists like Samuel Huntington, who had helped develop the infamous "strategic hamlet" plan to turn Vietnamese villages into concentration camps.

Throughout 1968-69, PLP and the Worker-Student Alliance Caucus had campaigned against the presence of ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) on the Harvard campus. Other demands included ending Harvard's plans for expansion in a Cambridge working-class neighborhood. The pro-nationalist right-wing within SDS opposed ROTC with lip-service but always found ways to resist taking militant action against it.

After losing a close vote to seize University Hall, a key administration building in Harvard Yard, nonetheless PLP and the WSA estimated that enough students were prepared to take this bold action and that it should proceed regardless of the vote. This decision was crucial in exposing the limitation of "parliamentary democracy" as an obstacle to revolutionary anti-imperialist action.

On April 9, scores of PLP-led SDS'ers seized University Hall, ejecting the administrators in the building. Crowds gathered outside to support or debate the sit-in. By nightfall, 500 protesters were occupying University Hall. The next day at 3 AM, Harvard President Pusey called in 400 state and city cops, who maced and beat the protestors, arresting more than 100.

The cops' brutality boomeranged. Thousands protested by boycotting classes. More than 10,000 attended a four-hour meeting in Harvard Stadium to discuss the demands and tactics of an action that had become a strike. The country's most prestigious university, a crucial resource for imperialism and the war effort, was essentially paralyzed for the remainder of the academic year.

PLP had compellingly demonstrated that far from watering down class struggle against imperialist genocide, an anti-nationalist line sharpens it. On the other hand, the all-class unity of nationalism inevitably leads to collaboration with the enemy and turns even the most militant struggle into its opposite.

As the annual convention of SDS approached, the '69 Harvard Strike swelled the ranks of the Worker-Student Alliance caucus and brought many new recruits into PLP.

(Next: The 1969 Convention: the right-wing minority "expels" the majority.)

U.S. Rulers Throw Wounded GI's on Scrap Heap

The exposé of horrific conditions in Walter Reed Hospital shows how once again soldiers have been chewed up and spit out by the military. The hypocrisy of the slogan support the troops is again exposed as only a PR slogan to get people to support a war they don't believe in.

How is it that no one knew what was happening at Walter Reed? Is it really possible that all this is just being discovered now? Four years ago Mark Benjamin, writing for UPI at the time, revealed similarly fetid conditions for wounded soldiers in Fort Stewart Georgia. Not only was nothing done, but he received hundreds of death threats.

Now the Washington Post writes the same story and two generals, the Secretary of the Army and the Surgeon General of the Army are fired. The Democrats who have pushed the Walter Reed hearings cynically ignored the problems of wounded soldiers for all these years because they wanted to see how the war was going to play out. Now with the war going down the tubes, they are piling all the blame on, and further embarrassing "lame duck" Bush.

It is particularly sickening that we have been fed story after story about how great the wounded have been treated, and all the medical advances that have been made by the military. Amputees jogging and playing basketball has become standard fair on the news networks. Did none of those reporters or politicians touring the hospital notice the hundreds of severely wounded soldiers living in squalor?

Using young working-class soldiers as cannon fodder and then tossing them away is nothing new. In 1932, at the height of the depression, poor veterans of WWI camped out in Washington, D.C. to demand benefits. These former soldiers, known as the Bonus Marchers, were brutally attacked by infantry, cavalry and tanks on the orders of Herbert Hoover and under the direct command of Douglass Macarthur, assisted by George Patton, and Dwight Eisenhower.

While ten times as many Iraqi's have been killed and wounded, the number of wounded U.S. soldiers is still huge. The official military count is at about 25,000, many with extremely severe injuries, but there have been over 32,000 who have been air medavacked out of Iraq. Many wounded are never even counted because they are treated in their units and then go on to civilian care facilities.

In addition the military admits that the number of mental health cases is already at least 65,000. All these numbers will only go up. The first Gulf War is still counting the wounded, with over 200,000 U.S. soldiers, nearly half the total force, suffering from some form of Gulf War syndrome. There is no doubt that for many years to come poor young people will be paying the price for this war for oil, and the ruler's politicians will be crying crocodile tears to exploit their pain.

Bush Trip In Latin America Reflects Sharpening Inter-Imperialist Struggle

The U.S. ruling-class strategy for its continued domination of Latin America is in disarray. This is not only the result of inept and shortsighted leaders (even though the U.S. rulers have plenty of them), but as a declining world power, they just don't have many alternatives. Bush's recent tour of five Latin American countries exposes this clearly.

His goal was to shore up U.S. imperialism's image and influence in the region, while undermining that of its imperialist rivals and of Hugo Chavez who are taking advantage of the U.S.'s precarious situation in Iraq to encroach on its backyard. In trying to stem this trend, U.S. bosses have a big problem: they're bankrupt both politically and economically. On both counts, they have little or nothing with which to bribe the Latin America elites or the region's 570 million impoverished workers.

Brazil - Latin America's biggest, most populous country, with the ninth largest economy in the world - was the big prize. To split Mercosur (a four-country trade group) and counter Chavez' proposed integrationist Gaseoducto del Sur - a giant gas pipeline that will link Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina, costing some $20 billion - Bush proposed "… a partnership with Brazil and other ethanol producers ….designed to wean countries from Venezuela's cheap oil." (LA Times editorial, 3/8) But U.S. ethanol producers are protected with a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff against the cheaper Brazilian ethanol. Therefore, the same Times' editorial continued, "The 'OPEC for ethanol' that the president is expected to create…won't actually open the U.S. market…and as a result will accomplish little."

"What Bush has offered instead," says the LA Times, "is a variety of small anti-poverty programs that are dwarfed by Chavez' initiatives in the region," referring to Bush's promise of $385 million to help workers buy houses; $75 million in three years for education; sending the hospital ship Comfort to visit Latin America's ports to attend patients; and $1.6 billion a year in aid to the region. A Brazilian newspaper mocked this, saying that's what the U.S. spends in less than five days in Iraq.

Mass anti-U.S. demonstrations also expressed the hatred that workers and others on the continent have for the U.S.-backed neo-liberal program and genocidal wars. Discredited politically and economically, eventually the U.S. rulers' only possible alternative to the challenges in the region of nationalist forces like Chavez and its Chinese, Russian and EU imperialist rivals will be to resort to war. That's why the U.S., under the guise of "fighting drug trafficking and terrorism," is expanding and upgrading its existing military bases in the region, while building new ones.

But as CHALLENGE has reported, the anti-U.S. forces in the region (backed by the other imperialists) are also arming themselves and building massive nationalist-patriotic movements to win workers to fight on their side. Chavez is spending billions more on arms than any other Latin American country. And both Brazil and Argentina have nuclear aspirations.

A NY Times Op-Ed article (3/11) poses the question: "Is the battle for Latin America already over?" We can answer this with a resounding "No!" - not without a bloodbath. Latin American workers and their allies need to reject false "revolutionaries" like Chavez, Morales, Lula, Ortega, Correa and Obrador and build the PLP and a truly revolutionary communist movement to bury all the capitalists/imperialists and their lackeys forever.