Ford Assault on Workers Triggers Mass Racist Job Cuts

Detroit Auto Workers Veterans of ‘67 Anti-Racist Rebellion

Expose Liberals’ ‘Anti-War’ Masquerade

Morgan Heir Lamont Lets Imperialist Cat Out Of The Bag

World War III And Webb’s Web Of Deceit

Vets Err In Backing Murderer Murtha

Racist Recruitment Killing Black, Latino, Immigrant Youth

Desperate Brass Sign Up Nazis, Ex-cons, 42-year-olds

School ‘Reform’: Rulers Train Students for Exploitation and War

L.A. Workers Kick Racists Out of Labor Day Rally

'From Oaxaca to LA, Workers Will Win!'

Indigenous Workers Protest Attacks In Oaxaca

Oaxaca Teachers Reject Sellout

AFL-CIO Hacks Betray Detroit Teachers Anti-Racist Strike

New Orleans Industrial Workers United vs. Racism

New Orleans Today: Not Just A Tourist Destination

Capitalist Weapons of Mass Destruction: Water Terrorism

War and More War on the Agenda Political Battle Emerging in Mass Organizations

Fight Bosses’ Ideology

Racist Reign of Terror At Chicago Hospitals

Liberals' Vote Ploy Masks Plan to Win Immigrants to War-Fascism Agenda

Ex-Boeing Hitman Targets Ford Workers

LETTERS

Honor Marx and 'Internationale'

Afghan Women Fight U.S. Bosses, Warlords

• CHALLENGE comment

Harvard Terrorist Would Nuke Millions

No Racist Survivors

Young Industrial Workers Take Leadership of West Coast PL School

Remembering Comrade Floyd Crawford

REDEYE

• Pols sabotage N.Orleans black workers
• Job cut is too small, says Wall St.
• Most workers get no layoff insurance
• Goering showed the way on Iraq war
• Hooking kids and African Americans on nicotine
• All presidents talk nice, then make war
• US putting ‘freedom’ on back burner

‘Fight Club’ Teaches Politics Of Defeat

Lumber Bosses and Their Government Destroy the Environment and Jobs

1,000 Navajos March Against Racist Crimes

---

Ford Assault on Workers Triggers Mass Racist Job Cuts

DETROIT,MI, September 17— Ford’s second "Way Forward" plan to eliminate about 45,000 jobs and 16 factories in the U.S., Mexico and Canada by 2010, is not just a restructuring of the auto industry. Rather it is a realignment of competing imperialists for markets, resources and cheap labor that will lead to new wars and make current imperialist slaughters look like a tea party.

Wall Street’s reaction was "Not good enough," and Ford’s stock dropped 12%. The plan was criticized for not moving fast enough to cut jobs, like GM’s buyout program that slashed 35,000 jobs more than two years ahead of schedule.

In the wake of the great Detroit anti-racist rebellion of 1967 (see box below), 100,000 black workers were hired by GM, Ford and Chrysler. Now we’re witnessing the reversal of that reform, and the undoing of 70 years of class struggle.

This is devastating communities across North America with job losses and tax-revenue cuts. For Michigan, already having the highest jobless rate of any state in the U.S. — and the center of Ford’s operations — it will be like a Katrina hitting the working class with overwhelming force.

Ford will also shut or sell 17 Visteon parts plants in the U.S. and Mexico that it took over in October 2005 in an effort to prevent the parts maker from going bankrupt. Visteon was spun off from Ford in 2000.

The United Auto Workers union is collaborating as if it was part of the company’s Board of Directors (at Chrysler it is!). After unprecedented give-backs last year in health benefits and pensions, it has negotiated local concessions that undermine whatever remains of work rules, job classifications, health and safety provisions and protection against speed-up and forced overtime.

Ford’s buyout offer to all 75,000 UAW hourly workers will wipe out union jobs and replace them with low-paid younger workers not entitled to the same health care, pensions and other benefits.

Capitalism Puts The Screws On

Ford’s worldwide automotive operations lost $3.9 billion last year, nearly 20 times worse than the $200-million loss in 2004. July 2007 will mark the beginning of national contract talks for Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler. The bosses and their loyal UAW junior partners will have plenty more cuts to make then.

David Cole, director of the Center for Automotive Research, said Ford must also cut health care costs and supported reopening local contracts. Those locals surrendering the most will supposedly keep working. This is known as "whip-sawing" one local against another. Cole said this gives Ford "more flexibility" and makes a "huge impact on the cost structure."

On September 9, UAW Local 600 at Ford’s Dearborn complex voted 2-to-1 in favor of a "competitive operating agreement" that will outsource non-production jobs, enforce a severe attendance policy, allow the use of temporary workers and replace the 8-hour day with four 10-hour days. Workers were told that if the contract was rejected the company would move production to other plants. Local 600 President Jerry Sullivan said, "We’re trying to be as cost-competitive as possible."

A similar contract was accepted by UAW Local 588 at the Ford Stamping plant in Chicago Heights. One worker said, "It’s really weird. Fights and complaints [against Ford] are way down. I’ve never seen it like this. People are worried whether they will have a job."

One worker at the Ford Assembly plant in Chicago, UAW Local 551, described three older white local union leaders "counseling" 25 young laid-off black workers. This underlines the inherent racism in these attacks, which hit black and Latin workers first and hardest.

This onslaught shows that capitalism can never meet the needs of the workers; whatever you win is fleeting as long as the bosses rule. We need to seize all the factories and mills and smash the bosses’ state with communist revolution and produce for the needs of our class. Over the next year we will build PLP in the auto industry as the main way to prepare for the coming struggle, and to honor the heroes of the 1967 Rebellion.

Detroit Auto Workers Veterans of ‘67 Anti-Racist Rebellion

Next July marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit Rebellion against racism, perhaps the greatest anti-racist rebellion of that time and the greatest act of international solidarity with Vietnamese workers and peasants who were fighting U.S. imperialism.

Many autoworkers participated in the armed uprising against racist police terror and racist unemployment. Many were Vietnam vets who knew how to use their weapons. Within 48 hours the racist Detroit police were out of bullets and pinned down in their stations, as was the Michigan National Guard. It finally took President Lyndon Johnson diverting units of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions from Vietnam to crush the rebellion. Dozens were killed, hundreds were injured and thousands were arrested and held on Belle Isle Park because the jails were full.

This struggle terrified the racist rulers. The legacy of these integrated, mostly black working-class heroes will not be lost if we build a base for PLP among autoworkers that will lead to a revolutionary solution.

Expose Liberals’ ‘Anti-War’ Masquerade

Fifty-eight percent responding to the latest CNN poll oppose the war in Iraq. That translates into over a hundred million against the U.S.-led slaughter. This rising anti-war sentiment holds both hope and danger. Many millions share aspects of our Party’s condemnation of the profit system and the bloodshed and racism it ceaselessly generates. They perceive the gross immorality of killing, maiming and dying for the benefit of Exxon Mobil and Halliburton. Racist atrocities in the hellholes of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo disgust them. As war’s horrors become evident, opportunities to win large numbers of people to a revolutionary, communist outlook increase.

Unfortunately, however, liberal politicians are trying to turn mass opposition to Bush’s Iraq war into support for even broader military action. Larger-than-usual primary turnouts and heightened public interest in the November elections reflect a trend harmful to the working class. Every elected official represents one group or another of capitalists. The liberal anti-Bush forces in — or running for — Congress speak for the Eastern Establishment. This is the Exxon Mobil-J.P. Morgan Chase-Rockefeller faction that has the greatest interest in protecting and projecting U.S. imperialism globally through armed force.

Morgan Heir Lamont Lets Imperialist Cat Out Of The Bag

Ned Lamont, heir to the J.P. Morgan fortune, provides a case in point. He beat Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic Senate primary by attacking his Bushite "stay-the-course-in-Iraq" stance. But in a recent speech at Yale Law School, Lamont reassured future Wall Streeters of his devotion to U.S. imperialism. While calling for a withdrawal timeline, Lamont "also said that some troops should remain in Iraq for humanitarian efforts and that others could be redeployed elsewhere in the Middle East." (NY Times, 9/14) Lamont echoes retired general William Odom, who proposes that the U.S. leave Iraq momentarily in order to regroup and gather allies for a massive invasion of the entire Middle East. The Times was careful to note that Lamont "did not rule out military action" against Iran. And alluding to U.S. rulers’ current recruiting shortfalls and their failure to mobilize the nation for war, Lamont stressed the need for more military "readiness."

World War III And Webb’s Web Of Deceit

Another Democrat sporting the phony "anti-war" label is James Webb, a Senate candidate from Virginia. An Annapolis grad and Marine Vietnam veteran, Webb has dedicated his life to the U.S. war machine. As Navy secretary under Reagan, he oversaw plans to build a 600-ship fleet (a project launched by Carter). Earlier as assistant "defense" secretary, Webb had "directed considerable research and analysis of the U.S. military's mobilization capabilities" (Webb’s campaign website). Webb is cynically garnering votes by saying U.S. forces should get out of Iraq. But the old warmonger hasn’t suddenly turned peacenik. He has far bigger fish to fry. Webb identifies Russia and China as "issues which demand our strategic focus." More specifically, Webb sees a grand anti-U.S. axis forming from the Middle East to the Far East. "I’ve been saying for 20 years that China was pursuing a strategy with the Muslim world designed to destabilize the United States and to improve its access to oil." Thus, says Webb, the U.S. "requires mobile forces...in other places around the world."

Vets Err In Backing Murderer Murtha

The leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War seem to have fallen hook, line and sinker for the liberals’ lies. They say they "stand behind" Pennsylvania representative John Murtha, the first in Congress to demand a troop withdrawal. They make a serious political error by ignoring Murtha’s class allegiance and his imperialist ulterior motives. Like Odom (and General Wesley Clark, Clinton’s bomber of Serbia), Murtha favors a tactical retreat from Iraq followed by a major counter-offensive in the Mid-East or elsewhere. "The policy of "staying the course"...in Iraq is hurting our national security" (Murtha’s website). Murtha’s says, "Redeploy to rebuild our military. Redeploy to meet future threats. Redeploy to strengthen America."

No matter what they say to get elected, politicians once in office cannot and will not forsake the needs of the capitalists they serve. (See Red Eye, page 7 on "Presidents Make War") The Senate’s unanimous 98-0 vote on Sept 6th to spend an additional $63 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan blows the cover off liberals’ pacifist posturing. The Iraq vets, and other working-class forces deceived by the fake anti-war rhetoric, should know that they, not their Congressmen, are crucial to the solution. History shows that rebellions by soldiers and strikes by workers can slow imperialist war’s deadly march for a time. More importantly, soldiers and workers, united in a communist party, can turn imperialist war into a revolution against the imperialists themselves and their profit system. This is the ultimate goal of PLP.

Racist Recruitment Killing Black, Latino, Immigrant Youth

NEW YORK CITY, Sept. 13 — While it’s become widely known that the military is concentrating its recruitment efforts in black and Latino neighborhoods, the most telling statistic reveals the results of this effort: of the 38 New Yorkers killed in Iraq, 33 — 87% — were Latino (21), black (8) or Asian (4).

These figures were reported in a 3-part series by Eva Sanchis in this city’s Spanish-language newspaper, El Diario-La Prensa, and summarized in an article in the NY Daily News (9/2). "A large number of the dead are immigrants." No wonder the liberal wing of the ruling class is so eager to pass legislation to entice immigrant youth into the army, possibly the biggest new source of cannon fodder for their imperialist oil wars.

These deaths grow out of the racism that puts most of the Armed Forces’ 26 recruitment centers in black or Latino neighborhoods: three of five in the Bronx are in the South Bronx, half of the six in Manhattan and six of eight in Brooklyn are in these neighborhoods, and all four in Queens are in immigrant communities. Yet not one center is located "in the upper East Side, the richest neighborhood in the city, which is 77% white and has a per capita income of $67,010" and where "only seven people enlisted in 2004," reports Ms. Sanchis.

Although 51% of city residents are Latino and black, 70.4% of the recruits in 2004 were from these two groups (37% Latino and 33.4% black), according to "Defense’" Dept. figures published by the American Friends Service Committee. "Poor young people need work, training, scholarships, but these are so scarce that they join the military," says a Friends Service representative, "not realizing that this is an institution created for war and not an employment program."

The rulers are going full speed ahead in trying to induce immigrant youth to die for the bosses’ system:

• A Bush "executive order allow[s] non-citizens to apply for citizenship after only one day of active-duty military service," to draw from an "estimated 50,000-65,000 undocumented…young adults." (July Senate testimony by Under Secretary of Defense David Chu) Chu extolled the DREAM Act which would give such youth the "opportunity" to join the military and obtain "conditional permanent-resident status."

• Recruiters are establishing booths in "cafeterias in high schools across the nation." (Boston Globe)

• Enlistment bonuses up to $40,000 are offered to immigrant youth who possess documents, an amount exceeding the 2005 per capita income of Latinos ($14,483) or black workers ($16,874), and even white workers ($28,946).

One El Diario reader, a Dominican father, wrote the paper: "My only son was seduced three months ago and joined, but by what I read in his letters he is tired of the Army. I don’t know where they are sending him. The sergeant who recruited him told me that it would be for only three months.

"From the day he left I have been in great pain; he is my only son…."

Such is the racism employed by the U.S. ruling class that sends these youth to kill tens of thousands of their working-class brothers and sisters in Iraq who are victims of the same racism, all in the name of the rulers’ desperate drive to dominate the world’s oil supplies. But based on these youths’ experience with racism and unemployment at home and a bosses’ war abroad, working with them and winning them to PLP’s ideas can turn them around to fight the brass, not their fellow workers. That’s the step towards winning them to a revolutionary outlook, and that’s our goal.

Desperate Brass Sign Up Nazis, Ex-cons, 42-year-olds

Given the failings of the U.S. military in meeting its recruiting goals, the rulers are becoming more desperate, leading to an army that will hardly resemble the "crack" cohesive force necessary for the endless wars to maintain their dominance over rival capitalists. As will be seen below, possibly only a draft will supply the cannon fodder needed. But that will only create more opposition among masses of people already disgusted with Iraq and Afghanistan. The rulers’ desperation is reflected in the following:

• The Army Reserves raised its maximum enlistment age from 35 to 42 and the regular Army upped its active-duty enlistment eligibility to 42.

• Next, ex-convicts: An army recruiter hanging around a Dallas-area job fair told the Houston Chronicle he was "looking for high-school graduates with no more than one felony on their record."

• Recruiting Nazis: The Southern Poverty Law Center reported "large numbers of neo-Nazis" in the military, quoting a Defense Dept. investigator that, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don’t remove them…"

The neo-Nazi magazine "Resistance" is "urging skinheads to join the army and insist on being assigned to light-infantry units" in order to prepare for "The coming race war and ethnic cleansing" until "the alien races are driven into the countryside [to be] …hunted down…" (NY Times)

• The "back-door" draft: "Marine commanders have taken the extraordinary step of drafting back into uniform those who have left the ranks," the so-called Individual Ready Reserves (IRR). (Boston Globe) "Approximately 14,000 soldiers on IRR status have been called to active duty" by the Army. (CBS News)

• The Army’s desperate need for officers has reached the bottom of the barrel in promoting captains: a high-ranking army officer told the LA Times, "Basically, if you haven’t been court-martialed, you’re going to be promoted to major."

• Hungry for re-enlistments: "Maximum bonuses [have] been raised to $60,000 for marine" re-enlistees in critical specialties. (Stars and Stripes newspaper) Additionally, there are "life-changing" bribes of promised benefits between $23,292 and $71,424 for active-duty and reserve personnel "to help pay for college" (if still alive when college comes around).

School ‘Reform’: Rulers Train Students for Exploitation and War

Working-class parents send their children to school to learn skills needed for productive lives. But the ruling class has other plans — to use the schools so they can more effectively exploit the lives of all workers. Control of the schools aims at creating racist and sexist divisions among young people. The rulers depend on these youth to create their profits and fight their imperialist battles.

Federal and state legislation forces curricula on teachers that emphasizes the nationalist ideas rulers hope will win students to fight for the U.S.

The smaller or charter schools, pushed in many cities, are another way for the rulers to win young people. When the principal knows their name, students may be convinced that such a school deserves their loyalty and trust. This can build a sense of all-class unity, that workers have more in common with bosses of their "race" or nationality than they have with other workers. Such loyalty wins U.S. workers to fight Iraqi workers on behalf of U.S. bosses, rather than uniting them with all workers to fight all bosses.

Meanwhile, the overcrowding, boredom and poor treatment students get at most schools can be converted into the discipline of the military life the rulers have in store for them. Because of the racism inherent in capitalism — super-profits to be made by paying black and Latin workers less — such students suffer in the worst schools, having the most metal detectors and the fewest books. As fascist conditions increase, more students find school to be a prison-like box through which they must pass on their way to unemployment, prison, the military or, if lucky, a job creating profits for a boss. The schools’ testing and tracking systems enforce divisions among students and encourage them to believe they are to blame for their current and future roles in capitalist society.

Ruling-class representatives at every level claim to be "reforming" the school system. At state and national levels, this has meant legislating more testing for children, rebuilding districts on a "business" model and creating smaller, more easily-controlled schools. But despite the sunny rhetoric used by the proponents of these reforms, racist and fascist conditions still apply in most working-class schools. High school graduation rates are low enough for Education Week (6/22/06) to consider them a crisis. In this case "reform" doesn’t mean that schools are being fixed to do more for our working-class children. Rather, through mandatory testing and regimentation, schools are being reorganized for the ruling class to better "train" our children to become docile, willing to be exploited at work and sacrificed in ongoing oil wars.

We workers want our children to grow up with knowledge and skills. The ruling class fosters ideas that will lead them to use those skills for the profit and war-making needs of the capitalist class. As we fight for communism, our goal is for children to learn to think creatively and use their skills to build a worker-led society that’s in THEIR class interest.

L.A. Workers Kick Racists Out of Labor Day Rally

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 5 — Union members and other workers showed their militant anti-racism here yesterday when they kicked the anti-immigrant Save Our State group out of the Labor Day celebration at Banning Park in Wilmington, a working-class area near the port of Long Beach.

While workers assembled to show their readiness to fight for economic justice for all, regardless of immigration status, the small Save Our State group shouted their anti-immigrant racial hatred. These racists say that immigrants are "taking over" the U.S. and "stealing citizens’ jobs." But as one young black woman worker explained, "It’s the government and the rich elite who are draining the U.S. economy. Their lies have caused hundreds of thousands of innocent workers to die fighting for [the bosses’] oil profits!"

The bosses’ newspaper, the LA Times, ABC-TV Channel 7 and the Spanish TV misrepresented the Labor Day action when they proclaimed that "the police escorted the protesters…across the street…" Actually, when an ever-growing number of workers confronted the racists on a small hill near the edge of the park, the 10 or 12 Save Our State demonstrators needed police protection to keep from getting slaughtered.

Union leaders tried to divert the workers from attacking the racists, urging us to return to the nearby area where they and Democratic politicians were giving their Get-Out-the-Vote speeches. But young Latino men, organized for security by the Labor Day sponsors, refused and confronted the racists, blocked their advance and drowned out their shouting with pro-labor chants. When more and more workers discovered that Save Our State, an organization closely allied with the fascist anti-immigrant Minutemen, had dared to bring their racist message to the rally, the crowd grew into hundreds, and pushed the racists down the hill toward the street. No speeches by Democratic Party representatives and union officials could stop the workers from pushing these racists out of the park.

Progressive Labor Party members participated in expelling the anti-immigrant group, whose main interest was getting media attention. While the media wants immigrants to think that U.S. workers support nationalist groups like Save Our State and the Minutemen, CHALLENGE has reported the continuing militancy of U.S. workers who fight for the international working class. We join our brothers and sisters worldwide in the struggle against the growing fascism of capitalist rulers.

The workers saw through union leaders’ efforts to prevent them from attacking open racists. With PLP leadership, they escape from the union leaders’ dangerous trap of supporting the U.S. Senate’s "lesser-evil" immigration bill. The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act — with six Republican sponsors and one Democrat (Kennedy) and backed by Bush —"promises" citizenship to immigrants if they agree to be docile, never complain or strike and fight in the bosses wars for profits. We must hit hard at the wolves in sheep’s clothing (union and nationalist misleaders) who continue to support this legislation to win immigrant workers to die for the U.S. flag as "patriotic" citizens.

'From Oaxaca to LA, Workers Will Win!'

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 2 — Chanting "From Oaxaca to LA, the workers will win" ("Desde Oaxaca a LA, los obreros vencerán"), a group of workers and youth marched in the Labor Day Parade today carrying signs backing the teachers and their supporters in Oaxaca, Mexico. Several workers from Oaxaca excitedly joined us while others on the sidelines shouted our slogans.

We made speeches to the crowd about the mass struggle of the teachers and other workers in Oaxaca against the government and the capitalist system. We called for international solidarity against the Mexican government’s increasing attacks on the workers in which teachers and their supporters have been killed, arrested and kidnapped. This shows the true fascist nature of capitalism, whose goal is the exploitation of the working class. That’s why workers need communist revolution to end this bosses’ dictatorship.

We can combat these attacks by building PLP to put our class on the offensive. Many at this march bought CHALLENGE and eagerly took PLP leaflets which explained that revolution, not voting for "lesser-evil" politicians — as union hacks on both sides of the border ask workers to do — is the only answer to the bosses’ war and fascist attacks.

Several activities are planned to spread support for our sisters and brothers in Oaxaca, one being a march of teachers, including PLP’ers.

Indigenous Workers Protest Attacks In Oaxaca

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 16 — A coalition of indigenous workers, many from Oaxaca, marched to the Mexican Consulate here to demand an end to attacks on Oaxaca’s teachers and their supporters. Almost everyone was glad to get CHALLENGE from a group of PL’ers who joined them. While some chants supported the liberal presidential candidate Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, there were lively discussions pointing out that no electoral party can change the nature of capitalism. Many wanted to stay in touch with the PL’ers about coming marches backing the Oaxaca strike and mass protests.

Oaxaca Teachers Reject Sellout

OAXACA, MEXICO — Striking teachers rejected sellout attempts by some leaders of the teachers union and the APPO (the mass group which has taken over the city) to end the strike which has been the backbone of the struggle. While the deal included a sizeable wage increase for the teachers (the demand that initially sparked the movement), the struggle has gone beyond that, now including political demands. So when leaders of the APPO and teachers union tried to sell the deal to the rank and file and end the strike, the sellouts were expelled from the assemblies. The teachers showed they won't be bought by some economic crumbs and that the struggle will continue, despite government threats to send in the Federal Police and the Army to take back the city.

We in PLP support the teachers and their allies. We're trying to move the fight-back more to the left, into a school for communism, beyond demanding the ouster of Oaxaca's fascist governor or to support Lopez Obrador in the dogfight among Mexican bosses. We aim to build the PLP and fight for a system where workers and their allies rule, which can only be achieved through communist revolution.

AFL-CIO Hacks Betray Detroit Teachers Anti-Racist Strike

DETROIT, MI Sept. 15 - About 9,000 members of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) returned to work, ending their 16-day strike against the Detroit Public School Board (DPS). On September 13, thousands of strikers packed Cobo Hall to hear the terms of a three-year contract. They voted to return while holding ratification votes at their schools.

The UAW and AFL-CIO leadership never mobilized an ounce of support for the strike, and the DFT never called them or the International leadership on it. In the end, the strikers had nowhere to go but back to work, never having mobilized the parents and students which could have greatly expanded the struggle. One poll reported pro-teacher sentiment at 72%.

Teachers chanted, "Books, Supplies and Lower Class Size!" on mass pickets surrounding Board offices They defied a court order to return to work, enjoying the overwhelming support of parents and the 130,000 students. (More than 50,000 students have left the system in the last five years.) Over 80% of the students are black and more than half live below the poverty line. Like NYC transit workers before them, the strike had an anti-racist character and was a breath of fresh air.

At one high school a male mentoring club had just returned from taking students to do volunteer work in New Orleans. During the strike they carried home-made signs criticizing the bloody occupation of Iraq instead of concentrating on cities like New Orleans and Detroit.

While the hundred of billions are spent on imperialist war in Iraq, Detroit reflects a system with nothing to offer black youth but prison or the military. The children of Vietnam vets feel no loyalty to the bosses and even less like killing and dieing for them. The bosses withhold money for public education, especially for black youth, but have endless tax breaks and subsidies for casinos and sports stadiums.

School CEO Walter Coleman, who makes $220,000 a year, and the Board demanded teachers take an 11% pay-cut over two years to fill a $105 million deficit with $89 million in concessions and threatened 2,000 layoffs if they didn't get them. Instead, the strikers settled on a pay freeze this school year, with "raises" of 1% in 2007-08 and 2.5% in 2008-09. Next year's raises will be the first since 2003. Teachers hired before 1992 will pay 10% of their health insurance costs as newer hires already do. And they will lose three days' pay for preparation days canceled by the strike.

Detroit may be the country's most segregated city, similar to Soweto in apartheid South Africa. The population has shrunk from almost two million in the early 1950's to less than 800,000. Newly-released U.S. Census figures show Detroit as the country's second most impoverished city. Thousands of vacant and crumbling homes stand like monuments to the decline of the U.S. auto industry, the collaboration of the union leaders with the bosses and the effect of the collapse of the old communist movement which has hurt workers’class consciousness worldwide. Detroit is a Katrina in slow motion, a victim of inter-imperialist competition among auto companies over the past 30 years.

Schools are old and in disrepair. School libraries are few, broken windows are many. At Miller Middle School, their new principal "welcomed" students back to their first day of school with police pat-downs and metal detectors. Michigan graduates only 30% of its black male students, and almost 80% of white males. In Detroit the numbers are even worse. The mostly Latino southwest side graduates about 13% of all students, black, Latin and white. There are few supplies and teachers spend tens of thousands of dollars from their own pockets for books, copies, paper, even toilet paper for their students.

But this battle is just one round in a long fight, and it has opened new doors to building PLP.

New Orleans Industrial Workers United vs. Racism

Part II

(Part I reviewed the united struggles of black and white workers after the Civil War.)

Now a new element had emerged — the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) which had begun organizing in New Orleans on an anti-racist, internationalist basis. They provided ideological leadership as well as organizational and material support. The modest growth of the organized Left in the 1907 dock strike was even more significant than the reform victory.

One white union leader — using the racist language of that era — described the change in his consciousness: "I fought in every strike to keep black labor off the dock. I fought until in the white-supremacy strike your white-supremacy governor sent his white-supremacy militia and shot us white-supremacy strikers full of holes.... There was a time when I wouldn't even work beside a n-----... You made me work with n-----s, … and finally got me to the point where if one of them ... blubbers something about more pay, I say, ‘Come on, …let’s go after the white bastards.’"

The lumber bosses tried to use black workers to break a 1910 strike by the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Their racism backfired as the union integrated and then affiliated with the IWW, proclaiming that, "No longer will we allow the Southern oligarchy to divide and weaken us on lines of race, craft, religion, and nationality."

In Katrina’s aftermath the bosses are again pushing racism in a thousand ways. As 19th century bosses tried to use the super-exploitation of black workers to "divide and conquer," today’s rulers similarly pit immigrant against black workers. New Orleans remains a mainly working-class city (see box). Once again we need to organize as one united working class — this time, for communist revolution.

After the Russian Revolution, many IWW members rejected the anarcho-syndicalism of their early years and became communists. (The IWW thought that seizure of the factories and proclaiming the "workers republic" in itself would create the revolution, neglecting to advance the necessity for the working class to smash the rulers’ state power.)

In 1921, the Communist Party USA was launched. The Progressive Labor Party has learned much from the victories, and more from the weaknesses, of that communist movement. We fight for black and Latin workers to take the lead in organizing multi-racial class struggle, and also — most importantly — in winning workers, students and soldiers to our Party with the goal of smashing the bosses’ state. Millions of workers already know that capitalism can’t be reformed to meet our needs. When these workers take communism to heart, we can abolish the racist wage system and build a new society based on the principle, "from each according to commitment — to each according to need."

(See Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class and Politics, 1863-1923; (1991), though his analysis differs from PLP’s.)

New Orleans Today: Not Just A Tourist Destination

The Port of New Orleans remains central to the economy of the city and the nation. In 2003 it handled an annual average of 11.4 million tons of general cargo. Its 28 million square feet of facilities included a new state-of-the-art container terminal. Although containerization and automation have slashed the workforce, in 2003 the port still accounted for 107,000 jobs, $2 billion in earnings and $231 million in tax revenue. Meanwhile, one-fourth of all U.S. oil production is based in the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana’s offshore oil and gas industries generate $5 billion in annual federal revenues.

The bosses need this oil industry and this port to carry out their plans for rebuilding their military and preparing for broader imperialist war. Repairing the damage done to these facilities by Katrina is much more important to them than fixing workers’ neighborhoods, or even gentrifying downtown. We must organize New Orleans’ industrial workers — black, Latino, Asian and white — to fight the bosses and their bloody war plans.

Capitalist Weapons of Mass Destruction: Water Terrorism

(Editor's note: With this issue we begin a feature that exposes the innumerable weapons of mass destruction generated by the profit system. We invite our readers to contribute material for this box. Please limit your submission to 150 words.)

Every year two and one-half million people die worldwide from polluted water or a lack of water. As pointed out on the radio program "To the Point" (WNYC-NY, 8/25), this is truly a weapon of mass destruction. Capitalists are not only rapidly privatizing water supplies and reaping millions in profits (especially in Latin America) but they're fighting over the supplies, from the Mid-East to the Western U.S. Some predict such conflicts could lead to war.

As the above program reported, one-third of the world's population — two billion people — live with too little water.

Combine capitalism's profit motive with its planlessness, and you have a prescription for a crisis which mostly affects the poorest workers on every continent. It will take communism — when profits, bosses and exploitation are eliminated — that will plan to distribute this most vital resource unpolluted, according to need.

War and More War on the Agenda Political Battle Emerging in Mass Organizations

(Part II of 3-part series. Part I reviewed the liberals’ call for strategic "redeployment" — a tactical retreat from Iraq to regroup for bigger and bloodier wars to protect the U.S. bosses’ increasingly challenged grip on Mid-East oil.)

Recently, a friend at work told me he was alarmed at reports that China had leapt 30 years ahead by "stealing" U.S. military secrets. Naturally, we discussed this propaganda about "stealing," but it started me thinking. Not too long ago every "expert" predicted the U.S. wouldn’t have to worry about China for at least 50 years. Let’s see: 50 minus 30 equal 20. That’s not too far away!

