1. GI's, Iraqi Workers Have Same Enemy
   Imperialism, Nationalism Massacring Tens of Thousands
   1. BUSH ERRORS SPARKED INSURGENT BACKLASH
   2. BUSH GANG: WIPE OUT THE NATIONALISTS, LIBERALS: PREPARE FOR BIGGER WARS
   3. LIBERALS SEEK UNIVERSAL `SERVICE,' WAR DECLARATION
2. RACISTS NYPD MURDERS AGAIN:
   50 MORE REASONS
3. History Shows GI's Can Be Won To Fight Warmakers
   1. ANTI-IMPERIALIST SOLDIERS
   2. IRAQ
4. Red-Led Russian Soldiers, Sailors Turned Their Guns on Bosses
5. Fight the Bosses, Not Each Other -- Students Lead Anti-Racist Struggle
6. ORGANIZING AGAINST IMPERIALIST WARS INSIDE THE MILITARY
7. NYC Teachers Must Sharpen Class Struggle, Reject Contract Bribes
8. Don't Be A Sucker for Bosses' Schemes
9. Transit Union Election Scheming Shows Need For Red Leadership
10. Protest Police-State Attack on UCLA Iranian Student
11. U.S. Pols, Profits Behind Africa's First `World War'
12. Racism Killing Immigrant Construction Workers
13. Savage Fascist Assault on Oaxaca Rebels Shows Capitalism Can't be Reformed
14. LETTERS
    1. Racial Injustice and Ecological Survival
    2. GI Families Got Folded Flags; Bosses Get Billions
    3. U.S. Ambassador, FMLN in Bed Together
    4. ESL'ers Link Profits To Global Warming
15. Auto Bosses Invade Old Socialist Bloc
    --At 1/5 The Wages
16. Sammy Scheer
    1954- 2006
17. REDEYE REDEYE
    1. Capitalism, not culture, is black oppressor
    2. US aims to overthrow elected gov't
    3. US needed rubber, bought Brazilian slaves
    4. `Anti-terror' database logs war protests
    5. `9/11 terror' swung jury against detainee
18. DVD Review:
    `World Trade Center' Movie Promotes Selfless Service for U.S. Fascism
19. Bosses' Culture Root of Worldwide Mass Murder of Women
20. PLP HISTORY: Anti-Vietnam War PL'ers Whack HUAC

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GI's, Iraqi Workers Have Same Enemy
Imperialism, Nationalism Massacring Tens of Thousands

Is it "sectarian violence" or "civil war?" The politicians' and pundits' debate deliberately obscures the class nature of Iraq's spiraling bloodshed. But a communist analysis indicts the profit system for mass murder there. Nationalist strife led by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish bosses over political power and oil is joining U.S. imperialism as a major killer of Iraqi workers. Trapped by dead-end nationalist "identity politics," many are committing atrocities in the name of their own religious or ethnic group. But by slaughtering their fellow workers, they're only helping to install a Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish ruling class that will continue their oppression and ally with one imperialist gang or another.

These militia leaders are all dyed-in-the-wool capitalists. Moqtada al-Sadr, Mahdi Army chief, draws his base from Baghdad's Shiite slums. But his wealth comes from oil. His faction controls the transport ministry, which runs pipelines and ports. After the recent Sunni assault on Sadr City, Sadr flexed his economic muscles by shutting down the key oil terminal at Basra. Earlier this year, Sadr sent two companies of working-class fighters to Kirkuk, many to their deaths, to wrest that oil-rich region from Kurdish bosses' hands. Warlords from Saddam Hussein's Sunni sect resent being stripped of state power and the oil profits that flowed from it. Kurdish chiefs, in turn, view the petroleum and population of the North as theirs alone to exploit.

BUSH ERRORS SPARKED INSURGENT BACKLASH

U.S. rulers had planned to control Iraq after the invasion by tripling crude production to six million barrels a day (mbd) and installing leaders of the three main factions as junior partners of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell. But Bush & Co. bungled the job by sending too few troops to secure the oilfields. They disbanded the Iraqi army and police who might have been better able to force the would-be oil barons to comply with the U.S. deal. A vicious cycle has developed instead. With an insufficient U.S.-led coercive apparatus, rival warlords have stepped up their attempts to seize oil facilities. Western oil companies, out of safety fears, refuse to send the engineers and equipment needed to increase production, which has, at times, fallen below the pre-invasion level of two mbd. Greedy Iraqi bosses then fight more bitterly for pieces of a shrinking profit pie and waste the lives of tens of thousands of the people they pretend to serve. Exxon's reluctance grows still further.

An article in the Times of India (10/1/06) offers insights into Iraq's oil-fired infighting; "The biggest oilfields in the country are in the Shia south, and the rest are in the northern Kurdish region. There is no oil in the Sunni triangle in the middle of the country....The new Constitution of Iraq was long delayed because of heated debates on sharing oil revenue. One constitutional provision says that oil belongs to the people of Iraq in all regions. Yet, the Constitution also gives autonomy to the three regions Shia, Sunni and Kurd. This fuels Sunni fears that the other two regions will ultimately hog all the oil."

BUSH GANG: WIPE OUT THE NATIONALISTS, LIBERALS: PREPARE FOR BIGGER WARS

As the mounting carnage chokes Iraq's oil pump, hamstrung U.S. imperialists are momentarily pursuing a deadly three-pronged policy: use U.S. troops to kill the nationalist insurgents; have the so-called Iraqi government do the job; and then watch the competing nationalists kill one another. On Nov. 25, U.S. forces killed 22 insurgents, and a few civilians at a bomb factory. Iraqi security killed 47 Sunni gunmen the same day. Recently Sunnis and Shiites have been trading car bombs, grenades, kidnappings, and lynchings at a record pace. The New Yorker magazine (11/27/06) quotes a senior U.S. intelligence official as saying, "The White House believes that if American troops stay in Iraq long enough -- with enough troops -- the bad guys will wind up killing each other."

Establishment liberals think they have a better plan than the Bush gang. Despite the phony talk among Democrats and James Baker's Iraq Study Group of withdrawal and of dealing with Iran, a consensus is emerging for a "big push, " a reinforcement of U.S. troop strength to wipe out both Sunni and Shia nationalists in Baghdad and elsewhere. Abandoning Iraq is simply not an option for U.S. rulers. And Iran's ayatollahs have no interest in yielding to U.S. demands. Anthony Cordesman, strategy chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major Establishment policy-shaper, says, "The worst solution is still an `exit strategy.' If Iraq can be made to work at any level, it will be worth...making a long-term commitment.... An Iraq divided or in a power vacuum affects a region with 60 per cent of the world's proven conventional oil reserves and 37 per cent of its natural gas. A de facto victory for Sunni Islamist extremists will challenge every moderate regime and political movement in the Middle East." (Financial Times, 5/3/06)

Shiite nationalism poses just as big a threat. Seventy percent of Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves, the cornerstone of U.S. imperialism, lie in the Shia-dominated Gulf shore. Both the Saudi royal family and its U.S. backers are paranoid about the possibility that these Shias, abetted by Iran (and now Iraq), will secede and take the oilfields with them.

LIBERALS SEEK UNIVERSAL `SERVICE,' WAR DECLARATION

A U.S. failure to counter Mid-East nationalism today will set back its efforts to combat imperialist rivals down the road. Recent editorials in the liberal Establishment's New York Times has alluded to the general military mobilization U.S. rulers need to reverse their downslide. The Nov. 26 piece gave the Pentagon the task of "figuring out why the Bush administration's military plans worked out so badly and drawing lessons for future conflicts." While rejecting the word "draft," the Times (11/21) praised politicians who said "the United States should require all young people to devote a year or two to service after high school or college." The bosses' "newspaper of record" had earlier (11/19) called for "a Congress willing to resume its proper constitutional role in debating and deciding essential questions of war and peace." The Times thus appealed to newly-elected Democrats to help win the public to the imperialist agenda and seriously consider legitimizing it with a declaration of war.

U.S. rulers and their nationalist opponents must resort to racism and phony- anti-imperialism to recruit the foot soldiers they require to protect their profits. The class interests of GIs and al-Sadr's militiamen, however, are identical. They lie in rebelling against their "leaders" and building a party that can replace imperialist and nationalist bloodshed with communist revolution.

RACISTS NYPD MURDERS AGAIN:
50 MORE REASONS

QUEENS, NY, Nov. 28 -- Once again, NYC KKKops have murdered execution style. Police fired 50 bullets at a car carrying three unarmed men -- two black and one Puerto Rican -- who had just left a bachelor party in Jamaica, Queens. Twenty-one shots hit the car, killing Sean Bell, and injuring the other two. Bell was to be married to the mother of his child later that day. Adding insult to this racist action, cops handcuffed the injured men while they received emergency care at the hospital. The bullets sprayed through the street hit windows, other cars and even a lamp in one man's living room.

The brutality of this murderous attack recalls the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo, shot 41 times by cops while reaching for his wallet. As with Diallo, the police are now searching for "evidence" to justify their murder.

Many more workers and children have been brutalized and killed since then and, as this latest killing shows, will continue. The cops have proven once again to be hired goons of the rulers who rely on racist terror to try to prevent workers and youth from fighting back. Racism is used by the bosses to divide all workers and to make billions in extra profits from the lower wages paid to black, Latino and immigrant workers.

On Nov. 26, a vigil organized by Democratic Party "activist" and FBI informer Al Sharpton to cool community outrage turned into an angry protest when demonstrators demanded the heads of the killer cops and of Police Commissioner Kelly. But the aim of Sharpton and other politicians is to divert it into demanding an "independent investigation" of the NYPD. Now, even NYC Mayor Bloomberg is "deploring" the incident, taking the liberal road in contrast to former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's more Nazi-like tactics. This is the same Bloomberg who says he can't pay municipal workers enough to keep food on their table (30% must resort to food pantries and food stamps).

But history has shown that essentially nothing will be done to punish the killers. "It is extraordinarily hard to criminally prosecute officers who were on duty," according to CUNY Professor of police science Eugene O'Donnell (NY Daily News, 11/29). Cops will continue to be racist goons because that's the role they serve for the bosses. The entire judicial system is racist to the core. Over two million people are imprisoned in the U.S., 70% of them black and Latino workers, two-thirds for non-violent crimes. Ironically, the black and Latino youth victims of these murders are the very same people who the racist rulers want to recruit to fight and die in Iraq, killing other workers who the oil bosses exploit for billions in profits.

PLP members and friends were on the streets distributing leaflets at City University of NY campuses, on jobs in hospitals and schools and in the Flatbush, Brooklyn neighborhood. The 25,000 member retirees association of D.C. 37 voted to send a letter of condolences to the families of the victims and criticize the unnecessary use of force by the NYPD. Our message is that workers and youth will get no justice under this system. Just like the KKKops walked free after their brutal beating and/or murders of Rodney King, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and thousands of others, they will probably walk free again. The only way to end these racist murders is to arm our class with communist practice and ideas for revolution. Only then will we, the working class, have a world free from murderous cops and the bloody system that they serve.

History Shows GI's Can Be Won To Fight Warmakers

GENERAL,
your tank is a mighty vehicle.
It shatters the forest and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect; it needs a driver.

GENERAL,
your bomber is awesome.
It flies faster than a hurricane and bears more than
a hundred elephants.
But it has one defect; It needs a mechanic.

GENERAL,
a man is quite expendable.
He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect;
He can think.

--Bertolt Brecht

Imperialist rivalries always lead to war, whether direct attacks against each other or smaller ones between their clients. These rivalries will eventually lead to World War. Bosses on all sides need to turn millions of workers into soldiers. Communist revolution needs these soldiers and sailors to fight the bosses. PLP members and friends must win soldiers to "turn imperialist war into class war" for workers power.

One of capitalism's weakest links is its difficulty in fielding a reliable army. Since World War 1 to the present, working-class soldiers inside the ranks have rebelled against their wars.

ANTI-IMPERIALIST SOLDIERS

While millions were being killed in World War I to protect bosses' profits, during Christmas, 1914, British and German troops declared their own battlefield truce, cementing their comradeship with a soccer game. Russia saw masses of soldiers and sailors help turn that imperialist war into history's first successful working-class revolution (see box). In 1919, West Coast longshoremen refused to load munitions being sent to the U.S. military in Siberia trying to crush the Russian Revolution.

In 1945, when World War II ended, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, led by left-wing GI's, organized mass protest demonstrations when ordered to stay in the Philippines to fight a communist-led resistance movement there, forcing the brass to send them home.

During the Vietnam War, thousands organized an anti-war movement inside Vietnam and aboard aircraft carriers, publishing 144 underground newspapers and posting bounties on officers marked for execution and fragging many. At one point, sailors' sabotage put six aircraft carriers out of commission, to be returned to San Diego for repairs; 503,000 soldiers deserted.

In June 1971, Marine historian Colonel Robert Heinl wrote an assessment in the Armed Forces Journal entitled, "The Collapse of the U.S. Army": "The morale, discipline and battle-worthiness of the US armed forces are, with few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States."

In Oct. 1971, black sailors led a major rebellion on the USS Kitty Hawk against orders to return to Vietnam -- including hand-to-hand battle with Marines trying to smash their shipboard meeting. They had published an anti-war newspaper, "Kitty Litter." The carrier was essentially removed from war duty.

Vietnamese workers and peasants, lightly armed, with no air support, but greatly inspired by anti-imperialist and red ideas, took on helicopter gunships, tanks, heavy weapons, napalm and horrific bombing attacks, and endured tremendous hardships to wage a successful guerilla war. They demonstrated the triumph of political commitment over technology. Unfortunately, the nationalist leadership of Vietnam has turned that victory around, making the country currently a haven for imperialist investments.

IRAQ

During current imperialist oil wars, the soldiers' role will be crucial. So far, they have mostly followed orders to kill other workers in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there have also been small signs of resistance. In 2004, the Army's 343rd Quartermaster Company refused its orders. Many GI's with anti-war feelings have refused redeployment. However, most resistance has been individual acts without anti-imperialist class-consciousness that would threaten the rulers' plans.

The liberal Democrats have long condemned Rumsfeld's refusal to field an army capable of securing Mid-East oil. Now that they control Congress, they're already calling for "more representative" armed forces to fight future wars. Their main difference with the Bushites is how to wage profit wars more "efficiently."

Without a committed military, the bosses cannot hold and expand power. Conversely, a revolutionary-led armed working class and a red army is essential to winning state power, as the Russian and Chinese revolutions demonstrated (see box).

War cannot be waged merely by a handful of politicians sitting in offices pushing buttons that release devastation. Imperialists need millions of patriotic soldiers and workers in war factories to fight for the bosses' interests instead of their own. Rebellions by these workers and soldiers would inspire workers everywhere to sharpen the class struggle to destroy capitalism.

Only communist ideas will give soldiers the ability to liberate themselves and the working class from the rulers and their endless profit wars. In the past, communist ideas have inspired soldiers to side with the working class and refuse orders to kill for imperialism. We in PLP are fighting to make this happen again. Join us.

Red-Led Russian Soldiers, Sailors Turned Their Guns on Bosses

In 1917, rebellion among hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and sailors (who literally turned their guns on the bosses) helped establish working-class power. The Bolsheviks (Russian communists) had been organizing inside the military since 1903. They led rebellions in the Navy during the 1905 war with Japan, including the famous insurrection on the battleship Potemkin. Sailors seized the ship to support workers in Odessa rebelling against the Czar.

By 1917, Bolsheviks had developed a pro-communist class base in large sections of the army and navy. Virtually the entire Black Sea fleet, the largest section of the Russian Navy, took the side of the working class. Large units of the Russian Army led the march on St. Petersburg that toppled the old ruling class.

In World War II, while Europe's capitalist armies rolled over with barely a fight, the Soviet Red Army, committed to defending workers' power, smashed the Nazis. In Asia, the Chinese Red Army led the fight against fascist Japanese aggression and crushed the old rulers of China to build a workers' state.

Fight the Bosses, Not Each Other -- Students Lead Anti-Racist Struggle

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, Nov. 24 -- The layoff of 4,000 Volkswagen workers here and threatened closing of the 5,400-worker plant contains the potential of a general strike.

Since Nov. 17, VW workers -- many of them immigrants -- have been on strike and have occupied the Forest plant around the clock to prevent the company from shipping out finished cars and dismantling machinery. Workers used burning barricades to block the major highway leading out of the city to the Veret suburb while picketing workers from other industries were surrounding the plant.

Thousands of jobs in subsidiary and supplier plants will be wiped out, a catastrophe in a region already suffering from an official 21% unemployment rate. "For each job at the plant," declared Nico Cue, a metal workers union leader, "you have to reckon two jobs outside the plant. So 12,000 jobs are at stake." (In the U.S., with 30 times Belgium's ten million population, this would mean a loss of 360,000 U.S. jobs.)

Strikers have been sharply critical and political. One said, "The European trade unions are nothing more than puppets....doing nothing about social issues." Another referred to the war in Iraq, declaring, it's "a war...[for] big business. Generations will suffer because of it....This is one reason I am standing here,....for them, not just for myself."

Ibisi Ramadam, an Arab workers and a five-year veteran of the assembly lines, referring to the huge joblessness, said, "Now there will be 4,000 more.... I don't know if one can trust them [the unions]....The problem is the capitalist system."

VW bosses say they must shift the entire production of the Golf model to Germany as a cost-cutting maneuver to compete against global competition. Their lieutenants in Germany's largest union, IG Metall, are cooperating to the hilt. They've already agreed to a 4-hour increase in the VW work-week without full compensation in the plant to which Golf production is being shifted, while VW is in the process of cutting 20,000 jobs throughout Germany.

VW bosses have literally bought off union representatives on the Works Council in Germany. The Council's former head raked in an annual "bonus" of 693,000 euros [over $800,000] over and above his regular salary. Works Council members also received luxury trips, including visits to brothels. These union "leaders" collusion knows no shame.

Workers at all VW plants across Europe are being affected, but the European Works Council refuses to organize a united struggle against the company offensive, seeking rather to pit one plant or location against the other. Belgian unionists are accusing the German auto union of betraying themselves and other auto workers throughout Europe. VW's attempt to appease the Belgian workers by promising to shift production of the Polo model from Pamplona, Spain to this Golf plant was rejected by the workers here, one saying, "They are trying to play off one workforce against another."

While the Belgian government has been acting "concerned" about the layoffs, when receiving advance notification from VW about the cuts, VW said the government "promised us their support." (Frankfurter Rundschau, 11/21)

VW strikers have been marching to company headquarters, to a company garage and to subcontractors. The local union leader has promised new demonstrations every day, building up to a major national demonstration on December 2. Rank and filers have been criticizing the leadership for not sharpening the struggle.

Meanwhile, labor action in Belgium continues to grow. Railway workers protesting new work schedules, struck Antwerp's main station, halting two-thirds of all rail traffic; 1,500 government workers (hospital and social services) demonstrated outside the Treasury here, demanding a [[currency]]20 monthly increase -- most now earn less than [[currency]]1,000 a month; and air controllers and technicians held a one-hour strike in two cities against lousy working conditions.

At the root of the attacks on the VW workers is capitalism's worldwide auto company rivalry, all bosses trying to capture as big a share of the market as possible, leading to overproduction and then cuts in labor costs. GM and Ford workers in the U.S. are suffering the consequences of the system's anarchy of production. And all these trade wars are helping to stoke military wars, the ultimate "solution" to inter-imperialist rivalry.

Right now, auto workers must unite internationally against this onslaught which pits one company's workers against all the others. The key is to turn these struggles into one pointing to the real solution -- destroying a system based on profits which takes out its losses on workers' backs, and erecting a working-class-run system without profits and bosses, based on serving workers' needs: communism. That's PLP's goal.

ORGANIZING AGAINST IMPERIALIST WARS INSIDE THE MILITARY

Recently, a forum on anti-war organizing within the military took place in our area. For those who see themselves as revolutionary or anti-imperialist, the forum raised issues such as: What should soldiers organize for? And, who should soldiers ally with in the movement against imperialist war? Related to these was how soldiers should organize in the military.

After opening comments from the organizers, two petitions were read to the approximately 100 people in the audience. The first was the "Appeal for Redress" being circulated among soldiers in Iraq and at military bases elsewhere. That petition identifies each signer as a "patriotic" American who "respectfully" urges politicians to bring the troops home.

The other petition, being circulated within the National Guard and Reserves, calls on Congress to guarantee that when these soldiers are called to active duty they not suffer any loss of job income as a result of the deployment. Neither petition indicates politicians from both parties supported the war. Neither party supports pulling U.S. soldiers out of the Middle East. That's because the main concern is controlling the region's oil.

After the petitions were distributed to the audience, three soldiers spoke about having opposed the war to many of their fellow soldiers while in Iraq, using the internet as well as person-to-person contact. They communicated with each other during their time in Iraq. At least one was brought up on charges for his anti-war organizing. Their comments showed they were sincere, resourceful and courageous.

Two of the three soldiers said that they were fighting for the principles established in the U.S. Constitution. One referred to the "Founding Fathers" in positive terms, although the third soldier commented that slavery and voting restrictions were their legacy. All three soldiers appeared to favorably view the fight to "restore democracy" both inside and outside the military.

After that, members of the audience spoke. All praised the soldiers for their boldness and fighting spirit. Two people sharply attacked the U.S. Constitution. One said the main thing the Constitution protects is the property of the ruling class, not "human rights." He called on soldiers to identify their interests with those of the working class, and said that imperialist wars will never end until the system that causes them is brought down. He was strongly applauded by the audience.

In response, one of the forum organizers said that if a mass movement of soldiers was ready to go to Washington to restore the Constitution, he would be there. His comments implied uncritical support. This "leftist" also promoted the movement for "democracy" within the military.

The bosses' Constitution and their whole legal system are designed to maintain their power and keep all challenges within their ground rules. Organizing within the military against imperialist wars is against those rules. PLP believes that soldiers will eventually reject misleaders who have no confidence that soldiers, like workers, can, as the German communist playwright Brecht said, realize their revolutionary potential. Soldiers can and will opt for armed struggle against capitalism, both inside the military and out. That's the only way to stop the sacrificing of workers' blood on the altars of the profit system.

NYC Teachers Must Sharpen Class Struggle, Reject Contract Bribes

Educators in New York City witness crimes on a daily basis: racist patterns in illiteracy and innumeracy; a testing regime designed to reproduce capitalist social inequality; overcrowding, resulting in frustration and student fights; graduates forced into uniform by an economic draft and sent to fight and die for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East.

The U.S. ruling class needs to prevent teachers and students from fighting back against these crimes and instead to win them to willingly fill their places in the system as it prepares for continuous war.

New York's teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), recently made a deal with the City for a new contract that includes a 7% pay raise, a $750 signing bonus and no give-backs on benefits. For the first time in many years an agreement was reached before the contract deadline and without major concessions by the union. Many teachers hailed this settlement as a victory. But this contract is not designed to benefit teachers and students at all; it does not recover any concessions given away in previous contracts nor does it address the real needs of working-class students.

No amount of money put into the schools can change their role under capitalism, but the rulers hope that by spending a limited amount they can divert workers from the inherent inequalities of the system while more efficiently winning students to capitalist ideas. This contract bribes teachers in an attempt to win their loyalty to the system, not to the students and parents who are their class brothers and sisters.

Throughout many years of patient work at the UFT Delegate Assembly and at annual nationwide conventions, PLP teachers have exposed the liberals, including the union leadership, as the main danger to the working class. They try to deceive us into ignoring or even supporting imperialist war and growing fascism. CHALLENGE is known by a good chunk of the thousand-plus delegates who attend the monthly meetings of NYC union reps.

So, when at the November 8 Delegate Assembly a PLP teacher took UFT president Randi Weingarten to task for suggesting that the Democratic sweep of Congress meant "we are going to bring our troops home from Iraq," silence fell on the hall; she was forced to eat her words. Two subsequent PLP speakers took the floor exposing the union's "Safe Secure Schools" initiative as a thinly-veiled racist attack on students. They declared a contract which does not put students first should be rejected.

This struggle is being built in individual schools as well. In one high school a chapter chairperson returned energized by the anti-war and pro-student speeches and made a point of reporting them to the rank and file. He is urging teachers to reject the contract. At that school the "Safe Secure School" initiative is on the agenda for the next union meeting. At another school, where a communist delegate was elected last spring, CHALLENGE distribution among teachers has spiked moderately in the wake of this fight.

These struggles in individual schools can lead to a more profound fight against the ruling class's goals. Teacher strikes in Detroit and Oaxaca point the direction for teachers, one of intensifying class struggle and rejecting class collaboration. We must cultivate the revolutionary seeds we plant with strong collectivity, planning and leadership. When teachers, parents and students are won to communist politics on various levels amid these struggles, the workers of the world are winning. The Progressive Labor Party is working toward that goal. Join us!

Don't Be A Sucker for Bosses' Schemes

The recent teachers' union contract represents a different ruling-class plan for teachers than for other workers. The current fiasco in Iraq exposes a serious long-term weakness: U.S. workers are not committed to sacrificing for the "greater good" of U.S. capitalism. They need teachers to shape loyal subjects for U.S. imperialism. This may require paying us off with raises and even the appearance of "improved" working conditions in which to indoctrinate the youth with patriotism.

U.S. rulers answer this crisis with both force and deception. Racist attacks on black and Latino students will continue apace and form the backdrop to every educational "reform"; yet it's easy to be deceived. New York courts have just ordered the state to pay an extra $2 billion (down from $4bn) into the school system. The news media is peppered with reports on falling science and math scores. But these reports invariably place competition between the next generations of U.S. and particularly Asian students front and center. Cynical whining about an "achievement gap" between black and white youth in the land of chattel slavery, Jim Crow and worsening segregation today hides a reality -- black workers are still crucial to every major industrial and military operation of U.S. imperialism and cannot be totally written out of the economy, driven toward rebellion by a school system that targets them for educational destruction. This is true for Latino workers and youth as well.

PLP calls on teachers to undermine the bosses' project. In a "teacher's fight" we must remember that the main group under attack in the schools is always the youth. Based on this understanding, unbreakable unity between teachers and students can be built. In unity with revolutionary industrial workers and soldiers, teachers can play a key role in the fight to destroy world imperialism.

Transit Union Election Scheming Shows Need For Red Leadership

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 22 -- A host of candidates are challenging Roger Toussaint, head of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 in the union's current presidential election. All the phonies vying for that post were either opposed to last year's strike or propose appealing to the newly-elected Democratic politicians for a "fair shake." None propose to organize the rank and file for mass struggle against the capitalist class that depends on mass transit to keep its profits rolling in.

Toussaint himself is not even a "lesser evil" among this motley crew. A militant rank and file forced a massive illegal strike which shut the transit system, showed the potential strength of the working class and enjoyed enormous support from the worker-riders. Yet Toussaint agreed to a contract that included a payroll-deduction for health benefits, a wage "increase" lower than the inflation rate -- amounting to a wage CUT -- surrendering of the important December contract expiration date, and a secret deal during the 3-day strike that wasn't revealed to the membership until this past November. The rank-and-file rejected this contract because it attacked all workers health and pension benefits nationwide. They are still without a contract a year later.

Neither Toussaint nor his presidential opponents will organize transit workers for anti-capitalist class struggle. None will expose the role of the Wall Street banks which reap hundreds of millions in profits from the interest collected in loans to keep the transit system afloat. And none of these labor fakers do very much, if anything, to unite the workers who ride the subways and buses with those who operate them.

Compare that with the communist leadership given the transit workers in Washington, D.C.'s Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689 by the slate led by its PLP president. Not only do they advocate striking and other militant actions to fight for demands and defend against give-backs but they organize and prepare the rank and file for just such struggles. During such a strike, they would expose the role of the bosses' state in using the cops, National Guard and Army to try to smash workers' militant actions -- there's no such thing as a "neutral" government under capitalism.

Communist leadership tries to build anti-racist unity and solidarity within the working class -- among black, Latin, Asian and white workers; young and old; men and women; city-wide and throughout the transit industry. Red leadership shows how the bosses squeeze the workers' lives to pay for imperialist wars in Iraq and elsewhere. Communist leadership thus helps workers learn that their struggles can only be won by destroying the profit system of capitalism. Through this process of struggle and education, transit workers are recruited to PLP, the organization that can lead the working class towards that goal.

Communist leadership cannot guarantee victory in reform demands since the capitalists run the government and armed forces, but it can lead a vigorous fight against racism as the most urgent need of the working class to cement its solidarity as a class.

For example, under red leadership Local 689 forced the transit bosses to reduce the number of years it takes young, mainly black workers to reach the top wage rate, thus beginning to reverse the racist, cost-cutting, divisive attack on Metro's labor force to which the previous leadership had agreed.

Contrary to the communist approach of mobilizing the rank and file for struggle, the TWU hacks lead the workers into the arms of the bosses by depending on liberal politicians who represent those same bosses. All NYC mayors, whether Democrat or Republican, have always enforced the strike-busting Taylor Law against municipal workers. Thus, the reformist Toussaint leadership, rejected political lessons of the 1965 transit strike when the workers broke the anti-strike law.

New York transit workers need red leadership and communist ideas to wage a fight for their class interests, to see that no matter what gains they can wrest from the bosses, the latter with its state power, laws and system based on profits will always be able to take them away, just as they're attempting to do now with their hard-won health benefits. To guarantee permanent victory, PLP must win transit workers to the anti-capitalist struggle for communism so that our class can conquer political power through revolution and rule in its own interests.

Protest Police-State Attack on UCLA Iranian Student

LOS ANGELES -- On Nov. 14, Mostafa Tabatabainejad -- a student of Iranian descent -- was studying at UCLA's main library when he was attacked by the racist campus police with a taser gun. Outraged at this racist police brutality, several days later hundreds of UCLA students and faculty -- organized by Muslim student groups and others -- marched across campus protesting the attack.