A bipartisan roundtable of industry leaders, the Pentagon and leading foreign policy strategists — hosted by the International Association of Machinists (IAM), a key industrial union — condenses the timeline. They worry that in seven years, 15 at most, the U.S. will not have the surge war manufacturing capacity to meet a challenge from a "near peer competitor." That’s Pentagon-speak for Russia and/or China, with tacit support from some European nations. They will issue a completed report as the next president takes office. Meanwhile, every IAM local and district is pushing this roundtable’s formula for class collaboration backing U.S. imperialism.

Nobody can predict the timeline with absolute certainty. Nonetheless, the bosses are sufficiently worried that they’ve decided to move this debate from the private think-tanks and government offices to the general public. We can expect the ruling class to use every tool at its disposal to galvanize political support for its broader imperialist plans: including the government, laws, media and culture. In this battle for the "hearts and minds" of the working class, the various mass organizations and unions are key battlegrounds.

Using organizational models like the anti-communist Americans for Democratic Action (discussed last issue), the bosses aim to enlist prominent reform organizations in their campaign for broader political acceptance of bigger bloodier wars — up to and including world war. Their new liberalism envisions a network of union, church, immigration, student and soldier groups and nationalist movements promising "positive" reform of capitalism, but delivering patriotism and imperialist war. They want this network to corral any opposition should the working class start to mount any serious anti-imperialist resistance — particularly if inspired by communist class-consciousness.

Fight Bosses’ Ideology

The IAM’s sponsorship of the "Surge Roundtable" is but one example. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) just announced support of Israeli butchery in Lebanon. The "pro-immigrant" organizations support the Senate immigration bill providing virtual slave labor for the arms factories and new recruits for the armed forces. Even anti-war groups among soldiers and their families offer Lt. Watada as an example to follow. He refused go to Iraq, but volunteered to serve U.S. imperialism anywhere else, including Afghanistan. The list of betrayals grows every day.

We avoid confronting the groundwork being laid in mass organizations for bigger imperialist war at our class’s peril. To date, we’ve been fairly good at linking the billion-dollar cost of the Iraq war to cutbacks for workers. But the preparation for war goes deeper. We must confront the political preparation of the working class and the ideological attack included in that preparation. Racism and nationalism are key weapons in the bosses’ arsenal, setting us up to attack other workers. There have been increased attempts to split black from Latin workers, two groups that can provide leadership to the whole working class. Building a base to challenge the "new liberal" leadership in the mass organizations on the questions of racism, nationalism and ideological support for U.S. imperialism is the order of the day.

Racist Reign of Terror At Chicago Hospitals

CHICAGO, IL, September 11 — Racist and fascist terror are on the rise for workers at Stroger Hospital, the CORE Center and throughout the Cook County Health Bureau. Today 75-year old Augustin Sotomayor, a recent stroke victim, was dragged from his car by Stroger cops. He was waiting to pick up his wife who works at the CORE Center, across the street from Stroger Hospital.

Augustin’s wife Manuela has worked for the County for eight years. Many other workers, patients and visitors witnessed her husband being beaten and thrown to the ground by two black hospital cops after they asked him if he "was Mexican" and if he was "legal." While hospitalized at Stroger, he was charged with "resisting arrest" and "battery"!

Cook County security, like the Chicago police, is off the leash. A few months ago, a black female ward clerk with 10 years on the job was dragged off an elevator and to the security office at the other end of the hospital. Her child was waiting in the car while she picked up her paycheck. The cop claimed he "couldn’t see her ID badge," which she was wearing.

In another incident, a black female nurse was attacked by security and dragged to their lock-up while she was getting her paycheck. Both black women were given suspensions by the racist Stroger bosses. If the unions had organized mass protests and job actions supporting these women, Augustin might not have been attacked.

Racist terror on and off the job is aimed at intimidating workers into accepting rotten jobs and a future of endless wars and growing poverty. In the past six months, a retired Chicago police commander was found guilty of torturing defendants into confessions. Yet he continues living comfortably, retired on his city pension because it happened "too long ago" to punish! A 14-year-old black youth was recently shot by the cops in the Cabrini Green housing project for "holding a B-B-gun." Last week, four cops in the Special Operations unit were indicted for breaking into homes, kidnapping and robbery. This week, a Latino family sued the city after the cops shot their son 16 times last year, killing him. There are countless other examples, large and small.

Meanwhile, the County and the SEIU are trying to secure a contract based on a racist war budget that will leave black and Latin workers further behind. Over 80,000 jobs and as many as 40 plants will be eliminated as GM, Ford and Delphi retreat in the face of increasing competition. And the Iraq war, already lost, continues to deteriorate and spread.

The only way out of this mess is building a base for PLP and communist revolution. As we fight every attack, our ties to the workers will deepen and the political struggle can sharpen.

Liberals' Vote Ploy Masks Plan to Win Immigrants to War-Fascism Agenda

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 17 — The efforts of mass organizations to win workers' support for the liberal bosses' plans for war and fascism are becoming broader, more crucial and active. The main slogan of a five-day "National Latino Congress" here — Sept. 6-10 — was "March Today, Vote Tomorrow."

Speakers included Latino/a elected officials — LA's Mayor, corporation heads and union leaders like Linda Chavez Thompson, AFL-CIO V-P, Mary Elena Durazo, LA County Federation of Labor president and Nativo Lopez of the Mexican-American Political Association. This Congress's neo-liberal leaders are organizing an all-out campaign to win workers and youth to elect Democrats to Congress, and push the Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Bill (see Labor Day article, page 3), the message being that Democrats will pass laws putting more immigrants on the "path to legalization."

The Conference leadership said now is the time to show "We are America " by getting out the vote, not the time to march. Their "path to legalization" is designed to create a docile workforce and a patriotic military. It's part of the bosses' plans for building fascism.

They're also saying that workers should join unions to achieve "the American Dream." Tiny wage increases (being eaten up by inflation and rising health care costs) were touted as big victories, while union leaders bragged that these reform fights make them the best-equipped to turn out Latino voters.

This conference is part of a carefully thought-out strategy to win us to fascism using a liberal cover. This strategy, outlined by the liberal think-tank Brookings Institution in "United We Serve," stems from U.S. imperialism's need to mobilize immigrant workers and their children to believe in and fight for that "American Dream." It was advanced in a paper entitled "National Security and Immigration Policy," created by a task force on immigration that began meeting shortly after 9/11. It was initiated by the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. They met with "counter-terrorism" experts to reform the U.S. Immigration System to further the nation's "security." They included current and former top officials of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Hart-Rudman Commission.

Their report examines the need to win immigrants to give information to the government; to greatly increase quotas for both skilled and unskilled workers; the importance of immigrants serving in the military; and the value of "Allowing the undocumented to secure drivers' licenses [which]…registers them in what is effectively the nation's largest law enforcement database" (p. 45) — an important screening tool.

The report asserts that if the government legalizes "those who are here and are coming here for valid purposes, we can concentrate law enforcement resources on the few bad actors." This document emphasizes the need for comprehensive immigration "reform," and reflects U.S. rulers' needs to both win over and control immigrant workers and their offspring.

These ruthless U.S. imperialists and their agents who are trying to win workers' support for wider imperialist war and exploitation in the production of weapons are wolves in sheep's clothing. They are the enemy of the working class. Voting for one or another "lesser-evil" capitalist politician who backs bosses' wars aims to lock us into these murderers' plans. They must be combated by workers united around a clear understanding of this enemy and the need for revolution.

PLP will participate in these movements to expose the bosses' plans and win masses of workers to oppose these neo-liberal imperialists with a mass movement of workers, students and soldiers fighting for power and a communist world.

Ex-Boeing Hitman Targets Ford Workers

"The United States has no divine right to our standard of living. That’s what we believe in. That’s capitalism." (Tacoma News-Tribune, 7/3/2002) Those are the words of Alan Mulally the new president and CEO of Ford. He was justifying firing 50,000 aerospace workers and selling factories to low-wage producers as Boeing’s chief of Commercial Airplanes. Apparently, the "standard of living" thing doesn’t apply to him. He gets $18.5 million up front, $2 million in salary, four million in stock options and 600,000 restricted stock units.

After Mulally’s first Ford board meeting, the company upped to 16 the number of plants on the chopping block. And you thought things couldn’t get any worse!

Richard Gephardt, formerly the UAW’s favorite Democratic Congressman, urged Mulally to take this job, "for the good of the country." In return, Mulally appointed Gephardt to the board of Spirit AeroSystems, the new owners of the former Boeing Wichita plant.

Spirit fired 1,300 Boeing workers when it bought the plant, reduced wages 10%, hired new workers at even lower rates and reduced pensions and medical benefits. Mulally threatened to "take the division apart" if the unions did not agree to these cutbacks.

He blackmailed Washington State into $3.2 billion in corporate tax breaks to retain the 787 jet assembly. Black workers were hit hardest when he slashed the blue-collar work force and then he pressured the state to cut (mostly Latin) farm workers’ unemployment benefits and gut workers’ compensation to finance this tax-break. He moved lower-paid subcontractors into the assembly plants and moved more work overseas or to new domestic subcontractors, often former Boeing plants.

Throughout this attack, Mullally said the International Association of Machinists (IAM) was "absolutely aligned and attuned" to the bosses’ plans. "We’re looking at being partners in creating value — or adversaries…fighting over an ever-shrinking pie," warned IAM strategic-resources director Steve Sleigh. (Business Week, 8/08/2002)

As Ford CEO, Mulally made his first call to UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, who called him "a great choice." The UAW has some Boeing workers and the two have conspired against them in the past.

The racist rulers plan to cut auto workers’ wages and benefits to boost profits and to keep war production at home. Changing exploiters at the top only takes us from the frying pan into the fire. The change we need is a change in systems. We don’t need new bosses; we need communist revolution!

LETTERS

Honor Marx and 'Internationale'

Highgate is a village on the northern edge of London. Karl Marx was buried in Highgate Cemetery. This summer our family of seven stopped to visit Karl. Four of us stood by the grave with our fists raised and sang The Internationale in English, Spanish and poor French. People walking by heard us and made these comments:

"It’s wonderful to see real communists singing The Internationale," said a middle-aged German man. "It is sad that communism has died." We assured him that, just as history has not ended, neither has the struggle for communism. He seemed surprised at our answer and brightened.

Near Marx’s grave many revolutionaries, communists and others — some exiled from their homelands — are also buried. While we were singing, two elderly ladies who were looking at the moving inscriptions on the gravestones circled around and then returned the same way to continue to listen to our singing. They seemed very happy and walked off arm in arm.

A young Chinese couple carrying a bouquet of flowers stopped when they heard us singing The Internationale for the second or third time. They asked if they could take a picture with us — being photographed with a communist at Marx’s grave was what they wanted. They were very excited and said they would show the photos to everyone. They had promised their father they would place flowers on Marx’s grave while in London. They asked us to visit China.

Others didn’t come as close, but stood, listened and watched. Nowhere was there an angry face. From this experience it seemed the ideas of Marx and Lenin are very much alive.

The following day two of us visited an ex-miner and his wife in the county of Kent. During the 1984-85 coal strike they had come to the U.S. He’s now a construction worker. He said he always sings on the job. When he sings The Internationale, he’s always asked to repeat it and the other workers always join in. Most recently this happened with a Ukrainian worker, singing together right there on the construction site. He said to us that if things started popping again, he’d jump right into the battle.

In the past, The Internationale and communists made a difference in the world, and will make a difference in the future.

An ex-Londoner

Afghan Women Fight U.S. Bosses, Warlords

The Sept 9th assassination of Hakim Taniwal governor, of the southeastern province of Paktia, recalls Afghanistan's bitter past while exposing its shattered present. This is a country whose infrastructure has been destroyed by 30 years of war and is ruled by U.S. imperialists and their warlord allies, many of whom are government officials. Corruption is rife, fed by U.S. dollars and the drug trade (Afghanistan supplies 87% of the world's heroin). Private militias outnumber the national army; kidnappings and extortions are commonplace. Women suffer extreme subjugation at the hands of the fascist fundamentalists who control all aspects of life. The resurgence of the Taliban has only worsened the situation for the oppressed population.

Yet amid such horrific conditions, working people are fighting back. Hakim Taniwal, who was assassinated by a Taliban suicide bomber, was a progressive voice in the current Karzai government. He had been a sociology professor at the University of Kabul, with close ties to the leftist government that ruled from 1979 to 1992. He left Afghanistan in 1996 when the fundamentalists came to power. He found asylum in Australia, but retained some of the ideas from his past of working for a more equitable society. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he returned to help rebuild the country. He was a down-to-earth man known for his honesty who tried to better the lives of the people, challenging the corruption — reasons why he was singled out and murdered

Much of the fight-back today is led by militant women who risk their lives simply for opening schools for girls. Still they carry on, helping their sisters — 90% of whom are illiterate — learn to read and write, acquire skills and inspire them to rise up against the horrors inherent in the profit-driven system of capitalism that are so starkly visible in Afghanistan.

Workers everywhere should support the people opposing that system.

An Afghan Friend

CHALLENGE comment: We stand in solidarity with those militant women who are fighting against the U.S. imperialist and fascist fundamentalist oppressors of the workers and farmers of Afghanistan. Imperialism and fundamentalism are part of capitalism and cannot be reformed. The Karzai government represents that system. The government that ruled the country from '79 to '92 was allied with the Soviet regime, which decades before became state-capitalist.

Harvard Terrorist Would Nuke Millions

If anyone doubts that cleanly-groomed Harvard-type men and women would hesitate to murder millions of workers, think again. An opinion column appeared in my local newspaper written by Harvey Simon, "a former Harvard University national security analyst."

Simon says (no children’s game) that politicians and the military must decide whether to continue the old Cold War approach with countries like North Korea that won’t be deterred by threatened U.S. nuclear retaliation. It may not work, says Simon, because heads of those states "may refuse to believe the United States would kill millions in retaliation." Simon clearly thinks that killing millions of innocent civilians with nuclear war is just another day at the park.

He explains that, "The traditional theory of nuclear deterrence was grounded in the World War II era, when civilian populations were bombed without mercy." In an apparent oversight, Simon neglects to mention that only Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Britain bombed civilian populations without mercy; the Soviet Union never engaged in such genocide against workers.

Simon goes on: "The Second Cold War, however, arrives at a time when precision strikes that minimize ‘collateral damage’ are considered politically necessary. U.S. war planners must consider whether they can any longer plausibly threaten to kill millions, if not tens of millions, of innocent people. And if they can’t they’ll have to find new ways to keep the peace." It’s all the same to Simon — the politicians and generals should make up their minds.

The media uses the term "terrorist" only for those who kill tens, hundreds or thousands of innocent people. For those who would kill millions, the proper term is apparently "former Harvard University national security analyst." Or "president," or "senator," or "congressman/woman."

Saguaro Rojo

No Racist Survivors

On September 14, the CBS-TV "reality show" Survivor was beginning a season with segregated teams of Asians, Latinos, blacks and whites competing against each other. Many anti-racist people and organizations are protesting, hoping CBS will cancel this racist trash. PLP members are among them, organizing in churches and unions against this racism.

Past episodes of Survivor were anti-working class, sexist and just plain stupid, promoting individualism. But now the TV bosses are pushing something even more dangerous since their system is in trouble and their economy is facing challenges from their imperialist rivals. Because the bosses cannot give workers jobs and vital services, they want to use racism to divide and rule. They’re pushing racist shows and movies in pop culture so we don’t unite and fight back.

For example, there’s a racist — stereotyping the people of Kazhastan — and anti-Semitic "comedy" movie staring Sasha Cohen of Ali G. fame. Cable station VH-1 has a racist "reality" show starring William Drayton (formerly of Public Enemy).

At the airport where I work, U.S. and Ethiopian workers have circulated an anti-racist union resolution attacking Survivors’ executive producers and writers as racist. Our resolution was sent to the local CBS affiliate and CBS headquarters in NYC.

While Survivor presents nothing specifically related to our jobs, workers live in a bigger world, not in a cultural vacuum. We’re struggling politically with workers for multi-racial unity, pointing out how CBS is insulting the memory of fighters like John Brown, Harriet Tubman and Lucy Parsons. The only solution to the racist bosses’ TV and culture is uniting all workers to fight for a communist revolution. When we cancel the bosses, there’ll be no survivors.

Airport Red

Young Industrial Workers Take Leadership of West Coast PL School

"I've learned a lot about leadership in preparing for this school. Communist leadership is about building more such leaders by example and providing opportunities for others to step forward," declared one young industrial worker of his experience preparing for PL's recent West Coast two-day school. "I wanted to keep discussing dialectics all day," said another.

This school was very positive for everyone. It helped our young industrial workers better understand their responsibilities as Party leaders, deepened and reinforced everyone's understanding of dialectics, and demonstrated our Party's commitment to building for communist revolution among this vital group: the industrial working class.

A club of young industrial workers that had never been given such a big responsibility organized this effort. At times they felt overwhelmed, spending too much time on logistics and not enough concentrating on bringing co-workers to the conference. More could have been brought, causing these young leaders to analyze their relationships with their friends. Yet ultimately, collective struggle brought the club members closer together as they demonstrated their commitment to building the Party among the industrial working class.

A young comrade opened the school with an in-depth report on the world situation and also described his efforts inside and outside the factories. He stressed creativity in bringing communist politics to industrial workers, relating it to whatever interests them; building relationships on and off the job, saying these workers will eventually lead us to other workers. This has helped him expand his CHALLENGE network among his co-workers, their families and their friends.

A presentation on dialectics was a good introduction for some as well as a chance for others to sharpen its application. More time could have given everyone more of an opportunity to struggle over these ideas.

The next day a veteran PL'er gave a great report on immigration "reform" and its relation to imperialist war. He explained how the bosses need to mobilize millions of immigrants and their children to fill the military and war industries and that the ruling class's liberal wing is leading this effort through immigration "reform": building a "green-card army."

Another veteran PL'er described the bosses' and their union lackeys' push to prepare for more imperialist war by rebuilding the rulers' war-manufacturing capacity, forcing long hours and low wages on jobs in the needed skills and moving these workers into war plants.

The presence of Party and veteran industrial leaders reinforced the young comrades' belief that PLP recognizes the vital role industrial workers must play in the struggle for communist revolution. The article "Armed Insurrection" describes how Russian industrial workers produced the weapons for — and filled the ranks of — the army in the fight against Nazi Germany in World War II. In 1968 in France, while students initiated an extremely militant movement, it became much more powerful once the industrial working class shut down the country. No wonder the U.S. ruling class feels the need to snare millions of workers into producing and dying for U.S. imperialism.

The current situation presents great opportunities and places a great responsibility in our hands: to build a base for communism among those workers with the power to stop capitalism dead in it's tracks. In response to that, one young comrade concluded, "Well, we have about 40 to 50 years of organizing left in us so we should be able to get much better at this stuff." With more experience and struggle we will develop more young leaders with the same commitment to transform workers influenced by capitalist ideas into strong fighters for communism.

Remembering Comrade Floyd Crawford

(The following are excerpts from a eulogy by a PLP member delivered at the funeral service for Floyd Crawford, who died on September 3, 2006.)

I met Floyd about 24 years ago. Floyd was not what one would call a "big talker," but through the years we discovered that this appearance of a quiet person masked the essence of someone who had lived for three quarters of a century and from that experience knew a lot more than one gleaned from first glance. We both had lived through and shared some of the same historical events, the Great Depression, wars and the like. [Floyd was drafted near the end of the Korean War, into the Army Air Force.]

Floyd was never much of a dancer while my wife Esther was terrific on that score, but when we were at the same affair together, Floyd would nevertheless ask my wife to get out on the floor with him.

We knew Floyd best as a proofreader of DESAFIO. Somehow Floyd had managed to teach himself Spanish. So when we asked him to help out by proofreading DESAFIO, he was happy to volunteer.

For the better part of the last 20 years, Floyd would come from his home in Garfield, NJ, all the way to our NYC office on Tuesdays, the day before we went to press, by which time nearly all the Spanish translations would be ready. Floyd would be there right on time, like clockwork, spending all day examining every minute detail of the Spanish.

Floyd didn’t merely spot typos or mis-spellings. Often he would challenge the meaning of an article’s translation, if he felt it didn’t correspond to the English version. He understood many of the nuances of the language. This was all the more remarkable because the bulk of the translating was done by our editor whose native language was Spanish, as was true of our other translators around the country.

Floyd would often catch an historical — or even geographical — error involving events he had lived through. So because of Floyd’s efforts, our paper was much more readable in Spanish and somewhat more historically accurate in both languages.

Year after year Floyd attended our May Day marches as well, and made generous financial contributions to our Party. On Tuesdays, he would always treat the CHALLENGE staff to lunch. Floyd and I usually shared a meal (we didn’t eat as much as the young ones) and he would invariably first ask me to choose the part of the chicken I wanted, to go with the rice and beans.

Floyd always seemed conscious of his health and what he ate, so much so that one of our members, a nurse, said she was jealous of his discipline when it came to food. So it was somewhat ironic that when we began to notice something was wrong with him physically, he would slough it off, saying he was O.K. He resisted our efforts to convince him to seek medical help. I think it was finally his dentist — who witnessed this deterioration from visit to visit — who persuaded him to have his condition diagnosed.

Floyd’s contribution reminds me of a scene in the movie "The Seventh Cross." Spencer Tracy played an escapee from a Nazi concentration camp, and was hiding out with the help of others. An old waiter from a delicatessen comes to deliver his food. Hidden beneath a sandwich are some forged papers to help get him out of Germany. Tracy was overcome, that the old man would risk his life to help someone he had never met. So the old man told Tracy this story.

He was filling the sugar bowl at the tables in the restaurant when he accidentally spilled some. Along came hundreds of ants, each one seizing just one grain of sugar to move it to a safe haven. The old man watched in amazement when soon the entire pile of sugar had been moved, one grain and one ant at a time, to another spot.

The old man told Tracy that one ant could never have accomplished that feat by itself, but each one, playing its role together with all the rest, was able to complete the task. And that was how the old man viewed his small role in helping Tracy to escape and carry on the anti-Nazi resistance.

Floyd, like all of us, made a seemingly small but consistent contribution to producing our paper and reaching tens of thousands with our communist ideas. Without each one of us contributing to the "whole," we can never produce that "whole." Truly, what each one of us does, counts.

We must always remember Floyd in this light, as a dear comrade who never failed to do his part in making that "whole" greater than the sum of its parts.

REDEYE

Pols sabotage N.Orleans black workers

Douglas Brinkley, Tulane University historian who wrote the best selling account of "Katrina, The Great Deluge," is worried that even now the White House is escaping questioning about what it is up to (and not) in the Gulf. "I don’t think anybody’s getting the Bush strategy," he said when we talked last week. "The crucial point in that the inaction is deliberate—the inaction is the action." As he sees it, the administration, tacitly abetted by New Orleans’ opportunistic mayor, Ray Nagin, is encouraging selective inertia, whether in the rebuilding of the levees ("Only Band-Aids have been put on them"), the rebuilding of the lower 9th Ward or the restoration of the wetlands. The destination: a smaller city, with a large portion of its former black population permanently dispersed. (NYT, 8/26)

Job cut is too small, says Wall St.

Intel, the world’s largest chip maker….will reduce its work force by 10 percent and cut $5 billion in costs….

But its shares declined in extended trading as Wall Street digested the news that the job reductions were not as large as many had expected. Intel said it would cut 10,500 jobs… (NYT, 9/6)

Most workers get no layoff insurance

Currently, because of tight state eligibility requirements and because a growing number of workers do not have long-term, full-time jobs, unemployment insurance is paid to just over a third of those who are laid off, government data show and coverage is less likely among the lower-income workers who most need it. (NYT, 9/14)

Goering showed the way on Iraq war

Reichmarshall Hermann Goering articulated the…strategy during his 1946 Nuremburg war crimes trial. "Naturally, the common people don’t want war," he said. "…(But) the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to a danger. It works the same way in any country." (Gene Lyons, Ark. Democrat-Gazette, 9/4)

Hooking kids and African Americans on nicotine

The amount of nicotine in most cigarettes rose an average of almost 10% from 1998 to 2004, with brands most popular with young people and minorities registering the biggest increases and highest nicotine content, according to a study.

Nicotine is highly addictive, and…the higher levels theoretically could make new smokers more easily addicted and make it harder for established smokers to quit….

Boxes of Doral Lights, a low-tar brand made by RJ Reynolds, had the biggest increase in yield, 36%....Kool lights increased 30%. Two-thirds of African American smokers use menthol brands. (GW, 9/14)

All presidents talk nice, then make war

George W. Bush is not the first president to lead us into war with less than the truth, if not outright lying….

President William McKinley in his war to seize the Philippines said he had heard "the voice of God" and "there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them." We need do little more than substitute "democratize" for "Christianize" all the world, regardless of the method used….

Woodrow Wilson, after campaigning on the slogan, "He kept us out of the war," lost little time in asking Congress for a declaration of war after his inauguration of a second term.

…Franklin D. Roosevelt…maneuver[ed] this country into…action, despite such re-election statements as, "I have said it before, but I shall say it again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."

…Lyndon Johnson…calling himself the peace candidate,…assured us, "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves?" Never mind, we lost 58,000 disproving that one. ( Gade Gusch, Liberal Opinion Week)

US putting ‘freedom’ on back burner

Officially, the…administration is undaunted. Unofficially, it is shelving the "freedom agenda". This month Mr. Bush is expected to extend a warm White House welcome to Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan, who has banned opposition parties and muzzled the press – but who runs a strategically placed, oil-rich country. The Saudi and Egyptian governments are once again being treated as key allies…. (FT, 9/5)

‘Fight Club’ Teaches Politics Of Defeat

Our PLP club has some youth around it and has just restarted our "movie day," watching an important/popular Hollywood film and then analyzing it using communist politics. We selected the influential 1999 film "Fight Club."

We first reviewed the origin of the book on which the film was based and then discussed the film’s cultural importance. Author Chuck Palahniuk interviewed men in bars, asking them how they viewed the world and their place in it. The end result was "Fight Club."

We soon discovered that the film, which stays very true to the book, had a more profound impact on the men in the group than on the women. We discussed how the movie is essentially a boy’s fantasy simply acted out by adults. We noted how both we and people we knew had watched this film dozens of times over the years and how it had affected our lives.

Our most humorous reaction was the realization that after the movie was released, every high school in the country must have had its own fight club. Understanding the film’s importance and lasting impact led to a serious discussion about a film that otherwise might have been dismissed as a simple pop culture artifact of the ’90’s.

Taking a balanced approach, we first noted what the film got right. This sparked an analysis of worker alienation in society and its causes. This particular theme is well-portrayed. It inspired a review of the structure and nature of capitalism, how it alienates workers from their labor, leaving a hole to be filled with empty consumerism.

Then someone pointed out the irony of a major motion picture selling for twenty bucks (if you’re lucky) discussing the emptiness of consumer culture. Although seemingly a silly comment to break the seriousness of the moment, it later provided a basis to ask, "If this film is so revolutionary, why did capitalist culture-makers release it?"

Outlining what went right in the film prepared us for the much longer discussion about what went wrong. Re-capping the earlier themes of the book’s creation led to considering the movie’s sexism, and then sexism in society as a whole. One PL’er explained that no revolution will get very far when it excludes half the population.

The film’s sexist ideas are perfectly captured in the line, "We are a generation of men raised by women; I wonder if another woman is really what we need." This provoked an examination of how the film mirrors sexism in the real world.

The evening’s longest conversation centered on the film’s anarchist messages and its Great Man Theory — whether individuals led people to change through great spectacles or whether mass organizations created change through study, discussion and action. The debate on whether political meaning can be derived from single random acts, like smashing a coffee house, was a heated one. PLP’ers noted how actions devoid of context do not move people because the action has no inherent politics. We considered how mass movements win people over slowly through political struggle.

A PL member then analyzed the difference between communism and anarchism (the two main outlooks among the viewers). Anarchists believe political consciousness appears spontaneously whereas communists believe political consciousness and revolutionary ideas must be worked on and refined. While this debate might not have moved everybody to join PLP, it did move people further left as they realized the limitations of anarchism.

After spontaneity was refuted, everyone was ready to attack the film’s Great Man theory. The idea that individuals, rather than mass organizations, create social change was thoroughly discredited, leading to examining capitalist individualism, something we all must struggle with daily.

Finally we returned to asking, "If this film is so revolutionary, why did capitalist culture-makers release it?" The answer was that the movie is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It used people’s identification with the emptiness of capitalism and worker alienation to teach the politics of defeat. The film’s core lessons are that sexism and mindless violence are good, and that organizing, study, discussion and collective action are bad. If we take this film’s advice and refuse to develop our politics — hoping some great action will develop them for us — and rely on a "great leader" to rescue us rather than fight to develop the collective power of the working class, then we will truly be lost.

Lumber Bosses and Their Government Destroy the Environment and Jobs

BITTERROOT VALLEY, MONTANA — This Valley in western Montana is considered a "high desert" land, making wildfires inevitable during the summer months. These fires endanger rural workers and the environment surrounding them. This danger exists mostly due to the bosses’ quest for profit by manipulating previously-burned forest lands.

The late summer of 2000 was a tremendous wildfire season here, burning more than 300,000 acres throughout this Valley alone. The vast majority of burned areas were prone to fire because of high levels of road-building and logging during the previous 40 years, mostly because of timber-industry development. Much of the 300,000 acres was previously clear cut by Darby Lumber Co., the majority of it approximately ten miles from nearby communities.

To protect the company and cover its own faults, the U.S. Forest Service has introduced — and is using propaganda to promote — the "re-burn" theory, that has yet to be scientifically proven. This theory says trees burned by fires in the past would fall down and create conditions for "catastrophic" fires. It created an excuse for Darby and other companies to profit from removing fallen timber from the forest. All this while suggesting their logging is "saving" both the forests and the rural communities around them from these fires, making it appear that they and the Forest Service are protecting the people’s best interests.

However, according to scientists there’s no evidence that fallen or decaying trees pose a higher risk of burning than standing ones. In fact, evidence points to the opposite: logging burned areas increases the risk of fires, and the rate at which they spread, for as long as eight years. This is partly because trees and other forest life cut down and removed actually clears a path for fires to burn and spread.

Due to the "re-burn" theory and its hype by the lumber companies and Forest Service, fear has convinced workers and others that the logging should continue. Meanwhile, years after that fire season of 2000, $16.2 million of restoration funding for that season is missing — neither the Forest Service nor any other department can account for it. Very little watershed and road repairs have been completed. Jobs are down because of damage to fisheries in the valley and to water sources. And that damage can create great health risks because of the harm to the fish people consume and contamination of the water.