Security personnel had approached Mostafa asking for his school ID, since it was past 11 PM. Initially he refused to cooperate, maintaining they were singling him out based on his Middle Eastern appearance. Eventually, Mostafa agreed to leave the library, but as he did so, campus cop Terrence Duren arrived and attacked him with a taser gun. (LA Times, 11/17) Since 2001, Duren has been the subject of two other use-of-force complaints. (LA Times, 11/21)

This assault on a student of Middle Eastern descent by racist university police exposes the cops' role under capitalism to be to enforce racist oppression and maintain the racist status quo, whether at school, work, or in our neighborhoods. That this incident occurred at UCLA in particular is especially significant in light of black students' recent protests of the school's racist admissions policy. Since Afirmative Action ended, the black student population has plummeted across the University of California system, but especially at UCLA where the 2006 incoming freshmen class of nearly 5,000 students includes only 96 black students. (www.newsroom.ucla.edu)

This incident also betrays the universities' role under capitalism. Despite claiming to be "a place of learning" and of "freedom of speech," it is, in fact, where much of the racist ideology that justifies fascist oppression and imperialist wars abroad is created. UCLA is home to professor emeritus James Q. Wilson who, at Harvard in the early 1980's, co-authored the "Broken Windows" theory with George Kelling which called for zero tolerance strategies for dealing with crime in the inner cities. (Atlantic Monthly, March 1982)

In other words, this theory would intensify the level of racist oppression already experienced by Latino and black workers in urban centers. NYC's Mayor Giuliani put it into practice in the 1990's with his chief of police Bratton, who's now using it in L.A.

Additionally, these strategies have played well into the development of a police state since 9/11. The attack on this UCLA student is but one example. More recently was the brutal slaying of Sean Bell (his minivan shot 51 times) by undercover cops in Queens, NY (see front page).

The increased anti-Muslim, anti-Middle Eastern racism generated in the U.S. is the same kind used to justify the genocide being committed by U.S. imperialism against our working-class brothers and sisters in the Middle East. From there to L.A., workers and students need to unite against racist terror and the capitalist system that spawns it.

U.S. Pols, Profits Behind Africa's First `World War'

Madeleine Albright, Clinton's Secretary of State, labeled the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Africa's "first world war." She should know. Her government and U.S. companies were deeply involved in this war which has killed more people than any other conflict since World War II. Tied to this war are such ruling-class figures as Presidents Bush, Sr. and Clinton, black politicians like Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan, and corporations like Chevron-Texaco, Royal Dutch-Shell and Coca-Cola.

It began a decade ago when forces led by pro-U.S. Uganda and Rwanda overthrew former dictator Mobutu. At the end of the Cold War, the CIA dropped Mobutu (just like it dropped Osama bin Laden), so he became a French imperialist agent. According to Lancet, the British Medical Journal, over three million have died in this war (some estimate nearly 10 million).

Despite a ceasefire reached two years ago, the killings continue between supporters of former rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba and President Kabila's government troops. Bemba is disputing Kabila's electoral victory in the second round of the presidential elections.

As reported last issue (11/29), conflicts in Africa are called "tribal" and "ethnic," but they really involve control of the continent's mineral wealth. The Congo is three-fourths the size of Western Europe.

The plundering by imperialist companies and their regional warlords of diamonds, gold, columbium tantalite (coltan), niobium, cobalt, copper, uranium and petroleum has taken a giant step forward. Some $6 million in raw cobalt alone -- an element of super-alloys essential for nuclear, chemical, aerospace and arms industries -- exits the DRC daily.

A Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2005 report, "The Curse of Gold," exposed Ugandan officials' and multi-national corporations' smuggling of gold through local rebel militias. The western companies targeted by HRW were Anglo-Ashanti Gold, a company headquartered in South Africa, and Metalor, a Swedish firm. But HRW didn't report that Anglo-Ashanti is partnered with Anglo-American, owned by the Oppenheimer family, and with Canada-based Barrick Gold (described below). London-based Anglo-American Plc. owns a 45% share in DeBeers, another Oppenheimer company, infamous for its near monopoly of the international diamond industry. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a director of Anglo-American, is a director of Royal Dutch/Shell and a member of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's Advisory Board. The report also suppressed the most damning evidence discovered by HRW researchers -- that Anglo-Ashanti sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid arrested rebel militia leaders.

Bush, Sr. served as a paid advisor for Barrick Gold. Vernon Jordan, a Clinton lawyer, also served on Barrick's Board, a client of the lobbying group of another black politician, Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and Clinton's U.S. UN ambassador. Young was a key organizer of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. In October 1994 Clinton picked him to lead the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund. Young's lobbying group has among its clients Chevron-Texaco, Coke, Monsanto and the governments of Angola and Nigeria.

In Congo's Katanga (Shaba) province, militias and racketeering are linked to criminal networks of businessmen, including Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Billy Rautenbach, John Bredenkamp, and Marc Rich. U.S. diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman has profited from Katanga concessions since the Kennedy era. Lawrence Devlin, the old CIA station chief of Lubumbashi under Eisenhower, maintained Tempelsman's criminal rackets with direct ties to Zaire's former President Mobutu, and was subsequently employed by Tempelsman.

The Congo is also rich in coltan ore, whose refined product is tantalum. The U.S. is entirely dependent on foreign sources for tantalum, an enabling technology for capacitors essential to aerospace weaponry and every pager, cell phone, computer, VCR, CD player, P.D.A. and TV. U.S. import records show a dramatic jump in purchases from Rwanda and Uganda during the time they were smuggling tantalum and cobalt out of the Congo.

So while U.S. rulers make a big deal about the situation in Darfur (where China is extracting oil), they keep a low profile on the Congo. (Information from an article in Znet magazine by Keith Harmon Snow and David Barouski.) More in a future issue.

Racism Killing Immigrant Construction Workers

NEW YORK CITY, Nov. 21 -- "His dream was to save money and go back home," said construction worker Julio Jara. But that dream was shattered forever when his brother, 25-year-old Clever Jara, fell 17 stories to his death near Union Square in Manhattan. The Ecuadorian immigrant was putting up netting to prevent bricks from falling during repair work on the building's façade. Witnesses said wind gusts may have caused him to slip from the building's ledge.

Twenty-four construction workers died in the city last year, "making it New York's most deadly profession, according to a federal Labor Department report." (NY Daily News. 11/2) "At least 98 construction workers in the city have been killed since October 2001, most of them in mishaps involving safety regulations or building codes." (Daily News, 11/5)

A good many of the construction workers repairing building facades here are Latino and other immigrants, forced to work under hazardous conditions in order to support their families, both here and in their home countries. Amid a building boom, scofflaw developers are allowed to "self-certify" themselves, so they simply ignore safety and pursue profits. When 27-year-old Arturo Gonzalez was struck and killed last year by an 800-pound steel girder, the Buildings Department "fined" the realtor and owner the grand sum of $1,400!

The racism of building contractors like Town Restoration -- the company fixing the above façade -- was evident in their ignoring safety precautions for these predominantly Latino immigrant workers. The company didn't have the proper permit for the project, maintained no on-site supervision and apparently had not provided Clever with the proper training for the job, given the absence of such certification. Workers trained for the rigs were not on the site.

According to the latest OSHA "report card" on construction-site deaths, 86% occur on non-union jobs. And the vast majority of these jobs involve immigrant laborers and therefore many cases are unreported. "When a union guy is injured, reports are filed," according to immigrant lawyer David Perecman, but when it involves undocumented workers, "the boss tells them if it still hurts in the morning go to the hospital and tell them you tripped and fell."

Alongside this is the racism of the construction unions which historically have refused to admit or organize black and Latino workers, so now the chickens come home to roost -- thousands of construction workers are unorganized and prey to the bosses lowering wages and conditions for all workers.

While anti-immigrant hysteria is whipped up against workers like Clever Jara, they end up sacrificing their lives for profiteering bosses who figure they can get away with it because such workers are "expendable" -- more evidence that a system that produces such needless deaths must be destroyed.

Savage Fascist Assault on Oaxaca Rebels Shows Capitalism Can't be Reformed

OAXACA, MEXICO, Nov. 28 -- Supported by thousands of federal troops, soldiers, judges, courts, jails and the Mexican bosses' Constitution, the fascist murderous governor of Oaxaca, Ulises Ruiz, declared: "There will be no pardon" for the striking teachers and their working-class supporters who fought the bosses for six months. Immediately he launched a witch-hunt against thousands of leaders and members of APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca).

Hundreds of houses were raided, APPO offices were burned down and hundreds were arrested. beaten and tortured. Hundreds more were arrested after Ruiz goons and federal troops occupying Oaxaca viciously attacked a November 25 APPO march.

Many of those arrested are in federal prisons outside Oaxaca. The entire capitalist state apparatus has been used to smash the Oaxaca rebels.

Workers and their allies are learning from these experiences about the fascist nature of the bosses' "democratic" mask to curb any mass fight-back.

Unfortunately, the APPO leadership (some of whom had illusions that the federal troops would control Ruiz's local goons) is just fighting to reform capitalism -- to get rid of Ruiz, for "more democracy," etc. Many workers and others also have illusions that Lopez Obrador and the opposition PRD are their friends. Obrador declared himself the "legitimate President" following the fraudulent "election" that made Calderón of the ruling PAN party the new President. All these politicians represent different versions of which capitalist and imperialist faction best to serve and how to best exploit workers.

The struggle in Oaxaca has revealed much about the class struggle; the need to fight racism against indigenous people; the militancy of teachers, urban and city workers and students; and the importance of international solidarity. But the main lesson is that capitalism cannot be reformed.

The only liberation for workers and their allies will grow from fighting for revolutionary power to build a communist society without any bosses and their racism. We need a mass PLP rooted in the working class to step up this struggle, from Oaxaca to L.A. to Karachi. And then workers and their allies won't "pardon" any bosses and their goons.

LETTERS

Racial Injustice and Ecological Survival

This fall our church, along with our interfaith coalition, sponsored a conference about sharpening the struggle against racism and imperialism by exposing how the rulers are destroying the world eco-system, leaving working people totally vulnerable to the resulting devastation. The participants were an interesting multi-racial mix of over 70 workers and students. The event grew from political discussions of our production of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" last winter as a fund-raiser for Katrina victims.

For almost 40 years, the ruling class's ecology movement has focused on separating mainly white, "middle class" workers and students from the most exploited of our sisters and brothers with the line "Love the Earth; Ignore (or Screw) the Workers." In sharp contrast, the scholar-activist who keynoted our morning gatherings, showed how the essential nature of capitalism is to exploit both workers and the resources of the environment to the MAXIMUM in order to extract the highest possible profits from every economic activity.

Because this brutal system is now universally dominant worldwide, he explained that both increasingly deadly wars for resources and markets, AND the worst predictions of ecological collapse are inevitable under capitalism. While the speaker was very knowledgeable, it was clear from his presentations and discussions that he's been very active with workers and students most of his life, in Central America, South Africa and the U.S.

Students and teachers led a workshop about their experiences as volunteers in New Orleans this summer. They explained how the nationalist and reformist orientations of the sponsoring organizations divided and demoralized workers and students, exposed how volunteer work was being co-opted for bosses' profits, and described how the capitalists' roadblocks to rebuilding the entire city, excluding many life-long residents, proves that communist revolution is the only answer.

Parents made an inspiring presentation of their ongoing struggle to ensure that black and Latino children had every opportunity for admission to the city's few more effective schools. They were very open to linking their work to the larger movement (of which PLP is a part) to expose capitalist education as racist and imperialist, and to broaden the struggle to include more parents, teachers and students. We will apply these lessons in a meeting to fight the local city college's move to destroy a multi-racial educational complex that is already meeting kids' needs in a better way. Our PLP club is discussing how to make revolution primary in our presentation.

In two sharp workshops on immigrant-citizen solidarity, one minister movingly told about her church's courageous work to provide sanctuary for immigrant day-laborers and to support their efforts to organize against the worst forms of exploitation. A teacher-comrade then explained how the rulers' movement to attack immigrants is part of a larger ruling-class effort to build a mass base for much more repressive fascism to control ALL workers and to militarize the country for vastly expanded imperialist war. She made a well-received proposal that we push our mass organizations to organize a solidarity demonstration spanning the Mexico-U.S. borders.

Finally, one of our leading comrades, a black worker, gave an inspiring speech about the racist health crisis facing our community and how the city health department admits this but will not ask for funds to reopen our health center, despite RECORD corporate profits in the city.

We recruited several more workers to this struggle. Most important of all, ten more workers and students have become regular CHALLENGE readers, and we expanded our Party study group. This is the most vital work: convincing our friends and ourselves that none of these extreme difficulties can be resolved without communist revolution, and more concretely, what that will mean for our families, our friends and the thousands more friends we plan to make.

Red Churchmouse

GI Families Got Folded Flags; Bosses Get Billions

I've been in the active-duty army for four years and spent a year in Iraq. The problem is not just the way the military is run. More body armor, more troops, or pulling out from the cities is not going to make imperialist war safer for the working class. Civilians suffer the most deaths and injuries and they're not issued any protection by anyone. Pulling out of the cities would only make it easier for commanders to rain artillery down on innocent workers.

"Better" commanders would not improve the occupation for our class. As long as we're fighting wars for the profit and power of a capitalist class, our lives will be on the line in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the next stop in the "war on terror" - all for the imperialists' benefit, not ours.

Some troops pay the ultimate price and are given extraordinary honors, medals, and some receive citizenship posthumously. Those of us who survive gather to grieve and pay our respects. Military ceremonies make people think that troops die for something, like serving our country or our brothers and sisters in the combat zone. While the fallen did die for something, it's not freedom or something like that. It's for the U.S. bosses' money and power. Soldiers' loved ones receive folded flags and the bosses receive billions.

Knowing that our comrades died for no good reason is hard to swallow. While our feelings for the people who've passed are overwhelming, military funerals are just there to make people feel better about the war. The truth is they can replace any of us. All they need is more troops. To the capitalists, we're just bodies -- we're useful when alive to fight their wars, and a quick write-off when we expire.

If you survive, they tell you the VA is there for you. But they cut the budget for the VA, close down hospitals, and second-guess your injuries. Nightmares, flashbacks, anger, guilt and inability to function may haunt you the rest of your life but VA services don't live up to the hype. The capitalist rulers need our tax dollars from the VA to pay for their wars. They question your claims and make getting expensive treatments difficult. It's cheaper to get fresh young bodies to fill your place than to fix broken troops.

Ads and recruiters say join the army to have a career but machine gunners, tank mechanics, and Nuclear Biological Chemical specialists are only useful to the military. Civilian employers are looking for civilian experience. Uncle Sam will not help you find a job. Somewhere between 30% and 50% of the homeless are veterans, but the recruiter didn't tell you that. Unemployment is high today but it's even higher among veterans, especially blacks, Latinos, immigrants and the poor. Did you see any recruiting commercials mention that one? You might not have joined if you did. Then again, you may not have had a real choice.

Capitalism is behind all these things. Solving capitalist-created problems for good -- a war we and our class don't benefit from; harassment by the leadership; injuries caused by the profit wars; getting everyone decent employment; re-uniting all troops with our loved ones back home -- solving all this depends on ending class society, sweeping away imperialism with communist revolution. Nothing less can honor and avenge the deaths of our class brothers and sisters.

Red Vet

U.S. Ambassador, FMLN in Bed Together

The U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Douglas Barclay, surprised many with a speech openly ordering President Tony Saca to fight corruption throughout his government.

Barclay stated that Salvadorans "have the right to feel secure in their home and public places, not only those who can pay private security guards." This representative of U.S. imperialism mainly wants to "take the criminals off the streets and put them in the jails," meaning an upgrade in their police force, with better-paid agents, bigger jails, special courts and emergency taxes. He also reiterated that business owners must pay the taxes they owe.

This urgent need for national unity and political will among the rulers forced businessmen, politicians and the government to propose a series of new repressive laws against the entire working class, including an "anti-terrorist" statute, Barclay's fascist aim.

And those happiest with this call were none other than the former guerrillas now-turned-electoral-party FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front). Ironically, FMLN spokesperson Sigfrido Reyes said the ambassador's speech must have been written by a member of his party! FMLN leaders were satisfied with the ambassador's statement, adding, "We share in the urgent call for unity to resolve this problem...what the ambassador has stated is what we've been proposing in the matter of security."

Clearly the FMLN, ARENA and all the other electoral parties are defenders of capitalism and its profiteers, both the imperialists and the Salvadoran bosses. This exposes the dangerous illusion that the FMLN is the option for the working class. PLP understands that a party of the working class never would advocate a fascist state to fight social injustice, poverty and unemployment. Neither executioner, Barclay or Saca, will solve our problems. The solution is to uproot capitalism, this oppressive and exploitative system, organizing and fighting for a real communist revolution.

PLP'er, El Salvador

ESL'ers Link Profits To Global Warming

My ESL classes recently participated in a project about global warming. Three hundred students from 20 different classes prepared 30-minute presentations for the 4-hour event. These classes are part of the Education Program of Local 1199, Homecare Division, in New York City.

The project reflected the union's emphasis on Democratic Party candidates and issues, specifically Al Gore and his book. Most of the ideas about solutions to global warming from the union and the classrooms dealt with individual responsibility in limiting the use of fuels, hair sprays, air conditioners and other pollutants.

I presented a number of questions to my class: "Are we all the same in creating global warming?" "Who are the biggest users of coal, oil and natural gas?" "Why do they use so much fossil fuel?" "Why do big corporations turn a blind eye to global warming?" "Remember New Orleans. The consequences of global warming have been and will be catastrophic. What are governments doing, or not doing, to protect people?"

My students debated the answers to these questions, in English and Spanish. One student responded that, "we are people at the bottom. The people at the top are guilty of the greatest pollution, as they seek profits and exploit us. As long as capitalism exists, we can try to make the situation better, but we won't be able to solve the problem." "I agree with you, Jasmin," I responded. Many students applauded.

On the day of the project after my class finished their presentations in English, four of my students spoke in Spanish about solutions, Jasmin included. A teacher in the audience said, "I guess we need a revolution."

"That's right," I said. After the presentation several students in the audience came up to speak to my students. "What they don't say" said one student, "is the U.S., the richest country in the world, is the biggest polluter." "That's capitalism," said Jasmin.

Jasmin has become a CHALLENGE reader and will attend her first PLP study group Saturday. Yes, communist leadership makes a difference.

A comrade

Auto Bosses Invade Old Socialist Bloc
--At 1/5 The Wages

The fall of the Berlin Wall has proven to be deadly for millions of well-paid jobs in Western Europe and the U.S. The entry of countries in the former Soviet bloc into the European Union is proving a bonanza for Western and Asian auto companies. As tens of thousands of auto workers are laid off in the U.S., Britain, Germany, Italy and France, thousands of workers are being hired in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic -- at one-third to one-fifth the wages in Western Europe and the U.S.The French automaker Peugeot Citroen has just opened an $890 million factory in Trnava, Slovakia, while closing its plant near Coventry in Britain. The Czech Republic could nearly double its production to over a million cars in the next four years. "Carmakers from Europe, Asia and the U.S." are "pouring billions of dollars of fresh investment into local factories" in Eastern Europe. (NY Times, 11/25) Even further eastward, GM just opened a plant near St. Petersburg, Russia to assemble the Chevrolet Captiva, a mid-size SUV. Hyundai is building a huge new assembly plant in the Czech Republic and Ford is moving production of its subcompact Ka from Spain to southern Poland, where Fiat is also setting up shop.

So capitalism is marching full tilt into the old socialist bloc. Meanwhile, it pits these low-wage workers against the higher-paid ones in Western Europe and the U.S. Capitalism's bottom line, searching for ever-higher profits, always trumps workers' lives. All the more reason for auto workers to unite across all borders against their common enemies among these companies.

Sammy Scheer
1954- 2006

"It's O.K. to mess up, but never to give up."

That lesson is what one of Sammy Scheer's teenage nieces said she learned from knowing her uncle. That's how all who knew and loved him would sum up his life -- no matter what circumstances you find yourself in, no matter what problems might beset you, no matter what mistakes you might make, never give up.

Sammy tragically died of a heart attack recently at the age of 52. He had the good fortune to be born into a family that was filled with love and communist ideas. His father, Morty, was one of the founders and his mother Phyllis was a member of the Progressive Labor Party. It is a testimony to Sammy that no matter what situation he faced, he never forgot what he learned from those two wonderful parents and from his Party.

In the early seventies, Sammy attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and became known as a great anti-racist fighter. He joined the Challenge Corps, PLP's youth group, and helped organize anti-Vietnam war marches and demonstrations. He became a leader of high school students and inspired many throughout the city.

On weekends, Sammy loved to take friends to Wo-Hop, a favorite local Chinese restaurant where people could sit for hours and talk and laugh. Sammy had tons of friends.

As a teenager, he began singing and playing the guitar with friends and at various political events. He was an accomplished guitarist with a melodic voice. He loved to sing songs about class struggle, love, about people fighting back, as well as about the beauty he saw around him. His favorites were Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan as well as coal mining songs and those on the PLP record. He did a mean rendition of "Clifford Glover," describing the murder of a black youth in Brooklyn and how the cops got off.

Sammy was a long-time member of the PLP. As a young man in New York, Sammy was the comrade you could count on. He organized on construction sites, facing threats to his life by right-wing goons. He strongly defended comrades under attack and defended many youth in Brooklyn in demonstrations against police brutality. He would fly from Houston to Washington to march in our annual May Day celebration.

Even as he helped raise his own two children, Rebecca and Matthew, he looked on all the other children that crossed his path as deserving of the same attention.

He continued to impart his ideas to his extended family, friends and co-workers. His wife Cyd told us that one of the things she most appreciated in Sammy was his ability to turn many of her family members in an anti-racist direction, overcoming the racist ideas that surrounded them from having grown up in the South.

One of his co-workers, a black man, spoke at his memorial service in Houston with great reverence. He said that Sammy's "world outlook" treated him in a way that he hadn't experienced with other white people in the South. Another co-worker, of Iranian descent, said much the same thing, relative to being treated as a human being with similar aspirations, not as someone "different" or "foreign."

Sammy became a hospital worker in New York and continued in that job after he moved to Houston, organizing throughout. All those who spoke at the memorial service in Houston kept returning to one universal description of Sammy: he was a "good guy." Often this comes across as a cliché, but in Sammy's case he truly was a "good guy," in the deepest sense of those words.

Sammy will be very much missed, but in the manner in which he lived his life he has bequeathed to us an understanding we all should treasure: yes, it's O.K. to mess up, but we must never give up.

REDEYE REDEYE

Capitalism, not culture, is black oppressor

For, decades, scholars and opinion-makers have been seduced by cultural explanations for economic problems. Recently, comedian Bill Cosby has caught the bug, leading him to inveigh against aspects of black culture he views as intimately linked to problems among African-Americans, from poverty to crime and incarceration.

Cosby is merely the latest and most visible in a long chain of cultural critics. Researchers Charles Murray (before turning to genetic explanations) and columnist Thomas Sowell have been making the "bad culture" argument about African-Americans for decades....but....

Black poverty fell 10.6 percentage points from 1993 to 2000 (from 33.1 to 22.5 percent) to reach its lowest level on record. Black child poverty fell an unprecedented 10.7 percentage points in five years (from 41.9 percent in 1995 to 31.2 percent in 2000).

The "culture of poverty" argument cannot explain these trends. Poor black people did not develop a "culture of success" in 1993 and then abandon it for a "culture of failure" in 2001.

What really happened was that in the 1990s, the job market finally tightened up to the point where less-advantaged workers had a bit of bargaining clout....

The record is clear: When economic opportunities are available to black Americans, they take them. When opportunities are scarce they fall behind, and culture has very little to do with it. (Washington Post, 11/13)

US aims to overthrow elected gov't

The US is arming Mahmoud Abba's Fatah organization for a confrontation with Hamas that risks plunging Gaza into all-out civil war. It wants thousands of rifles to be sent to Fatah from Egypt and Jordan and is seeking to persuade Israel to permit the Badr brigade, a pro-Fatah militia stationed in Jordan, to cross into Gaza. (GW, 11/23)

US needed rubber, bought Brazilian slaves

Men were needed in the Amazon, 3,000 miles away, to harvest rubber for the Allied war effort, he was told, and it was his patriotic duty to serve.

More than 60 years after the end of World War II, Mr. Dos Santos and hundreds of other poor Brazilians who were dragooned into service as rubber soldiers are still in the Amazon....

"We were duped, and then abandoned and forgotten,".....

The program originated in an agreement between the United States and Brazil. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had cut the United States off from its main source of rubber, in Malaya, and President Roosevelt persuaded Brazil's dictator, Getúilo Vargas, to fill that strategic gap in return for millions of dollars in loans, credits and equipment....

More than 55,000 people, almost all of them from the drought-ridden and poverty-stricken northeast, were sent to the Amazon.....

The work was exhausting, dangerous and unhealthy:...nearly half perished before Japan surrendered in September 1945.

"...Guys died of malaria, yellow fever, beriberi and hepatitis..." (NYT,11/23)

`Anti-terror' database logs war protests

An anti-terrorist database used by the Defense Department...included intelligence tips about antiwar planning meetings held at churches, libraries, college campuses and other locations, newly disclosed documents show.

One tip in the database in February 2005, for instance, noted that "a church service for peace" would be held in the New York City area the next-month. Another entry noted that antiwar protesters would be holding "nonviolence training" sessions at unidentified churches in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

"Veterans for Peace is a peaceful organizations,"...[one] entry said, but added there was potential that future protests "could become violent." (NYT, 11/21)

`9/11 terror' swung jury against detainee

A California man whose arrest, detention and prosecution raised questions about the limits of government antiterror powers after Sept. 11, 2001...was detained 10 days after the attacks...

Federal prosecutors said he had lied about his association with...hijacker, Khalid al-Midhar....the judge removed on claims of bias.

When the case finally reached trial this year, the jury spent six days in heated deliberations but remained deadlocked, with a single juror voting not guilty.

But in a shark reversal of sentiment, a new jury of nine women and three men took less than seven hours over two days before finding Mr. Awadallah guilty....

One major difference between the two trials was the emotional response to the Sept. 11 attacks....

This time, jury said they kept those feelings out of the jury room. (NYT, 11/18)

DVD Review:
`World Trade Center' Movie Promotes Selfless Service for U.S. Fascism

On the surface "World Trade Center" ("WTC") is a beautifully produced movie that tugs on your heart strings. Beneath the surface "WTC" pushes pro-cop, super patriotism, pro-war messages along with healthy doses of religious mysticism and sexism, each of which the U.S. ruling class needs to pave the way for increased fascism.

"WTC" follows two NYC Port Authority policemen who respond to the 9/11 attacks and get caught under the rubble of the World Trade towers. Much of the movie focuses on rookie officer Jimeno and Sergeant McLoughlin talking while trapped.

Like many films and TV shows about police, "WTC" tries to show that these thugs are really "just workers" too. The movie wants viewers to sympathize with cops who it claims are underpaid, insufficiently trained and lied to by the bosses. While everyone who works under capitalism struggles, workers should not feel bad for class traitors, like cops and scabs, who survive by making the rest of our lives worse. "WTC" obscures the role of police under capitalism. It is their job to carry out racist attacks against black and Latino youth as well as attack and jail workers who fight back.

Even if you don't like cops, there are times the movie forces you to root for the cops to return safely. The movie often cuts to scenes with Jimeno's pregnant wife and both officers' small children. Seeing these scenes makes you want to feel bad for two cops who were harassing homeless people and racially profiling teens in the first few scenes.

"WTC" also attempts to inspire the working class to serve U.S. bosses and fight in imperialist wars. People in various countries are shown saddened and horrified by the 9/11 attacks seen on their TVs. "WTC" gives the impression that people worldwide empathize with the U.S. government and support whatever actions it takes in response to 9/11 (and that they will even throw flowers at U.S. invaders!)

The whole movie follows Jimeno and McLoughlin because they are multi-racial poster people for national service. The U.S. ruling class has failed so far to use 9/11 to mobilize the working class to join the military, police or perform other types of national service.

One hero in "WTC" is a U.S. Marine who only refers to himself by his rank, never giving his first name. The movie emphasizes "the mission" over the character's own self-preservation. As the Marine is walking around the rubble of the towers, he tells someone over his cell phone, "A lot of good men will have to avenge this." At the end of the movie you learn that the Marine re-enlisted and served two tours of duty in Iraq. "WTC" constantly tries to rehash feelings and anger about 9/11, using examples of selfless service, to inspire patriotic fervor and allegiance to the U.S. government.

Throughout "WTC," different people talk about avenging "them," "those bastards" and "the evildoers." But the movie never mentions who "they" are and doesn't discuss the root causes of 9/11, leaving viewers no alternative but to believe that the "war on terror" is justified.

"WTC" uses religion as an ideological prop for its pro-war message. The Marine is supposedly called to NYC by god. When he reaches the rubble he looks at the smoke from the ruins and proclaims that god put up a curtain to shield everyone from what they're not prepared to see. However the anti-scientific director omits the smoke's most significant effect -- hazardous pollution that is still killing 9/11 rescuers and lower Manhattan residents -- and instead emphasizes religion. The message is: don't question things because god works in mysterious ways.

"WTC" also aims to win the U.S. working class to sexism. "WTC" focuses on the cops' wives falling apart. "WTC" didn't spend time showing how hard these women worked to raise their children and keep their households together. Instead, "WTC" shows other male relatives comforting the wives while they're hysterical.

Many things happened at the World Trade Center on 9/11. Many of them showed the potential for a communist society -- working-class people helping each other and addressing each other based on need, not money, "race" or gender. But the U.S. ruling class wants to channel workers' instinct to help each other into supporting war and fascism. "WTC" helps them do just that.

Bosses' Culture Root of Worldwide Mass Murder of Women

On Nov. 25, activities and marches in many cities worldwide celebrated the International Day of Non-Violence Against Women. The day memorializes the 1960 murder of the three Mirabal sisters by goons of Dominican dictator Trujillo.

In El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, Central America, there were mass marches and other public actions protesting the countless murder of women in the last few years. Marchers in El Salvador also protested discrimination against, and sexual harassment of, women workers.

Violence against women is an international epidemic which has worsened in this period of endless wars, fascist terror and drug gangs:

* Recently, four prostitutes were brutally murdered and thrown in a ditch near Atlantic City, NJ.'s glittering casinos. A serial killer is suspected.
* In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, hundreds of women have been killed and raped in the last few years and the killers have never been brought to justice.
* In El Salvador, 314 women have been murdered from January to August this year, compared to 305 for the entire 2005. Most have gone unsolved.
* In Honduras, some 500 women have been killed in the last three years -- 11% by their husbands or boyfriends and 23% killed by criminal drug gangs. The number of women murdered in Guatemala is even higher.

The sex slavery trade is another major cause of worldwide violence against women. It's a $12 billion-a-year business, second only to the drug trade, involving over one million women and young girls, mainly from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Eastern Europe. It is estimated brothels make $15,000-a-year profit from each one of those women.

Many of the November 25 activities against these "feminicides" called on the authorities to do something about them. This is like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. The only measures the rulers will take are more police-state attacks against workers in general (see letter from El Salvador, p. 6). Others tend to blame men in general for these crimes, instead of the culture of capitalism which depicts women as sexual objects and creates the basis for this onslaught.