The U.S. Forest Service is not filled with your friendly "Ranger Rick" and "Smokey the Bear" types. They’re an extension of the government, and work to protect the bosses just like any other branch. The profit nature of capitalism destroys both the environment and the working class affected by that destruction.

1,000 Navajos March Against Racist Crimes

FARMINGTON, NM, Sept. 17 — One thousand Navajos marched here on September 2 to protest both the latest racist attacks on their tribe members as well as memorializing past violence going back to 1974. On June 4, three white racists brutalized a Navajo man, William Blackie, 46, shouting racist slurs at him. Six days later a white cop killed a 21-year-old Navajo youth, Clint John. His family is filing a wrongful death suit against the cop, the police department and the city.

These attacks reflect widespread racism directed against Native Americans here for decades. In 1974, three white teenagers bludgeoned and burned three Navajo men to death and were "sentenced" to reform school. Four years later, Duane Yazzue, president of the Shiprock chapter of the Navajo Nation, was shot by a white hitchhiker and lost an eye. In 2000, two white racists bludgeoned a 36-year-old Navajo woman to death. George Arthur, a Navajo Nation delegate, was beaten by racist white youths who tried to set him on fire. No one was charged in the attack.

Mr. Yazzie said many other crimes against Navajos went unreported. Mr. Arthur said, "We can tolerate certain aspects of life. But not when it comes to our dignity." (NY Times, 9/17)

While the Navajo Nation has sought federal government help in prosecuting these racists, the fact that the attacks continue unabated indicates that looking to a racist government that kills millions of black, brown, Latino and Asian people won’t end the racism against Native Americans. Only ending capitalism, the source of this racism, will do the job.

PLP’ers Lead Confrontation vs. Racist Minutemen; Upstage Liberals

Imperialists’ Fierce Rivalry Leading to: World War III

PATCO Firings Marked Massive AFL-CIO Scabbing

When Wages Fall and Profits Rise, It's Capitalism

Class Struggle Amid Growing Fascism in Oaxaca Strike

LA Workers Oust Racist and Attack Mayor's War Agenda

Racist Bosses Turn Katrina into Fascist Carnage

Workers and Youth Ante Up, Now Need Revolutionary Politics

Workers Have Militant Anti-Racist History

U.S. Rulers' Education 'Reform Part of Plan for World Domination

The 'Cap and Gown' Road to War

There's No Ford in These Workers' Future

LETTERS

Pro-Boss Union Hacks Help Dump 3,500 Workers

Airport Workers Back Oaxaca Strikers

Evil, Yes; Lesser, No

Reforms Won't Beat Fascism, Only Reds Will

Trial by Fury Hits Bosses’ Courts

A Worker’s Questions Sparks A Communist Response

Hundreds of Millions, Not 'Great Men,' Created Science

Bosses Plot to Gain Workers Support for Bigger Wars

Detroit And Gary Teachers Strike Against Racist War Budgets

Redeye on the News

• Lebanon: part of U.S. war plan for Iran
• Israel cluster-bombs just before truce
• Phony unions for China’s Wal-Marts
• 9/11 Motive was U.S. policy, not religion
• Iranians know U.S. is no liberator
• Capitalist China texts: No class struggle!

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PLP’ers Lead Confrontation vs. Racist Minutemen; Upstage Liberals

MAYWOOD, CA., Aug. 27 — The cry "Queremos un mundo sin fronteras" ("We want a world without borders") rang out as hundreds confronted the racist Minutemen when they appeared in a nearby town whose residents are overwhelmingly working-class Latinos. The racist group’s intent, protected by the cops, was to "punish" the small city for a recent declaration made by its liberal mayor that his town should be seen as a "sanctuary" for immigrants.

A protest countering the Minutemen drew several hundred community residents. The mayor decided to stage an event at a nearby local church, to take place at the same time as the protest, calling for "peace and unity" and encouraging residents to register to vote.

PLP helped lead the fight against the racists, sparking anti-racist chants and sharing our bullhorn with residents who were clearly outraged at the Minutemen. When some Minutemen tried to break through the crowd of anti-racists, PLP led the charge in confronting the racists.

To keep workers from militantly protesting, liberals tried to lure residents to the mayor’s church event, a "Citizenship Fair." A priest from there showed up at the anti-racist protest chanting "unity, unity…" in Spanish, calling on demonstrators to go back to the church.

A group of youth who apparently had come from playing soccer seemed unsure of what to do. A PLP comrade confronted the priest, declaring that we needed to militantly confront the Minutemen. The soccer players decided to stay. A group of students chanted, "No basta resar, hay que luchar!" ("It’s not enough to pray; we have to fight!"). Most of crowd took up the chant. The priest, having failed, left.

Eventually, the mayor himself appeared with a huge sound system to appeal to the protestors. Once again a comrade confronted him with a speech about how liberal members of the ruling class promise citizenship in exchange for an indentured servitude-type "guest worker" program and loyalty to the U.S. imperial agenda.

A student cited the importance of confronting the racists on our streets and not being fooled by liberal immigration "reforms" that Democrats, unions, and churches propose as solutions. These "reforms" aim to swell the military’s ranks with immigrant youth for U.S. imperialism’s future oil wars, while also creating a vast pool of loyal slave labor for the bosses’ factories. Many booed the mayor; others waved at him to leave.

Some nationalists raised the Mexican flag on the Post Office flagpole, trying to raise a cheer. A comrade noted that the Mexican flag represents racism, exploitation and capitalism. Some anti-racists attacked the flag-raising as support for the murderous Mexican government. Behind the chant, "Abajo Banderas, Afuera Fronteras!" ("Down with Flags, Away with Borders!"), workers and students fought these nationalist ideas, saying that workers only need the red flag of the international working class.

A small group of Mexican nationalists attacked that chant and tried to silence the bullhorn but the students stood their ground and the nationalists backed off. A comrade’s speech pointed to the Minutemen’s U.S. flag as the flag of U.S. imperialism, while the Mexican flag represented the interests of the Mexican bosses who are killing teachers and their supporters in the mass struggle in Oaxaca. All bosses’ flags stand for racism and exploitation. Only the red flag represents the working class worldwide in its fight for liberation from capitalism.

Militantly participating in the fight against anti-immigrant racism provides the opportunity to build revolutionary class-consciousness, teaching us to rely only on ourselves and our working-class brothers and sisters to fight for our interests, not on our most dangerous enemies — liberal politicians and nationalists.

At this demonstration the strength and importance of PL’s leadership was clear. Had we not been there with the workers, many would have been swayed to go to the church. A close friend said, "Where else, and from whom, are workers going to hear these ideas?" Fighting the nationalists deepens the understanding of our friends that we need workers’ internationalism and communist revolution.

Imperialists’ Fierce Rivalry Leading to: World War III

"Combustible fault lines [that] could trigger a third World War" are deepening throughout the Middle East warns Richard Holbrooke, a leading liberal U.S. strategist. (Council on Foreign Relations — CFR — website, 8/31) Regional feuds embroiling Syria and Lebanon, Lebanon and Israel, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan could spark global conflict "like Serbian Gavrilo Princip’s bullet in 1914," says Holbrooke. [The trigger for World War I]

The Dialectics Of ‘Necessity And Chance’

A devoted servant of U.S. imperialism, Holbrooke helped plan Kennedy’s and Johnson’s Vietnam genocide and Clinton’s bombing of Bosnia and Kosovo. But this dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, who once ran Wall Street’s Lehman Brothers investment house, unwittingly provides a Marxist dialectics lesson on necessity and chance. In this case, the necessity is that, to maximize profits, various sets of capitalists organized as nations must compete for the world’s resources, markets and labor. This competition, as Lenin pointed out, inevitably leads to war, eventually to world war. "Chance" represents the many different possibilities for war. The U.S. is on one collision course with China over oil and on another with Russia over dominance in Europe. We can’t predict precisely when, how, or where WW III will erupt. Its form and timing depend on a host of contingencies. We can, however, examine the forces at play and identify possible flashpoints.

Iran Now Chief Regional Threat To U.S. Oil Control

The U.S. vs. China and the U.S. vs. an alliance of Russia and Europe appear the most likely scenarios. All these bosses have vast military potential and increasingly clashing geopolitical interests. Fault lines are emerging in the Middle East, where the U.S. has an inexorable need to maintain a chokehold on oil supplies. As far back as 1992, Bernard Lewis, a Princeton-based "adviser to presidents," wrote that the U.S.’s main strategic goal was "to prevent the emergence...of a single regional power that could dominate the area and thus establish monopolistic control of Middle Eastern oil." (Foreign Affairs; Fall, 1992). The U.S. invaded Iraq twice when Saddam Hussein threatened to become the dominant local power in the Persian Gulf. Now the chief regional threat comes from Iran, which has close ties to both China and Russia. China, with its rampant energy thirst, has negotiated multi-billion-dollar gas deals with Iran. Russia is boosting Iran’s anti-U.S. influence by helping build its nuclear reactors, thus greasing its weapons program.

To the benefit of China and Russia, Iran is winning prestige well beyond its borders. Iranian-backed Hezbollah fundamentalists — another group of aspiring bosses — hold sway over much of Lebanon, after the bloody Israeli-U.S. attempt to crush them failed. As for Iraq, because of Bush’s bungled occupation, "Iran has now superseded the U.S. as the most influential power there." (Chatham House, August 2006) Saudi Arabia, home to the world’s greatest oil reserves, is also becoming a hot spot in the rivalry. China gets most of its oil imports from Saudi Arabia, which has long been the private preserve of U.S. companies. For now, Saudi crude reaches China without U.S. Navy interference. But tensions will soon heighten when China launches its own blue-water fleet.

Russia-Europe Alliance Blossoming

Bosses in Western Europe are rapidly tilting away from the U.S. In keeping with Putin’s policy of strategic business deals, Russia just bought a big chunk of European arms giant EADS, which owns Boeing-Lockheed rival Airbus. The Times of London (8/30) understatedly cautions, "The prospect of a Russian state interest in Europe’s biggest aerospace group may make the Pentagon pause before placing orders. Russia is no longer a Cold War adversary, but neither is it seen as a wholly reliable or benign ally....Russia still presents a formidable challenge to the West: its arms sales to the developing world are huge and of crucial importance in volatile areas such as the Middle East."

In the energy sector, "Europe is clamouring to become ever more dependent on Russian gas. A new pipeline will run from close to St. Petersburg along the Baltic seabed to Germany." (London Times, 9/3) Defying U.S. interests, France hopes to become China’s top fuel broker. The French firm Total holds contracts to develop Iran’s enormous South Pars oil and gas fields.

Imperialists Will Start World War Iii....

All the conditions for World War III are not yet in place. China’s and Russia’s outmoded militaries are at the moment no match for the U.S. war machine. But an infusion of European technology could quickly change that equation. We cannot pinpoint the act of war, as CFR planner Ted Carpenter did in "America’s Coming War with China" ("a Chinese submarine attack" on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Taiwan Strait on June 2, 2013). Korea, the Caspian region and the Mid-East are just as probable. But we can say with deadly certainty that imperialist rivalry, inherent in the profit system, slaughtered hundreds of millions in the 20th Century and stands to outdo that horror in the 21st.

...Communist Soldiers And Workers Can Finish It

Ultimately, victory and defeat in war are determined not by technology but by politics, the motivation of those who do the actual fighting. The main ideas motivating soldiers in all armed struggles today are reactionary and anti-working-class: racism, nationalism and religion. This situation will not last. As the horrors of imperialist carnage increase, opportunities will increase for our Party to win workers, soldiers, and sailors to revolutionary communism, the only outlook worth fighting for.

PATCO Firings Marked Massive AFL-CIO Scabbing

August 5, 1981, marked somewhat of a turning point in the modern U.S. labor movement. On that day President Ronald Reagan fired 11,355 air controllers who had struck two days earlier and defied his 48-hour back-to-work ultimatum. The workers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), driven by inhuman hours and working conditions, were demanding shorter hours, increased work staff and wage hikes. Ironically, PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan in the 1980 elections. Their "reward"? Permanent dismissal, blacklisting, seizure of the union treasury and union decertification. Four leaders were jailed, convicted of felonies — striking against the government — fined and stripped of their civil rights. So much for "democracy" and a "friend in the White House."

Ten thousand military air controllers were hired to replace them (only 846 were allowed to return).

Such a fascist attack could not have happened without the complete cooperation of the sellouts that ran the AFL-CIO. Had the pilots, mechanics, baggage handlers and flight attendants refused to cross the PATCO picket lines, the entire airline industry would have been shut tight, and it wouldn’t have been so easy for Reagan to get 150,000 workers to replace them.

But at the very moment that Reagan was announcing the firing, United Auto Workers union president Douglas Fraser, at the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Chicago, was denouncing the strike, declaring that "it could do massive damage to the labor movement." (This was the same Fraser that used 1,000 goons, many of them KKK members from UAW Local 22, to bust the first sit-down strike in auto since the 1930’s when in 1973 PLP led a shutdown of Chrysler’s Detroit Mack Avenue plant over safety issues.)

What did do "massive damage" was these labor fakers’ ordering all other airline workers to cross the PATCO picket lines. One month later, 500,000 U.S. workers descended on Washington in a Solidarity Day demonstration, but the AFL-CIO "leaders" had already given their definition of "solidarity" by helping Reagan crush this strike.

Prior to this, workers who crossed picket lines were universally labeled scabs. Now the term "replacement worker" came into fashion. Instead of fighting this strike-breaking maneuver, the labor "leaders" sought — unsuccessfully — to get Democratic-controlled Congresses to ban it. So much for relying on "friends" in Washington.

While this class collaboration had been preceded by mass layoffs resulting from the attack on NYC workers in the 1975 "fiscal crisis" — under Democratic Mayor Abe Beame, and later the Democratic president Carter’s government bailout of Chrysler — the 1981 strike-breaking of PATCO marked an even more decisive turn down the road of mass layoffs, huge pay cuts, billions in concessions in auto, steel and other basic industries, and destruction of social welfare programs. This continues now with the layoffs and pay cuts at GM, Ford and Delphi.

From 1950 to 1980, major strikes averaged 300 per year. Since 1980 that average has sunk to 46. In 1955, the AFL-CIO had 15 million members; now it has only 6 million. Only 7.8% of private sector workers are in unions now, the lowest percentage in 105 years.

The U.S. ruling class faces a crisis at home and abroad. Internationally, China is becoming a leading threat to U.S. imperialism, while the latter’s drive to control Middle East oil supplies — necessary for its world domination — are leading it into the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, killing tens of thousands of workers along the way, not to mention those of working-class GI’s.

Corporations that must seek maximum profits to compete with their rivals cannot but help grind down the working class on behalf of the bosses’ "bottom line," and their labor lieutenants are greasing their path. By defending the capitalist profit system in an era of growing fascism, these labor misleaders must inevitably sell out the working class. There’s no more room for even temporary reforms. So the PATCO strike-breaking ushered in an intense attack on the entire working class.

Now the bosses are increasingly super-exploiting immigrant workers as well as using them as cannon fodder for their troop-short imperialist armies. But a labor "leadership" saturated for decades with racism — not having fought the mass layoffs in the basic industries in which the bulk of the victims were the "last-hired" black workers — is in no position to win the rank and file to fight anti-immigrant racism.

The after-effects of the PATCO strike-breaking and the class collaboration of the labor misleaders cry out for anti-racist red leadership of the working class. Militant and class conscious workers should join PLP to lead this fight against the bosses. We must up the ante of class struggle beyond the level of reforms — which, if forced to grant, the bosses can use their state power to always take away, as with PATCO. We must turn these struggles into schools for communism, winning workers to understand that only a communist revolution can solve this eternal problem of being on the losing side of the never-ending treadmill of capitalism.

When Wages Fall and Profits Rise, It's Capitalism

The way the capitalist economy functions never fails to prove what Karl Marx, the founder of communism, discovered over a century ago and what every worker knows in her or his gut: the capitalist class’s profits come from the working class’s labors. The latest figures (all quotes from NY Times, 8/28) clearly demonstrate this and show how capitalism is divided into two classes: workers and those who profit from them. They also show how the bosses continually drive workers’ wages down to increase their profits. Consider:

• "Wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product [GDP] since…1947" when the government first started compiling this data. Meanwhile, "corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s," producing "the golden era of profitability," according to the UBS investment bank.

• "The most important contributor to higher profit margins over the past five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income," says Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs’ economists.

• Since 2001, the "growing share of the economy to go to companies instead of workers’ paychecks" has cost the working class $660 BILLION, stolen by the bosses directly from workers’ labors.

The Times reports that the U.S. is in "the first sustained period of growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers." Why? Because as hourly wages for U.S. workers have decreased since 2003, "productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour…— has risen steadily over the same period." In other words, workers are working harder for lower wages, so — surprise — profits are skyrocketing.

On top of this is capitalism’s racism which produces super-profits for the bosses by paying black and Latino workers even less, lowering all workers’ wages — a condition which the pro-capitalist union hacks help to maintain by their defense of the profit system.

In a clear description of the existence of two antagonistic classes, the Times quotes political analyst Charles Cook as pointing to "two economies out there…" He says that one of these economies serves "the people who have benefited from globalization,…greater productivity and higher corporate earnings."

"And then there’s the working stiffs who just don’t feel they’re getting ahead despite the fact that they’re working very hard. And there are a lot more people in that group than the other group."

As Marx pointed out, when workers put in 8 hours on the job, the value produced in the first few hours covers their wages; the rest of the shift produces profits for the boss. The harder the boss can force the worker to work, and therefore the more value the worker produces, the less time it takes for the worker to produce the value of his or her wage and therefore the more value (profit) goes into the boss’s pocket. Marx called this the surplus value produced by the workers for the bosses.

As the bosses find themselves hard-pressed to pay out $8 billion a month to carry out their war in Iraq and protect their control of oil supplies in the Middle East, the tighter the squeeze they are driven to force upon workers at home (not to mention the more workers, Iraqis and GI’s, they kill in the process).

The only solution is a society with ONE class, the class that produces all value, the working class. When the working class controls what value they produce and how they produce it, we will be able to distribute resources according to need instead of allowing a small group to steal the value produced by our sweat. When workers control production they will be able to make decisions based on the common good, rather than on constantly increasing profits in the face of competition. That’s communism. Only revolution can eliminate the horrors of capitalist exploitation and endless imperialist wars. Join PLP and fight for it.

Class Struggle Amid Growing Fascism in Oaxaca Strike

Oaxaca, Mexico-Sept 2006-The three month old teachers' strike by Section 22 of the Education Workers' Union (SNTE) has become a mass movement against the cuts in the schools, demanding the resignation of the PRI governor. Hundreds of thousands are supporting the70, 000 teachers and other school workers who went on strike to demand a wage increase and better conditions for the students. Section 22 of the SNTE has been the most militant and active section of the Mexican Teachers' Union for many years.

After the defeat of the police forces sent by the fascist Governor of Oaxaca Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) to remove the strikers and their supporters from the Central Plaza, on June 14, organizations of farm workers, housewives, university students, the Front of Democratic Unions of Oaxaca (FSODO) and workers in general, repudiating the repression and angry at the injustice of the capitalist system, joined in solidarity with the teachers' struggle, forming a collation to lead the struggle, called the Popular Assembly of the Oaxacan People (APPO).

In demanding higher wages for the teachers, better schools for the students, and the resignation of the Governor of Oaxaca, workers, students, and farm workers have basically taken over the city, including temporarily controlling several radio stations. Government offices are not functioning, the tourist center of the city has been converted into an encampment where thousands of teachers and their supporters are camped out. Many businesses, hotels, and restaurants are closed. In the city of Oaxaca there are burned out cars, streets blocked with rocks or burning tires. Police and paramilitary units have killed workers in the darkness of the night. This isn't Beirut or Baghdad. It's Oaxaca.

In the face of a series of actions carried out by the teachers and popular movement, the bosses and the PRI state governor have implemented a Machiavellian plan in the style of the Mexican and South American dictators from the 1960's and 1970's. Since their plan for massive repression temporarily failed, beginning on August 6 they began to implement a fascist "dirty war", selective repression, a "witch hunt", kidnapping and jailing leaders, indiscriminate assassinations, physiological harassment and persecution of the activists using paramilitaries in civilian clothes, delinquents freed from prison, and different agents in their service, using the Federal Preventive Police (PFP) for brutal mass repression .

At stake in this struggle are not only the reform demands of the teachers and other workers, but also involved is the fight among the Mexican bosses and the imperialists over the privatization of PEMEX vs. nationalist Mexican bosses controlling some of these oil profits; control of electrical energy (CFE), education, water, the historical centers, and how to put into effect the Plan Puebla Panama. All the bosses electoral parties, the PRI, PRD, and PAN, are directly or indirectly involved in this struggle.

The class struggle is sharpening in Oaxaca and throughout Mexico. The big bosses along with opportunist politicians are lining up with one side or another depending on their interests. The fascist federal government, led by Vicente Fox and his gang, have not wanted to openly participate in the repression or any solution to the problem in Oaxaca, as they government did in the mines of Michoacán. The PRI Governor tried to involve the fascist PAN government by inventing the lie that guerilla groups were involved in this struggle, but the Federal representatives immediately said that there was no proof of this and that this was a state wide teachers' problem. The PAN has thus far refused to save the unpopular PRI's fortunes in Oaxaca.

The current demands for the resignation of the PRI Governor and to improve the schools leaves the capitalist system in tact, with its brutal exploitation, repression and racism, deepening through all of Mexico. The working class of Oaxaca has gotten a taste of the potential power in its grasp. Limiting the struggle to reform capitalism allows the fascist state to continue to exploit and hunt down workers. Capitalism is the cause of the problems of the oppressed and exploited working class, the class of the teachers and all the workers.

PLP's role in this struggle is to show workers that the current struggle among the bosses over the control of the wealth created by the working class can and must be converted into a workers' struggle for power through the long term fight for communism. The workers of Oaxaca are among those in the forefront of the fight against the imperialist bosses. With modest steps in pointing out the workers' potential to take power and run society in our own interests, PLP can help create the conditions for the workers to actually take power and build a communist society that can meet the needs of the working class. Our communist press, study groups and actions need to reach as many workers students and farm workers as possible.

Capitalism and imperialism have led the Oaxacan workers to fight against the bosses' inevitable attacks. The situation is full of potential. It's difficult but not impossible to build a mass revolutionary communist party of the working class capable of destroying the enemy, the whole capitalist system, For this the participation of all sectors of the working class is needed, along with international solidarity. The success or failure of the movement in Oaxaca should be seen in the advance of communist ideas and practice because that is the only way to guarantee the destruction of the real source of our problems, the system of capitalism and imperialism. We must build the PLP among all the workers of the world to bury all the oppressors and their murderous system in order to build the system that will meet the needs of our class: COMMUNISM.

PLP calls on all workers to organize support for the struggle in Oaxaca, condemning the attacks on the teachers and their supporters while showing that whether the resources of Mexico are in the hands of one set of national bosses or in the hands of another set of imperialists and their local accomplices, the working class loses. The road to victory lies in supporting the militant teachers and showing that the actions they have taken can be expanded, in the long run, to actions against the whole racist, imperialist capitalist system and to power to the working class!

LA Workers Oust Racist and Attack Mayor's War Agenda

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 23 — Over 3,000 city workers — members of the Engineers and Architects Assn. — held a two-day strike to demand higher wages and benefits. Mayor Villaraigosa "offered" between zero and 2% increases. The union leaders had no serious plan nor even tacit support from other LA unions.

But the dead-end tactics and politics of the union leaders are only part of the story. The other part is that many of these strikers eagerly took CHALLENGE and a PLP leaflet. They expressed anger at the supposedly "progressive" Mayor who is cutting all City services while spending more money on jails, surveillance, police and City Council salaries.

Many agreed that the Democrats, like Villaraigosa, are just as pro-war as the Republicans — with different tactics. Recently Villaraigosa spoke at an Israeli consulate rally, supporting that fascist government’s attack on the Lebanese people. Coupled with his support of the Iraqi war means Villaraigosa cannot support the workers of Los Angeles or anyplace else, no matter what his rhetoric.

Workers had a sign listing the Mayor’s crimes. Many agreed with PL’ers that his support of both wars is his biggest crime. Villaraigosa was co-chairman of Kerry’s 2004 platform committee for the Democratic National Committee when he helped ensure that nothing was said opposing the U.S. war in Iraq.

One woman picket was holding a racist sign stating that the Mayor has no money for City workers but plenty for "illegal aliens." A PL’er asked a striker why that sign was permitted. After looking for the picket captain, the striker, already angry about the sign, confronted the woman, telling her the sign was not welcome because it divided the workers. Another worker who was picketing yelled at the racist, "The workers are one class!" Other strikers joined in and took the racist sign from the woman.

A PL’er said the sign was also a lie. The source of the cuts isn’t immigrants — it’s the war, Homeland Security and the capitalist system. The worker who yelled at the racist said he used to read CHALLENGE 30 years ago and was glad to see it again. The strikers thanked the PL’ers and took papers.

Many of these strikers were born here while others are immigrants from around the world. They were all angry, very open to our communist newspaper and to discussing the source of the attacks on them — a good sign.

Racist Bosses Turn Katrina into Fascist Carnage

In the year since hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the bosses’ local, state and national governments have turned a capitalist disaster into a fascist outrage. That is the inherent result of a system based on racism and war. U.S. rulers have refused to commit the resources to rebuild New Orleans, but have concentrated on keeping most displaced workers in exile and harassing and attacking those who have courageously returned.

A year ago, working-class neighborhoods were flooded out when levees that had repeatedly been declared inadequate failed to stem the hurricane’s force. Workers were given 24 hours to evacuate. Those with no independent means of transportation were forced to stay behind and suffer without food, water and sanitary facilities. The bosses’ previous refusal to fund the reinforcement of levees (while billions were "found" for imperialist oil war in Iraq) led to this failure to meet the most basic needs of workers and turned a hurricane into an on-going disaster. That’s capitalism.

One year later the bosses continue to attack the workers here, refusing to allow the poorest, mostly black workers to move back into their communities. Residents of the Lafitte and Iberville Projects have had their windows and doors sealed with steel plates and caged in with a barbed-wire fence. Workers whose homes were destroyed by 20 feet of flood-water have been given unrealistic deadlines for houses to be repaired or else be bulldozed. These workers are deliberately being prevented from returning so that the bosses can replace workers’ houses with casinos and high-income homes and apartments, all to benefit real estate speculators.

Increased fascism is the major tactic for keeping workers out and terrorizing those looking to return. Jet fighters fly overhead during the day while police helicopters carry out surveillance at night. Military police harass workers. The Blackwater security force — the same thugs being used in Iraq — has been hired to protect the bosses’ private property in and around the Ninth Ward, making it clear that residents are not welcome to return. The bosses’ vicious response stems from their fear workers will revolt against racist exploitation. The face of fascism is ugly and clear in New Orleans!

Trying to defeat working-class unity, the bosses have introduced a "guest-labor" program, with immigrant workers brought in to work for as little as $18 a week. Black workers here lost homes and were denied adequate relief funds. Now the bosses won’t hire them at decent wages to rebuild their own city, another inevitable product of capitalism’s racism.

This fight for jobs has created a racist, hostile environment that the ruling class needs and wants. Most workers are treated like prisoners penned up in barbed-wire-fenced trailer parks with security checkpoints for poor black and white residents or concentration-camp-style housing for immigrant workers. These workers need multi-racial, revolutionary communist ideology to recognize that the bosses, not each other, are the real enemy.

The many organizations in the city helping residents gut homes and move back into their communities only seek to reform capitalism, not to replace it with a system without racism and exploitation. PLP’ers volunteered to gut houses as well, but we also discussed racism, sexism, imperialist war and class consciousness with local residents and other volunteers. All comrades who participated in the New Orleans Summer Project displayed great collective leadership and total dedication to the working class.

Hundreds of CHALLENGE-DESAFIOS were distributed to workers at the oil refinery, in the remaining housing projects and to the super-exploited day-laborers. Most who accepted the paper strongly agreed with what we had to say, stating that they’ve always known the capitalist system was the problem.

We will continue to raise communist ideas in this ravaged city because the bosses are nowhere near finished terrorizing its workers, anymore than they’re about to end their imperialist war in the Middle-East. The volunteers who’ve joined with workers trying to reclaim their homes are showing the selflessness that is the foundation of communist cooperation. We must seize on this example and on the workers’ anger and build a movement aimed at destroying this profit system that turned a hurricane into ongoing fascist oppression.

Workers and Youth Ante Up, Now Need Revolutionary Politics

While the media portrays young people and workers as cynical, uncaring, even violent, tens of thousands of young people and workers, multi-racial, women and men, volunteered to help their brothers and sisters in New Orleans who were uprooted by the devastating policies of capitalism. They devoted their time, sweat and tears to gutting and rebuilding homes. They didn’t do it for money or special treatment. They saw the abandoned ruins, the decay and the pain on workers’ faces. They showed that workers and youth care about their class.

But it cannot end with just volunteerism.

Capitalism cannot be changed and disaster awaits the working class because the ruling class’ main concern is profits and control of markets. Rebuilding houses is a band-aid on a bleeding wound that is killing our class. We need to develop a protracted struggle among workers and volunteers in New Orleans that includes: (1) Building class consciousness — the idea that we, black, Latin, Asian and white, are part of the exploited class of workers used by the international rulers; (2) Fighting racism and nationalism as the main ruling class tools to divide and conquer workers; (3) Winning workers to the communist Progressive Labor Party — an organization that mobilizes for a complete change of system, not built upon the exploitation of one class by another. Until then, any short-term victories our class manages to squeeze out of the bosses will be reversed. Participating in the class struggle, we can develop ideas and minds that will change the future.µ

Workers Have Militant Anti-Racist History

New Orleans workers have given our class some amazing stories of multi-racial working-class unity. In the fight to return and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, much can be learned from this history.

An 1865 united strike of black and white waterfront workers terrified New Orleans’ bosses, who fought this unity with racism and violence. During the 1873 depression, Democrats called on New Orleans bosses to "give preference to white over black labor." Starting in 1877, hundreds of black workers in Louisiana were tortured and lynched by mobs instigated by white landlords and bosses.

In 1887 the Knights of Labor organized a strike of nearly 10,000 Louisiana sugar workers (90% black). The state militia fired on the strikers, murdering 30 and wounding hundreds.