Communists must redouble our efforts to fight this anti-women culture and the male supremacist attitudes it builds, showing how the rulers turn men and women workers against each other, weakening our entire class, while reaping huge profits from the super-exploitation of women workers.

CAPTION FOR PAKISTAN PICTURE

In Pakistan, women had to fight against sexist Hudood laws that restricted them from confronting men who had raped them. These laws required a woman to have 4 male Muslim witnesses to prove she was raped or face adultery charges herself for making such a claim. Women activists won a law that would allow them to bring these charges to secular courts instead. These crumbs to the struggle against sexism won't outlaw the extreme oppression of women.

PLP HISTORY: Anti-Vietnam War PL'ers Whack HUAC

Cries of "U.S. get out of Vietnam!" resounded through the halls of Congress on August 16, 1966 when members of the year-old Progressive Labor Party challenged the anti-communist House Un-American Activities Committee's (HUAC) attempt to crush the expanding anti-Vietnam War movement. Police dragged anti-war witnesses kicking and screaming from the hearing room while their constant shouting interrupted the HUAC session (see above photo).

The witchhunt coincided with President Lyndon Johnson's and the U.S. ruling class's escalation of the imperialist war against the workers and peasants of Vietnam. The rulers subpoenaed a half dozen PLP members, figuring they could split the movement through a red-baiting attack on its most advanced section. But HUAC only succeeded in exposing itself, helping PLP to spread our communist ideas. The mass media was forced to report our activities and photograph our militancy.

As HUAC announced it would sponsor legislation that "would make it a crime to aid anyone engaged in hostilities against the United States," (NY Times, 8/17/66), hundreds of demonstrators streamed into Washington on a mid-summer work-day to protest the witch-hunt.

When the first "friendly" witness, Philip Luce -- a stoolpigeon and former member of PL -- took the stand, a PLP member stood up and yelled, "Let's stop this fink testimony and get the U.S. out of Vietnam!" The cops immediately dragged him from the hearing room as he continued to scream, "U.S. get out of Vietnam!" to much applause. A photo depicting the PL'er with his mouth wide open shouting that anti-imperialist slogan appeared on the front page of every major newspaper in the country.

With signs painted in the halls proclaiming, "Whack HUAC!" the committee was made to look like Keystone Kops in newspaper cartoons and soon lost its effectiveness, eventually being disbanded. The PLP-led action helped spur the anti-war movement to greater and more advanced heights, influencing many to drop the liberal "Stop the bombing" slogan and adopt PLP's answer: "U.S. Imperialism Get Out of Vietnam Now!" It also put the nail in HUAC's coffin, which the ruling class abandoned as causing more trouble than it was worth to them.

 

Dems Aint No Doves

Rumsfeld Out, But Workers No Better Off

Beware Liberals Like Spitzer Bearing Pro-War ‘Reforms’

PL’ers Building Base for Communism in D.C. Transit

Chile: Miners’ Solidarity With GM Strikers Paying Off

Pakistan: PL’ers Expose All Bosses, Aid Quake Victims

Salvador Hospital Strikers Block Streets, Confront Cops

Oaxaca: ‘Reform’ Capitalism No Solution for Workers

Back Oaxaca Struggle

Cops Save Minutemen From Anti-Racists’ Wrath

Red Ideas Make Headway at Public Health Convention

Racist French Rulers Use ‘Terrorist’ Lies to Fire Airport Workers

Oil Resources Behind Darfur Deaths, Wars in Africa

LETTERS

Liberals’ Petition Misleads Anti-War GI’s

Need Alternative to Liberals' GI 'Appeal'

Danger, Opportunity in GI Movement

Wider Wars Behind School ‘Reform’

Medical Murder: From Hitler to Israel to U.S.

Campus’ Action Exposes ‘Justice’ Roberts

The Deaf Must Unite With Their Class

REDEYE

• Nigeria’s workers rely on armed force
• Capitalist-run world swims in sewage
• Who are the worst terror-killers?
• Voters know they’re just flipping a coin
• ‘Demand for profit’ = world hunger
• They work to save legs — if you’re rich
• Unemployment low? This crowd says no
• Short-Circuiting Soldiers’ Political Potential

Book Review: Short-Circuiting Soldiers’ Political Potential

God Save The Queen Because The Working Class Definitely Shouldn’t!

---

War And Fascism Still Order Of Day For Decades

Dems Aint No Doves

The newly-won Democratic control of Congress is being hailed by many as a win for everyone. While workers and soldiers are distraught over the war, the Democrats have slithered into public consciousness as the "anti-war" party. Nothing could be farther from the truth, and not one worker should believe any of these snakes as they make grand plans for the future of U.S. imperialism.

The main wing of the ruling class, the Rockefeller/Eastern Establishment, is angered by the Bush administration’s bungling of the war which has lost the hearts and minds of the working class. They understand that after 9/11 the Bushites had a perfect opportunity to win millions of U.S. workers to goosestep to their imperial whims — first with Afghanistan, then with Iraq. But in the last five years, the recruits have not flocked to fight for the U.S. Instead, the body bags have piled up, and lives of workers here have increasingly worsened as the bosses move jobs to cheaper markets and steal from healthcare and pensions.

In the build-up to the Iraq war, some Democrats fought for a multilateral solution that would involve bosses from U.S. "allies" in the occupation. Instead, Bush and his neocons thought they could bully their way into controlling the entire Mid-East, first Iraq, then Syria and Iran. This unrealistic goal dismissed any possible opposition from their rivals in Europe, Russia and China, not to mention within the U.S. With its "Shock and Awe" war, this administration thought it could scare the world to its knees.

U.S. bosses are now trying to figure out how to chart a course in Iraq without losing its oil and military bases, and regroup for more effective imperialist wars for control of the region’s resources. They have called in Rockefeller old-schoolers James Baker and Lee Hamilton to help them with their fumbled war and control rising imperialists like China and Russia.

Historically, Democrats have never been any more "anti-war" than Republicans. During World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the Presidents were Democrats. During the 1990’s, Democrat Bill Clinton enforced sanctions and continuous bombing of Iraq that claimed the lives of more than half-a-million children and bombed the hell out of Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, he dismantled welfare and created fascist slave-labor Workfare. Under this "first black president," the prison population exploded, jailing millions of mostly black and Latino men, while putting 100,000 more cops on the streets.

The bosses need the Democrats now to get U.S. workers and soldiers to wave the U.S. flag. Rahm Emanuel, a Congressman from Illinois and former Clinton policy advisor (pictured above with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer), has declared that "we need a new sense of patriotism and responsibility that unites us in a common purpose again." In "The Plan," Emanuel proposes that the Patriot Act be used to promote "universal civilian service" to guarantee that "all Americans . . . serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation, and community service." Although he claims this would not be a draft, its intention is to win workers to becoming a Gestapo-like force for the ruling class, "citizens who can meet the needs of the nation at home."

During the Cold War years, the bosses could win many workers to the illusion that the U.S. was the greatest country in the world. The challenge for them now, as they fight to stay on top, is to have an army of millions who support U.S. imperialism and fascism at home, especially because they know they must spill workers’ blood to guarantee their profits in the short and long term.

Workers and soldiers must not be won to these misleaders. At every opportunity, communists should expose the lies and actions of the liberal rulers and their tools. They pose a greater danger to our class than open fascists because they pose as "friends of the workers," aided by their lieutenants running the labor movement. These liberal Democrats cast a line baited with false promises of universal healthcare, education and jobs for all; hoping that workers will swallow their poisonous ideology when we bite at those few reform crumbs they offer. The liberals can only guarantee that capitalism will continue and pave a new road to fascism for years to come.

The Progressive Labor Party advances what communism means: fighting for one flag, one class, one party. No concession should be given by workers to the capitalists. Only the working class, organized with communist politics, can turn the war plans of the bosses into a revolution for a society answering workers’ needs.

Rumsfeld Out, But Workers No Better Off

Drenched with the blood of hundreds of thousands of working-class Iraqis and Afghans, Donald Rumsfeld deserves our hatred. But his recent ouster, like the Democrats’ electoral triumph, should bring no cheers. In no way does it change the objective conditions underlying U.S. military action. The global rivalry for profit that requires U.S. rulers to wage oil wars while preparing for World War III is only sharpening. Rumsfeld’s replacement, Robert Gates, could, in fact, prove a more lethal warrior. He more directly serves those U.S. capitalists who have the greatest need to defend their empire by armed force. With Gates in charge, the liberal imperialist Establishment wing of U.S. capitalism tightens its grip on war policy.

On Iraq Policy, Gates Swings With Rulers’ Whim

Hand-picked by former secretary of state James Baker, a JP Morgan and Exxon Mobil heir, Gates is part of the Iraq Study Group (ISG). Anticipating November’s anti-Bush vote, the ISG cooked up bi-partisan Iraq "solutions" that actually entail stepping up the killing. The liberal New York Times endorsed an ISG option in its November 12th editorial, "one last push to stabilize Baghdad.... [t]hat would require at least a temporary increase in American and Iraqi troops on Baghdad streets." The U.S. butchered thousands when it tried to "stabilize" Fallujah a year ago. The carnage in Baghdad, twenty times more populous, would be all the more horrifying.

Many call Gates a hypocrite because he, as a CIA agent during the 1980’s Iraq-Iran war, supplied information to Saddam Hussein. But this episode only proves his loyalty to the Establishment. At the time, its cynical strategy for controlling the Mid-East and its oil was to weaken both Iraq and Iran by encouraging each side to slaughter as many of the other’s citizens as it could.

Gates: Die-Hard Establishment Warmaker

Gates is an important cog in the Establishment’s policy-making machine. In 2004, with Zbigniew Brzezinski, he co-chaired the Council on Foreign Relations’ Iran Task Force. Bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and overseen by Exxon Mobil’s Mid-East advisor, Suzanne Maloney, it concluded that the U.S. must treat Iran as a perpetual rival. Iran, it said, competes head to head with the U.S. for energy supplies and politico-military influence in the region and is forging worrisome ties to China, Russia and Western Europe. But, recognizing U.S. military powerlessness due to troop shortages, the Gates panel urged a course of "selective engagement," a combination of talks and threats, for now. Gates’ unwritten but obvious conclusion was that the U.S. must marshal larger forces.

Liberals’ Unfinished Job #1: Mobilizing 300 Million

Failure to even attempt to reach that goal doomed Rumsfeld. He represented a large sector of U.S. capitalists unwilling to subordinate their bottom line to war needs. They included small businesses, domestically oriented firms, and executives at huge companies who did not fully grasp the long-term game plan. [See Spitzer article, page 2] After the election, the imperialists seem to have the upper hand. We cannot predict just how they will try to organize their sorely-needed mobilization. But the Democratic Leadership Council, led by re-elected Hillary Clinton, is already pushing for compulsory national service and an immediate addition of 100,000 soldiers.

Under such circumstances, real political victory for workers lies outside the polling booth — in building a working-class communist party that can eventually put a revolutionary end to the profit system and the endless wars it causes.

Beware Liberals Like Spitzer Bearing Pro-War ‘Reforms’

Eliot Spitzer, New York State’s governor-elect, is one of the top cops in a rapidly hardening financial police state. Facing a near- and long-term future of ever costlier combat, U.S. rulers need to impose wartime discipline on their fellow capitalists. Under the liberal pretext of "corporate reform," Spitzer, as the State attorney general, forced hundreds of companies, large and small, to comply with U.S. imperialism’s agenda. His efforts in the country’s capital of finance have had nationwide impact. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley, the federal law that requires a strict auditing of corporations, resulted largely from Spitzer’s dogged application of New York laws in the service of U.S. imperialism.

Spitzer Targets Bosses Who Block War Agenda

Spitzer’s prosecution last year of insurance giant AIG’s boss Maurice Greenberg, for example, has major foreign policy implications. Spitzer drove Greenberg out of his chairman’s suite by charging him with improprieties in managing a family foundation. But, in the rulers’ view, Greenberg’s real crime was his ties to China’s bosses, with whom AIG has a sweetheart deal. It alone can operate wholly-owned subsidiaries in China. Greenberg is a director and big funder of the Council on Foreign Relations. With tensions between the two nations mounting, Spitzer discredited "soft-on-China" forces at U.S imperialism’s most influential policy think-tank. His investigation into bid-rigging had already booted Greenberg's son Jeffrey from his post as chief executive of insurance broker Marsh & McLennan, which also has extensive operations in China.

A full-scale U.S. war effort will require centralized government control of finance and industry. Knowing that, Spitzer doesn’t shy from swatting down the most prestigious firms and families when they clash with broader ruling-class interests. He slapped a $2-billion fine on JP Morgan Chase for its involvement in the Enron scandal and a $2.6-billion one on Citigroup for aiding WorldCom. Enron had imperiled U.S. capitalism by cornering the West Coast gas market and temporarily withholding energy from entire towns and factories, including war plants. In WorldCom’s case, Spitzer helped the rulers wrest a big chunk of the U.S.’s strategic communications infrastructure from Bernie Ebbers, a politically unreliable upstart with few ties to the Establishment.

Liberals’ Police State Hits Workers Hard, Too

Spitzer’s shaping up of wayward corporations goes hand in hand with a wartime crackdown on workers. In purging China hand Greenberg from Marsh & McLennan, Spitzer greased the way for Michael Cherkasky, his old boss at the Manhattan DA’s office, to become Marsh’s CEO. Cherkasky heads Kroll, a firm that specializes in homeland security fascism and became a part of Marsh in 2004, while Spitzer was prosecuting Marsh. Kroll advises the government on border control. It sifts bank data for terrorist activity.

The Supreme Court chose Kroll to oversee the Los Angeles Police Department, which has a habit of provoking rebellions inconvenient for war-bent rulers. Kroll took on William Bratton (now LAPD Police Chief) as a partner during his brief private sector stint. Among Kroll’s many police department clients, he spread Bratton’s "community policing" gospel, which calls for a network of pro-cop stool-pigeons based in churches and other local organizations. Spitzer himself has helped institute Bratton-blessed, cop-led Neighborhood Watch programs across New York State.

Spitzer now promises to rid the State Capitol of lobbyists who sell policy to the highest bidder while ignoring the capitalist class’s greater needs. The New York Times, endorsing Spitzer’s "clean-house" campaign, invoked Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and Nelson Rockefeller, Establishment imperialists all, as models for him to follow. Spitzer heeds his masters’ voice. His transition team includes Peter Goldmark, longtime head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Pro-war "reformer" Spitzer is no better than the rest of the wolves in sheeps’ clothing let loose by the election.

PL History: 1963: PL Busts Travel Ban to Cuba

In the summer of 1963, the year-old Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) — forerunner of the PLP — defied the U.S. government and broke its ban on travel to Cuba. Fearful that the Cuban revolutionary experience had great appeal to U.S. youth, especially black and Latino workers, and might spark revolutions throughout Latin America, the Kennedy administration wanted to isolate Cuba with an economic boycott (still in force) and this travel ban. Anticipating the U.S. rulers’ invasion plans, the PLM had distributed tens of thousands of leaflets, held street rallies and unfurled the first "Hands Off Cuba" banner in UN galleries. (See CHALLENGE, 11/1)

After the U.S. Bay of Pigs invasion failed miserably, PLM boldly announced it would break the travel ban. Of 500 students who applied, 75 were chosen and planned to fly to Cuba via Canada. But the latter government, in collusion with the U.S., refused a landing permit for the plane.

Then, figuring the FBI, CIA and State Department would send agents into our ranks, we publicly announced a plan to go via Mexico, even telling that to the student applicants. But actually, we flew thousands of miles to Europe and back to Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida coast, duping the U.S. spy agencies.

Upon returning, the students refused immigration officials’ demands to hand over their passports. More than 50 PLM members and friends were hauled before a Grand Jury and either cited for contempt or indicted on "conspiracy" charges, facing up to 20 years in jail. A national campaign was launched to defend the student travelers.

The best answer to the attack was organization of still another trip, with 84 of 1,000 applicants going. After a fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court, all charges were dropped. Many students joined the PLM during this struggle and PLM emerged as a new vigorous force in the emerging Left movement in the U.S., which later helped propel PLP into the forefront of the anti-Vietnam War struggle.

All this occurred at a time when the newly-organized PLM viewed the Castro leadership as socialist revolutionaries. However, eventually Castro became a supporter of the state-capitalist Soviet Union, impelling PLP to understand that Castro could not be viewed as a revolutionary communist.

Nevertheless, breaking the travel ban in that era did carry out the maxim, "Be bold; dare to struggle, dare to win!"

PL’ers Building Base for Communism in D.C. Transit

WASHINGTON, D.C. Nov. 13 — The election campaign for a PLP-led slate of officers is heating up here in Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689. The transit industry is of strategic importance to U.S. working-class struggle — transit jobs can’t be outsourced, like steel and auto. When transit stops, as in the NYC 2005 strike, the economy and profit-making are severly affected. Therefore, building PLP at Metro and in other basic industries is of critical importance.

While there’s growing militancy in transit nation-wide, there’s still too little communist leadership to channel this militancy in a communist, class-conscious direction. Nevertheless, transit unions in Denver, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have all fought militantly to resist cuts and maintain living standards despite the bosses’ determination to drive them down.

Here in D.C., the bosses are especially vulnerable to transit strike action. It would disrupt the economy, especially if led by communists. It could be seen as a rebellion and harshly attacked by the bosses’ state power — cops, National Guard, even the Army, the courts and jail threats and subject to media lies.

A strike would shut down the U.S. government and military headquarters at the Pentagon, and lead to escalating repression by the bosses. Communist leadership in the union can prepare workers for such a development, and fight now to build industry-wide and city-wide solidarity to up the ante in the class struggle. Such sharpening struggle would be welcome, since it would provide fertile ground for masses of workers to see the need to smash the entire capitalist system and replace it with workers’ power and communism.

The key step towards this goal is the choice, by more and more workers, to join PLP and help build the long-term struggle for revolution, using their strategic position at Metro. The San Francisco transit workers’ union elected a PLP’er Recording Secretary. The Metro union here elected a PLP’er President. Hundreds of delegates at the international ATU convention cheered the floor speeches of revolutionary workers. Thousands of New York City transit workers braved fines and jailings in a bold strike last year, and continue to thirst for militant and possibly even revolutionary leadership.

Transit workers have demonstrated recently that they’re beginning to understand the power in their hands and the need to use that power for their class. But only with the leadership of PLP will such potential be translated into a revolutionary force.

(For up-to-date developments in Local 689, check out the website — http://www.atulocal689.org/)

Chile: Miners’ Solidarity With GM Strikers Paying Off

ARICA, Chile, Nov. 7 — Over 150 GM strikers marched through this northern city last week, after 97% of the members of the Union of General Motors Workers rejected the company’s miserable "final offer" and walked out. The workers are demanding an immediate 8% raise; a back-to-work bonus of 1 million pesos (US$1,900); and abolition of a work-rule change affecting current seniority and work assignments that would force workers to perform more than one job. Flexible work-rule changes and the use of subcontractors attack the job security and lower the wages of all workers, part of the bosses’ plan worldwide to make workers pay for the effects of their fierce war-like competition.

A union leader told La Estrella de Arica, a local daily: "They are lowering our wages every day. A few weeks ago GM brought in 90 workers at a monthly wage of 170,000 pesos (US$323), well below the norm of 220,000 pesos (US$ 418)." For the first time since it opened in 1970, GM hired women but at the lower wage-rates.

In contrast to its slump in the U.S. and Canada, GM has doubled last year’s production of pick-up trucks in this plant to 30 units per day. Since September, the company began producing the new 2007 Chevrolet D-Max pick-up truck, very much in demand by the country’s growing copper-mining industry here — because of China’s heavy need for copper — as well as for export to Venezuela. So workers are demanding a bigger share.

In solidarity, the La Escondida miners’ union helped the autoworkers in their negotiations with GM. The GM workers had supported the miners’ recent 25-day strike. Mostly owned by the UK-Australian BH Billiton company, La Escondida’s profits have risen 153% to $1.1 billion.

Workers from Detroit to Arica need more of this kind of solidarity to counter GM’s and all bosses’ "divide-and-rule" tactic which weakens workers’ struggles. Even more, workers must learn the need to build an international revolutionary movement to end capitalism’s wage slavery. That’s PLP’s aim. Join us!

Pakistan: PL’ers Expose All Bosses, Aid Quake Victims

(The following is a report sent to CHALLENGE from comrades in Pakistan.)

Fundamentalism:

Pakistan is a paradise for terrorists now that the government has signed an agreement with the fundamentalist clerics to keep them in their federally administered tribal area, Waziristan. However, U.S. forces are doing whatever they think will aid their survival in Afghanistan. The fundamentalist leadership claimed that U.S./NATO forces attacked that religious school (madrassa), killing 84 and injuring many more in Bajure.

It is very clear to workers that these terrorists are strengthening the capitalists, enabling them to remain in this territory. These terrorists, who the CIA, Saudi Arabia and local bosses organized, trained and financed to fight the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, now have another task — to protect capitalism in this region by spreading divisive prejudices and producing chaos in this society, using suicide bombers to kill innocent people.

Nationalism:

The murder of Nawab Akbar Bugti devastated Balochistan. Nationalist forces actively destabilized the government, attacking public places, killing security personnel, organizing demonstrations and detonating bombs, grenades and missiles. Insurgency in Balochistan is not new. Nationalism is its driving force — there are more than 12 parties/groups fighting for their "turf." One is the Baloch National Liberation Army, engaging in military operations.

Feudalists are very strong in Balochistan also. The government claims they’re opposed to development in this region and therefore are spreading terrorism to discourage investment there. The feudalists and the government are battling for control of Balochistan’s huge resources. In this military fight between feudalism and capitalism, the capitalist bosses seek an empire with their own conditions but feudalists want a piece of the pie.

Privatization:

The government’s Privatization Commission is taking huge kickbacks by actively selling all the factories under state control to various capitalists.

Recently it virtually gave the Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM) to these private exploiters, strengthening their control over huge industries, to counter any working-class revolutionary struggle.

The PSM, completed under the former USSR in 1978, cost 25 billion rupees but was sold for 30 billion, although the currency exchange rate is now six times higher! Just before privatization the management spent 500 million rupees for new vehicles and 200 million on its roads — a nice gift for the new bosses. In three years, PSM reaped 20 billion rupees profit but is being sold for 21 billion while owing the workers 23 billion. No wonder the workers fear being fired. (Current exchange rate is 60.7 rupees to one U.S. dollar.)

Politicians Serve the Capitalists:

Pakistan’s political parties are fighting for control. If barred from the government, fundamentalists threaten other bosses with terrorism that would harm U.S. interests in this region. The Muslim Leagues oppose anyone who rules on behalf of U.S. imperialists. The Pakistan People’s Party is trying to convince the U.S. bosses that it can easily fulfill their agenda because they have the masses’ support. The revisionists (fake leftists) are indirectly doing the bosses’ dirty work while advocating "socialism."

Trade Unions’ Role:

The government has banned teachers’ unions in Sindh and fired their leaders. We must fight to win many workers to the need to join the fight for communism, because without a Party truly working for communist revolution they cannot eliminate these capitalist rulers.

The bosses are using the union leadership fakers to protect their profits. The union leaders are being bought off with homes, cars and money. Many workers who seek better wages and conditions fear being fired if they oppose this leadership.

2005 Earthquake:

It’s been more than one year since the devastating earthquake that killed 80,000, injured over 135,000 and left more than 3.2 million homeless across Pakistani-administrated Kashmir and the northwest province. Yet, because of the lack of planning, nepotism, dictatorial dealing with humanitarian organizations and corruption, the government has still not provided shelter for all the homeless. More than 80% are still in tents, facing problems like protection and security.

Although the government is supposedly compensating the homeless, this process is so complicated it leaves survey teams open for bribery. The poverty-stricken with no money for bribery have received nothing.

PLP has collected money, food and other needed items from our friends and delivered them to these deserving people. PLP has exposed the bosses who want to keep everything they can collect from the donors in the name of the affected people. Communism is the only system which can assist people in any emergency, free of discrimination.

Our Struggle:

We are determined to expose the crisis of capitalism in Pakistan, analyzing the world situation and aiming to win millions into our ranks, to lead an international communist revolution. All the evils of capitalism that exist here — high prices, no health facilities, education or clean water, fundamentalism, political chaos, exploitation in factories, harassment, inequality, injustice, nationalism, sexism and racism — give us the opportunity to build PLP. We are the real fighters against capitalist oppression worldwide, having the capability of uniting the working class into a single international communist party — PLP.

In Pakistan the geo-political and socio-economic conditions provide fertile soil for our struggle against the exploiting ruling class, helping us to recruit new workers into our Party.

Salvador Hospital Strikers Block Streets, Confront Cops

SAN SALVADOR, Oct. 27 — The 125,000 workers of the Social Security Institute Union (STISS), striking for a $100 monthly raise, have paralyzed operations of clinics and hospitals. When the Order Maintenance Unit police (UMO) took over the hospitals, the strikers responded by taking control of the surrounding streets, blocking the capital’s main thoroughfares and paralyzing traffic. This led to a confrontation between the police and the workers. By today, even more hospitals and clinics had joined the general strike.

The government has offered $20 a month. Nolasco Perla, director of the Social Security Institute (ISS), said these workers "are some of the best-paid workers in the country." While he may be one of the best-paid, earning $5,250 a month, most workers receive only $300.

"We hope that, when president Tony Saca returns to the country, he will reason with the director of Social Security," said the union leader. One doctor then declared, "These reforms will not solve the lack of medicine and instruments in the hospitals, even less so with our leaders sold out to the right-wing."

The strike is 15 days old and jurisdiction is now in the hands of the Ministry of Labor, an institution controlled by the ARENA Party fascists. They, as always, declared the strike illegal, provoking even more ruthless attacks, including salary cuts, jailings and police repression.

The workers are displaying courage and determination, inside and outside the hospitals, confronting the police and the sellout leaders. They deserve a better future and better strategies for struggle. Therefore, we are redoubling our efforts to build CHALLENGE networks to become the basis for new struggles, not only for $100 raises but for revolutionary struggles for a communist society where all the power and everything we produce will be for the working class.

Oaxaca: ‘Reform’ Capitalism No Solution for Workers

OAXACA, MEXICO Nov. 15 — "Even though we’re returning to teach, the struggle continues, mainly our revolutionary struggle," said a teacher here. She says that most of the State’s teachers (in small towns and rural areas) are returning to schools to begin classes and talk with their students and parents about the five-month struggle.

Hundreds of thousands marched on Nov. 2 and a week ago hundreds fought the federal troops and repelled their attack on Radio University. But this week the troops have reopened the UABJ (Benito Juárez Autonomous University).

In this city there is still uncertainty because of the repressive conditions. Thousands of local and federal police and paramilitaries occupy the city. It’s not known exactly when teachers will return here.

Meanwhile, APPO (People of Oaxaca Popular Assembly), with many internal divisions (more next issue) continues demonstrating and threatens to erect more barricades and organize mobile brigades if Governor Ruiz doesn’t step down. It has formed a state council with over 260 leaders of organizations, including the teachers union (SNTE Section 22) to draft a new Oaxaca constitution as a way to pressure the state and federal government.

PLP continues to struggle for our politics to shatter the illusion that there can be a pro-worker "reformed democratic capitalism" (as "the people’s President" López Obrador and his PRD party proposes as an alternative to PAN, the ruling party, and its allies in the PRI, the Party of the hated Oaxaca governor). López Obrador and his PRD, which has met with the APPO leaders, wants a capitalism that invests in programs for social control (as pushed by the World Bank), including investing in education and oil infrastructure. They say it’s "more efficient" and better at winning workers to sacrifice for the "national interests" — in effect, for the entire capitalist class. The PRD represents a sector of Mexican rulers who seek deals (including over profits from the government-owned oil company Pemex) with China and other imperialists rather than exclusively with U.S. bosses. Workers have nothing to gain by taking sides in this bosses’ dogfight.

The federal troops are in Oaxaca to guarantee the dictatorship of capital. Our aim is to show how the massive fight-back can become a school to build a mass PLP and fight for the dictatorship of the working class: a communist society without any local and foreign bosses and where workers’ needs are the only priority.

Back Oaxaca Struggle

NEW YORK CITY

Nov. 13 — 100 teachers and students organized by the Professional Staff Congress union at CUNY (City University of New York) held a spirited rally today here in support of the striking Oaxaca teachers. Many leaflets and CHALLENGES were distributed.

El SALVADOR

"Fraternal and revolutionary greeting to the teachers of Oaxaca whose organization and courage in confronting capitalism we admire," declared a teacher here in El Salvador. "Capitalism impoverishes and exploits teachers worldwide."

We’ve discussed the struggle of the Oaxaca teachers in meetings with hundreds of teachers, based on the ideas of class struggle, internationalism, exploitation under capitalism, and the need for communist revolution. In some meetings we proposed to support the teachers in demonstrations and in articles in the teachers’ union newspaper ANDES. PLP, using CHALLENGE, has linked this struggle to the fight among the imperialists.

"We won’t forget that the teacher who is fighting back is also teaching," said another teacher here. We’ve been in the streets marching with these same slogans and now it’s our class brothers and sisters in Mexico who are in struggle. Teachers play a key role in the fight against capitalism. They’re trained to teach the ideas of the system to keep exploitation and oppression alive. But when they decide to teach the ideas of struggling for a communist society, they become a powerful force.

They can help sow the seeds of revolutionary ideas to millions of future workers and soldiers, those who will be in the forefront of organizing a communist revolution.

From El Salvador to Oaxaca, the working class has no borders!

Comrades in El Salvador

Cops Save Minutemen From Anti-Racists’ Wrath

MAYWOOD, CA., Nov. 11 — Hundreds of angry anti-racists confronted the racist Minutemen today when they demonstrated here to protest the city’s status as a "sanctuary" for undocumented workers. A huge police presence protected the Minutemen from anti-racist anger meting out severe punishment. Many said angrily that if it were not for the cops, they would give the Minutemen what they deserve.

A group of youth hung one of several effigies of KKK-Minutemen from a lamppost as the crowd cheered. Although the cops eventually took it down, the crowd beat the other effigies.

Many joined lively chants against the Minutemen and the cops, including, "Este puno si se ve — los obreros al poder!" ("See this fist — workers to power!") as they shook their fists at the Minutemen and the cops.

At one point a supposed "demonstrator" began handing out Mexican flags (there was only one such flag before that). He was quickly identified as a Minuteman trying to divide the crowd, creating an image of anti-racists being loyal to the flag of the Mexican bosses. People yelled "Saquenlo" ("get him out of here"), chased him and threw his flags on the ground. One anti-racist demonstrator was arrested. The crowd became angrier and taunted the cops.