Then in November 1892 the New Orleans waterfront again exploded when thousands of teamsters, packers, and scalemen — black and white — organized a "Triple Alliance" demanding union recognition. Following their lead, other workers also organized bi-racial unions — usually separate black and white locals working together. The more advanced locals were multi-racial. Twenty-five thousand other workers — from railway porters to musicians — joined in an eleven-day general strike, one of the largest in U.S. history.

The bosses’ furious race-baiting failed to break the strikers’ unity, but the strike ended under the threat of federal military intervention. The militant, but reformist, trade-union movement was not prepared to confront the bosses’ state power. And the cotton union leaders (black and white) became the bosses’ junior partners. They refused to shut down this key economic sector, crippling the general strike and sending it down to defeat. Workers bitterly denounced this treachery, but in the absence of anti-capitalist political leadership they were unable to respond effectively.

New Orleans workers were also sidetracked by the Populist Party’s electoral politics. Initially challenging both Democrats and Republicans at the polls with an interracial alliance of workers and farmers, the Populists soon decided to ally with the "lesser-evil" Republicans and quickly caved in to racism.

Thus, in the mid-1890’s, the bosses used racism to divide and then smash the dockworkers’ unions. They provoked white workers into an anti-black strike, then imposed wage-cuts and work-rule changes that hurt white workers as well as black. Meanwhile, Homer Plessy’s brave effort to desegregate New Orleans streetcars was crushed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson which said that the U.S. Constitution permitted segregation. Another terrible racist riot in 1900 took a large toll among black workers.

Still, by 1902, the cotton unions had begun to rebuild interracial unity around demands that guaranteed a significant proportion of jobs for black workers, though the rules still favored whites.

When the interracial Brewery Workers Union was expelled from the openly racist AFL in 1907 they struck. Black waterfront locals supported them, along with some white labor delegates. Later that year, black and white workers together shut down the entire port for three weeks, winning many of their reform demands.

(Next issue: the emergence of the Industrial Workers of the World.)

U.S. Rulers' Education 'Reform Part of Plan for World Domination

(The previous article - August 2 - detailed the ruling class's liberal wing's division of labor among its various foundations, assigning specific aspects of "reforming" education directed at winning working-class parents to support its imperialist goals. These aspects include: training superintendents, senior administrators, teachers, school board members, parent groups, etc. The foundation sponsors and member include Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, GE, IBM and the presidents of the two teacher unions.)

The last time U.S. capitalism donned an anti-racist mask was to launch the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s, spurred by their rivalry with the Soviet Union. The masses in newly-independent African countries hated South Africa’s apartheid, which they identified as a step-child of Jim Crow segregation in the southern U.S. Consequently, U.S. rulers found themselves becoming isolated in areas like the United Nations while their Soviet rival reaped the benefits.

U.S. rulers responded with President Truman’s order to end segregation in the Army and court decisions "declaring" the end of public school segregation. Once this integration movement was released, however, the anti-racist anger of black workers took hold and through "ghetto" rebellions, anti-racist militancy and strikes — in the Army and in industry — the entire working class began flexing its muscles.

Forced to retreat somewhat, the capitalists re-grouped and then counter-attacked. Drugs and mass incarceration became their favored weapons, as U.S. rulers marched to their customary racist rhythm. The defeat of slavery had been followed by lynching and Jim Crow segregation. Now Jim Crow was replaced by mass imprisonment. A 1994 report titled "Cellblocks to Classrooms" noted, "...Society now spends about $2.8 billion to higher educate black males and $10 billion to lock them up."

Now this same capitalist class wants to drastically alter this trend. Driven by their bid to retain world "primacy" (as defined by the Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations), they’ve taken direct control of K-12 education. A July 30th Los Angeles Times article calls Bill Gates "the nation’s superintendent of schools!" It points out that "with the ability to handle more than $1 billion [every year]... the Gates Foundation looms larger than even the U.S. Department of Education, which by comparison, has only $20 million in truly discretionary funds."

Bill Gates is no Lone Ranger. The education takeover is part of a deliberate ruling-class action involving co-coordinated foundation grants, major corporate sponsorship and armed forces representatives (retired generals, admirals and so on). Its urgency hints at the desperation the leaders of U.S. imperialism sense about the world. On the one hand, they want to reverse the sharpening trade wars, which they’re currently losing; on the other, they need to strengthen their military capabilities for the series of wars they project as necessary to maintain their "primacy" in Eurasia and that may well lead to world war.

In 2005, New York University issued an education report (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) titled "With All Deliberate Speed." "According to the National Center on Education and the Economy," the report claimed, "by 2020, the US will need 14 million more college-trained workers than it will produce. Nowhere is college participation lower than among African-Americans and Hispanic youth; nowhere is the potential to meet our nation’s needs for college graduates greater."

It continues: "If this nation is to defend its long-term vital interests, [they call it world "primacy"; we say "world domination" — Ed.] we will continue to need a large pool of well-educated people who wish to volunteer [especially if college debts will be forgiven? — Ed.] to serve their country. Yet each year 1.2 million of our students do not graduate from high school, the majority of whom are minority [black and Latin—ed.]. If this dropout rate continues unabated over the next ten years, a total of twelve million young people in America will be unable to serve in our armed forces."

It’s clear: black and Latino college graduates are vital. The report continues: "The racial fragmentation of the American military in the Vietnam era had a profound impact on our nation’s military leaders. As a result our military leaders have made a deliberate commitment in the past 30 years to create a diverse officer corps that is of the highest standards." 

The generals may understand that racism is the Achilles’ heel of U.S. imperialism, but affirmative action in their officer corps won’t fix their problem. Anti-racism springs from a deep commitment to value and respect of all workers internationally. Imperialist armies inevitably march to destroy and subjugate the masses. Imperialist armies can’t fly the flag of anti-racism with any conviction for long. They didn’t in Vietnam, in Grenada or in Panama and they certainly aren’t flying it in the Middle East.

On the other hand, communists champion both the education of the working class (workers can rule society) and the necessity to fight racism — without the unity of the world’s workers we are nothing. Furthermore, whenever U.S. capitalists have donned anti-racist masks they have unleashed forces they’re unable to control.

In the coming political storms we can expect new opportunities to advance the fight for communist revolution, especially among our youth. The generals might count on an extra twelve million young people "to serve in their [imperialist] armed forces"; we’ll bet on recruiting an extra twelve million young people "to serve the working class" and build a new communist revolutionary movement.

The 'Cap and Gown' Road to War

Because capitalist wars are prepared in secret, it’s easy to mis-read think-tank reports. When "With All Deliberate Speed" refers to U.S. industries projected need for 14 million college-trained workers by 2020, it conjures up more or less innocent images of commerce, trade and manufacturing. Coupled, however, with the International Association of Machinists' (IAM) Surge Report, it reveals the present K-12 education reforms as really war preparations.

"To President Franklin D. Roosevelt," the IAM report begins, "surge meant a ‘swift and driving increase in our armament production.’"  The report then outlines how the U.S.’s shrinking industrial base threatens its capabilities to meet military surge requirements:

• One-third of the bullets used in Afghanistan and Iran are made overseas.

• The U.S. can no longer manufacture main battle tanks.

• The tungsten used in M-16 bullets can be found only in China.

• The Swiss government recently refused to sell component parts to Honeywell because the Swiss did not agree with the U.S. military stance in Iraq. 

Anyone wanting more details should Google IAMSurge. The point is, it’s fatally easy to mis-read the deadly war intentions of U.S. imperialism.

There's No Ford in These Workers' Future

DETROIT, MI, August 18 — "You just have the feeling that all the air is going out of all four tires as well as the spare. You’re in a time of discontinuity and a sea change is at hand," said James P. Womack, co-founder of the Lean Enterprise Institute. He was responding to Ford’s slashing production by one-fifth for the final three months of the year, the deepest cuts since th 1980’s.

Ten plants in the U.S. and Canada will close temporarily, affecting supplier plants and other auto-related businesses. Ford workers who have transferred to new plants from the recently closed St. Louis assembly plant are getting a chilling feeling of déjà vu. With rising gas prices, more than half the cuts will come from the F-series pick-up truck, which constitutes almost one-third of Ford’s sales.

The production cuts come as Ford, GM and the UAW are eliminating over 60,000 jobs, closing more than two dozen plants and cutting billions of dollars in costs. Ford has already lost $1.5 billion this year. In July, Toyota passed Ford in monthly sales for the first time, to become the No. 2 auto company in the U.S. market (Ford is still ahead for the year). GM and Ford’s combined U.S. market share sank to an all-time low, 52%, while Asian companies took 42%, their biggest share ever. Chrysler sales slid 37% from last year and GM sales dropped by 22%.

Mark Fields, president of Ford’s Americas group, said the battle for the U.S. market is now among the

Global Six; GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan. Currently U.S. bosses are retreating while Asian bosses take the offensive. Tens of thousands of autoworkers are being given a check and then thrown overboard by the UAW to keep the U.S. bosses afloat. If they survive the fall they’ll find themselves standing on line with thousands more for $10-an-hour jobs.

Ultimately, the inter-imperialist rivalry for markets, resources and cheap labor can only be resolved through world war. The bosses must rely on the very workers they are brutally attacking to pull this off. That is the contradiction they cannot resolve. But we can. We can’t stop the fascist bloodletting of jobs and healthcare, but we can consolidate and expand a base for PLP among auto workers. We can unite with workers in supplier plants, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, VW and more, here and worldwide.

The auto bosses’ global rivalry has brought the international working class much closer together. Steeled in struggle and building a mass base for CHALLENGE and PLP will prepare the leadership for workers to take power with communist revolution.

LETTERS

Pro-Boss Union Hacks Help Dump 3,500 Workers

SABMiller, the German-based company operating in 40 countries acquired Bavaria Brewery, intensifying the attacks against the workers that had begun when Bavaria was solely owned by the multi-millionaire Santo Domingo family. It has pushed through a rotten contract because the sellout union leaders’ passivity enabled the bosses to take advantage of the lack of a real union. Mass layoffs, unjustified sanctions against workers and ideological pressure led to constant persecution of the workers.

The union’s executive committee did everything possible to curtail any workers’ fight-back, leaving them at the mercy of company fascism. The hacks sold their souls for a few crumbs for themselves, including loans from Bavaria, for their cooperation. According to rank-and-filers, one hack even got a commission for every sold-out worker! Now the company is trying to decertify the union altogether.

Workers are paying dearly after years of producing profits for Bavaria. One worker with cancer of the eye was fired and now has no pension. Other workers suffer horrible conditions until the company decides they’re no longer needed. Meanwhile, the judicial system completely supports Bavaria — 95% of all cases brought to the labor court are settled in the bosses’ favor, bankrupting the losing workers.

Again, the bosses’ state serves the capitalists, not the workers. Workers can expect only state terror in this bosses’ dictatorship. Over several years, 3,500 Bavaria workers have lost their jobs through the collaboration among the company, their lawyers and judges and the union hacks. We’re now part of the army of the unemployed, without a regular wage, forced to become street vendors to try to make ends meet. Many of these workers have died of heart attacks and even committed suicide, leaving families in total misery.

That is what capitalism has brought to hundreds of millions of workers worldwide in this age of endless wars and growing fascism. The billions Clinton and Bush sent to the Colombian army and government to fight "narco-trafficking" have been used to attack workers. More drugs are produced now in Colombia than before Plan Colombia began in the mid-1990’s.

We in PLP are fighting the passivity and demoralization of many workers here. We’re using CHALLENGE-DESAFIO to bring them our communist politics, emphasizing the need to smash capitalism and struggle for a society without bosses — communism. That’s the road for workers to battle for their class interests and against all their tormentors.

Comrade in Colombia

Airport Workers Back Oaxaca Strikers

Revolutionary greetings from a group of airport workers in a major U.S. city. Because of fascist Homeland Security we cannot say where we work. We’re from the US, Mexico, Central America and Africa, readers and distributors of CHALLENGE, where we learned about your struggle. The news media makes no mention of your 70,000-teacher strike, or the 300,000 supporters who have defended the movement against the police. They purposely black out the largest strike in North America because they fear the example you might set for workers here.

We’re sad to hear of the police murder of our brothers and sisters. Many black and Latino families here have suffered at the hands of the police as well. You are all heroes for fighting back against the government and their killer cops.

At our airport, most of us are new CHALLENGE readers and learning about communism. We like many things in the paper and have some disagreements and many questions. But we urge you to seek out the PLP in Oaxaca. If anyone can help you, they can.

Your struggle is an inspiration to workers worldwide. We have sent a resolution to our union supporting your strike. Fight on brothers and sisters!

A Group of Airport Workers

Evil, Yes; Lesser, No

An editorial on the Sept. 6 CHALLENGE front page refers to "Vietnam War criminal Lyndon Johnson who ran against pro-war Barry Goldwater" in warning that "lesser-evil" liberals are many times even more dangerous than outright reactionaries.

In the 1964 presidential elections, the liberals were falling all over Democrat Johnson as the candidate who would "save" us from the Republican Goldwater’s "finger on the nuclear trigger." The Democrats ran an ad — since selected as the "best" political ad of all time — which first depicted two little 3-year-old toddlers holding hands while walking into a sun-drenched forest, followed by the scene of a huge atomic mushroom cloud. The implication was clear: vote for Johnson and our children’s future is secure; vote for Goldwater and all you’ll get is war.

Johnson won in a landslide, and what happened? The 16,000 "advisors" Kennedy had sent to Vietnam was upped to a half million by Johnson. Based on the Johnson administration’s "report" that North Vietnamese "gunboats" had attacked U.S. ships in the Tonkin Gulf off Vietnam’s coast, the so-called Tonkin Gulf resolution swept through Congress authorizing Johnson to launch all-out war against the Vietnamese. (Shades of Congressional authorization for Bush’s invasion of Iraq!) But as it later turned out, the Tonkin Gulf "incident" was an outright lie. There had never been any attack.

The upshot was nearly 10 years of war, three million Vietnamese killed, 58,000 dead U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands wounded, napalming of civilians, blatant massacres of Vietnamese women and children, carpet bombing of North Vietnam — U.S. aircraft dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were used in all of World War II! — Vietnamese forests "defoliated" by U.S. Agent Orange. For decades afterwards thousands of U.S. soldiers developed cancer and many died from the effects of Agent Orange, while thousands of their children were born deformed.

In April 1965, Johnson ordered over 30,000 Marines to invade the Dominican Republic when a popular uprising was aimed at toppling a corrupt murderous military Junta. In 1967, about to order the 82nd Airborne to Vietnam, instead Johnson ordered them to "invade" Detroit to crush an anti-racist rebellion against police terror.

Johnson did exactly what the liberals were warning Goldwater "would do" if he became president. So much for the fraudulent electoral "solution" of voting for the liberal "lesser evil."

Old-time PL’er who remembers

Reforms Won't Beat Fascism, Only Reds Will

In a discussion with some friends who believe in reforms I explained why I dismissed reformism and embraced revolutionary communism. I said I supported communism not only because it’s a better idea but also because in the absence of a communist revolution, fascist barbarism would prevail, inciting genocide against Jews and black workers. This is not a prophecy but a position based on the study of history.

I said the failure of a workers’ revolution in Germany had opened the door to Nazism. The fact that vendors at the Clearfield, Pa. County Fair had been selling KKK and Nazi items and that blatant racists were enlisting in the armed forces to receive military training for a race war in the U.S. shows these guys are dead serious. The only real way to defeat fascism was to build a mass communist movement. Forget about liberal-reformist peace rallies which accomplish nothing. Fascism is growing here. To deny it is to capitulate to it. I think they definitely were considering what I had to say.

Red Coal

Trial by Fury Hits Bosses’ Courts

"Getting arrested is the easy part," commented one of my co-defendants back in the summer of 2005. "The hard part is waging a struggle around the case." He was referring to the trial of three anti-racists who were declared not guilty for having defended the rights of immigrant day-laborers in Farmingville, NY. That victory taught some important lessons for myself and others.

First, we should always try to fight the bosses and their fascist court system. During the case, some people suggested that we take the easy way out by accepting a bad deal, which the District Attorney quickly withdrew. However we developed a defense committee, raised funds and brought the case up on our jobs, in our unions and other mass organizations, and among circles of friends and families. This seemed like a more difficult road to travel, but ultimately we saw it as the only way. Instead of building cynicism among the defendants and within PLP, we learned about expanding limits and turning a bad thing (getting arrested) into a good thing — winning our friends and co-workers to fight against fascism, using the strength of the collective.

This trial is just one example of the increased ruling-class intimidation of the working class. Being fearful means understanding how hard the bosses will fight to preserve their system. However, surrendering to this fear is our worst enemy. Taking the offensive meant confronting our fears and helping to lead the Progressive Labor Party and our friends and families. There was nothing like being a co-defendant and witnessing, day after day, a courtroom filled with comrades, friends and family members (not to mention those waiting in the hallway for the next available seat). It takes a lot of people in many different places, working collectively, to develop such consistency.

Finally, we never know who we'll meet as we fight and reach out to the working class. A previous CHALLENGE article mentioned someone from an immigrant rights group who urged us to keep up the fight because she understands that the attacks against immigrant workers will only get worse. Two weeks later she called to tell us that the Suffolk County Police Department had falsely arrested 21 immigrant workers affiliated with a local and very active immigrant rights organization. She invited us to a picnic which was very spirited; workers were cordial and sympathetic to our recent struggle. She introduced me as one of the co-defendants in the Farmingville case and explained, "We have a lot to learn from these guys." Some workers, including a NYC transit worker, took copies of CHALLENGE. We're looking forward to continuing the struggle against fascism and deepening our ties with workers everywhere.

Farmingville Defendant

A Worker’s Questions Sparks A Communist Response

After a long night in our noisy factory, my friend Sarah and I went to talk in a nearby restaurant. We’ve done this before, but this time was somewhat more advanced politically. Sarah had seen CHALLENGE and we’d talked about revolution and the difference between socialism and communism. I thought she knew what PLP was about, but actually she didn’t. While waiting for our food, she asked, "I know you said the Party has people around the world, but what exactly are you organizing for?"

Thinking before I spoke, I said we’re organizing for revolution but we’re not ready yet; we need more masses of workers won to the politics of communism. She thought this was a dream, but that didn’t stop her from more questions.

"So how does it work? Is there a leader? What do you guys do?" No co-worker had ever asked such questions so directly. Seizing the opportunity, I replied, "Being a Party member means something different for each individual, depending on their work and commitment. There are leaders, and Party decisions are made by discussions in clubs and committees throughout the party so that everyone is involved in developing our political outlook. We think it’s better to include everyone, rather than just listen to a few leaders."

"I feel kind of ignorant about these things," remarked Sarah. "I want to know more about your group. Do you think I have anything to offer to the Party?" Sarah teaches classes regularly in her church and has organized a system of rotations that started with no participation and is now at 80% in less than a year and a half, so her question surprised me. "Look at what you’ve done in your church," I said. "And remember the time we organized the shop to confront the manager last year? Most of those people would have never gone if I was the only one saying it. People respect you for your ideas and your actions."

"You know," she said, "I never thought of myself that way, but you’re right."

"Sarah," I went on, "a lot of people told me the people in our shop would never come together, but they did because we worked together." This led me to explain that we all have different skills and when we team up we can become a more effective force. One conversation won’t change her mind completely about revolution being a dream but something I told her seemed to make it slightly more attainable. "It’s like setting up one of our machines at work. It may seem impossible sometimes but when we have the right tools, a good plan and the help of a friend, then we can do what we thought we couldn’t."

This conversation with Sarah reflects the plan my club has been developing, starting with building relationships in our shops around communist ideas and CHALLENGE. We’re trying to develop ourselves as leaders so over time people like Sarah will come closer to the Party as friends, eventually join and then help develop others to take the same path. It’s important to find ways for our friends and recruits to play this role. They will discover skills they never thought they had and be encouraged to continue developing for future roles in organizing for PLP. Sarah is excited about our next event which we’re organizing together, providing lessons to be learned and gains made.

Next Sarah must be won to a "school" we’re organizing containing politics and teaching work skills. This will show her one way we work in the Party. A study group we’re planning after that can help develop her political understanding. To reach these goals I plan to continue to bring communist politics to the forefront of our daily struggle with her and others.

Hundreds of Millions, Not 'Great Men,' Created Science

Book Review: A People’s History of Science, by Clifford D. Conner, Nation Books, New York, 2005.

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

- Bertolt Brecht, "Questions From a Worker Who Reads"

Paying tribute to the history of world communism, PLP often says, "If we see this far, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants." This refers not only to the well-known individuals who founded our movement, but also to the tens of millions of unknown workers who fought for that movement. We stand on the shoulders of giants not only in the political arena, but in all areas of human knowledge, especially science. Communist theory developed from a scientific outlook, and most human progress depends on scientific discovery, so this is an important area to examine.

Conner describes this aspect of the history of science. Hundreds of millions of slaves, serfs and workers, over tens of thousands of years, who worked with both hands and brains, discovered and invented nearly everything that we take for granted today. They were craftsmen, artisans, engineers, toolmakers, blacksmiths, miners, peasants, sailors, midwives, healers, food gatherers, cooks, shepherds, and workers in literally thousands of other trades and professions.

Official science history says the "giants" are the "Great Men of Science" (virtually all said to be men) who worked mainly with their brains, and often on impractical projects. But the separation of manual and mental labor is a false notion created by ruling-class ideology. Everyone who works with their hands necessarily also works with their brains.

To their credit, some famous scientists, like Galileo, have acknowledged their debt to manual/brain laborers for the inventions and discoveries that formed the foundation of their own work (though most have claimed all the credit for themselves). However, science historians generally grant the intellectuals full credit for their incremental contributions, as though arising magically from isolated contemplation, and as though thousands could accomplish the task of hundreds of millions.

Conner guides us through practical work over the last several thousand years. Who, for example, invented the compass, printing press, spinning wheel, mechanical clock, suspension bridge, oil drilling techniques, steel, pottery, gunpowder, iron plow, ship rudder, agriculture, food preservation? Who discovered oxygen, algebra, decimal notation, navigation techniques? It was unnamed laborers, collectively, as this understanding was needed in their practical work. Yet particular — usually European — individuals are given the credit. Johann Gutenberg, for instance, is known as the inventor of the printing press. But movable type was invented over 400 years earlier, and the first iron printing press over 200 years earlier in China. In every case, Conner peels away the "great man" mythology to reveal realities of collective work by ordinary workers who helped create each famous discovery.

Prince Henry "the Navigator" of Portugal in the early 1400’s is credited with finding ways of exploring the world by sea, but he was a notorious thief of techniques and knowledge possessed only by sailors. His countryman, Ferdinand Magellan, in the early 1500’s, given credit for being the first person to sail around the world, relied on his navigator, a Filipino sailor named Enrique, whom he bought in a Malaysian slave market. And Magellan didn’t even complete the journey, killed by Enrique’s enraged allies in the Philippines when they arrived there. When the English captain James Cook explored the South Pacific in the 1700’s, he used Polynesian sailors who knew how to navigate to islands hundreds of miles away just by reading the wind, waves and ocean swells.

Conner also describes how the world’s ruling classes have controlled what science is allowed to develop and how those discoveries are used. Over the ages, these rulers have stolen from the working classes not only our labor and our dreams, but even our contributions to the understanding of the universe and our inventions that drive their profits. He shows clearly that the rulers could not survive without the workers. The (unintended) value of Conner’s work for revolutionaries is to help convince us, if we have any doubts, that the working class not only can run the world without the capitalists, but in fact has always created humanity’s advances behind the scenes.

Bosses Plot to Gain Workers Support for Bigger Wars

It’s not every day the bosses reveal their goals and strategy so clearly. The latest issue of Foreign Affairs, mouthpiece of the rulers’ premier think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), puts their cards on the table in a series of front-page articles. The ruling class must be worried about U.S. imperialism’s future.

In "What to Do In Iraq: A Roundtable," the magazine lays out big money’s strategy for the coming period. Five foreign policy heavyweights contribute, including Leslie Gelb, former New York Times international columnist and past CFR president. Each contributor presents his own tactics, but all favor some variation of strategic "redeployment": a tactical retreat from Iraq to regroup for bigger and bloodier wars to protect the U.S. bosses’ increasingly challenged grip on Mid-East oil.

"The Military’s Manpower Crisis" by Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute starts by bemoaning the short supply of infantry soldiers, but ends with a twist. After criticizing the administration for neglecting recruitment and retention of ground troops in favor of expensive "transformational" weapons systems, Kagan concludes: "but simply killing the transformational programs would be unwise." Beefing up recruitment and financing fancy new weapons will be expensive, but "…the absolute size of the defense budget, its percentage of the total U.S. budget, and its share of GDP [Gross Domestic Product] are ultimately irrelevant. What matters is whether or not the money is sufficient to pay for the kind of military the United States needs in order to prevail in current and future conflicts." "Current conflicts" refer to immediate needs in the Middle East; "future conflicts" include wars with what the Pentagon calls "near peer competitors," like China and Russia with tacit support from many European nations.

The foreign policy gurus vent their frustration with the Bush regime in "The End of the Bush Revolution." They note, "…The Bush doctrine has run up against reality and become unsustainable." But not before, "…squandering U.S. legitimacy, breaking the domestic bank, and getting the United States bogged down in an unsuccessful war." They are particularly concerned that, "Washington now lacks the reservoir of … domestic support to pursue other key national interests."

New Liberalism Modeled on Old Liberalism’s Anti-Communism

The front-page review of two books entitled "Authentically Liberal" by former U.N. representative Richard Holbrook offers a plan to regain this domestic support. Challenge already described how one, "The Good Fight" by Peter Beinart, advocates a new liberalism to develop a racist "warrior culture." Beinart and Holbrooke use the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), organized in 1947, as an organizational model to build this new liberal warrior culture.

"These liberal anti-communists [of the ADA] provided the seminal thinking and political muscle during the most creative period of U.S. foreign-policy making in history," writes Holbrooke. "In addition to [Senator, Vice-president and Presidential candidate] Humphrey, the ADA’s founding generation included Eleanor Roosevelt; [Kennedy administration historian and economist] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. [and] John Kenneth Galbraith; [and] the great union leaders Walter Reuther and David Dubinsky…On domestic policy, members of the ADA were unabashed New Dealers…and on civil rights, they were well ahead of their time. But on foreign policy, the ADA members broke ranks declaring opposition to communism overseas, and its refusal to cooperate with communists at home. They altered American history and committed themselves to a new liberalism."

This "authentically liberal" plan reflects the bosses’ imminent need to move support for bigger wars and aggressive U.S. imperialism from think-tanks to mass organizations and broader political acceptance in the working class. (Next issue: the implications of this strategy).

Detroit And Gary Teachers Strike Against Racist War Budgets

DETROIT, MI, September 5 — As we go to press, the strike of 9,500 teachers and other school workers in the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) against the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system is in its second week. "It's not just the money we're striking for," said a Central High English teacher. "We don't have supplies we need to educate the students."

Meanwhile, at the annual Labor Day Parade here, the AFL-CIO leaders turned their backs on the teachers, never once offering support for their strike. They turned the event into a campaign rally for the Democratic Party, whose two main Michigan politicians — Detroit’s Mayor Kilpatrick and the state’s Governor Granholm — threatened the teachers with a strike-breaking injunction and huge fines. The union hacks’ support for the Democrats puts them in head-on collision with the needs of the workers being victimized by those same Democrats.

The racist school bosses are demanding cuts of $88 million from teachers' salaries and benefits to cover a $105-million deficit. They rewarded administrators with raises and bonuses while DPS lost about 50,000 students over the last several years. The schools are in shambles while teachers dig into their own pockets to buy supplies and toilet paper for their students. According to the National Center of Education, Michigan graduated only 39% of black males during the 2003-2004 school year compared with 78% of white males. More than 80% of Detroit’s 129,000 students are black; two-thirds live below the poverty line.

Parents, Bus Drivers Back Gary Strikers

On September 1, more than 1,400 teachers and other school workers ended their one-week strike in Gary, Indiana. The school board vowed to break the strike, but parents supported the teachers and school bus drivers refused to cross the teachers’ picket lines.

Teachers have been without a contract since December 2004, and had not struck since 1984. There are 16,000 students in the district, down from 22,000 a decade ago. Like Detroit, the students are overwhelmingly black and live in poverty.

Gary and Detroit have both been decimated by the struggle among international steel and auto bosses for markets, resources and cheap labor. The students are the children and grandchildren of retired steel workers who’ve had their pensions and health care stripped away, and of laid-off auto workers who are lining up for $10-an-hour jobs with no benefits. The teachers, if not their union leaders, are clearly on the side of their students. A permanent war budget has written these students off. To the bosses, they are cannon fodder at best. (More next issue.)

Redeye On The News

Lebanon: part of U.S. war plan for Iran

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel has advised a plan for attacking Hezbollah — and shared it with Bush Adminstration officials well before the July 25th kidnappings….

"The White House was more focused on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel."

"The Israelis tolds us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. "Why oppose it? We’ll be able to hunt down and bomb missles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran." (New Yorker, 8/21)

Israel cluster-bombs just before truce

The United Nations yesterday described as "shocking and immoral" the fact that Israel dropped over 90 per cent of its cluster munitions in Lebanon during the last three days of the conflict – when it was already clear there would be a cessation of hostilities….

102,000 unexploded small bombs continued to maim and kill people every day.

"Civilians will die disproportionately again, after the war….It’s an outrage." (FT, 8/31)

Phony unions for China’s Wal-Marts

The All-China Federation….in China ….In-house unions are established automatically…in many foreign enterprises such as Wal-Mart.

"Both sides will sit down to find the right person to head the union – there is no election….

China’s unions are welcomed, unlike their militant counterparts in other countries, because they operate unashamedly as partners of the management rather than as the representative of labour.

"We will never take a simplistic measure like launching a strike…." (FT, 8/26)

9/11 Motive was U.S. policy, not religion

The most comprehensive examination of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was conducted by the 9/11 commission….

Talking to the detainees….the staff found that religious orthodoxy was not a common denominator.…Instead, hatred of American foreign policy in the Middle East seemed to be the key factor….

"I believe they feel a sense of outrage against the United States….They identify with the Palestinian problem, they identify with people who oppose repressive regimes and I believe they tend to focus their anger on the United States." (NYT, 8/20)

Iranians know U.S. is no liberator

Iran’s constitutional revolution of 1905-11 was a national struggle for democratic government….But its democratic roots were stamped upon by Reza Pahlavi, a soldier backed by the British….