A PL comrade passed the hat for the arrested anti-racist fighter. Spectators and demonstrators contributed $300 on the spot. The arrested man’s friends thanked us as we chanted "Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world, unite!" Over 200 CHALLENGES were distributed (all we had). The red PLP flag of the international working class waved proudly throughout demonstration.

Red Ideas Make Headway at Public Health Convention

BOSTON, Nov. 13 — While last year's annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Philadelphia produced a noisy demonstration, PLP’s "quieter" one-on-one activity this year can prove more valuable in the long run.

There was some action this year — like when the Boston cops (complete with police wagon) shut down the activists’ breakfast and Katrina slide show. Or when we dodged Convention Center Security to keep distributing flyers after being chased from several locations. But such moments were not the most important ones for building PLP.

A more passive atmosphere this year possibly resulted from delegates hoping a Democratic Party Congressional majority would end the Iraq war and boost funding for public health. (The elections occurred right in the middle of our meeting.) But PLP’ers from five cities sought conversations with friends ready to move somewhat beyond electoral politics. We made some real progress with some.

One friend — who had e-mailed a comrade a reminder to file his absentee ballot before leaving for Boston — ended up subscribing to CHALLENGE and to The COMMUNIST magazine. She had only seen the paper once but because of joint efforts in anti-war activity with this comrade for the past two years she was confident enough to seriously consider the Party's ideas and literature. Our relationship will continue after the Convention.

Advocating communist ideas in a mass way made possible other conversations. A Party flyer that laid out the Democrats’ war plans (using their own website) was passed out before the opening plenary, attended by thousands. Party speakers raised various aspects of the Party’s line at the podium in various sessions or from the audience. These included the need for soldier rebellions against imperialist war and the need to build a multi-racial movement to fight racism.

Other Party ideas — such as the need to violently combat the bosses’ attacks to bring about fundamental social change — were raised individually. One such sharp exchange with a good friend ended with the comrade asking, "So, do you want me to stop sending you the paper?" "No," the friend replied, "I don't agree with everything but keep sending it." Then the comrade was given a $40 donation for the sub and postage. The struggle continues.

Racist French Rulers Use ‘Terrorist’ Lies to Fire Airport Workers

PARIS, FRANCE, Nov. 10 — Last week the Roissy deputy prefect announced security clearances had been withdrawn from 72 Muslim airport workers over the past year. As a result, most of the workers lost their jobs. This racist attack was underscored by an Oct. 21 statement by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Referring to the loss of security clearances by an initial group of 43 workers, he said, "There’s no question of it being a case of us just not liking their faces. There are precise grounds which led us to forbid their presence at the airport." But it seems the workers’ "crime" is very precisely their faces — or their religion.

The context of this attack goes back four years ago when Jacques Chirac was re-elected French president in a campaign in which all candidates beat the law-and-order drum. Now next year’s presidential election has probable candidates Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and right-wing "socialist" Ségolène Royale again spotlighting "crime" and "terrorism." In the background, as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens, the French bosses are looking to discipline workers with new repressive measures. This racist attack on these 72 workers, mostly baggage handlers, can eventually be used against many of the 80,000 workers at the Roissy-Charles De Gaulle airport — Paris’s largest single employer.

Most of these workers are accused of "being connected" to Salafism, a branch of Islam. ("Le Figaro", 11/10) The deputy prefect, Jacques Lebrot, claimed the workers had "fundamentalist tendencies that are potentially terrorist" and were linked to "the Islamic scene."

Right-wing deputy Alain Marsaud swiftly called for a law to speed up revocation of security clearances. Before becoming a deputy, he was a board member of the scandal-ridden Compagnie Générale des Eaux, whose chairman was fined one million euros for lying.

When eight workers sued to force the prefect to disclose the evidence against them, it revealed the weakness of the government’s charges. On Nov. 8, the government restored security clearances to two workers, and today the court conveniently declared it had no jurisdiction in the case. The dossiers compiled by the central unit for "fighting terrorism" (which Marsaud headed in the 1980s) will remain secret.

No wonder. The police interviews, which French law requires before a security clearance can be revoked, don’t seem to have been very professional. The newspaper "Le Canard enchaîné" (11/8) revealed part of the procedure. Karim K., holding a security clearance for ten years, was asked: "Do you feel comfortable living in France?" He ought to — he was born here to a French mother and an Algerian father! When a cop suggested that his Saudi Arabia trip wasn’t for sight-seeing, Karim replied that he had gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca — and asked if the police were going to question all Christian workers who had gone on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Security company employee Hervé B. is a French convert to Islam. In March 2005 his company congratulated him for having intercepted firearms. Last April, he was part of the security team protecting Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy but still lost his security clearance.

The French bosses’ past laxity regarding corruption and air security exposes their hypocrisy. After the 9/11 attacks, Air France contracted with the Pretory guard company for in-flight security. Of 648 guards employed on France-U.S. flights, 173 had a police record and 20 had done hard prison time. ("Le Canard enchaîné," 11/18) Not so surprising, considering Pretory’s personnel recruiter had been sentenced to a 17-year prison term for armed robbery! And last July Air France boss Jean-Cyril Spinetta persuaded the judges not to charge him with money laundering and misuse of company property because it would hinder Air France’s merger with KLM!

Unfortunately, Roissy airport workers’ unions are pretty spineless. A Nov. 7 inter-trade union meeting agreed only to publish a joint leaflet; have their respective lawyers "work together"; and have a delegation meet the do-nothing minister for equal opportunity, Azouz Begag. They couldn’t agree on strike action and tabled the matter until the next meeting, Nov. 17.

The airport workers need to follow the Modeluxe laundry workers’ example (CHALLENGE, 11/1 and 11/15). Their one-week sit-down strike — which united all workers, French-born and foreign-born, documented and undocumented — forced the Essone department prefect to grant residence and work permits to ALL 20 of the undocumented workers.

Comparing the experiences of the Roissy and Modeluxe workers, it’s clear that winning workers’ demands doesn’t go through the bosses’ courts, but rather through workers’ unity at the point of production. Ultimately, eliminating the bosses’ courts, prefects and ministers will abolish capitalist exploitation once and for all.

Oil Resources Behind Darfur Deaths, Wars in Africa

Wars are spreading throughout Africa

• Somali Islamist movement fighters clashed with the interim government on Nov. 11 for the second time lately. "Militant groups and 11 countries are funneling the military aid needed for a full-scale war into Somalia, widening the threat of conflict into the Horn of Africa and beyond…" (Reuters, 11/10)

• In Kinshasha, Congo, armed clashes erupted between supporters of President Kabila and his opponent in the recent presidential election, Vice-President Jean Pierre Bemba. Kabila is ahead in the election’s second round. Over four million people have died since war erupted in the Congo in the late 1990’s, involving many nearby countries.

• In Darfur, the violence continues between government-supported militias and their opponents in the South of Sudan.

Said the Observer (London, 11/12): "This epidemic of war is as destructive as those of AIDS and malaria. But the chief fuel to this flame is not an innate aggression by Africans, as many commentators suggest. Tragically, in most cases, it is the blessings bestowed by nature on the continent and the strong desire of economically powerful outsiders to get them. Ethnic and religious rivalries are real, but too often serve as a smokescreen." (The Observer, Nov. 12).

For example, in Sudan the fighting is said to be among "Arabs and Africans" (both groups are African and black). But it’s oil that’s really behind it. U.S. bosses, black politicians and many liberals like actor George Clooney are focusing on the deaths in Darfur, but the reality underlying this "concern" is the China National Petroleum Corporation’s purchase of the rights to Block 6, the largest oil and gas field still controlled by the central Sudanese government, which lies mostly in Darfur.

"Production costs are believed to be a bargain, 22 cents…a barrel, and with Rolls-Royce Marine reportedly supplying tens of millions of dollars worth of pumping equipment this summer Block 6 production is alleged to have risen from 10,000 to 40,000 barrels a day," says the Observer. "Earlier this month China’s President Hu Jintao spoke forcefully in support of Sudan’s right to sort out Darfur as it saw fit, while his oil-thirsty country is now Sudan’s main military supplier. The signals from China’s recent summit with African leaders are that the Chinese will only push harder in future to gain their share of the spoils."

The conflict in Somalia is also labeled a religious struggle between Muslims and Christians (Ethiopia supports the interim government, opposed by a Muslim coalition). But what’s unpublicized is that the Ogaden region bordering Somalia sits on an unexploited gas field. The Malaysian oil giant Petronas has bought three concession blocks there. Ethiopa’s rulers fear a resurgent Somalia will seek to annex Ogaden. The area’s likely coming war is, in part, gas-powered.

The racists, who blame it all on African "savagery," point to the slaughter in Rwanda. "But there, too," reports the Observer, "one of the most under-reported tensions behind the conflict was the shortage of valuable grasslands." French and U.S. imperialists’ fight over resources also had their hands in this massacre.

The wars in the Congo were fought over diamonds, cobalt, gold and other precious minerals (with many imperialist companies financing the fighting). The wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia were again for diamonds, financed by foreign companies.

(A future article will review how many U.S. companies and investors — from George W. Bush to liberals like Clinton’s former U.S. ambassador Andrew Young — had their hands soaked with the blood of the millions who’ve died here, and how the only way out of this slaughter is to build an internationalist communist movement to break with all forms of tribalism, warlords and imperialists.)

LETTERS

Liberals’ Petition Misleads Anti-War GI’s

A subcommittee of my peace group builds support for anti-war resisters inside the military, along with groups like Iraq Vets Against the War and Military Families Speak Out. We were excited about the "Appeal for Redress" for military personnel to tell Congress to end the war, but there was much in it we disliked. The petition says nothing about getting out of Afghanistan or anywhere in the Middle East. Some of us wouldn't want to ask anti-war military personnel to self-identify as "patriotic Americans proud to serve the nation in uniform." Such language sets soldiers up for the next war - maybe, someone said, for World War III.

We created a "pledge" calling for ending the war and occupation of Iraq and everywhere else. It asks soldiers to follow their conscience and refuse to commit war crimes or fight for the corporate empire. Some were nervous about such strong language. Others are very enthusiastic and plan to take a mass approach with the pledge. Some members of the peace group dislike that; one leader is pushing the Appeal. The group has adopted our Pledge but this struggle will continue.

Working on the Pledge has provoked some sharp and useful political discussions in the committee, in the whole group and in private conversations. Taking it to friends in other groups, and directly to those most affected will spark even more discussion.

It will help this struggle if CHALLENGE is more consistent about the danger posed by liberals within the military anti-war movement.

The letter "GI's Begin to Opt Out" (CHALLENGE, 11/15) correctly states that "the ruling class is preparing a trap.…The Democrats…have a more sophisticated plan for waging imperialist war." Exactly for that reason, the same article is wrong to describe the "Appeal for redress" as a "blow to the solar plexus" of the military brass. Top brass were among the first to say that "staying in Iraq [with the Bush administration strategy] will not work" (in the words of the Appeal.) The group "West Point Graduates Against the War" declares, "the deceitful connivances of the current administration have resulted in a war catastrophic to our nation's interests." The Appeal's patriotism and reliance on "our leaders" in Congress push the identical lie that working-class soldiers have the same "national interest" as the imperialist rulers. We must sharply counter this lie or we, too, run the risk of leading troops into the Democrats' pro-imperialist trap.

Wherever there are people angry about the war, we can fight for aspects of revolutionary ideas, like international working-class consciousness and refusing to obey orders that are against our class interest.

A Comrade

Need Alternative to Liberals' GI 'Appeal'

The article "GI's begin to Opt Out" (CHALLENGE, 11/15) is very true and a good sign that many soldiers are against the war and want it to end. That shows there's lots of potential in directly working with soldiers. But I was disturbed by the article's claim that the "appeal for redress" signed by 1,000 soldiers was "hitting the military brass like a blow to the solar plexus." I'm confident we can explain the errors of patriotism in the appeal to soldiers. However, the article gives too much credit to the appeal, sponsored by liberals with strong ties to the ruling class.

The liberal politicians' agenda is to manipulate the anti-war anger of soldiers, using patriotism to set them up for the next war. One thing must be clarified: capitalism needs war. Politicians scream "let's get out of Iraq" because things are utterly ugly and they see no way to win with the current plan. There is definitely a need to end unjust, imperialist war; however, there are other places these same politicians would gladly send troops.

Any appeal that begins with "As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform," betrays the justified anti-war anger of soldiers. We should expose the goals of the liberal rulers. As soon as we can win over our base, we should propose an alternative statement for soldiers that's not patriotic. Sending petitions to Congress is fruitless and we should not confuse soldiers by encouraging them to send polite complaints to government officials.

The writer calls the appeal a "blow" and at the same time calls for communist revolution. The latter is an enormous blow. The article does acknowledge the sophisticated plan of the liberal ruling class accurately. We might not be able to get 1,000 troops to sign on to revolution now, but by criticizing the appeal and encouraging an alternative, we will make significant advances.

Red Iraq Vet

Danger, Opportunity in GI Movement

It's good to see the considerable activity and discussion about PLP's work with soldiers and their families. The recent article (CHALLENGE, 11/15) on the "Appeal for Redress" reflects the ongoing fight to build the Party within movements and struggles led by the ruling class. For us they contain both dangers and opportunities.

The "Redress," like virtually all organized class struggle in this period, is simultaneously a "blow" to the bosses and a temporary victory for them. The Oaxaca strike and rebellion, the supportive demonstrations by U.S. AFT chapters, the activities by Military Families Speak Out and IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) — two organizations formed by AFL-CIO and Democratic Party operatives — all provide opportunities to build a base for communist ideas in them while we're involved in whatever struggle is being organized. At the same time they're all led by the ruling class for the purpose of mis-leading workers. This is true regardless of whoever these groups' nominal local leaders are.

The Redress reflects rank-and-file soldiers' discontent with an imperialist war. Currently that discontent is being organized into a petition campaign led by the liberal rulers.

Given that the Redress is happening and over 1,000 soldiers have signed on to it, the main question is how we can take advantage of this development. Naturally, to the extent soldiers are following the liberal bosses, the Redress represents continuing victory for the capitalists. It's only when soldiers and workers can break away from following these enemies and follow communist leadership that the nature of the struggle can change.

This is true in one way or another — short of communist revolution — about every strike and struggle, no matter how militant or anti-imperialist the slogans, although the latter can raise class consciousness.

It would be an error not to participate because it is patriotic, any more than we would say don't participate in a strike or pro-immigrant demonstration just because the union or community group leads a march with an American (or Mexican) flag or recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Appealing to Congress builds as many illusions and creates as much opportunity as demanding a raise or amnesty or a new governor. What matters is what we do to build the Party in any of these struggles.

We should support the soldiers signing the petition, out of class solidarity. At the same time, as an organization, we should do what the writer says in criticizing the patriotism and raise more militant and politically sharper points, win people to communism and recruit to the Party from many angles, from within and without, loudly and one on one.

If people get soldiers to sign other statements, that's great too. To do all these things we must get deeply involved in this struggle and stay involved in every way possible.

red vet

Wider Wars Behind School ‘Reform’

As teachers in a PLP-led study group, we take teaching seriously. We want the best learning environment to teach the truth about class struggle and to prepare our students to fight for communism. They need to be able to read, write and think critically using historical knowledge, analysis and dialectical materialism.

But the schools are designed to serve the needs of the ruling class. This contradicts the ILLUSION that schools are an agency of upward mobility, that reforming capitalist schools would give working-class kids a better life. We want students to have a better life, not to drop out or do drugs, but we know that school reform is not designed to improve life for working-class kids.

Twenty years ago Party teachers helped fight for books, clean classrooms, pencil sharpeners. In those days, as long as we had our class under control, nobody knew or cared what we taught. Things have changed. It would be a mistake to mainly concentrate on the same old fight for better conditions; we must recognize the changing needs of the ruling class in the current crisis. There are now millions of dollars in additional funding, standards, standardized tests, small learning communities, and many more books. Obviously, the oldest school buildings in black and Latino communities still have moldy classrooms and falling-down ceiling tiles. In the growing imperialist crisis, the rulers need to pay closer attention to the inner-city public schools.

The ruling class wants to standardize instruction so that students receive a basic educational level of competence in reading, math, science, and social studies. They are particularly concerned with "the very poor, who drop out of high school and are therefore ineligible for the military." ("Was Kerry Right?" LA Times Op-Ed 11/3). It is precisely to prepare for wider war that the bosses are reforming education. Their rivalry with emerging imperialist powers is accelerating, and the ruling class needs to organize every aspect of society, including the schools, to lay the preparations for inevitable conflict.

Every major liberal think tank and foundation has united in this endeavor. A 2005 New York University report titled "With All Deliberate Speed", quotes retired Army Generals worrying about the high dropout rate harming military enrollment and predicts that the U.S. will need 14 million more college-trained workers by 2020, mostly to work in the war industry. A capitalist class that has spent decades pushing a racist program of drugs, social neglect and mass incarceration now faces the absolute need to change its educational plans to recruit, win and train a significantly larger sector of its inner-city youth.

One education reform has been the move to small schools which are often "school to work" programs (which serve the needs of industry), service-based programs (which train kids to be cops or otherwise serve the system) or "social justice" schools. The latter involve some of the most committed activists, but are an important part of the liberal rulers' plan to win the working class to patriotism and loyalty to the system. In these schools we spend a lot of time in meetings with our colleagues. There, and with our students, we try to expose the illusions fostered by community projects to register voters, the liberal patriotism that misdefines the fight against racism as "expanding who is an American" and the environmentalism that asks students to blame themselves for global warming. But most importantly, we fight to expose the bosses' need for war.

This month's Rethinking Schools magazine article by liberal apologist Alfie Kohn bemoans the bosses' plan to win global competition by "sending children home with packets of worksheets." He asks why we can't be allowed to educate kids to be enthusiastic and proficient learners, instead. Unlike the idealistic Kohn, we communists see that war is on the capitalist agenda and school reform is part of that. We need to expose this and win students, parents and teachers to fighting, not to reform public education for WWIII, but to build a movement to turn the bosses' war into a revolutionary war for workers' power. Only in a communist society can Kohn's dream of enthusiastic, proficient learners become a reality. Working-class students will be motivated to learn by fighting to organize society to meet our class' needs rather than to kill and die for the bosses' profits.

Reddish Teachers

Medical Murder: From Hitler to Israel to U.S.

The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., has been presenting an exhibit entitled "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race." It finally agreed, after much opposition, to bring this exhibition to the country that created the Nazis, and show it in Dresden. It was the rise of pro-Nazi groups in Germany today that convinced the Museum to do so. The exhibition displays some 400 documents, objects and photos of how Hitler’s fascist regime tried to create a "master race." Doctors and scientists played a key role, murdering thousands of children and adults considered "unfit to live" once they were catalogued as mentally ill or physically disabled.

Prior to the "Master Race" plan becoming a deadly killing machine, a joke pervaded Germany on how the "Nazi Pure Aryan" was "blonde like Hitler, tall like Goebbels and slim like Göring," Nazi leaders who were dark-haired, short and fat. But it was no joke. From 1939 to 1945 euthanasia killed 5,000 German children and 200,000 adults. It was part of the Holocaust slaughter of millions of "subhumans."

"It did not happen overnight," said Antje Uhlig, the exhibition’s director. She told the Mexican daily La Jornada (10/25): "Using the social prejudices already in place and based on the Eugenics movement, the Third Reich used research in human genetics to decide which human being was ‘valuable’ and which one was not…"

The Nazis popularized the eugenics theory British scientist Francis Galton wrote in 1883. His ideas spread internationally, including to the U.S., using horse-breeding principles to "improve" the human race through artificial selection of "the fittest." In 1930, the Dresden Hygiene Museum (site of today’s exhibition) opened on the subject of human sexuality. After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, it became the cornerstone of Nazi medical propaganda.

Upon the Nazis’ seizure of power, they enacted a law "guarding" against genetically inherited diseases, the judicial basis for euthanasia and the Holocaust.

While the law forbid abortions for Aryan mothers, whom the State idolized, still some 400,000 men and women with any one of nine Nazi-defined "hereditary illnesses" were sterilized, all according to "law."

Many doctors and scientists used this and other laws to execute horrendous human experiments. Joseph Mengele, the "Angel of Death," was the best-known of these doctors for his experiments at the Auschwitz death camp. But there were many others. Even before the war, Paul Nietzche, a Dresden psychiatrist, advocated death for the "incurably ill." He started the euthanasia program "Aktion T-4" after the 1939 invasion of Poland. It began with new-borns and then expanded to include adults. Doctors and nurses were ordered to register disabled children with genetic defects. A prestigious Berlin pediatrician, Ernst Wentzler, was one who had the final decision on who was to be killed. One picture in the exhibition shows a health crew smiling to the camera in a crematorium.

This exhibition of the past is very much related to the present. Copying the Nazis, four senior Israeli doctors were just arrested for illegally experimenting on thousands of elderly and mentally disturbed patients — including some survivors of Nazi concentration camps! — without their consent. Thirteen patients died during or shortly after one experiment.

Today, in the U.S. cutbacks in social and health services, racist medical practices and the drive for maximum profits by hospitals and HMO’s has caused the deaths of untold numbers of people who cannot afford medical care here. The bosses bribe many medical professionals to participate in these attacks, giving them relatively higher living standards than other hospital workers and most workers. Communist medical professionals have a long history of fighting the rulers’ racist attacks and strive to unite with other healthcare workers.

Nazi medical science was no aberration, but a product of a racist war-making profit system, which easily can be repeated here.

An online version of the exhibition can be seen at: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine

An irate patient

Campus’ Action Exposes ‘Justice’ Roberts

Recently chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts visited my college campus. His lecture was considered by many faculty and students to be a high point of the fall semester. What these people seemed to forget was that Roberts is not above politics; he was picked by Bush and confirmed by both parties in Congress to advance the interests of U.S. imperialism abroad and fascism at home. He is presiding over a court, which has signed off on the torture of innocent people in Guantanamo, and all over the world; which may soon seek to limit a woman’s right to abortion; and which seems determined to usher in the re-segregation of public schools.

At first I wasn’t sure whether people on my campus would be open to a demonstration attacking such a respected political figure. At our first meeting, only six other students came. It was a good opportunity for us to discuss how the Supreme Court functions to legalize fascism, racism and sexism. On the day of the demonstration, we came prepared with anti-fascist chants, soon 35 students and towns-people joined the demonstration. It was a good turnout for a school that is often considered apathetic. We distributed CHALLENGE and leaflets, and we learned that even small private colleges have people who want to ally with workers if they are given the chance.

Red Student

The Deaf Must Unite With Their Class

Since a comrade reported on the situation at Gallaudet University, the protesting students have won their battle to force the university trustees to dump their choice to succeed the retiring president.

This was a real victory for the students, but their movement contains serious contradictions. As the comrade reported, they want American Sign Language (ASL), to be primary at Gallaudet. ASL is a very different language from English and does not have a written form (the comrade did not realize this). Some of these students reject other forms of communication used by deaf people, including simultaneously signing and speaking, as incompatible with their notion of deaf culture. As the comrade rightly notes, this is a kind of identity politics, like feminism or nationalism, that separates its proponents from workers in general by emphasizing the "difference" of being deaf instead of concentrating on building class unity against the capitalist culture which does oppress the deaf in special ways. The many other deaf people, who need or prefer to use speech or English-based signing as well as ASL, are attacked as less pure and the capitalists who profit from all divisions within the working class are let off the hook.

I am myself a deaf person who lives in the mainstream (where I must use speech and lip reading to communicate). I admire the fierce energy of the Gallaudet protesters, which could go a long way toward overcoming the real, physical barriers that separate those without hearing from those with, and intensifying the common struggle against capitalism and its evils. I am saddened that far too much of that energy is being diverted into dead-end, even more isolating identity politics.

A Supporter

REDEYE

Nigeria’s workers rely on armed force

Last week militants seized more oil workers, one British and one American. More that 50 have been kidnapped this year….

The conflict has degenerated into a crisis threatening to halt oil production in the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter. Production this year is down by about 600,000 barrels a day….

"If we don’t use violence, we can find it difficult for the government and the companies to attend to our needs," said Earnest Tonye, a young militant in Port Harcourt. "It works. When you are quiet, nobody cares about you if you are dying."

At the heart of anger is what they see as decades of exploitation. Last year the Nigerian government earned about $45bn in oil revenue while more than 70% of Nigerians live on less than $1 a day. (GW, 11/16)

Capitalist-run world swims in sewage

Every year, more than two million children die of diarrhea and other sicknesses caused by dirty water and a lack of "access to sanitation."

…More than a third of the world’s people — 2.6 billion — have no decent place to go to the bathroom, while more than a billion get water for drinking, washing and cooking from sources polluted by human and animal feces.

At any time, almost half the people in developing countries have one or more of the main illnesses associated with inadequate water and sanitation….They are plagued by diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, trachoma and parasitic worms….

"Life-saving investments in water and sanitation are dwarfed by military spending,"… (NYT, 11/10)

Who are the worst terror-killers?

The overwhelming majority of people killed or maimed by cluster bombs are civilians and a significant number of those are children, according to an unprecedented study….The full extent of the damage caused by unexploded "bomblets" will probably never be known, it says….

Cluster bombs have been used in most major conflicts since Vietnam. Nato aircraft dropped them over civilian areas during the Kosovo conflict, British forces fired Israeli-made cluster weapons around Basra in 2003, and the Israelis fired them at Lebanon this summer….

In some areas of Iraq casualties from cluster weapons account for between 75% and 80% of all casualties. (GW, 11/16)

Voters know they’re just flipping a coin

Many voters, however, were willing to take a chance on unknown quantities.

In St. Louis, Floyd Butcher said he was not aligned with either party but would vote for Claire C. McCaskill, the Democratic challenger to senator Jim Talent.

"I’m sick of hearing Talent lie about McCaskill and sick of hearing McCaskill lie about Talent," Mr. Butcher said. "But we’ve had Talent for years now and we know that he did not do a lot for us. McCaskill may be just as bad, but at least we don’t know that for a fact." (NYT, 11/8)

‘Demand for profit’ = world hunger

Figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organiastion (FAO) show not a reduction but an increase of…undernourished people since 1996. The figure, now at more than 850 million, is testament to how current global policies are consigning the hungry to stay hungry….

The report says that neoliberal economic policy has encouraged the elimination of small-scale food producers. Farmers and indigenous peoples are seen as "residues" of history — whose disappearance is inevitable….

The message of the report is that small-scale farmers — the majority of growers in the world — want radically different policies from those being promoted by their governments. The call is for policies to start from the perspectives of food producers and consumers rather than the demand for profit. (GW, 11/9)

They work to save legs — if you’re rich

Economically and socially marginalized groups…get the shortest shrift in the amputation lottery. Among diabetics in North America, Hispanics and African Americans are 1.5 to 2.5 times more likely than whites to undergo lower limb amputations. (NYT, 11/7)

Unemployment low? This crowd says no

A new candy store that would be opening in Times Square needed workers. Starting pay was $10.75 an hour.

But by midmorning yesterday, a huge, swelling discontented crowd of job seekers was…filling the air with curses.

The crowd put a human face on jobless statistics at a time when the city’s unemployment rate, 4.5 percent in September, was the lowest since 1988.

Several thousand people — mostly young, black and Hispanic — had shown up to apply for fewer than 200 positions, only 65 of them full-time jobs. They came, they said, because of a phrase that had leapt out of the advertisements for the jobs: "on-the-spot hiring." But there were too many people clogging the sidewalk outside the building on Eighth Avenue between 35th and 36th streets where the company was conducting interviews, and everyone was abruptly told to go home and mail in the job applications….

Many had arranged for baby sitters, traveled from other boroughs and New Jersey, and lined up as early as 1 a.m.,…. (NYT, 11/4)

Short-Circuiting Soldiers’ Political Potential

Book Review: "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance during the Vietnam War," By David Cortright, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2005

The new edition of "Soldiers in Revolt," David Cortright’s 1975 survey of the Vietnam era GI movement fits well into U.S. rulers’ plans for a larger Army with Nazi-like commitment to prepare for bigger and bloodier wars ahead. As more and more workers, students and soldiers oppose the war in Iraq, Cortright’s ideas will be used to mislead the anti-war movement.

"Soldiers in Revolt" chronicles an impressive sequence of GI revolts, but then distorts these insurgencies with identity politics, faith in democratic reform and patriotism.

Soldiers Fight Back

Hundreds of thousands of troops rebelled during the Vietnam War with 250 anti-war, anti-racist committees and "underground" newspapers distributed illegally on bases and ships, in stockades and on the front lines.

The "less sophisticated, often violent means" [Cortright’s words] soldiers employed were even better. Outraged by the beating of a black soldier, the Ft. Bragg stockade erupted on July 23, 1968. Black and white GIs held out for over 48 hours before surrendering to armed troops from the 82nd Airborne. In early November 1972, the U.S.S. Constellation witnessed "the first mass mutiny in the history of the U.S. Navy." We should all be so "unsophisticated"!

As Cortright reveals, the Pentagon admitted 47% of active-duty soldiers participated in organized resistance or rebellion during the height of the GI movement in 1970-71. The imperialists’ worse nightmare would be soldiers won to revolutionary communist class-consciousness leading widespread Armed Forces rebellion.

Two Traps: Identity Politics and Democracy

But even the descriptions of rebellions must be read with care. The Progressive Labor Party’s single mention vastly downplays our military work. Knowing better, U.S. counter-intelligence officer Taylor testified (House Internal Securities Committee, Vol. II, 1972) that "other organizations were being overshadowed by . . . PLP in the 6th Army."

Cortright distorted the Party’s work in the mass anti-racist fight-back at Ft. Lewis led by three comrades, black, Latin and white. His nationalist and identity politics led him to describe the struggle as mostly whites supporting blacks, while maintaining "blacks normally stood alone in resisting racial abuses."

In fact, we built a multi-racial group (a slight majority were black) that fought racism and genocidal war on a class basis. Fifty CHALLENGE readers, writers and sellers, with the aid of thousands of leaflets and pamphlets, spread the word: racist attacks hurt all GIs! The brass did "their best to scare white GI’s away from fighting racism," according to an internal PLP report. "We succeeded in gathering some of the most militant, serious fighters, black, Latin and white around the Party by concentrating on the fight against racism." A number eventually joined.

Cortright pushes "democracy," devoting 85 pages to his plan to secure a volunteer army based largely on democratic reforms. "Voluntary recruitment…can only work in a…democratically structured armed force…."

Within those 85 pages, only one paragraph criticizes imperialism. The anti-racist struggle is reduced to "proud young blacks…fight[ing] for their rightful share of democratic freedoms." PLP, on the other hand, exposed capitalist democracy as a bosses’ dictatorship founded upon racism and imperialism. Soldiers’ experiences made them sympathetic to this analysis.

Another Trap: Bosses’ Patriotism

Cortright’s analysis has developed into a sophisticated defense of a "benign" U.S. imperialism. His August 2002 article "Stop the War Before it Starts" (The Progressive Magazine), favors building a movement that "ride[s] the patriotic wave and offer[s] forward-looking solutions that uphold the best traditions of American democracy." He raised more than $300,000 for Win Without War, promoting it as "mainstream and patriotic." He bragged that ads and press releases featured an American flag. Its mission statement began with "We are patriotic Americans…" ("A Peaceful Superpower: the Movement against War in Iraq")

The biggest imperialists finance Cortright. He heads the Fourth Freedom Forum funded by the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The new edition of his book contains a postscript in which he advocates a legalistic approach, explaining how he tried to sue the army. He further describes the new liberal coalition he wants to build to reform the army.

Cortright knows how the "Vietnam Syndrome" can affect soldiers. He’s already pushing GI "anti-war" petitions (for redress) to Congress starting — once again — with "As a patriotic American…" His patriotism sets up soldiers for the next war, preempting class consciousness.

PLP will continue military organizing to win soldiers to wage revolutionary class war against the imperialist warmakers, recruiting soldiers to the workers’ side. A revolution to smash this racist, capitalist system requires the active support of vast numbers of troops. Political friendships made in the military will help pave the long road to communism. "Soldiers in Revolt" may be worth reading for the stories of GI unrest, but Cortright’s politics, then and now, make a mockery of these brave soldiers’ struggles.

God Save The Queen Because The Working Class Definitely Shouldn’t!

I watched the movie "The Queen" with a friend from work and her reaction was "you know, Mrs. Blair in the movie was right, the Queen definitely does freeload off of the people with thirty million dollars in taxes coming in to support her." As if all capitalists don’t! The toilets in the Hilton hotels are scrubbed by underpaid workers not Paris Hilton. Whether absolute monarchy or bourgeois democracy, workers maintain the rulers’ thrones and mansions!

"The Queen" covered the time period shortly after Princess Diana died in 1997 and Tony Blair assumed the position of Prime Minister of England. Like another movie out right now, "Marie Antoinette," these movies are just trying to humanize workers’ oppressors, while ignoring their daily crimes against the working class. Even though around the world racist police terrorize, beat and kill workers regularly, the bosses want us to shed tears when one of them dies.

During her lifetime Princess Diana called for many reforms such as reducing the spread of AIDS, uncovering buried land mines in war-torn countries, and providing aid for starving children. While she was practically elevated to sainthood by the capitalist press, Diana was nothing more than a liberal apologist who thought charity and photo-ops would cure the working class of those above-mentioned ills. Her supposed heart of gold captivated many workers, but all the actual gold she wore had been extracted by suffering mine workers around the world. When she died workers lost little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

In Europe, many monarchies consolidated their wealth with the capitalists as they came to power and now are collaborators with the ruling class. In Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth advised Tony Blair. Far from a figurehead, she uses Blair as a messenger and enforcer for the agenda of the entire ruling class. You see this in the movie when Elizabeth questions Blair on his plans. The scene ends with the conversation trailing off as he mentions education reform, not getting into how Blair has pushed the imperialist war in Iraq and racist attacks on Muslim workers.

Tony Blair listens as Elizabeth concludes that the people needed their Queen to be there for them and that she is well known for keeping her feelings private. The message of the movie is that heads of state (be they queen, prime minister or president) cry just like we cry and that they are really people too. However rulers don’t cry because handcuffs dig into their wrists, nightsticks sting their cheeks, or their relatives die from poverty!

For the most part power and privilege have taken on a new appearance; the people who wield them don’t have crowns on their heads, just suits and flags. Yet no matter which master sits on top, workers will get screwed. Capitalism, feudalism, and slave societies all have concentration of power in the hands of the few at the expense of the masses. Tony Blair may have been part of the "Labor" party, but the working class only finds itself laboring endlessly for the profits of the ruling class. It is up to the working class to seize power through communist revolution and establish a system based on everyone’s needs.

1. OAXACA REBELS BATTLE FASCIST TROOPS
   1. Support Spreading
2. RULERS TRY TO FOOL WORKERS WITH PHONY IRAQ `EXIT' SCHEMES
   1. Oil-thirsty Liberals Seek More Mid-East Killing, Not Less
   2. Baker-Hamilton Brain-Trust Imperialist to the Core
   3. DEMS PUSH MILITARISM
3. Imperialist Rivalries Dictate Latin American Elections
   1. Latin American Elections Reflect Splits in the Ruling Classes
   2. BRAZIL
   3. ECUADOR
4. BUILDING COMMUNIST CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG D.C. TRANSIT WORKERS
5. Students Oppose Military `Career Fair,' Challenge University Intimidation
6. FIGHTING HIV and AIDS, FIGHTING FOR REVOLUTION!
7. PL'ers Fight for Real Communist Politics at Conference
8. Bronx Postal Workers Battle Layoffs, Closings
9. Auto Bosses' Rivalry Puts Brakes on Ford, GM
   1. Here is evidence that the Big Three is no more:
10. Corruption Inc.: NYC Central Faker Council Robs Workers Blind
11. Sit-down Striker Fights Anti-Immigrant French Bosses
12. RED YOUTH BUILD PLP IN MEXICO
13. LA Workers Back Oaxaca Rebels
14. LETTERS
    1. Is PLP Against `Better Schools'?
       1. CHALLENGE Comment:
    2. Racism Won't Fly With Airport Workers
    3. Workers Back Anti-Klan Protesters
15. Nicaraguan Election Exposes Opportunists' Betrayal
16. PLP HISTORY:
    Miners' Rebellion Launched PL's 44 Years in Class Struggle
17. REDEYE
    1. First nukes in Korea came from U.S.
    2. Climate issue is handy for ruling class
    3. Elections aren't fooling many people
    4. New Love for sugar daddies: Democrats
    5. China and India see wars over energy
    6. TV ad speeds up child's development
    7. North's rulers also got rich on slavery
18. Book Review:
    U.S. Britain Betrayed Death Camp Inmates
19. In Memory of Sam Chestnut
    Nov 26, 1943 - Sept. 26, 2006
20. Book Review:
    Murder Mystery With Working-Class Hero

---

OAXACA REBELS BATTLE FASCIST TROOPS

OAXACA, MEXICO, Oct. 29 -- Today, thousands of fascist federal police with tanks and bullets invaded this city of rebellion. Protestors reinforced their barricades with burning busses, some with full gas tanks. Thousands of workers with bags of rocks, with poles and Molotov cocktails waited for the police. Then the cops were met with a barrage of rocks. Fighting was hand to hand.

Other police used 80 buses to open the roads but youth ran alongside cutting their tires and burning some -- busses and police. Two older people with rock-filled bags on their shoulders ran from a barricade to an opening, bringing the rocks to the youth.

At one barricade led by women, demonstrations captured 12 unarmed young soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, detained them and later turned them over to the military.

Others wrongly waved the Mexican flag to try to slow the attack. But this flag -- which President Fox holds to his chest -- represents the bosses, not the workers.

By day's end, smoke and tear gas filled the city. Four workers were killed, with hundreds injured and arrested. The working class in general joined the struggle: teachers, workers, students and farm workers. It was a lesson for future struggles.

The city fell into the fascists' hands, but the spirit of struggle is freer than ever. This was one more battle in the long war against capitalism. Thousands of these now experienced fighters are open to a broader vision of the revolutionary struggle, not just for crumbs or capitalist reforms but also for control of all state power through a real communist revolution.

Oaxaca is one of Mexico's poorest states, with a large indigenous population and a reputation for rebelliousness. Control over Oaxaca is crucial for the bosses to prevent opposition to their project linking the Pacific Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico -- part of Plan Puebla Panama, (see box page 5) with great potential for tourism as well as an important transportation hub. Oaxaca is a source of cheap labor forced to migrate to the U.S., Mexico City and northern Mexico. The bosses fear that the racism, poverty and rebelliousness provide fertile ground for the revolt to spread.

The competing rulers have both political and economic motives for smashing the movement. Ex-governors Carrasco and Murat want to preserve control of state power and guarantee their profits. Elba Gordillo, the top hack of the SNTE (National Teachers' Union) -- and right hand of Mexico's newly-elected president Calderón -- wants to control the militant Oaxaca SNTE Section 22. Governor Ulises represents another ruling-class faction and uses violence to maintain his position.

While these murderers vie for power, the workers are repressed and killed. Ulises has held on because the other groups can't agree. He has the support of most of the PRI party which fears losing control of Oaxaca State to other electoral parties.

The fascist repression reveals the true face of Fox, Calderón, Abascal (Interior Minister) and the PAN, Fox's party. Although having tactical disagreements with PAN, López Obrador and his opposition PRD party showed their pro-boss class interest by their tepid response to the government's criminal actions. All of them are sworn enemies of the working class. We should never trust any of them or the capitalist system that they defend by murdering workers.

The PLP has played a modest but important role in the movement in Oaxaca, including distribution of CHALLENGE, the spreading of communist ideas and mass actions of support nationally and internationally. New friends are closer because of the Party's boldness in the struggle and its communist analysis of events.

We workers will only succeed when we organize in a party to take state power for the working class, not just to remove a gangster like Ruiz so the bosses can replace him with another puppet. We need communist consciousness over the long run to destroy the bosses' state power and establish a communist society where the decisions are made by the organized working class.

For the comrades who have fallen in the struggle and the thousands who have fought valiantly, the PLP commits itself to redouble our efforts to bring the fight for communism to every corner of Oaxaca and the world. We call on you to march under the Red Flag of the international working class.

Support Spreading

Four hundred thousand teachers from the CNTE (a national dissident group inside the Teachers Union) called for a work stoppage against the fascist police assault on the five-month struggle in Oaxaca. Protests have spread throughout Mexico and in Los Angeles, New York City, London, Madrid and many other cities. Political conditions for bringing communist ideas to the masses are maturing. PLP is helping to organize support actions in the U.S. and Latin America while presenting the goal of communist revolution.

RULERS TRY TO FOOL WORKERS WITH PHONY IRAQ `EXIT' SCHEMES

More than 100 GI's lost their lives to U.S. imperialism in Iraq during October. The puppet Iraqi government has given up trying to count its own dead citizens. Meanwhile, Establishment liberals are cynically trying to parlay disgust at the mounting carnage into a Democratic Congressional electoral victory and tighter control of U.S. foreign policy for the Bush regime's remaining two years. The dominant liberal wing of U.S. capitalism forced Bush to make a public admission of mistakes over Iraq at his October 25 press conference. Bush, dropping the "Stay-the-Course" slogan, welcomed the forthcoming recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), headed by Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton. Behind its misleading "phased withdrawal" rhetoric, the panel's report reflects the rulers' need for intensified warfare in the oil-rich Middle East.

Oil-thirsty Liberals Seek More Mid-East Killing, Not Less

The ISG report, slated for post-Election Day publication but leaked to the press in mid-October, presents two main options, "Stability First" and "Redeploy and Contain." The former would focus U.S. troops on wiping out insurgents in Baghdad (population 5,000,000), an operation that would make November 2005 U.S.-led massacre in Fallujah (population 400,000) look like a tea party. The latter meshes with calls by Rep. John Murtha and a host of Democratic Congressional candidates for a tactical retreat of U.S. forces from Iraq followed by an all-out re-invasion of the entire region. The re-deployers don't want all the troops out, however. The U.S. has built 14 permanent military bases near Iraq's oil fields, pipelines, and major cities.

The ISG also recommends negotiating with Iran and Syria. Such talks would be classic gunboat diplomacy. The U.S. Navy has recently dispatched two strike groups, including the aircraft carrier Enterprise, to the Persian Gulf. And, under the guise of monitoring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.S.-led NATO is conducting a massive naval build-up in the eastern Mediterranean.

Baker-Hamilton Brain-Trust Imperialist to the Core

Though hailing from Texas, ISG co-chairman Baker serves the imperialist Eastern Establishment. His law firm, Baker Botts, has represented Exxon Mobil and its predecessors for over a century. The Texas Commerce Bank, started by Baker's grandfather, is now part of JP MorganChase. As papa Bush's Secretary of State, Baker rounded up allies for the first Iraq war. Even before the second one began, the Baker Institute he founded teamed up with the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations to produce "Guiding Principles," a 32-page document on how to conduct the occupation. Bush & Co. failed to heed it. Hamilton, the ISG's other leader, sports equally impressive imperialist credentials. A Hart-Rudman commissioner, he helped draft U.S. rulers' plans for maintaining their supremacy well into the 21st Century by implementing a police state to mobilize the nation for ever larger wars.

DEMS PUSH MILITARISM

Whatever success liberals may have in exerting influence over the White House and getting Democrats elected won't benefit the working class one bit. Rumsfeld is indeed a war criminal. But firing him, as the liberal New York Times demanded (10/24/06), would only advance the imperialists' deadly agenda. The militaristic mobilization that liberals really want comes through loud and clear in the latest issue of "Blueprint," published by the Democratic Leadership Council, headed by none other than Hillary Clinton. Its lead article, "The Plan: Big Ideas for America," says, "All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service. This is not a draft -- nor is it military. Young people will be trained not as soldiers, but simply as citizens who understand their responsibilities in the event of natural disaster, epidemic, or terrorist attack." The phony "anti-militarism" soon yields to imperialist warmongering when the article later says, "We need to fortify the military's `thin green line' around the world by adding to the Special Forces and the Marines, and expanding the Army by 100,000 more troops."

The state of affairs that necessitates the rulers' Baker-Hamilton intervention presents the working class both with the danger of more lethal wars and the opportunity to organize against them. Simply put, Bush faces the task of mobilizing, people who don't want to be mobilized. The Clinton-appointed bi-partisan Hart-Rudman Commission report demands a sacrifice of "blood and treasure" for U.S. imperialism -- the "treasure" meaning higher taxes, not tax cuts. But capitalists with less imperialist aspirations -- who comprise part of Bush's voting base -- do not want war taxes eating into their profits. More importantly, the vast majority of workers are unwilling to give their lives for Exxon and JP MorganChase in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. In such times, our Party can and must build a working-class anti-imperialist war movement with the outlook of eliminating the profit system through communist revolution.

(Disciplining both capitalists and workers is crucial to the rulers' war plans. Next issue will analyze future New York governor Eliot Spitzer, the so-called "Sheriff of Wall Street," and the growth of the U.S. police state.)

Imperialist Rivalries Dictate Latin American Elections

It's election season across Latin America, and capitalist elections can mean both nothing and something. Capitalists spend billions on them to try to settle disagreements within their class and to win the allegiance of workers, who are led to bank their hopes of a better world on electoral change.

Elections provide a dialectics lesson in appearance and essence. Capitalism trains us to think superficially. The bosses celebrate elections, saying our voices matter. Politicians make big promises, but after the fuss of expensive elections, the working class always loses out. Using dialectics, however, we can learn to see beyond the appearances the media present and analyze the essential nature of the elections: no matter which politicians win they serve the bosses, not the workers.

Latin American Elections Reflect Splits in the Ruling Classes

Venezuela is a key oil producer which the U.S. once considered its backyard. Many workers see Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez as a courageous anti-imperialist leader; he survived a U.S.-backed 2002 coup and called Bush the "devil" in a recent UN speech as part of his now troubled bid for a Security Council seat. But he is only anti-U.S. (or merely anti-Bush), not a real anti-imperialist. Challengers to U.S. imperialism like China, India, Russia and Iran are investing heavily in Venezuela's oil. Venezuela is now shifting oil exports from the U.S. to China and India (in the first seven months of 2006, U.S. imports of Venezuelan oil declined 13% compared to the same period in 2005). Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil are now investing heavily in Venezuela oil and gas. Russia also just signed a billion-dollar deal to sell modern weapons to the Venezuelan Armed Forces. Also, a section of the local ruling class is making huge profits because of the oil price boom, while workers have gotten just a few crumbs. The support for Chavez by U.S. imperialist rivals symbolizes the relative decline of U.S. influence in Latin America, even though U.S. Big Oil and banks are still making big bucks in Venezuela. Chávez looks like he'll win the December presidential election. His slogan is "Ten Million Votes Down Their Throats." Chavez's discredited opposition, pro-U.S. factions of local rulers, has united around Manuel Rosales who supported the 2002 U.S.-backed coup against Chavez, later calling it a "mistake" in a "moment of confusion."

BRAZIL

In Brazil, the nation with the world's sharpest social inequality, the current "Workers'' Party president "Lula" da Silva won re-election with 60% of the votes in the second round, defeating the more pro-U.S. candidate Gerardo Alckmin. Workers supported Lula, an ex-metalworker and unionist, because of his reputation as a "working-class fighter." In 2002, when Lula was first elected, this appearance of being "pro-worker" worked, and did again today despite the corruption surrounding his Party.

But Lula basically represents the Sao Paulo bourgeoisie (the most powerful in Latin America) and Petrobras (the oil monopoly owned jointly by the state and private local and foreign investors). Since 2002, Lula has not changed the sharp social inequality or racism in this mostly non-white country. He didn't even withdraw Brazilian troops from Haiti after the U.S.-led invasion ousted Pres. Aristide. But Lula has bolstered Brazil's economic ties with China, selling it soy, iron ore and meat worth billions, while Brazilian workers suffer deep social spending cuts. By 2003, the total value of trade between the two countries was $36 billion; it's projected to reach $100 billion by 2010.

ECUADOR

A November run-off election in Ecuador features billionaire Alvaro Noboa, who favors close ties with the U.S. and Rafael Correa, a young professor. Noboa is the strike-breaking owner of many banana plantations utilizing child labor. Univ. of Illinois-trained economist Correa again is seen as the "lesser of two evils" by many, but he is just another capitalist tool. Correa's "leftist," campaign is based on diverting oil, Ecuador's main export, from the U.S. and into Asia. A section of the local rulers wants Correa to cash in on the opportunities with U.S. rivals. This doesn't mean Correa will end the poverty and racism suffered by urban and rural workers (many indigenous). He doesn't even plan to end the dollarization of the currency which plunged workers into more poverty a few years ago when it was adopted. According to one of his colleagues: "Correa is against the status quo, but that doesn't make him a Marxist or a messianic leader like Chavez" (NY Times, 10/16). The Times admits, "That may be why some prominent financiers and businessmen have backed him." Correa is in essence representing the bosses seeking to change the "status quo" of U.S. domination to some other imperialist bloc. And to the working class of Ecuador, he's a mortal enemy.

The shifting of Latin American ruling-class alliances away from U.S. influence and towards major rivals represents an area of concern for U.S. imperialism. The capitalists' constant rivalry for natural resources, markets, and labor is leading to imperialist wars world-wide. Our job as communists is not to build illusions about "lesser evil" bosses but to seize the opportunity to turn their wars into revolutionary struggles. That is why we aim to build a mass communist international PLP. A first step is to expand the CHALLENGE networks, to win workers to communist politics. Imperialism may seem invincible now, but in the long run it is vulnerable. There are two classes in this world: workers and bosses. What matters is which class wins, not which capitalist.

BUILDING COMMUNIST CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG D.C. TRANSIT WORKERS

WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 21 -- PLP study groups and growing youth leadership are helping consolidate the Party among Metro transit workers. Broader political education events train this emerging leadership and bring more revolutionary ideas to a wider circle of workers.

In this spirit, Local 689 held the third annual Committee on Political Education (COPE) Conference. Both younger and senior workers engaged in intense discussions about the Iraq war, the challenge of rising healthcare and pension costs and the need for militant actions, including strikes, to advance our class's interests. Significantly, not a single politician was invited.

Before Metro workers elected a communist president, there were no COPE conferences. Instead, the union would host a dinner/dance party and invite politicians as keynote speakers. The effect of those events was deadening. It deepened the reliance of union members on politicians and solidified the alignment of the union leadership with the bosses' politicians. The recent COPE conferences have broken with the politicians, struggled for higher levels of class consciousness and analysis on the part of rank-and-file workers, and brought an environment that helps create more revolutionaries. That's a worthwhile goal for the future of our class!

This conference's discussion about Iraq followed the viewing of a short video of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech "Beyond Vietnam" in which King drew parallels between the war in Vietnam and racism in the U.S., and questioned pacifism after seeing workers struggling to survive in U.S. ghettos and on the front lines in Vietnam. This sparked a lively discussion about whether Democratic politicians actually want to end the war. We said no, they're lying as usual! U.S. imperialist interests are too great in Iraq for the bosses to give up in that area -- Democrats have the same goal as Republicans on this issue (with slightly different tactics).

Preparing to fight the looming cuts in health coverage and pensions requires mass, conscious mobilization, not reliance on the union president to be a "clever negotiator." Past union history has turned off many workers and led others to rely on favors from the union officers instead of militant struggle. The current communist president concluded the discussion of the bosses' attacks and past inadequate responses with a clear call to prepare for a mass strike when the contract expires in 2008.

Students Oppose Military `Career Fair,' Challenge University Intimidation

CALIFORNIA, Oct. 29 --Last week, over 70 students marched back and forth through a Southern California campus fair filled with military and police recruiters chanting, "La Migra, La Policia, La Misma Porqueria!" ("The Border Patrol, the Cops, the Same Crap!") and "Political Repression Means Fight Back!" They were protesting police infiltration, military recruitment and imperialist war. As part of a growing trend, the university administration is trying to suppress militant, anti-imperialist activism through intimidation, police surveillance, and by limiting "free speech zones." The university career fair was a "Who's Who" of local police, border patrol and all the armed forces, reflecting the rulers' efforts to build war and fascism.

People readily took over 75 CHALLENGES, many especially interested in articles about Oaxaca and the war in Iraq. PLP's paper brought a welcome note of communist internationalism to the event.

Several months ago, a policewoman had infiltrated an immigrants' rights campus organization. She attended meetings, claiming to be a student. She later openly bragged about her stoolpigeon activities when she and another cop were arresting a student in a campus protest opposing the invasion of Lebanon.

This revelation opened students' eyes, leading many to see the university's real function as an institution to win students to the ruling class's ideology and to build fascism. Many were outraged and spurred to protest in last week's march.

University administrators tried to quiet and coerce the students to end their march. Some even argued that the "nice people with badges" were here "to give the students jobs."

Even many non-demonstrators were surprised at the array of employers: the border patrol, 11 different police and sheriff departments and the military. The push to recruit to such jobs on this working-class campus reflects the ruling class's need to replenish its army for wider wars, to continue its racist attacks at the border and in the cities. At the rally, one student speaker condemned the school's erecting a new criminology lab in partnership with the LAPD, while at the same time the war rages, student tuition keeps rising and cutbacks shrink the number of classes. Another speaker called for unity of students, workers and soldiers to build a revolutionary movement.

One point of debate among the activists was whether the demonstration should emphasize "free speech" or the fight against imperialism and racism. The free speech issue has arisen on other campuses as the rulers move to suppress an anti-imperialist movement. However, many are seeing that the fight for "free speech" contradicts building a revolutionary movement.

For example, while students spoke attacking the administration, one organizer felt it important to present the "other side," to allow a pro-war Republican to speak. Capitalist "free speech" means allowing such rights for racists like the Minutemen or the KKK, who shouldn't be allowed to spew their racist, nationalist garbage anywhere! The bosses allow "free speech" for those who support the ruling-class agenda, while attacking and suppressing those who oppose it.

Neither the university administration nor the capitalist state is neutral. As their wars spread, they will use their state power to try to stop the revolutionary movement. Only our long-term fight to destroy this capitalist system with communist revolution can end imperialist war and racist police terror. Recent campus events have led to deeper discussions about the system and the need for communism and the PLP.

FIGHTING HIV and AIDS, FIGHTING FOR REVOLUTION!

Washington, DC, Oct. 21--Today, over 50 comrades and friends in the anti-racist struggle against HIV and AIDS assembled at the Washington Highlands Library in the heart of Washington, D.C.'s impoverished black community to fight for more resources and programs to battle the HIV and AIDS epidemic here.

Washington, D.C. has the worst incidence of AIDS in the U.S. D.C. health providers estimate that five percent of the population and ten percent of the city's black men are HIV positive, with the infection rate for women climbing quickly. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 47 percent of gay black men have HIV, an outrageous number. The epidemic is further fueled by substance use from heroin to cocaine, untreated mental illness and social stigma against AIDS patients.

PLP'ers bring a revolutionary communist perspective to this struggle. The capitalists and imperialists commit mass murder by creating conditions in which millions contract the disease worldwide. The root causes of the spread of AIDS include the capitalist creations of wars, poverty, housing segregation, sexism and disruptive jobs that displace and fracture families. Capitalists also profit from drug-pushing in the cities and save money by denying mental-health care and substance-use care to workers ravaged by capitalism. On top of this, capitalist culture produces stigma and religious ostracism about the disease, as well as individualistic consciousness that says that public health need not deal with this disease because it's a personal issue and the fault of the individual anyway!

PLP'ers have been working in the coalition of HIV and AIDS activists to carry out grassroots organizing for the past year from the Washington Highlands Public Library. Ward 8 Democrats also meet there monthly to advance their misleading reform rhetoric, so we are reaching many young people and politicians with our sharper advocacy and anti-capitalist analysis.

The Disparities Committee of the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (MWPHA) has led politically sharp outreach activities every third Saturday, not only distributing condoms and testing information, but also petitioning for jobs and services and involving those most affected.

Participating at today's speakout along with MWPHA were Metro Teen AIDS, the Condom Project, Unity Health Care, and Family and Medical Counseling Service, RAP, Inc., and the Whitman Walker Clinic. D.C. Fights Back is a new activist HIV group that led efforts to make local politicians defend their basically nonexistent response to AIDS during the recent mayoral and city council elections. This week MWPHA voted to make this their advocacy program for the next two years, which should deepen the mass character of the campaign against HIV and AIDS.

Reform demands such as condoms in the schools and on the buses, needle exchange with drug rehab, jobs and increased funding for Ryan White (AIDS treatment legislation) and AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, are sharp struggles that lead to intense political discussion and analysis with public health workers, community residents and politicians. These debates and struggles will not change the root cause of the problem, however. So it is crucial that these activists, many of whom already understand that capitalism is the culprit, join the PLP to fight to topple the entire capitalist structure. PLP'ers continue to meet one-on-one with students and young workers, as well as with the patients and community workers. A Party study group is in the works.

PL'ers Fight for Real Communist Politics at Conference

AMHERST, MASS., Oct. 28 -- Members and friends of PLP participated in this weekend's triennial conference of "Rethinking Marxism" at the University of Massachusetts here. The conference focus was "Rethinking Communism." Communism certainly invites lots of rethinking. The record of the 20th century communist movement urgently requires analysis and reassessment. This conference only partially met this requirement. PLP, more than any other force, pressed for urgent discussion and debate.

One session, on "red pedagogy," addressed being a communist teacher in a working-class college: how to break down barriers between theory and practice and how to inspire students to view action against inequality as integral to their growth as thinking beings. Other sessions debated current U.S. domestic and foreign policy. In one, prominent liberals and neo-Marxists stressed the necessity to "defend democracy" as the bulwark against emerging fascism and anguished over the votes stolen by the Republicans in 2000 and 2004. PLP members and friends emphasized the theft of wages intrinsic to capitalism, as well as the theft of jobs under Democrats because of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement, implemented under Clinton).

Other sessions reviewed the history of the communist movement. The record of the Stalin era -- as demonically caricatured in Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" of 1956 about was subjected to more positive, if critical, review. The return of capitalism in China was strongly criticized, and anti-communist rants about the supposed "disasters" of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were challenged.

Revolutionary communist politics were of great interest to some, but many others were pulled to the right by neo-Marxism. Some cited as gospel truth the ideas of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who say that "oppositional trans-class global `people'" have replaced the working class and that it's no longer necessary to organize a revolution to overthrow the capitalists' state. Others were influenced by the economic analyses of the group from the journal "Rethinking Marxism" (conference sponsors), who state revolution is "unnecessary" because elements of communist production "already exist under capitalism," and need only be brought to fruition.

The irrelevant academic nature of the "Marxism" advocated by the conference's sponsors emerged during the large plenary meetings, which completely evaded all questions on the theory and practice of communism. In the closing plenary, supposedly devoted to the topic "Rethinking Communism," this betrayal of the conference participants came out sharply. Speakers droned on about bourgeois philosophy, vaguely red-baited the 20th century communist legacy, and offered no analysis whatsoever about what to do.

PLP members and friends, and others in the audience, roundly attacked them. The former stressed the imminence of fascism, the growth of racism (domestic and international), and the need to rebuild the communist movement. A PLP member outlined our analysis of the historical failures of socialism -- seen in hindsight -- and the need to fight directly for communism by building a mass party around that line.

PLP members and friends who boldly challenged the inadequacies of neo-Marxism were warmly congratulated by various conference participants. PLP'ers distributed 350 Party flyers and many people bought PL material from our literature table, leading to many fruitful contacts. Without PLP's presence at the conference, it would have been a far tamer affair, constituting no threat at all to the bourgeois sources that fund it.

Bronx Postal Workers Battle Layoffs, Closings

BRONX, NY, Oct. 26 -- Postal workers picketed the Bronx GPO at 149th St. and the Grand Concourse protesting the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) plan to close 139 processing centers nationwide by Nov. 18. Similar actions occurred in Newark, NJ, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere. Workers could lose their jobs and customers will suffer even more delays in services and deliveries.

Postal workers collected signatures among area residents to send to Senators Clinton and Schumer stating that the transferring of operations to Manhattan will cause delays at three important local mail centers; will delay mail deliveries to residential and commercial customers; and the job losses will have a devastating effect on local Bronx businesses.

Interestingly, Clinton and Schumer have done nothing to save these jobs and services but they continue to vote for more funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for even more troops to be sent there, to be paid for partly out of cutbacks like these. The cuts have a racist character, affecting mainly black and Latino residents of the Bronx.

The USPS has held no public hearing to inform the community of the cutbacks. The Bronx Coalition to Save Postal Offices is organizing its own community hearing for 12 noon on Sat., Nov. 18, in Lincoln Hospital's auditorium, 234 E. 149th St.

The Bronx GPO operation, employing 250 workers on three shifts, would be transferred to Manhattan's Morgan General Mail Facility, benefiting mainly corporations and big businesses.