Almost 30 years after Pahlavi crowned himself shah in 1925, the Iranian people had another go at establishing democracy. From 1951-53 they backed Mohammad Mossadeq…who nationalized the Iranian oil industry….

But this democratic experiment was again thwarted, this time after Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and …the Central Intelligence Agency’s Middle East Division, backed by the British, engineered a coup to overthrow Mossadeq and put Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Reza Pahlavi’s son, on the Peacock throne….

For Iranians, democracy is not a new idea but an ongoing struggle…twice stamped out by western powers….

George W. Bush’s description of the US as "freedom-loving" is regarded as mere words….

Instead it is regarded in Iran as being in ruthless pursuit of its own interests, be those security of oil supplies or the promotion of its…arms program…. (FT, 8/31)

Capitalist China texts: No class struggle!

When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise. The new standard world history text drops…Communist revolutions….

Socialism has been reduced to a single, short chapter in the senior high school history course. Chinese Communism before the economic reform that began in 1979 is covered in a sentence. The text mentions Mao only once — in a chapter on etiquette.

Nearly overnight the country’s most prosperous schools have shelved the Marxist [framework] that has dominated standard history texts since the 1950’s….

The French and Bolshevik Revolutions, once seen as turning points in world history, now get far less attention….

Some….speculated that the Shanghai textbooks reflected the political viewpoints of China’s top leaders….

Mr. Jiang’s "Three Represents" slogan aimed to broaden the Communist Party mandate and dilute its traditional emphasis on class struggle. (NYT, 9/1)

1. Whoever Wins Mexico's Election, Workers Lose
2. Liberals Cry `Out of Iraq' To:
   PLOT MORE WAR
3. Lamont: A Billionaire Pedigree
4. Liberals' `Just War' Image Hides Racist Cause of Atrocities
5. Big Oil Ordered Iraq War;
   Neo-Cons Just Followed Orders
6. `Peace Truce' Will Lead to Wider Wars
7. Victory Against Anti-Immigrant Kangaroo Court
8. As Copper Bosses' Profits Soar, Miners Strike
9. NYC Workers' War Contract Signals Need
   to Mobilize vs. Profit System
10. Combine Re-building Tasks with Revolutionary Ideas
11. Class Outlook Takes On Divisive Black Nationalism
12. Racist Gov't Devastates More People Than Katrina
13. CHALLENGE Welcomed Amid Bosses' Attacks on Returnees
14. Oaxaca Teachers' Movement Holds Potential PLP Growth
15. Black Workers, Youth Hit Streets Over Racist Cop Killing of 14-Year-Old
16. Racist `Community Policing' Murders Newark Black Man
17. CHALLENGE Spurs Debate on Mid-East War
    At Brooklyn Hospital
18. Deportation Raids Don't Intimidate Protestors
19. LETTERS
    1. Multi-nationals Dangerous for Farm Workers
    2. Winning Evangelicals To Oppose Iraq War
    3. Anti-War Churchgoers Expose Pro-War Liberals
    4. Rebel Soldiers Help Katrina Victims
    5. Raising PLP's Ideas At Pro-Immigrant March, Union Convention
20. Ted Kennedy, AFT Leaders: Partners in Racism and Imperialist War
21. Spain: Anti-Franco Resistance Inspired World's Workers
22. `Popular Front' Did Not Lead to Revolution
23. Workers and Peasants Practiced Communism in the Chinese Revolution

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Whoever Wins Mexico's Election, Workers Lose

MEXICO CITY, August 12 -- "Vote by Vote," demanded hundreds of thousands of supporters of liberal presidential candidate Andrés López Obrador in the streets of the capital and in many other cities nationwide. With huge demonstrations, seizures of streets, blocking bank entrances and even the stock exchange, many workers, students and people in general think the government's Institute of Federal Elections will give the Presidency to Lopez Obrador of the Party of Revolutionary Democracy over the right -wing party candidate Felipe Calderon of the National Action Party (PAN). This election dispute is a fight between various Mexican bosses to control the profits from oil (including oil giant PEMEX), minerals, energy, telecommunications and health care .

In these struggles and in discussions, Progressive Labor Party has strengthened new communist youth participating in these activities. These youth have distributed leaflets and CHALLENGE, attacking elections as a sham and calling for building a communist revolution. The workers have responded positively, although with much ideological struggle.

Workers around the world should oppose the capitalist electoral farce used to maintain the political system. Workers are won to think that by voting for one candidate or another capitalism can get better for workers, something that has never occurred in the history of capitalism.

Every presidential candidate represents one sector or another of the ruling class. The openly fascist Calderón has promised "jobs for all" and new foreign investments. Unemployment, however, is essential for capitalism because it uses the unemployed to pressure those who have jobs to work more for lower wages.

Other bosses like López Obrador use different tactics. His much more deadly battle slogan is to "defend the poor." But he has won the support of big capitalists. Using his populist image, he's evicted the poorest people from the center of Mexico City to make space for the historical center project led by Carlos Slim (Mexico's richest man and third richest in the world).

Slim owns TELMEX, of the Carso group, and much of the country's real property. Instead of expanding the metropolitan transport system, including the subway, he invests in road construction to promote private cars, benefiting corporations like Ford, GM, Volkswagen, Nissan, etc.

No electoral party anywhere will respond to the real interests of the working class. These ruling-class politicians look for solutions to their crises within the system, not to change it. The only solution for the working class is to eliminate capitalism, its markets and profits, and establish a society in which no one is exploited or oppressed. The great challenge is to organize ourselves with all the millions of the world's workers and students, not to chant "vote by vote," but "worker by worker" to forge a communist revolution and end this murderous capitalist system.

Liberals Cry `Out of Iraq' To:
PLOT MORE WAR

As killing fueled by U.S. imperialism rages and intensifies from Beirut to Baghdad to Kabul, Ned Lamont won the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary over incumbent Joe Lieberman on an "anti-war" platform. Lieberman backed the war in Iraq and ran for Vice President with Al Gore in 2000.

Their slugfest boils down to a dispute merely over the tactics for accomplishing U.S. rulers' two overriding tasks: battling increasingly militant Islamic forces for control of the Middle East and its oil and mobilizing the nation for a future conflict with a rival superpower. Lamont, in fact, poses the greater danger, because his phony "Out-of-Iraq" message can trick workers into supporting the rulers' agenda for broader wars.

George W. Bush's bungling is worsening matters for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The first U.S.-backed United Nations resolution aimed at ending Israel's war on Hezbollah quickly proved a deadly farce. Within hours of its first passage, Israeli air strikes murdered dozens more Lebanese civilians. The more U.S.-made bombs Israel drops, the more leverage Hezbollah and its Iranian backers gain. Even though there is a cease-fire now, that's no guarantee that the carnage will end anytime soon. Israeli leaders will pursue their self-interests no matter what Washington demands. Elsewhere, an increasingly lethal insurgency bordering on civil war prevents Exxon Mobil from pumping Iraqi crude. The Taliban remain at large in Afghanistan. And al Qaeda may have inspired a possible plot by British terrorists to try to blow up U.S. airliners.

This dismal picture has an important section of the ruling class saying it is time for Plan B: tactical retreat from Iraq followed by regrouping and a massive re-invasion of the entire Persian Gulf region by a wide U.S.-led coalition.

Lamont's exit timetable meshes with plans put forward by General William Odom, who complains that Bush's Iraq fiasco has the U.S. "paralyzed in managing the region from the eastern Mediterranean [Israel, Lebanon, and Syria] to Afghanistan." (Bloomberg Television, 8/11) Odom foresees a vast occupying force that includes European troops under U.S. command. "Upon our withdrawal, our allies will be far more likely to respond constructively to a U.S. bid to design a joint strategy for restoring regional stability in the Middle East." (Nieman Watchdog, Harvard University, 7/17)

Another anti-Bush general, Wesley Clark, who carried out Clinton's genocidal bombardment of Serbia, praised Lamont's success in steering workers down the dead-end road to the polling booth and patriotism. "Lieberman's defeat shows that the public is now engaged in politics." (Wall Street Journal, 8/10) Clark reassured Journal readers that Democrats, including Lamont, indeed had the more effective war plan. "The truth is the Democratic Party -- elected leaders, party regulars, and the big-time donors -- pretty much agree on the failures of the administration, and even on the policies that need to be adopted, like stronger diplomacy and more reliance on allies and international organizations, coupled with a willingness to fully fund, rearm, strengthen, and use America's armed forces."

As for galvanizing society for world war, Lamont has a less heavy-handed approach than Lieberman. Lieberman co-founded the Democratic Leadership Council, which in a recent book, "With All Our Might," espoused an openly-militarized Democratic Party and putting the economy "on a wartime footing." The ruling class dreams of both. But there's a hitch. As enlistment figures and opinion polls show, not many people so far, especially among traditionally Democratic voters, buy blatant militarism. Lieberman's voter base among munitions workers at Sikorsky and Electric Boat may do so, to a certain degree, but among the general public "Vietnam-Syndrome" mistrust of the Pentagon prevails. So Lamont tries the back door to fascism. His big push is for health care reform, which has two ulterior motives: tightening government control of a key industry and getting people to view the state as "protector."

For anyone who wants the bloodshed to stop, following Lamont and his ilk is a big mistake. "Peace" candidates turn out to be deadlier war-makers than "hawks." Look at President Woodrow "He-Kept-Us-Out-of-War" Wilson of World War I infamy or Vietnam War criminal Lyndon Johnson, who ran against pro-war Barry Goldwater in 1964. Votes only legitimize the imperialist butchers. The end of profit-driven wars lies outside the electoral system, down a long road of struggle to destroy capitalism itself.

Lamont: A Billionaire Pedigree

Ned Lamont's miraculous rise from nowhere bears all the signs of a full-court press by the liberal Eastern Establishment. First is his impeccable capitalist/imperialist pedigree. Lamont's great-grandfather Thomas W., a partner of J.P. Morgan, helped write the financial parts of the post-World War I Versailles Treaty in favor of the U.S. Next come liberal flunkies Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who stumped for Lamont among black workers in New Haven and Bridgeport. Moveon.org helped get out Lamont's middle-class vote. Internet-based Moveon was created by Larry Rockefeller and others in an attempt to limit the damage from Clinton's impeachment. The liberal New York Times endorsed Lamont in a July 30 editorial. A week later, it ran a column by Thomas Friedman entitled "Time for Plan B."

Liberals' `Just War' Image Hides Racist Cause of Atrocities

The U.S. Army's rape and torture of innocent people in Iraq should not be a shock to us. The extensive investigation and media coverage of 21-year-old Steven Green, the former private awaiting trial for the alleged murder and rape of an Iraqi family in Haditha, Iraq, is merely an attempt to re-mold the image of the U.S. military and scapegoat the lower-ranking troops.

This is not a case of a few "bad apples," but an inevitable consequence of imperialist war. Atrocities and genocide occur when working-class youth of one imperialist army is conditioned to view the "enemy" as inferior using nationalism, racism and sexism. So when the bosses' media starts decrying the very behavior it needs to field an army committed to its plans, we must look closely at, and understand, what the ideological differences among U.S. rulers mean for the working class.

Sections of the ruling class are furious at Bush & Co.'s method of handling the war, which is growing increasingly unpopular at home. The Bush administration's failures have energized the liberal wing of the rulers who are desperate to: (1) unite U.S. workers behind the war; and (2) divide the Arab peoples against each other. The liberals want to distance themselves from the Bush gang and prefer to win workers over to the notion of a "just war," that U.S. global dominance is not only necessary, but desirable for us and the world. They will spend time and money winning workers to the goals of U.S. imperialism -- domination of the world's resources, especially oil, and of cheap labor -- and will work with rulers from other countries to build the image of a "multilateral," international consensus on this agenda.

Yet the splits among U.S. rulers are purely tactical; they all agree with the greater imperialist goals. The liberal wing is angry at the Bush crowd's incompetence and recklessness in trying to run this war for oil on the cheap, economically and politically. The liberals and the Bush gang alike were mistaken in believing the war could be won as quickly as in 1991. However, the Bushites neglected to plan a long-term ideological campaign to win over U.S. workers and are now paying the political price. Here increasing numbers of working-class people are turning against the war; in the Middle East, various Arab groups have not only united against the U.S. but are being driven into the arms of Iran and China, two of the U.S. rulers' main competitors in the region.

To save the mess that Bush & Co. have made, the liberal sector of the U.S. ruling class will try to win over as many people in the anti-war movement as possible. Some in that movement are militantly opposed to imperialism, so the liberals want to channel their energy and militancy into various political campaigns within electoral politics instead of opposing imperialism itself.

Others reject the war because of individual acts of murder and gutter-racism such as the Abu-Ghraib prison tortures and the Haditha massacre, without rejecting the ruling class's greater imperialist goals. By attaching these crimes to Bush & Co. -- not tracing them to the inevitable consequences of capitalism itself -- the liberals will attempt to restore the image of "honor" and "integrity" to the U.S. armed forces, legitimizing this imperialist butchery as a "just war." However, the liberals' image neglects the military's long-standing complicated relationship with fascists such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis. After the white supremacist Aryan Nations' graffiti was discovered in Baghdad recently, Scott Barfield, a gang detective with the U.S. Department of Defense, told the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Report": "It's not epidemic, but there is plenty of evidence we're talking numbers well into the thousands [of fascists], just in the Army.... Only two have been discharged."

The liberals' hopes to build the "just-war" image to U.S. workers and the world hide the disgusting reality of their reliance on racism to fight and win wars. The liberals are in a tricky and contradictory position, wanting it both ways: the honorable "just-war" imagery reminiscent of World War II on the one hand, and committed killers loyal to imperialism on the other.

The rape and murder of the Iraqi family is a horrifying addition to the daily terror not only in Iraq but in much of the rest of the world. As long as capitalism exists there will inevitably be workers dying from imperialist wars and/ or workers dying in the aftermath of disasters such as New Orleans. Workers should not support any sector of the ruling class, especially now that the liberals are on the offensive against Bush and trying to seize the anti-war feeling.

The Progressive Labor Party fights the ruling class no matter how much it hides its savage plans for the working class. Imperialism is necessary to capitalism. Ending imperialism means ending the nationalism, sexism and racism that keep the bosses' profits flowing. PLP unites workers, students and soldiers internationally to fight for communist revolution and dump this barbaric system into the garbage can of history.u

Big Oil Ordered Iraq War;
Neo-Cons Just Followed Orders

By now -- as CHALLENGE pointed out early on -- most people agree that the invasion of Iraq was about oil, not about "weapons of mass destruction" or "bringing democracy to the Middle East." But now it's coming out that the most powerful ruling class interests, especially among the oil sector, were plotting for such an invasion because of Saddam's "manipulation of oil markets," a "destabilizing influence...to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East." (As quoted from a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report, in "Armed Madhouse -- Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf," by Greg Palast.) It was Big Oil, not the neocons, who conceived this war; the latter were just the instrument that carried it out, however ineptly.

Palast was able to get hold of a 323-page State Department report entitled, "Options for Iraqi Oil," which, according to Palast, "was crafted in Houston under the tutelage of the oil industry," organized by the James A. Baker III Institute. A former Secretary of State under Bush, Sr., Baker has as his "clients" the Rockefeller-owned Exxon Mobil (the world's largest oil company), the Republican National Committee and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Palast says the State Department report shows that Big Oil's decisive motive for invading Iraq was not so much its oil -- "the last thing the oil industry wanted from Iraq in 2001 was a lot more oil" -- nor "Saddam's affection for euro currency nor even panic over oil supply." Rather it was the fact that, "Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential influence over the price of oil." Iraq was a "swing producer" of oil. "Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week he's "supporting the Palestinian Intifada" and he cuts off oil shipments, spiking worldwide oil prices. Then he forgets the Intifada and pumps to the maximum allowed under the UN's Oil-for-Food Program, causing oil prices to plummet.

Up and down, up and down -- "Saddam was out of control." And "control is what it's all about," one oilman told Palast. "It's not about getting the oil, it's about controlling oil's price." Within days of Bush's November 2000 election, the Baker Institute warned: "In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived supply risks. Such a market increases the potential leverage of [an] otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq...."

Falah Aljibury, an advisor to the Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs, the Baker/Council on Foreign Relations group -- and host to the State Department's invasion-planning m'eetings in February 2001 -- told Palast that, "Iraq is not stable, a wild card." Saddam Hussein was, almost alone, setting the weekly world price of oil. He was driving the oil barons bonkers. So Rockefeller's CFR concluded it was time for a "military assessment," stating: "Saddam Hussein has demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon to manipulate oil markets.... [The] United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments."

This CFR/Baker report was delivered to the Pentagon by Dr. Edward Morse, chairman of the "Joint Task Force on Petroleum of the James A. Baker Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations." Palast reports that it was also "handed directly to Vice-President Dick Cheney" who "met secretly with CFR task force members...to go over the maps of Iraq's oil fields." Cheney than used the Baker/CFR recommendations "as his own plan" to "take out Saddam." (Interestingly, Palast says, "The cash for drafting the extravagant report that was so protective of OPEC and Saudi interests" came from none other than "Khalid al-Turki of Saudi Arabia...")

For all this, tens of thousands of Iraqis had to die, as well as thousands of GI's (and tens of thousands wounded and maimed for life). Still another reason to fight for communist revolution, to destroy the monster of capitalism.u

`Peace Truce' Will Lead to Wider Wars

After much haggling in the UN, particularly between France and the U.S., a "peace truce" has been imposed in the Israel-Lebanon war. Supposedly, the IDF (Israel "Defence" Forces) and the Hezbollah guerrillas will obey it. But the ceasefire has as much chance of making it as a cockroach in a chicken coop. Eventually, French troops will lead a UN "peacekeeping force" in Southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, several lessons can be drawn from this war:

* Israel's touted military invincibility has been heavily damaged -- 114 IDF soldiers killed in one month. Hezbollah and most observers are calling this a major defeat for the IDF. The NY Times (8/16) cited Hezbollah's "hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill." Already, the blame game is causing big rifts inside the Israeli ruling class about "Who lost Lebanon?" It's also led to rifts inside the White House. According to a Seymour Hersh New Yorker article, Dick Cheney, Bush and his national security advisor Elliot Abrams backed Israeli's failed blitzkrieg, but Rumsfeld wasn't 100% sure and Secy. of State Condi Rice was borderline.

* It has also caused rifts between the U.S. and the European bosses. A year ago, France and the U.S. united to kick the Syrians out of Lebanon and installed a "democratic" government in Beirut. Now U.S. rulers backed the Israeli air war which destroyed that whole U.S.-France plan.

* Bombings per se don't win wars, even though they cause huge damage (1,000 Lebanese killed, nearly all civilians and almost a million displaced from their homes; Lebanon's infrastructure smashed to smithereens by the Israeli Air Force). But still, Israel suffered a major defeat in the ground war at the hands of the well-trained and committed Hezbollah guerrillas.

* The U.S, Israel and their allies in the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have been exposed as the real Axis of Evil. Meanwhile, given the Israeli failure to destroy Hezbollah, its Iranian and Syrian backers have emerged as winners.

* The White House-Tel Aviv plan to bomb Iranian nuclear bunkers -- Israel has acquired a load of U.S. bunker-buster bombs -- must now be rethought. If the air war failed in tiny Lebanon, Iran, with 70 million people, much bigger and more powerful, could create a lot of problems for the U.S. in Iraq as well as for Israel in Lebanon and in Palestine's Gaza and West Bank. The U.S. liberal rulers' drive for more ground troops for all these potential wars will now be pushed more intensely. U.S. imperialists will need millions of soldiers to protect their oil empire from their rivals (Iran and its allies in Russia and China). Will a military draft follow?

Many in recent international anti-war demonstrations have been chanting "Hezbollah" as a response to the U.S.-Israeli fascist war-makers. This is a deadly mistake. Hezbollah is a reactionary organization which wants to impose an Iranian-type anti-worker fundamentalist system. From Teheran to NYC to Baghdad to Tel Aviv, workers, students and soldiers must organize to turn these wars into revolutionary struggles to get rid of their cause: capitalism and imperialism. That's the goal of the communist PLP. Join us!

Victory Against Anti-Immigrant Kangaroo Court

After the month-long trial of three anti-racists (see CHALLENGE, 8/16), Judge Toni Bean, her voice quivering, mumbling and hesitating between each word, gave her verdict. She surveyed a courtroom packed with supporters for the defendants. High school students and teachers, clergy from an activist church, trade unionists, family, friends and members of a Farmingville area immigrant support group squeezed into the courtroom listening to her every word, with more supporters outside for lack of space.

This is not what Suffolk County bosses intended when they relentlessly pursued a trial of the three anti-racists arrested on July 16, 2005. Local politicians get elected exploiting racism and anti-immigrant hatred. They were determined to be tough on anti-racist supporters of immigrant workers.

These bosses, however, underestimated the working class when organized for class struggle. PLP members, who had participated in the original demonstration, acted, understanding that an attack on any worker is an opportunity for struggle in which communist ideas flourish and new members can be recruited.

For nearly a year communists publicized this case -- and the courts' racist, fascist character -- in countless mass organizations. Resolutions were raised in several unions. Fundraisers were organized involving many new people. Contacts were made with the pro-immigrant organizations within Suffolk County. Attorneys were hired who live and work in the area but willing to take a stand in support of anti-racist protests. This struggle exposed thousands of workers to the case.

With the steady, dedicated effort of many comrades, hundreds of workers attended the month-long trial. The Judge, the prosecution and even the court officers were very aware of the daily presence of this multi-racial force. They're used to operating in private, their courtroom an inner sanctum never feeling working-class anger. Well, we brought in the light.

Everyone joining us in court found it unnerving and enlightening. People were shocked at the arrogant, racist treatment of everyone called before the Judge. Many who had promised to attend for just one day returned again and again to stand by the defendants. As one high school student told her teacher on the long drive home one day, "Now I understand what you mean by state power!"

Listening to Judge Bean's verdict we knew the essential purpose of the trial -- to terrify workers and keep them out of Suffolk County -- had been defeated. Whatever the verdict (though we are delighted it was "not guilty") the victory was ours. We had exposed the illusions many people had about "civil rights." We had recruited new members to PLP and to study groups and had developed and strengthened the leadership of the defendants who came through the process with a deeper commitment to the working class.

Outside the courthouse after the verdict, a woman from an immigrant rights group explained why all that we had done was so necessary: "I'm glad to see this victory today," she said, "for there are more battles coming. Soon it might be illegal to allow an undocumented worker to stay in your house. I'm sorry to say it, but there are bad things coming."

This worker understands the long road ahead. Our job is to bring her, and all workers, into PLP to help build the fight for communism.

As Copper Bosses' Profits Soar, Miners Strike

CHILE -- On August 7, 2000 miners struck La Escondida, the world's largest private copper mine, mostly owned by two UK-Australian companies, BHP and Rio Tinto. La Escondida produces 8% of world production. The miners are demanding a 13% wage increase and a 16 million pesos bonus ($29,400). The bosses' final offer was a 3% wage "hike" plus a $5,500 low-interest loan, which amounts to a wage-cut since the loan will be re-paid from that 3%. The bosses also offered a $15,600 lump-sum bonus.

The strike has impacted commodity markets. A prolonged disruption threatens copper availability worldwide when supplies are already tight.

The miners say soaring global copper prices, which have boosted mining profits, justifies their pay demand. The mine owners have invoked "force majeure," a procedure which gives them legal protection from being sued if they fail to live up to delivery contracts, such as for copper concentrate.

The Socialist Chilean government has sent riot cops to intimidate miners and their demonstrations. These bosses are worried since this company represents 2% of the country's economic output. The bosses' press has joined the anti-worker attacks, saying the miners are already the "best-paid" workers in Chile (El Mercurio, 8/8). But the bosses are making out like bandits, reaping super-profits from growing world demand, particularly from China. The workers' demands represent only 1% of the mine's profits since 2005. And recently, high school students in Chile waged militant protests fighting the cops for their own demands. The "Socialist" government has been exposed as just another capitalist State.

Other workers are looking to follow these miners in setting their own bargaining goals. "It looks likely that there could be copy-cat action, especially in Mexico and at other mines in Chile," said John Meyer, a mining analyst at Numis Securities in London. "This could be quite long-running, which is why the market is taking notice of it." (London Financial Times, 8/9)

Even though the strikers halted 60% of La Escondida production, it's using 2,000 contract workers to get out the remaining 40%. The strikers must win these contract workers to join the walkout. They can forge this unity by fighting for permanent jobs for these contract workers.

The miners need international solidarity from workers who face the same bosses' attacks: they make huge profits but want workers to make more sacrifices while the bosses use contract workers to divide us all and lower everyone's wages.

Capitalism has proven to be a dead-end worldwide even for the so-called high-paid. Workers must learn from struggles like these that without our labor power, the bosses cannot produce anything. Workers don't need bosses; they need to turn these struggles into a school for forging a revolutionary leadership to fight for communism.

NYC Workers' War Contract Signals Need
to Mobilize vs. Profit System

NEW YORK CITY, August 11 -- "When the hell will she retire?" is the endlessly repeated question among workers in AFSCME's District Council 37. "She" is Lillian Roberts, the overtly corrupt and autocratic executive director of DC 37, the City's largest municipal union, with 120,000 members. The Council leadership negotiated a thoroughly mediocre deal with the City, after 13 months without a contract. Frustration is near universal within the union over the Roberts' regime's endless petty power plays, open collaboration with billionaire union-busting mayor Michael Bloomberg, and shameless sponging of union dues.

But the rank and file must see the contract struggle not just as ridding ourselves of one corrupt misleader but as a fight against capitalist attacks, war and rising fascism. With U.S. rulers facing stiff competition worldwide, they're looking to smash even the few organized workers that still have even meager benefits. These cuts finance defense of their empire. In reality every contract is a war contract.

The union misleaders' job is to stifle struggle, not lead it. They paint Bush as the sole source of all workers' problems and rally behind the Democratic bosses. None of them ever criticize capitalism, even supposed "militants" like the Transit Workers' Roger Toussaint or Andy Stern, head of the recent split-off from the AFL-CIA. They still treat unions as a business.

The DC 37 contract is nearly as bad as the last one. Disgust with the leadership is still entrenched. The union leadership put nothing on the table for the workers during the entire ten-month negotiations. Instead, Roberts orchestrated a sham behind-the-scenes vote to "endorse" Bloomberg's re-election and then threw millions in dues money into his $70-million campaign.

True to form, they went hat in hand to the City and didn't hold a single rally or work action, or reach out to any other workers for support. In effect, the new DC 37 contract is a pay-cut, falling below inflation, and continues the same two-year, two-tier wage system for new hires they shamelessly agreed to last time, while pension and health benefit cuts wait in the wings.

The lack of mobilization against the City infuriated many workers, especially in the wake of the City's $5 billion surplus and last December's militant three-day transit strike which shut down the city. Although many workers were ready for action, the union refused to lead any fight-backs in the face of on-going cuts, like surrounding City Hall, holding daily pickets, organizing workers to slow down, walk off the job or strike despite the state's fascist Taylor Law banning them. Nor did they expose how the City bosses use their surplus to benefit big business and developers while maintaining long-standing cuts and layoffs. And the Council certainly didn't expose the squeeze on workers to pay for the oil war in Iraq.

With the industrial unions increasingly in the bosses' hip pocket, the ruling class is stepping up its attack on municipal unions. Last year government workers in three states lost collective bargaining rights, bringing the total to 15. As with United Airlines and GM, civil service pensions are being gutted. This isn't about a regime change in DC 37, it's about fighting the brutal effects of the profit system. It's about the City bosses and the union uniting to preserve capitalism and squeeze the city workers. Workers have no "friends in high places" on either side of the bargaining table.

Moving the struggle forward means PLP'ers and other militant workers expanding the contract struggle to fight the brutal oil war, not pinning our hopes on yet another corrupt union election. We must mobilize workers against racist cuts, against slashing school lunches to fund war profiteers and against the profit system -- the cause of all our problems. Turning the struggle into a "school for communism" would be the biggest victory workers could win.

Combine Re-building Tasks with Revolutionary Ideas

A group of students and teachers from LA had a great experience in New Orleans gutting houses, organizing residents and having a CHALLENGE sale. It revealed the great potential for bringing the paper to workers here.

This city gives us an opportunity to build the international working-class movement for communism. From the detention camps where thousands of residents are held in trailers surrounded by barbwire and armed government patrols, to the thousands of furious residents whose houses the government is seizing, residents and volunteers need communist vision, practice and politics along with involvement in the day-to-day organizational, survival and rebuilding tasks.

In barely half an hour, volunteers distributed 42 CHALLENGES to black and Latino immigrant workers at a local building and construction store. They donated over $13. Few refused the paper. Many angry workers agreed that capitalism is the problem. The more areas CHALLENGE reaches -- while we involve ourselves in the day-to-day rebuilding tasks -- the more ahead of the game we'll be. Ideas can become a material force to change the world. So discussions about the role of racism, nationalism, fascism, the government and working-class unity are very useful. While we were only there briefly, this work must continue and deepen. Without debates about the nature of the State, imperialism, and the abolition of wages, people will become bogged down on the treadmill of reform and oblivious to a revolutionary solution.

One young volunteer from LA Said, "I learned a lot of things about how the government works in New Orleans and what the system does. The government was late in helping the impoverished. They didn't provide any aid and stole the communities' money. If I go back, I'll take lots of CHALLENGES and information on what the government is doing. I'll help show people what to do to fight back. I'll tell them that when we fight as a group we're unstoppable. I would really like to see the people join and destroy the system."

Class Outlook Takes On Divisive Black Nationalism

My experience in New Orleans had its ups and its downs. From sweating while banging down walls, to crying from heart-breaking stories, to ideological struggles, at the end of the day I had a wonderful awakening experience.

The first day blew my mind away. We went on a levee tour that contrasted the 8-foot levees in the working-class neighborhood to the double walls of the wealthier neighborhoods. The orientation of the mass organization we were working with began with a question: "what does leadership look like?" After everybody gave their input, the leader of the meeting asked why no one said black in their definition of leadership. I figured it was the same reason no one said white: race doesn't matter when it comes to true leadership. He elaborated on why black leadership is good, beginning to piss me off with his Black Nationalist point of view. We had spoken about Black Nationalism before the trip, but I didn't expect it to be so blunt and open.