Auto Bosses' Rivalry Puts Brakes on Ford, GM

DETROIT, MI -- "All the old rules of the game are gone," said James P. Womack, co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute. He was referring to the deepening crisis of the domestic U.S. auto industry.

The fact that autoworkers may very well be seeing through their union's surrender to the bosses' crisis is evident in some Ford workers' reactions to their leaders' "solution." At a recent PLP Communist Workers' School, a Ford worker reported that his local leadership circulated a survey to get an idea which buyout options workers were taking. Many of the surveys came back with "FUCK YOU" written on them.

Here is evidence that the Big Three is no more:

*Ford lost $7.2 billion through September and could lose $10.6-billion this year, matching GM's losses last year. Ford is closing 16 factories, eliminating 40,000 jobs and will not make a profit in North America until 2009. After having been "#2" to G.M. for 70 years, Ford will now fall behind Toyota in the U.S. market. After the current round of job cuts, there will be more Toyota workers in the U.S. than Ford workers.

*G.M. is cutting 30,000 jobs and closing a dozen plants. It is about to be passed by Toyota as the biggest auto producer in the world. G.M. just introduced the Chevrolet Aveo subcompact, built for it by its South Korean partner, Daewoo.

*The Chrysler Group reported a $1.5 billion loss for this summer, more than twice what it expected. DaimlerChrysler is pairing with the Chinese automaker Chery to build a subcompact car.

*Bankrupt Delphi, spun off by GM to become the world's largest parts supplier, will eliminate nearly 75% of its U.S. work- force through buyouts and early retirements by the end of this year. It intends to slash the wages of the few remaining workers in half.

*As GM, Ford and Chrysler continue to retreat, the foreign competition is investing billions of dollars in U.S. factories, hiring thousands of workers.

*The United Automobile Workers (UAW), as always, is a loyal servant and junior partner to the bosses in this bloody restructuring. It negotiated the job eliminations at GM, Ford and Delphi sending a signal to the workers to get out before 2007 contract talks, when things will get even worse. They granted health care concessions to G.M. and Ford, and are now in similar talks with Chrysler.

The carnage at GM, Ford and Delphi reflects the increasing challenges to U.S. imperialism. While they shed 100,000 jobs and close over 40 factories, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes and a host of parts suppliers from Europe and Asia are opening new plants. While the "old rules of the game" may be gone for the domestic U.S. auto industry, the rules of capitalism are firmly in place. Iraq is a window to the future of what the bosses have in store for us. That is how the bosses settle their fights for markets, resources and cheap labor.

Just as we cannot avoid fascism and war, we cannot stop these attacks. But we can fight the bosses, expose the union leaders and build a larger base for PLP. When the union leadership at Ford got back the workers' reaction to the afore-mentioned survey (see above), they concluded that the workers weren't taking Ford's crisis seriously. We think it's a sign of life. And by deepening our personal and political ties, we will try to make the most of it.

Corruption Inc.: NYC Central Faker Council Robs Workers Blind

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 24 -- Enron and Halliburton have come to this city's labor movement, albeit on a slightly smaller scale. Brian McLaughlin is president of the NYC Central Labor Council -- the country's largest such council -- comprising members in 400 local unions. And how did he lead them? By organizing solidarity and strikes among these one million trade unionists? By uniting black, Latino, white and Asian workers? Not quite.

Rather he has just been indicted on federal racketeering charges, embezzlement, receiving bribes, fraud and money laundering. He stole over $2 million from the Council, the State Assembly (he's a Democrat Assemblyman), from his own re-election campaign funds and as bribes from street lighting contractors.

His annual union income of $263,000 in salaries and expense accounts was not quite enough to finance his life style. So he took $95,000 from donations to union-sponsored Little League baseball teams to pay his rent. He used subordinates as personal servants to take his dog to the vet and trap rodents in his basement. He stole $330,000 from his campaign funds to pay for a rehearsal dinner for his son's wedding and for his country club membership. And the money from street lighting contractors bought an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz for his wife and paid his son's college tuition.

As one official put it, the extent of his theft was "stunning in its breadth and scope," lending "new meaning to the term `hand in the till.'"

While posing as a "friend of the workers," McLaughlin "provided pivotal early support for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's re-election," (NY Times, 10/18) helping elect the very same billionaire who tried to break the NYC transit strike.

Why would the bosses' government indict such a friend? Apparently when the corruption gets so deep, they choose to use such sacrificial lambs to discredit honest trade unionists and stop the siphoning off of funds they need for their own exploitative purposes.

But then again, what should one expect from a trade union movement that's run like a business, aping the bosses with whom these labor fakers are negotiating one sellout contract after another? Yet McLaughlin's thievery is measured only in the low millions. It's small change compared to the tens of billions stolen from workers by the likes of the Rockefellers, Morgans, auto and steel barons, Halliburtons, Boeings and the rest of the really big bosses.

These labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, who support politicians who enforce anti-strike laws against city workers, are enemies of the working class.

Once workers begin using communist ideas to organize on behalf of their own class interests, they will dump these traitors into the garbage can of history.

Sit-down Striker Fights Anti-Immigrant French Bosses

CHILLY-MAZARIN, FRANCE, Oct. 27 -- "To my friends in the United States, I say that you must not let yourselves be exploited. If you do not struggle, you'll probably remain undocumented all your lives. I encourage you and everyone else in their struggles."

That's the message from one of the undocumented workers here at the Modeluxe industrial laundry. When the company moved to fire some of its 22 undocumented workers (in a workforce of 160), all of the laundry workers responded with a one-week sit-down strike (see CHALLENGE, 11/1).

"It's very important to struggle for your legalization," the worker (who wished to remain anonymous), said in an interview with CHALLENGE. "The bosses don't want their workers to be legalized so as to exploit them. You must not allow the boss to be the only one to act. If you depend on the boss to intervene for your legalization, it will never happen.

"The main thing for the boss is that the work gets done. You have to mobilize all the workers. In union there is strength. You have to go on strike. A factory that does not operate for one, two, three days is a very bad thing for the boss.

"It will work. You must never accept working in bad conditions. Struggle will bear fruit one day. You must not keep your heads down too much. You have to expose the problems. You have to tell people exactly what the conditions are. You'll find that there are many people who are opposed to the exploitation of undocumented workers."

This worker knows exactly what he's talking about. He and the other undocumented workers -- immigrants from Mali, Senegal, and Guinea -- were employed at the laundry for five years. When the police raided the factory in Dec. 2004, the CGT trade union intervened to demand the legalization of the workers. The prefect (the local representative of the French state) and the Modeluxe bosses schemed to dangle the promise of legalization before the workers' noses, asking them and their union to assemble dossiers [backgrounds].

Meanwhile, the exploitation continued. "They formed a special `third team' made up of the undocumented workers," said the worker we interviewed. "We were under pressure to do twice as much work as the others, even though we got paid 300 euros a month less. "They set us a special rate of 250 pieces, only to make us work harder. It was impossible to meet. When we couldn't meet the quota, they called us `sheep' to let us know they considered us to be savages or animals."

"We had to work from Monday to Saturday because we were undocumented. We could not refuse overtime. It was a new form of slavery. When you went to the toilet, the boss followed you. You could only stay in the toilet for five minutes. If you stayed longer, you got a warning letter."

The one-week sit-down strike ended on Oct. 7, with everyone winning pay for three of the strike days and with the legalization of four workers. The 18 remaining undocumented workers continued striking until the company fired them on Oct. 20.

To pressure the prefect, the undocumented workers attended a negotiating session with co-workers from the laundry and other supporters -- a crowd of 200. But the prefect stonewalled, saying only undocumented workers "with French relatives" could be legalized. Firstly, this is untrue; secondly, one of the undocumented workers is the brother of one of the legalized workers. They have the same French relative!

"We did not come to France to be bandits, we came to work," the undocumented worker told CHALLENGE. "But this government is encouraging the bosses to exploit the workers with its policy of labeling some workers `undocumented.'"

This battle proves the communist idea that workers' struggles have no borders. The fight against racism to unite all workers and for a revolutionary society without bosses is universal, from France to Los Angeles.

The 18 undocumented workers are planning more actions to pressure the prefect to legalize them. Solidarity messages can be addressed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

RED YOUTH BUILD PLP IN MEXICO

MEXICO, Sept 6 -- A group of young students met in a university in the north of Mexico--along with PL'ers from the center and south--to commemorate the 7th year anniversary of our student organization.

We have helped spread PLP's ideas through meetings and study groups with many students, using agitation, and propaganda through a student paper that denounces the injustices and exploitation of the capitalist system. We also distribute Challenge and invite students to join the fight for communism.

The first day of activities we painted a banner with the communist fist in the main library where all could see. We passed out the student paper in one of the walk ways where the majority of students pass, playing the music of Victor Hara and Jose de Molina (two famous Latin-American protest singers).

One of the students invited from the south took the microphone and spoke about the struggle in Oaxaca and denounced the role played by the media (TV, radio, bosses' press) in this capitalist system. The activity in the University was welcomed by many students interested in knowing more about the student organization and joining it. A student from this University, originally from Oaxaca, proposed that we be more active in informing the population in the north about the struggle in Oaxaca and the next day the group had a small forum in the town square to inform people about the struggle and to pass out more literature.

That night we met, including the new comrades, to analyze and criticize our activities. Organization and planning are vital to win more people to the fight for communism and we took steps to improve the security of all the comrades in the following day's activities.

During the second day of activities security guards wouldn't let us use the electricity for our sound system. We did not let that stop us. We used signs to call attention to the struggle in Oaxaca and distributed Challenge. We talked with many people during our demonstration and met a person interested in knowing more about the movement. We talked about the class struggle and the importance of building a working class party, the PLP. At the end of this discussion, he gave us his address to visit him and bring him information about the movement through Challenge.

At the end of the activity, we were self critical about the need to be more organized in the future. These errors hurt us, but our activities also strengthened the unity and commitment of the PLP members to continue the struggle. We need to invite more people to join our revolutionary communist movement and also give leadership to two comrades who joined the party the day before.

We invite our young student comrades to follow these examples because we learn both from our errors and from our successes. Students, workers, teachers and intellectuals can learn to organize and build the communist party that truly fights for the interests of the working class, the PLP. Join us!

LA Workers Back Oaxaca Rebels

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 28 -- A group of workers from Oaxaca held a fund-raising event here to support the striking teachers in Oaxaca. They invited other workers, including PLP members, one of whom brought copies of the last two editions of CHALLENGE. After one worker read the articles about the Oaxaca struggle and about the fight between rival imperialists and their Mexican capitalist allies over the state-owned oil company Pemex, he told the PL'er to put the papers on a table in the front of the room so everyone could get them. He said, "This tells us what's behind the struggle."

The workers watched the movie "Venceremos" which gave some history of the struggle in Oaxaca against the Mexican government. It showed farmworkers being kicked off their land (for a pittance) so that a high-speed railroad could be built across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This is part of the Plan Puebla Panama, to integrate the economies of the U.S., Mexico and Central America. Farm workers who resisted felt the brutal force of the Mexican government.

The movie showed the courageous teachers' struggle resisting the government attacks, and the mass support for them.

After the movie, a woman from Oaxaca said that when she was a child she had no shoes to go to school. She received her first pair from her teacher. A worker from Central America, moved by the film, was reminded of the struggle in that region. He called for internationalism, for all workers to support the struggle in Oaxaca. He said workers in El Salvador went through similar attacks and finally took up arms against the bosses, but unfortunately their leaders didn't have the unflinching goal of destroying capitalism and putting the workers in power. Today that FMLN leadership is part of the Salvadoran ruling class which oppresses the workers. He was warmly applauded when he pledged to organize friends and co-workers behind the struggle in Oaxaca. Another worker from Oaxaca linked the struggle there to the war in Iraq.

Everyone was invited to upcoming events and a hat was passed to help those in need in Oaxaca.

LETTERS

Is PLP Against `Better Schools'?

Four teachers in a PLP-led discussion group met about the CHALLENGE series on education reform. We found the articles informative and provocative. We agreed that billionaires who donate to schools are doing so for control. Apparently, schools run locally rather than centrally -- as in other countries -- are a problem for U.S. capitalists. Money and control from billionaires enables the capitalist class to standardize education.

But we don't agree with the sentence: "Much of this `reform' is aimed at winning and mobilizing working-class parents and students, especially black and Latino families in big cities, to support `better education' with the sinister underlying plan being to win them to support the racist, imperialist U.S. bosses, the source of the very racism that continues to viciously attack these same families."

We don't understand how this would happen. Families want better education for their students, but getting it doesn't make them automatically support the bosses. For one thing, the education is still not that great, even if it's somewhat better than before the large donations. Perhaps this point wasn't explained sufficiently. Is it that the money is used for better propaganda within the schools about how "great" is the U.S. government and "way of life"? We know the schools for the working class will always be substandard under capitalism. However, families want their children to learn to read and to be prepared for a relatively decent job. Many schools fail at this.

We also discussed a lot about small schools, where three of us teach. We see advantages in getting to know the students, building community and being able to handle problems quickly because of the school's close-knit nature. We see disadvantages also, but don't understand how attending a small school leads students to believe in "all-class unity," as the article states.

School reform is, and always has been, a complicated issue. The ruling class wants it for its own reasons, and the working class wants it because they believe it will give young people a better future. Many workers feel school reform should be even more widespread. Too many children languish in schools where education is an afterthought. Are we (PLP) against "better" schools? It's true that the rulers want more control over the schools and need a more educated population in order to help maintain the profit system. However, it's also true that they don't want to educate everyone.

Reddish Teachers

CHALLENGE Comment:

Thank you for your questions and comments. We welcome other readers to participate in this discussion, which will always improve our political ideas.

The ruling class hopes to use school reform in several ways to win workers to support them. One is, as you suggest, reforming the curriculum to better present the ideologies necessary to imperialism in the current crisis: nationalism and "community service." They also hope to win parents and students to participate in the electoral process, to care about the politicians' educational policies and therefore feel they are a part of the system rather than feel the need to fight back. They want to channel workers into fighting for more reformed schools instead of for a new world.

But just because the bosses are implementing this plan doesn't necessarily mean workers will be won to the extent the bosses need; and it is part of PLP'ers' job to win our friends to see how education reform serves the bosses' real needs.

The liberal reformers who started small schools are now warning that their "movement" has been co-opted by "less progressive" forces. The experiences of many comrades and our research into small schools nationwide show that the rulers are using small schools to build loyalty to individual schools -- in effect, trying to build loyalty towards the administration, which represents the bosses. The rulers hope this all-class unity on a small scale will be a first step towards a working class that more fully supports the entire imperialist program.

We do want better education for working-class youth, to have the best conditions and learn the skills they need. But we must never let fighting for the reforms that one section of the ruling class advocates interfere with our analysis of the bosses' goals and our determination to destroy their entire system. Any reform achieving something positive for some students can and will be taken back when it no longer suits the rulers' needs. Only revolution can solve the problems of the schools.

Racism Won't Fly With Airport Workers

Airport workers had a week of intense struggle against the racist bosses. The last time workers were this angry was when the bosses wanted us to scab on the Northwest mechanics' strike in 2005.

Most African workers are kept in part-time jobs and resent this racism. The only full-time positions for these workers are on 3rd shift, and that's only as a result of previous fights. The bosses target Ethiopian workers to avoid paying full-time benefits like vacation pay and medical insurance, but now these workers want to fight for jobs on all shifts.

Our PLP study group has been struggling over these issues. We discussed the need to fight for communist ideas and not just limit the struggle to trade union demands that leave the bosses in power to take back any concessions we may win and to pursue their agenda of war and fascism. Internationalism, anti-racism and revolution have to be put front and center.

When the local president was finally pressured to show up for a meeting, the bosses tried to keep the U.S.-born workers from attending so the African workers would feel politically isolated. Racist foremen and supervisors acted like fascist goons. The racist ploy failed when two U.S. workers entered the meeting, although other U.S. workers were prevented from attending to give support to their African brothers and sisters. The local steward explained to the African and Latino workers what the bosses had done and how they fear multi-racial and international unity. The African workers then angrily demanded justice, embarrassing the do-nothing local president.

After the meeting and for the rest of the shift, the racist bosses tried to intimidate workers. The next day they had an emergency meeting with the big bosses because their attempts to intimidate workers failed miserably.

Within this fight we are struggling against nationalism, especially among a few Latino workers. Also, more workers are reading CHALLENGE than ever before. Workers of the world ARE uniting!

Airport Red

Workers Back Anti-Klan Protesters

As reported in CHALLENGE (11/1), a militant anti-Klan/Nazi rally took place in Harper's Ferry on October 14. Some who confronted these racists wrote some brief notes about the event.

"While distributing CHALLENGE in the town, I met a woman and her mother from Panama who live in Virginia. They were very angry...[about] the Klan and were sorry to have missed the chance to rally with us. They loved the CHALLENGE headline showing how opposition to the Minutemen was the same fight since the racists have been active in Manassas and Herndon, Virginia. They took some papers and thanked us for being there."

"At Harper's Ferry, the KKK was allowed to use a sound system always denied to INCAR (International Committee Against Racism) rallies over a 15-year period of yearly events honoring the fight against racism at John Brown's Fort. The massive police presence and their attitude toward anti-racists made it clear to me and new friends who came that the federal government was happy to support the KKK to get out their message."

"HAVE A GREAT WHITE DAY!" That's how [the Klan rally] ended, although I'm not sure if the audience could oblige. Their appearance and speech pattern spoke of poor backgrounds, of hard times. But they cheered anyway. "White Power!" And I, a young black man dressed in baggy jeans and a tilted baseball cap, stood in the middle of the cheers -- tensely waiting for one to cross the line, surprisingly unafraid if one did, and bewildered at how familiar I found the sound of blind hatred and convicted jeers that blamed another 'race' for their problems."

"I was talking to a woman who lived in the area and came to the Park with her children ranging from 11 to high school age. She was unhappy to find out that the Klan was able to rally [here]. She took one of our anti-Klan flyers and thanked us for coming to protest the racists."

"This was my second demonstration against the Nazis and Klan. I didn't care for the chants so I talked to other people in the crowd instead. I approached one Klan supporter who had a confederate flag and asked her why she liked them. She said she supported "Southern Pride." Just then the Nazis started shouting "Heil Hitler." I asked her what, exactly, did Hitler have to do with "Southern Pride." No answer, of course."

Our answer will continue to be clear: mobilize the masses to crush the racists wherever they rear their ugly heads.

D.C. Comrade

Nicaraguan Election Exposes Opportunists' Betrayal

The Nov. 5 election in Nicaragua is a vivid example of the corruption and betrayal produced by armed struggle without a communist goal.

Whether capitalists fight in wars or in the political arena, their ultimate goal is control of the surplus value produced by workers. Participating in the bosses' electoral charade only perpetuates this robbery. But waging armed struggle to end capitalism's wage slavery, racism and wars without a revolutionary party fighting for communism, only leaves capitalism intact.

In Nicaragua, after 13 years of valiant armed struggle against the U.S.-backed Somoza regime, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation took state power in 1979. Tens of thousands of workers died in the process; 30,000 more died in a decade-long fight against the Contras, the counter-insurgency fascist army trained and financed by U.S. rulers to topple the Sandinistas.

Finally, "peace" came when the Sandinistas held national elections and Sandinista president Daniel Ortega lost to Violeta Chamorro, a leading oligarch. Both the Sandinista "revolutionary" rule and the following 16 years of conservative rule only benefited the old Nicaraguan ruling class, the Sandinista leaders and their capitalist backers.

The Sandinista leaders waged armed struggle to become the new capitalist rulers of Nicaragua. Thus, one of their first acts in power was to seize the mansions, Mercedes-Benz and other Somoza properties. In 1990, in their last weeks of power, they and their allies took personal possession of all the property expropriated by their government. Known as the "Piñata," it made them all multi-millionaires, including one that is now one of the richest men in Central America.

But the corruption gets worse. Ortega's running mate in the election is Jaime ("The Godfather") Morales Carazo, once the Contras' top political negotiator. Now, many of these butchers of thousands of workers are helping elect Ortega.

Ortega also made peace with Roman Catholic Cardinal Obando y Bravo, a strong supporter of Somoza, the Contras and a rabid anti-Sandinista. He also made a deal with ex-president Arnoldo Aleman, giving both of them a lifetime appointment to the National Assembly, meaning lifetime immunity from prosecution.

Amid this wealth and corruption, workers live in poverty and squalor, over 80% on less than $2.00 a day. More than 800,000 children can't attend school. Workers survive on the money sent back by hundreds of thousands who are forced to immigrate, mainly to the U.S., where they are super-exploited by the same bosses that helped create and perpetuate these horrendous conditions.

Yet, despite the rivers of blood U.S. imperialism has caused, it may be losing its grip on Nicaragua. Ambassador Paul Trivelli and the State Department tried unsuccessfully to organize the opposition to Ortega behind its candidate Montealegre. U.S. bosses oppose Ortega because he represents Nicaraguan capitalists looking for a better deal from other imperialists. As Salvador ("The Little Jackal") Talaveres -- an ex-contra butcher/president of the Nicaraguan Resistance Party and Ortega supporter -- puts it, "Seven thousand of our wounded war veterans are neglected. We have been working in these [conservative] alliances, but what's in it for us?" He said the U.S. "has not considered even a small budget to help the heroic fighters who served them." (LA Times, 10/29/06)

This group of bosses is hoping Chinese and Japanese imperialists will be more generous than U.S. bosses. There are plans to build two ports and a connecting high-speed transatlantic train financed by these other imperialists. The Ortega group also hopes to get them to invest in a canal with capacity for 250,000-ton ships, twice what the expanded Panama Canal can handle. These might be pipedreams or they might come alive because of the inter-imperialist rivalry. In either case, intensified exploitation, fascism and war is all that capitalism can offer the working class. But, as years of armed struggle in Nicaragua show, the workers are capable and willing to fight for their class interest. They only need the vision of communism and a party to lead them. That's PLP's task and in particular of our comrades in Central America.

PLP HISTORY:
Miners' Rebellion Launched PL's 44 Years in Class Struggle

During a rank-and-file miners' armed rebellion across three states in the winter of 1962-63, the Progressive Labor Movement (PLM) -- forerunner of the Progressive Labor Party -- cut its eye teeth on what was to become their participation in a long line of working-class struggles. While the fledgling PLM, just six months old, had no base among the miners, it decided that organizing a national solidarity campaign among as many U.S. workers it could reach was the order of the day.

Black and white miners were united in a strike against inhuman working conditions and $25-a-week starvation wages. The mine owners launched terror attacks against the strikers, using cops and local governments to bring in scabs. The miners armed themselves to battle the bosses.

The struggle was centered in Hazard, Kentucky, where 500 "roving pickets" would go from mine to mine to oust the scabs at gunpoint. If they were unable to stop the operation, they would dynamite the mine. Black and white workers, armed, in wildcat rebellion terrified the coal bosses.

PLM organized a Trade Union Solidarity Committee (TUSC), headed by a PLM member (a railroad union local president), to ship food and clothing -- including toys for the miners' kids -- from several cities. It raised money for a mimeograph machine enabling the strikers to publish their own local paper. The TUSC persuaded a NYC Teamster local to donate a trailer and a driver to ship a load of relief supplies to Hazard. The strike of the armed miners had become a national issue. In zero degree weather, nearly 1,000 people attended a mass meeting at a Manhattan church to hear the miners' leader Berman Gibson. PL Magazine ran an interview with Gibson (CHALLENGE was not yet born).

When the bosses realized communists were organizing this solidarity effort, they went nuts. "Communism Comes to the Mountains!" screamed an 8-column front-page banner headline in the Hazard Herald. PLM had told Gibson we were a revolutionary communist organization early on and he was unfazed by this.

However, seeing that armed rank-and-file wildcatting miners were working with communists, Kennedy liberals and assorted social-democrats and "C"P'ers stepped in with big bucks and their own "Solidarity" committee. They red-baited the small PLM and the TUSC. Eventually Gibson couldn't stand up to the anti-communism and turned to the liberals. After many months, the strike petered out.

However, this militant working-class struggle set the tone for PLM and PLP, impressing upon us the crucial role of basic industrial workers in the fight for communist revolution, especially the unity of black and white within that. It gave us confidence in the Marxist understanding that the working class was the revolutionary class with the potential to overthrow capitalism in an armed struggle defending its class interests. It therefore pointed the way to the necessity for communists to build a base among this key section of workers.

REDEYE

First nukes in Korea came from U.S.

There is more than 50 years of history to Pyongyang's attempt to gain a nuclear weapon, triggered in part by threats from Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to use nuclear weapons to end the Korean War.

In 1957 the US placed nuclear tipped missiles in South Korea... (GW, 10/26)

Climate issue is handy for ruling class

To the Editor:

...The negative effects of climate change will build over a long period and are unlikely to produce a universal catastrophe. However, today, and for decades, the negative effects of poverty, hunger, disease and war have killed and may kill millions, but these phenomena...are effectively being forgotten as climate change dominates political debates. (FT, 10/10)

Elections aren't fooling many people

"Politics," she said, "are for silly people. Those ads come on television and I reach for the remote."

I asked if she was planning to vote on Nov. 7.

"No," she said. "That stuff really turns me off".

If you pay close attention to the news and then go out and talk to ordinary people, it's hard not to come away with feeling that the system of politics and government in the U.S. is broken....

Not even the most faithful voters were confident that their ballot would make any substantial difference. (NYT, 10/30)

New Love for sugar daddies: Democrats

Corporate America is already thinking beyond Election Day, increasing its share of last-minute donations to Democratic candidates and quietly devising strategies for how to work with Democrats if they win control of Congress....

...A lot will hold their powder for now," said Brain Wolf, deputy executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "But after the election, we will have a lot of new friends." (NYT, 10/28)

China and India see wars over energy

Chinese see their country catching up with the US in terms of global influence within 10 years....

Large majorities in India and China said they believed a conflict over energy resources was likely in Asia. Majorities also said countries had a right to go to war to ensure adequate energy supplies. (FT, 10/12)

TV ad speeds up child's development

...The pediatrician was about to conclude 6-year-old Michael's annual checkup and asked if his mother had any further questions. "No," she replied, and then felt a forceful tug on her arm as Michael blurted out, "Yes, we do, Mom. Ask the doctor if Viagra is right for me."

...He was merely following instructions given by a gray-haired person in a white coat in a TV ad. (Consumer Reports Health/NOV.)

North's rulers also got rich on slavery

...In the North, a number of universities have ties to slavery. Harvard Law School was endowed by money its founder earned selling slaves in Antigua's cane fields. And at Yale, three scholars reported in 2001 that the university relied on slave-trading money for its first scholarships, endowed professorships and library endowment.

...It's pretty widely agreed on that Brown [University] would not be where it is if it were not for slave money....

At least one of the Brown brothers, John, a treasurer of the college, was an active slave trader.... (NYT, 10/19)

Book Review:
U.S. Britain Betrayed Death Camp Inmates

Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938-1945, by Hermann Langbein, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1994 -- Part 2 of 2

In part 1, we saw how the communist-led underground resistance in the Nazi death camps was able to organize under the noses of the camp guards and save lives. In this part we discuss sabotage against the Nazi war effort and escapes, as well as what we can now see were major political errors of the communist movement.

After 1942, the majority of prisoners were assigned to arms factories. "[D]irect sabotage, such as the damaging of machines or weapons, was possible only in isolated instances. In general, methods had to be employed that were hard to detect. These methods could be found because the technical and organizational know-how of the German civilian foremen, masters and engineers was so scanty that they were often dependent on the specialists among the inmates [p. 311]." A few examples: "...grenades...failed to explode. Frequently machines broke down because of defects. Inmates...found a way of damaging the mechanism of guns...after they had already passed inspection [p. 306]." "During the final inspection there were greater opportunities for passing large numbers of improperly dimensioned parts or for putting the right parts on a junk pile to be scrapped [p. 309]."

As the Nazis were being overrun in 1945, mainly by the Soviet Red Army, the SS was ordered to murder all camp inmates before the Soviet or U.S. troops arrived. The high command wanted to leave no witnesses who could inform the outside world about their massive crimes against humanity. Knowing of this plan, the prisoners attempted escapes to ward off imminent mass extermination.

Contact with partisans (guerrilla forces organized against the Nazis) and sympathy of local people outside the camps both increased in the later years of the war. Fugitives from Auschwitz received support, and news from Polish resistance organizations was smuggled into the camps. But the resistance relied increasingly on other contacts, such as the Red Cross and "allied" news media for getting information out to the world, such as maps of the camps and details about mass murders.

In July 1944, two Jewish inmates, Arnost Rosin and Czeslaw Mordowica, escaped and handed documents to the press, the Pope, and the governments of the U.S. and Great Britain [p. 258]. Communist groups inside the camps, it would appear, too often relied in error on the "allied governments." During an uprising by Jewish inmates in Treblinka, August 2, 1943, Yankel Wiernik escaped and with the help of his Polish friends, wrote down his experiences. Copies of his report were sent to London and the U.S. However, instead of bombing the railroads to the camps, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) fire-bombed the German city of Dresden, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Another example of the tragic reliance on these so-called "Allies" came when the Nazis marched prisoners from the Neuengamme camp onto ships, in order to hide the evidence of the death camps. The RAF bombed and sank the ships on May 3, 1945, resulting in the deaths of 7,000 to 8,000 prisoners.

We can see with hindsight that communist prisoners and their leadership in the international communist movement made major political errors before and during World War II: a) they relied on capitalist governments to gain support and save lives, with tragic results, and b) by failing to oppose nationalism both within the camps and outside -- though many nationalities did resist in unity -- they failed to organize the resistance groups into one international working class party that made communism the primary goal.

The cost of this failure was the prolonged life of the bloody rule of capitalism and its inter-imperialist wars for cheap labor, markets and oil. Sixty-one years after the end of WW II hundreds of thousands of working-class civilians are being murdered by U.S. and British rockets in Afghanistan and Iraq, and by Israeli rockets in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon.

The illusions about cooperation with capitalism played a major role in the downfall of the old communist movement, and helped prevent a qualitative advance toward communism. Nevertheless, the heroic struggle of communist-led prisoners should inspire us to fight for the communist revolution that will defeat fascism permanently.

In Memory of Sam Chestnut
Nov 26, 1943 - Sept. 26, 2006

Sam was a comrade and friend in the Bay Area PLP transit collective. He worked 30 years at MUNI RR in San Francisco driving trolleys and trains until forced to retire due to a work\stress-related stroke.