After orientation, we were off to the hard work of gutting homes and canvassing. I was extremely excited to be canvassing, but when that sun hit me and I began to feel dizzy, it wasn't as exciting anymore. We took an opportunity to talk to immigrant workers we met on the street. Using my knowledge of Spanish, I asked them about their living situation in New Orleans. They told us they get paid about $100 every week when they work, but work is not guaranteed. We spoke to them about capitalism causing their current situation and explained the ideas of communism. They seemed open to the ideas and gratefully accepted CHALLENGE. This day I felt that I actually did some good.

One night during debriefing, a debate started on what affected us primarily, race or class and what people meant by "us." Was "us" just blacks or was "us" the working class. That's when the ideological struggle between communist ideas and black nationalist ideas sharpened. I expressed my class ideas while learning more about the shallowness of the Black Nationalist point of view. I was trying to make the point that unity around race is not going to defeat capitalism, but that only by uniting as a class can we truly smash racism and capitalism.

A few days later we had a mass sale of CHALLENGE in public housing. Residents told us that they took back their homes without the government's permission. That's what I like to hear. I basically had an amazing time in New Orleans and learned tremendously. I wouldn't have traded this experience for the world. I encourage every CHALLENGE reader to join PLP and go down to New Orleans and get involved in the fight against racism.

High School Projecteer

Racist Gov't Devastates More People Than Katrina

The gutting of the house was awesome. We were all excited to empty the place to prevent it from being bulldozed, so my partner and I gutted two rooms in a day. We should have gutted every other day and gone organizing on the alternate days because both were really important.

When we went into the neighborhood, people related how the government didn't help them during or after they were flooded. Some agreed with us and said things like the government is "a "piece of shit."

One unemployed worker who was staying with his mother said he had a "beef with the government." Before the flood he was a renter and the government wasn't giving him any money. He didn't own a home so he knew the government didn't want him back -- what importance is a renter in New Orleans' poor neighborhoods?

Many young people made the connection about the lack of help and having deadlines for gutting their houses. One guy felt the government wants to bulldoze their houses and claim the homeowners' land. His friend agreed but he didn't want to fight for anything because the results would be the same -- nothing.

Another man who didn't live in the house he was gutting was strongly against the government. He, along with a few others volunteered with, and attended Survivor Council meetings where residents discussed their problems and results they sought.

I learned it wasn't Katrina that devastated people and their communities as much as it was the racist capitalists who left people to suffer, many with no financial help from FEMA. I understand more why we cannot rely on this capitalist system changing for our benefit. If PLP'ers stay in New Orleans for a longer period, we could really sharpen the ideas many workers and students already have, possibly winning them to our communist ideas.

A young comrade

CHALLENGE Welcomed Amid Bosses' Attacks on Returnees

After an exhausting day of "gutting" a home in New Orleans's Lower 9th Ward, a few comrades sold CHALLENGE at a housing community downtown. The residents were happy to receive the paper and were eager to discuss their struggle to survive after the hurricane.

According to the residents, Military Police have been patrolling the community since they arrived in June. Although they were originally stationed in New Orleans to "protect" the 9th Ward, they seem to be patrolling poor black neighborhoods all across the city. On any given night, MP's can be seen interrogating youth and giving them full cavity searches.

Upon finally arriving home this summer, residents claimed that they were forced to pay nine months back pay for rent. Almost immediately after the hurricane the bosses decided that the housing community was livable and yet failed to notify the residents. Many residents could not afford their payments and were forced onto the streets. Considering the community is located near the French Quarter, it is clear that the bosses want to bulldoze the community to build more expensive apartments.

This is another example of the racist bosses' persistent attack on the poor returning to their homes in New Orleans. The ruling class is vehemently attempting to remove black-working class communities. Yet their attacks have been met with powerful resistance. Many of the residents receive CHALLENGE and have joined the fight against ruling-class oppression of workers. The oppression in New Orleans resembles that of capitalist imperialism all across the world. Support for communism grows as more and more workers receive CHALLENGE. Eventually the working class, with communist leadership, will eliminate the ruling class and destroy capitalism forever!

Oaxaca Teachers' Movement Holds Potential PLP Growth

OAXACA, MEXICO, Aug. 14 -- After almost three months of struggle by 70,000 education workers -- initially for a wage increase and better conditions for the students -- now hundreds of thousands have joined the movement. They're demanding the Governor resign, while many question whether changing one politician for another is enough. Some blame the whole capitalist system for the oppression of the workers.

Here, and world-wide, the system uses all its ideological weapons: the bosses' media, religion, their educational institutions and the whole state apparatus to oppress us. But when workers begin to break these chains, question the system and organize to fight it, the rulers show their true fascist nature -- outright violence through their control of the police and the army. Young PLP'ers have brought communist ideas to many teachers through CHALLENGE and leaflets. (Full story next issue.)

Black Workers, Youth Hit Streets Over Racist Cop Killing of 14-Year-Old

CHICAGO, IL, August 11 -- Last Monday (8/7) the racist Chicago Police Department shot a 14-year-old boy, Ellis Woodland Jr., in the Cabrini Green neighborhood. While Ellis is surviving in critical condition at a local hospital, the police are claiming they shot in "self-defense," since the boy had been playing BB guns with friends. However, many from the neighborhood said Ellis was already on his knees when the cops fired five bullets in his direction with the intent to kill. This action is part of the ongoing police terror in Cabrini, from which the city is looking to displace public housing residents.

Black workers and youth responded by taking to the streets. Many workers understood the importance of young people standing up and fighting back. This is a much safer tactic than simply trying to avoid the cops' continued attacks. On Wednesday hundreds took to the streets, despite a heavy police presence, to challenge the cops.

On Thursday, when many young people again marched, PLP members joined their ranks. CHALLENGES and leaflets condemning the police as tools of the ruling class who will always carry out racist terror were well-received around the neighborhood and within the march. Many took up our chants: "White cop, black cop, all the same! Racist terror is the name of their game!" and "Racist cops get off scot free, while workers live in misery!"

The march continued to city hall where the mayor sat in his office and refused us entry. When PLP'ers returned to the neighborhood on Friday, young people had developed a better understanding of the system we live under. "Yeah, I think Mayor Daley is racist," said one. The politicians and police act for the rich. This small rebellion has instilled in many the sense that we'll need to overthrow capitalism in order to really improve workers' lives.

Racist `Community Policing' Murders Newark Black Man

NEWARK, NJ July 30 - A 26-year-old black man was murdered by a plainclothes Newark cop. Eyewitnesses, including a 10-year-old girl, saw the cops shoot Chakhan Nance when he was down on the ground and handcuffed. The cops claim that that Nance was a drug dealer who drew a gun. Everyone knows this is a bald face lie. Neighbors said that Nance looked out for local kids and would sometimes walk them home at night (Star-Ledger, 7/31/06).

This killing closely follows the inauguration of Mayor Corey Booker, 37, who became the top politician of New Jersey's largest city. The Star Ledger, voice of the big bosses like Prudential Insurance, backed Booker. Like Barack Obama, Booker is being touted as a young, black political superstar for the bosses.

Booker's key campaign promise was to fight crime. As soon as he took office, he announced a "safe summer" initiative, flooding the streets with cops. His supporters called for a major "community policing" offensive. Community policing plans have always been used tactically by the bosses to convince workers to participate in and feel responsible for the fascist oppression going on in their neighborhoods instead of getting angry at the "outside" forces of a traditional police department.

Newark happens to be the home of community policing guru George Kelling, who teaches at Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. Recall that Kelling wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the shooting of Amadou Diallo by NYPD cops was justified. This happened just before the jury let all of the murders off. Two years ago, Kelling went further by linking his "Counter-terrorism Information Sharing Consortium" with the latest "homeland security" plans of the ruling class.

The killing of many young people in Newark over the past eighteen months has given Booker, the cops, and ultimately the rulers, the pretext they need to put Kelling's ideas into practice. It is true that we should be struggling with our young working-class brothers and sisters not to fall into gangs and drug dealing. These activities are anti-working class, and spring from the bosses' idea of "me first and screw everybody else".

But we must remember who the real criminals are as we fight to involve these young people in positive political and social activities. The reason young people are caught in this hell with all bad choices is because of the racist, profit-driven greed of the bosses. After a mass exodus of manufacturing and other jobs from urban areas, the bosses left these cities to rot with lousy health care and jobs, deteriorating housing and schools and wide-scale police terror. These horrible social conditions have borne the poisoned fruit of gang activity and drug dealing as a false solution to this misery.

Youth are the future. In contrast to the capitalist system now oppressing them, communism will not beat down working-class youth. We will make them the centerpiece of our plan to overthrow this monstrous system, and build something much better for humanity. Kellings of the world beware: our day will come.

CHALLENGE Spurs Debate on Mid-East War
At Brooklyn Hospital

BROOKLYN, NY -- At a hospital here, workers friendly to PLP responded to the latest crisis in the Middle East by increasing CHALLENGE sales. Workers contributed $80, $10 coming from a part-time environmental services worker who's a regular reader. A leaflet based upon CHALLENGE editorials analyzing the war was also distributed.

A call for a union meeting to discuss the current crisis encountered problems in finding a common time and place. So we went to each of our departments and raised the issue with our co-workers. Many were confused about the reasons for the war between Israel and Hamas in Palestine and Hezobollah in Lebanon. Getting their information from the capitalist newspapers and TV newscasts, workers couldn't understand the underlying crisis. The leaflet helped clarify it.

A few workers stated that the politicians are always misleading us to support their views about the Middle East crisis. Surely, the politicians' interests don't represent the working class.

A few Jewish workers argued heatedly about the right of Israel to exist as a state. One worker cried, "Israel wants to live in peace." Another replied, "The Palestinian workers also wanted to live in peace." Still another worker stated that the only road to peace in the Middle East is the destruction of the profit wars for oil.So far, several workers expressed interest in joining a study group to learn more about PLP and the role of the past communist parties in that region.

Deportation Raids Don't Intimidate Protestors

HEMPSTEAD, L.I., NY, Aug. 7 -- "No human being is illegal" read signs carried by dozens of residents here during a protest against raids by government immigration and custom agents. Several area workers have been arrested during these raids and face deportation. The agents come with photos of people they're looking for. If they don't find them, others without "proper" documents are arrested anyway.

One demonstrator said that since these raids occurred, people fear even taking the bus. That's why protesting against these fascist, racist raids is so important, to show that terror won't stop workers from fighting back. (See article on Farmingville for PLP's analysis of the fight against racist anti-immigrant terror.)

LETTERS

Multi-nationals Dangerous for Farm Workers

Recently we visited a Mazahua community in the northern part of the state of Mexico. A farm worker agreed with us that we need a change in the economic system, since this one exploits and impoverishes farm workers.

Multi-national corporations like Wal-Mart are forcing a group of small producers here to sign a document mandating that their products be sold only in Wal-Mart stores, preventing them from finding best market price. Is this the "liberty of the free market"? The capitalists threaten not to give an allotment for starting production of organic products not yet planted if you don't give in to their price. These are products the multi-nationals already want to buy.

Some think that unity of the community can stop this. But the reality of the profit system is that the bigger fish eat the smaller ones.

What happens when those who supposedly should support these same producers are pressured from above or by their bosses to convince the producers to give in? Where is the independence of the farm workers or of the indigenous towns that the government always brags it's defending? The reality is, big capital rules, whether national or foreign.

University students have a great responsibility to farm workers, and not because some of us study nursing, mechanics, teaching, communication, sustainable development, etc. Without an understanding of what's happening, we'll be used to trap our communities and present them on a silver platter to the bosses, enabling them to continue to exploit farmworkers through the multi-nationals.

Students, just because we sit in an armchair, are we learning? Is life still rosy? Is the moon made out of cheese? What's happened to critical thinking, and the consciousness to fight for a world where everything is for everyone? Mystical, cosmic vision won't help us much, the god of the wind will not emancipate us, but the power we can build among all of us will. Long live Communism!

Young red student

Winning Evangelicals To Oppose Iraq War

In May, 17 members of our small conservative church openly called for immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq/Afghanistan and against any attack on Iran (letter, CHALLENGE, 6/6)). We mailed letters to 150 other churches of the same denomination in our area (rather than to the bosses' politicians), asking them to join us.

One woman in our group took leadership and suggested that we hold a public forum (on June 27) to broaden the effort.

Hard work by the whole group, including ads in the weeklies, lots of fliers posted ("Who Would Jesus Bomb?"), refreshments and paid child care drew an integrated audience of nearly 100 people, mostly from the surrounding community. The panel included an imam from a neighboring mosque, the woman rabbi of a nearby synagogue, a woman soldier from Iraq Veterans Against the War, and a woman church member whose fiancée just returned from Iraq. One of the church's two pastors was moderator. 

Considering the extent of anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic attacks in the U.S., the presence of a Muslim and a Jew speaking against the war in this church made a strong anti-racist statement. Also, the forum benefited considerably from the strong presence of women panelists. A lengthy period of questions and discussion followed, with all panel members engaged by people from the audience afterwards.

We're proud that a strong voice in the church on the war has now been heard, involving the community in a small but significant way. Although the forum's tone was pacifist, the racist, imperialist nature of the war was exposed. The original group of 17 has grown somewhat since May. All receive CHALLENGE regularly. 

Red Churchgoer

Anti-War Churchgoers Expose Pro-War Liberals

I'm a comrade working in the social justice section of a large, inter-racial, politically "liberal" church. Days after the Israeli bombing of Lebanon began, the senior minister preached about good and evil, weakly referring to Israel, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the U.S. in this vein.

My friends and I began talking about a response to the killing and to highlight key political ideas, such as the role of oil and imperialism in the Mid-East, the political consequences of U.S. occupation of Iraq and Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the negative role of nationalism and religion in the region. We proposed a forum about the situation to the minister in charge of our section, to be held the following week, and requested an announcement in the church bulletin and from the pulpit. Foreseeing this was unlikely to happen, we distributed 400 notices about the forum after service.

The following Sunday the senior minister preached about God as our "soul's roommate," not mentioning the Mid-East. Some people in social justice were dismayed. I responded that his silence indicated his support for the ruling-class position coming from Congress and both Democratic and Republican politicians.

The Sunday of the forum the senior minister mentioned a growing "conflagration that could lead to nuclear war" without naming the U.S. or any particular place in the Mid-East. Then he introduced his invited guests, referring to their "important contributions" -- Democrats Charles Rangel and Nancy Pelosi (who supported the House vote the week before to give India nuclear technology and information).

Following the service over 40 people attended the social justice forum at which comrades and friends effectively put forward our political perspective. The group agreed to organize a larger forum in the fall and to picket the U.S. Mission to the UN the following week.

A small group did picket the Mission, holding signs saying, "Stop the wars in Iraq and Lebanon"; "U.S. Out of the Middle East"; "No attack on Iran," and others. The police reacted quickly to our group because we hadn't "asked for permission in advance." In other words, the police hadn't been able to barricade us and divide us from the mostly friendly passers-by. They will no doubt call the church to "request" advance notice next time.

The contradictions between the church higher-ups and our political ideas will sharpen. Comrades working in ruling-class organizations and institutions can expect a long and difficult struggle as many people begin to question what's happening in the world, draw political lessons from the strengths and weaknesses of the old communist movement and realize that communism is not dead. PLP'ers' consistent efforts to raise our ideas and give political leadership in many arenas will lead to smaller and larger victories along the way to overthrowing capitalism worldwide and fighting for a communist society.

A Comrade

Rebel Soldiers Help Katrina Victims

Although it has been almost a year since hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans still looks like the cities currently being devastated by the imperialism in the Middle East. With police and National Guard patrolling the desolate streets, graffiti-marked homes saying "Baghdad" and "FEMA Kills" remind residents and volunteers that New Orleans is still a war zone.

Recently a group of volunteers organized a "gutting block party" to help gut homes in order meet a deadline set by the city that threatens to seize and demolish the homes.

Despite the vacant streets and a lack of electricity or running water, the local community center was alive with volunteers and residents celebrating a revival of working-class solidarity. The aroma of good food and the echo of music flooded the streets as everyone geared up to gut homes.

To the dismay of many, the National Guard showed up to inspect the celebration. While many were angered by their presence, one PL'er struggled with two soldiers about what the organization was doing. Soon the soldiers became eager to help, and eventually brought water and ice that they stole from their barracks. This act of insubordination demonstrates the potential to win soldiers to the PLP to help fight for communism. The more soldiers are won to fight for communism, the fewer workers will die for the bosses' profits.

Gutting homes proved to be even more trying. Many homes had not been entered since Katrina. In some, the debris was so great that the doors would not open. Many residents requested that sentimental items such as photos be recovered, but once inside it became clear that the destruction left little to nothing that was recoverable. The destruction was a living testament to the fact that capitalism, whether it is in the Middle East or in New Orleans, destroys the lives of workers.

In the end, there wasn't much that could have dampened the spirits of the clean-up effort. Working side-by-side with the residents provided inspiration by reminding everyone of the direct impact they were having on the lives of their working-class brothers and sisters in New Orleans. Despite the alienation felt by many of the Katrina survivors trying to rebuild their lives, alienation paled in the face of working-class solidarity that day. PL must continue to work directly with residents bringing not only their communist message, but also their willingness to share in the hard work of rebuilding the lives of workers in New Orleans.

Southern Red

Raising PLP's Ideas At Pro-Immigrant March, Union Convention

On July 19, three of us, teachers in the same union, joined the rally at the end of the latest march for immigration reform in Chicago. Over 10,000 workers and youth listened to Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who wants to be mayor, and others speak in favor of legalization for all undocumented immigrants and suspension of all deportations.

The crowd was much smaller than the 400,000 who marched May 1. However, it had the same patriotic display of thousands of U.S. flags and a speakers' platform loaded with labor leaders and Democrats. More marches are being planned for September in Chicago and on the East and West coasts. We need to prepare now to be part of these mass, multi-racial marches of workers and to have a clearly identified Party presence to expose the liberals' plans to lead us to more fascism and war.

Self-critically, we didn't have a PLP contingent there with red flags, revolutionary chants and speeches, leaflets and CHALLENGES, as we did on May 1. We must seize these opportunities to reach out to masses of workers with our revolutionary line.

We were at this rally to sharpen the contradiction between reform and revolution. I raised this issue within my union's executive committee and with friends in two other locals. As elected delegates to our recent national convention, we fought to get our union on record in opposition to "any immigration policy that further militarizes the U.S. border, hinders workers' abilities to organize, imposes high fees and fines on those seeking legalization, pushes immigrant youth into the military as a path to legalization and citizenship or criminalizes individuals or groups who support or assist immigrants regardless of their status." Although this was not adopted, it showed that by continuing the struggle and sharpening our communist line within it, we can return stronger to the next convention.

Given the limits of the convention, we were still able to explain the need for communist revolution to many delegates, held a small dinner/forum which included three new delegates and distributed 200 CHALLENGES. About 2,000 leaflets placed immigration reform and other struggles in the context of the inter-imperialist rivalry: main contradiction moving events in the world today.

Whether it's immigration reform, education reform, or the Iraq war, the U.S. ruling class must bend every aspect of society toward maintaining its current dominant position among the world's capitalist powers. Workers will never gain this understanding from the liberal Gutierrez, who wants to guarantee the continued exploitation of immigrants for cheap labor and to increase the number of immigrant youth in the military. No matter what legislation is adopted, immigrants and citizens alike will be sacrificed to keep U.S. bosses the number one super-power. PLP can only bring this understanding to other workers if we're embedded in this movement, fighting for our politics.

After our convention experience, we needed no convincing to join the July 19 marchers. At the final rally, we used the time during the speeches to discuss two letters in the July 19 CHALLENGE. They described the New Orleans Summer Project, including how imported immigrant labor is being used there to pit black and Latino workers against one another. Afterwards we made plans to invite other friends and co-workers to a meeting to bring them into our discussion. Introducing communist ideas into our reform struggles now will make next year's convention an even greater opportunity to build our Party.

Red Teacher

Ted Kennedy, AFT Leaders: Partners in Racism and Imperialist War

[The last issue described the anti-imperialist struggle at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention.]

When Peace and Justice Caucus members heard that Senator Ted Kennedy would speak, many argued that, "He's so popular, we can't demonstrate against him." A few called him "anti-war" although he votes for every war-spending bill. Most thought he was "not very strong" on immigration. But Kennedy's special role is to get immigrant youth into the armed forces. At the AFT convention he put a liberal face on the AFT leaders' pro-imperialist policies. Right after his speech they trotted out their "special order" supporting Israel's attack on Lebanon.

The Kennedy family has carried out and supported every imperialist adventure since JFK sent 16,000 "advisors" to Vietnam to jumpstart the Vietnam War. Ted Kennedy backed Clinton's bombing of Kosovo. Criticizing Bush for not taking sufficient advantage of 9/11, he called for "multi-lateral" imperialism in order to project U.S. power far into the future.

Kennedy's AFT convention speech was mostly "motherhood and apple pie" -- higher minimum wage, women's rights, etc. But he emphasized his solidarity with AFT founder Albert Shanker, who led a racist "strike" in 1968, pitting mostly white teachers against black and Latino working-class parents. Kennedy also praised former AFT President Sandra Feldman, a member of the Rockefeller-led Council on Foreign Relations.

One AFT member recalled that, "When the racists were organizing against school integration in Boston 30 years ago and PLP was fighting them in the streets, Kennedy met with them and concluded they weren't racist at all."

Unfortunately, many delegates thought Kennedy's position on immigration -- reflected in Resolution #1 -- was also "motherhood and apple pie," a dangerous illusion! Said Kennedy (May 2006):

"60,000 immigrants are fighting in the U.S. armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan today....The [immigration] reform debate is [about]... the even stronger America we hope to become....[O]ur military leaders ... are recruiting a diverse fighting force to think in new ways as we deal with our dangerous world." He has bragged that his immigration bill would send many more immigrant youth into the military. He also supports:

* Doubling the U.S. border patrol within five years and using more National Guard troops to police the borders;

* Fortifying U.S. borders with fences, high-tech devices and vehicle barriers, and placing permanent checkpoints on highways inside the U.S.;

* Biometric ID for immigrants and a universal electronic eligibility system for all U.S. employers;

* A "guest worker" program to provide cheap labor for the bosses;

* A "path to citizenship" so filled with obstacles (thousands in fines, requirement of continuous employment, etc.) that few will gain it, but will build patriotism among immigrants;

* Denying legalization to anyone who belongs to a "totalitarian" [read: communist] party or whom the Attorney General "believes" (no evidence required!) to be a "terrorist" or a relative of a "terrorist"; and,

* The DREAM ACT which offers the bait of citizenship for undocumented youth who join the military.

Kennedy's stance reflects a critical shortage in the U.S. military. "The long-term neglect of U.S. ground forces has caused serious problems in the Iraqi and Afghan campaigns. If not corrected,... this neglect will cause even worse problems in the future." (Frederick Kagan, Foreign Affairs, 6/2006)

The number of non-citizens in the military has nearly tripled since 1999. Non-citizens are half as likely as the U.S.-born to leave before completing their enlistment.

Kennedy notes that "immigration will be the only source of growth in the prime age labor force in America in the next two decades." Of the 36.6 million 18- to 24-year-old potential recruits nationwide, about 1.5 million, or 4%, are legal residents but not citizens. About 400,000 undocumented youth are also in that age group. "No doubt many would be willing to serve for some set period in return for one of the world's most precious commodities -- U.S. citizenship," wrote Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot ( LA Times, 2/2006)

Paul Bucha, Congressional Medal of Honor Society President, sums it up:

"[T]here is a standard by which to judge whether America is correct to maintain a generous legal immigration policy: Have immigrants and their children and grandchildren been willing to fight and die for the United States of America? The answer... remains a resounding `yes.'"

Young immigrant and black soldiers face racist treatment from the brass, who also bombard them with racist stereotypes of workers from other countries to justify killing as acceptable. Communist leadership within the ranks will build the fight against racism, help sharpen these contradictions and point the way forward to revolution.

Along the way, no task will be more important than tearing the sheep's clothing off liberal wolves like Ted Kennedy.

Spain: Anti-Franco Resistance Inspired World's Workers

(Part I described the Asturian Miners revolutionary uprising and commune in October 1934, which was viciously crushed by troops led by the fascist general Francisco Franco.)

On July 18, 1936, less than two years after the Asturian miners' insurrection, Franco and other fascist generals led an attempted coup against the Republican government elected five months earlier. This led to the bloody three-year-long Civil War.

The Republican government was a united front composed of social-democrats, liberals and leftists, including the PCE (Communist Party of Spain). At the beginning of the war, the PCE was relatively small, but it correctly stated that the government's hesitation to jail and punish the fascist generals like Franco, responsible for the bloody repression of the Asturian miners, was one reason for the attempted coup. The PSOE (Socialist Party) was the main force in the government. It was a social-democratic party which treated the fascist forces with kid gloves. It did nothing to purge the Franco-led Colonial Army which brutally put down rebellion in Spain's African colonies. (See box on the Popular Front.)

During the Civil War that followed the failed coup, nearly a million people were killed. The fascist Axis (Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy) helped the fascist forces with all their might. Mussolini sent up to 70,000 Italian troops to fight alongside Franco. The Nazis sent Franco its latest weapons (including Stuka dive-bombers and pilots to fly them) to test their latest weapons and its blitzkrieg war strategy, later used against the rest of Europe and the Soviet Union during World War II.

Only the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Mexico's nationalist government of Lazaro Cárdenas (which had nationalized its foreign-owned oil companies), helped the Republican side. Thousands of communists, socialists and other anti-fascists from 70 countries volunteered to fight in the International Brigades alongside the Republican forces, 2,500 (mostly communists) coming from the U.S. in the Lincoln Brigade.

Meanwhile, the Western "democracies" -- supposedly "neutral" -- really helped the fascists. France closed its borders, forcing the Soviets to send help on ships, which were attacked and many sunk by Mussolini's submarines. Franco's forces got all the supplies they needed through Portugal, the latter being ruled by fascist dictator Salazar. The U.S. "neutrality" did not stop Texaco from selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil to Franco's army.

Many, including Trotskyites, anarchists and others, have always attacked the Soviet Union's role during the Civil War. But the fact is that without Soviet help, the war would probably have been lost much earlier. The Soviets supplied 750 fighter planes to the Republican side (200 built in Catalonia in the middle of the war). These planes were crucial in the important battle of the Ebro River.

After three years of heroic defense by the workers of Spain and their internationalist supporters, the fascists won. The imperialist "democracies" that helped Franco were also helping Hitler, hoping he would destroy the Soviet Union. But after taking most of Europe from 1939 to 1941 with relative ease, Hitler hoped to do the same with the then communist-led Soviet Union. He organized the largest invasion force in history, a four-million-strong army, including troops from many other European countries (including Franco's Blue Legion) to try to crush the Soviets. After initial Nazi successes, the Soviet Red Army and masses of people fought back, and, at the Battle of Stalingrad the entire German 6th Army was encircled and surrendered to the Soviets in February, 1943. They then defeated the Nazis in the battle of the Kursk Salient, involving over 7,000 tanks, the largest such battle in the history of warfare. After the Soviets defeated the bulk of the Nazi war machine, the Allies finally launched the Second Front in France on June 6, 1944, fighting a much-weakened Nazi army.

Although the workers and allies of Spain lost to Franco's fascist hordes, they showed the world that fascism could be taken on. Their example inspired all the anti-fascist forces which, led by the Red Army, eventually crushed the Nazis.

`Popular Front' Did Not Lead to Revolution

In February, 1936, Spain's leftist parties formed a so-called "Popular Front," which included communists in the capitalist government. The Popular Front advocated that -- with the advent of fascism and imperialist war -- communists should form an alliance with social-democrats and some "good" bosses to preserve capitalist democracy and peace. That meant communists gave up fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and limited the fight against fascism to what the social democrats agreed to.

In Spain, this ruled out an alliance of the anti-fascist forces with the anti-colonial rebels in Spanish Morocco, to avoid offending French colonialism. It meant going along with the social-democrats' half-hearted and incompetent leadership of the war. They were more anxious to hold back communists than to defeat fascists. It meant not organizing guerilla war in fascist-held areas. Thus, the communists didn't try to take power, even when there was no other hope to defeat fascism. So, in this first "trial run" of the Popular Front, signs were clear that this strategy cannot achieve communist workers' power, the only way to defeat capitalism -- the cause of fascism -- once and for all.

Workers and Peasants Practiced Communism in the Chinese Revolution

Communism means a society where people work for the collective welfare and get back what they need from society, and in which classes have been abolished. To accomplish this goal fully will require a long period of working-class power. Marx and the majority in the old communist movement believed that even beginning to move toward this goal -- by immediately ending the wage system that is inherited from capitalism and distributing according to need -- should also be put off to the distant future. Some communists, however, argued for replacing wages immediately with distribution according to need.

During its fight for power, the Communist Party of China (CPC) did just that within the Party, Red Army, and CPC-run factories, distributing food, clothes and incidentals mainly on the basis of need -- the so-called "supply system." They did, however, allow small differences based on rank or assignment [1]. The Japanese army observed, "If [a captured Chinese soldier] willingly gives the good food to others and quietly takes the worst, generally he will be a Communist."[2]

Several years after the CPC victory, they returned to wages. While many resisted this decision, CPC leaders believed that the promotion of production should be their main goal, and that the only way to promote production was to ally with local capitalists and rich peasants -- a policy called "New Democracy." New Democracy ended up by strengthening pro-capitalist forces and leading to the future restoration of capitalism, as alliances with the enemy always does.[3]

To achieve their goal, the CPC attempted a massive increase in industrial production with the "Great Leap Forward," and large-scale people's communes were formed. Many included communal meals, a step in the direction of distribution according to need. Inspired by the communes, Mao and other party leaders discussed returning to the supply system:

"Why must we grasp a wages system? This is offering concessions to the bourgeoisie .... For a long time [our Party] has implemented the free supply system. From several tens of thousands of persons it grew to several million, right up to liberation.... In work everyone was industrious and in warfare all were courageous. There was absolutely no reliance on material incentives, but rather a reliance on the drumbeat of revolutionary spirit." [4]

The idea that the communes could lead to communism was also discussed in the press in 1958. The People's Daily published an article calling for the return of the supply system,[5] and a big Shanghai paper argued that the idea that communism leads to laziness is a capitalist and feudal point of view.[6] Despite the promise of the people's communes, the Great Leap eventually led to a famine in which many people died. This failure was based in part on mistakes in economic planning by the left-wing forces and in part on floods and drought, and was used by the right-wing CPC leaders to attack the Great Leap as a whole and to undermine egalitarianism in the peoples' communes.[7]

In May 1966, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) began and "was officially directed against" the "few" people in the party and the government who were "taking the capitalist road." Many workers, students, and peasants fought to overthrow the revisionist "red bourgeoisie" that was running China, and some wanted to go directly to communism.[8] In 1967, worker activists in Shanghai, moving in the direction of distribution according to need, demanded an end to the division into permanent and part-time workers, and demanded "equal pay for workers irrespective of individual productivity."

After years of mass movements, including some armed struggle, the Left was defeated in the GPCR. Deng Xiaoping, chief of the CPC capitalist-roaders came to power in 1978, dismantled the communes, and restored capitalism in China.

Despite this defeat, the experience gained from the monumental struggles of Chinese workers, students and peasants show us the way forward to communism: Distribution according to need, which necessitates the abolition of wages, is not only possible, but nothing else can prevent the rise of a new capitalist class and rid the world of capitalism -- forever.

Footnotes:
[1] Mark Selden, The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China, Cambridge: Harvard University, 1971, pp. 152 - 157.
[2] Kitahara Tatsuo, Japanese army specialist on communism, quoted in Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931-1945, New York: Pantheon, 1978, p. 94.
[3] See the PLP article "The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the Reversal of Worker's Power in China," http://www.plp.org/rr3/gpcr.html.
[4] Miscellany of Mao Tse-Tung Thought (1949-1968), Joint Publications Research Service, JPRS 61269-2, 20 Feb. 1974, vol. I, p. 233.
[5] L. Dittmer, Liu Shao-ch'i and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Berkeley: University of California, 1974, p. 186.
[6] "Disprove the `Communism Breeds Laziness' Theory," Wen Hui Bao, October 23, 1958, translated in Survey of China Mainland Press, #1900.
[7] F. Teiwes and W. Sun, China's Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians, and Provincial Leaders in the Unfolding of the Great Leap Forward 1955-1959, Armonk: M. E. Sharp, 1999, pp. 213 - 222.
[8] See "Whither China?" by the "Ultra-Left" group Shengwulian, in K. Mehnert, Peking and the New Left, Berkeley, University of California, 1969.
[9] J. Daubier, A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, New York: Vintage, 1974, pp. 124 - 131; J. Domes, China After the Cultural Revolution, Berkeley: University of California, 1977, pp. 85 - 88.

 

1. Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' Dogfight
   Imperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children
2. Anti-Racists Victorious In Showdown With Fascist Court System
3. LATINO WORKERS REJECT LIBERALS, PLEDGE TO PACK COURTROOM
4. French-U.S. Bosses' Current Love Affair
5. Whither Cuba?
   State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?
6. Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona
   Airport, Fight Job Cuts
7. Hotel Union Uses Immigration `Reform' to Sidetrack Potential Walkout
8. THOUSANDS OF DISSIDENT WORKERS MARCH IN VENEZUELA
9. CHALLENGE A Weapon to Unite Workers, Reject Divisive Nationalism
10. Power of Working Class Shines Amid Fascist Repression
11. PLP Anti-Racist Base Can Unite Katrina Victims Against Bosses' System
12. Teachers Challenge Pro-War AFT Hacks
13. Anti-Racist, Anti-War Resolutions At AFSCME Convention
14. DeMOCKracy in Iraq:
    Three Strikers Murdered in Kurdistan
15. NY City Workers:
    Red Politics Can Expose `Coalition of Sellouts' and War Contract
16. LETTERS
    1. Con Ed Profits From Workers Misery
    2. Campus Workers Unite Against Boss's Squeeze
    3. Reds True Fighters Against Anti-Semitism
    4. French Reader Gets Kick Out of Anti-Racist Football Article
    5. Israeli Move Part of U.S. Plan?
17. Communist School Stresses Crucial Role of Industrial Workers
18. Mexican Elections Won't Change Workers' Lives
19. REDEYE
    1. Officers's order in Iraqi: kill all able men
    2. Imperialist boundaries poison Mid-East
    3. Nixon adviser says fascism is real threat
    4. `For a good person to do evil, takes religion?'
    5. Dixie Chicks say religion keeps us down
    6. Judge bars Wal-Mart workers' health $
    7. US-Israel axis devastates Lebanon
    8. The poor pay extra for what they buy
20. 70 Years Ago Spain's Workers Led Fight Against Fascism
21. Years After `Peace Accords' Death Squads Back in El Salvador
22. U.S. Rulers Killed 1,000 World War 1 Vets in 1935 `Katrina'

---

Religion, Oil Pipelines and Bosses' Dogfight
Imperialist War Massacres Workers and Their Children

In attacking Hezbollah, Israel's fascist leaders further intensified both regional conflicts and the global rivalry among imperialists. The Israelis bit off more than they could chew. Having underestimated the resiliency of Hezbollah's underground network and the size of its arsenal, Israel's top brass now know that they need a ground war, not just air strikes, and have called up thousands of reservists.

Bombing Lebanese civilians has only inflamed hatred of Israel and its U.S. backers and built pro-Hezbollah sentiment from Gaza to Indonesia. [Supporting Hezbollah, however, is a grave political mistake. Hezbollah is a racist and fundamentally capitalist organization that takes orders from Iranian oil billionaires cloaked as ayatollahs.] In addition, with arms flowing from the U.S. to Israel and from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, the local clash is rapidly evolving into an escalating proxy war that deepens the divide between U.S. imperialists mired in Iraq and a host of challengers. At stake in the broader struggle are control of the entire Middle East and its oil and the lives of millions -- as cannon fodder or "collateral damage."

"The United States is already at war with Iran; but for the time being the battle is being fought through surrogates," wrote former ABC-TV news anchor Ted Koppel in the New York Times (7/21) citing, a "senior Jordanian intelligence official." Koppel and the Jordanian spy chief note Iran's gift of 12,000 rockets to Hezbollah and "more than $300 million in cash" to Hamas, "funneled through Syria" (although they fail to mention the U.S. rulers' annual $3 billion "contribution" to the Israeli war machine).

But the real cause of the current crisis, Koppel says, is the botched U.S. invasion of Iraq. Failing to replace Saddam Hussein with an effective occupying regime meant "tearing down the wall that had kept Iran in check." That failure has had other destabilizing effects.

While Israel and Hezbollah were busy murdering children, Iraq's oil minister Husain Al Shahristani met in Washington with executives of Exxon Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, Shell and BP (France's oil giant Total was conspicuously absent). Assuring the U.S. and British oil barons of first crack "in expanding Iraq's oil sector and developing new fields" (Associated Press, 7/28), he lamented that it would take at least four years to bring production even to pre-war peaks of four million barrels a day (mbd). U.S. rulers, represented by the Establishment's Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), as well as Bush's neocons, had projected a 6-mbd post-invasion output that would help spread prosperity, tranquility and pro-U.S. politics throughout the Mideast.

Leslie Gelb, ex-president of the CFR, calls Bush's Iraq fiasco the U.S.'s chief obstacle in dealing with Lebanon. "Mr. Bush has to restore America's military credibility....[H]e is so bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan that he cannot and will not take strong military action anywhere else." (Wall Street Journal, 7/28) Gelb says, "If Syria or Iran...stepped up unacceptable military operations in either Iraq or Lebanon, the U.S. could threaten...air attacks against Iranian and Syrian air-defense missiles and radars, air strikes against Iranian naval forces and oil depots, and cross-boarder raids into Syria to disrupt support of Iraqi insurgents."

Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, also sees Iraq policy as key to the problem but draws a different conclusion. "It is precisely our actions in Iraq that have opened the door for Iran and Syria to support Hezbollah and Hamas actions without much to fear from the U.S." ("Nieman Watch," Harvard University, 7/17) But Odom (like Rep. Murtha) calls for a U.S. "tactical retreat" from Iraq followed by a wider "counter-offensive" in the Mid-East, uniting the U.S. and "a coalition of the major states of Europe and East Asia."

In fact, U.S. rulers may not be sure of what to do. It's not strategic vision they lack; they have oil on the brain. What's missing for them are masses of people willing to shed blood for U.S. imperialism. Israel's bosses have the same problem and hesitate to send reservists into Lebanon.

An overlooked aspect of the fighting in Lebanon is the emergence of the eastern Mediterranean as a major oil transit hub. July 13 marked the opening of a U.S.-sponsored one-million-barrel-a-day oil pipeline, originating in the Caspian region and deliberately by-passing Russia, which ends at the Turkish port of Ceyhan, directly north of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. But more important is the 1.6-mbd pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq that also discharges in Ceyhan. Although insurgents have severely damaged the pipeline, Exxon Mobil lifted 2.1 million barrels of Iraqi crude from Ceyhan in one recent week. (Reuters, 7/29)

Washington, no doubt, expects Israel -- which now gets a fifth of its oil through Ceyhan -- to increase its naval influence over adjacent shores. The Russians, however, much of whose oil exports enter the Mediterranean through Turkey's nearby Bosporus strait, have conflicting ideas. They're dredging Syria's Mediterranean port at Tartus, preparing to move the bulk of their Black Sea fleet there from Sevastopol (Kommerzant, Moscow, translated by Global Research, 7/28).

One trap for workers to avoid is rooting for the phony "anti-imperialists" like Hezbollah and Hamas, who actually abet the imperialist designs of Iran, Russia, China and the European Union (EU). Another is falling for the "peace" plans proposed at the UN. The U.S. wants Hezbollah disarmed, and NATO to occupy southern Lebanon. The EU, seconded by Russia and China, wants a UN force, and Hezbollah retained as a foil to Israel and the U.S. All the players here are acting in the deadly self-interests of various sets of capitalists.

As we've constantly pointed out, the international working class has absolutely no interest in siding with any of these murderous bosses. War is widening. We must raise this issue in all our shops, unions, campuses and mass organizations. Building a mass PLP and winning workers in all these areas to red politics is the order of the day. The only road to ending these killer wars is the one leading to communist revolution. Join us.

Anti-Racists Victorious In Showdown With Fascist Court System

FARMINGVILLE, NY, July 31 -- Attacks against Latino workers continue apace in Suffolk County, Long Island. Day laborers evicted from their homes continue to camp in the woods near Farmingville and allies of the fascist Minutemen continue to harass them and their prospective employers with photo and video cameras.

One year ago three anti-racist fighters were arrested for the "crime" of demonstrating in solidarity with these workers, under attack from a leader of the fascist anti-immigrant Sachem Quality of Life organization. Our militant picket line put him and his group -- openly affiliated with other anti-immigrant racists such as the Minutemen -- on the defensive. Workers that day appreciated our anti-racist presence and responded to our call for international working-class unity by joining our demonstration.

Our counter-attack against these arrests has seen that call spread more widely, growing out of this struggle. Hundreds of students and workers have packed the courtroom and seen the criminal INjustice system for what it is -- fascism at work. The cops themselves openly declared that they can arrest anyone they want at any time during any demonstration they don't like. The deep truth of our slogan, "The Cops, The Courts, The Ku Klux Klan, All a Part of the Bosses' Plan, has become apparent to more of our friends.

We took the offensive by reaching out to our base in the mass organizations and they responded by filling the courtroom every day. Some days we had 60 people for a courtroom made for 36 and some had to sit outside the courtroom. Other days we squeezed up to 50 people into the small room. We provided the political leadership for our attorneys who were ultimately won to the outlook of fighting for all three defendants as a whole, of jamming the courtroom with supporters and of making our politics primary throughout the entire trial. After one year, momentum continues to build (see box page 3).

At the close of the trial, after forty court appearances, all the defendants were found not guilty on all charges.

But the real victory here is the deepened political understanding we developed, a victory beyond the influence of any judge's decision. It belongs to ALL workers.

Interaction with workers on Long Island confirms that despite the constant bombardment of patriotic garbage generated by rulers both here and in Latin America, a deep reserve of internationalist sentiment persists in the broader working class. A creeping suspicion of liberals and Congress also persists. We must substantiate this through painstaking base-building in the heat of struggle.

We don't welcome arrests but neither shall fear of them paralyze us. To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing. We're learning that workers won to communist ideas are the ultimate and only power which can smash the capitalists and their courts, cops and jails. Each fight is an opportunity to reveal the enemy's weaknesses, a chance to learn and grow on a more solid basis than before. u

LATINO WORKERS REJECT LIBERALS, PLEDGE TO PACK COURTROOM

On July 14, two defendants and several friends were well-received at an action meeting/forum organized by the Workplace Project, an organization providing legal and other services to workers on Long Island. Panelists reviewed legislation pending in Congress as well as urged voting and unity between blacks and Latinos.

One defendant questioned the panelists as to why they recommended voting as the next phase of the "migrants' rights movement" if the same imperialists who want to send Latino youth to the Mid-East and who exploit Latin America are the ones who will pass the more liberal immigration bill some hope for. While the workers gathered that evening applauded the question delivered in Spanish), the same wasn't true for any of the panelists' answers.

Several attendees agreed to help pack the courtroom for the defense case and closing arguments and they did.

French-U.S. Bosses' Current Love Affair

Flashback: February 17, 2003. In San Francisco, 150,000 people rally against the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. David Harris, a founder of the Vietnam War draft resistance, tells the crowd: "We're here to say `Thank you, France.'"

Maybe it seemed like the right thing to say. After all, just three days earlier French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin won an ovation when he told the UN Security Council that the use of force against Iraq was unjustified. Within a month, French president Jacques Chirac would threaten to veto UN support for the U.S. invasion.

But today the opposite seems true. France backs the U.S. on every important foreign policy issue: Israel, Iran, North Korea.... On Feb. 9, 2005, the French elite applauded Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice when she affirmed U.S. police power over "states where corruption and chaos and cruelty reign." That day, a Radio France Internationale reporter summed up France's new position: no timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, support for the Iraqi elections and for NATO intervention in Iraq.

Clearly, the French ruling class was never really committed to fighting against war and imperialism. But French bosses did see the invasion of Iraq as part of a plan to establish uncontested U.S. hegemony worldwide, and leave French bosses with a smaller slice of the world pie, according to Jean-Paul Hébert, a researcher at the school of higher studies in social sciences.

The French bosses thought their European counterparts would follow their lead in opposing the U.S. They were wrong. Former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine ruefully told a Le Monde-hosted internet chat, "The great majority of Europeans [i.e. European bosses] do not want to enter into a logic of being a counterweight [to the U.S.]. They think it's preferable to have good relations with the U.S. in the hope of influencing the U.S., even though that hope is illusory."

When French bosses saw which way the wind was blowing, they then ditched the anti-war movement and buddied up to the U.S. bosses. This proves, once again, that the anti-war movement can only rely on the working class and its soldier and student allies, because they're the sole groups in whose class interest it is to oppose imperialist war.

Any lingering doubts about the bosses' cynicism should consider how the France-U.S. rapprochement evolved, as laid out in a two-page spread in the April 6 Le Monde (the bosses' main newspaper for communicating their ideas to the French elites).

In the Fall of 2003 -- just months after the invasion of Iraq -- French president Chirac became worried about Syrian efforts to muscle the French bosses out of Lebanon. When Syrian president Bashar al-Assad turned a deaf ear to his protests, Chirac hinted to George Bush at the June 2004 D-Day commemoration that Lebanon needed "democracy." Within two months, Maurice Gourdault-Montague, Chirac's diplomatic advisor, and Condoleeza Rice, then Bush's national security advisor, were huddled together over Rice's laptop, pounding out the UN resolution that forced Syrian troops out of Lebanon.

Ever since, France has been playing "good cop" in the Arab world to the U.S. "bad cop," according to an unnamed French diplomat quoted in Le Monde. French diplomats advise Arab rulers that they [the French] are "restraining" the U.S., but the Arab rulers must toe the line because otherwise the U.S. will clobber them. The French bosses flatter themselves, that they're playing a role in world affairs by acting as U.S. messenger boy (although the destruction of "democratic" Lebanon by the U.S.-backed Israeli fascists might put a glitch in this love affair).

Nevertheless, Le Monde warns that the rapprochement is just a marriage of convenience. And Hubert Védrine warns that "China is...a future major world pole...an increasingly formidable trade rival, maybe an eventual military threat..." Védrine admonishes European bosses to "abandon their naivety" about U.S. intentions because "the world is changing before our eyes: new powers are emerging, a multi-polar world that excludes Europe could develop, China is growing in strength, with all that that implies, etc." Some French bosses want to be free to choose sides in a U.S.-China confrontation.

The front-runner for the "Socialist" Party nomination, and odds-on winner in next year's French presidential elections, is Ségolène Royale. She advanced her foreign policy aims in a June 22 interview in Le Monde. "Europe must not be on the defensive, but on the offensive," she said, "I deplore the defeatist talk of certain elites."

Once burnt, twice shy: If the French bosses think it's in their interest, they will again break with U.S. imperialism, and again pose as "friends" of the anti-war movement. No imperialist is truly against spilling workers' blood in endless wars for control of the oil that fuels their profit machines. Wars can't be fought by allying with one imperialist gang against another. It can only be done by ending its causes -- capitalism and imperialism -- and by building a mass revolutionary communist movement.

Whither Cuba?
State Capitalism or Back to a U.S. Colony?

Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul Castro after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding. Many, particularly in the Bush administration and among Miami's right-wing Cuban exiles, have already announced his death. The question is, whither Cuba after Fidel?

Cuba is not a communist country but rather is state-capitalist retaining some concessions won by workers from the revolution's early stages. But workers don't run Cuba; it is run by the state-capitalist rulers led by Fidel (and now Raúl).

The Miami exiles and the Bush gang want to turn Cuba into a U.S. colony as it was from the 1898 U.S.-Spain war until 1959, when U.S.-backed dictator Batista was ousted. But this scenario is not exactly a given because the world today is not what it used to be 50 years ago when U.S. imperialism basically ruled Latin America and the Caribbean as its backyard. Now many other rivals have landed there: China, European bosses and even Russia -- which Fidel turned to when Washington began trying to oust and/or kill him. Russia is making a comeback; witness the recent billion-dollar weapon and trade deal with Venezuela. And local bosses are grabbing their cut, as evidenced by a meeting last month in Argentina of Mercosur, a Latin American free trade group. In Cuba itself, recent discoveries of huge offshore oil reserves have attracted oil company investments from Norway to China (with U.S. oil moguls shut out).

The most probable scenario of a post-Fidel Cuba more likely resembles China or Vietnam, with the current state-capitalist ruling class maintaining power and opening the economy to even more imperialist investments. Some in Miami hope the U.S. will invade Cuba if Fidel dies and provoke chaos there. This could happen, but with the U.S. quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan (and possibly Lebanon since their Israeli ally's "blitzkrieg" seems to be backfiring), this scenario is not a given either.

Whatever happens, Cuba's workers will not emerge winning. The key element needed right now is a real revolutionary communist leadership to fight for true workers' power.

Wildcat Strikers Take Over Barcelona
Airport, Fight Job Cuts

BARCELONA, Spain, July 31 -- Facing the contracting out of 4,000 jobs nationwide, and a do-nothing union leadership, on July 28 hundreds of baggage handlers took matter into their own hands and wildcatted, taking over the El Prat airport here -- one of Spain's largest -- blocking runways and preventing all flights from landing or departing.

This was the workers' answer to the growing attacks against their jobs -- similar to those suffered by airport and airline workers and other workers worldwide. AENA, the airport authority, ended its contract with Iberia Airlines. Union leaders told the workers about the looming job losses but didn't lift a finger to stop it. Coming smack in the middle of the high summer season, the militant action had a maximum effect, forcing cancellation of hundreds of flights until the bosses agreed to workers' demands.

Immediately, the bosses took the offensive. An editorial in El País, Spain's leading liberal newspaper, basically labeled the workers "terrorists," stating such "savage actions" should be banned. A judge is now threatening the workers with "crimes against airport security."

The workers did the right thing, not waiting passively for their union hacks to make a sweetheart deal with the bosses. While the union leaders were holding mass meetings, the workers ran them out and took over the hall, deciding on the wildcat strike.

Workers are fed up with capitalism, making them pay for the bosses' crises and endless wars. This kind of militant action can become a school for communism if a revolutionary leadership is built among such militant workers.

Hotel Union Uses Immigration `Reform' to Sidetrack Potential Walkout

LOS ANGELES -- Hotel workers in the LAX airport corridor are preparing for a strike this fall, probably together with those in other cities. But the UNITE-HERE union leaders are building a political movement that only benefits the bosses and their war plans.

Hotels like the LAX Hilton pay immigrant workers less than a living wage to boost profits. Housekeepers, servers and others -- many from Mexico and Central America -- make as little as $7.60/hour even after 20 years. Health insurance costs up to $300 monthly. "We want to change the community," said a server with 19 years on the job. "We want to work one job instead of two, we want to have more time with our families. It's not just for us, it's for our kids."

Hilton and Westin workers are becoming leaders, defying bosses who charge them with "insubordination" for "crimes" like requesting a rule book. When a union activist was suspended recently, 75 co-workers sat down in the cafeteria to support him. When they, too, were suspended for six days, they picketed the hotel daily until the suspensions were lifted.

"People are scared -- not of a strike, but of other employees staying inside," said a union organizer. The union exploits that fear by building reliance on clergy and politicians instead of on the workers themselves. A recent march began with hundreds of enthusiastic workers chanting loudly but ended with staged arrests of a dozen clergy and other supporters in front of the Hilton, amid a massive, intimidating police presence. As the hotel workers drifted away, most of the energy disappeared.

UNITE-HERE doesn't expect a strike to win anything so they work closely with the City Council to legally extend the "living wage" ordinance now covering the airport to cover the nearby hotels. At best, that could raise wages to $10/hour -- still not enough to support a family here, even with two wage-earners working full time!

This small step -- which the bosses can wipe out easily by raising health premiums -- would come at tremendous political cost. When workers rely on politicians, they tie themselves to the same capitalist system that causes their exploitation. This is UNITE-HERE's plan for LAX hotel workers.

So far, it has mobilized workers around immediate issues: insufficient staff or equipment, speed-up, no breaks, no respect, high cost of health insurance. But with a multi-state hotel strike likely, union leaders are redirecting workers' militancy into supporting liberal rulers' "immigration reform."

New union literature highlights the "American Dream," denied to hotel workers, and calls for a "pathway to citizenship" to supposedly make this dream a reality. What lies! Across the U.S., tens of millions of citizen-workers realize that life under capitalism is a nightmare, not a dream.

This "pathway to citizenship" (actually an obstacle course) is the main distinction between the Hagel-Martinez Senate immigration bill and the Sensenbrenner House bill. It's a cruel trick designed to build patriotism among immigrant workers so they'll fill the huge holes in the bosses' military. As CHALLENGE has noted, the U.S. military desperately needs "more boots on the ground" and immigration is likely to be the only source of population growth in the 18-24 age group for some time. UNITE-HERE's "American Dream" campaign is playing right into their hands. Witness the "democracy" U.S. rulers and their Israeli lieutenants are bringing to workers from Baghdad to Beirut!

"I never thought of the connection between immigration and war before," said one hotel worker, "but it really does make sense." Imperialist wars and all other curses of capitalism can only be ended with communist revolution. That's why CHALLENGE readers must spread this paper to more hotel workers. We must mobilize our friends and co-workers to bring these important ideas to the picket lines, to workers' homes, and to the September 28 march on the Hilton headquarters in Beverly Hills. The bosses are fighting for the loyalty of these workers. We must fight back.

THOUSANDS OF DISSIDENT WORKERS MARCH IN VENEZUELA

CARACAS, July 19 -- Thousands of trade unionists marched to the National Assembly today, demanding respect for workers' rights. This was not a right-wing action but one organized by a militant caucus opposing the hacks leading the UNT (the Union Federation formed by pro-Chavez union leaders to counter the CTV, the virtually defunct pro-U.S. and pro-AFL-CIO federation). Other mass organizations joined the march.

The workers were protesting the constant violations of union contracts by private and government bosses, firings, low wages and the lack of job security. They also opposed joint ventures by the government with private international oil companies which attack energy workers. The marchers also defended workers who have seized plants abandoned by their bosses.

However, these workers, including the dissident militant C-CURA caucus inside the UNT), still have many illusions in Chavez's so-called "Bolivarian Socialism of the 21st Century." This is a deadly mistake. Workers need to build their own revolutionary leadership and fight for real workers power without any bosses -- communism.

CHALLENGE A Weapon to Unite Workers, Reject Divisive Nationalism

Seven young Washington, D.C. students and workers went to New Orleans with a group that prioritizes resident empowerment and brings displaced residents back to the city.

We had many sharp political discussions. The highlights of the trip were the levee tour (see next issue) and CHALLENGE sales.

We sold CHALLENGE to day laborers at Lowe's Hardware store, speaking to several workers about uniting black residents with super-exploited workers from Latin America. Anxieties over our Spanish skills dissolved once we began talking with the workers. Although not everyone in our group spoke Spanish, the workers still appreciated the effort and support from everyone. They were very receptive to the ideas and took about 10 papers for fellow workers. One man from Mexico said, "So how do we get together to work on this?" He gave us his name and number, as did two other workers.

The Iberville Project residents were also very receptive. Some had already seen the paper, giving us hope for sustainable Party work here. We spoke with some young men interested in the Middle East situation and in growing fascism here. They said the U.S. was trying to "take over" resources there. One talked about the cops' harassment of black people, specifically of those in the projects. We distributed 15 CHALLENGES. Three people asked us to contact them about talking politics and taking action.

We also discussed black nationalism and fighting racism. Some volunteers we met have a black nationalist outlook. One stressed that black people should do most of the talking with residents door to door, while white workers in the group should stay in the background taking notes. Our multi-racial group was turned off by this idea. Some people thought black residents wouldn't talk to white workers. This directly contradicted our positive experience with Latino workers at Lowe's and black workers at the Iberville Projects.

While the group we worked in focuses on building black leadership, an important goal, and while black workers will surely be leaders of the revolutionary communist struggle, no revolution can succeed without a unified multi-racial fight against racism and capitalism. Hopefully, as the organization develops able black leadership, a sharp political struggle for communist politics within the organization will point in a winning direction.

This experience strengthened our collective and built communist ideas in the future PLP'ers who came with us. We encourage everyone considering going to New Orleans to go, not only with the idea of easing suffering, but of ending it altogether with communist revolution.

Power of Working Class Shines Amid Fascist Repression

July 28 -- "I think the whole system is designed to keep us down -- from the schools to the jails -- not just FEMA and the storm. It's the whole rotten system." So declared an angry black working-class resident in the devastated area called New Orleans East.A group of teachers, parents and student volunteers traveled to this city to work, learn and participate in its sharp class struggle. Our multi-racial contingent spent a week gutting homes, visiting displaced residents, viewing Katrina's destruction and getting to know other volunteers.

We learned many valuable political lessons, the key one being the power of the working class. We saw what we could do by sharing tasks, helping each other and making decisions collectively. We also saw how strong many of the residents were who continue to fight, organize and speak their minds as they try to rebuild their lives and communities.

We met residents from the Iberville Projects who took back their apartments, and residents from New Orleans East whose homes were demolished and who were open to organizing groups such as the Survivors Councils. We met others who were courageous during Katrina and who saved neighbors' and friends' lives, contrary to the racist images the media portrayed.

We saw the growth of fascism with our own eyes -- while much of the city is abandoned and strewn with debris (including asbestos), the National Guard is patrolling in army vehicles, pulling over residents, mostly young black men. There's a curfew and few if any services for those who have returned. While there is a growing grassroots movement to encourage residents to come home ("the right of return"), it's clear that the ruling class continues to force those who do return to live in deplorable conditions.

The majority of homes in the Lower Ninth Ward are still abandoned and have signs spray-painted on them by FEMA marking the number of dead and living people and animals found upon inspection last September.

We also had great discussions with volunteers, residents and Summer Project staff at work sites and at daily evening meetings on grassroots organizing, a vanguard movement, nationalism and class, and about what it means to devote your life to changing society. High schools students led an evening workshop on the role of sexism.

The Project here is very much focused on high school students, revealing how they are an important ally of the working class and how willing some young people are to do hard work, to grapple with political ideas and to fight back! We pledged to return to New Orleans this winter with even larger contingents and to continue to show our solidarity with the struggling workers there.

PLP Anti-Racist Base Can Unite Katrina Victims Against Bosses' System

New Orleans is symbolic of both the utter callousness of the capitalists and the matchless collective spirit of the working class. It's a situation which exemplifies both the challenges and the opportunities that lie ahead to winning working people to PLP's communist politics.

Terry, a woman living here in the middle-income neighborhood of Gentilly, told us her story. Because Gentilly is not on a flood plain, Terry and some of her neighbors stayed to wait for Katrina to pass. They'd been through hurricanes before. However, they hadn't known that the canals surrounding the neighborhood would overflow when the levee broke several miles away.

As Terry walked through her house to get her family out, the water rose from her knees to her neck in minutes. Her family, along with about 50 neighbors, took shelter in a two-story house. Her son and his friend, both over 6 feet, rescued 17 people, including three children, one a baby. Terry and her neighbors were rescued from the second floor and taken to the Superdome.

She described the conditions we've all heard about: no bathrooms, no food, no water. National Guardsmen first told them they couldn't leave but later, when they managed to get outside, they were told they couldn't go back in. They slept on the sidewalk. Eventually, they were bussed to San Antonio. She said she would have stayed there, but her mother wanted to come "home."

Many New Orleanians want to return to the only home they've ever known. However, the city, state, and federal governments -- racist to the core -- are making that next to impossible for poor black people.

Several Chicago students and teachers traveled here recently to help organize people who want to fight for the right of return. It was an amazing experience.

In addition to Terry, we heard many other stories highlighting the complete disregard by the ruling class towards people in the path of Katrina, especially the most disadvantaged. Those left behind to die were the same people who this system has always treated as disposable -- not just here, but everywhere. Many Chicagoans noted the similarities between the plan to use Katrina to turn New Orleans into a whiter, wealthier city and Mayor Daley's gentrification schemes for Chicago.

Although we saw many horrors and heard many stories of governmental abuse and neglect, we also had reason for hope. Thousands of volunteers are here from across the U.S. Despite living under a capitalist system, where profits are valued above people, these volunteers have come during the hot Gulf Coast summer to help gut houses, feed people, and provide other services. Many New Orleanians are fighting the government's refusal to let them rebuild their homes. There are beginnings of unity between black and immigrant workers. Building an anti-racist base for PLP can solidify this unity and point out to Katrina's victims both the source of their plight -- capitalism -- and the solution: workers power.

Teachers Challenge Pro-War AFT Hacks

BOSTON, July 25 -- The leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) used the union's international convention here to justify the bombing and invasion of Lebanon by Israel, helping to pave the way for major war in the Middle East. More than 1,000 delegates voted against the leadership's pro-war proposal.