Sam's life was symbolic of many black workers here. His parents migrated to SF in search of work and lived in the Bay View Hunter's Point projects. After his time at the Post Office, Sam found many childhood friends who were all looking for that good union job. Here being black meant working for MUNI.

The stress and grind of driving, killer schedules and long hours combined with institutional and politically-inspired racist stereotyping made high blood pressure, strokes, and heart attacks endemic among MUNI operators. A 30-year study of "Stress & Hypertension" clearly documented this connection but management and the union, TWU Local 250a, did nothing to change it. In fact, conditions are worse.

Sam loved his family, friends and co-workers. He was especially proud of his son Jeremy. He laughed, partied and embraced people from all different backgrounds. At his Memorial, co-workers and friends remarked over and over about his kindness, his support "for doing what's right." He helped organize family and social groups to go to Yosemite and Santa Cruz. Union dances were another opportunity to defy the African American union leadership who pushed black nationalism in order to maintain control over their "private domain," the MUNI workforce.

Sam came under special, vicious attack for his friendship and activity with "the white boy, communist." May Day was another big event in his life. While Sam loved many, he hated every aspect of the demeaning, racist system he faced every day.

After study groups on political economy and dialectics, Sam said, "I now read between the lines in the newspaper and see the real significance of what's going on." Below are excerpts from a report Sam gave at a PLP workers' conference on how he dealt with racism, sexism and individualism in a mass organization. They are a fitting memorial to his contribution to class struggle and the development of communism.

"For years I worked outside the organized labor movement, having very little use for reforms to solve the problems of a crumbling system. I had very little success in promoting communist ideas; the effort was frustrating and slow.

In June 1998 I had a chance to work with a group of working-class people...that formed...[qround] safety concerns in our community following the death of a 9-year-old child....At our first meeting, 23...neighbors attended. The mood quickly changed from safety issues to people venting their anger at both management and employees. A core group of six people with different levels of political understanding were picked to...organize the fight against unfair rent increases, unlawful evictions and bad maintenance. I was accepted as a member of the core group...because I was a known communist.

Most members...used racist terms when talking about maintenance workers, who are all Latino. I struggled with my core members to understand class; how capitalism uses racism to divide and exploit the working class.... [I asked] them, "who are you more alike, the maintenance workers or the politicians and bankers...trying to evict us?"

[As a] result, racist terms will never be used at core meetings and...will be challenged at all community meetings....

Being a communist, I felt like a counter-puncher trying to answer each question with a communist analysis...to show the contradictions not only in their question but also in their answers. This [continued]... inside and outside meetings, at my house, at the store...anywhere we ran into each other....

I've found it very rewarding being a communist working inside a reform group. People's goals are geared more to the short term. It's perfect for me in trying to develop peoples' understanding of the capitalist system, trying to teach them to be critical thinkers ...to see and understand contradiction."

Book Review:
Murder Mystery With Working-Class Hero

A Race Against Death, Timothy Sheard

Looking for a murder mystery whose hero is a worker instead of a cop? Try this one!

Lenny Moss is a maintenance worker and shop steward in a Philadelphia hospital taking on the bosses at every turn. Lenny works collectively with six other characters to solve the mystery. The book steers clear of stereotypes -- the workers have good hearts, burn with righteous anger over injustice, but have plenty of human faults and failings too. Sometimes Lenny wants to just give up and lead a quiet life, but his sense of duty to his co-workers keeps him going.

The story turns on the murder of a doctor who has been performing unsafe late-term abortions on poor black women. A white medical student joins black medical students, who in turn team up with the hospital workers, to find and interpret clues. The unfolding story brings out issues of black nationalism, multiracial unity, and love and concern for fellow workers. Lenny's firm principles, which include multiracial unity and service towards the workers he represents, as well as his refusal to be intimidated by management, earns his co-workers' trust. The police detective refers to this by saying, "You're the guy that hears everything in this place."

Management's knee-jerk cruelty, indifference and coldness is glaring, correctly reflecting some basic truths about the U.S. workplace. The book doesn't have a Hollywood ending, but justice gets served for this moment in time.

The author will be speaking at the annual "Thanks for Fighting Racism" Dinner in the Washington, D.C. area on November 18 at 6 pm. If you're in the area, give us a call at 301.779.7432 and join us.

 

Anti-Racists Confront Minutemen

France: Sit-Down Strikers Demand Rights for Undocumented Workers

Iraq Body Count Shows U.S. Imperialists Are Mass Murderers

Oaxaca Struggle Shows Workers’ Revolutionary Potential

Bosses Battle for Mexico’s Oil

Liberals Attack Pervert ‘Pol’ Foley to Advance War Agenda

‘Free Speech’ for Racist Minutemen Means Fascism for Working Class

‘Freedom’ for Nazis Led to Death for Millions

Anti-Racists Drown Out KKK At Harper’s Ferry

Whether Dems or G.O.P., All Roads Lead to Racist Cutbacks, War

Florida Teachers Mass on Highways, Rallying for Pay Raises

Workers Nix Union Hacks’ War Contract, Strike Goodyear

Chavez’s Anti-Bush Rhetoric Hides Nationalist Reformers’ Exploitation

Anti-War Teach-In Reveals U.S. Imperialist Atrocities

Plan to Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks, Expose Liberal ‘Reform’ Tool for War Recruiting

Lynne Stewart Sentence: Judge’s ‘Compassion’ Masks Stepped-up Fascism

Students Rally vs. Military Recruiters at Career Fair

LETTERS

Learning Communism in the School of Life

Working on Many Fronts Post-May Day

Under Capitalism, Workers Can’t Celebrate ‘Independence’

U.S. Killed Nearly 3 Million North Koreans

Students Occupy, Close College for the Deaf

FLASH! Cops Arrest 133 Students

REDEYE

• Afghans’ life worse since US came in
• Senior decides jail is better than $5/hr
• Stunned by detainee innocence, GI quits
• US big biz likes China workers as slaves
• US teenagers not joining evangelicals
• $20 million victory party skipped
• Free market brings misery to poorest
• Physical abuse often underlies sexism
• Expert: FBI forced terror confession

The Great Anti-Fascist Battle In London’s East End, 1936

PLP History: Championing Internationlism

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Anti-Racists Confront Minutemen

NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 7 —Today the Minutemen rallied to spread their racist, anti-immigrant filth in front of the Mexican consulate in Manhattan. Earlier in the week they had also spoken at Columbia University in the face of student outrage (see article page 3). This latest organizing effort shows their seriousness in building their racist movement within the U.S. The fact that they were allowed to rally at a major, liberal Ivy League university and in the streets of Manhattan within a week shows the support these gutter racists are receiving from the ruling class in their continued effort to develop U.S. fascism.

A multiracial group of about fifty anti-racists, including a contingent of PLP teachers and students, chanted down the racist Minutemen at the Mexican consulate. With chants like "Power to the Workers, Death to the Fascists" and "The Workers, United, Will Never be Defeated," the anti-racists took leadership from PLP. The anti-Minuteman rally had both strengths and weaknesses. We distributed CHALLENGE to the protesters and to passers-by who stopped to show support.

Many high school and college youth took leadership in leading militant chants and speaking on the bullhorn. When the police told the anti-racists to shut off the bullhorn, while allowing the Minutemen to use theirs, the youth became even angrier and led the crowd in chanting even louder. Any illusions these students may have had about the cops’ role were fractured when they saw how the cops allowed the racists to speak while arresting one of the anti-racists just for standing too close to the barricade. Despite the cops’ attempts to discourage the anti-racists, we were still going strong when the Minutemen left, accompanied by the cops who protected them.

To the disbelief of many of the protesters, the Minutemen had a few black and Latino people in their rally. These individuals, having been won to support the ruling class’s racism, are becoming traitors to the working class. They help spread the big lie that unemployment, low wages and cutbacks are caused by other workers and not by the bosses’ drive for maximum profits and their war budget. All workers must see that racism divides and weakens the entire working class. It produces super-profits for the bosses — paying one group of workers less and lowering the wage level of all workers. Their racism is as venomous and dangerous as that of any neo-Nazi or KKK’er. These traitors to their class are an invaluable help to the ruling class as it builds up fascist oppression of the workers.

Although the anti-racists nearly doubled the number of Minutemen, our forces were still too small. U.S. workers still have a long way to go in understanding the dangerous role that groups like the Minutemen play in galvanizing anti-immigrant attacks. This lack of class consciousness weakens workers’ ability to unite to smash these racist goons and their capitalist masters. The ruling class counts on this lack of class consciousness in hoping to win workers — who hate the Minutemen’s racism — into the liberal immigrant rights movement. This movement builds U.S. nationalism among the immigrant youth who the rulers need as cannon fodder in their endless imperialist wars.

Communists have always been in the forefront of the fight against all forms of racism. Today, we must redouble our efforts to win all workers to the only struggle that can end racism, from Baghdad to NYC, and build a society without borders based on the needs and desires of most of world’s workers: communism.

France: Sit-Down Strikers Demand Rights for Undocumented Workers

CHILLY-MAZARIN, FRANCE, Oct. 13 — Immigrant and French-born industrial laundry workers made French labor history when they staged a one-week sit-down strike here, demanding papers for their undocumented fellow workers.

Management triggered the strike of 160 when it sent pink slips to some of the 22 undocumented workers at the Modeluxe laundry, whose customers are Paris hotels. On Friday, Sept. 29, all the undocumented workers struck in solidarity. The following Monday, all the workers — most are immigrants from Mali and Senegal — occupied the laundry in a solidarity strike.

Management at U.K.-owned Modeluxe first tried sweet-talking the workers. On Monday they said the government agreed to legalize four of the undocumented workers. The sit-down continued. On Wednesday they promised to win legalization for all the undocumented workers because the company needed the workers it had tried to fire! The sit-down continued.

On Thursday morning, the bosses talked tough, producing a government document saying no more workers would be legalized, and telling the workers they couldn’t win and should return to work. But the workers held fast. That afternoon, the company had the cops violently break the picket line and brought in scabs. Despite cops and scabs inside the laundry, the sit-down continued.

On Friday morning, the bosses brought in rent-a-cops with dogs to intimidate the workers, and started loading laundry carts onto a semi-trailer truck brought over from the U.K. — a clear threat to shut down the laundry altogether. Still, the workers continued their sit-down.

Finally, the company got a court order for the police to expel all "outsiders" from the laundry. At midnight the workers decided they couldn’t protect their undocumented mates from arrest and deportation, and ended the strike. They won payment for three of the days of the sit-down.

The undocumented workers are continuing their struggle for legalization, protected from arrest by union activists. Unfortunately, they’re relying on union bureaucrats and fake leftist elected officials. This fight shows that the real power to win legalization lies in the workers’ ability to shut down production.

Anti-immigrant racism is growing, from Europe to the U.S. The only way to eliminate the bosses’ borders once and for all is to destroy capitalism and its racism by fighting for communism.

Iraq Body Count Shows U.S. Imperialists Are Mass Murderers

U.S. imperialism stands guilty of mass murder. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have just published a study "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq" in the British medical journal Lancet. They found that the U.S.-led oil war killed more than 650,000 Iraqis between March 2003 and June 2006.

"Coalition" forces’ bullets and bombs directly caused one-third of these deaths. Sectarian warfare resulting from the botched occupation is responsible for the rest. The pace and scale of the carnage are staggering. Violent deaths have doubled every year since fighting began. The war has wiped out 2.5% of Iraq’s population. By contrast, during World War II, Britain lost 0.94% of its population, France 1.35%, China 1.89% and the U.S. 0.32% (less than one-third of one percent). Iraq’s 2.5% loss would translate into 7.5 million deaths in the U.S. today.

Liberal Warmakers Backed Anti-Bush Study

Johns Hopkins and the Lancet are by no means trying to start an anti-war movement. They’re both liberal, ruling-class institutions. Hopkins houses the School for Advanced International Studies, an important imperialist think-tank. The Lancet belongs to Anglo-Dutch publisher Reed-Elsevier, which shares top officers with Shell Oil. Their publication of the death toll at this time has two purposes. First, it’s one of many pre-election "October Surprises" designed to punish Republicans for bungling the invasion and help elect more effective war-making Democrats. Second, the report builds support for the U.S.’s endless wars for profit by suggesting that they can somehow be sanitized. The researchers end by calling for "an independent international body to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and other humanitarian standards" in order "to lessen the tragic human cost of future wars." They assume there will be "future wars."

Bosses’ Vietnam Lesson: Hide The Atrocities

While the rulers release the deadly numbers, as disturbing as they are, they keep a tight embargo on images and eyewitness accounts of the slaughter that might spark widespread anti-war outrage. The bosses learned a lesson from Vietnam. After losing that war, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that if they could do it over again they would change three things: use far more troops; officially declare war and thereby make anti-war activity treasonable; and shut down the media coverage that regularly broadcast graphic pictures of U.S. atrocities.

Fallujah Massacre: Standard U.S. Operating Procedure

Despite the photo ban, however, and the embedding of reporters handpicked by the Pentagon, news of U.S.-inflicted horrors has leaked out. On November 16, 2004, Radio4Houston aired a program (available online) called "Fallujah: A Sea of Rubble and Death." Consisting of interviews with U.S. soldiers who had been there, it proves that, for the U.S. war machine, atrocities are standard tactics, not aberrations. (Like systematic prison torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and recent brass-sanctioned rape murders and mosque shoot-ups, the bosses try to portray their policy as the work of "bad apples.")

First, the soldiers said, the Air Force "softened up" this city of 300,000, considered an insurgent stronghold, with a month of indiscriminant bombing. One veteran spoke of seeing a fetus that a U.S. bomb had torn from its mother’s womb. Next, the U.S. top brass ordered the city evacuated but then did a double cross. After a few, but not nearly all, women and young children got out, U.S. officers forced everybody back in, labeling males under fifteen years old "combatants." Then came the command to U.S. troops to eliminate the combatants. U.S. soldiers and Marines, the veterans said, went from house to house exterminating whomever they met. The head of Fallujah’s hospital said U.S. Marines killed 600 Iraqis, "most of them women, children and the elderly," in the first week after entering the city. (AP, 11/4/04) U.S. military hospitals, under orders, refused to treat those whom the invaders merely maimed.

‘Macbeth’ Hoax, Whether Farce Or Tragedy, Aids Warmakers

The rulers have taken extraordinary steps to discredit such exposés, however rare. Earlier this year, a young man calling himself "Jesse Macbeth" appeared in an alternative media video claiming to be an ex-Army Ranger who had killed over 200 non-combatants, including children, in Iraq. But "Macbeth" was a fake. He had never even been to Iraq. Pro-Bush media, led by Fox, jumped all over the hoax as "phony propaganda." It really doesn’t matter whether "Macbeth" was a well-meaning but misguided war opponent or Bush & Co.’s willing stooge. The media now treat all soldiers’ war crimes admissions with serious skepticism, even as the Lancet shows the "coalition’s" killing rate rising continually.

The Lancet report tallies the body count, which will explode into the millions in the coming, global conflict, most likely with China, but fails to charge the guilty-as-sin U.S. ruling class with genocide. It also neglects the more than 2,700 slain working-class U.S. GI’s and untold Afghan victims. Justice will come only when workers organized in a party such as ours indict, convict and punish the murderers in a communist revolution.

Oaxaca Struggle Shows Workers’ Revolutionary Potential

OAXACA, MEXICO, Oct. 17 — "What’s needed is a voice for communist revolution. The electoral political parties only defend the bosses’ interests and legitimize the injustice and inequality of the capitalist system that kills miners, teachers and students," said a striking teacher during a meeting with workers, students and teachers.

The teachers’ four-month battle in Oaxaca shows the potential of workers organized in struggle. Masses of people in Oaxaca showed their solidarity by erecting barricades in all the streets to repel police attacks. Workers armed with poles, machetes, rocks and Molotov cocktails take turns during the nights guarding the barricades.

Teachers have seized some radio stations while other workers warn the teachers about the presence of cops and call on the community to build solidarity with this movement.

Teachers and workers nationwide and internationally have supported the struggle in Oaxaca. On Oct.16, dissident teachers from 31 states and Mexico City threatened to form a new national union leader to protest fascist national union leader Elba Esther Gordillo’s plan to scab on the Oaxaca teachers.

Although the militant workers, teachers and students have made great sacrifices in this struggle, it may not achieve its stated goal, the ousting of the governor. Capitalism, the basic cause of our problems, will be affected but not destroyed. A new governor, controlled by the same system, would be just as bad or even worse than Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.

But this struggle shows that we workers are capable, committed organizers who can achieve real communist workers’ power when the masses are won to that goal. It can serve as a school for building communism, exposing the system, and understanding our enemy, the ruling class and its State (all politicians, judges, laws, etc.) and the rulers’ servants in the church and the media.

Recently, young students from Oaxaca went to a northern city where the militancy and solidarity of the University students greatly inspired them. They’re asking that workers and students from across the country travel to Oaxaca to share experiences and ideas on class struggle and revolution.

That weekend in Oaxaca was a moving experience as young people openly asked to become active participants in the Party. International solidarity encouraged comrades from Oaxaca to expand their struggle to build a communist society. These movements are full of danger but also create great opportunities to bring our political ideas to the workers and build a mass PLP. Meeting new friends and bringing them these politics are the biggest victories communists and the working class can achieve in this struggle.

Bosses Battle for Mexico’s Oil

Billionaire Carlos Slim — Latin America's richest boss (see CHALLENGE, 10/18) — has a strategy to privatize Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex for himself and the Mexican capitalists in his group. His plan confronts two apparently contradictory tendencies among the nation's politicians and ruling class. One is a privatization scheme as envisioned by President-elect Felipe Calderon and his group, which would benefit mainly the U.S. and foreign investors. The other idea is the "no-privatization-at-all" slogan advocated by Lopez Obrador's populist movement and the capitalists supporting him.

During the July presidential election, the Mexican Employers' Association — of which Slim and many in his group are members — endorsed Felipe Calderon. Slim and his gang didn't oppose this endorsement. However, they refused to add to their Chapultepec Pact program, a provision demanded by Lopez Obrador stating that PEMEX and its oil reserves not be sold to national or international investors.

It seems the ideal situation for Slim & Co. would be to have Calderon's government seriously undertake the sale of PEMEX to U.S. and foreign investors and then have Lopez Obrador — after making a deal as the nationalist/capitalist and big buddy of Slim — mobilize the millions behind him to fight for the slogan, "If PEMEX must be sold, better to Mexicans than to foreigners!"

Lopez Obrador, who calls himself "the president of Mexico by the will of the majority," has staged numerous, enormous rallies protesting the results of the July election which was decided in favor of Felipe Calderon. Millions of poor workers and others strongly support Lopez Obrador, hoping that his "the-poor-people-first" program will solve their many problems. But he's nothing but a demagogue who supports capitalism. He wants to throw a few crumbs to the workers in order to guarantee the stability of Mexican capitalism and win the allegiance of the workers to one sector of the Mexican bourgeoisie fighting another over resources and the value produced by workers. Liberal nationalist politicians always end up allying with, and serving, the interest of one or another sector of the national bosses and one or another imperialist butcher. They are wolves in sheep's clothing, the worst enemies of the working class.

Liberals Attack Pervert ‘Pol’ Foley to Advance War Agenda

Uncovering a scandal on the eve of elections — the "October Surprise" — is a time-honored, tried-and-true tactic of the ruling class. The latest suspect, Mark Foley, a Republican representative from Florida, faces accusations of having sexual affairs with teen-age House pages. What the dominant, liberal wing of U.S. capitalists wants is not Foley’s atonement for his sins but a House majority of Democrats who they hope will be better able to mobilize the millions of mostly working-class troops they require for their ever-intensifying military conflicts.

In Foley’s follies, the liberals hope they’ve found a means to strip the Republican Party of much of its conservative religious voting base. Amid the GOP’s troubles, the liberal New York Times has been running a blockbuster series attacking religious groups’ abuse of their exemption from taxes and other regulations. Calls for Republican House speaker Dennis Hastert’s resignation accompany "shocked" liberals’ prosecution of Foley. Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney’s recent guilty pleas to ostensibly unrelated bribery charges help round out the picture.

Foley’s saga recalls the liberals’ recent revelation of rampant child molestation among Catholic priests. Like the page abuse, the rulers had known the dirty secret for ages. They blew the whistle at the start of the latest war in Iraq, when U.S. priests were preaching the Vatican’s pro-European, anti-U.S. line. Chastened, these clergymen have since changed their tune. Bishops now hand out U.S. flags to potential military recruits at immigrant rallies.

We shouldn’t be fooled. What shapes the liberals’ moral posturing over Foley is a need to employ massive armed force to combat rivals for control of the world’s sources of profit.

‘Free Speech’ for Racist Minutemen Means Fascism for Working Class

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 11 — One week ago, Columbia University’s Young Republican club invited Jim Gilchrist, founder of the racist Minutemen (MM) to speak at this Ivy League center of ruling-class education. This is another big step in developing U.S. fascism, part of the rulers’ attempts to build mass support for their ideology. 

Hundreds of workers and community residents picketed outside of this student-only event, chanting anti-Minuteman slogans, including, "Hitler Rose, Hitler Fell; Minutemen Go to Hell!" and "Las Luchas Obreras No Tienen Fronteras" "Workers Have No Borders"). Inside — after a previous MM speaker, a black politician, had spoken for almost an hour — Gilchrist was spewing his anti-immigrant garbage for a few minutes when students from the Columbia Chicano Caucus marched onto the stage and unfurled a banner reading, "No Human Being is Illegal." A scuffle erupted as the MM and their supporters grabbed and tore the banner while punching and kicking other anti-racist students who attempted to get on stage. Then 80% of those in the hall began chanting their support of the anti-racists’ action. This ended the program.

During the protest, PL’ers reached many with our ideas via chants, posters, buttons and the sale of CHALLENGE. We salute the courage of those who confronted the racists inside the hall. However, many students who were disgusted with the MM racism still support the notion of absolute free speech. One Chicano student leader defended her organization’s actions saying, they have not "...interfered with anyone’s free speech. We simply expressed our right to freedom of speech."

But when the KKK came to NYC several years ago, PL’ers clobbered them BEFORE they could get started. Imagine if the racist MM had been physically attacked by the students and run out of the hall! That would have given the fascists pause before they continued to spew their filthy message.

Now "liberal" Mayor Bloomberg and the bosses’ mass media are attacking the anti-racists’ protest as an "outrage." They’re the same ones who support imperialist wars worldwide and racist exploitation of workers everywhere. Columbia U. President Bollinger is threatening action against the student protesters.

Under capitalism there is no "free" speech, only speech with money and power behind it. The ruling class will use its might to promote its real agenda and attack those who oppose it. We should support the Columbia students against any charges against them and use this opportunity to raise with our friends and within our unions, campus clubs, churches and community organizations the need to unmask the MM and their fascist paymasters.

Anti-Racists Drown Out KKK At Harper’s Ferry

HARPER'S FERRY, WV, Oct. 14 — PLP mobilized half of 50 protestors, including students, workers and active-duty military personnel, in a militant, multi-racial demonstration against the World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. These fascists dared to defile the sacred anti-racist site where John Brown's multi-racial band of 21 carried out their bold raid against slavery in 1859 that effectively set the U.S. Civil War in motion.

Chanting, "Death to the Klan, Power to the Workers," the Party-led group confronted over 100 cops brought in from five jurisdictions to defend the fascists. The cops fronted a line of nose-to-tail police cars, which in turn was in front of an impassable railroad trestle, which in turn was in front of a temporary metal barrier surrounding the fascists. Obviously they were determined to protect the Klan scum from anti-racist justice.

Nevertheless, our chanting and militancy drowned out the fascist rally of four robed Klansmen flanked by 15 uniformed Nazis. Several local residents of this mountain community joined us, and many tourists were aghast to see the Klan in this National Park. Our spirited protest awakened the activism among some of our friends, and bodes well for the growth of PLP.

Cook County Hospital:

Whether Dems or G.O.P., All Roads Lead to Racist Cutbacks, War

CHICAGO, Oct. 15 — Cook County Health System workers are learning the hard way that the liberals are paving the road to fascism. On September 28, Cook County Board President Bobbie Steele (a black woman Democrat) called for 10% budget cuts ($100 million) from all department heads. This will mean layoffs, service cuts and clinic closings. 

Just six days earlier, FBI agents raided the County's human resources bureau and four hospitals in a crackdown on corrupt political hiring. The racist rulers must squeeze out every dollar, including clamping down on their corrupt underlings, to maintain their empire and prepare for larger wars to come. Democrat and Republican roads all lead to racist cutbacks. 

In July 2006, a Northwestern University report stated, "The Cook County health care system is facing an impending crisis," and warned of cuts in federal Medicaid money, the escalating costs in healthcare and the rise in uninsured and underinsured workers. The County "does not have a structure…to navigate the emerging health care crisis," and a "Blue Ribbon Commission" is needed to oversee the County President.

One meeting was organized where professional health care workers were limited to discussing what they thought should be cut, like certain prescription drugs to patients. There was no mention of the $6 billion-a- month war in Iraq that is draining federal funding. 

On the other hand, chief medical officers, doctors and nurses unanimously oppose the cuts, recognizing the devastating effects they will have on the mostly black, Latin and immigrant patient population. They felt that doctors and nurses should stand with other healthcare workers and the community/patient population. This could set the stage for a struggle against the cutbacks and an opportunity to strengthen the base for PLP.

These budget cuts will worsen the health of an already ailing population burdened with poverty and illness. But it will be even more deadly if healthcare workers are won to fight under the leadership of the Democrats for a policed "health" system in line with a fascist war economy.

The goal of the Northwestern report and Democratic post-9/11 "yearnings" are to win workers and the community to fight for the bosses’ war budget health system, just as they have mobilized millions of immigrant workers and youth to march behind the Democrats’ war agenda. The ruling class wants more troops, a cheap labor war economy and a racist, patriotic population. Democrats only criticize Bush for failing to win the population to their fascist plans. 

Only by persistently and patiently fighting for our revolutionary outlook in the mass movement and at work can we win workers to join PLP. Many of our co-workers see these racist cutbacks are directly related to the war in Iraq. But they don’t see fighting for communism as the solution, yet. Our job is to build a base for communist revolution with our co-workers as we fight these racist budget cuts, expose the farce of the upcoming elections, and fight the fascist restructuring of the County health system.

Florida Teachers Mass on Highways, Rallying for Pay Raises

MIAMI, Oct. 11 — "More than praise, we need a raise," chanted thousands of schoolteachers across Dade County as they rallied along major highways and at district headquarters demanding raises on a par with neighboring counties. "I’m a single mom," said Santa Melendez, "and I have to work a second job to help pay the bills. No matter how hard we work, it’s still not enough." Teachers said they can’t afford to live in the county where they teach. Nearly 2,000 didn’t go to school to attend the rallies.

Workers Nix Union Hacks’ War Contract, Strike Goodyear

DETROIT, MI., Oct. 5 — Today more than 12,000 workers struck 16 Goodyear Tire & Rubber plants in the U.S. and Canada. Whether they know it or not, striking workers are taking a stand against a war economy that is forcing down wages and benefits to finance billions for war and fascist Homeland Security. The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) union authorized the strike after 40% of the workers rejected a tentative agreement between the union and the company. As in auto, steel, aerospace and other industries, workers have suffered decades of mass layoffs and concessions. And the patriotic union leaders boast of their being partners in this process.

Goodyear is continuing production at its non-union facilities and using management as scabs to try to keep the struck plants operating. The walkout could affect U.S. auto plants, which depend on just-in-time delivery and maintain a very low inventory of tires.

Workers are striking against Goodyear’s demands for wage cuts for new hires and against increased attacks on pensions, medical coverage and working conditions. Goodyear also wants to close two factories in Alabama and Texas, wiping out 2,000 jobs.

This summer, the USWA accepted concession contracts with the other big three tire companies. The union agreed to cut starting pay for new hires to $13/hour. But Goodyear demanded even more, including cutting wages for new hires to $10/hour. Meanwhile, Goodyear CEO Robert Keegan made over $7 million in 2005.

Like the auto and steel bosses, Goodyear wants to drastically reduce labor costs and the amount it pays out to tens of thousands of retired workers and their dependents.

The USWA absorbed the United Rubber Workers union in 1995 after the sellout of a ten-month strike of 2,300 Bridgestone-Firestone workers and the destruction of tens of thousands of union jobs in the tire industry.

Millions of workers are being forced to pay for the bosses’ plans for racist, endless imperialist wars and fascism. This is the immediate and long- range future capitalism has for the world’s workers. PLP offers a different future: fighting for a communist society without any bosses and their wars for profits.

Chavez’s Anti-Bush Rhetoric Hides Nationalist Reformers’ Exploitation

One day after George Bush addressed the United Nations to defend the bloody policies of the U.S., Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez blasted the "imperialist policies" of the U.S. In a comically rich speech, he called Bush the devil, proclaiming that "he could still smell the sulfur" of the evil one. He later said, "Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world."

Republican and Democratic leaders (like New York’s Charles Rangel) came to the defense of Bush because they considered it an insult to the whole country. Many on the "pseudo" left as well as workers around the world have praised Chavez’s criticisms of U.S. imperialism, believing he gave a voice to the people.

But if Bush left the scent of the devil, Chavez left the scent of a rat. Chavez’s "revolution" represents only the interests of local capitalists and imperialists who compete with the U.S. to control and exploit the workers of South America. Venezuela is a member of the Chinese- and European Union-supported MERCOSUR that is just the other imperialists’ alternative to the U.S.-sponsored Free Trade of Americas. Later in the speech he proposed giving more power to the Secretary General, repressing the veto and expanding UN membership. These proposals reform the United Nations (take power away from the larger capitalists like the U.S.), not destroy it as a defender of class oppression.

Chavez proclaimed, "Dawn is breaking out all over. You can see it in Africa and Europe and Latin America and Oceana. I want to emphasize that optimistic vision." This vision of reformed capitalism may work better for nationalist capitalists as well as imperialists friendly to them, but workers will only see a new dawn’s light if we reject Chavez’s "reformed" capitalist siren call.

Anti-War Teach-In Reveals U.S. Imperialist Atrocities

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 10 — At a recent documentary screening on a campus here, students saw first-hand the brutality and murderous violence of U.S. imperialism’s current profit war in Iraq. The film revealed the aftermath of the U.S.’s April 2004 military offensive in Falluja. Viewing the graphic footage of civilian casualties and heartrending interviews, many of the 50 students attending turned their eyes away several times in disgust. Some couldn’t believe that the atrocities depicted in the film — including the killing of two young children by U.S. snipers — were true.