Many had read the 500 CHALLENGES and 5,000 daily CHALLENGE flyers distributed by PLP'ers, with an editorial each day on that day's topic. The literature included PLP's advocacy of revolutionary communism and our position on many other issues like inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and China; liberal politicians as the main fascist danger; and the racist nature of the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) as well as of the debate on immigration. CHALLENGE was well-received by the delegates; when one resolution (on China) was being debated on the floor, many delegates were poring over our newspaper.

More than 3,000 delegates were in the hall when the President introduced a special order of business on "State-Sponsored Terrorism and the Crisis in the Middle East." Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran were criticized and the right and responsibility of Israel to defend its borders were affirmed. It ignored the acts of the world's biggest terrorists, Bush, Rumsfeld & Co. and their junior partners in the Israeli government.

Delegates lined up at the microphones but debate was shut down in fifteen minutes. The leadership's move follows its consistent support for U.S. imperialist foreign policy by promoting patriotism and anti-communism while trying to steer the membership into the arms of the Democratic Party. Sen. Edward Kennedy was a featured speaker and was introduced as "a great friend of labor," a "friend" who is one of the main sponsors of legislation viciously attacking immigrant workers and whose colleagues like Hillary Clinton want to send even more troops into the Iraq quagmire. (More on Kennedy's role in our next issue.)

During the past two years anti-war sentiment has grown within the union and resolutions condemning the war in Iraq have been presented at state and national conventions. This year four locals submitted resolutions which not only criticized the Bush administration but also the various ways the U.S. is trying to control the Middle East for economic and political reasons. They called for immediate withdrawal.

Right-wing forces centered in the New York State delegation tried to counter these efforts by introducing Resolution #31 which criticizes Bush but not the system. Progressive forces could not defeat #31 within committee but, after sharp debate, amended it to include the phrase "oppose the war" and to call for the removal of all U.S. bases and troops in Iraq.

The passage of amended #31 produced mixed reactions, some feeling that in and of itself this was a victory but actually the real victory was PLP'ers influencing the debate with our anti-imperialist communist position. A major step forward was the formation at this convention of an AFT Peace and Justice Caucus with 130 delegates signing up. This new group has the potential to become a significant mass organization if it reaches out to union members, engaging in anti-war struggles in the schools in between conventions, as well as fighting the racist educational system which, in NYC for instance, had produced the most segregated schools in the country.

PLP members must introduce communist politics into this Caucus, championing reliance on the masses, not on the AFT leadership and their friends in the Democratic Party. (More next issue.)u

Anti-Racist, Anti-War Resolutions At AFSCME Convention

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees' (AFSCME) international leadership plans to spend the second week of August at its Chicago convention fighting to get a dues increase. Although U.S. workers face the growth of fascism and the specter of more and wider imperialist wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, the pro-capitalist union "leaders" agenda is about fattening their business's bottom line.

Many workers understand the need to speak about, and act against, the horrors confronting our class here and worldwide. In AFSCME's New York City District Council 37, affiliated locals have passed several resolutions on such issues as the ongoing racist disaster in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast; immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq; and supporting immigrant rights while attacking both the Sensenbrenner and McCain-Kennedy Bills.

Such resolutions, even if passed, won't change the world, but the struggle over what ideas should lead the working class is part of that change. Many delegates, like those in the locals which passed these three resolutions, honestly want to act on the problems we face.

Therefore, it is crucial for our co-workers to understand that these problems cannot be solved by electing "good politicians," or by trying to reform that which can't be reformed. They are inherent in the profit system. Our goal must be to destroy it. Progressive Labor Party will be offering our revolutionary communist solutions for their consideration.

DeMOCKracy in Iraq:
Three Strikers Murdered in Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan, run by pro-U.S. hacks, has a reputation for being free of the daily butchery flooding the rest of the U.S.-occupied country. But it seems this doesn't apply to workers fighting back. On July 27, police and "security" forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) opened fire on 700 workers on strike against the Tasloja Cement Factory near Suleiumanyian. Three workers were murdered and 16 were injured.

The strikers were demanding higher wages and the re-hiring of 300 fired workers. The cops and security forces dealt with these workers as if they were "insurgents."

But what else can be expected from the (PUK) rulers? They've committed the same atrocities for years against anyone opposing their capitalist masters (several of the PUK leaders are millionaires).

This is the kind of "democratic freedom" the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys are imposing on the workers of the Middle East.

NY City Workers:
Red Politics Can Expose `Coalition of Sellouts' and War Contract

NEW YORK CITY, July 18 -- When District Council 37 of AFSCME announced a new contract covering nearly half the city's workforce, it signaled an attempt by the Bloomberg administration to impose its terms on all other city unions. Its 10% wage increase over 32 months barely keeps pace with inflation, and only seems like an "advance" when compared to the last contract -- ZERO percent for one year. Although touted as a "no-give-back" contract, it retains the two-tier give-back initiated in the last contract which pays new workers lower wages for their first two years. All this clears the decks for billionaire mayor Bloomberg to launch a campaign to wring give-backs from pensions and health benefits down the road.

Bloomberg's ruling class is driven to force such cuts in workers' conditions because of U.S. capitalism's problems worldwide: competition from imperialist rivals in Europe, China and Japan; a huge trade deficit; a losing quagmire in Iraq costing hundreds of billions; and an exploding war in the Middle East by imperialist clients sending the cost of oil skyrocketing. All this is impelling the ruling class to break unions and make workers pay for the bosses' crisis. This is fascism at the workplace.

The rulers' primary defense against working-class revolt is their state power -- laws, courts, police, military -- and their ideological control through their media and schools. But to avoid exposing the state (their government) as a dictatorship of capital, they have the union leaders to contain class struggle within the limits of the contract, head off or limit strikes and win workers to think they must accept their lot.

As "leaders" who defend the profit system, they are pro-capitalist agents of the bosses in the workers' ranks. Therefore, they must get workers to knuckle under to the bosses' need to save their system on the workers' backs. Knowing that there is "widespread grumbling among municipal workers" (NY Times, 7/13), these union lieutenants of the bosses look for ways to keep the wraps on this anger. So 20 other unions in the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) -- about half the city's workforce -- declared they will bargain "together" to counter any "pattern" set by DC 37. Already the city bosses are hinting they might not even negotiate with such a "coalition."

But this dancing back and forth between these two "sides" is designed to try to pull the wool over the rank-and-file's eyes. As the Times says, this MLC move "is partly a response to" that "widespread grumbling." When bargaining individually, union leaders like Randi Weingarten, MLC head and president of the teachers union, have been selling out their membership for years. A big coalition of 20 such hacks will only produce a bigger sellout.

Riding off the rank-and-file unity that developed in the transit strike, these union fakers hope that putting forward the tactic of 20 unions bargaining together will lead workers to think such unity will produce a better contract. But this is not rank-and-file unity; it is unity of the bosses' agents to head off workers' anger and save the "leaders" skins.

Real working-class unity can only flow from leadership that defies the bosses' system, red leadership. Some of that has been provided among city workers throughout PLP's existence. This is leadership that not only stands ready to break the bosses' laws, but also points out that reforms cannot solve problems inherent in capitalism, a system that puts profits first and workers on the garbage heap.

This unity also includes multi-racial unity, and a fight against racism, given that a huge number, if not a majority, of the city workers are black and Latino. These union misleaders have never led a concerted struggle against the racist bosses who have oppressed city workers and students, especially the black and Latino majority.

Victory in this contract struggle means spreading the revolutionary ideas of CHALLENGE which will help workers unite to fight the bosses, not bow to them, and will win workers to understand that only destroying the system and replacing it with workers power -- communism -- can solve our problems. This means expanding the circulation of the paper, developing more networks of CHALLENGE distributors, recruiting more workers to study-action groups and to joining PLP. Unity growing out of that kind of struggle is the opposite of the union leaders' "unity," which unites with the bosses' system.

LETTERS

Con Ed Profits From Workers Misery

The suffering, hardship and death in Queens, NY, along with new outages on NYC's Staten Island and the over 100 heat-related deaths in California all due to power blackouts continue the bosses' war on the working class. The growing fascist control and manipulation of the news we get turns the world upside down and distorts the truth, from Iraq to New Orleans to Queens. What about the thousands of 100-year-old feeder cables rotting because of no repair or replacement? What about the billions Con Ed bills us for while they warn us of power shortages and tell us to cut back on our use of electricity, a basic need to sustain life in the cities?

In a city boasting one of the greatest concentrations of wealth in the world, with the country's biggest utility -- possessing $25 billion in assets and $12 billion in annual revenues -- working-class families are forced to throw out food and go without lights or air conditioning in 95-degree weather, especially the aged and sick.

Electric power, like all capitalist products, is a commodity sold for profit. When the cost of building new generation plants and maintaining the infrastructure cuts into profits, the utilities slash supply and have reduced the workforce by 35% over 20 years, down to skeleton crews barely capable of making repairs when neglected equipment fails. When the City-owned, bondholder-controlled transit system was denied fare increases, it followed the same scenario until major derailments and service disruptions forced workers to approve a staggering bond issue providing billions in new taxes to rebuild the system.

Now it seems Con Ed may be going the same route. Money the government used to give them and other utilities now finances dozens of wars launched or sponsored by the U.S. ruling class to protect their profits and dominance.

Fascism is increasing because the bosses fear workers' growing unrest and anger at their rotten system that extracts profits from workers' misery and death. Con Ed fed us misinformation for almost two weeks, saying the power loss was a "minor problem" involving a few hundred people; then it became 1,800; then 25,000 and finally 100,000. If one adds homes and apartments with reduced voltage affecting lights, air conditioning and elevators, the figures reach 200,000 victims of Con Ed profiteering. But just as Con Ed turns truth from day to night, workers organizing for revolution will change capitalist night into a communist day.

A Comrade

Campus Workers Unite Against Boss's Squeeze

The class struggle is picking up at my NYC campus. The bosses are squeezing the workers -- what few remain after a round of firings -- for more and more work. The bosses are also using all their tricks to reduce costs.

However, recently all the members of one crew began fighting back, signing a letter to the "big boss" complaining about the workload. Standing together will make us stronger and enable us to resist attacks. The "big boss" sent quite a nasty letter in return, but our point got across.

At this jobsite a modest number of workers are reading CHALLENGE and being confronted with revolutionary communist ideas. Although this reform struggle seems small, the ideas in CHALLENGE are shaping this into a revolutionary one. While the class struggle continues with or without communist ideas, the responsibility lies with communists to bring red ideas to the fore and fight for political leadership of the working class.

For example, in this struggle it is crucial to point out that given the new social contract (fascism) under which we live, conditions will worsen. No matter how hard we fight or what few reforms we may win, our gains will be taken away. Workers here and everywhere must realize that only through communist revolution can we end the misery we face on and off the job.

Young Red Worker

Reds True Fighters Against Anti-Semitism

The Sunday NY Times Book Review (7/23) carried a review of  Jan Gross's book, "Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz," by David Margolick, which slandered communists, the real fighters against anti-Semitism. The review says the following about the July 4, 1946 murderous anti-Semitic attack, or "pogrom," when Poles murdered 42 Jews in the Polish city of Kielce, a year after World War II ended:

"Days before the pogrom, the Polish primate, Cardinal August Hlold, had spurned Jewish entreaties to condemn Roman Catholic anti-Semitism. Afterward, he charged that by leading the effort to impose Communism on Poland -- Jews were in fact prominent in the party, though hardly in control -- the Jews had only themselves to blame. The point was seconded by the bishop of Kielce, who suggested that Jews had actually orchestrated the unrest to persuade Britain to hand over Palestine. It was a neat trick: being Communists and Zionists simultaneously. Only the bishop of Czestochowa condemned the killings, and was promptly reprimanded by his colleagues. One wonders how Karol Wojtyla, then a young seminarian, later Pope John Paul II, viewed this cesspool of ignorance and intolerance."

So the Roman Catholic Church, evidently including the later "saintly" Pope Karol Wojtyla, either did nothing or actively blamed the Jews themselves!

Then Margolick says, "If the Church gave the Jews short shrift, the same was true of the Communists, even the Jewish ones. For them, ignoring the Jewish plight, as well as Polish complicity in wartime atrocities, offered a way to ingratiate themselves with a wary nation."

This is a lie. The communists did NOT "ignore the Jewish plight."

Margolick has to know -- but fails to mention -- that Polish and Soviet communist leaders moved swiftly to severely punish those responsible for the murderous anti-Semitic pogrom. They compelled everyone in Kielce, 10,000 people, to watch the funeral procession for those murdered Jews.

Five days later, the communists put 38 pogrom participants on trial. Nine were sentenced to death and executed on July 12, 1946. (*See bottom for website source.)

Evidently the Times' reviewer felt compelled to hide the fact that the communists fought anti-Semitism with a determination unmatched by the Western Allies.

Like Poland, pre-war Hungary was a fascist dictatorship in which anti-Semitism, along with other forms of racism against minorities (Rumanians in Hungary, Ukrainians in Poland) was institutionalized. During the 1930's and '40's the communist movement) opposed anti-Semitism more strongly than any other political force (including the Zionist movement). As former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin wrote in 1951: "The Soviet Government fought anti-Semitism with characteristic pertinacity....The truth is that the Soviet Government is anti-anti-Semitic."

Naturally many Jews were attracted to the communist movement. Many welcomed the Red Army after the war and joined various communist parties. Many communist leaders in Hungary as elsewhere were Jewish. Historically, communists have always led the fight against all forms of racism.

A Red History Buff

French Reader Gets Kick Out of Anti-Racist Football Article

When the latest issue of CHALLENGE arrived, I told my usually apolitical 18-year-old son about the article on the soccer star Zidane, and he said, "You're putting me on." I said, "No," and we immediately read the article together.

We discussed it -- he knows all about the racism of the Italian soccer clubs -- and I didn't even know he took an interest in the matter! So, one small testimony that printing this story was an excellent idea.

Zidane's backing off from charging racism breaks the rhythm of the article, but facts are stubborn things; we live in a complex world. It's important to know that there are limits to how far millionaire soccer players will go.

A Friend in France

Israeli Move Part of U.S. Plan?

I believe the Aug. 2 CHALLENGE editorial contains a misunderstanding 

of Israeli motives for invading Lebanon. Israel has not acted on its own volition. Since mounting an action of this magnitude requires extensive organization, it is likely that this conflict is the U.S.-planned prelude to the bombing and subsequent invasion of Iran. When Israel "decides" to pursue Hezbollah into Syria, the U.S. hopes to draw Syria into the war; Iran has a defense agreement with Syria. Once Iran enters the war, the U.S. would mount its own invasion from Iraq. This plan is predicated on the "cooperation" of the ruling classes in Syria and Iran.

Long-time reader

CHALLENGE Comment: The U.S. does not seem to be prepared to invade Iran at this point, considering its problems controlling Iraq (having to send still more troops into Baghdad). While your predictions about the consequences of these attacks are true, it's difficult to be certain whether the U.S. is behind the attacks or whether Israel is acting for its own interests and hoping the U.S. will allow them to continue, assuming it benefits the U.S. ruling class.

Communist School Stresses Crucial Role of Industrial Workers

LOS ANGELES, July 31 -- The last three weeks of our 2006 Summer Project demonstrated the potential for organizing a revolution and a communist society through a series of communist schools, study groups, leafleting, CHALLENGE sales and developing closer ties. The schools were memorable and vital, attended by up to 30-plus people at each. Two people joined PLP; many others are seriously considering it.

In one school, an industrial worker stressed the importance of young comrades becoming factory workers, citing the revolutionary potential of industrial workers. This coincided with our leafleting at many plants. He also suggested a "work-in," where those interested would find temporary factory jobs for a better understanding of industrial work, even if not doing it long-term. His description of developing ties with co-workers provided a better feel for doing industrial work.

We also heard presentations on the history of PLP, on immigration, and on racism and its roots in capitalism and imperialism. We discussed New Orleans and the need for multi-racial unity against racism, an attack on the whole working class as well as the need for communism and dialectics. We also analyzed the current Middle East crisis -- a sharpening quagmire rooted in inter-imperialist rivalry and many local bosses' greed for more oil profits. The war in Lebanon is a murderous example of this rivalry and possible omen of a coming world war. All this highlighted the necessity for even more dedication in building our party.

We had struggles over collectivity and contradiction between reform and revolution, understanding that while participating in reform struggles, it's an illusion to think they'll lead to revolution.

With consistent, day-to-day, hard work of building personal-political relationships and with genuine political and ideological struggle for communism (including a wider distribution of CHALLENGE), we will be able to bring our friends closer to the party. We're learning that it's not enough to just push for militant anti-imperialist politics. Grasping the primacy of a communist outlook will increase participation in events such as the Summer Project and building networks of CHALLENGE-DESAFIO, necessary to sustain our Party and movement. Many of us are realizing that fighting for communism is not a sacrifice -- it's in our class interest. We will lead more fulfilling lives from our experiences as communist organizers. A proper struggle can only strengthen us on an individual level and as a Party on a collective level.

Our communist school has inspired future study groups with more widespread leadership from among our comrades and our close friends as a result of these struggles here. We plan more anti-racist activity and will emerge from this even stronger.

Mexican Elections Won't Change Workers' Lives

[The following was accidentally omitted from our last issue -- Ed.]

Oaxaca's militant teachers have returned to work. They were pressured by the media's claim that if the teachers "care" about the students, they'll go back to work while negotiating their contract. The section below was written while the strike was still on.)

OAXACA, MEXICO, July 14 --"The Teachers' Struggle is Also the Workers' Struggle!"; "Long live Communism; Death to Capitalism!"olk,0

These were some of the slogans chanted by many people in the mega-march of 500,000 people in Oaxaca supporting the teachers.

The PRD and its candidate, Obrador Lopez, have promised to spend more money on education, scholarships for the poor, and pensions for the elderly and other reforms. Even if he had won the election and slightly limited the huge profits of Mexico's bosses and the imperialists, the lives of Mexican workers would not be changed significantly. As the competition increases between local capitalists on the one hand and the imperialists on the other, workers are sinking into greater poverty.

REDEYE

Officers's order in Iraqi: kill all able men

Military prosecutors last month accused four soldiers in the unit of releasing three Iraqi men they captured that day, only to kill them....

But the lawyers are...making a more startling claim: that the soldiers were given explicit orders before the raid to "kill all military-age males" they encountered.

The lawyers say that two senior officers -- a colonel and a captain -- have acknowledged that they gave that order, as have other men in the same company. (NYT, 7/23)

Imperialist boundaries poison Mid-East

...For the optimists hoping that war in the Middle East will soon end so the rebuilding can commence, there is a serious problem....

Boundaries between many countries of the Middle East, like those in Africa, were...put together...by European colonizers who...lumped enemies together on purpose, hoping that ethic hatreds might reduce anticolonial feelings...A new study....compares the performance of countries with natural borders to those with artificial ones and finds, overwhelmingly that artificial nations suffer terribly -- lower income, horribly ineffective and corrupt governments, less respect for the law, low literacy, limited access to clean water, poor health care, you name it.

...And having oil wealth is unlikely to save the day. Fragmented countries with natural resources often do worse because civil war rages over who gets to keep the money. Some of the poorest countries in Africa, for example, are actually quite well endowed with diamonds and other resources. (NYT, 7/20)

Nixon adviser says fascism is real threat

John Dean, the White House counsel who warned Richard Nixon 32 years ago that Watergate was "a cancer growing on the presidency," was back in town the other night....

"What is at the end of the road in America," he said, "is a proto-fascist type attitude.".... "We have a very real possibility in this country of getting on that road. We're not very far from it. It wouldn't take a very sharp turn."

His observations, Dean said, are based on many discussions with social scientists... (Tribune Media SVC., 7/16)

`For a good person to do evil, takes religion?'

In "Breaking the spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and theorist of cognition at Tufts, refers again and again to the "brave" researchers (including himself) who challenge religion. In " The God Delusion," Richard Dawkins, a professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford, once again likens religious faith to a disease and sets as his goal convincing his readers that atheism is "a brave" aspiration....

...As the (atheist) physicist Steven Weinberg has famously put it,...good people tend to do good, evil people tend to do evil, but for a good person to do evil -- "that takes religion." (NYT, 7/25)

Dixie Chicks say religion keeps us down

The Dixie Chicks...Lead singer Natalie Maines belts it out: "Dust bowl. Bible Belt. Got more churches than trees. Raise me, praise me, couldn't save me. Couldn't keep me on my knees." (Liberal opinion, 7/26)

Judge bars Wal-Mart workers' health $

Wal-mart won a major legal victory when a federal judge in the US struck down a Maryland state law requiring large retailers to provide minimal levels of health insurance. (GW, 8/3)

IRS firing auditors who find rich cheaters

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes....

Estate tax Lawyers are the most productive tax law enforcement personnel at the I.R.S.,...For each hour they work, they find an average of $2,200 of taxes that people owe the government. (NYT, 7/23)

US-Israel axis devastates Lebanon

The United Nations estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 Lebanese have been displaced, a giant number for a country of 3.5 million....people are stranded without food, power and in some towns ,clean water.

"we have between 20 and 25 percent of our population that is turned into refugees. What government can cope with that?" (NYT, 7/29)

The poor pay extra for what they buy

Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year's insurance.

The poor are also the main customers for appliances and furniture at "rent to own" stores, where payments are stretched out at very high interest rates; in Wisconsin, a $200 television can end up costing $700.

Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities... a "ghetto tax." (NYT, 7/19)

70 Years Ago Spain's Workers Led Fight Against Fascism

July 18 marked the 70th anniversary of the fascist uprising begun by Franco and other generals against Spain's Republican government. The Spanish Civil War was the first harbinger in Europe of World War II (along with Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and the Japanese fascist's attack on Manchuria in the early 1930's).

Even though Spain was a weak capitalist country, its banking system was very strong (as it is now). And the banks extended its capital to all branches of production. Spain's colonies in Africa and it's neutrality during World War I helped create huge financial institutions like Hispano Americano Bank, Bank Vizcaya and Bank Bilbao. The merging of finance capital with the landed aristocracy created a financial oligarchy, turning Spain into a small imperialist country (so labeled by Spain's Communist Party in the 1920's and '30's).

But this capitalist development also sparked a very militant and class-conscious working class. In Oct. 1934, the fascist CEDA party entered the government. CEDA didn't hide its sympathy for the Nazis. It was widely expected that CEDA would follow Hitler's example in using parliament to introduce an authoritarian regime. But many Spanish workers were determined not to fall prey to the disaster that had divided the German labor movement.

Following the heroic February 1934 uprising of Austrian workers in Vienna, in a vain attempt to stop the semi-fascist Dollfuss from entering that government, the watchword of Spanish anti-fascists had become "Better Vienna than Berlin", referring to Hitler's rise to power by parlimentary maneuvers. Nowhere was the radicalization of the Spanish workers movement clearer than in the ranks of the Socialist Party (PSOE). Under rank-and-file pressure, its strategy of reformist gradualism was being replaced by calls for revolution.

.A general strike was called. In Asturias, in northern Spain, miners rose in armed insurrection and formed militias which laid siege to most of the province's Civil Guard (police) posts. In the mining town of Mieres, the Provincial Revolutionary Committee announced to a wildly enthusiastic crowd the founding of the Socialist Republic.

The local Workers' Alliance Committees organized every aspect of life, from food distribution and hospitals to transport and communications. A makeshift war industry was rapidly established. Factories began to turn out armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition. The workers even produced a benzol substitute for petrol, made from coal. "Red Guards" were organized to ensure revolutionary order, looters were strictly dealt with and well-known right-wingers were arrested.

Women were heavily involved at all levels, many joining the militias. The miners had few arms and relied on those captured from government forces or arms factories; they suffered from a chronic shortage of ammunition. The insurrection's principal weapon was dynamite; its adept use enabled the miners to inflict humiliating defeats on the opposing army.

In the mountain passes, giant catapults hurled the dynamite at the enemy. In the cities, the dynamiters crept forward while smoking cigars, using them to light hand-held explosive sticks. Once the mining areas had been secured, a column of 1,000 militias was sent to seize the provincial capital of Oviedo. Here, where the local party and union bureaucracy was more dominant, the workers had been slow to rise, but the miners' arrival established revolutionary power in the city's streets. The government forces were quickly driven into a few isolated strongholds.

Meanwhile, troops sent from the capital in Madrid to deal with the rebels met stiff resistance in the region's southern mountain passes. Several hundred miners, armed mainly with dynamite, pinned down one such government force for 12 days. However, the Asturian Commune remained isolated. Much of the Socialist leaders' new-found militancy was only hot air.

Elsewhere in Spain the general strike soon collapsed due to the passivity of the PSOE leadership and the lack of anarchist union federation support. Only in Catalonia, under revolutionary socialist influence, did the strike begin to take on insurrectionary proportions before being undermined by the half-heartedness of the left nationalists and anarchists.

Such was the optimism of the Asturian workers that news of the failure of the movement elsewhere in Spain was dismissed as government lies. After ten days of desperate resistance, gradually the enemy forces pushed back the 20,000 militias. The government soon decided to smash the movement at all costs. Franco's advancing troops, who had experience crushing colonial revolts in Northern Africa, used prisoners to form human shields and bombed food lines. On October 18, after protracted negotiations, the revolutionaries surrendered. Many workers refused to hand over their arms, either hiding them or fleeing to the mountains to begin a guerrilla struggle.

(Next: the 1936-39 Civil War and how the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent Mexico, were the only forces helping the Republican government, while the U.S., France, Britain, fascist Germany and Italy helped Franco.)u

Years After `Peace Accords' Death Squads Back in El Salvador

EL SALVADOR -- On July 5, hundreds of high school students took to the streets protesting a bus fare increase and the high cost of living. They demanded fares be cut in half for students and for people over 60. When the students neared the National University, security police -- the UMO (Unit for Maintenance of Order -- assaulted them.

The students defended themselves and a big fight ensued. Police sharpshooters were stationed on adjacent buildings, helicopters flew over the students' heads, shooting indiscriminately, while other cops beat and arrested them. Hundreds from the National Civil Police, including the Group of Police Resistance, surrounded the University, arresting and beating more students.

In the end, two cops were fatally shot and many students and teachers were wounded. Dozens of students were arrested, beaten and tortured in the jails; many have disappeared. The government of Antonio Saca immediately accused the FMLN of being responsible for the demonstrations and the police deaths. But they ignored the poverty, unemployment and repression caused by the government and by capitalism itself.

Ironically, these police units that attacked the demonstrators were created after the "peace" accords between the FMLN leadership and the fascist Salvadoran government. The #2 police official is an ex-guerilla commander and many of the cops are former guerrillas, who today openly defend the murderous capitalist system. They are just like the old death squads.

"Now we live in a country where democracy is the main achievement of the peace accords," scream the FMLN leaders. Clearly, since these leaders are paid $4,000 a month, compared to a farm worker's $76, it's obvious which class and system they defend.

The Salvadoran working class is fed up with their inhuman conditions. There are daily demonstrations, protests, strikes and confrontations. The working class must understand that the capitalist rulers will do everything possible to keep workers on their knees, including building supposed "leftist" tendencies to confuse them.

Experience has exposed the FMLN's objective of "national liberation" as just another way to exploit and repress the working class. The attack on this and other demonstrations shows how capitalism meets workers' demands: with bullets. This system cannot meet our needs. The fight between workers and bosses is a fight to the death. Our only alternative is the direct fight for communism.

We support the struggles in the streets, strikes and demonstrations against the bosses. There we can expose capitalism and the phony left. Many of these angry workers and students know true communist ideas through our paper, CHALLENGE/DESAFIO , and that future struggles should be not only for fare reductions but for working-class power. Then all wealth we produce will be distributed according to the needs of these same workers, not for the profits of capitalist bosses.

U.S. Rulers Killed 1,000 World War 1 Vets in 1935 `Katrina'

The genocidal response of the Bush administration to Katrina is not new for the U.S. ruling class. And talk about putting soldiers and unemployed veterans in harm's way....

On September 2, 1935, what became known as the Great Labor Day Hurricane ravaged the Florida Keys with winds of 160 miles per hour and gusts up to 200 mph. Between 400 and 600 people, perhaps over a thousand, perished. Among the dead were hundreds of World War I veterans. At the height of the Great Depression these vets had been sent to build a road on the low-lying islands of the Florida Keys as part of the Public Works for Veterans program. While working, they were housed in inadequate tent-like structures provided by the Roosevelt administration. When the National Weather Bureau issued warnings for a hurricane, they were not evacuated.

Shortly afterwards, the editors of the communist literary magazine New Masses asked Ernest Hemingway to write an account of the storm from an insider's perspective. He was living in the area at the time and knew it intimately. Hemingway's response was the article, "Who Murdered the Vets? A First-Hand Report on the Florida Hurricane," published September 17, 1935. Excerpts follow:

Whom did they annoy and to whom was their possible presence a political danger?

Who sent them down to the Florida Keys and left them there in hurricane months?

Who is responsible for their deaths?

The writer of this article lives a long way from Washington.... But he does know that wealthy people, yachtsmen, fisherman such as President Hoover and President Roosevelt do not come to the Florida Keys in hurricane months....because [they] know there would be great danger, inescapable danger, to their property if a storm should come.... But veterans, especially the bonus-marching variety...are not property. They are human beings...and all they have to lose is their lives. They are doing coolie labor for a top wage of $45 a month and they have been put down on the Florida Keys where they can't make trouble....

As this is written five days after the storm, nobody knows how many are dead...but the total of veterans dead and missing alone numbers 442.... The total of dead may well pass a thousand, as many bodies were swept out to sea and never will be found.... But the veterans had been sent there; they had no opportunity to leave, nor any protection against hurricanes; and they never had a chance for their lives....

Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans, many of them husky, hard-working and simply out of luck...to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months?

Why were the men not evacuated on Sunday, or at least Monday morning, when it was known there was a possibility of a hurricane striking the Keys and evacuation was their only possible protection?

Who advised against sending the train from Miami to evacuate the veterans until four-thirty o'clock on Monday so that it was blown off the tracks before it ever reached the lower camps?....

Now it's calm and clear and blue and almost the way it is when the millionaires come down in the winter...except for the smell of the dead that always smell the same in all countries that you go to.... Or is it just that dead soldiers smell the same no matter what their nationality or who sends them to die?....

You're dead now, brother, but who left you there in the hurricane months on the Keys where a thousand men died before you when they were building the same road that's now washed out?

Who left you there? And what's the punishment for manslaughter now?