A teacher said that when she was in college during the Vietnam War, she couldn’t believe the stories of U.S. atrocities because "we were taught that Americans are the ‘good guys’ and the enemy is always evil." But in reality, she said, imperialism breeds brutality, torture and misery for ALL workers. Nationalism only blinds us from the truth, lying that we have more in common with our oppressors at home than with our working-class sisters and brothers worldwide.

One student declared that the film exposed the anti-Arab racism used by the bosses to justify their Mid-East oil wars. It gave a human face to the 600,000 Iraqis who have died since the U.S. invaded Iraq. While the ruling class speaks of "fighting terror" and "spreading democracy," the film showed that the main victims of imperialism’s genocidal violence are workers and students — especially the most vulnerable, like children and the elderly.

Another student pointed out that just as it’s poor U.S. workers who are sent to fight and die for imperialism’s profits, so it’s the workers, students and poor of Iraq and Afghanistan who also suffer, fight and die. Imperialism, regardless what flag it waves, is only interested in "spreading democracy" for multi-nationals like Exxon-Mobil and their rich capitalist shareholders. No bosses’ state has the interests of workers, soldiers and students in mind.

The teacher urged students to ask why these wars are being fought in the first place and who really benefits from them. There’s a connection between the killing in Iraq for the U.S. capitalist class’s domination of energy resources and the recent attacks on U.S. workers, like cuts in pensions, benefits and wages, and the closing or outsourcing of factories, from Ford and GM to Boeing. We need a multi-racial, international movement to fight imperialism’s root source, the racist profit system of capitalism. Communism, based on production to meet the needs of the international working class, is the answer to capitalist-caused slaughter.

The teach-in sparked great one-on-one discussions outside, and future plans for more campus teach-ins and actions. From these new contacts and discussions, we plan to extend our CHALLENGE networks and study groups, and win more students to PLP’s revolutionary communist politics.

Plan to Fight Anti-Immigrant Attacks, Expose Liberal ‘Reform’ Tool for War Recruiting

NEW YORK, Oct. 2 — CHALLENGE always points out we are living in a period of expanding imperialist war and developing fascism as U.S. rulers aim to maintain their super-power status. To further this goal, they are using immigration reform to implement a police state to squeeze more profits from the working class and provide more cannon fodder for their imperialist wars.

They have already militarized the U.S./Mexico border. Several towns have changed their ordnances to deny undocumented immigrants housing leases. Some Border State sheriffs have erected tent jails to detain immigrants awaiting deportation hearings. Young immigrants are told they can become citizens by joining the U.S. military. Racist militia groups like the Minutemen are welcomed to patrol the border and immigrant communities.

PLP will participate in a conference on "embracing the immigrant," inviting members of mass organizations we participate in, students and all our friends to this event.

The conference wants to put U.S. immigration issues into the framework of "human rights" and to explain how to "access legal, health, social and work services and rights." Although not a stated goal of the conference, it assumes acceptance of ruling class-sponsored "immigration reform" as the way to realize the "American Dream."

In PLP study groups with our friends and using CHALLENGE, we’re preparing to introduce proposals for fighting back and bringing aspects of our revolutionary communist ideas to conference participants. We know many people will be open to our ideas while others will try to stifle us. One key point we’ll try to present clearly is our analysis of the historical period and why "immigration reform" is a tool in the liberal Democratic Party’s war chest.

Our fight-back plan includes proposing that educators and social, health and legal providers plan non-compliance with laws mandating we reveal the identities of undocumented immigrants. Churches should become sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants, following the lessons of those who resisted the Fugitive Slave Act prior to the Civil War. We must establish networks like the Underground Railroad to support undocumented immigrants and fight racist groups like the Minutemen and practices like raids and deportations. We also should organize a U.S.-Mexico cross-border demonstration to build international working-class solidarity and unity.

On a deeper level — that exposes the nature of capitalism and imperialism — we must question the reasons for borders, and warn workers of the danger of racist and nationalist divisions, while explaining the historical necessity for revolutionary change to address the root causes of poverty, repression and war. For example, the NAFTA "free trade" agreement has given the multi-national corporations a green light to cut jobs and lower wages across the border, widening the gap between the super-rich and the poor in both Mexico and the U.S.

Finally, the Party’s goal is to raise communist consciousness, win many workers to the Party and expand the networks of CHALLENGE readers, as well as strengthen veteran communist leaders and develop new ones on the long road to communist revolution.

Lynne Stewart Sentence: Judge’s ‘Compassion’ Masks Stepped-up Fascism

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 16 — Today sentences were handed down to radical lawyer Lynne Stewart (28 months) and her co-defendants, paralegal Ahmed Sattar (24 years) and translator Mohamed Youssary (20 months). We applaud the thousands of people who wrote letters backing Stewart and participated in rallies, and in support meetings in unions, community and religious organizations. But we should not have the illusion that these were the reasons for Stewart’s and Youssary’s relatively short jail sentences. While sectors of the government disagree on how to apply their fascist rules, they all agreed on a sentence that would represent their class interests.

For example, "a message of deterrence has already been sent loud and clear…no further deterrence is needed," said one of Stewart’s lawyers. She has already lost her right to earn a living as a lawyer, thus sending the chill of terror to any attorney who might defend an enemy of U.S. rulers. Now, through Judge Koeltl’s sentences, the same government that is implementing greater fascist measures can simultaneously appear "compassionate."

No terrorist act resulted from the actions of Stewart, Sattar and Youssary. However, terror in the form of imperialist war, attacks on immigrants, homelessness, etc. occurs every day under capitalist class rule.

We should hail and spread the fight of Oaxaca workers and Columbia University students who have fought back against capitalism’s systemic terror. PLP pledges to build on the efforts to support Lynne Stewart by building a base of workers, students and soldiers committed to destroying the capitalist system.

Students Rally vs. Military Recruiters at Career Fair

NEW YORK, NY, Oct. 12 — "Recruiters, you liars, we'll set your asses on fire" students shouted today as they rallied against military recruiters and the war in Iraq outside a City College of New York (CCNY) career fair; 300 leaflets with a reprint of a CHALLENGE article were given out and over 50 newspapers were distributed.

The CCNY police circled the protest, showing its force. Last year they had arrested and beat students at another career fair. CUNY students continue to oppose the war; several new students participated.

Perhaps the best feature was the collective decision-making, with students struggling over what tactics to use. PLP'ers advanced its outlook through chants and discussion.

LETTERS

Learning Communism in the School of Life

Several years ago, I lived in the mountains where unemployed poverty-stricken farm workers live. With PLP's help, I moved to the big city seeking a job as well and to engage in political work in the maquilas (factories). It was a new world for me, full of obstacles.

Now I'm a young worker with a lot of anger against the capitalist system. During my participation as an active member of PLP, it's been difficult learning to bring communist ideas to others. I've been in the Party for five years, but because I didn't know how to write, I've been unable to improve my political work enough, nor could I find work in the biggest factories — they require a high school diploma.

However, I'm resolving this. I work among a lot of young workers. Little by little I'm understanding more profoundly why we fight. This motivates me to keep recruiting more people to the Party. It led me to start school two years ago. I'm now in the third grade and learning to read and write, so I can read Party documents.

Sometimes it isn't just important to know how to read but also to get ideas from the other comrades because the Party is necessary for all the world's workers. That's why some of my fellow workers and friends read CHALLENGE. I invite them to mass activities where we participate as the Party.

Our meetings have helped me learn. They explain why we fight and why it's necessary for workers to awaken out of the darkness of capitalist ideas. I want more Party schools here to learn more communist ideas.

A young worker comrade

Working on Many Fronts Post-May Day

Since May Day, our PLP club has been involved in various struggles, but with the same focus of building for communism. We brought our base of friends to the defense of comrades who were on trial for supporting day laborers in Farmingville, Long Island. We struggled with those who attended the trial not to view the victorious verdict as a sign that "the system works" but to understand how, in any arena, communists fight the bosses with mass action and political struggle.

We’re also raising two ideas in mass organizations to which we belong to further our solidarity with immigrants: (1) drafting a resolution that attacks all proposed legislation as further intensification of super-exploitation, and of expanding war; and (2) organizing an international cross-border solidarity rally in Laredo Texas.

One goal this fall is having a conference on "Racial Justice and Ecological Survival." The main theme will be indicting world capitalism as the cause of ecological disaster and imperialist wars. The recent discussions about the PLP document "Road to Revolution 4.5" is helping in organizing this event by making communist politics primary in the workshops.

We’ve also met regularly with a coalition that’s fighting to reopen our neighborhood health clinic. It has exposed the City as a racist murderer, using their own figures on deaths from asthma, cardiac-pulmonary disease, cancer and AIDS. In the past four months, we’ve lost three African-American activists to heart attacks: two in their sixties, one in her thirties! We’re planning our own health fair on the steps of the clinic building and possibly to take it over.

Last April a cop murdered one of our friends’ son and we’re working in one mass organization to sharpen the courtroom struggle as well as to win the family to PLP’s politics.

One of our members has lost her family’s HRA housing subsidy and we’re trying to build support for her at the hearings and a possible fight with the landlord. We will pack the courtroom.

However, overall we must do better in following up our May Day participants, using CHALLENGE in ways that engage their particular concerns and to win them to distribute the paper and raise funds to support it.

Red Churchmouse

Under Capitalism, Workers Can’t Celebrate ‘Independence’

PLP wrote and distributed a leaflet during the Sept. 15 Independence celebrations, exposing the hypocrisy of "Independence Day," and calling for a struggle for true revolutionary liberation under communism. Today the rulers force teachers and students into parades to celebrate this date which has no real significance for the working class since we continue as wage slaves, whether under European or U.S. empires.

Historically in Central America, like elsewhere worldwide, workers have been subjected to all kinds of racism and exploitation. After the imperialist invasion by the European kingdoms starting in 1492, a great repression and massacre of the indigenous peoples began when they resisted the plunder of their lands and excessive, brutal working conditions. The empires aimed to accumulate great wealth.

After hundreds of years of Spanish oppression, a movement for liberation arose, which was used by phony leaders who represented a particular powerful economic sector. Their role was to pacify the angry masses.

In 1821 a false independence was established through commercial agreements in which Spain’s rulers gave power to these opportunist local leaders. Workers can achieve total liberation only through a communist system, building our Party and organizing the working class for the complete elimination of the capitalist system and its oppression and wars. Fight for one class, one flag and one Party, the PLP.

A Salvadoran Comrade

U.S. Killed Nearly 3 Million North Koreans

There’s nothing communist about North Korea. It explicitly abandoned Marxism-Leninism in its constitution of the early ’90s. Its official ideology is "Juche," based on nationalist self-reliance. The capitalists call North Korea "communist" to paint all communists with the same brush.

Chinese and South Korean capitalists are investing in North Korea’s "Free Economic Zones." That’s one of the reasons China — even though it condemned the recent nuclear test — is reluctant to endorse the U.S. and Japan’s full embargo.

The nuclear test is a direct reaction to the failed Bush administration policy of shunning negotiations and threatening North Korea with war and regime change. North Korea had abandoned its nuclear weapons program until the Bush administration started threatening it as being part of the "Axis of Evil," while invading another "Axis," Iraq. There’s no doubt: people in the U.S. and worldwide are far less safe than five years ago.

U.S. rulers, not North Korea, are primarily to blame for this situation. In 1994 North Korea signed an agreement with the U.S. to suspend its nuclear weapons program and allow international inspections and monitoring of its nuclear facilities. In return, the U.S. agreed to cease military threats against North Korea, to supply fuel oil to replace the lost nuclear power, and to help build two modern atomic power plants.

But beginning in 2002, the Bush administration slowly gutted the agreement. It branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," threatened war, ended the shipments of fuel oil and the construction of nuclear power plants, tightened a long-standing economic embargo, and obstinately refused direct bilateral talks. The White House even threatened the limited use of nuclear weapons in a regional conflict with North Korea.

The context of all this goes back more than 50 years. Republican and Democrat administrations have refused to sign a peace treaty formally ending the Korean War and still maintain 37,000 troops in South Korea. They are the aftermath of the U.S. killing machine that during the Korean War (1950-1953), according to U.S. Air Force General Curtis Le May (quoted on PBS’s website), the U.S. "killed off…20% of the population….more than two million….civilians." The final total was actually nearly one-third of the nine million North Koreans. In all of World War II, the U.S. lost less than one-third of one percent of its population. Using bombs and napalm, Le May said the U.S. "eventually burned down every town in North Korea…and some in South Korea too."

With such a history, from 50 years ago and currently, no wonder when the Bush administration geared up for war on Iraq, North Korean officials were worried about the U.S. attacking them. Predictably, the North Korean government responded by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, expelled atomic energy agency inspectors, and began to develop nuclear weapons.

For eight years (1994-2002), direct negotiations with the North Korean government reduced the threat of nuclear proliferation and war on the Korean peninsula. So why do Bush administration officials say it’s "impossible" to negotiate with North Korea? They, and their neoconservative allies, are calling for sanctions, isolation, and even military threats to impose "regime behavior change." This is the same recipe that brought on the disastrous Iraq war, and will only deepen North Korea’s resolve to develop nuclear weapons, potentially setting off a new nuclear arms race in the region.

Of course, the nuke non-proliferation treaty is a sham. In addition to the main imperialists, Israel, Pakistan and India are also nuclear powers. Even the Russians have halted destruction of their strategic nuclear weapons since the U.S. is about to achieve nuclear supremacy for the first time in 50 years, capable of destroying Russia’s and China’s nukes with a first strike. So North Korea’s minute nuclear arsenal is really no threat to the U.S.

With few exceptions, much of the mainstream bosses’ media is echoing the White House claims that "negotiations won’t work," the same role they played in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

A Comrade

Students Occupy, Close College for the Deaf

I recently visited the protest at Gallaudet University — the nation’s only federally-funded university for deaf people — where hundreds of students this week expanded their occupation of the main classroom building, now closing down the entire campus by blocking all entrances. The students are well-organized, with grills to cook food, tents at all entrances and substantial support from the faculty.

Students are condemning racism and discrimination in the selection of the new university president and are demanding that the president-elect, Jane Fernandez, step down before she even takes office! Many black students are involved in the protest and there is a lot of interaction between black and white students.

Several years ago, a similar campaign (called the Deaf President Now Movement) resulted in the appointment of Jordan King as president, who was very popular with the students. His provost has been appointed by the Board of Trustees to succeed him, with his support.

Students have now turned against him for what they view as a betrayal of the deaf community’s interests, throwing juice on him at an event held to honor him. Yesterday he turned the situation over to the cops and washed his hands of it all, proving that when push comes to shove, even the most progressive-seeming president will hide behind the rulers’ state power and the cops.

The students claim that the search committee did not consider a particular deaf African American candidate, and so was racist, and that the president-elect (who is also deaf) fails to fully appreciate "deaf culture." Some proponents of deaf culture claim that the deaf community, due to its particular social experience related to deafness, is more internally compassionate and caring than other communities.

The students want to maintain American Sign Language (ASL) as the primary visual and written communication mode. ASL is a different language with its own grammar rules. For example, ASL inverts the noun and verb in a sentence, such as "The store, I go." The new president, an English professor, wants students to write in Standard English instead of ASL. The students reject this view, and also object to the fact that she both signs and speaks.

The students have been attacked as "spoiled" and their faculty supporters have been called "manipulative." These are the standard baseless attacks made on those who seek to "fight the power." However, despite the students’ boldness, I fear their emphasis on deaf culture isolates them from the rest of the working class, and is another form of "identity politics" (such as feminism and nationalism) which divides the working class into separate groups aligned with their own rich, bourgeois members. Identity politics hinders working-class unity in the struggle against capitalism.

Such nationalistic responses develop because people face real discrimination and feel the need to fight back. Deaf people have often been stigmatized and considered mentally retarded. All workers need to fight the discrimination against any worker and help unite us all against capitalist oppression. We also condemn any police action, repression or punishment of these brave students, whom we want to win to a revolutionary communist outlook.

A Comrade

REDEYE on the News

Afghans’ life worse since US came in

At best Afghans consider their government to be non-existent, at worst they see it as a corrupt, unscrupulous criminal organization. "Never in the history of Afghanistan has corruption been so bad, at every rung of the ladder,…."

….Half the population is suffering from malnutrition and just over a third of all children have been vaccinated. Every 30 minutes a woman dies from complications giving birth….

To judge by the account of villagers in the south, the Taliban are free to roam wherever they please. Yielding to Taliban propaganda, public opinion is increasingly in favor of the foreign forces’ departure….

"When the Americans arrived, the whole population supported them," recalls Noor Ali, a teacher in Kandahar. "But they lied to us and we are no longer interested in development and rehabilitation. We just want peace and security." (GW, 9/28)

Senior decides jail is better than $5/hr

A man who could not find steady work came up with a plan to make it through the next few years until he could collect Social Security: He robbed a bank, handed the money to a guard and waited for the police….

"At my age, the jobs available to me are minimum-wage jobs," Mr. Bowers, who will turn 63 in a few weeks, told the judge….

Prosecutors had considered arguing against putting Mr. Bowers in prison at taxpayer expense, but they worried he would do something more reckless to be put behind bars.

"It’s not the financial plan I would choose, but it’s a financial plan," the prosecutor, Dan Cable, said. (NYT, 10/13)

Stunned by detainee innocence, GI quits

In a court-martial here on Thursday, an Army judge sentenced Sergeant Clousing to 11 months in confinement for going AWOL….

Arriving in Iraq in November 2004, he said he was stunned at the number of Iraqis he was assigned to interrogate who were either innocent or disgruntled citizens resentful about the American occupation. He said he told his commander: "Your soldiers and the way they’re behaving are creating the insurgency you’re trying to fight. It’s a cycle. You don’t see it, but I’m talking to the people you’re bringing to me…."

…Sergeant Closuing took his misgivings to his superiors. They sent him to a chaplain, who showed him in the Bible where God sent his people to war….

Sergeant Clousing said he could not file for conscientious objector status because he could not honestly say he was opposed to all war. After several months of soul-searching, he went AWOL. (NYT, 10/13)

US big biz likes China workers as slaves

To the Editor:

Now our Chamber of Commerce and some major American Corporations are fighting against a new labor protection law in China ("China Drafts Law to Empower Unions and End Labor Abuse; Opposition Voiced by U.S. and Other Corporations," front page, Oct.13).

Makes you proud to be an American, no? (NYT, 10/15)

US teenagers not joining evangelicals

…Evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves….

"I’m looking at the data," said Ron Luce, who…founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, "and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work…but we’re losing." (NYT, 10/6)

$20 million victory party skipped

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation’s capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent. (NYT, 10/4)

Free market brings misery to poorest

Globalization brings wealth and opportunity to many people around the world. But to poor slum dwellers in the failing state of Ivory Coast, it has brought horrible sickness and death after hazardous waste, shipped nearly halfway around the world, was stealthily dumped in backyards around Abidjan….

…The waste…could have been safely disposed of earlier in its journey. But Trafigura, the Swiss trading company that leased the tanker, balked at paying European prices. Instead, 85,000 people ended up seeking medical treatment, and at least eight have died….

Dangerous cargos will find the course of least resistance, least cost, and least regulation, scarring the lives of some of the world’s poorest, worst governed and most defenseless people. (NYT, 10/4)

Physical abuse often underlies sexism

Violence against women by their live-in spouses or partners is a widespread phenomenon, both in the developed and developing world, as well as in rural and urban areas, the most comprehensive and scientific international study on the topic has confirmed….in interviews with nearly 25,000 women at 15 sites in 10 countries….

Most partner abuse is hidden, and only a tiny fraction is reported to the authorities…..

In the United States…about 25 percent of women said that they had been physically or sexually assaulted by a spouse, partner or date.

In the World Health Organization survey, one-fifth to two-thirds of women interviewed said that it was the first time they have ever spoken of the abuse to anyone…. (NYT, 10/6)

Expert: FBI forced terror confession

The Hayats were United States citizens; Umer Hayat drove an ice cream truck in Lodi. His 19-year-old son, Hamid, was a sixth-grade dropout.

In 2003 the family traveled briefly to Pakistan for Hamid’s marriage….

In the summer of 2005, when Hamid returned to Lodi, the F.B.I was waiting for him. Interrogated along with his father for 15 hours in separate rooms without a lawyer, they were both later arrested. Hamid was charged with attending a jihadi training camp — something both he and his father confessed to after the nonstop interrogation….

James Wedick, a recently retired and much decorated F.B.I. agent agreed to review the interrogation tapes…. "I was shocked," he told Frontline…Hamid changed his story only after the constant badgering….

"They more or less answered the way the bureau wanted them to answer," Mr. Wedick said. "All they wanted to do was go home….The trial judge barred Mr.Wedick from taking the stand….

The younger Mr.Hayat, convicted of material support of terrorism and lying to the F.B.I., faces a possible 39-year sentence and has filed an appeal….

In the end there was no terror cell….The Lodi case, a showcase trail in the Bush administration’s war on domestic terrorism, was largely created out of whole cloth. The country was never in danger from the Hayats but may well be entering a dangerous period of unnecessary and abusive prosecutions… (NYT, 10/10)

The Great Anti-Fascist Battle In London’s East End, 1936

October 4 marked the 70th anniversary of a great battle against fascism — the "Battle of Cable Street" in London’s East End. Stories of that day are still talked about amongst the British working class.

For 300 years the East End of London had been a passageway of poor working-class immigrants into Britain. In 1936 the area’s population was largely Polish and Russian Jews, Irish Catholics and non-immigrant English working class. Most streets were a crooked tangle. Tiny houses were crammed together — 18th century industrial housing with flush toilets out the back. Many people worked on the nearby docks and in small factories, garment sweatshops and open air markets.

At that time, Sir Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts — the British Union of Fascists (BUF) — was by far the largest fascist grouping of many that were growing in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. They had close ties to Hitler. Moseley’s group sent committed fascists into the East End to beat up and terrorize Jews. They wanted to divide the Jews from all the other immigrant groups. They labeled Jews "tyrants of international banking." On the streets, fascists would scream "kill the kikes" and "get rid of the yids." Amid a severe depression, Moseley’s movement was growing among the unemployed, white collar workers and small businessmen.

A lot of Britain’s upper and ruling class funded the BUF. Some of Britain’s big newspapers — the Daily Mail, Evening News and Sunday Dispatch — promoted it. Even the recently crowned King (Edward VIII) had wealthy fascist friends in Britain, France and Germany. The police often turned a blind eye to the fascists’ beatings of Jews. Communists and trade unionists — many themselves Jews — led the attack on the fascists in the streets.

Moseley decided to show his strength by marching 10,000 uniformed Blackshirts and thousands of supporters directly through the Jewish/Irish neighborhood. Police Commissioner Sir Philip Game ordered his cops to "support the march."

October 4th dawned bright and sunny. Ten thousand police were assigned to protect Mosley’s fascists. The official Jewish leadership advised workers to stay indoors and not show aggressiveness to them. But up to 500,000 people from the East End and other parts of London came to stop the fascist march. Mass and individual acts of heroism flooded the streets of the East End. The names of Cable Street, Gardener’s Corner and Aldgate joined the list of great working-class battles.

At Mile End (an East End street), a woman marched shouting, "They shall not pass!" and headed towards Aldgate. By the time she reached it thousands were following her. At Cable Street, jeering and singing crowds tried to breach the wall of cops to get at the fascists. The police attacked using nightsticks while mounted police charged the crowd. The horses stumbled from children hurling marbles under their hoofs and bursting bags of pepper under their noses. Women threw the contents of chamber pots from windows. The Nazis screamed, "The yids, the yids. We gotta get rid of the yids." But the people chanted, "They will not pass!"

The masses erected barricades (see photo top right). A truck was turned on its side to block the street; old mattresses, bricks and pushcarts were thrown on top. An Irish anti-fascist bus driver drove his double-decker bus across the road, forming a barricade between the police and the anti-fascists. It was later pushed on its side. Red flags hung from windows. The army of fascists demanded the police escort them through the masses of people.

At Cable Street the massive wall of people held their ground and only retreated to pick up bricks or bottles to throw at the cops and fascists. Soon wounded police, fascists and protesters were carried off. The anti-fascist forces were so aggressive that a myth grew declaring that the police had surrendered to the crowd. One recently married young electrician who was hit in the face with a nightstick would talk about it proudly 30 years later.

The fascists were under a constant hail of bricks, bottles and stones. As the crowd continued to fight, over 100 anti-fascist fighters were arrested, but still the police could not move the masses who held the cops within a vise grip. One demonstrator was moved to tears seeing bearded Jews and Irish dockworkers standing together to stop Moseley, saying "I shall never forget that as long as I live!"

At 4:15 the Police Commissioner canceled the BUF’s right to march. But now the police had to save them from being killed by the crowd. They surrendered Cable Street and attempted to escape two blocks away to Gardener’s Corner where they could leave the East End. The BUF hastily turned at Gardener’s Corner, but the anti-fascists — waiting for them — shouted, "Get them!" and crashed through police lines. They then chased the fascists out of London’s East End.

Later that night an elderly woman asked a bandaged fighter if he had been at that day’s battle. Fearing her disapproval, he denied being there. To his surprise and joy she said, "A curse on you that you did not fight this day." To him it sounded like a Shakespearian quotation.

For days people celebrated throughout London. The fascists continued to try to organize, but now much of the ruling classes withdrew their open support (many began to view Hitler as a rival imperialist threat) and it was clear that workers wouldn’t be easily won to fascism. In early December, Edward VIII abdicated, having been king for only 10 months. The official story stated he left "to be with the woman he loved," but among the working class it was common knowledge that he was forced out because of his open fascist ties.

From this battle we can see the working class should never give in to nationalist leaders. Both Jewish and Irish community and religious leaders tried to convince the masses not to fight the fascists, fearful of "causing more problems." But if the fascists had not been fought at Cable Street, they would have been a much stronger ally of Hitler inside Britain during World War II.

The constant communist-led anti-fascist organizing over many years led to the understanding and empowerment of the working class. That’s why today PLP leads the fight against the racist Minutemen and warns about the danger of the liberals’ road to fascism (see front page).

Dare to struggle — dare to win!

References

Benewick, R.: "A Study of British Fascism, Political Violence and Public Order." The Penguin Press, London 1969.

Hutt, A.: "British Trade Unionism — A Short History." International Publishers, New York 1953.

Ratner, R.: "The 50th Anniversay of the Battle of Cable Street." Spotlight Magazine, October 1986.

Rudkin, W.A.: "The Growth of Fascism in Great Britain." George Allen and Unwin, London, 1935.

Shermer, D.: "Blackshirts: Fascism in Britain." Ballantine Press, New York, 1971.

Thomson, D.: "England in the 20th Century." Penguin, Baltimore, 1965.

Walvin, J.: "Passage to Britain." Penguin, Harmonsworth, Middlesex, 1984.

Forward to Communism:

Reds Led Resistance Inside Nazi Death Camps

Book Review: Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps 1938-1945, by Hermann Langbein, Paragon House Publishers, New York, 1994 — Part 1 of 2

After fighting fascism in Spain (1936-1939), the author was imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz. He was a leader of the Auschwitz Combat Group resistance. His book dispels the lies that camp victims let themselves be passively slaughtered and showed that escape was not the main form of resistance.

The resistance mainly took the form of daily saving of lives, political study groups, sabotage and assassination of camp guards. Rather than individual heroism these were collective, painstaking efforts, led mainly by communists in highly secretive fashion and under the worst, murderous, dehumanizing conditions. They proved that even under the worst of conditions communists can still sustain their organization. Langbein says, "Communists...in contrast to men [sic] of liberal views...were used to absolute party discipline and were almost the only ones who were the enemy’s match as far as means and methods were concerned [p. 76]."

Initially criminal prisoners were responsible for enforcing discipline, keeping order and carrying out all commands. These so-called Greens (the color of their assigned badges) often received favors for killing and viciously whipping the "undesirable" political prisoners (so-called Reds) and Jews. As the Nazis invaded more countries and imprisoned more people, the SS (the Nazi organization that ran the camps) attempted to divide prisoners by nationality, but communists found many sympathizers and comrades from every country represented.

Slowly, Reds replaced Greens as senior block or barracks inmates by exposing their corruption, killing those who were demoted and seizing on the Nazis’ desperation to "manage" the hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Inmates kept roll call records, had responsibility for work assignments, and arranged hospital duty and transfers to other camps. (Incidentally, the Nazis used punch cards contributed by the U.S. company, IBM.)

Once positioned in a critical area, Red prisoners had some ability — although at high risk — to determine where people would go or who would appear or "disappear" from the rolls, often by assigning names of prisoners who had already died. Not all Reds or Jews were eager to engage in subterfuge or in deciding who might be saved at the expense of another. One Jewish woman, Vera Alexander, hesitated to become a block clerk, for then she would be subject to SS scrutiny. However, finally she did accept, and said, "Sometimes I was able to conceal in the block women who had been sentenced to death...At other times I was able to hide sick women so that they escaped the selection [for killing -- p. 49]."

From Ravensbrueck, a concentration camp mainly for women, three Jewish women were deported to Auschwitz for execution for their underground activities for the Communist Party. But the resistance organization in the women’s section of Auschwitz successfully protected them [p. 84].

(Part two will discuss the efforts of the underground camp resistance to hinder the Nazi war effort, the resistance’s mistaken reliance on the Allies for their rescue and finally the post-war failure of the international communist movement to organize for the overthrow of capitalism.)

PLP History: Championing Internationlism

Thirty-six years ago, on Oct. 24-25, 1970, NYC witnessed an historic internationalist event not seen in recent memory: over 2,500 workers and students from fraternal communist parties from Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. marched from Manhattan’s Lower East Side nearly four miles all the way to 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue, chanting, "Workers Power!" and "Fight for Socialism!" — slogans not heard on the city’s streets for 40 years. (This was prior to PLP’s more advanced outlook adopted in 1982 of "Fight for Communism.") It was a forerunner of PLP’s eventual international declaration of "One flag, one Party, one class."

The marchers surrounded the blocks containing the Canadian Consulate, protesting the Trudeau government’s "War Measures" attack on Quebec’s workers. Thousands of onlookers stopped to listen as the marchers sang the workers’ anthem, The Internationale. Many joined the march.

The participants came from many Canadian cities, and from Buffalo, Rochester, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New England and from all five boroughs of NYC and were addressed by representatives of PLP, the Socialist League of Puerto Rico — the famous poet, Juan Antonio Corretjer — and the Canadian Party of Labor.

The weekend was capped off with a dinner attended by 2,200. Many declared it one of the most inspiring events of their entire lives.